what media forms a "before/after" for you? that is to say, the person you were before watching/reading/etc was fundamentally different than the person after?
I think there are a few types.
- the thundercrack. you are not the same. this is the most dramatic
- more subtle. it provides a nice end to one chapter and transition to another, but maybe at the time you didn't even realize it
- the representative. maybe it wasn't actually that instrumental at all, but nicely represents some big change in your life I get too obsessed with proper ontologies so I am not married to the above and I think it's probably crude and bad and would be curious how other people think about this, because I bet there are more useful framings, I just don't want to psych myself out of posting.
though because I can't help but be pedantic I think that the size of impact can also vary. like a given piece of media can have a sort of extremely clear before/after affect, but that affect could be more constrained
I'm trying to think of pieces of media that form a before and after, though I won't commit to exactly what kind, I'd need to think about that more...god I wish I had a list of everything I've ever seen and read!!
Roughly in chronological order
- Akira
- Fushigi Yuugi
- Sans Soleil
- Sandman
- MP3 by Jonathan Sterne
- Swan's Way by Marcel Prouste
- Infinite Jest by DFW (yes yes yes I know I know I PROMISE I'M NOT ONE OF THOSE PLEASE GIVE ME THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT)
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities
- Distinction by Pierre Bordeax/Let's Talk about Love by Carl Wilson (I read distinction first, but Let's Talk about Love was a lot more fun and presented a lot of the same ideas)
- Hamefura (this is one of those smaller ones, basically just cemented my affection for ojou type characters, well that and having a badass bisexual character...ok I should probably post about my love of Hamefura sometime)
- Symphogear? (I think so, still processing, it's too recent, but it feels like something)
I bet there's gotta be stuff from when I was younger, I just don't remember it well enough. I gotta ponder this subject.
I think of those, the "thunderbolt" type ones, and the age I first encountered them, would have been...Akira (10), Fushigi Yuugi (16), Sandman (22), MP3 (24), Swan's Way (24), Death and Life of Great American Cities (26), Distinction/Let's Talk about Love (28). And well I watched Symphogear earlier this year :)
But I feel like I've always really been affected by the things I watch and read, which is why I love good stories so much. I feel they really...get into me. Change me.
probably not all the examples but there's been so many of these in my life and I love thinking about it
Thundercracks:
- Outer Wilds: it was only last year but I felt myself be reborn when I came out the other side of this game. it was unpleasant and I went into a funk for a month. I'd write more about it but it can wait til I'm ready
- Kingdom Hearts: Kingdom Hearts changed me. it changed the shape of the world as I saw it. It made the universe seem weird, colourful and fun. Despite its now-reputation for being an unintelligable mess, the first one is just an outstanding work of storytelling that blew my mind with its scale as a kid. Still a gold standard game for me to this day
- Super Mario 64: Before I wanted to make games, I wanted to be an animator making movies like the disney movies I watched. Mario 64 changed that. I played it at our babysitter's house and realised in that instant I wanted to make video games. The world of this game and its secrets expanded my mind and made me aware of just how much video games were capable of doing.
- Strapping Young Lad- City: This album was the heaviest thing I'd ever heard and in some ways still is. It had been around for well over 10 years by the time I listened to it, but it still sounded fresh. I stayed up until 3AM just listening to it over and over again for several days. I knew after listening to it that I wanted to make the heaviest music I could and nothing less
- Public Enemy- It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back : Another album that changed my outlook. it felt like an album that took me somewhere else, introduced me to things I'd never heard of before, and felt like I was outdoors and listening to live music in a way a studio album hasn't really made me feel until that point. Had a big influence on me and I think could've been one of many albums (including Rage Against The Machine) that introduced me to leftist politics at just the right time
- Iji: An indie game that was made by one person, and had a bit of a DIY feel, sorta like a webcomic, and it made me think simultaneously "I could do this!" but also "wow, this has made me realise I would much rather play things that felt like they had an AUTHOR behind them than play big-budget blockbusters"- this game was pure adrenaline and took itself just the right amount of seriously. It's a gold standard for how an indie game can be.
More Subtle:
- FLCL: Gainax's weird 6-episode story bridges the gap between some of their earlier work (Evangelion) and upcoming work (Gurren Lagaan) and has just the right mood to fit a transitional work. It's about puberty. (I think). I watched it as I was going from school to college, so lots of changes were happening in my own life. It hit exactly right- something that was exploding with endorphins and ideas and wasn't quite easy to understand and just had this sense of fun to it. I felt like a different person afterwards- I took myself less seriously, embraced my weird/horny side, and wanted to make stuff that was like this
- Homestuck: This work is now mostly associated with "fandom cringe" or whatever- but in its early days, it was just this website where... *something* was unfolding. this story felt like it was the germination of something that was about to change the world. I watched it update with baited breath, as it had this fusion between old-school adventure game humour and a story taking place on an unthinkably big scale for a webcomic. I read the fan adventures. I was obsessed with this. I think those early chapters are still the best, as I actually fell off it around the time it started being all about the trolls- but that early homestuck captures an energy you just don't see anywhere else
- Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP: It felt like this game was talking to me. I remember seeing the scythian and thinking "hah, he has long hair, just like me!" And at the time I had kind of supressed the side of me that knew I was really a trans woman. (this was in the early 2010s) ....The moment I discovered the scythian was actually female, and then not long after, went into a heart-pounding boss battle, I remember coming to the realisation, "wait, I can... BE a girl character? I saw myself in this character?" My world opened up...
- Psychonauts: Psychonauts is both just a good game but also a game that was ahead of its time. It was so ahead of its time that when Psychonauts 2 came out almost 15 years later, that game was ahead of its time too, despite being basically the same quality. I think this game felt like the future. It felt like a glimpse of the kind of thing games could do and I wanted to be a psychonaut myself so bad. That of course didn't happen, but wow this game stimulated my young imagination
- Scott Pilgrim: The books but also the video game: just this really lively comic that came to define a few feelings I was having at the time. its clear parody of masculine expectations (fighting other boys to "earn" a girl) was told through a lens that to me was satirical (but to others not so much) and as a confused trans girl pushing up against male expectations I didn't want to live up to- I found that lens spoke to me. The kind of jaunty perspective it took on the whole thing. Also retro game references weren't completely old hat at this point