CN: Discussions of Queerphobia, Popularity Investigations

Est. Reading Time 20 mins,

But Dont Worry, I Brought Some Tunes this Time :D
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This is very similar in tone and style to I Die A Lovely Life and that's not by accident. Apparently they are both 2 lesbian VN's that were submitted through an obscure preference competition called VN Cup. Shoutout to the wonderful Blood Machine for illuminating this, she's more lovely than an entire wife some days. I should state for those looking for a summary that this VN is absolutely worth giving a try as it's cute and tackles a lot of really messy ideas about the complexities of social functions in an honest and romantic way. It's not however immediately unique or nuanced and so, knowing me, I simply must get into this more specifically.

Getting Popular

This is a kinetic VN about the day in the life of a depressed 10th grader named Miya, going to an awful disciplinarily obscurantist high school and the constant navigation of the 'high school' social relations within. Miya starts by just wanting to cling to her friend Hina and make it through high school. There's a character conflict between her and her friend who, obsessed with the idea of seeing the fictions of her high school's popularity dynamics as a reflection of the real world, is constantly obsessed with trying to instill onto Miya the idea that she is breaking with community and that maybe it's not so good an idea to be an outsider.

Hina is wrong obviously, her perception of adulthood and fitting in is dramatically poser and desperate, but comes out of a genuine sense of alienation with the world. Popularity is an awful psychological power imposition, not just for those that are popular but for everyone. High school represents something that not even social media itself has resolved (and is often something that disparagingly gets both caught in reference to each other): That of the disparity between local popularity, and power. In order to understand the dysfunctional aspect of what makes this trope of 'fitting in' so actually thrilling I feel some aspect needs to be given to this funhouse mirror between popularity and power. This discursion will take a bit, so let's do something a little fun here! I will keep the theorists, academic citations and philosophers out of it this time. Sorry Foucault, you'd probably be useful here but I think there's something entertaining in trying to build all this on simple observational logics and massively appealing reference points.

Fool's Power

In particular there's a cognitive dissonance here, one that I think a lot of people do miss, popular people don't control you and the only arbiter of their popularity is how long they were able to maintain the conventions of a social script before slipping. I mentioned in my Backloggd Systems Analysis write up that

"The first thing cis people do to keep queer people in line is through fame resentment. They assess the amount of 'clout' somebody has and says 'thats too much clout' they use the instruments of success against us."

There's no question that popularity and charisma don upon somebody a certain level of power and control within smaller systems. However, it's not a hard power. To use the text for a moment the popular kid at school here, Sara, is sadly not going to have any agency in changing how, for example, stupid the dress code at her school is (nor did any of us when we went to school). In the same way the most 'popular' celebrity has some soft power but no stand up comedian is through comedy going to be able to affect the policies of their country. Such hard power is found not through popularity but through money and specific connections. Put this way it's actually a bit of a fool's power, especially if we think about it in terms of extremes. When rich people obsess with the idea of being just as famous as their hard power reflects they often end up looking like fools. Popularity is quite frankly a fools power because at a certain point it makes sense to take what you've gained from your public face and hide behind the curtain only to come out again at specific times.

In other words social capital, as it's often phrased, does not actually care about how much some conglomerate of people likes you, but how much people with access to wealth and/or control do. In that sense the power of popularity is actually an idiotic collective sensational power in how incredibly suboptimal that 'build' is. Wanting to be popular is in itself a markedly hilarious and absurd task in the same way playing an Action RPG game as a pugilist for example would be.

As it is right now, there's too many people in the world to sift through them all meaningfully in almost any community system schools have thousands of students, websites have hundreds of thousands of users, etc. It would make much more sense, rationally, to gain and maintain the favor of relatively well off actors and then ignore the opinions of the public afterwards. That said, they often disguise their wealth in a system by design. So there is an initial rationality to wanting to at least not be unpopular (especially for avoiding scorn), but not after a certain point, especially if that wealth and information access function has already been maintained. For me those metrics have been filled, but I still write almost in opposition to this fact more. We can't fully know why we do the things we do but I don't think this fact is out of some marked insecurity I have that others don't. When I call fame a 'fools power' I don't do it disparagingly. Fame fulfills a drive of knowing you are a satisfying person to interface with on a massive level. It's a foolish drive but in the same way a literal town fool, jester, clown, stand up comedian, 'youtuber' etc. is. There's something intensely satisfying for some people in knowing they are continuing to be massively appealing and socially useful to anonymous/random listeners. It's so satisfying that such a desire can actually fulfill out more private life in being able to display our public thoughts to those who love us with a marked and specific pride. There's a selflessness to it that can be deeply satisfying to perform.

Popularity Mechanics

In the same way popularity is not a cynically selfish act. Nor is it true that authentic popularity is something that is ordained by any cynically clear metric of charm. Instead, it's a disparity in attention that is simply thrust upon people based on 2 main factors of assessment:

1. Affability: How friendly or generally iconic someone is within a social system

2. Passivity: How long a person has gone without engaging in disruptive behavior

Here's the kicker: Passivity matters far more than Affability to Fame. After all, most people by the results of their own idiosyncrasies and ways of speaking are affable. Even if somebody is the most boring person in the world there's something about the deep uniqueness of human speech that pulls somebody to seem worthwhile. Put another way most of us aren't really that picky, for most people everyone is charming enough not to be bothered by I think especially if keeping company with supposedly 'boring' people means access to certain levels of observation or not. It doesn't take anything linear to maintain charm on an individual or mass level. Sometimes there's simply a mesmerization you build with the understanding of a speaker over time that stops the need for affability to be fulfilled.

Meanwhile passivity is a much easier thing to assess. Are there any examples of violent tendencies, has the person done anything emotionally disturbing recently, are there any abberently alienating character traits that have earned the speaker has some resentment. Often these questions have much more clear answers, for example anybody in high school who got caught up or had a friend caught up in an emotional outburst in class knows that this has probably decided your fate for popularity. If you get in a fight in school, as this text suggests, that pretty much dooms not just your ability to be popular but how much scorn you're going to catch in passing.

It's especially this perception of 'scorn' for the unpopular that causes feelings of resentment over the disparity in power. This is one reason I tend to believe it genuinely makes more sense to let queer people have this 'idiot power' because our entire history has been marked by scorn, meaning that we should be able to more easily assess when things have gone too far and try to do something about it. So far this has proven to be the case in my life. Queer people are much quicker to own up to indiscretions than most straight cis friends I've known who would rather hold onto grudges for years.

The Progression of Sitcoms

Okay, now with all the mechanics of the social constructs that make up popularity have been assessed. I have a question for you: How do popularity metrics deal now with the issue of both the actions of queerness and the actions of queerphobia as almost equally disruptive to popularity? It's easy to reduce this question to a simple holistic answer that probably needs more clarity, so to illustrate what I'm actually asking here, let's get out of the realm of thinking about social media and high school for a second. Let's think about sitcoms.

Sitcoms are unarguably the public metric for assessing popular thought as it combines humor and social norms for the purposes of a mass (TV) audience. TV sitcoms have dominated TV since its inception, with the only meaningful competitor being celebrity host entertainment shows for, I hope, much more obvious reasons. Popularity here is able to be assessed on actual terms, retention numbers and approval ratings. Well all that aside I want to make a sort of unusual point here: Since homosexuality has been tentatively accepted over time, you can see the desire not to be disruptive reflected in how sitcoms portray 'taboo' love. Lets take three separate reference clips from popular sitcoms to see what this looks like:

All in the Family Judging Books by Covers (1971) That Fairy! (Warning, F Slur dropped) is denial and suspicion of homosexuality, and instead of the family protesting on the grounds that queerness doesn't matter they instead protest that its unfair to clock that over stuff like glasses. Of course Archie gets commuppence for this from finding out his football friend is gay, but he's still given room to deny.

Seinfeld Season 4 "The Outing" (1992-93) 'Not That There Is Anything Wrong With That' is Cautious normalizing of homosexuality, but still making it the butt out of it for a joke.

Rick and Morty Season 2, Auto Erotic Assimilation (2015) Morty Dating Unity depicts a liberated Pansexuality on Rick's part and doesn't make the relationship dynamic the butt of a joke. In fact, the episode takes the relationship extremely seriously beyond their relationship dynamic as 'inherently problematic' on any terms for Rick.

For all the people ready to protest a lousy metanarrative when you see one let me do that bit for you. This is not a completely stable narrative of sexual acceptance in conventional audiences by any means, there's blatant homophobia in popular shows like Friends and Big Bang Theory, but those shows are generally treated with less critical acceptance over time in a way where reruns of most of these shows are treated with generally more Timelessness. If I told somebody that Seinfeld still has a somewhat regressive approach to homosexuality I would be catching flack from a critical audience receptive to a conversation. Not to say people who watch Big Bang Theory and enjoy it are bad people, but they don't approach their own entertainment with that same degree of indispensability. It's trash TV in the same way Disney Sitcom's like A Dog With a Blog and That's So Raven were for many of the people who are reading this. There's no sense that memories or iconic moments matter much with these sitcoms, its something thats just on. More importantly though, you can refer to [How Sitcoms Handled Homos in the 70s and 80s]
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpuJb9MnZDE) for a more in depth explanation of that argument of the slow 'voicing' of queer people (special thanks to John Harrelson for this).

So at least a little libertine sexual acceptance is now normalized as not deeply disruptive. In fact if we think about the popularity and success of Rick and Morty as a whole for a moment, the degree of acceptable disruptions for a population in the convention sense is now pretty high, most fans don't care much about positive role models in the way they used to. A lot of the issues around R&M are instead about a sense of dissatisfaction with the overall narrative, disrupting through cliffhangers and unresolved conflicts. So this is another point worth noting here what is disruptive depends on what audience you're talking to. Disruption depends at least in part on teasing at an edge with the benefits often being to keep out people who wouldn't care for the message in the 1st place. So how is queerness vs. queerphobia balanced? It decides ultimately on what audience you're writing towards. There's a lot of queers nowadays and they tend to care about indepensibility in their entertainment, so if you plan to write something indispensable you have to plan your statement in respect to us and the people that ally with us (to a certain extent). When I was young in my time and place, high school was hostile to LGBT people, the word gay (derogatory) was thrown around like it didn't matter. Now, people are realizing they can't become the top kid by being a queerphobe, its caused a 2nd round of considerations on this.

Back to Saying 'Good Morning'

So while we have some basic understanding now of that the plot of Good Morning and thereby its central conflict, how it does reflect a genuine concern in our everyday lives. The followup question is how does it resolve it? Well these social repressions of both queerness and queerphobia leave everyone in a really weird place of fundamentally not know if any action they take should be queerphobic or queer accepting, nor what people up the social chain think. This is again why having queer people up that social chain that are out matters, it sets social precedent. However this confusion on the ambiguity of a statement on sexuality as supportive or diminishing is the point that Good Morning I am interested in exploring. The protagonist is ruthlessly depressed and trapped in her own head with feeding thoughts of self loathing but none of them are about being a repressed lesbian, the person who teases this idea is her friend Hina but the idea she is a lesbian doesn't even enter her head. While there are a lot of stories of queerness that focus on the idea that people instinctively always knew even on a subconscious level, that's actually far from the norm. For example, I'm a trans woman, but in middle school the idea I might 'be a girl' or 'be gay, bi, etc.' were not even considered. Not because I hated or liked gay or trans people but because the matter just never came up. Nowadays everyone knows about gay pride, sexuality, trans identity, etc. at those ages, so there's a lot more ironic conversations where you have somebody teasing that you might be a certain way. The reality is that confusion on unexplored desire always starts out in at least a somewhat ironic fashion because you're considering something that your present consciousness never even considered. It's by design funny. In the same way it would be funny if I sat down with somebody before I started writing about 'videogames' and I fantasized with them about the idea I'd be good at it. I'd likely give it some thought before discarding it, there's an irony in considering the unexplored in that way.

That being said, the issue in queerphobic societies is that there's a deep uncertainty in what the purpose of the ironic questioning is. Hina actually does have a fujoshish supportive side, but she's also a clout chaser and poser that's interested in social climbing. There's a double meaning in her support and suspicious parties of any kind are always nervous of that double meaning. This is something that a lot of great high school fiction actually explores, is the ambiguity of intended actions. As you dwell in adulthood there's a sense that you're supposed to know your own intentions pretty well and act with 'good faith'. This expectation is often stifling and deeply reductive of the double meanings in life, but unfortunately when those double meanings of decisions are explored by adult characters in a fiction they are often seen as immature. Young Adult oriented fiction imagines a more fluid world of double meanings where there is not some clean easy ideology to satisfy a sensibility for desires and intent. Not only does Good Morning agree, but it also sees a case to be made that sometimes the best way forward is to sacrifice on the altar seemingly poor intentions and to forgive them after the fact.

What I mean by this is found in the genuinely romantic and loving ending in the text of Good Morning which I don't want to spoil to you. However it would be terribly unsatisfying to end this on such a blunt so allow me one further saccharine abstraction.

All Apologies

A lot of people make mistakes by letting the nastier part of their double meanings disrupt the communities they are in. I'm one of those people in this space. The fact of the matter is I don't think I'm some linearly good or bad person, that's not what really matters. What matters is that the only way I was able to bond and get closer to the people I was upsetting, was by first having upset them more. Not out of active malice of course in my case, it's the side effect of a double meaning I wasn't aware that my bitter impulses got in the way of. With that said apologies and caring for those you've hurt as a form of connection is important and often the only way to do that is to actually fuck up when trying to be vulnerable.

The failure to perform graceful vulnerability is a vital piece that keeps our humility in check. There is a salvation in everyone where recognizing the infliction of wounded emotions and spirits has to be found often through wounding them before things can settle and rebind. Miya had to pass out from Sara, who felt tricked, to freak out on her and cause her to faint. The good ending would never have happened if it wasn't for this failure to share vulnerabilities. This is not to justify poor behavior or imply that it should happen again, or that people should active upset those they care about through pushing their buttons, but buttons will be pushed and often they need to be in order for a closer understanding to happen. The question might be out for whether Hina gets salvation at the end of the story, it ultimately depends on how resistant she is. The reality though is that the text was smart to leave this upon a number of other concerns open ended. It begs the player to genuinely consider the ambiguity of Hina's actions and the complexities of queerphobia and discontent, of whether they would. I don't know how to deal with these double meanings and the reality is you probably don't know fully either. This is absolutely why we should not let this art shroud in the misery of being a shitty high school traumafiction. Behind every authentic action is a web of tormented self interests. How we decide to navigate that comes down in part to what fictions we consume and consider, I think that this is a really damn good one for doing that.

I want to thank you both, Detchibe and Appreciations seperately, for the hand of forgiveness here in allowing reconciliation through a series of disturbances. I want to make clear that this was 2 distinct apologies on 2 seperate matters that intertwined so I'm not bundling them in with each other. With that noted, I recognize we probably won't truly get along in the long term because I'm certainly an unpopular (or at least infamous) figure, it's also quite possible I alienate this shared audience in general to the point of unreadability, and if so no hard feelings there (I've gained enough popularity elsewhere in a different niche not to be too crushed). However, I do hope that this reflects a graceful vulnerability even in spite of the potential 'double meanings' that could cloud the intention of a post like this. As also if the day should come I hope to find a graceful way to leave both of your presences with respect as well. If it puts yall at ease, knowing that you've both accepted my apology has allowed me to not consciously dwell too heavily on this. This came out just through a close pontification of the narrative here in and I've certainly made my post 'disposable' by confronting this vector of it in this way. I feel a lot of guilt over my words, not just the deleted ones but all of them, I fear the double meaning in them all. There is an inherent guilt and insecurity in utterance itself for me, I'm always thinking of ways I can be misconstrued so when I inevitably am, it feels like a deep personal failure that can be hard to vault back out of, all of my sense of pride drops out from under me and I often go into either an 'overcorrection' or 'vindication' mode. I could have just looked past both of you in a frenzy for fame as I truly didn't know either of you well but it wasn't about that. I really do care how I consider and display the thoughts of others, to look past the cynical part of the double meaning, especially for other queers, should be a #1 consideration. This isn't really about me though I know that if I'm dealing with this stuff than by golly others damn sure are. The only way out is through but perhaps this functions as some guiding light for those worn down.

The fact is I'm an adult and I made these mistakes, it would be foolish to think that its an issue of personal immaturity. Seen the internet lately? No matter how much people disparage 'high school drama' a lot of us still get caught up in the functions of it. It really is drama, an illusion on the wall of how we view popularity vs. what we obtain from it. We get caught feuding over sandcastles, defending ourselves as emperors, as the waves slap up and erode the show back into the absurd squabble it is. With that said there is a lesson to be learned after everyone packs up the beach umbrellas and returns home. It would be a shame to miss it in passing by this VN.

Plus, the art style looks great :3

P.S. Me and Detchibe are unfortunately no longer in friendly contact due to the immense pressure of ongoing disagreements over Public Relations, but I still stand by what I said at the time as a historical moment of compassion. Me and Appreciations are closer than ever and has made it all worth it in the end c;