#yay I love meta narratives Charlie I LOVE META NARRATIVES

[tempestmothstorm]

Ok I have a whole section about this in the ddlc theme analysis that will take months to actually finish but the way the theme of nihilism plays directly into the game’s meta existence as a dating sim parody aughhughhhhh

Like most parody visual novels and parodies in general don’t expect you to get invested in the world it presents. Like who actually cares about the in-depth worldbuilding in the kernel sanders dating sim? Like unironically. Its setting either exists to make fun of the world or subvert it, never actually taking its base concept seriously.

And ddlc is like it too, making all the characters the embodiments of their tropes and having a dozen dumb contrivances to fill its cutesy quota. And the player base before playing the game expects it too, either joining for the hype, the horror, the lore, or the parody. Heck even I was like that, knowing all about the cool scares and meta stuff but none of the actual good writing until literally this year. Like no one told me about it the span of seven years. Apparently it wasn’t a selling point. This game has actual heart in it but from an outside perspective it was just another indie horror genre parody. Nobody came in actually expecting to get attached to the world of cute anime girl game featuring beloved anime tropes such as the tsundere and yandere.

And when Monika has her own epiphany she ends up having a pretty similar view too. A lot of things fuel her apathy and overall disillusionment with her life, but I think a big part of it is the fact that not only are the club members fictional, but they’re also badly written anime tropes. It’s like an insult to be compare to that, and yet here she is having to tolerate her existence being a poorly written joke. Nobody would actually want to care for unrealistic cliches, getting attached to badly written characters means you have bad taste allegedly. Why should she care for these tropes that are supposed to be her “friends”, when they have no meaning and can’t care about someone on a real deep or intimate level. Unlike an actual person, a cliche parody can’t have enough substance to mean something. They don’t feel real. They don’t even feel real emotions. Why would they change your life? Why should they mean something to you?

And being forced to live with npcs lab grown to appeal to the very specific fantasies of a stereotypical anime fan while they involve you in their insignificant shenanigans that mean nothing in the end where they get to enjoy the one thing you want more than anything while not being able to understand how lucky they are compared to you?

…Yeah it kinda sounds like hell. Especially for miss manga hater. And when you’re in hell looking at heaven, why wouldn’t you do anything just to get a closer look?

(Also shoutouts to AM in that one audio drama of ihnmaims specifically)

Uh. Problem with all of this. None of it is actually true with the club. They’re fully fleshed out people with depth and complexity. They are just as sentient as Monika is, and by the end of the game a lot of people cared about these characters, this world that was meant to be a parody ended up meaning the world to people. A world that is meaningless in the grand scheme of things holding value nonetheless. Because even if the world wasn’t made to be cared about, people still cared.

This was all probably intentional btw. Maybe not ddlc being labeled a viral mascot horror, but it did help in a different way. While Dan Salvato mentioned a lot about making this game as anime tropey as possible, he also wanted to tell a good story with good characters. He ended up putting his and others’ real human experience into these characters and making them real, characters who are still supposed be the embodiment of their tropes. It’s clear he love and cares about all of them, and it’s even clearer that the internet loves them just as much. Despite being cliches, they had real impact on people’s lives, teaching people new perspectives, allowing people to grow into something better, etc. By ddlc+, they ended up as characters that grew beyond their tropes and became their own people, something that was a big focus within its art and the side stories.

There’s something so genuine about these games that I never got to see as an outsider looking in, and I feel like a lot of people think about it the same way. The same way as Monika. The way that goes against the whole point of the secret ending. Even if they were a parody, the world still loved them. Even if they’re a bunch of ai in an existential science experiment, they could still love and care for each other. Even if they aren’t real. Even if nothing else is real. Even if their existence is meaningless. They can still love each other and find meaning in that.

And I think this meta narrative is just really sweet man. The game still ends with everyone in a bad situation, but that little spot of hope means a somewhat happy ending wouldn’t be antithetical to the game’s themes like other games with sad endings. Because even if the world goes against it and everything else sucks, they can still be happy, together. They deserve it. It’s ok to want them to be happy. There’s the chance for something better

Ok that’s it Ddlc is cool idc if it sounds cheesy I like it

[tinkdw]

Could you describe more about Jensen and Jared swapping lines in Slumber Party? What’s the story on that? This is the first I’ve heard of it.

They talk about it all the freaking time at cons. They’re so proud of it, like, we know Sam and Dean so well we knew these lines were the wrong way around so we changed them yay us! Freaking…. URGH. OK here goes.

youtube link

Original written by Robbie:

Sam: wow Joffrey’s a dick!Charlie: you have no idea, wait until -Dean: woah woah woah spoilers! I haven’t read all the books yet! Sam: you’re going to read the books? *incredulous*Dean: yes, Sam, I like to read books. *Pause*. You know, the ones without pictures *sarcastic face*

Canon because they’re freaking irritating - I still love em but jeez you just didn’t get it - idiots:

Dean: wow Joffrey’s a dick!Charlie: you have no idea, wait until -Sam: woah woah woah spoilers! I haven’t read all the books yet.Dean: you’re going to read the books?Sam: yes, Dean, I like to read books. *Pause*. You know, the ones without picturesDean: *confused face*

Which makes no sense in terms of exposition or use in the episode or, well, anything at all, all it does is REINFORCE the stupid toxic masculine facade that Dean upholds and remind us that Sam likes to read - which we already knew.

J2 just reinforced the facade BS because they didn’t understand the point the scene was making, that the BS facade is just that, A BS FACADE.

Meta writers and Robbie who wrote it that way around on purpose:

Reminder that this is also before Jensen was awkward about shooting the “Dean likes Taylor Swift” scene for exactly the same reason, that he didn’t want the Dean below the facade stuff, he likes Dean who only likes classic rock, he likes Dean who doesn’t read, acts like a dude bro, URGH. JENSEN. 

You play the guy as double faceted so well how on earth do you have such a top level Dean understanding? OK Sigh. He’s clearly better now 3+ years on but it’s still infuriating given he plays the friggin character as double faceted. It can’t be just good editing.

Reminder that during this period of episodes we are exploring why Dean throws Cas out of the bunker in parallel to Robin, the Cus’s waitress and framing his responsibility to Sam in Bad Boys, we see Dean and Sam’s toxic codependency get to the worst point in 8x23/9x01 and here we see Sam who says he’s ok with his life but he really isn’t, he’s resigned to it because he feels Dean can’t do it without him, it’s so deep in Sam/Dean dynamics, Sam wanting out but not feeling like he can because he has a responsibility to Dean to stay and Dean needing him and Dean not being able to let go of the deep parental responsibility he had forced upon him as such a young influenceable adult, where we see he gave up the chance to have so much love, tenderness and support, to have a father figure who cares about him massively contrasted in this episode to John, to potentially grow up in this positive environment and be a mechanic or a guitar playing rock star, with a girlfriend, being a normal kid and going to prom, all this exposing that he has this macho dude bro facade up in essence as a facade to protect himself from these feelings of loss at what he’s had to give up for Sam. 

It’s all SO META. I mean it’s not even that hidden subtext, you just have to listen to the story being told, it’s really not that subtextual at all, they literally say a lot of this out loud, as well as the obvious “here’s the life Dean left behind for Sam and isn’t it so tragic” whole freaking episode that followed.

Oh dear now you also have me onto the fact that these episodes were out of order when they aired for reasons and this again ties into all this. Basically the subtext being too textual so they ramped it back a bit by putting them out of order so it didn’t flow so well. But yeah, the original order had Bad Boys directly after this episode.

*No coincidence whatsoever that it all ties in together then*

*Side eyes TPTB*

*Even more pissy with the fact that they changed all this*

I mean it doesn’t really change anything for me, I can still see all this stuff regardless because I enjoy looking at things a bit deeper so I noticed anyway, but it’s irritating having to fend off idiotic antis who say this isn’t in the show because they don’t want to see it and it’s not clear enough. Chuck bless Dabb for making this all blatant now anyway :p

TL;DR Dean is multi faceted, yes sure he has a bit of a dude bro classic rock macho side but he also has another side, who likes Vonnegut, Dr Sexy, Taylor Swift (and a bunch of other music I bet we just don’t know yet), enjoys LARPING and reading Game of Thrones, later tells us he read freaking AESOP.

By season 11 Jensen is getting it a bit more and well also the show runners / writers are putting their foot down as this stuff needs to be textualised to make any sense of the actual narrative now too given they’ve rested so much on his being double faceted, needing to address the self acceptance arc etc. By 2017 he imo now does get it, given he’s started saying at cons that he used to think he was SO like Dean and now realises there are some big differences, distancing himself from the softer side of Dean I imagine, because reasons.

So yeah, Dean was supposed to say the game of thrones line, as part of his “who he really is” story beyond the facade, but they changed it to Sam saying it. Because they are adorable but irritating doofuses. 

[drsilverfish]

Hold the Phone! Steve Yockey Goes Meta With Lily Sunder

As those of us who follow SPN’s mirroring subtext know - when characters are dressed in way that reflects other characters, that’s a deliberate part of the (subtextual) narrative. We’ve all noticed that BMOL smoothie Mick was wearing a tan trench-coat in 12x09. So, we know to keep an eye out for Castiel-related resonances in the narrative. (Are Mick and Mr. Ketch lovers? We can dream). 

Now - who does Lily Sunder remind you of? Red-haired bad-ass woman with an eye-patch?

Charlie freaking Bradbury in Pac-Man Fever.

Charlie Bradbury, forever undeserving of her shitty fate in BuckLemming’s 10x21 Dark Dynasty.

So what does this correspondence mean in Yockey’s episode?

Lily is righteously pissed because her innocent daughter was killed by the angels. Her exchange with Castiel at the episode’s end is a lovely meta-narrative apology from one voice on the writer’s team to the Charlie fan-base for her death (and, we might surmise, from a sympathetic queer writer on the team, namely Yockey, who gets why the LGBT+ fanbase was especially pissed about it) If you need a reminder of why we were pissed see this old post of mine: 

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/118476606904/killing-charlie-bradbury ). 

Lily speaks for Charlie/ us in this exchange, the angels are the writers. And lo and behold, Yokey throws some sneaky shade - cuz who does the dodgy Ishim represent, in this meta-narrative, with his rapey attitude to Lily/ women? (<cough BuckLemming cough>). Castiel speaks for this specific writer (Yokey) on behalf of shitty decisions by team angel (the writers’ room):

 Cas -         “I’m sorry, I was wrong. And while it’s true that I didn’t know we were killing an innocent, ignorance is no excuse. I truly can’t imagine the pain of your loss. This was your child. I can’t imagine the pain. So if you leave here and feel that you can’t forgive me... I’ll be waiting...”

Lily:           “Thank you...” 

Now read that again, as a straight-up apology for Charlie’s death <sob>.

Ignorance is no excuse - yes thank you Steve (i.e., he’s speaking to other writers/ showrunners saying - educate yourselves about your LGBT+ fanbase when they want to talk to you about LGBT+ representation on your show).

Charle’s death was a pretty big deal in SPN fandom and one where fan anger definitely came to the attention of the showrunners (it was just before the “kill your gays” trope really hit pop-culture press discussion following The 100′s killing of Lexa). Remember that con vid of Carver stuttering as he got asked why they’d killed their lesbian character (SPN’s only, recurring, fully out queer character ever) by dumping her in a bath-tub for man-pain, while his main cast sucked on their teeth and didn’t step up to save him - cuz I do:

https://youtu.be/sBmAQaHvalk 

Yockey (in solidarity with Robbie Thompson, Charlie’s creator) uses his episode Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets to speak meta-textually to the general Charlie- Bradbury supporting and LGBT+ audience who loved her. 

Now I frankly bet you that if you asked either of them, neither Jared nor Jensen would straight-up discuss this particular subtext in the ep. They may or may not have noticed it, but it would be impolitic to discuss it on the fandom meet-and-greet circuit anyway (as it involves some sensitive fan-creator dynamics). 

Doesn’t mean it isn’t there though....  

Now why did Yockey reference Pac Man Fever in particular? Well, there’s a bit more covert BuckLemming shade for Dark Dynasty  right there (and to be fair, Carver/ Singer shade as well, as killing a recurrng character is a show-runner decision). Because in Robbie Thompson’s Pac Man Fever Charlie was trapped in a horror-nightmare video game by the djinn, endlessly fighting killer vampire-zombies. Dean had to dream-root in there to reach her, and together they got out. 

That kind of implies that Charlie’s end in Dark Dynasty was a shitty nightmarish alternative reality, and that, if he could, Yockey would pull her out of there. For now, as it is, he can give her a mirror presence via Lily Sunder and speak our truth. 

So, in conclusion, yay for A+++ use of subtext from Yockey for writer-audience meta-narrative communication and a big THANK YOU for the apology (one made in solidarity rather than in direct guilt - given that Yockey didn’t join the witers’ team ‘til after Charlie’s demise). 

It has been noticed. Solidarity right back at you. 

Here is a link to Steve Yockey’s website. He has written some interesting sounding plays about queer life, like Octopus:

http://www.samuelfrench.com/p/6396/octopus 

 http://www.redkingdreaming.com