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shielddrake · 4 years

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Psychonauts: Setup and Payoff Done Well (If Not Perfectly)

So about a year ago I posted a long lecture about how Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts 3 had major problems in the story department when it came to setup and payoff. I basically said that Final Fantasy XV had lots of scenes with payoff that were not set up very well and Kingdom Hearts 3 had some excellent moments that set up story elements but never followed through on them. And while I think some of those issues have been addressed with some of the DLC released for both games (I reserve my right to be a little salty Episodes Aranea, Luna, and Noctis were canceled) I still stand by my statement that these games have big problems with this.

During the past year, I have received a couple of comments regarding my position on this, ranging from “Can you give a good example of setup and payoff?” to “Well, if you’re so smart, why don’t you come up with a better example?” And I thought, well, what kind of game would be a good example of excellent use of setup and payoff? What game or series would I say does the job so much better than any writer has or does, video game or otherwise?

And then, the middle of a repeat playthrough I always do before a game’s sequel comes out, it came to me:

Now Psychonauts has been out since 2005, so a spoiler warning might seem a little silly here, but I think a lot of gamers have been playing it for the first time since the sequel was announced, so just in case: Major spoilers for the original Psychonauts game under the cut.

Whenever someone tries to argue whether or not video games can be considered art, one of the first games that comes to my mind is Psychonauts, and not just because of its amazing aesthetics. It has some of the best storytelling, script writing, level design, music, voice acting, and art direction I have ever seen. This game is possibly one of the best video games I have every played, despite the flaws that it does have (I’m looking at you, Meat Circus), and it is easily on my list of top ten favorite video games. Is it really any surprise that Psychonauts 2 reached its crowd-funding goal of over $3,000,000 in about a month? And yes, I admit that I am one of those backers, just to put out there any bias I know I have.

But this isn’t meant to be a review of Psychonauts.

I replayed Psychonauts a few months ago with the idea of the first game being fresh in my mind when the sequel comes out, which is supposed to be sometime this year of 2020. I was absolutely inundated with examples of effective setup and payoff as I played, so it seemed like the obvious choice to go over how this story-telling technique can be used not only well, but also to the point where it’s almost like there are far too many examples.

Honestly, I could go on and on and on about setup and payoff in Psychonauts’ story, but for our purposes here most of the focus is going to be on just three big things that are really important to the main storyline: Linda the Lungfish, bunnies and meat, and Raz’s dad.

One thing about setup and payoff is that the setup has to actually happen in a way that the audience, in this case the player, can’t miss it. There are several moments in the game that Linda is mentioned, the first time being in the opening cutscene, where Bobby teases Dogen about the monster at the bottom of the lake. You can’t miss the setup when it is thrown in your face that way.

But that’s not the only time we get references to some sort of lake monster. Before going into Basic Braining, the first official level of the game, if Raz talks to Mikhail, the adorable Russian psychic mentions a “giant, hairless bear” in the woods, asking if Raz has seen it and wanting to wrestle with it. Now, it’s not said for certain if Mikhail is talking about Linda or if he’s just referring to the telekinetic bears you meet later on, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it’s supposed to be the former.

The first time the player heads for the lake, Elton will run up to Raz and mention the “brain-eating fish” that supposedly lives there. Well, now we’ve got both a mention of the lake monster and the fact that it goes after brains. Hmm, sound familiar in retrospect?

Optionally, Raz can also talk to Elton about the fish being spooked by something in the lake.

Although only the first lake interaction with Elton is mandatory (whether it’s when you go to see Milla or before then), both of these moments act as reminders of the setup of the lake monster established in the opening cutscene.

And then there’s the scene in the woods between Raz and Lili on the way to Sasha Nein’s Secret Lab. Raz says that something was watching him, a shadowy being that smelled like pond scum.

I absolutely love Lili’s face in this scene, by the way.

We kind of get distracted by their interactions and Lili basically trolling Raz, but that’s part of what makes good writing. The scene is foreshadowing something without making it overly overt…not that the game is subtle every time, but the point still stands. This game does a great mix of the obvious and the subtle.

The game also has optional dialogue with Coach Oleander and Raz reporting on a UPE (Unidentified Paranormal Entity), which he suspects is aquatic in nature. And Oleander seems oddly insistent that the lake monster does not exist, that it’s just a camp fable.

Finally we get to the Brain Tumbler Experiment. Needless to say, it’s in this level that a lot of the elements come together. We come across a demon in the form of a big, shadowy figure that spits out a diving helmet. Again, does that sound familiar at all?

There is a minor mention of the lake monster in the mental vault below the spooky thorn tower (more on that near the end of this post), but other than that there’s a break in the game where the lake monster isn’t mentioned for a while. We don’t get another explicit scene about it until Raz and Lili meet Linda properly at the edge of Lake Oblongata…where Lili gets kidnapped, we go through the boss sequence under the lake, and enter Linda’s brain of Lungfishopolis. And the final payoff occurs with the Hideous Hulking Lungfish transporting us to Thorney Towers and giving Raz her real name, Linda.

Now would any of that be nearly as rewarding if we had never heard of the Hideous Hulking Lungfish of Lake Oblongata prior to her official appearance? Every single player would just have visible question marks hanging over their heads if Linda just showed up out of nowhere. Deus Ex Lungfish, anyone? But that’s not what the developers did. They spent plenty of time building up to Linda, making her reveal not only make sense but also weaving her into the story so that her reveal is more than satisfying.

There is just one thing I’ve always been curious about, a sort of chicken-and-egg scenario. Did the legend of the lake monster start because genetically-altered Linda showed up and starting attacking campers? Or did the legend already exist and Oleander used it as an excuse to write off any “sightings” of the monster? Any ideas?

Moving on from Linda, we come to the imagery of meat and bunnies.

Without knowing the full ending of the game, most players would think that it’s a bit strange I would stick meat and bunnies together in the same category. Sadly, the connection between these things is a bit on the morose side, and they are actually first introduced at the same time as well.

When I first played Psychonauts, the first time I actively thought about bunnies and meat being related somehow was during the Brain Tumbler Experiment, but that’s actually not the first time the game introduces these. Anyone else notice that Basic Braining has figments of meat cleavers, butcher knives, a pig, a duck, and a fox? I could logic that a meat cleaver and butcher knife fit with the whole army theme, but a pig, duck and fox?

Kind of odd animals would be included in all this, especially animals that are either butchered or hunted. At least that’s what I thought at first.

It is in Oleander’s mind that we first see the “meaty plant” that Lili saves from being squashed by Raz. It’s also here that we see bunnies hopping around the snowfield with the Gatling gun. This early in the game, is this important or just set dressing? I’m ashamed to admit, but I thought it was just weird set dressing when I first played, but it makes more sense as the story goes on.

Turns out it’s important all right, since the next time we see both meat and bunnies is in the Brain Tumbler Experiment. “Mr. Bun” seems like a rather random animal to have in Raz’s brain, but then again bunnies showed up in Basic Braining as well. Is there a connection somehow? Sasha tells Raz that an animal may represent a primal fear or memory.

He’s right on the latter, although a player going through the game for the first time might not know why (and I admit, on my first playthrough, I didn’t). And there’s more meat and meaty plants here. Raz doesn’t directly mention these (at least he didn’t during my most recent playthrough, to my recollection) but they are pretty obvious, to say the least.

So that’s two things connecting the Brain Tumbler Experiment and Basic Braining. Is this a normal occurrence? Maybe these things just show up in brains? Lili does mention she had been dreaming of meat plants, after all, both in Basic Braining and in the cutscene before Raz enters Milla’s mind. Maybe it’s a primal need for meat? Don’t tell the vegans I said that. The Vegan Police would be very unhappy with the final level of this game.

After the Brain Tumbler Experiment is finished, we know that the brain interference was coming from Oleander, but it’s not explained why there are meat and bunny references up until that point. There’s actually no mention of either at all in the subsequent levels until the last. Lungfishopolis, The Milkman Conspiracy, Gloria’s Theater, Waterloo World, and Black Velvetopia are devoid of all meat or bunnies, which possibly leads the player to forget about the whole thing for a while (and when I say “the player,” I really mean me).

In fact, we don’t see any sign of either until the final level of the game, Meat Circus. And, oh boy, Meat Circus.

Yeah, it should come as no surprise that I hate this level. I hated it so much that on my first playthrough of this game in 2005, I rage quit and didn’t look at Psychonauts for several days. I eventually went back to it and beat it, but let’s say I was more than a little relieved that they lowered the difficulty for it in subsequent releases.

But I digress.

We reach Meat Circus, the combined consciousness of Raz and Little Oly, and the payoff of all the meat and bunny stuff we’ve seen thus far. We have Frankenstein-esque meat bunnies, platforms made of steaks, rail grinding on bones, trapeze and trampolines of bones and skin, and of course the dark versions of both Raz’s and Oleander’s fathers, who not only are evil but also become a giant two-headed monster. When Sasha said that problems seem larger in your head than in real life, I should have known it would be taken more literally in this game.

I mean, is it really any shock that Oleander is carrying some trauma after seeing his bunny friend be decapitated by his own father? It’s never said how old Little Oly is, but considering his behavior he is clearly younger than Raz, so this happened when he was in the single digits of age. That’s really not something a little kid should see. That’s just asking for PTSD.

Anyway, back to setup and payoff, which is pretty obvious at this point. We have plenty of mentions of both bunnies and meat throughout the game, leading to the final boss that is both creepy and downright terrifying. Not only does this boss conclude Oleander’s trauma with his father being a butcher and killing his favorite bunny, but it also allows Raz to defeat his inaccurate mental image of his own father. Both of them are able to move forward from that point on. Defeating this monstrosity acts as the ultimate payoff and conclusion for both Raz and Oleander.

Speaking of Raz’s dad…

Raz’s relationship with his father at the start of the game is strained, to say the least. When Raz goes to learn Levitation from Milla, the very mention of his father showing up to take him home from the camp makes him nervous. Not the best sign here, and his other comments regarding his dad don’t make it much better.

Once Raz reaches cadet ranks ten and twenty, we get cutscenes of Raz talking with Cruller in tutorials for Pyrokinesis and Telekinesis. During Pyrokinesis, Raz first mentions that his father, Augustus, hates psychics and trained Raz in acrobatics to the point where Raz worried his dad was trying to kill him. During Telekinesis, Raz reveals his suspicions that his father is psychic as well. The memory vault we see of Raz running away from home only reinforces Raz’s perspective.

We’re led to believe that Raz’s statements are the truth, which is a logical conclusion since he’s the game’s protagonist, but the end of the game shows otherwise. At first I thought this meant Raz was simply an unreliable narrator, but that turns out to not be the whole story. While Raz is an unreliable narrator in that there are a lot of things he just doesn’t know, it’s not malicious in any way. Raz simply doesn’t know that he father really does care about him. That’s the magic of using the third-person limited point of view.

Up to this point, we’re led to believe that Augustus is a neglectful father at best, but it turns out that Augustus does love his son. He’s just apparently really bad at showing it. The very fact that he is the only one able to break into Raz’s “hard to penetrate skull” shows that there is a deeper relationship between them. And Augustus is clearly distraught that his own son sees him as a monster in his mind. Poor Augustus.

I think that a lot of the interactions between father and son in this game was cut out due to both budget and time constraints, because I feel like there is more to be said with these two than what we get in the final product. (I’m thinking we’re going to get more of that in the sequel, but that is up in the air at this time.) This doesn’t bother me too much though, since we do get effective enough setup and payoff that it doesn’t seem like it comes out of nowhere. They do finally talk to each other and express their concerns, mending their relationship…in the middle of a battle with a two-headed father monster.

Clearly these two have communication issues. The morale of this story is that it’s important to talk to one each other.

And this is certainly paid off in the end cutscene of the game. When Sasha says they want Raz to come along to rescue Truman Zanotto, Raz doesn’t just run off with them again. He turns around and gives his father puppy-dog eyes, clearly asking for permission to go this time. And Augustus not only gives it, he gives Raz his blessing and encourages him to “show them all.” Contrast this to the backstory of the game, where Augustus flat out forbids Raz from having anything to do with the Psychonauts and Raz running away in secret.

And if that’s not satisfying use of setup and payoff, I don’t know what is.

That’s not to say that all of the setup and payoff in Psychonauts is perfect. To be fair, there are times when the setup can be missed, and therefore the payoff that comes later can be confusing. The most obvious example of this is the nightmare that attacks you in The Milkman Conspiracy. When I first played the game all those years ago, my first thought was, “What in the world? What is this thing and where did it come from?”

Of course, on subsequent playthroughs, I did find the demon room in Milla’s mind, showing the same nightmares she had caged away. This is the difference between a sane mind and an insane one. Milla has all her demons under control (although notice that they have not gone away) while Boyd’s run amok because he has no way of mentally dealing with them, since his brain is a little bit busy with this, well, milkman conspiracy. The nightmares that attack in Boyd’s brain make more sense after I saw the ones in Milla’s brain. In this case, the payoff wasn’t bad since the nightmare miniboss wasn’t a bad fight, but context in the form of the setup made the payoff better.

Other times the setup can be missed? The other big one is the resolution of all the campers’ storylines. Unless the player spends time going around camp throughout the game and seeing the interactions the other campers have with each other, the little scene you have with each one once they are re-brained won’t make a lot of sense. The love triangle between J.T., Elka and Nils? J.T. and Chops having conflict about J.T. abandoning his best friend for his new girlfriend? Crystal and Clem attempting suicide to become more powerful? Chloe thinking she’s an alien? Maloof basically becoming a mob leader with Mikhail as his right-hand man? Elton and Milka’s blossoming love? …Just to name a few? Yeah, the context of all that is missed if the player doesn’t bother to talk to the other campers throughout the game, but I attribute that more to the player than the game. The developers accounted for this in the story, so it’s more the player didn’t look for the setup rather than Double Fine just not bothering to include it.

That’s just some examples of setup and payoff that I feel are probably the most important to the main storyline of Psychonauts. They are far from the only examples. Really far from it. Oh boy, could I go on about the scenarios of setup and payoff that happen in this game.

Dogen talking to the squirrels, who tell him that the short man is going to kill everyone, only for them to really be talking about Oleander?

Elton saying that Oleander’s recruiting office in Basic Braining resembles a dentist office, only to find out that one of the main antagonists, Dr. Loboto, is in fact a dentist?

Oleander having a mental vault trapped behind some mental cobwebs? Well, he has something to hide, despite him saying he doesn’t when you first play through Basic Braining. Of course, getting angry at Raz for snooping around a room with a curtain doesn’t give off the idea that Oleander has something to hide. Nope. Not suspicious at all.

Agent Crueller having all the different personalities around the camp, hinting as his unstable mental state?

The Hand of Galochio appearing in the lake as a reference to Raz’s family having a curse to die in water, and said curse just so happens to show up not only as a gameplay element but as a story element during Meat Circus?

Raz being able to read Lili’s thoughts when she doesn’t mean for him to, then for him to do it two more times near the end of the game?

How Lili’s cold stops her from sneezing out her own brain?

Sasha’s hatred of tacky lamps having to do with his past working in a tacky lamp factory? Or the shoeboxes indicating his father was a cobbler? Or the bed as the location of where his mother was horribly ill and died?

Raz needing to climb the “creepy thorn tower” in the Brain Tumbler Experiment, only to later need to climb Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed?

The mention of the town of Shaky Claim on the giant tree stump at the camp entrance referring to the sunken town that is (somewhat) explored during the boss sequence under the lake?

Raz talking about being back in high school in Black Velvetopia despite being ten years old? Not to mention the stories the dogs tell about Lana/Lampita and Dean/Dingo?

Lastly, do I really need to mention the incredibly weird and seemingly out of place mental vault below the creepy thorn tower? A brain chicken hatches out of an egg, meets a fish in water, goes to a circus, gets placed in a teacup, and blasts people to death? Kind of a summation of Raz coming out of the egg in the Brain Tumbler Experiment, meeting Linda at Lake Oblongata, entering the Meat Circus, and getting placed in a brain tank and defeating two people? Was the mental vault a foreshadowing of the main plot of Psychonauts? I don’t know. What do you think?

*Takes a deep breath.* See what I mean when I say I could really go on and on about setup and payoff in Psychonauts? There are so many examples that it’s kind of ridiculous. It could be said that there’s too much of this kind of storytelling in the game, but I fail to see how that is a problem. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, but when it comes to setup and payoff, Psychonauts is not it.

Credits

Screenshots courtesy of the following:

Comic Foil, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN-Y6XDe0oWyhgjcGunJqGw

Global Gaming, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pjsxNSwSSA

StoryGamer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXZ1vDFp_dw&t=139s

ThatNotSoAznKid, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ford0MGvWIc

#psychonauts #psychonauts spoilers #setup and payoff #writing in video games

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impossibleleaf · 7 years

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Why it doesn’t matter anymore whether the lostspecial’s “revelation” is genuine or if there’s a 4th episode

First thing to say is this: I never post anything, I live in the shadows, and enjoy taking part of TJLC behind the anonymous’ face. I have followed several tumblr account from a long time. I have been part of TJLC since the day lsit created her blog, the day after TSoT. In other words, I have seen my fair share of mindfuckery, of blogs I liked receiving hate but I have never taken an active role in this fandom until now.

Like many TJLCers, I decided to watch TFP having high expectations, knowing for sure I was about to witness something groundbreaking.

Well, I wasn’t wrong. Not really.

First came disappointment: so was everything a farce? A pure publicity stunt? Even the lostspecial website is a lie? Are we that desperate for something to be clever?

And then I was thinking… So what if we are? None of this makes sense anyway. Why shouldn’t we ask for a miracle?

Here’s the thing, when you rewatch that fuckery that is TFP, if you start explaining with knowledge you get at the ending, everything falls apart. Oh, this is Eurus, she’s on a plane and needs Sherlock’s helps but also Eurus cuts the communications and uses herself as a bargaining chip. Continuity? What’s that? Sherlock wear the Bellstaff because I say so, even though he didn’t have it when he decided to shoot himself.

That’s the point casuals decide the Sherlock show was that bad and move on. That’s also the point people with a brain and loving puzzles decide to dig deeper. In half a week, TJLC (+ the new TFHC) was back on scene, tearing apart the narrative and saying: that cannot be real, therefore it’s not. But they didn’t use shitty arguments, they didn’t decide to let logic flow out of the window, in fact, they used what the narrative gave us unlike many say, they were the most logical out of everyone actually.

So, there, we’ve proved there’s more at work, we know our show, we know who the bastards behind this are. They’re fans, like us, and what do they want, what do we want?

We want a miracle. We want Sherlock to survive the Final Problem, to escape the Reichenbach’s Falls and let him be true to himself. We want no loose ends and there are so many, we want what others have said for years to come true, we want Sherlock out of the closet, after more than a century. The Final Problem can never be the end, otherwise all is lost. You cannot be allowed to destroy your show there if you’re a fan.

So, people start to look for the Lost Special, an episode TEH proved Mofftiss knew and they found the disaster that was ATY. At that point, I admit, we could have been convinced we were wrong. It wouldn’t have taken much, just a few words from the Powers That Be that they’re sorry to have lead us on, something official, not a tweet dismissing the last years as a ludicrous fantasy. What we got instead was radio silence and another show thinking, let them think what they want, that’s good for us. ATY said no, but it was a little no, one that means, what don’t you try to find it yourself? Who knows what you’re going to see ;)?

So 22/1 wasn’t the right solution, okay. How about 29/1, that’s the day they met, you can’t go wrong with this, right? Apparently yes, but by the time we noticed, we had to bear watching two people with no chemistry fuck within the 7 first minutes and end with a rape while we need to beg a 7 years old show to finally address the elephant in the room and to have the protagonists say they have Feelings™.

That’s roughly the moment I started thinking, maaaybe there’s no 4th episode but then, what about these hundreds of meta confirming my suspicions? People smarter than me have built foundations for these ideas and here’s where it hurts: it makes total sense, it fact it’s so far the only way S4 can make sense and be bearable, even enjoyable.

Yes, what TJLC says is ludicrous at first glance, that’s the most insane thing I’ve heard. I mean, a true conspiracy? A fourth episode hidden in plain sight? Who can even believe in it? How improbable is that?

But once you’ve eliminated the impossible, what remains, no matter how improbable, how insane it seems, must be the truth.

Here’s what we have deemed as impossible: these two men cannot have made this shitty S4 accidentally. Gatiss is a gay man working for queer people to get representation in medias, Moffat turned Sherlock and John into Vastra and Jenny, two lesbians who kissed on screen on a children show. Moffat is a good writer, Heaven Sent is evidence enough and TAB’s last scenes proved they get what the heart of the show is. We have people who are good at their jobs, writers, actors, and there is no way so many of them fucked up so much at the same time. Not even BBC’s advertising team. Not when the stakes are that high.

Here’s what we have deemed as improbable: Mofftiss wants us to crack, they are two men with enormous egos who want to leave their mark in Sherlock Holmes’ history. Permanently. They love an adaptation who didn’t succeed in making Holmes gay and have decided to get the story right. They want us to cry bitter tears of relief, they want to pull the rug and say after the fact: see? It’s always been a love story, you saw but you never observed. It’s always been a story of love, a story about a detective and his blogger who keeps him right, about two broken men who managed to find happiness together and do great things. To reach that goal these two bastards are willing to play a very long game, to mindfuck everyone and break the fandom before mending it.

Here’s finally what seals the deal: when you start thinking you must add the ‘it’s not real but everything is a metaphor’ and ‘we are the missing piece, we are part of this,’ everything makes sense. In fact, that’s the only way it does. TJLC had predicted every plot point in TAB? They have managed to get back on tracks their deductions, they wobbled but didn’t break. They are nit-picking on details but widely agree on the big things. I dare anyone to give another explanation for S4 without using ‘the writers are that bad’ as a reason for relevant plot points. The more you search, the more you find that goes on that direction.

Now, people had found a website they were wary of but decided to go down the rabbit hole in hope of finding something. The people in charge of this site now say more than a week later: by the way, none of this was real. The codes? Made up. The pictures? Also made up. The lines on the code sources? We wanted to see how desperate you were. Some people even tried to see things that weren’t there in the 27kra video (thanks, but I noticed in the end I was wrong and let it go immediately). Look how stupid TJLC is, how much in denial these people are. There is no 4th episode and there never will be. Carry on, you silly child.

It’s too late.

I’m not saying this explanation isn’t possible. Maybe that website was a fake after all but too much happened. Several blogs received many encrypted messages and reveal that someone is playing with our nerves, someone clever and who has too much time on his hands to be a hater. Sherlock North happened, disturbing codes and messages were sent, thelostspecial.com happened and had things he wasn’t supposed to have on his site, we are 100% convinced at this point that they want to break our faith, nothing now will change our mind. Even if several trolls took part of this, the snowball effect is there and you can’t stop it anymore. And with dymm (who may or may not be a mole) having excited twitter and even causuals non-stop for a month, the idea cannot be banished anymore.

Here’s the truth of this: it doesn’t matter at this point if there is or not a 4th episode. Sherlock’s show has an enormous hole and they need to do something to save it. TJLC managed to give an alternative reading that makes 100% more sense than anything else. Even if (which I doubt) that hadn’t been Mofftiss’ point, they need to take what we have thrown at them to save themselves. Here’s the real Final Problem, what’s it’s always been about from ACD’s time: how is the fandom going to save Sherlock Holmes?

Make history, is what we tell them today. Dazzle us with your cleverness, prove us we were right to believe in Sherlock Holmes. Open the closet you’ve put yourself in, we’ve found the key and got your back. And if, somehow, we are wrong in thinking you are half as clever as we think, then what you did, all that queerbaiting was disgusting and we are going make history anyway. Sherlock Holmes doesn’t belong to you. We, the fandom, is the reason he is still alive and we won’t let you kill him without putting a fight. This isn’t about being in denial anymore. This is us, telling the authors how it’s going to be.

#tjlc #tfhc #the lost special #sherlock #the final problem #thelostspecial.com #queerbaiting #norbury

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celticnoise · 6 years

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Had I been fully back on my feet on Wednesday there is no way that this one would have passed me by. Had I actually been on Twitter more over the last few weeks I would have caught on to it even sooner. But it’s 6 April, and I’m all the way caught up.

And what a story this one was.

Another episode which heaps shame on our media.

Not that they’re feeling it or anything.

Our media literally has no shame, and Neil Cameron has less shame than most.

This is guy who frequently throws invective around like confetti and then tries to bemoan the lack of standards online. If he had standards, either personally or professionally, then some of us wouldn’t need to do what we do.

Let me go back to where this story begins; it starts, if I’m correct, with an email sent to the MSP James Dornan, on March 27, drawing his attention to a leaflet extolling the virtues of Smash A Fenian Day. I wrote about James Dornan on this site a couple of times before; he’s one of the loudest drum bangers for what used to be the Offensive Behaviour Act, but unlike a lot of his colleagues I get the impression he’s invested in the stated intent; i.e. he hates sectarianism and wants to see it eradicated from Scotland.

Don’t we all? My quibble with James is that neither he nor anyone else has ever explained to me how banning certain songs at the football will do that.

Anyway, this is the leaflet.

James Dornan did what any sensible person would do when faced with that; he brought in the police.

He also tweeted the offensive mail to see which other MSP’s or elected officials might have received something similar.

This, curiously, gave some of the haters an excuse to have a pop at him … asking why he would ever have publicised such a thing in the first place.

Easy answer. He didn’t. It was sent to him … and it was already out there.

I know that Dornan was not the first person to clap eyes on this thing; it’s been doing the rounds. In fact, it was Martin Beatty, Jay’s dad, who was the first person to draw my attention to it, but even trying to defend Dornan on this score is ridiculous anyway.

The accusation that he manufactured it himself, just for the purpose of causing trouble for “the PUL community” is a ghastly allegation which betrays just how sick some of the Peepul we are dealing with are. Here is a sample of what I’m talking about.

Regardless; this thing’s internet history could not be less important, because bear in mind that the very act of creating that and sending it out into the world was a crime.

A criminal offence, okay?

And not under the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act either.

Cameron is not saying that Dornan invented it.

He’s saying it was a bit of banter.

Frankly, I don’t know which suggestion is the more offensive.

There is no light-hearted way to look at that leaflet, and yes I know it’s a knock-off from similar ones that have been doing the rounds about Muslims for a while now. That’s kind of my point though; in England, those sort of leaflets are routinely prosecuted.

The people who produce them and share them know the stakes of the game, or they learn fast.

Dornan is the guy who brought it to a wider audience than it might otherwise have had … but since he did it has been reproduced, retweeted, re-posted and shared countless times, by people who agree with every single sentiment that’s on it.

It’s a matter of time before one of those leaflets is responsible for putting someone in a hospital or worse, on a mortuary slab.

That’s how serious they are.

And yet, predictably, Dornan’s entire timeline turned into a slew of invective against him, with, as I said, some people going as far as to accuse him of manufacturing the thing himself. One long-standing internet troll with a lot of followers and friends in the mainstream media – so many, in fact, that it’s not silly to speculate that said individual is a member of the press or at least used to be – decided to publicly accuse Dornan of “admitting” that he hadn’t been sent it.

Dornan called him a liar.

Of course.

As that’s exactly what he is.

That reply was in response to the following:

And that’s when Cameron first jumped into this, with this tweet which I presume he found funny.

Although I wonder whether Gerry Braiden did.

I wonder whether the victims of sectarian violence across Scotland did.

There’s an example, right there, of Cameron trying to make a joke out of something that’s extremely serious, and which was raised by an elected official who was sent it by email. A case could be made for saying it amounts to an actual threat of physical violence against James Dornan.

For Cameron, it was an excuse to indulge in cheap laughs.

Yet its public dissemination on various forums and by re-tweets and shares clearly constitutes incitement.

We have a sordid little history of all this stuff in Scotland, and it’s why people like James Dornan have become so determined to combat it and wash it away. I’ve long argued that our media does us no favours in this regard; they stir the pot, then they walk away when it starts to bubble up. They promote hate, and then panic when it threatens to (or sometimes does) become violence. None of them has done enough to challenge this kind of thing.

It is not weeks ago that the Union Bears marched to Ibrox in a paramilitary style parade, black clad, faces covered, making the Nazi salute. On Scottish streets. They had advertised their intent to do so days in advance and police allowed it.

The leaflet which promoted it included a vicious logo of a Celtic fan being kicked in the face.

The Smash A Fenian leaflet is dredged up from the same cesspool; the stinking one where anti-Catholic hate is still tolerated here in Scotland and if it comes with anti-Irish tinge all the better. They don’t call it “the last acceptable form of bigotry” for nothing.

The thing is, what happens on the internet all too often creeps off of it.

The media knows this, having played an active role in promoting hatred against Neil Lennon only to watch it morph into something infinitely worse. The morphing started online, on fan forums so filled with toxicity you need full body protection just to survey them. It deepened there until a few psychopaths were inspired into action and then it wasn’t emails getting sent to people; it was bombs. It was bullets. Lennon himself was physically attacked on the job.

But then, so was Scott Brown last year and I’m still waiting to hear what the SFA intends to do about that or the collective failure to properly steward Ibrox that day which I wrote several articles on at the time. This is all to say that this stuff isn’t a joke.

Cameron disagrees. In fact, that’s exactly what he said this stuff was.

A dark joke. A peculiarly Scottish version of it.

Something “we sort of invented” … I wonder who “we” are in Cameron’s disgusting claim?

I wonder if Cara Henderson, the girl who might have been Cara Scott had a sectarian bigot not cut then boyfriend Mark Scott’s throat outside of a Bridgeton dive, finds it funny. She formed the organisation Nil By Mouth; maybe they do. To the best of my knowledge they’ve not said a word to condemn Neil Cameron or The Herald Group for the reprehensible tweet with which they are now indelibly associated.

I just wonder if she, and they, appreciate the laugh out loud quality of it.

What was the slogan Nil By Mouth pioneered?

“Sectarian humour can have you in stitches.”

Yeah, Cameron.

You are hilarious.

A dark joke, eah? Who can beat it? It’s funny if you’re not the one sitting in the A&E. And you know what? It’s not even funny then. It’s twisted, both the act of producing that piece of filth and the act of defending it as a joke.

Not that Cameron is defending it, of course.

In fact, he seems to be trying to deny that’s what he meant.

The reason this double-blipped on my radar was that he got into an argument with a couple of folk on Twitter about it.

Before I go on, I have a confession to make; I absolutely love Bob Smith Walker and Matthew Leslie. The first is a Don’s fan, a sterling social commentator, activist and publisher who speaks his mind and isn’t afraid of controversy, much like many of the people whose work he has helped get into print; this includes Phil. Bob is, of course, the head honcho at Frontline Noir, who published Downfall. Matt Leslie is a fantastic blogger on all-things Scottish football. Like myself he doesn’t limit his writing to his own club, which is Hearts.

Neither of them found Cameron’s comments either humour or appropriate.

Bob Smith Walker called him out on them in the following tweet.

And Cameron, true to type, then got in a flap.

He claimed he’d been misquoted or misrepresented.

The exchange that follows is instructive.

No Twitter most certainly didn’t dream it, or his “I’ve booked a bus” comment either.

The following exchange should give you some insight into the kind of person Cameron is; he has publicly accused someone of lying (although they’re clearly not) and when confronted to make good on that accusation this is how he chose to defend himself:

Later on that night, he posted the following tweet.

Isn’t that pathetic? Isn’t that a pitiful response?

That sums him up to a T.

From laughing at sectarianism, and defending a criminal act as a bit of banter, to wallowing in self-pity because he was called on it … what a wretched human being.

You know what?

Scotland is full of people like Cameron.

I’m not suggesting that he’s a bigot, but here he’s treated something appalling and dangerous as if it were a giggle.

Which, as Bob Smith Walker himself pointed out, makes him a moron at the very least. I would go further though. In suggesting that this stuff was “a dark joke” and that it’s somehow woven into Scottish culture, as if something to be proud of, he’s stepped over a line.

It’s because of that I think he has questions to answer.

I think his bosses at The Herald have questions to answer.

This guy’s Twitter page has his job description down there on it.

It’s not enough for him to say “all my views” on there, as if it exonerates them.

His “views” here are repellent.

I am not asking The Herald if it’s editorial line on sectarianism in Scotland is that it’s “a dark joke” and something to be mocked.

I’m asking if they are satisfied that this contemptuous attitude towards the subject, ably demonstrated in public by one of their senior employees, helps them or hurts them whenever they have to write about the issue. If someone at their paper scorned antisemitism as a joke, or racism as something that “the sane people” didn’t get in a flap about, this “all my views” disclaimer wouldn’t fly for one second. This is a deeply disturbing incident, made a million times worse by how he’s handled it.

The ball is entirely in their court.

A lot of us will be watching with great interest.

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