/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11904875]

I think characterizing NPC-ness as a lack of inner world is mislead. Tracing NPCs back to its origin in games, we see that the essence of NPCs is the lack of agency, repeating the same lines or actions ad infinitum. In the normie strain of NPCs, we observe that there is simply a regurgitation of the most recent indoctrination. Though there is a change in the lines spouted and actions performed, this is analogous to stock lines or actions of a video game NPC being changed by the programmer. It is easy then to conclude that NPCs lack any form of reflection and thinking for themselves. Yet this is a false conclusion. All we can conclude is that they are in ACTING like an NPC. That is a rather obvious difference between an in-game NPC and a human one, in that we are certain that in a game the NPCs really are just what they seem while in real life, we are not so sure. How can we be certain that human NPCs do not in their minds think other thoughts but only act NPC-like perhaps due to fear of ostracization or persecution? In fact the idea that to be a NPC is to be a normie is arguable. Would an in-game NPC who glitches out cease to be an NPC? In fact we can see this in people with Asperger syndrome as they are able to articulate social norms in a laboratory context, where they may be able to show a theoretical understanding of other people's emotions but show difficulty in acting on this knowledge in real-life situations. In a sense, they are NPCs in that they are unable to escape their physical autism despite their mental non-autism. What we observe is only their repeatedly autistic behavior. We could of course argue that their inability to act normal in real life is due to a flawed understanding of normality, similar to Plato's idea of people only doing evil because they are not REALLY getting that it's evil. What I'm getting at is that NPC-ness is not the lack of inner world but the inability to translate inner reality into reality. We cannot deny that no matter how much agency we believe ourselves to have, or how unique our read on Finnegans Wake is, we cannot turn into a rabbit, we were probably influenced by something else we read. Because our powers are finite, we can at most act as an advanced NPC but never become truly "free". Perhaps only by becoming God or maybe Buddha can truly escape NPC-ness.

PS though of course even the player character in video games aren't really completely free, still being bound to the in-game physics etc. We can negate some of these through installing mods or even making our own game and become player characters in them. Yet there is no escape because we are still NPCs. NPCs controlling player characters is very much still an NPC. Perhaps there is escape in Christianity in that we allow God to control us. Perhaps only a God-controlled player character can realistically escape NPC-hood.

[Anonymous No.11904972]

>>11904875
Daring philosophy. Thank God for vidya giving us all of these tools to think differently about phenomena we previously took for granted. Based technology.

[Anonymous No.11905002]

>But what if NPCs are not characterized by an absence of imagination, introspection and so on, but precisely by an excess of it? The true NPC, I claim, cannot play the game because he is paralyzed by the Big Other. He cannot fulfill his desire to act upon the outside world and retreat within his internal monologues, away from ordinary society. He doesn't play because he feels castrated.
>But yet, and this is the paradox here, we need to retreat to be able to act meaningfully on the outside world, and escape predominant ideology.
>This is why I claim, we should all become NPCs.

[Anonymous No.11905008]

>>11904875
The sincerity of NPCs is manifest.

[Anonymous No.11905016]

>>11904972
Simulations and art will always mimick the greater structure of reality - of course, never truly leaving the realm itself.