The Ovid Effect

For those who don't know, Ovid is one of the most famous poets of the early Roman period, alongside Virgil. He is best known in life for being a highly controversial anti-authoritarian writer in a pro-authoritarian autocratic state. He was eventually exiled to the Black Sea by Augustus....perhaps because of an association with the Emperor's flirtatious daughter. Ovid's most famous work is Metamorphoses, which is actually the source of the greater majority of our remembered Greek myths. He's the one who turned an ancient Grecian monster into a tragic heroine. AKA, the Medusa.

Seeing this showed me something that happened in a lot of stories, either from the same author or from later writers adding to the same universe. A common theme in fiction that can revisit earlier things is revisionism and deconstruction. Revisionism is basically the examination of a past event, either in fiction or reality. Deconstruction is literally what it says; taking something apart. Using these, the later stories take apart and potentially undermine the existing narrative.

Ursula le Guin did this in the final two parts of her Earthsea pentalogy, where she openly questions the rules of magic. There's always been a sense ever since the first book that magic is so dangerous and strange that it's a wonder anyone can use it. But in Tehanu, and certainly in The Other Wind, we learn the full truth behind how magic came to be, and how it became the sole domain of men. There's certainly a bit of subtext here that could be spun as feminist, but the main point is that these revelations completely change how we look at the original trilogy.

Rowling's Harry Potter novels are an example where this approach is used as a narrative device and an analogy of maturation for the titular lead. In the opening books, characters are very clearly for or against Harry, but as the books slowly advance there are gradual shifts and indications of something more. This begins with the third novel Prisoner of Azkaban, but comes full circle in the final book Deathly Hallows, where key plot details are revealed and throw the entire saga into a new light. Some may say that it abuses the double and triple bluff, but it reflects how Harry's view of the world changes. He sees people as black and white during his first years at Hogwards, but by the end he sees everything in shades of grey.

The two examples that sprang to mind from video games were the novel Final Fantasy XV: The Dawn of the Future, and the Obsidian Entertainment-developed KOTOR II; The Sith Lords. Games are far more susceptible to this due to changing IP ownership and teams, and the general fluidity of the market.

The Dawn of the Future is a book that retells the events of a cancelled DLC tetralogy of the same name. The intent was the create an alternate final to Final Fantasy XV, which had a lot of people either scratching their heads or complaining due to its narrative choices. In the most basic way possible, the roles of the deities in Final Fantasy XV were defined in a way that was supportive, but in the novel they were skewed into being far more ambivalent. It doesn't strictly invalidate the original narrative, but it does throw a spanner in the works.

KOTOR II is notorious for taking the previously-simple dichotomy between Jedi and Sith and throwing it on its head, adding a moral dimension to the narrative that's ignored by the rest of the canon. Since they're both extremes, is either side right? It's more realistic as it accepts the existence of shade of grey, which everyone in reality has to face, but also puts everything else in the series on an uncomfortable position as it questions the entirety of the conflict that's at the centre of the series. If you want a more detailed analysis, watch this video.

All the examples above follow a pattern previously established by Ovid. They take a previously existing narrative, and put an analytical spin on it, mostly from the perspective of anti-authoritarianism, but also questioning the concepts of free will and morality. Ovid did this in his writing, particularly in Metamorphoses, as he recasts many different characters - both human and monster- as tragic, while the gods are typically not on the moral high ground. The common ground with the above examples; they were previously simple to understand and had some aspect of black and white perspective, but later works or additions can cast shadows on the white and shine a light on the black.

And before you ask; Yes, I want to do it to. Why? It's so much fun!