media

The False Intimacy Of Media

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Earlier I posted on how there’s two different ways to connect to Media. I summed it up roughly as follows:

  • Known Connections: A fiction reaches us as it triggers existing associations, such as tropes.
  • Created Connections: A fiction makes us see things anew, creating new associations and ideas.

Today I’d like to focus on the Known Connections, those cases where a media gets us interested because it contains known content, common ideas, and so on. I believe these kinds of metal associations with the media we consume explains one reason people get so addicted and defensive about their comics, books, movies, etc.

Consider how it feels when something “pushes your buttons” (in a good way) when you consume media. It feels good, it feels right, it feels as if it’s “for you.” Connection to a piece of media is an intimate experience.

Now, consider how media can throw Known Connections at you. That kind of story you can’t put down. That kind of character you always like. That obvious twist you still crave. The right media can pile on things you’ve seen before – and still get you to consume it because it’s the right pile of things.

Or in short, we all know that we will read the biggest mass of repetitive, unoriginal, done-it-all-before stuff if it hits the right spots. We might not want to admit it, but we will.

That explains, in part, why some people get so defensive of certain media that are, bluntly, pandering. It’s all the stuff they like, in a mass, wrapped up in a bow. They might not even be aware of how they’re pandered to, as that piece of media feels so right.

(And no, you’re not immune to this. I know I’m not.)

But there’s something else going on here. I think this love of media that pushes our buttons also leads to a sense of intimacy with the creator(s) and the people involved.

When we discover a piece of media that hits all the right spots (even if those spots have been hit a lot before), we also feel a sense of connection. Someone got all our focuses and loves right. Someone gave us what we wanted, even if we sort of have had it all before.

When you have that feeling, it’s a feeling of intimacy, of connection. It’s too easy to assume that this intimate feeling is, well, real. You probably don’t know the author. The media you chose, bluntly, is not that original (or is just pandering). Still, that connection feels right.

Looking this over, I think I understand why some people get obsessively protective of some media, authors, and actors. It does everything they like in the way they like. It feels intimate, it may even feel like it’s just for you.

It’s not, of course. But perhaps this explanation can help us navigating having discussions with people so attached to a piece of media.

Steven Savage

Connecting To Fiction

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

While thinking over fiction writing, it struck me that fiction is something that we feel a deep connection to. We read a story or a book, and some of the concepts strike us, the associations come together, and we feel the story – we experience a Connection (with a deliberate capital). These Connections exist in fiction no matter its quality – we can be intimate with something awful or we can connect with something sublime.

Think of how you see an idea that just seems right in a story or right to you. Think of how something just viscerally strikes your gut and you get it. Those are the connections fiction creates. Those are what we want as authors.

Then I realized that we connect with fiction in two ways:

Known Connections: A fiction reaches us as it triggers existing associations, familiar things. Familiar and beloved tropes are prime examples.

Created Connections: A fiction makes us see things anew, creating new associations and ideas. This is the experience of seeing something new or experiencing an idea in a different way.

These are simple, perhaps overly simple, classifications, but useful ones. Fiction evokes previous Connections of ideas or builds a new one. These experiences may be negative – one may experience a painful realization – but let’s focus on the positive and analyze it.

Or, perhaps the seemingly positive. Stick with me here. With this useful tool to classify fiction, let’s examine my ideas deeper.

Known Connections

Known Connections occur when a story or movie or whatever contains familiar elements. We like these because they are familiar, and often they run very deep in our minds. We all have some character or archetype or genre trope that just gets our attention.

These come from existing cultural infrastructure. Look at how people will instantly take to a familiar superhero or a genre trope – even if they’re overdone and tired. If you’ve ever wondered why some people prefer the familiar, it’s because it is familiar.

These Known Connections we experience in our fictional media are also powerful as they’re shared. How many people will bond happily over yet another remake of the same thing, or sigh together over a fictional heartthrob? Familiarity also has a social component.

I don’t wish to lionize these Known Connections. They’re often overdone in mainstream media and can be used in exploitative ways. At the same time, I don’t wish to discount them – humans like familiarity and common ground.

However, I will note they can get stale and lead one to unoriginality. Pursuing media with only Known Connections can leave one dissatisfied, empty, lacking a kind of “mental nutrition” – as we all need Created Connections.

Created Connections

Created Connections are what we experience when fiction gives us something new, and concepts knit together in a way we’ve not seen before. It’s that flash of insight, the realization of a new truth in an intimate way, the just plain cool idea we obsess about. We’ve all had that story or movie where we go wow and just feel we’ve experienced life a bit differently.

Fiction that builds connections is something we’d probably call “original,” though I’m not sure there’s a one-to-one-mapping here.

Note that Created Connections of ideas have to build upon familiar, Known Connections. Without having something already in your mind to build on, there’s no way for you to process or relate to new ideas. Created Connections literally rely on old, perhaps even stale, concepts and ideas to help you experience them.

Created Connections are vital for us to really experience fiction – and life. We need new ideas, diverse experiences, and so on for our well-being. To only experience the same thing over and over again limits us, stagnates us, and drags us down.

Why Is This Important?

So with this theory, what did I learn? Well, beyond the fact I’ll probably keep exploring this, I think I got some crucial insights on fiction and what it means for people. Let me share what this theory helped me think through.

First, this model helps me understand why people consume trope-heavy or outright pandering media. It’s known, and a good author can push all the right buttons with the skill of a conductor or surgeon. If it’s what you want and/or someone uses Known Connections right, you’ll get an audience.

Secondly, I understand why people who want something new get deep into some things. Those Created Connections hit hard, burrowing into our minds and building upon existing Known Connections while making something new. I get why people must experience the new.

Third, it’s a reminder to balance your introduction of familiar and new. You need to play on Known Connections to get attention and have Created Connection to get the rush of the new. It’s your balance of these elements that will determine how people connect with the innovation you’re working on.

Clearly, I’ll explore this more. I just had a Created Connection I need to process . . .

Steven Savage

You Ain’t Getting Rid Of Politics In Media: Part 1

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Raise your hand if you ever had someone tell you that they want people to “keep their politics out of books/comics/games/tv” and so on. Now, put it down. I can’t see it, so it didn’t help.

But despite the fact that I can’t see if you raised your hand, I’m pretty sure you did, if only spiritually. It’s a plague of modern media (at least as I write this in 2019) that people complain about politics in their hobby media. Complaining seems to be it’s own form of media, which is quite an overload of irony, but i digress.

If you, like me, have been curious about this phenomena, you’ll notice most of the complaints are not about politics in general, but certain kinds of politics. In short, most complainers are people not against politics, but against politics about anyone not like them, and politics that might disturb their sense of the world. I could go into the various demographics of this but let’s go to the idea that politics can be left out of media.

It cannot. It is impossible.

Politics is about how humans interact, make decisions, conflict, identify, and so on. If your story involves people there will be politics, even if its of the smaller personal kind.

Politics also is about how we understand the world, from hard-edged ideologies to general assumptions. We all drag those into our works – if we’re aware, they become informed decisions from our lives. If not, well . . . you get the idea.

Politics will be in everything, even if they’re awful ill-informed politics.

Because I’m a fanatic for good worldbuilding, I feel confident in saying every work of fiction created will have politics. It’s just a question of they’re thought out, explored, extrapolated, and understood by the author. Any attempt to leave them out is a failure of creativity – because they will be there, they’ll just be unexamined.

Let’s give an example. I’m going to take a common genre/trope popular in anime and videogames. Isekai – the whole “person from our world sent to another.”

Specifically, let’s go super-tropey. We want to do a story which has the usual generic Demon Lord attacking a fantasy realm, and people from our world for some reason are yanked in to fight him. If you’re not familiar with this setup, you’ve somehow managed to avoid wide swaths of anime, manga, and some video games.

At the same time, how can this simple setup involve politics? It’s sort of escapsim/wish fullfillment slathered on top of tropey but fun fantasy.

So let’s see why it’s political.

First, let’s talk the Demon Lord. Just how does one being become a threat to this entire planet? How are his armies arranged? Why is he followed? Why is there only one? Yes, even when you’re designing a generic Demon Lord you have to ask questions that verge on the political – how is his life and armies organized to even be a threat?

Now, as this is a fantasy world, the fact there’s a Demon Lord tromping around immediately brings up supernatural politics. What are the various gods, deities, other demons, ancient wizards, and so on doing to stop this Beelzebubian Bozo? I mean, you’d think they’d get involved. In short, to design a world like this in detail you have to give some thoughts to . . . supernatural politics.

On top of all of this there’s the regular people caught trying not to get killed by the Demon Lord. Why are they threatened? Why can’t they stop him? How are their societies coping – in fact, what societies do they have? Their politics, pre-Demon Lord and current require some fleshing out to make sense of this all.

Once we figure out this world, you have to then figure out just why people from our world end up in this world fighting evil. I mean be it a goddess or some crazy wizard or the Currents of Destiny, “let’s throw an office temp at the Demon Lord” is not the soundest plan out there. If any people (or human-like gods) were involved in this decision, hopefully they had a good reason and worked it out with their fellows – in short, politics.

Before your hero or heroine even ends up in the first adventure in a story like this, you have a huge amount of political questions to ask. We might not think of them as politics because they don’t involve the various parties and politicians we know, but they are political. They’re the politics of the world you created.

Finally, once your hero(es) and heroine(s) arrive, how does the world recieve them? Are they ready for those that will save them? Have they been burning through chosen ones like someone with a big bag of chips? How did any recent heros/heroines do and are people ready to trust them?

All this doesn’t even deal with other fantasy politics. Are there non-human sentients like elves and dwarves? Do species crossbreed? How do people cope with various generic Fantasy Monsters? WHere do all these damn dungeons come from? You get the idea.

Now one could ignore these questions and the others generated by this discussion. That’s a decision – a political one to avoid the repercussions of one’s worldbuilding choices. A save-the-world fantasy Isekai that goes by the beats is a political act – the act of excluding extrapolation to hit a series of chosen beats. Those beats are . . . political, because they reflect certain tropes and assumptions. They’re just not thought of.

Politics will be in your media. If you embrace it, you get great media. And if you decide to take things in a certain direction, at least you know why you engineered it the way you did (I’m a big fan of exploring tropes by taking them to certain extremes that make sense). It’s good writing, it’s good worldbuilding.

Of course doing this may force you to face uncomfortable questions. Which may just lead to better writing . . .

Steven Savage