Tag: video games

On NPC Gaze

I started my video game journey in earnest with Pokemon back when I was a wee demon living in suburbia. Pokemon is well-known for its clueless NPCs and how invasive you can be in their lives. Now, let’s back up: an NPC is a non-playable character in a video game. Typically they hang out in the background and only provide things to move the plot along or are just random extras. Sometimes they’re given really fun lines but for the most part they are meant to let you continue on in your own quest for fame and in-game self-importance. 

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has changed that for me in a way that I currently find unsettling and interesting. Animal Crossing is a game in which you (player and character) live on a land or island with villagers that are your neighbors and you help them out with mundane tasks and interact with them on a daily basis creating strange parasocial relationships with fictional characters. As stated, I started my journey with RPGs with Pokémon and for the most part the NPCs in any given region are pretty linear with their motivations and movements. Sure, they can walk around and move around but they rarely seem to exist outside of you. The houses don’t feel lived in, the parks don’t feel full, they are ghosts that fill a landscape for you: the hero of a Nietzschean wet dream. You walk into a house and rummage around the trash for goods and talk to someone, sometimes but for the most part, the unmoving digital eyes care little for your activities or actions. It’s perfectly normal within Pokémon to walk into someone’s home, steal their shit and leave. 

Animal Crossing is not Pokemon and I didn’t think that fact would unnerve me until I tried to leave Rocco’s house without saying anything. I had entered in the hopes of giving him a gift to build clout, I mean because he deserved it for doing nothing, and when I found him working away at his workstation, I left without acknowledging him. I was shocked to see how he reacted to that. Of course he would react and not kindly but with confusion. I entered his home and said nothing; that’s deranged and rude. But Rocco was confused and that gave me pause for the first time in my decades of playing video games. NPCs are watching me. I never worried about that until recently. I never cared about how I dressed in-game or how I behaved but now playing Animal Crossing I feel like I have eyes on me all the time. Characters’ eyes follow me when I run around; when I enter their homes and greet them they are often interrupted from a previous task. When I don’t see them, they are disappointed and when I talk to them too much, they comment on that. 

They have lives outside of me: something I rarely have had to think about for an NPC. I am part of their world, not a part of mine like most traditional narrative structure in games.My villagers are neighbors, on par and equal to me. While I am the main character, I am in many ways in service to them. I have to weed and water and pick up rocks and fill the museum and catch bugs and fish and keep the entire economy running by selling to a gaggle of capitalist tanuki. 

It created along with it a strange short of shame to me that I rarely feel in video games: most games allow players to be shameless with their dress and actions. You are the ubermensch of this world and it bends to your will. So what if I break into someone’s house in Legend of Zelda. But in Animal Crossing the characters have a life outside of you. They leave their homes, they sleep, they fish, they do things where you don’t matter; where I don’t matter. I am as much an NPC to them as they are to me. They are people creatures who truthfully would probably be fine without me sans “missing” my character and things getting full of weed because someone has to do the damn work around here. 

I’m a vain person, which is hilarious considering how low my self-esteem is. I’m image conscious even in games. I had this concern while playing Animal Crossing when Clyde, a horse I do not like, showed up on my island. I was told by friends that hitting him with my net and generally being a damn menace would encourage the horse to leave. I was fine with that, I’m used to being a sociopath in games and decided that I wanted to appropriate his land for my Japanese-themed garden on the island and proceeded to hunt the horse down mercilessly and hit him with my net repeatedly. I was then shocked to see the horse show visible frustration and sadness and when I spoke to him he said that his feelings were hurt and it was my fault. 

My fault?

This is a video game. This horse isn’t real. But I broke down over that. I hurt the horse’s feelings and hurt him. And while of course that makes sense because don’t hit random people with nets, for god’s sake, I was shocked that my actions had consequences. In video games, I am a lawless sociopath doing as I wish but here I did something that caused a reaction and one that was not positive. I was emotionally crushed in that moment (thanks, trauma) and I have left the horse alone for now to continue to mar my land with his existence but too afraid now to harm him. 

An NPC’s gaze can be powerful, more so than I ever assumed before. Now, I am paranoid, anxious and scared with so many virtual eyes on me. It has affected how I dress, act and move in-game and now has me wondering if I’ll ever view NPCs the way I used to again. 

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Embracing My Gender Fluidity with Animal Crossing

I realized that I wasn’t exactly my gender when I was in high school, around 16 or so. Then and even now, I was fine with my biological sex as female but the presentation of said biological sex and the presentation of the associating gender as woman was something I waffled on. I was mostly fine with presenting as female, using female pronouns and living my life as a female; but during those formative high school years there was a quiet storm starting to rumble, one that was not decidedly female or feminine. For the longest time, I thought I was transgender but I didn’t experience any dsyphoria. I didn’t feel wrong in my body; just not entirely a female. There was a male part of me that the longer I tried to deny, the more stark and apparent he became. 

I found out what I was about a year or so into my journey: genderfluid. Gender fluidity is under the umbrella of being non-binary, rejecting a strict binary of gender slotting people rigidly into male or female. There is a distinct difference in every part of me while presenting as female and presenting as male and both sides are different but united under one roof being my human meat shell. But I still present as female almost every day of my life. I don’t have an issue with being seen as and perceived as a woman and those close to me know about the male side of me that I don’t hide when in more intimate spaces. 

Recently I started playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons; yes, I know I’m late to the party, I’ve been playing Pokemon Sword for hours in a fugue depressive state. When I finally started the island slice-of-life game, I immediately tried to win over my villagers through gifts (as you do); mostly trying very hard to fit gifts to their personalities. But I quickly started simply regifting gifts I had received or items that I didn’t want to keep but also didn’t feel like selling back to the capitalistic tanukis. I would give male characters dresses, tank tops, skirts and female characters all sorts of sports memorabilia and it was all okay. Rocco accepted lacy tanks, Sheldon was fine with dresses, Clay was okay with getting cute pink items and is perfect in every way. 

I spent a great amount of time trying to get my house looking just right and for a while I was greatly troubled with how girly my home on my fictional island looked. Lots of floral wallpapers and pink and a galaxy floor for some reason. I worried that it wasn’t gender neutral enough or masculine enough but then I remembered something about my own gender: it’s fluid. I am both at the time, I am one or the other, a mix of the two, perfectly unbalanced and wonderful for it. 

I am a lot of things that are in contradiction: a goth, a pastel girly girl; a charming prince and a doting princess. That binary, that duality has always been part of me and I’ve always found it beautiful. I’m no less a goth because I like pink and no less a masculine because of it in the same way Rocco is no less male-coded if he’s in a frilly dress. That’s the funny thing about gender; it’s all a social construct. Pink was a masculine color until society just one day decided it wasn’t. Dresses were for men until society just one day decided it wasn’t. Clothes aren’t inherently gendered; nothing really is. Humans decided what is gendered and the arbitrariness of it has impacted the lives of trans and non-binary people for far too long. Capitalism made gendered products and thus created this artificial concept that products can be for some or for others.

Animal Crossing has been a game that lets me be unabashedly girly while not feeling like I’m sacrificing any of my masculinity and reminding me that, in fact, such a notion is a fool’s errand. Liking pink and flowers and nice clothes and rooms to coordinate with a sense of flow and purpose is not inherently gendered. Liking men’s clothing and dresses at the same time shouldn’t be so revolutionary. And the fact that Animal Crossing is so gender queer is just wonderful, even down to the character design. Looking at my little avatar running around depending on the haircut; very few gendered clues are provided as all character models are flat-chested and without difference in hip shape. It means that building what we know as male and female is entirely down to filigree; decoration that is added to a human body but with a simple swap can mean radical difference. 

For a while, I had attempted to strive for something that would look like gender neutrality: favoring lots of black and white, signing off letters and emails with a simple non-gendered “A” and thinking that despite the ample bust and wide hips that if I just tried hard enough I could pass for male and thus provide my gender fluidity. But even then all I was doing was trying to perform at gender. I was trying so hard to make people see something that truthfully, I didn’t need them to see. What matters is and forever will be, how I feel. Gender is a tricky thing; all at once very real and also very tenuous and fleeting and even though I am lucky enough not to feel much dysphoria ( I do sometimes when being labeled as female is used inherently as a means of condescension or with certain hormonal imbalances caused by the curse of being a biological woman); I have to give some thanks to a video game about capitalism, colonialism and terraforming for helping teach me a valuable lesson about my gender identity. 

Happy Pride, everyone. Be open, be kind, be empathetic and most importantly; when applicable, be yourself. And never forget that gender is entirely a social construct. 

What Bejeweled Taught Me About My Anxiety

In the days when my mother had a job and did work in an office, there was one interesting constant that I remember and that was the game Bejeweled. The gem matching game was installed on her desktop; likely something to do when she had down time in the office. Mother was a receptionist and she did inevitably have down time; it was also great for me because on the few days I had to be in office waiting for her to get off of work after school. I loved the game as it was mindless entertainment and my mother loved it as it kept me quiet as she finished out her work day. 

My relationship with video games is a complicated one. I like things that help me escape the realities of existence. I like mindless things. I like distractions. I like to escape. It’s one of the reasons I obsess over games like Pokemon and Cooking Mama. I am a neurotic little monster so anything that lets me escape into a world that has fewer problems, idealized people and simple tasks that can distract me: I’m all in. There’s a reason my CurryDex in Pokemon Sword is as stellar as it is or why I have such a great high score in Cooking Mama. It’s easy to want to keep trying to make the same thing over and over again but if I fail; it’s difficult to beat myself up over. If I don’t become champion of Galar, it’s okay; that’s not tied to my self-worth (but let’s be real; I easily defeated Leon and I am proudly Galar’s champion). It’s one of the reasons I like playing fighting games alone; the stakes are low. I don’t have to worry about losing to someone else, the only person who stands to lose or stands to be affected is myself. 

So when my mental health recently became the worst it had ever been and I found my phone once more devoid of all games after finally giving up on Pokemon Masters; I downloaded Bejeweled on a whim and the process of playing Bejeweled has taught me a lot about myself, my anxiety and my mental health. 

Bejeweled is a puzzle matching game so it’s great to keep my mind on something that isn’t the futility of life, how many errors (most likely imagined) I made during the day, how miserable I am, how alone I am and how much I miss my parents. I responded well to the patterns, the colors and the need to continue to feed my starved brain some dopamine when I felt I did a good job or cleared a level. It mostly became a mindless thing to do while laying in bed and waiting for sleep to take me. 

Bejeweled recently added a feature that was fascinating to me which was a Zen mode. Zen mode is an endless, you cannot lose version of the game that allows the anxious to just swipe jewels forever in hopes of easing worried minds. In Zen mode there are ambient noises and something I did not expect; positive affirmations. Now, many know that positive affirmations don’t always work for the anxious. It was hard to believe that I was worthy of good things or a magnet of success when I barely felt like leaving my bed. 

Recently, I’ve been taking my mental health more seriously and those steps mean taking a good hard look at myself and my thought processes and Bejeweled has brought to center all of the things I can’t stand about myself. One is the negative self-talk and worthlessness; not being able to believe those positive affirmations. Another is getting lost in the forest for the trees; I’ve noticed that I’ll get stuck on a level only to come back to it hours later and find that the solution was right in front of me. And a third was impatience. I get ahead of myself easily and I get easily discouraged because I don’t feel a great deal of self-worth. 

I didn’t think that a simple game would be better at shining a light on my emotional issues than years of therapy would be. I didn’t think I could find so much comfort in a simple gem matching game would help me find something to do when my mind raced and when my thoughts turned cruel and hateful. I didn’t think that Bejeweled would be the thing that distracted me and kept me grounded when I was stressed out and miserable. It became something to keep my hands busy, my mind focused and my soul at ease. 

And as my mental health improves (albeit, slowly) it’s easier to find those little affirmations less disingenuous and more relatable. It got easier to sleep. It got easier to teach myself to let my thoughts wander to other things that weren’t self-loathing. And I do hope it continues to get easier. The last few weeks have been complicated. I faced a lot of backlash over a post I wrote, honestly, one of the first times that’s happened on my blog. I had the anniversary of my father’s death as well as work stress and other personal things that make my already hectic life more hectic. 

There’s a place in the world for mindless distraction. There’s a place for the anxious for mindless entertainment and a certain comfort in routine and simple pleasures. It’s nice to let my mind wander now as I play Bejeweled to calm down, I feel less hopeless and less strange. Remember when I mentioned that I quit playing Pokemon Go? Maybe I was hasty. There’s nothing wrong with having something that gives you an anchor. And if my relationship with Bejeweled ever becomes such that it is a distraction from people, then I’ll delete that game from my phone as well. But for now; it’s a nice vacation with ambient sounds, positive affirmations and an endless sea of colorful gems to keep me occupied in my darkest hours. 

On Completing the Kanto Dex

When I got Pokemon: Let’s Go Eevee last year, I wrote that it was everything I’ve ever wanted in a Pokemon game. It allowed me to pick a non-traditional starter (in this case an Eevee) and allowed me to dress it up like a pet and let me dress up a character that got to be a younger version of myself as I was doing the Kanto run. Longtime readers will know that I have played almost every Pokemon game that has come out except for a few of the fighting tournament ones and the one weirder JRPG one that I don’t think any American played. And if you have been reading the blog for a while, you also know that I am an avid Pokemon Go player and one of the things I’ve especially loved about Let’s Go is its integration with Pokemon Go. That integration comes in the form of a very clever little feature that allows you to transfer Pokemon over from the mobile game to the console game. And since I’ve logged too many damn hours in playing Pokemon Go and a nearly questionable amount of hours playing Let’s Go, I’m about to hit a milestone. I am one Pokemon away from finishing up the original Kanto Pokedex.

Now, I’m giving myself a pass on two Pokemon since Let’s Go comes out during a strange time in Pokemon History with well over 800 Pokemon and that pass I’m giving myself is Meltan and Melmetal. I don’t need them for the Pokedex and they take too much effort to evolve. I’ll get there just not today.

Let’s back up for those who have not managed to sink two decades into the Pokemon franchise. The PokeDex or Pokemon Index keeps a tally of all the Pokemon you’ve seen and/or captured during your journey. Each new region in the Pokemon world has their own Dex and completing the Dex is one of the ultimate goals of the franchise. It’s given to you early in your Pokemon journey and shows you how far you’ve come or how far you still have to go on your quest.

I’m competitive. Most people who know me know that. But on a first glance, I don’t come off as a very competitive person. This is mostly mitigated because I play a lot of games by myself. It’s hard to be outwardly competitive when it’s about beating your personal best and the few games that I do play with others tend to be more friendly. It’s one of the reasons why the boys (Ricky and Carlos) and I like Pokemon so much. Even though there is a bit of friendly competition, of course there is, it’s more about helping each other, supporting each other and talking about the game with each other. That was especially true during our run of Pokemon X/Y and Carlos’ fervor to complete the Pokedex had its benefits, I got Pokemon I wanted while still playing the game at my pace. Here’s a funny thing about me. I tend to rush. I am very goal-oriented. My goal when I play Pokemon is to be the very best and that means completing the main story. During my Kalos run, I beat the main story in less than 24 hours and I missed a lot of side quests and caught only the Pokemon I wanted and that I thought were cute and/or useful to me. But I didn’t mind that because it wasn’t like I’d never return to the game again. Since then I’ve logged over 200 hours in the Kalos region and have explored many small homes, trash cans and skated around not-France France while flirting with a very hot regional professor.

Carlos was determined to complete the Kalos Dex as he had not played a Pokemon game since Hoenn but I was content to spoil my Fennekin and enjoy all the clothes I could buy. We just play the game differently and there’s no wrong way to play. One of the benefits of Carlos’ desire to be the very best was the occasional message where he’d offer up a legendary or a shiny because through extensive trades he had a surplus of legendaries for some reason.

But it’s just never been my primary concern to finish the PokeDex especially as the number of Pokemon ballooned from a daunting 150/151 to now well over 800. I’m content to collect the Pokemon I want and keep the ones I like and the rest of the Dex be damned. Especially because most of the games now have many game-locked types of Pokemon from game specific legendaries to different types of Pokemon entirely based on which one of the game you get. Fortunately, between me and the boys, we typically have each variant game covered so if someone really wants a particular Pokemon, there is a friend who likely has it.

But with all the hours I have logged in Pokemon Go I have amassed quite the collection of Pokemon and the ability to transfer from the app to the game I was able to fill in many of the gaps I have in the PokeDex from my race to be the Pokemon League Champion.

It actually took me a while to sync up my app to my console version of the game. I was having fun running around playing with my Eevee and exploring the very familiar nostalgic region that is Kanto: where many of us started our Pokemon journey decades ago.

It was when I finally did start to sync some Pokemon in that I realized that I was very close to finishing up the coveted Kanto Pokedex. Something I have not done, well, to be honest: ever. I for sure didn’t care about catching them all when I was 6 and by the time I was more serious about the games around the time Crystal and Ruby/Sapphire came out, a Dex of a few hundred seemed daunting and like a challenge. It took a few transfers to really make me understand that I was very close to doing something that was quite a challenge.

So by the time you’re reading this post, I’m likely tormenting a Goldeen because Seaking is the last one I need after I move one Mew over (that’s why it doesn’t count in the tally: I already have the Mew).

And that eagerness to finish the Dex, finish the list, be the best has been thrilling. I feel like it’s an accomplishment. At the end, you get a little certificate for finishing the Dex and the thought of having a little set of pixels that said I did something is a pretty powerful motivator.

I’m not delusion. I know this is a game made for children but I’m genuinely excited. Every time this dumb fish Pokemon gains a level, I’m one step closer to my goal. One step closer to a goal 20 years in the making and a bond decades old with Pokemon and me.

I’m on my way to being the very best like no one ever was and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Pink Games Matter

I was like, 'I want us to stop using that term. I'm not a 'girl gamer.' I'm just a gamer.' The reasons I love gaming are the same reasons everyone loves gaming. Aisha TylerRead more at_
I got a Gameboy as a kid because I spent a lot of time inside. It was too hot during the Summer months to leave a little asthmatic like me out in the oppressive heat of the Texas Summer months. So out of school and with little activities, I was given my first handheld in 1998 with a copy of Pokemon Red. I had a magenta one, of course. And I have lots of memories from my first Gameboy Color. I remember Pokemon and Tarzan. I remember Donkey Kong Country and getting more Pokemon Games but the game I remember most is Barbie Ocean Discovery. For those of you who don’t know, Barbie Ocean Discovery is a game made for girls that features around Barbie exploring the ocean. You get to swim around, collect items, talk to fish, search for treasure and solve puzzles. This game absolutely is a Pink Game. Pink Games are games marketed towards young girls because apparently, gendered items are very real. Pink Games usually had pink art and pink game cartridges hence the title. Because if it’s girly: it’s pink.


So while I’m here to cop to some of the inherent misogyny that comes with Pink Games and game marketing, I want to sing some of the praises of Pink Games and Pink Gaming.


Pink Games get a really bad reputation for being deeply rooted in some ideas that the patriarchy has about what is important to girls: fashion, pets, cooking and the like. Pink Games assume that girls don’t want to be the very best or be world champion in a fighting tournament. Girls want to ride horses and swim with dolphins and be fashion designers. Sure, some girls do but this biological woman wanted to be both. I was always a weirdly gender queer kid, I suppose it makes sense. I always liked both. I liked sports and dance. I liked stuffed animals but with an edge (note, I recently found my much beloved Stuffed Velociraptor from my childhood).


So while I played a ton of Pokemon as a kid, as a teen, the games I remember the most is Cooking Mama. Cooking Mama is a very Japanese Pink Game where you play as Mama who is a dutiful housewife who cooks and cleans and has an entire game empire with cooking, crafting and running cake shops. You want camping or science? That’s up to Papa and he’s the one that controls the outdoor stuff or the science. Because remember: girls don’t like science. Girls like stringing fake beads.
And some of the earliest experiences I have with online gaming aren’t Runescape or Gaia, it’s dressing up Barbie online and playing Neopets. These little Flash games were intensely important to my early gaming career and that continued on despite the changes in handhelds and how much I cared about trading card games.
But as a stressed out college student, Cooking Mama was a welcomed distraction from my coursework and busy anime club. I took pleasure in being able to slice fake onions and blow into my DS mic despite being asthmatic. And while during college I played the hell out of Pokemon Platinum I used Cooking Mama to unwind. A lot of the recipes in the game I made for my friends and kouhai and it was comforting to have someone encourage me when I did well or scold me when I failed miserably and brought dishonor to the household.


If you open up the dictionary to “casual gamer” there’s an unflattering photo of me in it. Sure, I play a lot of games now: still mostly Pokemon but with the recent PS4 purchase I’ve gotten back into fighting games and into Persona 5 (a noted departure for me). But I wouldn’t be where I am now without the importance of some Pink Games. Ocean Discovery was one but it opened me up to realizing that I didn’t have to sacrifice being a “girl” and liking video games. Even now I struggle with being a “girl gamer” not just because I even struggle with gendering myself at times. I am a human person who plays video games and gendering items to me is silly. Some of the most talented people playing Overwatch that I know are biologically female and there are male friends of mine that enjoy Dance Dance Revolution more than I do (which is a lot).


Pink Games are often maligned for being too easy and pushing gender roles and yes, many of them do that. Super Princess Peach uses Peach’s emotions as weapons and is intensely dumbed down in places in comparison to some of the earlier Super Mario games and let’s pause for a moment of the metaphorical importance of one of the few female characters in the Mario franchise using her emotions as weapons to defeat enemies. But despite the thinly veiled misogyny, it’s a super fun game. I love me a good platformer and Super Princess Peach is a fun platformer.


It’s easy to shame NintenDogs and older pink games like Barbie Ocean Discovery but for a generation of girls, it was a great way to break into a world that to them seemed alien. Games just weren’t for girls. It just wasn’t lady like and I hope that most were like me and grew up with the sense or had the family and friends to later ignore labels and do what they wanted. I was lucky, I quickly found what I liked and stopped caring about being judged. I took pleasure in being the best Soul Calibur player that my friends knew and being an excellent shot in Halo. I had to. It wasn’t enough to be biologically a girl and to just be good at a game: I had to be the best. Even now, that means being the best I can at Street Fighter (which I am now very bad at) and doing my best in Pokemon (yes, still playing that damn franchise).


I’ll never forget playing Smash Bros in Travis Park on my DS and having a man stop me to say:
“Woah. You’re playing a game? I didn’t know girls played games.”
To which I promptly responded:
“Of course girls play games. But girls play games at home because men like you still feel the need to comment on girls playing games like me.”


The idea that games are still considered to be not ladylike is a struggle. We’ve made lots of progress since I was a youngling back in the time when dinosaurs roamed but we still have progress to make.
And this is the place where I’ll let the folks in the back say:
“Well, the trends show that women don’t play games the same as men.”


Sure, there are some games that women are more likely to play: Bejewled, Candy Crush, Farmville. Those types of Mom-Bored-At-PTA-Meeting type of games are very commonly played by women but that ignores all the men playing Words with Friends online. Yes, there are genres of games almost entirely played by men but that speaks to the issue of girls “talking” about what they are playing. Have we all forgotten GamerGate and the moment when girls had to return to the shadows with our charging cables and game cases?


I have fond memories of playing girly games. I still play Cooking Mama and I still stick to girly characters in fighting games because they are fast. I still have the best dressed character in Pokemon and still run mostly with contests and happily a member of the B-Button Club. I loved my pink Gameboy color, my purple Gameboy Advance and there’s a purple sticker on my Gameboy Advance SP. And while it’s easy to say “just separate gender from gaming” this is also a person who legit cried during Pokemon X/Y when I could make a little brown character that looked like me down to the impeccable fashion sense. Denying that a person can be girly and be a serious gamer is not incompatible and that also doesn’t mean that a male or male-aligned human can love the hell out of some DesignStar.


And gender aside, there was a certain safety in in Pink Games. They were safe spaces. There wasn’t a ton of smack talking, no abuse, no one being cruel to each other except for me playing Babysitting Mama with friends and spiking the Baby Doll stuffed up with the WiiMote because it wouldn’t stop crying. Hop on any Call of Duty server and watch the abuse flow like water. Not to say that it’s unbearable and that many women don’t face such a thing with great tact or with an immense lack of tact (no shame, ladies. ). But for many women (this biologically female author included) use games to escape and my escape doesn’t need violently chirping voices in my head. I’m much happier going through an AI run in Castlevania: Judgement. The only person being cruel to me when I play Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop is Mama when I press too hard on the piping bag.


I hope you all appreciated this little dive into Pink Games and gaming in general. In the comments below, I’d love to hear what sort of games you’re playing. If you ask nicely, I may even swap Friend Codes or PSN names with you.

All That is Old is New Again

juvenoia (uncountable)(neologism) The fear or hostility directed by an older generation toward a younger one, or toward youth culture in general..jpg

I was born in the glorious 90s. And because of that, I am nostalgic for the late 90s and the early to mid 2000s. And while I’ve talked before about how important being a 90s kid is to me, I wanted to talk about the generational divide and why it’s strange being stuck in a nostalgia-loop.

From television, to movies to music: it seems like we’ve been stuck in a perpetual loop that glorifies the 1980s and 1990s. And that makes sense: many of the media creatives that are major producers now were born in the 1980s: it would make sense for them to want to look back to a simpler time that meant a lot to them.

There’s this thing called a nostalgia cycle: it’s a funny sort of thing. It essentially states that the media that is popular reflects an era that’s either 10, 20, 30 or 40 years from the current year. Think of the 1990s being nostalgic for the 50s and 60s. And I’m far from the first essayist to comment on this nostalgia cycle but it’s worth mentioning because it does seem to be never-ending. But there’s one aspect of it that I think we’re missing when we talk about weaponized nostalgia: it’s been surprisingly forgetful of the past while claiming to be doing something new.

I’m writing this right before Black Panther hits theaters here in the U.S. and for many this is the first black-led superhero movie. [update: I did see Black Panther and the movie is out and successful!] To which, many and all comic book fans roll their eyes. Blade is hilariously underrated and fantastic and was a black-led superhero movie in the 1990s. Not to say that I am not excited about Black Panther nor do I hope to quell any of the hype any folks may have for this film: it is a big deal but it isn’t the first anything right now.

Similarly, almost all the music that is popular nowadays seems to sound just like music did when I was growing up. Lots of house beats, tons of 80s synth influence and way too many songs that never end and just repeat lyrics. Not to mention that fact that we have yet to seem to get rid of the girl/boy band.

I think I’m most struck by this because I have a younger cousin who stands in as the avatar straw-man of all the reasons 90s kids are at odds with Gen Z and why Baby Boomers must hate us damn millennials. When I was home for Christmas, I got to sit and watch the yearly ritual of him receiving hundreds of dollars in gifts because he is an only child like I am and thus is spoiled rotten as I was. This year, he received an outfit that I’m almost certain my elementary school classmates wore from the sunglasses to the dark khaki joggers and a very retro looking smartwatch: hell, I think it still had a calculator on it. And in a brief moment of time that was only the two of us: I could hear him reciting the lyrics to Good Morning, a song from Kanye West that I love and is now nearly 10 years old. Everything from the yuppie fashion to the questionable music choice made me think of myself when I was his age now almost 15 years ago.

I’m also very torn by how sanitized the narratives are for this new wave of nostalgia. Sure, the 90s and the 2000s were great but they weren’t perfect. We had racism, school shootings, terrorism, inequality and all the things we still have just with more Spice Girls and legitimate battles over which boy band was better. But if you look at Stranger Things, a love letter to the 1980s, you’d think the 80s was a magical time where nothing bad happened and racism wasn’t a thing and political correctness existed. But we’ve been bad about that for some time. I’m reminded of the Johnny Rocket’s franchise, which begs you to think of the 1950s as a time for sock hops and milkshakes and not Civil Rights battles and police brutality.

It’s especially troubling considering that we’ve taken nostalgia to it’s only logical place which is to make huge profits off it.  F.Y.E. just had a huge promotion selling Reptar Bars, a part of my childhood from Rugrats that I always wanted to eat but never could: they also briefly sold Reptar Cereal and while the sale went over great: it did seem out of place. I hadn’t given thought to Rugrats as a show for years: I’m pushing 30 and that was  T.V. show I watched as literal child.  There seems to be no end to the things that want to push anniversaries and the nearly endless stream of reboots, remakes, sequels, prequels and more that make it seem like all the things I knew as a child never really left.

If you asked me at 16 if I’d still be playing Pokemon, Street Fighter and still listening to Kanye West and The Killers while there would still be Star Wars movies: I would have first had a lot of questions about how time travel works and then probably say that such a thing wouldn’t make sense. One would assume that media would move on, one would assume that as technology progressed: we’d make progress and not just nicer versions of old things we loved. Now, don’t get me wrong, it was lovely getting a stylish Castlevania anime but I’d also love that energy placed into something new and original.

I’ve talked about nostalgia before when it comes to Pokemon: Sun/Moon and Pokemon: Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon and how its marketing and gameplay centered around the nostalgia of late 20-somethings like me who had been playing the games for all these years and understood and respected such callbacks. But is the game so enjoyable if you don’t know these references: my little cousin likely get through the game but he wouldn’t have the gut punch I did seeing Red and Gary show up like traveling boyfriends asking about this new Hawaii-like region. So why put them in there? If the average actual player of a Pokemon game isn’t likely to get that reference: why put it there? And that’s the issue with our current weaponized nostalgia. It isn’t done to teach, improve or just enjoy: it’s there because it’s there.

And the sad thing is:  we keep buying into it. I’m not sure if you are aware but at least here in parts of the great old United States, things are a hot hot mess: we’re using media to escape our current realities more and more as we refuse to face the current situation of an orange-tinted warmonger in office and issues like racism, homophobia, violence and the threat of terrorism, war and natural disasters. And this isn’t new: we’ve been escaping reality for as long as we could through story, substance and more but at least when I was younger: all of this was new. When I was 12 and saw InuYasha for the first time, it was radically new and different. When I was 10 and arguing with friends over which Boy Band was the best: it was because music like that hadn’t been explored in such a way. When I was 9 playing Pokemon, no game like that had been crafted and distributed for American children. And that’s what this nostalgia cycle is leaving behind: sure, the 1990s were cool and the 2000s were the best: but what made them great was innovation: we didn’t stay stuck thinking of how cool the 1950s were. We did meditate on those things briefly while still continuing to move forward.  

The Case for Gatekeepers

We build too many walls and not enough bridges. (1).png

I come from a darker era for comic book fandom and really, general nerd-kind. I remember being told over and over again that I wasn’t a real fan because I was biologically female. I was told that I couldn’t be that into comics. I was clearly just doing it for attention. I was clearly just there because I only thought the covers were pretty. And psychologically, that’s really hecking damaging. It’s frustrating having to constantly prove that you are a fan of something. I was quizzed, questioned and dismissed so many times that I just came to accept it and now that we are in a halcyon era of comic book movies and nerd acceptance but maybe… just maybe gatekeeping wasn’t so bad in places.

Let’s take a minute to go over some vocabulary. Gatekeeping is a sociology and recently appropriated fan term that essentially means more “experienced” fans act as, well, gatekeepers and use their knowledge in a certain property or fandom to keep novice or newer fans out. We see this sort of phenomena in a lot in the cringe-inducing comic book guy in most television shows. Think The Simpsons or the literal entire cast of The Big Bang Theory or literally any other popular thing. They all have the same comic book dude who can’t hold a conversation about anything real but will be mad at you if you don’t know exactly what shade of pantone pink the Star Sapphire uniforms are. The normal avatar for this sort of person is usually a white, cis, hetero male and because of that, the view of any other fan that is of color, queer, or female (or a combination of any of those things) is somehow immediately less of a fan. This is also sometimes called fan-gating but that term makes me giggle so I’m just going to use gatekeeping.

The problem is that Gatekeepers think they’re doing a good thing. They think they are protecting their beloved media and often times, they are. Comic books were not always as mainstream as they are now and the knowledge so many comic book fans had (have) was not always valued and was often a source of ridicule and persecution. I was often teased for being able to recite Etrigan’s spell from memory. (I still can, don’t judge me.)

Now, let’s be clear. I am in no way advocating for the gatekeeping of ye olden days. That gatekeeping meant to keep women, queer folks, POCs and others out of comic books, videos games and the like because it was a white man’s hobby. And while, no, that isn’t the view of every comic book fan or generalized nerd human it certainly was the driving force for many of them in the comic world in the 90s and early 2000s (when I was a young impressionable comic book reader). To this day, there are still men who insist that girls only read comics for cosplay and that POCs simply don’t read comic books (It’s almost like black people didn’t make their own comic book line or anything like that…).

Here is also where I’ll pause for all the folks who think that me being quizzed over the canonical order of the Robins in Batman is a valid thing to do as I try to purchase a comic book from a store. (Real thing that happened: ask Carlos.).

I’ll wait.

Glad to have you back. This chapter in Moon Knight was getting a little intense.

So after all that talk about how dehumanizing, exhausting, racist, sexist and miserable gatekeeping was and is…why would I possibly ever say that maybe it isn’t so bad?

Remember that statement I made about comic books and other geeky, nerdy things now coming into mainstream popularity? That was not a thing even 10 years ago (back when the first Avengers movie was barely a concept and we were all still angry at Joel Schumacher for ruining Batman.). And there were plenty of people (me included) who have now found themselves in a curious place. Suddenly, the things we love(d) are now very popular. And that means those folks that teased many of us (me included) now suddenly very en vogue. I’ve had old high school friends suddenly claim that it’s so cool they know a cosplayer: the same folks that 10 long years ago was a sore subject and the butt of many jokes towards me. Now the jock that used to make fun of me for liking The Green Lantern is very excited about Guardians of the Galaxy movies.

Now, can people change? Sure. Am I being a little petty? Always. But I think it brings up a valid point. With the influx of new fans, the conversations can be a little strained now. Now we have plenty of folks who say they know comics based on the movies but likely couldn’t tell you much beyond that. Now, casual fans are fine and I love them but most casual fans don’t claim to be experts. It’s the folks that will step to other fans and say they know comics but only do because they’ve seen Captain America: Civil War three times. In so many other fields, I am a dirty casual. I’m a casual gamer, pretty novice with RPGs and while I used to be a strong tournament contender in a few things, I’m by no means as good at Street Fighter as I used to be.

“Stay in your lane.” is a shorthand for that kind of thing I use a lot and a few of my friends have picked it up, too. When Carlos and Ricky are talking stats in Tekken, I tend to shut up and let them. If they ask about stitches, well, it’s my time to shine then.

Another aspect of gatekeeping is one close to my heart and a topic we’ve tackled before. It’s the topic of having convictions, discussions and not being reduced to name-calling when someone doesn’t agree with your ship. During many a gatekeeper’s conversation, I’ve had to defend which Lantern Corps I was in. Which Harry Potter house I was sorted into. I had to explain why I liked a comic and had to prove my knowledge of it frequently. And sure, it was demoralizing and exhausting but it made a fan with iron-clad convictions. When I was on my dear friend Heather’s show ( seriously, listen to it and enjoy several minutes of us fangirling over each other. ) we discussed this sort of phenomena and it comes down to attachment styles. Because I had to constantly fight and prove what I loved an why I was a fan: I have now been able to form secure attachments to my fandoms. Newer fans that have not had to constantly prove themselves have formed insecure attachments often times because they are not being challenged. Because of that, any challenge is perceived as a threat on their person rather than an often times valid criticism of the piece of media they wish to defend.

Now, that doesn’t mean that I wish for the same horrible experience I had as a fan to happen to newer and casual fans. No, not at all. But there is something to be said about challenging a fan. I have this problem a lot with recent film criticism where Internet critics will bash a thing from a comic book movie even though it is likely the most authentic part of the film.

There’s something to be said about being challenged from time to time. There’s something to be said about having to defend your ship. There’s something to be said about being proven right or wrong. And there’s always room for a good, spirited conversation that doesn’t devolve into racial slurs and casually calling someone a homophobe.

In the comments: I’ll be answering questions and ranting about how amazing Damien Wayne is.

Thanks for reading!

 

A Direct Hit to Nostalgia: Intertextuality in Pokemon Sun and Moon

“Nostalgia is an illness for those who haven't realized that todayis tomorrow's nostalgia.” ― Zeena Schreck.png

Intertextuality is a zeigeisty kind of word. It essentially means a call back in a current piece of media to a further piece of media in that franchise history. It’s been used a lot by video essayists and it’s a fine word but one I don’t use a lot in day to day speech because I find it pretentious. But it’s appropriate for my point. So minor spoilers for games. Sit back and relax. We’re going to talk about a firm grip on the nostalgia and when a callback is not genuine.

I’ve been playing Pokemon for 20 years now. I remember getting Pokemon Red in 1996-7 and enjoyed the game as much as a 6 or 7 year old could. It wasn’t until Pokemon Crystal or really even Pokemon Ruby that I decided to sell my soul to Nintendo and to the franchise. I have since played every game that has come out. Well, the mainstream ones. Never did play that weird JRPG one. But after 20 years of Pokemon, I’ve seen the games reach epic highs like Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon X/Y and I’ve seen it hit some lows like Pokemon Sun/Moon and Pokemon Alpha Sapphire/Omega Ruby.

I’ve gone on record that Sun/Moon were not my favorites. Despite giving me my favorite round owl son I had serious issues with the game. I didn’t like that the game was hand-holding and too easy. I hated the Rotom-dex. I thought the story was lacking and overall, I just didn’t enjoy the game. But the game had a troubling side since the start: it was aggressively pandering towards us older 20-somethings while also making a game that was built clearly for Japanese children. Each ad for the game made callbacks to the older games and that it’s been 20 years. The game brought back all sorts of things we knew and loved. A new tan Professor Oak. A new surfing Raichu (which Carlos hates). New forms of old Pokemon. Sun/Moon was nostalgia: the game.

And while I bit on the nostalgia, I slogged through the game. And in my key attention to detail as I begrudgingly played through a game I bought with my own money, I noticed a few things. The first was Grimsley. Grimsley is one of the Elite 4 in Black/White and in Black/White 2 (close friends will notice that this is actually one of my favorite games). And there Grimsley was. On the beach. Dressed like Byakuya from Bleach. Ranting on and on about love and loss. I was floored! What was my darling Elite 4 trainer doing? Why was he in a kimono on the beach? Why is he giving me items? What is this nonsense? You do get some clues once you’ve dug deep into the lore but what was the point of adding Grimsley to the game? To give hope to people like me who had given up on the game up until that point?

Another instance was with Colress. Now, this one has a funny story. Carlos and I were playing Sun/Moon around the same time but he was way ahead of me because he liked the game more than I did. He mentioned meeting a man with strange hair and a Nintendo power glove in the game that gave him an item and he thought the man was really interesting. This was the same day Nintendo released a short centered in the Black/White universe of Unova where Colress is shown icing a bunch of people in a city to literal death. The game glosses over some of the violence but the short does not skip on the detail that people likely died as Colress and Team Plasma tried to find a way to better control Kyurem.

I immediately recognized Colress once I met him in game and went back to Carlos barking about how he shouldn’t trust a literal murderer. And sure enough, Colress gives you an item, babbles about research and leaves like he isn’t a snow killer.

What was the point of adding Colress? Was it just a cool callback? Were there no other scientists in game that weren’t evil that the writers couldn’t think of? No, it was just a cool callback to an earlier and much more loved part of the franchise.=

And this isn’t the first time Nintendo has weaponized nostalgia. Pokemon Alpha Sapphire/Omega Ruby was absolutely a giant direct hit to the nostalgia of adults like me who cut their teeth on Ruby/Sapphire and the additions made in the new game involved riding the mythical Latias/Latios and the brilliant Delta Episode which almost almost turned the game around for me. AS/OR was essentially just a retread of Ruby/Sapphire with updated graphics like Pokemon Emerald was. And those games do have value but when they’re done to just redo a game for a cash grab, it’s frustrating. Emerald at least added things to those first generation games that were rough around the edges and did not always age well.

The best parts of the newer games were the times they added to the foundations of the older games like X/Y. I loved being able to have a character with my skin tone and that could dress very fashionably. I loved being able to sit on benches and pet my Pokemon. I loved being able to roller skate around and be given Pokemon from games that I adored like Lucario and adding to its mythos rather than just dropping a Pokemon off and saying “Here, young adult. I hear you like nostalgia. Here’s a Pikachu with a hat. Enjoy your nostalgia and your half-baked game.”

We see intertexuality at work in a lot of video game and comic book movies. Many will be a comic book saga in name only like Captain America: Civil War which had very little actual Civil War and was mostly just Tony and Steve have a lover’s quarrel. We see Star Wars movies that essentially just redo the original trilogy with better graphics. Stranger Things is literally a show based on callbacks but Stranger Things does so with love and reverence while Star Wars: The Force Awakens is done to help hide some of the less than ideal storytelling.

Remember, nostalgia is only as good as the thing it’s based on and while I love Pokemon, my love is not enough to keep me motivated when a game’s only interest is reminding me of how great the 1990s were.


This was different and timely! I don’t do this very often. I mostly just wanted to rant. I am not enjoying Pokemon Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon like I thought I would. Motivate me to make my owl son proud.