The Living Gimmicks

Do you remember rhythm sticks? Probably not, because they were around for about five seconds back in the mid-1990s, sometime before or after pogs. Remember pogs? That came and went quick, too. How about gak? Moon shoes? There were a lot of fads back then, most lasted barely a moment at all. We don't see these sorts of trends much in the physical sense anymore, but they still exist. They're even more potent than they used to be, despite that.

Regardless, back in the 1990s there was a new trend every single week. There had been fads before in previous decades, you can find most of them by watching TV shows from other eras, but by the 1990s it had advanced to where there was a new one constantly. There is a reason the decade at the end is unrecognizable from the how it was at the start.

When the internet came into play, fads changed into online trends. On social media there is a new trending topic every day and, some might argue, every hour. We always seek the new at the expense of the old, every single time. It still happens now, though it most definitely feels as if less and less people care to play in like they once did.

The point being that, for centuries now, the west has been obsessed with the newest thing, and has only found new ways to continue their worship of the novel at the expense of the eternal. Fads don't come and go anymore, now they embody every aspect of life itself. Life, especially online life, is like living on a drip-feed in a coma. Even more so since all the nonsense that has happened since 2020. It has only exacerbated.

We no longer look for anything everlasting or eternal. We no longer even look to create anything that reaches for such things on the most base level. All anyone wants to do is catch what the newest algorithm says people currently desire, and artist intent is now directed at turning heads and causing surprise instead of engaging minds or hearts. All we want is to consume and devour the next piece of content without even letting the previous digest.

Of course you already know this, everyone does at this point, but it has gotten to the point where this reality has invaded even casual discourse itself. Unless you want to talk about whatever the internet wishes to talk about at that exact second, then most will not pay attention to what you have to say. This might not make sense if you haven't seen "guru" types on social media attempting to gain clicks and engagements for their "controversial" takes that simply jump on recent issues and condense them into fortune cookie knowledge so they can sell their own brand instead. Keeping the cycle of garbage going indefinitely, but also telling you how to fill the hole inside of you, is not too dissimilar from the old 1-800 numbers late night television used to be slathered in.

None of this, however, is good for art. It is not good for any sort of scene or creativity. We have turned even that into novelty.

We haven't had a climate of art in a long time, the form being degraded by the newest fad formulas and shoddy genres we were advertised as good by the television and radio programs, and people who ingratiated themselves into secular high priest position at corporations. Every industry has been solely about selling ways to consume, not about reaching the eternal and sharing it with your fellow man. You can't connect with others or anything higher if you're more concerned with being fashionable and filing in with a momentary trend. All you can do in that case is strive to color inside the lines within a frame that has no relation to the bigger picture.

As an example, take Epic Fantasy. The "genre" was sold as a valid formula for writers, and the correct way to tell an Epic story in the tradition of Tolkien. What they never tell you is that Tolkien did not write "Epic Fantasy" at all. It was never his intent. What Tolkien wrote was his version of an old poetic Epic in the imagination space he spent his life creating as a hobby. His example is so hyper-specific and non-applicable to most other folks that it feels ridiculous that anyone should not only try to copy him, but make a career "worldbuilding" to make books like you are told he did. That wasn't what he was doing, and despite his original creation process, in his whole life he only really published two books about said world. How is that the base for a stable genre?

Well, it isn't. The reason it was pushed and sold to audiences as such is because OldPub's stranglehold of the paper industry benefits from fatter books sold at higher cost. They used their advertising machinery and bought for writer's workshops to sell it as The Way Things Should Be for a very good reason. That reason has nothing to do with creativity.

This advertising campaign was so successful that no one bats an eye at the fact that OldPub will not accept any work shorter than 100k words long for publishing consideration. You must either write in their narrow formula and pad out your story to hit an arbitrary word and page count, or you do not get published. No flash fiction, no short stories, no novellas, no novelettes, and no short or normal length novels--only one formula is allowed. They changed the entire industry to sell more paper, and everyone thinks it is because of some noble pursuit of higher art.

This is why anyone telling you "Fantasy" as such is a genre has bought into a frame that sneaked in during a fad of their own creation. This isn't unlike the Young Adult fad pushed by fanfic writers in editor positions at OldPub, an artificial fad that only worked for a few select people with connections at Scholastic and the like. This is just as fake. It isn't relevant anymore, and readers have fled the hobby of reading in droves, but that didn't stop the masters of OldPub from getting the desired endpoint they wanted: an industry of loyal customers who will only buy the formula they deign proper. This is what fad chasing always leads to, in the end.

Such thinking continues in other arenas, too.

This mentality of following OldPub's talking points has what has made the recent debates about AI art so puzzling, particularly those focused around art losing the "human element" for machine algorithms. To believe this, one would have to ignore all the above where those in charge of the industry deliberately mechanized art in an attempt to turn the process of creating into a factory-line of product consumption. Everyone knows this, too, which makes ignoring it so bizarre. The 20th century was spent removing humanity from all art and entertainment to get formulaic product for corporate masters instead. This isn't even deniable anymore.

You can even hear David V. Stewart talk about the subject here:

As he mentions, there is a deeper issue at play, one that exists today because it was ignored ages ago by people who should have known better. Now no one in charge can see the problem for what it is. We turned art into product, and wonder why it is currently being treated as product. We consume, we do not savor, we do not delight. We merely move on to the next plate at the buffet. As long as there is another plate, we simply keep moving down the line.

This is what makes the current cries for "originality" or "humanity" in the industry bizarre. At what point in your lifetime has that even been the secondary goal of the entertainment or art industry, never mind the primary one? Do you even know what the industry would be like if that was the case? Whatever happened to originality, to beauty, to adventure, to wonder? When did it get replaced for halfhearted tropes and rules from corporate overlords? With them in charge, art turned into flavor of the second gimmicks meant to keep you glued to the constant content coming down the factory line. Formulaic gruel is all you get, because that's all you ever asked for. You never demanded better, no one did. I sure didn't. And now we complain? It's a bit too late for that.

To give an example of the "factory line" mentality of creation, let me bring up the ever-popular example of anime. This is a medium that has had its battles with corporatization and creativity for ages, and recently seems to be in a real quarrel with itself trying to figure out its path forward. Right now the industry is in a spot that will define where it goes in the future. But it also still has life in it, unlike in the west.

Currently the  anime industry is doing battle with the nostalgia trend the entire world appears to be caught in, delivering new adaptions of classic anime like Spriggan, Bastard!, and even new City Hunter movies (the Spriggan one is made by the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure guys and is particularly good, by the way), while also carrying trends like moe idols and shonen adaptions on the other side of the spectrum. While some think the industry is at an all-time low, this is partially because there is too much glut and a lot more trash being produced than there once was. Back in the 1990s there was less being produced, but the quality ratio was a lot higher than it is today. If one focuses on the material outside disposable glut, you can still see the spark in the industry.

As a matter of fact, one bigger trend that appears to be going by the wayside (slowly) is the corner cutting that once used to define the industry so well. the anime industry has always had a problem with being a content mill at the exchange of focus (outside of old movies and OVAs), and they are slowly changing that. This is to everyone's benefit, even if it means less drip-feed of product. It leads to a much better, and long lasting piece of entertainment.

For instance, a Shonen series like Naruto would go on weekly without breaks for years, even decades, suffering in animation and writing quality as oodles of terrible filler content had to be squeezed out while the manga was still going. It led to a rocky experience at the expense of quality. That's 52 episodes a year with no break, constantly.

Today, the likes of My Hero Academia gets one season of 25 episodes a year that are very well animated, for the most part. Whatever complaints you might have with the adaption, it is objectively overblown. I suggest watching some Naruto filler, and even some canon manga material, and learning how good you actually have it. They then take a rest from the series, and work on other projects until next year for a new season. The process is not perfect yet, but it is most definitely a step in the correct direction. It is better this way, despite there being many Millennial weebs that think otherwise. They simply want that content drip-feed instead.

Regardless, this leads to a better quality product, a better piece of entertainment. When the series is finished, and that will be sooner than you think, My Hero Academia will be a better watch than Naruto. It will age better as a completed piece of art. Better animation, better pacing, and at a much more compact length.

On the other side of the spectrum, is the obsession with "simplifying" everything in order to make series "easier to animate" which is, allegedly, why character designs have gotten so bland for anime original series over the years. Try thinking of many memorable ones and you'll notice it difficult. This is because quality is treated as secondary to ease of production.

This is what leads to the below degradation of character design. It isn't all encompassing, but you can see the trend.

Your aesthetic preferences in the above aside, the first two are better character designs because you get a sense of the character's personality on her face with just one simple look. The facial features are more defined which lends to a resting face that allows personality on it by default. The character is built to have a character, at a glance. The remaining three designs don't say anything, and can be interchanged with any character to mean anything with what the animator wants to get across.

This makes it easier for the animators and designers, but it doesn't add more for the viewer. This is because the change wasn't made for their benefit.

These designs weren't changed for character design related reasons, they were changed because less detailed characters means less work for the animators. This is the Japanese equivalent of the western "CalArts" or "Toon Boom" (for lack of a better term) problem. That being safer and rounder designs meant to make the product easier to pump out. Again, your aesthetic preference is not the point here, it is what the intent of the creator is. This is like designing characters to be cosplayed, instead of designing characters to be who they are. It isn't done for the benefit of the story, or the audience, it is done to make Content easier to pump out.

I'm not saying having more work is necessarily a good or bad thing, but I am saying that making your art have less character or take less effort shouldn't be the goal. If you have a story to share, to express, why wouldn't you want to put as much into it as you can? This doesn't mean overworking yourself into an early grave, but it also doesn't mean dictating most of your art to an assembly line factory to slap the pieces together for you instead.

I don't want to sound like I'm picking on Japan, because I'm not. This piece isn't even aimed at anyone in particular. It feels as if we in the modern world care more about the artist doing less work than about the work they are producing. You don't need to kill yourself to produce, but you also shouldn't be killing your soul and identity to push out characterless product instead.

Isn't there a higher reason to create than just because you can? Every piece of art is meant to express something, even if it is simple. The undercurrent of nihilism that undergirds all art today is hard to shake off. But it wasn't always this way.

In order to remember the purpose of art, we need to remember the purpose of life. What is purpose? What is meaning? Why are we doing anything we're doing? Art was once the constant reminder that what you do has higher origins, and everything that happens occurs for a reason. You can't even write a good story where everything that occurs doesn't have an overall purpose in the result. We take in art to remind ourselves of Truth and Beauty, to take ourselves away from the mundane. In essence, it reminds us that life is precious, a gift.

Life is not novelty. Existence is not a gimmick. This is why modern art and trends have no relation to reality or human nature, because they are just product meant to manipulate you into paying the bills of conmen and advertisers (but I repeat myself) instead. That's all it is.

This does not mean one can't produce art created off of another's property, even one created initially by someone else, since art is conversation and all, but that the entire purpose should be framed around lifting the audience toward the divine in some way. You can do that even with a simple hero story showing how good can triumph over evil, or a tragedy where wrong choices lead to a bad end. The overall aim, is Truth.

Back in the day when Flash animation degraded the quality of hand drawn animation and cells, we were told it was "either this or nothing" as if the choice was between comfort or quality, which it was. In no scenario was the answer to simply slow down the pipeline and focus longer on craft--we just wanted to consume more content faster. And now we live in a world where the dopamine matters more than the art itself does. Quality was never the reason for any of these changes.

It is no wonder we care less about art than we do gimmicks and novelties. We long ago lost the love of art as beauty. We have sunken into hedonism, devouring to devour, satiating the base urges. This cannot be sustained, and it currently is not being sustained.

Art cannot be nihilistic, without any meaning. Even a story whose point is that there is no point still has a point, even if incoherent and couched on 20th century irony. This is what "subversive" art seeks to do, and it is empty for it. Subversion, after all, is little more than a gimmick, a way to make art about nothing instead of Something. In the end, there is still a meaning to it.

This is the part of the recent debate around AI art we tend to miss. We ejected the human for the inhuman long ago, and we don't understand what the human element we lost even is. It is something only we can use to make art that matters: soul. Soul is more than the tools used to make art, it is also in the intent and the purpose of creating at all.

What is it that we should really be doing?

When was the last time we asked ourselves these sorts of questions? When was the last time any industry made a decision based upon them?

What is it that we are meant to do? What heights are we meant to reach? Why are we neighbors with so many others just like, and also, just as different, from us? Do we pretend they don't exist? Do we ignore anything that doesn't give short term gain? Is jumping on the creaking gimmick train the way to sustain a healthy art scene of artists with their hearts in the right places? Is pretending the previous century wasn't a failure going to prevent us from finally moving on from bad decisions we still justify to this day?

Fanatics are only a portion of the problem. They are a large portion, but still not the entire pie. The people that refuse to admit their Modern God of an ideology didn't work out and has led them into a world of despair and regression, when it was supposed to do the opposite, really shouldn't command the amount of power over others they still have. And yet not only do we let them control everything, we make excuses for their changes and want to bring their level of power back to a time in the past when it was more manageable instead of insane.

But genies don't go back in bottles, and relinquishing any control to someone who hates you, and has a track record for failing in tremendous ways, is suicidal. Fanatics only rule because we continue to give them power over our art, our worldview, and even the very words and terminology we use in day to day life. We let them rule every aspect us, even when we admit they shouldn't, even when it is proven all they push has failed.

How much longer is that going to go on for? 

I don't know, but at this point it's just as much our fault as it is theirs. They might not be able to accept failure and move on, but neither can we. Excuses make for good coping. We are just as much to blame for the way things are today. All we are doing is allowing the decay to continue, and making excuses for letting it.

All because we can't live without shiny chrome plating and jiggling keys. This would almost be funny if it weren't so obviously unhealthy and dangerous. Do we really desire novelty and fashion over truth and eternity that much?

Fanatics are only half the problem

The AI art issue isn't the real subject to discuss, and it's obfuscating the reality we are being faced with in the blown out ruins of Cultural Ground Zero. Tools aren't the source of the communication breakdown and entropy enveloping the arts: it's our lack of soul that is. It is our fear of pushing into unknown territory, of reaching into the past to push forward. We are instead enamored with frivolous distractions meant to keep us complacent.

There isn't an easy answer to this problem, but there is a simple one. If one wants an art climate where things matter, where we look beyond the fads and trends of the meaningless mass media of today, then it must be created and supported. The old industry only gets as much power as you give it, as much room as you give it to breathe. You don't have to give attention to people who hate you. If they hate you, they're not trying to reach you to begin with. If they don't want to reach you, they aren't creating art in the first place. You owe them nothing.

There is plenty out there not swirling the drain with the dead mainstream culture of today, and even less alternative artists and entertainers are plugged into that hellscape than you think. So why get obsessed with the downfall of an already dead scene when you can enjoy the fruits of a live one instead? You have far more options than you did in the Good Old Days, including material you might have missed out on the first time around. Why sweat the small stuff?

At the end of the day, you are the scene you want to create. Unless you create it, no one else will. So what are you waiting for? Bring the soul back, and show everyone else what that means. This is something only you can do.

We need a climate of art that matters again, free from obsession with the mundane and the novel over beauty and truth and the good. And we're going to have it again.

The old industries are dying, detached from the good and humanity as a whole, enveloped in pleasing corporate masters and fads over creating any sort of art at all. But you don't have to be like them. You don't even have to give them attention.

All you have to do, is be the best you that you were born to be. That might sound overly simple, but that doesn't make it any less true. The world doesn't need 500 variations of the same tropes, fads, or gimmicks; the world needs you. And that difference is what matters more than anything else when it comes to creation.

Remember why we're here, and what we can do for the future. It's later than you think, but the sun always rises in the morning. Life is no novelty, it is an opportunity, one we should always make full use of.

Have a Merry Christmas! It's been a wild year, and it's not over yet. Make the best of what you have! Who knows how many chances we'll have to get it right next time.

Christmas in Y Signal's 1995 is also something to behold!