“The Best way out of a Difficulty is Through it.”

Welcome back, fair customers! I hope you enjoyed your cocktail last night.  Perhaps this one, inspired by one Robert Frost, will also be to your liking.

Perhaps one of the most disheartening trends in video game development of late is the removal, or skirting, of “difficulty.”  Traditionally, games focused on intense difficulty and mechanics that forced players to polish, improve, and master their skills in order to best the game at, well, its own game.  In many ways this was due to the fact that games were created to munch quarters and force players to continue at a cost, or lose their hard work.  As games moved from arcades to homes, however, that difficulty tended to remain in place: give players the challenge they wanted, and reward them with memories and stories to share with their friends and fellow players.

Recently, however, that trend has more or less evaporated; in some ways, gaming difficulty seems to have been diverted from its normal path in place of a Golden Calf, “accessibility,” sometimes known also through the infamous quote, “We want the Call of Duty audience.”  The term “casual gamer” became something of an industry standard, but also a sort of a false idol: chase an audience that has had no real passing interest in your market, with the promise that they will be duly rewarded with victory with very little required from them, and they will come in droves.

And, perhaps sadly, they did.  The Wii sailed to amazing sales heights on the back of “pick up and play” mechanics and games, flooding its market (and the market of competitors) with titles geared less towards the usual market, but more towards quick “cash grab” consumers interested less in battling heroically against the games they bought, but more looking for those games to hold their hands and give them “a good time.” Of course, people should get what they pay for, but in many cases this attempt to attract larger market share came at the cost of games developed with the challenge of their older compatriots.

Perhaps the most vexing part of this exchange, though, was that recent games made to some of the same difficulty standards were judged harshly: games like Maximo, for example, faired somewhat unwell in the light of the new “difficulty” standards; a game being “too hard for most gamers” was a point off a score, not a point added. The idea of mastery, of being rewarded for hard work, was replaced instead by the fact that “everyone” should be able to complete the game they bought regardless of how good or bad they were at it. Of course, difficulty settings have existed for some time, but the “new” era of difficulty settings was oddly skewed; in many cases, even playing a game on “hard” presented a challenge somewhere below that of the “harder” games of yore.

And in the very worst cases, the addition of “harder” difficulties was done, as per the current term that I like to play around with, “Artificial” means. In most cases, newer games, particularly games in the current generation, replace increased difficulty with “increased damage taken,” or “reduced damage given.”  Others simply flood the game with enemies; some, like Hitman Absolution, place stock in the idea that making games “retro” or “purist” is accomplished not through programming, but by removing modern day conveniences like HUDs and navigation.  All this truly accomplishes is giving the players who yearn for older styles of play a broken game; the game isn’t inherently more challenging, nor does the harder difficulty change anything in terms of HOW the game is played, in terms of enemy patterns, AI levels, or skill required on the player’s part. Instead, the difficulty is instead relegated to making things “disappear” that the game was created with in mind; removing a map does make a game more difficult, but it does so for the incorrect reason: players can’t see where they’re going, but the game is laid out with one specific path in mind, meaning that not having a map simply leads to endless wandering through areas than making the experience more difficult due to finding one’s path.

Similarly, recently released Bioshock Infinite does much the same thing with its touted “1999 Mode.” The game is built around a navigation mechanic, and 1999 mode disables it. The mode also increases damage taken by close to 5x, and reduces damage dealt to half.  What this means is that players are not challenged with a more difficult game with better AI or forced to master secrets, as in FPS games of yesterday like Wolfenstein and Doom, but instead are left puzzled at why they continually die to over-powered grunts, who blend in with the environments and give no real idea of their movement patterns, while “boss” characters like the Firemen and Zealots die with extreme ease because they move in simple, telegraphed ways; a game that is more “difficult” should require that the player become much better at playing, or should have the challenge be placed at the foot of the player: if you are willing to master these skills and break the game’s “engines” down to your own design, you can march to the top of this hill and claim it as your own.  Instead, players are left frustrated and desiring of more, finding it in either retro-rediscovery, or playing what are more or less considered “niche” titles.

One of the most recent examples of this is the PSN/XBLA game, Black Knight Sword. Created by Grasshopper Manufacture, Black Knight Sword is, on the surface, a simplistic sidescrolling action game with only 3 real “control” options: attack with a sword, jump, or use magic.  The game however takes these three mechanics and requires players to not only master them, but understand them in specific ways in order to conquer the game, but also to discover all of its secrets: in one stage, in order to grab a Cat Head Grass (the collectible ‘secrets’ in each area), players are required to, with extreme speed and precision (and perhaps a bit of wiggling through a wall ‘accidentally’) to turn a giant cog-wheel, then turn it a second time, scraping under it before it becomes impassable and then also making a very quickly timed jump in order to arrive at the top of the cog before it becomes impossible to jump over. The sequence seems ridiculous, and the reward is mostly miniscule, except that it gives the player perhaps one of the greatest things a game can bestow: satisfaction.  Instead of rewarding players with endless “loot” or achievements, the game simply gives the player the knowledge that they have collected that item, and when they wish to, they can view all the cat-head grasses they’ve obtained on the main menu (There is of course an achievement for collecting all of the grasses, by the way, but so is the modern gaming world).

That sense of satisfaction is maybe the heart of the matter: games are no longer about a bond created through a player and the game, but instead are now a “social” experience tied to gamerscores, achievements, and being able to say you too completed a game.  Perhaps one of the oddest current gaming complaints is that a game is “too short,” in the case of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.  The game can likely be completed by the most average of players in perhaps 8 hours maximum, but “completed” is maybe the wrong word. The player can see the entire plot, but they likely could not collect all hidden items, listen to all codecs, unlock all upgrades, or complete all VR missions. However, this “shortness” is reflected in review scores (many of which are played on easy to allow for “speedy” finishes to games before a deadline, so take reviews with a grain of salt), despite missing something rather key.  Many gamers, those enamored with the medium, replay the same games over and over, always looking for more things to do, unlock, discover, or simply find ways to beat the game “faster” than they did before.  With the move to more “casual” experiences, as well as focusing on creating movie-like narratives, games do indeed become completed in short times, but they also then lack any real reason to continue playing them after completion. In this case, the complaint of “too short” is very true; there is no reason to invest time beyond completing the main “story” of a game, and there’s no impetus (or sometimes even ability) for players to go off the rails and experience the game for themselves. The difficulty in this regard acts as a “speed limit,” making the game either longer or shorter depending on how hard or easy the game is.

The Demon/Dark Souls games, then, probably exist as something almost of an anomaly in the “modern” gaming world.  They give very little narrative, focusing more on letting players discover and create the experience for themselves. Enemies are punishing, but not simply to infuriate: they possess patterns and strategies, and require players to use patience and take notice of what enemies are doing in order to find the best way of confronting them and conquering them, whether they’re bosses or simple “grunts.”  And, perhaps most shockingly in the age of instant-respawns, regenerating health, and “shield” mechanics, Souls games are not just willing to let players fail, they place all responsibility for those deaths at the hands of the player.  If a person dies in CoD, they die despite regenerating health, cover mechanics, and other things that are literally forcing them to remain alive despite lacking the skill to understand how their deaths happen–instead of recognizing their mistakes, they instead cry about “unfairness” or “cheap” deaths–and thus don’t learn, requiring more hand-holding.  Souls games, however, take the more “hands off” approach to this. If a player wishes to run off a cliff, there is no invisible wall to catch them. Want to attack a giant creature, or a shopkeeper? Go ahead. The consequences are one’s own, and the game secretly desires that you recognize and take responsibility for your actions.  Your death is your fault, and you can learn from it, or continue doing it over, and over, and over, and over again.

This sense of “responsibility” perhaps most easily links back to that sense of satisfaction.  There are many ways in which Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls perfectly encapsulate gameplay styles of yesterday, crystallizing them in new forms for new players: learning the game, mastering it, and discovering anything requires that the player enter into a covenant with the game.  As long as the player is willing to work at it, learn from it, and hammer away at the game, the game will continue to reward them with satisfaction, whether it is from new areas, hidden lore, breathtaking landscapes and hidden secrets, or simply from collecting the “best” weapon that player could hope for.  For those willing, there is an endless amount of content to be found in Souls games, much beyond the simple surface of the “narrative” behind it–most expert players could likely “beat” the game in a few scant hours.

It is likely that games that vexed players for years, like Ghosts and Goblins, have seen their days come and go…from the mainstream market.  Smaller, niche titles, and “indie” developers, are perhaps the only places left to turn for players looking for these sorts of experiences again, or looking simply for a game that gives them the tools, and lets them build, instead of a predetermined “roller coaster” that shows the player through a series of great set pieces, and deposits them back where they started.  Sadly, difficulty in games tends more towards the heavily flawed “Purist” mode of Hitman or “1999 Mode” of Infinite; it would perhaps be great, in the future, to discover developers have gone back to creating titles that challenge skill instead of endurance, test mettle instead of patience.

While we wait for those days to return, however, there’s never been a better time to rediscover the “hard” games of the past, because there is always the sad possibility that those games may become lost relics; enjoy them while you can, lest they be wiped from history forever; in the modern gaming world, Shelley’s Ozymandias still rings true: “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.”  For like the sands of time against a statue, there is the possibility that difficulty and challenge may simply become worn away and forgotten.  Perhaps, though, the era of Kickstarters, of retro-revivals, and of indie-developers may place a buffer between the altar of “difficulty” and march of “mass audience appeal.” And perhaps that buffer will be enough, a blanket to stop the corroding winds, as long as there are people willing to help hold it up.

 

“Cause baby, you’ve got you and me.” The Importance of Being Skullgirls.

Welcome back, customers! I know its been quite a while since my last update, and most of that is attributed to moving and relocating following my PhD. work. I hope you haven’t gotten too thirsty without your favorite bar to serve your needs.

Your first notice may be that the site’s theme has changed a bit! please think of it as your viewing the menu of our new drinks and dishes. As I’m sure you know, bars and restaurants are highly seasonal, so we do appreciate keeping things changing when we open our doors…

I suppose one thing to get out of the way is that, in the coming week, I will be working on at least one update a day! So, I’ll be trying to do my best to restore the blog to a more constant updated status, but to do that, I have to begin here, with the reason behind the slew of coming updates: Skullgirls.

During the recent Indiegogo drive to fund expansion of the game, I promised my readers / twitter followers that I’d update once a week if the game met its goal. And boy, did it. Even I am still pretty amazed at how much fans were willing to invest in the dreams of the Skullgirls team and in the game itself.  So, I thought perhaps it would be only fitting to begin my updates with a contemplation of Skullgirls, and what it really means.  It might seem like a departure from my normal postings so far, but this is a blog to catch all my ideas, musings, and thoughts, so bear with it! You might like what you see.

Skullgirls, for those that don’t know, is a 2D fighting game developed by the Lab Zero team, headed by Mike Z. and Alex Ahad; the two of them, as well as others, combined forces to create one of the first “indie” fighting games, a project that was ten years in the making before it came to light.  Taking the things they loved the most in fighting games, and seeing ways in which they could improve, refine, or even better them, the Skullgirls team launched their game in 2011 with success, although financial issues caused the team to put the brakes on any real updates.

With that primer out of the way, though, its perhaps more important to consider what Skullgirls really means in terms of games, gaming, development, and above all the dream to create. In many ways, Skullgirls seems like the type of thing that gamers would think up on their days off: the “perfect” fighting game, created by them, with all of the great elements from past games that they loved, and things that had never really been seen before.  Fighting games, perhaps, breed this sort of thought more readily than others; the mechanics don’t seem all that hard, and the flashy moves and well known inputs allows many people to perhaps think they know how to do it better than others.  The Skullgirls team, however, decided to put their money where their mouth was, and go ahead and actually work to create the game.

However, the story of Skullgirls is not neccessarily just one of ‘the little game that could,’ because the story is also fraught with a ton of pitfalls and misery; in many cases, Skullgirls is the game that almost wasn’t, and even when it was, it soon became the game that almost died at birth.  The real story of the game, though, goes well beyond the team itself, and instead has some more interesting implications for how game development works, or could work; it also has some interesting things to say about fighting games in general, and the people who play them.

As a genre, fighting games seemingly add little to the narrative power of video games, and yet recently the trend to include story modes, sometimes exceptionally complicated ones (Such as in Blaz Blue), but for the most part fighting game stories serve as illustrations of a character’s “personality” than it does as a device through which to tell an interesting story. In this regard, Skullgirls is quite a bit different than most games. Skullgirls focuses on developing characters with motivations and goals, whose personalities live beyond their simplified storymode and even bleed into the overall gameplay; one of the reasons for the game’s longevity, aside from gameplay mechanics, seems to stem from the very personal way in which players attached to their characters.  In games like Street Fighter, character personality means little in the scheme of the overall mechanics, but perhaps due to the balancing of Skullgirls to have “a fully viable cast,” players were left with the ability to pick characters that either appealed to their visual, playstyle, or personal preferences. Although no game is perfect, the system was a very admirable attempt to solve the problem of fighting games filled with “useless” characters, and in doing so created a community based around gameplay as much as it was around love for favorite characters.

Perhaps the best way to describe this, then, is atmosphere. The game executes its atmosphere with frightening attention to detail that even “higher quality” fighting games rarely manage. The animations are fluid and stylized, with each character having a very distinct personality and profile; its impossible to confuse two of them.  However, that detail extends into other details, such as background animations in stages for each character, and the music (composed by Michiru Yamane), which contains one of my favorite ending songs; I listen to the song often while writing, because it exudes a certain feeling and emotion that extends well beyond the game itself. (The song, “In a Moment’s Time,” is available on Amazon and iTunes, as well as listenable on youtube if you’d like a sample).  Its a shocking amount of polish for a game that, for all intents and purposes, exists at a very meager budget compared to higher budget fighting games, and yet launched with nearly no gameplay glitches and game-stopping flaws (like certain other “versus” fighting games of recent times…), but even the small ones (like characters turning into their hitboxes in certain animation frames) never stopped or affected the game from being top-notch in all of its attempts to define itself.  Its music, art, characters, and voices ooze personality and style with every drop.  And, perhaps, that’s one of the reasons that the game became so personable; each character’s voice is so lovingly crafted that the characters seem to come alive (perhaps best personified in motor-mouths Ms. Fortune and Peacock), and each character has special dialogue for special events in the game, making it seem less ‘mechanic’ when they speak and more animated and alive.

In essence, however, Skullgirls is perhaps more a triumph of community than a triumph of industry. The game provided, in many ways, the ability to show how dedicated a gaming community could truly be to their title: in two separate occasions, the Skullgirls community, created out of fragmented pockets all around the world, showed their support for the game with one of the things that speaks the most in this world: their wallets. One common complaint or gripe or (for lack of a better word) “salt” tossed at Skullgirls is that the game has very little presence at live events; in many ways this is true, but it doesn’t speak to the community behind the game…except, perhaps, that maybe it does. Skullgirls has shown that, when its fans are pressed, can raise nearly 2 million dollars in funding from the pockets of individual users, a feat not possible were the community so microscopically small that it was invisible.

Instead, it perhaps denotes more that the Skullgirls community is made up of fighting game fans from different geographies, but like-minded interest; in many cases, Skullgirls appeals to the older style of arcade fighting games, the type of quarter-crunching monsters that dominated smoky mall arcades and shops of the late 80s and 90s; in many cases, however, those places no longer exist, but the people do–and they’ve moved online.  Skullgirls perhaps embodies an evolution in playstyle more than anything else, a game that can be played locally, online, or both (one of the more intriguing feats was a tournament that comprised live, “local” gamers and online players in the same event).  However, fighting games are also sadly victim to the needs of “professional” players looking to make names or money, meaning that their interests may quickly fade; however, if that were the case, Skullgirls would never have achieved the “success” that is has–something brought those people to the game, and it kept them there.

In some ways, it is likely that vision of the vibrant arcade games of yesterday.  Skullgirls, at heart, ensconces many of the virtues of arcade fighters (and is comprised mostly of their best parts) that it is a paean to the days of yesterday; gone are meeting at arcades to slam quarters into arcade machines, here are the days of gathering at a late-night cupcake shop with wi-fi.  Gamers are getting older, and newer gamers are entering the fold in ways that cannot even comprehend the old arcade days of yore; instead, evolution takes place–find way to stay relevant, or die.  Skullgirls seems to have latched onto that, maybe begrudgingly, and has kept at it since as a defining way of playing it:  instead of going out, stay in. Instead of laggy online matches, use GGPO. Instead of bloating the roster with clones, create a core cast that allow for deep mastery and variation.  And perhaps most importantly, treat the customer like the creators want to be treated: create the game of your dreams, and then be sure to share it with other people without being prohibitive.

The dream of the Skullgirls team became the dream of its users: the fighting game they always wanted to play, the characters they want to see, the people they love to be around.  Other fighting games may have larger communities, bigger prize pools, or more “mainstream” success, but perhaps more of them could be like Skullgirls: a tight-knit community that seeks the prolonged success of their favorite title, and the people behind it, as well as the continued expansion of the game itself.  Its certainly a lofty goal, but so far has shown itself to be exceptionally successful; there is little doubt that the people who love Skullgirls will stop doing so, and perhaps with time that will allow more and more people to come into the fold as fans and aficionados.  Skullgirls is important. Perhaps that seems ridiculous, or perhaps it may be dismissed as simple “fanboy/girl-ism,” but the game signifies that perhaps gamers don’t need AAA titles crammed down their throats with millions (close to billions) of dollars behind a machine created to simply separate them from their money and their free time for short periods. The Indie Game scene is a massive market, gaining traction by the year, and Skullgirls is perhaps one of the best stories in that market: a game developed by fans, for fans, and championed by their community, funded out of the desire of their users to see it grow instead of meeting profit margins or sales projections.  In the future, it perhaps would be great to see more games develop in ways similar to Skullgirls–without some of the funding and publishing foibles–grown from the desires of fans and interested consumers, not by the need to attach season passes and locked content to games someone has already spent 60+ dollars on.

The future of Skullgirls looks bright, and even if the Indiegogo campaign is the last hurrah–the supernova instead of the big bang of new life–it will certainly remain dear to the hearts of its players, and in many cases may perhaps leave its mark on the gaming community and market at large for a long time; Fighting games are known to be a small market, and the money raised by the SG community is not groundbreaking in the scheme of things such as Double Fine or Project Obsidian, but it is perhaps groundbreaking in the way it shows players willing to put up or shut up: to give all they can in a shared dream and goal, all for the sake of playing a fun game with their friends, wherever they may be.  And, in some ways, perhaps that’s the most memorable and important aspect of the recent story.

 

“What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.” – William Blake

Hello, customers. Its been a little bit of time! Sorry for the delay in service; sometimes, even your faithful bartender must attend to other duties.

Have you ever considered the way in which a story is told to you as something that, in itself, is important? This is something beyond simply what tense or point of view is it in, but instead, deals with the difference between two very distinct styles of storytelling: Explicit, in which everything is laid bare and explained to the most minute detail, leaving very little room for speculation, opacity, or subtext, and Implicit, in which the very bare minimum is shared with the audience, spurring them to do the legwork in terms of connecting dots and drawing conclusions.

I hate to start something like this with a judgement, but there are very few cases in which Explicit storytelling is superior to Implicit; however, it also tends to be the type used the most frequently within popular culture formats, from television, comics, movies, and video games–more on why video games are extremely important to this discussion in a while–so that audiences are not left “confused,” but are instead entertained. The idea of entertainment as the major goal instead of the telling of stories is why, in many cases, it seems like there is a distinct “dearth” of “creative” mainstream fiction. There really is no nice way of saying it: seems isn’t the case, there really is not. Whenever your entertainment, be it a comedy, drama, or action film must ploddingly connect all the dots for the viewer so as to not leave anyone behind, what happens is that creations become devoid of depth. Instead of becoming the Roadrunner-esque wall into which he runs, the modern consumer of entertainment instead plays the role of Wiley Coyote, slamming headfirst into a painting of a tunnel.  I want to be clear that “enjoying” Explicit-style stories isn’t bad; they’re made for you to enjoy them. What I do wish to be clear, however, is that they are the types of things that lack certain amounts of depth or sub-currents, making them very hard to be anything other than what they are: the Avengers is very much not a subtle movie, but it is a very enjoyable one, for example.

One of the first objections that might be made after stating that is “you’re just trying to be deep” or “artistic” and you don’t want people to “have fun.” That’s not true in the slightest; the problem of overly-explicit style storytelling is that it robs the audience of ever having any sort of interaction with the fiction, and makes investment with it very difficult.  Consider, for example, if you have a favorite film or show that you “identify” with because of the way you can connect with it.  For an example, lets use perennial favorite FLCL: quite a good number of people who watched FLCL generally attach certain personal “readings” of the series to their own lives, as the show dealt quite heavily with themes of first love, puberty, maturation, adulthood, loneliness, and the awkwardness of adolescence wrapped around a show about a boy with shoots robots from his head when these thoughts become too much for him.  Very little of FLCL is “explained” to the viewer, and when it ends, there really is not an extremely large amount of closure or exposition. Instead, the audience is asked to “infer” from their viewing and their own backgrounds, being asked quite literally by the piece to “figure it out” and think critically about the subject.  Moving to a very different form of entertainment, the Twilight series is the exact opposite, yet deals (in some regards) with some of the very same things that FLCL addresses, most notably romance, adolescence, and awkwardness (although to be fair that may just be attributed to bad acting).  What Twilight does differently, however, is that its characters leave nothing “vague,” and instead speak literally their feelings and emotions. The viewer doesn’t have to question motivations or ideas, or even “I wonder what he’s thinking,” because the movie/book will tell you directly; there is little to identify with, there is little to infer, and for the most part it becomes “I really think X is very attractive.”  Identifying with the text is not impossible, but it is very much more closed off and almost rejected than it would be in a work like FLCL or Harry Potter (which, to be fair, vacillates quite willingly between Explicit/Implicit.).  this is not a snipe at quality, so please don’t look at it that way. Instead, what I am attempting to highlight here is the fact that much, much too many works of fiction will not let the audience draw their own conclusions.

For a different point of reference, one might state that “books for children are obviously explicit, and I don’t want to be talked to like a child!” However, that statement itself is a bit too generalizing; in fact, you’d likely be surprised to find that children’s literature is one of the most implicit styles of storytelling.  I will suppose, gentle reader, that you are somewhat familiar with the works of Dr. Seuss.  Personally, one of the most fascinating stories I ever read as a child was The Lorax, because there is so much unanswered by the book by the time it closes, despite it being direct and very to the point in terms of writing / rhymes.  The Lorax may not be the most developed or critical piece of fiction ever created, but it knows well enough to conceal many of its deeper contemplations and meditations below the surface, “telling” them to the willing listener instead of “showing” them.  Many of Seuss’ other texts work in the same fashion, and this is most likely due to his past works as a WWII political cartoonist, who spent his career working subtext into simple illustrations; his children’s texts, by comparison, are created in a way to deal with social ills (racism, pollution, nuclear war) in a way that is digestible to children, but also recognizable to a parent; this is also why there are people who hold that Horton Hears a Who is an anti-abortion text, despite Seuss’ estate saying otherwise; because of that “confusion” caused by its Implicit styling, readers can come away with very distinct and seemingly abstract readings; whether they are “correct” or not is not always as important as the fact that those readings, according to those readers, can be supported by close readings of the text (Of course, research into the author and the historical context debunks those readings, but they can be made, which is the key here).

Shifting gears a bit, are you familiar with the games Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls?  Both games are action-rpg games in which the player character is placed within a world with little but the most scant explanation, and given the task of not only exploring and surviving the world, but figuring out exactly what, where, and why the world is how it is.  There are players who will say that the games have “very little story,” and this brings us to the discussion at hand.  Unlike other works, which share a somewhat 50/50 split between Explicit/Implicit storytelling, or simply rely entirely on telling the reader/viewer/player absolutely every last detail with little mystery, the Souls series is almost entirely Implicit.  Going off of what would be the “average” playthrough time of a new player, that means that a game that could take somewhere in the 15-30 hour range attempts, almost actively, to tell you nothing about its world and its inhabitants, even more-so in Dark Souls than in Demon’s Souls; since that is the case, we’ll be discussing Dark Souls for a good majority of the rest of this serving, as it best illustrates the power and importance of Implicit storytelling.

Dark Souls opens with a short movie that tells the player that the world they are entering is one in which the spark of fire gave birth to the Lordsouls, which are displayed as powerful, dangerous beings of great might: Lord Nito, the Chaos Witch, and Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight. The final figure is revealed to be a “furitive pygmy,” who is never spoken of or directly seen, the very first hint that the story will not tell you anything more than it has to.  Following this, the viewer sees as these figures slaughter the everlasting dragons with the help of Seath the Scaleless, and that after this the “Age of Fire” has begun, into which the PC is placed, an “Undead” who is cursed with the “Darksign” which means that upon death, they do not truly die, but go “Hollow,” lacking humanity–which is quickly discovered to be something similar to a type of “currency” as well as a metaphysical representation of the self. And then, after that movie (which lasts about 5 minutes) the game begins.  No more rendered cutscenes follow, and almost all dialogue is optional.  Even the direction the player is to go in after reaching the “hub” of the game, Firelink Shrine, is not told or revealed; numerous first time players end up wandering into places like the Catacombs before finding their way to the “correct” destination.

This vague direction style is tied directly to how the world is built.  While it may sound like the player is given very little information, that is because none of it is directly told to them. Instead, players can find out information by talking to NPCs, who are also somewhat unreliable, but perhaps 90% of the storytelling of Dark Souls is “figured out” through players paying attention to the descriptions of items, weapons, and armor that they encounter or pick up while playing. Each item has a distinct description, and it is through reading these, and playing “connect the dots,” that players can piece together the world of Lordran and the “truth” of what happened to it, and what is currently happening.  But, because all of this information is optional, there are good chances that players will never encounter it, or perhaps that they will not see everything on their first playthrough.  Certain areas are skippable, and not all items are easily discovered, meaning that a player who believes they know “the story” may in fact have missed a key part of it, or missed an important offshoot to it, that would only have been uncovered had they found an item they missed.

What helps immensely in this act, that every single thing, down to broken swords and pieces of armor, is connected, is the “geography” of Dark Souls.  As players progress, the world itself is very carefully constructed so that places players visit have links and geographical distinctions that allow the player to realize where they are in reference to another place in the game.  This is perhaps most notable in the following areas: Within the Tomb of the Giants, it is possible, before heading into the cave leading to Gravelord Nito, to see 2 distinct areas from a ledge: a cloudy area with large, leafless tree trunks, and above them, a red, glowing area of ruins.  From this vantage point, the player is simulteanously seeing the “top” of Ash Lake and are looking up into the ruins of Lost Izalith.  While it isn’t important to the story, the ability to “see” how the world connects to itself is visually jarring, as many video games exist in worlds that are “separated” by loading areas and such, or are simply linear hallways that have vast amounts of decoration.  Dark Souls instead very slyly ensures that, if you pay attention, you can generally see at least 2 or even 3 other areas of the game from where you are, giving the world a connected feel, and making Lordran feel like an “organic” place instead of an abstract collection of dungeons, something that Legend of Zelda games tend to do: the world of Hyrule is explained to be connected, but in reality each area is simply a “dungeon” connected to the “hub” or the castle/town of that game.  While areas in Dark Souls generally lead back to Firelink Shrine, they also lead to other places, and at least 3-4 areas have no real “importance” to the game and can literally be ignored: The Painted World of Ariamis, Darkroot Basin, Ash Lake, the Great Hollow, and Valley of the Drakes can be completely ignored by players on their journey to complete the game; Valley of the Drakes exists as little more, on the surface, than a slightly dangerous pathway between 3 areas.  In terms of storytelling and world building, however, these “empty” places are actually exceedingly rich and developed, giving the player/reader access to information that they would have perhaps otherwise never known, or allowing them to understand certain parts of the nebulous plot of Dark Souls.  Within the Valley of the Drakes, for example, players come face to face with blue drakes, which are never seen anywhere else in the game except for one specific time: the castle of Anor Londo, in a room in which Dragonslayer Ornstein’s “trophies” are displayed.  Within the Painted World, the player comes to meet Half-Breed  Priscilla, a supposed abomination of cross-breeding between Dragon and some other being, yet who her parents were is never explained, and the placement of the painting–again within a special room of Anor Londo–gives no answers, but instead raises more questions as to why the painting is where it is.

The NPCs of Dark Souls do little to make deciphering the story easier, and instead add nothing but complications to its rich layers: Solaire, perhaps the most “popular” of NPCs given his penchant for jolly co-operation, is never truly explained to the player. They know he is from Astora, but they only know this because Solaire tells them so. There is very little else given to the player in terms of information, and the ideas or suspicions of who he is abound among players: is he the lost son of Lord Gwyn? Is he just some crazy guy in armor? The truth is never revealed, and instead the game allows players to fill the gaps as they wish.  And, of course, none of this even matters if the player chooses to ignore or kill Solaire, which are options totally open to the PC. In this sense, the story of Dark Souls is so Implicit that it exists whether the player cares about it or not, almost as if it is asking the player to engage in a type of roleplay beyond their adventures: do they wish to become “archaeologists,” digging within the rich soil of Lordran for the truth and the clues to the world, or do they simply wish to just go from boss to boss, fighting big monsters or invading other players for the sake of battle? Both are totally acceptable, and Dark Souls makes no judgement upon the player either way. The world exists whether they look into it or not, and the game never “intrudes” upon their ability to play the game how they wish.

Contrast this style of play to games like Dragon Age 2, the Mass Effect series, Final Fantasy, or “cinematic” games like Gears of War, Call of Duty, or Uncharted: instead of letting the player fill in the blanks, or simply ignore them, most games tout their stories as their major “selling point,” which means that the player must be forced to experience them head-on, or that supposed economic value is lost.  If that sounds a bit asinine, well, it is: the product tells you that you will engage in a deep, rich story, and that means that the game must then force you to do so; choices don’t matter, and a player’s interest in the story (or lack thereof) is tempered only by how fast they can hit the button to skip dialogue or cutscenes.  It also eliminates the ability for games of that nature to be Implicit with their storytelling, because it must hit the viewer face first, or it has failed to do what it supposedly is advertised to do.  Even in games in which player choice is highlighted as a major “feature,” there really is no way to be implicit with that, or to allow those choices to have any real effect upon how the storyline plays out, because the game’s script is already written and given to the player in a completed form; the “freedom” players are given in terms of experiencing that story more or less amount to “will you go left or right,” and after making that choice one finds themselves at the exact same place as the person who went the opposite direction; instead of a river with many paths, they are rivers with large, diverting rocks in the middle of them, forcing the flow of water to skim to one side or the other before reconnecting once the rock has been passed.

If it sounds a bit like I’m touting Dark Souls here above other games, I am, to an extent.  Games like Catherine, for example, are fantastic stories and the choices do affect the way the story is told and how it turns out, but most games simply bring players along for the ride, rendering them inert and not allowing them to interact with and become “part” of the story beyond cosmetic decisions: the story has to be something that millions of hopeful customers can “view” while playing a game, and that means that anything that diverts too far from that ability will alienate potential customers. Dark Souls, however, simply broadens its market by providing itself to players as an action-rpg with tough gameplay and interactivity between players through invasions and co-op, but if you ever really get bored of shanking someone with your +15 uchigatana, the game wants you to know that you could, of course, always read about where your uchigatana, your estus flask, or that armor you just picked up comes from, who it belonged to, and contemplate how that relates to the game you’re playing now, and the mission you’ve been tasked with.

Explicit storytelling serves a purpose: it enables an author to directly tell a story to a wide audience and leaves little room for confusion or indecision about what that story means, who took part in it, and what they did. In simple terms, Explicit storytelling is Schwarzenegger’s Commando, while Implicit storytelling is A Clockwork Orange. Not all things must be Implicit; what should instead be taken away from this slight meditation on the use, and skill, of storytelling styles is the fact that any medium can tell a deep, engaging story that is able to be critically examined and pondered by an audience.  The decision lies in both parties: the audience must be interested in doing so, but the creator must be willing to allow the audience to “play,” as Derrida would say, with their creation, instead of simply stating “This story begins here and ends there and nothing else happened.” As media studies and literary studies begin to move into new circles, examining video games, comic books, graphic creations, anything beyond the “norm” of poem, prose, drama, and film, the focus of these examinations will likely be to look at the things that are not said on the surface, the things that must be uncovered. Like the history of Lordran, mediums that take advantage of the power of Implicit storytelling will not only reward those who wish to dig, but will continue to entrance them and entice them to continually sink their shovels into the ground one more time, perhaps uncovering another piece of the puzzle, or perhaps stumbling upon an entirely new mystery to be solved. Implicit storytelling, like your favorite drink, is complex and rich, always begging you to take one more sip of it, to feel the mingling of flavors on your palate, and teasingly leaving an aftertaste that makes you not only crave more of it, but question if you ever noticed the light hint of citrus, or the way the alcohol mixes so well with your favorite types of food, or why your favorite wine reminds you of that time you went to the mountains of France.

 

“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.” -Oscar Wilde

One of the more interesting comments I’ve heard is:

Why can’t people just enjoy whatever they enjoy? Why do we have to bother examining, analyzing, or ripping it apart? Its like people just don’t want to have fun and have to over analyze everything. I don’t get it.

What strikes me about this statement is that the people who are doing the analyzations have stated that enjoyment cannot be a part of their work.  The idea of critical thinking extending beyond that seems foreign, as if it serves no real outright purpose other than to “ruin” the fun of others.  Critical readings of movies, literature, games, comics, etc., is then relegated to being the realm of the person who goes to a party and interjects at the end of every joke with “But why?” or continually ruins funny anecdotes with depressing statements; in effect, the “academic” is then more or less portrayed as Debbie Downer.

In another aspect, this tends to be where the division of “Literature” and “literature” comes into play. This division is a battle fought from two different sides, both of which want the separation, but want it for different reasons.  The Ivory Tower Elite wants only to have their precious “art” preserved and studied and fawned over, casting off the “common trash” to the rabble below; the people who want “entertainment” for the sake of entertaining themselves want to dismantle or do away with things that are “too highbrow” because they are apparently devoid of fun.

The problem with this position, on either side, is that it is basically fighting for a type of idiotic sense of self-righteousness about what one does with their spare time.  However, it also brings into the debate the question of aesthetic pleasure somehow surpassing or negating academic, critical considerations. The reality is that you can have both things at once: this is a cake and eat it too scenario.

The reason for this is because, when it comes down to it, works of creative license are experienced (generally, this is an entire subject on its own) in the same way by members of its audience: readers of the same book still read the same book, viewers watch the same movie. The plot, substance, or narrative of those things does not change: if you were to ask a group of 30 people to tell you what happened in a movie, for example, they will likely tell you the same thing (although it would be interesting to see which parts of the story were more important to one person than another). However, if you were to then ask that group what, exactly, they “felt,” you’ll likely get a very different group of responses that are generally formulated from how much the person enjoyed the item.

Extending this further, if one were to ask a group to then think beyond their likes / dislikes, and to perhaps consider the item critically, you have not ever negated their ability to enjoy the material. The question of whether they liked it or not does enter into the discussion as a bar to deny entry.  It is at this point, the question of critical thought, that I wish to spend some more time on.

First, though, lets make concrete the “levels” of questions I’ve just noted:

1. What did you (read/watch/listen/view)?

2. Did you enjoy it?

3. What did you think about it? (At this point you can extend the question with “what did you think of the way masculinity is portrayed? Race? etc. questions forever).

This is not a hierarchy in the sense that 1 is less than 3–it is just a series. Obviously, you could always subtract question 2, because it really doesn’t matter, but it is the general progression of this sequence. As mentioned above, many people do not really enjoy the third question, or find it to be somehow “useless,” or that it somehow “interferes” with their previous answers; it really has nothing to do with them and is a completely separate question.

Critical thinking is perhaps one of the most important skills a person can possess; the reason for this is pretty obvious, as it basically states that you are able to take your brain and extend its use beyond simply flipping yes/no switches in your brain. It is the sequence that allows you to question motives, ideas, etc. So the application of that to ones choice of entertainment is not particularly extraneous or even negative, but really is the next step in enjoying that entertainment–until, as we’ll get into later, you recognize something problematic in your entertainment (and it is at that point that many people get upset).

First, let us return to our Wayback Machine and hop back once again to the 1500s.

As mentioned in the previous post, much of the modern world’s view on terror was derived from the events of the 1500/1600s. However, this area of time was really responsible for quite a lot of other things, and “critical thinking” was one of them.  The Renaissance is quite famous for its birthing of great thinkers and artisans, but what a lot of people don’t really notice is that it was also the period in which the general public began to increase its literacy rates due to the Protestant Reformation. Protestantism requires a personal, in-depth relationship with God, and to do so means that one must be able to read the Bible themselves and then respond to how they interpret scripture and what the passages “mean” to them–in this sense, the Protestant Reformation was the “birth” of what is now known as Reader Response theory: readers take a text, read it, and then divulge what they feel the text “means,” what they felt in terms of interpretation, and how the text conveys those meanings. Its a simplistic method, but it is one of the earliest and most widely used because of its reliance on the reader to impart how the text impacted them, instead of looking outside of the text for other contexts.

Because of this rise of literacy, and the questioning nature (although, don’t get too excited–this questioning was very limited) of the Reformation enlivened people’s abilities to apply this to other things. Not long after this, Sir Philip Sidney crafted the essay “In Defense of Poesy,” in which he became one of the very first literary critics, describing the power, importance, and effect that literature can have, and the way in which it must be studied and understood not just as “entertainment,” but as an artistic endeavor that seeks to convey a larger and deeper meaning beyond just the aesthetic.  Since literature became an avenue for “creative endeavor” at this same time, so too has the expansion followed when new forms of media are birthed.

(An Aside: One distinction here is that “Art” has always been separated from literature and other creative works. I find this interesting, because one of the first things people will do to defend something they believe isn’t getting enough recognition is how “artistic” it is. While there could be an argument that it is all the same as they are creative, imaginary works, there is a big problem with what “art” is. So lets ignore that word altogether. You don’t need to define the thing you enjoy as “artistic” in order to investigate it and interpret it. In fact, some of the best works of interpretation and critical readings come from things that are decidedly NOT “artistic” by definition; to be self-referential, refer to the previous post, in which I reference the 9/11 report as “literary.” )

Let us take the machine back to the present, then.

One of the things I generally hear when people balk about Critical Thinking and “entertainment” is the fact that they “just want to shut their brains off.” The idea behind the statement is mostly that they want to stop having to think about “the real world” and escape into something enjoyable. This is totally fine, but there’s actually something interesting going on here: it is an act of denial, not one of resistance. The act of “turning the brain off,” so to speak, is impossible, for obvious reasons. But the reality of the statement is simply that people want to stop  “thinking” about something they’re consuming as entertaining, because if they have to think about it, they may find that they don’t really enjoy it.  The argument is something of a strawman, because that isn’t the case at all in the relationship: if you have to “stop thinking” to enjoy something, you probably do NOT enjoy it and are finding some way to force yourself to do so. Instead, the relationship is created because of improper schooling and teaching methods, making the act of “thinking” feel like a chore, and the act of “relaxation” as an escape from that chore, a moment of relief from the ever present thought process that rules one’s waking hours.

To divert a bit, however, have you ever had an interesting dream that you wanted to talk about when you woke up?

Most people have–unless you are one of the few people who does not ever remember a single dream, or the even less common number of people who do not dream (or at least claim not to)–and, in some ways, this is deeply relevant to the discussion at hand.  A dream is very little else but the brain processing, organizing, and “chunking” data together, processing things that are seemingly random and placing them into some sort of narrative order. Dreams are interesting, because they are narratives being created out of one’s mental library, and yet they are also a process of the brain that exists in order to help keep the brain running in a certain condition–a mental de-fragmentation, like a hard drive.  What’s interesting here is that the urge to tell someone about your dream is actually still part of the dream “sequence,” because it is through telling someone else your story that you can not only better help “understand” what was going on in it, if it has any significance, but also it allows you to engage an “audience” with your wholly original narrative. In many ways, dreams are the way in which any person can become a storyteller.

Dreams, of course, do not happen on demand. You can’t tell your brain “I don’t want any dreams tonight!” or “None of that funny stuff.”  Instead, what you actually are doing is engaging in a form of “entertainment” in which your brain is running full speed, and the secondary act, the wishing to tell the dream, is your brain wanting to actively “think” the dream through.

Now, lets return to less ephemeral forms of entertainment.

The same process occurs here as well: while the viewer/reader may be actively trying to “not” think, your brain is desperately wanting to digest the information and then ponder it, consider it, and engage with it in ways beyond just “what happens next.”  The brain wants to engage in discussion, even if that discussion is one sided. It wishes for you to look past the surface of things; and in reality, the ability to do so is not something that will remove the “enjoyment” from your entertainment, but, I promise, will actually make your enjoyment much more, well, enjoyable. The reason for this is that the divorce between “Thinking” and “Entertainment” is predicated on the terrible ways in which people are, in general, educated.  Education tends to ingrain a sense of dread when it comes to “thinking,” or “analyzing,” which makes it seem as if the activity itself is not only not fun, but is only supposed to be used for things that require “effort.”  In essence this is more a problem with Western educational practices, which have historically skewed towards a “Banking” method of education where thought is replaced with a “give” and “receive” sort of relationship: the teacher gives, the student receives, and there’s nothing in between. However “giving” and “receiving” are perhaps too generous: it is an aggressive relationship, and the teacher’s authority is unable to be questioned. For many, this makes things associated with “learning” or “Critical” activities as something they don’t want to have to engage in any more often than they do regularly.

Obviously, there is no way to force someone to “think critically” about things they enjoy; if they wish not to do so, so be it. However, I urge you all to not only consider doing it, but to begin to actively do so in all aspects of your life. Critically read menus, city layouts, cereal boxes, everything.  You’ll find that by expanding the practice to things you “enjoy” and things you just “experience” passively, you’ll start to become much more entranced by the ways in which humans express themselves, how they spread their cultural beliefs, mores, and problems, and how works of mere “entertainment” can become a process that goes well beyond that while still being fun.  Consider Critical Thinking in the same vein as wine tasting: one can certainly get drunk by simply imbibing the wine for its alcohol, but wine is truly enjoyed when it is “considered”: tasted, its flavors spreading through the tongue and palate, paired with certain foods but not others, its terroir considered in how it was made, where it was made, and who it was made by.  The next time you go to enjoy something, be it a manga, video game, movie, play, tv show, eroge (you’ll find out why I mention that soon…), treat it like a wine instead of a simple “drink”: consider the media, and you’re enjoyment of it, and other things, will only deepen and expand. Let your palate be cleansed, your taste buds awakened, and your senses put to work in swallowing down the “wine” and all of its rich complexities.

 

“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” Macbeth Quote (Act IV, Scene I).

Perhaps this is an odd way to start a blog, but given the date, it is possibly the best time for a post of this sort.

Have you ever considered the history of terrorism, or of reading literature in the view of terrorist plots? It might sound odd, but the fact is that terrorism has had a heavy impact on literary history since its inception as a “modern” concept during the Renaissance. That’s right: modern terrorism is 500 years old.  You might be asking yourself, or me, or wikipedia: is that true? Well, the dates are always a bit hard to pin down, but it is likely best to place the beginnings of what we today would consider terrorism around the period in which it began to achieve precedence, which would be the late 1400s to 1500s and forward.

Terrorism today is generally linked to religious/idelogical fanaticism: 9/11 is perhaps the most obvious and monumentous event in the general collective Western memory, and for good reason: it was one of the most destructive acts of terror, and to a large extent it could be considered “successful.”  However, many people have never read one of the most amazing literary texts of the 21st century in relation to the event: the 9/11 Commission Report. Your eyes didn’t deceive you: I said literary; do not consider that I am saying the book is a work of fiction. Instead, it is a textual representation of the commission’s findings and beliefs about the 9/11 Plot, and it is a fascinating, terrifying, and gripping work of literary non-fiction.  For example, the text contains the information that the plot for 9/11 originally was supposed to go something like this:

KSM had insisted to his interrogators that he always contemplated hijacking and crashing a large commercial aircraft. Indeed, KSM describes a grandiose original plan: a total of ten aircraft to be hijacked, nine of which would crash into targets on both coasts. . . . KSM himself was to land the tenth plane at a U.S. airport, and after killing all adult male passengers on board and alerting the media, deliver a speech excoriating U.S. support for Israel, the Philippines. . . . Beyond KSM’s rationalizations about targeting the U.S. economy, this vision gives a better glimpse of his true ambitions. This is theater, a spectacle of destruction with KSM as the self-cast star–the superterrorist.

(A link to the text )

The 9/11 report is a key text to understanding the realities of the “spectacle,” as the text calls it, and to the underlying “audience” and “target” of the attacks: the American public. One of the most intriguing aspects of modern terror is that it is generally linked to targeting “abstractions” instead of “physical” items: the twin towers were sadly part of a larger scheme that involved attacking symbols of American economic and military might, displaying how the “idea” of America is attacked, and thus spread fear.

This is similar to many of the other recent / preceding terror attacks, and is also the motivation behind the first Twin Towers bombing in the 90s: the attacks are meant to incite fear in the public and cause them to question their ability to feel safe under their current leadership, existence, or identity. Instead of being after a specific person, terrorism seeks to attack “ideas,” and the people caught in the surrounding event are “collateral damage” instead of main targets.

Now, let us return in history to the 1500s and the birth of “modern terrorism.”

In the 1500s, one of the most pressing matters affecting Europe was the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation. Many history classes generally teach this as an event that was not only quick, but simple and only slightly violent; in fact, the Protestant Reformation was perhaps one of the bloodiest periods of modern European history, as people were branded heretics and burned at the stake, slaughtered in their homes, and imprisoned for their religious beliefs, both Catholic and Protestant.  One of the other odd ideas floated about this period is that of Henry VIII, who is generally placed as a sort of “figurehead” of English Protestantism.  Likening Henry to a religious hero is probably one of the most bizarre applications of rose tinted history ever; Henry’s fear of Protestantism was due to the fact that the religious movement encouraged laypeople to read, debate, and discuss ideas, meaning that they would, by nature, become somewhat more educated and possibly resistant to royal rule and Henry’s fat, iron fist. However, Protestantism also offered Henry a way “out” of certain situations: namely, his marriages; as Henry was obsessed with a male heir, and also a notorious lecher, his ability to use religion in this fashion was mostly for personal and occasionally political gain; his tampering with religion lead to much of the unrest that followed his death.

England’s divided nature towards religion following Henry’s death caused a consistent public flip flopping between Catholic and Protestant domination of the island; when Queen Mary ascends to the throne, England becomes a Catholic nation once again, and also becomes a period in which hundreds, if not thousands, of Protestants are killed for being heretics, earning her the titles “Bloody Mary.” Her title is mostly a political play that became historical “fact,” although Mary’s disposition was by no means overly pleasant: the term Bloody Mary is denoted upon her following her death, and is used as a method through which to elevate Elizabeth I, who is more or less now a totally iconic figure of English history and mostly untouchable in terms of “heroism.”

Elizabeth I’s reign is marked with a continued struggle, this time by Catholics, to find a way to “reclaim” England for the clutches of the heretics and their Queen; her popularity soars, and her success in defending England against invaders and would-be conquerors (The Spanish, mostly) helps to solidify England as the powerhouse it would become later.  In many cases, this is due to the efforts of the first historical “spymaster,” Sir Francis Walshingham, who served Queen Elizabeth as her chief “intelligence officer,” if you will.  A fascinating book of Walshingham’s life, Her Majesty’s Spymaster, is certainly worth a read; in short, though, Walshingham was responsible for foiling numerous attempts on her majesty’s life, and was also key in navigating the problematic religious politics of the time. Walshingman was also the person responsible for the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, removing the “legitimate” Catholic heir to the throne in order to further protect his Queen.

Although there were many plots against Elizabeth and her country, there are none that were “successful,” but the Protestant campaign against Catholicism was indeed very strong and openly vitrolic.  John Foxe, author of The Book of Martyrs, became key to the belief that Catholics were demonic forces of papal brainwashing, a group of religious zealots who would stop at nothing to kill and murder “innocent” protestants. the full texts of his books can be found online here; the importance of these texts was the fact that one could find them inside of most, if not all, English Churches next to the Book of Common Prayer and The Bible, meaning that Foxe’s propaganda against Catholics was housed next to the two most important–and perhaps the one most important–texts of the period, as well as meaning that it was housed with the same reverence as these texts. There is another reason this is important, though: Protestants pushed for literacy and the translation of the Bible into English, meaning that the public was not only much more readily able to read, but could also read text’s such as Foxe’s, which, being housed in the Church, more or less made the work “state sanctioned.”

With a heavy public attitude against, and the revocation of many public rights for Catholics under Elizabeth, who in many cases was perhaps almost as bad as her half-sister, led to the first “Terrorist Plot,” the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 by Jesuits against King James I, Elizabeth’s successor.

The Gunpowder Plot is quite well known, in certain ways: its the event that involved Guy Fawkes, of V for Vendetta Fame.  However, like many other things, the “myth” of Guy Fawkes is perhaps more entertaining than the reality: instead of being discovered at the last minute by royal officials, Fawkes was instead arrested while he was sitting in a house guarding the barrels of gunpowder.  Fawkes also was not the mastermind, or even the leader, of the event: he was simply the person responsible for watching over the plot’s “weapon of mass destruction.”

The Gunpowder Plot is what could perhaps most readily be described as the first “terrorist plot,” except that, for the most part, it isn’t. Its generally called a “conspiracy,” despite the fact that its planning, aside from never happening, shares everything in common with “terrorism,” and in fact could be considered a blue print for terrorist activity; the fact of the matter is that for most historical texts / public documents, the word “terror” is used only when a “foreign agent” is generally employed as the person responsible–this, of course, despite the fact that people such as Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber were American, for example–and is generally a confused term that comes with a lot of added baggage from other sources. Instead, it is probably best to remember that terrorism is:

An anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, whereby-in contrast to assassination-the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. Threat and violence based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperiled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primary sought (Schmid, 1988).

This definition is perhaps complicated, but it gets to the heart of the matter: terrorism is an act by a person, or a body of people, against another through a secondary “target” in order to elicit fear or other responses from the “victim” group.  The Gunpowder Plot’s existence was to create a spectacle (much like 9/11) through which the Catholics could then begin their uprising against the Protestant Monarchy and government: the target of the attack, the House of Lords, was meant as a symbolic attack against the “body” of government; the building itself was the target, not the people inside, although a death toll would have worked even better for instilling fear.  The event itself was set to precede a general uprising in the Midlands, making it a “beacon” of the Catholic rise against their oppressors; the plan was foiled by James’ own spymaster, Robert Cecil, who uncovered the cyphers and codes of the plot (although, in an act of shrewdness, gave the credit to the King for supposedly “solving” the mystery, an act that allowed James to appear even more of a “great” leader).

The Great Fire of 1666 actually played into further fears: many English believed it was the result of Catholics attempting to destroy England, and the Popish Plot, a ficticious conspiracy, continued these fears to an even greater degree in the following years.  For the most part, England’s history after the Reformation is one fraught with terror and political / ideological battles, although many of these events are forgotten or overwritten by attempts, perhaps, to codify “Christians” as one large group of people; whatever the P.C. reasoning or historical white washing, the battle between English Protestants and Catholics is one of the first hallmarks of terrorism and terrorist plots.

Moving closer to the 20th century, the Greenwich Bombing is England’s first “international terrorist act,” in which a French man attempted to destroy the Greenwich Observatory in 1894. The attempt was to assault “time,” and the fact that Britain’s observatory is considered, in many aspects, to be the “center” of time and thus an icon of its power and ability to “control” others. The plot itself failed, but became the inspiration for Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent.

There are of course many other causes, cases, and attacks that could be listed, but for the sake of brevity, and for something I’ll get to a bit later, I wanted to focus on these British events and their links to the ways in which we not only think about terrorism today, but also the ways in which it is written about.

To that end, have you ever considered Macbeth to be a text about Terrorism? How about Titus Andronicus? The Tempest? Probably not; many of Shakespeare’s plays are studied aesthetically, or psychologically, or even with focus on gender and social roles. However, Shakespeare’s texts are heavily filled with remarks about England’s tumultuous political existence during the time he writes them, and the Bard was quite knowledgeable about the events and plots of the time.  Macbeth, for example, is written and first performed 1 year after the Gunpowder Plot is foiled.  Many of the texts do not contain direct references, but either deal with the idea of torture, terror, and fear–Titus and the Tempest–as a method through which to control people, or with plotting, conspiracy, and violence, as in Macbeth.

Similarly, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus both contain “heroes” who attend college in Wittenberg, site of Martin Luther’s beginnings of the Lutheran Movement (which then became appropriated as the beginnings of all Protestant Reformation).  The site of Wittenberg in texts such as these, and other period pieces, is as a place of radical thinking and possible danger–it is perhaps no surprise that Hamlet, one of the most unhinged Shakespeare characters, and Dr. Faustus, who makes a deal with the devil, received their education in a place that is supposedly responsible for so much change, both good and bad, within the European landscape of the time.

Later writers felt the impact of these terrorist attacks and their plotting, and also began to recognize the ways in which these events could be utilized for literary expression: John Milton, one of the most outspoken political activists of the Cromwell movement, created Samson Agonistes, a text that ends with Samson being portrayed, in many ways, as the first “suicide bomber,” pulling the temple down and killing everyone inside at the cost of his own life. Samson is portrayed as a tragic hero, and his cause just, but that has much to do with Milton’s political leanings; it may sound strange to call Samson a terrorist, but his use by Milton in this way is a keen insight into the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the greater political good, a theme not readily present in many other works of the time, and perhaps in very few afterwards.  Samson’s death is portrayed as a paradoxical attempt to protect political liberty and life while also destroying, physically, the bodies of political opponents; Samson’s attack comes against the building, not the people, retaining much of that “collateral damage” mentioned earlier.

Conrad’s The Secret Agent is a fictionalized version of the Greenwich Bombing, but it is also a fascinating tale of its own right: the character of the Professor is perhaps the first true “suicide bomber,” the first “terrorist” of literary works, a man who walks the streets of London with dynamite strapped to his body, hand on the trigger at all times.  Conrad plays with the idea of what terror is, and what a true “terrorist” perhaps seeks to accomplish, and his depiction of The Professor would fit, in many ways, with modern envisioning of terrorists: disaffected people with no value attached to life, ready to sacrifice it at the drop of a hat in order to “make a point,” or simply to just always have the “idea” floating through the public’s subconscious.

So, coming back to things, lets see if we can’t find an interesting way to tie the events of the Elizabethan Age to that of the 9/11 Era.

Have you ever seen the film Elizabeth?  How about its oddly timed (nearly a decade) sequel, Elizabeth: The Golden Age?

The first film, from 1998, debuted to success, and calls of Anti-Catholicism by many for its depiction of Catholics as hate-mongers and murderers; the claims were made, apparently, because the film was “too harsh” in suggesting that the Catholic Church itself was behind the violence in England, when, in fact, it supposedly wasn’t. That claim aside (by the by, the claim is false; the Catholic Church was indeed behind many of the plots in England, or at least sanctioned them), the real intrigue comes from the sequel.  The Golden Age, in 2007, arrives with a tale about England that will soon be under attack by religious zealots wishing to destroy their way of life, who wish to attack and destroy its Queen and country so as to create a religious land that follows their one true belief; this group is the Spanish, here portrayed almost comically in a Monty Python-esque fashion as Catholic zealots, but the timing of the film and its arrival post 9/11, post Afghanistan and Iraq, is what makes the film somewhat bizarre and also seems to drive this entire discussion full circle.

The first film exists as a historical drama, a retelling of Elizabeth’s rise to power, and yet its sequel is an exceedingly Post 9/11 film, one in which the aspects of recent terror of such a grand scale has invaded the act of creativity, much in the way that Shakespeare, Milton, Conrad, and Marlowe all engaged acts of terror in their works. E: The Golden Age deals with the attempt by the Spanish as, instead of an open declaration of war, a terrorist conspiracy filled with martyrdom, secret agents, and attempts at public spectacle to drive fear into the hearts of the British. It is perhaps fitting then that the Virgin Queen is used as the protagonist for this type of film; in many cases, nations are portrayed as feminine (Lady Liberty, etc.), and Elizabeth becomes a literal and figurative symbol of resilience in the face of religious terror and zealotry.  The execution of Mary is played as an act of martyrdom, not as a political orchestration by Walshingham, and the the Armada’s attack is “discovered” through the interrogation and torture of agents and spies captured by the British; in the era of Waterboarding and Guantanamo, the techniques and their supposed legitimacy are transported 500 years into the past as plot points in historical fiction, made all the more intriguing by the fact that many of the ways that we conceive of terror was derived from that very historical period, as if the film attempts, consciously or subconsciously, to link the two periods, the Reformation and the Post 9/11 “War on Terror.” As the film arrives admits political unrest in Europe, America, and abroad due to American policies, though, the film also makes a key note to display that the attitude of Elizabeth and her agent are at times questionable, and that while being subjugated by religious zealotry is bad, so too is a rampant and out of control government.

As people around the world go about their lives in the Post 9/11 world, they might be interested in knowing that their existence is not all that much different from people before them; perhaps it is more personal, more present, more obvious. But the existence of terror, and the ways in which we “read” it, “interact” with it, and “own” it, has been with modern history for half a millennium now.  Although its a bit of a tall order, and perhaps a stiff drink to swallow, the realities of terror, and the ways in which we “know” it, are facts of life that have been ingrained upon our minds, and will likely continue to do so.  Next time you go see Macbeth, consider the Witches less as a mystical force, and more as agents of terror, spreading fear and anxiety: you’ll likely view the play in a very different light.

 

“Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit,” -The Clown, Twelfth Night

Hello there! Welcome, to the bar. Grab a seat, get comfortable, and order your favorite drink…

This post is going to serve as a somewhat introduction; I don’t really know if I can properly introduce a blog that has nothing on it, but for the most part, I wish to outline what it is I’m aiming for here. First, a bit about who I am:  I’m a 29 year old holder of a PhD. in Literature, and most of my free time is spent in awful wastes of time: watching anime, playing video games, and reading manga (of which I’m focusing much of my intellectual pursuits; yes, I’m *that* guy, the one who wants to teach you about comics. No, don’t run. It only makes it hurt more).  I also have a deep passion for the study of just about everything, particularly anthropology and history, two areas that I’ve pursued on my own and academically during my career.  My passion for knowledge spreads to my other passions: I want to share it, teach it, and encourage it in others, and I want people to understand that appreciating their hobbies beyond “escapism” is something that is not only healthy, but in the end deepens the impact it can have upon you.  What you do with your time should be your passion; for myself, I’ve managed to find a “dream job” of sorts that allows me to put that passion into something that allows me the ability to continue pursuing it and not live in a cardboard box.

Depending on how much academic growth you’ve had in your own life, or how many literature classes you’ve taken, you might be aware that literary studies tends to use philosophical areas / ideologies for further examination of texts: Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Gender Studies, Feminism, Cultural Studies, etc.  For myself, I tend to enjoy New Historicism, so you might notice that at times I will discuss things relating to context or historical precedent quite readily; I’m familiar with and a fan of quite a lot, if not most areas, but I can say that you’re more than likely going to see New Hist. and Cultural studies (as well as gender/feminism) more often than anything else; I feel that literature/art/media/video games/comics/manga/everything under the Sun is simply just more interesting when it is considered in its contexts, its histories, and its moments.

Originally, I wanted a place where I could put musings (academic, casual, somewhere in-between) about things I don’t normally get to write about in my everyday work / conversations–things that don’t fit well in a twitter post, or don’t fit in with class discussions, etc. Sometimes, ideas are just that–they aren’t necessarily fit for publication or presentation at conventions and journals.  However, I really just want a place that I can play with what I know, and perhaps provide people with something to read that will interest them, challenge them, or just simply give insight into something that perhaps they hadn’t considered before in regards to whatever topics those might be.  At the same time, this is a place for myself; if I were to discover that I literally had only 1 reader, I’d still produce–if I had zero, I would still write here.  My hope is that, if you do visit, and perhaps continue to do so, that you enjoy at least half of what you’ll find.  I can’t promise everything will be fascinating or groundbreaking, but I hope it will at least be entertaining.

A few words on the title of the url/theme:

The PS3/360 game, Catherine, takes place for the most part between a nightmarish world of puzzles and a bar, the Stray Sheep.  The idea of the Stray Sheep is tied to the narrative of the game, for sure, but the “idea” of the bar itself, as a place where the player can relax, learn interesting/odd/bizarre facts about just about anything, and engage in conversation, entertainment, and camaraderie, is the function that I’m lifting for my own uses. One of the most enjoyable things in the game were the facts about alcohol; while this blog will probably not deal with it that much (actually I can’t promise that; I do really enjoy Moyashimon, Drops of God, and Oishinbou..), instead I’d like for you, the reader, to consider this as a place to engage in (if I will allow myself to be overly pretentious for a minute) academic insobriety: find a “drink” you like on our menu, order it up, and enjoy its contents.

I hope you’ll enjoy what you find here. Please feel free to leave comments, and engage with each other in the event that it does actually occur; like a bar, of course, the idea is for people to become social and relate their stories and ideas to one another.  I’d love nothing more than, aside from reading my own writings, that you all (whoever you may be) find something else to discuss or debate within the comments after the entries.

So, to commemorate the opening, and welcoming of you, the guest, and keeping with the theme a bit, a Gaelic toast to you and the blog:

“Céad Míle Fáilte!”

_______

As for the title, 2DP(H)D, of the site:

Its a play on “3D Pig Disgusting.”

…

Blame Dan Kim.