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Video game crossposts: id-heavy edition
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and minutiae
Taking something big and breaking it down into mundane, daily parts is one of my favorite transformative tropes for things like fanfic and video games comics. Look at this thing that canon takes for granted; extrapolate it into what is, for the characters, real life. In short form it can be really funny—Awkward Zombie does this, Penny Arcade does this, proving that video game logic would be ridiculous were it real life. In longer form it has the ability to be immersive, even poignant. In original stories, it works better in narrative formats which are—or have room for—more interiority and less action. Robin McKinley writes small, domestic books about daily magics which I adore—there's room in a book to backend the plot and focus instead on minutia. In something like a video game, it runs the risk of slowing the plot and action. (And I'm generally too invested in the creativity of speculative fiction to be content with slice of life—or contemporary—as a genre.)
One of my favorite fanfics of all time is one I read back in ye old LiveJournal days & expect I'll never find it again. It's about the Final Fantasy XII crew travelling through the Paramina Rif, a mountain pass. Everyone's bickering because they're cold and tired and, atop everything, Balthier insists they conserve their potions and MP for just-in-case, so no one is fully healed. That's it, the whole 1000-word fic: a moment of life within the world, navigating around combat encounters, spinning game mechanic/player habits into a lived experience for the characters. It's intimate, specific, familiar; boring, perhaps, in a wider context, but the game is the wider context, and transformative work allows us to add depth to it.
A side game/sequel isn't a transformative work, but it occupies a similar space in that its also able to capitalize on a preexisting narrative. We already know why we're invested in Roxas et al, why we're invested in the world's apocalyptic stakes; we can take time, then, to focus on the mundane behind the scenes of the Organization, on day by day pacing—busy work, relaxing with friends; Demyx begging work favors, dry & joyless Saïx as the boss; Roxas when he doesn't know what to do with a day off, Roxas keeping an awkward diary. And that's half of 358/2 Days: it's the minutiae which can make a world immersive, make it a lived, personal experience.
It particularly benefits a series which is about heart. Borrowing from Disney means that there's a lot of big narratives in Kingdom Hearts, a lot of world-saving and happy endings; to scale things back to the local, personal, and charmingly inconsequential paints a more realistic picture of what informs a person's complete identity.
And when things in 358/2 Days do break down, everyone's failing attempts to hold on to minutiae—the way they mourn ice cream at sundown even as it dies (one of the trio missing, or just the sense of it lost to a worry too big for friends—even good friends—to relieve)—is all the more affecting. The plot feels even larger, the consequences more personal; the end of that game is devastating.
It's not my favorite KH gameplay experience; it honestly took me a bit to fall in love; but it does something unique, something that would be hard to do from any position other than side game for a franchise*, and it does it superbly well.
* with some obvious exceptions, like: it is the literal basis of the Persona games to set daily minutiae against larger plot; it can be done as a standalone work, and well! but to take an existing franchise and adds this trope to it is still a delight.
Terra as a victim of purity culture
Terra's storyline is a microcosm of Kingdom Hearts storytelling insofar as it the series is about large absolutes of light and dark, ostensibly set in balance but, by guardians, viewed instead as "good" and "bad," coupled with similarly simplistic Disney narratives* & morals, but in plot is actually about having a complicated, individual relationship with darkness, with "badness," with emotion.
* the use of Disney in Terra's story is interesting because the vast majority of the humor comes from dramatic irony—from the audience's metaknowledge that these characters are the bad guys in their given stories. from our PoV, Terra spends most of the plot being adorably stupid and unlucky; from his PoV, there's nothing charming about it, there's no humor to lighten the tone. this pays off when the Disney trapping falls away, when there's no metaknowledge to buffer the audience and both character and player are confronted with a legitimately tragic ending.
in other words, Terra is a victim of purity culture: he's told that he's innately dangerous/in danger, but instead of being given tools to understand darkness & control its impact on him, he's taught to avoid it entirely and is punished for any evidence of interaction with it. instead of being taught reasoning skills, he's encouraged to rely on authorities; this makes him easily manipulated by people in authority, which is what ultimately destroys his balance and makes him go "bad." he's lead there directly by his good intentions. he still has potential, but he's robbed of the chance to grow into it.
Post-curse transformation
I am of the firm belief that every character that gets transformed or cursed into some sort of not-their-species creature either periodically returns to their other form after they've been cured, or wishes they could
that the inhuman/other/lesser/altered version of self becomes incorporated into themselves; that the chance to escape the confine of humanity is a relief; that what felt like a curse—and which probably was objectively bad—becomes necessary, or valued, or revelatory
#but it was actually a 10th Kingdom fic that put this in my head long ago
anyway that fic is Wild Things by Shayheyred
To his amazement, Wendell has found he quite likes being a dog now, though he hated it once upon a time, when he and his companions had to make their arduous journey. True, the ground still smells mostly of excrement and feet, but there is also the heady, mulchy smell of loam, the sounds of birds and wind in the leaves, the taste of clear water lapped up from a brook. Most of all Wendell loves the freedom of being four-footed again; it lets him indulge the wild part of his nature he never knew he had.
(offscreen dub-con dog sex in the fic ... just ... as warning, if necessary)
it's this which gets me—most transformation narratives have some character-growth-via-transformation, usually along the lines of "being dehumanized humbled you" (Wendell in 10th Kingdom) or "being othered taught you your intrinsic worth doesn't depend on your social status" (Midna in Twilight Princess), but most still end with the curse breaking: the transformation is a teaching tool to be discarded once the lesson's learned, and the return to normalcy is a good thing
but the cursed form teaches that lesson b/c it speaks to the character's personality, either directly or by foil, so it has personal resonance; and there's an entire potential subnarrative about how it's not until a character accepts their cursed form that they're able to internalize the lesson taught by it
so what gets me is the aftermath, the realization that the transformation didn't just serve a plot/character growth purpose—it also came to feel right, it also had benefits, and it was inside the character the whole time
but now it's no longer on their outside, they can't inhabit it entirely anymore
and they want it back
#(like 'want but can't have' is always a really enjoyable tension #but this also offers space to explore the push/pull of the body horror aspects of transformations #what was it about that other body which made it distasteful? how has distaste morphed into longing? #what was the nature of the transformation? what lengths will they go to transform back? #Wendell in the above gets the best of both words and I did say 'periodically returns to their other form' #but give me narratives about characters who go 'yeah lesson learned curse broken but fuck this being a beastie beast was way better' #and then goes to extremes to return while those around them are disgusted and confused and still invested in normalcy)
Kazuichi and Nekomaru in Danganronpa 2 (spoiler warning)
Defensively hetero Kazuichi so obsessed with Nekomaru's new body that he forgets to be defensively heterosexual. He begs for the chance to examine it, just a little, to open up just one limb. The tech teases him. It's beyond anything he's seen, and his skills have been stifled since they wound up on Jabberwock Island. The desire is enough to make him forget the fact that Nekomaru is more than a machine, although it's that—a full, living, thinking robot!—which makes Kazuichi so eager.
And then Nekomaru's murdered.
It all comes crashing down, that impossible truth: even in a robot body, Nekomaru was a person, he was their friend, and now he's dead too. Kazuichi's so damn normal that it hurts him: he's had the hardest time wrapping his head around the fact that his peers keep dying. But he's almost complicit in this death, it's some sort of twisted dream come true. He has to open Nekomaru up, explore, disassemble, repurpose, reuse, get elbow-deep in the brand new tech that he wanted so badly.
And it's such impressive tech.
So how can he cope. Nekomaru's part of the Funhouse, now, his wires stitched into the wall. Kazuichi stays up all night, builds what remnants he was able to shove into his overall pockets into a Nekomaru doll. Like Hiyoko, he's building a shrine. It's an apology. And it talks, of course it does.
#to call this my fetish would be a VAST understatement
Cortana's rapancy
There's something too much about Halo 4; too transparent, too verbal, too emotional. And there's something problematic about the gender roles, the whole damsel in distress fridging manpain of it all, and the fact that Cortana's disease evidences as excessive emotion.
But I've never seen a better representation of my particular crazies—the anxiety in particular, the obsessive and self-destructive thinking that happens when NOS anxiety cozies up to obsessive tendencies and unravels the brain to the point of exhaustion—and the general fact that chronic crazy creates an anger, a violent frustration that explodes outwards because directing it inwards has proven futile
or the way that it effects those personally invested in my safety, that they too become victims of my condition
or the threat that my condition could compromise my autonomy; or, worse, the knowledge that perhaps it should
and the fact that all that anger and frustration belies an essential, necessary, perpetual fear.
#we're doing a Legendary playthrough (skipped 2 though because of the way respawn works) #and each time I replay the series I pay more attention to the Chief's interpersonal dynamics #and each time I get to 4 I'm sundered again by how intimate Cortana's pain is #and how accurate
Taking something big and breaking it down into mundane, daily parts is one of my favorite transformative tropes for things like fanfic and video games comics. Look at this thing that canon takes for granted; extrapolate it into what is, for the characters, real life. In short form it can be really funny—Awkward Zombie does this, Penny Arcade does this, proving that video game logic would be ridiculous were it real life. In longer form it has the ability to be immersive, even poignant. In original stories, it works better in narrative formats which are—or have room for—more interiority and less action. Robin McKinley writes small, domestic books about daily magics which I adore—there's room in a book to backend the plot and focus instead on minutia. In something like a video game, it runs the risk of slowing the plot and action. (And I'm generally too invested in the creativity of speculative fiction to be content with slice of life—or contemporary—as a genre.)
One of my favorite fanfics of all time is one I read back in ye old LiveJournal days & expect I'll never find it again. It's about the Final Fantasy XII crew travelling through the Paramina Rif, a mountain pass. Everyone's bickering because they're cold and tired and, atop everything, Balthier insists they conserve their potions and MP for just-in-case, so no one is fully healed. That's it, the whole 1000-word fic: a moment of life within the world, navigating around combat encounters, spinning game mechanic/player habits into a lived experience for the characters. It's intimate, specific, familiar; boring, perhaps, in a wider context, but the game is the wider context, and transformative work allows us to add depth to it.
A side game/sequel isn't a transformative work, but it occupies a similar space in that its also able to capitalize on a preexisting narrative. We already know why we're invested in Roxas et al, why we're invested in the world's apocalyptic stakes; we can take time, then, to focus on the mundane behind the scenes of the Organization, on day by day pacing—busy work, relaxing with friends; Demyx begging work favors, dry & joyless Saïx as the boss; Roxas when he doesn't know what to do with a day off, Roxas keeping an awkward diary. And that's half of 358/2 Days: it's the minutiae which can make a world immersive, make it a lived, personal experience.
It particularly benefits a series which is about heart. Borrowing from Disney means that there's a lot of big narratives in Kingdom Hearts, a lot of world-saving and happy endings; to scale things back to the local, personal, and charmingly inconsequential paints a more realistic picture of what informs a person's complete identity.
And when things in 358/2 Days do break down, everyone's failing attempts to hold on to minutiae—the way they mourn ice cream at sundown even as it dies (one of the trio missing, or just the sense of it lost to a worry too big for friends—even good friends—to relieve)—is all the more affecting. The plot feels even larger, the consequences more personal; the end of that game is devastating.
It's not my favorite KH gameplay experience; it honestly took me a bit to fall in love; but it does something unique, something that would be hard to do from any position other than side game for a franchise*, and it does it superbly well.
* with some obvious exceptions, like: it is the literal basis of the Persona games to set daily minutiae against larger plot; it can be done as a standalone work, and well! but to take an existing franchise and adds this trope to it is still a delight.
Terra as a victim of purity culture
Terra's storyline is a microcosm of Kingdom Hearts storytelling insofar as it the series is about large absolutes of light and dark, ostensibly set in balance but, by guardians, viewed instead as "good" and "bad," coupled with similarly simplistic Disney narratives* & morals, but in plot is actually about having a complicated, individual relationship with darkness, with "badness," with emotion.
* the use of Disney in Terra's story is interesting because the vast majority of the humor comes from dramatic irony—from the audience's metaknowledge that these characters are the bad guys in their given stories. from our PoV, Terra spends most of the plot being adorably stupid and unlucky; from his PoV, there's nothing charming about it, there's no humor to lighten the tone. this pays off when the Disney trapping falls away, when there's no metaknowledge to buffer the audience and both character and player are confronted with a legitimately tragic ending.
in other words, Terra is a victim of purity culture: he's told that he's innately dangerous/in danger, but instead of being given tools to understand darkness & control its impact on him, he's taught to avoid it entirely and is punished for any evidence of interaction with it. instead of being taught reasoning skills, he's encouraged to rely on authorities; this makes him easily manipulated by people in authority, which is what ultimately destroys his balance and makes him go "bad." he's lead there directly by his good intentions. he still has potential, but he's robbed of the chance to grow into it.
Post-curse transformation
I am of the firm belief that every character that gets transformed or cursed into some sort of not-their-species creature either periodically returns to their other form after they've been cured, or wishes they could
that the inhuman/other/lesser/altered version of self becomes incorporated into themselves; that the chance to escape the confine of humanity is a relief; that what felt like a curse—and which probably was objectively bad—becomes necessary, or valued, or revelatory
#but it was actually a 10th Kingdom fic that put this in my head long ago
anyway that fic is Wild Things by Shayheyred
To his amazement, Wendell has found he quite likes being a dog now, though he hated it once upon a time, when he and his companions had to make their arduous journey. True, the ground still smells mostly of excrement and feet, but there is also the heady, mulchy smell of loam, the sounds of birds and wind in the leaves, the taste of clear water lapped up from a brook. Most of all Wendell loves the freedom of being four-footed again; it lets him indulge the wild part of his nature he never knew he had.
(offscreen dub-con dog sex in the fic ... just ... as warning, if necessary)
it's this which gets me—most transformation narratives have some character-growth-via-transformation, usually along the lines of "being dehumanized humbled you" (Wendell in 10th Kingdom) or "being othered taught you your intrinsic worth doesn't depend on your social status" (Midna in Twilight Princess), but most still end with the curse breaking: the transformation is a teaching tool to be discarded once the lesson's learned, and the return to normalcy is a good thing
but the cursed form teaches that lesson b/c it speaks to the character's personality, either directly or by foil, so it has personal resonance; and there's an entire potential subnarrative about how it's not until a character accepts their cursed form that they're able to internalize the lesson taught by it
so what gets me is the aftermath, the realization that the transformation didn't just serve a plot/character growth purpose—it also came to feel right, it also had benefits, and it was inside the character the whole time
but now it's no longer on their outside, they can't inhabit it entirely anymore
and they want it back
#(like 'want but can't have' is always a really enjoyable tension #but this also offers space to explore the push/pull of the body horror aspects of transformations #what was it about that other body which made it distasteful? how has distaste morphed into longing? #what was the nature of the transformation? what lengths will they go to transform back? #Wendell in the above gets the best of both words and I did say 'periodically returns to their other form' #but give me narratives about characters who go 'yeah lesson learned curse broken but fuck this being a beastie beast was way better' #and then goes to extremes to return while those around them are disgusted and confused and still invested in normalcy)
Kazuichi and Nekomaru in Danganronpa 2 (spoiler warning)
Kasuichi Soda: A-Awesome... He's...seriously a real robot!
Hey, can you let me disassemble you!? Can you let me disassemble you and show your insides?
Nekomaru Nidai: NOOOOOOOOO THAAAAAAAANK YOUUUUUUUUU!
Kasuichi Soda: Are you malfunctioning!? If you show me your insides, I can fix you up, you know!
Nekomaru Nidai: NOOOOOOOO MEANS NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Kasuichi Soda: Disassemble, reassemble, see how it goes...
Disassemble, reassemble, see how it goes...
Doing that over and over gets my brain moving!
Nagito Komaeda: But Kazuichi should be able to disassemble the body, right?
Kasuichi Soda: I know I said I wanted to see his insides, but...not like this! This is just too much!
[Kazuichi faced Nekomaru, his eyes full of determination, and began stabbing his tool knife into Nekomaru's body.]
Defensively hetero Kazuichi so obsessed with Nekomaru's new body that he forgets to be defensively heterosexual. He begs for the chance to examine it, just a little, to open up just one limb. The tech teases him. It's beyond anything he's seen, and his skills have been stifled since they wound up on Jabberwock Island. The desire is enough to make him forget the fact that Nekomaru is more than a machine, although it's that—a full, living, thinking robot!—which makes Kazuichi so eager.
And then Nekomaru's murdered.
It all comes crashing down, that impossible truth: even in a robot body, Nekomaru was a person, he was their friend, and now he's dead too. Kazuichi's so damn normal that it hurts him: he's had the hardest time wrapping his head around the fact that his peers keep dying. But he's almost complicit in this death, it's some sort of twisted dream come true. He has to open Nekomaru up, explore, disassemble, repurpose, reuse, get elbow-deep in the brand new tech that he wanted so badly.
And it's such impressive tech.
So how can he cope. Nekomaru's part of the Funhouse, now, his wires stitched into the wall. Kazuichi stays up all night, builds what remnants he was able to shove into his overall pockets into a Nekomaru doll. Like Hiyoko, he's building a shrine. It's an apology. And it talks, of course it does.
#to call this my fetish would be a VAST understatement
Cortana's rapancy
There's something too much about Halo 4; too transparent, too verbal, too emotional. And there's something problematic about the gender roles, the whole damsel in distress fridging manpain of it all, and the fact that Cortana's disease evidences as excessive emotion.
But I've never seen a better representation of my particular crazies—the anxiety in particular, the obsessive and self-destructive thinking that happens when NOS anxiety cozies up to obsessive tendencies and unravels the brain to the point of exhaustion—and the general fact that chronic crazy creates an anger, a violent frustration that explodes outwards because directing it inwards has proven futile
or the way that it effects those personally invested in my safety, that they too become victims of my condition
or the threat that my condition could compromise my autonomy; or, worse, the knowledge that perhaps it should
and the fact that all that anger and frustration belies an essential, necessary, perpetual fear.
#we're doing a Legendary playthrough (skipped 2 though because of the way respawn works) #and each time I replay the series I pay more attention to the Chief's interpersonal dynamics #and each time I get to 4 I'm sundered again by how intimate Cortana's pain is #and how accurate