MayVaneDay Studios (Gopher Edition)

a final dictum

published: 1-31-2019

I hold very few intimate moments near and dear to my heart. But the few I have, I will remember until the day I die.

Of course, to write them down here in such a public place- even if it is a dusty and disused place- while it would help my memory immensely, it would negate the intimacy of said moments, and it would betray the privacy of the people I share those moments with, regardless if they hold these events in such a light or if they even remember them at all.

That said, I will share one with you, since it is not as sacred.

Sitting on my bed in the cushy hotel room my family was staying in on our way to the Grand Canyon. It was one of those places meant for longer stays- there was a tiny kitchen hidden away in the corner of the main room, a countertop with a little basket filled with popcorn packets and coffee pods and other “settling in” things. We were only going to be there for one night, so I didn’t understand the extravagance… but we were near the seedy part of town, so maybe that’s why.

I’d messed up the Ubuntu install on my laptop yet again, so I was watching the anime Serial Experiments Lain on my Tails stick. Taking screenshots as much as possible, reminding myself to move them into the Persistent folder after every episode so I didn’t lose them. It was somewhere in Episode Layer Six: Distortion that the fire alarm went off, and I, being either startled or a dumbass, pulled the Tails stick before I moved my pictures into Persistence.

I packed up my backpack and took it with me, leaving my suitcase behind in the room. We stood outside for about ten minutes until the hotel manager came outside and declared the place all clear: someone had been cooking ramen in their room’s kitchen, and it had caught on fire. We went back inside, and instead of getting to stay up late like we usually did on the road, my parents immediately sent my brothers on their bedtime routine.

What makes this scene notable was that, for whatever reason, I unironically thought that it was Lain’s will that I lost all of the screenshots for that episode.

Lain is a… contentious topic, especially because of the cult-like subculture it’s spawned. Different than other “cult followings” I’ve seen, partly because there’s so damn little content for it, even if you know Japanese; partly because, well, the first experience I had with it was an actual cult, only becoming familiar with the source material behind it through smug posts on various chans about how insane the whole Systemspace endeavour was. You make your own fun with the little content you have, even if that means you take an anime and turn it into a full-blown religion.

Looking back on my posts from last year, I can see a great deal of Lain’s influence, whether that be good in floating me along a lazy river to eventually find my chippie friends, or bad in pulling me even further down in my anhedonia. Slowly spiraling down into madness, plagued by the incessant thought that maybe, just maybe, this misshapen rock that I hold in my hands that lets me talk to people all over the world is the key to a life beyond this one.

It’s hard to remember that, no matter what the culture one has immersed oneself in says, at the end of the day, video games are just video games, and TV shows are just TV shows, and anime are just anime. These are just things we consume, not things to base our entire goddamn identity around! If we base our identities in external sources, then who are we but walking advertisements? And if our sense of these things has diverged far enough from the source material that they are effectively our own, then we should give credit where credit is due- ourselves- and embrace it instead of paying lip-service and further money to others who don’t even know of our existence.

These things only exist because fellow humans spoke them into existence. I hold entire worlds inside me- but it would be disingenuous to say that I was “divinely inspired”, or that some entity beyond the segment of reality that I can perceive were guiding my hands. If there were one using me as a puppet, would they really be so stupid as to reveal their existence? Unless they were deluding themselves of their benevolence, and then I’d have an opportunity to cease my work in its current form and thus deny them masterhood.

And with that, a shred sitting in my notes collection, undated other than the knowledge that it was written late at night:

On one hand, if we take the multiverse theory into account, I could very well be Kadaj or Lucina reincarnate. These feelings of “otherness”, of being incomplete, of an almost feral hatred of group pride and self-categorization of any shade, existed long before I knew of these characters, and they will persist long after my interest for their source material wanes and my interests shift. In such a period of chaos in my life, it might do me good to take mental refuge in something stable, something already complete.

But then the anarchic side of me sees this as an attempt by the corporatist in me- the “cop in my head”, if you will- to co-op fundamental parts of my identity into something that can easily be packaged into commodities and be sold back to me at an upcharge. I don’t need shiny toys or the latest games the moment they release, but because my psyche associates a sense of self and stability with things that feature these characters, I find my wallet and mental energy drained nevertheless.

This is why I resent being associated with the fictionkin community so much, regardless of the behavior of its members. If I allow my identity to be so easily influenced by others, then I cease to be my own person.

I cease to be myself.

In addition, as a creative myself, I do think that it is incredibly disrespectful to take a character that someone else might have poured their heart and soul into making and essentially claim them as one’s own, essentially co-opting the effort took to bring that character to life and into a coherent form for our enjoyment. But we should make an important distinction between a work of art that was intended for mass production and consumption, such as a video game from a major studio or the latest bestselling novel, and more indie arts, like a work-of-passion story (shameless self-promotion) or an OC. While mass art is still art, it’s also a product intended to be marketed as much as possible, and so it has to appeal to a much wider audience in order to make back the money spent creating it. That’s why one could name a popular character at random and probably find several kinnies of that character, but far less kin (or none at all) for smaller works.

With larger works, there’s far less of a chance of kinnies coming into contact with the original creators. If someone came to me and claimed to be kin with Lukas, the main character of The Duality of Mankind, I would cut off contact with them immediately because they’re clearly lying out of their ass: Lukas was based on the feelings of sonder, anhedonia, and pent-up anger I felt throughout my senior year of high school into the following summer. If anyone was qualified to be “kin” with him, it would only be me, because he is based on me and therefore a part of me. Sonic, however, is a multi-million-dollar franchise, and if it can survive Chris-Chan and multiple shoddy mainline games, it can survive a few kinnies.

This isn’t to say that otherkinity is monolithic; that, in other words, everyone’s experience is exactly the same. Not everyone has the same issues with self-image as I do; not everyone shares my deep-seated need for self-liberation of all kinds, or any other views, political or not. I could very well be wrong about all of this and really be the above in denial. (It seems like something they would do.) A sizable chunk of the kin community, I would wager, are perfectly stable individuals but with a quirky identity. But regardless of my past identities, it does not bode well for my mental health to pine for the past. The past is immutable, but the present is now, and it is all I will ever truly have.

As a loved one of mine says, as she wrote in the back of a sketchbook she gave to me one birthday: Be true to yourself in all things.

And I will.