Salt the Earth: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''I will personally burn everything I’ve made to the fucking ground if I think I can catch them in the flames.''|''Gabe'', '''[[Penny Arcade]]'''}}

 

 

So as a trope, characters will often have an analogous action, sometimes literally salting the earth, which performs as a symbolic act to indicate their embrace of scorched earth tactics and the increase of hostilities beyond it. The act can be a movement across the [[Moral Event Horizon|Moral]] or [[Despair Event Horizon]]s, increasing the threat of a character, making the stakes truly a matter of survival and making the lack of forgiveness or remorse clear. So it is that the act can occur at a pivotal moment in the middle of a war or as the final blow at the end of one.