Dupli's Library

This is a rather long essay that will contain spoilers for Carole & Tuesday (2019 anime), and while it is a show that I can't confidently recommend, I would prefer that you watch it for yourself and form your own opinion on it rather than be influenced by my own. That being said, prepare for some... less than ideal LGBTQ+ representation. Finally, I will be discussing politics from a pretty far-left wing perspective. If that bothers you, I ask that you leave now.

It's... difficult, to see flaws in something that you once loved. Especially when it's a piece of media that got you into anime as a whole. But no matter how much you love something, acknowledging its flaws is essential. But at surface level, Carole & Tuesday is... fine. It's a cute show about two girls who want to be the best in the music industry, not truly understanding the horror that lies within it. They are artists who are feeling the thrill of having created something for essentially the first time, and hoping to be able to profit from it. With this relatively simple premise, it may be hard to understand how in the world Carole & Tuesday managed to carry on for a full two seasons for 24 total episodes. The answer becomes obvious when you factor in a political subplot that becomes relevant in Season 2, along with the fact that Carole and Tuesday aren't actually the protagonists of the show. More on that later.

The most evident flaw that I first noticed when watching the show the first time was the LGBTQ+ representation. Across the entire show, there are six characters that fall under the LGBTQ+ umbrella (nine if you count all of the mermaid sisters as separate characters), and only a total of two are given any real care. These characters are two lesbians who show up for a grand total of one episode (sans the curtain call at the end of the show) and I think the number of lines of dialogue they have combined can be counted on two hands. This one smarts even more for me personally because the episode in question is otherwise kinda pointless in the grand scheme of the plot, and all it really does is some interesting character work for Gus, who I'll touch on more later. But all the other queer characters are all handled rather poorly, I feel. This certainly isn't a new opinion by any means, but it's almost alarming as to the sheer extent of it. I'll touch on Dahlia last because she's the most present of all of these characters, but after the lesbians, we meet Cybelle. It is never stated outright that she is gay, but the way she acts around Tuesday, and her general actions definitely make the intention clear. But she's presented as this crazy fan of Tuesday who, as soon as she gets even the slightest rejection from her crush, immediately does things to harm Tuesday. This isn't necessarily homophobic on its own, this is just a parasocial relationship gone too far, but Cybelle (along with Dahlia before her) is the start of a very worrying pattern in the show that, on an individual level, don't feel like anything major. But combined together, they form into something... less than ideal. Right before Cybelle goes crazy from Tuesday's slight refusal, we meet the Mermaid Sisters, four characters with pretty much the exact same design who are explicitly stated outright to be non-binary. They provide one of many instances of musical comedic relief in this show, with their song being entirely curse words over a very fun bouncy melody. Chances are if you didn't watch the show before reading this essay, you've probably seen the clip of that song going around on social media. It's a silly song, but they're taking part in a music competition on live TV, and their song quickly gets cut, and they get waved off the stage. And, in what is the second worst joke of the entire show, the four sisters get incredibly angry and violent at the decision, causing the staff to cut to commercial (would now be a good time to mention they are all also black? Cause yeah, REALLY bad look). Again, on its own, there's nothing inherently queerphobic about this moment. The decision wasn't made based on their identity, but the content of their song. And there's nothing explicitly about their identity that made the Mermaid Sisters fly into a fit, it can be read as simple anger at a decision that seems wrong (and honestly, the Mermaid Sisters were right, they got fucking snubbed and I will not stay silent about it). But unlike Cybelle, who has something of a mirror in a fucked up cishet guy, who's in a parasocial and stalking relationship with Angela, no other character ever acts like the Mermaid Sisters, with sole exception to one I'll talk about in a moment.

The fifth character who is explicitly queer is Desmond, who is not only non-binary, but had a husband until he died. Desmond is exclusively referred to as they/them, and they're relatively fine compared to the rest of the characters. Not only do they deliver the core philosophy of the anime, but they also have this mystical quality to them that gives them an otherworldly beauty. As a matter of fact, the biggest problem I had with them on my first watch of Carole & Tuesday is the fact that Desmond dies in the same episode that they are introduced in (this is the 'bury your gays' trope, which I really wish we had escaped back in the year of our lord 2019). But, as I watched this show again and again (because, I liked it), I came to the realization that Desmond is... too perfect. Both in a 'they have no noticeable flaws' kind of way, and in a 'their gender is perfect.' What I mean is that, Desmond's appearance, voice, and even mannerisms all exist at perfect androgyny. They are the 'perfect' non-binary, neither being too masculine nor too feminine. And while there are a select few of us that can appear this way, this is by and large not the reality for most genderqueer folk. I don't really want to get into queer theory because that's not what this essay is about, but the point of this all is that, where Cybelle and the Mermaid Sisters fall at an extreme of representation that is somewhat hateful (even if not intentional, the actions taken represent negative stereotypes), Desmond represents the opposite extreme of representation, where they are this absolutely flawless angel of a person that imparts wisdom on Carole and Tuesday before dying. And for those of you who argue that they return in the final episode, I would contest that a character who disappears and doesn't come back again until the final episode isn't actually that much of a character. They have no personal investment in the overall story of Carole & Tuesday, and less so in the political subplot that actually becomes relevant in the episode they star in.

And last is Dahlia. Oh boy, oh boy, oh fucking BOY. It's easy to say that Dahlia is problematic just like the other characters I just went over, but there's a part of me that sees the attempt at complexity with her, and really wishes it was written better. Dahlia is, effectively, the antagonist for Angela. And yes, not Carole and Tuesday, but Angela, the rival for the main duo. Dahlia is explicitly stated to be a transgender woman, a fact that is relevant to Angela's past. Before her transition, it is heavily implied that Dahlia was abusive to Angela, and now is trying to get Angela to achieve the dreams she had when she was younger. It's very clear emotional manipulation, but Dahlia isn't evil. I can't stress this enough, but she does genuinely care for and love Angela, but the thing about emotional manipulation is that you can do it without even realizing it, which is why I find some sympathy in Dahlia's character. But everything surrounding her queer identity is an amalgamation of everything wrong with the previous characters' queerness ALONG with re-contextualizing all of them to be worse than they already are. Dahlia is trans for a Reason, and that's because there's some radiation on Mars (which I guess I haven't brought up yet, but you should've watched the series before reading this anyways) that I guess transes your gender. Dahlia made the executive decision to take HRT in order to fully become a woman, but the pills... made her more violent. This is pretty bad on its own, but only gets worse when you realize that Desmond was ALSO affected by Mars' transgender beam, which is why they are slowly being forcefemmed. Now would be a good time to bring up the fact that this anime was directed by the beloved Shinchiro Watanabe, of Cowboy Bebop fame. In said anime, there is a hermaphrodite that becomes such because of space radiation or some shit, decides to roll with it, and then proceeds to die after two episodes. In the context of Cowboy Bebop, and only Cowboy Bebop, this is Fine, honestly. It fits with the theming of the show, especially since that character is far from the only one who ever dies, and they last far longer than most other characters that bite the dust. But with this context, it kinda shows just how this doesn't feel like a random coincidence, especially with the fact that Dahlia ALSO fucking dies in the second to last episode of Carole & Tuesday (she is not brought back for the curtain call). As much as I do sympathize with Dahlia as a character, she is a mess as representation goes. But again, I do feel like all of this is beating a dead horse. I definitely think others have expressed this exact opinion much more eloquently than I have. But it's honestly almost a minor complaint compared to my thoughts on the political subplot of Carole & Tuesday.

Tuesday is introduced as the daughter of a politician, Valerie Simmons, who is very evidently running for the Mars presidential election in the equivalent of the Republican Party. For most of the first season, the only thing that Valerie is relevant for in any relation to her campaign is trying to get Tuesday back after she ran away from home. After all, a runaway child is a very bad look for a politician on the campaign trail. But her presence increases tenfold in Season 2, where the political intrigue hits its peak, and the story becomes incredibly relevant to current day politics. Valerie's campaign is based primarily in anti-immigration policy, where she spreads the idea that people from Earth are savages who want to take over Mars. A very nitpicky problem that I have with this campaign is that Mars was only colonized 50 years prior to these events, and it can be assumed that everyone currently living on Mars could easily trace their lineage to Earth. The reason Trump can get away with declaring all immigrants bad is because the colonization of America was so long ago (there's the addition of targeting a specific group of people that can be recognized by skin color, but that's besides the point). I don't think you could find many Americans who could trace their ancestry back to before England crossed the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, let alone Columbus. Therefore, the parallel of 'we're all immigrants' falls flat when so many of us are far removed from the reality of our ancestors, whereas the Martians in Carole in Tuesday probably have living parents or grandparents who were from Earth. But the point is that it's supposed to be an exaggeration of Trump's policies, so it's fine. I'm also of the opinion that respecting a statue of the God of War (Mars) is not as fittingly ironic as respecting the Statue of Liberty which... y'know. But the point is that this is a Republican policy, and it's definitely meant to be seen as bad. While Valerie's campaign is going on (before the election happens, and there's currently a Democrat President), this policy supposedly spirals from spoken discrimination to all-out deportation. I'm tempted to say that the depiction of police brutality against black people is perhaps unnecessary, but it's not my place to say that as a white person. It just feels like trauma for the sake of it, but I would also say there is also a solid depiction of a lot of Black Joy, at least from what I can tell. But what bothers me about the political subplot is that the solution seems to be... 'just vote blue.' It's this very middling, easy answer that pretty much any Liberal will tell you if you complain about Trump. But the problem is, MICE raids are happening even with the Democrat President in the office. This kinda reveals the fault with 'just vote blue,' because Democrats aren't doing shit about deportation, possibly even supporting it themselves. Even after Valerie drops out of the race (I'll get back to that later, I promise), MICE still show up to arrest the singers in the final episode. It proves that this isn't a Republican v. Democrat thing, it's both of them. This political subplot bothers me because it wants to do a good guy and bad guy thing, but it doesn't want to fully commit to the bad guy having power, which retroactively makes the good guy look bad. And this is ALL super irrelevant because this is not how the American political system works whatsoever, but because Carole & Tuesday doesn't have the time to properly dive into it, it turns grossly oversimplified to 'whoever wants something to be done gets it,' I guess.

The other big problem with the political subplot is that it doesn't really explore how Valerie's policies actually effect Carole or Tuesday. Carole is an immigrant from Earth, and Tuesday is not only Carole's best friend, but also Valerie's daughter. The things that Valerie is saying should be a very real problem for the both of them. Yet the only time that the two address it in any capacity is a vague wave in the direction of Valerie's policies when they are creating their final three songs. The politics only have an impact on characters we barely know, so the conflict feels weak, and allows neither Carole or Tuesday to really be all that invested in them, despite one of them being related to the person who has these policies. But don't worry, in case you were thinking that wasn't bad enough, it does get worse! Most of the reason that Carole and Tuesday don't really have anything to do with the political subplot is because they Are Not characters.

Carole & Tuesday, despite primarily following two female characters and shining a spotlight on a third woman, is not feminist in any way whatsoever. I'm hesitant to say that it's misogynist because I do believe that Carole and Tuesday are treated as human beings and not objects for men, but it does come startlingly close to that. Earlier, I said that Carole and Tuesday are not the actual protagonists of the show which is named after them. They are, at best, deuteragonists, but considering their absolute lack of any real character whatsoever (genuinely after Episode 1 they act the Exact Same as each other), it is hard to even call them that. One would suspect that their rival, Angela, is more of the protagonist instead. True, she does get more of a deep character and a full arc, but everything in her story is exclusively at the mercy of the real main characters of Carole & Tuesday: the men in each of the girls' lives. More specifically Gus and Roddy for Carole and Tuesday, and Tao for Angela. They are the protagonists because they actually move the plot along and get things for the main characters to do. This is moreso evident for Angela than Carole and Tuesday, but it becomes increasingly evident for the main duo when you remember that their dreams revolve around becoming well-known musicians. And the way that Carole & Tuesday get away with having men find all of their musical opportunities for them is by making Gus their manager, with a lot of help from Roddy. But more than that is how Gus tends to take over decisions for the two without really asking them first, and employs another man to be their producer that is initially presented to be incredibly unlikable. And more than that is how each and every single man in this show has a unique personality and character, along with having their flaws somewhat explored (or in Tao's case, conveniently ignored).

Angela is perhaps the clearest example of something amiss with the writing of women in this show, only slightly disguised by the fact that she does have something of a character, unlike Carole and Tuesday. But she is just a victim, and nothing else. She is a victim of someone who is currently a woman, though she was formerly a man (the only reason I bring this up is to highlight this show's transmisogyny), then in Season 2 she gets harassed by a male stalker and a manager who sees her as a prize to be won rather than a person, and she is saved from both by other men. I would be remiss if I didn't also mention that Tao, who saves her from the stalker, ALSO contributes to Angela's trauma, but it's fine, he gets to be a good guy who's just looking out for Angela's best interest, doing a bunch of behind the scene things that are tangentially related to the political subplot. I would say Angela is at least slightly misogynistic, as something of a damsel in distress whose entire story is controlled by men, something that she only escapes in the final episode thanks to, you guessed it, Tao telling her to. Remember, women can be strong and independent, but only if men want them to be.

The issues of women not having control of their own story even applies to the political subplot (yes, it's WORSE than everything I already laid out about it), because Valerie is not the person who decided to make the anti-immigration policy. It was a snake of a man named Jerry, who was secretly controlling everything behind the scenes. We as the audience are supposed to hate Jerry for manipulating Valerie in a very obvious way, but I actually hate Jerry for existing to begin with. Please understand an important concept about feminism: yes, a lot of women are at the mercy of men in our patriarchal society, but that doesn't mean that women can not do horrible things, and it definitely doesn't mean that women do not uphold the patriarchy themselves by virtue of existing as women. Look at the way that Carole & Tuesday lets men be properly explored: there are some deeply flawed characters and complicated men that may be doing the wrong things, but have interesting reasons for doing them. Writing good women should at least extend that same olive branch of complexity to them. The only woman in the show who is complicated in any interesting way is Dahlia, and I feel like I've already given ample reasons why I'm not that fond of her writing either. But more than just Valerie being controlled by men to back a policy that she says she doesn't like, the political subplot ends up getting resolved thanks to the efforts of two men: a journalist named Kyle, and Valerie's own son Spencer. With just a handful of research, Valerie is convinced of Kyle's accusations of Jerry, and she decides to fire him along with dropping out of the presidential race. Valerie shows a few signs of suspicion towards Jerry beforehand, but she is by and large just a puppet of a lot of other men in this election and in the plot of the story. It's almost poetic with how Angela started her music career with Tao telling her that she would be a 'marionette.' The women of Carole & Tuesday aren't characters that have interesting flaws or stories outside of a few small things, these are puppets to be controlled, to move to the exact motions that the puppeteers want them to, and they can not exist outside that.

...It should be stated that I do not hate Carole & Tuesday. Even with all of its flaws that I've slowly recognized over the years mounting up and how extensively I just tore it apart over the previous paragraphs, I do still have something to hold onto in the show that I do still love, and it is the art. Both the actual artistic style of the show, being a constantly gorgeous and radiant world that shines in each and every passing moment, and the music. Yes, this music show has good music; surprising for a show where the two titular women are not the main characters. The primary genre of the show is R&B, though there it does dip its toes into pop, jazz, and even rap at some points, and every song is very good. But more than just being solid songs that I love to listen to, there are a lot of nuances about the songs that I've slowly come to notice more of on repeat rewatches. Each song is related to the characters' stories as it progresses in at least a small way. Again, since Carole and Tuesday are overwhelmingly cardboard cutouts as opposed to actual characters, a vast majority of their songs boil down to the fact that they were missing each other, and now that they're together they can do things that neither could've dreamed of alone. I do actually really like "Lost My Way," a purposefully simple song that reflects that they're not quite on the same rhythm that they had been in other songs. The point of it is defeated when you realize again that Carole and Tuesday are never on separate wavelengths, but I still like the song has something of a character arc for them, even if the resolution immediately afterwards is 'we need to go back to our roots.' Angela, being a much more complicated character, has so many different songs that emphasize her feelings and her struggles. It still smarts that a lot of her story is controlled by men, but I do think her songs still shine in spite of it.

More than just the songs reflecting pivotal moments in the story, the songs and the characters feel (somewhat) tailor made for the actual singers behind them. Carole & Tuesday has a large amount of vocal talent behind it, and each and every artist brings their all to this show. Nai Br. XX and Celiena Ann make a wonderful duo, their different backgrounds reflecting that of Carole and Tuesday, and their individual styles I feel combine nicely for the anime's songs. Quite a number of artists picked for the characters are incredibly deliberate, having something in common with the character or the style of music they play. One of my favorite parts of my last rewatch of Carole & Tuesday was really delving into these artists' discographies and seeing just how talented they all were.

However, it's hard to really appreciate something when it's stuck in the middle of all of the aforementioned flaws.

"Stuck In the Middle With You" is a 1972 song by the Stealers Wheel, a Scottish band that isn't known for all that much besides that song. Due to the most repeated lyric of the song "Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you," there are more than a few people that have made the bold assumption that this song is political in nature, but it's not intended to be. It's ironic that there are centrists who think that this song is about how right they are, because if you apply that logic to the rest of the song, it's actually becomes about how awkward and uncomfortable it is to be in the center, rather than any assumed superiority to the guests that the main lyric entertains. However, what the song is actually about is how being successful often results in a lot of awkward situations and conversations. It's a vaguely relatable sentiment of 'oh, I see a bunch of people who were just like me before I became successful, and their pleas for help are sympathetic, but I want to hold on to what I feel like I've earned.' It's maybe the most essential song to understanding the mechanism of Capitalism, since it's easy to see those who are less fortunate than you as perhaps pitiable, but definitely not worth helping. All the while being in proximity to them is awkward because you are a representation of what they want, but can not have. So there you are, stuck in the middle. What Carole & Tuesday represents as a whole to me personally, is this same idea of seeing people that are struggling, and looking down on them, even if partly in pity. "Oh you're queer? Well, that's a little unfortunate, you're probably delusional and/or violent. But I respect and love you, don't worry!" "Oh, these are awful policies that someone is implementing that'll make your life a living hell? Well just vote for the other guy, who is doing the same thing but quieter! And also hope that the original politician drops out, I guess." "Oh you're a woman who wants to do something? You know you should probably have a man who supports you, otherwise you're going to struggle."

As spectacular as it is, I think that Luffy vs. Kaido really just goes to show the limits of powerscaling. Does it really matter how strong they are? I get it already, this dragon can destroy his entire roof if he wants to.

Part of the appeal of devil fruits, at least to me as a viewer, is the sheer creativity that comes from them. Not only in what they can do, but in raising the question of how to deal with some of them. This guy can just turn into smoke, what do you do about that? This guy is just sand, you can't punch sand. So a lot of early fights are ironically more interesting than the spectacle of Luffy v. Kaido by the mere fact that there is more to beating the enemy than just 'punch them in the face.' Yes, Luffy does eventually punch all his major villains in the face, but at least with the exception of the one guy that Luffy had a hard counter against (and even that fight had interesting aspects), pretty much every pre-timeskip fight was far more interesting than just: "Luffy needs to get a stronger punch."

And I am firmly in the camp of loving each and every new move that Luffy pulls out, and the fights are hype as fuck each time! I am not a pre-timeskip apologist, I think there's a lot of great aspects of post-timeskip. But haki, at least to me, feels like an 'easy answer,' since not only can it hit all those unique devil fruit users, it can also be steadily trained and mastered, so that there can still be more powerful foes. At the end of the day, what's separating this punching match from all the other ones in previous arcs? The answer is the spectacle of it all. Look, Luffy is fighting a giant dragon in the middle of a storm on the top of a giant skull, isn't that cool?!

I may also be a bit miffed from Wano, because at least in comparison to the arc immediately before it, Wano feels kinda stale, if that makes sense? And I will admit that I was spoiled by Whole Cake Island and Big Mom's homies. That actually felt pretty close to a return to form of more creativity, because Big Mom's power was controlling all of that. On top of that, the first major fight that Luffy had, he managed to defeat the enemy in an extremely creative way that I absolutely loved. It was still a spectacle, but it was also really fun and went all out. I was hoping that Big Mom being in Wano would spice up the arc a bit, but she's just kinda... there. You better watch out cause the big scary lady is here with the big scary dragon, too.

In the original fairy tale of Puss in Boots, a young boy tells a lie and gets his cat to make that lie a reality. He wears a mask, but by the end of the story, that mask transforms into his real face. Is this good? Is this bad? The answer is never made clear, but the boy, at the very least, seems content with all that has happened.

"What kind of music do you listen to?" It's a casual conversation with a coworker, and we just finished airing out the stressful tasks of our daily routines. I gave them some of my personal philosophies, which I have ever stewing in my head partly in thanks to the monotony of the job, and they gave me some things they've been thinking about in return. We are, at this point, acquaintances, and my coworker is perhaps trying to cement a proper friendship. But the one, simple question that they've asked is impossible for me to truly answer.

It hangs in the air like a light mist, clouding over the rest of the conversation and immediately dampening my spirits. I can not tell if I'm actually sweating under the pressure or if I am imagining it. I am convinced that my panic in this moment is extremely visible, that my coworker is not only seeing my fear of the simple question, but is also judging me for it. My brain is falling apart at the seams, going up in flames as it desperately tries to formulate some answer that is short and succinct, because that is what a good response to such a question must be. It is not all that serious a question, and that is half of the reason I am floundering for a response. Because when your answer to such a simple question is actually extremely complicated, it feels like it's the wrong answer.

The simple question ends up actually making me feel wrong about how I interact with music entirely. It makes me think that the music that I listen to will be judged by others, and hated. Because for me, asking "What kind of music do you listen to?" is something akin to asking "What kind of artwork do you like to look at?" And god knows, maybe some normal person out there actually has an answer to that one, too. But I do not enter an art gallery to look for one particular kind of art, or zone in on a specific artist. And in the same way, I do not listen to music with any particular genre in mind, and I certainly don't have a favorite music artist. So the easiest answer to the question "What kind of music do you listen to?" for me is "I listen to pretty much everything."

It is a lie. Don't let my calm demeanor and nonchalant attitude fool you, I am lying to your face if I ever say those words to you. I am Puss in Boots' owner, and my playlist of music is the cat itself, slowly but surely making this convenient mask that I wear into my actual face. But I do not listen to every genre of music, nor do I like them all equally. I do not listen to death metal, the screaming is too intense for me. I can appreciate the amount of unfiltered rage that must go into the making of any death metal music, but I simply do not enjoy it all that much. I don't really like techno, a lot of the songs feel very similar and end up blending together. I have gained an immense appreciation for rap over the years, but it is difficult for me to listen to any song while doing something else. I like to actually pick apart the lyrics and actively listen to the songs. That's why the number or rap artists I've really listened to has barely exceeded five artists. And while I could very effortlessly say I love rock n' roll or jazz, that doesn't encompass the entirety of the music that I listen to.

What makes it worse is that growing up, I actively avoided listening to anything playing on the radio. Yes, I was one of those edgy kids that disliked things solely because of popularity. And unfortunately, I do believe this mindset still affects me to this day. So the kind of music that I listened to when I was younger was mostly just video game music. And VGM is largely great music, but it has firm roots in actual music. Mario has jazz inspirations, Zelda has classical notes, Sonic has a whole host of different genres, from rock to funk. Saying that your favorite genre of music is 'video game music' is like saying your favorite type of art is 'album art.' You narrow it down to something of a niche, but it's still broad enough that there's still no idea on the actual kind of music that you like. It's a mask.

I'm sick of performances. I've had enough theater to last my entire life, and I want to completely abandon the parts that I play in front of an imagined audience. This is why I am not male nor female, I don't want to play a role. But as I tell my coworker "I listen to pretty much everything," there is a pang of regret in my chest, because I can recognize the mask that I have fashioned for myself, which is slowly but surely twisting itself in order to fit the molds of my very own face. They don't seem to notice it themselves however, seeming a bit confused by my answer, but unwilling to press further. Perhaps they noticed my massive uncomfort in trying to answer the question, or perhaps they genuinely believe me. I can not tell who I am trying to fool with this mask that I wear, if it's the person asking the question, or if it's myself.

But I'll tell you what music I listen to, if you're willing to sit for a while longer. I just finished revisiting Denzel Curry's "Melt My Eyez See Your Future" album and I really liked it a lot. His love of jazz and his concept of the voice being another instrument make him a truly wonderful artist, and I really want to listen to more from him. Due to a truly silly chain of events, I ended up finding out that the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra made orchestral covers of a number of ABBA songs, and I just listened to their cover of Mamma Mia, which was just so fun. Even if I couldn't understand a lot of her songs for the language barrier, I enjoyed listening to Celeina Ann's discography for her upbeat vibe. Similarly, Nai Br.XX was a delight to listen to for her dreamlike songs, with a complimentary short animated film to go along with it. And yeah, I did find out about those two from Carole & Tuesday, but that doesn't change the fact that they're great artists. Cise Starr is my forever surprise artist because it is wild how good he is with none of the real popularity to truly back it up. CYNE truly deserves more recognition. Chance (the Rapper) was immediately endearing to me for his radical optimism that I greatly sympathize with, and I sincerely hope that his comeback with Star Line is more than just one album, though I also hope each of these artists takes proper time to rest. Rachel Chinouriri is maybe exactly my vibe, I don't think there's a single song from her that I dislike. I am still listening to a lot of video game music, but with a more conscious effort to consider the specific genre of music.

So yes, there is a lot of music that I listen to. But what kind of music, specifically, do I listen to?

I first played Animal Crossing: New Leaf in September of 2014. I was 14 myself at the time, and it was one of the first games that I had on my 3DS. And, something that I still remember pretty distinctly was seeing the box art, and thinking that was the kind of world I was going to be going into.

But the truth of any Animal Crossing is that you make the world that you live in. You plant trees, water flowers, create public works projects which you pay for with bells that you earn from selling fish and bugs, and you slowly but surely pay off a home loan for your very own place to live. It's... life. It's an awfully condensed life and a power fantasy where you can afford to easily move and live in a small village with very little consequences, and everyone in the town quickly knows you and relies on you for the most basic of things, but it's life nonetheless.

I can not see the appeal. I could not see the appeal of playing at life even 11 years ago, when I did not have major responsibilities to deal with. The appeal, at least from what I understood, was that you could relax in the game and just idly play it. There is no pressure, at all, to pay off any of Nook's loans, and no pressure, at all, to catch all the fish and bugs for the museum. But whenever I play video games, goals plague my mind like a nagging child.

What am I doing this for?

It is ironic that, in an attempt to make a game comforting, it ends up being one of the most stressful games I've played. Because I'm trying to go for the goal of getting everything for my house, building public works projects, donating all I can to the museum. Because if I'm not playing with an objective in mind - something to do in the game I'm playing - what am I playing the game for?

Comfort games aren't for me. The days turn from cozy things for fun to chores that I have to do in order to meet whatever goal I'm aiming for. And maybe this time my problem was that I was trying to play once every day, and the stress weighed heavier with an every day reminder of it. But I know this would've eventually happened.

I honestly, really tried. I gave it my all and sometimes forced myself to play New Leaf, even on days I didn't really want to. I got through all of January somehow, but I was a little spottier during the early part of February. What finally broke me was the Festivale.

Animal Crossing has a number of holidays and events to mix up gameplay and keep the NPCs (somewhat) fresh during the year. I'm not sure what all of them are, and I don't think I'll ever find out, because I saw the outfits the NPCs were wearing during Festivale, heard Isabelle say something about a 'samba,' and decided no, I won't participate in cultural appropriation. I'm sure it's fine, considering I've never heard of anyone complaining about it and Nintendo probably doesn't want to deal with any more drama around problematic representation, but still. It was just the final straw that made me realize that I didn't really want to see this experience all the way through.

But because I hate abrupt goodbyes, I did open the game again one last time this evening. The sky was dark and overcast, quickly spilling into a somber rain, the grass was dark green and gloomy, and the sea was quiet and murky. In other words, it was a perfect day to say good-bye. I made my way through the quiet village, and talked to every NPC in my town one final time. I wish I could've told one particular resident that I loved him, but even if I wrote a letter, I know he wouldn't be able to reciprocate. Or that it would really matter. But I took one final look in my home, one final round around the small village that I had wanted to live in for a year, one final look at all the things I had donated to the museum, and when I was all done, I made my way to Club LOL, where I knew a dog would be waiting for me with his guitar.

There is no such thing as true closure in real life. That's why, when I tell K.K. that I'm feeling sad and watch the credits roll as he lays down a fitting tune, I know that I am playing a video game. I am playing a video game about life, but it can only ever be a shadow of what life really is. Never once do I get the sense that any of the villagers have a life outside of my character. Never once do I get the sense that any of them feel anything towards me that they aren't programmed to feel. And because there are such an expansive array of NPCs, all of their personalities could fit snugly inside of a cardboard box with a smiley face drawn on in marker. Never once do I get the sense that there are more interesting things to see and do; I've already seen and done everything now.

K.K. Slider finishes his song with a high note and bit of strumming on his guitar, and I am grateful that I have tried again. But it will never be satisfying to me in the way that other genres of video games are, and I am well aware of that. So, as my character still sits in the chair in front of the the dog, I press start to save and quit, leaving my small little town in peace to govern for itself.

This essay will contain light spoilers for GOAT (2026 Movie)

One of my favorite things to do as a kid was write. The first story I ever wrote was a one page novel called Super Straw - a super hero that was made out of two pieces of trash who could beat the bad guys and save the world. As young as I was, it was littered with references to media that I had consumed at the time, and was generally kinda a mess. I understood the spectacle of stories without really getting the deeper aspects of them. But it was always my dream to become a great writer.

When I walked into the seating area for the movie GOAT just earlier tonight, I was the only one there. It was a local theater in a small town, and the prices were pretty high out of necessity. There was a woman who walked into the theater in front of me who bought an excessive amount of snacks, and I partially wondered if she was doing that for a family, or if she was actually trying to help the theater out. This stewed in my mind as I took my seat in front of the screen. Empty as it may have been, I still took one that was a row back and one seat in, lest someone else come in who wanted a better seat. There's a sort of anticipation that comes with being in a movie theater, staring at a blank screen and waiting for the lights to dim and the projector to come to life. The stench of movie theater popcorn butter is potent as I wonder if I may have accidentally went into the wrong showing, if the projector might be broken, or any odd number of things that could be wrong. I anxiously checked the time on my phone to see that it was still a minute before the movie is scheduled to start. So I try to relax and unsuccessfully calm myself in the fleeting seconds that remain. Then, the lights dim, leaving the only visible source to be the glowing red lights along the ground, which reflect onto the screen. Finally, the Sony logo appears.

Spectacle. That's the word that I'd use for GOAT. Its spectacle is perhaps unmatched, even in an industry that is constantly trying to push the envelope for its medium. There's a sort of energy that radiates from each and every frame of the movie - a want to get audiences out of their seats and cheering loud like they are right there, watching the basketball game themselves. The level of adrenaline that you share with the main character makes him immediately sympathetic, and before you know it you are right there in his shoes, with the same dream that he has. Spectacle is what makes us believe that we can do more, be more. Spectacle is what electrifies us into actions and dreams. Spectacle makes us believe, even for a moment, that the world is right and that any of us truly can make it, to reach our dreams.

I love the wild personalities for the team, but I regretfully can not remember their names outside of William, Jett, and Modo. I think the ostrich was Olivia? But for the rhino and giraffe, I'm sorry guys. You were great as well, I promise. But I felt that each of them were explored incredibly well in spite of the short attention they all get. I honestly found it somewhat refreshing that Jett got more of an arc in learning to pass on the torch, rather than William learning that he needs to think differently about how to play the game. He already knows, but Jett ends up being exactly what gets in his way with her own desires and personal struggles. You can feel the expectation and stress weighing down on her, she knows that she may never be good enough, but she's adamant on her desire to win. But, we all are cursed to never be able to see ourselves in the way others do. We could have a million and one fans cheering our name, wearing our team's colors, and chanting our motto, but the mirror will still only reflect what we see. But Jett is the reason that William wanted to get into basketball, Jett is the inspiration for all the people in her hometown, she represents the spectacle of the game - the idea that any of us truly can make it.

The theme of the movie is quite literally spelled out - dream big. William is a small character (though a joke that didn't escape my notice was that he was about average human height) that has all the skills of any professional player, but with none of the height to really be able to do anything with it. Add in the fact that he's going up against bears, horses, rhinos, and you begin to understand that William is in a battle against nature itself. But that never gets to him. He's always trying in spite of the world around him. He is the embodiment of the spectacle of the movie.

A scene that is going to be lodged in my brain from now until the end of time is when William is practicing his shots at the beginning of the movie. He has no opponents to practice against, no physical obstacle in his way, nothing between him and the net in front of him. He shoots, and it swishes through the net. He shoots, and it swishes through the net. This time from the three yard line. This time from the edge of the small court. Seconds remain on the internal clock in his manufactured game, and it all comes down to one final shot. He takes it, but it just barely misses. But because this is a made up game and no one is watching, Will is quick to pick up the ball again, making one final shot before bigger animals come in to practice. It leaves his hooves and flies through the air, hanging in space for a moment. Two moments. Three moments. And finally, it enters the hoop, and swishes through the net. A glorious three pointer to end the game, to the cheering audience of one person.

I'm white. And there is difficulty in seeing any piece of media made by black people, for black people, and not feeling a little detached from it all. And that is completely fine. It is an experience that I fundamentally could never truly understand, but what I do understand that it was not made for me, and rather made for people who have not had all that many movies made for them, much less by them. So for GOAT, I did my best to put myself in the shoes of the main character. It wasn't actually all that hard, because there was a very brief time in my life that I had wanted to play basketball, even joining a school team to horribly fail and end up sitting on the sidelines for most of the season. So to see William go from being mocked as someone who could never do it (even if William started the movie way more skilled than I ever could be) to winning the championship, felt like encouragement for the part of myself that wanted to try basketball, if only once.

I think everyone deserves to have a chance to realize their dreams, even if it ends up they don't really like it all that much and they stop before achieving anything. Before the season of basketball was over, I got a chance to play on the court. I was passed the ball close to the hoop and I shot, but I missed. I got another chance later, to shoot and miss again. But then I kept getting chances, as everyone on both teams implicitly understood that this was not something that had happened before. And then, just before the end of the game, I finally managed to get the ball into the net.

This essay will contain spoilers for Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine (2012 Anime).

What stories do you typically consume? Which do you like, and what keeps you coming back for more? What do those stories say about you? What do they say about the people who wrote them? What do they say about the very real characters that lay within? A knight who slays a dragon and rescues the princess lifts up the heroic actions of the knight, but the princess is regarded as nothing more than a goal, the treasure that a fearsome beast protects, inevitably to love and wed the knight which saves her. Reverse the roles, and it is ironically the woman who is still the object at the end of the day. She must, of course, want to rid the land that is ruled by her father of the scourge that is destroying it, so that the status quo can be maintained. And in saving the knight, it is assumed that the princess will inevitably love and wed him. She's empowered to do the action the man had done, but her story remains the same. But if she were to team up with the dragon and burn down the kingdom, she is evil – a woman who is acting out of selfish interests. But maybe we can still sympathize with her as the audience. Perhaps her father was extremely abusive, and the kingdom in general hated everything about this princess. It's no wonder that a woman thus scorned would come to hate these conditions, and join with the dragon to burn the land asunder. But what has changed for her story? She is evil because a man made her that way, so the audience naturally can come to the conclusion that a 'good' man could turn her good, help her kill the dragon – the true evil in this story – and he and she would stand alone on top of the scorched earth, silently weeping tears for all that had happened. The princess' story can never be her own.

The Woman Called Fujiko Mine leads its audience on to believe that they have a decent idea of where the story is going, right from the first episode. It is all so very clear: Fujiko Mine is a thief, and she got into this life of crime due to some unknown past that she is trying to forget. But as she continues trying to escape the past, more of her memories come back, slowly unfolding into the story of Fujiko Mine. But this is not her story, it is someone else's. In the last episode, the show reveals that the memories that Fujiko supposedly had were actually implants of another woman's troubled past - a girl named Aisha, who was left bedridden after her abuser was finished with her. Aisha, as we find out, was trying to see if there was any life for her now that her abuser was dead and gone, and Fujiko was just one of many girls she planted her memories into. Fujiko was also the only woman who did not take her life afterward.

Aisha saw the possibility that Fujiko presented, and was excited by it - even if a thief with an active sex life was a little surprising. But Fujiko was repressing the implanted memories, which made Aisha mad. This is where Aisha starts to try to control the Story of Fujiko Mine. The abuse Aisha suffered made her convinced that a woman - especially one like Fujiko - could not exist without a man having made her that way.

So who is The Woman Called Fujiko Mine? In the original Lupin III manga, she is not one woman, but many. Every woman that Lupin meets is Fujiko, simply because the original writer didn't want to bother thinking of multiple names. Is it that every woman is Fujiko? Or is it that Fujiko is every woman? It is fascinating to think that a simple, perhaps silly decision ended up creating a character who could very well be a metaphor for femininity as a whole. Fujiko is sexy and dangerous, she is soft and fragile, she is angry and strong. She is everything, potentially more realized than even a living human being could be, in spite of her lack of a backstory. Fujiko Mine is, as she herself says right from the start, a mighty fine woman.

So of course any woman would idealize her. She is the ultimate female power fantasy; able to seduce any man or woman and use her feminine traits to get whatever she wants. Fujiko is... free. But that freedom is just as frightening as it is attractive to Aisha. She loves the idea of being free, but it means that Fujiko's story isn't controlled by Aisha, and by extension the man who abused Aisha. A piece of imagery that was particularly striking to me when I rewatched the show was the use of dolls in the final two episodes. Normal porcelain and plastic dolls fill a room, belaboring Fujiko Mine's story - or at least, the one that Aisha wants her to remember. Right after this room, Fujiko goes into a room with a bunch of 'living dolls' - woman (and men) all dressed up to look like Fujiko and brainwashed to try to kill the original. I get the sense from Episode 10 that Aisha is still mentally a child, and she is playing with these real humans in the same way that a young girl plays with dolls. And what I interpret from this is that, since Fujiko is resistant to going along with this story, Aisha believes that Fujiko must be killed so she can be controlled.

In the writing of this essay, I find it admirable that Aisha can be forgiven and get to spend her last moments in the real world - truly free. The stories that she wanted to be a part of, the life she so desperately wanted to live, all served to further imprison herself. They were all illusions that she conjured up to make sense of the horrid abuse that she had suffered. To go back to Episode 10, there's a flashback with Aisha where she has Lupin try to catch her, cause it's "her story." And in order to catch her in an illusory world where nothing is real, she instructs him to focus on what's real, like pain.

Aisha can not escape her own pain. Her attempting to control the Story of Fujiko Mine was an attempt to reconcile her own abuse with the freedom Fujiko had, but they could never be the same story. Fujiko was always free, and she always will be. Aisha needed to learn to save herself.

It's in this way that bringing Aisha to the real world is both a kindness and a cruelty. Aisha always wanted to be like Fujiko, free in the world. But she never made that decision herself.

The stories that we consume about women are catered to the male gaze. This is by design, of course – the patriarchy does not allow the presentation of a strong woman who is strong purely on her own merits, and who's story does not involve a man. Stories have obvious power, so these stories have been systematically used to trap us. Not just women, but men as well. We are all shackled to the performances that we are expected to play, the stories that were designed for us. This is the prison of our own making, and the only way to escape is to focus on what is real. It's a daunting and challenging task, and I know that there would be a few who are more content within their fantasies and can not escape to reality.

My very first game was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I still have distinct, crystal clear memories from the first time I even beat the game. The final battle against the evil king Ganondorf, the castle crumbling with his apparent defeat, the awe of him coming back as a giant beast, and the entirety of the ending sequence are all things that you could never erase from my memory. That is to say, it rocked my fucking socks off. I also grew up with Pokemon Gold, with one of those carts that couldn't save properly, so every attempt to play the game was a race against the battery life to see just how far I could get before the GBA I had would lose power. I beat the main game with that cart and that GBA twice, only ever getting to Kanto once - a one in a million chance that the save function actually worked and let me continue to the post game. But I never got close to Red. Finally, there was Sonic the Hedgehog. I managed to play both Sonic 1 and 3 on original hardware, trying and failing to ever beat them (I think I never got out of the first level of Sonic 3 as a kid, actually).

I've played all of these games since that time. And, they don't hit for me the way they did as a kid. OOT is a classic, but I've played it so much that I know pretty much everything about it. It was nice finally being able to beat all the gyms in Kanto and face Red, but it lacked the excitement of not knowing if I would be able to make it to the Elite 4 in time, or if the game would save properly at the credits. And I've beaten all of the original Sonic trilogy, but it feels less like vindication for child me and more like demonstrating how much better I've gotten at video games (if kid me thought that was hard, they were not prepared for Celeste). And to be clear, it's not that I found replaying these games disappointing in comparison to my memories of them, but just that it's... different. I have more context, more knowledge, more appreciation for a wider array of video games, and that doesn't make my childhood favorites any worse. It means that I'll never truly be able to play them with the same mindset as when I was young.

I recently made a quick (at least, in relation to this) review for another game I played when I was younger: The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning. And while it gets across a lot of my objective thoughts on the game, it certainly didn't so much as acknowledge my subjective feelings on the game.

It's not disappointing, it's different. Perhaps that's just a convenient lie I tell myself for the entire adventure. I don't really remember enjoying A New Beginning as a kid, but I suppose I was still expecting to feel something as I wandered back into the game. But it's just... fine. And perhaps that was what bothered me the most as I followed Spyro's reboot. It's not wonderfully whimsical like the platformer trilogy, it's not weirdly good in the way (what I've seen of) Skylanders is, it's just. Alright. The game wants to be epic, it wants to be a big movie-esque adventure with extremely railroaded progression, but it always feel like it's lacking something to make it truly shine. There is gameplay, which has... some complexity to it. The player never really needs to truly grasp that complexity in order to make progress, with sole exception to Ignitus' tutorial. But in spite of my gripes and general feeling of malcontent, I decided to press forward with my campaign, one particular moment lodged in the back of my mind from my childhood - a moment that I desperately wanted to see if it was as awesome as my inner child remembered.

So onward I went, surprised to find that the second full level of the game was one that I just forgot entirely, but that was more than likely due to how... normal it felt, at least in comparison to the other levels. But that being said, I did appreciate how each stage corresponds with each elemental breath type that Spyro unlocks, and each stage still feels perfectly natural to explore. But, no matter what I did, I was still kind of feeling detached from the whole experience, and I truly worried that the one moment I remembered would actually salvage my memories of the game.

But I pressed on, until I finally reached the final boss (foreshadowed pretty plainly since the start of the game): Cynder. She managed to come back in Skylanders, and I think she became a bit of a fan favorite, and I can see why. First of all, she's voiced by Cree Summer in this game, which automatically means she's cool af, and her design goes unnecessarily hard. Her actual boss fight, on the other hand...

So, I've neglected to talk about bosses up to this point, mainly because there's not much to say. There are four bosses total (five if you count the Ice King getting re-used), and they definitely steadily get easier. I'm also partially convinced that straifing like the game intends for large enemies is perhaps the worst way to fight bosses. Spyro ain't no Bayonetta, his dodges take a bit and does not grant him invincibility frames, meaning it is kind of useless. But all that being said, Cynder is maybe the easiest of the four bosses, once you figure out that you can cheese her quite easily by jumping in the air and attacking.

But I was still determined. I had come this far, and I am maybe the most indulgent when it comes to the sunk cost fallacy. And then, it happened.

For anyone who has not played this game, it is impossible to truly describe what Spyro's final fury attack against Cynder has done to my brain chemistry. If you have played the game, I would imagine that this moment did the same thing to your brain as well. In just one singular moment, roughly a minute of a 7 hour experience, my childhood self was vindicated. This moment was just as cool, just as epic, just as jaw-dropping, just as everything that I had remembered it to be. I got fucking goosebumps, it goes that hard.

It's hard to recommend A New Beginning. If I've learned anything from this, it's that perhaps it's irresponsible to chase feelings from your childhood, let alone trying to chase a feeling a random stranger on the internet has. Things just won't be the same now that you're older and you have more experiences. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but it's important to accept that the things that you loved as a child might not hold up as well as you remember.

But perhaps the strangest is the weird, somewhat serious reboot of the Spyro franchise: The Legend of Spyro. I only ever played A New Beginning, but it definitely is where I got into beat 'em ups, and might actually have been my first exposure to Elijah Wood as an actor, cause I'm sure my parents were probably reluctant to share The Lord of the Rings trilogy with me at that age. And... after replaying it... it's alright! I definitely can understand why people who like the original platformers weren't a fan of the series new direction, and there are a lot of things I also wish were better, but I think it still holds up pretty well for what it is. I think my two biggest issues are enemy variety and music. The enemy variety is... fairly decent? But more often than not you'll be going up against the same fucking baboons for several waves of a fight. The game's even reluctant to throw out bigger enemies like the Dreadwings for some fucking reason. Music is also serviceable, it really feels like it's trying to be the score to a movie, but that makes it extremely forgettable. I also feel like the combat isn't interesting enough, if that makes sense. You have melee moves and elemental breath moves, but neither really serve each other in any interesting way, other than elemental breaths keeping enemies knocked back in the air. It just feels like fighting enemies just comes down to going through the motions.

This essay will contain spoilers for the story of The Messenger.

After the intro cutscenes of The Messenger, the player goes right into the first level of the game, Autumn Hills. Within a very short time, they will inevitably find and be forced to enter the game's Shop, in order to get the first of four upgrades needed to get through the first half of the game. This shop is quite distinct from the area the player was just in, with a very unique vibe and theme to compliment it; it gives more the feeling of a sorcerer's secret lair than a place that one could buy or sell goods. There are a variety of things to see within this shop that mainly exist for aesthetic purposes and little else, with The Shopkeeper behind a counter to give you an upgrade you need, along with offering a wide array of other optional upgrades for a price. But at the far wall of this room stands a lone cabinet, which may seem pretty inconspicuous to a first time player, as it meshes with the rest of the strange things in the shop quite well. However, if the player does go up to the cabinet to interact with it, The Shopkeeper will tell you not to touch it. The player can actually touch the cabinet again, and The Shopkeeper will more insistently tell the player not to touch it. A third time, The Shopkeeper all but demands you stop trying to touch it. If you continue trying to interact with it, The Shopkeeper will get progressively more annoyed with your efforts, eventually launching into a rather long and unskippable philosophical rant that circles back to the reason that they do not want you touching their cabinet. This is all supposed to tell the player that there is something more to the cabinet than meets the eye - something uniquely stranger and curiouser than any of the other strange things that lie elsewhere in the shop. Yes, perhaps even more interesting than the Shopkeeper themself is this lone, wooden cabinet, extraordinary in its pure ordinariness, that the player is not allowed to open.

This idea, that there's more to certain things than what meets the eye, is almost hammered over the players head if they decide to further chat with The Shopkeeper themself. In each unique area in the first half of the adventure, the player can chat with the Shopkeeper, learning about the area they are in, any upgrades that the Shopkeeper had to give them for progressions' sake, or most importantly, tell the player a story. These stories largely have nothing to do with the actual overarching plot of the game, but they serve as a wonderful microcosm of the problem I find myself coming back to whenever I think about this game.

A friend of mine opened my eyes to a term that I've come to associate strongly with The Messenger, and that is "Appeal to Audience." That is to say, in a lot of dialogue throughout the game, there are direct nods at the audience as participants in the story, and in other other words, fourth wall breaking humor. Now I do not mind meta humor all that much, I think it can be done very well. But its use within The Messenger a lot of the time serves to explain things that seem arbitrary or forced. And the joke is that it is both arbitrary and forced, the writers and devs are all in on it. More frustrating to me is the fact that every single story that The Shopkeeper tells the player throughout the adventure (including the 'non-stories') all see The Messenger (the character you play as) questioning it in some way, and The Shopkeeper always, without fail, goes out of their way to justify it, give explanations for it, or just double down that The Messenger doesn't understand the power of stories. Add to that the fact that The Messenger isn't really a character, and moreso a stand-in for the audience, and I hope you can see why I find this all... irritating.

But everything's deeper than its surface level appearance. That is the one thing that the game wanted to make sure I took away from it, and by Jove, I looked. I read and re-read. I tried breaking down the plot of The Messenger in as many possible ways that I could think of. To finally summarize for those who have gotten this far into the post without having played the game (thank you for your dedication): the story revolves around a millenniums old curse that's been haunting the world ever since a flood destroyed most of the mainland. Empowered by the loss of gods, demons effectively massacred humans, with only a small settlement surviving in the aftermath of everything. One brave man tried to stop the demons himself, acting out of revenge and sorrow, but they were far too powerful and they turned him into the source of the curse, which would ensure that demons would once again reign terror to the surviving humans every 500 years, planning to slowly but surely drive humanity to extinction. The man responsible for the curse is trapped in a music box, and he somehow manages to create a scroll that had the potential to save humanity. He managed to teleport the scroll to the last human settlement, where a particularly skilled adventurer picked it up and managed to take it across the entire island. Whether by accident or intention to figure out what the scroll was, the adventurer discovered it had time magic, and realized that it could only be tied to the man who tried to fight the demons. The scroll let the adventurer travel to a period five centuries in the future, where he formulated a plan to try to break the curse. Using the time magic and other particularly skilled adventurers, they effectively created a system of Messengers to pass the scroll from one hero to the next, until they could finally get everything they needed to break the curse. The Messenger that the player controls is not intended to be the last of the chain, but through a series of events, ends up being the one to get most of the items to open the music box, go inside, and stop the curse.

Alright, that's a lot. But all of it is decidedly pretty simple when you break it down. It's a standard struggle of good and evil, with a few other elements mixed in that I don't really think change much. But there had to be more to it than just that, I thought. Surely there must be some additional meaning to be gleaned from it all. Well, it could be about colonization and genocide. There's certainly a superiority complex to be seen with the demons that mirrors the classical fascists from not so long ago and all too recently. But there's no active fight for liberation among anyone other than The Messengers. There are NPCs, and friendly ones at that, but they're all largely used as more joke fodder rather than to comment on the state of the world under the Demon King. Other than the demons coming back to try (and fail) to kill the remaining humans, life in the singular settlement seems... relatively peaceful. As a matter of fact, the village that the protagonist grows up in is far more concerned with the prophecy coming to pass rather than the active threat of demons that are just outside their walls. The village seems to survive perfectly fine without needing to mess with the demons, so the idea that the story is a metaphor for oppression seems just a bit farfetched. Not necessarily impossible, but I think unlikely. Okay then, the story could be about how hubris will inevitably lead to tragedy. This somewhat links to the man who started the curse to begin with, even if he was acting out of anger more than any sort of pride. He was still confident that he could, somehow, rid the land of demons and save all of humanity by himself, and that was folly. This idea even links to a fair number of the stories that The Shopkeeper shares with the player, with multiple characters getting too self-confident and falling to their own plans. You could even argue that this applies to The Messenger that the player controls as well, who is so sure that he can save the world and rid it from the demons, when he is in fact just one Messenger in a long line of Messengers who were trying to break the curse. ...At least, until he does in fact save the world and rid it of demons, along with doing The Most to break the curse. That isn't to discount the work of the many Messenger before him, but it does make his hubris justified at the end of everything. There's something to be said about the story being about the power of teamwork over the power of the individual... but again the player is the one doing most of the work to actually break the curse. The others are only there to make them feel more important (notice that none of the important characters have an official name. They are their titles). I don't actually have a problem with this at all. If I took issue with games giving players an inflated sense of ego just for playing the game the right way, I would hate every single video game ever. But it does effectively disprove that the story is about how hubris is a heroes' greatest downfall. But that doesn't mean that the hubris doesn't apply to the demons, who are so self assured in their curse that they spend 500 full years at a time just sitting around doing nothing - confident that they will eventually force humans to go extinct. But the problem is, the curse that the demons created is strong. It takes a significant amount of power from all the (currently living) Messengers to completely destroy it once and for all. To get into DLC a bit as well, the Demon General Barma'thazel (I think that's how it's spelled) effectively creates a win-win scenario for himself, where even if The Messenger wins, Barma'thazel still gets what he wants. The demons aren't self confident because they think that everything will work out to their design naturally, they are cold and calculating, making sure that their plans will work.

So... what does all of this mean? Is The Messenger a plot that has no substantial meaning? Is there really nothing deeper than the surface? Is the cabinet in the corner of the shop really nothing more than a cabinet with a bunch of blue robes in it?

Well, I did find something substantial, within the very stories that The Shopkeeper tells. After the halfway mark, the player ends up revisiting a lot of areas, so the Shopkeeper doesn't have any new stories to share. But, at the very end of the game, in the final level of the main story, The Shopkeeper has one final story to share with the player, if they are willing to listen. It is about a boy who stayed in a well, telling a bunch of stories to himself, but didn't come out to share them with anyone else. But one day, someone wandering by the well did hear the stories the boy told, and enjoyed them. The stranger asked the boy for more stories, but the boy was very shy about sharing them, afraid of his work being judged by others. After some encouragement, the boy did eventually open up, and the stranger told him that there might be others who were curious about the boy's stories. Eventually, the boy was ready, and the stranger helped the boy get out of the well.

This is pretty clearly a very personal story, not just for the character of The Shopkeeper (whom we otherwise know ironically little about), but for presumably the very creator and/or writer of the game. It is the only story that The Shopkeeper shares which is not commented on by The Messenger whatsoever, and there is never any explanation or justification for it. The story is just allowed to be. I think that the well, in this case, is purely metaphorical. Or if it was literal at any point, it blends with the metaphorical well that was constructed around every part of The Shopkeeper and their stories. Of course, this metaphorical well I refer to is the fourth wall humor and the explanations for the stories. Every single other story in the game, there feels like there's a need to justify them somehow, even if the reason is just for a laugh. It feels like it's afraid of the audience. Afraid of the stories being judged - indicated by the protagonist's cut-ins to the stories. It's as if the kid is still there, at the bottom of the well, cautiously telling his stories because he isn't sure that anyone would appreciate them for what they are. Instead of just letting them be stories, there are extra things to distract the audience and make them laugh. But the final story stands on its own. It's maybe the strongest show of bravery that I can think of - sharing perhaps the most vulnerable, most personal story in one's life, and just letting it be. This arc in the stories - slowly going from jocular and deflective of audience in veiled fear to confidently sharing the most intimate story - is reflected similarly in the actual overarching plot of the game. After the opening cutscene and introduction, the player doesn't get that much more story at all. There's bits and pieces reluctantly doled out as the player does more and sees more, but a large part of the summary from earlier comes from just before the final level, where everything spills out and all the pieces lock into place. There's no reason why The Shopkeeper (who already knows everything from the get-go) doesn't tell The Messenger everything as the character, but I think I've effectively illustrated exactly the reason why The Shopkeeper doesn't tell The Messenger anything as a stand-in for the audience. It's silly, played out, overdone, simple, full of plot holes, and honestly a bit long for a game that didn't seem to have that much of a plot beforehand.

But it's still a piece of art at the end of the day. And even if I see problems with it, I still greatly respect the amount of bravery it must've took to bear it out in full without any silly jokes or needing to explain itself.