ENJOYMENT SHOULD BE CIRCUMSTANTIAL

or, How To Stop Caring And Yap

By the title I don’t mean anything faux existential; I’m not about to go all fatalistic and talk about how every decision from the splitting of the first cell has lead you to this exact point in time, and how everything we do is almost entirely dictated by our environment. I write to you today with a far purer goal — to make you a more nit-picky and biased consumer. Because it’s more fun that way.

Let’s admit it, our opinions on media are often heavily dependent on the context, or irrational, or downright stupid. Life is too hard, too complicated for people to exercise all of their critical faculties every time with something that’s supposed to be entertainment, a wind-down from like, doing taxes or arguing with your wife. We’re all in acknowledgement of this fact, but we’re scared to admit that to other functional members of society. We’re afraid of being exposed for liking/disliking something for a “dumb reason”, so we rationalize, analyze and criticize to make our opinion seem more legitimate, when at the end of the day, none of that matters. It’s all ultimately subjective, and have you noticed that, unless they have stakes in their opinions on media like some stupid Youtuber, barely anybody gets convinced by a compelling logical argument to start liking/disliking something? Have you ever tried talking a Taylor Swift or Opium fan out of the drivel they ride or die for?

While this can sound discouraging to people — why discuss art at all if it’s entirely circumstantial and nobody really cares to change their mind — I don’t think that’s the case. Subjectivity is a double edged sword; it drives people into uncertainty, but also shows that everybody’s experience is equally valuable. Your particular experience with any piece of art is uniquely yours, because the circumstances in which you engaged with it is also entirely unique. Isn’t that something worth celebrating? That your relationship with a mass released product can be so radically personal — if you allow it to be so? its kinda like jesus if you think about it maybe idk

So I say, when you’re trying to talk to me about how good this new album is or something, don’t talk about how the lyrics or instrumentation are good. Talk about your own personal story with this album, where you heard it, who’d you listen to it with, and if that experience doesn’t give you the clearest critical look, so be it. Allow yourself to be biased and use radically subjective experience as your justification. Make your relationship with media truly your own. Don’t worry if it makes you look dumb or unreasonable, it’s your actual experience and that alone is worth enough. If you hate Die Lit because Pi’erre Bourne’s producer tag reminds you of the creaking of the door when your dad left to get cigarettes and never came back, go off king.

This is really all I had to say, but for the sake of putting my money where my mouth is, here’s two of my own recent anecdotes. It’s about anime so if you don’t care or really really hate Japanese people, have a good day.

Hibike! Euphonium is one of those anime people make Twitter layouts and fan compilations of; a candidate for the best/favorite anime of all time for many. And I’ve never gotten it.

Initially, I really thought I just had a bias towards it stemming from my less-than-positive experience with competitive guitar as a kid, but watching the third and final season in 2024, having more or less gotten over that time in my life, and seeing the revived Eupho fandom in full force, I can safely say: yeah, I still don’t get it.

Much like how the film Whiplash dramaticizes jazz school into more or less a sports narrative, Euphonium dramaticizes the high school orchestra band into something much fiercer than it probably actually is, which didn’t help make the overbearing drama any less petty. But the main issue is, while Whiplash is about how the pursuit to be the very best above everything is both alluring and self-destructive, Euphonium just says that it’s… good, actually, and constantly rewards ruthlessly meritocratic mindsets, a.k.a. the worst kinds of try-hard assholes you know in high school, at the cost of making any sense.

For example, in Season 3, the child genius Reina calls the main character and her long-time best friend Kumiko a failure of a club president and “just jealous that she’s not good enough”, simply because she raised very reasonable concerns about the supervisor’s audition policy. My girl Kumiko then took a whole episode to pep talk with some other characters and develop as a person and as a leader, all the while Reina did fuck all and got validated in the end, as Kumiko said “It was because you were a fucking asshole that I got to develop as a character”. I hate it. BUT.

At the same time while I watched that Eupho episode, I was reading a manga called The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity. Disregarding the incredibly tacky title, it’s a very well-illustrated romance manga about likeable characters looking absolutely adorable together. It’s so wholesome that pretty much every “conflict” in the story is about how they are just too nice to each other, and every misunderstanding is immediately addressed. Reading it assures you that good people exist in the world, and I love it. But after binging 70 chapters of the thing, that sweetness started inching towards type 2 diabetes, and I started getting tired of how toothless these perfectly well-adjusted teenagers were being. Don’t you just wanna be an asshole sometimes? Don’t you just wanna go apeshit?

It was asking that rhetorical question that made me look at Hibike! Euphonium a different way. I started appreciate how dramatic this god damn high school band got at everything. I started appreciating Reina’s tendency to be an absolute bitch. Because, you know what? We need people and stories like that in this world. Wouldn’t it be too boring otherwise?

Days after buying Persona 3 Reload for 70 dollars much to my wallet’s dismay, I tried Logan Paul and KSI’s sports drink Prime for the first time and contracted both a fever and horrible diarrhea. I was knocked out both physically and emotionally, as several real life relationships were crumbling. In that feverish stupor, even though I knew I had several huge tests coming up, I booted up Persona 3 Reload for the first time and played through the whole thing.

I never intended to write anything about this game and simply wanted to enjoy it, but as I controlled the barely alive characters through a typical high school experience while being barely alive, something itched at the back of my mind. Maybe I didn’t want to feel like I was wasting my time, maybe I just didn’t have much else to do — but I wanted, for some reason, for this game to be my Action Button review. There’s too much lore to get into for that to make ANY sense, but the point was, I wanted to make a 6 hour video on Persona 3 Reload. I wanted to dump everything I thought and felt at this specific point in time, as well as a video game essay, into this video. As I wrote and wrote over seven thousand words of appreciation, apprehension and self-flagellation, describing everything that happens in this game with such detail and care, I thought that perhaps I wanted to pour all of myself into one thing so I can pack it up, send it away or throw it out the window.

In the end, I didn’t go through with this video, because it was never realistic to begin with. Actually, I couldn’t even figure out if I liked the game or not. All I remember are the half-finished analytical points and some really sad thoughts. For better or for worse, this is my memory of Persona 3 Reload. And for a game about making memories before it’s too late, it’s not the least interesting one. Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote.

My character sat there, as the usually cheerful Bebe bawled his eyes out over his beloved aunt, until the obnoxious Arcana music interrupts the moment, and the cold words “I have grown closer to Bebe” stung in my chest. It was another day. Another timeslot. That same evening, I would read a book with Fuuka. This is existential horror. Persona 3 Reload is existential horror.

The next day, Bebe told me he might be leaving. I felt grateful that I got to meet him every day. In this rigid, abstract structure we call a video game about high school.

I felt on some level bad for how much I was invested in Bebe’s social link. I did it because he reminded me of myself in real life. Isolated, immigrant, and dorky. I wanted to be the friend that I so desperately wanted. Answering his link questions were too easy. He was too easy to read. He just wants to be heard, and be accompanied. It made me beyond uncomfortable to know that fact. 

Same thing with Maiko. I, the player character, is the only person in her life willing to hear her out. As someone who barely got close to anybody, that level of connection is hard to bear. Especially like, 10 of those.

I guess the only thing I can say is: Thank you, Logan Paul.

I started writing because I was inspired and often moved by insightful analysis that made me see a story, even the world at large, differently, so I really value analysis as a form of interpretation, as a way to rationalize our thoughts and the creator’s intentions. But I’ve often gone too far down this lane and ended up obsessing over a story’s (usually lack of) competency more than I should have, finding myself more confused than when I started with just vague feelings of annoyance. It turns out, trying to rationalize feelings is only useful as far as it expresses it, not when you try replacing it. This, compounded with the realization that I’ve been gravitating towards the personal stories told along the analysis more and more, has driven me to write this blog post — more as a reminder to myself. This is what I really want to be writing (hopefully less depressing in the future though), to be expressing: perspectives and feelings, instead of just criticism and analysis. And that requires a certain level of…shamelessness, a feeling that whatever you have to say, well, actually matters. I often lack that, but the only way to combat that is to keep writing, keep making stuff, and keep focusing on the love of creating and expressing ideas. And this is the first step.