Patreon Letter: 21st January 2019

Hey everyone, it's Jackson here with the patreon letter! This is going to go over some ground that is being covered in podcasts we're doing because I haven't had time to do a single thing that wasn't for a show in the last few weeks. I'm exhausted! So this week I'm going to expand on a few thoughts in the shows, talk about what I've been doing lately, do some behind the sausage introspection. It's going to be more like some unstructured notes than a full article but such is the nature of the patreon letter.

Oh, and I'm gonna spoil Final Fantasy XII

Heads up about that.

Killing The Gods

So in the final three hours of Final Fantasy XII (which, by the way, was a fifty hour game for me, and I played entirely on 2x speed), there is a massive reveal. The bad guys of the game are merely trying to - and I don't mean to shock you here - Kill the Gods. Your party recognizes that the gods aren't good and perhaps existing under their thumb is a bad idea, but given the circumstances they don't think that using the magic supernukes in order to free us from the gods is the right choice either. Maybe they will find a third way?

They don't do that. They just stop the guy who wanted to kill the gods and then move on like everything is fine. It's a bit of a weird ending.

We talk a lot about this in the podcast (coming in a couple days!). I've been thinking a lot about it too, because this is an extremely common storytelling trope. It's most obvious in JRPGS, I've ended up sitting through this exact plot about five times over the last couple months, to varying degrees of success in each one. But I don't mean to make this sound like a Uniquely Japanese Occurrence, it's everywhere, you can see the same basic thematic setup in western media all the time just in a different frame. Almost every single marvel movie is about a villain who represents a significant ideological challenge to society and seeks to destroy it. Then, instead of responding to those challenges, the heroes usually stop them from killing a bunch of people and they win! Don't think about the part earlier in the film where we all talked about american imperialism for a bit there. shhhh.

And so I feel like more and more lately I've come away from so many stories with this exact critique, to the point where I want to look inward and ask myself what I'm looking for from stories. I know the answer in shorthand, I want art to be honest and to engage with its own themes and ideas to the fullest possible extent. But what does that look like? I can point to Age of Ultron and say "the opposite of that!" or point to Final Fantasy X and go "that! do that" but both of those answers are lacking. It's easy to answer in abstract. Is this a failing of the works or merely a result of me becoming cemented in my leftism so I can't enjoy centrist "much too think about" works anymore? Probably a little column A, a little column B.

Anyway the result of all this is I'm feeling like a bit of a bad critic. Not in a self-deprecating way, I'm proud of the work I do and I enjoy doing it, I'm not fishing for approval don't worry. I just want to be smarter and more assured when I approach things, and I've had a month that's knocked me on my ass mental health wise so I feel further from that goal than I'd like. 

I don't have a conclusion, more notes on an idea that's been sitting with me and a general sense that I want to be better than I am. Which I suppose is always true. Also maybe don't play five JRPGs in a row with exactly the same plot but *checks my kingdom hearts to do list* that's not going to happen just yet.

Behind The Sausage

The other thing I wanted to talk about was just a little update on what's going on with the Abnormal Mapping process on my end. I'm exhausted and not doing great these days for regular life reasons, you know, we're all in capitalism we all know. Things suck at home because my Grandma's dying, but in the slow way where it could happen tomorrow, it could happen six months from now, and every phone call makes things more tense. 

And the upside is I feel guilty a lot, I feel guilty when a recording slips because of the situation, I feel guilty when I'm late with the letter, even though everyone I've ever spoken to about our podcasts has been very understanding, the guilt is self-generated and never really goes away. So I guess I just wanted to say that I'm doing my best and I'm thankful for everyone's support. 2019 has started about as poorly as it possibly could in my personal life and the instant crashing of all new year momentum has made things harder than they have any right to be.

Making things for the internet is very stressful and the longer I'm in my own head the worse it feels, so it makes me feel a little better every time we get a gundam out and people yell about it on the discord, or people are excited to talk about star trek, because those releases turn this into something tangible.

Okay that's enough feeling sorry for myself. We got a Star Trek podcast up today and we'll have Gundam out tomorrow so please be excited!!! See you soon!

-Jackson