(I recommend actually buying .hack//Sign since my words don't really do it justice. One can get either the DVD this episode is on, or the full series as a set.)
.hack//Sign, Episode 3: Folklore, Start to 4:50
Welcome to episode 3, Folklore. As you
might imagine, there's folklore in it. It seems that there's a rumor
about the game that's passed into a sort of legend amoung the players
and we'll be hearing about that now. But first, remember how we left
on a thrilling cliffhanger? Remember how a meeting between Tsukasa,
Mimiru and Bear went terribly wrong and the unconsciousness and
amnesia causing Guardian was taking shots at Mimiru and Bear against
Tsukasa's wishes? Remember how Bear and the Guardian were moments
away from impaling one another with sharp objects?
Well we're not going to pick up from
there.
When I watched through the series to
refresh my memory before starting these posts some things surprised
me, like the fact that DVL was the one who tried to push Tsukasa to
be around Mimiru, but the only thing that made me think something
might be wrong was the beginning of this episode. I was worried that
my DVD had been damaged and skipped a track or something because the
beginning of this episode didn't seem to follow from where we left
off.
We left in the middle of an action
scene, we return to nothing of the sort.
We don't even return to the same place
or the same characters. Instead we find ourselves in Venice (Mac
Anu) where Subaru and the Silver Knight are on the boat Subaru seems
to run the Crimson Knights from, having a conversation.
Subaru: So, are you all right
now?
Silver Knight: I'm sorry I had
you worried.
You may recall that the last we heard
about the Silver Knight was that his player was found unconscious in
front of the computer, with some memory loss. Memory loss that would
have prevented the player from saying exactly what led up to falling
unconscious.
Subaru had pretty good reason to be
worried. Anyway, the Silver Knight goes on to say something that
indicates that he thinks his job, as one of the Crimson Knights, is
to support system administration. Subaru disagrees with this. She
should know, she founded the organization. It's not that simple
though.
Subaru: System support. That is
not the true purpose of the Crimson Knights.
Sliver Knight: I don't mean to
contradict you but many of us think of it as our first duty.
There's probably a discussion to be had
about who controls an organization. Subaru and Crim founded the
Knights, Crim left, Subaru has been its leader continuously for the
entire period that the knights existed and its sole leader since Crim
skedaddled. As such you'd think she has a pretty strong say in what
it is and what it stand for.
On the other hand there are a lot more
knights than there are Subarus, and if Silver Knight and the others
primarily disagree with Subaru then surely they, the bulk of the
organization, have some say in things as well?
But then we come to the third hand.
Are they the bulk of the organization? Silver Knight assumes that
the lurkers are on his side, and he might be right. As someone who
works in the field and runs patrols and whatnot he probably is better
able to get a pulse of the population than Subaru. Silver Knight
might have a privileged position, but he's not The Boss and that
alone might mean he's more in touch, but that assumes he's really
paying attention. Is he, or is he just assuming everyone else agrees
with him? Even if he is paying attention, is he right? Just as
Subaru is probably more likely to hear people agree with her than
challenge her, so too is Silver Knight.
We never really get into this debate
though, because there always seem to be other things that come up at
the same time. As, for example, this time. Silver Knight doesn't
leave off with stating that he disagrees with Subaru, he carries
right on talking:
Silver Knight: Though the other
players often hate us, under the name of the Crimson Knights we are-
And Subaru cuts him off right there.
He's setting the Crimson Knights up as something apart from the
players, they hate us, we do awesome stuff. At least I assume that's
where he was going to go. If he ended it with “we are complete
jerks,” that would hardly be a good argument in his favor.
Anyway, a foreseeable result of
thinking like this is a sense of superiority. Silver Knight is
already doing it. He's setting himself apart from the players and
giving himself the (nonexistent) role of system support staff.
Somewhere between player and administrator. He's claiming authority
and prestige that the Knights don't actually have.
And Subaru will have none of that.
Subaru: We are players here as
well. We are merely playing these roles and nothing more. Please do
not forget that.
Subaru takes what goes on in The World
very seriously, she's devoted herself to it for basically as long as
the Crimson Knights have existed. For her “merely playing these
roles” is not something that lessens the actions done. I think
that that needs to be realized because if you don't realize that, as
is the case in a first viewing or, I suppose, for someone who doesn't
pay attention then these lines could be seen as dismissive of what
the Knights do.
There are people who treat what goes on
as if it doesn't matter because it's just a game, Subaru is not one
of those people. Once you realize that you come to understand that
this quote is entirely about not seeing oneself as above others. The
other players have made other choices, but that doesn't make them
less than the knights.
Anyway, this brings us back around to
the question of the purpose of the knights:
Silver Knight: Then, Lady Subaru,
what is the true purpose of the Crimson Knights?
And veer right away again:
Sliver Knight: Is it just as Crim
has said?
Subaru: (Angry) I do not approve
of his ideas.
Silver Knight: Is that the reason
Crim left us?
Subaru: (Calm) No.
The way that Crim being brought up
angered Subaru is uncharacteristic for her. He was brought up
before, when Subaru was under greater stress, and her only reaction
was a quiet reflective, “Crim, huh?” I think it's probably the
assumption that she agrees with him on this point when she very much
doesn't. In many ways the two end up at the same place, but through
very different means.
Crim is of the, “It's just a game,”
school, but because of the way he chooses to play the game his ideals
are pretty similar to Subaru's. The glaring difference being
commitment. Crim left the Crimson Knights because to him a game is
about doing what you enjoy, and the moment he stopped enjoying the
Crimson Knights he was out the door and gone. It might not have been
quite that fast, we don't really know, but from the outside (which is
Subaru's only angle) it looked like his idea of loyalty was, “I'll
stick with something so long as it amuses me.” That she's
still pissed off about.
But the general things that the knights
promote, civility, generally not being an ass, playing nice,
protecting the helpless, so on, those are all things that Crim values
just as much as the Knights do.
Anyway, bringing up Crim stopped us
from getting the Knight's mission statement.
Subaru turns away.
Subaru: I have an appointment.
Let us speak of this issue at another time.
-
And we go to the mountains in the
clouds.
BT: Do you expect me to believe
you?
Bear: I'm sure you'll have a hard
time believing anything I say. However, I am not exaggerating. This
is a true incident that occurred yesterday.
What? What is the true incident? The
last time I saw you, you were in combat. The critical moment had
arrived, horror was written on the faces of the onlookers, and now
it's the next day. What happened? Tell me!
I am easily manipulated by suspense.
Or that's just a really annoying way to
create suspense.
Also this is one of those times that I
have to remind myself that this is very early in the series. Having
seen the whole thing I know that BT lies all the damn time, so her
acting like Bear is the untrustworthy member of the pair kind of
stands out to me. I'd say something like pot kettle, except Bear
isn't lying. In fact he almost never will.
Someone seeing it for the first time
couldn't know that. I don't think she's had an opportunity to lie
yet.
Before I move on from these lines, I'd
like to point out that in Bear's position I'd be tempted to respond with
sarcasm. I probably wouldn't, but the temptation would be there.
You know, “No, I told you all of that on the expectation that you'd
casually dismiss it out of hand because I like wasting breath. Of
course I never expected you to believe me.”
BT: That's systematically
impossible.
Bear: That's why... Tsukasa
transcends the system.
I actually have no idea what she's
referring to. The most interesting parts of the incident were not,
so far as I know, systematically impossible. It was the groundwork
that was. Tsukasa being trapped in the game, Tsukasa reaching that
server without using the gate. That sort of thing. But the incident
itself seems like it's just really weird, not impossible.
Perhaps they're talking about the lead
up to the incident rather than the incident itself.
BT: But how?
Bear: I have no idea. That's why
it's troubling me.
BT: Troubling you?
Bear: It's as if he's playing
under and entirely different set of rules from the rest of us. It's
creepy.
Creepy isn't anywhere in the list of
things I'd think to use to describe that, yet I suppose it is.
I'm not sure why creepy doesn't
resonate with me here. Disturbing would have. Then again so would a
good old fashioned Spock “Fascinating.”
Anyway, strange things are happening to
someone that shouldn't be possible. Bear is troubled by this, BT
changes the subject and we start getting to the folklore:
BT: Bear, what do you think about
that rumor?
Bear: Which one?
BT: About the single hidden item
that is said to exist in The World.
Bear: That rumor has no
foundation. It is simply a hoax, nothing more.
So many things to say about this.
First off, and most irrelevant of all things I could say, the first
two lines here remind me of Disney's The Three Musketeers.
Apparently they remind me of two different parts that got conflated
in my mind, but as I said it's irrelevant so I'm going to throw
further discussion of that into a footnote.*
More on topic we've got the fact that
it is a rumor. An actual rumor. Not a bit of game-flavor that says,
“Rumor has it there's a [insert quest hook here],” an actual
rumor about the game. Something that the players talk about which
has no apparent foundation in the game, the manual, the releases of
the developers, or much of anything else.
Such things do spontaneously come into
being, but if we're going to take it seriously, as BT is, we have to
wonder where it came from. If it is something with no apparent
basis, and yet it is true, how did the truth get out? Did someone on
the development team leak it? Did some glitch allow a player to
access content that wasn't supposed to go live yet? Did some hacker
get a copy of an internal email referencing it? What?
Then there's the fact that BT's
explanation of which rumor is pretty vague. There are two things
worth taking from this. The first is that the rumor is well traveled
because Bear immediately knows what she's talking about even though
she hasn't said much of anything. This rumor about a special hidden
item is so well known that if someone talks about a rumor about a
hidden item they know exactly what rumor is being brought up.
The second thing is why BT doesn't just
come out and say it's the rumor about “The Key of the Twilight”
(which is the item's alleged name) and that is that she doesn't know.
She's heard that it exists, but doesn't even know what it is called.
There are multiple possible explanations for this. A simple one
would be that she overheard someone talking and immediately went to
ask Bear. That doesn't seem like BT to me, and also doesn't account
for her not finding out the name sooner than she does.
What seems more likely is that she's
tried to look into it and hit dead ends. She may have heard people
talking about it in passing, or seen references to it in records, but
everything that has the actual name recorded, every board post with
the words “The Key of the Twilight,” is gone.
Some of this, we'll learn, is the
result of deliberate suppression. From the start discussion was
deleted. The thing that got everything started was deleted almost as
soon as it was created. Some of it is probably just that archives
are not always maintained. Some boards don't even have archives,
some places when something falls far enough into disuse it just
disappears. Not all fan sites last forever.
When the rumor started people were
interested in it, it captured everyone's imagination, but nothing
ever came of it, most people reached Bear's conclusion, and it
stopped being important. A combination of active suppression in some
places and total disinterest in others could erase it from searchable
records, especially if you don't know exactly what you're looking for
when you start looking.
Maybe once BT learns that it's called
The Key of the Twilight she'll be able to find more information on it
just by sticking that in a search engine.
Anyway, Bear isn't interested, so BT
tries to get him interested in a different way, she ties it to
Tsukasa:
BT: What if he's found that
hidden item that is said to override the foundation of the world?
Bear goes hmm
BT: I'm interested in actually
meeting this boy, Tsukasa, on the other side.
“The other side” being real life.
Bear still doesn't care about the
hidden item, but he does think that they might have to meet Tsukasa,
his focus not being on hidden items or epic quests or whatnot, but on
the simple question of what is happening to the player while Tsukasa
is online all the time. He's right to be concerned. Tsukasa's
player is in a coma, and if not for being found and brought to a
hospital would either be dead or nearly so at this point. There's
only so long one can go without eating and drinking.
Of course, neither he nor BT knows that
at this point. BT brings up another possibility:
Does the player even really exist
in the real world in the first place?
Yes. She does. Very much so. But
it's a completely valid question given the information they have
available.
-
* Ok, so BT asking, “What do you
think of that rumor?” as if Bear could immediately respond in an
intelligible way reminds me of some things that happened between the
King and the Cardinal.
I thought that they were part of the
same exchange, but when I checked I found that they happened at very
different times, basically they're two difference conversations
started with the same dynamic
King: Your Eminence, I demand an
answer.
Cardinal: Perhaps if I knew the
question...
King: You Eminence, I've heard some
troubling rumors about you.
Cardinal: There are so many to choose
from.
The second one goes into one of the
best sarcastic confessions I've seen. The King clarifies that the
rumor was, “Betrayal.”
The Cardinal responds: Ah, yes. That is
usually the first. Let me see if I remember it correctly. While the
English attack from without, the wicked Cardinal undermines from
within, forging a secret alliance with Buckingham and placing himself
on the throne. But really, Your Majesty, why stop there. I have heard
much more festive variations. I make oaths with pagan gods, seduce
the queen in her own chamber, teach pigs to dance and horses to fly,
and keep the moon carefully hidden within the folds of my robe. Have
I forgotten anything?
Given that of the eight things listed
he has attempted or is attempting four of them one wonders whether
there are some interesting training sessions going on in his stables
and sties, if there could be a secret altar to some other gods, and
whether the moon might have been stolen. (Really, when was the last
time you saw it?)
It's also notable that there's nothing
particularly nefarious about making oaths with pagan gods, teaching
pigs to dance, teaching horses to fly, or keeping the moon on your
person for safekeeping. So of the eight things he listed, the ones
that are definitely true are the bad ones. And yet, in these
exchanges with the King, Tim Curry makes evil seem so fun. (It's the
rest of the time when he reminds you that evil is, in fact, evil.)
-
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