Tyranny of The Masterpiece

I love The Room(2003) a lot. The alien world presented in a late 90s city aesthetic, the way Johnny becomes alive in the screen, the daring sex scenes, the impeccable dialogue, the naturalistic scenes, how the dramatic music is juxtaposed with everything else, and all the other small details create a magnificent experience we will perhaps be able to see only in this movie. I usually can’t remember movie quotes, even after watching them several times, but the dialogue in this movie is very easy to remember despite how mundane the conversations often are. The combination of the great dialogue and bizzare visuals create many, many perfectly memorable scenes. Whether it’s the small talk in the flower shop, two guys throwing a ball at each other in a weak attempt to replicate how humans actually play sports, Johnny throwing the plastic bottle to the floor, the sex scenes which manage to erase all the sexual tension from the movie; all scenes bring their unique flavor while also building up to a unified tone. The acting undoubtedly play a huge part in this. When you pick apart scene by scene, most of the acting is — albeit filled with golden moments — nothing legendary on its own; but together they all contribute to the otherworldly, surreal feeling that’s present in every shot of the movie. Of course, Tommy himself dominates pretty much every scene he is in, creating all the memetic scenes we love. For me it’s more than “weird funny speaking”, it doesn’t really make me burst out laughing, but rather I am simply amazed at the character that comes alive in Johnny’s acting. It is a truly brilliant performance, had Johnny been “just himself” or tried to act more restrained it would not be the same way. The end result is as it is right now only because he really wanted to act as a nice person who got inexplicably betrayed by his lover. As video creator Hbomberguy puts it in his video (link), the movie is an honest representation of the way misogyny operates in how cis straight men view relationships. Had movie been more “competent” in certain ways, for example had it succeeded to connect people with Johnny as a unjustly wronged man, it would be actually a worse movie. It would speak to many guys who “can’t just understand women”, and criticisms of such a depiction would be regarded as cynical. I can pratcially hear people saying  “Are you saying men don’t get betrayed or what?” and feeling really smart about it. By being “worse”, it’s much more wholesome, bizzare, memorable experience that is also a honest examination of men-women relationships and much easier to dissect without someone feeling like being insulted. Dare I say, The Room is a “good” movie.

Multiple copy-pasted Johnny’s throwing the bottle at the roof scene

Now, someone (which I admit to exaggerate for the sake of argument) might say:

Great art is a product of great minds. And art is essentially a transmission of ideas and emotions from the creator towards the audience. A work of art consists of two things: Intent, the underlying concepts, themes, the premise etc, and the execution: the way creator transmits the intent. So, if the intent is great and it is communicated well, then the the work is good and creator is talented. If you happen to enjoy something in any other combination, then it’s just bad art you like, accidentally.

A more accurate model of art would be someone shouting poetry they wrote a while ago, but now does not fully remember to a stranger across a busting, crowded street. Perhaps the listener doesn’t know the language, perhaps they can’t even hear at all. Perhaps there is a music playing. Perhaps, there are two people having a heated argument. If the “poem” is to be alive as an artwork and not mere ink splattered on paper, the street itself and the condition of the listener are as important as what the poet wrote and how they are shouting it. A unintenional interpretation is never true accidents in the vein of forgetting to save your file or putting wrong laundry to the washing machine, people will always hear things in the ways you did not intend. On the process of the creation, far it be from the flawless plans, or — even worse — whimsical inspirations of great minds, decisions are often made on coincidences, the particular mood of creators, compromises on not only with resources at hand, but with team members and one’s very own conflicting opinions. After many hours of meticulous planning, careful execution, discussions and retakes; they all fail, as art is human, that’s what art makes so special [1]. They are not computer programs that are expected to give predictable output, where unexpected result is to be simply cast aside as error.
Speaking of computer programs, despite being built on them, in video games the mistakes of the machine themselves become genuine expressions. In Pokémon(1995-2018+) series, there are “X Items” which increase a certain stat of a ‘mon by certain amount during the battles. In Pokémon: Red/Green/Blue/Yellow(1995-1998) games, instead of raising the value, X accuracy simply removed the check for accuracy. This mistake did not result in an inferior game overall, many simply did not care enough for X items and for others, it was an opportunity for new strategies. Its existence brings a legitimate question about the place of move accuracy in the design: As the later installments brought more and more ways to deal with the accuracy, removing the accuracy check outright proved to be the most popular method. However, one can also make the argument that getting rid of accuracy too easily would take the risk from using poweful moves, remove the thrill that chance factor provides, and make certain mechanics like sleeping even more broken, so a balance is necessary. Perhaps then, the glitch isn’t necessarily inferior, but also neither reveals a fatal flaw; instead it creates a different and equally valuable experience. In video games, this phenomena happens all the time(link), even in works which aren’t (in)famous for its bugs, it’s not always easy to differentiate oversights from “intended features”, and it’s not rare to see glitches later being adopted as “true mechanics” by the developers.  In “Are video games art?” discourse people often brought examples of games which held as brilliant creations; but for me something like out-of-bounds glitch is precisely what makes video games so unique, complex, messy and human, like what art is at its core…
I can hear a certain objection:

If we have it your way, then we can’t differentiate between a picture made with effort and dye poured over paper or random outputs from a computer. You imply that skill or effort isn’t relevant.

Creators should not limit our personal relationship with art, but this doesn’t really imply we need to treat art like something which sprung the existence out of thin air. All works carry a part of their creator, accepting author as “dead” does not contradict this. Rather, it’s a natural conclusion of this thought, the meta context does not rule over my experience, but rather becomes subservient to it. Definitely, what makes The Room what it is now is deeply connected to who Johnny Viseau is and the fact that he wanted to make a drama movie. Enjoying the movie as an anonymous comedy flick is also perfectly fine, but to me, this context makes it all better. Best art truly comes from what’s deeply personal, and The Room is a “mistake” that was born from the depths of a man’s heart, and shaped with the honest effort of the cast. This separates it from creations which are “deliberately bad” or “random”, even as parodies, they sometimes succumb to feel cold. A good example are the games whose wacky glitches were the main appeal are funny, they often don’t have the charm and the lasting appeal of bugs in Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion(2006), as they are in a context where they transcend being mere accidents. Trainwrecks can be interesting to look at, but they eventually need to be cleaned up; artistic media is on the other hand is meaningful with its failures as much as its successes.
Bioshock Infinite(2013) is a game that I don’t have many positive feelings about. It is too fast and frantic, wastes its own setup for a less interesting conclusion, somewhat emotionally empty, overall vastly inferior to Bioshock 2(2010). Yet, Bioshock Infinite is certainly competent. The creators were excellent at tension escelation, creating an alive city, using visuals to struck the player in awe while indulging in relentless gore, the music, the character writing, the voice acting, the controls, the guns, the machines, the cinematography of cutscenes… and many more little things. And this isn’t merely a matter of opinion, they are just able to hit certain notes for a certain player base. There  isn’t too much magic to it, just hard work and experience. Popular things are popular because they are competent. However… doesn’t this refute me? If there is a reliable metric for art to create a range of feedback from a range of groups of audience, then what I am rambling about here? Then, there is a merit to this random quote[2] from Twitter:

“…. there is no GOOD fantasy literature. There is fantasy literature you LIKE, and that’s great, I’m not saying that’s wrong…”

In similar vein, maybe I am just wrong about Bioshock Infinite? Maybe people are wrong about liking trash? Maybe endless debates between music genres are meaningful? I might just have the wrong mood or mindset, or my tastes might not be trained enough to appreciate good art? I mean, classics are classics for good reason, after all…
No.
First of all, “skill” cannot be isolated from the context which art resides. From today’s perspective, Half-Life(1997)’s complete rejection of cutscenes, at times excessive dedication to leave the player on their own, tight first-person platform sequences feels outlandish. Especially US military not only being depicted as an antagonist but doing so in a manner that’s eerily accurate to its real life behavior seems downright absurd for a big budget game of today, but yet it was the state-of-the-art PC game of its year. In 1997, it was the next stage for FPS games and 3D engines. If the same exact game has been released in 2007; it would be seen as outdated, unprofessional, lacking of content, perhaps controversial for its portrayal. In 2017, it would be seen as an avant garde indie project, a call back to the past, and most likely too “sjw” for some. In all cases, audience are certainly different, but developers have exact skill for level design, 3D modeling, sound design and writing, and for the sake of argument, same mindset. Even so, a “Half Life” of 1997, 2007 and 2017 would still be not the same games. They have the same pixels but they point to different people, a different world, a different time, a different existence. The fact that even marginal differences in time, place, socioecological background, life experiences, beliefs, momentary mood, art viewing habits, the platform which art is being viewed by and other many minor hard to predict elements all not only influence how people judge the quality but also shape the very existence of art in society in the first place makes it very daunting — I would say, impossible — to find metrics for judge the whatever true goals art should exists for, unless we just decide — as people who try to define rules for art often do — the people who experience art is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
Even if we could find an objective — or inclusive enough — mission for art, it would mean nothing, because all it achieves is to make people enjoy art less. “This isn’t good but I really like it.”, “I just enjoy trash sometimes”, “I like this more but I just have a bad taste.”, “You may not like this, but it’s still very important.” are some of the phrases I commonly encounter. (Often in jest, but just as commonly with full sincerely). Adding (however subtle) social pressure to keep art from the person only scrubs all meaning from it. Instead of being transgressive, de-personalized art is a tool of conformity. Instead of being the voice of the silenced, it becomes a tool of propaganda for status-quo. Instead of personal catharsis, it exists as source of pre-approved thoughts and feelings. Before gaining the heart of the reader, de-personalized art aims for “higher”, more prestige, more numbers, more approval… Any kind of set standards stop improving art and instead art becomes a mere tool to reproduce these standards. Obviously, art cannot become truly de-personalized, so what I am talking is hypothetical; but the idea of what art means for mere individuals is a secondary concern was and is a quite a common opinion. Aristocrats, radical thinkers, many academics, the Church and stakeholders of  intellectual properties all love their standards, their values, their rules, their “refined taste”, they all contempt  “trivial”, “unambitious, “lazy”, “shallow”, “mediocre” art.
The words  “good” or “bad” are extremely loaded when it comes to media. If they were only easy shorthands for a group of personally chosen metrics, something like “I liked the bad movie” would be entirely fine. Unfortunately, there is definitely a collective crutch to our relationship with media, if we weren’t so obsessed to separate “great” art from others, then why there are so much content about praising extremely popular media and drag-down hated ones? The moment a person starts to be slightly conscious about media, they have a chance to bow to the tyranny of the masterpiece, where “I liked the movie because it had cool special FX” is no longer an acceptable take, now it must be “groundbreaking”, “classic”, “meaningful”, “important”. So, “bad art” now instead describes the opposite: “wretched”, “cheap”,” lazy”, “immoral”, but still “great” in the opposite the way. “Liking trash” is a powerful phrase because not only one makes it clear that they share the same values on which metrics make a work of art great, but it also saves oneself from the greatest curse of all: Mediocrity!
In most contexts, “mediocre” really seems to be worst insult for a work of art. “Forgettable”, “lackluster”, “not a masterpiece”, “flawed”, “average”, the opposite of “great”, art which is blamed to a serve no purpose other than itself. “Mediocre” art comes in two flavors: The first kind is “derivative” and “safe” one, it does not challenge the audience enough, often “done for cash”. The second is “failed experiments”, it challenges the audience too much, too “unfamiliar”, “interesting but unpolished”. Either way, they fail at being “great”. Here, it’s assumed that money is merely something keeps art from reaching it’s “true” purpose, but marketability, or simply getting a paycheck, is just another external goal, like spreading propaganda, honoring your commisoner sultan, playing an instrument to be cool and attractive or doimg calligraphy because that just what your family has always did. And a lot of popular “mediocre” media is excellent at being marketable, it takes serious skill to depict realistic issues while avoiding saying anything controversial about them, to use flashy parts to keep the audience from thinking too much about details, landing a edgy but still family-friendly and uncontroversial humor, coming up with witty quotes, memorable shots, cool merchandise-friendly designs while consistently maintaining a certain degree of fun. Sure, popularity isn’t an indicator of merit, it’s mostly an indicator of advertising power and luck, but the content still needs to be advertisable. In that way Marvel movies are skilled, competent, “objectively good” art; in the way a more flawed older superhero movie is not. Prioritizing standards over personal connection will not only encourage conformism among the audience, but creators as well. This is true for the designs of the beautiful mosques of certain periods, explicitly mission-oriented art movements and the commodification of art alike, the difference is that commodification clearly enforces conformity on an unprecendented scale and magnitude, as capitalism does. When it comes to this, people often want to have their cake and eat it too: “Oh, objective standards matter, but this popular trash doesn’t follow my standards!” No, your standards are also derived from how you feel about art,  if you enforce impersonal standards, then in the end your own personal standards will also get invalidated: Spiderman Into the Spider Verse(2018) is a movie a lot of people like a lot. I have never witnessed people talking so passionately about a superhero movie before, yet it was one of the less profitable Spiderman movies(for comparison: link1, link2). If the mission is to make the most money, there is an ironclad rule: “live action is better than the animation”, animation is doomed to the second kind of “mediocrity”, it is still too challenging for a lot of people. As with any area of life, class society will favor certain goals and thus will reward certain skills over others. Purposely engaging with art with the same logic only ends up validating mediocrity, ironically in the name of escaping it.

Still, there is a clear difference between true art and trash, a fine dinner and fast food, unique and generic, touching and fleeting. By through rigorous study of classics we can cultivate a good taste to seperate wheat from the chaff, truly great works still have a brilliance which puts them above all others, and this is identifiable in even if we are not able to give exact formula for the beauty.

Reducing art to certain metrics of competency does reduce its meaning in another way, because whatever human mind produces, nature does it better, as former also is a product of other. [3] A real tree is more detailed, more lively, more vivid than a drawing; and it’s something you can touch and smell. Real people are infinitely more complex than the best written characters, they have an existence outside of limited words in a paper. An action VR game has the comfort to be away from actual danger, but it can’t ever give the thrill one’s whole body feels on a rollercoster. The director who knows how to make their audience cry is an amateur compared to a doze of the right hormone. Should art be tasked to hold a candle to the shadows of societies when studying history, sociology, anthropology directly enlighten us much better? Are little nuggests of thought art provides can be a match for tomes of philosophy and political theory? If art is primarily a show of brilliance, then it is condemned to be a mere imitation of life.
But it isn’t. There is more to Bioshock Infinite than its goals and achievements. When I listed of the things the game had gotten right, there was a twist. You see, I actually enjoy the game quite a bit, just not particularly for any of the reasons why it’s “competent”.  Even though most of the game doesn’t sit right with me, it is still valuable as it is. It made me challenge and reevaluate my tastes, made me think about how games do stuff, when it game the chance to slow down and take a breath, it showed me how different it could be. Even though I’d prefer Bioshock 2 in a reductive one-to-one comparison, I am glad Bioshock Infinite is what it is. Works of art becomes what they are with its strong and weak points together, just like people who create them. Every piece of art carries the mark of a human:  An amqteur drawing of a tree, a game which routinely enter “worst 10 games of all time” lists, the music perfonmance in the shower, the most stereotypical wish-fulfillment fantasy fanfiction, a short film which solely exists to advertise knock-off cellphones… They all bring something with them. This means neither it is necessarily worth giving attention to just about anything nor all art is equally valuable. There is certainly something that makes certain art truly special above others: It’s the bonds we forge with them.
It is hard to figure out what makes art great because these bonds are undeniably personal. We can talk about traits, styles, genres people commonly enjoy and draw certain rules about art from them: “Study real people for characters”, “don’t let exposition break the pace”, “12 rules of animation”, “emergent gameplay” etc. However such rules can only describe some patterns of enjoyment, the process of forging bonds is truly where art becomes magic; personalized, hard to define, impossible to contain, creates a life on its own. This bond might be the homely feeling when turning page of a book, the film which helped you in the dark period of life, the song that witness your undying love, the show which made you learn to draw solely for making fan art of your favourite character, the game who practically taught you a foreign language. What’s the most important masterpiece one will never watch compared to the soap opera they are so passionate  that they can be distracted from their otherwise dull life? [4] The “cringe” fanfiction a teenager regularly posts might be more magical to them than “the classic” they are obligated to read and “appreciate.” No amount of professionalism and mastery alone can create such bonds, it is only born during the experience between person and the art, special for each person and that ‘person’ in the moment, for the creator and the audience alike. What’s the point of calling someone’s taste’s “bad”, if they are happy about enjoying something? Why a work of art being able to reach a person is a bad thing? Or, why disliking a popular thing has to be about being edgy? Why attempt to destroy the magic, especially when capitalism trying its best to do so?
Just like magic, the true bonds between us and art are impossible to be co-opted by the capitalism, so instead it replaced by a pale imitation. Just as how commericalized magic is depersonalized, formulaic and often expensive remains of what’s been destroyed long ago that enables us to buy crumbles of spirituality, art is being stripped away from the person to sell the crumbles of humanity back at them: Not only property-holders are self-declared arbiters of how we access the art, but also one’s entire relationship with it. The toxicity of fan communities, fandom rivalries, the state of media criticism are not bugs, they are features: A real gamer has the real gaming equipment and only plays real games with other real gamers. A consumer making a choice — often because they need to manage their money and time — means they hate everything they left behind. Art elitists say they want to further art, but how does exactly enforcing a true/false art dichotomy help literally anything when it is already done so quite effectively? Once again, why destroy the magic?
For me, the goal of art critique is not only examine our relationship with it but also enhance it in a way. Whether by finding new angles for appreciation, exploring our discomfort for a better understanding of ourselves or simply finding catharsis by finding our feelings in words, a great media analysis is able to strengthen our bonds or even creating new ones! This isn’t to say that negative analysis is bad — far from it, i have myself complained about fake positivity in the very last article, (link) — however there is a difference between being negative and destructive. A critique does not need to attack the very concept of liking something, as if personal enjoyment or dissatisfaction are harmful ideas that needs to be debunked, a art is a battle to win or lose and making a critique is an arena to prove one’s mettle. They don’t have to be “nuanced”, “fair” or “neutral” — I, myself, very much prefer criticism that comes from the heart — but they shouldn’t further the masterpiece/atrocity dichotomy. There is more to say about a work than being a 10/10 gifts of the gods or THE WORST THING EVER. A critique may contain many mistakes; it might be dishonest about the subject material, go into too much hyperbole, unable to support it’s points well and so on, but the worst thing it can do is make the audience leave with less emotions and thoughts instead of more, to contribute to render expressing sincere love and hate for something passe, and to succeed in breaking personal bonds between the person and art.
Now, it’s time to embrace my own biases: It’s quite hard for me to carry strong negative opinions about art. At worst, I find something mildly dull or unapproachable, but even then most art is at least conceptually interesting to me, even if it’s not just interesting enough to experience in full. This doesn’t mean I don’t empathize with cathartic hatred nor claim any sense of superiorty in my view, but it’s a feeling I rarely foster towards art. It’s very likely that this feeling is what makes me so averse to the any notion of standards, masterpieces and atrocities in arts. It follows from here that for me, “good art” is the one I enjoy to experience. My ode to the Room in the beginning isn’t an mere attempt to be a contrarian, it is able to connect to me so I don’t find any value in disregarding as a failure. If pre-assumed notions of quality is useless to explain my feelings, then I find them useless. However, even outside of my bias coming from being a complete nerd, my stance still has a merit, because I have truly never seen any application of de-personalization that did not end up in shaming people out of enjoying art or push them to conformity. Thus, I say that if you also feel a need to hierarchize your experiences, you should say “no” to the tyranny of the masterpiece.

Even so, you must still have some conception of art being plainly terrible. Clearly, certain works deserve condemnation, not praise.

No, I am very firm about the uselessness of objectivity in art, this should be clear. However, I do think we can have some objective standards for media. If we accept media as the instrument for art and should exist for the benefit of the audience and their creators then we can set such goals to media:

• First, we should be able to access and decipher the contents. A falsely printed comic,  a broken software and a story behind the paywall are all terrible. As discussed, media certainly can create new understandings for art but if there is no understanding, then we can safely call the media a failure.
• Second, it shouldn’t create patterns of harm: Causing seizures, triggered trauma due to untelegraphed inclusion of sensitive topics, setups for addiction, verifiable spread of misinformation or hate speech are examples of such. This extends to the creators too. No media is worth destroying their creators in the process.
• Third, media should not be a tool of validation for actively terrible people, even if their creation is just about cute puppies. The world has enough people who aren’t abusers or fascists that suspending their validation by the society won’t be the end of art.

It might seem there is a contradiction in my rhetoric, but if we hold art as something dynamically exists between the media and the person, it all makes sense. As an example, let’s compare a novel that presents reactionary ideas and Adolf Hitler’s paintings. One can read the former and can make a multitude of interpretations: The text might be in support of the reactionary ideas, deconstruct them, contain contradictory or unrelated themes, be worth experiencing due to it’s other qualities and so on. It’s usually not a good idea to morally judge its readers based on a single interpretation,relationship between art and the person is complex, but we can learn something about the readers based on their opinions, for example the way they frame the story’s depiction of abuse. Even so,  definitely there is a dynamic being we can hate, love, be critical or bored of, but it’s quite tough to call the book bad without a clear pattern of harm.
Hitler’s paintings are the opposite. For someone who has never heard of Hitler, they would be just unassuming normal drawings they might like and dislike; but for everyone else the paintings’ existence is completely overshadowed by their creator for good reason. There is no connection with what paintings are, they only exist as painted blocks of a Nazi, they are media without art. So, if someone expresses adoration for the paintings, it’s quite fair to be suspicious, did the truly get past the whole Adolf part so easily? As the answer is quite literally concerns our safety, even if someone was really giant art-lover, we can be sure about calling those paintings objectively bad media.
In the same vein, a lot of art we like exist within objectively bad media, this is a fact we are facing as more and more stories worker abuse and despicable creators come to light. Something that might be beloved in the past might be now empty. Without ‘the person’, there is no art, when connection is severed, the work of art as previously known is no more. Just as often however, people still embrace the art despite the media. Yes, we shouldn’t “let people enjoy” just about anything, and we should be conscious about our financial support, but the problems of the media is greater than individual creators. Most media is bad, because society which creates them is bad, but just as we can find good people in the bad society, we can find good art in bad media. This fact just adds another good reason against the tyranny of the masterpiece: No art is so bad that it is nothing but an artifact of the society, but also never so good that it can escape the society.
Then, what would a post-masterpiece society look like? It would certainly would be a post-capitalist one. People bringing the trash out from the depths their hearts with no care any rules or taboos, no worry of any approval, no desire of greatness. Imagine modding communities, art posting sites, blogs dedicated to extremely niche tastes but without limitation of the capital. Weird, plain, beautiful, ugly, inspiring, gross… Just their creation, unfiltered, probably unpolished, open to anyone interested. Or only for their in-group, or just themselves. Either way, all the chains between art and person is broken. A beautiful chaos of trash manifests after complete ruin of “artistic standards”, as there is no one to enforce them left. For now however, they still haunt us and will do so for quite a while. Until then, we can at least reject their authority with completely embracing our bonds with art. Please create and enjoy “so bad it’s good”, “cursed”, “fun trash”, “happy accident”, “problematic fave” art, don’t hesitate being contrarian, no more “guilty pleasures”, let all of your love be genuine!
This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.

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[1] I am not implying any kind of specialness of “humanity” here, if there were other species who are creative enough for art, art would also mirror them too.
[2] The quote includes a part about judging genres, that’s a whole another beast I won’t attempt to tackle here.
[3] Hopefully it is clear enough in the paragraph, but I don’t argue in favor a nature/human dichotomy. “Nature” itself is a heavily loaded word, here it just has a meaning of “systems in universe which humans observe, interact and are part of.”
[4] I am not setting up a false dichotomy of “genuine” vs “pretentious” art here. A person can be just as easily bonded to an arthouse movie or surrealist painting, it’s precisely the existence of such bonds render hierarchies of “artistic value” worthless.

Should We Let People Enjoy Things?

Angry Estelle Face

Negativity thrives on the Internet. One of the best ways to get regular growth on Twitter is to get beefs with other people: Dunks, hot takes, screenshots, outrage…. Similarly on Youtube, drama machine is ever strong, “nitpicky men hating things you like” is a growing genre, videos with negative titles get more views. Fandoms are notorious for people receiving backslash for the most innocent things. There are entire online “communities” dedicated on hating specific personalities, groups, media etc. So it’s understandable that a lot of people are tired from the environment of cringe culture and cynicism masquerading as intelligence and We crave sincerity and wholesomeness. It can feel truly refreshing to filter out loud noises and see unbridled joy . “Let people enjoy things!” is often used in expressing this sentiment. Unfortunately, it is used as a tool for artificial positivity to shut down criticism.
Smarm is highly endorsed by social media platforms; a post that “looks like” insult or threat of violence might you get banned, but something truly disgusting with a “calm and neutral” demeanor almost never will. Being contrarian brings fame, but it also brings infamy. One with loud sharp opinions will be usually less well received than one with a positive demeanor, this is also a rule as old as humanity itself. Just look at the comments any time a game journalism site posts something slightly critical of the industry, or when they give less than perfect score to the new iteration of [giant franchise]. In short, as much as negativity is thriving, there is a far larger tendency to enforce artificial positivity. This might seem like a contradiction, but actually loud cynical criticism goes hand to with aggressive politeness.
Smarm is cynical, False positivity does not always appear in the form of “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything”. Just as often, it laser focuses the negativity into a single, outsider target. A particular case of cringe culture highlights this well: Sonic is notable as a popular franchise where not only hating it is safe, the ridicule is embraced as its own official PR. Being “a good Sonic fan” requires one to maintain a certain emotional distance to it, nothing new coming out of it can be ever good, all Sonic talk eventually comes to “LOL fan art”. The aesthetics are different, but the demand for civility is essentially the same. If you are openly positive about Sonic, you are being rude, you are ruining the validation people get from having a pariah, you are breaking the rules of Sonic discourse.
For all their postures of politeness, US Democrats operate quite similar to this. Their social contract says it’s good to hate on Trump. It’s a free zone, anything and everything about Trump can be said, no matter how bigoted or irrational it sounds. However the moment one makes a remark about how certain policies of Trump’s policies are continued from Obama they are violating this contract, no matter how level-headed the critic actually is, they are “lacking decorum”. Smarm is removing disputes, there is no dispute in making fun of Trump, but there is in bringing up the drone strikes Hillary had approved. Snark at the outsider is fine, this outsource the conflict. Why critique of their nation’s enemies should be a bother to a true patriot, it validates their own values after all. In smarmy web of Democrat ethics it’s OK to be deeply racist against China, but not OK to think that maybe the problems of China comes from structures which are all not that different in the US. The smarm’s goal is not always a total elimination of snark, but often, it’s to create snark-free zones, like safe rooms with precious trinkets . The children can’t play there, but it would be easy to convince them to do so if they had a playground outside. Trump is the Democrat’s playground, The illusion of a “US before Trump” is the fragile, fragile porcelain which must be guarded all costs.

Snarky Smarm

In smarm, snark is watered down to mere cynicism. It is so empty that it might as well be praise. Speaking against the king is rebellion, except for the fool. No matter how harsh the fool is, his snark won’t inspire change, so it’s harmless and remains unopposed. Cinema Sins perfectly fits the bill. The channel tackles movies in a particular fashion: It looks at movie scene by scene and either complains about minor production errors, plot holes which are hard to realize on first watch, anything that only becomes a problem when a scene is viewed out of context, the narrator not understanding plot devices, quite a few sex jokes, calling things cliche, intentionally petty complaints and or easy observations which doesn’t really add up to any critique[1]. ( This critically panned movie has bad special effects, woo!) The way videos are structured and the narration makes it very hard to actually remember what’s said in the video. If one can pay attention, it can be easily seen that jokes, criticism and petty complaints all blend to one another, added with the fact that videos are sometimes outright wrong about scenes it’s talking about; there isn’t really much to get out of here, reading the synopsis of the movies are more informative. According to comments, the channel occasionally dissuades people from watching some movies, but people often tend to dismiss even larger plot issues,and let’s all be honest here a movie does not require a coherent plot to be popular, let alone a tightly constructed one. Despite sounding brutal on paper and having high view counts, the videos do not create discussion besides riffs on the channel itself. At its heart, it’s a syllabicity pop-culture trivia.
That would be alright, except for people who haven’t engaged much critical thought about media, it’s quite plausible that this sounds smart and insightful. Whenever people call them out on their mistakes or incomprehensible critiques[2], a host of fans are ready to remind “the hater” that they are all just jokes, expect when they themselves say “Wow, I didn’t realized there were so many mistakes, haha!” under the same comment section. Sometimes, fans of the certain movies start a war in the comments, seeking to restore the positivity a single video has been disrupted, but Cinema Sins fans are disciplined soldiers of true intellectual criticism; so the ultimate authority of the channel is always restored back. Only the Cinema Sins guy is entitled to snark, everyone else must cheer and laugh, just as oh-so-offensive comedians think. Didn’t you hear, they talked about 1000 genders in Tumblr? Ah that cutting humor again. Wait, is it not? So you must be one of those SJWs? Of course, their brave and scathing critique must have offended you! They are the height of comedy, you are offended and trying to censor them! One might think the comedian is merely reaching to cover up their lack of humor, but this is typical of smarm. The comedian, the intellectual, the podcaster, the debater are entitled to the snark. You are not, you are either laugh with them, or accept being laughed at; otherwise you are a horrible bully. The modern alpha man is a big ball of smarm covered with a thin layer of snark.
To contrast, let’s examine The Tropes on Women video series by Anita Sarkeesian. It’s a series examining video games, sometimes other media, from the lenses of how they represent women, later expanding to minorities. The videos are in serious tone, but they are not authoritarian or even harsh in criticism. It’s mostly a invitation to think about how video games depict certain things(Ex: “Games use Damsel in Dress trope a lot.”) and overall have an optimistic tone, an underlying hope of video games becoming better. If you have been online for the last 10 years, you know how salty gamers were at these videos. Of course, it first must be said that this wasn’t a purely spontaneous reaction, now we are fully aware that it was manufactured and fueled, with the goal of punishing being a women who says things men don’t like. Yet still, the groundwork of this anger was the thick goo of smarm around games, that’s what most of the criticism amounted to: “Games are never sexist, there is at least 1(one) video game with a women lead, when women are sexualized it’s always for their empowerment, developers never have any bias about women characters, don’t criticize my video games., except when you are talking about glitches or something.” Smarm is much more than mere tone-policing, or a selfish desire to ignore problems, it’s a question of who is allowed to say what.

Enjoying Things and Being Woke

So that’s why it’s good to be careful when one says “Let people enjoy things”. Is anyone actually restricted or shamed from enjoying something? Are people attacked over a innocent romantic pairing or a fan art? Is someone giving a sermon whenever they hear someone is liking media they hate? Or it is just the mere fact that a rant video, a harsh article, a Twitter post criticizes a beloved franchise? It it is one thing when a review casts a shade on an experimental indie project, but the most ferocious defenses are always made for cash cow franchises. Of course, the real reason for this defensiveness is much more personal. The fans feel like they themselves are under attack because their external validation for media consumption is being threatened. Humans are social beings, our emotions and thoughts being shared by others makes us feel good, thus getting closer to people who are like us. This can bring the idea that enjoyment of art is something that forms communities. Embracing a “fan” identity is about embracing a virtual communitya nd “let people enjoy things” is often a defense of assumed communities from an non-existing threat.
Corporations actively work very hard to make us believe in these communities. Nintendo for example is very successful at this, maintaining the image of a creative, colorful, wholesome friend. They have managed to turn the resignation of their CEO — not someone who worked at games, mind you — into a PR event, even after a short while after they have blasted a large ROM archive into oblivion. When one said anything critical about this situation, they received the backslash from the horde of fans as expected, but that’s not what makes this notable. There was a truly impressive level of brand construction only a few can reach, resembling those of sports teams. People were heartfelt at that moment, sad but prideful, sharing memes and old clips… One could feel the warmth of a community, just as the ex-CEO himself said in the video. This magic alone could make someone feel terrible over being critical of the situation; cynical, bitter and cold against this wholesome family of people who bought the same products. How one can fight against the millions of people’s childhoods? It’s not an angry fan, not a snarky social media account, not a passive aggressive shout-out telling us “Let people enjoy things”, this is a beautiful lullaby from Saruman’s voice …
However, the sense of community alone does not fully encapsulate “Let people enjoy things” sentiment. Phrases like “Don’t like, don’t watch?”, “Why don’t you write your own novel if you know better”, “If you care about story, read a book”, “No one is forced to buy microinstructions”, “his review ruins people’s enjoyment” all expressed same defensiveness, but today there is a more insidious aspect of it: Enjoying thing, thus buying stuff to enjoy things is “woke”. If one suggests that the latest blockbuster movie perhaps isn’t the best gay representation, but they are not only harming communities, but also ruining the empowerment people have. The media debates must revolve around the very important messages of giant franchise:. There are already small media full of queer stories from queer people, but — who cares about them — the five seconds of no-homo moment in latest iteration of Avengers is clearly more important. It’s also very important that narratives of beloved franchises happen to perfectly fit into today’s political environment. Art and life imitate each other, fiction can help us to articulate world better, as this very article references LOTR; but it’s something else to use Harry Potter or Game of Thrones as the main vector to navigate real life politics. It’s not that such people cannot separate reality from fiction, but rather in the same vain of celebrating inspirational shoe ads, the consumption itself is accepted as moral good. Big media, and the corporations who own them is accepted as the moral authority. Therefore criticizing media becomes criticizing the fan’s morals. How one can fight against what people stand for?

Breaking the Magic

Commodities alone cannot create communities. Communities are built with trust and mutual support building upon shared interests, emotions and goals. Drawing Super Mario fanart, modding Zelda games, Pokémon speedrunning, Princess Peach unbirth roleplay etc. can all form communities, but not being “a Nintendo fan”. There is a always talk of “toxic fandoms” about popular media, but there is no need to feel any commitment towards groups of people who just happen to consume same media we do. (These groups are so often dysfunctional precisely because they are not a real communities) Nor there is any need to feel pressure just because something is widely disliked. The common advice given here is to not take criticism personally, but this somewhat glosses over how personal art is. No, the issue is the failure to embrace media as personal to full extent and let the specters of “the consensus”, “artistic standards” haunt us, even in the case where the criticism is about possible bigoted implications of a work. The point of “enjoying art while remaining critical” is precisely this: “Okay, I can see this controversial aspects can be problematic to some people but I can conceive a case for a positive reading” or “I find these aspects troublesome but its valuable parts still makes this media overall a good experience.” In turn, critics should be more confident (not the same as being aggressive) in their criticisms, reduce the use of phrases and sentences such as “in my opinion”, “subjectively”, “Everyone is entitled to their opinion.”, “If you enjoy it, that’s fine” . Such weasel words train people to expect permission to disagree with the critic, and makes them even more defensive if a critic sounds just ever-so-slightly-authoritative.
Snark is a not always good. Certainly I am not advocating for being abrasive for mere personal satisfaction. Our rhetoric should not create collateral damage, for instance it is easy to not use well-known slurs. However, snark is important, all over-seriousness achieves is taking away an important coping mechanism against the ugly reality, a flexible tool of social critique reflecting the anger and the hope of the oppressed. And good snark can be really powerful, does not necessarily imply dark humor: Throwing milkshakes at the fash is precisely great because it destroys their air of respectability. Very serious tabloid writers, centrist pundits, conservative politicians speaking of milkshakes as if they are life-threatening weapons is profoundly beautiful. Not matter how much they claim to be subversive or edgy, reactionaries have a unrelentingly serious self image, which makes them quite fragile against any tiny dose of absurdity. Milkshake has proven to be better snark than anything websites that prided itself on being edgy ever conceived.
Against Saruman, Théoden’s voice is like a shriek, immature, ugly, alien, horrible. Yet sometimes, it is necessary to sound dirty, to be negative — strongly even — towards the positivity imposed upon us. Because smarm has evolved long past the point of a smiling authority figure telling us sweet lies, it now reproduces itself by convincing us to lie ourselves. If we can’t even refrain from watching a live music show in Israel when Palestinians explicitly asked us to do so, our critique of the wishy-washy words expressed there is rendered hollow, by indulging in power we have already chosen to take part in smarm. I am not advocating for a sacrificial mindset here — far from it, I strongly encourage to find ourselves in media — but one can’t get anything without giving anything, that’s the rule of universe: To push back against swarm, sometimes it’s better to not let ourselves enjoy things. lest the black hole of smarm sucks all genuine enjoyment dry. Sometimes this means not supporting certain media by money, sometimes “ruthlessly critiquing all that exists”, sometimes pursuing stories by us from us instead of waiting rainbow capitalism’s grace, sometimes donating to a emergency fund instead of buying the really good looking game.. And sometimes letting go of a delicious drink…
Media affects us as people and the world, but merely reading narrative does not make us make better. Only those who create narrative can change the world. The status quo, and the groups who represent them, cannot be trusted to create narratives for us. If we want to see ourselves in the narrative, we need to put ourselves in the narrative. Companies should not own our social lives nor our stories…
[1] There is a new habit on the media discourse which people deride any kind of criticism about plot as “being like Cinema Sins”. No, plot is still an ingredient of a story, the audience should not have to “shut down their brains” to enjoy something, there is a clear difference between genuine criticism and pure pedantry.
[2] A regular occurring example: Exposition in dialogue is bad, exposition in background is bad, exposition with flashback is bad, vague or no exposition is also bad, several of these complaints can be all in the same video.
This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.

Dethronement of All Authors

“Art is subjective.” is a self-explanatory statement. Something that exists to communicate and receive feedback from the audience, even if said audience only consists of the creator themselves  obviously is dependent on the subject and not a problem which can be broken down and solved. It is just like saying. “Can opener opens cans.” No one disagrees with this in practice, otherwise we could not simply create or enjoy art. However, in theory, this is contested in the belief that art must be subjugated by an authority. Most people would not accept a censorship bureau, but rather; a subtler, more abstract type of authority.

The first important authority is the perceived general audience. Thinking their own biases, tastes, emotions are simply superior and universal, and the worthiest of consideration. There are certain reasons why such a thought might develop:

• They are exposed to a media which regularly caters to them, to the exclusion of most anything else. There isn’t much need for subjectivity when one can stay in a bubble.
• Popularity, high rankings, critical acclaim, sales numbers etc. Certainly there are common patterns in media, and some art have more appeal to higher number of people. There is nothing that proves universality here, and even if there was an art which was truly universally appealing, that would not diminish its subjectivity. Something less appealing but different would not be entirely less valuable, because it would come out from a different human being.
• Rarity, is perhaps even more effective. After all. only the truly worthy can experience true art, for true causes, not to satisfy the simple whims of a mere commoner, right? We decided this work is “cringe”, no one can sincerely enjoy it anymore. Also, popular things grow their fandom. Fandoms are bad, and everyone should feel bad about a work by mere association to a fandom.
• The worst of all, the politicization of aesthetics. Here, merely consuming art becomes an ideological battle, and thus there is hardly any room for plurality. Unsurprisingly, this enables rather reactionary ideologies.

The second authority is positivist art criticism. The words “subjective” and “objective” are often used in a loaded way, as extreme opposite ends. It posits that something is either entirely personal and impossible to articulate or must be able to be solved like a math question. It’s a fairly common opinion that humor and music is “too subjective” to be analyzed, but something such as game design is often treated as definitive. As said before, subjectivity does not imply absolute uniqueness. When creating art, an objective goal can be used in creating different experiences, such as certain filming techniques. Art can be analyzed in different ways, and certain analyses aren’t more authoritative because they refer to more certain, calculable properties. The very process of deciding which observations about a work of art is personal. Just as there is no finality in art, there is no final word in art critique and that doesn’t make any certain interpretation less valuable. Something can be personal and still be shared collectively.

The third important authority is the creator themselves, they are “authors” after all. The concept of Death of the Author is applied always knowingly or unknowingly at a certain level, as it is simply a corollary to the subjectivity of art. Limitations of that concept is being argued still today, but in the process of experiencing art, one is only concerned with visuals and sounds right there, the creator only exists in the art at that moment; this is not something contested. However, people still feel obliged to let their personal experience of art dictated by the creator for various reasons.

• “Canon” is supposed to supersede and control all interpretations. The story is reduced to a mere series of events, replacing any cultural context or personal connection with perceived approval from the author as the one and only legitimate source of validation. In particular, it’s often used to argue that a work is “not political” (i.e “not about things I don’t want to be reminded of.”), and invalidate all queer readings of a work.
• “Target audience ” is a notable case of invoking both the author and the audience. Here, even the very experience itself becomes under scrutiny, as if enjoying things wrong is a social taboo. Of course, a critic should admit when a work does not speak much to their tastes, but that doesn’t make the criticism inherently worthless. This is a false dichotomy between the contents of work and personal opinion. All criticism that’s not written as marketing centers one’s personal taste, it’s just that “the taste” is often more complicated than “I like this work because it confirms to type of content, style etc. what I’ve already found appealing before.”
• When a creator turns out to be responsible for unethical things, it might be difficult to engage in their work. The process of experiencing a work entails separating art from the artist, but the art is a part of the artist. So if one sees only a domestic abuser when they see a face, they might not be able to see a fictional character in that face. That’s one of more understandable reasons not to discard author as an authority, but in many cases there is no reason to shame people who can see past an author, that’s what supposed to happen. This goes other way around too. A person with good intentions can make fiction with bad implications. Trying to judge one’s entire personhood around their work alone is not fruitful.
• When discussing the cultural impact of a work, or its function as something other than art, invoking the author might seem intuitive. It’s quite possible to look at a creator and the creation process of a work, and deduce their purposes. However even here, it is not actually necessary. We can understand that something is Nazi propaganda without even knowing anything about the author. A work of art is an alive being, we can find out its place in greater cultural context just by communicating it. The only thing to keep in mind is not to invalidate personal connections. It’s entirely possible that a work can be harmful in certain contexts while being valuable and in others.
• As long as art remains a commodity, supporting works means elevating their creators. As such, it is perfectly reasonable to not support harmful works and creators, but the limits of individual choices should be recognized. It is likely prudent not to commission drawings from that child abuse fetishist, but worrying about whether a blockbuster movie gets funded by the military doesn’t achieve much , the boycotts rarely do anything for a reason.

It’s no coincidence that most arguments about invoking author, audience, “rules of art” etc. seek to end the discussion. Establishing an authority on becomes a very literal goal. “You can’t enjoy lesbians in the show, because it is made for men.”, “This game is only a silly meme, you can’t enjoy it sincerely”, “The thing you love sucks” and so on. Of course, such an authority is not independent of existing power structures. De-personalizing art is dangerous not only because it stifles the discourse and collective treasure of ideas, but because it only ends up to serve the existing oppressive relations. Striped of the person, all remains to the viewer is to emulate other’s experiences. ” AAA game industry is a very poignant example here. The studios freely appropriate real life conflicts, struggles but absolutely refuse that their games are making any political statements. They use microtransations, premium access, timed content, and all kinds of devious psychological manipulation to goad players into certain behaviours. They discourage negative reviews and critical presses. Often they are hostile to hacking and emulation, instead offering their own restrictive services., also try to subjugate modding at times. Even the simple idea of being able to play games offline is seen as undesirable. Never mind not owning the game, the player is not even allowed to own their experiences. Only what’s useful to capital is valid.
When freed from the audience, author, and absolutist criticism, an unrestricted, bountiful flow of exchange between the person and the work starts. Indeed, it is not one way at all. A game will be completely different to a first-timer, a veteran of a genre, a beta-tester, a writer who plays it for reviews, a person who revisits it a decade later. As the viewer looks at the work and the work reflects back at them. Art can tell a lot about its viewer, often more than it tells about its creator. Less in a collective sense, and more in a personal way. Trans people usually read gender-fluidity in a work differently than cis people. Nostalgia is mis-applied in criticism quite often — and oh do I have problems about it — but it’s not a lesser feeling to have towards art. The cozy language here might be misleading, but personal connection is actually neutral phrase. It doesn’t have to be positive, nor healthy. No matter how masterfully a writer deconstructs it, some will always side with tyrants in a story. No matter how blatant it is, some will defiantly deny any queerness in a work. Nevertheless, it’s all about this connection, not the series of letters, pixels or sounds. A major part of creator’s challenge is to make what they want to say a part of the connection between the viewer and the work, but they can never have the last word.
De-personalizing art make it less worthwhile for all. No one should feel inferior because their love of work is not seemingly based on objective qualities, all qualities we seek derive from the personal. Overly concerning about whether a work is problematic or not does not much else besides punishing oneself. Yes, even when a work is terrible in from one perspective, from another interpretation it can be wonderful, they can co-exist even for the same person. We can and should be critical and still cherish our connections to art. Which creators we need to support financially and uplift their vices brings a valid ethical angle, but it’s important to remember in most cases that’s something beyond what individuals alone can impact. Do the same to ideas too. “Steal” the ideas of thinkers, writers you like and leave the rest. Representation matters, but it’s not more important than your experiences. Interpreting art is re-creating it in one’s own image, fully embrace it! Only art that successfully lives inside people can impact society.
This is why “death of the author” is so important to me. It’s not merely about ignoring author’s post-publish output, it is liberating art from the tyranny that turns the viewer and the creator into laborers who are coerced to produce the existing systems in art again and again, for the wage of a small window of human feelings. The only way to resist this is to make art ourselves. I call this stance “dethronement of all authors”. Unlike death of the author, it is more interested in all meta-authors of work rather than author’s brand, and implies a more deliberate rejection of de-personalization imposed upon us.
This article mostly talks about in abstract terms, because it is an introduction to a series where I examine various topics concerning de-personalization. And I will focus on video games, because I see a lack of discussion of this kind on that area, but games not only bring whole new dimensions to this subject, but it constantly generates such discourse that… oh my Madoka the discourse!…
This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Emelina, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.

Fairness in Competition

"Trans people in sports" remains to be a frustrating "debate". On the one side, there are those who know how hormones and human body work; and on the other, transphobes.  Science part of this topic one thing, but it is revealing in another way too. I want to discuss the inherent problems of "fair competitions".
What is a fair competition? Being fair broadly refers to equal efforts getting equal outcomes. Cheating is deemed problematic because it violates this, it gets around obstacles everyone else has to struggle. Then, taken to its logical conclusion, a truly fair competition would be one where everyone's obstacle is the exact same, which leads to everyone has exactly equal chance of winning. Once the all internal factors are equalized, the only thing that determines the winner is the external randomness, thus an ideal fair competition would lead to a random outcome with uniform distribution, like rolling an ideal dice or flipping an ideal coin.
There is an obvious problem about this: Competitions are usually supposed to determine who is better at something. A competition with equal outcome cannot do that. And in one way, that seems unfair too. If equal effort means brings equal outcome, then why more effort shouldn't bring a better outcome? This is a very clear contradiction which needs to be solved, but how?
Mario Kart(1992-2016), a racing game series, tries to do it by an item called blue shell. It's an item anyone besides the racer in the first place can obtain and used as a sure way to make the racers in front of the user explode and lose precious speed. This item attracts the hatred of a lot of players. "The game punishes the skill, so it's unfair" so the thought goes. What's happening here is the series taking a very clear stance: This game is not primarily about proving one's skill at racing. It's casual and supposed to be fun for all of the players, because of this regardless of their reflexes are or how much time they have invested in this game everyone gets a chance of victory. Thus, Mario Kart games are actually fair for more players overall, because the competition the series offers is for the sake of itself, for having a good time.
My left hand is weaker and have delayed reflexes. It puts a ceiling to how well I can do in a lot of competitive games. In a fighting game for instance, anyone who is above the beginner skill will defeat me with near certain possibility. Competitions can be only so much fun when one knows they are going to lose. The "blue shell" design would benefit me here a lot, but most games do not have that. They have a cumulative effect on victory. The more one plays, the better they get, which leads them to play more, opening the skill gap. If I used a method to bring myself to the level of someone with average hands, such as a  special controller, that would most likely seemed as unfair, because I would be seen as bypassing the skill requirement. That's only partially true though, my the skill requirement is already far higher and what I am doing here is bringing up to myself closer to the normal starting position, not beyond, so that I can enjoy it like anyone else. Otherwise it's like thinking a wheelchair user using elevator is unfair to abled people who can climb stairs.
When competition becomes more serious than games, this line of thinking hurts people much more. A striking example here is exams, where the fairness is supposed to be much more important. Everyone is responsible for the same courses, asked same questions, given equal time, subjected to the same surveillance. The violation of these terms is cheating, such as using an external source of information. The exams are done to determine how much the student has met the goals of the courses, the fairness is entirely defined in the context of the time frame where the exam takes place. In contrast, whether the person the ability to prepare for the exams, such as having a suitable learning environment, mental capability, access to proper material etc. is not relevant here. Nor someone taking private courses is seen as a problem. All that matters is the number on the paper.
What's at play here is a fundamentally different understanding of fairness. It isn't holistic or universal. Only a predefined set of factors are important, the other problems are solely the concern of the individual, which means the hierarchies which create them are fair. As a result, the true function of a "fair competition" from this perspective is to reinforce existing hierarchies, "the best" must be the one that validates the hierarchies "with merit". It's no coincidence then that minorities are a constant target from the angle of competition.
The treatment of Serena Williams is an eye-opening example. Despite having zero evidence about it, she is again and again suspected of doping. This is very blatantly racism, in a special dehumanizing way. Supposedly, the winner is the best and that's fair, but her success is an error for the system. Serena is in a space that excludes her and as such, her very body is seen as illegitimate and unnatural.
It's hard not to draw any parallels to this in trans debate. Watch how hormone therapy is treated like its nuclear mutation. Trans people's genitals, bones, muscles are endlessly questioned, mocked... Their bodies and privacy is violated to no end. That's precisely the purpose of course: It serves to enforce the gender norms and maintain one more sphere of society where trans people are excluded.
To combat this, it's not enough to just respond the bad faith arguments however. Convincing people who trans women join the tournaments under similar hormone levels to cis women is a forward step, but it's still in the very process that dehumanizes trans people in the first place. Trans people should not have to prove anything or choose between their identity and careers. Non-binary people face a blanket exclusion by the system. The gender division itself is what creates these problems.
The fact that women's sports get less attention, prestige and money compared to men's, the excess attention on sportswomen's physical bodies, sports' heavy association with masculinity despite the history of women's divisions are not a coincidences. It's not that a cis woman cannot ever beat a cis man in a physical competition. Certain aspects of human body provides consistent advantages in certain sports, like height in basketball, yet this is not considered unfair. Certain sports already have different categories for weight; there could be easily a similar system where one can participate sports in the certain classes of performance, mass, hormones, age without ever caring for identity. Even chess is divided by gender for the same reason. The idea behind it is the same: "The best" of human must be male.
This doesn't have to be strictly intentional. "Fairness", "effort", "merit" aren't static constructs developed outside of society, they are also part of its structures. When, "the best" matters the most in competitions, it's hard to "the best" not be informed by existing hierarchies. Individual sportspeople has a chance rise to the top by cultivating their own brand, but an amateur club of friends, or even small town teams won't ever rise to high leagues, they can't just keep up with the absurd amount money poured in this business. The only way to make the competition healthy is to stop caring about the best, and focusing on mutual betterment, joy and harmony. Only then, sports can commit themselves to the ideals of peace, friendship, but today, they are a tool of nationalism, racism, capitalism, patriarchy and chauvinism..
Just as there is no fairness in a competition to determine the best, so there is no justice in a society built on hierarchies.  Only true solidarity can lead us to betterment of all, not competition between individual brands or enforced collectives.
This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Emelina, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.

What is Skyrim?

Media criticism around The Elder Scrolls: V Skyrim(2011) did not help me articulate the connection I had with the game. The game either is "huge epic world where you can do anything you want", or "wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle." Neither describes what Skyrim feels like to me: So, here I will exactly try to do that instead.
[caption id="attachment_1308" align="alignnone" width="600"] A mudcrab[/caption]

Teaching the Adventure

The beginning of the game  is not great. It is a several minutes of nothing but dialogue, followed by a linear hallway where enemies can be dealt with your follower. Aside from creating a great deal of false expectations and not really fitting the spirit of the game, it's an inferior tutorial compared to what comes after it.
When the player exists the first cave, they can go anywhere they want. They are nudged to follow their accomplice but  nothing really stops them. If they listen what the game says,they are made to choose a birthsign and then guided to Riverwood. It is a small town but neatly packed with tutorials. The blacksmith's lessons on crafting is an obvious one. Most of them are subtle however:
The player quickly learn how crime works, where they can enter, what they can take, and whom they can attack freely. The town serves a safe place to practice stealth. This learning process feels organic compared to the one in the cave, where the sleeping bear is much less alert than every other bear in the game. The town as a whole serves as a template for all the other towns and introduces the player how quests work.
Player is then directed to Whiterun. Along the way they can see some warriors fighting a giant which both informs them of guilds and alerts them to random encounters of similar nature. Upon entering the city, the player is allowed to have a quick demonstration of speech skill.
Whiterun is special as it's towards the center of world map and a place where player likely revisits a lot, especially during some of the longer questlines. Compared to other cities, its layout is simpler and all main utilities are neatly placed closed to each other. The "thane" system and house ownership is also introduced here.
Next up: There is the dungeon clearance quest. This dungeon serves as a warm-up to future dungeons and informs the player how to obtain "shouts". Upon completion, the player introduced to dragons, and then shouts. And so, the game is now fully open to explore. .
Overall, the game is very good at teaching itself, without needing long texts or breaking the game's pace. The real beautiful part is, if player goes completely off-road from the designed path, they could still have a similar tutorial experience, the world can adapt very quickly to the player. This plays into the strongest asset of Skyrim: Exploration.
[caption id="attachment_1309" align="alignnone" width="1211"] Giant hitting a guard, resulting in the guard being flown to the sky[/caption]

A Seamless World

I won't bother the reader with yet another endless praises of Skyrim world, To summarize it: it's really good, with excellent ambient music very act of walking becomes joyful. Instead, I will focus how the other systems in the game contribute to this feeling.
Just by stumbling into a place, player can get new loot, some weird encounter or easter-egg, a little piece of lore or a whole new quest. Wandering around never feels like a waste of time, and the more player follows their curiosity the better they are rewarded. Quests in Skyrim are criticised for their basic go-get-something structure, but that also plays into this. It's usually possible to just randomly pick up a quest item and start the quest from there. The world has very few truly inaccessible places, the player can swim, climb, find shortcuts, encounter something new.  Even the lukewarm reception glitches got can be tied into this; they just become another attraction to see.
Skyrim is very dedicated to make sure player doesn't feel frustrated or trapped. No dungeon is truly undefeatable, their level is set on first encounter so to they can be defeated later. Tougher enemies can often avoided by sticking to certain roads. It's also always possible to adjust the difficulty from the menu. The player can always have enough cash and resources to continue.While I don't think game is a cakewalk in the first couple dozen of hours, challenging the player is definitely secondary to seamlessness of exploration.
Battle system also plays into this. The game is easy on reflexes, there is hardly any number crunching, the skills naturally grow in players journey, all is self-explanatory. The game doesn't punish the player for trying out things. They can start by wildly swinging axes, then want to sneak around for a while and try out some spells along the way. It is designed to be as accommodating and as possible. From the melee fight animations to hitting someone from afar, the game instantly rewards the player with something new. Poisons, shouts, environmental hazards, various types of spells, lycantropy, weapons with magic effects, magic staffs, even their naked fists are at the disposal of player. Fighting in the game is basic and crude at times but its simplicity keeps it in the way to be an obstacle to exploration and it is satisfying to have some demon lords cleave through the enemies, repeatedly shooting people through their head from shadows, or just thoughtlessly hurling oneself at the enemy with a fire breath in one hand and a sword in other.
While there is a shout to run faster, the walking speed itself feels just right. The dungeons are often just long enough to not feel tiresome. There is never a sense of walking in endless, empty void. The most importantly, while the exploration is at the heart of the game, it's not made mandatory. Player can often just follow quest marks and fast travel. This is criticized for ruining exploration but making it on player's terms overall makes it stronger. There are some quests without map markers and they make a nice pace of change. And keeping it to specific quests ensures that when player wants to explore something, it's always on their terms. Therefore, the act of walking never feel feels like a chore; on the contrary, it's a quite meaningful in on itself.
There is certainly a sense of adventure and wonder in Skyrim. In these areas, the game solidly carries the true spirit of a player RPG(*). For the rest, the game starts to get confused sometimes...
[caption id="attachment_1312" align="alignnone" width="800"] Two blue butterflies[/caption]

Dragonborn? What Dragonborn?

The game is not confused on one front: Dragonborn does not matter as a character. Not only in the sense they are an empty vessel, no, the game is vehemently focused on making Dragonborn utterly irrelevant and minimizing the level of abstraction between the world and the player.
This is quite obvious from the way lore looks back at past Elder Scrolls protagonists. The Agent, the Nerevarine, the Champion of Cyrodill are all recorded in the same manner. "They came from nothingness, saved the day and one day, vanished mysteriously." One might think this is to not have a certain canon to invalidate the player's choices in the past game. However, this premise is absolutely ridiculous. Yes, the details can be lost after a long period of time and medieval recording is not the best, but no, Elder Scrolls protagonists can amass an absurd level of financial/social influence to be completely forgotten like this. If they merely interested in keeping the canon vague, they could use the typical unreliable narrator style of Elder Scrolls writing. However, not only the texts speak very little of these nameless heroes, all of their achievements are undone in the next installment of the series: The Empire is shattered, factions of the pasts are in decay. The game makes a strong statement with this: The Dragonborn is merely a legend for the player to wear, only the wearer is important for the game.
This is reflected well on the rest of the lore as well. The more one reads the books and spends time in the world, the more discrepancy between the two becomes clear:

• The weirder, more magical side of the lore almost never comes up. Daedric quests are usually just shinier "go-get-item" quests. The whole mage guild quest is just another defeat the large evil plot. The player almost always interacts with magic in the most mundane gameplay level.
• The interactions and backgrounds of races almost never affect the player. Sure, Khajiit traders aren't taken into cities, a Khajiit Dragonborn or their followers won't ever have any problem. For all the talk of prejudice, the player themselves never experience any real inconveniences, just some rude talk at worst.
• Almost no information from books or rumors comes useful or at least even vindicated during the game. For example, at no point in the game you can confront Ulfric Stormcloak with his past or his views on other races. Those things are just happens, player has to always contend third-party information.

The quests have a hollow feeling to them, furthering the theme of Dragonborn's irrelevance. When player is given narrative choices, those are crafted very deliberately to either arrive at an equal or similar conclusion. The quest in Riverwood will make the player lie about one of two love interests for a woman. The two guys are equally invested in lying about each other, there is no way for the player to make a moral choice. This isn't a gray morality choice. The choice is what player gets as a reward, an archer follower or a melee follower? This faux gray morality comes up again and again throughout the game, the most glaring one being in the civil war questline.
One might think it's a choice between a corrupt repressive empire vs. nationalists but the game tries it's hardest to make sure the player can't reach any clear conclusions. Are Stormcloaks racist? Yes, but not too much, it seems more of a Nord thing in general? In that context it's kind of laughable that they can immediately trust a High Elf Dragonborn. Are Imperials repressing freedoms? Yes, but not too much, secretly they allow it, it's enforced partially because of Ulfric's actions anyway. Both sides are secretly helped by Thalmor to continue the war, both sides can't see the threat of Alduin. The player never gets to feel too bad for favoring one side, the choice really boils down to color: Red or Blue?
The moral meaningless gets bolstered by the fact that Dragonborn doesn't have any kind of morality themselves and player can't fill in the blanks. Without any hesitation from the game, the player can happily murder people for a death cult; do basic chores to help people, join a civil war to little personal benefit , adopt kids, endlessly desecrate graves and slay creatures in the pursuit of power, play matchmaker between shy lovers, join a vampire clan all the while saving the world from existential threats. The player can simply opt out of quests they find unreasonable, but they will be always in the quest log. Ready to be completed, if the player finds the reward appropriate...
The final aspect of Dragonborn's worthlessness comes by the lack of impact and permanence of their actions. After the main quest, not much changes for the world. The living legend does not gain a social leverage in a society that highly values warrior culture. The dragons does not cease to attack. They can be leader of all factions in the game. Again very little changes and all Dragonborns earns is to doing low-rank chore quests that will never end. They can fight in a devastating Civil War, but the victory does not change much besides uniforms. There will be always remnants of enemies to fight, no actual policy will be implemented, they won't even be able to see a formal crowning they have fought so hard for. Becoming a vampire-hunter and destroying a thousand-year old vampire clan does little to stop the player becoming a vampire lord themselves. The game will respect the position of an apple after the player knocked them off from a table more than literally anything Dragonborn ever does.
[caption id="attachment_1313" align="alignnone" width="1031"] A black kettle on the head on a woman. The kettle is obscuring her head to chest.[/caption]

Quests As Both A Success and Failure

What the quests, dialogue and story are for then? The quests are all about tangible gameplay rewards and pushing the player for more exploration. They either come in the form of very simple "kill/Get X for Y" or theme park attractions, where player enjoys some distraction from the usual exploration cycle: Player assassinates the Emperor, joins the hijinks of a Daedra lord, infiltrate a Thalmor base at a party. All the writing exists is to give some context to player's journey and spice up their themepark ride. Looking at from this perspective, radiant quests aren't so bad. They are just a way to ensure player has something to do at all times, they just lack the packaging of lore. Regular quests are usually just fine as well: Explore the Dwemer ruins and unfold the story of an adventurer, clear out a vampire cave but while doing so, reveal the hidden vampire in the town. At their best, the themepark quests are memorable and can feel like a refreshing break from all the fetch quests. The inherent absurdity of Skyrim improves the otherwise-dull parts too. One can only take a story so seriously when their follower starts to shout "Let's kill someone!"in the most inappropriate moments.
At their worst, they feel detached from rest of the game in a way that renders the player's typical activities sour. In master level conjuration spell quests, the player needs to obtain a stone, so they need to tame an unbound Dremora Lord into giving them by defeating them several times. The player engages with magic that's different from merely using them weapons, the quest delves into the nature of summoning otherworldly beings. It tackles the lore, perfectly fitting for a college of mages too... but it also makes the generic "thwart the doom" plot really dull in comparison. Normally, the player is conditioned to expect lore staying in the background, they are used to purely functional quests, but the existence of a quest like this makes one wish for more.
The player agency is very central to Skyrim, and player is trained to treat narrative branches in a utilitarian way. The linearity of quests is often elegant enough as to not make the player feel railroaded to something. One quest really sticks out like a sore thumb however: The quest about murder investigation in Markath. It's decent expect the part the player is marked as guilty and has to go to the jail. The player can either accept going to jail or... not be able to advance the quest while dealing with an infinite number of guards. The question shows itself like a midday sun: If there isn't a real alternative, why that choice exists? Sure, it's absurd to a person not ever thinking about resisting a libel, but it's a familiar absurdity that is stitched in every corner of Skyrim. This quest feels out-of-place.
We tend to think immersion only in the sense of believability of a world from a narrative sense, but there is a level of immersion provided by coherent, consistent game rules. Tetris(1985) doesn't feel "real" but in its abstract way, it feels meaningful. In Skyrim, some characters having immortality is absurd but it's an accepted premise, just like accepting a premise of a fantasy world. The game teaches the player the functional linearity of the quest and is fairly consistent about it, but then there comes the first Dark Brotherhood quest. After the player kills the abusive runner of the orphanage in Riften, Astrid -- the leader of the brotherhood -- adducts the player to a shack for "a kill they must repay" The player is told that one of three hostages in the room has a contract on them, and the player needs to kill the correct person, Those three people all have reasons to be disliked by people but the player can't ever know who the real contract is. Of course, the sense of choice is fake, Astrid does not actually care whom the player kills and the player is destined to be a cold-blooded murderer for a death cult from here on out. It's the narrative linearity and faux-gray morality in its purest.
But wait! There is a real choice: The player can kill Astrid, thus fail the quest and start the one for destroying the Dark Brotherhood instead!. In a vacuum, this is a brilliant twist: Players who are long conditioned to expect important characters as unkillable has to think outside the box. In the larger context this brings two problems: This weakens other quests that logically could be altered with eliminating key people, and the quest after that is a complete joke. Destroying Dark Brotherhood is exactly like any other "kill these people quest", the player just casually is given the location of secret base and password of the magic door. At the cost of giving up one of more entertaining storylines of the game, tons of gold, cool gear and spells and more. It's as if the game is making fun of the player for ever thinking Dragonborn could make a meaningful difference or assert any semblance of personality.
The so-called main questline is emblematic of both strengths and the weaknesses of the quests. Individually, climbing to a top of mountain, capturing a dragon, infiltrating an embassy are all fun and memorable, the rewards are good, Paarturnax is one of actually interesting characters of the game, and even the trip to Sovngarde could be a nice distraction. Collectively however the main questline, which should be a high mark Skyrim, goes against all of its ethos. The game starts to care Dragonborn as a character, for a little while, but the legends, lore and exposition alone just does not make a compelling story. Sovnguard is in particular a low moment for the game. Functionally an empty, linear hallway that ends in with an inferior repeat of a fight several quests ago.. The main questline" could be much simpler, most other quests in it could be independent adventures, without the excess forced dialogue and traveling back-on-forth. Together with the examples above, this reveals some lack of confidence in game's design. Previous Elder Scrolls games all tried to be a lot of things at once, but Skyrim is usually very adamant in putting player at the center, just occasionally it feels like it needs to mimic every other Western AAA RPG. For better or worse, Skyrim is not like any other.
[caption id="attachment_1310" align="alignnone" width="1852"] A Vigilant of Stendarr standing near a vampire and a daedra, two things he is supposed to hunt[/caption]

The Heart of Skyrim

It's even different from the player-RPG tradition too. Dragon Quest(1986) ends with player becoming the king. The dungeon-crawling adventures end at the last door, last floor, last creature. Some of them, like Pokémon(1996-2018) series have post-game content that might infinitely continue, but they still carry a credits screen, a bookmark that the player reached at the end of adventure, they are just free to stay for more. Skyrim does not end. Not in the way of an arcade game that ends when player runs out of lives or an MMO which are kept alive by upgrades. No wonder the opening and "ending" feels so alien then; Skyrim is an eternal world frozen in time which Dragonborn can only change minimally. The main quest is just another quest in the log.  Dungeons cleared re-fill in a short time. There are always radiant quests to make.  Most enemies and weapons re-spawn indefinitely. Player can level up forever. The game does not leave the player goalless mind you, there are rare items to collect, houses to buy and craft, tough enemies to defeat... But this don't change the fact that only way to end the adventure is to quit the game.
This speaks to the very heart of Skyrim. A lot of RPGs make a point about respecting player agency but Skyrim demands agency. There are a lot of, really a lot of ways to play the game, but there aren't many extrinsic incentives to play like one way over others. The player can make the combat trivial in just couple of hours.  All damage is governed by a simple difficulty slider. The games will be never difficult unless player explicitly wants the game to be hard. Quests aren't really that special from other activities: Being obscenely rich with alchemy, adopting kids and making them go to their beds, climbing mountains with a horse, stealing an entire town's worth of people's clothes and have them act casually with their underwear, rolling dozens of cheese wheels on top of a hill, having a library of all books in Skyrim. From the moment the player exits the Helgen Cave, they are free not to follow the arrow.
There is a certain game design philosophy that says a game should be meticulously crafted for a specific experience. "Players will optimize the fun out of game."  as it goes. Skyrim stands as the complete opposite of this idea. More than any aspect of the game, this is the turn off of many people. It's even seen as a revolting-idea for an RPG, as a hallmark of a lazy, "dumbed down" game design, just a sandbox of content. Despite enjoying the game, I felt a similar distastefulness when I got eventually bored with the game.
I don't think so now. Skyrim ends when the player gets bored, and that's okay. It might be after 3 hours, 30 hours or 330 hours. The game just wants the player have some nice adventure for a while. They can rake a trip in the woods, see a mudcrab and a bear fighting, fight with a bandit but don't have to think too much about it. Yet they can also think too much about it, spend a lot of time in details of the game, hopefully the game has something for them. The game even directly addresses this with Ebony Warrior. He is a nameless warrior who can actually seriously challenge him. He specifically exists for a high-level quest: He completed all quests, defeated all challenges, there is nothing else to do, he says and wants the player to defeat him as a last fight. Dying is the only way he can quit the game, but if player thinks there is nothing else to do, they can just quit right there. If dungeons started to feel repetitive after 100 hours, maybe they need a break from them.
Skyrim has a certain influence on endless content open-world games we have today. However, it is actually not one of them. There are two fundamental differences. First is that Skyrim actually doesn't mind player quitting, it's not a cynical live-service game. (Although Bethesda would certainly like to be the case) The second is Skyrim doesn't want to be everything,   Unlike today's giant 100+ games, Skyrim is usually consistent and honest in what it wants to be.  It has a soul in it that gently guides the player into finding the meaning of Skyrim. Sometimes this is glitches, annoying characters and memes. Sometimes it's adorning the game with a lot of mods. Sometimes realizing it has not much meaning anymore and ending the journey.
For me, it was the funeral for my dog. During one of our adventures, we have been ambushed by a group of vampires. Of course, as the master wizard I am, they were no match to me, but the dog was a frail being. I didn't even realise it until the fight was over. I am proud save-scummer but here something stopped me. I guess... I felt it was like a disservice to everything. Instead I carried the dog to near river. Under the weird moons of Tamriel, I put down some flowers over its body. Sent three pulses of light to the sky and waited in silence for a while. While the game's moody night music is playing I did nothing and watched until the lights run out. Then I gave the dog to the river, and it got carried away... and away....
[caption id="attachment_1311" align="alignnone" width="600"] A dirty brown dog[/caption]

Masterpiece?

This is why, Skyrim is a profound, refined experience and I can't agree with the criticisms about game's shallowness. It can get rough around edges, but it clearly connected to me on in its unique way even other TES games could not provide. It has a simplistic but enduring charm. I would even call it the masterpiece of Bethesda. Yes, the game journalists were right about this, but not for the reasons they were usually praising the game. Surely, today Bethesda can make games with better graphics, more polished combat, larger world, more voice actors etc. but if they continue to chase the tail of today's trends then I can't expect too much from a future installment, certainly not the magic of Skyrim. Thankfully, it seems that Skyrim won't leave us anytime soon...
This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Emelina, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.

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(*) RPGs where the player char. acts as an avatar for the player instead of having a uniuqe personality or one constructed by the player. Read more, here...