Reflecting On 12 Years Of Writing About Subculture Media And My Writing Process

16 10月 2024

Today is my 31st birthday, and I've been blogging about subculture media (mostly Japanese) for 12 years. That means I've been blogging since I was 19. Not surprisingly, my ideas about what to write and how to write it have changed over the years.

These days, whenever I open my text editor to write an article about something niche, I always write with two audiences in mind: those who have or will read the work in question, and those who will never read it. There are subgroups within each audience -- for example, the latter might include people who don't currently have the time and energy to learn Japanese -- but for the most part, these two main audiences differ in their level of curiosity and what they ultimately want from the article.

I don't have a precise psychological model of how these two groups think, but I've written enough articles to know what people usually want, and I used to be an avid reader of untranslated media criticism before I learned Japanese.

And the way I write for these two audiences reflects why I find niche media articles so valuable and interesting. I hope people will allow me to be a bit philosophical on my birthday.

For me, the purpose of writing about niche media has always been to unveil the commodity fetishism of a niche work for whatever is valuable in it. I've written about this before, so I'll quote again:

The issue isn’t simply that niche games are invisible but rather we haven’t gotten the right lens to see them as labor-power. Unfamiliar eyes can only see these titles as commodities, and they can only shrug and say, “Not for me.” That’s valid if we simply leave these titles as commodities. But anyone who sees people working on this craft, expending a lot of effort and sweat into them, and more is going to end up reappraising this “product”. We may not get it, but the expenditure of labor-power is real, and we wanna validate it.

And the role of criticism on spaces like here then is helping that validation. We shouldn’t be simply trying to get people to play these games (again, that’s more of a bonus) but to help the non-players to understand why people have put their labor-power into this. My analysis of games and other media I write about, I hope, should come across as me trying to assess and explain to people what kind of effort these creators are doing to an audience that may not know how to appreciate it. In a way, I view my own articles as teaching people how to appreciate them as much as they can, even if they don’t plan to try them.

I wrote this in the context of text-only interactive fiction, but the same applies to, say, shoot 'em ups. The obtuse design of Battle Garegga makes it one of the most complex and difficult games out there, so it would be unreasonable for casual audiences to pick it up and play. Still, we should find ways to help people at least understand the craft.

It's a good thing there was a famous website, The Genius of Garegga, dedicated entirely to explaining the core design philosophies and helping people see that there's more to it than meets the eye. Not everyone will agree with this website's arguments, but it is written to provoke audiences to think beyond reductive assessments. Take the intro from the thesis page:

Unlike the large majority of games which primarily exist to be good games, Battle Garegga has a thesis which flows through every facet of the game’s design:

You can do anything, but everything has consequences.

As you play, this thesis is continually reinforced. The weapon system gives you precise control over both where you want to fire and how much firepower you want to use. The scoring system is discrete enough to let players choose the opportunities they wish to take. Even the story, wherein a pair of engineers unwittingly empower a vicious regime through their own creations and now must stop it by their own hands, has a strong individualistic streak running through it.

You can do anything, but everything has consequences. Which leads to the second rule of Garegga: take what you need and make the most of what you have...

This thesis goes on, but I think it succeeds in explaining the value of Garegga to both casual and hardcore audiences. Now, people may disagree that this "everything has consequences" idea is central to the game. I don't quite agree either. But it does make me think about the game differently and why it's different from other shoot 'em ups I've played. I may express my thoughts differently, but reading this helped me gain new insight into how I appreciate design.

In fact, criticism should make people reflect on how they view the work (whether they've played it or not), even if they're not convinced by the readings. Criticism doesn't have to be as formalistic as the Garegga fansite or as historical as some of my blog posts. It can be a personal exploration of how people connect to the story and breathe their own life into a work: I'm thinking of Amelie Doree's underrated video on Cross Channel, for example.

In other words, I think the most interesting works of criticism should give the audience (and perhaps the critic) something to chew on.

This is difficult, of course. Not only does it require original, substantive writing, but it also means recognizing that you are writing for audiences with different levels of engagement with said media. When I write about an untranslated Japanese visual novel, I'm sure people will come to the article with different expectations, depending on their familiarity with the language, the subculture, and so on. There is no formula for balancing these needs and desires, and I still can't ignore my own desires to write about something. It would be soulless to write for these audiences all the time without checking what I really want to do.

Therefore, I often choose what to write about and then imagine the multitude of readers into the two main audiences mentioned above responding to the article. And then I start writing and see where it goes. As I hammer and shape my piece into something readable, I begin to notice the themes of my piece and see where it takes me.

I often think of it as creating a narrative. Indeed, it resembles writing a short story to me. Take the Zambot 3 article, for example: I want to sketch out how I first came across the work through an interview with the creator and Yokoo Tarou, got depressed, and ended up thinking about the meaning of the toy symbols. It's not just a post about Zambot 3, it's a post about my encounter with the media -- and I'm trying to tie it all together into a narrative.

This is a risky approach, because the reader is not only reading about Zambot 3, but also about my experience of it (what academics might call my own subjectivity). It allows for more skepticism about the narratives I choose to convey because my experience of the work is essentially the narrative. I open myself up to criticism. But I think all works of criticism, even in the ivory tower, do something similar; I want it to be transparent to the reader that they are not reading something objective, but about me reflecting on the personal connections I have with the work.

I arrived at this approach because I wanted to appease the two main audience groups and myself. For the audience that is familiar with the work or is expecting to engage with it, they will be able to think alongside the article in their own voice and perhaps find something new to ponder about. The other group, on the other hand, will be able to understand why I like the work and what's so unique about it.

And I also find this approach valuable for myself, because it allows me to think about how I've experienced the work and research, and has led me down paths I hadn't considered. I recently wrote about Cordwainer Smith's reception in Japan for Kansoulations, and that led me to discover mountains of research on the genealogy of catgirls in Japanese media. It allowed me to see a different side of a writer I already love.

To sum it all up in one word, I hope my writing is an enrichment to everyone, including myself.

Each article is a research project in itself. When I read a book, I think about what I've read before and what it reminds me of. Then, I dive into additional content before writing my article. It's a never-ending cycle of research, reflection, and writing.

The result, I hope, is a coherent literature review and analysis of what I've found interesting and valuable for the readers and myself. Even if an article isn't up to my standards, I hope the little trivia make it worth reading.

I don't know what I'm writing most of the time. Sometimes, I consider it literary anthropology. Sometimes, I think of it as historically-informed writing. Sometimes, I just think they're blog posts. But this is what I've ended up with after so many years of writing.

Will my writing change as I write more? I'm sure it will. I don't think it will settle into anything stable. Old readers will stop reading, new audiences will come and comment on the blog. But as long as I keep writing about subcultural media the way I want to, I hope my main goal of unveiling commodity fetishism in niche media and provoking new ideas will be achieved.

To all of you who have been reading my blog posts, whether from day one or just today, thank you for sticking with my amateur writing. There are niche media out there worth discovering and talking about. The world may be flooded with spam and cynicism, but there are still people out there doing their own work, and I want to write about them.

Let's keep reading and writing together :-)