#Western perspective

[alwaysbewoke]

"Benjamin Netanyahu has been prime minister for longer than other Israeli leaders since the country’s birth in 1948 and is increasingly unpopular, but many of his policies in Gaza and the occupied West Bank enjoy huge Israeli support. The problem in Israel isn’t solely Netanyahu. He’s the symptom of a major larger societal shift. Replacing him with another carbon copy will change little for the millions of Palestinians who live under a brutal military occupation. One possible successor, Benny Gantz, has spent his career proudly promoting the destruction he’s caused in Gaza in previous wars. There’s long been a western obsession with Netanyahu, wrongly believing that he’s the impediment to a more humane "Jewish state". It’s the same mistake recently made by US President Joe Biden and Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, who argued that Netanyahu was blocking any prospect of peace in the region. It’s his belligerence, we’re told, that makes ending the Gaza onslaught impossible. When cautiously questioned by CNN recently, Netanyahu said that he wasn’t some fringe player in Israel but a leader who spoke for many Israelis, pursuing policies in Gaza with broad mainstream backing. He was right, and ignoring this reality doesn’t make it go away."

[mindumedia]

Restoring the context of Arcane Manuscripts: The Vedas

Through the ages our attempt at gaining a understanding the universal principles of the Vedas from a religious point of view has suffered at the expense of ideological and ontonological differences. This article will explore how these differences obfuscate our understanding of the archane texts we inherited from former and foregone civilizations. The Upanishads and Vedas are ancient texts that…

[ultimateinsomniac]

hopping up on my special interest soap box to say: i think we as a fandom should discuss the satire in danganronpa V3 more.

idk if it is just me but i have always viewed this game as a satire, if only just because of the ending. it exagerrates the formula set up by the previous games to criticize the current state of media and media consumption. i know a lot of people in the fandom don't like V3, and i think that is by design. it is ridiculous, it is over the top, the ending is a punch to the face, but it's all on purpose. you're supposed to be uncomfortable because it is a satire. (of course you don't have to like the game, i just think it is intentionally like that)

the whole theme of fiction vs reality is put in there intentionally to make fun of the fandomization of danganronpa, as well as to poke at game studios and companies that put out media in general. tsumugi, in my interpretation, is representative of danganronpa fans (hence why she's the ultimate cosplayer). she is the mastermind. you aren't supposed to like her. her insistence on the idea that "fiction doesn't affect reality" is a direct criticism of that exact idea in real life fandom. the idea that this is the "53rd" danganronpa is directly making fun of other pieces of media "jumping the shark" because fans insist upon it. this is not to say you can't like tsumugi, i think you absolutely can, i just think her character represents some key ideas relating to the satire of the game.

this is why everything in the game is SO over the top. kirumi being the prime minister, korekiyo both having DID AND being a serial killer in a reference to the first game, EVERYONE'S over the top backstories (gonta and keebo come to mind), it's all acting as an exaggeration of common tropes (albeit highly problematic in several areas, not trying to excuse those aspects by any means).

and then there's kaede. they set her up as a strong female protagonist, only to kill her chapter 1 to be replaced by a male protag. on paper this is very misogynistic, but in the context of satire it is an exaggeration of the danganronpa formula. of course we couldn't have a female protag in a main line game, of course it would have to be a man. shuichi having a secret ahoge only adds to this; it's making fun of the trope. the best part is that i truly do love both of these characters, and their role in the satire doesn't diminish the excellent writing that went into them and the story.

this entirely shapes how i view this game. it manages to tell an incredibly compelling story with very complex characters while making fun of itself at the same time (as a good satire should). i know a lot of people have said they feel like the writers of v3 must have hated danganronpa, and while i see exactly what they mean i don't think that's necessarily true. i think it was an intentional choice as a work of satire.

i can see an intense love behind the writing of this game. the characters are rich and the story is compelling. the ending just serves to send home the point they wanted to make. i think it adds a really beautiful perspective to the danganronpa series as a whole.

[yellowocaballero]

So fucking glad to see someone talk about SSS Class revival hunter 😭 I lived it so much and I feel like no one ever mentions it against more popular titles like ORV or even The Lout of the counts family, so I'm so glad to come here and see your amazing takes :>

Thank you for the ask which lets me talk about SSSCRH (the version I read was titled 'Suicide Hunter', which tbh I like more - no beating around the bush).

It's hard to draw an accurate comparison since I'm going off just the webtoon for SSSCRH, while I'm going off both the webtoon and the webnovel for ORV. And I love ORV, ORV is my media blorbo right now, it hydraulic presses my brain, I am writing ORV fanfic - it's, like, funner to enjoy. But SSSRH is just better. In the vast majority of ways it is is better. It's better than the holy trinity by a wide margin. TW talk of suicide obviously.

I can't believe I'm saying this but you need a basic understanding of Buddhism in order to understand SSSCRH. It's not about Gongja's suicides - he doesn't suicide from depression or lack of self-esteem. SSSCRH is about suffering in the Buddhist sense - dukkha. I don't want to make this an essay, so I might reblog this with more information, but extremely shortly:

The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism is the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. You've heard that Buddhists say 'life is suffering'. To put it one way that doesn't require defining a lot of words: the cause of suffering is experiencing the world as we percieve it instead of how it truly is. Suffering isn't just being miserable and in pain, and life isn't suffering because life sucks and global warming exists and people voted for Trump. Life is suffering because we can experience beautiful and joyful moments in this world, but we do not exist in the moment of that happiness or place our ego/'self' between us and that happiness. Living in that moment, accepting the moment as it is unconditionally, is freedom from suffering. The Buddha tries to free people from suffering through teaching Buddhism.

"What does this have to do with the webnovel and manwha about a guy murdering himself thousands of times" it has everything to do with it. Because SSSCRH is about suffering, and it is about using suffering as a tool in order to experience a world unfiltered by ego and break down the artificial boundaries between human beings. Suffering in SSSCRH is not a bad thing. Gongja has the unique capability to (reincarnate.) experience a person's suffering in unity with them, which dissolves the delusion of separation between people and puts us in touch with the reality of oneness.

The Murim arc was fucking insane because Gongja pulls a Big Bodhisattva Move and walks through the suffering of the world in order to achieve full understanding of the human experience. He takes all of the suffering of the world into himself and is liberated. You can tell it's Buddhist because death was not presented as a bad thing - death was an aspect of a happy ending for the Heavenly Demon lady, because she was finishing her life according to her own joy, and because her teachings were passed on she did not truly die.

But the purpose of embracing suffering is to discover the ability to fully embrace life, and that's where Heavenly Demon's teachings were incomplete - as the ghost dude said, Gongja hasn't even experienced his own full life and the infinite capability for his own happiness. You can only feel the depths of sadness when you've felt the depths of happiness. Sadness deserves its place in the world and it can strengthen you, but so does happiness.

Gongja is attention-seeking, envious, and unbelievably petty. When he drills down into his own desires and why he wants the things he wants, you see that he has a very strong sense of justice and right and wrong - he realizes he doesn't want to be famous, he wants to be acknowledged, but on an even deeper level he is desperate for love and to be loved. Everything he does is to experience love, and as such he learns to love others. His love for the Flamey Asshole was purely parasocial and ego-filled, with no concern for who he was as a human. Throughout the manwha, he grows to care for people as they truly are and pierce through any delusions or misleading outward appearances. He has released all attachment to life and death, and as such does not fear death, and as such has taken a step on the road towards becoming a Boddhisatva who frees others from the cycle of samsara, and as a result has learned sick sword techniques and is sooo good at beating people up.

I think the only other thing I want to mention here because otherwise this is an essay: in almost every time loop/regression story, only the final regression matters. In stories with dungeon monsters and NPCs, only the humans matter. The regressor exists in a space where there are no consequences for their actions, so they act terribly and do whatever because none of it matters. In Groundhog Day Bill Murray acts like an asshole because he can. That's not the case here. Everything Gongja does matters. The NPCs are fake, but Gongja never treats them as anything less than real people who deserve life. Once he understands a person's life he never treats them as unimportant. No loop is thrown away and no person or life is disregarded. His choices matter, the way he treats others matters, and Gongja never treats anybody as if they don't matter except for himself.

That was not short. There is a lot more. The female characters are so good and so rich. From a craft perspective it is excellently paced and has a wonderful sense of set-up/payoff and balances tone and maintains a lot of momentum, which is really hard in a time loop story. You have to do a few very specific things to write OP characters well and SSSCRH does it very well. There's more to say from a craft perspective and it's hard to judge accurately from a webtoon but it's good. I was so strangely struck the entire time about how sincere and genuine it was, how it said what it said with no trace of irony of confusion, and I think that's what stuck with me the most.

TL;DR: SSS Class Revival Hunter is good for a lot of very normal reasons, such as excellent pacing and set-up/pay off and characters, but it's also so sincerely and genuinely Buddhist that it blew my tits clean off.

[saint-ambrosef]

wild to me that the Mediterranean diet is supposed to be based on research regarding the naturally healthy diet and lifestyle of those living in southern Europe.

but then you look at suggested eating guides and suggested meals and they always have weird crap like "put soy milk in your coffee" or "use only fat-free greek yogurt"

like bruh, have you ever been to the Mediterranean?? they consume dairy in moderation, but when they do, it's the full fat stuff! why model a lifestyle diet off these people's traditional diets because they're naturally healthy, but then ignore that it also includes full fat dairy products?

[g0nefischin]

Yeehawgust 2024

Day 31 - Cowboys Never Die

Let us erase this pointless world, and move on to the next.

[sketching-shark]

Starting Journey to the West assuming its the story about a silly goofy monkey going on monster-of-the-week adventures with his friends:

Reading about Sun "was-definitely-a-warlord" Wukong smashing the upteenth person's head into a meat patty but a few chapters in:

[hephaestuscrew]

Heard a vague acquaintance joking yesterday that if a podcast creator didn't want anyone to listen to a particular episode, they could just release it on Christmas Day because no one listens to podcasts on Christmas. I could have absolutely blown his mind if I told him about the two-hour Wolf 359 finale released on December 25th.

[eruverse]

Someday I will write 90s Amerus fic. That day isn’t now (biggest writing block rn), but someday. Many of the 90s fics in the English fandom are too incorrect in my opinion when it comes to historical contexts — and I know why, but it is 😄 grating

[eruhamster]

Went down a Taoism rabbit hole for TGCF purposes, and was reading about the Three Souls and Seven Senses since there's a recurring mention of 'three parts [blank] and seven parts [blank]' in the story and was wondering what it meant, and it made me think of Xie Lian's 2nd ascension a little differently.

from here

Usually when western fans talk about Xie Lian deciding not to ascend and banish himself that 2nd time it's seen as an act of self-sabotage and self-punishment, but this made me think maybe it's meant to be seen a little differently.

Xie Lian is a Taoist. He only gets deeper into Taoism after his 2nd banishment.

The leadup to his 2nd ascension was him being so plagued by those seven senses (particularly grief, anger, fear, and hatred) that he nearly did something unforgiveable, and he still thought he ended up annihilating 'Wu Ming' because of his actions.

I think it's possible that Xie Lian truly felt that he fucked up so badly that his cultivation clearly wasn't at a point that he was ready to ascend. It's still the one regret he has.

And so he continues on the path of cultivation and being able to control his emotions, and he ascends a third time after hundreds of years as an immortal/xian; as someone who has cultivated so perfectly that he reaches godhood, even with no luck and no followers and doing nothing but collecting scraps. Complete enlightenment.

[elegantcherryblossomsheep]

the thing is that whats happening is really scary. not because everything is going to fall apart - he may do far less damage than we fear.

but because this outcome has people afraid for their lives and uncertain if they want to live. democracy should never leave such a large proportion of people fearful.

yes, there will always be people upset about the outcome of an election - usually around half. but there should never be people interested in harming others or constructing conspiracy theories, and absolutely never people interested in harming themselves.

American politics, radicalism and individualism has gone too far and its dangerous.

[wasabikitcat]

community college is so funny because half of the teachers are like "For this class you need to use lockdown browser for all quizzes and tests. You need to buy this 70 dollar textbook, and all papers turned in must be in APA format with a title page even if they're only 500 words long. I will not accept late assignments. Also you have a minimum of 4 assignments a week." and the other half are like "you don't need proctoring for the final exam I trust you. here's a download link to a pirated copy of the textbook. as long as your writing is coherent and demonstrates an understanding of the material I literally could not care less what format you use. I can't figure out how canvas works so I'm not giving you due dates, just make sure it's turned in before the grading period ends. your only weekly assignment is a forum post with a minimum of 100 words."

[snobgoblin]

sometimes I'm like "am I egotistical for wanting to push for transmasc rep and positive masculinity in fiction. am i egotistical for trying to push for more masculine representation in things like fairies. am i egotistical for having so many transmasc characters" but then I'm like well everyone's gotta contribute something right and if I don't do anything about these feelings I guess nobody fucking will so it HAS to be me or someone like me that cares. egotistical or not

[isfjmel-phleg]

I had to express my regrets to the comics shop owner that I couldn't come back for the big October sale since I'm returning to Texas, and he suggested that I frequent some other shop he knows of in Texas, and I tried to explain that I live in Middle-Of-Nowhere (no comics shops near enough for my transportation situation), but clearly this New England gentleman had no concept of how big the place is and why a shop's simply existing in this state doesn't necessarily mean that I can easily go there, so we had to leave it at that 😅

[drsilverfish]

The English and “The Shame”

The English dir Hugo Blick (Nov 2022 on BBC iplayer UK and Amazon Prime elsewhere) starring Chaske Spencer and Emily Blunt.

Discussion under the cut because major spoilers warning

This is a really beautiful tale in every way. It’s also a parable about English colonialism. It’s a reparative story, which takes the Western narrative and, for once, gives the starring part to a Native American.

Chaske Spencer’s Native American hero Eli brings so much to his character through a taciturn yet gentle endurance, which speaks volumes about all that he has suffered (losing wife, children, family). He’s someone with a dual identity, a Pawnee tribe member, having been a scout for the US Army in (I think, from the timeline) The Black Hills War against the Sioux.  

The drama is called The English, for a reason, because on a broader canvass, this is about the brutality which the colonial conquest of the English ruling class wrought on its own working class, on the Scots, on the Irish, on the Native Americans, on the American continent itself. 

Blunt’s character is a representative of that English ruling class. She is Lady Cornelia Locke and she says that her father, “...owned half of Devon”.

She is wealthy, but, she is also a woman in the Victorian era, a period when women (even aristocratic ones) had extremely limited rights, effectively “belonging” to their fathers and then to their husbands. 

Lady Cornelia is on a revenge mission. She was raped (by a duplicitous British butcher out to make his own way in the States) and she and the son that resulted from that rape, were infected with syphlilis (then incurable and ultimately fatal) and suffered from the pain, and the social stigma of that. 

She is a sympathetic character, but she also embodies “the English” colonial project and its repercussions.

In America, she carries around a bag full of a large amount of money throughout her journey, which is often reacted to with shock (and avarice) by those she meets along the way, who are all scrabbling to make a living. This is of course, a metaphor for colonial plunder, which is where English aristocractic money significantly comes from. Yet Cornelia retains a naivety (a protective ignorance) about that. 

It’s also symbolic that Cornelia has been infected with syphillis. Disease metaphors are always a bit narratively dubious, because they tend to reinforce stigma about infection, particularly sexually transmitted infection. Unfortunately, this is no different, as syphllis is partly used to signify sexual and moral corruption in this narrative. Nevertheless, it also functions effectively as part of the colonial critique.

It is believed that Columbus brought syphilis back from the New World to the Old World in the 1400s. On a metaphorical level, we can understand Cornelia’s syphilis as the horrible consequences of colonialism coming home to roost. The character herself did not deserve to suffer, and she is depicted as brave and true-hearted, a victim herself, but the point is that colonialism infects the souls of colonisers as well as colonised. This is a metaphor also carried in the narrative by Cornelia’s identification of herself as a Scorpio, and Eli’s warning that scorpions are often most dangerous to themselves (sometimes stinging themselves to death with their own tails. Looking at the present, a metaphor for Brexit Britain, arguably the self-inflicted wound of imperial hubris coming back to bite us..  

It’s entirely important, therefore, that Sheriff Robert Marshall, played by Stephen Rea, is Irish, the Irish being victims of English colonialism themselves. The Sheriff has compassion and sympathy for Eli and Cornelia and helps them escape culpability for the murder of their common enemy, the English villain Melmont.

The love story, told extremely well with two excellent performances from Blunt and Spencer, is the bow in which the colonial critique is wrapped. Cornelia and Eli love one another, but must part, and it is notable that he accepts they must separate while she first protests, in their final scene. But in the end, she does what “good” colonizers should do; she goes home.

And when, in England years later, Cornelia meets the Native American young man whose life she and Eli saved, and he lifts her veil to kiss her, and she whispers, “But...the shame”, he replies, “Yes, but not yours,” and we understand that ‘the shame” is not the shame of syphilis, but the shame of colonialism itself.

[beemintty]

so i was talking to my dad (who is an absolute history/literature/mythology/all the other interesting things nerd) and we were talking about how the gods in greek mythology (and lots of other mythologies) are not seen as good like how christianity views god. instead humans fear and appease the gods in fear of them doing bad things or causing harm because gods only act on there nature, they have no ability to change, whereas humans are changeable and can act against nature. he [my dad] described the gods as "the unmoved movers". so having the ability to change reality, having the power to change the world around them but only if it is in there nature to do so. the gods were made incredibly flawed unlike the perspective of god in christianity who is completely perfect. humans have the ability to be good. gods can only act in accordance to who they are supposed to be without any chance of changing.