ok so while my ds is getting sand poured into it at alarming rates I'm thinking about how jrpgs in specific have a really weird desync with How Important Death Is. like some address it better than others but it very frequently happens where if you take a step back youll go "am I wild or is everybody just like, Really down with murder in this game". and consequences for said murder, especially in a characterization sense but even just actual physical consequences, don't really happen? unless it's a vehicle for conflict but like. when it is a vehicle for conflict it feels weird because why are These Guys actually taking the fact we killed somebody in broad daylight seriously and coming after us for it while all the other npcs and even the main party took it like it was another saturday evening
see I Think where the issue lies is in the fact that everything is in its own little world when you're in a battle? like. when you fight an enemy and you get leather out of it it's seen as something the enemy Drops and not. their hide. when you defeat a character in a battle it does just feel like you Defeated them. unless there's dialogue afterwards that says otherwise you don't even mentally assume you killed em you just wounded them enough to make them flee or dissolve or whatever. and it's Weird to just. have that assumption there because for a lot of games it really isn't clear if you're killing them or defeating them !!
that last point is extra important when you have the specific brand of Skittish Hero / Noble Hero Who Doesn't Kill People / Rational Hero In Way Over Their Head or whatever where you really don't think they Would kill a guy just to get them out of the way. in that case it's REALLY weird because it's hardly brought up. even if it Is brought up that that guy Sure Did Die the mc doesn't tend to actually have a reaction ??? and I don't know why this is ???? like Any written reaction would be more interesting than nothing even if the guy doesn't have a full on crisis about taking another life having them go "oh shit, The Consequences" would be nice. really anything except (oh cool we can advance the plot now).
I will also mention that Some deaths do matter plot wise but very frequently what makes them matter is how much of it is linked to an in game battle I think. if your mc just finishes a fight and comes back to the overworld and the guy's Disappeared or Dissolved or whatever it means they don't matter. if the guy's still around after the fight it means it's more significant, especially if they're still alive but wounded or Really Shaken Up. because this clears up the indistinguishable line between if a battle is lethal or not and if a character decides to deal a finishing blow now it's Way more telling of their character. even though this is basically the same thing that happened in the (killed In A Battle) scenario. just with more dialogue. I will also mention that the person who deals the finishing blow is Rarely Ever that good hearted protagonist and often they'll even go :0 at somebody else committing a murder despite them instigating and helping murder quite a few people. just. In Battle. so it's less bad. I guess.
this is leaving out the fact that in party deaths are often a Major Major Blow because like. ok that's fair. that's A Guy You Knew that's understandable. anyway I don't really know where I'm going with this I just think it's interesting how in these types of games death can swap from not mattering at all to mattering a Lot and if u don't think about it too hard u don't even question it. I'll probably be putting some examples in the tags idk
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bitching abt my partner again so i can get it out of my system and not let it fester
had a Discussion yesterday and i said how i didn't like that i, someone who naturally wakes up early and has to go to bed around 11-midnight to get decent sleep, have been spending the last few months either sleep deprived or forced to use sleeping pills to sleep, when he sleeps in til fucking noon, even on the two days we both have off and can, yk, spend time doing things in the morning together, and then he complains that we never do anything outside (bc we live in florida. anything after noon is just a fucking sauna.)
anyways. i ask if he can start waking up earlier. he says he'll wake up at 10 today. i go, ok, thank you, but what does that prove? that you can do it once? i've been changing my schedule for months. i want to hear that you'll try to do it consistently. (And 10 isn't early anyways, but i didn't say that). he insists he's going to do it. makes sure i see him set an alarm in front of me and everything. so anyways. 10:01 i get a text that he's going to sleep a little more.
man.
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