nortti OH1CAU

Every now and then I think about this youtuber (Mother's Basement) who got their start doing Jojo OP analysis and some years ago dared to make a video arguing that despite the fandom's gatekeepy memes, its fine, actually, to skip Jojo parts. That just maybe the entire point of new settings/characters/conflicts each part was for that sort of multi-entry approach, and the series owes all of its traction in Japan to people jumping in at whatever part was serialized when they were young.

To further illustrate the flexibility of the format he made a silly, theoretical mixed read order which got memed to death and he was endlessly harassed for it and the video overall. Recently in a podcast he said he basically stopped making Jojo videos since, despite still adoring the series and having lots to say, because it wasn't worth the effort of opening up that can of worms again. Just can't help but marvel at how incredibly silly and petty it all is, to assert Jojo, of all things, as being so immutable. People argued skipping parts was akin to opening a book to a random page and reading from there.

So yea, I've got a lot of opinions on the "best" ways to experience lots of things, but I also know that isn't worth much over experiencing it in the first place, there is really no point in trying to force people this way. Some of us are nerds, we'll go down the retrospective, dig out the originals, but that's no more valid or true than any other way.

Nostalgia and the human idea for "optimization" is a messy mouse.

Unless the media literally doesn't work unless you go through it a specific way (and I can only think of one instance I've seen this) let folks rock.

It's something I acknowledged the fear of happening starting my classic DOOM marathon streams, but folks are (mostly!) being good about not having "the real DOOM" experience.

People get this weird about The Legend of Heroes series and it never made sense to me. It's an on-going video game series that currently has 12 releases over 2 decades. And despite the 4 major story arcs, which each introduce a new main cast and setting that could act as entry points, so many fans insist people start at the beginning.

If people express interest in the most modern games, then I try to tell them to go for it and will inform them later that's it's part of a larger whole if they are invested enough to want more lore. So many people will come out of the woodwork to be like "No, you need to start with the Steam version of this 2004 PSP JRPG that doesn't respect your time and is a little dated game design-wise in other regards too."

They don't realize that's intimidating? Not everyone can pick up an older game and appreciate it. Hell, I dropped the first game in the series a decade ago. Then I unwittingly picked up the start of the most modern story arc years later, enjoyed it a lot, and a friend reminded me about the larger whole. My investment and interest helped me enjoy the first game when I went back to it and tried again. If I had asked people about picking up the modern entry and they told me to go back and play a game I dropped 5 hours in years back, I would have told them "Oh, no thanks. Guess this series sucks and isn't for me."

Oh man, I've had this happen so many times to me, and it's one of the most annoying things to experience. I know I'm guilty of doing it back in the day.

And that last line is perfect. I remember when I use to be a regular in the Castlevania subreddit and I ended up leaving it because there was one thread that popped up every single day (multiple times):

I'm new to the series, which game do I play first?

Despite having a pinned thread that had a solid breakdown of the series and the obvious answer of Castlevania on the NES, that shit still popped up so frequently, it's all I'd see. It was just easier to leave and not deal with because you couldn't have a conversation in space like that.

kay you've fucking got it for sure. the reason people shouldn't worry about how they tackle media is the same as why they shouldn't worry about 100%ing games or seeing all the 'secrets' or whatever.

your individual experience of a thing is going to be special no matter what, and if you get passionate about a subject, it's fun to go fill out stuff you missed in the past or whatever. it's fun to read as much or as little about extras in a game you liked, or seek out other people's own experiences.

whatever happens, the context of all the other media we've watched, like, ever?? and just our entire lives is gonna shape how we react to any game or movie or blah. so just trust the things you like to be good, and not so fragile that you gotta recreate perfect lab conditions for it to be meaningful to someone.

as a game developer who made a game with multiple stories you can do in various orders (and side content you can do whenever), people even argue about the order of that when someone new shows up. The order they did it in is clearly the optimal way. It's really exhausting to see that all the time with nothing i can do about it! If one story order was optimal then i would've just enforced it, so stop arguing please 😓