The Appeal of Older Things

And Why I Don't Care As Much For New Things

While I know it's been quite some time since I've used this blog, I never promised to use it regularly nor do I think I had anything significant to write about for quite some time. I've been thinking as of late about how much more appealing I'm finding media that is older. Now "older" can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people, but for me I tend to think of media that's over a decade old at the least. Which specific eras fascinate me at any given moment tends to vary a great deal, but right now I'd say I'm most fascinated by media from around the turn of the milennium. The newest piece of media which fascinates me at the moment is The World Ends With You, a game that I really need to finish up (I took a hiatus from playing that game at around the same time I took a hiatus from updating this website, which released in 2007. However, most of the media and the things in general which are fascinating me currently come from before that time.

As readers of mine who have seen my site prior to this specific post's publishing will know, I've been reading Dostoevsky's The Idiot for quite some time, though, again, it was only recently that I started reading it in earnest after taking some time away from it. Dostoevsky's novel is from the 19th century, which would make it the oldest piece of media that I'm fascinated with at the moment, though it's certainly not the only media that isn't from the late 90s/early-mid 2000s that has caught my eye as of late. For instance, the night prior to when I'm publishing this article (at least in my time zone) I was able to watch the made-for-TV movie which would later lead into the longrunning television series, Columbo, entitled, "Prescription: Murder." It was certainly a fascinating film and an interesting peak into the culture of the late 60s as I'm sure the rest of the series is, but I'll place that series on my mental shelf as something I'll watch with my family at some point down the line if I'm ever able to acquire a DVD which contains enough episodes for me to watch with my family.

Those two aside, the rest of my attention has been firmly placed upon media from before or around the time of when I was born. It's weird because a lot of 2000s media was very much before my time, but because of lower prices, reruns (on channels like Boomerang), and various other things in my life as a child, I have an intense nostalgia for that time period. I had a PS2 for much of my childhood alongside a copy of Sonic Mega Collection Plus, despite both that system and that collection being much older than the copies of them that I owned and not something that most people from my specific age group have probably played. In fact, perhaps Sonic is one of the various factors to blame for my specific hyperfixation because of the recent release of Sonic X Shadow Generations and the upcoming release of the third Sonic movie stirring up a great deal of hype and nostalgia amongst the internet at large for the early 2000s, when Shadow was a brand new character who everyone (rightfully) agreed was way past cool. It certainly doesn't help that I'm in quite a few online communities built around media from this particular era (like MegaMan Star Force) and that in general a lot of my favorite media comes from that era. The anime series .hack//SIGN is perhaps the greatest example, as it's a series I didn't watch until I became an adult and yet is one that I've become incredibly attached to to such an extent that I've watched it at least once every year since I first watched it two years ago. I'm probably due or another watchthrough of it soon, now that I think about it, and I'm in the exact frame of mind that would make watching it again fun. It certainly does help that a few months ago I was able to get my hands on the entire series' original DVD volumes, which from what I understand are superior to the more recent box set and certainly would be superior to the pirated versions I've seen in the past. Heck, I'd love to own the IMOQ games at some point, if such a thing was possible. In all likelihood I'd have to go pirate at least Quarantine (and probably Outbreak), but that wouldn't be too crazy of a thing to do given how stupid expensive Quarantine on its own is. I'd be emulating the games no matter what, so I don't exactly have a lot of qualms about piracy. I just love the .hack series to such an extent that owning the IMOQ games physically is much more appealing to me than only downloading them off of the internet. There's a degree of extra physicality and authenticity there that just can't be replicated, and one which I might discuss in a future blog post if I don't take another hiatus.

I think the greatest testament to this latest hyperfixation, though, has been an incredibly poor spending habit of mine. Over the course of the past few months (at the time I am writing this post), I have ended up ordering a few older Sonic comics, a copy of Shenmue, a green Virtual Memory Unit, and, most expensive and painfully of all, a SEGA Dreamcast. It was way too expensive and a dumb financial decision (realistically, that money would have been better spent on anything else or just saved. However, I at least am taking a bit of solace in the knowledge that I am adamantly refusing to spend any money on myself after this Dreamcast purchase and will be cutting back on any new comic titles (my growing obsession with comics is another matter that needs to be discussed in another blog entry) from here on out. The problem I have is that I love owning books, growing a collection of literature that can hopefully be compared to a library some day in the future, without really having the room to justify these things. I'm an impatient person who can't help but spend money he doesn't really have on things that he wants but doesn't really need. In order to fix this I am trying to better store things and get rid of things that I don't want and/or need, but that's not a problem that I've entirely been able to fix as of yet. Either way, I'm looking forward to trying out the Dreamcast, even knowing that I've made poor financial decisions (again, hoping to rectify that sooner rather than later) as of late.

But that bit of materialism does bring me back to the title of this article and the point of me writing it in the first place. You see, this fascination didn't come alone and it didn't come without reason. It came alongside a resentment towards a lot of modern day culture, particularly on the internet, and a desire for something different. Despite the problems I have with my spending habits, I don't believe that they are necessarily incompatible with this desire. A big problem I have with a lot of modern media is how flashy it is. In the age of attention spans that are somehow finding ways to get shorter than people previously thought was possible, everything needs to be incredibly intense, with flashing lights and colors which don't work well with my epileptic brain. They focus on a style which I wholly dislike, losing the art of subtlety and forgetting entirely how to slow things down for the sake of an emotional scene. It's style over substance. With the advent of meme culture, too, came the advent of forgetting what it meant to be authentic, to tell a story which could emotionally resonate with viewers. Instead, a modern story will tend to feature the skeleton of a good story but, instead of adding meat to the skeleton, it instead points and laughs at its own poor execution, as if being constantly self-aware in an way which lacks originally can make up for a poorly written and executed story. We have lost depth and subtlety in films, television, and games within the modern era. We have forgotten what it means to have fun when telling a good story, forgotten that good stories often come straight from the heart and will feature a vulnerability that audiences will pick up on. Some members of that audience will laugh and poke fun at that vulnerability because they are, plain and simple, horrible people who don't know how to be moved by a good story. The rest, however, will see that vulnerability and resonate with it. That story might even change their life for the better.

That isn't to say that I don't understand the desire to not be vulnerable. In fact, I understand it well. Being vulnerable, being earnest, means that you can be hurt if someone doesn't like your story. Poking fun at that story feels like poking fun at you as a person, and not just what you made. That is something which is completely understandable, and for some, it is better to refuse to be vulnerable in order to avoid getting hurt than to have tried to be earnest and failed in finding an audience that will love your story. However, that doesn't justify this trend and I don't think more recent media will inspire the works which I create, at least not as much as the stuff from the past that I've been delving into as of late.

However, that isn't to say that modern media is all bad. I go to emphasize specific mediums because I have found plenty of good comics (mostly Sonic the Hedgehog related because of my specific preferences) and books which have not lost their ability to be earnest, to be vulnerable, to actually try their hardest to tell an interesting story. The Sonic comics are in the midst of an amazingly well-told arc at the time of writing which features some amazing character moments for several members of the comic's cast and it's amazing. The Sonic games, too, seem to be fighting against this trend, after helping push it along for far too long. I hope to someday add to that pile of stories that is pushing against self-referential, self-deprecating humor and instead trying to tell something honest, something beautiful, and something worth telling.

Here's hoping, my lovely readers, and here's hoping my journey down this rabbit hole will make for a fun post or two! Here's hoping I'm here to stay, too, because I did miss writing both for this blog and my personal journal.