...and then I trample on it with depressing mindfuckery, for that is what I do?

[mithrigil]

.

So, one of my springkink prompts bit hard and fast--and then refused to comply with what the original prompt asked for. I asked the prompter's permission, and she is cool with me writing the thing as, well, it wrote itself.

Title: Three Men Make a Tiger
Fandom: Digital Devil Saga (2)
Characters: ...so she asked for Bat and I gave her Bianfu. Doctor's

Comments

[harukami]

asdf;j I -- this is amazing. I was completly pulled into the rhythm of this piece; the reality, and how horrible it was, yet how... 'reasonable' it was to do (not at all, but at the same time, very). I love how the playground reminded me of the playground at my preschool -- which was, of course, in the psych department at university. (Where all university preschool playgrounds are, in the psych department). I like how... intuitive, intelligent Bat was here, and how linked he was in SERA'S mind with blood and with rejection...

Damn amazing.

Pretty much perfect, really.

[mithrigil]

!

I am so, so glad you enjoyed it. And more importantly understood it. What Sera did to all of them...it's frightening. And getting into how our actions and appearances can be misconstrued by context and bad luck was just a blast to explore, here.

Thank you so much!

[harukami]

It's funny you should mention the "What Sera did to all of them" part, because in reading the comments, I was flummoxed by how many people hated Sera for that. I mean, admittedly, I adore Sera, and I'm well known to get pretty damn frustrated at Sera-bashing, but ... reading this, I liked Sera a lot here because you did a fantastic job of demonstrating how little autonomy she had in the situation. Of course, if you go by the premise you present here that everyone had original models (which in a canon situation I don't follow because of David-Gale, but it works fantastically as a premise for exploration here) -- of course in that situation, she'll associate people with things not accurate to them. She's two years old and while her body/mind might be growing up fast, her context has been extremely limited; she's still fitting people into mental 'boxes' in order to learn about them. Psychologically, that's what toddlers do. Identifying 'traits' become all-identifying. So much of the backstory to the series IS Sera discovering that when

[mithrigil]

I'm closer to with you on this than appearances would have--writing Sera, especially in the context of the Doctor's Cast and O'Brien most of all, has helped me sympathize with and understand her a great deal more. I don't dislike her as much as I dislike her archetype (hadaka na hakoirimusume, GAAAH), and then when she deconstructs it and goes beyond it that made my initial aversion to her so much less pronounced. And yes, recontextualizing the last spiel on the Sun in that light...

I think efforts in fandom to characterize Sera and her situation are fascinating and really telling about the individual author. It's one of many things I consistently like about your work, actually. :smiles: That what she did was frightening but not consciously so is the key in the matter. She's a child. She has no malice, just selfishness, and whether one can fault her that or not is more up to the beholder and the context than anything else

[harukami]

Haha, I don't mind her archetype so much because dds is so careful to disconstruct and play with it like they do with all the characters -- she's never really the "bird in the cage", imho, because of how many angles the game takes for showing her different types of attempts to escape that cage (if that makes sense). I think one of the most fascinating things dds does is take standard rpg archetypes and break them down, like -- oh, Heat, the angry loner compared to his actual needs, feelings, what he actually wants, and the backwards way he goes about it. And sob, I know what you mean about context taking things down -- I was pretty neutral on Sera (not really liking her, not really disliking her) until I started to play Heat in an online RP and trying to see what the OTHERS saw in her and now I'm rather annoyingly noisy about her. *g

[mithrigil]

Agreed that she's never the bird in the cage, that she has this ridiculous amount of control. But she's still the naked girl in a box, and still the girl who sings and wants to help everyone. And I've never liked that device. But once she stopped being that and her circumstances were revealed it was easier to go on it. And writing as Heat impels you to like her, impels you to see what she makes him see in her. Powerful stuff. :smiles:

Re: the basic tragedy of DDS, YES. It's that the world doesn't run on anime-style RPG logic. They show it in DDS1 with how emotions undo the FPS atmosphere and utterly, literally break the Game; they show it in DDS2 when Sera's emotions undermine the constructions around her and the strictures that imposed those constructions in the first place, personified in Sheffield and Cuvier respectively. It's about the failure of quantification and the power of emotion. On some level, at least. Oh, ATLUS, how you subvert yourself

[harukami]

She is, for sure. The thing that always gets me about her wanting to help everyone, though -- and it's definitely a retrospective thing because you don't and can't know about it until later -- is that she's already too late. By the time she went "I know I'm here to save everybody", they'd already been overtaken by the virus -- she's playing catch-up and cleaning up messes and fixing symptoms when she can (not often) until ... well, until something's put there that she can affect even though it'll kill her to do so. I've never liked the characters who want to help everybody and can do it, but I love the -- well, the "Allen Walker" type (if you're familiar with D.Gray-man at all) who still want to help but are consistantly, tragically, too late. *g* I know I'm wordy about this and I don't want you to think I'm trying to 'convert' you or anything, I just find the way dds plays with archetypes and undermines them with information revealed later and with character growth FROM them to be fascinating and I love rambling about it. Sorry if

[mithrigil]

It's not pushy at all! You're attached to her and you've had to defend your position on her before, there's nothing untoward about doing that now. I don't know D.Gray-man but I do know the type, and like the type*, and there might be a reason I've fixated on Sumeragi Subaru from TB/X etc. lately, he's got the same problem when he's younger and then just gives up. The poor dear.

ATLUS is amazing for narrative and commentary and meta-. That's the bottom line. They choose something to play with and they take it apart and blueprint its system and they don't put it back together, they go from the blueprints and augment and fix things and in building something new try to undertand the original. And it often works. And oftentimes they'll do that to childhood and things that were associative and emblematic there, which gives them an intrinsic notion of formativity and fear and a kind of universality that most games with DDS' extent of meta- and message just don't have

[harukami]

Thank you. *wg* I know that there's a fine line between "excited discussion" and "defensiveness" and I try not to cross it, but I know it's easy to do because I've also heard a lot of counter-points to it and have already built up my responses in the past. I'm really not trying to be defensive here because -- honestly, well, because I love the way you think about it and your position's completely valid and interesting and there's nothing to defend! But I know it can sound that way so I'm sorry and thank you. And yes, oh god, Subaru. SUCH a tragedy -- so many times the ruination of ideals is so painful and yet such a perfect tragic arc. In a way, trying to save everybody IS a sort of classic hubris...and in the end that kind of goal can only be reached with a huge sacrifice, I think

[harukami]

Because I replied to the original thing before seeing the edit -- no, that makes total sense to me. She WAS introduced as a device; I think ATLUS later played with that by providing character, motive, and all those stuff as something that was "hidden" from the start, but because it WAS hidden, it was totally a device when intro'd. It was one of the things that made me roll my eyes when I started playing. (That and the girl starting with healing skills, lol Argilla, though of course THAT later turned out to have ironic significance as well...)

[mithrigil]

Oh good, you know Subaru. That is going to make Aneurysm so much more interesting for you. I've been kind of stuck on TB/X for the last five months, late to the party I know...but yeah. If it's conscious, it's hubris, and if it's unconscious it's sympathetic idiocy, and either way (or both, because it can be both!) it's tragic.

And so much LOL Argilla. They really undid her type and her supposed tokenness.

[harukami]

I do! I never read TB fully translated, but I followed it a lot during the 90s. I used to be a giant Subaru fan, in fact. *g* I'm realy looking forward to seeing what you've done there. And yeah, exactly.

They really did. *wg* In retrospect, seeing what they were doing as a meta thing on the whole, they pretty much HAD to start with her being the one who didn't want to devour and who had healing skills. (I loved, loved, LOVED Lupa following the exact same arc as Jinana later in the game after you got 'used' to the 'stereotypes' -- because Lupa's introduced TO start pointing out the cracks in the system, how their world is subtly 'wrong', and then they go ahead and give him both the male strong single warrior archetype and the exact same traits they gave Jinana to define her as the 'tragic female', which of course works backwards to break both. TANGENT but. Man.)

[mithrigil]

Such WORD on Lupa and Jinana, and on how on now you see what they're doing--and now Gale sees too. Yes. So much yes.

It's awesome to have such in-depth conversation about the game. There's so much genre convention that's undone throughout...

[harukami]

It's like, until then, there've been occasional moments of "Huh, weird", and then suddenly things are being deconstructed and the meta and in-game stuff work together and it's. Kind of awesome.

Yes, thank you for it! I'm really having fun, l-lol.

[mithrigil]

For me it was the ship that did it. On one level, it's deconstructing the presence of an utterly incongruous dungeon, on another level it's Gale being utterly irreverent of that conceit and BLOWING SHIT UP, and on a third level it's showing Sera's attachment and the Embryon's lack thereof save as it relates to her. So here's the player, just starting to realize the correlation between the game and the game mechanics...

[harukami]

Oooh, yes, yes, *yes*, and Gale acting as intermediary without any of the attachments the others have (and of course he *wouldn't*).

And then there's Coordinate 136, where Sera's literally the narrator, and bits get exised from the text and mixed up as it moves further away from the 'fairy story' and closer to the trauma... Not to mention the whole jumble of 'warnings' like how you can't tell the difference between a good prince and an evil prince until you're too close...