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annaminijayan3dblog · 9 months

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Academic Blog 7

In a game with a narrative, characters are the driving force. Their aims, abilities, and experiences become the players' abilities and goals. The game What Remains of Edith Finch (2017), a critically acclaimed game for its narrative, is a first-person exploration video game that explores the tales of members of the Finch family. Every story is strange and specific to the family member it pertains to. The game combines ludology and literary structures to create an engaging narrative game.

The game can be seen as a collection of short stories within a main narrative where the protagonist returns to her family home to find out what led to the strange deaths of her family members. Bozdog and Galloway (2020) argue that this structure has been derived from a literary technique called “frame narrative” by developing a collection of stories within a story within a story. The game combines literary structures with game mechanics to produce a fascinating experience for the player. The texts in the game appear and fade away as the player is transported from one narrative to another.

Each story in the game has its unique genre reflecting the personality of the family member. Barabara, a child actress who became popular through horror movies, is given a plot that perfectly fits the classic horror genre. The tale of Gus and Gregory shows how the game utilises literary texts in its game mechanics. Just like how the curiosity of the two leads to their demise, the texts to be read appear near objects making the player curious about how the story progresses and eventually reaches their end by interacting with them. The interesting combination of ludology and narratology makes the player experience unique. Bozdog and Galloway (2020) support this by saying that ‘The players are invited to deploy literary and ludic skills; deep and hyper attention; and cognitive, critical, and interpretive skills as they read, play, and navigate through the Finch house.’

Cheeseskates (n.d) BarbaraMemorial.jpg

The video game also uses the environment in the game to convey the narrative and aspects of the characters. The rooms of each Finch that the player is transported to differ according to their personalities and backgrounds. The sounds and narrative voices of the characters also help the player take on the role of the characters. In Lewis’s story, his monotonous life and his imaginary life take place at the same time. The realistic and dull visuals of his real life are overshadowed by his colourful imaginary world as it takes over. ‘The alienation between body and mind as well as between fantasy and reality is captured through the game mechanics.’ (Bozdog, Galloway, 2020, p.803)

What Remains of Edith Finch (2017) is an example of what combining storytelling and gameplay can achieve when used in a way that complements each other. Bozdog and Galloway (2020) say that hybridity and cross-disciplinary experimentation by combining literature and video games in the game have the potential to showcase innovation and artistic expression. My goal is to create engaging games that also convey a story. The techniques used in this game such as using the environmental elements to create a narrative is something I would like to implement in my work. The game also creates an emergent narrative based on the players’ interactions with the objects in the story. I want to design games that make these individual interactions innovative like the ones seen in Gus and Gregory’s tale.

References

Bozdog, M., Galloway, D. (2020). 'Worlds at Our Fingertips: Reading (in) What Remains of Edith Finch. Games and Culture'.in Games and Culture. 15(7). Available at: https://doi-org.ezproxy.herts.ac.uk/10.1177/1555412019844631. [Accessed: 8 December 2023]

Cheeseskates (n.d) BarbaraMemorial.jpg, What Remains of Edith Finch Wiki. Available at: https://what-remains-of-edith-finch.fandom.com/wiki/Barbara_Finch?file=BarbaraMemorial.jpg [Accessed: 8 December 2023]

GIANT SPARROW. (2017) What Remains of Edith Finch. [Video Game]. Annapurna Interactive. [Accessed: 8 December 2023]

#sources and significance

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jhavelikes · 9 months

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Over the past decade, the field of natural language processing has developed a wide array of computational methods for reasoning about narrative, including summarization, commonsense inference, and event detection. While this work has brought an important empirical lens for examining narrative, it is by and large divorced from the large body of theoretical work on narrative within the humanities, social and cognitive sciences. In this position paper, we introduce the dominant theoretical frameworks to the NLP community, situate current research in NLP within distinct narratological traditions, and argue that linking computational work in NLP to theory opens up a range of new empirical questions that would both help advance our understanding of narrative and open up new practical applications.

Narrative Theory for Computational Narrative Understanding - ACL Anthology

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linguistlist-blog · 1 year

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Discipline of Linguistics, General Linguistics, Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics, Text/Corpus Linguistics / Language. Text. Society (Jrnl)

Call for Papers “Language. Text. Society” (ISSN 2687-0487) is an independent, peer-reviewed academic online journal that publishes research in semantics and pragmatics, text linguistics and discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, speech genres, narratology, and sociolinguistics. Prior articles have covered a wide range of topics related to the use and function of language in various texts, genres, and discourses in diverse sociocultural settings. Submissions for the upcoming issue can be mad http://dlvr.it/SqRmQy

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tanhuynhgrad703 · 2 years

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CREATIVE PRACTICE AS RESEARCH: DISCOURSE ON METHODOLOGY - Skains, R. L. (2018)

In this article by Skains (2018), he studies a “methodological approach to creative practice as research.” He uses 4 different methods to conduct his research on creative digital writing. These methods include Practice-based Research (PBR), Auto-ethnomethodology, Cognitive approach, and Post-textual analysis.

PBR is when you use the creative act as an experiment to answer a research question that isn’t able to be explored by using other methods. The outcome of this method is usually an exegesis that goes hand in hand with the creative work. Auto-ethnomethodology is when the researcher asks what can be done to create trouble in a familiar scene. When using this method, the practitioner will introduce an unfamiliar element to an activity that they’ve already mastered and are familiar with. The Cognitive approach focuses on the artists thoughts and behaviours while creating their work. Skains (2018) wanted to focus on how the outcome of the work was influenced by the artists thoughts and experiences. Post-textual analysis looks into the work and processes of the practitioner. Skains (2018) used 3 different ways to analyse his research on creative digital writing. These included transmedia narratology based on the theories of Ryan (2006), cognitive narratology (Herman, 2007), and unnatural narration (Alber et al., 2012), (Alber & Bell, 2012), (Alber & Heinze, 2011), (Richardson, 2006).

Skains (2018) concludes that when developing critical knowledge through creative practice, it should be based in a clear and strong methodology instead of it being an afterthought. This will bring us closer to answer previous questions that were difficult to answer.

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brown-little-robin · 2 years

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Sources on fanfiction, transformative works, and cognitive narratology for @lovesodeepandwideandwell! You gave me the tiny excuse I needed to finally assemble my sources for this, and I have a Lot.

This (https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/issue/archive) is the archive of the Organization for Transformative Works’ journal. It’s open access, and there’s probably some usable stuff for you there, but of course it’s a biased source XD

OTW sources

Articles from the OTW’s archive that I found interesting on a glance include:

An article on “Fan Binding”, the transformation of fanfiction into physical book, with reflection on what that says about fanfiction as not just a digital phenomenon and also on fan binding an another expression of “the fandom gift economy”.

A short study on how fandom members seek out information!

Review of a book on fanfiction as “emotioned literacy”, as opposed to the masculinist perspective that elevates mind over body and logic over emotions (especially in engagement with literature). “Loving Fanfiction: Exploring the Role of Emotion in Online Fandoms” is the name of the book.

Articles

On fanfiction, I have a few sources. I have more on narrative gaps: the holes in stories where the reader puts their own meaning. I also have lots of sources on cognitive narratology: how people mentally engage with stories. Please ask if you want more sources on narrative gaps—I have a ton—so just ask if you’d like me to send some. Here are some things that might be relevant to your article in no particular order:

The Construction of Literary Character: A View from Cognitive Psychology. Gerrig, Richard J., and David W. Allbritton. This article is fantastic for a psychological explanation of why people think of fictional characters as real people and how they engage with stories—using James Bond as an example! (I have some notes on this one typed up for my professor, who used my labor to brain through all the articles and type up easy notes and pull quotes she could use; I’ll send them to you if you like.) This could easily be used to demonstrate some related truths about fanfiction! We use it the exact same way!

“Fanfiction as imaginary play: What fan-written stories can tell us about the cognitive science of fiction”, by Jennifer L. Barnes. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2014.12.004. This is another cognitive narratology one, with a solid base in academic psychology, examining how people engage with media beyond just viewing / reading it, including the widespread phenomenon of people daydreaming about media. Play is so underrated as something natural and good for adults...

“Minding the gap: visual perception and cinematic gap filling”, an excellent article on narrative gaps as they appear in film.

Book Sources

I’d like to especially recommend “Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind”, a foundational cognitive narratology book by David J. Herman. It’s long (of course), but so worth reading if you want a good foundation for the subject of how people engage with stories. It’s divided into two parts: “worlding the story”, about how people bring their own experiences and needs into the story to interpret and envision it, and then “storying the world”, where people use stories to interpret the world and make decisions based on story frameworks.

During my narratology research, I also used the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, edited by David Herman, author of the Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind book. It’s a good resource for any confusion about narratology terms (there’s so many...). Sadly, I don’t have a link for that one yet.

Also, I’m currently reading a book called “Pictures and visuality in early modern China” by Craig Clunas. If you want to get a non-Western perspective on the meaning of art, chapter 4 is an excellent resource! Apparently, in Ming China, elites were expected to intelligently discuss art, drawing conclusions from it and sharing it with others. AND!! Copying other painters and even their individual paintings was a valuable and completely valid way to pay tribute to them and to improve one’s own skills!!! (I have got to get an exact quote for this because this is world-shattering.) Also see this quote from the conclusion: “The Western tradition of viewing and understanding, at least until very recently, seeks to ground the meaning in the objects viewed, to see it as a container for the meaning poured into it at the time of manufacture. If as I have argued... the Chinese epistemology grounds knowing in the knower, seeing in the person who sees, connoisseurship in the connoisseur, than attempts to deal with the essence of Ming Chinese painting, no matter how subtle, cannot but be misreadings of the manner in which they were created and brought to view. Such a misreading has perhaps a long European history behind it.” (Clunas 171).

(as you can maybe tell, I am currently going a little insane about the differences between Chinese and Western culture about art & story.)

Keywords You Could Look Into

Okay, this might seem weird, but a lot of my struggles with my research last summer was just. Not knowing what to look for. So I’m listing some keywords and theories that might unlock some good sources for you. I haven’t looked into any of these fully, so no guarantees, but here they are.

Ricoeur's theory of mimesis (cognitive narratology)—derives from Greek philosophy (specifically Plato) and fuels a lot of cognitive narratology theorization. It’s about how humans construct and then apply meaning to things like stories. It’s a three-stage process.

Fabula and storyworld are terms for the constructed reality the reader makes up in their head after reading a text. Those would be interesting terms to look into when you’re looking at how people consider things “canon” or “headcanon” and all the fascinating complexities of the different ways people view stories and derivative stories.

(for myself, I’d like to look into historical fanfiction, such as myth-making and adaptations of fairy tales and such. I’d also love to have sources on superheroes with regards to fanfiction! but I don’t, sadly.)

Okay! I have told you about my best sources, I think.

#long post #cognitive narratology #on fanfiction

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literary-structures · 7 years

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Earlier in my chapter, I suggested that cognitive flavor, including the presence of the kind of highly charged cognitive exchange we find in this scene, was just one of the factors that might make a moment special—and thus implied that a full narratology of the moment would have to handle more than purely cognitive issues. I believe that to be true—some scenes are wonderful, for instance, simply because of their verbal virtuosity or because (like some scenes in “Catch-22”) of their humor. But in her commentary on an earlier draft of this chapter, Lisa Zunshine asked whether, for narrative fiction, moments of complex mind-reading configuration might not have a special importance. My first reaction was to say no. After all, my first venture into narratology of the moment—the place where I coined the term—was a paper, delivered at the Narrative Conference in 2012, that didn’t deal with mind-reading at all. It centered, rather, on issues of memory—in particular, a vertiginous scene in Lermontov’s “Hero of Our Time” where the protagonist Pechorin tries to control his future memories of the present by creating a falsified version of the past. Yet as I reread that paper, I see that that scene—and the other key scenes from Turgenev, Chekhov, and Proust that I used as background—could just as well, and perhaps even better, be explained in terms of their mind-reading configurations. So perhaps complex mind-reading configurations are of special importance—and it might well be that, more often than not, entryways into novelistic aesthetic bliss are lined by complex mind-reading. In any case, the phrase “lined by” brings us back to the issue of sequence and raises the question: how might cognitively flavored moments relate to narrative’s temporal dimension?

Peter J. Rabinowitz, ‘Toward a Narratology of Cognitive Flavor’ from The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies (p. 92)

#aesthetics #cognition #narratology #theory of mind

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bettsfic · 2 years

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75k words into my magnum opus (the fic I asked for advice about many months ago); got it changed to first person and have not regretted it for a second (she's an unreliable narrator haunted by an extra-dimensional entity only she can see: first person is the only way that makes sense). Anyway, hoping to pick your brain about the second half of the fic. (Full disclosure: i know i need to just think on it more but i'm so impatient! I think about that meme all the time: "turns out to read my fic I have to write it first. Shocked and upset!" Lol.) I want to do a 'mystery', in that the main character has a terrible secret she's holding on to at all costs, she doesn't even *think* about it, but the pieces of the truth are revealed slowly through the second half until the secret comes out in the emotional climax. I want that reveal to be a huge emotional punch, quietly devastating. Like a twist, in that it recontextualizes the prior pieces of information.

But I'm really struggling. This feels like a Big Challenge and I'm daunted (full disclosure: I very much suffer from 'my first draft has to be perfect!' syndrome. It's getting better, but slowly). Any advice on writing mysteries, emotional gut-punches, or anything that occurred to you as I was trying to describe the challenge? Thanks for your time! Also, good luck with the residency! Please keep telling us about it! I'm very intrigued :)

first of all, congrats on 75k and making the change to first person! i really love how complex first person can get from a narratological perspective. a lot of people overlook the fact that first person is a facsimile of consciousness and in its flawed rendition of cognition there's a lot of formal/structural risks you can take with it. in your case, the big risk is implying unfettered access to your character's mind but the reveal isn't just the secret itself, it's that the secret has been denied to the audience, which renders the reliability of the rest of the story suspect (and which will add to the fun of rereading! figuring out what's true and what's not).

[for anyone interested, i wrote a bit about the limitations of the portrayal of reality in fiction. a lot of what i'm going to say relies on what i've already said there.]

what you're talking about, what this all comes down to, is the concept of narratorial access. in every story ever written, the writer has had to, consciously or not, decide how much or how little access we have both to the mind of the narrator and the true events of the story. no access at all would be omniscience; the story is being told from a narrator who cannot see at all into the perspective of the characters and therefore we can imply that the proposed events of the story are entirely true. (example: kent haruf's plainsong)

the opposite, however, is impossible. we can't ever recreate the absolutely true experience of consciousness in writing, because in the mind our thoughts aren't necessarily bound in any specific way. but in writing, we're bound to the necessity of letters presented on a page in sequence. we're bound by language itself. you can think two thoughts at once, but you can never write two thoughts at once. they must go one after the other, and they must be read one after the other. honestly it's one of the great tragedies of reality, that we have this beautiful tool of language that allows us to understand the minds of others, but it's still so profoundly limited.

which is to say, in that impossibility of the portrayal of consciousness, there's still a decision to be made of how close can you get. the more narratorial access we have, the less certainty we have in the true events of the story outside their perspective (this is where the concept of an unreliable narrator comes from. an unreliable narrator is simply a narrator whose perspectives we have a lot of access to).

this example of extreme access is actually very relevant to you: pale fire by vladimir nabokov, in which we have absolutely no fucking clue about the true events of the story and the narrator is keeping a big, big secret from us. he's even keeping the chronology of the story from us. he denies us the very thing nearly all stories offer us: a sequence of events. but that's what nabokov does, right? his portrayal of cognition is so detailed that the work of the reader is figuring out what the story even is.

so, speaking of the work of the reader...

re: emotional climaxes: on a sentence level, a general rule of thumb is that anything you deny the reader, the reader must supply themselves. if you don't describe a setting, the reader must create the setting on their own. if you don't describe a character, the reader must create that character.

this is not to say you should describe everything so your reader doesn't have to do any work. what i'm saying is, pick the work you want your reader to do.

i once had a professor whose feedback was often "i had to put a lot of this information on the page myself, and i don't think that's something you want me to be doing because i've probably gotten it wrong." this is the crux of "show don't tell" and why it's often misunderstood. "show don't tell" is a shitty way of saying the reader likes doing certain work. the reader enjoys drawing conclusions from a character's thoughts or behaviors. the reader doesn't want everything explained to them. but! there are many, many instances where the reader does need things explained to them, which is why "show don't tell" sucks. one of the greatest challenges in writing is figuring out where that balance lies. what do you put on the page? what do you keep off the page? what do you explain outright? what do you leave to interpretation? there's no right or wrong, better or worse. there's only what's appropriate for the story you're trying to tell.

debra gwartney explains it a lot better than me in "when the action is hot, write cool." personally i think this craft essay is a little too prescriptive (there are many genres where this advice just isn't true), but it's an interesting craft technique to keep in mind when approaching your own culminating moments.

the best example i can think of "cool" writing in an emotional climax is jo ann beard's "the fourth state of matter." (major content warning for a school shooting.) you may notice the style right away offers us a LOT of narratorial access. we can assume by reading that the narrator isn't really holding anything back from us, emotionally speaking. we can also assume, since this is nonfiction, the events of the story are true but simply colored by the perspective of a woman going through a messy divorce who has a squirrel trapped in her bedroom. but even though this is a nonfiction essay, we're denied access to reflection; the events of the piece are unfolding to our narrator as they did, presumably, in reality.

(when you have a narrator reflecting from a specific present of the narrative [that's called the point of telling, which is like point of view, but for time instead of character], there's always a decision you have to make in terms of what information to unveil when, considering your narrator already knows the whole story. this is different than if you have an implied ongoing present of the story where the narrator themselves has no access to future events until they happen.)

as you go along reading "the fourth state of matter" a moment happens near the end where the style abruptly changes. the narrator abruptly changes. we shift into a space of impossibility, of pure speculation. we go from highly textured complex sentences to fragmented sentences. we pull far, far back from any emotional connection to the story.

and in doing so, it hurts the reader way, way worse.

beard has denied the acknowledgement of emotion in the sentences themselves, and so the reader must supply it. and in supplying it, they feel it.

i hope this made sense. best of luck in the second half of your story! and if you have any questions about what i said here i can do my best to expand on it.

#writing advice #narratology

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mbtiofwhys · 4 years

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Persona 5 and how MBTI can expose writing (in)consistency

Disclaimer

We’re studying writing and narratology as self taught, we are passionate about narrative in general and we believe in MBTI as a tool to analyse things and frame both reality and fiction in a different way. These are our opinions on the matter of how MBTI can be useful in approaching plot and character consistency, but don’t take it as a scientific paper;

We’re writing this article after a good 3 runs and various hundred of hours spent in this game per mod. We’ve already analysed the whole main cast and tried to explore everyone of them more in depth, so please don’t take anything in this article as an attack to a certain character or the game as a whole. We love P5 and P5R wholeheartedly - for this reason, we can’t overlook problems when they arise;

Big huge enormous spoilers for both P5 and P5R.

Premise

Characters are the most important element of a story - yes, even more important than the plot. Especially if you consider that a plot is, basically, characters doing stuff to reach a goal. Lots of stories revolve around a particular event or atmosphere, a fictional world to explore, or an issue, but there will always be characters in them because, as human beings, we’re attracted to people, their flaws and their problems.

So, if characters are the basis of a story, going deeper we see how fictional works tell us about how and why people overcome hardships and become a better person in the process (tragedies surely exist, but they aren’t the norm). That’s what is called the transformation arc.

That being said, how do we use MBTI? Since cognition is essential and behaviors mean nothing, we tend to look at characters both from a narrative and metanarrative standpoint. This means putting aside what characters do or what they like, and focusing on how they gain information, make decision and what are their motives. Since stories tell us about people and their struggles, it’s interesting to understand why characters act in a certain way, what really moves them forward.

This approach, inevitably, must compromise with the fact that fiction is made by people, and people can make mistakes. Works of fiction aren’t flawless and sometimes, trying to find what type a character is, is a way to bring light to those problems. Rules are a social construct, they’re fluid and constantly change, but they also provide useful tools to analyze stories, discovering their strength and their flaws. So, stories aren’t defined solely on strict rules, however MBTI can push one to better understand what is a good story or a well-written character and, vice-versa, why stories can fail to amaze us.

Why Persona 5?

Because it’s an excellent case study to show both how our typing process must adapt to face different situations, and what means to analyse a wide cast of characters that aren’t always perfectly written. The cast, though, is diverse enough that you can have characters with similar or opposite types that interact for 100+ hours, and this creates a very interesting setting for comparison and conflict.

Moreover, the confidant system can be a golden source MBTI-wise, because, if properly developed, a confidant can give us great insights about the character, or show other sides of them outside the main plot.

Tropes and typing

Persona 5 offers really great examples of what means to differentiate between typology and tropes when typing. Since we’re talking about fictional characters, we must acknowledge that sometimes there is a correlation between certain tropes/archetypes and certain types (mbtinotes on Tumblr talks about this more in depth here: https://mbti-notes.tumblr.com/spotting#fiction ). This, though, isn’t a rule and mustn’t become a limitation when typing, because cognitive functions work regardless of tropes, exactly as they do regardless of behaviors. P5 has both types that follow the tropes they are often associated with, and types that are completely different.

Ryuji is one of the main example belonging to the first case. He matches the Book dumb and Dumb blonde tropes, alongside with the Hot-blooded and Idiot hero ones. Those traits are usually linked to Se doms: always hungry and with lots of energy. In Ryuji’s case, though, he’s not an ESFP (only) because he’s loud and reckless, but also due to his approach to life and general cognitive process. That being said, it’s also true that he embodies the most common conception of what an ESFP looks like.

A similar example also applies to Akechi: he’s presented as the smart ace detective (The Ace) and later on as the mastermind traitor. He possesses many traits often linked to ENTJs, especially when they’re the villain, antagonist or anti-hero of the story. This doesn’t serve as a limit to his character though, and Akechi shares the majority of a young ENTJ’s cognitive process, alongside with some of its tropes.

On the other hand, P5 also offers characters belonging to the second case, for whom only looking at their tropes and role in the plot can be misleading typing-wise.

It's the case of Futaba: she’s an INFP according to our typing process, however the game always stresses her quirky and antisocial side, something so strong it defines her as a person even after her narrative arc. This is why many people type her as INTP, since those traits are often linked to Ti doms, high Ne users or rationalist types.

Another example is Yusuke: we typed him INTJ even though the community often refers to him as an ISFP. Our main complain regarding Yusuke as an ISFP is about how this type is justified only using the tropes he’s associated with. Since Yusuke is a bizarre artist and a weirdo, he must also be an ISFP in love with painting, art and beauty, right? Well, this is true, but not because he’s an ISFP. His behaviors don’t stem from an ISFP cognition, rather from the one of an INTJ, in our opinion.

Narrative arcs

Narrative arcs define the plot, but (following a shonen structure) they also sadly tend to be too much stand alone in the game, especially when it comes to character development. This leads to a situation where characters shine in their narrative arc, but then just sit in the background for the rest of the game, as a part of the Phantom Thieves. This isn’t entirely a bad thing, since Persona 5 revolves around a large cast of characters and tends to focus more on the group as a whole, so this structure suits the game’s leitmotif appropriately. However, narrative arcs surely enhance what we said about tropes and stereotypes, not always in a good way.

There’s also the problem of characters following the plot/comic gags instead of the opposite. A story may undoubtedly be full of gags and fanservice without it compromising its characters and their purpose inside the narration, but problems arise when said characters must adhere to rules set by the plot, rather than being realistic people freely taking actions and making mistakes.

More specifically, we’re referring to:

Ann and harassment

This, in our opinion, is the most emblematic case about narrative arcs and how they tend to be isolated from the rest of the game. Ann’s arc doesn’t revolve around a big issue, differently from others later on where the Phantom Thieves face threats against the entire Japan. However, Kamoshida feels like a real villain and the pain inflicted to his students isn’t less relevant than other issues. The firs arc tells us a story about harassment, how it may lead to victim blaming, social exclusion and extreme actions like Shiho’s attempted suicide. So, the game surely starts with a realist and captivating take, but what lies after it? Sadly, not much. From that moment on, Ann still remains the most sexualised member of the group and is often the one whose body is used as a tool to gain intel or other useful things - Yusuke’s modeling affair and the second letter of recommendation on Shido’s ship are just two blatant example.

And while Ryuji’s confidant is simple and straightforward yet still works properly, Ann’s one can be dull, revolving around characters less interesting and engaging than the ones we see during Kamoshida’s arc. Moreover, her confidant takes place while Shiho is still recovering, so we see her mentioned only few times.

Makoto and duty

Every awakening in Persona 5 is thrilling and moving but, speaking for us mods, we think that Makoto has one of the most galvanizing. Her arc embraces the leitmotif of rebellion and it works even better than the others since she always appears as a diligent and polite student. But is there something more after her awakening? Sadly, as we saw for Ann, the answer is no. Makoto’s confidant is plain, a simple solution placed by developers to show her personality while introducing new characters. It works, but it doesn’t give a further twist to the premise the game showed during her awakening. Not to mention that, despite her decision to less blindly follow the rules, Makoto is often relegated to the mom friend/dutiful student role, reminding others of rules and schoolwork and stuff. Yes, she has a relevant role in Sae’s arc, but we still find her confidant lacking what is shown during Kaneshiro’s arc.

Futaba and self growth

Futaba’s arc is interesting on many levels, especially because we see how a hikikomori undergoing severe traumas can overcome them, thus becoming a healthier person. Even though her arc is one of the most emotional in the game, Futaba quickly resets to a stage where she’s more of a comic relief than a vivid character and she often kicks in just to mock the other thieves or to solve problems tied to computer science and technology. Yes, this is coherent to her character, at the same time it often closes her in stereotypes since Futaba is limited by those roles rather than showing her new and mature side.

Kasumi and Sumire and the lack of closure

Sumire’s arc and confidant deal with finding acceptance and a new balance between her old and new self, since Sumire slowly accepts her sister’s death. Or, at least, this is what the game tries to convey to the players. We love what Persona 5 Royal added to the main game and we played both versions for hundred of hours, however we must admit how both of us mods found lack of proper character development throughout Sumire’s confidant. Her arc does a great job in showing how much pain she had to endure and how she begins to live with her sister’s death. But at the same time her confidant doesn’t give her a new starting point, in our opinion. Why? Because reaching rank ten with Sumire means that she just finds a new way to be tied to Kasumi, and not in a completely healthy way. Sumire admits how gymnastic was a way to be together with her sister and how she loved accessory activities tied to the sport, like eating ice cream after training, more than the sport itself. So, Sumire never really cared about the competitive side of gymnastic and, at the end of her confidant, it seems like she sticks with it just as a way to be tied to Kasumi again. Yes, this is surely a healthier way than the one she took with Maruki’s help, and we know how our opinion regarding Sumire can be controversial, at the same time we don’t think her confidant truly ends her arc properly.

What has typing every character highlighted?

After 3 playthroughs, two platinum trophies and many hours spent discussing this group of punks, we used MBTI to give a structure to our articles and, unexpectedly, we often had to slightly change our approach in typing the main cast. It’s been a huge project of analysis, research, reading online discussions and further learning. In the end, we’d like to write down our own conclusion about these characters. This specific section might be a bit more about our personal opinions, though.

Protagonist (ENFP)

Typing the protagonist was the wildest part of this project. Since he’s mostly an avatar controlled by the player, we knew everything had to be taken with a grain of salt. We separated canon from player’s choices, as a way to find what makes the protagonist a real character (sadly, not as much as he would have deserved). We also tried not to rely too much on gameplay mechanics in typing. In the end, we progressed by process of elimination, discarding the option that surely didn’t fit. We agreed on ENFP for him, but ENTP isn’t a bad match either. Even if a character so malleable by the player can’t be associated to a single type so easily, we do believe that a starting point somehow exists. Our hope for the future is that in new games we’ll get to play a real character, though.

Morgana (ESTJ)

Morgana was pretty hard to type, especially regarding the perceiving axis - which is a pity, because he’s not the stock ESTJ type of character. But since he’s the mascot of the Phantom Thieves, Morgana is often even more stereotyped than the other characters. He decently shows his dominant function during the game, but way less his auxiliary and tertiary ones, since his personality gets subdued by his function as the sidekick of the protagonist.

Ryuji (ESFP)

We talked above how tropes aren’t always detrimental and Ryuji is the perfect example of this concept. He was the easiest character to type, due to his simple (yet defined) personality. Ryuji demonstrates how a character doesn’t have to be complex or multifaceted to be interesting and loveable.

Ann (ESFJ)

Ann is the opposite case of Ryuji: a character driven by plot rather than by being a vivid person. We aren’t saying we dislike Ann (honestly there isn’t a thief we properly dislike), but we must admit how typing her was really difficult, and not because she’s too complex. It’s safe to assume she’s a Fe dom, however the game doesn’t give any solid clue about her perceiving axis - we traced down Si only by elimination and because her confidant show a clear FeNe loop, but otherwise the game offers nearly no clue of her Si (or Ti). Ann’s personality can’t shine properly in a game where, outside her narrative arc, she often has to follow the role of the ‘attractive/supportive character’ assigned to her.

Yusuke (INTJ)

Yusuke is an interesting case: typing him wasn’t easy, but, contrary to Ann, just because he’s more complex than he may appear. Under the ‘artist’ trope (that misled the majority of the community towards ISFP) there’s a character with less predictable sides and a well-written arc. Also, a very nice example of a non-textbook INTJ, since these types are often associated with science and/or greater battles in life. Yusuke was a nice surprise to find.

Makoto (ISTJ)

Typing Makoto was a bit of a slow process, since there isn’t a popular type assigned to her by the community. At the same time, identifying her cognitive functions wasn’t too hard, so we can at least say she’s a relatively solid character, meaning that even if she’s mostly a textbook ISTJ, she still shows the development process of her inferior Ne and tertiary Fi in her confidant. Her growth is pretty linear, and the problem lies precisely in the lack of a proper twist in her personality, since she could have been far more interesting and less predictable.

Futaba (INFP)

Futaba was hands down the hardest character to type, since she’s tied to all the stereotypes of being quirky, asocial and nerd, usually associated with INTPs. Futaba perfectly shows how a theoretically well-written character can’t shine under specific circumstances: she has an emotional and complex arc, which was in fact our starting point in typing her, since it’s a pretty clear example of a FiSi loop. Yet, she acts more as a comic relief or as a source to solve IT-related problems, and her functions aren’t properly shown.

Haru (INFJ)

Despite the meme of Atlus hating her and not giving her the proper screen time (which isn’t untrue), Haru was pretty easy to type. She’s a nice example of how a character doesn’t have to follow his type’s tropes to feel real. Haru isn’t the typical daydreaming INFJ with a saviour complex, and in fact she gets sometimes mistyped as INFP. Unluckily, as for Ann, the game doesn’t do a good job in giving her a well-rounded personality, and in fact finding evidences of her third and fourth functions was pretty hard.

Goro (ENTJ)

Akechi is probably the most multifaceted and complex character in the game, at least in P5 vanilla - we believe Maruki lowkey stole that record in Royal. However, since he’s a well-written one (even if he still lacks a proper narrative arc, to a certain extent), Akechi wasn’t hard to type. The most interesting thing is that he may seem the classic ENTJ with a psychopath/killer personality, but in reality, he probably doesn’t suffer from any mental illness, and his character revolves around what happens when functions are used unhealthily, or are excessively underdeveloped. For this exact reason, though, we find a pity that the game doesn’t properly address the consequences and aftermath of a teen that had to commit severe crimes and murder people to find a place in life.

Kasumi (ENFP) and Sumire (ISFJ)

There’s a lot to say about Kasumi and Sumire, especially regarding their role in the plot and their confidants. Typing them wasn’t easy, since we only see Kasumi through Sumire’s actions, and both of them have a half-confidant instead of a proper one each. So, with both sisters we had to proceed a bit by process of elimination, since they appear for a relatively short time and without super strong evidences of their types despite a few functions. Sadly, they highlighted how writing characters for plot’s sake rather than by making them vivid may lead to incomplete narrative arcs.

We’ve come to the end of this article. Thank you for reading!

This officially concludes our journey with the P5 main cast - it’s been a wonderful experience to learn more about both MBTI and the characters of the game we loved so much. If you want to discuss things with us, we’ll gladly listen. You can reach out here on Tumblr in comments, asks and dms, as well as on Instagram.

(And, if you’re interested, we’ve also wrote about Maruki, Sojiro and Tae).

#mbtiofwhys #mbti #personalitytypes #typology #blogging #stereotypes #clichés #video games #fiction #fictionalworks #persona 5 #persona 5 royal #p5 #p5r #narrative #writing #fictional characters

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dzeikobb · 4 years

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20.01.2021

Leo Bersani - Homos

Monique Witting

Judith Butler

Michael Warner

Andre Gide, Jean Genet, Proust

desire for the same and desire for the lack

anticommunitarian impulses they discover in homosexual desire

The Immoralist, Sodome et Gomorrhe, Funeral Rites

how desire for the same can free us from oppresive psychology of desire as lack (a psychology that grounds sociality in trauma and castration)

a salutary devalorizing of difference

difference not as a trauma to overcome (it nourishes antagonistic relations between the sexes), but rather as a nonthreatening supplement to sameness

"Once we agreed to be seen, we also agreed to be policed"

a traditional sanctification of state authority

The Archaeology of Late Antique 'Paganism' edited by Luke Lavan, Michael Mulryan

Constructing Postmodernism By Brian McHale

reading modernistically - paranoiacally

New Criticism, New Critical institutionalization of modernism

paranoid reading is assumed to be the appropriate norm of reading

then postmodernist texts appear which assume and anticipate paranoid reading-habits

they incorporate representations of (fictional) paranoid interpretations (conspiracy theories) or paranoid reading practices, or they thematise paranoia itself, reflecting, anticipating, perhaps pre-empting actual readers' paranoid readings.

La Jalousie, Pale Fire, The Crying of Lot 49, De Lillo Running Dog/The Names/Libra, The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum

"the idea is not to discover the secret, but to construct it"

no longer an epistemological quest, but an enterprise unconstrained by criteria of truth and evidence (world-building?)

an experiment in self-conscious world-making, a cosmological matter (novel-writing enterprise is one as well)

one projects (calls into being) an entity, anticipating a response

Masons, Illuminati, Rosicrucians, Gender-LGBT

"he declares that the league exists so that people will then create it"

St Anselm ontological proof of God's existence

confusing existence in thought with existence in reality

but: they project into reality the non-existent entities

inventing nonsenses, but the public will want to pursue them if they hear of them

"we've shown the necessity of the impossible"

"we invented a non-existent Plan, and they not only believed it was real but convicted themselves that they had been part of it for ages, or rather they identified fragments of their muddled mythology as moments of our Plan"

ontological side effects of world-making: the projected world has begun to contaminate the real world

there might come a time when the projected world will supplant the real world

Frederick Jameson: Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

symptomatic works and diagnostic works

reflections or expressions of late-capitalist social and economic relations

diagnostic works aspire to produce some image/figure/representation of the unrepresentably complex multinational world-system in which we live

Kevin Andrew Lynch was an American urban planner and author. He is known for his work on the perceptual form of urban environments and was an early proponent of mental mapping.

cognitive mapping

Conspiracy paranoia is a recurrent cultural phenomenon especially in American political life, with successive waves of anti-Masonism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Communism etc

Hypothesis: Whenever the complexity of the social-economic system outstrips our capacity to represent it to ourselves, conspiracy theory arises to fill the gap as the "poor person's cognitive mapping"

The recurrence of crises of cognitive mapping

responses to successive crises of society's self-imagining

"fossilized" attempts at the cognitive mapping (reminds me of Deleuze and geology - paranoic geology of the psyche?)

late-capitalist high-tech versions of conspiracy and the postmodernist resurgence of traditional conspiracy theories

Constructivism's basic epistemological principle is that all our cognitive operations, including (or especially) perception itself, are theory-dependent. This means, first of all, that data do not exist independently of a theory that constitutes them as data.

Granted the theory-dependency of "facts", it follows that faithfulness to objective "truth" cannot be a criterion for evaluating versions of reality (since the truth will have been produced by the version that is being evaluated by its faithfulness to the truth, and so on, circularly). The appropriate criteria for evaluation now are, for instance, the explicitness of the version, its intersubjective accessibility, its "empirical-mindedness", i.e. its aspiration to be as empirical as possible, where empiricism is not a method but a horizon to be approached only asymptotically; and above all, the adequacy of the version to its intended purpose. In other words, constructions, or what I have been calling versions of reality, are strategic in nature, that is, designed with particular purposes in view.

cities constructed, not given or found

or are they?

Parisian structuralist narratology - Barthes, Bremond, Genette, Greimas, Todorov

21.20.2020

I have been watching protest of the Women's Strike. On my phone, at my desk, at home, later from bed. I have been unable to attend due to my deteriorating mental health condition. How to describe the feeling and the atmosphere of this protest? I will juxtapose the following:

Hierarchy - Presence - Genital - Narrative - Metaphysics - Determinacy - Construction of a world-model - Ontological certainty [modernism]

Anarchy - Absence - Polymorphous - Anti-narrative - Irony - Indeterminacy - Deconstruction of a world-model - Ontological uncertainty [postmodernism]

What I saw leads me to believe that I should associate my perception of protests with the latter column.

A plot: events arranged in temporal sequence, a causal motivation for the sequence

modernism and postmodernism not as period styles, one of them current and the other outdated, more like alternative stylistic options between which contemporary writers are free to choose without that choice necessarily identifying them as either avant-garde or arriere-garde.

The dissolution of the library and the world

And then collecting the fragments (relics) of the burned library

What if the library does not burn, but is flooded?

What if it dissolves into a flood of meaningless text

An overflow of meanings leading to the ultimate loss of all meaning

An overabundance of points and places in the map causing the map to become illegible

Alain Robbe-Grillet: Instead of having to deal with a series of scenes which are connected by causal links, one has the impression that the same scene is constantly repeating itself, but with variations"

"narrative as a systematic application of the logical fallacy denounced by scholasticism under the formula post hoc, ergo propter hoc"

"a complex web of responses to and repetitions of earlier works, visual and textual, creative and critical" (isn't any text/work such a web?)

Gradiva - Novel by Wilhelm Jensen

Topologie d'un cite phantome Robber-Grillet

"a narrative which has abandoned any sense of progress and explores the past as a set of variations on a split and dispersed present"

Vigo-Atlantis on the connecting point of three continents-islands

it is inundated in never-stopping rain

Ruins of Warsaw after World War 2 turned into a closed-off monument and after the fall of communism, into a "tragedy-amusement park", somewhat like Westerplatte

a participant of the Warsaw Uprising and a young Jew-Robinson (a descendant of other Robinsons) who survived hiding in ruins until present time both emerge and react differently: the insurgent tries to kill tourists thinking they are Germans and is killed by security himself and the Robinson goes back to hiding, understanding that the world has experienced an apocalypse and a new world has emerged, in which there is no place for him.

22.01.2020

Właśnie przechodzę przez kolejny nawrót depresji, nie stać mnie na terapię, nie jestem w stanie z kimkolwiek rozmawiać, nienawidzę stanu, w którym jest moja skóra i ciało, za bardzo się wstydzę, by naprzykrzać się komukolwiek opowiadaniem o moich problemach, mam za mało pieniędzy, prawie nie mam pracy, nie mam dokąd uciec, nie mogę nawet wyjechać za granicę, rzuciłem studia po raz piąty w życiu i ignoruję te kilka osób, którym jeszcze choć trochę na mnie zależy.

#2021 #dzeikobb #postmodernism #modernism

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