I'm joking with the meme, but it's an interesting how plot armor unintentionally places value on people's lives in fiction.
It's telling that censorship laws decide who it is and isn't acceptable to kill. Just thinking about violence against sentient robots and how that's normalized in things like Samurai Jack.
Like we know the robot has thoughts and feelings, like they'll try to run to save themselves or plead for mercy, but a character can still heroic after essentially killing a non-human who's acting like how we understand humans.
I feel like there's something dangerous in how easily we can depict appropriate targets of violence. Not just robots, but anybody deemed as less than human are allowed to be more put at risk.
Unnamed people are killed in superhero fights all the time. But unless they are of a class of characters like protagonists, they are collateral damage at best.
I think Plot Armor as a trope needs more class consciousness and awareness around how deciding who gets to be protected is often an unconscious political belief.
What about you though? Any tropes in media you'd like to see explored more or written with a leftist understanding?
if you're interested in the discussion of whose lives matter in fiction and what measure is a non human listen to a more civilized age, which is constantly getting into this over droids and clones and aliens
my pet issue is i would like to see trans characters who are both chill (neither transphobic stereotypes nor suffering for cis people to feel bad about) and not just cis people with different genitals (this one's less mainstream, but it's obvious in some books and it bugs me). basically what i want is for trans writers to get more mainstream positions, because there are plenty of characters like that, they're just only in shit like unjust depths. which i love dearly and i love that it's free, and it couldn't be as openly revolutionary and marxist if it was less indie, but i would love to be able to talk to other people who have read it outside the 50 people in the official discord server. basically i want madiha (or another transgender communist, there are others writing good stuff) to be given the reins to a prestige tv show and not have any oversight