Lumity

Horror Game Protagonist Bracket: FINALS

Finals and 3rd place matches will be open for 1 week.

Welp, we made it to the finals match. Thanks to everyone who voted, liked, reblogged, anything! This was my first ever Tumblr bracket, and it was very fun to create and run. Might do another bracket, but not immediately after. Thank you all so much!

/rp

Tubbo’s not at fault for not opening up about his trauma but Tommy isn’t at fault for not knowing Tubbo has that trauma and assuming he has thicker skin unknowingly because Tubbo’s coping mechanism is repression. 

They are both hurt and traumatized but neither of them is purposefully ignoring the other’s trauma 

lord forgive me, im back on my undertale voice acting bullshit

dear dear friend

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. 

Has this been done yet or...

something i think people tend to gloss over in ranboo's character is that he lies.

like, he lies! little white lies, he lies by omission, he straight up doesn't tell the goddamn truth. he twists it around into what people want to see/hear. he's actually a pretty manipulative character- not to the extent of say, quackity or wilbur, but he is. he is NOT innocent.

now, that's not to say he's a bad person. he's a person trying very hard to be good and by consequence, doing some shady things. it doesn't mean he's morally awful, just that he's struggling (which people are often wont to do)

he's smarter than people give him credit for. stop underestimating him, especially as he gets closer to unlocking the truth within himself.

John yayyyy

TUMBLR DIDINT LET ME POST HIM 💔