Dear Dear Friend

Hello crk, I come in peace, I’ve been intrigued by a certain cookie(s)

hey guys! let’s talk about something called narrative distance. 

you’ve probably heard of it before! narrative distance is the degree of separation between the reader and the narrator or character in the story. first person vs. third person is a good way to show narrative distance: consider how “I stomped inside, the pavement burning the soles of my feet, my wet hair sticking to the back of my sweaty neck, so hot my skin felt like it was melting” feels compared to the more impersonal “Jack stormed in, his face flushed with heat”. 

now let’s be incredibly pretentious and translate narrative distance to minecraft roleplay. in this sense, a regular ranboo semi-lore stream where we watch c!ranboo spill all his deepest fears while recounting his thought process would be the equivalent of first person. there is very little distance between c!ranboo and the viewer. we get to see and hear and know everything c!ranboo sees and hears and knows, and if he doesn’t know something, we don’t know it either. 

a tftsmp stream would be the equivalent of third person: we see c!karl in brief segments where he doesn’t reveal any inner thoughts or conflict, and the more edited and produced format means we’re separated from the character himself and the normally first-person minecraft experience. we aren’t seeing the world through his eyes, we’re watching his life from a bird’s eye view. 

narrative distance can affect how we view characters and how sympathetic we are towards them. for example, during the exile arc, the viewers are firmly in c!tommy’s shoes, seeing everything that happens to him, hearing all his thoughts, living his life in the first person perspective nonstop for two weeks. we’re so incredibly close to c!tommy that c!dream’s arrival feels like a jumpscare. for contrast, when c!quackity’s torture of c!dream is mentioned or shown, it’s sanitized by production value, editing, montages, discretion cuts, and music overlaid on top. when the viewers get to see the characters interacting, they cut in after the gruesome bits are over, and it’s at most a ten minute snippet that’s not from the perspective of the victim. 

although c!dream is the victim in this situation, it’s harder to see him as such and feel sympathetic, because it’s so very impersonal. the torture is more a word-of-god concept than an actual scene, because we never see it. we get very little idea of its effects, and on top of that, c!dream doesn’t even have a perspective to watch. compare to c!tommy, whose abuse was laid out in gritty detail, and whose cc has painstakingly acted out the lingering trauma in every stream since– which happen to be mainly in an unedited slice-of-life style. and we can connect that to the difficulty in viewing c!dream sympathetically as well: we as viewers were very close to a storyline where c!dream was a villain, and very separate from the storyline where he’s a victim. which impression of the character do you think would be stronger?

narrative distance contributes to how we view villains. c!schlatt is gleefully hated, a static but well-rounded character that we don’t feel any sympathy for. the viewers are distanced from him because he doesn’t have a perspective and only shows up for plot-related events on others’ streams or for comedy bits. nobody tries to look into his motivations and nobody’s sad when he dies. we’re not close to him, we don’t understand him, and we don’t need to.  

then there’s c!quackity, who we watch go from a regular funnyman to an idealistic politician to a ruthless but caring advisor to a manipulative asshole focused on power. we walk in his shoes for every step of the way, we see his motivations and fears and inner thoughts, and we feel sympathy. and then he starts to distance himself, starts to edit and produce his streams and only show certain scenes without any emotional vulnerability, and starts acting as a villain. it’s kind of genius because he’s adding narrative distance while his character becomes harder to sympathize for. but we can still understand the character and feel pity for him, because we as viewers have lived his life and we know who he is and what he ultimately wants and needs. 

narrative distance. it’s pretty cool. 

~Capitalist Pig~

(I think I was 12 the last time I drew this asshole. I don't think younger me would have expected to still be obsessed with Outlast nearly 10 years later, but here we are lmao)

funfact! I think this is the first time I’ve drawn Amity.

she used to be my favorite but then… Hunter happened.

if you saw the version of this post with palismen misspelled, no actually you didn’t 

MILES NOOOO LOOK OUT FOR THAT PEBBLE ON THE CONCRETE oh god oh fuck it’s too late nooo miles :(

I’m sure someone thought of this already, but my sister gave me this idea awhile ago and I finally executed

made this for a Halloween art event involving horror games so here i am with outlast 😋

👙Hunter

He deserves a beach episode to chill tf out tbh (maybe on earth, though, so they can all swim without melting their skin off...)

taking a break... he'll join them in a minute.

#I LOBE THIS *eats it

over and over