#two completely disparate things. one fictional and one real. only related because I personally lived them at the same time | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tundrainafrica · 4 years ago

Note

Hi Sav! Hope you’re doing well these days. Anyways, I came to ask for your opinion, to which I hope is alright with you as I enjoy your constant analyses on certain matters in SNK, on a controversial take that I arrived after much thinking, debate, and reflection with myself and others on the basis of character writing is that Floch > Hange. [Please note that it isn’t in any intention of mine to spark any debate or spread hate.] (Pt. 1); TBC—

This really ended up much longer than expected, so I’m hiding my answers to all these under ‘Keep Reading’

Thanks for the ask anon. And sorry for the long wait. I mean this is such a big brain ask when I first saw this my brain kinda went on overdrive like do you want a political analysis on AOT? A philosophical analysis?

And I found myself thinking, really? Am I qualified to do any of those?

So disclaimer:

I'm neither a philosophy major nor a political science major nor do I have a master's or a PhD on anything so my analyses of it ever goes into any of those of realms or any realms in general may appear flawed, may actually seem uninformed for people who actually live and breathe the humanities and the soft sciences so heads up for that really.

I guess this is a heads up as well for people who do read my analyses to take these with a grain of salt. I try my best not to make these sound like a word of god or anything. I'm just dropping my own takes of this based on my own beliefs, personal experiences, my own stock knowledge and an attempt to just make sense of it. And possibly to help others form their own analysis and interpretations?

(This is a disclaimer for anything I write really.)

Okay first question...

Floch > Hänge Character Development?

No. Sorry I don't agree with that. I'm a Hänge Stan, I hate Floch but after thinking long and hard about this, I don't think I can rate Floch's character to be better written than Hange. I mean the whole basis I’m seeing behind this notion is the fact that Hange’s character path seemed like a mess?

Which I guess I agree to a degree. There was no path set out for Hange, or the path which was given to Hange didn’t seem what she was meant for anyway from the start. But I did mention before that the nuances of Hange’s character were more subtle compared to others and I still found her development pretty reasonable and I found the way Hange did react to whatever she was doing, the way she was handling it valid.

But do I consider Floch character development or his overall character to be bad? No I don’t. I think Floch does his part to be a well written character too and if you were going to put me in a situation where I did have to pick, I would put them as equals or Floch a little less in my scale of well-written.

Because I think their arcs and the developments of their characters have so many parallels that I couldn’t help but just deem them as of equal depth? Just in completely different directions?

Okay, first things first before I go in depth to as to why I consider both their characters well written, let's ask ourselves, what makes a good character?

I have always been a fan of characters and overarching plots. I think I have had this talk with people multiple times but I have never been a fan of flash fiction or anthologies. If I wanna get into something, I get in hard, I virtually make friends with all of the characters in my head, I write fanfiction, I hc. And I always have to relate so hard to at least one character before I even say I enjoy something.

And as a consumer of fiction and a simp for the characters more than the actual plotlines at times, I would consider well-written characters to be characters so relatable, those that develop so naturally that they can evoke emotions in readers, they feel real. And what I consider SPECTACULARLY well written characters as those that not just evoke emotions but do do their part to help me reflect on my views on certain topics and help me refine my views to at least make them a little more nuanced and to help keep me informed on other views so at least I can tackle future challengs, problems and situations with a new way of thinking or with a new perspective.

I mean, in the simplest of words, the most well-written characters are those that can teach a lesson and they do it by helping the readers and the audiences walk in their shoes, and they do it by evoking, sympathy, empathy and almost friendly intimacy.

And of course, all Hange stans agree. Hange has made us feel things. Tbh, Hange’s death literally made me feel like a lost a pet or maybe even a good friend, I did have a hard time getting out of bed for a few days after 132. So Hange, did touch me in ways that other characters didn’t. So that does mean that Hange’s well written? Right?

Okay then people might ask, then why didn’t you feel the same way for Floch, that means he wasn’t well written right? No. It doesn’t. Floch did his job. He made people angry. He made people seethe. And I think the fact that Floch made people feel so many things even with his very limited screentime and his very underwhelming achievements (yo, the man had to ride on the main protagonists fame to get anywhere), I think he did amazingly to leave his mark. And although he does leave us all seething while rereading 132 and while reflecting on Hange and meta-ing her death. If we even the playing field by considering the disparity in screentime and depth and overall achievements between the two, we have to admit that Floch did evoke emotions in us and he did make us reflect maybe (ON HOW MUCH OF AN ASSHOLE JAEGERISTS ARE...) and he turned out to be a pretty memorable character. And maybe he is at least, close to the other characters or even Hange or on par at least in the scale of well written.

And that’s just the emotions. There are also so many things I wanted to point out about both their developments. If we consider the AOT narrative, it is a huge conglomerate and sometimes it does get messy. I mean Yams as like fifty if not a hundred characters he has to give depth to at a time given the overall plot. And the thing is, he did ease into the story the depth of each character incredibly slowly.

I have been watching AOT since 2013 for example but I never really started writing fanfiction until last year when I managed to get the whole story in one whole binge. I thought about this for a while and I did read a few reviews on just season 1 and a commonality I found among a lot of reviews was the fact that the characters weren’t… engaging? Most were forgettable and faded to the back of EMA and to a degree, Levi.

I mean, 2013 me was a Levi simp and I shipped him with Petra because I low key wanted to explore the softie in him before I fell off the earth of fangirling coz college happened. Then I did realize, Season 1 did fail to give a lot of characters as much depth and as much exposition compared to the later seasons (for good reason). I think the whole point of season 1 really was to set the tone, set the setting and introduce the characters.

More relevant to this essay is the depth of Hange’s characters actually, and the first time I did notice it was around season 2 maybe with the appearance of pastor NIck because that was when we started to see her more serious side. And we started to see that maybe she had a genius and a brain which surpassed even her nerdy and crazy titan demeanor. I mean sure, I did know she was a genius and she had to be smart since Season 1 since she was a researcher and that had been touched on multiple times in Season 1 but the fact that she knew how to lead and the fact that she took the reins when pushed comes to shove, that she could become serious and she could still deliver in times like those, cemented her as a more nuanced character I genuinely liked to explore more.

And Hange’s development was incredibly natural, very believable and it did evoke emotions in me (especially with the later episodes). I’m suspecting that the reason people found it ‘messy’ I guess or ‘all-over-the place’ generally was because as I mentioned before, it was subtle. Hange had no one to talk to, Hange wasn’t the type either to give her own exposition right? When has Hange ever talked about herself in the story? When has she ever justified her actions?

When has anyone actually stopped to explain Hange’s actions. Like I feel like literally, we have had exposition on other characters except Hange, it’s like even the characters take Hange’s actions for granted. And I guess the reason behind it is because Hange has never done anything too questionable to even need a freudian excuse or a justification and if that doesn’t say anything about how kind hearted her character is overall, i dunno anymore man.

And Floch had some good development to, and I think the reason why Floch had that ‘exposition’ which made his overall character arc and the development more ‘clean’ or ‘obvious’ is because Floch was incredibly vocal about it. I mean with Erwin’s death and his actions and his saying ‘only a demon can lead,’ we get a glimpse of Floch’s ideologies from the start.

This is compared to Hange. As you noticed in early Season 4, Hange never discusses her ideologies. I mean we know she’s kind hearted and we know she does have preferences like ALL other people. All we got from Hange though when Erwin died and Levi picked Armin was… “I would have picked Erwin too.” and during the actual pivotal scene, she had been too busy comforting MIkasa that we never really get indepth crumbs on how Hange would have picked it.

It was only natural she would because it was more of the strategic option. But do we get a lot metas on why Hange would pick Erwin? Not enough crumbs to make it worth while besides we have the strategic reason and maybe the ‘he’s our friend’ reason but Hange just never seemed selfish enough to be like that. Anyway, the only time Hange does explicitly mention her dreams after like early season 4 of her just keeping away from reporters, strategizing as a commander and just… being tired was when the survey corps was actually split up. WHen Hange was put in a position where she had to actively say her own ideologies to get whatever people could be on her side and that was in ch. 126, after the forest scene.

It was as if with the betrayal, she realized she had to more actively hold on to her idealogy to get shit done because she needed to band together with similar thinkers at least who believed the rumbling was wrong.

Anyway, I believe their developments were incredibly natural and I honestly think these developments were incredibly crucial to the story to show one crucial point on society and human nature as a whole.

Which brings me to my next point:

Was it a deliberate decision by Isayama to create chaos in s4? What purpose (like in the movement of the actual plot because it’s obvious that her role is that of a commander of the SC) does her character arc serve in s4? Just to create the Alliance? To bind together the “opposition force” against Eren? To temporarily keep the commander position warm before Armin takes it?

I want to talk about something. I mean this has been weighing on me for a while and I really think to a degree that whatever I noticed could have just been reaching but whatever, I’m just gonna entertain this possibility now and just never talk about it again. Probably.

There are parallels between Hange and Floch. There must have been a reason behind the circumstances and most importantly the timeline of their death. They died right after the other. Floch had been the reason for Hange’s eventual sacrifice and after Hange’s sacrifice, the final battle did start right?

And there was a message Yams wanted to definitely give with the death of the two factions of the survey corps:

The first thing which I thought of was, the two factions of the survey corps died and they acted like the ‘wings of freedom’ to make the final battle possible and to make the plane fly which is a culmination of the whole build up of what the survey corps was in the first place.

And if I remember correctly, Hange wore the last cloak. She had been the last one wearing the wings of freedom insygnia when she died. If we look back at everyone else fighting post 132, none of them were wearing anything reminiscent of the old survey corps right? So I couldn’t help but think, with Hange and Floch’s death, the survey corps died with them. And the survey corps and their wings of freedom dream died to get the protagonist and the alliance to fly and fight Eren.

And when I thought about this, I was thinking, Hange and Floch must have represented something much more important for the survey corps. When the survey corps had a common enemy in titans they were united. They had a common goal. They had freedom. And when their enemies are mindless giants, there’s nothing much to reflect on. The main emotion the average soldier would probably feel towards the other is disgust right? The thing is (and this is a fairly common message in AOT) when the enemy becomes humans, it gets a little more complicated.

And lemme try to explain why I think hate runs much deeper when dealing with a human enemy than a mindless eating giant. Some people would think. “They’re human, why would you hate them more than a mindless eating giant?”

The most general thinking process I would come up with, when trying to make sense of the hate that humans tend to feel when faced with an other which is also human is this:

“You eat just like me. You sleep just like me. YOu shit just like me. But why don’t you agree with me? Why are your principles all over the place? Why do you not hold the same ideals close as I do? Aren’t we both human? Aren’t we of the same background? The same species? WHY DON’T YOU AGREE WITH ME?”

And this realization that humans can have beliefs in the whole other side of the spectrum, tends to have people thinking THEN YOU MUST BE PURE EVIL. The thing is, when faced with an unknown creature, humans have a tendency to be more open and more accepting with how one navigates the world. But when their enemy is just like them but just navigates the world so differently, humans just can’t stomach it because it’s like ‘I’m supposed to understand this person because I’m a person too... but I don’t’ and I think that’s generally why hate and why ostracization is just SO much more prevalent in humans.

And that same hate, possibly fueled flock and the jaegerists further in the first place. And before that, maybe that same thought process did lay out the foundation of hate and for calling the Eldian’s in Paradis the island devils. And to makemy point of ‘the more alike, the more hate they probably feel’ who hates the Eldians more than the… Eldians? Right?

Anyway, yes this hate only exists because humans have different way on how they choose to navigate their beliefs and how they choose to navigate their lives and it is a huge fuel for hate as mentioned above but now, I want to address another point as a good segue to the whole ‘how did Floch and Hange create this faction in the first place.’

The chaos was deliberate but at the same time, it was the most natural progression for whatever shit was going on there. When all they were fighting were titans, there was no idealogy to question there was no Otherworldly creature to reflect on. And the thing is, going back to my thoughts above, they were alike yet they were so different which gave them the best environment for a little political tension.

I mean to prove my point on how much variety there is in political beliefs and ideologies in this world despite all of us being the same race, lemme just drop a simple political compass quiz as a link for anyone who’s interested. I’m not gonna go in depth into that but yes, I’m pretty sure we’re all familiar with right, left, the liberatarian, conservative and everything in between.

But anyway the point is, people look for different things in any political environment. People look for many different things in leaders. No single leader is going to please everyone. Erwin did get his own fair share of flack because people hated that he was so easily sacrificing his soldiers. Remember in season 1 when the guy called Erwin heartless because he left the body?

Hange just happened to be on the other side of the spectrum (or maybe she was too moderate. I believe that the far right and the far left have more in common really than moderates vs radicals)

Maybe Hange did have too much of a heart, maybe sacrificing soldiers didn’t come as easily for her. I mean sure casualties are inevitable but I found Hange’s approach to keeping casualties to a minimum, much more proactive than Erwin’s efforts have ever been if you get what I mean. With the raid on Marley for example, I had this convo with my friend on how generally back in the world wars when they sent paratroopers to a place, there was kinda an acceptance that the paratroopers wouldn’t make it since paratroopers are hard to collect.

But the fact that Hange went through all that as to get lights set up and a blimp there just to save as much people as she can? Compared to Erwin’s expeditions where he just let people die left and right?

And you get the huge culmination of all that when Hange says that freedom isn’t worth the price of the rumbling. And Hange’s road to freedom had been the conventional, safe and slow option of diplomacy.

(I don’t wanna go into a meta now on whether or not Erwin would have approved the rumbling but he probably wouldn’t but maybe anther time? I dunno?)

So the point is, Hange had a more conservative approach towards the ‘freedom’ which the survey corps has been fighting for so long. And only naturally, not everyone would have agreed to such an approach especially after a hundred years of suffering, after finding out that Marley still wanted to continue the war and especially when they are completely aware that they have the trump card of rumbling right at their fingertips in the form of one Eren Jaegar. So the formation of the Jaegerists was very reasonable and Floch of all people of course who was told to march to his death, who experienced the deaths of 200 soldiers first hand to an honorary Marleyan, to monsters of the outside world would be the one to see marching to death, to giving away lives for a cause to be reasonable.

And civil unrest is a fact of life. As long as you get enough people who don’t agree with whoever’s in power, power struggle will exist. And with the variety of points on the political compass, all types of people with different beliefs, ideologies and ways of thinking will exist so by extension, power struggles will always exist and it was only natural that something will have sprung up in the survey corps anyway.

There’s actually a theory that can explain this. It’s called a social contract theory if I remember correctly. There is a social contract between the powerful and the non-powerful. The powerful has to make the non-powerful at least somewhat satisfied. Because the moment, the powerful becomes unbearably abusive, unwilling to even let the beliefs of the non-powerful to slide, if they never let the people under them get their way at least once, then the non-powerful/ the masses will fight back and we have seen the breaking of this ’social contract’ in action countless times in history.

And that was possibly what happened between Hange and the Jaegerists

Hange and Floch represented two different ways the belief and the fight for freedom had evolved with the opening up of Paradis. Floch was Hange’s antithesis. A fight for freedom can be violent. But a fight for freedom can also be diplomatic.

And if I do compare it to one discourse in history...

And I think the final To Rumble or NOT to rumble debate is actually very similar to the Revolution vs. Reformation debates which tend to pop up in a lot of history lessons, especially those that discuss post colonialism from the point of view of the colonies.

I’m from the Philippines which was a colony of Spain, Japan and the US so the reformation vs. revolution debate did come up a lot and I did have to study it.

We had a really famous reformist during the Spanish period who wrote two books which Filipino students are all required to read in high school. A lot of Filipinos started pointing out how the main character of the book was incredibly similar to Eren. That in the first book, Noli Me Tangere, he was pretty hopeful, tried to build a school, tried to change from the inside out, then he had a character development towards the second book which was similar to Eren’s.

In El Filibusterismo, the main character, Simuon who is pretty much their Eren, had a plan similar to the rumbling where he planted a bomb in a wedding full of rich people. If I remember correctly, it was a lamp and the moment they light the lamp it explodes.

There was one character named Isagani who crashed the party and stole the lamp before it could explode. I guess narrative wise, he did remind me of Hange.

Okay, fine Isagani did it because he had a crush on their girl and he didn’t want her to die. But back when I did watch the play, I remember so many people back then, we’re incredibly frustrated about the fact that the lamp didn’t explode. I remember people were screaming as Isagani ran in and stole the lamp before the bride could light it. As a high school student, I was frustrated too. I kinda wanted the lamp to explode and kill everyone there because all the people in the wedding were assholes the whole story anyway.

Looking back at it. I couldn’t help but think, hasn’t Hange been trying to do the same thing since the start of the story? And I guess when I started to look at the parallels, I thought of the fact that maybe one reason I am so against the rumbling despite everything that has been happening, despite sympathizing so much in the Eldians and even after completely understanding everything behind it is because my favorite characters were also so adamant about it?

Or it could have been reversed. Would they have been my favorite characters? The ones I’d like to emulate the most if they weren’t against it?

Anyway, I just wanted to end this long ass essay on positive note but the most well written characters are those that can make us change our views, make us reflect, constantly think and refine our own personal views.

And now that I think about it, if the show ended anticlimactically with Hange doing something similar to Isagani’s lamp stealing. If Hange just did something before the rumbling even started, maybe I wouldn’t have been as frustrated with AOT as high school me had been when El Filibusterismo ended.

Maybe because, Hange and her ideologies had already rubbed off on me a long time ago, and if that’s not a sign of a well written character then I guess I don’t know what well-written means then.

#hange zoe #commander hange #hanji zoe #meta

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shihalyfie · 4 years ago

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The 02 epilogue and “realism”

While the following thoughts have been something I’ve been thinking about for a very long time, the official Kizuna Twitter posted some interesting tweets this morning about the 02 epilogue that made me feel very much like I wanted to talk about this in detail today, so I’ve written this up. Considering how historically controversial the 02 epilogue is (or having an opinion on the 02 epilogue at all, really), I’m probably standing on thin ice by even talking about it, but I’ll do my best.

I think there’s no way getting around the fact that the 02 epilogue was really sudden for pretty much everyone -- it pretty much jumps at you without warning at the end of episode 50, a sudden 25-year timeskip when we had just gotten out of Oikawa’s death (and a very chaotic finale in general). But there is another quirk about the epilogue, which is that a lot of what seems “illogical” out of it...is most certainly illogical to someone approaching it as a kid thinking in terms of media tropes, but gains a very different nuance when you become an adult and have a certain degree of life experience under your belt.

(Note: This post does not discuss Kizuna, despite being inspired by something from it, so no fear of spoilers.)

Before we begin for real, I just want to get it out of the way that I’m not trying to “defend” the epilogue in the sense of implying that people are unreasonable for being blindsided. Like I said, it was sudden, and it was a giant timeskip where a ton of incredibly massive changes happened, leaving the audience likely to be disoriented wondering what on earth happened in the middle there to lead up to that. On top of that, although the rest of this meta is basically dedicated to “analyzing the meaning behind the epilogue writing choices from the production perspective”, I will be very honest in that, yes, I do think that, regardless of good intent, it may not have been the best decision to go ahead and make these decisions in this degree of lack of thought as to how the audience (especially one that was expected to be largely comprised of children) would take it -- creativity is a two-way street, after all, and communicating with your audience and understanding how your work will come off is very important.

Still, nevertheless, I’m writing this meta because I think, well...now that we’re all adults, and now that we’ve gotten a plethora of development information over the past twenty years, especially in the light of Kizuna, it’s worth doing an analysis about why these kinds of writing choices were made, because even to this day you get a lot of people who feel completely blindsided about it.

Everyone’s careers

Actually, the reason I decided to make this post was that I was inspired a bit by this morning’s post from the Kizuna Twitter discussing why, despite being a lead-up to the 02 epilogue, some of the cast in Kizuna seems to be in careers or aspirations that are slightly off from the careers we saw them in during the actual epilogue. (Most notably, Sora still working in ikebana instead of fashion design, Mimi being into online shopping instead of her future cooking show, etc.) The official statement was that Seki Hiromi (producer for the original Adventure and 02) personally stepped in and warned them that, in real life, a lot of people will end up changing their career aspirations at this age, and that it wouldn’t hit close to home if everyone had it exactly figured out by this point.

Kizuna is a movie about the Sad Millennial Adult Experience, so of course it is very important that it be relatable to adults in the modern era. But, in all honesty, this principle applies to 02′s epilogue itself as well. Back when the epilogue first aired -- and for the last twenty years, really -- you got a lot of comments like “why didn’t Taichi become a professional soccer player? why didn’t Yamato go into music?” and such. The thing is, though...well, this is a personal anecdote, but I first got into Digimon when I was a preteen, and, having already had an experience where my childhood interests had changed completely, I actually severely disliked seeing people say that because it felt too straightforward. Even that early, that kind of thing felt unrelatable.

Kizuna as a movie, right now, would be impossible to make in the form it is now if it hadn’t been for the 02 epilogue setting that kind of precedent -- because of the idea of your childhood hobbies not feeling as appealing as they used to be and being very lost about what to do now, feeling that everyone lied to you about that whole “having things figured out by adulthood” thing, and maybe you’ll never really figure it out. But even taking out the fact that the 02 epilogue most likely wasn’t written with the idea they’d need to make an adult-relatable movie 20 real-life years later, I think it’s easy to glean that this philosophy was behind the 02 epilogue as well. Especially since, well...Adventure and 02 themselves were both famous for this kind of writing, for depicting the lives of children in surprisingly realistic and close-to-home ways that avoided generic anime tropes.

Actually, Kakudou said it straight-out:

There were a lot of anime normally made with the idea that a given rule must occur, but I decided to do them while having doubts about whether or not it was a good idea to take on such given rules without any detail. Even if we went on with these given rules, I tried to take appropriate steps in showing why such things had occurred through step-by-step arrangements and reasoning. That is why I tried to add a little bit of realness each time to the characters, despite the restrictions that they are from anime.

So yes, that actually was the point -- no using anime tropes unless they felt they could feasibly happen with these characters. Daisuke is commented on as having “the most anime-like” and idealistic personality, but as I commented in my earlier 02 meta, he still doesn’t quite hit all of the check marks on the shounen hero archetype. So after going for a whole series on the line of going into a grounded take on human mentalities and thought processes...it probably would be inappropriate to suddenly shift into an extremely idealized fictional trope-ish depiction of everyone just going into a more exaggerated version of their childhood hobbies.

Again, that doesn’t mean that some of these don’t come off as really sudden -- the most infamous being Yamato becoming an astronaut. This was eventually revealed in 2003 and several times later to be a holdover from the original beta concept for a third Adventure series, so in that light it makes a little more sense -- Yamato probably would be the most passionate about keeping up the fight as a Chosen -- but nevertheless, it’s ambiguous whether that actually still holds (especially since the actual, uh, “third series” was...a bit different), and since we live in a world where that hypothetical Digimon in Space series never happened, it still blindsides the viewer.

On the other hand, though, both the tri. stage play and the official Kizuna profiles only took less than a paragraph to explain the disparity of why Yamato isn’t doing music anymore: he wanted to keep it in the range of hobbies. Which, incidentally, is an extremely common thing for many who experiment with creative work in their youth -- many realize that if they make it into their job, they’ll actually start hating it. Conversely, while I haven’t talked to a lot of astronauts myself, I really do sometimes wonder how many of them actually knew they were going to get into it from childhood.

So that’s the thing. We have no idea what happened, we’re left with very little recourse as to bridging the gap (at least, until Kizuna came 20 years later and helped us out a bit), and that’s why it feels implausible to many -- especially for a kid in the audience who may not have had that experience of having their hobbies change or feel less appealing. In the end, like I said, I’m not sure that going about it this way was the best decision when the very target audience was likely to be confused about this, and since, after all, fiction does have to have some acceptable breaks from reality for the sake of being a followable story. But at the very least, it is very much in line with Adventure and 02′s philosophy towards writing and its characters -- that things would be the case based on what would be these characters’ likely trajectory as actual people, and not as what you might expect “because it’s fiction” or “because they’re this kind of character”.

That everyone has a Digimon partner

I have a very distinct memory of, as a preteen, going around the Internet and seeing a fansite where someone made their “better version” of the epilogue, where their favorite ships got married instead and everyone got the careers they thought they should have, but one major thing that stuck out was that it had the now-adult kids still keep the existence of Digimon a secret, and that it’s kind of a “secret club” that they still have. In general, one of the biggest arguments against the “everyone has a Digimon partner” thing is that this, allegedly, diminishes how “special” the Chosen are when they’re not the super-amazing sole people in the world to have a partner.

When you’re a kid, being the “Chosen One” sounds romantic. You’re a special selected hero with fated abilities to save the world. In the context of Adventure and 02, however, this would actually be very contradictory to the constant reminders given by both series that magical powers selecting you out of nowhere means absolutely nothing if you’re not the one with personal will and volition to do the right thing with what you’re given. In fact, I’d say it’s actually the opposite of what all of those people have said -- if you did something amazing because of fate or because some higher power said you should, it says a lot less about you than if you were given abilities and choices and actively made an attempt to do something good and change the world, by your own volition.

But the other very important thing about the epilogue is that people keep seeing this development of Digimon proliferating all over the world like it was completely out-of-nowhere, to the point I’ve even seen conspiracy theories that the epilogue was a last-minute decision. This is especially funny because the epilogue was one of the first things decided in the entire series -- “the entire series” in this case being not 02, but Adventure -- before they’d even finalized the characterizations for everyone! The 02 epilogue was, infamously, intended to be Adventure’s ending, before 02 was greenlighted and they postponed the plan there resulting in 02 ultimately taking the fall for it.

Because it was a new television series, without an original novel or manga to use as its reference, we had to cut back on the aspect of explaining the character to each voice actor, something that we would usually do under normal circumstances. We only described their basic personality during auditions because it was likely that those personalities would change drastically in the future depending on the plot’s developments. We did not omit the explanations because there were too many characters. I swear.

But in exchange, we began post-recording by saying just this: “This story is one that’s being reminisced on by one of the children in the group who becomes a novelist 28 years later. The narrator here is that child as an adult.” Those who watched the last episode of the continuation series “Digimon Adventure 02” would know that this was Takeru, but back then, that information was kept secret. At the time of the show, it was planned that the last episode of “Digimon Adventure” would end with ‘where are the characters now’ 28 years later. However, in mid-run, production for its sequel “02” was decided and its story contents were established to be juxtaposed to the previous show, so we carried over the 28 years later scene to the sequel series instead.

(From the afterword from Adventure novel #3, from director Kakudou Hiroyuki.)

25 years after 02. 28 years after Adventure. We calculated that very precisely. In 1999, there was Taichi’s group of eight, and there were also eight other people who didn’t appear in Adventure. Before that there were only eight total, and before that only four, and before that only two, and at the beginning, only one. If they were to double every year, then it would be 28 years until everyone in the world would be able to live alongside a Digimon. Threaded through both Adventure and 02 is a story about humanity’s evolution. For everyone to have their own Digimon partner is the final step of evolution. Because there’s not much left for our actual bodies to change in terms of evolution, it is a story about how the hidden parts of our souls use the powers of digital technology to manifest in the real world, resulting in humanity’s evolution.

Statement from Kakudou Hiroyuki, from the Digimon Series Memorial Book.)

About Digimon 10: The initial trigger for humanity receiving partner Digimon was the Hikarigaoka incident in 1996, but at the time the Internet network was not ready and it was too early for anything to happen. The following years resulted in two and then four people getting involved, and after that it doubled every year (twice, because digital and binary). About Digimon 11: Twenty years later, in the world depicted in the final episode of 02, all human beings have received a partner Digimon. This is the ultimate result of Digimon Adventure’s story of evolution.

Statement from Kakudou Hiroyuki, originating from Twitter and later moved to his blog.)

While the 02 epilogue taking place in the year it did sounds like it’s because they just wanted to add an arbitrary neat number of “25 years later” to 02′s finale, in actuality, the original goal was not for that 25 years but to specifically hit the year of 2028 (not 2027, actually), where, calculating the number of humans that could be partnered to a Digimon based on the global population, everyone would have a partner by exactly 2028. The “doubling every year” principle was only brought up in actual anime-centric canon in a drama CD, and even then it was in a context of speculation instead of being stated as hard fact, but it should be noted that even Kizuna is compliant with this principle, since To Sora states directly that the number of Chosen Children as of 2010 is over 30,000, which is the approximate correct amount you should be expecting by 2010 under this principle. (So yes, really, despite ostensibly not being compliant with his original concept, presumably thanks to the nail added by partnership dissolution and how that ties into his theory of Digimon being part of the soul, Kizuna actually goes out of its way to otherwise be compliant with even the more obscure parts of his lore.)

But the really interesting thing that this epilogue concept brings out is that “the adventure of the Tokyo Chosen Children” actually had nothing to do with the proliferation of Chosen Children around the world whatsoever. From the very beginning, even since the original conception of Adventure, the proliferation of Digimon was something that was going to happen whether anyone liked it or not.

In fact, let’s look at what Koushirou actually says in the aforementioned drama CD:

Yes. I’ve figured it out… The meaning behind the term “Chosen Child.” The number of “Chosen Children” has been growing at a steady rate. Having a partner Digimon isn’t really that special. Being a “Chosen Child” means… to cease the hostilities that break out and inconvenience the Digital World. In order to do so, that child gains a partner Digimon faster than another. In other words, we are children chosen to fight. That’s what it means, isn’t it? ... Oh, is that so? That’s surprising. I didn’t expect that not even you would know what countries the Chosen Children come from when they go to the Digital World… It’s Qinglongmon that’s helping you, is it, Gennai-san? Do the other Holy Beasts who have revived not know either? The Digital World is still so full of mysteries. I’ll do my best to look for them over here.

I think a lot of people tend to have misconceptions about the nature of a Chosen Child, and those who picked them, because the way everyone became “chosen ones” is actually very different from how most media usually would play the trope. In particular:

Homeostasis, the Agents, and the Holy Beasts are explicitly not gods nor omniscient. Homeostasis admits their own lack of abilities in Adventure episode 45, and there’s a recurring undercurrent of the “I don’t know” coming from them and the Agents not actually being because they’re deliberately cryptic, but because they really don’t know. In fact, the Digital World itself is depicted as being about as confused about this whole human contact thing as the human world is.

Note that Koushirou makes a distinction between “being a Chosen Child” and “having a Digimon partner”. If you’re deemed someone who might be able to do something important in this very early time when the Digital World is still trying to figure all of this stuff out, in a world where humans overall still don’t understand Digimon very well, you get first dibs because you’re someone who can be a valuable pioneer. In other words, just because everyone else will eventually get a partner doesn’t mean your contributions aren’t still historical, valuable, and important.

The Digital World was mentioned in Adventure episode 19 as being approximately as big in scale as the real-world Earth itself. That means the Digital World is huge. Of course, its time and space doesn’t exactly match up with the real world’s, as demonstrated multiple times in 02 when the kids abuse it to circumvent travel distance, but nevertheless, there is presumably a lot of the Digital World that neither the Adventure nor the 02 kids have seen in their lives. When they meet Qinglongmon in 02 episode 37, he introduces himself as being in charge of the Eastern side -- and we never meet the others. In effect, there’s probably a huge area of the Digital World that needs protecting that even twelve kids from Tokyo can’t cover by themselves. And that answers the question of what the international Chosen Children are there for -- what do you think they’re doing with those Digivices, twiddling their thumbs? The Tokyo Chosen’s adventures were the ones we were blessed with being able to bear witness to, but that absolutely does not exclude the idea that there were other kids going through their own tales of growth and adventure -- especially since, as I said, Homeostasis and the others protecting the Digital World are not omniscient, and there are a lot of known factors beyond their control.

On that note, you might notice that, by the doubling-every-year principle and by running a math calculation, in 1999, there were eight other Chosen Children besides Taichi’s group. This also tracks with the fact that Adventure episode 53 revealed that there were other Chosen Children prior to Taichi et al. who performed an incomplete seal on Apocalymon, ones that even Gennai wasn’t aware of (remember how I said that the Agents aren’t actually omniscient?). While the fact that such an ostensibly huge fact was dropped so casually is jarring for the viewer, in retrospect, the fact that this was dropped so casually was indicative of the idea of how...not very much of a big deal this was supposed to be. Taichi and his friends may have been instrumental in the selection process for Chosen Children back in 1995, but they weren’t the only ones who witnessed the Hikarigaoka incident nor to have contact with Digimon, and they weren’t even the first to save the Digital World, nor will they be the last. But the journey of personal growth they took was still important to themselves -- just because they weren’t the only ones who took it didn’t change the fact that such an important thing happened, nor that we got the benefit of being able to meet and resonate with these kids.

In fact, the Hikarigaoka incident wasn’t even the first point of contact with the Digital World. 02 episode 33 hinted very heavily that what humans have perceived as youkai and other spirits were actually Digital World contact, just not something actually noticeable until digital technology started connecting the worlds. Episode 47 revealed that Oikawa Yukio and Hida Hiroki had made contact sometime in the 80s via video games -- even though they weren’t Chosen Children themselves at the time. In short, the concept of the Digital World and its contact with the human one is something that spans throughout history, of which the Tokyo Chosen Children are only part of in very recent years.

And finally, one of the most important parts: the idea that the Digimon would stay a secret to the world for very long is inherently infeasible. The 1999 “Digimon in the sky” incident was international. It made international news. Everyone in Tokyo has clear memories of the “Odaiba fog” incident, and, as revealed in 02 episode 14, even a boy from America, Michael, has clear memory of seeing a Gorimon. Reporters like Ishida Hiroaki didn’t hesitate to get in on the scene and try to cover what was going on, and 02 episode 38 revealed that Takaishi Natsuko was doing intensive enough press coverage on the Digimon incidents that Oikawa actually sought her out for information on it. They’re probably not the only reporters around the world doing the same. One episode later, Gennai revealed that the government/military and scientific worlds had actually caught onto the existence of Digimon and did make active attempts to research it -- but, fearing that the world wasn’t quite ready to do that without exploiting Digimon for evil purposes, Gennai and the other Agents wiped out any data records so that they couldn’t do organized research or swap notes. But just wiping out data doesn’t wipe out the public memory, and, especially when the number of Chosen Children is proliferating, and with all of the Digimon-related disasters that happened around the world in 02 episodes 40-42, at some point the world is going to start becoming very aware of what’s going on with this whole thing.

And finally, about that thing where a lot of people claim that a world where everyone has a Digimon partner must be some kind of dystopia: I think this camp severely underestimates how adaptable the world is.

This is something that might not be as resonant to those who were very young at the time they aired, but Adventure and 02 were written in what was a very shocking and scary world for adults that were living at the time. The rate at which the world changed and adapted to digital technology in the late 80s and all of the 90s was ridiculous, and in some ways even terrifying. Many tech people have pointed out how much it feels like the entire structure of the world has changed in light of technological developments, AI, and the Internet in only the last few decades compared to centuries before. International policy has changed, daily life has changed, business structures have changed, in time much less than 25 years. Hell, I’m writing this post smack in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic; I think anyone reading this right now at this time can attest to how terrifyingly quickly the world changed itself in only a few months in response to such a thing.

Compared to that, a whole 25 years of slow burn where the Digimon partner rate at least had the decency to double every year and give people a chance to acclimate and make public policy seems practically luxurious. On top of that, while there will certainly be more people like the Kaiser out there abusing their power, Digimon evolution at least happens to be tied to human emotions (unlike many other weapons out there), and there is some stifling factor in less-than-pleasant people being a bit less likely to have the same access to overwhelming power as those who are more selfless and virtuous. That kind of limiter is something I wish modern technology could have sometimes.

So what is the Tokyo Chosen Children’s place in this narrative? At the forefront of such incredibly massive incoming changes were children who were living in a completely different world than that familiar to even people who were born five to ten years earlier -- much like the real children born in the world of technology in the late 90s. The Tokyo Chosen Children were some of the earliest pioneers in this regard, being the ones who had to figure out logistics and Digimon and the Digital World and what it meant to be a partner in a world that hadn’t figured any of this out yet, and arguably wasn’t ready yet.

Yet they did, and they saved both worlds with no precedent nor support on what to do. This, I think, is a massively more meaningful accomplishment than the idea that they were exclusively selected by some higher power.

On romance and marriage

I feel like this topic is one I’m setting myself up to end up with my head on a pike by daring to breach it -- there is pretty much no way I can cover this without setting myself up for some risk of this -- but I do want to talk about it. I really don’t want to make this post into a pro- or anti-shipping discourse post, so you’ll have to forgive me as I try to be about as diplomatic about this as I possibly can. For all it’s worth, I’m a firm believer in shipping and shipping headcanons being an integral part of the fan’s experience (heck, anyone who knows me knows that I often talk about my own ships more than I really should), and so, as I said before, I’m writing this largely from the perspective of elucidating “the most likely reason it was written this way”, and not “should it have been written this way” nor “how I think people should feel in spite of this”.

In any case, I’m going to start off this section by a statement from a friend that left a particular impression on me. I’d introduced them to Digimon recently, with both of us as adults, and one thing they commented was that the idea of shipping any of the characters felt a little too odd, because they were all elementary school kids. They, of course, understood quite naturally that I had been shipping some of these kids since I was their age (and that my current round of shipping usually was more about whether they’d get together later than whether they would during the time of the series), so it wasn’t an accusation of me being creepy or anything -- it’s just that, as an adult coming into this for the first time without a lot of preconceived attachments, it felt too weird for them to ship children at that young of an age, and it was something that made me think a lot about it.

As I said, shipping is often an integral part of the fan’s experience, even for those who don’t do “fandom” -- romance is such a huge priority that it permeates all of our media, and how it’s handled is often one of the first things deeply scrutinized. Part of the reason the 02 epilogue is so controversial is that it went pretty much against the face of the most popular ships in the fanbase, and the two that did go forward (Yamato/Sora and Ken/Miyako) weren’t ones that people would conventionally expect given what you’d generally look for when it comes to fictional relationship development.

But that’s kind of the issue here: remember when I pointed out earlier that Adventure and 02 were trying to stay away from anime tropes unless they found it to be particularly relevant to the characters’ arcs? In actuality, the way that people generally expect romance and romance tropes to happen in a series -- especially a not-particularly-romance-centric series like this one -- isn’t how romance generally works, and especially not for kids at the age we saw them in Adventure and 02. It doesn’t seem like coincidence that the first hard show of romance we get (Sora asking Yamato out during Christmas) is when the relevant characters were 14, which is around the earliest age you can imagine two kids actually taking a relationship seriously and having some depth of what they’re getting into. As if to drive this in further, Daisuke’s crush on Hikari is portrayed as a sign of him acting shallow and not having a good sense of priorities at the moment; the whole 02 main cast, as of 02, is probably still too young to entertain anything serious for at least a few more years.

If you look at actual couples, as romantic as “childhood friends to lovers” is as a trope, it’s actually not very common in real life, especially for “childhood” being defined as 8-12. There might be a slightly higher chance when it comes to the Tokyo Chosen Children, considering they’d gone through some shared experiences others might not understand, but even that gets slightly mitigated by the fact that more and more people around the world are becoming Chosen themselves. So while it can happen, and while it’s probably somewhat more likely for this group in particular, it’s not as likely as the average shipper would probably want it to be. Even those who support the canon ships don’t really favor the idea of them being in a continuous relationship all the way up to adulthood -- my personal experience as someone closely following Ken/Miyako fanfiction and comics in both the West and in Japan indicates a common thread of it being treated as a mutual pining ship until several years later, and the Yamato/Sora fans I’ve personally talked to have a very high rate of feeling that the two of them have experienced at least one breakup before getting back together. Or, in short, even people who like those ships have a hard time imagining a unbroken, continuous relationship all the way from elementary/middle school to adulthood, because of how much that generally doesn’t happen.

I promise I am not writing this as a treatise against the ship itself, I swear I’m just using this because it’s the best example I can pull out at the moment, but I’ll put it this way: I think the clearest example of this is Takeru and Hikari, the only pairing that has the unfortunate distinction of being explicitly confirmed as not being married (by Seki Hiromi in V-Jump), whereas everyone outside the scope of Yamato/Sora and Ken/Miyako is still technically in “believe whatever you want” territory. Takeru/Hikari is, depending on which scale of ranking you use, a ship that consistently ranks as one of the three most popular Digimon ships globally, and them not getting together is cited as one of the most common things disliked about the epilogue. But despite its overwhelming popularity to the point you’d think it’d be easy to cater to such a humongous fanbase by pairing them together -- and so few people would dispute it, really! -- not only were they not made an item, but they were explicitly confirmed as not being one.

Why?

Takeru and Hikari probably feel “baited” to anyone who’s looking at this from a romantic trope perspective. They’re constantly in each other’s company to the point where it almost feels like they like hanging out with each other more than they do others. Takeru is shown as having a particular investment in Hikari’s welfare in 02 episodes like 7, 13, and 31. They’re constantly associated with each other in promotional materials, too. But when you look at them in terms of their actual relationship as children...well, I’ll put it this way with another personal anecdote: I actually had multiple platonic friends like that back when I was their age in elementary and later middle school, and, uh...well, people did actually ask if we were in love with each other, and it genuinely, no-strings-attached, annoyed the hell out of me, because we weren’t, and I hated being pigeonholed into that.

In real life, platonic relationships happen a lot with kids in that age group, and it’s not actually all that surprising that 02 would have wanted to portray a healthy one without any strings attached -- the same way the series also portrayed other unconventional situations with kids, such as Iori being a nine-year-old who hangs out with kids much older than him (there are most certainly kids who can attest to being in that position!). I mentioned in my earlier 02 characterization meta that both Takeru and Hikari are actually rather inscrutable (especially in the first half of the series), and in fact, episode 13, usually quoted as a Takeru/Hikari episode, is actually centered around Takeru having difficulty reaching out to Hikari because, despite the fact he was closest to her at that point in time, she still was too closed-in to open up about anything. They almost never talk about what they actually think about each other, other than obviously having an investment in each other’s welfare and enjoying each other’s company, but, again -- this isn’t unusual for platonic friends at this age. And the fact that this is the one ship where there was actual official word putting a foot down and saying, no, this did not end up in marriage...everyone interprets this like it’s some kind of callous move made to make people miserable for no good reason, but I would say that, given the writing philosophy applied to the kids in nearly every other respect, the intent was likely to make a statement that this kind of relationship can exist without it ending up in inevitable marriage somewhere down the line.

We’re inclined to see “two people being emotionally close means a higher chance of being a couple” because this is how romance has been portrayed in media for as long as any of us have been consuming media, but in actuality, relationships are very multifaceted and complicated, and there are many ways to be “emotionally close” to someone in ways that don’t overlap with being “romantically attracted” to someone. This is especially once you start becoming an adult and end up needing to navigate the web of who’s a friend and whom you might have a crush on, and in actuality the person you start flirting with because you think they’re attractive might have been someone you just met last week, or at least someone you don’t know very emotionally intimately (which is why crushes can be intimidating, even in adulthood). This is also what I think fuels the disparity between why Taichi/Sora gained such a huge following and what actually happened with them, because many, many fans will testify that they felt baited by the ship, but if you look in the actual series in terms of what counts as “romantic attraction” and not just emotional closeness, there’s...not a lot; they happened to know each other before the events of the series (but so did Koushirou!), Taichi had a bit of a mental breakdown about saving her (because he’s not someone who abandons important friends), and in Our War Game! they had a bit of a spat with traces of tsundere (which, ultimately, are circumstantial and don’t necessarily indicate they actually have serious mutual feelings for each other). Official word implies that Yamato and Sora were planned since rather early in the series, and it doesn’t seem like coincidence that “pairing up the main hero and heroine” (Taichi and Sora) was given as an example of an avoided trope in an official booklet, so it lends further support to the idea that “not following typical romance tropes and expectations” was a significant priority.

Again, this isn’t me saying anything about those who ship it or those who have been able to figure out ways in which the relationship could work in some very wonderful headcanons I’ve had the benefit of reading over the past decades, nor those who are having a marvelous time with fanfic and headcanon and comics and being a bit more willing to indulge outside the scope of the series’s canon. (Nor the multitude of very good headcanons and meta I’ve seen about the possibility of Takeru/Hikari at least trying out dating somewhere along the line, even if it doesn’t end up anywhere permanent.) Nor does that mean I think that this was the best way for the writers to go about it -- as I’ve said in this meta already, there is an inherent fallacy of not paying enough attention to how writing will be taken and interpreted by people with certain reasonable expectations cultivated from years of media consumption, and especially by kids who aren’t going to pick up that nuance or don’t have the appropriate relationship life experience. Regardless of intent, there’s still a lot that can be criticized about its handling; in many ways, it could be considered a bit cruel that the series had things known to be considered romantic subtext in most other series that may not have been actually intended this way. But, nevertheless, I do feel very strongly that there’s a high likelihood that this is what they were at least going for, even if it didn’t come off that way to most of the audience.

Extrapolating this concept further, it’s also interesting to see how Adventure and 02 treat romance as a relatively insubstantial thing in the grand scope of things. I said earlier that it’s quite understandable that romance and shipping have become the main obsession for media -- and it’s probably been that way for as long as human civilization has even existed -- but when you really think about it, Adventure/02 treat romance as “a thing that is a big part of your life, but not the sole controlling factor”. Again, note how Daisuke’s precocious crush on Hikari manifests when he’s at his most shallow, and even after Yamato and Sora start dating in episode 38, we really don’t hear a lot about it -- granted, neither were in the lead protagonist cast by that point in the series, but whenever they do appear thereafter, it’s almost always about their work helping out as Chosen than it is about their relationship, which is presumably a private thing going on in the background. It’s a part of their lives, but it’s not the only thing going on with them. Of course, shounen anime with casts of these ages don’t tend to breach the topic of romance much at all, but it’s interesting how it touches on the topic and then leaves it in the background -- again, something probably frustrating and a bit too cavalier for those inclined to see shipping and romance as life or death, but from a real-life perspective, makes sense in the realm of friends’ relationships largely not being your business, even if it is significant.

(Ken and Miyako are a trickier matter because their pairing was allegedly based on their voice actors’ friendship, but considering that it has been cited multiple times across multiple Digimon series production notes that character outlines were often subject to change even mid-series based on impressions of the voice actors’ performance -- it happened in Tamers too, and it’s not even unusual for original anime in general -- it’s still ambiguous as to when in production this decision was made, and, considering the flip between Miyako having jealous pettiness over him in episode 3 to fantasizing over him and considering him exactly her type in 8, I would not be surprised if the decision were made somewhere in between there, especially since the fact the epilogue would eventually happen was already established in production over a year prior. Unlike with Yamato and Sora, we don’t get to see the two of them at a reasonable age to start doing anything serious within the scope of 02, which led to the unfortunate result of the reveal of them getting married in the epilogue being a very startling and sudden jump for many.)

In any case, I’m going to close this with yet another disclaimer -- I know I’m repeating myself too many times at this point, but I really, really want to make it clear that I am not, in any way, trying to imply that I don’t understand why people would be blindsided by the epilogue in any of the above ways (careers, the status of Digimon partnerships, shipping) because, as I said, I do think there is some merit to the philosophy that maybe they should have paid a bit more attention to how people -- especially kids -- would actually see the events rather than the writing philosophy behind why it should be written this way. (And, to be honest, I think I might have this complaint behind not just the epilogue, but both Adventure and 02 as a whole, for a multitude of different reasons.) Moreover, there are a million other cans of worms that could be feasibly discussed regarding the epilogue that I’ve only barely scratched the surface of here, because there are so many different topics to unpack when it comes to it, and I could go on forever (and further increase my risk of ending up with my head on a pike...). And of course there’s the wider issue of how to handle timeskip epilogues in general (they don’t really tend to be very popular, do they), so, really, there’s only so much I can cover in one post before dragging this on for too long. But in the end, even after writing all this, I understand that there are a lot of people who still won’t like it or don’t want to accept it, and that’s fine; it’s not my place to try and convince people to.

But, nevertheless, the reason why I made this post -- and what I hope the take-home can be -- is that, no, I don’t think this was made as a random off-their-rocker decision with the intent to make everyone miserable, nor some kind of fever dream that the writing staff must have pulled out while drunk, nor whatever accusations I’ve seen levied about it as a weird spontaneous idea (and the fact it really did come out very suddenly at people), but that -- regardless of how it landed -- there was some idea behind why it played out, and why, even 20 real-life years later, principles like “not everyone’s going to stick with the same career even in adulthood” continue to hold.

#digimon #digimon adventure 02 #shihameta

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paradife-loft · 4 years ago

Text

A Smattering of More TGCF Thoughts, Having Finished Book 3

*not exhaustive, because that would be way too much; but still apparently enough rambling to need a cut for length

EVERYTHING IS METAPHYSICAL WORLDBUILDING...... I don’t even know if I have a specific place I’d want to start with this, bc it’s all just deeply fascinating trying to tease out how it all works, but. mmmm delicious crunchy worldbuilding on what heavenly officials (of each court) and ghosts even are, and how spiritual power works! what exactly ascending is, and what role “fate” plays in that, and what even is fate really? what relationship does fate have to social standing in one’s mortal life?

this is my shit. I love to know how it all works. I will poke at all the things.

BLACK. WATER. XUAN. it is probably obvious by now that I am in massive hearteyes with He Xuan?? just. the dramatic flair! the extent of being SO wronged! intense murder aesthetic! d e d i c a t i o n. power and planning and being utterly terrifying as a trap closing in when the time comes - and an absolute Weirdo antisocial half-person Mess the rest of the time! “I am going to give you all these tests as opportunities to show that you see me, the person your successes came at the very literal physical cost of, and CARE to rectify that horrible injustice. show me that you give a fuck! show me that you’re not just stuck in your pampered myopic little heavenly heads!”

I am a little disturbed by how quickly I’ve built up a whole headcanon persona and POV for He Xuan already despite. not having finished the book yet. :’D what can I say though, intense capacity for violence, plus messy depression/depersonalisation badbrains, plus unstable identity and literally subsuming other beings into yourself, plus hella fucked up relationship with food... This Is Coming For Me Where I Live rn <33

(nom nom transmisogynists make a delicious crunchy snack~)

honestly it’s kind of like, the more intense my feelings & thoughts about a character are, the harder it is for me to really ramble properly about them without more specific prompts.... oops. but just know, I have many He Xuan thoughts. hot damn.

Yin Yu and Quan Yizhen ;____; god, I just have.... a lot of feelings about the way in which Status Issues Fuck Them Up. and about how Yin Yu ends up taking all this blame not because he’s A Bad Person, but also not because he’s Framed Horribly and Is Totally Innocent? he’s just very real, and imperfect, and his personal shortcomings combine with events to create a complete and utter clusterfuck :(

CORPSE RATS CORPSE RATS :D I am enjoying literally everything that’s eaten other spirits in this book honestly. delightfully fucked up favourite “taking on traits of a thing you consume” trope :D

Mount Tong’lu especially, but also just a certain amount of the aesthetic of this book in general, is once again Reminding Me Of Dark Souls. it’s the combo “gain more power by murdering other entities and consuming their souls” / “transformational Final Level specifically called a kiln” thing, I think.

so I guess it’s canon that the Supremes are a “mentally unstable obsessives only” club??? :’D I have a lot of feelings about much-younger-ghost!Hua Cheng just kind of. spending ten years alternately nerding out over trying to learn to read a dead language, and trying to... depict his devotion and somehow express/externalise the very story of who he even is into this empty underground series of caverns? trying to pound it into his head to, like, remember who he is and make SOME part of the world witness to what’s made him, even though (and because) he can’t actually open up about any of that to any other people?

like hmm, certainly I don’t think he’s losing it during the Mount Tong’lu experience as much as, say, certain other individuals might have (*cough*), because he’s not literally taking the essences of other beings into himself, just getting a power-up - but that alone, killing so much and experiencing that kind of metaphysical change, must already be kind of disorienting and weird? especially if you’re functionally alone the whole time?? which is to say, sure, the thousand gods and all the murals might have been a little bit of a monument to Hua Cheng being batshit crazypants for a while, but given the material circumstances of 10 years of isolation/ling nerding/murder, I really cannot blame him. (I would also rather not have other people, certainly not the object of my affection & obsession, get to see those things! that is entirely relatable, not sinister!)

(obligatory “what would a centuries-old sourdough starter from Mount Tong’lu be like“ joke....)

although. that said. I continue! to be not okay! with the extent of Literal Hero Worship happening in this relationship! “if you don’t have anything else to live for, then live for me!” like ok ok it is all very well and good that you said that as a dumbass naive teenage god, and clearly don’t believe in any such thing anymore, but. Hua Cheng! has not gotten over that! he is still very much in that headspace! “oh don’t worry my ashes are in a totally safe place bc if the place where I hid them was destroyed then I would have no reason to live either ~<3″ NO. NO BAD. EXTREMELY BAD, HUA CHENG SIT DOWN RIGHT THIS INSTANT UNTIL I FIND YOU SOMEONE TO TALK YOU THROUGH THIS SHIT.

I just. mmmmmmmnnn. I really enjoy how they interact with one another most of the time! I’m also just... not cool with the level of power disparity in terms of psychological vulnerability to one another, that seems pretty fundamentally baked into the dynamic :/

(it’s funny bc this is the opposite of the panic Mu Qing & Feng Xin were having over Hualian, oops)

actually while I’m being a whole-ass Downer about ships, I will also mention that I do Not get shipping those two..... like “excessive bickering” has never appealed to me in the first place but also. FX seems to genuinely think MQ is a bad person?? and doesn’t understand what his perspective is like in general? perhaps I am simply A Bit Sensitive to people misunderstanding someone and thinking they’re a bad person bc they’re not Nice And Cheerful And Personable, but. eugh, no thank you.

miscellaneous thoughts....

Ling Wen can honestly do as many murders as she feels like, I’m not too broken up about this ultimately :////

Xie Lian’s trauma response panic mode whenever he sees White No-Face! it’s upsetting!

White No-Face is not valid specifically for the reason that I wanted the next ghost king to come out of the kiln to add something cool to the Calamities’ color scheme >:( Give Me A Purple Ghost You Dumb Motherfucker >:(

(actually in part I make fun of him because I am otherwise also terrified of him! he is creepy and horrifying! he seems like substantially less of a Person and more like a Horrible Force of Nature than the other calamities!! also HE WAS LIVING IN THEIR HOUSE *screams*)

(you may notice there is approximately no book 2 content on here and that is.... largely bc I found book 2 very upsetting and unpleasant to read, as “overwhelming futility in the face of world affairs and mass suffering” is in fact my Least favourite emotion to have evoked in fiction. or in real life for that matter. “biological phenomenon wherein foreign entities grow in or on your body” is ALSO a least favourite thing in both fiction & real life too, funnily enough! not actually to the same extent as Futility Forever, but. no thank you.)

there’s definitely more I wanted to talk about at one point or another and then forgot, so, if there’s something you want to hear about in particular, ask me questions!

#James liveblogs books #hua cheng's ghostly down with cis bus

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tragicbeauty1991 · 6 years ago

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In Defense of Disney's Captain Hook: A Not Wholly Unheroic Figure

With the recent popularity of ABC's hit show Once Upon a Time, the classic view of fairytale villains as irredeemable bad guys has been turned on its head, and while some of our favorite baddies like Cruella and Dr. Facilier remain fairly true to their original Disney counterparts in appearance and personality on the show, others have gotten such a complete makeover that they are hardly recognizable as the same character they are supposed to portray. Among those given the latter treatment is fan favorite Killian Jones, a.k.a. Captain Hook. In a day and age when Jack Sparrow is the first fictional pirate who comes to mind, it's no surprise that the show's creators decided to embrace the guy-liner and black leather-wearing sexy bad boy approach to the character, but while this creative choice has had the effect of garnering fans' attention, it has also had the unfortunate effect of turning the original character into something of a joke. While Killian is viewed as a well-developed sympathetic character with the potential for redemption, Disney's original version of the character tends to be seen as little more than a straightforward comical villain with little or no real depth. As a fan of the original Disney version of the character, however, I'd like to argue that from the very beginning, Disney's Hook was always intended to be a complex, likable villain and continues to be portrayed as such in modern Disney media. My argument is as follows:

Hook's original creators, including author J.M. Barrie, producer Walt Disney, and voice actor Hans Conried loved the character.

The original author of Peter Pan, James Matthew Barrie—who significantly gave his own first name to the pirate captain—is quick to remind the audience that despite his flaws, Hook “was not wholly evil; he loved flowers...and sweet music (he was himself no mean performer on the harpsichord)....” When Walt Disney decided to approach the character, he quickly realized that a villain with such a soft side would appeal to the viewers and instructed the animators to alter the original ending of the story, having Hook chased off by the crocodile but still clearly alive because “the audience will get to liking Hook and they won't want to see him killed.” Hans Conried, who served as both the voice-actor and the live-action reference model for Hook's character design, also had a fondness for him, stating that “He's a much maligned character. If you read the lines with any sensibility at all, you must have an animus against Peter Pan who could fly, and took outrageous advantage of this one-armed man. Hook was a gentleman. Pan was not. His behavior was very bad form.”

His motivation as a villain departs from the standard and immediately sets him up as a sympathetic character.

Whereas many of the traditional Disney villains are motivated by greed, envy, the desire for power, or revenge for a petty slight, Hook departs significantly from the norm in that his motivation stems from severe physical (and arguably psychological) trauma suffered at the hands of the supposed hero. While we are never told the exact circumstances under which the hand loss occurred, Hook has a legitimate reason to hate Peter Pan that runs much deeper than mere jealousy or megalomania. In fact, in his opening scene with Mr. Smee, Hook concedes that even such a crippling injury alone would not have warranted his hatred; rather, it is the fact that Peter gave the hand to the crocodile, causing him to live in a constant state of fear (and the boy's tendency to exploit that fear), that pushed him over the edge.

He has a multifaceted, well-developed personality which humanizes him for the audience.

In various interviews animator Frank Thomas has discussed the disparity between the personality storyman Ed Penner and director Gerry Geronimi envisioned for the character and the resulting difficulty he had in designing the version of Captain Hook that we see in the finished film. One viewed him as a foppish dandy of a fellow while the other envisioned a much darker, more frightening man who readily used the hook as a weapon against his enemies. This difficulty was further complicated by the fact that action-scene animator Woolie Reitherman—who was responsible for drawing Hook's interactions with the crocodile—wanted to bring a level of comedy to the character which somewhat clashed with his depiction in more serious scenes. The final result was a villain unlike any other Disney had created at the time—a villain who was by turns both fearsome and fragile, dangerous and debonair. Many of Disney's earliest films focused more on the new art of animation than the art of developing well-rounded characters, resulting in very black and white idealized heroes and villains. With Hook, Disney crossed a line into the morally gray territory, resulting in a sympathetic yet sinister character whose moments of weakness would endear him to audiences while his wickedness simultaneously appalled them.

His physical and emotional issues are highly relatable.

Ironically, despite the obvious mention of the prosthetic in his name, we tend to forget that Hook is technically disabled (by our “hero” no less!)...and that physical disability comes with a host of other issues, some of which are trauma-related. In addition to the crippling anxiety we see displayed on-screen, other Disney media indicate that he also suffers from high blood pressure (Kingdom Hearts manga), depression (365 Bedtime Stories), and low self-esteem (Jake and the Neverland Pirates). These are very real everyday issues that we can all relate to on some level either through personal experience or through someone we know.

The dynamic he has with Mr. Smee is unique among Disney villains and sidekicks.

Disney sidekicks—while often providing exceptional comic relief for the audience—are not always necessary for the hero/villain to stand on their own. Many early villain sidekicks, in particular, are given very little personality and some (Diablo in Sleeping Beauty and Gideon in Pinocchio, for example) don't even have any lines. While the sidekick to the primary villain often relies on his/her master as the brains of the operation, the primary villain usually has little need for their companionship. They are expendable resources whom the villain could easily replace or do away with altogether. Hook and Smee's relationship is different in that neither character could properly function alone; Smee relies on Hook for leadership and direction while Hook heavily depends on Smee for emotional support. Further, Smee—unlike many villain sidekicks—seems to genuinely care about his captain's well-being, and Hook recognizes and appreciates this, if only subconsciously. Despite being frequently irritated by his sidekick's apparent incompetence, Hook—a man who doesn't hesitate to shoot his own crewman for singing badly—never legitimately threatens Smee, resorting to raising a fist or giving a smack with the blunt side of his hook to show his frustration rather than taking a swipe at him with the more dangerous side of the claw. The crew, too, recognize Smee's privileged ability to speak his mind plainly to the captain without fear of serious repercussions, showing obvious disdain for him. One character is rarely ever seen without the other, and for good reason—neither one is capable of standing alone, their on-screen chemistry likely a result of the fact that animators Frank Thomas (Hook) and Ollie Johnston (Smee) were real-life best friends.

In the more lighthearted Jake and the Neverland Pirates series for Disney Junior, the characters' relationship is further expanded into actual camaraderie, and the two pirates play off each other extremely well in what voice-actor Corey Burton (current Hook) has described fondly as a “vaudeville comedy routine,” crediting the success of their dynamic in the show to his own friendship with fellow voice-actor Jeff Bennett, who performs as Smee, the relationship of the men behind the characters once again bleeding over into their fictional personas with the best possible results.

He occasionally displays qualities typical of a Disney hero.

While Barrie notes in his book that Hook is a “not wholly unheroic figure,” Disney's original film did little to show this side of the character. However, subsequent portrayals of the captain in various media indicate that this villain has the potential for moral growth. For example, in a deleted song from Return to Neverland, one of the pirates mentions Hook taking him in when he was a child. Another example of such benevolent behavior occurs in Epic Mickey: Castle of Illusion; at the end of the game when the illusion is broken and characters are saying their farewells to Mickey, Hook actually apologizes for his behavior while he was out of sorts, suggesting that although he is quite willing to fight anyone actively siding with Peter, he generally has no qualms with other Disney heroes and is capable of being civil and even polite to them. Additionally, in the Kingdom Hearts manga, Hook actually saves Peter (admittedly because he wants to have the pleasure of taking out Peter himself, but it's something, at least). Furthermore, in the preschool series Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Hook occasionally partners up with the main characters and in most instances, though he's a bit of a bully, ends up doing the right thing when hard-pressed to make a serious decision so long as Peter isn't around. In the episode The Legion of Pirate Villains, he even proudly proclaims to the main cast's common foe, “I am no mere villain. I am a villainous hero!” This concept of Hook as a sort of anti-hero was even hinted at in a line-up of character products known as the Disney Adventurers franchise sold at the Disney Store between 1999 and 2004. This franchise, originally intended to be the more masculine counterpart of the Disney Princess line, featured Hook as the ONLY villain apparently fighting alongside heroes including Tarzan, Aladdin, Hercules, and—astonishingly—Peter Pan.

TL; DR – Captain Hook is a highly complex, relatable character who deserves his place among the most iconic Disney villains. Walt and others who were critical to the development of his character loved him, and you should too.

#disney #disney villains #captain hook #disney captain hook #disney peter pan #peter pan #jm barrie #frank thomas #walt disney #corey burton #hans conried #jake and the neverland pirates

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b8rack · 6 years ago

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I just watched ‘Magnolia’ directed by Paul Thomas Anderson for the first time. A few years ago I watched his film ‘There Will Be Blood’ and it immediately became one of my favourites; I have not yet come to a really firm conclusion about ‘Magnolia,’ beyond the fact that I did like it, perhaps quite a lot, and I am curious to see if I arrive at any by the time I feel have finished whatever this is.

During my life I have found many reasons for liking different movies. Oftentimes they are personal; I particularly relate to something or someone (either a character or an artist involved), or it touches on a topic or place that is very dear to me. Then there are directors, writers, and performers who have a magical touch that enables them to stir strong emotions, pretty much regardless of the topic at hand. And sometimes, a damned interesting story just happens to come along.

All of these are fine and dandy- and I don’t think there is any shame for loving (or, for brave souls out there, making) a flick for any of these reasons. And yet, when I want to explain why I like something, even to myself, very often I fall back on the technical. I admire cinematographers who find rule-of-thirds shots or pan in exciting ways, writers who construct dialogue that is vaguely reminiscent of real-life conversations, and actors who seem to be anyone other than who they really are.

I think the reason for this is that I want to feel that I am right in liking something- and not just right, but objectively, permanently right. I want to make arguments that no one, dead or alive, can break down. And saying that I like a movie because it is interesting to me for some tangental reason is not the stuff that such arguments are made of. However, things like cinematography can be quantified, and therefore, regardless of their actual merit, are a goldmine for people who just want to win arguments.

The truth is, though, most of the time technical and mechanical components are basically bricks. They can be gorgeous bricks, bricks you want to hold close and gaze upon, but ultimately, most of the time the goal is to build a house with them. It’s good that they’re strong and beautiful and perfect- but that is for the purpose of making a stronger and more beautiful and more perfect house. And if the house isn’t strong and beautiful and perfect to match them, then what’s the point?

What is irritating is that critics, both amateur and professional, whose job it is to help us all find the best things to entertain ourselves with and not judge us for what they are, often fall into the same trap of just defending films based on the technical. One would like to think that people who do nothing but consume media (particularly those that are paid to do so) would be both braver and more forthright, and more able to form coherent and interesting qualitative rather than quantitative opinions, but that is not always so.

To finally start circling back to the topic at hand, watching ‘Magnolia’ I was often reminded of another period classic: ‘Pulp Fiction.’ These movies are in very different categories, but, they are both basically the story of superficially disparate people who very casually float in and out of each other’s lives with unusual consequences- in Los Angeles, in the mid to the late 1990s. They are also both quite, quite long, and are the products of recently matured auteur writer/directors with keen visual eyes.

When ‘Pulp Fiction’ was released now almost 25 years ago, it caused quite a critical and popular stir- which has never really stopped. It’s a brilliantly executed film; it pushes a very specific combination of buttons that touches just the right nerves within an awful lot of people. It’s a brash adrenaline rush with eye-candy cinematography and fluid action. Probably the biggest complaint is that it is very violent (which, to be fair, is because it is very violent).

‘Magnolia’ was not a critical flop- but it generally receives much more guarded praise, and has garnered some unexpected derision. It was was also not a flat-out box-office hit; a combination that is particularly surprising given the all-star cast. And there are a number of common complaints about it (beyond debatable topics like morality)- mostly revolving around the length, and peculiar- or at least unconventional- pathways of the plot.

However, beyond its spectacle and mechanics, I don’t really think that there’s really much to ‘Pulp Fiction.’ It doesn’t open unique doors or paint a whole new picture of the world; it isn’t exceptionally moving, or wondrous, and most of the mechanics (notably including the famous looping narrative) would be just as interesting if they were applied to a completely different story. In my mind, as important of a milestone as it is, it’s unquestionably an over-rated movie.

On the other hand, I think that ‘Magnolia’ contains truly amazing snapshots of humanity- with some of the strongest, and most real, moments of both pain and joy that I have ever experienced in a movie (notably, the emotional always trumps the physical for both). It’s deeply thought-provoking and poetic, and produces the wonderful sensation that the world has permanently turned ever so slightly after watching it. And, as abstract as the movie was, I found a definite point that seemed perfectly complemented by the narrative: that, as horrible as people can be, it is always worth it, at every level, to try to be better.

I guess I am bewildered- or, if not bewildered, just annoyed- that this isn’t something that universally constitutes a great movie. I am not saying that ‘Magnolia’ will hit the spot for everyone- but it seems like these qualities should. Nor am I am saying that it’s not a technically well-made film (it’s flawed, no doubt, but you can find that anywhere)- or that technical filmmaking isn’t important. However, it’s importance isn’t in its own right- its job is to be present when it’s needed to carry off a truly great story.

In spite of all of these words I suspect that, at the end of the day, none of this really matters. There is so much that is subjective on so many different levels that the only qualification that might make sense is whether or not a movie is able to entertain you for two hours of your life. But sometimes, just sometimes, I think it’s nice to be reminded that both movies and life can be so much more.

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dystopialiving · 8 years ago

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Case Study #10: Let’s Play

Some Background

Documenting video game play-through is an activity that’s been undertaken by disparate groups more or less since the popular inception of video games.

Probably.

The creation of the specific Let’s Play genre is credited to Something Awful forum user Michael Sawyer, A.K.A. slowbeef, in the mid 2000s. Inspired by a thread wherein screenshots of Oregon Trail gameplay were posted to the forum to provide users the opportunity to collaborate on a play-through of the classic game, slowbeef made the jump from posting game screenshots and commentary on his personal site to the Something Awful forums. He posted these image commentaries, for which he coined the Let’s Play name, until 2007, when he introduced video into the mix. And so, from the loins of slowbeef, a genre was born.

Today, Let’s Play takes the form of recorded or live streamed video wherein a gamer documents and provides commentary on his or her experience playing a video game. Put more simply, remember when you were little and you would go over to David’s house because he was the only one with a Super Nintendo? And then, instead of letting you play Super Star Wars, he just made you sit on the couch and watch him play while he said “let me show you something cool” over and over? It’s that, but in video form.

“Let’s Play” my ass

Let’s Play videos are distinct from walkthroughs or strategy guides in that their primary purpose isn’t to provide information on how to to progress through the game. Instead, they document a gamer’s subjective experience in order to entertain and, as the name implies, attempt to include the viewer. Serialization or live-streaming of play-throughs allows the audience of Let’s Play videos to provide feedback on how the gamer should complete play-through, though this isn’t a necessary component. In many instances, the viewer is simply included through the comment section of the stream or video. The format of Let’s Play videos is relatively loose, but they can take the form of criticism, unique challenges (i.e. complete a game without killing any enemies), or play-throughs of user-made mods to well-known games.

If you don’t spend a lot of time in the world of online video, this might seem like a niche form of entertainment, but it’s important to know that Let’s Play video content is popular. Like, really, really popular. Twitch.tv, a site dedicated to live streaming video game-related content, including a huge chunk of Let’s Play video, sees 45 million unique users per month. Similarly, Let’s Play content is extraordinarily popular on YouTube, with the honor of the most-subscribed creator on the entire platform belonging to Let’s Play superstar Felix Kjellberg, more popularly known by his handle PewDiePie. Kjellberg has more than 50 million subscribers on YouTube, and his videos have seen nearly 14 billion views combined. Framed in YouTube Standard Units, that’s 5 Gangnam Styles worth of views. His annual income from this activity approaches $50 million, which is more than all but the wealthiest professional athletes make. Suck it, jocks.

Oh, and Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2016. So, yeah. It’s kind of a big deal.

If you’ve never seen one of these videos, their style could best be described as “millennial as all hell.” Here’s PewDiePie’s most popular video, which as of this writing has surpassed 74 million views. If you can through more than a few minutes of it, congratulations: you’re more patient than I am:

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The Dystopia

Many works of dystopian fiction explore the concept of what entertainment might look like in their imagined societies, often featuring dumbed-down versions of popular media or barely-disguised advertisements that have supplanted other forms of media. As early back as The Time Machine in 1895, H.G. Wells postulated on the decline of literature and the curiosity that inspires its consumption among the childlike an ineffectual Eloi, descendants of humanity who evolved in an environment in which strength and intelligence were no longer required to thrive:

youtube

The irony of presenting the film version rather than a text excerpt is not lost on me.

Similar representations of in-world media, in which content is dumbed-down and designed to promote complacency and consumption, appear in Brave New World, The Marching Morons, THX-1138, and Idiocracy, the latter of which already bears an eerie resemblance to the end-bumper of most YouTube videos:

Criticism of the Let’s Play genre generally follows the same pattern that has characterized criticism of all emergent forms of media throughout modern history. For a pre-internet point of reference, see Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, which directly draws comparisons to Huxley’s Brave New World in criticizing television as a form of media.

Within this vein, criticism of the Let’s Play genre can roughly be categorized as follows:

It’s dumbing down entertainment/it’s reductive: i.e., why would we watch a video of someone playing games that we can play ourselves? A South Park episode featuring the genre, entitled #REHASH, takes this line of criticism.

It’s encouraging sloth/complacency: i.e., Why are we paying people (in some cases) millions of dollars to sit on their asses and play video games?

It encourages further consumption: i.e., plenty of these videos are just thinly-veiled advertisements for the games themselves.

It’s isolating: i.e., Why are we sitting in dark rooms watching these videos alone when we could be gaming socially?

But Why?

While the Let’s Play genre might seem like the shiniest and newest thing in media, both the form itself and the criticism it has inspired are anything but. In reality, Let’s Play is simply the logical product of existing realities within the media landscape.

Watching someone play a game that you yourself could play is nothing new. That idea has been around basically forever, and it exists in what might otherwise be considered the cultural opposite of video games: spectator sports. The only real difference between spectator sports and Let’s Play videos is the type of game being played. In fact, in comparing the two, we can find responses to the criticisms leveled at the latter:

It’s dumbing down/it’s reductive

We can find value in watching someone perform a task we ourselves are capable of because that person might be more skilled or more entertaining than we are. I can play a pickup game of basketball if I want, but it doesn’t compare to watching Steph Curry sink a half-court buzzer beater. Similarly, I can play through Ocarina of Time and enjoy many hours of interesting story and puzzles, but watching an expert beat the game in under 20 minutes is a categorically different experience.

It’s encouraging sloth/complacency

Given the incredibly high spectator to participant ratio, do spectator sports really discourage sloth any more than Lets Play? The chubby guy in the stands or on the couch screaming about his team is such a common sight that it’s practically a trope at this point. Cheering only burns so many calories, after all. Furthermore, we can’t even argue that spectator sports universally promote healthy habits among those few who they do inspire to become athletes. As our pal Fake Malcolm Gladwell so eloquently put it:

It encourages further consumption

Spectator sports are just as laden with advertising as Let’s Play, even if the latter can obfuscate the matter more. Furthermore, advertising provides a means for content creators to earn money, and it’s broadly a good thing that as the economic landscape is changing, new opportunities for individuals to make a living continue to arise. Advertising within the Let’s Play genre is really only dystopian in so far as it approaches content marketing, i.e. disguising an advertisement as the content a viewer is seeking out, rather than explicitly promoting a product in and around the content itself. This becomes even more concerning when considering the relative youth and impressionability of the Let’s Play audience. While the format of Let’s Play videos lends them to content marketing more than does something like spectator sports, this form of advertising is in no way unique to the genre. As a rabbit hole of its own, it bears more complete discussion in a separate post.

It’s isolating

It’s on this final point that spectator sports and Let’s Play diverge most clearly. Spectator sports are still a predominantly social activity, with viewers gathering at stadiums, in sports bars, or in their homes to watch games. While the act of watching Let’s Play videos alone on a computer or phone screen may seem fundamentally less social, the evidence actually suggests that the genre did not arise to promote solitary behavior, but rather to remedy larger isolating forces at play. The rise of Let’s Play videos is directly correlated with something we’ve discussed in previous posts—the death of local multiplayer games. As video games become more graphically intense, consoles have a harder and harder time processing the multiplayer experience on a single screen.

Furthermore, game and console manufacturers have a strong monetary incentive for favoring online multiplayer over local multiplayer. For example, if you and three friends want to play a game locally, that requires the purchase of one console, one copy of the game, and four controllers. If you and the same three friends want to play a game online, that requires the purchase of four consoles, four copies of the game, four controllers, and, in many cases, a monthly online service subscription. Surprise! Once again, the pursuit of profit plays a large role in the most dystopian aspect of this case study.

Redeeming Qualities

Digging into the Let’s Play community in either the form of video comments or forums, it becomes clear that the social nature of the videos is what draws a substantial portion of viewers in, motivated in part by the aforementioned economic strains that modern gaming places on gamers—particularly those who are younger. Playing the latest and greatest games can be a very expensive endeavor, but watching Let’s Play videos is free, absent the cost of an internet connection. Viewers in many cases are unable to play these games themselves, socially or otherwise, but can find in Let’s Play an experience at least somewhat analogous to playing them—and playing them with friends to boot. Beyond that, it’s hard to ignore the generally positive tone of comments on Let’s Play videos, in particular those as unrepentantly positive as PewDiePie’s. In a very real way, watching these videos makes people feel happier and less lonely.

Beyond social benefits and the mitigation of economic strains, Let’s Play democratizes access to games that are otherwise restricted by region or obscurity, particularly old and out-of-print games. A content creator can invest his or her revenue stream in these types of games and allow viewers from around the world to gain insight into what it’s like to actually play them. Similarly, the Let’s Play genre can provide a valuable platform for independent games that might not otherwise be noticed by mainstream game reviewers. Plenty of genuinely interesting and unusual indie games, including Thomas Was Alone and The Stanley Parable have directly attributed their success to positive relationships with Let’s Play channels.

Can We Fix It?

In an unexpected turn of events, after some research and reflection, I think that there’s much more to like about Let’s Play than there is to fear.

Don’t get used to it.

If anything, Let’s Play is a symptom, not a cause of the larger social isolation—at least in physical spaces—happening today. In many ways, the genre seeks to fight back against that isolation and provide a social outlet for gamers, albeit a digital one. There’s a larger conversation to be had about whether a digital remedy for physical isolation is adequate, though my position on the subject is probably not as full Turkle as you might think, given the rest of this blog’s content.

Perhaps the biggest space for concern is the commodification and corporatization of the genre. As Let’s Play becomes increasingly popular, game manufacturers will seek to increase their presence in the form of content marketing, which will have the effect of reversing the kind of democratization that the genre excels in.

We need to be clear in calling for transparency in advertising and improving our own abilities to discern sponsored content. On that note:

Up next: Content Marketing

#lets play #youtube #video games #pewdiepie #DystopiaLiving #dystopia #the time machine #idiocracy

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