#metanarratives

[bellshazes]

this close to writing myself into the argument that AFK farms constitute virtual reality in the sense that your non-game actions and time are now mediated by the game world. like, unironically.

[qpjianghu]

My galaxy brained MLC meta-narrative take of the day comes from my rewatch of ep 39, when Li Lianhua smiles sadly and says "the Wangchuan (styx) flower is indeed a miracle cure," because what if it actually doesn't exist. Which is why he has that extra sad look in his eye whenever someone (Fang Duobing or Di Feisheng) mentions it, or bestows it upon him. He knows it's not real. It is a "miracle" cure in the same way he is a "miracle" doctor. Miracles don't exist. The Wangchuan flower doesn't exist. It is a literalized MacGuffin manifested by the meta-narrative to force Li Lianhua towards his Normative Happy Ending.

Because it makes no sense. Whenever it appears in the show, it appears sooo conveniently. We know Di Feisheng has people searching for it the whole time, but we never see how / where they found it. We see Shan Gudao emerge with it, but we don't know how either. And in 38, the drawer just happens to pop open during Di Feisheng's fight, revealing the flower... just in the nick of time. And then, later, Di Feisheng literally just walks over out of nowhere to put the box on the table where Li Lianhua and Fang Duobing are drinking outside Lotus Tower.

And we don't even see eventually Li Lianhua deliver it to the Emperor. All of that happens off-screen, which is totally wack. Unless... it never. actually. existed. (Btw, saving the emperor to preserve the status quo of his hierarchical / hegemonic rule.....I'm just saying!!! Classic normative narrative!!)

Li Lianhua knows this. And giving it away is his one final (succussful) attempt to break away from the narrative and forge his own life (...and death), and story, off the page.

[box-of-paperclips]

The adventures of postmodern Paul, again.

[visenyaism]

*watching the play within the play that clearly highlights the themes of my narrative and foreshadows the circumstances and tone of my epic and tragic downfall while recontextualizing myself as an performer in a tragedy without any agency of my own* luckily all this stuff is random and fake

[kettle-bird]

Commission for @modmad of RGB from The Property of Hate! Which you should totally go read immediately it is absolutely top notch

[inamindfarfaraway]

I saw Hadestown recently and... the metanarrative aspects didn't need to go that hard. The entire cyclical structure with the story being acknowledged as an "old tale from way back when" that they tell again and again despite knowing the tragic ending, which is explored as precious proof of the enduring ability to hope? Orpheus and Eurydice falling in love so fast because they feel that they already know each other, they always have, and we know they're right? Hermes fluidly switching between character who emotionally invests in the doomed lovers and omniscient narrator who knows they're doomed, and the revelation in "Road to Hell (Reprise)" that he's genuinely been both from the beginning? The final song, a requiem for the living by the dead, with the cast out of character after the curtain call? When Orpheus toasts to "the world we dream about" but then also "the one we live in now" and everyone on stage looks straight at the audience for a moment of absolutely chilling silence? I was not prepared and I'm not okay.

[semiohazard]

for stanleyday you get the most rushed postparable drawings I the wourld

[determunition]

i've had click clack and early-godhood inspekta on the brain, imagine learning that the storytelling god you admire is a repressed disaster your first week on the job

[oujibaka]

she delta on my rune til i mus_smile.ogg

[bellshazes]

my first two jobs ever, in order, were "board game teacher" and "university library assistant," so tho I've never formally studied games (I have been dropping out of college on and off since 2015, and was a freshman in 2012 lmao) I've been casually exposed to games and the people who make and play them in a professional context, as well as having the research skills to help close the gaps. i actually kind of hate playing board games but i loved GM-ing the coop arkham horror and watching my players, which i did for seven years straight.

my current fixation is the result of several years' fucking around on YT watching all kinds of game content, from LPs to specific game dissection to video essayists. jacob geller and folding ideas are kind of gold standards, but this week I've been really enjoying errant signals in particular. Sometimes I'm introduced to concepts this way - ludonarrative dissonance, ergodic literature, the magic circle, etc. that, and getting recommendations from friends or accidentally stumbling into game studies via other research (such as the paper i wrote a few years ago on theater-as-games in prison contexts). most of it though is having thoughts and opinions on things and letting it percolate until i am dangerous enough to find someone who's already explained a concept better than I could, and then running with that. find something that cites its sources, and then chase the ones that seem interesting.

my syllabus post is very much not a reclist, though i do in varying ways recommend everything on that list and it might be of use. here's some stuff I think would be great starting points:

Rules of Play - Game Design Fundamentals, Salen and Zimmerman. This book is an excellent resource, as it introduces a wide variety of scholars who you can dive into as it is relevant to your interests as well as providing tons of useful frameworks and vocabulary to go hunting. It's an easy read with concise bullet-point summaries after each chapter, and the PDF is hyperlinked for easy navigation. I might have found this via Wikipedia, honestly.

A Play of Bodies: A Phenomenology of Video Game Experience, Keogh. What I'm currently liveblogging - it is firmly a literary/philosophical work, rather than by/for designers, and correspondingly it's a little more difficult without at least passing familiarity with cyborg theory or any brand or offshoot of post-modernism, but still fairly digestible and a great read so far.

My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft, Nardi. Found this during my theater-and-games paper, and MMO anthropology is not really my thing, but it's a nice complement to the other books as an explicitly player-theorist perspective. Also provides a more approachable introduction to a variety of theorists and sources. (Open access on JSTOR!)

Draw Your Weapons, Sarah Sentilles. I'm biased because I discovered this book by accidentally attending an author event at my local museum, and the games portion is incidental, but if you can find it I think this analysis of the relationship between depictions of violence and violence itself is worth your time. Memorable re: games for its discussion of Press F To Pay Respects.

here are some videos which I offer as examples of channels you might enjoy diving into, looking for additional jumping-off points:

Playing as Anyone in Watch Dogs Legion, Errant Signal. I really appreciate Errant Signal's thoughtful, personal approach to analysis and especially his highlighting of buried gems in his Blips series as well as his non-self-deprecating reevaluation of some of his older analyses over his decade plus career making videos.

Controllers Control Everything, Game Makers Toolkit. Discovered via the Boss Keys series highlighting the souls games, and although I think his channel is (increasingly) geared toward devs, these are well-constructed, thoughtful videos about many aspects of game design. Even when I don't personally get what makes him enjoy Zelda dungeons in that specific way (I'm an outlier), I appreciate his analysis.

Mega Microvideos 2, Matthewmatosis. Perhaps better known for his extremely long-form essays, I love Matthewmatosis' series of microessays framed like Wario Ware minigames. They are brief but don't pull punches, and the format is uniquely delightful. (See also this microessay mixtape.)

Making Sense of Catherine Full Body, SuperButterBuns. She doesn't do much essay content, I guess, but I she loves Catherine and the Persona series, and this dissection of Catherine Full Body is an absolute treat.

Jon Bois. Okay, mostly not about games, but like - come on. 17776 and Breaking Madden, alongside everything else he's ever done, fit because I feel like they do. If nothing else, I think Pretty Good and his general use of Google Earth as a medium for storytelling have a lot of utility in talking about digital media. He's good for the soul.

The Future of Writing About Games, Jacob Geller. One of the gold standards for a reason - and especially if you're looking for further solid recommendations for other writing/creating about games. This video in particular discusses & links to some really great pieces, but his Big List of Other People's Video Essays is also a great way to spend the next month of your life. (You might notice some crossover between this list and his, only some of which is coincidental.)

if i have any conclusion, it's that my current fixation on digital literalism is me finally finding an outlet/academic match-up with a fascination i developed in 2015 when studying gonzo lit. i think the utility of academia and the long history of scholarship on a given topic, as a non-academic, is to help you express ideas or reinterpret beliefs or experiences you've had to others without having to reinvent the wheel. i always become most energized when i stop worrying about knowing all the bg and chase whatever is useful and affirming or enlightening to me. and you can get pretty far if you think about why you like what you do, and just - enthusiastically also consume non-academic stuff. maybe this is a note more for myself! but thank you for the opportunity to monologue.

[kakishirocream]

Something interesting about the Winter Newsletter

Whats interesting is that Frisk was collecting every snowflake they can hold in their umbrella until it cannot physically hold itself and then it tips over onto Papyrus.

The umbrella has reached its absolute

(Credit to @/Clowntownerr on twitter with the meta oservation i wanted to share it here)

[qpjianghu]

 “It’s not that you don’t forgive others... it’s that you refuse to forgive yourself.”

Li Xiangyi / Li Lianhua - Mysterious Lotus Casebook, Ep. 40

[visenyaism]

have you seen the green knight? i feel like you would have interesting thoughts on it

Yesssss my beloved roommate @fkapommel took me to see it outside in college because they’re smarter than me and loved the original story. We watched it on the lawn in the grass with the medieval studies department.

I was kind of buzzed, but I love surrealist movies because I have like minimal ability to remember anything so my life kind of feels like stumbling through a half remembered dream where people say cryptic things I don’t understand at me all the time. And that’s what the movie felt like it was so beautiful and weird and extremely serious and dev patel did great and there was gay kissing. So when it ended I turn to my roommate like yayyyy this is the best movie ever and they were just like that sucked so bad they didn’t adapt the book or its themes. Divisive.

[spooksier]

can i do something will probably interest maybe 5 of you and explain the deltarune/magnus protocol twin sisterism that has made itself so clear in my mind

[youkaigakkou-tl]

Im kinda curious so a question if you dont mind: what change(s) do you dislike the most in the anime adaptation of Yohaji?

the thing is i dont really spend time "disliking" things about media ever, things are just "neutral" at worst to me. i mean maybe its because im not nearly as concerned with bombastic animation or big name VAs

of course before release i had pipe dreams of it pulling a bocchi the rock or mob psycho, but again, those come up in conversation Because theyre one-in-a-thousand adaptations

and considering a "2nd season" was always going to be basically impossible anyway, 24 episodes speedrunning to renren arc is a crazy out-of-left-field miracle i hadnt even considered possible, compared to whatever they could have done with 12 episodes

basically all the detail changes have some sort of reasoning behind them if you think about it for a second, and it mostly boils down to the differences between producing a comic and producing animation

so, really, the most awful thing to me about it, isnt any change the anime makes per se, but people who like the manga saying they hate the anime and not wanting to watch it (and also people who found the anime, and then read the manga, and now say they hate the anime), but again, its not as if i have the power to change the anime, or change someone's mind (which may be harder than changing the anime) so......

[finalgirlsamwinchester]