Dean
Flairless
Variously accused of being a hilarious insufferable reactionary post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal critical theorist Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man idiosyncratic party-line Fox News boomer. No one yet has guessed a scholar, or multiple people. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
User ID: 430
This post is an unscientific clickbait for people who want the flattering kudos and ego-stroke that come from a minor accolade on this corner of the internet.
This post is a grab-bag of meta-observations on the sort of tactics or techniques one might use to start building a positive reputation in a reputation-economy moderation forum.
This post is a completely selfish effort to get other people to write more of the sort of posts I like to read.
Any of these reasons could be true. None of mine are noble. But like the rule of three, if it works for thee…
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Why Should You Believe Anything In This List?
Let’s just start by saying you shouldn’t, and instead read on with healthy level of indulgence. I am a stranger on the internet with a history of opinions and a whole host of pejoratives earned in return. I make no claim to insider insights, impressive metrics, or special profession.
On the other hand, personal credibility can help. At the same time, it is hard to appeal to yourself without appearing a cad as well as a braggart. Instead, let’s just settle for that I have written some AAQCs, and read even more from others.
Hopefully, the following claims can hopefully stand on their own, with some appropriate caveats. This is a list for organization’s sake, not a claim of all relevant factors. I am (trying) to keep it relatively short per claim. None of this guarantees you will get an AAQC. Fair enough?
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Agenda
This list of fifteen tips will be organized in four parts.
Part One: Social Engineering From The Start
1: Moderator Interests
2: Interested Audiences
3: You (Yes You)
Part Two: Structure and Formatting
4: Fundamentals Always Apply
5: Depth vs Breadth vs Brevity
6: Organization & Visualization
Part Three: Traps to Avoid
7: The Diss Post
8: The Typical Rut
9: The AI Assist
Part Four: Topics Of Common Interest (And Honorable Examples)
10: Subject Matter Experts
11: Timelines & Narratives
12: Global Political Developments
13: Popular Culture Media
14: People & Places
15: Human Experience Stories
Conclusion With All The Tips
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Part One: Social Engineering From The Start
There is a relatively simple social formula for getting an AAQC:
[YOUR AAQC] = [(Moderator Accepted) AND (Not Moderator Veto)] AND [Nominated by Mottizan] AND [Written by YOU]
Recognizing the implications and interests of these three groups can help you get to the door, or at least not exclude you from consideration.
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1: Moderator Interests
Tip 1: Moderators are the last and most obvious screening party. Less obvious is that they screen in two ways.
The last stage of every AAQC is a mod formatting the post they will make of the AAQCs they have selected. Every AAQC is nominated via the same report button used to tag potential troublemakers for consideration. While @naraburns leads the process and posts the product, IIRC other mods in the past have mentioned they all can see the report folders, and thus greater opportunity to opine, during the list’s creation and tailoring phase. While different mods may have no influence on the process, others might functionally, if not formally, present a veto.
This does not mean you should try to appeal to moderators too directly. naraburns don’t like no brown noser. It does mean you should try to understand what they would oppose, or what they want to promote, and why. naraburns has been open that they view AAQCs not as a mark of accuracy, but as rewarding people for a positive contribution to the Motte community. What makes something a positive contribution? You can find more of Nara’s modding philosophy here. Other mods have their own. When the time comes to narrow down all the AAQC reports to a final list, those philosophies are what influence which of the variously deserving posts make the cut, and which are cut.
These perspectives collectively lead towards a general point- moderators view AAQCs as a way to nudge The Motte towards the sort of forum they would like it to be. They are more likely to advance an AAQC they view as contributing that that ‘better,’ even if they disagree with it on a personal level. They are not going to proactively advance nominations they feel detract from the ethos or health of the Motte. Though differing opinions could lead to different conclusions of what qualifies as what, from an AAQC-seeking perspective moderator views are a reality you need to navigate around.
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2: Interested Audiences
Tip 2: Some of your fellow Mottizans must find your post interesting. Preferably serial nominators.
If moderators are screening for impact, it is the rest of the Motte which actually nominates based on interest. Unless you are so desperate that you would use a sock puppet to nominate yourself, your AAQC depends on someone else thinking it is interesting enough to bother pressing the few buttons to report it. No one does this for the things that bore (or frustrate) them.
This does not mean that you need to appeal to many Motte posters. While the number of nominations may sway a moderator’s consideration, a post nominated by just one person is just as in the bin as a post nominated by one hundred. The bigger impact of popularity-posting is probably/possibly that someone bothers to nominate it in the first place. If each person who likes a post has a 1-in-X chance to actually nominate, then someone who appeals to X people has a much higher chance of getting nominated than someone who appeals to less-than-X.
But in practice, or typical human psychology, not all audience members vote equally. Call this a guess, but were I a betting person I’d bet that people tend to nominate far, far more than others, for the same sort of reasons that some people post more, or downvote more, or so on. Granted, this is probably topical rather than general- it is less that these people nominate for all topics, but their topics of particular interest. These purely hypothetical ‘super nominators’ are your ‘real’ target audience if you seek an AAQC nomination. Writing to the topics that interest them enough to nominate is your ‘hack,’ whether that topic is AI, academia, geopolitics, or whatever.
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3: You (Yes You)
Tip 3: You are a Mottizan too. Write about what interests you.
Every AAQC ever approved first had to be written. Inverted, no one has ever gotten an AAQC for a post they did not write. You (yes you) are more critical than any other person in the process. No mod can endorse a response you did not post; no audience be interested in an argument you did not make.
This reinforces the point about writing to the interests of those who matter. It is not just the people who nominate an AAQC who must be interested. You are people too. You have to be interested enough to develop the post in the first place. Yes, you could approach a deliberate AAQC as if you were authoring a book report. Book reviews are a reasonably predictable way to get an AAQCs, if that is all you care about. But if you are on the Motte, you are at least a young adult, and adults have competing priorities and interests that will tend to win over unnecessary book reports for interweb audiences. AAQCs are kudos, not paychecks. There is a reason that most Mottizans who go writing for Substack stop writing much here.
This is why it is important to write about things that interest you. Your own interest is what corresponds with the other factors that cultivate interest in others. Passion can lead to more effort and exposition that can reveal new and novel things to the audience. Positivity encourages positive interest, contrasting with passivity and doomerism more likely to stir apathy to hitting that report button. People having fun nerding out encourages other people having fun nerding out with them, which is the sort of good-faith discussion that the mods want to encourage.
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Part Two: Structure and Formatting
If you are going through the effort of writing an effort post with the hope of an AAQC, put in that little bit more to make it easier for the audience to digest. Many in the audience have limited time and less patience to scroll through a never-ending narrative. Giving a sense of progression can help the audience hold out to the end and thus get to that report button which you want them to push.
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4: Fundamentals Always Apply
Tip 4: Basic principles of writing (almost) always apply.
AAQCs are not college essays, and the idiosyncrasies of informalities add to the quality. That said, the things that would make for a bad paper can reduce a ‘quality’ contribution to merely ‘interesting.’ A lot of this is surface-level cleanup, like using a spell checker, making sure you did not leave incomplete sentences as you were trying to organize thoughts, or overly long paragraphs. (Yes, I am aware of the irony. There is slack.)
The most important shared principle is hooking the audience’s interest by telling them what you are going to tell them as early as possible. The Motte weekly threads have over a thousand posts a week, more than is feasible to read. People skimming will read what looks interesting. If they cannot tell that within the first few lines, they are as liable to skip it as something that looks uninteresting from the start. If you can do this with a suitable quip that the mods can use for your AAQC tagline, all the better.
There are exceptions to everything, however, and having a mastery of fundamentals is what gives you the judgement of when and how to deviate. Grammar checkers are good, but AI slop that bores people is often excellent on a technical level… so having technically incorrect grammar (like …s or (parentheses clauses)) can increase the informality. Telling the audience what you are telling them is good, but sometimes a bait-and-switch for demonstration purposes depends on you not doing so. Such techniques are easy to misuse, and can annoy some, but performed well they can deviate from the norm enough to stand out and be called out.
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5: Depth vs Breadth vs Brevity
Tip 5: Know whether you are trying to go deep or broad, and then be brief on the other part.
AAQCs do not have to be long, but they tend to be. It takes a bit of space to lay out enough thoughts to be far enough outside the norm to stand out. It is easier to do that by adding more in unique ways than in trying to rearrange a smaller set of text in ways that will pass the social selection tests. However, too much text is boring, and being both deep and broad leads to exponentially more text. If you cannot be brief in general, be brief on either depth or breadth.
Depth in AAQCs tends to come from paying a lot of attention to a relatively narrow context. This allows exploring the nuance of a specific subject, series of events, or perspective. It is rarely well suited to grand theories of the world, but it does not need to be. ‘Depth’ AAQCs are probably the easiest in terms of effort, since they can come from your individual subject matter expertise in a particular subject, but the hardest to stand out in if your area of expertise is relatively common. Brevity in depth comes from pruning the tangents or rabbit holes that would lead away from the focus.
Breadth in AAQCs tends to come from tying together a lot of different fields to form a coherent narrative. This is much harder both because there are more areas your area of competence to trip over, but also because any one of these fields could provide its own ‘depth’ effort-post. ‘Breadth’ AAQCs are probably the hardest in terms of effort, since you must bring in more topics, but the easiest to stand out from people who do not / cannot do it as well. Brevity in breadth comes from concisely summarizing new actors or factors as able, so that you can cover the effects they had rather than the factor itself.
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6: Organization & Visualization
Tip 6: Write in a way that makes it clear where you are starting, where you are going, and how far along the way you are.
Humans are superficial visually-oriented creatures, and appearances matter. In so much that the cardinal sin of AAQCs is to be boring, few things bore as much of seemingly endless walls of text. While tip four focused on hooking people with your topic, and tip five focused on scoping the topic, this tip acknowledges the dark art of all true Mottizans- PRESENTATION!
With moderation and deliberate effort, you can make the exact same text grab (and keep) attention if you use text format to draw attention not words later in the paragraph.. It’s not just that bold is for emphasis, or italics allow an alternative insinuation if you know what I mean, or that the Motte’s blue text external links are you sign of something useful, interesting, or amusing,
or all three. (There is an AAQC to be made about that one, I swear.) Those are characterizations of how the text formatting is used by an author. The utility for the author vis-à-vis the reader is easier. Even if the reader is skimming, they will notice a key point buried in a paragraph if it is well formatted. That notice may draw interest, and attention, to stay engaged. Just… don’t overdo it, or it loses the effect.
Finally, consider a chapter break system between the distinct arguments in longer effort posts. In shorter posts, you can use bolded words as ‘chapter titles,’ which makes it obvious when a new topic starts. In a longer post, using a page break at the end provides the scrollers that indicate that the previous topic is over, and the new stuff may be more interesting. Personally, I like to use / and /// as minor and major transitions, so that people can know if they are still on the same general topic or a larger change of topics.
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Part Three: Traps to Avoid
The other side of learning the principles behind AAQCs is recognizing the tendencies that undercut it. This returns to the previous point that AAQCs are a mod tool for highlighting and commending posts that shape the Motte towards a certain sort of discourse. By extension, the sort of posts which go against that will typically not make the cut.
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7: The Diss Post
Tip 7: Writing in insults is a way to write yourself out of an AAQC.
A key ethos of the Motte as a project is to optimize for light, not heat. One way of interpreting this is that people are expected to disagree but are moderated on how they do so. Whether it is booing the outgroup of your political opponents in a post, or insulting the other poster you are responding to, carrying on an argument too aggressively is a quick way to scuttle any AAQC post.
This does not mean that critiques, even personal critiques, are off limits. You can get AAQCs for explaining why people hate certain athletes, outright calling an academic study bullshit, or even takedowns on the bad faith troll arguments of other Motte posters. The Motte is named for a military metaphor for a reason, and it is not because the forum is expected to be agreeable and harmonious.
But as much as Amadan’s AAQC takedown of Darwin has practically become a Motte legend for how the passion and fury behind the direct criticism led Darwin to abandon the guesswho account and the Darwin association entirely, it was the exception and not a norm. It was exceptional because, despite the anger behind it, the personal critiques still centered on the target’s own arguments and behavior associated with pushing those arguments. Most posts lack that distinction, or that balance of historical context, to manage that. If you want an AAQC consideration in the context of an argument, to publicize your position and get some sort of last word in the argument, take down the argument, not the arguer.
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8: The Typical Rut
Tip 8: Build a reputation of being more than a single-issue poster by posting on more than a small cluster of issues.
Several previous points emphasized that the Motte AAQCs are part of both a reputation economy and an interest economy. Part of being interesting is novelty, so people do not grow bored and dismissive if your argument pattern matches their predictions of you. Like a dish of your favored food, something that is enjoyable at first, becomes a lot less enjoyable if over-indulged. For AAQCs centered on ‘depth,’ plumbing the same narrow cluster of themes gradually grows stale.
This is an issue with single-issues posters share, whether you feel their issue is a good one or not. Someone with a new take on an issue is unique once, but there are only so many variations on the theme before it is stale. People with less popular issues, such as joo-posters who try to frame even nominally different topics in terms of malign influence, tread the same rut point to the point it is practically a game to spot the fixation. The issue for AAQC qualification is not whether the issue is morally good or bad, but whether it is tiring and trite.
The antidote to this sort of typecasting is to share the breadth of views that make you a character rather than a caricature. Not only does a diversity of opinions leave people guessing what direction you will take this time, but it enables the sort of ‘breadth’ AAQCs that have a lot more chance to combine things in novel ways. You don’t have to abandon your interests either- just use your starting rut as the initial path to a topic less traveled, and eventually you will be seen as a person with a world view as opposed to a single view point that could be machine generated.
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9: The AI Assist
Tip 9: The judgement of whether AI improves the quality of your post rests with the audience, not you.
This is not a point about whether AI tools can help you write better. This is not a position on whether AI assistance should matter. This is a point that indications of AI use do matter with the audience, which goes back to the first two points of AAQCs being a social vetting game. Whatever your own feelings on using AI, the audience and moderator views of perceived AI use matter.
You should understand the arguments against use of LLMs on a discussion forum even if they do not persuade you. I feel @4bpp started a good discussion summarizing AI skeptic concerns, which approach both a moderator and a user concern as the other two endorsing parties. Motte moderators have an interest in encouraging people to put in the effort to contribute, which is undercut if people use LLMs to create longer responses for a fraction of the effort. Individual users can develop their own ‘allergies’ to the tells of AI content, including dislike or boredom just form the signs of editing. Since AAQC writers need an endorsement from both groups, a posting style that could turn off either is an exceptional risk.
Does this mean that no AI can be used in any way in creating an AAQC? No. And sometimes LLM-inclinations to repetition are unavoidable in some formats, like the overlapping /common justifications behind this list of distinct tips to writing AAQCs. But if the people you need AAQC endorsement from are reacting poorly to your use of LLMs to generate or even alter your posts, then you have two general choices. You can ignore their concerns, and hope your post passes muster anyway, or you can tailor your AI use around their concerns. You will not be able to intellectually brow-beat them into endorsing your post if they do not want to, and having a fight over the use of AI is more likely to make ‘neutral’ observers, users and mods both, not want to.
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Part Four: Topics Of Common Interest (And Honorable Examples)
While individual AAQCs tend towards the novel or atypical, there are broad genres of topics that consistently clear the user and moderator approvals each month. If you, the would-be AAQC writer have an idea but are not sure how to frame it in a way to catch Motte interest, the topics below are historical winners. Not every post along these lines will be an AAQC, but a good-faith and exceptional effort post along these lines has a better chance of being nominated.
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10: Subject Matter Experts
Tip 10: Wonk In / Nerd Out!
Subject matter experts can write the best ‘depth’ posts by simple virtue of being able to contribute more (and more interesting) knowledge on the (interesting) topic of interest than the layman audience. People know the most about things that they have to know about because it is part of their job, or they love to learn about because it is their passion. Let us call these wonks and nerds, and celebrate both because of what they can bring to any topic.
Wonk-topics tend to be practical, professional, and public-interest issues. Because someone is getting paid to know about them, they tend towards some level of practical and public interest by default, or else no one would be paying for that sort of knowledge. Since the wonk must have a certain level of competence to get and stay hired over time, it implies a certain level of proficiency. With both time and position comes insights into the behind-the-scenes professional perspectives and internal politics that provide those qualities of novelty and insight that make for easier AAQCs.
Nerd-topics may be less elite, but no less interesting. As much as wonkery provides a monetary incentive to go learn an exceptional amount about something, passion needs no other reason. Nerds can dive deep for the strangest of reasons, or no reason at all. Good nerds can bring their wonk skills to other fields to elevate the quality of their passion. Tremble before the nerd who can bring their wonkery or multiple nerd-interests to the same issue, for they can provide unparalleled breadth and depth of effort.
Honorable Wonk AAQC: @gattsuru: "VanDerStok has dropped."
Honorable Nerd AAQC: @UnopenedEnvilope: "Opera! Now this is in my wheelhouse."
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11: Timelines & Narratives
Tip 11: Tell an interesting story over time.
If subject matter experts provide an easy route to ‘depth,’ posts centered around tracking the narrative of something over time is a straightforward way to ‘breadth.’ Narratives that track a person, group, or dynamic over time by their nature must expand to encompass the other factors impacting the subject of interest. They also take the work that makes it easy to stand out from the rest of the AAQC contenders of the month.
A timeline effort can be a surprisingly literal approach. Take a topic, show how it changed over time, typically with multiple citations of news articles or perspectives at various moments. This style of post stands out because it can connect the limited viewpoints of media coverage in the moment to show how perceptions changed. What was, or was not, mentioned at the time that became clearly obvious / relevant with hindsight? Where are the culture war flashpoints of yesteryear now? These are interesting, but combined in a way that a single perspective at a single point in time fundamentally cannot convey.
A narrative differs by emphasizing the ‘breadth’ of contextualizing something in relation to the world, and less on the developments over linear time. Historic context may matter a great deal, but a narrative approach tends to use the past to explain the present. Sometimes a narrative may be a grand theory of something, sometimes it is just framing (or challenging) how people see the world, but by its nature it is relating a concept to other relevant parts of the narrative.
Honorable Timeline AAQC: @BahRamYou: "Do you remember a short story called "Cat Person," which was published in 2017? It went viral and caused quite a stir at the time."
Honorable Narrative AAQC: @recovering_rationaleist "Someone's wrong on the Radio: Internal contradictions in the narratives on USAID"
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12: Global Political Developments
Tip 12: The world is filled with interesting things waiting for an interesting take.
Most Motte AAQCs come from the weekly Culture War Roundup thread. While the culture war in question is normally the American one, there are a lot of somethings to be said about cultures and wars elsewhere in the world. Talking about places foreigners are not familiar with, from the cultural viewpoint of a different culture, are easy ways to be novel, outside the norm, and provide that unique je ne sais quoi to seem worldly and experienced. Two approaches of this genre are posts which talk about global cultures, with any conflict being of secondary importance, and posts that cover global conflicts, with culture being secondary.
Talking about global cultures could be anything from an ethnography analyzing a culture foreign to you, to a casual attestation of your experience from within that culture. These topics tend to focus on relating one’s own observations to another frame of reference, whether that be another country or the expectations of an outsider audience. Talking about global cultures leans towards ‘depth’ posting, since you are focusing on a specific aspect of a culture.
Talking about global conflicts can be anything from current geopolitical conflicts to the clash of cultures. The Ukraine War has been a reoccurring topic of the last few years, but intercontinental culture wars, or trade wars, and other conflicts count too. Global conflict posts lean towards ‘breadth’ posting, since you are naturally covering multiple complex states to an audience with a wide range of views of the same issue.
Honorable Global Culture AAQC: @Southkraut: "Such is the dominant discourse in Germany, as imposed by the victors of WW2, and you're getting a taste of it now."
Honorable Global Conflict AAQC: @The_Golem101: "...I think you're making a historical error to include things like the Bengal famine and even the Irish potato famine in with the holodomor uncritically - especially using the same term for both Ukraine and Ireland."
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13: Popular Culture Media
Tip 13: Truth can be stranger than fiction, but both are interesting.
The Motte has a surprising appetite for discussing media, and not just the reality-covering kind. The culture war touches many parts of culture, of which fiction is as much a part as daily news, and it drives a lot of Motte discussion. Sometimes people want to read about how the culture war affects their media, and sometimes people just want to discuss the culture within their favorite media.
Culture-touching-media posts provide an external viewpoint of the relationship between the real-world culture war and its impacts on the creation and contents of media we consume. These discussions demonstrate the second-order-effects of how the culture war starts to shape not only the people directly involved, but what we later see from them. This approach leans towards breadth over depth, as the separation between culture causes and effects on the media starts to increase the parties and contextual interests.
Culture-within-media goes in for looking at a piece of media on its own terms, often with an internal perspective towards the internal logic of characters, setting, or themes. These takes can generate interest by taking a subjective viewpoint of a setting, then tying in some external IRL factor to give it more salience. This approach leans towards depth over breadth, since it is often a nerd out moment of a specific cluster of personal interests.
Honorable Culture-Touching-Media: @Testing123: "I want to take a break from talking about how modern politics and the culture war is ruining society to explain how modern politics and the culture ruined one my favorite book to movie adaptations: The Long Walk."
Honorable Culture-Within-Media: @self_made_human: "Batman might be a typical Wuxia character. Superman would be a weak character in a Xianxia setting, especially in a novel that is managed to steadily creep up in both power and page count."
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14: People & Places
Tip 14: Go to interesting places. Learn about interesting people. Tell us about them.
If global culture wars make for good AAQCs because they cover interesting places and people, who needs the culture war? You do not, which is why just talking about notable people or interesting places are regular AAQCs. Even if most of the forum is American, the Motte’s user base is heterodox enough that staying here is already an indicator of interest in different viewpoints from different views and places, making this an easy genre to get at least some interest in.
Notable people posts are some more in-depth introspection or observation about someone notable. Sometimes this can be a way to talk politics or the culture war by talking about a specific politician or culture warrior. Alternatively, it could be a reflection of some personal acquaintance, minor luminary, or something else. These AAQCs will typically make it as AAQCs if they can tie the observations to some broader point, though outright biographies are rare enough that they could work as well.
Interesting places is the AAQC zone where people can be as personal as simply sharing their travelogues or experiences of where they lived. These are the sort of posts that may seem utterly mundane to someone ‘trying’ to think of something interesting, but can be fascinating to outside observers. There are countless local curiosities or observations that may seem mundane to you but make for a distinction to other people’s lived experiences.
Honorable Notable People AAQC: @WhiningCoil: "Never Meet Your Heroes, Even Posthumously"
Honorable Interesting Places AAQC: @aqouta: "Aqouta goes to China", Part 2, Part 3
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15: Human Experience Stories
Tip 15: Tell us what you think it means to live.
The final genre of AAQCs is the Motte equivalent to the human-interest section of the news media. These are the sort of personal posts that talk about the human condition, or make deeply personal admissions that resonate with the audience. While I do feel obliged to advise everyone to never compromise their internet anonymity for the sake of internet kudos, there is a certain sort of sincerity that comes from trying to untangle the mess of emotions we call the human experience.
Human condition posts are those that muse on the nature of what it means to be and live as a human. Over the years this has included everything from transhumanism, religion, or dating. Everyone has their own human experiences, and thankfully not everyone experiences the full range of human experiences. Writers who can share their own atypical experience with those who have not are contributing to the community sharing that bit more of the human experience.
Personal experience stories are accounts of one’s own lived experience. These can include the sort of viscerally personal confessions of past shames, hard lessons, or humbling admissions that you would almost never hear in public. For all that these are incredibly subjective and non-generalizable, there is a credibility that comes with willingly lowering your guard. While I again never advise anyone make themselves vulnerable to strangers for the sake of internet kudos, some of the people who do so willingly and deliberately are practicing a level of bravery and charity that I will never mock.
Honorable Human Condition AAQC: @FiveHourMarathon: "Taking advice, really taking it to heart and following it, requires a radical act of submission foreign to the modern mind."
Honorable Personal Experience AAQC: @DuplexFields: "Then in November 2010, in my darkest depths, I discovered My Little Pony Friendship is Magic."
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Conclusion With All The Tips
And with that weighty tip, let us review!
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The 15 Tips For Writing AAQCs
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Moderators are the last and most obvious screening party. Less obvious is that they screen in two ways.
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Some of your fellow Mottizans must find your post interesting. Preferably serial nominators.
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You are a Mottizan too. Write about what interests you.
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Basic principles of writing (almost) always apply.
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Know whether you are trying to go deep or broad, and then be brief on the other part.
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Write in a way that makes it clear where you are starting, where you are going, and how far along the way you are.
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Writing in insults is a way to write yourself out of an AAQC.
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Build a reputation of being more than a single-issue poster by posting on more than a small cluster of issues.
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The judgement of whether AI improves the quality of your post rests with the audience, not you.
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Wonk In / Nerd Out!
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Tell an interesting story over time.
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The world is filled with things waiting for an interesting take.
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Truth can be stranger than fiction, but both are interesting.
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Go to interesting places. Learn about interesting people. Tell us about them.
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Tell us what you think it means to live.
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This concludes your fifteen numbered tips on how to go about getting an AAQC, and uncounted numbers within them. Yes, fifteen was an arbitrary number of click bait hook to attract interest. Yes, trying to stick to three supporting paragraphs a tip was an equally arbitrary way to maintain pacing. If you are reading this, then it worked, no?
I would like to give thanks to all the people who helped develop this list. None did so wittingly, and some did so by demonstrating what not to do, but I would not be here years later if there weren’t good eggs here. A shout-out to all the AAQC contributors who were shouted out as honorable examples. There were a lot of good posts this year, and it was a joy to review the last year of roundups. I imagine some of you might be a bit embarrassed for the reminder, but you can blame @naraburns for his diligent effort each month that caught you on record.
Finally, I’d like to leave off by dispelling any absurd suspicions about my motives for this effort. The research behind this advice entailed only the highest quality sources, and was not picked solely from my personal pet peeves and biases. This was always something I planned to do, and not at all a result of being trapped in a series of airports and airplanes during holiday travel. Most of all, any insinuations that I am hoping that this might prompt new or old Mottizans to (keep) writing more of the sort of posts I like are completely unfounded rumors.
I just selfishly want more people to write more and more interesting AAQCs this year, I swear.
In which Dean spends sick time writing a bit too much about a game about bugs.
TL;DR / Spoiler Warning: It is good, real good, and if you have any interest go play it for yourself before reading this. Spoilers ahead, and you’ll lose a great deal of the charm of the first-time experience if you read into this meta-analysis before playing and trying to figure things out for yourself.
Are you still here? Anyway, get a drink, kick your feet up, or pay less attention at work. This is one of those long ones.
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Introduction
So, in case you were living under a different rock last month, an indie sequel has been disrupting the video game industry recently.
Hollow Knight: Silksong came out at the start of last September, and made waves like few games do. The sequel of the independent developer Team Cherry’s breakout hit Hollow Knight, which released in 2017, the nearly decade-long wait for Silksong was so long and had so little news that the wait alone became the subject of memes, putting it in the same sort of forever waiting room as Half Life 3. Given how Hollow Knight itself sold over 15 million copies, putting it in the top 10 of indie games sold on steam, Silksong had high expectations.
Which, going by the player metrics it has been setting, it has been. In the first days after release, Silksong had over half a million concurrent players on steam- an exceptional showing for almost any game, but particularly for a game which did not send advance review copies to gaming media to build pre-release hype. In fact, the game only announced its release date 2 weeks before it actually released, announcing its 4 September release on 21 August. Even on such short notice, multiple indie games delayed their planned releases to avoid losing the overlap in the day one hype. While the game has its blemishes- or rather, the game is already notorious for its difficulty compared to its prequel, which itself has drawn more than a few comparisons to the infamously hard Dark Souls series. This is somewhat expected when games with deliberately steep difficulty curves hit more widespread audiences, but even then the difficulty is somewhat ‘priced in’ for a major commercial success.
So, all of this is establishing that there is a bandwagon around Silksong, and Hollow Knight as a franchise more generally. But why is there a bandwagon in the first place?
My position is that Hollow Knight’s success goes beyond the similarities it has with Dark Souls, but that it has natural thematic synergies with the classic metroidvania format mechanics of exploration, mystery, and limited lore that build upon the fact that this is ultimately a game about gods, civilizations, and bugs. The crawly kind, not the glitches. Plus, it is tied together by impeccable storytelling design that, while minimalist, effectively drops lore tidbits, uses environmental storytelling, and ties it together with exceptional use of song.
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Part 1: What is Hollow Knight, as a Game?
Hollow Knight is a metroidvania that combines platforming, exploration, and mysteries. It is also a game about bugs. This later aspect has a surprising amount of natural synergy with the tropes of the metroidvania genre.
Mechanically speaking, Hollow Knight is a metroidvania series, whose 2d platforming and exploration format draws more from the early console Metroid and Castlevania series than the more modern 3D games like, well, Dark Souls. Metroidvanias tend to be characterized by large, 2-dimensional, and maze-like maps of rooms connected by vertical and horizonal passageways, rather than separately loaded zones or linear corridors. These passageways tend to require a mix of platforming and combat to get past dangerous obstacles and enemies. The passages can be any sort of biome from traversing cave tunnels, climbing towers, trying to cross large bodies of waters by jumping between rockets, and what have you.
Hollow Knight works with this format by virtue of taking the typical 2-dimension conceit of a metroidvania, where complex 3-dimensional areas are 2-dimension solely for the sake of gameplay, and working within the real-world format of an ant farm, a common inclusion in many a natural history museum or child’s education center. These colonies present a nearly two-dimensional ant colony format by virtue of how the narrow looking pane serves as a wall constraining horizontal growth. Even though Hollow Knight practices the same premise of its levels being a small slice of a broader world, it does so with a framing that is both familiar and nostalgic to even non-gamers unfamiliar with the metroidvania genre.
Thematically, the metroidvania genre is also associated with exploration, isolation, and mystery. These themes owe some of their longevity to the eponymous early games that defined the genre, but these themes have stuck in part because of the natural gameplay synergy.
The theme of exploration is one of the most obvious, since most of a metroidvania is trying to find the parts of the map you need to get to in order to unlock the victory condition. These intermediary objectives may be where you find keys or rewards, but they are just as often the location where you get upgrades in tools or abilities that let you pass otherwise impassable routes. Since every metroidvania exploration starts with an unclear direction, unsure which fork to take, a large part of a blind playthrough is trying to develop a map, identifying the dead ends, identifying areas that look like they are passable but not yet, and trying to find the abilities that make those temporary obstacles into new branching paths.
This is a theme that is also, for better or worse, associated with bugs and insects. Like them or loath them, the ability of insects to move in ways that no human can, to places no human would be able to on the same scale, works well in the framework of a metroidvania. They unfailingly seem to hunt out and find rewards for them, even if it’s trash or rubbish to a human. Insect capabilities, such as exceptional jumping, limited flight, or climbing on walls, all make for analogous exploration mechanics. And insectoid hazards, such as pools of water, can present credible obstacles that a human would be able to swim through.
The theme of isolation is also a common one in metroidvanias. This is often because the nature of a large world puts the scale of the protagonist into a context that makes them feel literally and figuratively small. And the nature of a maze of corridors filled with enemies provides a literal and social sort of isolation. While metroidvanias can have areas of civilization and non-playable characters, these are by the nature of the game the exceptions rather than the rule. They are small havens of safety, not living civilizations. And since the gameplay of exploring often artificial passages or structures implies the prior existence of civilizations to build them, a civilization which is not here now to guide or protect you through the gameplay dangers, there is often a sense of civilizational isolation as well. Whoever built these structures is not here anymore, and it is often unclear- and thus unsettling- what convinced or compelled them to leave.
This, too, is a theme that works well for bugs. Bugs are amongst the smallest creatures we recognize as creatures, and many of them live solitary, isolated lives that are dangerous, small, and short. And while there are species that are hives of activities, these swarms of drones are just that- drones- such that the idea of thinking individuality would still be alone even when surrounded by an un-like things. These fragile and lonely lives are surrounded by dangerous and often dead past examples of bug life- the insect hives rooted out by predators, taken by blight, or overwhelmed by forces of nature and acts of gods, be they the flood-sending sort or higher beings like humanity that variously ignore bugs or exterminate them on grounds of inconvenience.
Finally, a classic metroidvania theme is the theme of mystery. Like many of the genre’s mechanical tropes, this theme’s prevalence derives from that idea of exploration. When you are building a game around exploration, you have a natural format for springling in secrets or surprises in those uncountable end-ways. If the story is to have a plot, it has a natural set of obstacles and known ways to overcome these obstacles that allow information to be doled out selectively and at a pace of your choosing, each no earlier than the unlock requirement that enables it to be found. Even though metroidvanias are by their nature exploration games, and exploration games allow the freedom of choice to try and make their own path, a metroidvania format lends itself to leveraging secrets, such as what causes the hostile isolation of the prior theme.
This, too, is a theme that works well for bug protagonists. As the ultimate underdog, and as protagonists not associated with free will or independent thinking, bugs are a natural starting point for an unaware protagonist. Bugs, with their literally small perspective, cannot see the bigger picture. They cannot at all times perceive the nest or nature of the place they are in. And even the format of the genre invites questions- why is this bug, specifically, a protagonist? Why does it think or act with will, when the tropes of bugs at large are to, well, not do such things?
So on reflection, a metroidvania about bugs makes a certain sort of sense, even if you know nothing about bugs and only a structural familiarity with the metroidvania genre.
It is not necessarily an obvious insight, and so it remains an example of creativity and imagination you might not think of unprompted, but there is an alignment of themes. The tropes of a metroidvania, and the associated aspects of bugs that transcends specific cultures, provides a… if not universal basis for embracing the game, at least an intuitive way to appreciate and relate the experience with other games and concepts the audience has a level of familiarity with.
But Hollow Knight works on a story level too.
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Part 2: What is Hollow Knight, as a Story?
(Biggo spoilers here. For reals, last warning.)
Hollow Knight is a minimalist dark fantasy about how the conflict of higher beings worshipped like gods is ravaging the hive that is the central civilization. Naturally, being a game about bugs helps here as well, making it into an example of the low fantasy genre as well.
To start with the end and work backwards, and using some very broad- and thus disputable- definitions that I will source from Wikipedia for simplicity…
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Low fantasy, or intrusion fantasy,
Low fantasy, or intrusion fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy fiction in which magical events intrude on an otherwise normal world. The term thus contrasts with high fantasy stories, which take place in fictional worlds that have their own sets of rules and physical laws. Intrusion fantasy places less emphasis on elements typically associated with fantasy and sets a narrative in realistic environments with elements of the fantastical. Sometimes, there are just enough fantastical elements to make ambiguous the boundary between what is real and what is purely psychological or supernatural. The word "low" refers to the familiarity of the world within which fantasy elements appear and is not a remark on the work's overall quality.
Hollow Knight is an low fantasy akin to Watership Down, the story about rabbits trying to find a new warren that is a well-known for its rabbits-eye view of the human world as it is for a surprisingly disturbing animated film that possibly traumatized children unprepared for how dangerous the world can be for a rabbit. Which, conveniently, is how a lot of the themes and mythical structure of Hollow Knight works- a world of fragile, very mortal bugs who die to stronger, more dangerous things.
Which is where the low / intrusion fantasy works its way into the setting. There is a mundane world of bugs and nature, where bugs are dumb and act off of feral instinct. Then there is the world of bug civilization, where there is a kingdom that knows itself to be the kingdom of Hallownest, the self-proclaimed last and only civilization. While it is not in fact the only civilization of thinking bugs, hence the epithet of ‘last’ which implies a ‘first,’ the sapience of bugs is itself the magical intrusion into the world. It is as much an intrusion into the ‘normal’ as the other forms of magic, magic of the soul or dream of void, which exists in the setting.
That is because Hollow Knight is actually a story (stories, with Silksong) about species uplift. Its societies are societies that were brought up from bestial instinct by external intervention, in service of the desires of higher powers beyond their comprehension. The world of talking bugs who build societies, streetlights, songs and art- these are not the natural state of the world. These are the uplifting gifts of powers who relationship with their subjects, and each other, drive the plot.
But more on that later. Hollow Knight is not just a low fantasy, but also a dark fantasy.
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Dark fantasy, also called fantasy horror, is a subgenre of literary, artistic, and cinematic fantasy works that incorporate disturbing and frightening themes. The term is ambiguously used to describe stories that combine horror elements with one or other of the standard formulas of fantasy.
Dark fantasy is a notoriously difficult definition to agree upon, and it’s not automatically obvious that Hollow Knight would qualify.
While Hollow Knight’s art style often leads towards the gothic, or at least stylistic, at least for the architecture, it’s character designs lean far more towards the cute and adorable, with soft, smooth curves and uncomplicated faces (that are literally masks). While there are bosses designed to be more intimidating, [this is also that same boss in its vulnerable state](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/hollowknight/images/e/eb/Screenshot_HK_False_Knight_04.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20200103200805]. Hollow Knight is a series that treats even its enemies as cute character fodder, compared to the far more horror-movie monster vibes of the Dark Souls series. When one thinks of an eldritch abomination that haunts dreams, you typically think more Cthulu and less this. Hollow Knight doesn’t even try to lean into arachnophobia per see to unsettle you- this is their spider tribe.
But make no mistake- Hollow Knight is a dark fantasy, and it deals with themes that are just as disempowering and unsettling to humans as they would be to humanized bugs. To list just three: the matter of sentience, caverns of skulls, and the question of a justifiably wrathful god.
A Matter of Sentience
As was raised in the low fantasy section, hollow knight does not have a sapience-normative setting. This is actually a plot twist of sorts, as the player’s first introduction in Hollow Knight’s opening presents society and civilized bugs as normal, and the violent / feral bugs as the aberration. There is (deliberate) incongruity at this that can be passed off as cultural chauvinism at first- an early monument claiming Hallownest as the last and only civilization- but the hostile bugs are presented as sickly and succumbing to an infection that drives bugs mad. Even as we’re told bug civilization is rare, the presentation of the early game is that these bugs would be civilized as well, if they weren’t the victims of a mysterious orange infection. The framing is that these bugs have been lowered to a more bestial state. As you go across the story, you meet talking bugs, thinking bugs, very human-like bugs with amusing and understandable motivations. They are so human, and empathy is encouraged as you can identify with them.
This is a misdirection. Not just civilization, but sapience itself, is artificial. While there are bugs that are naturally capable of thought, others are not, and the degree of thought we witness is the reflection of a deific intervention by a higher power. A more magical bug called a worm, whose size was so monstrous that it is scenery setting in its own right, reincarnated itself into a being known as the Pale King, whose influence alone drew bugs to him like, well, moths to a flame as he brought the aspects of civilization like treaties and kingdoms and education.
But this uplifting was limited in space, for if a bug strayed away from Hallownest, their sapience diminished. To be sapient was a gift dependent on staying in the Pale King’s influence… and his desire was to be influential in many ways, as much political as spiritual. The Pale King’s ambition was to rule and be venerated by the bugs. The Pale King may have been a welcome uplifter, but it was as much an imposition on the natural order as the political order, not the natural state of things… even though that is how the Pale King wished it to be remembered.
But then this, too, is revealed to have been another sort of misdirection. Before there was the Pale King, there was another higher being who dominated a part of what would become Hallownest. This higher being, known as The Radiance, was worshipped by a tribe of moths, and in her era those under her influence were part of a hive mind, linked to her via dreams. But even the radiance was not the first. Just as the Pale King’s civilization and individuality followed the Radiance’s tribe and hive mind, the Radiance followed an even older, unknown ancient civilization. She was as likely to have pushed them out as she was herself pushed out… and as she is pushing out the current paradigm?
And that infection mentioned earlier? The one that robs bugs of their sapience and reverts them to bestial aggression? That is the Radiance re-emerging and re-asserting herself through the dreams of bugs, even as she remains partly trapped and certainly mad. Sapience is being subverted to a hive mind by outside will, as much as sapience was imposed in the first place.
Hollow Knight’s setting, in other words, isn’t just a setting where Kingdoms build upon the bones of prior civilizations. It is a setting where individuality, as we, the audience, know it, is a coincidental nature of how a metaphysical struggle for dominance plays out. The capacity for individuality and choice was a result of a proud king’s desire to be chosen over all others.
Your capacity for thought, in other words, is not special. But it isn’t even normal either.
Cue existential dread.
Caverns of Skulls
A second theme of the Hollow Knight games is whether the ends justify the means.
Again, this will focus on Hollow Knight rather than Silksong, though both have this theme. Both games present the ruins of civilizations that indisputably had culture and sophistication, organization and purpose. But both games grow increasingly blunt and brutal about how the societies they present, as sophisticated and civilized as they might seem, are figuratively and literally built on the foundations of those who were sacrificed to advance the social vision of the civilizational leaders. Bug Civilization is Not Nice.
In Hollow Knight, the original game, this discovery is part of what undercuts the established buildup of the Pale King as the father of civilization, sapience, and all that seems good in the bugs of hallow nest. In a setting where those who refused to join are presented as tribal, bestial, and violent- absolutely the sort of people to place skulls on spikes to mark territory- Hallownest is a place of treaties and laws and commerce. When the infection- the mysterious illness that players are initially introduced to as a mysterious force robbing bugs of their natural sapience- began to emerge, the Pale King nobly worked with sages and scholars to find a way to contain it, for the good of the Kingdom (and its people).
In truth, the Pale King’s plan- and the rise of the Pale King in the first place- were built on the sacrifice of others, including his own children. To quote his only line in the game, from a flashback-
No cost too great. No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry suffering.
That’s him referring to the child he needs to enact his master plan that already failed before the game started. As for the children who did have a mind to think, will to break, or voice to cry suffering…
Remember that description about how Metroidvania levels can be any sort of biome or structure?
Yeah, each one of those broken masks represents a discarded child thrown to be forgotten in an abyss. There is an entire level where you are traversing over the corpses of your discarded siblings.
So yeah, the Pale King of Hallownest- who if you haven’t gathered by now has more than a few thematic parallels with the Warhammer 40k Emperor of Mankind- devised a plan that required breeding the perfect tool to basically serve as a sacrifice. He abandoned untold numbers of his children in the process of finding the one he could sacrifice, the titular Hollow Knight. But at least he built a memorial (that was cut/bugged content). A whole lot of bug blood, ultimately futilely spilled.
But it was to save free will and sapience, so its arguably for the greater good for the sort of moral ambiguity / necessary villainy that fans love to debate endlessly. Like Skyrim Stomcloaks versus Imperials, except with a threat to all sapience and civilization.
Except, again… the Pale King kind of buried the previous civilization through an act of godly unwilling sacrifice. To spoil / simply some stuff already raised, the infection that robs sapience is the re-emergence of the hive mind of the previous higher being, who lived through the dreams of a tribe of moths. Except this ‘living through’ is both literal and metaphysical- the higher being exists in the dream world and depended on the dreams / reverence of the tribe it was patron to.
So when the Pale King incarnated to become the Pale King, and proactively expanded Hallownest as far as he could, he converted that tribe as well. Who, in falling under the Pale King’s influence and individuality, forgot / abandoned their patron goddess, leaving her trapped and starving in the dream realm. Except- being a godly higher being herself- she was ultimately able to break through into the dreams of bugs, which is the source of the infection overtaking Hallownest.
Or, to put in other words- to build his Kingdom as the exclusive civilization of the region, the god-bug that was the Pale King sealed away a prior god-bug and doom it to death by starvation. Deific sacrifice, if you will.
And to reseal his prior victim, he bred and discarded a cavern of skulls of his own children.
And it didn’t even work.
The plot of Hollow Knight occurs because the Pale King’s plan failed. The Hollow Knight remains sealed, but the infection re-emerged. The Pale King ultimately fled, even as the infection tore down the intellectual (and sapient) scaffoldings of Hallownest.
Was sapience worth deific sacrifice? Was clinging onto that civilization worth countless child sacrifices? Would they have been worth it had the grand scheme not failed?
Is the subject of our existential dread, raised above, worth any cost of victimizing other, lesser, beings?
Cue ethical horror.
Justifiably Wrathful Gods
Hollow Knight has an interesting take on gods, or at least the higher beings that understandably worshipped as gods.
In the setting of Hollow Knight, all bugs are not created equal. It is not a particularly egalitarian setting. This is understandable as the variances amongst bugs far exceeds human divergence. Some bugs are small and fragile, others strong and massive. Some can think, some cannot even be uplifted. Some bugs are innately capable of feats of magic, magic of dreams or soul or silk, and others have no such gifts.
And then there are the higher beings, who are things apart. Capable of feats of magic no spell-casting bug could match. Capable of creating great and terrible things. But worst of all, capable of dominating the minds and will of the human-identifiable bugs around them. Even as they are beings that- in physical terms- a human foot could smash, they are also so far above the bugs around them that it understandable why they would be worshiped- and want to be worshipped- as gods.
Hollow Knight does not have a particularly positive view of such gods.
The best that is said of the Radiance, the old god of hollow knight, is that she was not malicious or expansionist in her era of bug tribes and a moth hive-mind. In the present, she is the source of a maddening and vengeful blight. The Pale King built a civilization, but the arrogance and self-gratification is shallower than the cavern of skulls, and that was before he fled and abandoned his followers to die. In Silksong, the kingdom of Pharloom is built around a religion both capable of great beauty and even greater cruelty, centered on the Grand Mother Silk who’s own daughters in spirit and silk betrayed her to seal her away in sleep and worse.
At no point in the series are you, the player, actively encouraged to side or align with the higher beings. There is no faction system, no secret ending, no alignment. Your ends may align, but only accidentally and never to a point of reconciliation. Higher Beings are beings that are- if not inherently harmful- naturally inclined to dominate others. They distort the world around them by their very nature, and those distortions- both by acts of will and by their absence- lead to great harm.
But the higher beings of Hollow Knight are not malevolent. They have understandable- if not acceptable- reasons for what they do.
Radiance acts for her survival. Her infection is both her reemergence and her revenge for having been sealed away without provocation. The Pale King acts for his kingdom. Having built a realm and civilization, he sacrificed his own family more than any of his subjects to try and end a collective threat. The Grand Mother Silk was betrayed by her daughters and sealed in her own silk by an entire religion. Her actions are to gain her own freedom, and understandable as her effort to reassert her agency and control after her trust was betrayed.
These higher beings, in other words, are very much ‘gods’ to the bugs beneath them, but if not relatable, at least empathizable to the human player audience. While human players are encouraged to identify with the lower bugs who most resemble the player characters and who most converse with us with human-like personalities, the reasons for the higher beings to affect the lower is understandably human as well. Even if their actions are morally wrong, they are understandable, in much the same way the harm they do the bugs is analogous to the harm the human players might do to bugs. Sometimes you stomp a bug out of malice, sometimes out of convenience, and sometimes merely as a consequence.
But this is where the incongruity sets in. Just as human players can associate themselves with the higher beings, we can associate with the lower beings as well, the sentient bugs with oh-so-human peculiarities and interests. And by analogy, just as the god-bugs are so far higher to the normal bugs we can understand why they’d dismiss or react angrily to those that wronged them… well, what about a higher-than-human being who is as high above us? What does it imply about us, if we are acting wrongly towards it? Would our loss be as dismissible as a cavern of skulls because we were so much lesser, or if it was for some grander cause? Or- worse- are we the targets of revenge for a wrong towards that higher being that we do not remember or understand?
Humans, as a species, do not appear in Hollow Knight. There are no direct narrative parallels between god-bugs and humans, or allusions to any sort of the Abrahamic God of an all-creator or morality-defining power.
But as a thematic parallel- something that can appeal to intuitive understandings without have to be explicit- Hollow Knight is tapping at something, crawling around in the back of the minds of people who would rarely want to confront what it means to make a higher power justifiably mad.
Cue theological unease.
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Part 3: Tying Themes Together With Minimalism and Music
This is the part of this review that makes me feel a little bad, because you can’t write a review like this without ruining the experience of a first-time discovery. Sorry about that, but you were warned.
Hollow Knight follows in the footsteps of the post-Dark Souls souls-like genre of having minimal direct storytelling, significant use of significant environmental storytelling, and using small amounts of flavor text or lore drops to flesh out a world through discovery. These aren’t directly related to the themes of bugs, but they do contribute to a broader community of fan engagement as fans compare notes and impressions to try and understand the setting.
For those less familiar, the Soulsborne genre pioneered by Japanese developer FromSoft was very influential in the industry in the 2010s, growing from the niche / cult classics of Demon Souls and Dark Souls to the AAA juggernauts of Bloodborne and Elden Ring. Aside from their notorious difficulty curve, proving there was an audience for higher game difficulty despite an industry trend towards lower difficulties in the name of accessibility, what FromSoft games also influenced was how the games delivered their narrative. For all that the original Dark Souls was once characterized to me as ‘The Legend of Zelda, except darker and hard-core,’ there were no companion character to explain what to do, no setting-establishing cinematics to establish elaborate geopolitical contexts, and no exposition dump characters to hand you the plot or plot twists as you progressed through the story. You could go through the entire game and quite reasonably not understand who you were killing, why you were doing it, or even if it was the right thing to do.
Instead, the Soulsborne series leaned far more into cryptic opening narrators, and more cryptic NPCs that had a few lines that established some aspect of characterization but not much else. Instead, the primary mechanisms of storytelling were environmental storytelling and flavor texts from discoverable items.
Item flavor text is often the most explicit narrator in these sorts of games, because the minimalist format makes them the most trustworthy of sources. In games where characters like Trustworthy Patches (he’s not) trick the player, or the meddling of gods are used to trick the populace (and the audience) as to their intentions, a lack of clear truth-teller often complicates the relative lack of information. Instead, items themselves become a narrative device, providing a bit of a lore. A trophy from a boss is a bit of insight into the boss, a mundane weapon may reveal some background lore of a nation that used it. Collectively, by tying together flavor texts that reference the same characters or places or key words used to related to shared concepts, these individual isolated pieces of information start to combine for a broader understanding. Due to how few words there are, you can often link even seemingly unrelated items if you can recognize the connecting key concepts whose words would otherwise not be used. This could be obvious, such as the name of a character or Kingdom, but it can often be more indirect, such as Hollow Knight rarely using the term ‘Pale’- especially when capitalized- except when referring to the Pale King. These [clusters] of key word usage are what organize and link lore tidbits.
In the FromSoft tradition, these flavor texts are basically always trustworthy, coming from an omniscient third-party narrator. While there is a good deal of Exact Words nuance, and what is there can feed a lot of theories, the nature of the medium is that most fan discussion falls apart if you don’t accept these out-of-setting descriptions as accurate. These are often the only sources of information, the primary sources if you will, and if you can’t accept them as a starting point, you can’t discuss much at all.
Hollow Knight… does not actually follow this approach, because Hollow Knight doesn’t have much of an inventory system. There are (extremely minor) item descriptions, but what Hollow Knight leans more towards in-universe lore stones, tablets or monuments carved into areas of the map to be read in-universe. For example, a public monument to the Hollow Knight in an abandoned city called the city of tears, where the monument in a dead kingdom praises the knight’s sacrifice for saving the eternal kingdom. In Silksong, there is a (now infamous) automated confession booth in a church which tells the petitioners that they must work for redemption. Such sources are filled with the explicit and implicit biases of the narrators, whether as obvious propaganda or raising personal opinions.
What these functions have in common, however, is how they tie the discovery of new lore to exploration and allow for the combination of small bits over time. In Hollow Knight, you can find monuments to the Pale King and his civilization heralding its glory, while on the untamed outskirts you can find the testaments of doubters and outsiders who either grudgingly accepted Hallownest’s domination, or refused entirely. Whether lore you find by looting an enemy, or lore you can only reach by pushing through enemies, both of these still require exploring and overcoming adversity just to get the preconditions of lore discussion.
Environmental story telling contributes something similar, but with even more space for (and burden of) interpretation.
In environmental storytelling, the positioning of key parts of the level architecture and characters / enemies in the game is used to provide non-verbalized narratives. This is something the Fallout series has long specialized in, using apocalypse logs and the arrangement of skeletons and items to convey the final moments of the apocalypse. Think of the skeletons of an adult and a child, with the adult having a 6-shot revolver with 4 bullets left. Or Elden Ring hiding a plot twist that the eponymous elden ring of Queen Marika the Eternal was not the first elden ring by hiding a mural behind an extremely late-game boss fight. No character or narrator actually verbalizes the actions or implications but leaves it to the player to find and recognize.
Hollow Knight doesn’t go into quite the extreme of Bethesda-style environmental storytelling, as it doesn’t have the sort of 3-dimensional set dressing or inventory medium to do so. This is part of why it uses the monument tablet style that it does, which is both lore-node and environmental story telling combined. The monument to the noble sacrifice of a knight whose sacrifice did not save the Kingdom has real Ozymandias, King of King, a lone monument in a place remembered as the city of tears, tells more than what the words say. A church who automates its castigations and demands for the faithful to toil says more about the callous exploitation of the leadership than just a dogma of virtuous redemption.
There is (far) more than these alone, of course. The stark disparities of the bug-filled wilderness and civilized areas tell their own narrative nuances. In Hollow Knight, the deep nest is a wild, untamed, and never truly settled regio that Hallownest at its peak never dominated. Compared to the wide-open hallways, large structures, and paved tunnels of the capital, the deep nest is tight, claustrophobic, and dark. Spiders cross skitter across the foreground and background, things never clearly seen or encountered. Ambush predators take the form of elsewhere harmless grubs that you seek to rescue, and massive centipedes crawl through the level as terrain obstacles in and of themselves. They are impervious to any weapon, show no reason, and both the literal and figurative enlightenment of the Pale King never reached here. Nor did civilization dominate the Mantis tribe, who fight out of pride and nature, but who go from dangerous obstacles to unthreatening observers once you earn their respect, even gesturing in respect as you pass but still accepting a challenge.
This is where Hollow Knights environmental storytelling shines (or darkens). What it lacks in that level of specificity of Bethesda body placement, or even FromSoft item descriptions, it more than makes up for in vibes.
And this is where we transition from not just narrative delivery, but sound design. Which I wish I had a better vocabulary to explain, but here we go.
Hollow Knight has a very good sense of song. Not just music, but song and poem in their written form, which is used in deliberate ways to build mystery, unease, and melancholy.
Take the opening of Hollow Knight, which delivers a poem. This is a first impression of the setting, meant to frame the player’s mindset as they start their path of discovery.
In wilds beyond they speak your name with reverence and regret, For none could tame our savage souls yet you the challenge met, Under palest watch, you taught, we changed, base instincts were redeemed, A world you gave to bug and beast as they had never dreamed.
With what I’ve told you already, you can see in it the allusions to the Pale King and his uplifting. It is the start of a poem that heralds and praises the Pale King (reverence), even as it sets the sets the somber undertone (and regret). It mythologizes and raises the Pale King above the lesser bugs, whose base instincts are ‘redeemed’- and thus somehow lesser- prior to the change and being tamed.
But the real hook- a foreshadowing of a conflict I already explained but a player wouldn’t begin to learn about for hours yet- is in the last line. ‘A world you gave to bug and beast as they had never dreamed,’ at first read, is a generous and magnanimous act. Upon (much) later learning of the nature of The Radiance, as a being who lived through dreams, and it takes a more sinister turn even if the speaker would not see it as such. Rather than ‘I will give you better than you could have dreamed of,’ as in surpassing dreams, the Pale Kings world replaces dreams. This is more explicit in the full version of the poem that can be found in the game files, but was never used in-game, whose later linens more directly allude to the conflict with between the Pale King and Radiance. (And, by being too obvious, give a bit too much of the plot away.)
This is the sort of deliberate two-impression approach, the initial first impression and then a new understanding after later revelations give new context, which characterizes a fair bit of Hollow Knight’s music. Hollow Knight is one of those series that supports an entire micro-genre of YouTube first reactions where composers do an (alleged) first-experience of music in isolation to try and identify the key themes, musical momentum, and tropes of the medium of music to try and identify artistic intent. And while I have a somewhat skeptical opinion of this micro-genre in general- it is hard to verify and easy for creators to fake- it is credible enough when it comes to Hollow Knight.
That is because the Team Chery composers were very deliberate with how they designed their music, just as they were deliberate with their written poetry or songs. Some of the deliberate uses of leitmotifs to build connections- including the background music linking the prior elegy to the Pale King even though he’s not identified by name- for non-explicit narrative links. The atmosphere of various ruins, such as the city of tears, is not just visual in terms of lighting or water effects but deliberately introduced by shifts in the musical instrumentation and transitions.. And then there are the [the different themes and compositional narratives revealed by the choice of boss fight chords and balance of instruments]( (https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOVEmfXEEAUB0YPkuVn1PGy0Mhdzwsrfa) noted in the musician-review genre.
But- and to tie it back together with some earlier points of interlocking themes- the music in Hollow Knight is not ‘just’ good music in isolation. It’s not like the use of classical music in space epics to give a sense of scale or majesty, but which has no real role or recognition in-universe. The role and rise of music in-setting has strong tie-ins to the themes of cultural sophistication and what elevates bugs from beasts. Art and culture are cultivated, not inherent, and the sort of music for ‘civilized’ foes often differs in vibes from the music for fighting madmen or beasts. This is background framing for most of Hollow Knight and the civilization of Hallownest but becomes even more explicit and even a major plot point of Silksong, which is a Kingdom built on song as much as with literal silk.
Music in the Hollow Knight setting, in other words, doesn’t just sound good. It is a deliberate, and exceptional, method of storytelling.
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Conclusion: Hollow Knight Is Good Because Its Elements Intuitively Reinforce
This will be a more rapid summary, because by god this is already long enough and I’m tired. In short, the various elements that have been discussed so far work as well as they do because they have non-obvious reinforcing synergies that make sense but won’t necessarily be obvious to most players.
In terms of pure gameplay, Hollow Knight’s use of bugs as the character medium works well with the tropes of the metroidvania genre. From the presentation tying to the familiar concept of ant farm, to small bugs having their own thematic parallels to the themes of exploration, isolation, and mystery, bugs are a suitably fragile protagonist for a suitably challenging game that skirts human-centric expectations.
As a low fantasy, bugs work well for much of the same reason as the rabbits of Watership Down, being small, fragile, and subject to powers beyond their understanding. The medium of bugs allows the link of a familiar and mundane world, that of bestial uncivilized bugs, and the magical hidden world, of magical bugs and god-bugs, which provide a contrast at smaller scale but not smaller stakes than a human-protagonist fantasy.
As a dark fantasy, the god-bugs as higher beings who both transcend the bugs humans are meant to identify with, but who have human motivations the players can understand as a fellow higher-sort of being, opens up non-explicit but troubling themes. By challenging the nature and value of sentience as a natural and even desirable thing, challenging utilitarian ethics by raising the great sacrifices of doomed efforts, and providing understandable if not righteous basis for higher beings (who humans can empathize with the desires of) to inflict suffering on lower beings (who humans are encouraged to identify with), the dark fantasy challenges a certain sort of human-centric assumptions. The darkness of the dark fantasy is in the existential dread, ethical horror, and the theological unease in a way few games do.
As a minimalist story telling narrative, Hollow Night uses exploration-based lore discoveries and non-explicit environmental and musical story telling to provide context it doesn’t do explicitly. While exploration-discovery and environmental story telling tie into the nature of the metroidvania, the environmental storytelling and deliberate use of music provides an indistinct style of delivery that encourages players to commune together and compare notes.
What makes Hollow Knight exceptional is not that it has any one of these elements, but that it deliberately uses all of these elements to lead into and support each other.
The character format of bugs leads into the gameplay of a metroidvania and the fragility of an animal-centric low fantasy. The low fantasy use of bug-gods leads into the themes of the dark fantasy. The elements of the dark fantasy are delivered by the exploration-linked minimalist lore drops and environmental story telling. The environmental story telling is supported, and in some cases linked, by the deliberate use of musical design and themes. The theme of music itself aligns with the theme of the civilized bugs who cultivate such culture, leading back to the low and dark fantasy elements.
It is good. It is deliberate. It’s attractively packaged together, and best of all to a casual consumer, it’s cheap, outperforming industry standards for a fraction of a typical sales price.
And I truly apologize if I have robbed anyone of the magic of experiencing it for the first time without preconditions, in case any of this review gave you a desire to try it for yourself.
That is all, and thanks for listening to my bug talk.
Click here for your mood music for this review.
This is a recommendation for some low-stress, feel-good, nostalgic history to play in the background of your next weekend(s) chores or driving. Consider it your invitation to live vicariously through the heights of excellence that can only be achieved in children’s video games.
TL;DR: If you like your video game nostalgia and have time during a drive or when doing chores, play Summoning Salt videos like you would have a sports channel playing in the background. Mostly to listen to, sometimes to pay attention to for hype moments, and mostly pleasant ambience.
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Part 1: What Is This Post About?
This post is unapologetic nerd-out culture of video game speed runs.
I doubt anyone here is unfamiliar with video games. They may not be your thing, but you know of them, in the same way that someone who is not a sports fan can know something about football. You may even have seen or passed by a tournament playing out, where players face off in competitive games in a typical elimination format. You may even know a bit of e-sports, the professionalized gaming leagues typically done for team-vs-team shooters or real time strategy games.
Video game speed running is to e-sports what time trial sprints are to team sports. It is a fundamentally individual endeavor, with no outside interference. It is something one can solely do on their own. However, it is also extremely competitive. You may not be fighting with or interfered by a rival, but you are both in direct competition with not only others, but yourself, for beating the best record.
On an individual level, speed runs can loosely broken into four general phases. You select the game you intend to race. You select the rules you run within- rules such as allowing various types of glitches, or requiring only core story or 100% completion, and so on. You run the game, aiming to be as quick as you can. And then you track and record the effort, creating the timing and the proof which can be compared with others.
But collectively, speed running communities band together to do a lot more than that. What starts to make the community a community rather than a bunch of individuals is the degrees of collaboration and feedback that goes into planning a run. Fans will strategize and theory craft the best way to approach a run, such as identifying the critical requirements and in order to not waste time in unnecessary distractions. Forums of players will share the results of mechanics sleuthing, trying to figure out why an interaction in a game works some way and to see if a nuance can be turned into a few seconds advantage. And finally, of course, is the community tracking and cheering, trying to identify who is the best and getting the internet accolades when you do well.
Video game speed runs are old enough as a format to have started going through the orders of media coverage. Media coverage in this context isn’t in the sense of ‘mainstream media,’ but rather the degrees of separation from the act and how it is discussed.
A first-order speed run media is a recording of the speed run. It is not the act, but the presentation of the act without further discussion.
For example, Super Mario 64, a game that some readers may have spent dozens of hours on as a kid, can be beaten in about 6 minutes. This speedrun video is first-order speed run media.
A second-order media is media that discusses the recording. Given the nature of the medium, and how modern monetization model typically work in the Twitch.tv format where people can watch the runners make their attempts live, sometimes speed runners comment on efforts during the run itself. However, since speed runs often entail heavy focus, second-order media is often commenting on a recording.
For example, the Zelda game speed runner bewildebeest has videos where he inserts commentary over the video itself, sometimes elaborating and sometimes joking. This sort of media can provide insights in the difference between, say, a Majora’s Mask 1 hour speed run, and the considerable differences for a 6-hour 100% speedrun of the same game. The difference between these two speed runs is the rule set implications between ‘just get to the ending credits’ and ‘get to the ending credits getting all the unlockables,’ which creates 5 hours worth of playtime- and commentary- difference. It is the commentary that is second-order media.
A third-order media is media that discusses the discussion of the record. In other words, meta-discussion. This can be done seriously, such as critiquing someone’s critique of a speed.
(Well, maybe not so seriously. That specific clip is part of the memorable ‘Alpharad vs. Pchal Saga’, in which a youtube internet funny man went as far as an entire pokemon nuzlockee villain arc after one too many reaction videos by another youtuber, PokemonChallenges, a dedicated nuzluck reaction channel. Unironically good comedy if you’ve got time.)
But back to orders of speed run media, third-order media really does lean towards parody. Parodies don’t have to literally discuss other people’s commentary, but parody is, by its nature, a commentary on the coverage.
For example, the sub-culture of Nintendo speed runners was influenced in 2009 by youtuber ScottFalco’s animated parody, A TOTALLY LEGIT Wind Waker Speedrun Cartoon (WORLD RECORD). It is a silly cartoon parody of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, a game notable for its cell-shaded art style that allowed (and was used for) cartoonish comedic effect. The TOTALLY LEGIT speedrun cartoon is filled with the sort of animated absurdities and pop-culture references that passes for your totally not my humor. Even the name itself is poking fun at the then (and still) common speedrun trope of people posting speed runs with titles in ALL CAPS and insisting on legitimacy because, well, take your guess.
ScottFalco’s parody is just a silly little cartoon, until you realize that the parody actually does allude to real mechanics that look just as absurd when side by side. If you’ve ever wondered why someone would want to motorboat Link, and you’re not a degenerate, third-order media can explain why. Scott isn’t the only speedrunner animated parody either. Around the same time, youtuber TerminalMontage released the animated Something About Super Mario 64 ANIMATED SPEEDRUN. It is only 2 minutes, but when you compare it to the 6-minute real speedrun from earlier… well, it rings true.
(Disclaimer: TerminalMontage was my gateway to speedrunning communities during the COVID lockdowns. He has a host of animated speedrun parodies, to the degree that Speedrunner Mario and Speedrunner Link are reoccurring characters with their own mythos. If you need a way to waste some time, or amuse small children…)
Enter Fourth Order Media
Back (again) to orders of media, and the nominal subject of this post.
Summoning Salt is a fourth-order speedrun media creator. He creates media that discusses the media that discusses the media of the record. Or, discusses the discussion of the meta.
Or- to put it in yet other words- he’s a historian of sorts. He organizes, by topic and chronology, the history of speed runs. He makes his living not by doing the act of speed running (1st order), or commenting on speed runs (2nd order), or making silly parodies (3rd order). Hiss full-time job now entails researching, organizing, and presenting records of the records of video gaming.
Summoning Salt is not the first fourth-order video game commentator. One of the earlier examples was Andrew Growen, who wrote the Empires of Eve by Andrew Growen history series of the EVE Online MMO.
Which, tangent, is really interesting in its own right. For a MMO set around anarcho-capitalism IN SPACE, there is drama, intrigue, and interstellar wars for market share. There are international alliances between gooners and Russians against an authoritarian hyper-centralized centrally-planned economy ran by an American militarist as all compete for control over the keys to power. Which honestly sounds way more interesting than what I’m talking about here. If you want the short version, here’s the 50 minute public talk at EVE Fanfest 2016.
Which I realize may seem more exciting than something about speedruns. But I promised you some nostalgic feel-goodisms, and Summoning Salt provides.
But who is the youtuber who I’ve spent a 1000-word essay and a half not describing yet?
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Part 2: Summoning Salt History
Summoning Salt himself is a nobody to somebody YouTube success story.
Summoning Salt’s start on YouTube in 2016 was as a speed runner for the old Mike Tyson Punch-Out game. This was an incredibly niche and minor channel, with only a couple hundred subscribers. He wasn’t bad at the game by any means, but there’s only so much audience for a game older than the N64, which was the formative gaming experience for the first main YouTube generation. Given how the YouTube economics work, he was making nothing, and it was a strictly hobby experience.
Now, however, Summoning Salt is a 2-million subscriber youtuber whose videos reliably draw in millions of views within a year. This sort of scale is nothing compared to the titans of the platform, but it’s also enough for it to be his full-time job… which it is.
Summoning Salt’s breakout started with his first speed run history video, in January 2017. World Record Progression: Mike Tyson was the transition point where his videos went dozens or hundreds of views to thousands. At this time of writing, nearly a decade later, it marks a transition point between older videos that now have the fame-boosted level of sub-30k views, and the video game histories that routinely break 1 million views, now often getting a million within a year.
Summoning Salt has talked about his channel growth since, notably in his 1 Million Subscriber video back in 2021. He is open that he was inspired by another Mike Tyson speedrunner, Sinister1 (who had 4k subscribers to Salt’s 1 Million at the time), discussing the evolution for a specific character strategy during a stream. Sinister1’s video was just a face cam recording of a two hour stream, verbally relaying the history of records since the 80s. However, it lacked the video editing Summoning would use to condense two hours to twenty minutes.
Summoning Salt received internet kudos on forums and social media, which convinced him to keep trying. From 2017 on, the channel focused on what was initially called the World Record Progression series, focusing on classic games like Super Metroid, Mario Kart 64, and other games. This teething stage was undoubtably a bit of algorithm chasing, going for speed of more and shorter uploads, often with less quality and polish than more recent efforts.
In 2018, ‘modern’ Summoning Salt started. This was when Summoning started using the song ‘Home – We’re Finally Landing’, the song recommended at the start of this post, as his distinctive leitmotif. The opening chords, which are retro and thus appeal to those earliest days of video games, are sometimes called the speedrunner’ s anthem due to its association with him.
It wasn’t just the music that evolved. The naming scheme of videos gradually shifted from ‘World Record Progression’ to variants of ‘The History of [Subject] Records.’ Videos gradually became consistently longer, going from less than 30 minutes to over, reflecting more research. Editing likewise improved, even as the pace of updates slowed.
By this point, however, Summoning Salt had built momentum in the YouTube economy and in gamer pop culture, consistently growing. He hit 1 million subscribers around 2021, is in the 2 million tier in 2025.
At this time, Summoning Salt has published over 50 video-documentaries. While older ones are in the 20-minute range, more recent ones are easily in the 1-2 hour range. This makes Summoning Salt Videos very much something to listen to in the background, more as a podcast with visuals for when you want to see clips he’s discussing. Or as a sports channel you have on the TV.
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Part 3: What Helps Summoning Salt Succeed?
Rather than go in depth into any one video, I want to highlight five elements that might make Summoning Salt videos more interesting to the Motte Audience. These are more meta-context and mechanics of approach, if you like that sort of thing.
Element One: Combining History and Technical Sophistication
On a purely mechanical level, Summoning Salt does an impressive job in filtering large amounts of repetitive data into an enjoyable format.
On the history side, this is a necessity. You have to in order to distil decades of material into tens of minutes, but it is still commendable. As a communicator you have to draw the line between relevant and irrelevant history, and as a story teller you have to choose the entertaining stuff that is still accurate enough to give context. This also means knowing when to share information now, and when to withhold it for later.
What makes Summoning Salt more impressive than a mere historian is that he also has to convey a large amount of technical information as well. High level video game speed runs often entail identifying and applying incredibly niche game mechanical interactions for marginal advantages. We’re talking things like exploiting the angle of plane and movement interactions to shave fractions of a second on a run, or leveraging how a game internally tracks race progression in order to exploit reset conditions. A significant part of the world record progressions come from speed runners figuring out how to overcome some technical obstacle, or finally achieving a theorized mechanical opportunity before anyone else.
Summoning Salt successfully balances the needs of historical context and technical depth, and uses them to power the narrative for a constant sense of progression. While his videos are long, they are exceptionally well paced due to how he packages and presents the information for you.
Element Two: Research and History
Summoning Salt is making history in a most literal sense, in that he is making a historical record of things that would otherwise be lost to time.
Since his transition to video game historian, Summoning Salts has consistently improved in his thoroughness when conducting research in topics. This is partly prompted by his earlier algorithm-chasing history videos, where he made some embarrassing mistakes / misinformation in games he personally had no experience in. As his channel matured, he has spent more time looking for recording, conducting interviews with speed runners and building archives of screen shots, video clips, and graphics that he uses in his videos.
This is, unironically, Research in the sense of academic research, using the sort of techniques that graduate students might in a thesis or paper. It doesn’t have the style of ivory tower academia, and it isn’t bound to the same rigor per see, but this is absolutely a deliberate, purposeful, and structured pursuit of knowledge.
It is also a real contribution to the historical record. An irrelevant history, perhaps, but preserving irreplaceable things before they are lost. Many of the games that Summoning Salt publishes on are games where the oldest parts of the speed running community have been lost to time. Old players moved on, old internet archives degraded, videos lost for whatever reason. When these things are lost, they are lost for good.
This means that Summoning Salt’s videos may be the most enduring history of these speed running shenanigans when the primary sources fade with time. His videos, and the fact they are so popular relative to others (and sparked a similar genre), may be the primary (secondary) sources used in the future for anyone interested in this topic. Summoning Salt isn’t just writing about history, but preserving things- irrelevant as they may be- for the future.
Element Three: Music and Editing, and We’re Finally Landing
Summoning Salt found and popularized the perfect song for nostalgic video gamers.
As a video essay maker, Summoning Salt has gotten consistently better over time. In the history section, he referenced that his first history video was inspired by a streamer who gave in depth history during a live stream. That streamer never used any real editing techniques. Summoning does, and over time has gotten better.
Editing isn’t just about smoothing the delivery, but it can also be a part of a story telling medium. Summoning ‘gets this’ in a way many people don’t, for the same reason he’s able to parse overwhelming data on history and technical specifics to deliver a narrative. When you listen to a history of video as a pod cast, this means using the right kind of music for the right time of tone, managing the word tempo for cadence, and transitioning between graphics. But it can also mean making your editing go for the narrative pitch at a visual level, such as selective zoom-ins, strategic blur-outs to maintain a mystery from being revealed too early, and so on.
I won’t claim the video editing is out of this war, but Summoning Salt’s leitmotif, We’re Finally Landing, might as well be. I’m not a musically inclined person, so the best I can do is say that the use of synthesizer cord, rhythm, and artificial tinniness is what strikes me as ‘retro gaming.’ It’s the sort of thing you might associated with a 80’s era arcade, video gaming before modern 3D gaming kicked off with the N64, and so appeals to a retro-history before the history of many of the games he's talking about. We’re Finally Landing is pure nostalgia bait for people who enjoyed older games, and even for the people who don’t it gives the audio-thematic vibes of video game history that works so well in the story telling format. Its chords match what I’d associate with optimistic, successful, but also a bit tired- whether that’s because of age or of hard-won success.
And it is also distinct enough as a leitmotif that it has come to be associated with Summoning Salt’s speedrunning series. Which is a good parallel with the rest- it’s not that no other video game 4th-order video game writer uses video editing or even music, but few pair them as well.
Element Four: The Unapologetic Sports Narrative
I raised at the start a metaphor linking speed running to sports. This was not an accident, but a key part of why Summoning Salt’s narratives work. He is absolutely cribbing from the well-worn genre of sports documentaries.
Summoning Salts’ history isn’t delivering a mess of facts. It is organized to tell a story, and that story is of people competing to be the best. He uses many- though hardly all- the tropes of genre. He has challenger narratives, underdog stories of protagonists no one thinks has a chance, defending champions trying to hold their titles against the next generation. He shows people responding in real time to winning world records, the excitement and break between pure focus and celebration.
This, in turn, lets him use the rhetorical tricks and techniques to build audience investment. He will not lie, but he’s not beyond obfuscating some facts or framing to imply a level of emotional investment that the protagonist may not have felt, like a loser’s congratulatory message being a show of bitter-sweet good sportsmanship. He’s a particular fan of a sort of progression chart which is used to track speed run progression, and then zooming in make small gains seem huge. The horse racing of who’s ahead at the moment is central to, well, racing, and speed runs are a race of sorts.
One element of sports genre that Summoning Salts does not employ is toxic rivalries. Arguably the least realistic part of the narrative, but there are no villain stock characters in these stories. There are not sabotage campaigns or whisper narratives to disqualify legitimate winners. It’s all in good fun, the flame wars are glossed over in favor of compromise, and the speed running community is presented as a wholesome community, not a toxic one.
Is it totally unvarnished realism? No. But it’s not trying to be either, any more than it’s trying to deconstruct the characters. The embrace of the sports narrative is what it is trying to be, and that includes the sort of trite cliches and warm-and-fuzzies of inspirational quotes that make it a cheesy feel-good experience.
Which leads to the final merit-
Element Five: Unapologetic Celebration of Excellence
Summoning Salt’s videos are unreservedly positive about the people who contribute to the speed running community, and that above all else is why I think his channel took off. It is optimism in the face of difficulty, and overcoming adversity on one's own merits.
Speed running is obviously a contest of excellence on the part of the player. This is where it is most like the excellence of sports. There is excellence of control on the part of the player, the sort of minute motor control and timing that allow the player to control the avatar into feats of acrobatics or maneuvering. It is the excellence of the player’s ability to strategize, to recognize optimizations. It is also the excellence of managing or leveraging RNG, with world records often hinging on player RNG and the world-record holders maximizing the odds and minimizing risks that could ruin a world-beating run. This requires grit of its own sort, to sit down and keep trying after hundreds or even thousands of failures in order to get that best RNG.
But speed running is also a genre of collaborative excellence, in ways where it is a multidisciplinary activity in ways most sports aren’t. A football player doesn’t need to understand the theory of physics to learn to handle the ball, but world-winning speed runs often have to engage in exceptional code sleuthing to understand why mechanics work the way they do and how to leverage it. The player at the controls and the players theory-building, code-diving, and developing proof of concepts often aren’t the same people. In fact, sometimes the brute force approach of many people playing the same game uncovers things that the ‘elite athlete’ speed runners don’t know, but then adopt wholesale.
To get what I mean, there is a memorable sequence in the opening of ‘The Quest to Beat abnew317’, a Mario Kart 64 speed runner, in which a top tier speed runner is dominating the leader board. This is two decades after the game’s release, and so the speed run optimization is pretty much a solved problem that can only be marginal improved through player performance and RNG. Then, one day, a random no-name nobody had heard of sends a message claiming to have a new shortcut and asking how to send proof.
This is probably futile, the sort of claim made countless times and variously false or outdated and wouldn’t help… except this one is true. The provider is a tool-assisted-speedrun expert (someone who programs a computer to play the game with a precision humans can’t) wanting to share their find. The documentary shows the twitch stream of the speed runner’s expression change from skepticism, to confusion, to realization as a technique for a new world record pace is realized.
And then it happens again, the very next day, because someone watching the stream had discovered the same general technique twenty years prior when playing with their friends. They’d just never brought it up because they thought the speed running community knew about it already but had reasons not to do it. In a competitive context where world records can change hands by margins of a third of a second, a random casual contributed a shortcut worth 30 seconds.
Summoning Salts delights in searching for and sharing these sorts of contributions, commending all involved. Part of this is the sports narrative framing, part of this is his own past as a speed run passion player, but there’s a clear sense of joy that’s rare in [current year].
Summoning Salt videos are unapologetically happy about video games, and the people who play them, and the people who engage with people who play them. There are no snide jobs fat gamers, people without real jobs, or the childishness of playing or watching others play games from one’s children. There are no efforts to deconstruct the premise, to vilify or tear down people on a personal level, or engage Serious Issues.
There is, in other words, no culture war.
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Part Four: The Influence of Summoning Salts on the Genre
It turns out, a moderately successful niche youtuber and inspire emulators and copy cats. Who’d have thought?
Once you go down the speed running rabbit hole, you start to look at games differently. And once you start looking into fourth-degree media influencers, you start to see how they influence the community and shape the environment around them. As people become aware of media like Summoning Salts’ documentaries, it changes how they behave in the sort of things that might be in a speed run documentary.
In the speed running community itself, it’s hard to quantify the impact Summoning Salt has had. There are no good metrics I’ve seen to suggest he has had an industry-level shift in viewer engagements or what have you. There are anecdotal examples of people who claim to have entered speed running after seeing his videos, including allegedly at least one record holder, but there’s no real data and unlikely ever to be such. At best, Summoning Salts has raised exposure of the community more broadly, raising it from incredibly niche to merely still very niche.
What is more visible is the niche of video game World Record Documentary genre. In the last either years since Summoning Salt started taking off, but especially in the last four when he was already past the 1 Million metric, a host of other, smaller youtubers have tried to follow suit with similarly structured video essays. There is a World Record Progression playlist of such YouTube videos, and of various quality.
There have also been branching media from speed runs to less speedy challenge runs, where instead of racing for time, there are special conditions. Perhaps the most infamous is the five and a half hour documentary on the Mario 64 ‘A Button Challenge’, i.e. how little jumping it takes to beat Super Mario 64, a platformer game designed around jumping a lot. This is the challenge which has made memes of speedrunner Mario entering parallel universes, cloning, and possibly cosmic rays a part of the subculture lexicon. There has quite possibly been more graduate-level research and analysis put into how to pick apart this one challenge than went into creating the first 3D platformer of the N64.
Most broadly, Summoning Salt has helped normalize a sort of video game nostalgia / retrospective genre that certainly pre-dated him, but certainly has adopted elements of his exhaustive analysis since him. Whether it’s the 2CPhoenix Kingdom Hearts Breakdown that reviews levels in exhaustive detail at up to an hour a stage, retrospectives on The HALO Trilogy that include not just the game but corporate contexts behind games, there is a clear market- niche but there- for people interested in long-form essays on the sort of childhood games they no longer play, to a level of detail that goes beyond lore videos or so on.
But most recently, there’s been this endorsement to you.
If you’re still reading this… congratulations! You may be the sort of stickler for nerdiness and overly exhaustive detail that could enjoy a history of video game challenges. You might not even have known that about yourself, if you only started reading because of where this was posted or who pointed you to it.
If so, consider this your endorsement to start with Summoning Salt.
It’s free, there’s no cost besides opportunity costs of not watching something else, and let’s be honest- you weren’t going to be setting any world records on your games anyway. But that’s no reason you can’t enjoy other people’s triumphs from a good story teller, and this would make fine background audio on your drives or during your chores.
It’s not like you should be working right now anyway… right?