#that doesn’t mean that in a different medium or genre exploring these things

[foundfamilywhump]

the question, you see, is not ‘is it too ooc for this character to cry’ but rather ‘what circumstances would push this character to cry’

this is the whump wisdom, go forth and make that character cry

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

curious about your take on riddle's dream. i have seen people en masse claim that riddle yearns to a deliquent/"if he wasn't traumatized, he would be in a pop music club" and... it feels like such a literal interpretation (although there are some who are obv just joking) to the point of misinterpretation? i'm not very invested in riddle's story arc, but to me it read like a pretty clear "what if i was the worst version of myself (which riddle has been raised to see as being disobedient) and i was still loveable".

[You can read my thoughts on the book 7 chapter 12 part 3 update here!]

I think there’s a lot of different ways to interpret the dreams because of how… vaguely they’re written + their length + every player coming into the dreams with their own experiences which inform their POVs. For this reason, I don’t feel comfortable outright stating X or Y interpretation is “wrong”, and nor do I wish to be used as a means to validating one interpretation over the others. All I’m going to do this ask is explain how I personally interpreted Riddle’s dream. That’s all.

I don’t think Riddle wants to be a delinquent; this would be conflating a child’s desires to that of a delinquent. Yes, Riddle was detained be a police officer—but not for any violence or serious criminal actions. He was detained for singing in front of the police station (without a license) and causing a public disturbance (because of his amplifiers). Furthermore, Riddle doesn’t engage in any other criminal behaviors (unless you count not going to school, but a minor isn’t usually held liable for that; the onus is on his parents for not sending him). I think it would be more accurate to say that Riddle’s wishes are very child-like ones. He wants to be able to play with his friends all day, he ignores studying and obeying rules, he can eat tarts and drink sugary tea whenever he wants, he has doting parents that are always emotionally there for him, etc. These are not marks of delinquency, they are the innocent longings of an inner child that never got to be recognized.

While I don’t think it’s a guarantee that Riddle would be in Pop/Light Music Club had he had a more lenient mother, I do think that Riddle would want to explore creative outlets. He is noted as having a very strong imagination, but is limited in his life experiences and struggles to think for himself or to act outside of the concrete, as is defined by rules and laws. If these restraints were loosened up and he had actually been allowed and encouraged to explore other avenues, he might have found an interest in the arts and expressing himself through that. It could be a visual medium, a written medium, a musical medium, whatever.

I think music is what we jump to right away because he has a band in the dream, but I could easily see him dabbling in other areas too. Maybe music was chosen because it’s a group activity, and Riddle longs to be that setting. A happy family, a boy with lots of friends, you name it. You could also argue that Riddle went with music because that’s what he knew from his dorm members. Adeuce are in athletic clubs, which Riddle is sort of rubbish at, and Trey is in Science Club, which of course covers topics Riddle would already be studying irl. Cater’s club is the only one with a significant degree of creativity allowed. Riddle might have based his hobby in the dream off of Cater’s experiences. One telltale detail that supports this theory is that Riddle mentions people keep leaving because the band can’t stick to one genre, which is also true of Cater’s irl Pop/Light Music Club. Another thing to consider is that Riddle is able to conjure the look of delicious cakes and cookies but not replicate the taste because he’s not familiar with it. You could say this is also true of his being in a band. He looks the part, but we never hear him participating in it—perhaps because Riddle could have seen Cater rushing to a club meeting in his outfit, but not have actually heard him play. Therefore, it’s possible that Riddle’s dream is just pulling from his shallow understanding of what “being in a band” is about… the camaraderie of it. This, again, loops us back to Cater’s relationship with his fellow club members. It’s less about the actual playing and more about the vibes and hanging out with one another. Maybe Riddle heard stories from Cater about this and got curious? This same logic applies to other aspects of his dream. He seems to emulate what he has heard from his dorm members in general. Loving parents who are there for him (like Trey), the bout of delinquency (like Deuce), the ability to speak his mind (like Ace). Riddle is wanting to be more like his peers, who were able to have “normal” experiences. To me, it feels like he used his dorm members as templates (which he combined with his own desire to have a fulfilling childhood) because Riddle himself doesn’t have a clear concept of what it means to live freely. After all, he only has like 1-2 months of playing with Trey and Chenya to go off of compared to a few years with his Heartslabyul classmates.

As I said earlier in this post, I don’t think the Riddle we see in the first layer of his dream is meant to be “the worst version of himself” or “Riddle but disobedient”; it reads as more of Riddle indulging in everything he missed out on in his childhood. Sweets, parental love, playing all day with friends, loudly and openly expressing himself through music, exploring creative ventures, making happy memories… I don’t believe these are bad things or borne out of Riddle wanting to be rebellious or disobedient, they’re just consequences of acting like a kid.

I do find it interesting that so many aspects of himself were entirely written over. However, I don’t see it as Riddle thinking he has to be a different person (as in, having a different personality?) in order to be worthy of love. Riddle was definitely still able to make friends as a child even with the quiet personality he had then. It was possible. Nothing in his backstory makes me think Riddle believes he wasn’t deserving of love—but he may think that love has to be earned, that love is conditional. And what is that condition? Following the rules, obeying, performing well in exams. That’s what he was taught would earn him success and his mother’s love and that’s what he enforced in early book 1. I think… Riddle definitely wants to be someone else, but in the sense that he wants to be born into different circumstances. Parents that get along, a dad that has time for him, a mom that dotes on him, no magic, no expectations to shoulder, lax rules, etc. This ties in with Riddle wanting to live the childhood he feels he never had. A childhood where he had no friends, where he studied all the time, where his mother calorie counted for him, where he was not allowed to play video games or watch movies, where he was not allowed to choose his own clothes or career or anything. Several of these sentiments were expressed post-OB.

Now that being said, everything I just discussed covers only the first layer of Riddle’s dream. I see the idea of Riddle thinking he has to be someone else coming through a little stronger in the second layer of his dream. That’s the part where everyone is being chased through the destroyed rose maze. Here, we see a much more extreme and even more domineering Riddle than what we saw in book 1. He lords over his students such that even his versions of Ace and Deuce have fallen into line and mindlessly follow his commands. The mob students are scared of him—and though Riddle is aware of it, he is content. They salute him and praise him for his iron fist. He is the most correct, after all. He is ruling just as his mother would, he is being the person his mother wants him to be.

This is expanded upon further in the third layer of his dream, in which he faces his inner darkness. Riddle confronts the truth: that he is desperate to cling onto the dorm leader seat, because that’s all he has going for him. He has driven away his classmates, who fear him and resent him. There’s his mother, but she has not granted him the affection he craves, and her approval is conditional. He is alone and unloved. This potentially recontexualizes details seen in earlier layers. Why is Riddle in a band? Maybe because he wants to be like Cater, who seems easygoing and approachable. Why does Riddle live many other aspects of his dorm members’ lives? Why do the characters conjured by Riddle’s darkness to fully believe that Cater wants to transfer to Scarabia—a dorm known for having a friendly and relaxed leader? It could suggest an insecurity in Riddle, a worry that he, as he is, is not enough. Not smart enough for his mother’s approval, not kind or cheery or normal enough to make friends. So all he has is his crown, which he reverently claims to. It’s one of the few things he has to call his own, a decision he made for himself and something he earned through his own merit.

But ultimately, I see Riddle’s truest desire as… being his own person, having his own independence and things he chose for himself. Not letting himself be ruled by the shadow of his mother. (His Phantom fittingly seems to dangle him on strings, as if Riddle is its puppet or marionette.) It doesn’t mean complete chaos or anarchy, and it doesn’t mean being like other people. It means defining his own rules for how he should live. Walking forward on his own path. Making his own identity, not tied down to that of his mother. Riddle is so used to being to do what to do or how to be—by his mom, by some arbitrary set of rules. The fact that he confesses to the things he actually wants after his OB… that he wants to stand up to his mother over winter break… that he confronts the dream version of his mom with the declaration that he will open this door with his own hand, that he will walk forward on his own path… I think that says a lot.

…. Weeeeell, like I said at the start, that’s one interpretation 🤷‍♀️ It’s not necessarily “correct”, and it’s liable to change (especially since all of this information is still very fresh; I’m still taking the time to digest it myself). The wibbly wobbly dream magic is open enough to invite all kinds of interpretations, so I encourage you to take this all with a grain of salt and to come to your own conclusions?

I think it’s interesting that it’s Riddle’s dream that has resulted in many different interpretations, especially on the English speaking side? I wonder if that’s because the average EN player skews younger, so those fans can relate a lot with the struggle for identity and finding freedom from one’s parents, even if their circumstances aren’t exactly the same as Riddle’s. We project our own experiences and feelings onto Riddle, which informs our interpretation of his dream.

[burquillos]

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the final MHA chapter because the internet seems to be very divided

I waited till MHA officially ended! Long post ahead!! People being divided on the ending makes sense. Different people come to watch shows and read comics for very different reasons and with very different expectations for an ending in mind. Especially for a series like MHA which is a battle manga that seeks to subvert shonen genre tropes.

I think part of the reason why people are so divided on it right now is because of leak culture and reaction culture. People have to remember that comic books and manga are a storytelling medium. The author actually thinks about the arrangement of the panels, what’s in the panels, and how the combination of these things can form a narrative. Reading it from twitter thread/discords from people in a rush to translate to get the information to you as fast as possible is NOT the intended way to experience the story.

The “leak format” kind of encourages people to put too much focus on certain panels and roughly translated text that would otherwise feel very different when you are reading the story through the intended medium, and when you pair that with the highly reactive way people ‘consume content’ nowadays, the result is a snowball of very volatile emotions being thrown around without a moment for people to breathe, think, and wonder for themselves “Why did the author write it like this? Was there something I missed? How does this re-contextualize story? Have I actually missed the point this whole time?” etc.

That being said, I sort of have a philosophical way of approaching MHA?? When I got back to it again, I was hyper-critical of it especially because I just came back from reading One Piece (and the writing styles and messages are VERY different). I slowly learned to judge the writing for what it is rather than keep comparing it to other series and I learned it was more enjoyable to experience the story like that.

The ending is a very hard pill to swallow for a lot of people which is understandable, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. I mean, just look at the ending lines of "Do Not Be Defeated by Rain", the poem that inspired Deku’s character:

I am also a stubbornly optimistic person, and my number one rule is never to engage with anything in bad faith. I CHOOSE to see hope through the margins and the final chapter being so open to potential encourages that thinking of mine.

So even though I think there are some things that could be handled better (the villains) and storylines I WISH were explored (OFA vestiges my beloved) there’s no reason why it couldn’t be fixed.

There is this openness to it that leaves so much room for hope and imagination that I can’t truly be mad at it.

I might find MHA lacking as an entertainment piece, but I will defend it to the end as an artistic piece.

Horikoshi has said before that he doesn’t care if his manga is popular or not, MHA is basically a culmination of the stuff he enjoys, and I KNOW drawing whatever the hell you want despite knowing not everyone will like it takes a lot of guts and it’s what makes MHA so human.

All the traces of him are in there, flaws and everything, so you can endlessly turn it around, flip back and forth and there will be always something new to unpack, learn, and realize and the thought of what could've been will always haunt people (just like Star Wars, a series he also likes kajdbaldnlk)

[hak]

it’d be like a nightmare to reply to this I’m not a twitter replier period so I’ll just be annoyed about this here.. like this person is saying these new fantasy works are subversive essentially bc kui folds comedic and societal speculation about her fantasy worldbuilding in her work. that isn’t antithesis to fantasy at all??? it’s giving guy who’s only watched baby boss rn. if you actually read normal western fantasy (western bc someone had to bring up Tolkien) then the level of detail CAN go to that length, it just always isn’t in the medium to do it (comic vs novelizations, differences in genres). and mediums can define so much to how a story is formed. I haven’t read terry pratchett but to imply that it’s not equal to dunmesh in comedic or worldbuilding value because “escapism as primary motive” in fantasy, then u literally don’t know fantasy as a genre at all. you’re just talking about isekai harems specifically. and besides, fantasy isn’t one specific thing - lord of the rings’ hard fantasy isn’t also the very new booktok romantasy genre. even animanga fantasy varies largely in scale and gauge of how hard/soft fantasy it is (seinen, shoujosei included).

if this person also is meaning to say that kui cares for her world more than stupid harem isekai then that could be objectively true especially when the genre is more or less unserious/parodic, but even if you’re a hater of the genre there does exist plenty of seinen isekai with bad plots and characters but do a sufficient enough job of representing a “nonescapist” fantasy world, meaning it can stand on its own. the content and level of writing doesn’t negate it from being in the fantasy genre especially if the world is decently built up. whether or not it’s at the level of kui and others mentioned doesn’t really matter imo

I kinda don’t even get the point of why this was even said in the first place. Just applaud kui and the others for writing a well developed fantasy world and be done with it. Say you hate the isekai fantasy genre specifically and live your life do not start dragging a blanket of misdirected fantasy critique if you don’t understand the difference between them and “escapism fantasy” whatever the hell that nonphrase means lmao. I love the mentioned stories so much and they have value BECAUSE they work with the fantasy genre built heavily by their fantasy predecessors.

ALSOOO these fantasies being different and cool and new bc it’s “built around a core concept from reality” YOU MEAN THE HUMAN CONDITION? you mean good writing is using fiction to explore human ability and emotion?? Please think first fkkden

[ask-artsy-oncie]

I mean I can say it but nobody wants to hear it. Except it’s especially important, now, considering recent events.

Any discourse regarding the ethics of consuming Disney-owned media - in the context that this discourse has been taking place - is effectively worthless until animation becomes a more respected medium in the West.

And like - first of all, just fucking pirate everything. Just pirate as much entertainment as you want. Like be smart about it, but I’m not talking about which companies you give money to. That’s also effectively worthless to the conversation right now, but I feel like I should disclaim that I’m pro-piracy and this post wouldn’t change regardless of money being involved.

Because I’m talking more about the people who tie ethics to the type of media someone consumes whether they’re paying the company or not. And I need every single one of these people to understand that the people you’re yelling at make up a fucking microcosm of any given show or movie’s viewership. To keep all this discourse within fandom spaces demonstrates an ignorance to the bigger picture - and the picture is SO much bigger. Despite the fact that fandom has been growing so rapidly within the past decade, we remain a pond looking over the ocean that is the majority of the Western animation audience - non-fandom kids and parents.

I cannot emphasize enough that the 14-year-old animation fan who happens to be fixated on the newest Disney release is likely exploring non-Disney, non-USAmerican animation when the fixation wears off and they get curious about what they’re able to access now that the wider internet is available to them. Admonishing them for enjoying Disney at all when they “could be watching X film from X country instead!” is essentially just preaching to the choir. Like yeah, they’re still learning about different films that are more obscure to them, but if they’re out here still unabashedly enjoying animation into their teen years when Western society demands they grow out of it, they were going to go looking for this stuff, regardless.

Meanwhile, the parent who needs to entertain a kid for a few hours is going to just put on a Disney movie because of brand loyalty, blind trust, and the notion of “this is animated, ergo my kid will enjoy it” without considering genre or quality. They don’t know about whatever indie or non-USAmerican animated movie that might speak to their kid more effectively or even be enjoyable for them to watch on their own - and they’ll never learn because they don’t care. Animation isn’t a medium they believe they should be enjoying beyond “this is cute and makes my kid happy”. The non-fandom “Disney Adults” who kind of appear to be fandom but like never actually participate in any kind of fandom community (or have any respect for animation as a medium) are in it for brand loyalty. Buying Disney merch to them is like buying the newest iPhone.

I’m reminded of this every time I see some kind of outcry about a movie or show not getting supported enough. With things like the HBO pull or instances of Laika stop-motion underperforming in box-offices, it’s important to note that animation fans have always been showing up to support these shows and movies. What support these works lack is the parents and kids outside of the scope of fandom who weren’t effectively advertised to - there’s a thread on Twitter from Matt Braly regarding all the cartoons being pulled from streaming services for “not earning enough money”, where he talks about how these shows aren’t advertised, weren’t merchandised, and didn’t pull the viewership that execs expected them to. How could that be though? A ton of these shows had considerable and dedicated fanbases. Could it be, perhaps, that fandom doesn’t actually have more power over non-fandom or “normie” viewers when it comes to animation? The kids who ask for toys and other merch of their favorite shows and movies and the parents who are told about the new animated show or movie from advertisers?

What I’m getting at, is that if you want a multi-billion-dollar company to stop having the stronghold on Western animation that it does, then people outside of fandom spaces have to start caring about Western animation again. It can’t be “just a medium for kids”, it can’t be something seen as “lesser” than live-action, it can’t be “good” with the caveat of “for an animated movie/show”. Yelling at other fandom people who have shown so much love for every facet of animation, just because one of those facets happens to be Disney, is pointless. This doesn’t mean that you can’t say “if you liked [big name movie], you’ll probably also like [small name movie]!” but guilting people who are so barely part of the problem that even their support doesn’t seem to matter is performative. If you really care about making a difference, spend that energy promoting animation as a medium to Western audiences, instead. I promise you that will make much more of a difference.

[f3ralblog]

Why Everything Isn’t and Shouldn’t be “Jazz”

I came to Pittsburgh and learned more about jazz music than I had ever anticipated learning, thanks to the rich history in the region and the stories the music itself tells. Musicians like the great Roger Humphries, Dwayne Dolphin and Ahmad Jamal who both exist in history and propel the music today. Artists like Mary Lou Williams, Stanley Turrentine and Billy Eckstine who exist through performance and the retelling of stories, in a language that can be heard, felt and explored universally: jazz.

I love the music. Unequivocally - it speaks to me on a level that very little does. It’s intellectually stimulating, emotionally charged and present-facing by its nature. Improvisation, as a form of expression, changed my life.

But when I read the word “jazz,” in publications or in descriptions of music, I can’t help but believe that the word has been diluted. The work of countless Black artists, and over a century of art, has morphed into a catch-all for music that isn’t well understood. Or soothes you during your morning commute. Or literally just contains a saxophone.

An entire American history, forgotten.

There is music that is jazz, and there is music that is not. If it’s confusing for you, great, because this train of thought haunts me daily. I don’t think I can easily define jazz music. I hear with my own ears the influence of jazz in music today and every day. The general understanding, though, is that music that developed from jazz deserves a cavalier shove under the same umbrella. That could be fine for all of the other genres. Not that it is, but that it could be.

Not this one. Not the pioneering, uniquely American achievement that is jazz music.

Pittsburgh loves its generalizations. WDVE and rock music? Synonymous - everyone knows that! They just know rock music, you know? Media and journalism - same thing right? Television news is completely unbiased! Their sources - infallible! Indisputable!

Not this one. Not the pioneering, uniquely Black American achievement that is jazz music.

My band, Feralcat and the Wild, has been called jazz. And well...I don’t think that’s quite it. More like a hyphenate. It’s easy to hear that jazz music has inspired so much of what I make. I just don’t think my work fits into that same umbrella. The wisdom of all of his past lives are available to him, but ultimately the impact Aang makes is on his present. Yes, I’m comparing myself to the Avatar, the Last Airbender.

It’s like I keep getting pulled back into a meeting that I’m desperately trying to escape from.

I think I wish, like any lifelong learner would, that more folks saw what I see in the music. I see innovation, and a bold, never-ending legacy of evolutionary storytelling. In my own lessons, I implore my students to dive into the details of the music; an effort to develop critical thinking and a historical context for the impact of black Americans on music in the 21st century.

I immediately think of Robert Glasper, who popularized blending hip-hop with jazz and soul. He has gone on to win several accolades for his work, which both takes clear direction from and diverges from “jazz.” Glasper doesn’t call the music he creates “jazz”. In a NYT interview with Nate Chinen, writer of the book Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century, Glasper said “A lot of the time I prefer not even to say ‘jazz,’ because technically I do more than that.” He, like so many contemporary artists who have studied jazz extensively, works within his medium to ultimately evolve from jazz music.

Might I suggest using descriptors like “jazz-inspired” or “jazz-influenced” instead? Maybe use more specific sub-genres to create a clearer picture: free jazz, jazz fusion, bebop, swing, post bop, and cool jazz are all wildly different means of describing improvisational music based in jazz harmony.

Perhaps go deeper, and try to understand what about the music you’re listening to made you think of jazz. Are there rhythmic feels derived from Carribean and African musical traditions? Is there noteable individualistic expression? Are there references to the “Great American Songbook?” Use those words to describe the music you’re hearing; unless you can draw a clear line between the sounds you hear and the legacy of Bird, or Miles, or Lady Day, or any historic jazz figure. Even then, be that specific.

Jazz is dead - reborn, not resurrected.

If it lives, it lives to preserve history. If it lives, it is through its everlasting impact on the evolution of the arts.

[spaceboysandfieldgirls]

tired of that post that’s like ‘people who were fic writers before they were pro authors all suck’ and using like cassandra claire as an example. sure, some authors who started writing fanfic now make shitty derivative wish fulfillment books with bad adjectives. but that’s such a misunderstanding of what fanfiction is.

fanfic is not an inherently subversive genre, and i personally hate people who’s only queer lit is fanfic. they’re missing like everything important about the queer experience. but fanfic is also not meant to be a societal medicine, a cure-all for queer issues.

fanfic is a space for passionate people to express their love for a piece of art.

just like fan artists don’t make bad artists, fanfic writers don’t make bad writers. it isn’t causative.

however, lots of people in fandom are new to their mediums, or young, or not super high effort. so fandom spaces are flooded with the content of amateurs- people who create out of love.

lots of those people are bad at it. not because liking things enough to write about them makes you bad at art, not because wanting gay people to kiss makes you bad at art. but bc the point of these works is singular: to create for a fandom a thing that is wholly yours, drawn from your love of that fandom.

i go to art school (fake gamer, i know) and all of the most talented artists, especially the illustrators, had fandoms that they drew for when they were young. the fan space allowed them a community to create for, people to encourage those early stages of artistic development.

this is what lots of (i’d bargain most) fanfic is. it’s the beginning of an artistic process. it’s fresh, it’s new, it’s missing constructive feedback and editing and perspective. just like the early works of a million different singers, songwriters, painters, writers, actors, and dancers before them, these artists are laying the groundwork for their future endeavors. and they’re doing it out of love. i think that’s beautiful.

furthermore, lots of fanfic is actually well written. those posts that say ‘x is such a raw line you’d think it’s from shakespeare but it’s actually from a stuckky incest fic’ or whatever. those posts are a perfect example of the actual writing ability of some fic authors. i’ve read fics that do innovative things with form, rhythm, plot structure, etc. i’ve read fics that discuss in more plain-clothes fashion topics that are hard to find in most fiction. sure, maybe i do really like it when a character is confrontational in a way no real person is, but that unrealistic behavior doesn’t mark a bad author— fiction doesn’t have to feel like it’s real, it has to feel congruent with its own internal logic. some fic authors understand this better that some ‘real authors’. many don’t.

finally, there are some authors that i’m pretty sure were fic authors before they got published (no evidence, just conjecture) who make incredible work. nora sakavic, lee mandelo, c.s. pacat. their work is all notably fic-y, from some writing conventions to plot points to obvious references to other works. none of this devalues their books, which each have their own merits. the all for the game trilogy by nora sakavic is an awesome fast paced action series centered around stupid mafia drama and a fictional sport (which would be way more fun to play than fucking quidditch btw) and also deeply explores consent, trauma, and what it means to be someone’s family. summer sons by lee mandelo is a beautiful languid southern gothic with some innovative ideas about ghosts and some really intense haunting scenes. c.s. pacat’s captive prince trilogy is undeniably fic-y with a lot of weird plots and sub plots and sub sub plots, alienating dialogue, and an obsession with sexual trauma. and the captive prince trilogy is also the most comprehensive look i’ve ever gotten at battle strategy. i love how the relationship between afflictors and those afflicting harm was discussed- there’s no right way to understand the atrocities discussed in the text, but the characters are people, so they keep living, and they make bad decisions and they make good ones. i’d recommend all of these books.

all this to say that fanfic has its place. there’s nothing to be achieved by acting like it’s some angelic force, but likewise bashing on it needlessly does no one any good. and to close: i got into economic theory because of my sisters ex-boyfriend who had a copy of das capital. i got into queer theory because a fic writer i like mentioned the faggots and their friends.

[neocatharsis]

Ten on his new Represent capsule, grappling with creativity, and evading genre lines.

As Ten Lee - a vocalist and dancer in K-pop groups NCT (with whom he debuted in 2016) and Super M, and Chinese group WayV - is musing over his proclivity for partnering music or visual styles in a way that others deem strange, he veers off on a tangent. “Anything can be matched… except juice and coffee,” he says, suddenly. “Those two should never be.” Ten is infamously anti-fruit. It stems from a mistaken process of association in childhood where “I had the image of a spider and the image of fruit mixed up,” he laughs awkwardly, “so now whenever I put fruit in my mouth, I think there’s spiders in my mouth.”

Random abstractions such as this pepper his rapid-fire conversation, like small fireworks fizzing through the dark. Excitable, enthused and sharply alert, if Ten’s energy was visible it would be a shimmering mantle of gold and silver dust. As a dancer, he moves with a sinuous, controlled power that can shift from elegant to explosive on a single beat. As a visual artist, the Bangkok-born, multilingual 25-year-old recently added the title of designer to his growing list of achievements, launching an already sold out collaboration with the bespoke merch platform Represent.

Aptly, he named his collaboration “What is ??? THE ANSWERS”, for although being a chameleonic artist is one of Ten’s greatest strengths, the personality traits that enable this created within him question marks around how he saw himself fitting into the world. “People ask me, ‘What kind of music do you like?’ And I say, ‘I like R&B but hope it sounds rock’. And they’re like, ‘That doesn’t make sense’.” It was troubling to Ten that people began telling him who he was and how he should be, instead of accepting him as is.

In a recent Instagram Live, the myriad of Ten’s contrasts tumble forthwith. He’s the doting cat-dad. His inner emo, who loves rock music, shows off dried roses, with the stern, black, geometric lines of the large tattoo on his inner right arm sometimes visible. But he’s also delicate in a way, with his butterfly tattoo and hair lightly permed, who names daisies as his other favourite flower, and plays Fousheé’s breathy TikTok hit, 'Deep End'.

“Have you seen the image where I have my name in a cross in lots of different languages?” He pulls the image up on his phone. The design sits on his Represent long sleeve tee. “I was thinking [about this], like, what you’re saying... Ten has this luvvie flower side and a very ‘rawwrr!’ side. I’m always like, ‘Ten, what kind of person are you?’ I do ask myself that, too, because everything I like is so different [to the other].” He could have conceded, and reined himself in. He’s pushed back instead. “I thought, ‘I can be anything I want, I can be this in the morning and this at night. I can be any person I want to be’. And that’s what makes me comfortable and happy.”

On his Instagram, Polaroids feature scrawled messages, like “Don’t tell me what to do!” and “Whatever! I’ll do it my way”. The designs of his collaboration seek to challenge being boxed in by other people’s standards, thus limiting ourselves. The recurring symbol of a cross tipped with arrows is a nod to the Chinese letter for 10, but doubles as a plus sign. He’s added it to his Instagram, writing “TEN_+•10” in his bio. “A plus sign can mean that you’re adding on and growing.” He points to another version of the arrow-cross, one with short diagonal dashes between its points that symbolise light. It means, he says, “that I’m radiating. I’m burning, I’m active, I’m doubling myself.” He touches his forearm, where crowning his geometric tattoo is a blazing sun. “I have this, like, if you want to be the light, you have to burn. I relate to that.”

This isn’t to say Ten’s self-exploration is complete. While celebrating his strengths, the artwork also portrays parts of himself not yet conquered. He admits to being a chronic overthinker: “Even very small things that happen to me, I rethink a thousand times, and I get stressed out because of the things I do. Like, the main theme [here] is me overthinking but trying to find an answer even though it doesn’t have any answer.” Fittingly, spiral shapes dominate his designs, looming large amongst bright, bold shapes that evoke 80s Pop Art and graffiti, though Ten shies away from defining himself as “fully an artist, I’m not in the position to say things like that yet.”

“I’m still learning and trying new things. You learn by getting different elements from different people and I’m in that stage now.” He enjoys wandering the infinite halls of Instagram and Pinterest where he screenshots art that he likes, lost in the images, often for hours. He explains that he’s mostly influenced by whatever his current visual obsession is. “I’m interested in tattoos lately so my paintings look like tattoo designs. I’m that person who, when they see stuff, it goes into my brain and instantly comes out from my hands,” he laughs.

Ten’s introduction to art and design was through his mother, who believed music, art and sport were more important in a child’s development than traditional academia. “She didn’t care if I got an A* or not, just don’t get an F or a D,” he grins. Like any kid forced to do something, Ten railed against spending his weekends at art school. He attended but he didn’t draw. He befriended his teacher and other pupils and, as they worked, he chatted. “I was a very talkative kid! When I came to SM Entertainment (in 2013), I had a lot of my own time because my parents were in Thailand and I was alone. I had to absorb all the new culture and adapt to a new environment.’” When he felt surrounded by “negative energy”, he began drawing, enamoured with the space and freedom it offered because in art, as he often says, “there’s no right answer.”

There is, however, sometimes a middle ground. His goal was to make the Represent collection accessible to his diverse fanbase. “I wanted to make things that people can easily wear because it was my first project to make something with clothes and it’s a collab. If you go too far out, no one will get it. If you go too far back, people won’t reach for it. So finding the middle ground is important but that’s the hardest thing to do. If it’s my own project, I’ll be like, ‘I’m the president of this brand, I’m gonna make all the weird clothes that I can imagine!’”

He sought second opinions to ensure his designs landed the way he hoped. “I have a lot of good friends around me - my choreographer, (SHINee and Super M member) Taemin hyung, my manager. I randomly ask people I’m comfortable with and have known for a long time, like Mark (Lee, of NCT and Super M). Mark has the same kind of perspective as me, but I’m a person who is arrghhh!” He waves his hands in the air. “And he’s very calm. I need a person who is opposite of me because when I’m in a mood, I talk nonsense - ‘I wanna do this, I wanna do that, I wanna make this!’ - and Mark’s like,’Bro, calm down’,” he says in a rather uncanny impression of the Canadian-Korean.

Ten works fast when he’s drawing. He has to. He describes his personality as someone who can't wait until the next day to do something. “I’m very impatient,” he smiles. “If I’m going to paint or draw, I’m going to finish it in, like, two hours. I can’t sit down for three hours.” When inspiration hits him, it’s off the back of deep contemplation, sometimes about the mundane - “Like, why do the cats come to me when they’re hungry only? Is it selfish or instinct? - at other times, something affecting him emotionally.

But whereas his job as a singer and dancer sees him project his energy outwards, art offers the opposite. He’s often alone in his room when he works. As is for many artists, the right mood is fundamental. “When I’m in a good mood, I can’t draw,” he half-sighs. It’s also a multi-sensory process. “Smell or the temperature of the room, that really helps me draw. I light three or four candles. And when I draw, it’s kind of heavy, the feeling,” he explains. “It feels like you’re sinking into something, into yourself, and everything seems so small. Everything narrows down into me, my pencil, the paper.”

The more work he does in different creative mediums, the less Ten’s desire is to keep them separate. His art, dance and music influence each other, whether it’s customising his own collaboration pieces, a choreography video in an art gallery or dancing underwater with a film crew. When someone tells him that something won’t work or match up well, he refuses to let the idea go until he’s attempted it.

“I’ve had that since I was young. I think everything is possible. If you don’t try, you don’t know. When people say it’s impossible, like dancing in water for three minutes, I’m like, then let’s make it possible. You don’t need to walk a straight line [in life], you can walk this way,” Ten says, pointing along an invisible line before switching sharply in direction. “Then go back on track, go that way, come back. No one should tell you to walk in a line, I don’t see the point of that.”

© Clash Magazine

[lucemferto]

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT PH1LZA (or Why Philza is a Victim of Narrative Circumstance)

Heyo! Per request I am posting the script to my video of the same name here on tumblr. I must warn you that just reading the script will probably not give you the full experience, so I would encourage you to watch the video (linked above).

There might also still be a lot of grammatical errors in the text, because I don’t proofread.

Intro

LAST TIME ON LUCEM FERTO

Okay, so! I don’t want this to turn into a reaction channel OR a Dream SMP channel for that matter! [echo]

Well, I lied.

[Intro to “Luc is pretentious about the funny blockmen. Episode 2”]

I swear, I’m working on other stuff. It’s just that my dumb lizard brain has only capacity for one interest at a time!

So, something you might not know about me, is that I am on tumblr – who am I kidding, most of you will know me from tumblr. Before starting this whole YouTube thing, I thought that website died years ago – but as per usual reality proves me wrong. I’m also on Twitter and Reddit, but I get the most engagement on tumblr – by far! – and I need those sweet, sweet numbers for the serotonin!

Anyways, one of my favourite past-times on tumblr is to razz Philza Hardcore Minecraft – that’s his full name – for being a frankly awful father [clicking away] – wait, wait, no! Philza fans, this isn’t a hit piece on him, I promise! Please come back!

This is video is meant to be a companion piece to my previous video about Technoblade and the Doomsday event – you can tell by the shared nomenclature – so you should probably watch that one before you proceed. Unless you don’t want to, which is also perfectly understandable.

DISCLAIMER: This video is mostly about the character Philza plays on the Dream SMP. Whenever I talk about the content creator Philza, I will say so properly. Also, Spoiler Warning for Dream SMP Season 2.

… What is that? You’re wondering what the Dream SMP is? Well, if you had just watched the other video like I told you to do, you would know, because I explained it pretty well there. But in case you don’t know, here’s the cliff notes.

Dream SMP is the hottest New Media Series on Twitch right now! It has it all: gaslighting, child soldiers, Machiavellian political intrigue, Hamilton roleplay, desecration of the dead, shounen protagonists, SO! MUCH! AMNESIA! Filicide, furries, a red egg that’s definitely homophobic and teenagers inventing nuclear warfare. And it’s all done in Minecraft – yes, the funny block game where the only way to emote is to crouch.

And you say the perfect brief doesn’t exist!

Now, you might be wondering, why do I want to talk about this? Well, it’s because Content Creator Philza is one of least controversial internet personalities that I can think of. That man exudes pure comfort. So, it’s just very, very amusing to me that his character became one of the most controversial figures on the SMP, only outshone by Tommy and Technoblade.

And it’s not just amusing, it’s also extremely interesting! I want to dig deep to uncover and discuss the dynamics behind why that is. How did it come to this point? How did a man who appears genuinely so pleasant create a character that inspires so much discourse!

Now, if you watched that Technoblade video – like I told you to twice now! – you might know, that I am the resident character analyses hater of fandom! And that impression is false and slanderous! Don’t tell other people that I hate character analyses! I love them!

It’s just that, in the Dream SMP in particular, there is an abundance of character analyses! Every streamer has at least two very good essays written about them, exploring every possible angle to view their characters and backgrounds and everything. All I’m saying is: I don’t have anything to add on that front.

So, instead I want to pursue a different approach – something, that I feel is a bit underrepresented in the fandom! And I’m not just talking narrative analysis – that’s right, this episode we’re going even more pretentious! – I’m talking Transtextual Analysis!

Now, what is Transtextuality? Well, unfortunately it has very little to do with actual Trans people – #transrights, just in case that wasn’t obvious – but instead describes a mode of analysis with which to put – to quote French literary theorist Gérard Genette – “the text in a relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts”.

Basically, you know how the L’Manburg War of Independence heavily quotes and borrows from the hit musical Hamilton? That’s transtextuality! A lot of the analyses surrounding how Tommy mirrors the Greek hero Theseus, who was invoked by Technoblade multiple times in the series, are already doing transtextual analysis! So, it’s really not something that’s new to the Dream SMP fandom.

But how does this apply to Philza and how he is looked at and judged by his parental skills? Well, there are multiple forms of transtextuality, two of which we will discuss today.

But before we continue, I gotta do that annoying YouTuber thing. I know these videos don’t look like much, but I spend a really long time making them. I work fulltime and I try my best to keep up, but sometimes I can’t. So please, like, subscribe, comment to give me some algorithm juice – I really need it – and most importantly share it! Share it with your friends, share it with your family – I’m sure Grandma is very interested in what I have to say about Philza Minecraft.

And I’m trying to be better! If I sound at all different for this video, it’s because I finally bought a new pop filter, so I can hit my plosives without it sounding like there’s a thunderstorm in my room. I hope it makes a difference; it was a very cheap pop filter, so maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it sounds worse – that would be bad!

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, CHILD NEGLEGT!

 Intertextuality: Why is Dadza?

You know what’s really interesting about the Dream SMP – aside from, you know, most things about it? Very few of the characters have concrete, fleshed-out backstories – and that’s pretty weird! In no other medium or genre could you get away with something like that – at least for long-form storytelling!

So, how does Dream SMP get away with this? Well, it’s because every character on the Dream SMP is basically a self-insert – and I don’t mean that in the “This character is based on me”-kinda way, but in the “This character, for all intents and purposes, is me!”-way. This, like many things that are fascinating about the Dream SMP, is owed to the fact that this series didn’t start off as a continuous drama – it started off as a Let’s Play.

And while we can talk about how someone’s on-camera/on-mic persona is in some ways a character, it’s still miles off of being an actual, fully-realized, separate character in a storyline.

This is where Intertextuality comes in.

Intertextuality is a subset of Transtextuality. It describes how the hypertext, which is the text, you’re currently engaged with, uses another text, the hypotext, to supplement itself. The interconnection the hypertext establishes with the hypotext, through stuff like allusion for example, uh-hum [Hamilton], can colour how an audience interprets the hypertext. Basically, Hamilton and Theseus are the hypotexts; the Dream SMP is the hypertext.

So, what does this have to do with backstory? Simple: The backstories of the characters in the Dream SMP consist basically of nothing but intertextual references. Through intertextuality their content effectively substitutes their character’s backstory.

You can see it everywhere. Wilbur’s and Schlatt’s relationship and rivalry is hugely enriched, if you are aware of their shared history like SMPLive, for example – I think anyway. I haven’t watched SMPLive, because … there’s only so many hours in the day and I cannot keep up with the Dream SMP and catch up on SMPLive and live a healthy life – which I already don’t do, so…

BadBoyHalo’s and Skeppy’s relationship, which has become the crux of the Crimson-Storyline of Seasons 2 and 3, is hugely supplemented if you know that they’re also very close as streamers and in real life.

Another great example of intertextuality is basically Technoblade’s entire deal. If you just look at him completely within the text of the Dream SMP and try to transplant his entrance to any other medium: It would be extremely weird! Like, he’s just this guy that comes in in the middle of a very climatic arc, no build-up, no explanation what his deal is, and he’s treated like he has always been there. In any other medium that just wouldn’t work – at least not without a flashback or some sort of exposition!

But because of stuff like Minecraft Mondays, the Potato Wars, his Duel against Dream and SMPEarth, we understand that he is a Big Deal!

Anyways, to bring all of this back to Philza Minecraft: What kind of hypotext informs how the audience sees his character? Well, this is where I will have to talk about SBI.

SBI is an acronym that stand for State Bank of India, the 43rd largest bank in the world and…

It also stands for Sleepy Bois Incorporated. Sleepy Bois Incorporated is a loose assembly of content creators, consisting of Philza, Wilbur Soot, TommyInnit and Technoblade. It is most well-known for its very endearing family dynamic – a dynamic that is frequently acknowledged and played up by the creators involved. Tommy is the youngest brother, Wilbur and Techno are the two older brothers and Philza is of course the dad. And when I say, it’s played up, I really mean it! Wilbur seems to be especially enamoured with the idea and leaves no opportunity untaken to bring it up – which we will come back to.

And I’m not saying that they’re faking this and this is somehow an act. While I know none of these people personally, it appears to me, that this is genuinely how they interact – if a little exaggerated for the streaming experience. Even when they’re not consciously playing into the family dynamic, their interactions still very much lend themselves to that interpretation by the viewers.

Philza especially just radiates Dad-Friend energy – so much so that it has become a huge part of his brand identity – yay, I can bring that back (check out my Christmas video if you want to hear me ramble about that). The nickname Dadza stuck even before SBI was a thing.

So, even if we completely disregard SBI – which we shouldn’t for reasons I’ll get back to – Philza has cultivated an image of strong paternal guidance. He is, in my opinion completely deservedly, regarded very positively. He is highly respected and in turn seen as a voice of reason.

All of this would eventually inform the hypotext of the character Philza within Dream SMP.

 Interlude: Before Dadza & November 16th

Okay, so now we have established that a) Dream SMP heavily hinges on intertextual readings by the audience to supplement character backstory and b) that Philza’s entire deal is that he’s the dad-friend – more specifically that he’s the dad of SBI (not the bank). I think you know where this is going.

So, yeah, ever since it was on the table that Philza could join the Dream SMP, it was immediately assumed that he would take on the paternal guardian role all these traumatized people on that server so desperately needed – and with good reason! Like I said before, the audience at this point was trained to take intertextual interpretations as basically canon or at the very least canon-adjacent.

I want to emphasize that this is most likely not done deliberately. I’m sure content creators Wilbur and Philza didn’t sit there and said: “Yes! We will rely entirely on the audience’s inclination to interpret our characters intertextually to define character Philza!”. Like, obviously that did not happen.

But it’s also important to remember that unlike with traditional media and the fanbases cultivated there, the separation between the Dream SMP and its audience is almost non-existent – and purposely so. The story events are streamed live, Chats are acknowledged in canon and even outside of livestreams creators are extremely involved with the fandom. So, the weight of fan-expectations is equally amplified and will more likely be incorporated into the writing process. Case in point:

[Wilbur “I miss Philza”/Philza about Wilbur]

During Wilbur’s villain arc, even before his official involvement, Philza became a prevalent point of discussion. The hope that he would be the one to snap Wilbur out of his downward spiral was not only wish-fulfilment on behalf of the fans; it also very much played off of the intertextual reading of the SBI-dynamic in relation to the Dream SMP.

Of course, this still doesn’t make Philza and Wilbur canonically blood-related – but it definitely used the “paternal”-dynamic of SBI to build-up tension and drama.

And that ultimately brings us to November 16th. The Grand Finale of Season 1 and Philza’s first canonical appearance on the SMP.

Now, for this I want to pull back from the transtextual analysis and talk about simply narrative analysis: What is Philza’s narrative purpose on November 16th?

Philza serves as the last threshold on Wilbur’s Villain’s Journey – to appropriate Vogler’s version of the monomyth for a minute here – he is what Vogler calls the “Threshold Guardian”. He is the last enemy the Hero faces before completing his quest – in this particular case Wilbur’s quest is to blow up L’Manberg. Multiple people have at this point tried to dissuade him from this course of action: Tommy, Quackity, Niki and others. So how come this Philza moment is not redundant in terms of dynamics compared to these prior scenes?

Well, it’s through our intertextual understanding of Wilbur’s and Phil’s relationship. Because Philza does not just occupy the role of the Threshold Guardian – he is also implicitly the Mentor. Before Phil there was no character in the storyline that held a higher position of moral authority than Wilbur – Dream and Schlatt, while at points more powerful in terms of actual authority, were never positioned by the narrative as Wilbur’s superiors in the same way as Wilbur was to Tommy, Tubbo or even Niki.

Before November 16th all challenges Wilbur faced were from people narratively subordinated to him. But that trend is broken with Phil. That is why he is the Threshold Guardian, why this confrontation is at the climax of Wilbur’s arc. Because Phil is the last thing tethering Wilbur to whatever morality he held before his villain arc; Phil is the last, moral obstacle Wilbur has to discard before gaining his reward.

And, just a quick sidenote, because I’ve seen it around the fandom a bunch: When I’m referring to Wilbur denouncing his morality, I’m using that in terms of narrative analysis. I’m mentioning it, because Wilbur’s character can very easily be read as mentally ill or neurodivergent and some people have – rightly! – pointed out that the excessive vilifying when talking about his character is … problematic, to say the least.

So, I just want to make clear, this isn’t a character analysis, I’m being purposely broad when talking about Wilbur and Phil.

In the end, Wilbur takes that final step and gets his “reward”: As his final request his mentor takes his life and vanquishes the evil – the dragon of Wilbur’s story slays the dragon of L’Manburg. It’s very Shakespearean in its tragedy – but beyond the larger theatrics it’s not really used to further characterize Phil – at least in the context of Season 1. There’s not a lot of focus on his characters internal conflict during November 16th.

Phil, like Techno, is very utilitarian in how content creator Wilbur writes him: He serves as a moment of hype; an obstacle Wilbur has to face; a participant in the tragic climax of Wilbur’s character and ultimately takes on his implicit and expected role of mentor and guiding figure to the rest of L’Manburg.

I think not a lot of people talk about how Philza does not join Technoblade during November 16th. He takes the side of L’Manburg – he fights against the withers and he joins Tommy, Tubbo and the others at the L’Mantree, thus framing him as loyal to the L’Manburg administration – even though Season 2 would make his loyalty to Techno central to his character. But more on that later.

What’s also important about November 16th is that this is the day when the general intertextual interpretation became canonized text.

[You’re my son!]

Wilbur is made Phil’s canonical, biological son. The intertextual interpretation of SBI as it pertains to these two characters on the SMP was completely reinforced by the narrative. Or to put it in Fandom terms: The headcanon became actual canon. At least when it came to Wilbur … but what about Philza’s “other” children?

Well, that leads to our second form of transtextual analysis:

 Paratextuality: Is Dadza?

These titles are just getting better and better.

The Paratext is defined as all those things in a published work that accompany the text. It comes in two forms: One of them is the Peritext, which are non-diegetic elements directly surrounding the text – like chapter titles, author’s notes, and stuff like that. Translated to the medium of the Dream SMP, it would be stuff like this:

[Examples]

And, trust me, I could make a whole separate video about how people on the SMP use their peritext as a tool for storytelling – I’m looking at you, Ranboo – but that’s not what we will talk about in the context of Dadza.

Instead, we will focus on the second form of Paratext, the Epitext, which consists of all authorial and editorial discussions taking place outside of the text. That’s stuff like interviews, private letters or J. K. Rowling’s Twitter Account – you know, before she decided to become a full-time asshole.

[Wilbur: Transrights]

After Season 1 ended, Wilbur indulged pretty heavily in providing epitext for the Dream SMP, something he had not done prior to November 16th. His paratextual additions ranged from the playful, like assigning DnD alignments to various SMP members, to the extremely impactful, like the whole three lives system!

You probably think, you know where this is going. Wilbur provided some epitext about how Tommy and Techno either are or are not biologically related to him … and I have to be honest I thought that too. But then I began looking into the impenetrable web that is the SBI-canon on the Dream SMP and found this!

[Ghostbur explains family]

So, it wasn’t paratext, it was just straight text. Said in character, in canon, without any implication that we the viewers should question this. The text of the SBI family dynamic was explicitly linked to Dream SMP-exclusive lore, namely Fundy being Wilbur’s and Sally the Salmon’s son. This is as clear as Philza’s anguished declaration on November 16th in establishing the intertext as text. And because Wilbur also had a very heavy hand in the discussion of paratext around that time, it gave his character’s words even more “canonical” weight. Metatextually speaking, this very much read like the author giving exposition through his character – exposition that we should understand as reliable.

And, by the way, before I continue, I need to give a huge, huge shoutout to kateis-cakeis on tumblr, I hope I pronounced that right, who was just so quick in providing me with these crucial clips. Without him I would have looked for days because these people don’t archive their shit! And the Dream SMP Wiki was NO help, by the way! I love what you guys do, but stuff like this belongs in the Trivia section on characters’ pages!

Anyways, basically during the entirety of early Season 2 the SBI family dynamic was basically canon to the SMP. Sometimes it was only alluded implicitly, again letting the intertext fill out the rest.

[Philza clips]

But just as often it was just explicitly talked about – both in the text and in the paratext.

[Fundy clip/Wilbur “Twins” clip/Tommy clip]

So, I know what you’re thinking: “Why is this part called paratext, if the entire family tree is just textual”. Well, that last clip might give you a hint, as to what I will talk about. Notice how Tommy, one of the people most directly impacted by the canonization of SBI lore, is both unaware of and seems generally unenthused about it, to put it nicely? Well, that would soon turn out to be a much bigger deal than anyone could have imagined as he wasn’t the only one.

[Technoblade decanonizes SBI]

Yeah …

This happened on 20th of December. Regular viewers of this channel will remember that I put out a 90-second joke video, where I complain about this very development. And while I was mostly kidding around, the core idea is still true. The paratext provided by Technoblade and established text were in direct contradiction with one another – and that brought a lot of confusion into the fandom. Confusion, that would soon be followed by frustration.

Because Techno only decanonized himself as part of the SBI family dynamic – but what about Tommy and Tubbo, the latter of which was incorporated into the dynamic exclusively within the lore of the Dream SMP. Was this still canon or wasn’t it?

What followed was a muddled mess of contradictions, intertextual implications, text and paratext in conflict with each another. It was for the most part inscrutable to figure out how Tommy and Philza related to one another. I’ll spare you every comment made about this – mostly because I want to spare myself from looking for all of them.

In the end, the current status is that their familial relationship is … unclear. Philza said, again in paratext, that it’s ultimately up to the writers to decide, whether or not Tommy is his son … which, I personally think he and Tommy should be the ones to establish that, but I’ll come back to that later.

But why is all of this important anyway? Why would this ambiguity create such an uproar, such controversy – especially when it comes to Tommy’s character? What makes Tommy’s and Philza’s relationship such a target for discussion in the fandom?

Well … this is where we will have to talk about the storyline of Season 2.

Interlude II: Tommy’s Exile and Dadza in Season 2

Okay, Season 2. This is where the spoilers are, so I will just sneakily drop this again. It took me five seconds to google this gif and I will milk it for every penny it’s worth!

At the beginning of Season 2, Philza’s narrative role has not changed much from where Season 1 ended. He is in L’Manburg dispensing earthly wisdom, being a paternal figure to Fundy, Ghostbur and Tubbo, helping with the nation’s rebuilding efforts; just generally occupying the role of the mentor.

[clips]

And then came … the Exile. The Exile Arc took place between December 3rd and December 15th during Season 2 of the Dream SMP. It revolves around TommyInnit getting exiled from L’Manburg and slowly getting psychologically tortured and broken down by Dream. It’s a really great arc, at least in my opinion, that explores and deepens a lot of Tommy’s character relationships, whether that be Tommy and Dream, Tommy and Tubbo or Tommy and Ranboo. One relationship, however, is noticeably missing.

So, yeah, Philza spends basically the entirety of the exile doing pretty much nothing of consequence. And that’s not a problem specific to him – One big criticism I would levy against the Exile Arc is that a lot of characters are left spinning their wheels. Which is why we get zany stuff like El Rapids, Drywaters, Eret’s Knights of the Roundtable, Boomerville – anyone remember Boomerville, that was a thing for 5 seconds, wasn’t it? – basically a lot of storylines are started and then unceremoniously dropped. Now, I will talk more about this, when I make a video about Season 2 of the Dream SMP … in ten years, look forward to it.

In the case of Philza, this inaction was especially damning, because at this point it was still a considered canon that he was Tommy’s dad. So, the fans were left with a situation, where just a few weeks prior Philza was occupying a paternal role for Fundy and Ghostbur … but now, that his youngest son was in a very concerning predicament – to put it lightly – he was nowhere to be found.

So why is that?

Well, the most obvious answer is that Dream and Tommy didn’t write him into the storyline. We’ve seen that Tommy wasn’t particularly interested in exploring a familial relationship to Philza, at least at the time. And it would just not fit in with what Dream and Tommy tried to do with the Exile Arc: they wanted to tell the story of Tommy being isolated, completely under Dream’s mercy, slowly worn down and manipulated. If Philza had been constant presence for Tommy during that time, it would have definitely shifted the narrative focus. That doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have done that, it’s just a matter of fact that they didn’t.

This also reveals another truth about content creator Philza’s character work, that I think is extremely crucial: He takes what the writers give him. Outside of a few choice moments, he doesn’t seem particularly interested in expanding or even solidifying his character on the SMP.

What I’m saying is that he is very go-with-the-flow: Wilbur wants to enact a Shakespearean tragedy? Philza’s up for it. Fundy wants him as a parental figure and mentor? Philza’s here for him. Tommy, conversely, doesn’t want him as a paternal presence, even though it would make sense for Philza’s character, as it was established so far, to be there? Philza will oblige.

The reason I’m mentioning this is because, while Tommy and Dream were unwilling to utilise Philza in their storyline, someone else was more than happy to. Which leads us back, like it always does, to everyone’s favourite Porky Pig-kinnie in a crown: Technoblade.

Technoblade and Philza, from everything I’ve seen of them, seem to be very good friends – and they share a lot of history even outside SBI. So, it’s commendable that they would collaborate on a storyline together.

A consequence of that, however, is that Philza’s narrative purpose shifts completely with very little transition. His entire character changes from being the Mentor-figure of L’Manberg to being pretty much exclusively defined as Technoblade’s ally; his man on the inside. It is a very sharp turn from the end of Season 1. Their relationship is once again informed via intertext – this time the Antarctic Empire on SMPEarth serves as the hypotext – but there isn’t a huge effort made to smoothly integrate that aspect of Philza’s character into the larger narrative framing around him.

How much the narrative utilisation of Philza has shifted can be very easily observed through the Butcher Army event on December 16th, a story event that I like less and less the more I think about. Here Philza is used to show just how corrupt and violent Tubbo’s administration has becomes. He is no longer the respected mentor, he is now the stand-in for the oppressed populace, similar to Niki’s role in Season 1. On a narrative level, he is here to prove a point.

If you’ve seen my Technoblade video, you know how I feel about … just that entire storyline, so I will not reiterate too much on it. I just want to make clear that I’m not principally against this development – if they wanted to truly explore Tubbo going down a dark path and getting corrupted by power, so much so that he would even treat the person who effectively raised him like a prisoner, I would be extremely here for it, I cannot stress that enough.

The problem I have is that it’s just so sloppily done. It is not coherent with how these characters behaved and, more importantly, how they were narratively framed prior to the Butcher Army event. Fundy gets one token line about Phil being his Grandfather – a far cry from the very emotionally complex relationship they had established at the beginning of Season 2 – and Phil then callously disowns him.

The major problem simply is that we don’t see how Philza changes from Mentor-figure to embittered, oppressed citizen. And there was enough time to build to that. During the entirety of Tommy’s exile Tubbo was pretty much spinning his wheels and Quackity and Fundy were opening up plot cul-de-sacs that didn’t end up going anywhere. This is time they could have spent on developing their relationship to Philza and the dark path they were going down – but again, Season 2 video.

There is not much to say on Philza’s narrative purpose and framing beyond the Butcher Army event. He remains pretty much exclusively Techno’s consigliere with his role as Mentor to L’Manburg a distant memory. He has some cute character moments with Ranboo, because content creator Philza is just big dad-energy whether he wants to or not, and whenever he and Ghostbur share a scene suddenly the narrative remembers that there are people other than Technoblade that should exist in Philza’s inner world. But aside from that, Philza’s storyline in Season 2 remains … pretty definitive is the nicest way I can put it.

Most importantly his relationship with Tommy continues to be completely unexplored – whether by chance or choice – and that combined with ever vaguer paratext leaves “Dadza” in a very peculiar situation.

 Conclusion: Is Dadza a Good Dadza?

So, the question to end all questions. The big, obnoxious text, that I will probably have put in the thumbnail – I haven’t made it yet, but I know myself. The honest answer is: I couldn’t tell you.

I have, in the past, been expounding the virtues of narrative analysis. That is because I feel that Narrative Analysis and Textual Analysis, like in this video, can provide certain tools that Character Analysis lacks. Often times I see people trying to get at a writing problem or query and getting frustrated because they’re not using the toolset, they need to figure out what they want to figure out.

But I’d be a hypocrite if I pretended like everything could be solved through the modes of analysis I prefer. And I think the Dadza-issue is exactly such a case.

I set out to explore why the Philza-Tommy-“Dadza”-relationship has become so controversial. It’s a combination of expectations build up through intertextual readings, that were partly canonized – something that is very common for the Dream SMP – conflicting pieces of paratext, which only serve to muddle the issue further and a text that is not only completely uninterested in actually exploring Tommy’s and Philza’s relationship – as it stands right now they might as well be strangers, narratively speaking – but also completely changes Philza’s narrative purpose as it relates to characters like Fundy or Tubbo about half-way through with little to no transition.

That is why I say, that Philza’s character is a victim of narrative circumstance. Because unwittingly, through all of these factors and decisions, there is not coherent reading of Philza that frames his parental skills in a particularly kind light.

The question of how we can judge Phil as a paternal figure ultimately falls within the purview of the character analysis – and that’s a very multifaceted issue, highly dependent on which POV you focus on and how you interpret the other characters in that POV’s periphery.

To put my cards on the table, I think that Philza is a very flawed father/father-figure – and I find that absolutely okay. Flaws are the spice of character building. He is not Cinderella’s Evil Stepmother – but he’s also definitely not Mufasa. If we were to read Philza as a paternal figure, then he would have made a lot of mistakes and decisions to the detriment of his “children” – least of all everything that happened on Doomsday.

But I also have sympathies for Philza fans who are tired of the Dad-Debate and would like to have his character judged independent from his relationship to Ghostbur, Fundy, Tubbo and Tommy.

Ultimately, to bring it all to a point, I’d like to end with saying, that I think that Philza, out of all the characters on the SMP, has the potential to be on of the most intriguing, multifaceted ones. There are all of these different patches of story, character moments and narrative and transtextual implications, that, if brought together, could create a beautiful tapestry of the character Philza.

You have his relationship with Techno, which holds the potential for so much emotional conflict and vulnerabilities, you have his time as mentor of L’Manburg, which is just criminally underused; the complex relationship between him and Ghostbur/Wilbur; and – for me, personally – most intriguingly this weird, almost uncomfortably distant non-relationship with Tommy. That last one is intriguing to me, because it contrasts just so much with our intertextual understanding of the characters and streaming personas – and it just holds the potential for so much conflict, so much drama, so much angst. Which I live for!

And, yes, I do believe that most of this is narrative happenstance, that this was largely not intended by Philza or really any of the writers. It’s just what happens when hybrid-roleplay-improv a long-running, livestreamed storyline in Minecraft.

But I want them to realize the potential they have on their hands, because it could – with barely any adjustments – turn Philza from a victim of narrative circumstance to a champion of it!

 Outro

Thank you so much for watching this video. Usually, I don’t record outros this standard, but after this beast of a video I felt it necessary. I hope that whether you’re a Philza fan or a Philza critical or just completely uninvolved in the whole thing, there is at least a little entertainment you could get from this.

I want to take this opportunity to say that my next few videos will probably not be Dream SMP related – a sentence which undoubtedly lost me a bunch of subs – simply because I don’t want to burn out on it. I genuinely enjoy watching the SMP and being exhausted by it would be something I wouldn’t want to force on myself.

But who knows what will happen? The Karl Jacobs video was something I did spur of the moment because the idea just came to me – so I can’t guarantee that the next video won’t be a three-minute joke about Purpled or whatever.

Anyway, my concrete plans for future Dream SMP videos are essays on Season 1 and Season 2 as well as one for Tales from the SMP.

Before that I have a longer video in the works, which I’ve already teased a bunch, so I hope it will finally be finished sometime. And I also may be working on something … eboys-related? Maybe. I’m not making any promises!

[hobeemin]

Pick of the Patch

🍂 Genre: Fluff, Romance

🍂 Pairing: Kim Taehyung x (f) Reader; Yeontan appears 💜💜

🍂 Rating: pg13

🍂 Warning(s): Light cursing, feelings of uncertainty, 

🍂 Word Count: 1.9k

🍂 Credits: A huge thanks to @taerseok​​ for reading this over and giving me great feedback. Thank you so much!! Resources for banner provided here

🍂 A/N: to the lovely @chillingtae​ I hope you enjoy this just as much as I did writing it for you darling 💜🥺

Another lazy Sunday. 

You sat on the bed after cleaning the apartment, relaxing against the pillows. Yeontan jumped up on the bed to join you giving a little yip for to you give him a few scratches behind his ears. Giggling you obliged, settling in as the next episode of your drama began. Yeontan snuggled close to your side yawning as he got comfortable. You focused on the screen nearly jumping out of your skin as your boyfriend kicked the door open in surprise. Yeontan barked before jumping off the bed and hiding under it. You clutched your chest as you glared at him, body frozen in shock. Your face twisted into a scowl as the stupor dissipated.

“Tae! What the hell is wrong with you?!”

Taehyung grinned running up to you with a laugh. “Sorry, Jagiya. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

You swatted his hand away still scowling. “Don’t just apologize to me. Tannie is under the bed.”

The look of horror crossed his face. Not his baby! Taehyung dropped to the floor coaxing his dog out with soothing words. Eventually, Yeontan came out and Taehyung scooped him up in his arms cooing to him like a baby. You watched shaking your head. “Tae?”

“Hmm?” He said, occupied with rubbing Yeontan’s belly.

“Why’d you come crashing in the house?”

His eyes widened in confusion as if registering why he came in the first place before a smile spread across his face. “Oh! Yeah. I’m taking you somewhere.”

Your brow raised. “When?”

That boxy grin formed on his face. “Today.”

You glanced down at your clothing. Donned in one of his baggy shirts and some leggings, you had planned to chill the remainder of the day. Now that you noticed, he was dressed up more than usual. He wore dark jeans, an emerald sweater, and a comfortable brown jacket. His light brown hair was hidden under a newsboy hat.

“Tae–”

“Jagiya,” he cooed, wrapping you up in his arms and kissed your forehead, “Come with me. You’ll have fun, I promise.”

The ice around your heart cracked away as you rolled your eyes. He could always make you smile, even when you didn’t want to. Grumpy or not, Tae put up with you. With resolution, you sighed giving him a quick kiss on the lips.

“Oh alright. Let me get dressed.”

He cheered kissing all over your face. “You’re the best girlfriend ever!”

Suppressing a smile, you rolled your eyes playfully at his remark, your mood becoming lighter as you swatted him away to change. “Yeah. Yeah.” 

🍂🍂🍂

Taehyung drove carefully down the road singing at the top of his lungs. That dorky man. You joined in adding the melody to one of your favorite songs. Yeontan howled along from the backseat. You never felt so much at home in this moment as you all sang together. Tae chuckled hearing his adorable dog, reaching over to squeeze your knee as the song ended.

“Thank you for agreeing to come out with me, Jagiya. I know things have been stressful, but I promise this will help you take your mind off some things.”

You smiled slowly as the blush crept into your cheeks. Were you really this lucky? Tae hummed as the scenery changed from urban to suburban to rural. The hammering in your chest grew loud as you looked around. Like him, being outside was something you loved most. Being in the city was nice, but something about being close to nature soothed you. You couldn’t help but bounce in your seat as Taehyung turned in a winding road that led to what looked like a farm.

“Tae!”

His grin widened as he drove under an arch with the words ‘Heritage Farms’ twisted in the iron. Your mouth dropped glancing at your boyfriend. “Are you serious?”

He chuckled as he easily parked the car in a grassy field. “I know you miss doing this with your grandparents, so I thought we could make some memories as well.”

Tears threatened to spill as you sat in the car. Going to this farm filled you with so many emotions. It had been a humongous part of your childhood. Coming here with your Gram and Pop Pop was a treat. The smells invaded your nostrils as Taehyung opened your door and pulled you out of the car. With his other hand holding Yeontan’s leash and the other wrapped around yours, you both walked to the open area. 

The gazebo was just how you remembered it, green roof, wrapped in decorative leaves. A sign with the word ‘Pumpkins’ stamped across. The small white house with green trim on the hill came into view as you both walked down the path. Tae pointed towards the fork in the road. 

“Apples or pumpkins?”

You tapped your chin thoughtfully, brows furrowed in thought as you made your decision. “Pumpkins please!”

He gave you his famous boxy grin and ran with you down the path. Yeontan yipped running ahead on his leash. Your eyes rounded as the pumpkin patch grew closer. It was just as you remembered if not more. The pumpkins were even bigger in size.

“Oh my gosh Tae! Look!”

He grinned gesturing to them. “Go ahead, jagiya.”

You squealed and ran over running through the pumpkin patch giggling at the brightly colored orange shaded orbs. They sat among the leafy vines shining under the sun. The nostalgia came crashing down on you so suddenly almost making you tear up. You bent down taking one into your hands and held it close, shutting your eyes and swaying side to side. You barely heard the camera shutter go off as you opened your eyes to see Tae propped against the fence taking your picture.

An endearing pout formed on your lips, with your  hands placed on your hips. “Taehyung!”

He chuckled, giving you a wink. “What? That was too cute to pass up.”

Rolling your eyes, you glanced down at Yeontan sniffing around at the pumpkins. “Tannie.” The Pomeranian’s ear perked up at his name being called and he looked at you curiously, eyes wide and round and just the most lovable. 

“Your daddy is lucky I love him otherwise he’d get a punch to the eye.” You huffed, a teasing smile on your face before it hit.

Both your eyes widened at the confession. Your cheeks flushed looking down at the dirt. You hadn’t discussed the L-word quite yet even though you’d been dating for over two years. Embarrassed out of your mind, you walked further into the patch exploring the different types of pumpkins and squashes to pick from, trying not to look in your boyfriend’s eyes, even if it was tempting. Taehyung stood in surprise feeling his heart beat loud in his chest. 

“Tan Tan, you heard that right?”

Yeontan barked pawing at the dirt.

“Yeah I thought so too,” he replied scratching his nose.

He gulped nervously, grabbing his camera, and continued taking pictures of the farm, sneaking more pictures of you when you weren’t looking.

After picking a few choice pumpkins to decorate your place with, you found a spot near a wagon decorated with hay bales. Yeontan followed you wanting some attention and you agreed wholeheartedly. With a soft chuckle, you stroked the top of his head relaxing and enjoying the fresh air, humming a quiet tune before the events replayed in your head.

“Oh Tannie, I think I messed up,” you mused. “I’ve never said I love you before. Sure we live together, but like, does he feel the same?” You glanced down at the dog inquisitively. “This is new territory. I just came out. Damn it.”

You wanted to kick yourself. You didn’t do sentimental stuff normally. It wasn’t until you met Taehyung that he brought out your sweet side. Hell, he was the first partner you agreed to move in with, though quite scary in the beginning, eventually, you both got used to each other and found a happy medium.

But this ‘i love you’ business. It felt so natural, even if you hadn’t said it prior. You looked off in the distance not noticing Taehyung plop down next to you. He reached over and placed a gentle kiss on your cheek causing you to jump.

“Hiding from me?” he teased.

You blushed looking away from him. “N-No, just needed to be alone,” you whispered.

Taehyung pouted slightly, taking your hand and squeezing it. “I hope it wasn’t something I did to scare you off.”

You shook your head turning to him. “What?! No Tae! Gosh, I-I...damn,” you looked up at the sky trying to get the words out. Why was it so hard to say? “I’m sorry. You’ve been perfect. All this to cheer me up. I can’t believe you remembered that story I told about this place. I don’t even know what to say except how grateful I am to have and Yeontan in my life.”

You felt his large hand engulf yours and you squeezed it giving him permission to speak.

“You mean so much to me. Jagiya, you don’t have to be scared of how you feel,” he smiled at you softly. “I was a little surprised, but that doesn’t change how I feel about you. In fact, it makes me fall in love with you even more.”

Your eyes widened in surprise. “Really?”

Taehyung's smile spread as he pulled you close to him. “Are you kidding? I’m crazy about you! Even though we've been together for only two years, I feel like I’ve known you longer. I love you Y/N always and forever.”

You choked out a sob as the tears trickled down your cheeks. Taehyung picked up Yeontan and held him up at eye level giving him a cute voice to speak. “If you’ll have us.”

“T-Tae?”

He put Yeontan down with a laugh. Visibly nervous, he wrung his hands looking anywhere but at you. With a deep breath, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a tiny box wrapped in black velvet. His cheeks dusted in pink, whether it was from nerves or the autumn chill, you weren’t sure, but the determination filled his eyes as he stared at you.

“I knew you were the one since the first day we met. You remember? That rainy spring afternoon near the Han River. We got soaked on our bike ride and found a tree to hide under the downpour stopped. I wasn’t sure about being set up on a blind date and I could tell you weren’t happy either, but we sat there and talked about everything under the proverbial sun. The way you laughed, or how you would touch your eyebrow when you were talking about something you were passionate about. It made my heart race. I knew then I couldn’t be without you. You’re my better half. I love you so much.”

He opened the box to reveal a moonstone set in rose gold. You cried silently as he slipped it on your finger. He chuckled bashfully. “I may be jumping the gun, but would you marry me? It would make me the happiest man alive.”

You nodded, speechless for a few seconds, and wrapped your arms around his neck. “Yes. Yes I will,” you answered, voice barely above a whisper. “Tae, I love you so much. Thank you for being there for me.”

He bent down to kiss your lips sweetly. “This wasn’t exactly how I planned this, but do things ever go our way.”

“Never,” you said with a laugh. You picked up a pumpkin and twirled it with your hands standing on your tiptoes to kiss your new fiancé on the cheek.

Yeontan barked, jumping between the two of you and you patted his head. “Yep Tannie. My words exactly.”

[yolkyeomie]

Trade Off of Gifts | Bang Chan

summary — no one knows the world of an artists as well as you do, at least that’s what you thought until he decided to show up one day

word count — 1.7k words

pairing — chan x gender neutral!reader

genre — fluff, artist!reader with a tiny hint of musician!chan (even tho he’s already a musician???)

disclaimer — just something tiny for all your fast and short topher needs !!

Being someone who is artistically gifted has its perks, leaving you to be more creatively thoughtful than most of the people around you.

The world and its people was one big incomplete painting to you, splashes of colors being splattered into its surface as you began to maneuver through it. You were the artist who determined what colors were allowed to stay and what colors no longer fit the narrative you were trying to create. It was a tiresome and even lonely job when you had to pick up a brush and bring a new color into your final masterpiece, but it was a rather exciting process nonetheless.

Different colors meant different things and different shades indicated different tones. Sometimes they’d change meanings and sometimes they’d stay the same, it always depended on how you felt that day. You could never explain exactly what everything meant to you, thinking of it as some innate feelings you were born with.

You never bothered trying to help outsiders comprehend what you meant either, as it was easier to keep it to yourself instead of giving your thoughts and feelings for the world to see.

But then somehow, you were stumbled upon by someone who shared the same views as you. Someone who saw the world in a rather similar artistic and dreamy light as you did, and they weren’t even an artist who puts pen to paper.

“That’s a nice drawing,” the stranger told you, hovering over your shoulder like a hawk to its prey. You scrambled to your feet almost immediately, pressing your art to your chest in a defensive manner. You didn’t like it when people hovered over you while you were drawing, entranced in this magical world of fantasy and possibility when you doodled on whatever surface you.

Usually, people would interrupt you when you weren’t finished, commenting on how odd everything seemed and how empty your art looked.

But then it clicked in your head, the stranger didn’t make any sort of ignorant comment on it. He simply said it was nice.

“Thank you,” you managed to say, your eyes darting down to the sketch you had created.

It wasn’t anything special, a half-done headshot of one of your friends from memory. It didn’t really look like any of your friends at the time either, there wasn’t enough detail on the features for it to be recognizable of who it was. “I mean, it’s not really done or anything so it’s not the best I’ve ever created but—“

“Really?” He questioned, his eyes widening to show off the little twinkling stars in his eyes and his mouth gaping open at your response. You couldn’t help but chuckle at his expression, nodding your head as an answer. “You’re a really good artist, you know that? Not many of my friends can even pick up a pencil if we really wanted to, but I guess that’s not really a compliment. Is portraits the only thing you draw?”

You lifted an eyebrow as he spoke, cautiously eying him and the choice of his words. He definitely wasn’t new to the whole artist thing, there was no way he was that knowledgeable on what artists liked to hear and what they didn’t like to hear and wasn’t an artist himself.

He even called you an artist instead of a “drawer”! If that wasn’t a dead giveaway of the fact that you were in the presence of an artistically gifted person then you don’t know what was.

“Not always,” you answered him, shrugging your shoulders as you tried to come up with a decent answer. “It really depends on my mood, but I like drawing portraits of people more than anything. It gives me an excuse to look at others without seeming… creepy? You know?”

“Oh…,” he nodded, a smile donning his face as he looked up at you. “So you’re a people watcher?”

“Not exactly,” you corrected him, “I just enjoy looking at people’s faces. You know, to catch every little detail that makes them unique to themselves. Everyone’s got something about them that’s different from everyone else and drawing lets me capture their uniqueness in a form that can be treasured forever.”

“That just sounds like an over-exaggeration of people watching,” the boy insisted, a laugh escaping his lips when he caught your frustrated glare digging daggers into his skull. “I’m kidding I promise! I completely understand what you mean. So who were you drawing just now then?”

Your expression immediately falls into a grimace, hesitantly peering towards your unfinished work to your friend. “Ah… this?” You ask him, trying to stall time from explaining your latest creation to him.

Through when you looked up to the boy he only nodded at your question and gave you the brightest smile he could. “It’s… it’s a drawing of a friend. He didn’t ask me to make this or anything, but I was just using him to practice faces.”

“You’re only practicing?” the boy gasped, scooting closer to you to steal another peek of your sketch from before. “That’s crazy, I would have thought you were working on an actual project and trying to get to the final piece!”

“You flatter me too much,” you joked, giving your sketch a half-smile. You appreciated the compliments he was showering you with, but there was no way you were actually living up to those expectations in your head. Being artistically gifted had its perks yet also had its more major downfalls: creating unattainable standards for yourself that you constantly set yourself up for failure was one of them. “I still have a long way to go before I can get anywhere near where I want to be.”

“I think where you are now is a great place, you should help yourself to the compliments when you get them. You deserve them,” he commented, a wide grin stretching across his face. Watching his lips turn into a smile made you so do the same, the atmosphere around him too addicting to go to waste. “Plus, I can tell you like it when people praise you.”

“Shut up, you ruined the moment,” you hissed, jumping to your feet to shove him out of your range of sight. The boy giggled at your reaction as he forced himself to stay put, not moving a singular inch no matter how hard you pushed him. “Leave! I don’t want you around me anymore, you ruined the moment!”

The boy thought about your words for a moment, as if he was trying to determine whether or not he wanted to leave you alone. “How about this,” he offered, spinning on his heel to face you. It caught you off guard for a moment, stumbling back on your feet as he shined that same smile from earlier on to you. “I’ll leave you alone now, but you have to let me come back and talk to you about your art more.”

You snorted, “I don’t even know you, why would I do that?”

He nodded in understanding, considering your comment before holding his hand out for you to shake. “Okay then, hi! I’m Bang Chan and I want you to let me come back another day and talk to you about your art. Does this make up for the lack of acquaintanceship?”

“Hi, I’m Y/N,” you humor him, shaking his hand before sliding out a slightly impolite question from your lips, “Is Bang Chan asking to hang around me because he wants me to give him a free drawing? If so I’m sorry but I’m not confident enough in my skills to even make you anything if I wanted to. There’s a reason I’m practicing here you know.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he clarified, slumping back onto the ground and laying back with a content smile. “I don’t want free art, I just want to hear you talk about your art. Maybe people watch with you from time to time.”

“I’m not a people watcher.”

“Sorry,” Chan nodded, “maybe not-people-watch with you then.”

You went silent for a moment, looking down at the sketch in your hands and glancing back towards the boy. “So that’s all? You just want to… hang out with me while I draw? No strings attached? You’re not going to ask me to draw you for free in the future or make fun of my unfinished work at all?”

He nodded in response and pointed a finger at your head. “The mind of an artist is a very interesting place to explore because not every artist has the same thought process when it comes to their creations. I want to see how we differ from each other.”

“So you’re an artist as well?” You question, your eyes widening as you slowly began to realize what he had said.

“Wouldn’t exactly say an artist,” Chan laughed, downplaying his statement as much as possible. “More of a… musician? I guess? I make songs, but that’s nothing compared to being someone who puts a pencil to paper.”

So your hunch was correct, Chan was artistically gifted! Of course, it wasn’t exactly in the way you had thought before but the mere fact that he was like you made much more sense now. “A musician is still an artist,” you tell him, “just because you’re not creating art in that sense doesn’t mean you aren’t an artist. Art comes in many different forms you know, you can’t limit it to one medium.”

“Well my form of art isn’t very… how do I say this, it isn’t—“

“—You’re embarrassed.” You finished. As expected the boy came up with as many excuses as possible, trying to drill the false act into your head but utterly failing. All you could do was laugh as you spoke, “don’t worry! It’s normal to be closed off about the things you create, I’m embarrassed to show off my art to people all of the time.”

Chan nodded, nervously fidgeting with his hair as he tried to play off his flustered actions. “I guess that’s one thing we have in common right?”

“Make that two things,” you corrected him. He turned to you with a confused glint in his eyes as you held up two fingers and grinned at him as you explained, “we’re both artists and we’re embarrassed to show people our creations. Oh the woes of being artistically gifted, am I right?”

He nodded in agreement, a cheeky smile appearing on his face once again as he repeated, “oh the woes of being artistically gifted.”

[dotthings]

Now that there’s a good bit of S15 already aired to ponder, I’m going to revisit some more Dabb quotes about S15. This is from Variety, October 7, 2019.

Concerning Sam, Dean, Cas, and Jack as a unit: “ultimately this is a found family, and they have deep emotional bonds”

This point is pretty straightforward. The current showrunner regards the four of them as a family, and that’s been reflected in the story. While SPN has never been only Sam and Dean, in this era of SPN, the family they assembled has become more important than ever.

On the overall emotional approach of modern SPN:

“This is not just true of this season, this has been true for awhile, but we can devote a lot more time to the emotions of the guys. In the beginning of the show they were always on the road, but since they’ve been able to be settled, we’ve been able to see their lives beyond just the next monster.”

This quote is so interesting to me, and matches a lot of what I’ve been saying for a while on various platforms about how the characters and story evolved. The importance of the bunker, the importance of their expanded family becoming more and more a constant. I’m not watching SPN for the plot ultimately, I’m watching for the characters and their emotional life, with monsters, demons, angels, and mytharc to keep things lively. This is a big reason why I love genre. The monsters and mytharc are fun, but it’s the monsters and adventure and wild plots as a wonderful springboard to explore and reveal characters. Late run SPN is embodying this balance really well. I could also list off a number of shows I love that operate under this principle. So much of genre TV operates under this principle.

About how TV has changed and SPN has changed:

“I think you really get an evolution of TV as a medium. When this show started it was a very different show than where it will end, and the same thing about television generally. And I think what’s allowed the show to stay on as long as it has is that it’s been able to adapt.”

Gosh it’s like a show that’s been on for more of a decade will evolve or something! What a half-baked notion, who gave this guy the keys and put him in charge? LOL. I’m sorry I have to laugh at the rage in fandom over the mere fact that SPN didn’t stay frozen in amber carbon dated S2 and why anyone is surprised by that. It’s not just SPN itself changing, it is TV industry changing around it and SPN had to keep pace. SPN would not have survived to S15 without being adaptable. Now you can say it all sucks so you think it should have ended when Kripke left, but you can’t brag about SPN’s longevity and then dump all over the things that helped get it there, knee jerk rejecting necessary change on a hard core level. As if change itself is the reason you’ve got criticisms. It’s not. Execution of the story would be a reason to criticize, but not change in and of itself. We can all differ on the effectiveness of that execution, but there’s plenty of fans who are loving Dabb era just fine, just as there are fans who exist who despise it.

On “fan service”

“I hope we’re speaking to the majority of our fans. There’s definitely episodes where we do address things that come out of the fandom and out of social media, but in terms of how the story ends, in terms of bringing back certain characters, it was [about] what makes sense for the guys on their journey and in this story at this point. To some extent, all television now is fan service, but it’s not about direct fan service in that way; it’s more about what is going to get us to the emotional conclusion that we want for these guys.”

Notice the “I hope.” There’s no assumption here that absolutely everyone will love what they do, there never has been, from anyone at SPN in fact. They try to tell the best possible story they can that will appeal to the most fans. “All television is now fan service” is a very interesting statement, and Dabb doesn’t elaborate, but I want to try and unpack what he could mean.

In this era of social media and so many different possible delivery platforms, the scrutiny all shows fall under, the heavy interaction between creators and fans, and TV being by its nature, in its creation, a collaborative medium to begin with, it’s unrealistic to think any show could survive and operate in a bubble that completely ignores fan responses or disregards industry changes happening around it. That doesn’t mean spn or any show has to alter things at the mere whiff of every negative or positive fan response. Social media can also be a bit of a funhouse mirror of fan response, or provide a far too selective idea of fan response. For every SPN fan shouting that it’s wrong for SPN to listen to fan responses, there’s a fan response saying the same thing to shut down the opposing lane. Who do they listen to? What does it even mean to protect the sanctity of the story in this era of TV?

SPN fandom currently has multiple lanes claiming to be the arbiters of what “everyone” wants, and the reality of the fandom is very different, it actually looks like chaos. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Remember that for a long long time SPN fandom wank focused around brosonlies who kept saying caring only for Sam and Dean was the 99% and anyone who had any concerns for Sam or Dean’s autonomy in the story, who loved Cas, female characters, found family, and who cared about diversity on SPN was the 1%. It’s been obvious for a while now that TPTB are much more astute about the actual make-up of the fanbase than that false narrative. Over time the wanking got less locked into a few clear-cut lane divisions and now it’s a mess of internal lane conflicts and 3-5 lanes in opposition at any given moment, lanes within lanes, subsets within subsets. I don’t think that’s because SPN sucks. I think it’s because a) we’re approaching the end so people’s emotions are really really jacked up and heightened and b) a natural evolution of what would happen when a show like this goes on as long as this one has.

It’s funny how at the time this interview came out, fandom narrative ran with that quote as Dabb saying SPN is all fanservice when he’s saying the opposite to that. “It’s not about direct fan service” “it’s about what is going to get us tot he emotional conclusion that we want.” They aren’t bringing back familiar characters merely because fandom loves them, although he’s not denying that as a benefit to it, they’re back because they serve a story purpose. They don’t do anything just to service fandom. “Fan service” as a term is mis-used in SPN fandom so often it’s lost all meaning. “Fan service” in SPN fandom means anything the angry fan doesn’t like, no matter how much build-up it’s been given, no matter how logical it is for the character to return, no matter how tied into the major core themes of the show for umpteen years already certain reltionships are, they will be yelled down as “fan service” just because there’s a bunch of fans who love it, while fans who don’t are mad about it, therefore “fan service.”

PR is a lot of smoke and mirrors a lot of the time, but the reason this is relevant is so many Dabb’s quotes are reflected in the actual execution and tone and focus of canon.

SPN revolves around Sam and Dean and Cas and found family, and has for a very long time. Sam and Dean are the most central figures, but Cas is part of the central hub of that pov, and the show isn’t just about Sam and Dean, or just about Sam, Dean, Cas, it’s them...and their familiy. SPN has always been about family. That’s...the show.

[theradioghost]

Can you talk more about the history of the language and storytelling techniques/conventions of audio dramas? That's an incredibly intriguing concept but I wouldn't have the first idea where to look for more info about it. It reminds me a lot of the idea of video game literacy and how a lot of games aren't accessible to people who are brand new to video games because there are so many established conventions that aren't explained to new players

It has taken me nearly a month to reply to this, which I know is in reply to this post, and I am sorry for that! But also, yes!!!!! Hell yes, yes, I see exactly what you mean about the video game stuff.

Unfortunately I think there’s not much out there already written about the developing conventions of the new wave of audio drama. In large part, I think, because coverage of new audio fiction from outside the community has been so notoriously poor. But maybe also partly because there seems to be a strangely negative take on classic radio drama from a lot of the US sector within that community? Which I think really comes down to exactly the things I was talking about -- Old radio drama feels wrong to a lot of people now, because its storytelling language just doesn’t exist in our culture the way it once did; and even fewer people are familiar with late-20th-century American audio fiction like ZBS that might feel more comfortable or closer to other present-day mass media storytelling techniques. I see it claimed sometimes that there’s something inherently unsophisticated about old time radio storytelling, which is just flat out untrue, and I would highly encourage anyone who’s wondering to check out something like the “Home Surgery” episode of Gunsmoke or “The Thing on the Fourble Board” from Quiet, Please to see just how effective and well-done a lot of those old shows were.

(Leaving the UK out of this, because audio fiction stayed way more prominent there and I do not think the same problems exist, and leaving everywhere else out because unfortunately I just don’t know enough about how the medium fared elsewhere, or how it’s doing now. Alas.)

I’ve been thinking lately about parallels to this in other media that I have been able to study and read other people’s writing on, and I think a good comparison is possibly novels? The western “novel” as we think of it is really something that didn’t exist at all until about the 18th century (there are earlier works that have been kind of retroactively labeled ‘novels,’ some of them centuries earlier, but even if they have the characteristics of what we now call a novel, they’re very much disconnected from the evolution of the novel as something we have a name and a definition for). There are no novels from the medieval period, from the Renaissance. There are books as long as novels, but they’re not novels.

The thing is, when you read 18th and even 19th century novels, it shows, because the techniques for telling a story in that form hadn’t been really figured out yet. What you get is a lot of meandering, episodic doorstoppers, some of which have hundreds of pages before the main characters even enter the picture. A lot of writers at the time, and into the 19th century, actually hated the whole concept of novels. I think it’s a bit like going back and watching Monsters, Inc. and then watching Monsters University. The first one was revolutionary, yeah, and it’s a good movie still, but it’s not hard to see the visual difference between the two just in terms of the tools that the people making them had available to them. Before you can write a story or animate hundreds of thousands of individual hairs on one character, you have to figure out how.

One of the big, obvious things about novels from that period, though, is that many of them are first-person, and many are epistolary. It’s hard to find one that isn’t supposedly a memoir or a journal or a set of letters. The third-person perspective in long-form prose was something that had to be figured out; it didn’t just exist in the void, automatically summoned into existence the moment we started writing novels, which I think is really fascinating. There’s a lot of work in those early novels that’s being put into explaining why, and how, and to whom the story is being told. Because otherwise, how does it make sense that the book exists? It’s not a poem, or a play; it’s not taking the form of a traditional story or myth, not attempting to be an epic. Those early novels were about contemporary, real-seeming people, so the writers and audiences wanted an explanation for how the story had been recorded that relied on other existing forms of writing -- letters, journals, memoirs, sometimes claiming to be older texts that had been “found” (gothic novelists seemed to like this one). Sometimes the narrative voice is just the author using first person to actively tell you the story. They hadn’t yet bought into the presumption that we take for granted now, that a novel can have a voice that knows everything, without being the voice of any character in it.

And I think that it’s fascinating how similar that is to the heavy use of recording media as frame narrative in modern audio drama. It’s worth noting: classic radio drama doesn’t do this like we do now. By far, the standard for OTR is the same as the third-person omniscient perspective, the film camera; the storytelling presumes that you’re not going to need an explanation for how you’re hearing this. The audiences those shows were made for were used to fiction told solely in audio, in a way that a lot of modern audiences are not, and so that narrative leap of faith was kind of inherently presumed.

There’s also a way more common use of omniscient or internal narration in old radio drama that I feel like I mostly see now only in shows that are deliberately calling back to old styles and genres. A good example is The Penumbra; we hear Juno’s internal thoughts, just like so many of the noir-style detectives from the 40s and 50s I grew up listening to, and we never really ask why or how. (Except, of course, when the show pokes fun at this affectation, which I think really only works because it feels more like lampshading the stock character tropes of noir, as opposed to the actual audio storytelling technique it facilitates.) To take it further, there are some old radio shows like the sitcom Our Miss Brooks which go so far as to use an actual omniscient narrator to facilitate a lot of the scene transitions, but do so in a much more confident and comfortable way than modern shows like Bubble, where the narration reeks of “we’re making this audio drama in the hopes we can finally make the TV show, and we actually hate this medium and don’t know how to work in it, so rather than learning how to make what’s happening clear with just audio, we’re going to tell you what’s happening and then reference that we’re just telling you what’s happening.”

Bubble’s narration doesn’t work, because it’s actively pushing against the show, telling you things that sound design could have told you just as easily, sometimes actively acknowledging that the narration feels wrong instead of just not using narration. Our Miss Brooks is admittedly not one of my favorite old radio shows, but its use of narration is much smoother, because it’s written with a confidence that it’s only being used to clarify the the things that would be the absolute hardest to show with audio alone; confidence that they know how to tell everything else with sound. Internal narration from the likes of Juno Steel or Jack St. James or my favorite classic detective Johnny Dollar works because noir as a genre is inherently tied to the expressionist movement, where the (highly idiosyncratic) personality and worldview of the characters literally shapes how the world around them appears to the audience; it works to hear their thoughts, because we’re seeing the world through their eyes. We don’t have to know how they’re saying this to us, they just are.

None of which is at all to say that there’s anything inherently wrong with using framing devices! Actually the opposite, kind of. First of all, because I genuinely do think that it’s a sign that we are actively, at this moment learning how to tell these stories, and how to listen to them, which is just so, so exciting I don’t even have words to express it. And secondly, because as a person who loves thinking about stories and storytelling enough to write this kind of ridiculous essay, I am obsessed with metafiction. I’m a sucker for the likes of Archive 81, The Magnus Archives, Welcome to Night Vale, Station to Station, Greater Boston, Within the Wires. They’re stories that take the questions that framing devices are used to answer for writers and audiences who don’t feel comfortable not asking them -- Why is this story being told? Who is telling it? Who is it being told to? -- and use those questions to the full advantage of the story, exploring character, creating beautifully effective horror, creating a bond with the listener. (Hell, one of the admittedly many things that Midnight Radio was about for me was exploring how much value and comfort I have found in listening to stories that acknowledged I was listening to them.) I think, though, that not all stories necessarily are their best selves when they feel like they have to address those questions, and as fiction podcasts become a bit more mainstream I’m really hoping that writers will feel more comfortable in trusting the audience to suspend that disbelief, and that audiences will feel more comfortable doing it, and that framing devices will be less unjustly maligned.

Of course, all of that is focused on writing techniques, and I think that’s because I’m a writer who has studied writing! I know very little concretely about the part of audio storytelling that relies on sound design, so while I have a definite feeling that classic and modern audio fiction is using different sound design languages, or that the audio language of British audio drama (where there’s much more continuity in the history of the medium) is different from audio fiction from elsewhere, that’s a lot harder for me to put into words like this. It’s something I would desperately love to see explored by someone who did know that field intimately, though.

[thevagueambition]

Video game asks: 3, 5, 14 :)

*shows up a month later with a wall of text*

3: A game that holds a special place in your heart?

Ahhh there are a LOT of games I could mention here, really, but I would probably be lying if I didn't say Dragon Age II. I played that game over and over and over again as a teenager. I think I felt very alone and isolated at that time and this group of chaotic bisexuals felt like my friends, you know? Not that I didn't have real friends, but obviously you can project things onto fictional characters that you can't necessarily have with a real human being -- certainly not when you still haven't really figured yourself out yet. Today I am very much part of a queer friend group, but back then, I only had a few scattered friends who were at as much of a loss as myself. As much as I have criticisms of how Dragon Age II handles the sexuality of some of the love interests, it gave me a space to explore myself and it showed me what could at least credibly be interpreted as a queer friend group. And that meant a lot.

Aside from all that, Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II were what made me a "gamer". Not that I necessarily find that term.... good (it's a marketing term that some sad boys cling desperately to in lack of more meaningful sense of identity) but what I mean is that playing those two games (which I did in as quick succession as you can when you've never played a hardcore RPG before and pick up DA:O as the first one lmao) changed my attitude towards video games. I'd played a lot of games, because that was the time I grew up in, but it wasn't something I necessarily considered an interest of mine. I suppose what I mean is that DA:O and DA2 was what made me think about the medium and pursue trying out new games, rather than just think about it as a type of leisure activity that made train trips go by faster or a type of social activity I could engage in with my brother or my friends. I think there was a gap between it being a childhood activity to when I began approaching it as a hobby in my early/mid teens after I played the DA games.

There were other factors, the reason I picked the DA games up were probably because I was playing a lot of p&p rpgs and nerdy tabletop games during this time, so naturally I was surrounded by people talking seriously about video games as well, but yeah. DA:O was my first hardcore game and DA2 was the one that really captured my heart (not that I don't love DA:O as well, and it is frankly a better game in a lot of ways, but DA2 was the one that really captured my heart).

5: Least favorite video game character?

Hmm, least favourite? I tend not to spent too much time thinking about characters I don't like, so I don't really know, haha. I mean, really, the worst thing for a character to be is unmemorable or boring, right? There are some DA characters I hate, but I'm supposed to hate them, right? Or I have complex feelings about them, but that's proof that there's something interesting going on with them? Like Cullen is frustrating more than anything else, because his arc could have been fascinating, but it's so incredibly fumbled between DA2 and DAI -- they're practically different characters. But I wouldn't say he's my least favourite for that reason. Maybe Zaeed Massani from Mass Effect because his story doesn't seem to go anywhere and he's just this... hardened mercenary stereotype but they don't really do anything with it? He's trite and boring imo. He has a few charming moments in his ME3 appearance, I guess, but everyone who has one does, that's the point of them. It's not really earned with him.

14: Most memorable gaming moment?

Honestly, I think it has to be the conversation with Sovereign in the first Mass Effect. I came to the series after the release of the last game and Mass Effect isn't even my favourite series, but that moment, that story beat? That's the type of twist that really works, that's the type of writing that leaves an impact.

Disco Elysium has a lot of really memorable moments, but I think because there are a lot of them, they naturally stand out a bit less. Also, I was younger and less well-versed in RPGs when I played Mass Effect for the first time, so it stands out in my memory more strongly haha. Although in revisiting it, I still think it's very strong -- that's also vital for a good twist, it has to work even when you already know it's coming. And that whole conversation is just so well-written regardless.

Honestly, even though I am much more of a Dragon Age stan than a Mass Effect one, I do think all the most memorable gaming moments for me are Mass Effect ones. Mass Effect 3 in particular has a bunch -- which is probably a result of having so much build up to pay off on, most games don't get that to work with. There's probably also something to the genre here -- Disco Elysium is, despite some absolutely wild shit in the worldbuilding, a very down-to-earth story, about this one specific guy and this one specific place and this one specific murder and it's all absolutely excellent, but even when it does have moments that make you go HOLY SHIT OH DAMN it's not as... Epic Story Moment(tm) as the Mass Effect ones, just by virtue of genre and format. Dragon Age is sort of in between the two in both regards.

[thearkhound]

Hideo Kojima x Mamoru Oshi interview (August 8, 1996)

The following interview was translated from the Policenauts Kōshiki Guide published in 1996 by NTT. You can read the original at the following link.

Source: https://archive.org/details/policenauts-official-guide-konami-official-giudes/page/118/mode/2up

At first I thought it was just a detective game from the packaging art

Kojima: How was the game?

Oshii: The truth is that I’ve just finished it last night. I thought I would be in trouble if I didn’t finish the game before meeting you.

Kojima: Were there any parts that gave you trouble?

Oshii: I failed the bomb disposing sequence around 15 times. Cutting the wires gave me trouble. I also didn’t know that you could auto-aim either until the final shooting sequence. Since it was impossible to win due to so many enemies, I was wondering if there was a way to make it easier. (laughs) I also had a bit of stress when I was unable to shoot the final bad guy.

Kojima: Yeah, Ed ends up killing him for you. A part of me wanted to make Policenauts into a sort of buddy cop game, since I was part of the generation that was raised on shows like Starsky & Hutch. As a result, I was always aware of American culture whenever I turned on the TV. Therefore, I wanted to make something like that. Is there any particular game that do you like?

Oshii: I used to like adventure games and played them a lot, so I already knew about Snatcher. Policenauts, which I was able to play for this occasion, has a very clear world building. It felt a bit nostalgic, like the PC games that I used to play.

Kojima: What about buddy cop movies?

Oshii: When you speak of buddy cop movies to someone of my age, really old stuff comes up. It ends up becoming the world of something like The French Connection. 

Kojima: That’s another movie that I like. However, I believe Lethal Weapon is the movie most appropriate for the younger generation to understand what buddy cop movies are. Because that’s what it really is (laughs).

Oshii: Having an astronaut as a protagonist is unusual. Maybe not so much around the time when space exploration started, which around back when I was in grade school, but nowadays astronauts aren’t really that looked up to anymore.

Kojima: Astronauts were really admired in my generation. Even the astronauts that appeared in movies like Planet of the Apes knew things that weren’t usually known. It created the impression that you had to be smart to become an astronaut.

Oshii: The buddy cop genre seems to be really suitable for an adventure game, but it wouldn’t had occurred to me to have the story set it in a space colony.

Kojima: A cylinder-type colony doesn’t have much of a reality to it, does it? Originally I was thinking of setting the game in a torus-type colony or even in a sphere-like colony, but visually for today’s generation [a cylinder-type] is what they recognize as a space colony from a glance. When you think about that, all you see nowadays are Gundam-type space colonies.

Oshii: The cylinder-type colonies that appear in the Gundam franchise are really nostalgic for people like me. The whole thing has that kind of atmosphere. It’s really calming.

Kojima: It seems to be a common trend in games to have the player character replaced during the middle of the story. I usually can’t emphasize with that. But in the case of Policenauts it was very difficult to tell such a subjective story until the end.

Oshii: That’s certainly true for video games. When it comes to simultaneous proceedings, all you can do is watch when you’re shown something that isn’t from the hero’s perspective.

Kojima: Moreover, the original concept was to have no distinction between the movie parts and the gameplay visuals, but due to scheduling issues [it wasn’t feasible].

Oshii: The pre-rendered movies are treated as a single cluster, with no interactivity.

Kojima: That’s right. The pre-rendered movies are just loaded as clusters. As for the text portion, they’re cut into units of sentences while the program checks for flags. There was actually supposed to be a U.S. version made, but a translation wasn’t feasible. We talked about it on three occasions and each time the idea was ultimately abandoned.

Oshii: If the translated sentence is out of alignment, then it ruins the timing of the video. But if you end up forcibly changing the sentence, then it completely changes the meaning of the story. I think it must’ve been pretty difficult to have scenes where there are text messages, but no voice acting.

Kojima: What do you think about the voice actors?

Oshii: Since there were many actors that I recognized, it was easy to get used to them. Hideyuki Tanaka, who plays Jonathan Ingram, actually appeared in one of my movies, but it’s been a while since I’ve heard his voice.

Kojima: With Policenauts I wanted the actors to act as if they were dubbing an American movie, so I picked out people who had experience with movies. When we did the recordings we started with the NEC PC-9821 version. Since there were no video files for that version, we had them act out while we explained their scenes showing cuts of the visuals. The voice recording took quite a while, with the recording for the PC-9821 version in particular lasting six days.

Oshii: That’s quite a while. Did you do the casting yourself?

Kojima: That’s right. On top of that, I wanted to record the dramatic parts with 4 or 5 actors at the same time but such a thing seems to be rarely done in the game industry. If you record the actors one by one in isolation then there won’t be as much tension.

Kojima: What are you plannign to do after Ghost in the Shell?

Oshii: There are many things I want to do, but I want to take a break from animation for a while, since I’m really tired. I really want to do live-action, since it’s fun. But then the problem would be that I wouldn’t be able to eat when I want to.

The moment we decided on making a Saturn version, I was thinking of utilizing the Virtua Gun

Oshii: I still find the old text adventure games to be interesting. Maybe it’s because they stimulate my imagination. But when it comes to games released in this age, I think players expect them to have pictures, sounds and even moving images. Moreover, many recent RPGs and such are filled with mini-games in addition to pursuing a story.

Kojima: In case of Policenauts, if the player gets involved in a minigame, there’s a possibility that they might end up forgetting the plot. That’s why a recap mode was added.

Oshii: It’s pretty interesting to play with the Virtua Gun, whether it’s a main game or a mini-game.

Kojima: I was already thinking of adding Virtua Gun support the moment we decided on a Saturn version. We didn’t have a light gun peripheral until now. However, there are some difficulties with using the gun. It’s not really suitable in places like the moon surface, where it is difficult to keep your aim in one place. It has its pros and its cons.

Oshii: I actually fired real guns on my spare time, but I find the Virtua Gun difficult to use. I can fire a real gun all day long, but I get tired holding a light gun for two hours.

Kojima: I also underwent actual gun training during development. The shooting booth I went to was quite scary. There were no security guards or cameras, and you had to buy your own guns and ammo before bringing them to the booth. I once read a novel about a female FBI agent who hated gun training because of the smell it left on her and I never understood that until I started my own gun training. I realized what it was like when the smell of gunpowder tainted my clothes.

Oshii: Ah, that’s the smoke of the gunpowder. It turns your hands black. I wonder if there will ever be something as interesting as video games again. It’s the ultimate toy for boys. I don’t think there’s ever been such an interesting toy to such an extent. When it comes to video games, what is stimulating about them is the fact it takes you to a completely different world. Or should I say, it’s a completely naked product.

What does it mean to be interesting? Something we must think about once again.

Oshii: I think we’re talking whether it is important for games to have interactivity. Starting from the fact that these two things are different, I wonder if it’s better to go back to something that is simple and fun. I don’t know much about such matters, since I don’t play that many games.

Kojima: I don’t play games that much at home either. I shouldn’t had said that loudly. (laughs)

Oshii: I don’t think there are that many people who play games and couldn’t live without them. A game is a medium where you not only receive information, but send it as well while feeling the engine on the side. With that said, I believe the amount of people who want to be entertained up to that point are very few.

Kojima: I don’t think people who play games were originally common. Game development is also an interactive world. It’s a workflow, and at the same time it isn’t. If anything in the story, events or music becomes twists, then the whole thing will become uninteresting, so you need to excavate the raw elements and then reshape them. The finished product will differ depending how much you adjust it.

Oshii: Normally I work only with movies, but in the end ,whether it’s a game or a movie, it can only harvest either, its worldview or the drama. When it comes to harvesting the worldview, having a kind of promise would better for the story. But when it comes to harvesting the drama, the worldview must be adjusted to a certain degree before it can hold up. I think Policenauts harvested the worldview. If you harvest both, you will certainly fail.

Kojima: I probably picked the worldview without thinking about it. if anything, you are often told about the story because it is an adventure game. When it comes to making a game, it is completely different from writing a novel. We make the contents first, then we add the mini-games and such afterward, and if there is a good scene i come up with, we fit it into the time frame.

Oshii: In the old days there was many easy ways out such as lack of technology, primitive specs or minimal storage space, but now there’s no such excuses. When I started thinking about what makes video games interesting, I was wondering if there was a way to make things like they were in the old days one more time. I think such problems will emerge once 3D and polygons started to emerge. In other words, I think that will be the true place for people who make games.

Interview conducted on August 8, 1996 inside Konami Headquarters in Ebisu.

[aion-rsa]

Streaming on Plex: Best Movies and TV Shows You Can Watch for FREE in September

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DEN OF GEEK CRITICS’ PICKS

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

They’re the world’s most fearsome fightin’ team. They’re heroes in a half-shell and they’re green. I mean, what more do we need to say? 2014’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is no Citizen Kane, but comic book movie fans flock to it like the four titular turtles to pizza. The film knows exactly what it is, providing cheesy one-liners, silly action, and unpretentious fun. Throwing in Will Arnett as a sidekick for April O’Neil was an inspired choice that paid dividends in laughs and whoever tapped Tony Shaloub to voice Splinter should get a pay raise. Produced by Nickelodeon Pictures, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wasn’t only the highest grossing film in the series, but also the highest grossing Nickelodeon film of all-time. This reboot of the classic ninja team helped spawn further films, new TV series, and a renewed interest in one of the most beloved comic book properties ever. Cowabunga, dude!

Noah

This isn’t your Sunday School’s Noah. Darren Aronofsky’s adaptation of the story of the biblical figure Noah is an awe-inspiring epic that takes the bones of the famous story and infuses themes about environmentalism, self-doubt, and yes, faith. Pulling liberally from texts like the Book of Enoch, the film has far more action than just leading animals onto a boat and a storm. Shot by Matthew Libatique, the movie looks absolutely gorgeous and at times can be genuinely breath-taking, but it’s not just about the visuals. Russell Crowe stuns in the title role, but the entire ensemble is great, including a post-Potter Emma Watson and a ferocious Ray Winstone. No one expected Noah to be more akin to a thought-provoking art house film than a straight-forward epic, but that’s the sort of genius you get from Aronofsky, one of the most exciting and inventive filmmakers working today. 

Shine a Light

Even if we hadn’t just lost the immortal, suave Charlie Watts, the heartbeat of rock and roll’s longest institution, The Rolling Stones, we’d still be recommending Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light. Capturing the legendary band during their A Bigger Bang Tour in 2006, Scorsese spends a lot of the time rightfully focusing on Watts. With the camera fixated on Watts, you witness his unflappability; the way that he can make such raucous playing look so effortless. You also catch the man’s unique, jazz-influenced technique, like how he rarely hits the center of his snare, or how he changes his grip whenever he hits a cymbal. Even in their old age, the Stones are still one of the tightest, most electrifying live acts, and Shine a Light puts you right on stage with them as they barrel through one of the deepest catalogs in recorded music. It’s simply a masterful concert film.

The Virgin Suicides

Sofia Coppola likely has to deal with accusations about nepotism to this day, but anyone who saw her directorial debut The Virgin Suicides knows that Francis’ daughter would have made it as a filmmaker even without her famous last name. This haunting adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel of the same name taps into the melancholy of childhood, the dreamlike haze of memory, and the mystery that lurks inside suburban homes. Coppola expertly captures the pull that an ethereal group of sisters have on the imaginative group of boys that pine for them in a way that is relatable for anyone that had an unrequited crush in high school. As a coming-of-age movie, it is one of a kind. As an exploration of trauma and grief, it is crushingly effective. The original score by the band Air only adds to its hypnagogic vibe. 

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School

Punk rock music and Roger Corman pictures are some of the core tenants that Den of Geek was founded on, so of course we’re going to recommend 1979’s Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, which features possibly the coolest band of all-time, The Ramones. Let our resident punk rock movie expert Jim Knipfel break it down for you:

“After producing so many dozens of teen rebellion films over the years, Corman finally hit the pinnacle, the ultimate teen rebellion picture, with the cartoon antics ratcheted up more than a few notches. There are so many bad jokes flying around, so many visual gags and film references packed into every scene, so many overwrought teen film clichés pushed way past absurd, it’s a film that demands multiple viewings. Even if “Riff Randall, rock ’n’ roller” (P.J. Soles) doesn’t look much like any punk chick I ever knew, I’m perfectly willing to accept it. And in historical terms, it really was this film more than the 4 albums they had out at the time that spread the word about The Ramones to mainstream America, and that’s worth something. Old as I am I still get a thrill every time the students and the Ramones blow up Vince Lombardi High, and anyone who doesn’t must be wrong in the head somehow.”

New on Plex in September:  

1000 Times Good Night 

13 

13 Assassins 

The Accidental Husband 

All Good Things 

Assassination of a High School President 

Awake 

Bent 

Bordertown 

Brain Dead 

Cold Mountain  

The Descent 

The Descent Part 2  

Even Money 

Fear City 

First Snow 

Freedom Writers  

Gray Matters  

The Jesus Rolls 

Johnny Was  

Keys to Tulsa  

The Legend of Bagger Vance  

Mad Money 

Marrowbone 

Murder on the Orient Express 

The Ninth Gate 

Nothing but the Truth  

Ordinary People 

Rememory  

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School  

Sanctuary  

Shine a Light  

Soul Survivors  

Taboo  

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles  

The TV Set  

The Virgin Suicides  

What Doesn’t Kill You  

Winter Passing  

World Trade Center  

Catch before it leaves in September: 

31 

Absolution  

Accident Man  

Aeon Flux 

After.Life 

Angel of Death 

Answer Man 

The Bang Bang Club 

Battle Royale 

Blood and Bone 

The Broken 

Cashmere Mafia  

Child 44 

Cleaner 

Cold Comes the Night 

Coming Soon 

The Connection 

Conspiracy  

The Cookout  

Critical Condition  

Dark Crimes  

The Death and Life of Bobby Z 

Death Proof 

Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star 

Downhill Racer 

Dragged Across Concrete  

The Dresser  

The Duel 

Dummy 

Flight of Fury 

Flirting with Disaster  

The Foreigner  

Goat  

Gutshot Straight  

Halloween III: Season of the Witch  

The Hard Corps  

Hesher  

High Right 

Honeymoon  

The Hunt 

I Saw the Devil 

In the Mix 

Jason and the Argonauts 

Jeff, Who Lives at Home 

Jiri Dreams of Sushi  

Joe 

Journey to the West  

Kill ‘Em All 

A Kind of Murder 

The Kite Runner 

Lake Placid 2 

Lake Placid 3 

Last Resort 

The Lazarus Project 

Misconduct 

Mr. Church 

Mutant Chronicles 

Mythica: The Godslayer 

Mythica: The Iron Clown  

Never Back Down: No Surrender 

News Radio  

Noah 

Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior  

Ong Bak: The Beginning  

The Order 

Out for a Kill 

The Outcasts  

Phantoms 

Pistol Whipped 

The Protector 

Pulse (2001) 

Reprisal  

Return to the Blue Lagoon 

The River Murders  

The Romantics 

Second in Command 

Shadow Man 

Shattered  

The Shepherd 

Southside with You 

Space Station 76 

Square Pegs 

Standoff 

Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation  

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder 

Steel Dawn 

Substitute  

The Super  

SWAT: Under Siege 

The Terminal  

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada  

Touchy Feely  

Trollhunter 

UFO 

Universal Solider: Day of Reckoning  

Vamps  

Vicky Cristina Barcelona  

Walking Tall: Lone Justice 

Warlock 

What Planet are You From?  

World’s Fastest Indian 

World’s Greatest Dad  

The Yellow Handkerchief  

Still streaming on Plex: 

2:22 

2 Days in New York 

21 Jump Street  

22 Bullets  

24 Hours to Live  

3rd Rock from the Sun 

6 Bullets  

99 Homes 

A Little Bit of Heaven 

A Walk in the Woods 

The Air I Breathe  

Alan Partridge 

ALF  

Alone in the Dark 

Amelie 

American Pastoral  

And Soon the Darkness 

Andromeda  

Are You Here 

Arthur and the Invisibles  

Awake 

Battle in Seattle 

Bernie 

Better Watch Out 

Black Death  

Blade of the Immortal 

Blitz 

The Brass Teapot 

Bronson 

The Brothers Bloom 

The Burning Plain 

But I’m a Cheerleader 

Cake  

Candy  

Catch .44 

Cell  

The Choice 

Clerks II 

Coherence  

The Collector  

Colonia  

Congo  

Cooties 

The Core 

The Cotton Club 

Crossing Lines  

Croupier  

Cube  

Cube 2 

Cube Zero 

Cyrano de Bergerac  

Death and the Maiden 

The Deep Blue Sea 

Deep Red 

Derailed 

Detachment 

The Devil’s Rejects  

Diary of the Dead 

District B13 

DOA: Dead or Alive 

Dr. T and the Women  

Eden Lake 

The Edge of Love  

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