The Patreon Letters - July 22, 2017

Hello everyone, M here again for this week's Patreon letter. If you notice, we don't have any updates for you today. That's because, going forward, the weekly update will be a separate post that we write and put up every Sunday for all Patrons instead of appended to the front of this writing. It didn't really make sense that useful links were behind this higher tier of pledging, anyway. If that means these letters appear a little shorter, then my apologies.

We're about to record our episode of Devil May Cry tomorrow, and I'm pretty sure we're going to disagree about a lot of aspects about it: how effective it is, the ways in which it defined the character action game genre, how it sits compared to games like Ninja Gaiden and Bayonetta and everything else. It has me thinking about what disagreement means, especially in terms of doing these podcasts specifically with Jackson.

When we started Abnormal Mapping Jackson was literally still a teenager. I recognized the inherent risks of getting into an ongoing collaboration with someone who is still in many ways a child. Jackson wouldn't have my bench of references to talk about--not even different references, but just a lack of them to pull from. I would be more self assured and could overpower the tone of the show (something that I do think has happened, though to lesser degrees over time) because of that experience gap. I had a pretty firm ability to delineate work and play and gauge how I was handling both with this hobby project versus my real life. These were tools Jackson didn't have, or they were poorly developed, and I had no small concern that the friction of that lack would create a really toxic power dynamic in our burgeoning friendship when work came into it.

This wasn't unwarranted. We used to have long painful discussions about expectations or lengthy explorations of hurt feelings based on assumptions. I can be businesslike to the point of disregard when I want something done. I tend to always be on the spot or ahead of my work. Jackson needs to establish an emotionally safe space to proceed with anything. Jackson still often pushes deadlines up to the very last minute. It caused fights. Fights that made that power dynamic hard to navigate. It's a delicate thing: to get into a working relationship with someone so much younger and more immature than you. It's a space that will be rocky and difficult, and if someone asked me if they should do it I'm pretty sure without more context my answer would be no.

I'm not telling you this to tell you that I regret what we've done or the relationship me and Jackson have. In fact, I want to do the opposite. But I would be remiss if I didn't point out that it's been a bumpy road at times. We've nearly ended the podcast a time or three for various reasons. We're often pretty good at presenting a very cohesive front as a pair online, but that doesn't actually reflect how different we are and how much friction there can be between us as people.

This week I was on the first album wrap-up episode of The Amory Score, Jackson's Coheed & Cambria podcast. I was nervous because while I do genuinely enjoy the podcast, I really fucking hate the band and all of their music so far. Would it be a disaster to put my distaste up against Jackson and Molly's fandom? There was a time in our relationship where, owing to that power dynamic, Jackson was very upset by divergence in our opinions on things.

This is partially my fault, I think. As a critic (or former critic, I guess) I definitely do that performative self-righteousness that is the hallmark of someone who has gone deep enough to love works nobody else paid any attention to. Jackson's general sense of things having to be right and settled I mentioned above would bleed into things like reads on works. Jackson was and is a consensus seeker. I am a pretty fierce individualist, at least when it comes to responses to art. When that relationship has the power dynamics of mentor/mentee (or older/younger sibling, or even parent/child which ... ugh, but whatever, the argument can be made) those frictions can cause genuine interpersonal strife.

But I also don’t want to wholly blame being too cool for school. This four years has changed both of us. Within these four years has been my coming out as non binary and doing a lot of work to deprogram a lot of the performative masculinity I was using as a cover for my sense of identity. I could and can be dismissive of feelings. In work mode, I value the schedule over people. Learning to touch base and do the emotional labor involved with a friendship has been a non-trivial thing for me. Especially since things started on such an imbalance.

I remember the one time we legitimately got into a shouting match over Final Fantasy VIII. I have a very specific read on it based out of my teenage years where I identified very strongly with a lot of Squall's traits. Jackson finds many of those traits morally repugnant. In many ways, my Squall-ness was and is representative of many of our friction points. So it proved the perfect catalyst to an accelerated blowup. We both took it kind of personally. It broke bad. Shouting happened. It was a whole thing. We talk specifics in our episode about Final Fantasy VIII, though by the time we recorded the event was mostly behind us.

I say this to say that while I recognize the mess and turmoil our relationship has been, how unfair and perilous the dynamic could have been, I was always up front with Jackson that I wanted them to feel free to disagree with me and I've done my best to try to support that. Four years in, I think the experiment has been mostly successful. We don't agree on lots of things. We have pretty divergent tastes in the types of games we play for fun. We regularly have different reads on the day to day stuff everyone talks about on twitter and I try very hard not to talk about in our 'work'. We're probably not going to agree on Devil May Cry, but I don't worry about it like I would have if we had played this game three or two or even a single year ago.

I still can be bossy and brusque more than I'd like, especially when I'm distracted. I make the attempt to adjust whenever I am too much that. Jackson still does everything last minute and can feel weird about fundamental incompatible reads, but they've never missed a deadline and have gotten good at letting that go, at least when it comes to us as collaborators.

My Amory Score appearance went great. We had a pretty good time. Because we've been doing this a pretty long time at this point, and we've both grown a lot as people. There's nothing that either of us can do to erase the experience and physical age gap between the two of us, and some of the sticking points that are generated from it. But I like to think that we've gone from a very imbalanced show to a pretty balanced one. We're both adults now, and our show reflects adult attitudes and appraisals, even when we're both goofing on a stupid video game thing or a bad, bad Star Trek book.

I said in the lead up to this whole piece that I wouldn't encourage anyone to necessarily get into the kind of relationship that me and Jackson have, but I can say that it can work and I think we're a good example of that. We're best friends and work partners not because we are united on things but because we can and do disagree on things with increasing regularity. I just want to recognize and feel compelled to speak to the responsibility that comes to the elder, and the resilience and courage to speak up that falls to the younger, to make this succeed.

Nobody should do this. It's probably not safe, and definitely a bad idea. But we did it, and if you want to do it, you should. It's been a hell of a ride, and I can't wait to see how far the years will take us.

Until next time,  
M