I've been thinking about this series a bit lately. I lost traction on it after the unusual activity spike a few years back, when two episodes came along in quite quick succession, and I think I've come up with at least one significant reason why.

In recent years, a lot of new information has come to light on the consequences of closed head injuries, particularly in sports. Now, obviously, people never thought these things were good for you, but it's only fairly recently that it's started to get around how really, really bad they are. The consequences of repeated concussions, and the ease with which a person once concussed can suffer repeated concussions, are shaping up to be far, far more terrible than was commonly believed in my youth.

I'm not a football fan—don't really understand the game, much less follow it—but a lot of the high-profile case studies in the fallout from repeated traumatic brain injuries these days are football players, and one in particular came to my attention more or less by happenstance: Jovan Belcher was a University of Maine graduate and committed his murder-suicide while I was an undergraduate there, recently enough after his own graduation that there were still quite a few people on campus who knew him. There was, as we now say, a Campus Dialogue about the matter for some time afterward, and I've taken notice of similar news items when they've crossed my path ever since.

All of which may go some way toward explaining why I've become so ambivalent about continuing a series based on Street Fighter, which is, at heart, a game about people who travel around the world giving each other concussions. Now, it could be argued, and I have argued this point to myself, that it's set in an idealized fictional universe where, for all we know, chronic traumatic encephalopathy isn't a thing, and "walk it off with a shot of bourbon" is still, 1930s noir style, the correct way to treat a mild brain injury. It's sort of the interpersonal violence and cerebral trauma equivalent of those harmless vanilla porn stories where no one gets an incurable disease or unwanted pregnancy because that would harsh the mellow, man.

And yet, all the same, I find myself increasingly uncomfortable with the notion—which, given that it's bound up in the central premise of the setting itself, makes continuing Warrior's Legacy... problematic.

I suppose if I wanted to really explore the meta here, I'd have the characters confront this issue themselves, possibly as an extension/extrapolation of the qualms G has been having about enabling Sakura's delinquency. It's an option. What does a street fighter do if he's developing an ethical reservation about the very core of his "profession"? It's a thought. Not sure it's one I particularly want to build a narrative around, but it's a thought.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>I've been thinking about this series a bit lately. I lost traction on
>it after the unusual activity spike a few years back, when two
>episodes came along in quite quick succession, and I think I've come
>up with at least one significant reason why.
>
>In recent years, a lot of new information has come to light on the
>consequences of closed head injuries, particularly in sports. Now,
>obviously, people never thought these things were good for you,
>but it's only fairly recently that it's started to get around how
>really, really bad they are. The consequences of repeated
>concussions, and the ease with which a person once concussed can
>suffer repeated concussions, are shaping up to be far, far more
>terrible than was commonly believed in my youth.
>
>I'm not a football fan—don't really understand the game, much
>less follow it—but a lot of the high-profile case studies in the
>fallout from repeated traumatic brain injuries these days are football
>players, and one in particular came to my attention more or less by
>happenstance: Jovan Belcher
>was a University of Maine graduate and committed his murder-suicide
>while I was an undergraduate there, recently enough after his own
>graduation that there were still quite a few people on campus who knew
>him. There was, as we now say, a Campus Dialogue about the matter for
>some time afterward, and I've taken notice of similar news items when
>they've crossed my path ever since.

There's been similar rumblings from the Wrestling world of sports entertainment, where it's technically more concerning because, well, on paper they're trying not to actually hurt each other. Mick Foley's been pretty frank about the toll it's taken on his body overall, and the damage repeated concussions seem to have done to him as part of that. And they've got a prominent murder/suicide that shook everybody up so much they tried to erase the guy from their history as part of the reaction to it.

>All of which may go some way toward explaining why I've become so
>ambivalent about continuing a series based on Street Fighter,
>which is, at heart, a game about people who travel around the world
>giving each other concussions. Now, it could be argued, and I have
>argued this point to myself, that it's set in an idealized
>fictional universe where, for all we know, chronic traumatic
>encephalopathy isn't a thing, and "walk it off with a shot of bourbon"
>is still, 1930s noir style, the correct way to treat a mild brain
>injury. It's sort of the interpersonal violence and cerebral trauma
>equivalent of those harmless vanilla porn stories where no one gets an
>incurable disease or unwanted pregnancy because that would harsh the
>mellow, man.
>
>And yet, all the same, I find myself increasingly uncomfortable with
>the notion—which, given that it's bound up in the central
>premise of the setting itself, makes continuing Warrior's
>Legacy... problematic.
>
>I suppose if I wanted to really explore the meta here, I'd have the
>characters confront this issue themselves, possibly as an
>extension/extrapolation of the qualms G has been having about enabling
>Sakura's delinquency. It's an option. What does a street fighter do
>if he's developing an ethical reservation about the very core of his
>"profession"? It's a thought. Not sure it's one I particularly want
>to build a narrative around, but it's a thought.

At best, it would explain the... severity of some of the villains in the games. But I can completely understand that the issues with grappling with the subject in context are very offputting given what you wanted to do with it when you started it.

Hmm.

Well, 'Do I continue at all, in light of Real Life?' is obviously a personal question that would need to be considered internally.

But if the decision to continue is made, I can think of a couple of ways that 'Lifeforce Manipulation' can be used to handwave the issue.

Option 1: The knockout blows we've seen, probably in fact all the strikes delivered by 'normal' street fighters (Though, uh, not Decapre), aren't just, possibly not even primarily, about physical impact. Instead, all of them (rather than just the flashy attacks) carry a 'ki charge', introducing foreign energy into the target in an effort to cause an (ultimately harmless) bluescreen shutdown. This would actually neatly explain the games' lifebar mechanic - the ultimate crash-unconsciousness could only come if the target's ki was sufficiently weak relative to the attacker's, either naturally (a normal person) or via a full fight's attrition. Fighters probably know how to throw purely damaging blows, but choose to rely on the ki effect for basically friendly matches.

Option 2: Direct development and manipulation of ki reinforces the body's healing mechanisms, letting trained ki-users genuinely regenerate after a concussion in ways that normal people just can't.

Option 3: Both.

-----
Iä! Iä! Moe fthagn!

LAST EDITED ON Oct-18-17 AT 08:01 AM (EDT)
 
>Option 1: The knockout blows we've seen, probably in fact all
>the strikes delivered by 'normal' street fighters (Though, uh, not
>Decapre), aren't just, possibly not even primarily, about
>physical impact. Instead, all of them (rather than just the flashy
>attacks) carry a 'ki charge', introducing foreign energy into the
>target in an effort to cause an (ultimately harmless) bluescreen
>shutdown. This would actually neatly explain the games' lifebar
>mechanic - the ultimate crash-unconsciousness could only come if the
>target's ki was sufficiently weak relative to the attacker's, either
>naturally (a normal person) or via a full fight's attrition. Fighters
>probably know how to throw purely damaging blows, but choose to
>rely on the ki effect for basically friendly matches.
>
>Option 2: Direct development and manipulation of ki reinforces the
>body's healing mechanisms, letting trained ki-users genuinely
>regenerate after a concussion in ways that normal people just
>can't.
>
>Option 3: Both.

I've thought about this off and on, actually, though not specifically related to head injuries--just how they stay capable of fighting after knocking each other out all the time in general. (I've been thinking about all fighting games, not just SF, though it started when I actually ran the old SF tabletop RPG many, many years ago.) My take on it is this:

-They strike with full force--not always to kill, certainly, though some do. Always to knock out, though--their honor, both giving and receiving, would demand no less. If you're not giving it your all what's the point? You'll just lose to the ones who are, and shame yourself and them in the bargain.

-They do, however, manage to be in good shape for the next round. We can skip the 2/3 rounds stuff here, of course, but still, injury and whatnot in the real world takes far more time to heal than it does in the SF (or KOF, or wherever) universe. From this I infer that all martial artists on this level have had specific training in techniques necessary to heal quickly, as a ki ability. Ordinary people would not have that benefit, and there are even more advanced techniques for healing available (in the SF RPG, it was called chi kung healing, but every style surely has its own name) and, even if the greater culture isn't aware of those techniques the martial artist subculture would be. Soon as they regain consciousness they can meditate and focus, whatever their sensei taught them. I see no reason whatever why we can't say this ki healing can't heal up the little hits that build up to traumatic brain injury as well. This sort of thing happens in fictional universes -constantly-.

-TLDR: Option 2, above. =)

These are educated guesses, of course, but they preserve the balance of explaining away real world injury and game world necessity. They're internally consistent with the fictional universe's rules and fit neatly into what we've already seen in both this series and the canon SF storyline.

As for the bigger question, what to include in the series concerning this issue, I'd recommend possibly making an OOC note to show you're thinking about this and you're not glossing over real-world traumatic brain injury, and perhaps a quick flashback scene for Sakura, showing how Gryph taught her to recover quickly. If she didn't already figure it out!

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

As I recall, isn't there even a comment somewhere in one of the stories about how they can actually knock each other out "carefully", as it were? Made by Zoner, as I recall. In addition to other peoples comments, that is. Establishes tradition, as it were.
At the end of it, it's your story and so you get to do as you wish with it, but I personally really enjoy it, and it certainly has enough of the "cartoon" vibe in my opinion that it could be explained away. It isn't as "realistic" as UF, for instance.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

I understand your concerns, yet at the same time I don't.

I'm not reading UF for hard science fiction. I know the science is dependent on unobtainium, handwavium, and made-up, and you've pointed this out more than once to people who didn't recognize this point.

In the same way, WL isn't where I'd expect a realistic examination of internal bleeding, dementia pugilistica, and such. Its roots are clearly in the Cold War spy stories via James Bond; these are tales where people were knocked unconscious with a regularity that the medicine of a few decades later would find distressing.

At the end of the day, it's your process, and there's nothing that requires you to continue if you're uncomfortable with defying that portion of reality. That said, I hope you can find a way to continue; I want to know where the story ends.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>At the end of the day, it's your process, and there's nothing that
>requires you to continue if you're uncomfortable with defying that
>portion of reality. That said, I hope you can find a way to continue;
>I want to know where the story ends.

I think the primary concern is an OOC one, one of social responsibility, rather than the IC plot. I think the story universe's assumptions already include 'martial artists can take a beating safely' without even worrying about explaining it, and even if an explanation is required myself and others have provided at least a couple good ones in this thread. That said, I don't think this story constitutes some sort of moral lapse, either. I think it's fine, in all honesty. And if you truly feel the need to make your feelings plain, Gryphon, I think it can be done without detracting from the work and certainly without derailing it entirely.

Besides which, I'd really love to see a continuation myself. :)

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her