A Song of Ice and Fire

Duck

🦆

Duck

60

As a child I had two consecutive duck toys. I know the later one was called Duck-Duck, but the name of the first one is lost to time, much as the toy itself was. Duck-Duck on the other hand, met a fiery end, which is disturbingly fitting for this comic.

I'm sorry, Duck-Duck. You deserved better.

11

I agree.

Let's take violence vs sex in fiction.

Violence is everywhere and you don't have to be 18 to have access to it. It has been completely normalized and today 11 yo kids play games like fortnite about murder.

But show a tity or sex and people will throw hissy fit about "bad" influence on kids (while the same kids happily murder people in games because it's fun).

39

I tried reading these books, waaayyy too much rape in them. The bloody violence I could handle, but after the 3rd gang rape, I decided the author didn't have what I was looking for.

36
This is thrown around all the time but I'm not sure I'm convinced by a point it's trying to make. When I was a kid, I watched someone get shot by police through their car window and die. Stuck with me for many years, and my parents always blamed themselves for bringing us to the wrong place at the wrong time, but it wasn't their fault. Things like that just happen randomly and it's very much a part of life.

Add to that your grandparents dying, pets getting hit by cars, or whole communities dying of sickness, this sort of stuff just finds you when you're a kid and there's really no way to prevent it. It's a part of life as a kid, you just have to learn to live with it. Media portraying violence isn't necessarily showing them something they're not already familiar with.

But I have never seen people having sex without going looking for it. Idk, that's just my two cents.

18
Nice observation. To add on sexual intercourse is just an advanced form of a relationship, so what's a bad influence is actually an expression of love - it's quite a conundrum.

10
How much blood is in Fortnite?

3
- Not sure but there’s like six graphic sex scenes in Lego Fortnite
  
  5

Finally.

Books bad comic.

27

I wish I could experience the absolute joy my toddler gets when he turns to his favorite book page and laughs hysterically at it for the 100th time

18

It seems extreme violence and cruelty has been completely normalized in fiction. It's the same thing with movies, shows and videogames.

I think it's a cheap trick to provoke emotions in the audience without the need for good writing.

16

Fuck Brothers Grimm for starting this trend.

11
- And screw Sophocles for giving them the idea!
  
  3

Generally not a huge fan of violence in fiction. Doesn't do much for me. If it's abstracted/cartoonish enough, fine I guess. Definitely am not a fan of suffering.

Those ducks seem cool though.

9

Even if I don’t want to end violence in fiction (it’s a very effective theme of conflict) I do think there’s too much out there that normalizes the extremism of it, and especially the fetishization of death.

In the one hand, you have fiction where large groups congregate around arenas where prisoners fight to the death, and applaud the bloody carnage. I firmly believe there’s not nearly so many of this kind of spectator as fiction implies.

On the other, there’s fiction where, even amidst a chaotic and violent conflict, the heroes labor to save even singular lives of people lost or separated from the destruction - retaining focus on the preservation of life as the goal, and violence as the unfortunate but necessary method to achieve that.

We’ve also seen this in Marvel vs DC Movie universes - where DC has reveled in mass death and destruction, while Marvel, even if their large-scale spectacle makes it seem unrealistic, emphasizes the narrative point of characters going well out of their way to keep people safe; 90% of Cap’s signature Avengers “Why should I listen to you” plan being around how to keep the aliens away from innocent people.

I’m glad Game of Thrones has had a bit of this analysis too. There’s some very well-planned and tragic deaths in there, but also plenty that just bought into the theme of “anyone can die” without building any useful or engaging narrative theme.

To make the point in an unnamed game: This game showed one interesting person as the main character. After one chapter, it killed them off in a surprise twist. This was well-written and unexpected…but then I realized on my next play I just wasn’t interested in continuing - not out of sadness, but boredom. What they’d gained in shock value, they’d destroyed in stakes.

4

Dune (the books) do a good job I think. They have violence, but it doesn't revel in it. It usually broadly describes the events and moves on.

(Meanwhile, the new movies added new scenes just to have more action sequences.)

2
Odd aside, it's my test in a horror game to see if I should actually take threats seriously. If you see something creepy- can it kill you? Some games it's just creepy stuff that can only scare you- but if it can't hurt you then no big deal and loses all risk and threat.

1
- Amnesia did this really well imo. The first half of Rebirth has no direct threats, but many many things that make you feel uneasy. You won’t know offhand when you’re finally in a “lethal” situation, and it hides its failure states a bit so that you’re never sure if you could have avoided an encounter.
  
  The end result is something very close to the one-chance experience of being a character in a horror movie, complete with unrealistic escapes.
  
  2

Those wyverns are a way milder version of how ducks of that size would behave.

3

A Song of Blood and Incest.

2