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juushikaComing to the end of the crossposts! This wraps up most of the video game content. Some of these are old and profoundly overwritten; the discussion of projection vs content/subtext vs text is also nicely explored in But What I Really Want is to(o) Direct by franzeska.
False equivalences and "the rebels are just as dangerous!"
I am tired as hell of speculative narratives about how a legitimate uprising by a repressed group poses danger equal to the violence perpetuated by that group's oppressors, see: Bioshock Infinite, Dragon Age, the Scoia'tael in The Witcher which incited this particular essay. The intent is to create a morally complicated narrative, but all speculative concepts explore real-world parallels and while this particular trope is common its real-world parallel doesn't exist. Minority movements fight broken systems, they don't destroy society. And minority movements don't benefit from the power structures that benefit oppressive systems: they are not equally dangerous.
Here's what that narrative actually does: feel good about yourself for considering the plight of the disenfranchised, but remind yourself that their disenfranchisement is necessary for society, and society is inherently good, and so the disenfranchisement is justified.
This is true even in interactive narratives where the player can side with the disenfranchised, and true even if oppressive society is condemned, because the minority movements are explicitly problematic—the deadly vengeance of the Vox Populi, the "some mages and lots of magics are legitimately uncontrollable dangers!," the Scoia'tael as political pawns of an outside evil all falsely equated to the problematic existing society and so insisting that, however compelling the complaints of the minority, they pose a danger and oppressing them is a valid solution.
This is especially pertinent problem in the current US political climate but hey guess what, it's pertinent always, and narratives that pretend to engage minority voices and then provide excuses to fear and dismiss them are always gross because of what they imply about the real world.
Fast travel
a sidenote about fast travel: the Witcher books make a huge fuss about how difficult travel is in pre-industrial society infested by monsters, and rightly so, because it a) justifies Geralt's entire job, b) informs the scale: the why of the war, the impact on non-combatants, the risk and danger and therefore necessity of the various journeys taken by the cast
but in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, fast travel is required! without it the game would be joylessly unplayable! this is occasionally nodded to—characters planning to meet at a location in a week, to account for travel, and so now we know how long Geralt's fast travel takes—but it still removes scale and danger from the setting, and thus realism from the narrative; it hamstrings the world
there are some open world games that can be played without fast travel—it hugely benefits Skyrim and, to my understanding, most Bethesda games to do this; it forces trip planning, it restores scale to the setting, it creates an intimate, measured, dangerous quest
(to my knowledge, Fallout 4′s settlement system makes fast travel necessary again; we should be getting better at immersive open worlds, not worse)
but here is the other option: justify fast travel. literally at all. the justification in Breath of the Wild is just Sheikah ~technology~ and, you know what? that works, because magic and advanced technology fuel the game's entire premise
so you can have that vast, unruly scale and accommodations for playability, without breaking immersion. this is why Nier: Automata needed a more punishing breakdown in the save/fast travel system when the technology enabling it was compromised: to maintain immersion, and therefore the entire world the game worked so hard to create
The end of Yume Nikki
Let's start by saying: I doubt a whole lot is "wrong" with Madotsuki other than her plain old self. Could she have been raped, witnessed something traumatic, done something awful? maybe. Could she have outstanding, specific issues with something like her gender identity? maybe. But I think it's easy to underestimate the power of a mind to be fucked up all on its own—to be sick for no reason other than the fact that it's sick.
I say this because I have that sort of mind—and so, yes, I am certainly projecting my own experiences onto Madotsuki, but I know what it is to have all of this: violent, repetitive, strange dream imagery, agoraphobia, suicidal inclinations.
I can't speak about what it means to be a hikikomori, because I don't come from the culture that breeds them. But I am a recovering shut-in of the boring Western variety, and it's a lot more than being socially awkward or spending a lot of time online: it's a crippling fear of, and inability to face, the outside world. It's social—to be a certain way in a society that expects you to be another way, to have negative experiences with society that drive you to avoid it. It's personal—to be the sort of person who sows and reaps these things, to be sensitive and anxious and unwell. I see myself in Madotsuki, and I think she is a shut-in.
I can't speak to Madotsuki's mental health, I can't pretend to diagnose her, because we simply don't see enough of her to know for sure. But I know what it is to dream of walking nightmare landscapes, explicit violence witnessed, explicit violence committed; I know what it is to be at a place in the waking world where suicide seems like a perfectly viable option. Sometimes people end up that way due to specific, external causes, but sometimes we just are. I've had some bad experiences, I can pinpoint certain things, but they're as likely to be caused by my illness as the cause of it. When it comes down to it, I'm just depressed. I see that in Madotsuki too: illness, because of illness.
In a sea of thoughtful interpretations, mine is at its heart simple: Madotsuki is just herself. She probably had a troubled relationship with a female figure in her life. She may have problems understanding and accepting her gender and sexuality—at some level, most of us do. She probably has issues of self-representational or identity; she thinks, underneath it all, that she's a bad person. She may have a list of mental health issues, and she's probably agoraphobic. She's normal, average, plain, brown-haired, she has a favorite sweater; she's just a young woman, she's just unwell.
And "just unwell" can still mean "catastrophically so."
That is, if you call suicide a catastrophe.
Of course I don't think it's a good thing, but what's bad about it isn't the fact of death—but the fact that someone was at such a low point that they wanted it. In all my history with depression, strong as my death drive is, my relationship with suicide has been limited to contemplations and impulses; I've never tried to kill myself. I've been in horrible places, reached valley-deep lows, but I can only imagine how much worse things must be for those that look to suicide as a way out—imagine, and ache for them.
Sitting on the edge of the stairs, overlooking the sunrise, contemplating the step forward and the dive over the edge—being in the sunlight for the first time, overlooking the vast horizon—my final moments as Madotsuki were not painful ones. They weren't spent being chased by the women who were supposed to protect me, they weren't spent walking long and isolated hallways, they weren't filled with bloodied bodies or quiet ghosts. They weren't frightening. They were beautiful.
There are all sorts of dangers in idolizing suicide, certainly. Perhaps Madotsuki could have gotten help and gotten better if only she'd lived to do so. There are many circumstances where suicide is no solution.
But I can imagine it. I haven't experienced it, but I can imagine it—a place where death makes sense, where it is a solution. I thank fuck I never ended up there and pray I never do, but Madotsuki did. This is her end, and if she isn't sad about it then neither should I be. And so to her, as she jumps and leaves me, I say: godspeed.
Projection in Pokemon Black
I'm not sure yet where I stand on this "plot" thing in Pokémon Black and White. As I mentioned before, I was quite excited to find out that the central conflict would be around the role of Pokémon in society, but unsurprised to see much of it corrupted by shallow storytelling. I still hold out hope for N.
But even if the game drops the ball, having picked it up in the first place is amazing. It's not new—I think a lot of Pokémon players, especially as they get older and a little smarter, wonder about the same thing: would a creature want to be trapped in a little ball and trained into a fighter and sent out in an endless slew of battles to get the shit kicked out of them, or worse yet would a creature want to get trapped in a little ball and then stored on a PC ... forever? And Pokémon seem to be more than your average, this-world, non-sentient animal: they seem intelligent and emotional, both in the games and in other parts of the franchise.
In the previous generations it was easy to quash that sort of worry with, "Well, it's just a game." Because it is, and its underlying premise and mechanics would be less than useless if Pokémon had to be treated as independent, conscious entities. You're still encouraged to love and groom them, but they're "just" Pokémon, this capture-train-fight thing is what they do, and that's it.
But it's harder to dismiss the issue as just the premise of the game once the game itself starts questioning it.
So even if the plot doesn't end up doing much (which would be no surprise), even if they do worse than little and try and sweep it all under the rug with an official "well that's just what Pokémon do!", the fact that it acknowledged the issue is something. It means that I can't sweep it under the rug.
When I say that aesthetics matter (yes, this all spun out from that), I don't mean quite that. In my ideal little fantasy Pokémon world (you have one too, right?), Pokémon really are my friends—I live and work along side them, I cuddle up against them at night. They're not people, but they're not just animals either (for all that I love animals, too)—they are remarkable, mysterious, sympathetic, intelligent, alien friends. So when I pick a Pokémon to be on my team, I pick a Pokémon that I would want in my home, napping on my bed. I like them clever, cuddly, mischievous, kind, sweet, and COVERED IN FLUFF you better believe it. I would fight Team Plasma to the death for those Pokémon, because—even if I can't prove it—I know that we belong together as companions.
But what about the hundred languishing on my PC? What about the HM slave that I pull out just to set to task? Just pixels and bytes, of course; just the premise of the game. But I've been having these pangs of guilt, because the game won't let me dismiss the issue anymore, not like that. I'm sensitive, I know—me and my nervous affair with Eve, me and my faithfulness to Chihiro (and love of Nanako, and beloved pet dogs, and and and): I am prone to making silly emotional connections in "just a game." But Pokémon has always encouraged just that sort of thing, with its Pokémon walking behind you and happiness points and Silver's entire story arc—and now it wants to know: do we really believe it?
Projection vs content/subtext vs text
Allow me to transcribe, edit, and expound upon a chat with Sabrina in order to create actual content, because half my thinky thoughts occur accidentally in gchat these days.
I continue to admire the underlying irony of how easy it is to identify with no-voice Blair (Pokemon Black), but fully animated and voiced Hawke (Dragon Age II)? nah, he ain't me—or at least he wasn't for some time. I do find myself roleplaying now, in the sense that I have head canon explanations and investigations and details for/into/of what happens in the game, and things which I do in game for my benefit and not because the game is aware of or derives meaning from them—like when I took Fenris out of my party for a little while after "A Bitter Pill," because we needed some space. But it took 25 hours and a pretty id-appealing relationship for me to get to that point; usually, I'm ridiculously prone to identifying with protagonists, to the point of over-immersion (let me tell you about how my Pokémon are my friends or how I used to spend every other afternoon in Chihiro's bedroom).
As contrived and silly as the silent protagonist trope is, it works. When we can project thoughts and words on to a void, we create the character that we want, or need, or will fall in love with forever. And I think that the ability to provide your own content and extrapolate subtext builds upon itself, to the point that literal expressed content can never be quite right, or as detailed or meaningful as it would be were it user-created. This is why I so often have issues with "none of these things are what I want to say" and "that was not what I meant to say" with Hawke—in small part because the dialog choices are not verbatim (which is as it should be, to give a better sense of the emotional import, if not exact language of, what's said, and because hearing the exact dialog that you just finished reading gets pretty boring), but mostly because they are Hawke's words: I chose which sorts of words they should be, but they are not quite mine, and so Hawke and I maintain a separation.
I have begun to wonder how desirable that sort of user-provided content is, however. It gets self-indulgent and escapist—the best world is the one that this game pulls out of my head, and it is private and not only tailored to but created by my desires. For someone like me, already prone to escapism, that can be dangerous. But more to the point, it limits how much I can enjoy actual characterization and non-subtextual content. Revenant Wings has a fantastic rivalry/relationship between Vaan and Balthier—until Balthier shows up, the characters interact in person, and the relationship becomes explicit rather than implied. It feels self-congratulatory to say so, but "there's never as much [actual] complexity and depth as I project onto/draw from the subtext." That statement alone is problematic, because in many cases—not necessarily in that one, but—I would be talking about queer subtext, and there is a desperate need not to restrict that content to subtext, be in inadvertent in your average intense character interaction or disgustingly, homophobically intentional as in the BBC Sherlock. But when you can more or less create perfection yourself, external creations are bound to be imperfect by comparison. They are limited by writing and by someone else's mind; one's own desires have few limits.
But their undesirability doesn't make them unnecessary. Content is necessary, be it something as important as queer relationships or something just as basic as content itself. That's not to say that Persona 3's protagonist is necessarily an artless, blank canvas, but to be honest someone like Blair(/Touya/Hilbert) is. Pokémon Black is still a fantastic and surprisingly thoughtful game, don't get me wrong, and there is little which could positively fill the void left for me to project my characterization and emotions (for example, a more detailed/realistic Pokémon friendship system would probably just be annoying and hokey, as the current one is already barely better than that), but Blair simply is not a character, even if I make him into one. The game uses him to make some meaningful statements, but the decision to make him a non-character robs him of so many other statements, and ideas, and interactions, and relationships.
It is tempting, and sometimes good and desirable, to leave those aspects to the imagination—but it is also limiting.
To prefer, or at least be so comfortable, with said limitations is an acquired taste, and having acquired it I find it difficult to develop an appetite for anything else. But I'm thankful that Dragon Age II is pushing me to do so, both because it highlights my own self-assumed limitations and because, while the game's content isn't perfect, it is content, solid and strong and surprisingly enjoyable and, as with all content, I could not have been exposed to exactly it anywhere else.
A specific example of projection vs contet/subtext vs text in Revenant Wings
in I appreciated the Vaan/Balthier relationship more when it was inexplicit. I'm so used to subtext being the basis for just about any interesting relationship (romantic or non) that I'll admit it always catches me off guard when the nature of the relationship is made explicit—and you think it would be a good thing but often it's not, because there's never as much complexity and depth as I project onto/draw from the subtext. This makes it sound like Vaan and Balthier are carrying on some fantastic tryst and that's not at all what I mean—lately I've found myself shipping in the broadest definition of the term: relationships are fascinating; sex is only potential facet of a relationship, and not necessarily a facet of an interesting one. I adore Vaan's rise to independence and leadership, Balthier's discomfort with his mentor role, and the camaraderie/conflict that arises between them as result. They could be lovers that could be another fascinating angle, but don't need to be; my point is the relationship interests me—or it did more when it was explicit, when it was shadowed by the complexity of possible interpretation; these explicit discussions about "Balthier come on you don't have to be so difficult all the time" sort of ... bore me.
How and why to fix the OT3 in Miracle Mask
I beat Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask; beware spoilers.
I'm discontent with the treatment of Angela, the way she's packaged up as "things Randall thinks was stolen from him," because that's what women are, right, love interests and prizes for male characters. And how fucked is heteronormative monogamy that 18 years of a fake marriage is presented as a good end?
It's twofold. One: Late adolescence is when most people start to encounter meaningful personal loss, because they've lived long enough, because they're old enough to comprehend it; isn't one of the big human challenges to encounter death, and to discover how our knowledge of it changes us? There's something uncomfortable about a narrative where denying death, denying death for 18 years while living in vigil instead of moving on, is rewarded. Layton's late adolescence has lovely subtly: we knew from Unwound Future that his gentleman/hatness was an affectation; now we learn that his archaeology and puzzle-solving is borrowed; Layton is the only one who expressly moves on with his life, but in truth he doesn't, he conglomerates his losses and memories into an entire persona. It's sweet and very sad.
Two: Randall/Angela/Henry isn't by nature competitive, and only appears that way because heteronormative monogamy. I don't expect a) polyamory or b) authentically messy romantic-spectrum relationships in my game, but the truth HAS to include at least one of those things. Everyone obviously loves everyone else, and I believe that Henry's offer to Angela—to wait for Randall, together—is literal, a partnership: she's a person who's had interim relationships in eighteen years jesus christ, not a prize (grand prize, one pristine condition, still-in-box girlfriend) to be awarded to Randall on his return. I believe that Henry began to fall in love with Angela precisely because he loved Randall, because he loves his love's love; I believe Angela began to fall in love with Henry for their shared experience and his support of her; I believe that 18 years is a long time and they've built a fulfilling, meaningful relationship; I don't believe any of that conflicts with their feelings for Randall. It could complicate them, but the game wants to have a miracle ending, a perfect reunion—so while it's entirely realistic that Randall would come back to people who love him but who have changed, and everyone would need assess their current feelings and future relationships, the best end is a triad, because Angela and Henry are both clearly capable of loving each other while loving Randall and, now that he's done being a supervillain, jeez Randall, perhaps Randall can do the same.
Look, the reason I'm invested is this: I adore unhealthy relationships, Laytons pretending to move on while building their lives around loved ones lost; Henrys with loyalty so deep that, despite sense and health, they never give up faith. It pleases me right at the root of my id to see those relationships explored, so I don't even care that it's an unrealistic or troubling representation of coping with loss. What made Angela-as-prize unpleasing wasn't that it was """unrealistic""" but that it was gross, and it gets in the way of more interesting, more fulfilling relationship dynamics. Dynamics my rated-E-for-everyone game couldn't get away with, sure, but I don't need to be content with that.
franzeska.False equivalences and "the rebels are just as dangerous!"
I am tired as hell of speculative narratives about how a legitimate uprising by a repressed group poses danger equal to the violence perpetuated by that group's oppressors, see: Bioshock Infinite, Dragon Age, the Scoia'tael in The Witcher which incited this particular essay. The intent is to create a morally complicated narrative, but all speculative concepts explore real-world parallels and while this particular trope is common its real-world parallel doesn't exist. Minority movements fight broken systems, they don't destroy society. And minority movements don't benefit from the power structures that benefit oppressive systems: they are not equally dangerous.
Here's what that narrative actually does: feel good about yourself for considering the plight of the disenfranchised, but remind yourself that their disenfranchisement is necessary for society, and society is inherently good, and so the disenfranchisement is justified.
This is true even in interactive narratives where the player can side with the disenfranchised, and true even if oppressive society is condemned, because the minority movements are explicitly problematic—the deadly vengeance of the Vox Populi, the "some mages and lots of magics are legitimately uncontrollable dangers!," the Scoia'tael as political pawns of an outside evil all falsely equated to the problematic existing society and so insisting that, however compelling the complaints of the minority, they pose a danger and oppressing them is a valid solution.
This is especially pertinent problem in the current US political climate but hey guess what, it's pertinent always, and narratives that pretend to engage minority voices and then provide excuses to fear and dismiss them are always gross because of what they imply about the real world.
Fast travel
a sidenote about fast travel: the Witcher books make a huge fuss about how difficult travel is in pre-industrial society infested by monsters, and rightly so, because it a) justifies Geralt's entire job, b) informs the scale: the why of the war, the impact on non-combatants, the risk and danger and therefore necessity of the various journeys taken by the cast
but in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, fast travel is required! without it the game would be joylessly unplayable! this is occasionally nodded to—characters planning to meet at a location in a week, to account for travel, and so now we know how long Geralt's fast travel takes—but it still removes scale and danger from the setting, and thus realism from the narrative; it hamstrings the world
there are some open world games that can be played without fast travel—it hugely benefits Skyrim and, to my understanding, most Bethesda games to do this; it forces trip planning, it restores scale to the setting, it creates an intimate, measured, dangerous quest
(to my knowledge, Fallout 4′s settlement system makes fast travel necessary again; we should be getting better at immersive open worlds, not worse)
but here is the other option: justify fast travel. literally at all. the justification in Breath of the Wild is just Sheikah ~technology~ and, you know what? that works, because magic and advanced technology fuel the game's entire premise
so you can have that vast, unruly scale and accommodations for playability, without breaking immersion. this is why Nier: Automata needed a more punishing breakdown in the save/fast travel system when the technology enabling it was compromised: to maintain immersion, and therefore the entire world the game worked so hard to create
The end of Yume Nikki
Let's start by saying: I doubt a whole lot is "wrong" with Madotsuki other than her plain old self. Could she have been raped, witnessed something traumatic, done something awful? maybe. Could she have outstanding, specific issues with something like her gender identity? maybe. But I think it's easy to underestimate the power of a mind to be fucked up all on its own—to be sick for no reason other than the fact that it's sick.
I say this because I have that sort of mind—and so, yes, I am certainly projecting my own experiences onto Madotsuki, but I know what it is to have all of this: violent, repetitive, strange dream imagery, agoraphobia, suicidal inclinations.
I can't speak about what it means to be a hikikomori, because I don't come from the culture that breeds them. But I am a recovering shut-in of the boring Western variety, and it's a lot more than being socially awkward or spending a lot of time online: it's a crippling fear of, and inability to face, the outside world. It's social—to be a certain way in a society that expects you to be another way, to have negative experiences with society that drive you to avoid it. It's personal—to be the sort of person who sows and reaps these things, to be sensitive and anxious and unwell. I see myself in Madotsuki, and I think she is a shut-in.
I can't speak to Madotsuki's mental health, I can't pretend to diagnose her, because we simply don't see enough of her to know for sure. But I know what it is to dream of walking nightmare landscapes, explicit violence witnessed, explicit violence committed; I know what it is to be at a place in the waking world where suicide seems like a perfectly viable option. Sometimes people end up that way due to specific, external causes, but sometimes we just are. I've had some bad experiences, I can pinpoint certain things, but they're as likely to be caused by my illness as the cause of it. When it comes down to it, I'm just depressed. I see that in Madotsuki too: illness, because of illness.
In a sea of thoughtful interpretations, mine is at its heart simple: Madotsuki is just herself. She probably had a troubled relationship with a female figure in her life. She may have problems understanding and accepting her gender and sexuality—at some level, most of us do. She probably has issues of self-representational or identity; she thinks, underneath it all, that she's a bad person. She may have a list of mental health issues, and she's probably agoraphobic. She's normal, average, plain, brown-haired, she has a favorite sweater; she's just a young woman, she's just unwell.
And "just unwell" can still mean "catastrophically so."
That is, if you call suicide a catastrophe.
Of course I don't think it's a good thing, but what's bad about it isn't the fact of death—but the fact that someone was at such a low point that they wanted it. In all my history with depression, strong as my death drive is, my relationship with suicide has been limited to contemplations and impulses; I've never tried to kill myself. I've been in horrible places, reached valley-deep lows, but I can only imagine how much worse things must be for those that look to suicide as a way out—imagine, and ache for them.
Sitting on the edge of the stairs, overlooking the sunrise, contemplating the step forward and the dive over the edge—being in the sunlight for the first time, overlooking the vast horizon—my final moments as Madotsuki were not painful ones. They weren't spent being chased by the women who were supposed to protect me, they weren't spent walking long and isolated hallways, they weren't filled with bloodied bodies or quiet ghosts. They weren't frightening. They were beautiful.
There are all sorts of dangers in idolizing suicide, certainly. Perhaps Madotsuki could have gotten help and gotten better if only she'd lived to do so. There are many circumstances where suicide is no solution.
But I can imagine it. I haven't experienced it, but I can imagine it—a place where death makes sense, where it is a solution. I thank fuck I never ended up there and pray I never do, but Madotsuki did. This is her end, and if she isn't sad about it then neither should I be. And so to her, as she jumps and leaves me, I say: godspeed.
Projection in Pokemon Black
I'm not sure yet where I stand on this "plot" thing in Pokémon Black and White. As I mentioned before, I was quite excited to find out that the central conflict would be around the role of Pokémon in society, but unsurprised to see much of it corrupted by shallow storytelling. I still hold out hope for N.
But even if the game drops the ball, having picked it up in the first place is amazing. It's not new—I think a lot of Pokémon players, especially as they get older and a little smarter, wonder about the same thing: would a creature want to be trapped in a little ball and trained into a fighter and sent out in an endless slew of battles to get the shit kicked out of them, or worse yet would a creature want to get trapped in a little ball and then stored on a PC ... forever? And Pokémon seem to be more than your average, this-world, non-sentient animal: they seem intelligent and emotional, both in the games and in other parts of the franchise.
In the previous generations it was easy to quash that sort of worry with, "Well, it's just a game." Because it is, and its underlying premise and mechanics would be less than useless if Pokémon had to be treated as independent, conscious entities. You're still encouraged to love and groom them, but they're "just" Pokémon, this capture-train-fight thing is what they do, and that's it.
But it's harder to dismiss the issue as just the premise of the game once the game itself starts questioning it.
So even if the plot doesn't end up doing much (which would be no surprise), even if they do worse than little and try and sweep it all under the rug with an official "well that's just what Pokémon do!", the fact that it acknowledged the issue is something. It means that I can't sweep it under the rug.
When I say that aesthetics matter (yes, this all spun out from that), I don't mean quite that. In my ideal little fantasy Pokémon world (you have one too, right?), Pokémon really are my friends—I live and work along side them, I cuddle up against them at night. They're not people, but they're not just animals either (for all that I love animals, too)—they are remarkable, mysterious, sympathetic, intelligent, alien friends. So when I pick a Pokémon to be on my team, I pick a Pokémon that I would want in my home, napping on my bed. I like them clever, cuddly, mischievous, kind, sweet, and COVERED IN FLUFF you better believe it. I would fight Team Plasma to the death for those Pokémon, because—even if I can't prove it—I know that we belong together as companions.
But what about the hundred languishing on my PC? What about the HM slave that I pull out just to set to task? Just pixels and bytes, of course; just the premise of the game. But I've been having these pangs of guilt, because the game won't let me dismiss the issue anymore, not like that. I'm sensitive, I know—me and my nervous affair with Eve, me and my faithfulness to Chihiro (and love of Nanako, and beloved pet dogs, and and and): I am prone to making silly emotional connections in "just a game." But Pokémon has always encouraged just that sort of thing, with its Pokémon walking behind you and happiness points and Silver's entire story arc—and now it wants to know: do we really believe it?
Projection vs content/subtext vs text
Allow me to transcribe, edit, and expound upon a chat with Sabrina in order to create actual content, because half my thinky thoughts occur accidentally in gchat these days.
I continue to admire the underlying irony of how easy it is to identify with no-voice Blair (Pokemon Black), but fully animated and voiced Hawke (Dragon Age II)? nah, he ain't me—or at least he wasn't for some time. I do find myself roleplaying now, in the sense that I have head canon explanations and investigations and details for/into/of what happens in the game, and things which I do in game for my benefit and not because the game is aware of or derives meaning from them—like when I took Fenris out of my party for a little while after "A Bitter Pill," because we needed some space. But it took 25 hours and a pretty id-appealing relationship for me to get to that point; usually, I'm ridiculously prone to identifying with protagonists, to the point of over-immersion (let me tell you about how my Pokémon are my friends or how I used to spend every other afternoon in Chihiro's bedroom).
As contrived and silly as the silent protagonist trope is, it works. When we can project thoughts and words on to a void, we create the character that we want, or need, or will fall in love with forever. And I think that the ability to provide your own content and extrapolate subtext builds upon itself, to the point that literal expressed content can never be quite right, or as detailed or meaningful as it would be were it user-created. This is why I so often have issues with "none of these things are what I want to say" and "that was not what I meant to say" with Hawke—in small part because the dialog choices are not verbatim (which is as it should be, to give a better sense of the emotional import, if not exact language of, what's said, and because hearing the exact dialog that you just finished reading gets pretty boring), but mostly because they are Hawke's words: I chose which sorts of words they should be, but they are not quite mine, and so Hawke and I maintain a separation.
I have begun to wonder how desirable that sort of user-provided content is, however. It gets self-indulgent and escapist—the best world is the one that this game pulls out of my head, and it is private and not only tailored to but created by my desires. For someone like me, already prone to escapism, that can be dangerous. But more to the point, it limits how much I can enjoy actual characterization and non-subtextual content. Revenant Wings has a fantastic rivalry/relationship between Vaan and Balthier—until Balthier shows up, the characters interact in person, and the relationship becomes explicit rather than implied. It feels self-congratulatory to say so, but "there's never as much [actual] complexity and depth as I project onto/draw from the subtext." That statement alone is problematic, because in many cases—not necessarily in that one, but—I would be talking about queer subtext, and there is a desperate need not to restrict that content to subtext, be in inadvertent in your average intense character interaction or disgustingly, homophobically intentional as in the BBC Sherlock. But when you can more or less create perfection yourself, external creations are bound to be imperfect by comparison. They are limited by writing and by someone else's mind; one's own desires have few limits.
But their undesirability doesn't make them unnecessary. Content is necessary, be it something as important as queer relationships or something just as basic as content itself. That's not to say that Persona 3's protagonist is necessarily an artless, blank canvas, but to be honest someone like Blair(/Touya/Hilbert) is. Pokémon Black is still a fantastic and surprisingly thoughtful game, don't get me wrong, and there is little which could positively fill the void left for me to project my characterization and emotions (for example, a more detailed/realistic Pokémon friendship system would probably just be annoying and hokey, as the current one is already barely better than that), but Blair simply is not a character, even if I make him into one. The game uses him to make some meaningful statements, but the decision to make him a non-character robs him of so many other statements, and ideas, and interactions, and relationships.
It is tempting, and sometimes good and desirable, to leave those aspects to the imagination—but it is also limiting.
To prefer, or at least be so comfortable, with said limitations is an acquired taste, and having acquired it I find it difficult to develop an appetite for anything else. But I'm thankful that Dragon Age II is pushing me to do so, both because it highlights my own self-assumed limitations and because, while the game's content isn't perfect, it is content, solid and strong and surprisingly enjoyable and, as with all content, I could not have been exposed to exactly it anywhere else.
A specific example of projection vs contet/subtext vs text in Revenant Wings
in I appreciated the Vaan/Balthier relationship more when it was inexplicit. I'm so used to subtext being the basis for just about any interesting relationship (romantic or non) that I'll admit it always catches me off guard when the nature of the relationship is made explicit—and you think it would be a good thing but often it's not, because there's never as much complexity and depth as I project onto/draw from the subtext. This makes it sound like Vaan and Balthier are carrying on some fantastic tryst and that's not at all what I mean—lately I've found myself shipping in the broadest definition of the term: relationships are fascinating; sex is only potential facet of a relationship, and not necessarily a facet of an interesting one. I adore Vaan's rise to independence and leadership, Balthier's discomfort with his mentor role, and the camaraderie/conflict that arises between them as result. They could be lovers that could be another fascinating angle, but don't need to be; my point is the relationship interests me—or it did more when it was explicit, when it was shadowed by the complexity of possible interpretation; these explicit discussions about "Balthier come on you don't have to be so difficult all the time" sort of ... bore me.
How and why to fix the OT3 in Miracle Mask
I beat Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask; beware spoilers.
I'm discontent with the treatment of Angela, the way she's packaged up as "things Randall thinks was stolen from him," because that's what women are, right, love interests and prizes for male characters. And how fucked is heteronormative monogamy that 18 years of a fake marriage is presented as a good end?
It's twofold. One: Late adolescence is when most people start to encounter meaningful personal loss, because they've lived long enough, because they're old enough to comprehend it; isn't one of the big human challenges to encounter death, and to discover how our knowledge of it changes us? There's something uncomfortable about a narrative where denying death, denying death for 18 years while living in vigil instead of moving on, is rewarded. Layton's late adolescence has lovely subtly: we knew from Unwound Future that his gentleman/hatness was an affectation; now we learn that his archaeology and puzzle-solving is borrowed; Layton is the only one who expressly moves on with his life, but in truth he doesn't, he conglomerates his losses and memories into an entire persona. It's sweet and very sad.
Two: Randall/Angela/Henry isn't by nature competitive, and only appears that way because heteronormative monogamy. I don't expect a) polyamory or b) authentically messy romantic-spectrum relationships in my game, but the truth HAS to include at least one of those things. Everyone obviously loves everyone else, and I believe that Henry's offer to Angela—to wait for Randall, together—is literal, a partnership: she's a person who's had interim relationships in eighteen years jesus christ, not a prize (grand prize, one pristine condition, still-in-box girlfriend) to be awarded to Randall on his return. I believe that Henry began to fall in love with Angela precisely because he loved Randall, because he loves his love's love; I believe Angela began to fall in love with Henry for their shared experience and his support of her; I believe that 18 years is a long time and they've built a fulfilling, meaningful relationship; I don't believe any of that conflicts with their feelings for Randall. It could complicate them, but the game wants to have a miracle ending, a perfect reunion—so while it's entirely realistic that Randall would come back to people who love him but who have changed, and everyone would need assess their current feelings and future relationships, the best end is a triad, because Angela and Henry are both clearly capable of loving each other while loving Randall and, now that he's done being a supervillain, jeez Randall, perhaps Randall can do the same.
Look, the reason I'm invested is this: I adore unhealthy relationships, Laytons pretending to move on while building their lives around loved ones lost; Henrys with loyalty so deep that, despite sense and health, they never give up faith. It pleases me right at the root of my id to see those relationships explored, so I don't even care that it's an unrealistic or troubling representation of coping with loss. What made Angela-as-prize unpleasing wasn't that it was """unrealistic""" but that it was gross, and it gets in the way of more interesting, more fulfilling relationship dynamics. Dynamics my rated-E-for-everyone game couldn't get away with, sure, but I don't need to be content with that.
