you're a legend for referencing lauren berlant and michael warner in relation to your top gun fic and I'd like to think that they would say the same!! the stories that you've created are beautiful explorations of some of the biggest questions posed in queer theory: who are we in public? who are we in private? where is the line that separates the two (spoiler: there is no way to actually separate the two, no binary) and what are the structural forces bearing down upon all of that bullshit! I for one would love to see your questions about privacy and respectability explored with rooster and ice and mav. especially considering the generational cliff between them, with the aids crisis in the background of rooster's childhood when they were all the closest, in your world. anyway! you are an incredible writer and it's been a privilege to read you work :)
thank you so much for this ask!! yes i have spent so much time thinking about this. In March i started working on a new-yorker-style interview that tried to address a bunch of these questions. Since I didn’t do wip wednesday yesterday (sorry) here’s some relevant sections of that wip related to your ask. I don’t think it’s spoilers since I’m not sure id ever post this anywhere—you can see for yourself how entertaining the writing is and it’s overly political and didactic. Just a lame hegelian dialectic where im interrogating my own characters (at least, my own interpretations of them) on their politics. And I’m not an expert on any of this stuff (currently on the slow uphill climb out of the valley of the dunning-kruger graph—trying to learn). Nor am I fact-checking it & that feels irresponsible to post For Real. so just take this post as a fun (for me) exploration of what i (20y.o., ignorant, no editorial oversight, smooth-brained) think Might be some political implications of my fics, trying to write from a lib-moderate pov (tough!)
talking points I wanted to address:
The politics of ice’s career, both internationally & domestically (some wild navy scandals happened under his “tenure” [fat Leonard most pressingly—would LOVE to know how actual TGM’s ice & mav felt about that bc it was SO FUCKING CRAZY, navy officers & admirals having wild sex parties paid for by a singapore defense contractor (the details are so fucking crazy i can’t even say them here—one anecdote involves 7th fleet officers using WWII/Korean war general macarthurs historical memorabilia during sex acts—go read about it) a couple PACFLT RDMLs were charged with actual crimes, 60 admirals (of the navys total 160 admirals) were under investigation & both my and TGM’s ice & cyclone would probably have been two of them, basically if you were a pacflt officer in the mid-2000s-2010s you were under investigation it was so fucking wild]) —and another geopolitical look at the implications of both top gun movies (reagan weighs in from beyond the grave)
Ice and mav who can’t win—they want their relationship to Not Be A Big Deal. leave us alone. We’re Normal. we’re not Weird or anything. —but can’t understand WHY their relationship is so sensational/political—yes, boys, it is a big deal, sorry!! mavericks probably the last Ace the world will ever see & ice is the secretary of the navy and they’re married, fuck yes that’s newsworthy!!!
my version of Ice acceding to SECNAV at the intersection of a couple crucial contextual moments for the navy/military as a whole: 1. Recruitment is currently fucked. This interview takes place in 2020/early 2021, and things were bad then, but the numbers just came out for the Navy this year, and hoooooly shit they are so bad. And blame is falling along partisan lines like always: Ds blame low recruitment numbers on lack of benefits etc, Rs literally i am not shitting you are mostly blaming low recruitment numbers on the military going Woke. The USN has long been seen as the most obnoxiously woke/gay (derogatory) service to conservatives & there’s a lot of political baggage that comes with having a SECNAV who, while not openly identifying as gay, is openly married to another man. especially with a recruiting crisis like this one. 2. Withdrawal from afghanistan obviously. kind of a shit way for ice to end his career ngl. It Did Not Go Super Well. 3. rising tensions in eastern europe pre RU-UA invasion in 2022, what that means for the MIC and procurement, etc. 4. The joint chiefs openly declaring they (& by extension the military as a whole) would not support trump’s coup attempt post-J6—the end of that extremely politically polarized presidency—what does it mean for the following Dem president to then have a gay secnav after that? It’s HUGE. SO no matter what, Ice as SECNAV is going to go down in history. He just wants it to be for his actions, not the fact that he’s gay.
Icemav’s relationship with their identities. We really really don’t want to be known for being gay. “Ask me what my proudest achievement is, I’ll tell you without a second of hesitation—my family. Without a doubt. But does any military man really want to be best-known for his marriage?” We want to be known for being the BEST at our jobs, which we are. We’ve earned that title! There’s so much more interesting stuff about us than who we got married to.
AND how that is a liberal-moderate-conservative median-50% meritocratic WET DREAM of an ideology. an interview like this one is a straight fluff piece pre-ice’s confirmation to secnav—it lets him prove to the moderate liberals that he’s left-leaning enough to protect social justice interests in the USN, AND prove to conservatives that he’s right-leaning enough to not let identity politics/“woke bs” get in the way of the navy’s mission of providing a lethal maritime fighting force. the merits of this ideology are up for debate.
maybe helping the conservative viewpoint of that ideology: The fact that the Kazansky-Mitchell-Bradshaw-seresin family is so not-stereotypically gay. Like, look at these four guys. 9-to-11 combat kills between them (11 in my universe where ice gets an extra 2, 9 canon confirmed) in a period of history/modern warfare when ANY air-to-air kill is/was massively historically significant. Extremely macho & tough. They present themselves about as traditionally and toxically masculine as you could possibly get. Theyve KILLED PEOPLE. They’re not “soft” by any stretch of the imagination. Physically & emotionally they ARE extremely conservative, and there’s something to be said about the politics of that too—molding yourself into the shape of what you think a man should look like, just to avoid persecution, and then performing masculinity BETTER than even the men who would want to persecute you…!
Related to your ask: the modern/young ppl inclination to make sexuality SO political and public. When asked how he could reckon with joining a DADT-ruled navy, rooster answers: “hope I could do something to destroy it before it could destroy me.” When asked why he DIDNT use any of his considerable power to influence the repeal of DADT, ice answers: “it was better than the blanket ban that came before it. And maybe I’ve always wanted neither to tell nor to be asked.” the conservative respectable opinion that your intimate relationships ought to be PRIVATE, doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight—just do your job, and preferably do it well. yeah, don’t ask and don’t tell. It’s not anyone’s business. ice doesn’t have a philosophical problem with DADT, because he agrees sexuality should be private & secret. —is it anyone’s business? whose business is it? How much of your personal life do you owe the public if you’re a public-facing individual like the COMPACFLT or SECNAV? all good questions!!!!
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Posts like these are really getting to me because they confidently state things without actually knowing what any of this means. This is not helping to parse through criticism and feedback, nor is it helping anyone to understand how writing for video games work.
Specifically for this post, this is a posting for a new position. Bungie is not firing anyone and writers aren't leaving in droves; Bungie is simply in the position to open many new positions (Sony money helped) and they've been hiring new people for months now, in all departments. They are currently hiring more people for the narrative team.
A narrative design document is not a one and done thing. This franchise is 8 years old and story and lore are being developed over time. This is how storytelling works, especially for big live service game franchises. A narrative design document is also being developed over time, it can be added to and it can change with the changing mechanics, gameplay, direction and player population.
This listing specifies that the job requires you to aid in that development. It doesn't mean that the narrative design document doesn't exist. And it certainly doesn't mean that a narrative design document changing or being added to is wrong or strange. It also probably doesn't mean what you think "narrative design" means. I'll get to that later.
This particular listing is also a smaller role, as per the intro:
In this role you will work closely with the various small teams within systems to write strings for rewards and collaborate on narrative context for features. This includes being an advocate for Franchise narrative goals and collaborating with the Expansion and Seasonal teams to help support their creative goals through your content.
This isn't a big writing position. First example of what the job is:
Work with the Systems team to write compelling strings for gear and features
Only occasionally write actual dialogue:
Occasionally create captivating activity dialogue and cinematic content that remain on tone with the established style of the franchise and the product
Improvements should definitely be made and Bungie at this point needs a much more solid narrative design document due to the incredible amount of accumulated lore and gameplay mechanics over the past 8 years. Which is the point of looking for more people to help in that section. This is a good thing.
All writing will always develop over time, but especially the writing for live service games. A narrative design document is an ongoing project. It is literally impossible to develop something like that once and never touch it again. Perhaps for one-shot singleplayer games, but even then narrative changes throughout development in ways we don't even see.
Also, as I said earlier, "narrative design" is not what people think it is. Especially not for video games. A really in-depth article about narrative design, how it works and how to do it. Incredibly relevant bit:
In an MMO, we see a lot more emergent storytelling, or rather stories that emerge over time from the interaction between players and the world. It’s a call and response where fan theories emerge, and the MMO responds to them.
Narrative design itself is not just "people writing a story." Narrative design can often be done without any writing:
Simply put, narrative design is the use of story to make sense of gameplay in a video game. Like a novelist, the narrative designer focuses on elements such as structure, character, and setting, but the key difference is that the hero in the story is the player and their experience is interactive.
And:
The narrative designer’s role on a team is much more than just being a good writer and storyteller. The narrative designer works with her team to build a world, inventing characters and events, and reconciling mechanics or rules. The job is part writing and part championing the importance of story throughout the process of making a game.
And more:
Narrative design is all about the intentional use of story and the flow of the game, either linear or nonlinear. More than merely story building, narrative design is about world-building. It’s an evolving art form, and with the development of AI and virtual reality, it’s becoming much more immersive.
On top of that, narrative design is still a new concept in video games:
Narrative designers are still quite a new concept in game creation. Hiring professional writers might seem like an obvious thing to do, but for years developers and producers have been writing storyline and dialogue. There are some old attitudes about the role that can make it difficult for a narrative designer to integrate well into a team. But integrate you must.
More stuff about what narrative design is and what it does (sorry this one is in French for the most part).
There's always feedback and criticism to give Bungie when it comes to lore. Them hiring more people for narrative design is not it. Like, Bungie being interested in fixing and mitigating these issues to combat things we have problems with is a direct opposite of criticism. They're actively hiring for narrative design. That's a good sign.
A lot of criticism often comes from the fundamental misunderstanding of how video game writing works, and especially how live service writing works. Over 8 years, there will be new information and even contradictory information to what was said previously. This isn't always a retcon. And even if it is, it's not always a bad retcon. Retcons are not inherently negative.
Most importantly, over 8 years, gameplay will change. And narrative design is about merging and making sense of the story and gameplay combined with the player involvement.
A lot of people complain because some aspect of the story is no longer the same as it was described when D1 launched. This is normal. New information being revealed is a good thing. Stories are not static, worlds are not static and characters are not static. Sometimes characters are mistaken or they lie. Sometimes things seem one way but they are another way. This is instrumental in creating a world that feels real. Because that's what happenes in reality. People are sometimes wrong in how they interpret the world around them.
Sometimes this will fall flat on some players or even all players (when it falls flat for the majority, that's usually when the game dies or is struggling; this happened to D1 Y1 and D2 Y1). In live service and ongoing projects, there will always be people who just don't vibe with the new direction or new information. New reveals can be off-putting to some and that's completely normal. It doesn't mean there's an objective fault with the writing though.
This is all a part of the narrative design, including how to tie all of these things into gameplay and player experience. This is a forever ongoing project in MMOs.
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