is this just something about being a Nerd Creator who learned craft by hyperfixating on a trashy medium but who also thinks poop and gay jokes are really, really funny?

...you low key have a point tho.

The Slim Shady LP/Metal Gear Solid: Amazingly strong statement of purpose that brings you into a fictional world that SURPRISE IS ACTUALLY A PRETTY DIRECT REMAKE OF AN EARLIER WORK while also being a sequel

The Marshall Mathers LP/MGS2: The freaky post-modernist masterpiece about censorship, much more technically good than the first but a little didactic and less enjoyable perhaps? BUT ALSO the one that retains relevance and makes everyone so, so mad because of the trolling

The Eminem Show/MGS3: Ditching pretty much all the postmodernism, ducking the eyeballs away from the camera, tells a much more personal and emotional story in an ultraconfident and crowdpleasing way. Retro pastiche. Probably the most straightforwardly entertaining one

Encore/MGS4: Extremely depressed man who does not want to be there erupts into a combination of surprisingly mature reflection on his legacy/flaws, a closure of the series forever, and also a lot of fucking poop jokes

it's simultaneously the best and worst one.

Relapse/MGSV: Almost totally without any lightness or playfulness, really pushing it out for worst instincts/shock value after a long and troubled period of nothing, and there's so so goddamn much of it and it still feels so unfinished. You hate it for the first 40 hours and then conclude it is the single greatest artwork ever devised by mankind

it kind of falls apart there but it's weird how the tone/artistic inclinations sync up so well just down to the art coming out at a similar time and both being based on a similar conversation with the audience

it's something like thesis/antithesis/synthesis/annihilation/rebirth

something to do with them both having a similar aesthetic. gothic fourth wall comedians with a healthy love of vulgar populism and macho-camp sentimentality

both into insane dynastic mixed up families of generational trauma with chaotic gender dynamics, word nerding and eternal studentship, cool shit they saw in a cartoon one time, and the corrupted nature of power

and homoeroticism

people look at me like an idiot when I remind them Em had a queerbait phase where he pretended to be bi to shock people

I think this comes from both artists having this weird love-hate obsession with their own audiences and trying to talk about the work itself/their own geniusness

the conversation ends up forming the same shape

god this plurk is good