#but typical/common in japanese narratives more generally i have no idea

[beannoss]

Hi Bean!

I have a question for you! I have noticed in your writings that Twilight and Yor begin a romantic relationship after their secrets are revealed. Are you opposed to any romance between them before they find out? I assume if so, it’s because it’s morally questionable, though a lot of fans find romance before compelling as it raises the stakes considerably. I’m not suggesting one is right and the other is wrong, I’m just interested in your take on this! I love your writing! Thank you! 😊

Hello you! I'm always chuffed to see your name pop up 🫶😊!

Oh boy! Thank you for this ask — it's a big question but also I do have thoughts XD Sorry it's taken me a few days to get my ducks in a row!

I want to start, though, by emphasising that my thoughts and preferences here are exclusive to Spy x Family as a canon enterprise; they don't pertain to fanworks or other fan theories, I'm not out to yuck anyone's yum ✌️ ditto for even my own writing! You're right that I don't really have an interest in exploring that dynamic but I reserve the right to change my mind ;)!

[Reference herein to manga chapters not yet animated]

Right, so. There's lots of things I love about SxF, but one of the things that interested me early and keeps me engaged is that it operates under an interesting and complex morality. Spy work and contract killing are obviously an ethical minefield, and in the real world, generally to the bad. Within the world of SxF, Endo takes pains to write Twilight and Yor both firmly on the morally right side, even if Twilight’s tactics or Yor’s actions in a vacuum are frequently questionable. With Twilight especially it seems Twilight is currently (resisting) working through the impact and ethical implication of his actions on Anya. When it comes to Yor, I expect that’s where we’ll see him wrestle with similar questions through a romance lens. I think it was quite deliberate and important that Twilight specifically articulated that he’d been wondering if Yor had previous romantic relationships, and that it was now confirmed she hadn’t. As far as I can remember, it’s the only time he’s had that sort of reflection on Yor's life before the Forgers; I mention it because it mirrors times he’s reflected explicitly on Anya’s history and trauma and her needs as a child, with implication that his actions and motivations for adopting her could/probably will hurt her. I hazard that his observation about Yor will be similarly indicative of an arc down the line.

When it comes to canon, if the Yor x Twilight romance were to firm up while Yor still believes Twilight is Loid, I admit there’s a high chance I’d nope out. I want to emphasize firm up though… I tend to think Yor already has feelings for Loid (Twilight?) whether she’s fully aware of them or would necessarily articulate them as romantic (and I think this is being really interestingly conveyed and explored through her current feelings about kissing, though I may differ with some on how I think that may shake out). I also think there’s a… less high but not impossible chance that Twilight is aware he has or is developing feelings for Yor. I’ve argued before that he knows he has formed/is forming an attachment to her and that he knows he trusts her. I don’t think it’s too far from there to romantic feelings for Twilight: after all, attachment and trust (intimacy) are not things he's had in a long, long time. And given his current pseudo-short temper and general malaise comes out most with Anya, with Yor he’s been notably softer and more receptive. In my view, this is partially because so far he hasn't really done much that would really hurt Yor and nor has she done anything that would really hurt Twilight. So far, Twilight and Yor are on a fairly even footing.

This is a very long way of saying that I trend toward thinking we’ve got at least a few toes into the romance already.

The reasons I’d be a squicked by the firming up of the romance, pre-reveal, are related to its being morally questionable as you pointed out (I'll talk a bit more about that in a moment.) But it's also because I think it would undermine character arcs and dominant themes.

Twilight’s arc involves finding and forging a new pack, a new family. Somewhere safe and loving that he’s been denied essentially for his whole life (I don’t dispute that his mother loved him deeply and did her best to protect him: living with an abuser and then with her under war was never going to actually be or feel safe). A big part of this safety and love for Twilight is about being accepted, warts and all. Twilight started lying because he wasn’t accepted by his father as he was. There’s a fair bit to work through by way of accepting Twilight’s warts already — I think Yor will be fairly understanding as things currently stand, and that’s part of why they’re a good match. Their moral compasses, their sacrifices, how they see the world and how they want to try and make it better, align and/or resonate in foundational ways. However, given their current standing, pursuing deeper intimacy of a romantic/sexual relationship with Yor before reveals, I think would take it past the line. And particularly when considering Yor’s character arc.

Yor’s arc is also around finding love and security, but centred less around acceptance (although that obviously also explicitly features!) and more around self-worth and understanding her value. If the romance were to firm up pre-reveal, the false pretences are… I mean, to me, they lob a Molotov cocktail into that theme of self-worth and being valued, as she really would just be being used: the intimacy could never be real because Twilight is not Loid Forger. To expand a bit on an earlier point, perhaps ironically, Yor’s relationship with Loid is mostly on the up-and-up: they both know any marital connection they demonstrate is fake. They may be (are) friends, and also they’re under no illusions that it’s something of a tenuous friendship (at least for now). They co-parent Anya but are clear that this co-parenting comes with clear lines around and between their relationship otherwise. I want to tread mindfully here, because I also really like and appreciate aroace interpretations of Yor and Twilight and their relationship: I think this discussion around firming up their romance actually also holds true in the case of attempting to substantially deepen their platonic bond, pre-reveal. In the same ways, Twilight needing acceptance and Yor learning self-worth would be severely undermined by a pre-reveal apparent and false deepening of their commitment to one another.

On the point of it being morally questionable generally, yeah it is. I mean, look, it's fiction and they aren't real people who can be hurt by those actions. So in principle, Endo can write what story he wants, I wouldn't think it reflected poorly on him or anything like that. I just don't really want to read a story that goes to that place; it’s a squick. I'm sure this has been discussed before in fandom, but my read on the moral dubiety centres around the idea that it isn’t possible to actively choose or meaningfully consent to emotional or physical intimacy when one person is lying about who they are (and in this case, they're both lying about who they are... Although Twilight to a greater extent). This does tie back into SxF themes as well, as choice and consent are also… maybe not big themes of SxF exactly, but active choice and informed consent are things which have come up more than once (I have my thoughts as to why: for a character whose choices drive so much of the narrative, Twilight is actually also a character who’s shown to have little actual choice or control over much of his own life. Considering his motivations for a world where children don’t cry, imo valuing active choice and meaningful consent are important factors required for that world. And I also actually suspect the theme of choice will become more important the more we learn about Donovan, and his role as foil for Twilight.)

Also, honestly for me, it would be too close to a common trope in a lot of popular western fiction/media that I don’t like: a woman being taken advantage of by a man in some way, shape or form, and then through the magic of her non-specific womanness, forgiving him his gross transgressions under the thinnest of pretences. Particularly as Endo has already taken pains to sidestep that as a foundation of their arrangement. To be fair, I wouldn't be surprised that were Endo to take the pre-reveal romance path, it would be a deeper interpretation of that trope, but as with other sexist tropes utilised in pop fiction/media, I have to ask why the choice couldn’t have been for a more interesting path, rather than retreading that one. And particularly given everything he's established for Twilight and Yor: it goes against much of what Twilight stands for — and indeed goes against much of what he meaningfully brings in his current relationship with Yor, that of encouraging her, supporting her, and shoring up her thoughts, opinions and self-image, particularly when she voices upset or doubt about them. It also goes against much of what Yor stands for: while the power imbalance would lie firmly with Twilight, it remains true that Yor’s lies in an apparently deepening intimacy would also undermine the safety and security she ostensibly creates for Twilight. She also so obviously hates lying, the prospect of her keeping her secret into what she believed was a real relationship would wreck her. Doubly so, given the weight Yor puts on Loid's acknowledgement of who she is and what she believes: something she hangs her self-worth on, a recognition of her value. And I'd argue here that it would actually, conversely, be impossible for Loid Forger to acknowledge or accept Yor's truth: that's only something Twilight can do.

And so I guess there’s also just the bare fact following from the above that I think a pre-reveal firming up of their relationship is the less interesting choice for what is a major franchise that has otherwise done innovative things. Another reason I love SxF is that it subverts tropes and complicates cliches. One of which includes communication: for a pair who have crossed lines as a foundation of their relationship, Yor and Twilight actually do a lot of communicating. That’s a subversion of many heterosexual romantic tropes and norms, at least in a Western context, and, to put it sort of flippantly, it would bum me out if it failed at the final hurdle.

I just want to emphasise one more time, my opinions and preferences here are strictly related to Spy x Family in an official canon capacity, and nothing to do with fanworks or fan theories or what fans want to explore in whatever fashion. Part of my feelings here are also honestly because of the tone and pacing of SxF. I think it entirely possible to do interesting things with those tropes and actually think Endo is the type of writer I would trust to do so. But the way SxF is written by way of tone, pacing, narrative priorities and audience demand, I don't think even Endo would be able to do them within SxF in ways that wouldn't squick me out and make me lose love for Twilight, specifically, pretty entirely. I'd rather he just didn't 😂

Tl;dr: in canon exclusively I’m not into a firming up of their romantic relationship pre-reveal! Their situation is complicated enough as it is; give these goobers the love they want and can share with one another, kindly and gently, when the world has been neither kind nor gentle with them. In my view, it’s already primed in their character and thematic arcs 🫶

[richs-japan-tabi]

May 14 - Ueno Park

Today we went to Ueno Park! This park is known for its scenic views and scale. It is so big that within it there are several shrines and temples. The first of which we visited was Shinobazunoike Bentendo. After making an offering, there were omikuji and various other trinkets that were available for purchase. I, instead, decided to buy a goshuin stamp, which I thought had nice calligraphy compared to some of the other temples I had seen. At this point, my collection of goshuin has grown to four! 

The second we visited was Ueno Toshogu Shrine. I was informed that this shrine was built in honor of Tokugawa Ieyasu as a branch of his more famous shrine. It was thought that his soul would live through this shrine and offer protection to the city of Edo in his afterlife. Contrary to most other shrines, Ueno Toshogu Shrine does not follow the Japanese visual aesthetic of wabi-sabi. Rather, it is lavishly decorated to display Tokugawa's wealth and power.

When we were done walking around Ueno Park, we visited the Tokyo National Museum. This museum had a multitude of interesting artifacts from ancient Japan. As for the building itself, it was impressive in its own right, standing out from what is expected of Japanese architecture. I will further discuss my experience in this museum in the academic discussion.

By the time we had finished exploring the museum, I was starving. For lunch, we stopped in Ameyokocho, an open-air shopping district by Ueno Station. Almost immediately, we found a butsudon restaurant. When we sat down we noticed that there was a numbness scale. Confused, we asked the server what this was, and he explained that it was different than traditional spiciness and recommended we start with only a little. The food was delicious! However, I did notice that it left a little bit of a tingling sensation on my tongue. I suppose this is what he meant by the numbness factor.

We ended the day by going to Akihabara. While I have already visited Akihabara multiple times due to its proximity to the hotel, I still had fun. I went inside one of the many arcades and played a bit of MaiMai, a Japanese arcade game, before leaving.

Academic Reflection

First, I would like to discuss my experience at the Tokyo National Museum. An artifact that immediately caught my attention was a replica of a samurai general's helmet from the late 1500s and early 1600s. This helmet unlike many others was designed to resemble a man's head. I found this fascinating as I typically associated samurai helmets as being these eye-catching spectacles as presented in Western media. However, this one had horse hair on top to resemble human hair and a headband made of black lacquer and silver leaf!

The readings for today's excursion were centered around the otaku. Defining otaku is a difficult task and, for this reason, remains to be the main topic of both readings. Azuma describes otaku through his idea of the database as opposed to the traditional grand narrative that can be found in media. If media of the modern age can be described as a fragment of a grand narrative, media of the post-modern age can be described as a database of moe around which characters are built around. Moe describes characteristics that invoke an emotion in their audience. One common example of this in anime is girls with cat-like ears. Rather than stories being written by an author and characters being placed within them, the media of the post-modern age begins with the characters. Works such as anime, manga, and other story-driven media begin, instead, with the character. The second reading further explains the psychopathology of the otaku. It explains how the otaku expresses ownership by making a work their own through parody. This, for example, includes fan art, fanfiction, and cosplay.

The influence of otaku culture is immediately apparent upon entering Akihabara. Characters with various moe elements can be seen on nearly every building as you walk through the city. Furthermore, stores such as Melonbooks sell doujinshi that are a testament to the scale of post-modern nonnarrative works. If you would like to examine otaku culture or even take part in it yourself, Akihabara is definitely the place to be.

[kyomunosaki]

A handful of celebrity chef memoirs I really liked

Plus a rant on Chang's work, and a way general audiences can enjoy memoir as a genre

I don't have all too much interesting to say about them, but they're all definitely worth a read. The audiobook versions are pretty amazing, especially since they're being read by the authors themselves.

Bourdain's excellence goes without saying, but Chang's memoir (he's the Momofuku/Ugly Delicious guy) is seriously underappreciated. I think I just saw the cover at a bookstore once, and was just weirdly drawn to it for some reason.

The Sisyphus imagery being evoked with a celebrity chef memoir seemed interesting, and the further elaboration in the beginning of the book, of it being Oddjob and I think? an allusion to the Allman Brothers Band, might be enough to draw some of you in.

It was especially interesting for me to read as both an Asian-American and Japanese (Just FYI Chang is Korean-American, he taught English in Japan for a while). A lot of the work discusses Asian identity in general, and talks about some of Chang's artistic work in relation to this within his restaurants, which is genuinely super interesting to learn about. There's a lot I think Asians can take away from this work, especially since I think "Confucianist" upbringings are somewhat common for us.

The order I experienced the three also worked out well, since there happen to be some through-lines and discussions of similar topics from different points in time and from different people. I don't really want to impart my own meaning onto these autobiographical works, but it gave me a lot to think about in general.

I honestly didn't expect so much from these works, since so much of what a celebrity chef is in the popular consciousness is "persona" in a sense. And more specifically, "exaggerated persona to make money," say Chang's typical public persona and like Gordon Ramsey. I don't think I can really draw the line with what is and what isn't persona or exaggerated with these works, nor am I qualified to do so, but at the very least: I can say the experiences presented in them are extremely human, and heartfelt, regardless of veracity to one's character or real events.

Genres like memoir are ultimately not a life-accurate recollection of various happenings, but just a work of writing created for public release, and I think that is important to always keep in mind. But regardless of that, they often still work as a work of narrative, and we can always look to it to try to understand it in some sense. Understand, not as in fact-check or comb through and try to guess what's real or who's actually "Bigfoot" in real life; but as any work of writing, just engage with it through good faith, and try to derive some personal meaning from it.

Also I should just make a note somewhere here, or else I'll get yelled at, but biography and history are still very important and noble pursuits; however, it should probably be left to academics lol. There is still definitely an element of historical interest to pick up on, but that should somewhat go without saying in the genre that is "memoirs." What I'm trying to get at is what other things this genre can provide for general audiences, and to just make a point to not worry too much about historical truth or accuracy of some portions.

TL;DR

Back to the works I mentioned first, would I recommend them? Definitely. I'd somewhat urge you to check them out in release order, alongside any other celebrity chef memoirs that interest you. It's really interesting to see the changes in the landscape and just changes in ideas over time, and does have some interesting history too. Just a lot of interesting stuff to read about.

Memoirs as a genre are pretty interesting, and I do think they can be enjoyed in a lot of ways. The typical way of just reading it as literal is great, but just thinking about the narrative of the works I think can have immense value as well, since that is kinda how they're written.

[usergreenpixel]

JACOBIN FICTION CONVENTION MEETING 1: La Seine no Hoshi (1975)

1. Introduction

Well, dear reader, here it is. My first ever official review. And, as promised, this is one of the pieces of Frev media that you have likely never heard of before.

So, without further ado, sit down, relax, grab drinks and snacks and allow me to tell you about an anime called “La Seine no Hoshi” (The Star of the Seine).

“La Seine no Hoshi” is a children’s anime series made by Studio Sunrise. It consists of 39 episodes and was originally broadcast in Japan from April 4th to December 26th of 1975.

Unlike its more famous contemporary, a manga called “Rose of Versailles” that had begun being released in 1972 and is considered a classic to this day, “La Seine no Hoshi” has stayed relatively obscure both in the world of anime and among other Frev pop culture.

Personally, the only reason why I found out about its existence was the fact that I actively seek out everything Frev-related and I just happened to stumble upon the title on an anime forum several years ago.

So far, the anime has been dubbed into Italian, French, German and Korean but there is no English or even Spanish dub so, unfortunately, people who do not speak fluent Japanese or any other aforementioned language are out of luck ( if anyone decides to make a fandub of the series, call me). That being said, the series is readily available in dubs and the original version on YouTube, which is where I ended up watching it. The French dub calls the anime “La Tulipe Noire” (The Black Tulip), which could be an homage to the movie with the same name that takes place in the same time period.

Unfortunately, while I do speak Japanese well enough to maintain a basic conversation and interact with people in casual daily situations, I’m far from fluent in the language so the version I watched was the French dub, seeing as I am majoring in French.

So, with all of this info in mind, let’s find out what the story is about and proceed to the actual review.

2. The Summary

(Note: Names of the characters in the French dub and the original version differ so I will use names from the former since that’s what I watched)

The story of “La Seine no Hoshi” revolves around a 15-year old girl called Mathilde Pasquier - a daughter of two Parisian florists who helps her parents run their flower shop and has a generally happy life.

But things begin to change when Comte de Vaudreuil, an elderly Parisian noble to whom Mathilde delivers flowers in the second episode, takes her under his wing and starts teaching her fencing for an unknown reason and generally seems to know more about her than he lets on.

Little does Mathilde know, those fencing lessons will end up coming in handy sooner than she expected. When her parents are killed by corrupt nobles, the girl teams up with Comte de Vaudreuil’s son, François, to fight against corruption as heroes of the people, all while the revolution keeps drawing near day by day and tensions in the city are at an all time high.

This is the gist of the story, dear readers, so with that out of the way, here’s the actual review:

3. The Story

Honestly, I kind of like the plot. It has a certain charm to it, like an old swashbuckling novel, of which I’ve read a lot as a kid.

The narrative of a “hero of the common folk” has been a staple in literature for centuries so some might consider the premise to be unoriginal, but I personally like this narrative more than “champion of the rich” (Looking at you, Scarlet Pimpernel) because, historically, it really was a difficult time for commoners and when times are hard people tend to need such heroes the most.

People need hope, so it’s no surprise that Mathilde and François (who already moonlights as a folk hero, The Black Tulip) become living legends thanks to their escapades.

Interestingly enough, the series also subverts a common trope of a hero seeking revenge for the death of his family. Mathilde is deeply affected by the death of her parents but she doesn’t actively seek revenge. Instead, this tragedy makes the fight and the upcoming revolution a personal matter to her and motivates her to fight corruption because she is not the only person who ended up on its receiving end.

The pacing is generally pretty good but I do wish there were less filler episodes and more of the overarching story that’s dedicated to the secret that Comte de Vaudreuil and Mathilde’s parents seem to be hiding from her and maybe it would be better if the secret in question was revealed to the audience a bit later than episode 7 or so.

However, revealing the twist early on is still an interesting narrative choice because then the main question is not what the secret itself is but rather when and how Mathilde will find out and how she will react, not to mention how it will affect the story.

That being said, even the filler episodes do drive home the point that a hero like Mathilde is needed, that nobles are generally corrupt and that something needs to change. Plus, those episodes were still enjoyable and entertaining enough for me to keep watching, which is good because usually I don’t like filler episodes much and it’s pretty easy to make them too boring.

Unfortunately, the show is affected by the common trope of the characters not growing up but I don’t usually mind that much. It also has the cliché of heroes being unrecognizable in costumes and masks, but that’s a bit of a staple in the superhero stories even today so it’s not that bothersome.

4. The Characters

It was admittedly pretty rare for a children’s show to have characters who were fleshed out enough to seem realistic and flawed, but I think this series gives its characters more development than most shows for kids did at the time.

I especially like Mathilde as a character. Sure, at first glance she seems like a typical Nice Pretty Ordinary Girl ™️ but that was a part of the appeal for me.

I am a strong believer in that a character does not need to be a blank slate or a troubled jerk to be interesting and Mathilde is neither of the above. She is essentially an ordinary girl with her own life, family, friends, personality and dreams and, unfortunately, all of that is taken away from her when her parents are killed.

Her initial reluctance to participate in the revolution is also pretty realistic as she is still trying to live her own life in peace and she made a promise to her parents to stay safe so there’s that too.

I really like the fact that the show did not give her magic powers and that she was not immediately good at fencing. François does remark that her fencing is not bad for a beginner but in those same episodes she is clearly shown making mistakes and it takes her time to upgrade from essentially François’s assistant in the heroic shenanigans to a teammate he can rely on and sees as an equal. Heck, later there’s a moment when Mathilde saves François, which is a nice tidbit of her development.

Mathilde also doesn’t have any romantic subplots, which is really rare for a female lead.

She has a childhood friend, Florent, but the two are not close romantically and they even begin to drift apart somewhat once Florent becomes invested in the revolution. François de Vaudreuil does not qualify for a love interest either - his father does take Mathilde in and adopts her after her parents are killed so François is more of an older brother than anything else.

Now, I’m not saying that romance is necessarily a bad thing but I do think that not having them is refreshing than shoehorning a romance into a story that’s not even about it. Plus most kids don’t care that much for romance to begin with so I’d say that the show only benefits from the creative decision of not setting Mathilde up with anyone.

Another interesting narrative choice I’d like to point out is the nearly complete absence of historical characters, like the revolutionaries. They do not make an appearance at all, save for Saint-Just’s cameo in one of the last episodes and, fortunately, he doesn’t get demonized. Instead, the revolutionary ideas are represented by Florent, who even joins the Jacobin Club during the story and is the one who tries to get Mathilde to become a revolutionary. Other real people, like young Napoleon and Mozart, do appear but they are also cameo characters, which does not count.

Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI are exceptions to the rule.

(Spoiler alert!)

Marie-Antoinette is portrayed as kind of spoiled and out of touch. Her spending habits get touched on too but she is not a malicious person at heart. She is simply flawed. She becomes especially important to the story later on when Mathilde finds out the secret that has been hidden from her for her entire life.

As it turns out, Marie- Antoinette, the same queen Mathilde hated so much, is the girl’s older half-sister and Mathilde is an illegitimate daughter of the Austrian king and an opera singer, given to a childless couple of florists to be raised in secret so that her identity can be protected.

The way Marie-Antoinette and Mathilde are related and their further interactions end up providing an interesting inner conflict for Mathilde as now she needs to reconcile this relationship with her sister and her hatred for the corruption filling Versailles.

The characters are not actively glorified or demonized for the most part and each side has a fair share of sympathetic characters but the anime doesn’t shy away from showing the dark sides of the revolution either, unlike some other shows that tackle history (*cough* Liberty’s Kids comes to mind *cough*).

All in all, pretty interesting characters and the way they develop is quite realistic too, even if they could’ve been more fleshed out in my opinion.

5. The Voice Acting

Pretty solid. No real complaints here. I’d say that the dub actors did a good job.

6. The Setting

I really like the pastel and simple color scheme of Paris and its contrast with the brighter palette of Versailles. It really drives home the contrast between these two worlds.

The character designs are pretty realistic, simple and pleasant to watch. No eyesores like neon colors and overly cutesy anime girls with giant tiddies here and that’s a big plus in my book.

7. The Conclusion

Like I said, the show is not available in English and those who are able to watch it might find it a bit cliché but, while it’s definitely not perfect. I actually quite like it for its interesting concept, fairly realistic characters and a complex view of the French Revolution. I can definitely recommend this show, if only to see what it’s all about.

Some people might find this show too childish and idealistic, but I’m not one of them.

I’m almost 21 but I still enjoy cartoons and I’m fairly idealistic because cynicism and nihilism do not equal maturity and, if not for the “silly” idealism, Frev itself wouldn’t happen so I think shows like that are necessary too, even if it’s just for escapism.

If you’re interested and want to check it out, more power to you.

Anyway, thank you for attending the first ever official meeting of the Jacobin Fiction Convention. Second meeting is coming soon so stay tuned for updates.

Have a good day, Citizens! I love you!

- Citizen Green Pixel

[i-did]

if you’ve addressed this before I apologize but what do you think of claims that Kevin is a poc coded character and his supposed “mistreatment” is fandom racism?

I mean Nora definitely intended for Kevin to be white while writing him, as she did with all other characters who races are not stated as otherwise. And like, I think I’ve seen the post you're talking about and what they describe is not what coding actually means.* There also isn't any textual basis for Kevin to be a POC besides Wymack, who people often see as non-white due to the discomfort over his 90’s tribal tattoos. IDC if people HC Kevin as a POC, but usually he’s just vaguely tan in the way people make Neil. You’ll see a “The Rock” FC for Wymack, but I haven't seen anything that actually goes beyond that. I’ve seen fic’s actively treat Dan, Matt, and Renee racistly, but Neil and Kevin get the same “vaguely tan” treatment and therefore avoid it. Nicky and Riko are different since they're canonly POC and not fanonly, so they fall into a different area. 

I would also say Kevin is a pretty common fandom favorite too? So I would disagree with that claim as well. Most people I talk to their favorite is either Andrew or Kevin it seems, then like a few Aaron lovers, and my personal favorite is Neil. These are all canonly white main characters–and are largely still depicted and treated as such. Dan, Matt, Nicky, and Renee are all larger characters than Jean or Jeremy, and besides Nicky, are intended to be white but the fandom decided weren't. So Dan, Matt and Renee all get pushed to the sidelines over favorable ‘white’ characters. Fandom’s racism actually has such wild layers tbh, same with its misogyny, but that’s another thing. 

I do think with a lot of the characters in AFTG adding headcanons making them POC can add an entire new layer to the canon and recontextualize scenes and struggles which would make some themes a lot stronger–I do this with most of the foxes in fact. 

But Kevin to me, if I do HC him as a POC, he is going to be white-passing and raised essentially believing he is white until he learns otherwise. 

Kevin to me is very peak white guy. I love him as a character, but book 1 he shows very typical white guy arrogance. He comes to a team and bosses them around while also dismissing them in the same breath. He believes he is owed something from the people around him, and they will blindly follow him and do what he says. They should always listen to him, and he automatically knows what is best–better than Dan. This feeling of “what I ask will be given, and I am above them” is definitely due to the raven mentality of everyone is inferior, but I’m sure there were racist raven recruits along the way, and Kevin is usually HC to be brown and not East Asian/Japanese, which experiences a very different type of racism. I believe if Kevin was a brown MOC… he would act differently. 

Personally, I see white-passing Kevin discovering he’s not actually white as much more narratively interesting and fitting. His mom is Irish, and it's very rare for a mixed kid to be perceived by society to look more related to their white parent than their brown parent–unless of course they're white-passing. And since the fandom usually has Wymack be a MOC, then it would make sense for this green-eyed light skin baby that never is outside but when he is he just kinda tans but is still light skinned, and think “yeah I believe her when she said he’s not my kid.” I also think it could fit Kevin’s arc of realizing Exy isn't all there is to him, in fact there is a whole culture and a father waiting for him to connect with, that he didn’t even know was there ‘as an option.’ it gives him something else to tack onto his identity as well that he had no idea about and was sheltered from. 

I’m still not solid on my own HC for Wymack and Kevin and if he will be white-passing or just white yet, but I play around with the idea sometimes for sure. But I don’t ever see him as visibly a POC. He feels no need to prove himself like Thea does and the media is shown to go easier on him as well as the foxes. The foxes are annoyed with him, but they ignore it, and the media forgives him easily and fawns over him, telling him he’s handsome and talented. Kevin from an outside perspective is very privileged in a way that parallels with Allison a lot actually. Who was based off of Paris Hilton– disowned wild child of a rich family that owns Hilton hotels, struggled with the public eye and is credited as the original influencer. 

*But yeah POC coding isn’t really a term like queer-coding is. Queerness is something that must be unstated for various reasons, which led to coding for either vilification or because there was no other way for it to be shown. But media dives pretty hard into ‘othering’ with POC, doing it’s best to show all the ways whiteness is different from ‘the rest’ by playing up stereotypes or extra emphasis on non-white features. I mean the first ever ‘talkie’ or modern day movie, had blackface in it, (the jazz singer). There is no perceived societal need for ‘POC coding’. There is such thing as ‘Jew coding’ however, which again is used for vilification and dates back pretty far in depictions of devils in churches in Europe. Kevin isn't shown as a ‘gay pervert’ like queer-coding does, or ‘dark curly hair and a strong nose, with his hands rubbing together’ like Jew-coding does. POC aren’t treated with coding but rather a full dive into minstrel depictions instead. 

Kevin is shown as sympathetic but also struggling, he is a victim, but he is also harsh. He is struggling with addiction that gets enabled by the other people around him who don’t know a better way to help. He has an arc, he learns to grow, he gets the tattoo, he talks to Wymack, he fights with Dan, he speaks to Jean, he scores the last point on the winning game, he learns to stand up to Riko. He develops in the books, and is one of the 3 main characters, Neil, Andrew, and Kevin. 

I think the fandom definitely focuses mostly on Andrew and Neil, which is unsurprising since they're the main pairing and get the most development and attention by the author as well. But the nature of fandom and fanfiction typically is to have all the background characters act as overly invested props to get the main paring ending up together. That's just kinda the way fanfiction typically goes. Kevin still largely is a character with his own thing going on, often recovery or dating other people or grumbling in the background with his own thoughts, in fics a lot more than any of the other characters in AFTG who aren't Andrew and Neil. I don’t think Kevin gets excessively ‘mistreated’ either, I think he gets a lot of the similar flattening out of his character we see a lot in general in fandom, whether its for a joke post or a fic.

[letterboxd]

Generating Magic.

As Studio Ghibli’s first fully 3DCG-animated feature film, Earwig and the Witch, lands in theaters, director Gorō Miyazaki chats with Toussaint Egan about the magic of flawed protagonists, the joys of 1970s anime and seeing Star Wars with his dad.

“When I make an animation, it’s not that I don’t want adults to enjoy it, but I really want to make films for children to watch.” —Gorō Miyazaki

“For Gorō, Hayao Miyazaki is not a father but rather a tall wall.” That’s long-time Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki speaking to the Los Angeles Times in a 2013 interview about Gorō Miyazaki, the eldest scion of one of Japan’s most celebrated directors. For over a decade and a half, the former landscaper-turned-director’s career in anime has been attached to expectations associated with his father Hayao Miyazaki, whose body of work spanning more than half a century is an exemplar of the medium.

Despite, as Suzuki-san put it, “the fate of one who has a legendary father”, and a less-than-enthusiastic reception to his 2006 directorial debut Tales from Earthsea, Miyazaki Junior has forged ahead with the express goal of asserting his own identity as a creator, with a body of work that is distinct and apart from that of Studio Ghibli’s most famous co-founder.

No more is this apparent than in his 2014 animated series Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter, a first for both Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli as not only his (and the studio’s) first animated series, but the studio’s first fully CG-animated work. While the elder Miyazaki has only lately come to express interest in CG animation in the form of his 2018 short film Boro the Caterpillar, Gorō, by contrast, has wholeheartedly embraced the medium, marking a clear and distinct break between his own aesthetic sensibilities and those of his father.

“If I were to create [a] hand-drawn TV anime series now, I would only be following a path carved out by Hayao Miyazaki and others as a latecomer,” Miyazaki told Asahi Shimbun in 2015. “Well, I wouldn’t like that. Expression by computer graphics remains incomplete, so both the workers and myself believe that there still remains something that we could do.” In choosing to pursue CG animation, Gorō Miyazaki is free to be held to no precedent other than his own.

Earwig and the Witch, Miyazaki’s first feature-length film since 2013’s From Up on Poppy Hill and Studio Ghibli’s first-ever feature-length CG-animated film, is another push forward. Adapted from Diana Wynne Jones’ 2011 children’s book, the film was made for Japanese television, but is being released theatrically elsewhere. The film tells the story of Earwig, a clever and precocious young orphan who, unbeknownst to her, is the daughter of a powerful witch on the run from malevolent forces. When she is adopted by the witch Bella Yaga and a mysterious shapeshifter known as the Mandrake, Earwig must use every ounce of her wits, charm and guile to assert command of her new life and learn the secret of her foster parent’s history.

Early Letterboxd reviews for Earwig and the Witch are mixed—such is the fervor for Ghibli’s hand-drawn masterpieces, comparisons will always exist, and there’s a common feeling that the film’s ending is abrupt (possibly setting things up for a sequel). Those who have enjoyed Earwig and the Witch, however, write that it is “solid, undeniably charming and lovely” and hope that “people who watch this will go in with an open mind and [refrain from] judging Earwig unfairly”.

We talked with Miyazaki over Zoom to discuss his motivations for adapting the book, the anime and films that have inspired and motivated him throughout his career, and what he would most want to be remembered for as a director.

Most of your films are adaptations of writers like Ursula Le Guin, Astrid Lindgren and now Diana Wynne Jones. What did you feel when you read the original Earwig and the Witch novel for the first time? What inspired you to turn it into a film? Gorō Miyazaki: When I first read the book, there were two things that really stuck out as very interesting to me. The first one was the protagonist, Earwig. I love the fact that she wasn’t portrayed as your typical, good obedient girl. She’s someone who, when she knows what she wants in her life, in order to achieve those goals, she doesn’t hesitate to use people or make people do as she wants them to do. And even in scenes where something bad happens and she could cry, she doesn’t cry. She’s strong-willed and works to overcome those challenges. She acts and works to come up with ideas of how she could overcome these challenges, so those traits of that character really appealed to me.

The other thing was how Jones portrays the concept of magic in the book. Bella Yaga, the witch, while she’s making all these magical spells and potions in the workshop, there’s also a physical sort of work at play. She has to blend these elements and ingredients, the mystical and the physical, and mix them together. So to see someone create magic in that way was a very intriguing idea to me.

What kind of stories do you typically enjoy reading? What are some of your favorite books, and what are you reading right now? In terms of fiction and fantasy, I’m a fan of Dianne Wynne Jones’ writing. What I like about her stories is that they have a lot of quirky characters. Sometimes the protagonist will be someone who would be quite difficult to interact with in real life. The characters have flaws and dimensions. They’re not often one-dimensional, neither good or bad. Her characters have different sides to them that make them really attractive and charming. In terms of books I regularly read though, I tend to prefer reading more non-fiction books than fantasy.

How did the experience of working on Ronia, a 3DCG-animated series, prepare you for the experience working on this film? Do you feel you’ve grown as a director since your last film in 2011? It’s hard to tell whether you’ve grown or not by yourself, but in terms of working in 3DCG with Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter, I was able to see what the possibilities of working with 3DCG were in terms of being able to [make] the characters act more, perform more, and show a different range of emotions. With Earwig and the Witch, I wanted to make it a story that was less driven by the [narrative], but driven by the characters and their performances, such as Earwig’s reactions, expressions, thoughts and feelings. I would say that the experience I had with Ronja was very much a learning experience and place to experiment with different ideas. Each episode of Ronja would have a different challenge—where for one episode I would try to make it into more of a comedy, the next episode would be just the two main child characters talking with each other, and then there were episodes with elements of horror or violence featured throughout. It was a place for me to explore and experiment with what was possible through 3DCG animation.

Writer-director Gorō Miyazaki.

What were some of your favorite animated films growing up that you return to for either inspiration and entertainment? I try to avoid going back to reference these animations or to emulate exactly what they did, but in terms of memorable and impressive anime from when I was growing up, Hayao Miyazaki’s Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro is one that I still hold dear. I wouldn’t call myself a hardcore movie or anime fan. My generation grew up during a period when anime became huge in Japan, so Leiji Matsumoto’s Space Battleship Yamato (1977) and Yoshiyuki Tomino’s Mobile Suit Gundam (1979–1981) were very popular at the time. I remember watching those and them leaving a big impression on me, as well as films like Star Wars (1977). I remember going to the theater when it first came out and that had a big impact on me.

A while back I was wondering who I went to see Star Wars with when it first came out, I couldn’t remember who I actually went with. So when I went back to my parents’ house and we were talking about this, it turns out the entire family went to go see the film. So I actually went to go see Star Wars with my father, Hayao Miyazaki! The second one, The Empire Strikes Back, my mother told us, “I don’t need to go and see this,” and so I remember going to see that one with my dad and my brother as well.

Your films often touch on the relationship between a child and their parent. How has your relationship with your son inspired your work? What films do you love watching with him? I’ll usually go and watch whatever film he wants to see [laughs]. Most recently we went to go see the new Demon Slayer movie. I thought it was very interesting, I felt like it had a freshness about it. Even with hand-drawn animation, I could tell it was done by a younger, ambitious generation of animators trying to accomplish something new.

What have been some of your favorite 3DCG animated films in recent years that have inspired you as a creator working in the medium? I love all of Pete Docter’s works at Pixar. I haven’t seen Soul yet, his latest film, but I loved Inside Out and I loved Monsters, Inc. when it first came out. I really enjoyed Tian Xiao Peng's Monkey King: Hero Is Back. What I loved about their films was that, as the audience, you could feel the energy, devotion and enthusiasm of the creators wanting to create something great using CG through the art form of animation.

As a director, what kind of stories are you most interested in telling? What would you ideally want your work to be known and remembered for? When I make an animation, it’s not that I don’t want adults to enjoy it, but I really want to make films for children to watch. Something that will inspire them in how to live their lives as they grow older and go into the world, something that might encourage them and offer hope. In terms of how I’d like to be remembered, I hope people will remember me as someone who always came up with something different than what they would’ve expected, and [from] what he did before. Not inconsistent, but someone who was always exploring new and challenging possibilities.

Related content

Ghibli Magic Moments: the Letterboxd Show podcast episode featuring Adam Kempenaar, David Jenkins and Tasha Robinson

Ghibli Goes Digital: a chat with Ghibliotheque’s Jake and Michael about the studio’s works heading to Netflix

The Top 100 Anime Series on Letterboxd

Follow Toussaint on Letterboxd

‘Earwig and the Witch’ is distributed in the US via GKIDS, and will be in limited theatrical release in the US from February 3, and on HBO Max from February 5. A digital release follows on March 23 with Blu-ray and DVD April 6.

[mr-kamiyama]

Quick thoughts about Digimon:

I tuned in one morning I wasn't working, which was rare at that job I was at at the time, caught 02 ep 10, and was hooked. I later realised the writer of all the Dark Ocean content was Konaka Chiaki, whose work I generally like, so no surprise there.

I gotta say, they probably should've just gone with 「相棒」 for partner. This word is usually a partner in context of a business partner or police partner--in fact, a show called just that has been running for the entire 21st century about detective partners (and it's a pretty good show. I've seen it be sympathetic to the plight of undocumented immigrants, for one)

Using "partner" the English loanword...well, the context I really hear it in is same-gender partner.

Now, mind you, I only figured things out as an adult, and native Japanese speakers here are and always have been treated pretty miserably. (Which is why "exotic Japanese garnish for my human default English" is very, very much rubbing your priveledge in our faces, incredibly offensive, but hey, y'all also repost Japanese fanworks without permission to the point many delete their accounts and give up because y'all are so married to the idea we're not people, which frankly, y'all's treatment of queer men in fandom is equally garbage)

But the reason that point is mentioned is that we're so sidelined, it's hard to even find and connect with each other (e.g. SF Japantown only has Japanese speaking clerks on one floor of Kinokuniya where the books in Japanese for us are kept. It's now "look Asian for the tourists") so a lot of us end up having trouble accessing random words in our own language because we're so used to either no one around us speaking it or bad consequences when we break our English with Japanese.

So, as I've never experienced queer life in Japan, and Japanese immigrants commonly end up yoyoing back to English, I'm not entirely sure "partner" the loanword is the only way to express same-gender partner as opposed to just the only one I've heard.

It does stand that it is *a* way. (Well, obviously, you could still use terms like "boyfriend" or "wife" but think the same as English speakers use it)

When watching 02, it's pretty easy to not go there because they're so young, and interact with the digimon during downtime like siblings, as the digimon are children as well (and you can't tell me that Wormmon isn't spot on for a younger brother in an abuse situation caring for an older brother)

Tailmon isa bit different, and obviously more mature, but ep 10 was the only Hikari-centric episode, and I never really had the desire to go back and watch Adventure. I don't feel like it had something for older viewers like I got out of 02-Frontier (Savers was intentionally about older viewers, and it was like a Doogie Howser/Men in Black/Digimon crossover, and I love it. And it had adults and even an elderly character with Digimon partners! Yay for useful adults!) so I admittedly can't decisively say about Tailmon.

But the rest do seem like siblings to their human children. And they're pointedly all children.

But just now, I was watching the new short, To Sora.

I have to say, as Piyomon has an adult voice, and Sora is an adult, my mind definitely went to "maybe the nomenclature could be better."

I do also have to say that I'm rather disappointed that they're ending this with "adults can't be Chosen anymore." At least there'll always be Savers, and maybe someday, I'll have enough of my massive dual-prong Digimon and Bleach project up that I can call it "extant" (I'm having a handful of the Bleach gang become Chosen as well as Osamu put into a gigai, and if you know Bleach, just imagine Coyote Starrk getting a new friend. Of course, he still has Lillynette and also adopts most of the Arrancar as his own children, but yes, Coyote gets a Digimon friend, too. And they're specifically trying calling adults because the kids keep getting too traumatised)

Ah, things run away from me.

But yes, especially with adult chosen and digimon, "partner" the loanword with no qualifier (i.e. "partner digimon") sounds like something else entirely to my queer mind www

And also "boo" for usefulness having an age limit. I wouldn't be saying this if this weren't specifically being aimed at fans who grew up with Adventure, and, while younger than me, are still well into adulthood. Cross Wars or the reboot have no reason to concern themselves with adult viewership, but Kizuna is being made for adults. So "end of childhood=end of your ability to be a hero" seems kinda... Even if they're just trying to end the original Adventure franchise, seems like a...they can do it better.

While no, Ken's and Daisuke's parents and Jun really *don't* deserve love, just... I dunno, there's just a deluge of teen heroes with powers and some immortal hero stories, but there's not a whole lot of the kind of adults you see in Savers. Yeah, they're side characters, but I'll take what I can get. Kizuna's approach is more common, which is a shame now that the average fan is roughly 29.

(Doesn't it also mess up the whole making the epilogue make any sense, what with everyone being with their digimon in that?)

(And for that matter, I would've loved 02 parents to have names, and maybe they could've gone into Miyako's more. She seems like she has a solid family. We see Ken explaining the digimon, and his parents exploited him until he had a breakdown. Heck, his dad continues to jump down his throat over things. Why couldn't Miyako's get some love? Why can't we see Miyako explaining digimon to her family and stay up all night with her older siblings hanging on her every word? Which considering how much real life kids get sorta discounted when two adults are talking (which I'll often just walk past and wave to the kid, so they know someone sees them) might have actually been an empowering fantasy for viewers. And a really great balance to Daisuke and Ken's home lives. (The kids with unpleasant families feel represented and empowered because they can still be heroes, but kids can also have the empowerment of watching Miyako's whole family, of which she is the baby, hanging on her words

(Also, why can't we see how someone from that family could enjoy the company of someone who slaps her kid brother around? And has some kind of stalker complex? Sure, it's stuff I can make answers for myself in my project, just like the initial reason to cross them was explaining the Dark Ocean, but I really would've loved something in canon about them)

Typically, adults in any kind of action hero story--let's look at Star Wars. The people who raised Luke are non-combatants. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda (an older Muppet, but older still stands) are just there as mentors, like Urahara in Bleach. It's really on Luke's shoulders. Han Solo is as old as a hero gets, and he's pretty young himself. (I've seen the original trilogy, and it was forever ago, so if Luke Skywalker is actually a teenager, forgive the error)

You don't see anyone between 20 year old hero and 60 year old mentor doing much of anything. Buddy cops are the only exception to this.

Shame that digimon is gonna follow that pattern instead of buck the trend, especially now that their fanbase is getting older. I dunno how much of a letdown the apparent Kizuna narrative is for a 29 year old as opposed to someone who wasn't even a kid when it was new, but I'm sure it's there. Even if I am decidedly older than that, I can't be the only one disappointed by it. If I thought I was, I wouldn't make this post.

And it kinda messes up using this to make the epilogue make any sense. When it was first revealed that Yamato suddenly became an astronaut, Gabumon was there with him on Mars. So on and so forth, and all humans had partners. Which naturally includes all the people over 23.

I guess we'll always have Satuma and Kudamon. (Miki and Megumi are nice too, and are also teetering on the edge of canon ship, which it's nice to see queer female fans get that, but they do seem like they're in their early to mid 20s, which arguably puts them at the end of typical "useful age range")

I'd love to already have an alternative up, but for now, I only have a few Bleach prequel one shots posted and over 800 pages of bullet point notes.

[jasperlion]

Nonspoiler review for 3H:

Positives:

-> The story does change depending on which House you pick and while the first few chapters will only feature minor differences, a lot of them will play a key role in the future or will clear up events that happen on other routes and shed some light on the events before the game.

-> Further interaction with the characters will help flesh them out in ways that expand old mechanics like the 'Headquarters' mechanic in SoV and conversation mechanic in Tellius games. There's a lot of little things here and there that also help shed some light on the characters, their habits, their likes and dislikes, further expanding on them than other games did before.

-> You can interact with characters of the Houses you did not pick up to a point, and this makes them all both endearing and plays into what the game attempts to do for it's latter half. It also gives you additional context and lore. They also react to ingame events.

-> There's a lot to do and read about the world in which the game takes place, a lot of flavor text that gives you a bigger idea of what it's like.

-> There's a lot of architectural diversity and attention to the three countries the game focuses on, structures in each will look similar and share roots with real world counterparts, also differing from each other in that sense as well. It makes the world feel rich and varied rather than uniform.

-> There's also canonical artstyles from the world this takes place in in both their flags and other ingame 'sections', like the murals/frescos in Valentia or the flags in Tellius, and it's always neat in my book to see more of a fictional culture, especially its art.

-> A lot of lore!

-> Enough care went into the setup that even if the paths diverge the narrative feels cohesive enough.

-> A lot of old and new mechanics to the series add to the quality of life of the game, especially in combat, and it’s pretty innovative and ambitious with how you can build your group.

-> Supports are a real treat and the voiceacting just adds even more to it. A lot of them tend to delve into a character and their ‘typical’ traits as well as the root of it, which tends to make sense and makes the characters feel more human.

-> Diversity. Has its drawbacks, though. The monkey paw curled hard.

-> To do with the above: Some mlm and wlw content can be found in the game. It’s not perfect and I have my nitpicks, though, so be warned.

-> All three lords on the cover are varied and have their own individual motives, making them all feel fresh and welcome. 

Negatives:

-> The lore is paced in a way that’s hard to follow if you don’t know a lot of the names of the characters and their families, and how it’s chunked out makes it feel like a bunch of nonsense. You might feel very, very lost on the first playthrough, especially lore you find in textdumps.

-> The chapters are all fairly long and a slog to get through. While what you can do helps expand on the world and characters, a lot of this becomes rote and repetitive to do, and even at times overwhelming as more stuff becomes available. Even then, it manages to somehow feel stale.

-> Some of the choices in locale and army movement don’t feel like they make sense and should have been overhauled and changed. Not much can be elaborated upon because of spoilers, but on the latter half it generally feels like the movements of your group are strange. It makes sense if you know.

-> The plot on Lions and Deer feels rushed towards the end, or like the pacing has suddenly changed. It’s even more prominent in Lions due to the sudden and underdeveloped change in atmosphere as you approach the endgame, which makes it feel disjointed and your missions out of place with everything else. THIS IS BOTHERING ME A LOT.

-> Speaking of plot, there’s a blatant giant plothole near this turning point as you approach the Blue Lions endgame, and it’s been bothering me since.

-> Some events are made to draw your eye but don’t have a relevance beyond this chapter. This is particularly notorious in Lions and Deer, as they use the same ‘tiny twist’ that isn’t followed upon at the start of the latter half of the game. For those in the know: mission in satan’s asshole.

-> On some routes it feels as if you don’t pick certain class trees for your motley crew, you’re fucked.

-> A lot of the microaggressions and racism found in the game feel like they’re never properly addressed or dealt with, and at times feel like they’re just there to make the characters its towards and the player feel like ass. As you have no way to protest against it, it feels empty that it should even be present to begin with. I know they’re trying to show there’s a problem, but its presentation and lack of resolution are my issue with it.

-> A character who has trouble speaking the language of the country you’re in doesn’t seem to have a cohesive way to speak/stumble that makes sense, it feels like a bunch of traits from different esl speakers were dumped on there without consideration to linguistics and how different languages with different structures will affect how an esl speaker sometimes stumbles or code-switches while speaking. I know it’s likely not notable among the monolinguals, but as a multilingual... be advised. It is apparently an issue with the english translation, however, as the character only speaks in a paused manner as if thinking through what they’re about to say before speaking in Japanese. This is a more respectful interpretation.

-> I am sad that i got bait and switched on something :( I don’t want to say more than that, though.

-> A White Man Is Angry And Violent And In Power And It Terrified Me For Various Reasons, Fellow POC (And Maybe White Women/NB Folk) Will Understand.

-> The final battle in GD, and a lot of the route battles in general after a certain point, don’t feel like they mesh with the general message of the route, making the finale feel a little less... thematically tied with it, I guess? Eagles and Lions avoids this, though, as both have a lot to do with the themes of their respective routes.

-> Grinding felt like a chore (I was support grinding, the level grind is fairly simple, but some might need to grind for money and supports... and overlevel as a result). It’s less possible to grind on higher difficulties too, but I think it’s fairly valid. I did have to grind a lot on Blue Lions for this reason, but it was my own mistakes I was paying for as well as my completionist nature, so this point is, uuuh... depends on the person and how they play.

-> Tying to the above, the maps felt less novel the more I had to go through em to grind and hhhhhh

-> It’s uncomfortable how the characters in the game keep drawing comparison to the slaughter of a whole people to that of just the royal family and guards as if they have the same gotdamn weight. The people who got slaughtered are all POC.

-> Another group of POC are often made out to be barbaric/etc and it makes me uncomfortable lol. You could argue the same for another group, too.

-> This one character is meant to be uncomfortable and overzealous and I think it’s cool but it makes something in me shudder in horror. I recognize it’s a Me problem.

-> There’s this white savior thing x2 and I want to dead. I’ve lost all means to say this eloquently. It makes a lot of things very uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable.

-> I should stop with the wholeass thing with the racism but it bothers me a lot that a black kid aged 18 looks like they’re 22 in their artwork because it feeds to the all too common stereotype and oh my god I love the character but why would they do that to them...............

Final judgement: 5/10, I’m never going to -censored spoiler-

Thoughts: 

It’s not a terrible game, and while I did harp about a lot of stuff, it’s pretty good in it’s setup ad most of its development. In some parts, it fell short, but it is overall an ambitious project that did what it set out to do and would have definitely felt a lot more enjoyable if I didn’t feel pressured to finish ASAP so people didn’t spoil the experience for me (and, spoilers, they did anyway :) ). I feel I might be a little too harsh on it because of how negative my experience was around this game and how hard it was for me to pick up and replay it to see everything, so please take this with a gigantic spoon of salt.

[scripttorture]

Sources

So this isn’t exactly a Masterpost. Good sources on torture are hard to find and it’s not always obvious what they cover. I’ve had a couple of people recommend fictional titles in the comments and while fiction can be helpful for working out how to handle torture in stories it is rarely accurate and no substitute for factual sources.

 I thought it might be helpful to give everyone a quick run down of the sources I’ve found most useful and what they cover.

 This may well be edited in the future as I find more books. :)

 Torture and Democracy by D Rejali

 This is basically the book on torture.

 It’s the size of a breezeblock.

 Rejali covers torturers and victims, provides a systematic breakdown of why torture fails, gives a history of electrical torture, an analysis of factors that encourage torture in society and an overview of how the law fails torture victims. Interrogation is extensively covered.

 This book covers torture in the modern era globally and in that area it is very thorough. Historical torture is not extensively covered.

 But for a thorough understanding of the topic and modern torture, Rejali is a must.

 Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation by S O’Mara

 O’Mara’s book is much more focused on science than Rejali’s. It is a point by point analysis of some of the most common ‘clean’ (ie non-scarring) torture techniques used today, explaining exactly how harmful they are and debunking claims that they’re not ‘real’ torture.

 O’Mara’s speciality is the brain and he uses his knowledge to show the biological under-pinings of why torture can not work.

 An excellent source on torture generally and a brilliant explanation of how pain, memory and distress work. This is useful for writing any traumatic event but doesn’t cover a wide range of torture techniques and is very Western-focused in its approach.

 Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture by I Cobain

 While I have some problems with Cobain’s book he remains an excellent source.

 My problems are pretty simple, Cobain’s a journalist not a scholar and he often allows apologist arguments to creep into his book. He often takes torturers’ word for it and believes them when they suggest that valuable information can come from torture.

 Rejali and O’Mara will tell you why that’s wrong.

 But the interviews in this book are incredibly valuable. Cobain interviews victims and torturers and sets them in a wider political context, showing how governments have supported or ignored torture.

 His interviews on the London Cage and the collected work on Ireland, Aden, Cyprus and the Mau-Mau is well worth a look for anyone interested in those conflicts in particular or the British ‘National Style’ of torture in general.

 Sourcebook on Solitary Confinement by S Shalev

 Shalev’s Sourcebook is a free resource that’s available online and an excellent break down of the damage solitary confinement causes.

 While this is obviously focused on one technique this Sourcebook contains pretty much all the information you could want on solitary.

 The majority of the data comes from US prisons and the book is obviously biased towards confinement in a prison context. But the discussion of symptoms, risk factors and long term effects makes this utterly invaluable.

 Any author who writes about solitary confinement or isolation should consult at least the second chapter.

 Mao’s Great Famine by F Dikötter

 One of the best books on famine in print.

 The style is somewhat impersonal, but I think that works in its favour. The focus is essentially on how widespread famine can occur rather than how starvation affects the individual.

 The discussion on community and the role of enforcers is particularly good.

 I’d recommend it for anyone writing a large-scale natural disaster or atrocity.

 Amnesty International Reports (Annual 2016/2017)

 Amnesty’s annual reports give good concise updates on torture globally, year by year. They are freely available online and generally contain a lot of survivor accounts.

 It can be difficult to find specific information using them. You can not, for example, tell from the summaries whether particular techniques are covered. They rarely contain follow-ups on survivors and so are not a good resource for the recovery process.

 But the accounts of survivors, in their own words, are invaluable.

 World Food Programme

 An excellent resource on starvation and malnutrition. If you want to know how a starving or malnourished character would be treated or recover this is probably the best free resource you can find.

 Very good for physical effects and for descriptions of disaster relief programs. Not so great on survivor accounts or giving an idea of what starvation feels like on a personal level.

 International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims

 If you’ve been following my blog for a while you may have heard of these guys. Not only do they work to support torture victims but they also publish a free online journal dedicated to helping survivors recover.

 Rather academic and dense, this material often requires a lot of effort and engagement. This is very much the academic side. It can be incredibly helpful, but it’s not always easy to find the information you’re after.

 A Darkling Plain by K R Monroe

 A collection of interviews with survivors of a wide range of atrocities, Monroe’s book shows a real range of both traumatic events and responses to them.

 The main focus of the book is how people move on with their lives after atrocities and how they hold on to their sense of humanity. As such it’s incredibly useful to authors whose writing touches on these themes and authors who want to include a wider range of realistic responses to traumatic events.

 Highly recommended.

 The Wretched of the Earth by F Fanon

 The appendix contains some of Fanon’s notes on people he treated during the Franco-Algerian war.

 These notes include two torturers, a family member of a torturer, victims and relatives of victims.

 This is still one of the most valuable readily accessible sources on torturers’ behaviour.

 The Question by H Alleg

 Alleg’s account of torture during the Franco-Algerian war is a classic for a reason. This is a lucid, often harrowing account of torture failing from a victim’s perspective.

 I talk about victims refusing to cooperate. Alleg describes what it feels like from the inside.

 I strongly advise anyone writing from a victim’s perspective to read this book.

 We Wish to Inform you that Tomorrow we will be Killed with our Families by P Gourevitch

 The Rwandan genocide. This book provides both an overview of the events, interviews with survivors and transcripts/quotes from the time period.

 A difficult but important book, and extremely useful for writing conflict and war crimes.

 A History of Torture by G R Scott

 This book was written in the 30s and boy does it read like it was.

 The casual racism and sexism is extreme and off putting however this remains one of the most thorough books on historical torture globally. Just…read it with a critical eye.

 To the Kwai and Back by R Searle

 This collection of war drawings is, in my opinion, Searle’s best and most affecting work.

 They chronicle Searle’s experience of the Second World War as a prisoner of the Japanese. The drawings document torture, starvation, forced labour and death marches and are interspersed with Searle’s commentary and memories.

 The book serves as both a survivor’s account and (as Searle is looking back) a discussion of how he as an individual recovered. It serves as a very good source on large-scale atrocities seen from a personal perspective.

 Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea by M Kurlansky

 The focus of this work is in the title but torture crops up in this wide ranging historical narrative time and time again.

 It won’t be relevant to everyone’s stories, but I’m including this book for its numerous moving examples of people across cultures and history resisting torture, slavery and genocide without violence. We have very few fictional examples of this kind of action, and the history is rarely remembered.

 I want you, my readers, to be aware of as many sources as possible so you can break the mould if you want to.

 Tell Me Where I Can Be Safe: Human Rights Watch report on LGBTQ Rights in Nigeria

 This is a pretty harrowing read containing a lot of rape and sexual violence as well as torture. Victim accounts are prominent and the report only covers a relatively recent period in one country.

 I include this because my reading strongly suggests that it is typical of anti-LGBTQ violence across much of Africa and the Middle East. The methods and tactics used crop up across multiple countries and have been known to occur in Europe (though Gay and Trans Rights legislation has helped combat such violence).

 As a result I think this is a very valuable resource for writing torture and abuse of LGBTQ people specifically and an extremely important resource for Western writers who wish to write LGBTQ characters who are not from the West.  

 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by R Skloot

 An incredibly valuable overview of unethical experimentation in modern America.

 While far from a complete survey this book covers unconsenting or uninformed experimentation on minors, mental health patients, black people and prisoners.

 It talks about how experiments were conducted, how subjects were chosen and the effect on both the victims and their families.

 Highly recommended for anyone who wishes to write unethical experimentation.

 The Horrible Histories Series by T Deary and M Brown

 Yes these are children’s books and yes I am sure they deserve a place here.

 With their focus on the ‘gruesome bits’ of history these books generally contain quick and accurate overviews of historical tortures. Descriptions of punishments, methods of execution and medical treatments at the time are present in almost all of these short, accessible books.

 The focus is on English history as such there’s a lot that isn’t covered, but they’re very good for getting a sense of the tortures that were used during different historical periods quickly and easily.

Men and Hunger: a psychological manual for relief workers by H S Guetzkow, P H Bowman, A Keys, 1946 (The Minnesota Starvation Experiment)

 This is not the full text but the 70 page summary sent out to relief workers immediately following the experiment. This covers all the important psychological and physical effects of starvation in enough detail for an author writing a starving character to find it extremely helpful. It contains a lot of specific examples of behaviours and quotes from the men involved with the experiment, giving a rounded, detailed sense of their experience.

 However it does contain some racist and sexist language common during the 1940s when it was written.

UN Human Rights report on Rohingya refugees from Myanmar

 This is the UN report on the on-going genocide/ethnic cleansing taking place in Myanmar.

 The report contains accounts of murder, rape, gang-rape, torture and the murder of children. It also contains brief statistical analysis of the crimes survivors reported witnessing or experiencing (over half of Rohingya women reported being raped or sexually assaulted, over half of the survivors interviewed reported that a family member had been murdered).

 This could be useful to people writing about ethnic cleansing and genocide. I think it gives an overview of the situation within countries where these crimes occur, giving a sense of what they’re like before, during and after these atrocities.

War Child: Reclaiming Dreams

 This is a quick summary of the effects war has on children by the charity War Child. It focuses on the work they do in various countries; it aims to raise money for the charity and awareness of the causes they’re involved in.

 It provides a decent, quick overview of the many factors that affect children in war; both as civilians and as combatants. It talks about how children are used by armies (pointing out that the idea of they are always forced to fight is false) and how families and children caught in the cross fire are affected.

 A useful source for authors writing about children in combat zones and a good starting point for anyone planning on writing child soldiers.

The UN Standard Minimum Rules for the treatment of Prisoners, aka the Nelson Mandela Rules

This is a pretty dense legal document outlining how prisoners should be treated and the conditions that are a minimum acceptable standard for keeping them.

It’s tough reading but it could be useful for anyone planning to write about prisons and prisoners in a modern setting.

The collected works of S Kara

Kara’s research on slavery today is based on almost twenty years experience and thousands of interviews with enslaved people across continents.

He covers both individual experiences and the larger global picture of modern slavery. He covers multiple countries and slavery in different kinds of industries.

He also provides a thorough and convincing breakdown of the numbers; how many slaves there are today and where. This is accompanied by a clear analysis of how slavery has been allowed to continue and what needs to be done to stop it.

Brilliant, harrowing, necessary books that are a must for anyone writing about slavery.

Disclaimer

[bylillian]

By Gerald Jonas

Jan. 23, 2018

Ursula K. Le Guin, the immensely popular author who brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminine sensibility to science fiction and fantasy with books like “The Left Hand of Darkness” and the Earthsea series, died on Monday at her home in Portland, Ore. She was 88.

Her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin, confirmed the death. He did not specify a cause but said she had been in poor health for several months.

Ms. Le Guin embraced the standard themes of her chosen genres: sorcery and dragons, spaceships and planetary conflict. But even when her protagonists are male, they avoid the macho posturing of so many science fiction and fantasy heroes. The conflicts they face are typically rooted in a clash of cultures and resolved more by conciliation and self-sacrifice than by swordplay or space battles.

Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Several, including “The Left Hand of Darkness” — set on a planet where the customary gender distinctions do not apply — have been in print for almost 50 years. The critic Harold Bloom lauded Ms. Le Guin as “a superbly imaginative creator and major stylist” who “has raised fantasy into high literature for our time.”

In addition to more than 20 novels, she was the author of a dozen books of poetry, more than 100 short stories (collected in multiple volumes), seven collections of essays, 13 books for children and five volumes of translation, including the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu and selected poems by the Chilean Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral. She also wrote a guide for writers.

Ms. Le Guin’s fictions range from young-adult adventures to wry philosophical fables. They combine compelling stories, rigorous narrative logic and a lean but lyrical style to draw readers into what she called the “inner lands” of the imagination. Such writing, she believed, could be a moral force.

“If you cannot or will not imagine the results of your actions, there’s no way you can act morally or responsibly,” she told The Guardian in an interview in 2005. “Little kids can’t do it; babies are morally monsters — completely greedy. Their imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.”

The writer’s “pleasant duty,” she said, is to ply the reader’s imagination with “the best and purest nourishment that it can absorb.”

She was born Ursula Kroeber in Berkeley, Calif., on Oct. 21, 1929, the youngest of four children and the only daughter of two anthropologists, Alfred L. Kroeber and Theodora Quinn Kroeber. Her father was an expert on the Native Americans of California, and her mother wrote an acclaimed book, “Ishi in Two Worlds” (1960), about the life and death of California’s “last wild Indian.”

At a young age, Ms. Le Guin immersed herself in books about mythology, among them James Frazier’s “The Golden Bough,” classic fantasies like Lord Dunsany’s “A Dreamer’s Tales,” and the science-fiction magazines of the day. But in early adolescence she lost interest in science fiction, because, she recalled, the stories “seemed to be all about hardware and soldiers: White men go forth and conquer the universe.”

She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1951, earned a master’s degree in romance literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance from Columbia University in 1952, and won a Fulbright fellowship to study in Paris. There she met and married another Fulbright scholar, Charles Le Guin, who survives her.

On their return to the United States, she abandoned her graduate studies to raise a family; the Le Guins eventually settled in Portland, where Mr. Le Guin taught history at Portland State University.

Besides her husband and son, Ms. Le Guin is survived by two daughters, Caroline and Elisabeth Le Guin; two brothers, Theodore and Clifton Kroeber; and four grandchildren.

By the early 1960s Ms. Le Guin had written five unpublished novels, mostly set in an imaginary Central European country called Orsinia. Eager to find a more welcoming market, she decided to try her hand at genre fiction.

Her first science-fiction novel, “Rocannon’s World,” came out in 1966. Two years later she published “A Wizard of Earthsea,” the first in a series about a made-up world where the practice of magic is as precise as any science, and as morally ambiguous.

The first three Earthsea books — the other two were “The Tombs of Atuan” (1971) and “The Farthest Shore” (1972) — were written, at the request of her publisher, for young adults. But their grand scale and elevated style betray no trace of writing down to an audience.

The magic of Earthsea is language-driven: Wizards gain power over people and things by knowing their “true names.” Ms. Le Guin took this discipline seriously in naming her own characters. “I must find the right name or I cannot get on with the story,” she said. “I cannot write the story if the name is wrong.”

The Earthsea series was clearly influenced by J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. But instead of a holy war between Good and Evil, Ms. Le Guin’s stories are organized around a search for “balance” among competing forces — a concept she adapted from her lifelong study of Taoist texts.

She returned to Earthsea later in her career, extending and deepening the trilogy with books like “Tehanu” (1990) and “The Other Wind” (2001), written for a general audience.

“The Left Hand of Darkness,” published in 1969, takes place on a planet called Gethen, where people are neither male nor female but assume the attributes of either sex during brief periods of reproductive fervor. Speaking with an anthropological dispassion, Ms. Le Guin later referred to her novel as a “thought experiment” designed to explore the nature of human societies.

“I eliminated gender to find out what was left,” she told The Guardian.

But there is nothing dispassionate about the relationship at the core of the book, between an androgynous native of Gethen and a human male from Earth. The book won the two major prizes in science fiction, the Hugo and Nebula awards, and is widely taught in secondary schools and colleges.

Much of Ms. Le Guin’s science fiction has a common background: a loosely knit confederation of worlds known as the Ekumen. This was founded by an ancient people who seeded humans on habitable planets throughout the galaxy — including Gethen, Earth and the twin worlds of her most ambitious novel, “The Dispossessed,” subtitled “An Ambiguous Utopia” (1974).

As the subtitle implies, “The Dispossessed” contrasts two forms of social organization: a messy but vibrant capitalist society, which oppresses its underclass, and a classless “utopia” (partly based on the ideas of the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin), which turns out to be oppressive in its own conformist way. Ms. Le Guin leaves it up to the reader to find a comfortable balance between the two.

“The Lathe of Heaven” (1971) offers a very different take on utopian ambitions. A man whose dreams can alter reality falls under the sway of a psychiatrist, who usurps this power to conjure his own vision of a perfect world, with unfortunate results.

“The Lathe of Heaven” was among the few books by Ms. Le Guin that have been adapted for film or television. There were two made-for-television versions, one on PBS in 1980 and the other on the A&E cable channel in 2002.

Among the other adaptations of her work were the 2006 Japanese animated feature “Tales From Earthsea” and a 2004 mini-series on the Sci Fi channel, “Legend of Earthsea.”

With the exception of the 1980 “Lathe of Heaven,” she had little good to say about any of them.

Ms. Le Guin always considered herself a feminist, even when genre conventions led her to center her books on male heroes. Her later works, like the additions to the Earthsea series and such Ekumen tales as “Four Ways to Forgiveness” (1995) and “The Telling” (2000), are mostly told from a female point of view.

In some of her later books, she gave in to a tendency toward didacticism, as if she were losing patience with humanity for not learning the hard lessons — about the need for balance and compassion — that her best work so astutely embodies.

At the 2014 National Book Awards, Ms. Le Guin was given the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She accepted the medal on behalf of her fellow writers of fantasy and science fiction, who, she said, had been “excluded from literature for so long” while literary honors went to the “so-called realists.”

She also urged publishers and writers not to put too much emphasis on profits.

“I have had a long career and a good one,” she said, adding, “Here at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river.”

[cruximpetus]

ok - more important things in relation to monika because i’m headcanoning like crazy because i want to know what she’s like when she’s...not self-aware.  like - we don’t get a lot of backstory on the other characters, really, but we know what they’re like in the world of the game - and we know what monika’s like self-aware but not who she was in the world of the game, how she interacted with everyone, who she...should have been.  (and, yeah, we get an idea of her character, her personality - being self-aware doesn’t change those things, not at the core, it just changes how they’re shown - we know that getting things right is important to monika, we know she stakes herself on one thing, we know that she struggles with depression, but unlike sayori she considers suicide as an end if she cannot get things right, etc.) so i’ve been creeping around tvtropes, because as a dating sim character, there are tropes she falls into (i’ve talked about monika as a broken ace, and i’ve mentioned that monika would be the team mom - but it’s deeper than that, because there’s the whole four-girl ensemble trope, and each of the girls does fit into one of the character types mentioned there, and monika is the team mom - but those aren’t my focus right now), and i ended up on the japanese school club page (monika says in the third act that they’re in japan, although it doesn’t feel like japan and the story never explicitly states (prior to that) where they are - and even so, the dating sim setting is meant to resemble a japanese school club setting in the same way that so many others do because, well, they are) - and i was caught off-guard by one paragraph:

It's rare for a student to be a member of more than one club — School Clubs Are Serious Business in Japan, as they are seen as training for the companies students will eventually join when they enter the adult world. Since company loyalty and longevity are highly prized in the Japanese workforce, it's considered downright rude to devote time to more than one club, or worse, quit one club for another. The Ordinary High-School Student who isn't a member of any club is said to be a member of the "Go Home Club".

and i thought - in relation to monika - this is extremely interesting, because this is exactly what monika does - she quits the debate club (where she was the leader) and not only joins another club, but starts another club. now.  this is tvtropes, and although i tend to trust it on terms of tropeisms, i’m not sure i can trust it with cultural stuff (although it’s had a tendency to be fairly correct in those terms as well), so  i did some searching around.  i checked wikipedia first (which has some of the same issues as tvtropes but it at least cites its sources) and found:

New students usually choose a club after the school year begins and only rarely change for the rest of their high school careers. Clubs meet for two hours after school every day, many times even during school vacations. Although there is a teacher assigned to each club as a sponsor, they often have very little input in the club's daily activities. These clubs are an important chance for students to make friends and learn the social etiquette and relationships like the "senpai" (senior)/"kohai" (junior) dynamic that will be important in their adult lives.

However, most college bound students withdraw from club activities during their senior year to devote more time to preparation for university entrance examinations. Homeroom teachers work with students and their parents at this time to discuss their admission prospects or career plans.

and, again, this is important because it points out that senior students tend to withdraw - which would be third-year students, which we can surmise monika is (because, realistically speaking, no one is going to be the leader of a club like the debate club their first year, which means the previous year, when she was the leader would mean it was her second year, which means that the year in which the game takes place must be her third year) - which would lend to it being more socially acceptable that she drop off the debate team.  ish.  but this does not reinforce the idea of being devoted to one club (although, again, realistically speaking, if your club meets for two hours every day, then you don’t really have time to meet with another club). and then i found this article, which confirms both of the previous ideas (and although its main focus is on sports clubs, it makes sure to mention and include non-sports clubs as well):

In general, junior high schools expect children to pick a club upon entering the school and stick with it. Those with no interest in sports, or who want a more relaxed schedule, typically choose a cultural club like art, science or cooking, that doesn’t meet as often.

Quitting your club is usually frowned upon and is rather sardonically referred to as kitaku-bu (going home club). Parents in the survey whose children quit club altogether reported having to jump through hoops to have the move sanctioned....

Whatever the pros and cons of bukatsu might be, it doesn’t last forever. Unless students are in an escalator school with guaranteed admission to the next step on the educational ladder, both junior and senior high school students usually quit in their third year to concentrate on entrance-exam preparations.

this also adds another idea to the mix - monika would have been in debate club since junior high, so when she talks about learning to fake confidence (which i’ll link to later, as i’m still in the process of working on that headcanon and what that revelation in the third act means to monika as a character), i would assume that started as early as her first year in debate club at least, if not sooner (i would assume it to be a puberty-related trait, but i’d also expect it to be related to her anxiety (she talks about random moments of anxiety in her third act and then sitting wondering why she’s anxious and then growing more anxious for sitting and thinking that - which is typical of generalized anxiety disorder, but i haven’t done explicit research on that yet, so don’t hold me to that because she also talks about...something that’s common to people but that, in conjunction with her fake confidence, generalized anxiety, and depression might mean something more in relation to her - so i need to do more research, basically) - so it’s an even bigger deal that she quits entirely - even if it is expected for third-year students to drop out so they can work on entrance exams - and here’s why: 1) Regardless of whether third-year students culturally tend to drop out or not, in fictional narratives such as an anime show or dating sim, this rarely happens.  Characters are in their club for the duration of the year, even if they do have exams to worry about.  So Monika, as a character in a fictional narrative, would have stayed in her club.  (That said, obviously clubs are important in a fictional narrative in so far as needing to be part of one, but fictional characters - such as Sayori, who joins the Literature Club in her second year, or the Player Character, who does the same - tend to be able to join clubs when they want.  This still does not distract from the idea that you have one club and you don’t change clubs.  Also, unlike Sayori and the Player Character - and most characters who wait - in terms of personality, Monika is the type of character who would show that sort of extreme devotion and get started early on.) 2) Monika obviously still has time for a club activity despite studying for entrance exams, as well as time to a) learn minor coding (as a necessity, obviously), and b) pick up piano.  Although it is indicated that she picked up piano only after her epiphany (at which point one would assume she gives up on entrance exams, being a fictional character in a video game who knows she is a fictional character in a video game, but also given her conversations in the third act about what she wants to do outside of high school, what she wants to do with her life, it’s equally obvious that this is not necessarily the case).  Not only does Monika still have time for a club, she has time to start a club, which would require more work in terms of gaining members, setting up a charter, finding a sponsor, etc.  And while Sayori might have been a very good help in these areas (and i really need to meta on their relationship, but i may just drabble because that seems the better way to do it), Monika is the one with experience as a club leader.  She would be taking on most of these tasks, as well as teaching Sayori, her VP, how to carry on the club in her absence.  It is substantially more work than simply remaining as a member of the debate club would have been - and so would seem rude for her to drop out of debate entirely to start something else after all those years of dedication - and the leadership position - within that club. That said, what this tells us is that whatever happened to make Monika quit the debate club had to have been a very big deal to her.  She talks about politics and being on the board (”To be honest, I can’t stand all of the politics around the major clubs.  It feels like nothing but arguing about the budget and publicity and how to prepare for events...” (act one and two - it is word for word the same both times)), and these are important within the context of something Monika says later - that she is not good with confrontations, but they’re equally important in the context of how much time did they spend arguing about preparing for the festival and how uncomfortable would that have made her and yet she brought it up anyway - and also, in cultural context, that is not enough reason to quit one club and start up another one (especially given that starting a club would have included all of those things because she would have to be setting everything up from scratch - also further commentary on the debate club obviously being something of a major club, etc.). So while Monika gives her reasons as not wanting to be part of politics and arguing and states that she’d “much rather take something [she] personally enjoy[s] and make something special out of it” - given the context, I’d say it was likely something else more than that as well. --but i’ll address that later when i have more time.  ^^

[takenews-blog1]

How Wolfenstein 2’s hero attracts on his Jewish heritage for power

New Post has been published on https://takenews.net/how-wolfenstein-2s-hero-attracts-on-his-jewish-heritage-for-power/

How Wolfenstein 2’s hero attracts on his Jewish heritage for power

We’ve by no means been informed outright if B.J. Blazkowicz is Jewish. Followers have questioned for years if his Nazi-killing methods had been in any manner motivated by faith, and with good cause: Whereas the builders have mentioned that they all the time thought he was Jewish, it wasn’t till Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus that audiences lastly bought their affirmation.

B.J. is half-Jewish, particularly. He’s the kid of a Jewish mom and a Texan, anti-Semitic father. I bought a kick out of this as a result of, more often than not, individuals don’t understand I’m Jewish both.

[Warning: The next accommodates main spoilers for the Wolfenstein collection.]

It’s not simply due to my final identify, which is laughably Italian, however I’ve additionally been informed that I don’t “look” Jewish sufficient. Centuries of stereotyping have dictated what I’m alleged to appear like, and that usually features a large nostril and curly hair.

My mom is a Jew of Japanese European descent, and my father is Italian. I used to be raised Jewish, per the custom that Judaism is handed alongside the mom’s facet. I went to Hebrew college, the place I discovered to learn Hebrew and take part in Jewish customs.

I had a bat mitzvah, the place I learn from the Torah in entrance of a big group of my Roman Catholic relations. I went to Jewish sleepaway camp, attended synagogue on Saturdays and would quick on Yom Kippur. I didn’t adhere to strict practices, and I ultimately went on to guide an agnostic life, however being Jewish typically turns into a big a part of your identification anyway.

Associated

I all the time had the sense that I didn’t belong. Everyone I knew was Jewish on either side, as a result of even in my mother and father’ technology, a Jewish particular person not marrying one other Jew was practically blasphemous. It nonetheless is in conservative circles. An authority determine informed me that I wasn’t an actual Jew after I was a teen, and will by no means develop into one as a result of I had a Catholic father. He additionally mentioned I couldn’t elevate Jewish kids.

We are able to assume that B.J. didn’t get a lot of a Jewish schooling moreover what he picked up from his mom. We all know that she’s at the very least considerably spiritual; B.J. wakes up from a beating from his father to listen to her saying the Birkhat HaGomel, which is a prayer mentioned after an sickness or harm. The sport exhibits us that he reads somewhat Hebrew, however not sufficient to be helpful.

He additionally doesn’t observe any Jewish traditions or practices. B.J. appears to keep away from the topic of faith altogether. That fits him, since he typically goes undercover, and his Aryan options — identified to us by Frau Engel in The New Order — make him inconspicuous. He appears to be like like, in some ways, the right Nazi specimen.

It’s laborious to know whether or not MachineGames and the writers on Wolfenstein had been totally conscious of the implications of creating B.J. half-Jewish. Having him be Jewish in any respect places a lot of his motivations into perspective, and it permits him to have some connection together with his heritage whereas additionally being barely faraway from it.

That in flip makes The New Colossus a sport that’s subtly about B.J. coming to phrases together with his personal previous.

“You haven’t any concept what it’s prefer to endure like I do,” B.J.’s father tells his mom.

A younger B.J. is trapped in a closet, overhearing his mom and father argue. There are some cash troubles within the Blaskowicz family. Zofia, his mom, blames Rip, his father, for squandering the household’s enterprise, whereas Rip is livid as a result of he noticed B.J. hanging out with a black lady. It’s Rip who sees himself as the actual sufferer within the household, regardless of the management he wields over everybody and the beatings he appears to offer out at common intervals. He’s the one struggling, and nobody else can relate.

That is ironic, after all, since such an enormous portion of Jewish historical past is predicated on struggling. You be taught concerning the Holocaust lengthy earlier than you possibly can perceive the idea of demise. That schooling occurs even earlier in case you have an ancestor that was killed.

You be taught to learn Hebrew in Hebrew college, however that’s additionally the place you study all the opposite profitable and tried genocides of the Jewish individuals. Nearly all of Jewish holidays — Hanukkah, Pesach (Passover), Purim — are celebrations of how we survived an effort to subjugate or destroy us.

B.J.’s mom has a black eye the primary time we meet her; she has suffered as properly. We later discover out that Rip offered her out to the Nazis after America’s give up. This may have been B.J.’s destiny as properly if he hadn’t gone off to combat in World Conflict II, and Rip turns his son in after they meet later in life.

Rip is every thing that B.J. hates: racist, anti-Semitic and a violent Nazi-sympathizer. Rip’s objective in elevating B.J. was to not be an excellent father, however to maintain him away from his Jewish roots.

“All matter of scum and sickly minds … doing every thing of their energy to rid the white man of what he’s earned,” Rip tells B.J. at one level. “It’s on us to straighten out the queer.” That is the duty that Rip feels, and it’s one thing he tries to cross onto his son. Rip needs to boost his son to assist him obtain a racially pure future.

B.J.’s mom tries to steadiness that hatred with love. Zofia offers our hero an engagement ring that had been handed down via the household for eight generations. That is an object that follows B.J. into The New Colossus and turns into his sole bodily attachment to his heritage — an vital heirloom in a world the place the Nazis gained. It’s later taken from him by a Nazi.

He additionally has a religious attachment to his religion. He clings on to his faith’s fundamentals, even in demise. “Was I righteous and simply?” he asks his mom. “Adequate to witness the awe of heaven?” However it’s shallow at finest. He seems like he’s going to hell at one level, despite the fact that Judaism doesn’t imagine within the idea within the conventional sense.

Set Roth is essentially the most explicitly Jewish character within the sport, each in his frequent use of Yiddish and his data of Da’at Yichud, a society based mostly in Jewish mysticism. Wyatt, one other supporting character (who might have died in your playthrough), has a narrative in his timeline that entails Kabbalah hallucinations. It looks as if even he, as somebody not of the faith, has a better connection to Judaism than B.J. exhibits within the sport.

But B.J. is surrounded with reminders of each his mother and father. His Aryan options are admired by one German character, and he later goes undercover in a focus camp. He continues to hold the ring his mom gave him, and it begins to symbolize hope for his future. He has causes to cover his identification in these conditions, however The New Colossus exhibits us that he discovered to be ashamed of who he was lengthy earlier than the Nazis took over.

“It should finish higher than it started,” Zofia tells a grieving B.J at one level within the sport.

Now we have lengthy held onto this hope, even amid our years of wrestle. A whole e-book of the Torah reiterates how we had been enslaved 1000’s of years in the past. We set ourselves free, however then needed to wander within the desert for many years. We ended up settling in Canaan (modern-day Israel), however are attacked quite a few instances all through the centuries. A holy wall nonetheless stands in Jerusalem as a reminder that we proceed on, even when the temple that was as soon as there may be gone.

And this was all earlier than centuries of prejudice, discrimination, expulsion and genocide. I can’t rely all of the examples that we got in Hebrew college, and that’s earlier than the Holocaust comes up.

We might toast to the “subsequent 12 months in Jerusalem,” as my grandfather would learn from the Haggadah in the course of the Passover Seder. This mantra symbolizes not that we’d actually go to Israel, however that we’d overcome our struggles as soon as once more and be united in peace.

Zofia giving B.J. hope for the longer term is smart throughout the context of centuries of Jewish custom. It’s in all probability essentially the most outright Jewish second in your complete collection. Right here’s a Jewish lady, abused and diminished to her most stereotypical attributes — Rip married her as a result of he thinks that Jews are good with cash — however who holds out hope for her son. She instilled Jewish optimism in B.J. from the very starting, even when he didn’t understand it on the time.

When B.J. is placed on trial for his actions, which takes place as an escape fantasy, he reunites together with his mom. He tells her about all of the issues she’ll be lacking, and about his guilt over leaving the household.

“All hardship is non permanent. Have you learnt this? And most of it’s inevitable,” she tells him. “We maintain combating even when we have no idea how.”

This sense of hope, which is predicated in recognizing the unhealthy that’s occurred whereas sustaining perception within the good to come back, is Zofia’s most vital present to her son. B.J.’s function and drive comes from the teachings of his Jewish background. He continues combating, and even finally will get the engagement ring again, proposing to Anya.

If we take the ring as the one relic of his Jewish heritage, then rescuing it’s greater than taking again an object that belongs to him. B.J. can also be taking his Judaism again from Engel, the sadistic Nazi, and he’s then in a position to cross it alongside in his household, persevering with eight generations of custom. If B.J. continues to outlive his combat in opposition to the Nazis, we are able to assume that he’ll cross the ring alongside to his kids.

We see B.J. accepting his heritage whereas refusing to let go of hope for the longer term, even when the sport doesn’t say that explicitly.

Holding onto that ring turns into essentially the most righteous act of defiance in your complete sport. Jewish historical past has all the time been about stubbornness and a refusal to die — B.J.’s journey is simply our latest instance.

[yes-dal456]

The Modern Fragmentation of Lives & Identities

I have two groups of friends, and they don't intersect. The first group are my fellow Amherst College alumni--intellectual, career-oriented, hard-working, and thriving in the most prestigious positions. The second group are perpetual travelers, bicycle-tourists, and digital nomads--unrooted, non-materialistic, free-wheeling, and content in their unconventional careers. I belong in both--and neither. I find intellectual discussions about social theory more gripping than travel tales. I am a minimalist who prefers to spend his money on adventure. I strive towards the passion and productivity of my New Yorker friends. I revel in the unpredictability of the road. I'm not special. In my contradictions, I am not particularly different from any other inhabitant of modernity. All of us contain such fragmented identities, which we pick up as we work our way through a complex and ever-changing world.

-

At the turn of the twentieth century, only 13% of the world's population lived in urban areas. Most people would die not far from the place that they were born. In your village everyone would know you, for a long time, and across many different contexts. The worldviews of everyone around you would tend to be very similar, usually organized around religion. This all changed with modernity. As urbanization, industrialization and capitalism swept across the globe, our lives have become increasingly diverse and fragmented. As Austrian-American sociologist Peter L. Berger writes in his book The Homeless Mind, "Different sectors of ... everyday life relate ... to vastly different and often severely discrepant worlds of meaning and experience. Modern life is typically segmented to a very high degree." In our daily lives, we step in and out of many different settings, each with its own worldview and system of knowledge. You go to work, hang out with friends from college, join online communities, call family back home, visit the doctor... As modernity fragments, these different settings increasingly do not overlap.

AS THE CULTURAL AND SOCIAL WORLDS IN WHICH WE ROOT OUR IDENTITIES SPLINTER AND DRIFT APART, OUR IDENTITIES MOVE WITH THEM.

The fragmentation of our daily lives has fragmented the communities we live in. In that village a hundred years ago, people would know you across multiple contexts, understanding you as a complex, multifaceted being. In modernity, people might only come to know specific sides of you, from within specific contexts. Thus, each small group of friends may only be able to fulfill a small slice of your personal totality. Georg Simmel, the classical German sociologist, describes this well in his book The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies, "The modern type of feeling inclines more to differentiated friendships; that is, to those which have their territory only upon one side of the personality at a time, and in which the rest of the personality plays no part. ... These differentiated friendships ... bind us to one man from the side of sympathy, to another from the side of intellectual community, to a third on account of religious impulses, to a fourth because of common experiences."

Berger posits that modernity's fragmentation goes beyond social relationships, "It is important to understand that this segmentation ... is not only manifest on the level of observable social conduct but also has important manifestations on the level of consciousness." This view of identity is consistent with the postmodern turn in social theory. As the cultural and social worlds in which we root our identities splinter and drift apart, our identities move with them. Stuart Hall, one of the founders of the field of cultural studies, writes, "The subject, previously experienced as having a unified and stable identity, is becoming fragmented; composed, not of a single, but of several, sometimes contradictory or unresolved, identities. ... Identity becomes a "moveable feast": formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways we are represented or addressed in the cultural systems which surround us."

"IT SHOULD NOT BE A SURPRISE THAT MODERN MAN IS AFFLICTED WITH A PERMANENT IDENTITY CRISIS" - PETER L. BERGER

Hall scoffs at the idea of a core self, writing, "If we feel we have a unified identity from birth to death, it is only because we construct a comforting story or 'narrative of the self' about ourselves. The fully unified, completed, secure, and coherent identity is a fantasy." In the end, this all leads to an existential crisis. As modern society becomes more fragmented, more complex, and more unstable and fluid, the individual turns inwards to look for consistency. The Greek aphorism "Know Thyself" is waved vigorously in our faces, as the first step to successful careers, authentic passions, fulfilling relationships, and just happiness in general. But, as Berger writes in The Homeless Mind, "On the one hand, modern identity is open-ended, transitory, liable to ongoing change. On the other hand, a subjective realm of identity is the individual's main foothold in reality. Something that is constantly changing is supposed to be the ens realissimum. Consequently it should not be a surprise that modern man is afflicted with a permanent identity crisis, a condition conducive to considerable nervousness." That's pretty bleak. Or is it? Must our identities splinter with our social worlds? The fact that we behave differently in front of different groups of people, might not be contradictory to an integrated inner self. danah boyd, author of It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, protests in her MIT Master's thesis, "These theories fail to recognize the agency of the individual to separate their internal and social identities, fragmenting only the latter without creating a crisis for the former. Suggesting that an individual is inherently fragmented and undergoing an identity crises is problematic. In a society where people play many different roles and must constantly adjust for different social contexts, their presentation may appear to be fragmented, but this does not imply that they are." Georg Simmel (1858-1918) Ultimately, the coherence of your identity may come down to your story telling skills. Our identities could be seen as self-constructed narratives that weave together the disparate events of our lives. While Hall might scoff that these narratives are 'fantasies' and 'comforting stories', as Dumbledore told Harry Potter, "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" Identities portrayed as such are indeed inventions, but all social institutions and systems are inventions in the same way. Being inventions though, do not mean that these institutions do not have real impacts on the people they interact with. Additionally, it does not mean these institutions are completely within our control, or even that we create them intentionally. Through external interactions with a complex world, and the inner turmoil of our own subconscious, we can easily lose control of our identities.

IDENTITY FRAGMENTATION MIGHT NOT ACTUALLY BE THAT BIG OF A DEAL.

The reality of the situation then, probably lies somewhere between Hall and boyd. We must admit that in modernity, developing an integrated identity is increasingly difficult. As the characters and settings of our lives multiple and become more diverse, weaving a coherent narrative that reconciles all of them might be impossible. Slowly, we are all becoming Third-Culture Kids, as we are forced to straddle multiple cultures and locales. Hopefully though, depending on the skills of the story-teller, there can be varying degrees of narrative coherence. It could also be true that identity fragmentation might not actually be that big of a deal. The generation that has grown up in this complex world is increasingly used to fragmentation and change, and more readily tolerate complexity within their worlds and within themselves. As Japanese cultural theorist Hiroki Azuma writes in his book Otaku, "The younger generations that grew up within the postmodern world image ... do not need a perspective on the entire world that surveys all." Indeed, many now embrace internal complexity and contradiction, seeing them as signs of uniqueness and maturity. Personally, I don't see my two divergent friend groups, and identities, as a big deal either. The two groups were born of disparate passions, in social theory and in perpetual travel, which both stem from the same root--curiosity. In my daily life, I attempt to conjoin these two passions by applying the lens of the former towards the experiences of the latter, writing articles such as this.

-

Nonetheless, Georg Simmel's problem remains--the differentiated, specialized friendship. That in modernity, each friend may only understand and fulfill a fragment of your inner complexity. Simmel remains hopeful of the differentiated friendship's potential, writing that it "leads ideally toward the same depths of sentiment, and to the same capacity to sacrifice, which undifferentiated epochs and persons associate only with a community of the total circumference of life." From personal experience, I wholeheartedly agree. Still, I sometimes wish that I knew more people who sit at the intersection between my two selves. Drop me a mail if you are a world-traveling postmodernist, would you? For more articles on meaning, philosophy, and identity, visit David's new blog, Living Meanings.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from http://ift.tt/2kRnKGi from Blogger http://ift.tt/2jXTYRB

[imreviewblog]

The Modern Fragmentation of Lives & Identities

I have two groups of friends, and they don't intersect. The first group are my fellow Amherst College alumni--intellectual, career-oriented, hard-working, and thriving in the most prestigious positions. The second group are perpetual travelers, bicycle-tourists, and digital nomads--unrooted, non-materialistic, free-wheeling, and content in their unconventional careers. I belong in both--and neither. I find intellectual discussions about social theory more gripping than travel tales. I am a minimalist who prefers to spend his money on adventure. I strive towards the passion and productivity of my New Yorker friends. I revel in the unpredictability of the road. I'm not special. In my contradictions, I am not particularly different from any other inhabitant of modernity. All of us contain such fragmented identities, which we pick up as we work our way through a complex and ever-changing world.

-

At the turn of the twentieth century, only 13% of the world's population lived in urban areas. Most people would die not far from the place that they were born. In your village everyone would know you, for a long time, and across many different contexts. The worldviews of everyone around you would tend to be very similar, usually organized around religion. This all changed with modernity. As urbanization, industrialization and capitalism swept across the globe, our lives have become increasingly diverse and fragmented. As Austrian-American sociologist Peter L. Berger writes in his book The Homeless Mind, "Different sectors of ... everyday life relate ... to vastly different and often severely discrepant worlds of meaning and experience. Modern life is typically segmented to a very high degree." In our daily lives, we step in and out of many different settings, each with its own worldview and system of knowledge. You go to work, hang out with friends from college, join online communities, call family back home, visit the doctor... As modernity fragments, these different settings increasingly do not overlap.

AS THE CULTURAL AND SOCIAL WORLDS IN WHICH WE ROOT OUR IDENTITIES SPLINTER AND DRIFT APART, OUR IDENTITIES MOVE WITH THEM.

The fragmentation of our daily lives has fragmented the communities we live in. In that village a hundred years ago, people would know you across multiple contexts, understanding you as a complex, multifaceted being. In modernity, people might only come to know specific sides of you, from within specific contexts. Thus, each small group of friends may only be able to fulfill a small slice of your personal totality. Georg Simmel, the classical German sociologist, describes this well in his book The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies, "The modern type of feeling inclines more to differentiated friendships; that is, to those which have their territory only upon one side of the personality at a time, and in which the rest of the personality plays no part. ... These differentiated friendships ... bind us to one man from the side of sympathy, to another from the side of intellectual community, to a third on account of religious impulses, to a fourth because of common experiences."

Berger posits that modernity's fragmentation goes beyond social relationships, "It is important to understand that this segmentation ... is not only manifest on the level of observable social conduct but also has important manifestations on the level of consciousness." This view of identity is consistent with the postmodern turn in social theory. As the cultural and social worlds in which we root our identities splinter and drift apart, our identities move with them. Stuart Hall, one of the founders of the field of cultural studies, writes, "The subject, previously experienced as having a unified and stable identity, is becoming fragmented; composed, not of a single, but of several, sometimes contradictory or unresolved, identities. ... Identity becomes a "moveable feast": formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways we are represented or addressed in the cultural systems which surround us."

"IT SHOULD NOT BE A SURPRISE THAT MODERN MAN IS AFFLICTED WITH A PERMANENT IDENTITY CRISIS" - PETER L. BERGER

Hall scoffs at the idea of a core self, writing, "If we feel we have a unified identity from birth to death, it is only because we construct a comforting story or 'narrative of the self' about ourselves. The fully unified, completed, secure, and coherent identity is a fantasy." In the end, this all leads to an existential crisis. As modern society becomes more fragmented, more complex, and more unstable and fluid, the individual turns inwards to look for consistency. The Greek aphorism "Know Thyself" is waved vigorously in our faces, as the first step to successful careers, authentic passions, fulfilling relationships, and just happiness in general. But, as Berger writes in The Homeless Mind, "On the one hand, modern identity is open-ended, transitory, liable to ongoing change. On the other hand, a subjective realm of identity is the individual's main foothold in reality. Something that is constantly changing is supposed to be the ens realissimum. Consequently it should not be a surprise that modern man is afflicted with a permanent identity crisis, a condition conducive to considerable nervousness." That's pretty bleak. Or is it? Must our identities splinter with our social worlds? The fact that we behave differently in front of different groups of people, might not be contradictory to an integrated inner self. danah boyd, author of It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, protests in her MIT Master's thesis, "These theories fail to recognize the agency of the individual to separate their internal and social identities, fragmenting only the latter without creating a crisis for the former. Suggesting that an individual is inherently fragmented and undergoing an identity crises is problematic. In a society where people play many different roles and must constantly adjust for different social contexts, their presentation may appear to be fragmented, but this does not imply that they are." Georg Simmel (1858-1918) Ultimately, the coherence of your identity may come down to your story telling skills. Our identities could be seen as self-constructed narratives that weave together the disparate events of our lives. While Hall might scoff that these narratives are 'fantasies' and 'comforting stories', as Dumbledore told Harry Potter, "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" Identities portrayed as such are indeed inventions, but all social institutions and systems are inventions in the same way. Being inventions though, do not mean that these institutions do not have real impacts on the people they interact with. Additionally, it does not mean these institutions are completely within our control, or even that we create them intentionally. Through external interactions with a complex world, and the inner turmoil of our own subconscious, we can easily lose control of our identities.

IDENTITY FRAGMENTATION MIGHT NOT ACTUALLY BE THAT BIG OF A DEAL.

The reality of the situation then, probably lies somewhere between Hall and boyd. We must admit that in modernity, developing an integrated identity is increasingly difficult. As the characters and settings of our lives multiple and become more diverse, weaving a coherent narrative that reconciles all of them might be impossible. Slowly, we are all becoming Third-Culture Kids, as we are forced to straddle multiple cultures and locales. Hopefully though, depending on the skills of the story-teller, there can be varying degrees of narrative coherence. It could also be true that identity fragmentation might not actually be that big of a deal. The generation that has grown up in this complex world is increasingly used to fragmentation and change, and more readily tolerate complexity within their worlds and within themselves. As Japanese cultural theorist Hiroki Azuma writes in his book Otaku, "The younger generations that grew up within the postmodern world image ... do not need a perspective on the entire world that surveys all." Indeed, many now embrace internal complexity and contradiction, seeing them as signs of uniqueness and maturity. Personally, I don't see my two divergent friend groups, and identities, as a big deal either. The two groups were born of disparate passions, in social theory and in perpetual travel, which both stem from the same root--curiosity. In my daily life, I attempt to conjoin these two passions by applying the lens of the former towards the experiences of the latter, writing articles such as this.

-

Nonetheless, Georg Simmel's problem remains--the differentiated, specialized friendship. That in modernity, each friend may only understand and fulfill a fragment of your inner complexity. Simmel remains hopeful of the differentiated friendship's potential, writing that it "leads ideally toward the same depths of sentiment, and to the same capacity to sacrifice, which undifferentiated epochs and persons associate only with a community of the total circumference of life." From personal experience, I wholeheartedly agree. Still, I sometimes wish that I knew more people who sit at the intersection between my two selves. Drop me a mail if you are a world-traveling postmodernist, would you? For more articles on meaning, philosophy, and identity, visit David's new blog, Living Meanings.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://huff.to/2jCJvb4

[megers67]

The Various Projects I’m Procrastinating On

I’m making this list as part of my New Year’s Resolution to get at least one of these done. As organized by medium type because most don’t have any real working title. I’m also putting my reason for it existing because those reasons keep the idea in my brain as something I want to do.

Book - Nonfiction

A writer’s guide to making alien species that would be a collection of essays covering how to combine alien biological/physical design with a culture in a way that makes sense. It would also go into detail on how to make a fictional culture and discuss how to avoid things such as stereotype, coding, appropriation, and colonialist idea holdovers.

Why: I haven’t seen anything about making fictional CULTURES. Most things I’ve seen talks about visual design or at least some into the potential of biological diversity in aliens. After seeing the horrible negative stereotypes used in the Star Wars prequels (Watto = Jewish, the Trade Federation = Japanese businessmen down to the l-r), this is something that needs to be addressed.

Fanfic

The Enterprise helps in the final negotiations for a planet to enter the Federation, but find out that the general populace have grievances about the whole arrangement that have gone unanswered. Part of the problem is that they have a language system that defies the universal translator and its a huge part of their cultural identity. However for them to become a part of the Federation, they need a form of language that is a bit more compatible to make things like trade and general interaction far more reasonable on a larger scale. The people are worried that this will wipe out their cultural heritage because they will be forced to work with the outside with a different language system that migth eventually supercede their current one.

Why: In my Star Trek RP experience, I’ve found that many of the same aliens are used when there’s so much potential to make your own. Also I wanted a situation that dealt with cultural identity and also something that defied the universal translator for once.

Film

The plot is the typical Chosen One story where a girl ends up in a magical kingdom while chasing her father’s kidnappers and finds the remaining members of a resistance force rebelling against a tyrannical leader. She finds out she has magical powers and bla bla bla saves her father. But this would be ENTIRELY from the villain’s point of view (because that plot is so predictable, you don’t need to focus on it to figure it out). It would start from her defeat and go backwards to go into first how she came to be defeated, then how she became a tyrant.

Why: I’ve yet to be completely satisfied with how Hollywood presents villain POV’s because they inevitably cross that line between explaining their actions and excusing those actions. Maleficent came so close to doing that, but the ending ruined it for me. I had the idea for this for over 10 years, but the focus switch came after seeing Maleficent.

Short Film

The story follows a girl whose boyfriend has become super distant since they got back from summer break. He checks out and starts skipping classes until he just goes missing altogether. His close friends have an idea and the girlfriend insists that she comes along because she’s worried. They take her to a magical realm that the boy and the friends had together saved from an evil wizard. However, the boy (who had been basically a leader, prolly a Chosen One plot again) had become disillusioned with his mundane life since returning home and has run away to the magical realm where he’s a hero. The plot of the short film would be trying to convince him to come back and I think I might have him become almost like a villain in his insistance that he stay. I’ll have the girl break up with him even if she saves him because he’s been acting like a major dick and she deserves better than that. 

Why: I want to look at the kind of aftermath of these kinds of stories. I mean, you’re a national hero and people adore you then go back to being just one in a crowd? Like fuck man, that’s got to be a blow to your psyche I think.

Tabletop RPG

At first I wanted this as a Graphic Novel (and the original basis grew out fo an RP group, but it has changed SO MUCH since then), but I think it has more potential as a tabletop game. So the setting is, briefly, a post apocalyptic fantasy where the war between those who can and those who can’t do magic left no winners and just wiped out the landscape. Though the current day has had some time since then so nature is reclaiming its landscape with dots of towns around the place (but not incredibly frequent). Substrate magic is based on common molecules/substances etc. such as water, carbon dioxide, different rocks (or things like iron) and each person can only do one substance. There’s also a rarer grouping that called Energy that can do fire and electricity. Non magic people aren’t completely defensless because nuclear radiation cancels out magic so there’s that.

Why: I just really like the world and there’s so much potential in it that I can’t possibly make a dent in it if I was the only one to play in that sandbox.

TV Series/Web Series

An ode to shows like Star Trek and Firefly that is on the lighter side of things. It follows a military supply (subject to change, but definitely military support and not the flashy flagship that gets to do all the fun stuff) crew on its adventures of being the butt of the joke in the fleet. This is the ship your assigned to when you need experience before going on, or when your superiors don’t like you but you haven’t done anything to court martial you. A reckless and paranoid security officer, a helmsman and science officer who are completely and obviously a married lesbian couple but they have to pretend they’re not because of regulations against relationships, and a doctor who hoards supplies and is never visible because he can’t survive everyone else’s atmospheric conditions, confining him to a giant hazmat suit. Together with a largely unhelpful AI, the captain and first officer have to keep enough order to function. But when the captain has the chance to be promoted onto another ship, will she take it?

Why: This is a project that I brainstormed with @thewinningscenario and it’s a vehicle for all the things we wish in a sci-fi series from little things like universal translator issues, to things like more representation for different sexualities. 

Research Paper

The closest to actual fruition. I used stopwatches to figure out the percentage of applicable Disney movies that the protagonist and their love interest are shown to interact. However I still need to go back now and figure out the percentage that the protagonist does NOT spend with their love interest as my initial numbers gave me interesting results, but I can’t just assume that it’s an inverse relationship (for example, there may be a lot of things with side characters without the protagonist at all). Then after I collect THAT data, I need to actually write the damn thing. Though I need to figure out what editions I did for the original data. I know for Beauty and the Beast it was a copy that had Human Again, but I don’t know if any of the other movies have things like that that would throw off my numbers. 

Why: I wanted to see what the numbers look like. Also because we have this modern idea that it’s better if they spend more time with their love interest before the end because it means that the chemistry can build. But we often forget the flip side that it means that there’s less time spent on them in their own narrative by themselves. But I need the other data set to really be able to make a statement about that. Also for some reason the animal films are outliers in their eras which I was not expecting at all and don’t know what to do with THAT.

So yeah that’s a lot of shit I need to get sorted out. Some have more progress than others of course, but hopefully I shorten this list before I add things to it?