Dreams of the Enemy

So, who else doesn’t really like all of the generic evil villains out there these days? For a lot of games, it’s enough just to have a villain that is simply evil. Not morally gray, not well intentioned, just evil. Same goes for movies… as far as one can tell, Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars is evil for the hell of it. Really, what does he want? Because “power for its own sake” is about the only answer visible.

Building a massive planet-crushing Death Star and destroying a civilian pacifist planet is another excellent example of what I’m talking about. What point was there to that, beyond just being evil for the hell of it? Try this plotline: Empire captures princess, puts her in Star Destroyer prison cells. Rescue team saves princess, but Empire plants tracking device on their ship.

About the only differences are: the Empire has a lot less ill will (you know, that whole not-blowing-up-a-planet deal) and a lot more Star Destroyers, since they have a lot more resources to spare. The other problem, though, is that it’s less dramatic, which is why in Star Wars the villains needed to be over-the-top; why they needed to be purely evil for its own sake.

It gets old after a while, though. Why doesn’t Team Rocket from Pokémon go into the mechanized construction business? With the number of robots they’ve built for the sake of screwing with Ash and friends, they clearly have the aptitude for it. And they wouldn’t have to go blasting off all the time. I guess it’s just not evil enough (or funny enough) for them to make an honest living and send money and Pokémon to Giovanni that way.

It certainly seems in a few different cases that there’s no internally consistent reason for the villains to act the way they do. The demands of producing an interesting movie or TV show, the demands of drama or comic relief, are the reasons for creating villains that act in these ways. But treating those stories as worlds in their own respect forces the view that they’re acting evil for the hell of it. That the villains have no goals beyond being the antagonists; that the dreams of the enemy are non-existent. And people don’t usually act that way.

So it’s awfully refreshing once in a while to get a series like Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s. As the series opens, the antagonists seem pretty clearly marked. You know, those guys over there that are the guardians of the Book of Darkness. That cursed book that has never been used for anything other than destruction. That tome that will gain limitless power once all 666 pages have been completed. Frankly, at first, it’s a little bit of a cliché storm. (link to TVTropes)

But, much like the first season does, it doesn’t remain clichéd for long. The motivations of the “villains” are laid bare before the season is half over; the dreams of the enemy are apparent to at least the viewer, if not the protagonists. And the master of the Book of Darkness isn’t the textbook villain lusting after power; likewise, the guardians aren’t just the textbook mini-boss squad that seems to gain nothing from being evil. Oh no.

In fact, they’re about as far from that as it’s possible to be. In a refreshing turn from the standard “bwa ha ha I’m evil and I like it” villain, the master of the Book Of Darkness specifically ordered the guardians not to go out and complete the book. She hardly qualifies as an antagonist, and even if one did try to fit her into that category, she’s definitely not seeking “power after power, ceasing only in death,” as Hobbes put it. (Yeah, I can reference political theory too.)

But then, why are the guardians completing the Book? Clearly they must be more typical villains, right? Well, actually… no. Actually, their leader accepted that order fully and completely. Until they learned that the Book of Darkness was killing its master through a curse, one that would lose effect if the Book was completed. Yes, that’s right: they’re acting as they are to save their master’s life.

What does this mean? People aren’t usually mindless drones that are only supposed to act as the antagonist for some greater story, and it’s nice to see a story that reflects that fact. Although they do exist, it’s the rare person that really does act evil for the hell of it. In the world that we live in, everyone has some kind of dream or goal. Even one’s enemy or opponent has their own wishes and desires. Sometimes, those are even noble ones.

It’s all too easy to look at an opponent and dismiss them as nothing more than an object. Nothing more than an enemy to defeat, even to kill. But that’s not what people are like. When war breaks out, the dead are reduced to numbers and the enemy is reduced to just some monolithic force that must be defeated in battle. It’s all too easy to lose sight of the people behind all of those numbers and uniforms.

Note, I’m not saying that war as a whole is wrong because of this. Unfortunately, sometimes force is the only solution to an opponent who carries a destructive dream. But there must be that awareness of the opponent’s status as a human being. And that awareness is one of the things that will help to ensure that we go no farther than we must.

Protection and Destruction

The line between the two is incredibly thin. All too often, the effort to protect something requires that something else be destroyed. This is most obviously seen in war, when armies do battle. Usually with both sides claiming justice; all claiming that their goal is to protect. And all the while, more destruction rains down. Sometimes, it reaches even what’s being protected; the old joke “We had to destroy the village in order to save it” is a classic for a reason.

But then, where can the line be drawn? Just yesterday, I watched the eleventh Pokémon movie, Giratina and the Sky Warrior. (It’s on again tomorrow, February 15^th, at 1900 hours. Although I will spoil a good deal of the plot, so if you want to watch it, I’d read this after you do so.) And interestingly enough, the story of a reversed world and its role had plenty to say about the line between destruction and protection.

The villain of this tale was a man named Zero. Who knows why someone would actually be called by that name, but whatever. And his goal was to take control of the Reverse World by basically taking power from the Reverse World’s sole inhabitant, Giratina. Sacrificing that legendary Pokémon in the process, of course.

But he of course had his noble motives. You see, the fight between Dialga and Palkia from the tenth movie (I didn’t know the Pokémon movies had this much continuity…) had put strain on space-time, and the Reverse World was relieving this strain. The results of this process were fairly severely polluting the Reverse World. And Zero billed himself as its defender, working to prevent the real world from polluting the Reverse World any further.

The strain is visible. Protection, or destruction? Or both? For Zero’s plan, a fairly major amount of destruction was called for. To protect the Reverse World, the real world would have to be destroyed. To even get there with the power to do anything, Giratina would have to be destroyed. In this specific case, it’s fairly obvious where Zero falls. In actually watching the movie, the sheer madness is obvious more than any desire to protect.

Likewise, the heroes are also fairly apparent. But still, the line between protection and destruction exists. By trying to stop Zero’s efforts, Ash and his friends (along with the titular Sky Warrior, Shaymin) were basically saying that the pollution of the Reverse World was acceptable. Along with, of course, doing indescribable amounts of damage to Zero’s Pokémon and assorted gadgetry.

So why is it that the destruction endorsed by the heroes is acceptable while the destruction of the villain isn’t? What is it about their actions that makes them better than Zero? There are a number of answers to that question.

Some philosophies dictate that the massive amount of destruction that Zero would have caused versus the smaller amounts that the heroes caused in the end justify their actions. That purely weighing the different sides of the balance show how Zero’s actions were worth stopping. Likewise, Zero was protecting an abandoned world in which only he would live while the heroes protected the real world and all of its people. That’s a perfectly valid answer to that question.

Personally, though, I prefer the one rooted in intent. Zero’s intent wasn’t really to protect. Sure, he tried to claim that he was protecting the Reverse World. And it’s certainly even true that his actions would have stopped the pollution of the Reverse World. But that’s not what he wanted. He wanted to forcibly take power from Giratina, killing it in the process. He wanted to rule over the Reverse World and destroy the real one. He wanted to destroy.

While the heroes? The heroes at all points were protecting something. Ash and his friends spent much of the movie trying to protect Shaymin, or at least accompanying it when it didn’t really need protection. They put no small amount of effort into protecting the real world, of course. Even more, they knew that it was sadly the natural order of things for the Reverse World to react as it did to the strain on space-time. It can even be said that they were trying to protect the natural order of things. They wanted to protect.

And when Giratina was at Zero’s mercy, Ash, Dawn, Brock, and Shaymin put no small amount of effort into protecting it: a legendary Pokémon that they had actually fought earlier in the movie; one that certainly had no real desire to help them at the time. Shaymin had been terrified of Giratina earlier in the movie; now, Shaymin nearly exhausted itself helping Giratina.

Intent and the will to carry it out can change the future. As such, intent must be where morality is rooted. There are those with the desire to destroy. They can claim that they’re protecting something: Hitler can say that he was protecting the German people; Zero can argue that he was protecting the Reverse World. But intent is what matters: Hitler wanted to rule the European world, Zero wanted to rule the Reverse World.

And if the heroes have to engage in destruction to stop them, then so be it. If the Allied Nations have to engage in World War II to protect the free world; if Ash and Shaymin have to accept the pollution of the Reverse World, then so be it. The line is indeed thin between destruction and protection. And in so many cases, both will be seen at once.

But it can be determined who is in the right. Destruction may be all too common, on all sides of a conflict. And in many of those conflicts, the intent of each side is paramount. Whether to claim protection in order to destroy, or carry out destruction in order to protect… I know which side I fall on. I will make no excuses. I will destroy if I must. But I will do no more than I must, and I will remember why I act in that way.

The Need for Honest Effort

In some cases, I know that I’m going to make a two-part post before I even start writing. Not so this time; I realized about two minutes ago that I could extend what I said last week. (Well, two minutes before I started writing, anyway.) And really, it’s more that I realized I could use similar titles than a realization that I had more to say.

Regardless. Last week I discussed some of the rewards that I found in the effort I put into Pokémon. But there’s more than that in what video games have to say about effort and hard work, at least for me. You see, like many activities, video games offer rewards to dedicated players.

It’s visible all over: the amount of effort required to even clear a lot of games is almost enough right there. The idea of an “achievement”, first seen in Xbox titles, has spread all over the community of Internet flash games, even spawning a parody game (Achievement Unlocked, produced by Armor Games, link to OneMoreLevel.com) that has nothing but such achievements. Even after clearing a game, usually there’s even more to do for 100% completion (link to TVTropes). And unsurprisingly, these kinds of rewards for reaching goals, even if those rewards are nothing but the satisfaction of success, do encourage the kind of motivation and effort that can translate into all areas of life.

And an excellent example of one game in which this applies more than any other is Dance Dance Revolution. Dance Dance Revolution (or just DDR) is a kind of rhythm game where the challenge is to respond to a song being played. Predictably, having a good sense of rhythm is unendingly helpful when playing these games. DDR in particular is a dancing game, in which the player has to step on arrows on the ground in response to the arrows on the screen. The game, like most rhythm games, thus requires a special controller to play. In this case, a pad with four arrows on it.

The difficulty ranges from really easy to insanely hard. The songs with difficulty levels around one or two are usually easy enough for anyone to handle, while songs up at eight or nine usually cause people unfamiliar with DDR to stop and stare. The legendary level ten songs are usually impossible for just about anyone, even experienced players. The odd thing about all of that, though, is that surprisingly enough, it requires no small amount of practice and effort to become any better at the game.

I can barely even remember when I first tried DDR. I know it was in an arcade somewhere, and I seem to recall being immensely proud of myself after doing a really easy song. That lasted about until I finished, and the person waiting for the arcade machine got up and played a song that was much, much harder than anything I had attempted. Better yet, it seemed like every time I went to the arcade, there was a large crowd of skilled players around the machine, and I didn’t dare interrupt them.

Because of this, I wasn’t really getting any practice. I wasn’t improving significantly at all. Now, I certainly could have just written it off as unimportant and done something else. Certainly, there are plenty of people in the world who write off video games in general as unimportant. But that’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted to get better at DDR; I harbored my dream of being able to one day walk up to such a crowd and force my way in on the basis of my skill. And I knew that if I wanted that, I had to practice.

I could have backed down overall. I certainly could have just thought about that dream and satisfy myself with those thoughts. But that wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere. Setting a goal or having a dream is only the first step. It’s a first step that’s meaningless without the willpower and effort to make it happen. I could have saved my money and my time for other pursuits. But all of life is making choices and allocating resources to the goals and dreams that we possess. And in this case, I chose to put my effort into realizing this dream.

In addition to the arcade versions, there are DDR games sold for home consoles as well. So I went out and got the only available DDR game for the only major console I had at the time: DDR Mario Mix for the Nintendo Gamecube. And I practiced and (slowly) improved. Unknowingly, I had bought a DDR game that was easier than most other available games; I can’t say whether or not this affected my development.

I eventually got to the point where I wasn’t being challenged anymore by any of the songs on that game. By this time, we had an Xbox as well (still in the previous generation), so the obvious solution was to pick up one of the DDR games for that system. After getting DDR Ultramix 3 as a gift, my improvement continued.

Two more recent events have shown the culmination of all of this effort. My old high school held a talent show every year, and by the time that my senior year rolled around, I was confident enough in my ability (and encouraged by all of my friends) to play DDR for the crowd. I chose what is known as a “boss song”, one of the insanely difficult songs that on the hardest difficulties are almost always difficulty level ten. I did not play at that level, instead going for the level nine difficulty just below that.

It went about as well as could be expected. I missed all of three steps in a lightning fast song that demands quite a lot in terms of physical ability. And I led off the talent show in style as the first act; according to some of my friends in the audience, I drew at least a partial standing ovation. I had gained the respect and admiration of a crowd far larger than I had ever dreamed of performing for.

Much later, at a club meeting for video game players at Brandeis (yeah, CGX shout out!), two highly skilled club members had brought a DDR game on the computer (not technically called such, but it might as well have been the same thing) that several members were enjoying immensely, including myself. And with a massive selection of songs from any number of different DDR games, I had a lot to choose from.

Near the end of the meeting, I found the song that I had played for the talent show in the list, a song called The Legend of MAX. And I decided that, since I had improved in the intervening months, it couldn’t hurt to try it on its highest difficulty. Yet again, I stood in front of a crowd of people and demonstrated my skill. One cleared level ten song later, I had finally reached that goal that I had set so long ago.

And now? Now I can do things like, well, the video below.



That’s a level ten song on DDR SuperNova for the PS2, called Xepher. (Obviously, I was the one dancing in that video.) I’ve cleared six level ten songs since then, and I’m still practicing. The nature of songs of this difficulty means that really, one has to individually break down each one. Unlike at the lower difficulties, where the ability to clear one level nine or level eight song usually translates into the ability to clear most of them, level ten songs usually require a lot of individual practice before they become possible.

It took me about a year to get from being a complete novice to being able to handle level eight or nine songs. And it took me about another year of practice after that to finally clear a level ten song. For the truly motivated, video games like Dance Dance Revolution aren’t just a waste of time; they’re a skill in their own right, one that like any other requires time and effort (that is to say, practice) to master.

And over the years that I improved, there were so many chances for me to turn back. Either before I got any DDR game, or before I got Ultramix 3, or just at any time to get tired and quit. But nothing in life works that way. Not Dance Dance Revolution, not my classes, not my extracurricular activities, nor anything else. If one has a dream, one has to put in the effort and the will to make that happen. And that’s a lesson that if nothing else is reinforced by the challenges presented by the video games that I play.

The Rewards of Honest Effort

In today’s world, Internet connectivity for video games has progressed past a novelty into a requirement. Almost all decent multiplayer games have a system in place to connect with other human players anywhere in the world these days. But that isn’t always enough. In most cases, these systems will have limitations, especially Nintendo’s systems. Without having other ways of communication, without knowing a person in some other manner, it is usually impossible to connect with that person over a Nintendo game on the Internet.

Thus, the need for other means of game play. There are programs that can be downloaded that replicate certain functions of games and allow these competitions to be held online with less restriction. Not just video games, either; there are systems that emulate things like trading card games as well, to allow their play over the Internet.

I’ve tried some of these emulators. As a Pokémon trainer, when I learned about the world of competitive battling for that game, I wanted to try my hand at it. So I got a simulator called Shoddy Battle (their website is here, for the curious) which has as its stated goal “to create and maintain… a computer program that offers an online RPG battle experience similar to one found in the Pokemon games.”

And honestly enough? I don’t really like using it all that much. Now, before I continue, I want to make it abundantly clear that this dislike has nothing to do with the program itself or with any of the people involved. The program works beautifully; the people I’ve battled have (usually) been fine people and a fine challenge for my skills. No, after some personal examination, I’ve come to realize that my dislike has to do with the idea of using a simulator in the first place.

When it comes to Pokémon battle, there are two major parts to the planning. In the real world, strategy is generally long-term planning for a wider situation, while tactics are more immediate methods in a single battle. Pokémon is divided much the same, with the art of team building alongside the actual use of that team in battle. Both are highly complicated affairs for which experience is a major asset.

And when actually playing the game, both require a lot of effort and skill to properly manage. As I write this, I’m laying initial plans for a new competitive team. Even after I finally decide on what Pokémon I’m actually going to use, which is a challenge all to itself, I’ll still have to get those Pokémon with the right natures (natures affect their statistics) and train them properly to optimize those statistics for each Pokémon’s given role. This is a process that will likely take up several hours of game play, spread over days or even weeks, in its completion.

Once all of that is done, I’ll start battling with them and figure out what works and what doesn’t, along with having to deal with the fallout from any mistakes that I make. Each battle will be a challenge all its own, as I’ll have to figure out how to deal with anything that comes my way. And more often than not, I’ll probably fail and end up losing, as competition between human players is something for which experience is important… and I don’t have much of that yet.

But after all of that effort, I get its due reward. I do have a team designed for competitive battling already, after all. And yes, it did take a lot of effort to set up on my game card. It isn’t the greatest team in the world, but it is mine. After all of that effort, there is nothing I enjoy more in the Pokémon games than bringing it out (usually on Pokémon Battle Revolution for the Wii, since I can battle random people over the Internet with that) and trying my level best to take down the opposing team.

I have also constructed a competitive team on Shoddy Battle for use on that program. And after battling with it several times, I started to notice that I didn’t really enjoy those battles as much as the ones I did with the actual game. It eventually got to the point where I all but ceased using the simulator entirely; I haven’t really logged on to that for a while. And I think it has to do with the effort involved in using the simulator.

There’s a reason why I emphasized that the team I built on my Pokémon Diamond game card was mine. After I spent the amount of time that I did, and invested the effort that I did in creating it, I feel like that team has become more than just a few Pokémon that I trained. There’s more than just that time and effort in them now. I feel like I’ve invested a part of myself in that team.

And when I battle with that team that I built, I feel like I’m displaying that; I feel like I’m putting my effort forward for the world to see. The people that I have challenged probably aren’t too impressed with my effort, but that was never the point. I enjoy battling with my Pokémon; I enjoy challenging myself in attempting to lead them to victory.

The problem is… I don’t get that feeling from dueling on the simulator. I haven’t put much effort into creating that team. I still had to decide what Pokémon to use and what roles they would play, yes, but once those decisions were made the rest was nothing more than clicking buttons to do what took me hours in the actual game. The feeling that that team is a result of my effort just isn’t there.

I have no doubt that there are people who would dismiss much of that as irrelevant; this isn’t the Pokémon anime show, in which the relationship between a trainer and his or her Pokémon is of paramount importance. But until computers can simulate the kind of interaction between trainer and Pokémon that is seen on the show­­, I think that what I feel playing with the team that I built is as close as I can possibly come to that same camaraderie.

And maybe it is irrelevant. It certainly doesn’t affect game statistics; in fact, the Pokémon team I constructed on the simulator is superior in that respect, because I have more power to alter certain aspects of the Pokémon on that than I do in the game. But there are still rewards for that effort that I put in. There is a sense of joy that I haven’t found elsewhere, in taking the results of my work and pitting it against the work of other trainers.

Finally, I turned on Pokémon Battle Revolution and played a few battles against people that I’ll likely never see again just a few days ago. It was as enjoyable as it always is, despite the loss that I took. In contrast, I haven’t activated Shoddy Battle for several months now. That, more than anything else in my opinion, shows what my rewards are for the effort I put in. Maybe it’s only me, but I take pride in that effort, and that gives both the results and the process of that effort a joy that I haven’t found without it.

The Past and the Future

Going back to Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, another thing that only really becomes apparent late in the series is how annoying linear time is, at least for the villain. We all know how that works: the past has already happened and cannot be changed; the future is unknown and affected by the events that come before it. And it was both of those facts that created a problem for Precia, the primary villain of the series.

Decades before the events of the actual series itself, Precia had an important research position and a daughter named Alicia. That said, though, she was conducting illegal experiments, and in true mad scientist illegal experiment fashion, those experiments ended in a catastrophe. When the dust settled, she was exiled from the city and her daughter was dead. That was her past, the events that came before.

But then, what future became of that chaos? With Alicia gone, Precia descended into madness. She chased after myths and legends in an effort to change what had come before, in a manner that promised yet more harm and suffering to anyone nearby. Essentially, Precia chose to ignore the future, to change her future by reclaiming her past rather than by moving forward. And it was that desire that created all of the problems in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.

There are people much like her in the world today. There are those who look at their past and see nothing but regret, nothing but events that need to be changed. Unlike Precia, they usually aren’t villains that end up causing more harm, but they share her anguished lament of “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be!” For better or for worse, it is a reaction to loss and sorrow.

But it can be carried too far. The past will not change, no matter how much one laments on what could have been different. As Crono Harlaown, one of Nanoha’s allies in that final battle, put it, nothing’s ever the way it’s supposed to be. Nothing is ever perfect, and anyone who wants to find only what could have been done differently will be paralyzed for months, doing nothing but regretting the mistakes they’ve made.

What, then, can we do? How can we balance learning from the past with having a positive effect on the future? No one should become completely consumed by taking back their mistakes. We will all make them, and we can’t demand of anyone that they put things back to the way they were. Sometimes, such a restoration back to the original order will be impossible, as it was for Precia.

We cannot change the past, and we cannot always reclaim it. Because of that, we need to focus on what we can change. When mistakes are made, we can’t look to the past and try to reclaim the world before those errors. We need to look ahead. Move ahead, to the future that is shaped by the events that come before. The events of the past will remain in place, so all we can do is look to the future and create those events that will bring about a better one.

Precia had her attention fixed on the past. She stated, “I’m going to change what was, and create a brand new future for me and Alicia!” I find that statement more than any other to be a contradiction. She may have wanted a different future, but she didn’t pay it any mind. She was devoted to changing the past, not the future. The problem was not in the events of her past but rather in herself.

Statements like that have no place in the creation of the future. A fixation on the regrets of the past is no help in forging a better future. We may not be able to change the events of the past, but we can change and shape the events of the future. And thus, it is on that future that our attention must fall.

The choice is one presented to anyone who has ever lost something, whether it be a few hours of play time from forgetting to save before quitting all the way up to the people that are important to us. We can fixate on that loss, and pine for what was. With some lesser events, we can try to exactly recreate what we lose, as one could with a video game. We can allow our own lives, and reality as a whole, to lapse in our grief over what is no longer there.

Or we can take that loss and build a new future even with it. We can play the game again, not caring for what exactly happened the first time but enjoying the second no less. We can fondly remember our losses yet move forward with our lives anyway, learning and changing from the events around us and doing what we think is important. Those losses and that past will always be with us, and shouldn’t be ignored. But they do not deserve our entire focus.

I know what I would prefer when I leave this world, as I no doubt will one day. That could happen tomorrow; it could be a hundred years in the future. But when I do, I would not want to see the people around me overly devastated by grief. I would not want to be completely forgotten. If I could, I would want to see those around me remembering yet moving on. Looking to the future even with the losses of the past.

Again in the words of Crono, we can choose to run away from reality, or we can face it head on. We can take our losses and mistakes of the past and make them part of our future. We can choose to not let our grief and regret rule our future, but rather make them a part of our future. We can carry the past, which will remain unchanged, and look to the future, which can be changed.

To create a better future, to truly do what Precia was trying to do in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, both the past and the future will be important. The past will inevitably be part of our future, but so too will our decisions and our outlook be important. And as long as only one of those can be changed, then I know what I’ll focus on. Not the past, as Precia chose, but the future.