FREY AND ESGOO HIT PIECE LETS ES-GOO!
This is about the Traumascaling video because among numerous problems including the fact that it wasn't good at ranking them based on trauma, it has a couple other problems with it.
Pre-Script (1): I want to preface this by saying that undeniably, Mr Goo and Frey are both two of, if not the most, influential people in the Project Moon community (EN) barring Kim Jihoon himself from that ranking.
That kind of sway comes with whether they intended it or not, a certain level of responsibility. While I do understand that people fuck up and content creators are all human at the end of the day, being human too is about, in the words of the very games they claim to have “Literary expertise” in, accepting the faults of your past, what you’ve done to others and what others have done to you, and being able to move past that.
As Angela puts it in Library of Ruina: “To be responsible for my own decisions and deeds… That’s what being human is about, isn’t it? …Even if the burden is heavy, I will bear it and move forward. It may be sorrowful now… yet I’ll find myself happier next time.”
It would be wrong to claim their influence is entirely negative, and I don’t aim to suggest so in the slightest. APR is a charity for a good cause and a uniting event for the community, and I think that its existence, and their part in its promotion and formation are undeniably good things. While I am going to be harsh in this, it is because I want to be right in “knowing” that they can do better, both of them. I understand neither of them was originally that big, nor is there a crash course on conduct for whence a creator becomes so to say “influential”, understanding that is not paramount to disregarding all criticism, because their demeanor has not grown in proportion to their size.
If by some divine intervention either Frey or Esgoo are reading this, first of all, hi. Second of all, I mean what I spake afore, I do believe that the both of you have the potential to do better, and all I wish for the community is that it may improve and flourish.
Pre-Script (2): I was not on PMTWT during the time this video released and had a controversy, nor have I watched the video until late June (earlier the month this is being written, and 3 months following the video’s release). If I go over any things critiqued in the time period, so be it I cannot care if more than ones self has noticed a problem, and the fact that others have critiqued the video in the past is not proof in of itself that the critiques are invalid for whatever reason.
Pre-Script (3): The P.S at the bottom of papers means Post-script, which means that prefaces or forewords like this could indeed be called prescripts, and I like the Index so I am going to call them such.
Prescript (4): Please do the due courtesy of reading until the end before sending me hatemail or the like. I at least did the courtesy of sitting through an hour of that wretched video so it is truly the least you can do. Additionally, consider that by sending hate mail or harassment, 1) You won’t do anything to me because I’ve already resigned myself to it. 2) You are going against the core principle of the game(s) that you claim to care about or are in the community in, such is to say perpetuating the cycle of violence and hate against others ad infinitum:
Citations of this claim: Limbus Company: Entirety of Canto 4, Entirety of Canto 5, Library of Ruina: (Spake by Roland in Reception): (In phase 1) I’ve come this far so I can make her suffer the same… No, to bring her even more pain than what I’ve suffered. I don’t exactly believe there’s happiness waiting for me at the end of this… There’d only be empty regret. I’d get nothing out of it. (In phase 4) “If I beheaded my nightmare, I might feel good for a moment." "I had been bearing with this shit until now to experience this small victory…" "If I were to gouge out this pain, would I be able to accept that it’s over?" "If I neglected this choice I’ve been given, wouldn’t it… find a way to me in some other form eventually?" "I thought it’d all be over once I could accomplish this dream of vengeance." "I had a reason I couldn’t give up… I told myself that this was for me…" "That it’s only fair for me to destroy this place for taking the one I cherished away." "Even if no one understood me… At least I would be able to understand myself." "Deeper into the darkest depths. Fate made my heart cruel." (spake by Angela in Keter): Even if I had my revenge on that man… they simply won’t. That’s why I have to stop this… Repeating this cycle will eventually result in it crushing me. (trust me there are hundreds of lines like these for these two characters alone) Lobotomy Corporation: The Eye Facing the Fear; Breaking the Cycle (Binah Epithet) The Eye Embracing the Past; Building the Future (Chokma Epithet)
Pre Script (5): If you are to send hatemail or harassment to anyone who critiques this post of in of itself, or to either of the two creators who are implicated, you are fundamentally worse than both. See prior quotes for reference.
Hah. Alright… Let’s begin.
So. Who am I to be criticising these two? Nice to meet you, my names (are) Carmen/Camellia, I have a background in psychology, I have been following Project Moon for a good 8 years at this point and my hobby is media and literary analysis.
Originally speaking I was going to go over the problem rankings but for a couple reasons (namely there are too many which have the same base explanations of “Reductionist” “Biased answer” “Internal Logic Issue” “Unfunny joke”, which I feel would detract from the wider point that I am trying to make. While there will be some parts wherein I point out the outliers for final rankings, and the internal logic of rankings, I will mostly be viewing this as an outside observer who is criticising the methodology and implications of the manner that this is structured.
Shoutout to ME who had to remake the tier list by scratch because they chose to never show the final tiers in their entirety.
To begin as they did at the start of their video, bottom up.
“Would Manifest EGO”. Stop. Think about what that entails in Project Moon. What are the circumstances wherein one manifests EGO.
Extreme stress and trauma which pushes one to the three pronged road of Distortion, E.G.O and Peccatulum.
This is the bottom tier, which you would assume implies the fact that they lack any trauma despite themselves being in the City, however this is not at all taken into account for the actual requirement which is, in their words “the kind of lives that allow them to shake off the kinds of grief and tragedy when it does strike”
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how EGO works in Project Moon. E.G.O manifestation is not reliant on “shaking off” the grief and sorrows in your current and past states, in fact quite the opposite, it’s about accepting and moving on WITH the trauma, not leaving it behind, repressing it or not caring about it.
E.G.O is at its core a reflection of the totality of a human or abnormality. Manifested EGO is the acknowledgement of your flaws and ability to move on forwards with those in full view. The resolve that comes with certainty in yourself, not with simply “living a good life”.
Furthermore, the implication that this tier’s statement of ‘living the kind of good life that allows one to shake off their trauma when it does happen’ is a flawed understanding of trauma as a concept. People have trauma. I have trauma, cPTSD. Living a good and sheltered, or even happy life does not count as negative trauma, nor does it by its nature prepare you for when/if trauma would strike.
Throughout this post I will be largely focused on these two central points, a misrepresentation of trauma as it exists in real life, and the biases or stereotypes that the video helps perpetuate, as well as the fact that I’m not convinced either of the two know how to read.
Going up past this tier (are) “Boring”/“Nest World Problems”/“T Corp”/“Get a Prescription”
Boring is to be graded on a curve to our world being “this kind of trauma is standard in the city”
T Corp is a subsect of “boring” which has been separated because haha British people bad. Even if it is true that the UK is fucked right now it’s not very funny but I digress.
Before I continue I want to point out another manner in which I think that these two make overly light of the topic they are claiming to give focus on being the trauma that people have faced, which is to say 3 seconds into the actual tier list when they are ranking Yi Sang as he is in the current story.
Yi Sang did not have his trauma psychically removed.
Yi Sang very explicitly is recovering from trauma, and not the normal kind that a city dweller would face either–Yi Sang fled the country twice because of oppression and effective enslavement, his only group of friends was betrayed causing its the dissolution of the league, and what few friends of that sort he had remaining he had to kill.
While he doesn’t have actively as much violent trauma as the higher tiers, even if they also say in this section “Yeah you watched all your friends die, that's just tuesday”.
Meanwhile, Sinclair is two tiers higher having an almost identical story, he was rich (which everybody knows directly correlates to your trauma-o-meter) and watched all of his friends and family die. Sinclair is not actively more repressed than Yi Sang, Sinclair is just more unstable and Yi Sang in contrast is less prone to communicating anything clearly.
Moving up you have “The Problem”.
This is not a measure of trauma first of all, so this is another logical inconsistency in their internal criteria.
Second of all, the implication being made is that they are, to reference a certain reddit post I saw about the game “Evil and Proud” Moreover, IDs which actively cause suffering unto others but who are not wallowing in/about their lives in such (eg. Both thumb IDs) are given a pass over in this section. Third, the fundamental nature of making this a tier list with discrete categories creates an absolute hierarchy between these rankings, as well as an absolute divide between them—The implication that is made throughout this tier of the list is that there are only two discrete kinds of people, abusers and the abused (and those who were abused but not in a way that they can spin a joke about or is very explicitly shown or discussed).
Eg. Fanghunt Hong Lu is a perpetuator of the cycle of violence against innocents with his murder of bloodfiends being indiscriminate and his showing of acute enjoyment in their suffering. Fanghunt Hong Lu is a Hong Lu ID, and he has his Jade Eye; Hong Lu directs his trauma of the OTHER highly virulent humanoid non-human creatures that exist only to reproduce outwardly to the bloodfiends.
Eg. Spicebush Yi Sang is a direct analogue to Dongbaek, who suffered the same or arguably more trauma of/than Yi sang’s base ID due to the dissolution of the league of nine, and the fact that his manifestation of said E.G.O means that he was in a/the same/similar circumstances and ideology as Donbaek and the rest of her Alliance. This applies to Heathcliff as well, being a partial analogue to Dongbaek who is the only one we see wear the same E.G.O, as well as sharing the theme of being abandoned/rejected like a dog.
They quote the fact that Heathcliff outwardly rejects help and pushes others away… one of the most common trauma responses which we can see from BASE YI SANG PRE CANTO IV, or Ishmael Pre-canto, or Rodion in general. This response is only exacerbated by the fact that he’s actively wearing the EGO that makes him long for and also reject any and all attention from others, as seen through the dialogue lines of Sunshower Outis and Sunshower Heathcliff.
The fact that he hurt others by pushing them away and rejecting those who are close to him is undeniable, and but if this video was truly being made to spread awareness about mental health as the pinned comment states, surely you would recognise the fact that this is one of the most common ways that traumatised people enter a vicious cycle of isolation.
We can also see this is Hong Lu’s canto, which again, Frey is meant to be *THE* analysis person, who has a self described “Expertise” in Project Moon literary experience; Actively tried to ignore his trauma and push everybody who knew him further away, which only served to fester hatred and resentment from his brother and friends, refusing to allow anybody genuinely close to him because he “knows” that they are going to end up hurting. Selfish selflessness is a very VERY direct analogue to what and even just how a lot of people end up living their lives. The fact that Base Hong Lu is in “get a prescription” despite this, despite the fact that he is the most realistic depiction of a trauma response in Project Moon, is odd to be generous.
The tier above this one certainly does not help with the perspective they push of these two delineated categories “abuser” and “abused” with it being “would probably kill the therapist”. Again, the implication on a tier list which scales Trauma is of course that people with more trauma are inherently more violent in some manner of speaking.
And the highest tier. “Carmen’s Favourite Target”.
What the fuck is that tier. First of all, why aren’t all the R corp people there if 3 of the 5 are for no other reason than the blood games. If its the Reindeer horns that get them that high, I, as someone with both trauma and chronic migraines, am especially in a position to say that THEY ARENT THE SAME AT FUCKING ALL. They portray the fact that Hong Lu’s reindeer willingly just sat down and died to the Rhino as him being actively suicidal however in the same story the Rhino are coming in because the Reindeer have finished their part, and treating your life as worth nothing when you are a clone soldier is not equatable to being suicidal.
Furthermore, as someone who is, was, and will be foreseeably suicidal, saying “The best thing that they can do for themselves is distort at this point” struck a nerve in me because I know that exact sentiment painfully intimately, remember Distortion like death doesn’t just remove suffering, in fact distortion is worse, it perpetuates the suffering, you have no choice but to wallow in it because until you are undone or returned, the shadow is all that is your being.
Finally. The fucking Magnum Opus on this.
The pinned comment
Mental health, the thing that we completely misrepresent and partially demonise with our implications that theres a direct correlation to violence with higher amounts of trauma, and where we effectively
say that some people have it so bad they should lose their entire self because that would be preferable.
Mental Health is real and we are comfortable people comforting people. Buy my merch.
I know that they state they aren’t meaning to devalue the trauma of real people. Intentions are fine, but thought crimes and thought saviours aren’t real. I don’t think they mean harm but I do think that they are perpetuating bad ideas and profiting off of it.
The separation between the “get actual help” and “Get a prescription”, the fact that the list has a direct correlation between the violence and trauma as the tiers scale up, the fact that they misrepresent so many of these ideas both in and out of universe.
the conceit of violence being inherent to immense trauma, of some people being truly beyond help, is the kind of mentality that had people like us, like me, Lobotomised and institutionalised for decades.
I am a disturbed person, and I’d wager that most of those who are acting as “counter reactionary” commenters are not.
To those people:
Until you can learn to admit that people have the right to be mad at things that are well intentioned, and the fact that even without intention creators have an entire capacity for harm, I cannot help you. I sincerely hope that you get help if you are one of those people, as in, I truly hope that you get better. The well was poisoned but I have no reputation to uphold so I willingly take part because I don’t want to see a community like this decay into tribal defences. My criticism is coming from a place of someone concerned with the state of things in the community as someone who can speak from experience(s). For those who aren't having been effected by Trauma or especially by the rhetoric of the mentally ill being violent, consider if you have an equal say to the people who do, and kindly shut the fuck up until you can learn what privilege means
I do not and have never much liked either of these two, but like I said before, that is not grounds for either me or them to attack the other.
If either creator made it to the end of this, genuinely thank you for taking into account what my humble self has to say. I can't say we'd get along after this but if you have any concerns feel free to contact me.
