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Post by Pen Against Sword on Jan 5, 2009 19:02:11 GMT
Just so everyone knows, I already asked Pied if it was okay to make this thread after the explodey-ness of The Shipping Wars. She said it was fine, just to stay on topic. Yay!
Okay, so, ryushikaze has asked in The Shipping Wars thread why author declaration is so bad. That is a very good question.
So I'll pose this: is it bad? Why?
It's all, as usual, a matter of opinion. And now I will state mine, which a lot of people are sure to disagree with. I will do my best to be as coherent as possible about this. BEWARE: tl;dr ahead.
Okay, as a developing author, someone who wishes to make a living off of writing in some way-shape-or-form, this is my opinion on "author declaration." First, I'll state my understanding of the definition of author declaration.
To my understanding, author declaration is when a creator of a work further elaborates on certain points of that original work -- whether this is through interviews or extra publications made to explain things or anything of that nature. If I am wrong about this, my entire post from here on out will be invalidated, but oh well.
I am going to discuss this in relation to Square-Enix and FFVII, but this, to me, applies to other things (such as all JKR's info-dumps in interviews after Deathly Hallows was put on the market, just for an example). Please, DO NOT turn this into a debate of what is canon or what isn't canon. We have enough of that going on in The Shipping Wars thread. We don't need more of it here.
When I first played Final Fantasy VII, I got the general impression that the creators had deliberately hinted at a lot of plot points but deliberately left them ambiguous so that I, as the player, could formulate my own interpretations of the game and all its information therein. This impression was solidified into an opinion by things like: they let you make so many different dialogue choices in the game; Cloud is an open vessel throughout the first half, so that you, as the player, can slip into him more easily (not to mention it was part of the story of course); different scenes can be triggered or not triggered depending on what you do (the Zack flashback is optional, the date scene can be just about anyone if played a certain way); at the end, you can interpret it either way -- they may have lived, they may have died (AC, of course, confirmed that they lived).
All these things and many others led me to believe that the creators had, in a stroke of very careful genius, left many things in the game ambiguous. It seemed very well-constructed to me, a good element of storytelling.
And then I started hearing about the Ultimanias, and people started quoting them for answers to questions that fans have had for ages -- whether or not Cloud and Tifa are "together," whether or not Jenova or Sephiroth was really in control. They started explaining the entire game and taking away all the ambiguity.
My immediate thoughts were, "Why in the world would they do that? It was fine how it was!"
There are some who are of the opinion that the Ultimanias only explain what had been made already apparent in the game. Okay, well, if that's your opinion and you saw it all clearly and the Ultimanias just cleared it right up for you, then I'm probably not going to be able to convince you.
However, this is what I present to you (a general sort of you, just by the by). If they had to go back and explain their canon through the Ultimanias, that means they wanted it to be understood in the first place, right? They wanted us, as the audience, to play the game and just generally understand it and not feel like anything was left hanging.
But then they published the Ultimanias after many fans were confused or questioning or interpreted many of their plot points as ambiguous. They did this so that we, as an audience, would finally understand what they were attempting to say in the first place.
This, to me, is a failing on their part as the creators. If they had intended it to be understood in the first place (as evidenced by their creation of the Ultimanias), and then many fans regarded it as deliberately ambiguous, they failed in their objective to be understood. That is why I (often, but not always) find author declaration to be a mark of a bad author.
Hope I was clear enough.
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Post by piedflycatcher on Jan 5, 2009 19:31:56 GMT
Hmm... I think it depends. Sometimes author declaration can be a good thing, sometimes a bad thing.
For example, the LoTR appendices. Do they count as author declaration? They do explain some backstory and stuff which isn't in the books themselves. But I like them. I don't think it's a weakness in LoTR that these extras aren't incorporated into the text.
And I don't mind all the extra stuff JK Rowling has said, because I don't think it really takes away from the text in any way. The books themselves are still great, whether or not you're familiar with the interviews.
I do think it is different with FFVII, because sometimes they have to tell us things that are otherwise ambiguous in the game, and that suggests to me a failure to get their point across. I think if you have to explain something which should have been clear in the text itself, you haven't done your job properly as an author.
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Post by Hope on Jan 5, 2009 19:37:40 GMT
If we assume that Square released Ultimania's because they intended to make their intentions explicit then I agree with you, but I'm not sure that that was neccessarily the case.
I've always assumed (though this is pure conjecture so please tell me if you know otherwise) that Square did intend to leave some questions unanswered for the player to fill in the blanks. As you say, this is a good element of storytelling - but I've never seen it used without immediate cries of "so what really happened?" from the readers, players, viewers etc.
I thought that the interviews/ ultimanias etc. came in response to consumer demand for more explanation (and probably the opportunity to make money off the back of it), so I'm not sure that I agree that it is neccessarily a sign of bad storytelling. The game was complete in my opinion, but fans asked for it to be further explained and so it was.
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ryushikaze
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Posts: 17
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Post by ryushikaze on Jan 5, 2009 20:25:08 GMT
In the case of FF7, I think, you are applying a single either or dichotomy "Either they wanted it to have an explicit answer OR' there was no answer, it was ambiguous because there was none', but this is not the only way. You can have a decided answer, but be deliberately ambiguous about it. As Nomura said, there is a definite answer with FF7, AC, etc., but they didn't want to just give out those answers in the story, they wanted you to try and puzzle them out yourself. In that regard, the Ultimanias are like an answer sheet to FF7's quiz.
But whether or not is is a 'good' thing, I also ask why the appendices of LOTR, or Salman Rushdie or Rowling's statements on their works can be taken as authoritative, but for some reason the Ultimanias, Distance, Reuinion Files, etc. do not.
And does this apply to other video games? Why or why not?
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Post by marilena on Jan 5, 2009 20:37:22 GMT
But whether or not is is a 'good' thing, I also ask why the appendices of LOTR, or Salman Rushdie or Rowling's statements on their works can be taken as authoritative, but for some reason the Ultimanias, Distance, Reuinion Files, etc. do not. And does this apply to other video games? Why or why not? They can all be taken as authoritative. But there is a difference between can and should, and it applies to both cases. Whether you consider the author's declaration as canon or not is up to you. There is no right/wrong side to the decision.
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Post by Pen Against Sword on Jan 5, 2009 21:10:52 GMT
I've always assumed (though this is pure conjecture so please tell me if you know otherwise) that Square did intend to leave some questions unanswered for the player to fill in the blanks. As you say, this is a good element of storytelling - but I've never seen it used without immediate cries of "so what really happened?" from the readers, players, viewers etc. That may very well be true, and I guess I'll always be disappointed by fans' inability to let things lie. (That's what fanfiction is for! : That's like when I read Pygmalion, got to the end, and it was left ambiguous as to whether or not Eliza ends up with Higgins or if they just stay friends or even if they remain friends at all. I preferred to think that their animosity eventually would have developed into a snarky, hilarious relationship of epically argumentative proportions, but apparently, after the play was originally publishe, fans were out for George Bernard Shaw's blood for leaving it ambiguous. He eventually wrote a long essay detailing exactly what happened to every character, who Eliza ended up with, why she wouldn't have been with Higgins, etc. In that case, I didn't feel it was any failing of Shaw's -- maybe it was more a failing of the fans. Considering this, maybe it's the same for Square. *shrug* But whether or not is is a 'good' thing, I also ask why the appendices of LOTR, or Salman Rushdie or Rowling's statements on their works can be taken as authoritative, but for some reason the Ultimanias, Distance, Reuinion Files, etc. do not. And does this apply to other video games? Why or why not? Well, I wouldn't know with video games because besides various RPGs (mostly of the "very mainstream" variety) and platformers, I'm kind of a newb. So I can't think of examples in that direction. As for Salman Rushdie -- don't know anything about him. Tolkein -- well, I am one of the few people that doesn't enjoy his works. Now, on the subject of JKR's various appendices being taken as authoritative, and why can't Ultimania be taken that way -- I have a theory, but it's just that. Merely a theory. Now, according to wiki, the FFVII Ultimania was published in 2005. Final Fantasy VII was released in 1997 for PC and 1998 for the playstation. So Ultimania was released eight years after the original game. I think maybe a lot of people have such trouble accepting it as an authoritative source is because they spent so long thinking of the events in the game as one way and then Square came out and clarified everything, possibly taking what they thought about the game on its ear. Can anyone tell me how long after JRRT wrote LOTR that the appendices were published? I'm not really familiar with it.
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Post by Woodster on Jan 5, 2009 21:13:20 GMT
The LOTR Appendicies were published with The Return of the King, and were the reason the release of the third volume was delayed. LOTR is different in the sense that a lot of the information contained within the appendices was written even before LOTR itself.
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ryushikaze
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Post by ryushikaze on Jan 5, 2009 23:37:27 GMT
Edit: I apologize for this. I accidentally modified your post. It's not saved, so you'll probably have to re-write it. I'm really, really sorry.
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Post by Pen Against Sword on Jan 6, 2009 0:10:52 GMT
Even if it were a failing on his part, would that change your opinion on the authority of his statements? No, and it doesn't change my opinion on the authority of the Ultimanias, either. Any qualms anyone may have with them come down to that endless canon debate. Sorry, that wasn't very clear of me. What I meant was that I got halfway through The Two Towers and could force myself to read no more, so I'm not familiar enough with JRRT to use his work as an argument or anything like that. You can't read my mind, though, so there's no way you could've known that from my garbled statement. Rowling's books were released over a steady flow of time, at least attempting to adhere to a specific schedule -- every year to year-and-a-half, a new book was released, and all this while the hype was still on for Harry Potter. The Encyclopedia is being released while Deathly Hallows was put on the market not that long ago, and the movies are still coming out, so the hype is still on. The compilations (with their Ultimanias) were released years after the heat for Final Fantasy VII had died down. Which I say again probably turned a lot of viewers' opinions on their ears and didn't really make them all that amenable to the change. This could mean that maybe author declaration isn't a mark of a bad writer. Maybe the fault just lies with the fans. I find myself wondering about that now.
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Post by marilena on Jan 6, 2009 0:45:29 GMT
And I do not care about 'should'. I question why some authorial dictations are admissable, and others are not. Whoever said that this particular declaration matters, while the other doesn't? You seem to assume that everyone who doesn't consider Ultimania and the rest canon, considers another author's declaration authoritative. This assumption is wrong. Many simply don't like them in general. As to why some people choose to take an author's declaration into account and ignore another at the same time, it's a question with no value in this argument. It's their call. Maybe they find some declarations more convincing or necessary, maybe they're just biased - either way, it's only their personal interpretation. For example, if I think one of Rowling's clarifications made sense and filled a gap I didn't like, I might consider it canon. Just because this one fit with my view of that part of the story, I'm not obliged to take into account another author's declaration by default. If it isn't a mere clarification but a big, usually unnecessary, leap in plot and/or characterization, then I won't. If I think it's a big, unnecessary leap, it's my opinion and I'm entitled to it. Personal opinion on such matters is rarely black or white, right or wrong. It's sort of like when you read about a certain character, and you find yourself thinking he/she is the most selfish person to grace the literary world with his or her presence, while the person next you can see a higher purpose -which you might or might not consider an actual higher purpose- to the character's actions that makes them reasonable and understandable. Which one is right? The text itself states neither. Perhaps, one of the two is more objective than the other. Who's going to judge that? Final Fantasy VII is a finished product, created and sold as one entity. Assume that I played the game and then moved into a cave. I have no access to the internet/media/stores. I don't know Square ever made supplementary products, so, naturally, I only know what the game let me know. Even if the extra information that came out afterwards contradicts or clarifies what the game told me, is my interpretation of the complete and only FFVII product when I bought it, played it and based all my conclusions on, wrong?
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Post by VulcanElf on Jan 7, 2009 3:29:30 GMT
My opinion, such as it is:
I have heard it debated that all art, any kind of art, only belongs to the artist during the act of creation. Once it has been exhibited/revealed/displayed/shown/premiered/published or what have you, it belongs to the consumers of that art. It belongs to the public, and is open to whatever interpretation any given consumer chooses to impose, and is a different piece of art for everyone who partakes of it. So if it isn't ready yet -- if it doesn't say everything you want it to say and only what you want it to say -- don't put it out there.
You don't get to tell people how to perceive the world. You don't get to tell people how to think, or feel, or react. You don't get to paint a picture of a butterfly and hang it on the wall and then inform everyone who comes over to your house that it's really a hummingbird. It is whatever that person sees, not what you tell them to see. So an author doesn't get to publish a novel and then tell the world afterward, in interviews or articles or appendices or whatever that No, you're all wrong, this is the way you are supposed to have interpreted my work.
This is as true of a game that tells a story as it is for any novel or movie or piece of music or other art that tells a story.
So I don't know if author declaration is a sign of a bad creator or an inadequate, but it sure as hell is the mark of an obnoxiously insecure and autocratic human being.
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Post by NRGburst on Jan 7, 2009 11:08:17 GMT
My opinion, such as it is: I have heard it debated that all art, any kind of art, only belongs to the artist during the act of creation. Once it has been exhibited/revealed/displayed/shown/premiered/published or what have you, it belongs to the consumers of that art. It belongs to the public, and is open to whatever interpretation any given consumer chooses to impose, and is a different piece of art for everyone who partakes of it. So if it isn't ready yet -- if it doesn't say everything you want it to say and only what you want it to say -- don't put it out there. You don't get to tell people how to perceive the world. You don't get to tell people how to think, or feel, or react. You don't get to paint a picture of a butterfly and hang it on the wall and then inform everyone who comes over to your house that it's really a hummingbird. It is whatever that person sees, not what you tell them to see. So an author doesn't get to publish a novel and then tell the world afterward, in interviews or articles or appendices or whatever that No, you're all wrong, this is the way you are supposed to have interpreted my work. This is as true of a game that tells a story as it is for any novel or movie or piece of music or other art that tells a story. So I don't know if author declaration is a sign of a bad creator or an inadequate, but it sure as hell is the mark of an obnoxiously insecure and autocratic human being. I agree with this completely. While you can say something like, "Oh I was going for such-and-such effect," telling others how to perceive your creation is both pushy and pretentious to me.
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Post by piedflycatcher on Jan 7, 2009 14:01:24 GMT
So an author doesn't get to publish a novel and then tell the world afterward, in interviews or articles or appendices or whatever that No, you're all wrong, this is the way you are supposed to have interpreted my work.I wonder, do you think there's any difference between an author telling you the facts of a story, compared to more subjective things such as how you're supposed to perceive the characters? I mean, for example, JK Rowling telling us that Ron has blue eyes, versus her saying something like we shouldn't sympathise with Malfoy in the first few books; he's a nasty, cowardly bully. I think if she said something like the second, I'd baulk much more at that because I don't think the author gets to tell us how we should respond to her work. On the other hand, I don't really care when she says that Ron has blue eyes. I suppose partly because it's an insignificant detail, but also because my feeling is that the author gets to define the facts of their world. Oh, and I think there's another issue as well. Obviously, if everyone interprets a work differently to what the author intended, then the author has just failed in their intention to, say, paint a hummingbird instead of a butterfly. But what if the majority of readers interpret the work as the author intended, yet there is a significant minority who misinterpret it? To go with Harry Potter again, there was the whole thing between Ron/Hermione and Harry/Hermione. Rowling solved that in the last couple of books, but I think before that she had said things in interviews which indicated that the Ron/Hermione shippers had it right. So when a few people are really misinterpreting something, is it acceptable for the author to clarify that or not?
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Post by Moira Rose on Jan 7, 2009 14:12:50 GMT
Hmm...Great point made by Vulcan. And thanks for starting this thread Pen! At least we have a more focused DISCUSSION (not a debate xD) on this matter.
The whole concept of Author Declaration is, often, to please the fans, and give them the view of each ambiguous statement/relationship in whatever story/game/novel/anime/manga that they published. The AD (can I call it that?) makes it simpler and more straight-forward for fans who really want to know what happens next to know. Sometimes, it can really destroy the story, since I, for one, appreciate Squeenix's ambiguity and greyish areas in their work. The relationships, like all human relationships, have the fuzziness and indecision of humans that make them real.
But then again, as ryushikaze said, they're like an answer sheet that you can choose to use. Some people just like poking around the dark (me), but then again, if you want to REALLY KNOW then you read it.
I think it's quite silly to do so, but then again, that's still my opinion. To me, some things I'd rather continue guessing then have it told to me that "THIS IS HOW YOU SHOULD THINK ABOUT IT!"
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Post by Youko-Kokuryuuha on Jan 7, 2009 23:10:36 GMT
I'm not entirely opposed to author declarations, but I don't love them either. Depending on how they're used, they can be effective in their purposes.
Let's take JK Rowling, for example (Harry Potter's used quite a bit in this thread, isn't it? :B). She stated offhandedly that Dumbledore was gay. Most people sort of scratched their heads at that. You could argue that Dumbledore never seemed gay in the series, but that doesn't diminish the fact that he is.
Sometimes, the facts revealed in Ultimanias and other publications simply don't have any place or relevance being mentioned in the story, and just so happen to be a tidbit of information. Otherwise, they'd be injected rather awkwardly and unnecessarily. Could you image Harry and Dumbledore discussing Horcruxes and Voldy's defeat and then, for no apparent reason, Dumbledore just blurts out, "Harry, I'm gay." It'd be an eyebrow raiser; nice to know, but not really necessary. In the same vein, if an Ultimania said Cloud's favorite color was pink--and gave a detailed account of why--would you question it? The fact still remains that his favorite color is pink.
I think that's where author declarations come in. They allow the author/creator/etc to dictate any few hidden, factual truths that simply never came up in the story. Unfortunately, some take that as an opportunity to express how they wanted their work to be seen.
"In AC, Cloud is madly in love with Tifa" or something of the sort. You'd question that because there really isn't any display of romantic affection evident; sure, he seems to care for Tifa, but it really doesn't seem to go beyond anything platonic.
As Pied and Vulcan put it, author declarations only have the right to list facts; they don't have the right to decree how actions and emotions should be perceived.
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