Fatal Frame meta for Fandom_Level, level 1

[estirose]

I'm doing five levels (40 metas) for Fandom_Level. I figured it would be a change from writing fic.

Here are the metas I'm using to clear level 1. Note that these are all spoilery for the games.

1: Abduction as Seduction, or an alternate view of Mafuyu's motivations at the end of Fatal Frame I.
2: Amnesia, or the awareness of ghosts in the games.
3: Angst, which pretty much describes the whole game for players, characters, and ghosts.
4: Alternate Universes, which ponders how the various game endings can be thought of as semi-canonical alternate universes.
5: Bad Boys, or why Itsuki's good idea to rebel ultimately caused everything to go wrong.
6: Blindness, or tactics of the blind and blinding ghosts of the game.
7: Girls, or a discussion on International Womens' day of why I like the Fatal Frame games.
8: Blood, and how it's used to great effect in the games.

Also, thank you to the people who maintain the wiki at "Beyond the Camera's Lens", which I've found very useful for checking my facts.

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Meta 2: Amnesia

[estirose]

The Amnesia of Death. 612 words.

Of the four games, only Fatal Frame IV touches directly on the subject of amnesia, through Getsuu syndrome. And yet, we see it during every single game, thanks to the ghosts not remembering certain things about their lives.

The most obvious examples are the ones that consistently mistake a living character for a dead one. Kirie thinks Mafuyu is her dead lover, despite knowing at the time of her death that he was dead. Kyouka chases after the player characters because she thinks they're all her lover Akito - who got killed by her mother because he wanted to take her away. The whole village in Fatal Frame 2 thinks that Mio and Mayu are Yae and Sae, though that's understandable given that they're partially possessed by said sisters during the game.

Some of the game hostiles are heartbreaking, especially the kids, when you realize that they don't know they're dead. There are three little kids in the second game that are specifically noted as not having realized that they've died. They're too busy playing hide and go seek, and you're it during one of their eternal games. Chitose of the same game also doesn't seem to have realized that she died, though it's more because she's extremely terrified the entire time you fight her. The three battles with the kids in Fatal Frame I are also with amused, playful kids, who happen to be unaware that they're sucking your life out when they touch you.

It's rare for ghosts to realize that they're dead, actually. Most of them seem to be repeating their last moments, from Yae's worry about her daughter and Blinded's search for somebody to help her, to the dollmaker in the second game, the Kuze Family Head in the third, and several of the doctors and nurses in the fourth. They don't seem to be aware that they're repeating their last bits of life, whether to ward off intruders, worry about their families, or just to seek help. The vanishing ghosts are as much so, pieces of people and their lives that are stuck wherever they are.

Choushiro in the fourth game is one of the amnesiac dead, though we don't find out about this until very late in his storyline. Because none of the playable characters interact with each other during the game (with the exception of encounters with Madoka), there's no indication that Choushiro has died long before we ever play him. Choushiro is very much an example of what it is like to be one of the ghosts who has forgotten their deaths. He investigates around, he chases Dr. Haibara, he tries to remember what's going on. Finally, his story takes him to the roof, where Dr. Haibara stabs him, and he falls and lands in the exact same place he appeared in his first chapter. He finally remembers he's dead, that he died years before, and that he's now repeated his last days at least once. When Ruka gets Sakuya to the point where someone has to put the restored mask on her, it's Choushiro's job to finish things off and put an end to things. He's been broken out of his amnesia, and it's time to move on.

But most of the Fatal Frame ghosts aren't that lucky. Most of them move to their final destination without having any clue that they've been repeating things over and over. Ruka's father seems to be somewhat aware in the end, and Kirie of course has a hellgate to guard, but the rest of the ghosts in the series move from amnesia to afterlife with nothing inbetween. Perhaps they're the lucky ones.