[ SECRET POST #6875 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6875 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 42 secrets from Secret Submission Post #982.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

07. https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/b04ad1e5e2db.png

Transcript by OP

[fscom]

I kinda feel bad for this poster.
Did she miss the point of Disco Elysium? Most Likely!

But literally all she said was: she wants a different game with the same (great) system design and writing quality.

Who hasn't played a game they were impressed by production-wise, but didn't care for personally? Have people never gone "wow, I wish this same type of high quality production were present in a different game or genre that I'd enjoy more?"

People should have laughed at it and moved on, not made her the poster child and/or strawman for being anti cozy-as-a-genre years and years later.

[iff_and_xor]

Yeah, I'm with you on this. And I think it actually got discussed on tumblr not too long ago when someone brought up that meme again. So we're not the only ones. That's part of the thing with memes, I guess. They live on well after the "sin" actually warrants.

I think people reacted most poorly to her snark about "generic middle aged white man", when they thought the character had plenty of depth and was being dismissed for superficial reasons. But I don't really know.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know anything about this poster or any drama (?) that may have arisen from her opinions... but I will say that "playing as a generic middle-aged white man again" is the #1 reason why I have no interest in playing this game, no matter how many great things I hear about it.

[iff_and_xor]

I think the use of "generic" is interesting there. It makes me wonder what traits would be required to sufficiently distinguish a middle-aged white male character in a way that would make his story interesting/appealing to you or this poster or whoever else.

[(Anonymous)]

For me, personally? Nothing.

It's not their personality or story that makes them generic, it is the fact that they are the face of 85% of media.

I don't care about their stories any more. I could barely bring myself to care about them before I experienced ten million video games and movies and TV shows telling me how unique and interesting their specific middle-aged white man is, and I care even less now.

[iff_and_xor]

Thanks for explaining, I can get that even if it's not quite how I naturally think about characters or stories.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

I think saturation works against them in this regard. There are plenty of middle aged white male characters that I like, but I can also name a dozen dozen others that are similar to them in theory that exist. When there are so many, it kind of can't be helped, since uniqueness or genericness is dependent on comparing them to all the others.

What's the most unique middle aged white male character you can think of?

[iff_and_xor]

I do get what you're saying about saturation.

I think I'm realizing that I don't naturally group characters at that level. It's much easier for me to say what a "generic" grizzled detective is like. Or a depressed suburban husband. Or a workaholic father. Or a quirky private investigator. Those are character types that I can feel I'm sick of when I see too many of them that don't distinguish themselves from the average. Age, race, and gender doesn't feel like a narrow enough category to be a natural grouping in my head.

The most unique middle-aged white male character off the top of my head? Of course, as soon as you ask, I feel like I'm just forgetting huge swathes of what I've read and seen. But of things I've talked or thought about recently... maybe Cadfael, as a Crusader-turned-herbalist monk with shockingly idiosyncratic ideas about theology. Maybe Alfie Solomons from Peaky Blinders, as a Jewish gangster caught between Italians and Brummies, who has very odd but very fervent politics and morals and (huh, again) religious beliefs.

But maybe I'm also thinking about character "uniqueness" in weird way that isn't what others mean.

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly? harry dubois.

[(Anonymous)]

Simply put: name one middle-aged white male character whose story would not be made a hundred times more interesting and unique if they were literally anyone else.

Middle-aged white man is the default for every single form of media. Change any part of that descriptor, and your character automatically becomes more interesting.

'Generic' in this case, means the default, the standard, the done-to-death. A character's personality or story might change, but the baseline state of being for "middle-aged white man" is the same again and again and again. Make the same character a middle-aged woman, an elderly black man, a Mexican teenager... that character is already more interesting by virtue of not being an exact carbon-copy of the single most commonly depicted experience.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd say 30ish is more common than middle aged. But yeah, 30ish brown haired white dude with stubble has been done to death.

[iff_and_xor]

Okay, so you're with anon above on using "generic" not as a type of middle-aged white man, but as a descriptor of the whole demographic.

I can understand that take. The nature of adjectives just makes it a little ambiguous.

[(Anonymous)]

SA.

Yeah, I think adjectives are the real villains here. It's hard to have a good-faith discussion when every party is attributing the same word to a different part of the sentence... and doubly so when none of them are technically wrong.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess I just don't understand this mindset at all. To me, what makes a character interesting isn't what they themselves are, but what their story is. I don't find a character inherently more or less interesting because of their race/gender/age/what have you because you can have a unique character with a boring story or a generic character with a fascinating story.

[(Anonymous)]

It's the double-edged sword of A) having a less-than-zero interest in men in general... which in itself wouldn't be a problem when it comes to finding characters interesting, if not for the fact that B) they are the central character in absolutely everything.

Give me someone else’s story. Literally, anyone else at all.

[(Anonymous)]

I think I might have phrased it as "Yet Another White Guy" (YAWG?).

[(Anonymous)]

I just don't think "young quirky female witch character" is THAT much more original, actually. Especially since if it's a small village in the Alps, she would very likely still be white.

[(Anonymous)]

IDK. If I got to play even one quirky female witch for every twenty middle-aged white men, my gamer girl's heart would be ecstatic.

(Make-your-own-custom-protagonist-type games not included, obviously.)

[(Anonymous)]

Makes me think of so many canons actually, but primarily Little Witch Academia and Little With in the Woods. Wylde Flowers. This is just five seconds of thinking about Quirky Witch games and anime and I barely keep up on things.

[(Anonymous)]

I can't get over the use of "most likely" in missing the point of Disco Elysium. They MASSIVELY missed the point of it. It's like saying The Wire would be better if it was about a girl's school in the alps and then saying that take "most likely" misses the point.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't understand where people are getting "she said DE would be better if-"

She didn't say that. She said is she wants a separate game about something else, with the same "insanely well crafted narrative system and wonderful writing"

Then people jumped all over that, just like this.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

If someone said The Wire's writing and direction are A++ superb but they're not into crime dramas, and they'd love a show about teenage heroes fighting vampires that had the same amazing quality of writing and direction... would you assume they want to change The Wire to star Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

The stretches people are making to internet hate on this person are wild. :\

[(Anonymous)]

Their dismissive eyerolling at "another gritty crime drama" (even asking why another one needs to exist?) and their disdain at the main character does imply they think their cat in the alps idea is better though.

[(Anonymous)]

I still kinda want the young witch in the Alps DE, tbh. As written by someone who understands that - as one of the anons above pointed out - what makes the writing so "incredible" is how entrenched in the context of its "grimy" political and social issues, its unflinching exploration of how they intersect with the lives of the characters and their worldviews, with deft humour and genuine humanity. A game that delves just deeply into neo-paganism, misogyny, rural isolationism/poverty/gentrification, etc.

If the twitter OP understands this and also wants this, awesome, but if this isn't what they mean, then they don't understand why DE was so excellent, and they fully deserve the anti-cozy dunking they got.