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feeling like so much of people's frustration with media can be when someone's heart longs to break through to the other side of the screen but their internal contradictions and the limitations of the medium or particular work prevent them from getting close enough
people talk about suspension of disbelief. i think this is meant as some critical lens thing, but like. occasionally there has been a specific moment where i simply Lost my disbelief, a literal jaw-drop moment, where suddenly my barriers are gone and the author gets through
and sometimes, the work really wants to take you there, and your heart really wants to take that outstretched hand and follow, but it can't, and ultimately that frustration is taken out on the work itself.
that's what i meant when i said megalopolis was frustrating
you can say a lot about whether the obsession with immersiveness in games and so on is good or not but i totally get it. sometimes people are desperate
this has broader application though. like… whether someone enjoys theatre is basically about this, their relationship with its screen, the fourth wall. similarly with whether someone enjoys larping. one of the things that prompted this was me thinking about the “star wars hotel”
i said in that earlier thread that the sky is not a box (of the square, 2d kind). well, in the star wars hotel, the endless night sky of space was a box. like a source engine level, the sky is technically just a differently textured wall, but it looks like the sky, with depth
and i have such respect for what they were trying to do, how if you went into that in the right state, you would feel for those two days like you really were in space. but they also chose a medium that is very, very hard for a lot of people to engage with like that. it's tragic
and, worse, it probably attracts the kind of person who desperately needs to be able to engage with it, but can't, and that creates suffering
if you enjoyed this thread you'll probably enjoy my one from a year ago about irony poisoning
https://social.noyu.me/@hikari/statuses/01HJ129PF54V90G8NGJPF959NR
@hikari when I write, I get very frustrated (both with myself and with the work) when my stories fall short of my vision for them and they don't pull readers through
@hikari the worlds I write exist fully formed inside my head, and I try to get them *out* and into my friends' heads, but I keep falling short and all I can do is try again until something sticks
(one of my stories from last year about how it feels for a robot girl to be disassembled and repaired has lodged itself in some friends' heads and I'm really proud every time they mention it)