You Never Experience a Story the Same Way Twice

There is a strange idea we have about entertainment.

We talk about movies, television shows, books, and video games as though they exist in a vacuum. As though there is a definitive experience waiting for us, and if two people consume the same thing, they should more or less feel the same way about it.

They don't.

They can't.

Because you never experience a story with an empty head.

You bring everything you've ever watched, read, played, loved, hated, misunderstood, and obsessed over with you.

And that's not a flaw.

That's the point.

Nothing Exists in a Vacuum

Take The Hunger Games.

Millions of people watched it. Many loved it. It introduced audiences to a dystopian world in which young people are forced to fight to the death for the entertainment of the masses.

But what if you had already seen Battle Royale?

What if you had watched The Running Man?

What if you had read Lord of the Flies?

Suddenly, The Hunger Games isn't simply The Hunger Games.

You're watching it through a collection of other stories.

You might recognize similarities. You might notice differences. You might wonder why one story handles an idea differently than another. You might appreciate something more because you know what it is borrowing from, or appreciate it less because you've already seen the concept executed in a way you preferred.

Someone experiencing The Hunger Games without that background isn't having a lesser experience.

They're simply having a different one.

And the person who has seen those other stories isn't having a "correct" experience, either.

They're bringing more baggage to the theater.

Sometimes baggage is exactly what makes the trip interesting.

Stories Talk to Other Stories

And sometimes you can trace those connections directly.

Take Squid Game.

When Hwang Dong-hyuk created the series, he had already spent considerable time with stories about people being forced into deadly competitions, including Battle Royale. He wasn't creating in a vacuum. He was taking ideas that had stuck with him, mixing them with his own experiences and concerns, and turning them into something new.

That's how storytelling works.

Battle Royale influenced Squid Game. Squid Game then influenced an entirely new generation of creators. Those creators will make games, movies, books, and shows that influence somebody else.

The chain keeps going.

And here's where it gets interesting for us as audiences.

You might watch Squid Game without ever having seen Battle Royale. You might think the premise is completely novel. Someone else might watch it and immediately recognize the DNA of another story they've loved for years.

Neither person is wrong.

In fact, the second person might appreciate Squid Game for completely different reasons. They might spend the entire series comparing how it handles the concept differently. They might notice what Hwang changed, what he retained, and where he took the idea somewhere unexpected.

And then somebody else might watch Squid Game first.

When they eventually encounter Battle Royale, they'll have the opposite experience.

They'll be the ones saying, "Oh. I see where some of this came from."

That's not a spoiler.

That's context.

The more stories we encounter, the larger the map becomes.

We start seeing the roads connecting them.

We Don't Read the Same Mystery

This is especially obvious with mysteries.

Mysteries depend on information.

But they also depend on what the audience already knows about mysteries.

If you've watched a hundred murder mysteries, you're going to approach a new one differently than someone who rarely watches them.

You know the tricks.

You know the red herrings.

You know that the suspicious character introduced in the first ten minutes may be suspicious specifically because the writer wants you to think they're suspicious.

You know that the person everyone seems to trust might be the one you should be watching.

And sometimes you know exactly what kind of mystery you're looking at before the story has even finished introducing its characters.

That's part of the fun.

But it also changes the experience.

Consider Murder on the Orient Express

We recently played the video game adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express.

And there is an important thing about our experience that we think is worth acknowledging:

We hadn't recently watched or read the original story.

That mattered.

We knew the basic premise. We knew it was a famous murder mystery. But we weren't sitting there with every detail of Agatha Christie's story sitting in the back of our minds.

That meant the game had room to surprise us.

We were invested in figuring out what happened.

We were asking questions.

We were looking at suspects.

We were trying to put pieces together.

Had we just watched the movie immediately beforehand, or read the book, we might have approached the game differently.

We might have spent the entire time waiting for the next familiar beat.

The mystery would have become less about "What happened?" and more about "How are they going to get us to the thing we already know happened?"

Neither experience is inherently better.

But they are absolutely not the same experience.

The Things We've Already Loved Follow Us

This happens constantly.

Watch a science-fiction movie after spending years watching science fiction, and you bring all of that with you.

Play a survival horror game after playing Resident Evil, and you bring Resident Evil with you.

Play a detective game after spending years watching Law & Order, Columbo, Sherlock, Only Murders in the Building, or every terrible mystery movie you could find at 2 a.m., and congratulations:

You have become the world's most annoying backseat detective.

You start predicting things.

You recognize patterns.

You notice when the camera lingers on something.

You notice when a character says something that seems strangely specific.

You know that if a game gives you a perfectly innocent-looking object in an otherwise empty room, that object is probably going to become important.

And when you're right?

It feels fantastic.

When you're wrong?

Sometimes that's even better.

Because the story just taught you something.

This Is Why Reviews Are So Personal

It's also why we think people sometimes take reviews far too seriously.

Not our reviews.

All reviews.

A reviewer can tell you that a game is fantastic.

You can play it and hate it.

A reviewer can tell you a movie is boring.

You can watch it three times.

Someone can call a book predictable.

You can be completely blindsided by it.

And nobody necessarily made a mistake.

The reviewer brought their experiences with them.

So did you.

If someone has played fifty detective games, the fifty-first might feel painfully familiar.

If you've played three, that same game might feel revolutionary.

If someone has watched every slasher movie ever made, they might recognize the killer before the opening credits finish.

If you've never seen one, you might be on the edge of your seat.

Context changes perception.

That's true whether we're talking about art, entertainment, food, music, or pretty much anything else humans experience.

And That's Okay

There is sometimes an impulse to think that we should try to experience things "fresh."

To forget what came before.

To avoid spoilers.

To avoid comparisons.

To approach every new piece of entertainment as though it is the first story we've ever encountered.

But that's impossible.

And frankly, we'd argue that it's undesirable.

Because the things you've loved before become part of you.

If The Running Man makes you recognize something in The Hunger Games, that's not ruining The Hunger Games.

It's giving you another way to understand it.

If Battle Royale makes you think differently about the premise, that's not a problem.

It's a conversation between stories.

If another mystery makes you better at spotting red herrings, congratulations.

You've gotten better at mysteries.

That's what happens when you consume things.

You learn.

You develop preferences.

You develop expectations.

You discover tropes.

You learn which tropes you love and which ones make you want to throw your controller across the room.

And then something comes along and either confirms what you already believe—or changes your mind.

That second part is particularly valuable.

The Best Stories Change the Lens

Maybe that's ultimately what we're looking for when we play, watch, and read.

Not necessarily something completely new.

That's an impossible standard anyway.

There are only so many stories humans can tell.

Instead, we're looking for something that gives us a new way to look at something we already know.

A mystery that makes us rethink what a mystery can be.

A horror game that makes us reconsider what scares us.

A movie that takes a familiar premise somewhere unexpected.

A book that makes us understand a character we would normally dismiss.

Sometimes the experience works because it's completely unfamiliar.

Sometimes it works because it reminds us of something we loved twenty years ago.

Sometimes it works because it reminds us of something we hated.

Sometimes the most interesting reaction to a new story is:

"Wait. I've seen something like this before, but I've never seen it done this way."

That's not repetition.

That's evolution.

We Bring Ourselves Along

At The Mystery Cartridge, we've talked a lot about playing games together.

That's another reason this matters to us.

Two people can sit on the same couch, watch the same screen, hear the same dialogue, and experience two completely different games.

One person might notice the mystery.

The other might notice the character relationships.

One might be reminded of another game.

The other might have never played anything like it.

One might predict the ending.

The other might be completely surprised.

And neither person is necessarily experiencing it "wrong."

They're bringing different histories to the same story.

That's one of the best things about entertainment.

You don't just consume a story.

You bring yourself to it.

Every book you've read.

Every movie you've watched.

Every game you've played.

Every story someone told you.

Every character you loved.

Every ending that disappointed you.

Every twist you saw coming.

Every twist that completely fooled you.

All of it comes along for the ride.

And every once in a while, something comes along that changes the way you see everything that comes after it.

That's how you grow.

That's how stories grow.

And that's why two people will probably never truly watch, read, or play the same thing.

And honestly?

We wouldn't want it any other way.