Forums

Another hard question for me personally cause I tend to be largely positive on things I guess hm...it's not exactly the same but I was very hype to play Pokemon Masters back in the day but I didn't enjoy the gameplay and leveling system so I was pretty disappointed to have to quit that one. 155

What was the biggest example of a game not living up to the marketing for you? For me, it would be Evertale, which advertises itself as a horror version of Pokemon, but is a boring fantasy waifu simulator.

The Fantastic Statement: Semiotics, Language, and “The Lost World” of John Crowley’s Ægypt The sign is the basic unit of semiotics; the langue is the basic unit of language; the statement is the basic unit of discourse. Each semiotic system, such as language and discourse, rely on this basic unit to develop and construct its code, or system of signification. Language and discourse become extensions of the notions developed within semiotics, referring back to their own signs and signifiers. Roland Barthes positions the mythic within the realm of language, constituting a semiotic system which refers back to a sign and signifier which precede or take place before communication. Umberto Eco considers that such signs and signifiers form around the code, or a system of signification, which links these notions to a particular context. It is through this process, between the sign and the signifier, which context presents itself. Jacques Lacan considers that it is this code which “locks” or “closes” these notions to particular context, otherwise their referents would continue ad finitum, constantly referring to something else. Without this signification, then the sign and the signifier would be rendered all-meaning and meaningless, having nothing direct and specific: the sign and the signifier would refer to an absent object void of direct meaning. For, it is, as Eco continues, “enough for code to foresee” this relationship, “valid for every possible addressee even if no addressee exists or will ever exist”. Mythic signification renders communication possible from material of the past, a code “that it is constructed from a semiological chain which existed before it: it is a second-order semiological system”. My interest does not lie in the ordering of these systems, but the creation of a system itself; drawing inspiration from Barthes’ mythic speech, John Crowley’s novel, Ægypt, parallels the subject of myth with the mode of the fantastic, drawing from similar material of the past which renders itself present in the speech associated with it. For Tzevetan Todorov, the fantastic juxtaposes this “in-between” code of signification, positioned against the “‘stands for’ and its correlate”, in the shape of a specific coordination of time: a “moment”. As Todorov explains, “[t]he fantastic is that [moment of] hesitation by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event”. Or, to place it within the semiotic system, it is placed as the sign of the supernatural and the signifier of the change in the laws of nature. The mythic, as Barthes explains, draws from a system of signification rooted in the already, a type of speech encoded through a code derived from past materials, while the fantastic, as rendered in Crowley’s Ægypt, arises from the hasn’t-been, from a discourse encoded not through what has been communicated but through what has been forgotten, lost, or only imagined; it is a mode of speech which, rather than transforming the past into language, makes a language from that which was absent, revealing a semiotic condition in which the real and the imaginary collapse into a singular signification born not from knowledge but from rediscovery.   Roland Barthes begins his examination of the semiotic system of mythology with a basic question, “what is a myth, today?”. It is in his answer which begins the perusal of this idea, connecting it to discourse and to language, framing it through a code or a “system of signification”. As he responds to his own question, he declares that “myth is a type of speech” that is determined by the same qualifications as all speech is hitherto bound and developed by — the tripartite notion of sign, signifier, and signification. Foucault, however, shifted from the framing of semiotics through language to one more associated with discourse, another means of presenting communication through signs and signifiers, at the level of the written and spoken language. In other words, discourse is not a type of language, but language in use. It is the phenomenon of practicing language; it concerns itself with the practice, distribution deliverance, and reception of the language. In part, discourse implies a struggle of language between an address and addressee, or as Michel Foucault explains, “[d]iscourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart”. Here, discourse broadens mythic speech, and all forms of speech, to a reflection in which its aim is to render the meaning of the transmission of language, unearthing the significance and meaning that is placed behind this speech. Here, the signification exhibits the very ideas that Danisi presents in his development of the semiotic dimensions in speech and discourse. Specifically, language refers back to the system in which communication is possible. For mythic speech, this system determines itself from materials already established for the purpose of communication. This form of speech, then, draws its signification from this material. Barthes explains, “Myth sees in them only the same raw material; their unity is that they all come down to the status of a mere language”. The fantastic, while draws from a similar material, places its context in the hasn’t been rather than the already. Todorov’s perspective on the fantastic occurs in hesitation of the reading, encoding the text with an explanation that leads one of two ways, an explanation which hasn’t been. Christine Brooke-Rose develops this hesitant moment of the text based on how such a hesitation becomes resolved, and what explanation is delivered to further it. “This hesitation for the reader”, she explains,   Jacques Lacan establishes that this relationship between these three notions is determined by the third dimension, the signification, whereas the dimensions of the sign and the signifier refer back to an endless cycle of subjects and images. The signifier, as established by Lacan, “is that which refers to the subject of another signifier”, or the subject which relates to any and all forms of the signifier. This limit remains similar to the sign, which instead of referring back to another signified, finds its place in the different forms in which it represents, or as Lacan states, “represents something for someone”. It is through the significance process which confines the sign and the signifier, places them into their related context and the addressee for which they refer back to. This third dimension, as Marcel Danisi defines, is determined by the “thoughts, ideas, and feelings” for which the sign evokes, rather than the function or the image that it takes on. Barthes’ own mythic speech presents itself through this closed system, through its signification, within its own code. I use the term “code” to express the system in mind, as Umberto Eco expresses that signification takes place through the “coding” of the system in which it refers to. For him, this process exists between the limits of the sign and signifier, and should “foresee an established correspondence between that which ‘stands for’ and its correlate”, between the sign and the signifier. In other words, the signification process refers back to the relationship which takes place between the sign and the signifier, or the context and the code for which these terms reference. It is, however, the explicit code in which speech presents itself which determines if that speech is mythic or not. Barthes’ mythic speech refers to a code which draws upon the past or the already to determine its code, its signification. As Barthes explains, this type of speech, “mythic speech”, is constructed or “made of material which has already been worked on so as to make it suitable for communication”. It is this material which refines the signification, or the classification of speech as mythical or otherwise, drawing from a cultural consciousness. In other words, as Barthes furthers, the materials which develop mythic speech, “the materials of myth (whether pictorial or written) presuppose a signifying consciousness, the one can reason about while discounting their substance”. Such speech is framed by how it is communicated, turned into both language and discourse, from within the code which refines it. Myth transforms the materials that it takes from (“the language itself, photography, painting, posters, rituals, objects, etc.”) into a language, or code, for communication. The fantastic, however, is already encoded into its language; the raw material does not transform into a language, but come encoded with the language itself. This distinguishes the aspects of the semiotic systems they take place in, it is speech which encodes the mythic, while it is discourse which encodes the fantastic. The fantastic becomes encoded through the text, through the moment in which the reader is held between what has already happened and what is to happen next, between the already and the hasn't been. Here, the fantastic draws upon the similar material as myth; rather than seeing it as raw material which produces a language, however, it is raw material which produces a discourse: it transforms language from the natural and into the supernatural. Or rather, as the fantastic is held to the “hesitation”, the in-between of already and hasn’t been, it produces an “evanescent element” with which this “hesitation as to the supernatural can last a short or a long moment and disappear with an explanation”. The fantastic itself exists only within the statements which render it possible, drawing upon an understanding of natural law which then may be subverted, distorted, or perverted, as to transform it into the supernatural. This is where mythic speech and fantastic speech differ in their production, as one produces a language and a code of communication, the other produces a discourse which is encoded within the explanation. While mythic speech draws upon the already, John Crowley turns his attention to the fantastic and fantastic speech in his novel Aegpyt, referring to speech that was lost within the past and found within the present, rather than which set its determination on material of the past. Following the path of mythic speech, fantastic speech also draws its signification within the relationship between the signified and the sign; but rather than positioning its determination within the “presuppos[ition] of a signifying consciousness”, it is founded in material that remained absent from this signifying consciousness, forgotten or lacking within. Crowley establishes this material in his representation of the forgotten and lost country of Aegypt, for which the book takes its name after. As he explains, this country draws from the fantastic and the mythic to constructs it notion, “from Ægypt, the country where all magic arts were known”. Its existence remains something only read about, something that declares itself within the statements and the phrases which bring it forth. It becomes corporeal in the discourse which contextualize it, from the stories that precede it: “after all, he had got the stories he had told from somewhere”. From stories, only more stories evoke. As it comes from somewhere beyond himself, it continues through his speech, “From History, he had told his cousins”. In part, the country remains lost only to the past that might have never been, a lost world which “never-was” and has always been.. For the protagonist, the claim proclaims its effects from within the imaginary and into the Real, “for sure his Ægypt was imaginary; only perhaps it hadn’t been he who had invented it”. The protagonist had come across something bewildering: a world that had once been told, but lost to both time and space. Now, he had come across it as if it were fiction itself made real, discovered and created simultaneously. This instance is what separates the fantastic from the mythic, specifically due to the fantastic only making itself known through itself being “lost”, “discovered”, or “invented”; the mythic draws on past material, while the fantastic codes this material through a newly discovered and unraveled means. Such material, though it is possible to come from the same as mythic language, the fantastic comes from a language which makes itself known only as it is spoken.   The phrasing I put in the last part of the section is something important for this sentiment, specifically the word “lost”. Now, for Crowley, and more apparent for his protagonist, Pierce, Ægypt is a country that only exists in the residual effects which persist throughout time, in the presentation of literature and passed-down traditions. For the latter, these traditions are tied to specific cultures: “[w]e believe Gypsies can tell fortunes” because “still carry with them, in however degraded a form, the skills their ancestors had”. As such, thought brought back to the Real through this recreation, there are elements which had remained prevalent. The gypsies tie the lost country of Ægypt to a cultural movement, traversing and evolving through geographic lines and temporal placements; though it had been a shell, “degraded a form”, it had continued onward past the locale which one held it. In fact, had there not be a direct tie to the literature which Pierce has been given, “some book full of antiquated notions and quaint orthography had first suggested to him the existence of that shadow country”. From this, Crowley shapes the signification of the fantastic: it is something beyond, something far gone and yet not revealed; it has always been, just never noticed. It exists much in the same way of hesitation, distorting the understanding of the natural and placing it into the realm of the supernatural, which now one must either accept or attempt to explain. It feels almost mythical in its relationship to the natural, but for the speaker and the listener, remains a “product of imagination”. This repeats the very notion, that while Pierce had acknowledged a shadow country or a lost world, “his Ægypt was imaginary”. In fact, for Lacan, the imaginary is as much real as the fantastic: “in [this] way the real can be seen to be contained in the imaginary”. One could further this connection toward Lacan’s psychic topology, but what remains important is how the fantastic draws from the real. As Crowley states, a “country once again seemingly before him, still there in the past: Ægypt.”, a country which was lost to the past and had found its way into the present —  a lost world, a world lost to time moving forward. Here, the fantastic is brought back into the world by records of the past being found anew, being found with the contemporary present; their only attachment to the past is that it took place, was created there, remaining within the unveiling of a past made present. The country remains lost physically, disappearing from the very locale and place which had originally  occupied it, “Whatever country occupies its geography now, Ægypt is gone, has been gone since the last of its cities, in the farthest East, failed and fell”. As the protagonist uncovers, it is within the records that make their way from the past that this country remains, something wondrous and fantastic beyond the trajectories which construct the present moment. Crowley expresses this country as a “shadow” that conceals and hides itself, explaining that it was from “one book full of antiquated notions and quaint orthography” that had “first suggested to him the existence of that shadow country”. The lost country has always been around: it is a rediscovered world. “It is only lost because it has been found”, Daniel Haines explains, “[n]ow that we have found it we can say that ‘it was lost’, but while  it was ‘lost’ we never knew or suspected it existed”; rather, it has always been there. The fantastical occupies this position of a “lost world”, something that is only lost due to it being found. More specifically, or in other words, the fantastic is always prevalent; it is only recognized as it makes itself known within language.          The fantastic is found within speech: it prescribes the possibility of the supernatural and the natural, condensing the symbolic and the imagination into a moment at which these two poles are confronted. “There is language”, Foucault claims, when one “suspends, not only the point of view of the ‘signified’...but also that of the ‘signifier’”; left within the gap of the signifier and the signified remains the signification, the meaning: it is the perception of the sign and the signifier, “signification, interpretation, or simply meaning”. The signification process refers to the meaning-making of language, the way in which use and practice of language is directed. Here, the signification of the fantastic is exactly as Pierce describes his finding of Ægypt; what fantastic language possible is that it is to be“encountered again and again, apprehended, understood, recounted, forgotten, lost, and found again”. The signified and the signifier of the fantastic refer to the referral and the referent of the explicit moments in which the fantastic is enunciated. As language, it is the conditions which posit the possibility. Rather, by putting aside the point of view of the signified and the signifer what remains within the signification process is language: “reveal[ing] the fact that, here and there, in relation to possible domains of objects and subjects, in relation to other possible formulations and re-uses, there is language”. This “found only because it was lost” makes possible fantastic speech, prescribes the use in which such a language is enunciated. But, as Pierce had found Ægypt within the fantastic, he had also recreated it within the present, within his imagination. The use of fantastic speech, from the present and through the imagination, then, remains something else — something other. While others have dictated the ways in which the fantastic has been used, that is not the aim of my position: rather, I want to create the fantastic for myself to lose and for others to find again, to make their own meaning from it. As Pierce had discovered Ægypt, he also, “at the same time” felt that because of his discovery, “the universe extends out infinitely in every direction you can look in or think about, at every instant”. As readers of this essay come to learn: the fantastic is always around, it is for those that hesitate as they confront it to “extend out in every direction” their meaning. The fantastic, is then, the language of the infinitely possible and is only limited within the relation between the subject and the object, within the conditions of the signification process.