#he's like a very well illustrated example of a kid who projects all of his own issues onto everyone else because he doesnt know how to

[backfliips]

I work at an alternative school for teen students who for many various reasons are unable to be functional in a traditional typical classroom setting - disciplinary reasons, anxiety, emotional disorders, trauma, etc. - and I assist with a lot of english classes. It makes me a little sad that the teacher I work the most closely with hates the catcher in the rye so much because I’ve been rereading it and I think my students would relate really closely to Holden Caulfield. Caulfield may be annoying and whiny and privileged and obnoxious but I think the narrative of a teenager who acts out and postures himself to be older than he actually is and is struggling to comprehend and process a lot of trauma in his life so he does things he can’t even explain to himself and acts self destructive and lashes out to other people and has emotional breakdowns for seemingly no reason would be REALLY relatable to a lot of my students and I wish I could teach it to them...

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Central to the superman idea, is, of course, the outcast, loneliness, the feeling of standing apart from other human beings. After the original, more complex or ambivalent science fiction classics dealing with supermen, Alfred Jarry’s Le Surmale, and Hans Dominik’s Die Macht der Drei, virtually all science fiction stories dealing with supermen have dealt with young ones, young and angry and alienated supermen, misunderstood by a cruel and stupid world. A very popular contemporary example is Marvel’s best-selling Spiderman comics, a modern superman with sinus trouble, girls trouble, money trouble. Most adolescents at one time or another feel that they stand outside the world, that no one really understands them and that other people are stupid. Science fiction fans tend to form a high opinion of their own group of science fiction fan friends, strengthening the conviction that they are really a breed of select supermen, standing apart from the mundane world which does not read or understood books - particularly science fiction. Tests made by and on fans on many occasions, in many countries during the past thirty years or so, unanimously suggest that fans - in their own opinion at least - are more intelligent than other people. No wonder superman tales have always been popular in science fiction.

A. E. Van Vogt’s Slan even started a Utopian community of sorts in 1943, when a group of American fans in Battle Creek, Michigan, lived together for nearly two years in the ‘Slan Shack�� community. Only fans were invited, and grandiose plans were drawn up for a ‘Slan Center’ consisting of an entire city block in Battle Creek, with its own grocery store, general store, common heating plant and electricity generating plant. Utopian societies have certainly been founded on flimsier premises than a common interest in science fiction and the belief in the Slanishness of oneself and one’s friends, but the project never materialized and the original Slan Shack, an eight-roomed house sheltering a dozen or so fans, finally was abandoned as well.

An exception to the misunderstood adolescent superman of science fiction is in one of my own favourites, the Mule, in Isaac Asimov’s celebrated Foundation trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation, originally published as eight stories in the American magazine Astounding from May 1942 through November 1949). The Mule, an enigmatic mutation of superior intelligence and with the ability to play upon people’s emotions, appears in Foundation and Empire, soon unifying the entire known galaxy into a new, strong empire, using complicated Byzantine intrigues the like of which had seldom been seen in science fiction, until he finally meets his end in Second Foundation. A frail human being without most of the hero traits usually found in literary supermen, he is an oddly convincing and tragic personality and complex person who in many respects is the real principal character of the trilogy, certainly the most interesting of all the cardboard characters inhabiting this classic. He is no hero, though, and no science fiction fan community was ever founded to honour him.

The superman is in many respects the Utopian ideal of science fiction on a more personal level, coupled with the inevitable feeling of loneliness felt by many adolescents who prefer to read books instead of running round and hitting the other kids on the head with a baseball bat. The underlying dream of power is here, as is the feeling that one really ought to have the chance to change the whole world into something more glorious, or at least something more interesting. The fact that A. E. Vogt’s Slan, by far the simplest of all superhuman stories, is also the most popular in science fiction, never out of print since it first appeared and much imitated, tells, I think, a lot about the psychological mechanisms behind the lure of this science fiction theme”

- Sam J. Lundwall, Science Fiction: An Illustrated History. New York:Grossett & Dunlap, 1977. p. 184

[AL: Obviously, a 50 year old book - one of my favourites I’ve read over the years since being given an old copy by a friend in middle school - doesn’t necessarily tell us much about science fiction now, or is fully applicable to fandom now. Nonetheless, an interesting perspective on the superman and superhero in science fiction. Lundwall, a Swedish science fiction writer, was also a step removed from the American SF scene, and much more skeptical and critical about science fiction compared to the typical boosterism found in much SF writing and fandom at the time...or even now.]

[thekingofwinterblog]

It’s all for his sake - Endeavor and the Sunk Cost Fallacy

My hero academia 301 is a pretty interesting chapter, but for me, the most notable piece of it was how Endeavour reacted to the realization that Touya couldnt surpass All Might.

upon realizing that his son might not be able to do it because of inborn physical limitations, he immediatly stopped his training, which frankly was the responsible and adult thing to do. 

This stint of real parenthood did not last long however.

After taking the matter to a doctor, he is flat out told that not only cant Touya achive what endeavor wants, but it is a direct result of his incredibly selfish and irresponsible attempt to play god, by trying to breed the “perfect” hero into being.

It is how you react when you lose however, that shows who you really are, and endeavor illustrates that very, very well.

Upon being told in no uncertain terms that his attempts at Breeding an heir failed magnificently, producing a child that was not capable of resisting his own immense power, but also admonished by his doctor for even attempting it, and adviced not to try again, Endeavor instead doubled down, while focusing on the child he screwed over from the start with his attempt at genetic manipulation.

It was all for him you see. Endeavor doesnt use those words, but that is how he spins it here. it was all for Touya, all for his sake. if i stop now, then Touya was all for nothing, a mistake, im doing this for my son.

if im doing this for my son, then im not responsible for any of this.

his wife however, calls him out on it, as she understands Touya much, much more than endeavor does. or rather, she sees him fully as a human being, instead of as a thing, a weapon, a failed attempt at an heir.

Unlike Endeavor, Rei is able to see the way this all is affecting her son. She is able to see, and understand that Touya has fully accepted what Endeavor wanted him to be. a stronger, and better version of himself. however, unlike Endeavor, she only cares about him as a person.

Endeavour by comparison isnt completely uncaring about Touya. like most abusive parents, he does possess love for his offspring, but it is forever tainted by the fact that however much he might care, or not care about Touya, any familial love he has for his son is tainted by the fact that to Endeavor, he is a failed experiment, a failed heir, not his child. 

He is the golden child that Endeavor was building up as his true and only heir, who he breed, trained, and molded to for that single purpose, and now that he’s reached a point where he cant continue that legacy.

so, its time to abandon him, and start over new, despite literarily having just learned how stupid this plan was, and that it can, in fact, go completely wrong, with a quirk that will fuck over the person he brings into the world.

Of course, Endeavor doesnt use those words to frame it. there is no way to pretend to be a hero, if you phrase it like that after all. Intead, this is the words he uses.

this is a very important series of panels for a great number of reasons, some that can be debated, argued, and we will probably never know the full truth to the questions because this is a series published in 2020′s shonen jump, and there are things that probably wasnt gonna fly with Hori’s editors, if it was the case.

but lets start with what can not be debated. Endeavor’s words here.

“If we want him to give it up, then we have no choice... Touya... Cant surpass him.”

These are very telling words, and however you believe The third and fourth children of the Todoroki family was concieved, there is not denying the meaning of what he’s saying here.

The only way that my son will stop being an idiot and fall into line, is if we have another baby. that is the only Right way to move forward. it is morally right, because if we dont do this, then he’s going to destroy himself.

there are two ways to interpret this scene.

The charitable way is to read it as the fact that he used Rei’s oldest son’s mental state as a justification of guilting his wife to have a third child, to give this attempt at a superpowered breeding project another shot, despite the fact that they now know that this can lead to a child who is essentially born crippled from his own powers, and despite the fact that Rei obviously understands the effect of them continuing this insanity will have on their oldest son.

the uncharitable way to look at it, is that he used this as justification for flat out raping her, and forcing a third, and then later a fourth child on her.

I personally believe the last one, given a number of factors shown in this chapter(the way this page is framed, the fact Rei obviously didnt want a third child, given she predicted exactly how touya would react, the way her eyes would latet turn when she looks at who is presumably touya which really brings to mind how she would later react to her youngest son’s face after her mental breakdown, etc.), but i’ll frankly admitt that withouth a direct quote from Hori, its impossible to know for sure one way or another. 

either way however, this is a very good example of Endeavor both being influenced by, and using Sunk Cost Fallacy to justify bringing another potentially crippled child into the world for his own, selfish goals.

sunk cost Fallacy, is a mental reaction to when you invest more time and resources into a project, that you becomes so emotionally invested into said project that you will continue to invest into it, even if it reaches a point that it becomes clear that the resources you put into it, far, far outweighs the potential gains you can achieve.

because if you give up after having invested years, and years of effort to breed, raise, and train a kid, and then all that effort was absolutely wasted. hence he choose to keep going, despite having learned what a terrible idea this is.

He doesnt care about the fact that his next child might be even more crippled than his firstborn, he doesnt care about his son’s actual wellbeing. he cares about the fact that if he doesnt continue this insanity, then not only will he not achieve his dreams, but everything he did to get to this point was for absolutely nothing.

and endeavor cannot accept that. and so long as he can justify breeding more children into the world, and there being any chance they might inherit both quirks perfectly, he doesnt care about anything else.

and the moment he realised that this kid wasnt gonna cut it either, he did it again. it is not a coincidence, that the age gap between Endeavor’s second, third, and fourth children were all 3-4 years apart. because thats the age where you can usually tell when a quirk will manifest or not, as established earlier in the series.

While she isnt brought up directly by Endeavor as a justification, it is very telling that Endeavor decided on having a third child, only after his second child was old enough that he could tell that that there was no chance she could take the place as his heir instead.

So, he had his third child, and as time passed and it became obvious that he wasn’t gonna be able to fulfill Endeavor’s goals either, he dumped him, and instead breed a fourth child into existence.

and finally, he struck gold. he did it. he produced Shoto.

everything was finally worth it, and now, everything would be absolutely fine. the cost fallacy had reached its end, and it was now all full sails ahead.

except of course it wasnt.

His oldest son, now in middle school, had been raised from birth to believe he would surpass his father, only to be thrown away, and getting to see his father try to replace him, not once, but twice.

frankly, this scene is probably my favorite in the chapter, because it goes to show Endeavor’s mindset. Natsuo made a point that their father completely ignored his older children. and he did... from Natsuo’s perspective. however, having a more thourough picture of things, we can clearly see that this wasnt the case with Touya.

Endeavor genuinly cared for Touya, enough that once he got that child he tried to breed into existence 4 times, he genuinly wanted him to just abandon trying to be a hero. he genuinly thinks of himself as a good dad here, wanting his son to abandon the mission he set out for him before he was born. of course, with context, this heartwarming scene is incredibly sad and insidious, because we understand why Endeavor got so attached to his oldest child. because he WAS the golden child. he was the child Endeavor genuinly cared about, and invested in, and trained personally with great warmth and enthusiasm.

And not only did he abandon him as a failed project the moment he realized he wasnt gonna live up to his ridiculous standards, but he literarily created 2 more kids to try and replace him, just as his oldest son was old enough to understand what exactly his dad was doing. over the course of this chapter, we get to see Touya’s start as a 5-8 year old, his deteriorating mental state over the years, until he finally seemed to reach the breaking point with Shoto’s birth sometime in his middle school years 12-15. 

Endeavor is in this scene, just not capable of understanding why Touya so desperately wants to become a hero, when obviously he isnt physically able to do so. he isnt able to understand that he is 100% to blame for the fact that his son is having a full emotional breakdown after literaly being replaced by his siblings. 

In other words, Endeavor genuinly think’s he’s a good person. a person who has made a few mistakes along the way sure, but a person who was always justified in the end, and now that he’s having to face the fact that as dabi would later say “The past never dies” and has to face the aftermath of his inane attempt to play god for the pettiest of reasons, things simply arent going to work out.

He isnt going to have a happy family, who can now put the awful early years behind them, he put way too much effort, caused too much suffering and sacrificed too many years of his life for this not to work out as he wants.

after all, if he walks away from this project now, and lets Shoto have a normal childhood, and decide for himself, with no pressure from him, wheter or not to become a hero, then the sunk cost fallacy will have reached a negative end. it will all have been for nothing.

and we know he did eventually double down on this mentality, literarily beating into Shoto that he WAS going to become a hero, and there was not but’s or no’s about it.

there was no way that Endeavor was EVER going to let things be for nothing. His treatment of his older children could not be for nothing. His treatment of his wife could not be for nothing. His treatment of Shoto, and the way he beat him black and blue to train him, could not be for nothing.

Because if it all was for nothing, if everything he feels guilty about was for absolutely nothing, then he was in fact, a bad, bad person, who had no justification for anything he ever did.

[greysfall]

My 4444-word review of NEO TWEWY (with personal illustration + heavy spoilers)

My overall critical score for the game is 7.5/10, while my personal enjoyment score is 8.5/10. This review is posted as I have 80% completed the game, got the secret ending and achieved the Angel psychic rank. I’ll first start with the main pros and cons as follows.

PROS:

-        Enjoyable as a whole, still upholding the first game’s spirit in world building and sharing the same backbone - which was mostly revealed in the Secret Reports, it’s impossible to grasp the story without reading them.

-        The new cast and new game is charming in their own way

-        The old cast’s return is one of the biggest highlights for sure, it was fun and impactful. Everyone stays true to themselves and also had their own stories wrapped up nicely.

-        Boss designs are cool, new pins are fun to use and collect

-        The connection between the old and new cast is well written and executed, including but are not limited to the tension between the old and new protagonist, the weird but fun interaction between the 2 Composers, the new friendships revealed and formed

-        Sho being in the main cast is something so uniquely TWEWY and uniquely Sho

-        Still good music

-        Still many fun side quests, some of them really uphold the same quirky spirit of the old game and some are surprisingly touching

-        Many new nice stores and yummy looking foods to explore

-        The map is really easy to memorize for me, it’s fun to travel around the “current” Shibuya to see all the differences compared to the past

-        The social network is crazy and interesting to read through

-        Has an anti-frustration system to help 100% complete the game more easily and earn money faster, so post-game is relatively managable.

-        Overall, I really feel the efforts the team poured into making this as their passion project, not just during the development process but for all the last 14 years. They showed the vision of what they wanted to make, at the same time giving something to both the old as well as new fans.

CONS:

-        The biggest problem with the game is scenario writing. The story is so heavily back-loaded. The director himself thought it would be better to balance out the tension flow by adding more at the beginning but gave in to the scenario writer in the end, probably due to time pressure. This results in an underwhelming execution of characterization and lots of wasted potentials for the first half of the game.  

-        I struggle to view it as a stand-alone game, since the backstory and the old cast both play such an important role in the core of the game. If someone plays this game without having played the OG, they can only enjoy it on surface value at best.

-        The new cast is nice but most of them aren’t quite as intriguing as the old cast, maybe it’s cuz they’re all too nice deep down that they lack a little bit of an edge, of that batshit craziness that everyone in the OG used to have? I think some characters (Fret, Nagi) ended up weaker in terms of characterization because the writer is too afraid of making them unlikeable – which kind of backlashed cuz they only became likable in the most expectable way to cater for a specific group of fans. I would have wished for the other team leaders to be more crazy too, had they not suffered 30+ loops of the Game…

-        The CAMERAWORK IS HELL.

-        Gameplay does get tedious at certain points with all the time travels.

-        Shiba is so badly written as a villain, some Shinjuku characters should be given more screentime cutting into Shiba’s– like Hishima or Kaie or even, Hazuki (though his limited presence also solidified his importance).

-        Some of the main character designs, for example Beat’s hairstyle and his food reactions are hilariously bad. What’s the point of covering up most of his unique facial features?

-        Some of the minor/side characters’ design are too cool for them to have such a small role (eg: Ayano, Eiru). Ryoji did get much screentime but is nowhere as fun as Makoto was.

-        Overall the scope of this game is made a little too big for the team to handle as perfectly as the last game that was very compact, it felt somewhat rushed in development too so the missing pieces are clearly there in the final picture

The entry fee versus paying for it all in the end

An important difference between the Neo game and the original Shibuya game was that the Shibuya rule asked for an entry fee that is the Player’s most important asset, stated as a chance the Composer gives them to reexamine themselves. Meanwhile, the Shinjuku rule neither encourages nor allows personal growth and ultimately aims to erase as many Players as possible. It’s a pity we were never introduced to the full Shinjuku rulebook, as it seems like the system there focuses more on building up power and a grand government to compare with the individuality-driven system of Shibuya.

When you have to compare the new game and the original game (OG), this is an important factor to consider. Also, the OG has a serious storyline running through and through, locked with a different partner/GM creating unique atmosphere for each week and you don’t get to see your old partners again until the end. NEO’s team system does not allow such deep insight and communication between the Players. All of your teammates are always there throughout, the dynamic does change with each new addition but it is not as prominent as a partner change.

Another important factor is how the OG was built from scratch for a new platform as “something no one has ever seen before”, while Neo recycled a lot of old unused ideas from the previous development (check out this interview for more details). The development team for NEO lacks 2 key members and had a change of writer so the final product is not as strongly bound together as the last game.

The new cast is definitely inspired by today’s teenagers (from the view of creators), compared to the old cast they’re more sociable and always seem to take whatever works for them despite feeling unstable inside. They are all innocent and genuinely nice kids, avoiding to hurt each other to a degree that they end up keeping some sort of distance. They’re also unable to communicate at deeper levels, always stagnant at this half-baked stage of equilibrium without any motivation to get to the core of things. That is the cost of entering the game without an entry fee, without even dying or having a reason to be there/to fight seriously. These kids were stolen from the RG into a Game that was decidedly the worst environment for them to change or develop, just wandering around cluelessly to find a way “out” until tragedies started to unfold one by one and they ended up being charged the total sum of the price for their actions – ultimately losing everything in the end.

That is, I believe, a story arc which can resonate more to the youth of today rather than of my generation. If the message of the old game was to “listen”, enjoy life to the fullest and accept to trust others, the message of the new game is to “speak up” from the inside, trying to understand yourself and take actions instead of just going with the flow and finally, to take responsibility for such actions.

If Neku was handpicked by the Composer for being the special one with an all-dense soul to ensure victory of the game then Rindo was just a normal kid chosen out of random by Kubo to be his back-up plan, who just happened to have a high enough imagination to awaken the incredible power from his pin. Rindo was then officially chosen by the Composer as Josh picked up and handed the pin to him again, this time not as Josh’s personal Proxy – but as the Proxy to represent the normal people of Shibuya and via whom he could gamble if humans can fight for their own fate.

The underworld heroine and the hero with little of his own

Shoka is for me a refreshing and layered heroine. She’s the kind of character that took at least 3 trials of creators to form as a complete individual – that included Nomura who gave her the base design and Reaper background, Gen who gave a more cunning touch and the writers who made her English dialogues more punchy. Dishonesty equals “tsundere” is such a cliché, so the English writers tried really hard to avoid that trope in my opinion, while still letting her good intention come through.

She serves as the character who is informed of everything the players should have known, and there was almost nothing she could do about it. Almost. Until she met Rindo.

They were drawn to each other by sharing a state of “not having anything of their own”. They both started out with not being able to truly know themselves, Shoka even hated her RG life but also managed to mature from that stage before Rindo. She must have vibed with Shiki’s love and passion in the Gatto Nero threads, initiating her connection with Shibuya and understanding herself more. With Shoka as Swallow, they were able to open up to each other and offer mental support… but was still not getting to the centre of their problems because for all this time, Shoka could not tell Rindo the most important things about herself.

How did Shoka feel when she met Rindo at the UG? She probably didn’t want to hope that he would live the day until she witnessed the Twisters’ potentials. From the very beginning, they were both incredibly conscious of each other and also constantly frustrated that the person they happened to “notice” was such a condescending bitch/a clueless loser. The Shinjuku Reapers are overall quite drunk in power and uncompassionate to Players, Shoka included. She is also a master of dissociation, which results in her constant boredom, tone swings, haughtiness and subconsciously distancing herself from the friend – the boy she cares about – from false hope, as she judged from facts that it was a hopeless situation where nothing could ever be. Maybe she is naturally a bit of a chameleon just like her name suggests (Shoka 紫陽花 = hydrangea, the color-changing flower), so putting on an act and always dissociating herself from what’s important was easy, while hiding her contradiction was impossible. It was the ex-Reaper Beat who broke it out to her, that she should decide whether she really cared and wanted to do something for a change. He knew how it felt like to cross that line, and knew she wanted to too.  

Shoka is endeared by many of the Shinjuku Reapers and has shown independent acts of kindness (the Shinjuku ghost), proving that her kind and truthful side is as real as her harsh and dishonest side – which makes her a nice mirror to the previous heroine Shiki, who also embraced a dichotomy of self-complex and self-love within her character. In the end, she was the first of the new cast to ultimately accept all that is important to her and independently made the decision to help save Shibuya despite all costs.

She was jealous at Rindo’s interaction with Tsugumi and Kanon but remained silent cuz she wasn’t at a place to have any say about it. She also didn’t reveal about Swallow because that would only add an awkward irrelevance to their current situation, as she was too ready to face erasure at the end of the Game. She only wished to “play a game” with him, be it FanGo or the Reapers’ Game. The tension that the team could only feel at the end, she’s felt it the entire time. The song “DIVIDE” is applicable to not just one bond in the game, but it always makes me think of theirs. There is always a “divide” between her and Rindo throughout the course of their journey, as the living and the dead, as a Player and Reaper, as someone who has a place to return to and someone who doesn’t, someone who knows little but wields too much power and someone who knows a lot despite not being able to do much.

“If only I had the chance to connect with you on the other side

But time goes on, and without us realizing it

The battle is getting heated

Time goes on, and without us realiazing it

Divided again”

To be honest, maybe I didn’t grow any affection for the new main cast from Rindo’s perspective but from Shoka’s. Since I started to sympathize with Shoka, I started to see the boy in a more “real” way. The real Rindo, behind his peaceful façade with others, would lash out on Shoka for her unfairly harsh attitude while none of the others cared. He could also subtly feel that mantle of unspoken secrets from her, her own contradictions, the unresolved chemistry between themselves – and not knowing what to do with it rather than to feel angry with all the unfairness he could not process. (As a Libra too, he’s triggered the most by unfairness!)

It is actually a positive development as he’s at least “reacting” to something strongly now rather than to keep evading his problems. During my replay, I clearly saw the difficult situation Shoka was in, her remaining harshness after the Motoi incident was due to her internal struggle with a mission to save her own life, versus a chance to really be with the team. Her decision was to do both at the risk of losing favour from both sides. Rindo started to accept her layer by layer, as the person who resonated the most to her contradicting nature from the start and knew that via learning her resolve, he has learnt his too.

Later into the game, she even got too much of his attention. Maybe even without knowing she’s Swallow, he’s familiar with her thinking direction and Swallow had always been closer to him than any other friend. It was only after she had to betray her important ones twice that she could start being truly honest. The scene when she died a 2nd time left a strong impression in me, the little reveal let Rindo know that he is also losing Swallow as he’s losing Shoka – and that only death could drive the last secret out of her. Her final “Later, loser” echoed through Rindo as it was the final truth, with only him remaining to hear it: they had actually, already lost everything.

Rindo was the boy who never dared to face all that matters to him until he lost it all, fighting an unfair battle in the faith that they would somehow still win. Shoka was the girl who always knew what was dear to her, but never dared to think she could be together with them ever after and still threw her all into a battle she knew was losing. I think they stir each other on naturally to fill out their gaps, similar to what the Shibuya game partner systerm would have aimed for. The end reward was a little divine intervention to help close up the divide between them once and for all.  

During the game there was not enough space to process anything personal so at the ending when they officially became “friends”, it was an important affirmation of their bond. Some people complained it was friendzoning but it’s not, they just have arrived at the perfect place to start something more. “From now on, we will truly be together” – I read it as that kind of message.  

The heroine from a lost battle, with her story taken away

After reading the secret reports and playing the game to be surprised of how small a role Tsugumi had in the main game despite being the “Hype-chan” thought to be a major character of the next TWEWY installment, many fans would feel sad at a missed opportunity to see the Shinjuku arc in full depiction.

It was shown clearly that, a Shinjuku arc was very carefully planned out and is a vital part of the whole story, yet it could not be made due to various circumstances behind the development scene. I would assume, that the team were not able to make a TWEWY game that ended on a despairing note, but it already happened in their mind, thus becoming a mental burden that forced them to break away from it and started the game anew with NEO. A significant part of NEO became the healing arc for the Shinjuku characters, especially for Tsugumi though I really wished more emphasis should have been placed on her rather than Shiba. We didn’t even get to see her brother – Shinjuku’s Conductor who had a vital role and instead was given the clueless Shiba, who had absolutely no idea what’s going on all the way until the last day in NEO. It’s as if Tsugumi has had her story stolen away from her, because her own battle ended with a saddening loss.

I think every time the game creators look at Tsugumi, they would feel that sadness too. Maybe to them, she is a bigger character than what is seen by the fans, as despite their failed effort to depict her story, she’s lived in their mind for all these years through periods of destruction, healing and rebuild.  Though it is a pity we could not get to experience the full scope of the Shinjuku story, the creators was clear about the place they wished for it to arrive at.    

Individuality, connection and the social network

The team system adapted from Shinjuku rulebook does not allow much room for personal development, as the team dynamic is closer to a work relationship forced to bear results, than a spiritual bond to max out all corners of understanding as found in the partnership system. The old Shibuya system allowed only 1 winner and 1 week limit per game, while the new rule declares for a 1 winning team and only the team at last place will be erased – the other teams will enter another loop. Furthermore, whichever team to challenge the unwinnable Ruinbringers will face the risk of ending up dead last followed by erasure. As a result, the longest-standing teams are most likely not the strongest ever recorded, but the ones who have figured out a strategy to simply survive until something changes, enjoying their newly found social constructs while they are at it. Basically, it is a system to hypnotise players into the illusion that they are still “living”.

Therefore, we as players would not get to the core of each Player individually as fast and directly as we did in the last game. The Twisters were able to stand out not because they’re powerful, they only started to have a real chance after growing enough to each form a meaningful and personal connection to another teammate. It did not come as a team, nor did it intiate from the existing friendship between Rindo and Fret. In fact, I did not find much solidity or anything truly note-worthy about the main team and new characters within themselves until they started clashing with other team members, Reapers and new recruits from week 2 onwards. Rindo found his personal development with Shoka (via a clash with Motoi and pretty much a mini dating sim between them), then via the confrontation of his role with Neku; Fret found his with Kanon then Nagi, the team learned about the real Neku via Beat, Neku entered the UG via Coco’s wish to save Tsugumi… it was not the team but their personal links that empowered them to fight and solve each of their problems.

The other team leaders may have failed because they did not form such personal links, after 30+ hopeless loops Fuya’s team all fell apart to pursue their own interest even at the cost of erasure, Motoi quit his KOL façade to work like a dog for the Reapers (probably to save just his own ass not his team), while Kanon dropped her tricks to find changes via honest cooperation in acceptance of a fair loss. The despairing note in that is huge without making much of a scene because their failure didn’t happen at their best effort to “win”, but in their last attempt to find a way “out”. Even Shiba got his way “out” in the end thanked to his personal friendship with Hishima and Tsugumi.

Something has shifted in the mindset of the game creators in the last 14 years, as both games are about “connection vs individuality” but the last game focuses more on connection between just individuals and this one on the overall network that is formed out of those individual connections.

The introduction of Beat into the main cast was truly the bridge between old and new, they helped each other out in several turns before officially recruiting him. Beat is a character whom a lot of fans including myself have felt somewhat concerned about after Neku disappeared from the RG, so when the new kids welcomed Beat with warm and organic interaction and Beat seemed happy, I started to feel like I wanted to help them out too! I think the overall team chemistry is enjoyable enough for new players, but I could warm up to the new kids more from the pov of a returning character – whom I’m glad to be Beat, as the older brother figure who is genuinely kind, fun, serious and upbeat at the same time; who is needed and needs the kids in return.

The social network is a fun and refreshing feature. You can read all of the crazy tidbits about Shibuya and the links each character have formed with the town people, it’s also fun to visualize how the characters act off screen. Characters’ profiles provide extra insight into their background too, like how it reveals Tsugumi has been friend with Coco during her time in the RG. During the game when not all characters have showed up, you can sometimes guess which empty spot will belong to whom. For example there is a 1 character linking to Neky that is not linked to anyone else, so I could guess that was Joshua, and that another character linking only to Joshua was probably Hazuki, hinting that the 2 Composers are related before either of them even showed up.

Hazuki only showed up for 5 minutes, but his presence is so vital and true to the game that I think he is the most memorable out of the new cast. The two Composers have such an intriguing bond, with their yin/yang or phoenix/dragon themes, opposite color design, the sempai/kouhai tone and the way they keep some sort of distance/work relationship as if it’s mandatory between Higher beings, yet at the same time they can talk so casually because they are truly equal – and different from one another. I have written a separate meta on them here.

Some people pointed out, that all Shinjuku characters’ names and themes are based off Hanafuda cards and the Phoenix in Hanafuda belongs to the Paulownia suit – which is Joshua’s name flower. This is so interesting because it feels like the creators somehow saw it as a sign to interweave the Shibuya and Shinjuku storylines together. Though it doesn’t come out much on the surface, it’s fascinating nonetheless considering both Josh and Haz had at some point interfered with the other town’s affairs.

“Shibuya tour with Haz” was such a special scene, as it happened between 2 characters who do not/no longer have a reason to care about Shibuya, on the subject of what is worth saving about Shibuya. Hazuki carried out the purification of Shinjuku and stepped in to restore Shibuya just as part of his job and unlike Hanekoma or Joshua who both possess profound understanding of humanity, he really didn’t know humans at all. Rindo’s irrational wish invoked in him a sense of curiosity, to try gambling on something irrationally and learning a bit of what his senior have experienced. With all the pieces put together, it provides an overview on Higher beings as a whole, and that Joshua and Hanekoma are really the odd ones out with Hazuki being somewhere in between them and the rest.        

The old friends

It’s easy to have returning characters overshadow the new cast as they have already matured out of their personal story arc and stayed in our hearts for all this time. In the end, I have managed to enjoy both the old and new cast separately and altogether, and they will both find their own place in our memory of this game for the long term.

Sho is truly as crazy as ever, the game wouldn’t be the same if Sho is any less of what he is. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like Neky or Beat is younger than Nagi at all, with moments when it seems like Neky has aged 14 years instead of 3 years. His friendship with Coco surprised me pleasantly, and their interaction together with Beat was fun to watch. Rhyme’s found a new dream and her friendship with Kaie is precious too, especially considering that she can still talk to him online after the game ended. Josh and Neku’s interaction suggested that they have resolved the past and are on equal terms now, they even parted ways in good spirit and I don’t feel any worry about them like I did before.

Neku and Shiki’s reunion scene was beautiful, theirs is such a special bond that it has grown and supported them even without being able to see each other. I am so happy to see them all again and that they stay true to who they are, albeit looking more grown up, cooler and happier than ever before.  

Overall, NEO can’t become a classic on par with the OG, but is definitely a good sequel and a good game in its own rights. I’m happy with whether or not there will be a 3rd game to complete the 3 monkeys theme, but if there will be – I hope the creators can really find the time to learn from the last 2 games and start over with a fresh mindset and strong core.  

[canmom]

pls make a post abt how textual trans girl zuko is, it's everything to me but i haven had the strength to write it out for years 🙇‍♀️

lol i deleted that post bc i didn't want to get in a fight with the friend who reblogged that post about transmasc zuko but sure, ok

it's not super complicated really. like i don't think when it comes to 'trans headcanon' there is like, a 'reality' out there, zuko isn't a real person who can be definitely 'trans' or not, he's a symbol who we fill with our own ideas of personhood when we encounter the story. rather it's whether a reading is resonant or not, which is going to depend on the reader and what they can project on a character. I expect my reading will be more sympathetic with trans girls ;p

all the same... zuko is portrayed as being raised in a fascist society (seemingly most modelled on Imperial Japan, as interpreted by a couple of American liberals writing for a kids' TV network) which values military bravado and individual displays of skill, and exercises corporal punishment for 'dishonourable' behaviour; all of these are part of the construction of masculinity in our world. and we watch Zuko try very hard to live up to the values of this society (despite being, well, very bad at it, to the point he increasingly becomes an ineffectual joke villain), since he has been cut off from all kinds of affection outside of Iroh since his mother was exiled. Zuko is pressured to believe that this will earn the love denied by his evil father who very publicly and sadistically scarred his face. this is all pretty straightforwardly textual.

now these values aren't necessarily portrayed as intrinsically masculine in what we can 'learn' about the fictional Fire Nation, at least insofar as Azula is able to embody them. but it's not out of the question for fascist and nationalistic societies to provisionally accept cafab gender nonconformity in a limited number of cases, as examples like Violette Morris indicate; if we look further back we get things like the medieval 'one sex' model and occasionally beliefs that like, sexual anatomy would somehow follow behaviour. so we could say Azula is probably an exceptional case - the footloose-pastiche and beach episodes illustrate that the Fire Nation definitely has some pretty conventional gendering going on, and the vast majority of authority figures in the Fire Nation are men. iirc they establish that descent is not rigidly patrilineal but the Fire Lord can name an heir; that said all the Fire Lords we see have been men.

so. it's not automatically that Zuko's arc of struggling to reject the values of the imperialist Fire Nation must be read as a struggle with gender given the text; however it is obviously quite resonant insofar as like, the common egg experience of like, trying desperately to live up to the hell of death cult masculinity before eventually it breaks you and you have to figure out another way to be. zuko's 'crime' in his father's eyes, the thing that dishonours him, is not merely speaking out of turn but doing so to advocate for something other than "maximum death all the time"; essentially, acting too effeminate! Fire Lord Ozai has to very publicly burn his 'son' because otherwise the generals would be like, wow boss, your son is such a fag, must be something up with the royal line.

(meanwhile Azula succeeds on the terms of the 'male' power structure, she's a prodigy girlboss etc.; but perhaps part of her issue is that she knows her power is fraught, she's aware of the abyss if she ever steps out of line especially after seeing what happened to Zuko (with her willing assistance). we could easily imagine the suspicion that would exist if military authority is considered men's domain; that's why she works so hard to terrify everybody around her. she's also desperate for recognition; as much as it's not fully convincing, her breakdown in the final episode comes when she's named Fire Lord only for her dad to put himself on a new higher rank of 'Phoenix King', leaving her out of the big showy genocide he's about to perform, and she realises she's just a tool to him rather than someone he truly sees as a successor.)

now let's go to the first season, when zuko is chasing the gaang all around the map and failing to catch them constantly, and dressing up at night to do things that his society wouldn't sanction (ok it's a ninja outfit not like a dress or something but still, i'll take what i can get), while getting in fights with a big buff guy like Zhao for whom living up to the standard masculinity is assured and easy. the idea of trying to express femininity in some tentative way and having the door viciously slammed shut on your fingers and like, flinching back and going for tryhard masculinity in the wake of that traumatic experience is one that's gonna be viciously familiar for too many camab gender variant people.

later we see zuko's arc in the tea shop in Ba Sing Se - ok, it is on one level just like, learning to be a decent person and there's a somewhat unconvincing hetero romance subplot in there, but you can absolutely read zuko's struggle there in gender terms. like. it would be so easy to imagine him trying out a maid outfit during that arc, right? ...no? oh huh.

later still, you have his failed relationship with Mai while living in the Fire Nation in s3... Zuko's trying so hard to do a heterosexuality bless him, and he just has no idea. it's like, papering over the 'break' from society that has developed, so obviously doomed to failure.

but it's also kind of the case that i just see an angsty bishie-adjacent (tbf zuko is merely anime, not especially bishie) 'male' character and i'm like mmhmm, nice egg you got there. ultimately it doesn't really matter whether you read Zuko as trans woman or a gay femboy or just an angsty sorta guy; it's a narrative that simply resonates with like, stuff we experience around the crazy contradictory construction of gender we have to live under - it's material that's very easy to pick up and run with if you're in the mood.

so the impetus for the deleted post was like, if (in my reading) zuko's arc is so obviously about rejecting the values we associate with masculinity at great personal cost to define a narrative on 'his' own terms; sure, that's totally something the transmascs gotta struggle too with from their own particular zone and with its own difficulties, i can't speak to that, and ultimately these gender categories are totally incoherent and fake; but like, 'zuko is a trans guy' is not the obvious reading that suggests itself to me! and i think if Korra had the guts to just be like oh yeah and Zuko's a girl now that would be based as hell, but bryke would never be that cool in a million years, so it's just something you gotta insert yourself if you're in the mood.

[thankskenpenders]

Enerjak Reborn: Epilogue

It’s time to answer the question on everybody’s mind. How did Ken respond to Ian killing off Locke, one of his pet characters?

Well, the answer, as you should expect, is: poorly

Now, it’s important to remind everyone that Ken has not actually read the arc. He never read any of Ian’s run, to my knowledge. But his fans were sure to tell him all about it and ask him how he felt

Eventually, in 2010, two years after this issue dropped, we got a response from Ken talking about how he felt about Ian’s run. (Again, even though he wasn’t actually reading it himself.) Said response is worth reading in full if you’re interested in all this drama and Ken’s mindset. You literally get to see the guy brag about how he actively ignored what Bollers was doing when the two were sharing writing duties, as if this is a good thing that makes him a better writer. He also criticizes Ian for using the previous writers’ characters instead of introducing even more characters to the bloated Archie cast in his first few years on the series. But the relevant part to the discussion of Enerjak reborn is here:

“I especially don’t consider anything either does with any of the echidna characters – especially Locke – to be canon as neither created the characters nor established them in stories as the viable fan favorites they’ve become. No matter what Ian writes, he can never alter the fact that in MY universe, the events of Locke’s passing as depicted in SONIC #143 is canon. Anything he writes can easily be counter-written by a better story with an alternative solution.”

Let’s just brush past the very funny part where he calls Locke a “viable fan favorite”

So yeah. Penders was VERY unhappy with the way Ian wrote Locke, and the way Locke’s death in Enerjak Reborn meant that the timeline depicted in Mobius: 25 Years Later wasn’t the one true future of the series. He’s also gone on record saying that he thinks Ian didn’t get the relationship between Locke and Knuckles. When asked about Ian’s work, this has always been one of the major things that’s bothered him

On a broader level, his ramblings here are reflective of how he views comic franchises in general. A particularly illustrative quote from him is provided in the comments section below the article I linked:

“The only work I consider significant to any character is the work done by the original creators. Anything done afterwards by anyone else pretty much doesn’t count. For example, I consider the original issues of FANTASTIC FOUR by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to be the only stories that matter in the entire run. Anything being done today is by writers and artists who are simply building off the work Stan and Jack originated. I apply this standard to just about every character I ever enjoyed over the years.”

This odd mindset explains a lot about Ken. It explains why he hates that Ian kept using his characters, and why he actively avoided building off of the work of his contemporary writers at Archie. I can see what he means on some level, of course. When another writer comes in and adds more novels to a series after the original author dies, I generally tend to ignore those. And I skipped a good chunk of Twin Peaks season 2 because it had less involvement from creators David Lynch and Mark Frost, making a lot of it feel like filler. But we’re talking about a licensed comic, one that had been a collaboration between multiple writers based on the work done for the games and cartoons from the very beginning. Ken was never the sole writer--he wasn’t even there for the first year--and he was writing stories centered around characters he hadn’t created like Sonic, Sally, and Knuckles. He doesn’t take credit for creating any of those characters, but the hypocrisy still seems to be lost on him

But of course, we’re not just talking about Ian’s handling of all of Archie Sonic here. We’re talking about Locke. And as Ken has said himself, Locke was based partially on his own father. And that’s really the kicker here

As I’ve said many times before, I try to avoid psychoanalyzing Penders and digging into his personal life. I don’t know the guy, and that’s his own business. But it’s hard not to when he literally says shit like THIS to fans

Locke is emotionally abusive towards his wife and son. Locke is also based on Ken’s dad. Ken refuses to see Locke as abusive, even though that’s exactly what he wrote, because that would mean acknowledging that his own father was abusive. So there’s always an excuse for why father knows best. It was a different era! They’re not humans! He could see the future! He might have hurt Knuckles, but it toughened him up, and he was always there for him in the end! The dad is never, ever at fault. The moms, on the other hands, are mere bystanders to the child rearing done by the dads. It’s just sad, really

I get why Ken would be bitter that Ian took this fictionalized version of his late dad, went “hey, this guy’s an asshole,” and then killed him off. I get why that would upset somebody. He wrote a very personal story there. But it’s not like Ian was pouring salt in a fresh wound--Ken lost his father all the way back in 1982. I know this because Ken literally dedicated the M25YL story about his version of Locke’s death to his dad. It had been nearly 30 years when he wrote this response to Ian’s work. That’s plenty of time to see a goddamn therapist instead of projecting all of your baggage onto Knuckles the Echidna and writing stories for kids about how you should never question your dad ever

The irony, though, is that Ian’s different take on Locke is arguably way more nuanced than Ken’s ever was. In his final moments, Ian’s Locke turns into this tragic figure who only realizes too late that the way of life the Brotherhood had raised him to believe was a mistake, that he had failed his son by passing those beliefs on to him. But he’s still held responsible for what he did. He’s a horrible dad, and the characters around him call him out for his failures, but you pity him for only now realizing what he had done

Ken, on the other hand, gestures at Locke doing horrible things, then tells you to forget about all that and stop questioning him. Knuckles pretends he has a totally normal Leave it to Beaver-ass father-son relationship as soon as they reunite in the Knuckles series. As an adult he thinks back on how great a job Locke did raising him, even though Locke literally took him from his mother, raised him to believe that his mother and the rest of his species were all dead, and then pretended he himself was dead for six years of his son’s childhood (among MANY other things)

M25YL gestures at those very same themes of not repeating your parents’ mistakes that Ian touched on in Locke’s final moments. Knuckles is raising Lara-Su very differently from how Locke raised him, and Locke admits that he wishes he had raised Knuckles differently on his deathbed. But his decision to suddenly admit wrongdoing in this flashback to his death feels unearned and arbitrary. Locke is never at fault. We cannot question Locke. Knuckles turned out fine, so don’t worry about it. Locke might regret the way Knuckles raised him, but Knuckles is not allowed to hold any ill will towards his father or question his methods whatsoever. We’re allowed to gesture at the idea that Knuckles doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the previous generations, but those vague mistakes aren’t allowed to be anyone’s fault. That’s just “how things were”

Ken would do a lot more than just complain about Ian’s handling of Locke on the internet, though. Because you see, the way Ian wrote Locke is commonly cited as one of the main reasons why Ken started copyrighting his work, right up there with Bioware basing the story of Sonic Chronicles partially off of the Knuckles comics without his blessing. And those copyrights, of course, were what started the legal battle that would kill off the original Archieverse

[dai-bendu-conlang]

Qui-Gon’s Last Words in Dai-Bendu — a Meta/Explanation

So very early into this project, loosingletters and I (ghostwriter) watched The Phantom Menace together, and when Qui-Gon died, we looked at each other and were like “We can make this way sadder in translation, can’t we?” 

And so off we went, with that goal in mind. 

Because we went into this thinking “can we improve this interaction via language/translation?”  we need to first first explain why we don’t love Qui-Gon’s last words in canon, to then explain why we made the changes that we did.

The reasons are as follows:

Qui-Gon’s last words have nothing to do with Obi-Wan, the person he is saying goodbye to.

His last words being an order about Anakin left a weird taste in our mouths

We wanted this to feel more intimate and more emotional

So, we started with ways we could change the connotation of the words being used. We came at it from a lens of assuming that the dialogue was a classic “bad translation�� of what was actually said; as in, someone translated the literal meanings of the words into English, and lost a lot of the social meanings that the words might have in their original contexts. 

Here are Qui-Gon’s original last words, in canon:

Obi-Wan: Master! Master! Qui-Gon: It’s too late. It’s too… Obi-Wan: No! Qui-Gon: Obi-Wan, promise...promise me you'll train the boy Obi-Wan: Yes, Master Qui-Gon: He is the chosen one...he will...bring balance...train him!

(Sidenote: upon actually looking up the dialogue, we were honestly shocked by how, like. Bare bones it is. And how pretty much all the emotion of that scene comes only from Neeson and McGregor acting their hearts out. So, kudos.)

When looking at this dialogue, we singled out the following things as points we could build on: 

Jedi cultural values regarding teaching (which we all have a lot of Feelings about)

The word “promise”

The whole idea of balance

And then we proceeded to go to town. 

The Dai Bendu translation of this dialogue is as follows:

Obi-Wan: Jaieh! Jaieh! Qui-Gon: Im enoh...nev forpai paikazah Obi-Wan: Shet. Qui-Gon: Obi-Wan, ikio… ikio fehl paipadenji keel nev paqorak. Obi-Wan: Haj dai, Jaieh. Qui-Gon: Enoah kar... daisha. Pauji... kar aimato’ak. Paden... karak.

Firstly, the things we didn’t change, ie: pretty much all of Obi-Wan’s dialogue.

Obi-Wan says, in order, “Master, Master!” (though he uses the Jedi-specific word for it, which also translates to “teacher”), “No.” and “Yes, Master,” just like in the original script. The most significant thing here is that the Dai Bendu word for “Yes” directly translates to “Force-Wills,” which could be read as some unintentional, ouchy subtext that both implies that Obi-Wan is agreeing with Qui-Gon’s point about Anakin being the Chosen One as a final act of comfort (because he’s expressed doubt about the possibility before), as well as conceding to both himself, Qui-Gon, and the universe that the Force has willed his Master’s death. 

Next, the things that changed from the script mostly as a symptom of the ways that Dai Bendu is different from English/Basic. For instance, Qui-Gon refers to Anakin as “the child” rather than “the boy,” because Dai Bendu does not express gender in that way. Instead of saying “it’s too late,” a more word-for-word direct translation of “Im enoh nev forpai paikazah” would be “no time is left,” which both lines up with how we imagine time works in Dai Bendu (link here), and is more natural to the way Dai Bendu handles sentence structure (“it’s too late” is a very English sentence construction). 

And now we get to the meaning changes. Other than changing the structure, “im enoh nev forpai paikazah” also adds “pai,” our consequential prefix, to “kazah,” which is the present-tense of the verb “kaza” or “to leave.” That makes the sentence mean something like “no time is left, and because of that the future has changed.” This is essentially Qui-Gon admitting to both himself and to Obi-Wan that his death is going to change, at the very least, Obi-Wan’s future forever, and also the future of the entire universe (though whether or not Qui-Gon knows this last part, in a Force-saturated moment right before death, is unclear in both the original version and our version). 

Qui-Gon’s next line is “Obi-Wan, ikio… ikio fehl paipadenji keel nev paqorak.” Again, we have the consequential prefix, this time attached to “paden,” which means “to guide/to teach,” here in the future tense. The implication of that being something like “teach him and it will alter the future.” Adding the consequential prefix to something which is already in the future tense is considered repetitive — comparable to saying something like “it is so enormously big” in English. A native speaker making the choice to add it here illustrates a conscious emphasis. Qui-Gon is really trying to express how important he thinks teaching Anakin is. 

We also have a lot of Thoughts and Feelings about the Jedi as a people who are dedicated to teaching as a cultural value. On top of being archivists and having/keeping a vast collection of knowledge, Jedi do pretty much nothing but study/learn their entire lives. They are dedicated diplomats and so on, but outside of that they seem to want to foster understanding and that in-and-of itself is always a lesson. In TCW, for instance, everything is a teachable moment for someone. The fact that so much careful consideration is put into who you pick as your Padawan, and that you retain a deep connection to them even when the apprenticeship is over, shows that this connection and this act of teaching is immensely important. It is considered a standard part of each Jedi’s life to step into that teaching role at least once — nearly every Jedi takes on at least one apprentice. If you take Obi-Wan as an example, he spent half his time in the PT being a student, and then the other half being a teacher. So here, Qui-Gon is taking one of their culture’s most important values and handing it to Obi-Wan. 

Then we have the word for “promise” we used, “ikio.” While we have a standard word for promise, “aima,” the word that Qui-Gon uses here instead is one with more cultural meaning. “Ikio” refers to a very specific kind of promise, something like “promise me because you love me,” or “promise me because I trust you above all.”  The word dates back to the Jedi-Sith schism, where it was used as an oath to state that you trust this person to take your lightsaber and bring it back to your home temple, should you die in battle.

Which means that, holistically, the line “Obi-Wan, ikio… ikio fehl paipadenji keel nev paqorak” both places the highest amount of trust possible in Obi-Wan’s hands, while also stating that Qui-Gon believes him ready of preforming one of their most culturally important values, and trusts him implicitly to carry that out. 

Finally, the line “Enoah kar... daisha. Pauji... kar aimato’ak. Paden... karak.” Some of this is, again, just us having words in Dai Bendu which Basic doesn’t have. “Daisha” is the word for Chosen One, the one referred to as such specifically to that old prophecy Qui-Gon likes so much. It’s a word that all Jedi would be familiar with, but usually in the context of folk tales. It’s like calling someone “The Once and Future King.” (Which also makes Qui-Gon talking to the Council way funnier — “hey guys, I found King Arthur!” “what the fuck??”). Qui-Gon also uses the third person Jedi/in-community pronouns when referring to Anakin, showing that he already thinks of this kid as a Jedi. 

Then there is the concept of “aimato,” here in the accusative case as “aimato’ak.” Aimato is the word for “cosmic balance,” which is both a very important idea in Jedi philosophy, and also a very big and abstract concept. And like any other big and abstract concept which has a large impact on lives and culture, like Love or Brotherhood or Democracy or God, it’s something that individual people and individual Jedi have different conceptions of and ideas about. This is a culture of warrior-philosophers — pretty much everyone has a slightly different theory as to what aimato/”cosmic balance” is supposed to mean and what it will look like when it is achieved, or if it’s possible to achieve, from "it means that one day the Force shows itself to all people" to "it's about finding balance within only yourself" to "it means that evil will finally stand down" to "it means that all who strive for it will achieve peace" to "it's in tiny everyday moments." People sit around and debate this for hours. 

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan deeply disagree on it’s definition, given their specialties in the Living vs. Unifying Force, and have essentially had an ongoing debate about it for years. It’s an old, comfortable argument both of them know that neither is ever going to win. They could both probably recite the other’s points in their sleep. However, it’s something they end up going back to every time they have a spare moment with nothing else to do. 

Qui-Gon bringing it up here is not only referring to something very important in their culture, it’s almost like referencing an old, treasured inside joke between him and his student, which is something Obi-Wan would pick up on right away. 

So, to summarize; we attempted to modify this very... Anakin-focused last dialogue, and instead make it about Qui-Gon telling Obi-Wan he trusts him above all, specifically to teach (which, again, with Jedi and their teaching focused culture is a HUGE thing) and to continue their discussions and keep their traditions going with this child.

It’s also a fun thought experiment in translation studies — sometimes, things really can get lost in a one-for-one translation of something, when cultural and collaborative meaning aren’t considered and translated accordingly. 

Thank you for reading!

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

Hi! What are yours views on the recently released billboard article about bts? I assumed that people agreed on the fact that its was extremely disappointing and disrespectful towards bts but there are many ‘army’ blogs who are still defending that article

From anon: What do you think of the new Billboard article about the boys? 😓

I’ll be honest, I had a bit of a debate with myself if I want to post something about the article or not, if I want to draw more attention to it (like there’s literally anyone left who hasn’t heard about or read it), and if I want to get mad all over again. Since you’re reading this, we all know what conclusion I arrived at.

Usually I try to at least somewhat organize my answers to not jump around or angrily rant, but wow, I don’t know if I’ll be able to get that done this time so please bear with me this once. I’d also usually add direct copy+paste quotes and/or screenshots but I truly don’t want to give this article any clicks, or give that “journalist” and his writing even more direct attention, so this answer will have to do without them, I’m sorry. I’m sure you’ve all read the article, or at least seen parts of it, so you’ll know what I’m talking about in each instance.

You know, in all of this, besides the obvious awful aspects of it all, I also feel bad for the staff (not the Billboard journalist and the editors) involved in this, like for example the photographer who went in and took gorgeous pictures of the members, did his best working with them, only for said pictures to be forever attached to this dumpster fire. And the members who spent so much time during that photoshoot to get only the best results and yet, what does it even matter in the end. As well as the fact that they took time out of their busy schedules to meet the journalist, to answer whatever questions he had, to just end up having to read all...THAT.

As some pointed out, it is though very telling that none of the HYBE/BHM/BTS twt accounts have retweeted the Billboard twts with links to the article. That already basically tells you everything you need to know, as in, that the article isn’t worth our time and our braincells needed to read it.

After so many years I think most of us have come to expect basically nothing from interviews with literally any US publication, but especially magazines like The Hollywood Reporter (remember that mess?) and Billboard, and, well, the bar was in hell and yet they still managed to deliver a result that was, I think, one of or the worst article I’ve ever read on BTS. Especially since large parts of the article weren’t even about them? For a cover story about BTS, what’s up with the lack of interview, the minimal amount of quotes from their answers, the summarization of their supposed words, and the large focus on a “controversy” basically cooked up by haters on stan twt? And the “journalist”, who has shown in older twts that he has a negative bias toward BTS and ARMY, even taking direct quotes from stan twt accounts for western artists to illustrate his point, instead of, I don’t know, legit sources? Showing numbers or anything that would show credibility and a solid foundation for said argument? But instead it’s gossip and malicious accusation based on “I don’t like that this band is successful instead of my fave so I will accuse them of cheating while I ignore all the cheating my own fave partakes in”.

More below the cut:

Of course we were, once again, served the narrative that ARMY are just a bunch of manipulated teens which, let’s like talk about that for a second because there are a lot of layers to this and the further you look, the worse it looks for people like this journalist and everyone else like him openly shading ARMY. 

Let’s suppose ARMY really somehow were millions of girls ages 12 to 18 (who somehow have access to enough money to raise funds for music and also match BTS’ $1 million donation and spend money on so many different charity projects every year) and these journalists, most of them men usually above the age of 30, go around and basically belittle and “hate” on them. Do we see the problem here? The fact that in this case grown adults openly, in publications they are paid to write for, bully teenagers and kids simply because they don’t agree with the musician said teens and kids have decided to be a fan of and support. And because they are girls instead of soccer loving boys, as counter example.

A truly weird hill to be willing to d*e on just to make some kind of (negative) point if you ask me. 

Then of course there’s the whole thing that Mr. Journalist decided to go in with a narrative in mind and seriously sit down opposite Namjoon and basically ask him “hey, listen, what do you think about your crazy TEENAGE fans buying your music (truly the audacity, how dare they) and that they are cheating and manipulating the system? Like that’s not right, right?”. Bless Namjoon and his genius brain for being able to keep his cool and shut down that man with his amazing answer shifting the blame right back onto Billboard and how, if they don’t like people playing by the rules that they themselves have created, maybe they should look at their own system and reevaluate it instead of turning against and point a finger at BTS who, as Namjoon said himself, are simply an easy target because they are foreigners, because they sing in a language that isn’t English, and because they are Asian. And really, is there anything the US music industry hates more than foreigners, POC at that, being successful, or even more successful, than their industry supported artists? Don’t think so.

Also can we talk about how strange the argument of “bulk/mass buying” is when ARMY never goes over the limits Billboard themselves have set up, being four copies of a given song. If they truly were against people “bulk/mass buying” you’d think they would lower the number to one copy per person and that’s it, right, the way iTunes does it. And yet, they did not. Because “bulk/mass buying” is okay, just not when it’s ARMY and Bangtan.

Billboard: Buying multiple copies of the same song is bad and makes no sense. You’re cheating.

Also Billboard: Here, buy EIGHT copies of the same magazine, with the exact same contents but different covers, for $170+ in this neat little bundle.

Make it make sense, will you? Or at least be less obvious with what you’re doing.

It’s a problem when it’s done in a way that doesn’t benefit them, and the greater US music industry and their shady system, but when it does benefit them, it’s totally chill, easy, no problem? It’s so obvious, dumb, and kind of makes me want to laugh but also scream and/or knock my head against my table because it’s just so bizarre yet it’s treated like this all makes sense and is completely normal. And the sad thing is, it is normal. We, or BTS as umbrella term, are a problem because we get things done, we get achievements and #1s and numbers without giving in to payola, paid playlisting, bundles when they were still a thing, and without everything else the US labels do to push their artists into basically false fame. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen and nonbinary friends, is where the issue lies.

While talking about all of this among ourselves (as in ARMY at large) across sns, as well as taking into account some pondering by journalists questioning the intentions of the article, a thought arose and, now that I think about it, it sounds just too obvious and yet here we are. Voting season for the Grammys is coming up sometime soon-ish, and Billboard is one of the major publications that the voting members look at and read when considering who to give their vote to. Now imagine you’re a voting member who until this point had a positive, or at least neutral, opinion on BTS but on Monday you sit down and read this article? Would you still want to vote for an artist being accused of “chart manipulation” and supposedly claiming they didn’t actually want to do music in English but were forced into it despite originally saying something else?

No, right?

And that’s the point. 

This is nothing but a glorified smear campaign against Bangtan across lots, and I mean lots, of publications who picked up the narrative that this article presented and ran with it. The US music industry sees their success and feels threatened because they are showing that when you have true, organic success and a loyal fan following you don’t need any of the paid for tricks to achieve things, you don’t need payola, don’t need paid for playlisting on streaming websites, and don’t need US industry backing. You can do it all on your own, therefore these exploitative systems and institutions don’t make any money off of you which is obviously unacceptable. Even more so when you could actually win, or at least again be nominated, for what is regarded as the supposedly most prestigious music award, aka the Grammys. So, since they know they can’t get rid of ARMY, can’t discourage us from supporting BTS, they go for their image and reputation instead. And that’s what this article tried to achieve. Show that, wow, in the end all the “dark side of K-Pop” stories were true all along because even poor, poor BTS are puppets of their evil agency after all, are forced into things, and are used to manipulate their gullible teenage fans into throwing money at them and manipulating the charts.

How come we’re the only ones who see just how f*cked up all of this is? And the few journalists who are on our side?

Lastly, can we talk about just how weird the use of and the quotes themselves from the members were? Most felt not only out of place, out of context, but also so weirdly out of character some ARMY have started to question how much of their “quoted words” are actually theirs and how much might be, essentially, fabricated/twisted to fit the desired narrative the journalist had from the get go. I know a certain crowd, you know which one I mean, jumped onto what was said about the english songs but also especially the final quote from Seokjin at the end of the article that essentially boiled down to “we were so annoyed and overworked we said screw everything, especially our agency, and now we only trust each other” or something to that effect. Am I the only one who thinks that quote sounded nothing like something Seokjin would say? Yes, he’s said cheeky things in the past, he’s also said bold things, like his entire speech against sajaegi back in 2019, but each time he was polite and stuck to his manners while doing so, yet this? I don’t know, something about it just feels very off. Or JKs quote about how he sacrificed more than just his youth to be who he is now. While we know that is true, after all he became a trainee at a very young age and spent the better part of his teenage years as idol on stage, but has he ever spoken about that negatively? In such a manner?

Someone suggested that interviewers should publish transcripts of the original Korean answers and questions that BTS were asked in order to offer some transparency and also for us to know that what they are quoted saying are actually things they did say. I know that’s very unlikely to ever happen, just wishful thinking on my/our part, especially when a hit piece article is attached to it, but in moments like this, it really would be very helpful. For us, but also to add credibility to such articles and the context in which said quotes are used.

Now, for the ‘ARMYs’ who defended this article, to be honest, I’d very much question how much of an ARMY someone is when they can go and read this article and agree with it. How? I get that for some the things in this article played right into their manti agenda, but mantis aren’t ARMY. And the crowd who decided to, instead of blaming the journalist for the narrative he tried to push with all its negative implications, blamed HYBE/BHM instead? Are you serious? That isn’t how journalism works, or at least it shouldn’t be. HYBE/BHM can’t just go in and say “we don’t like this article, change it”, that’s not how freedom of press works, and also, do you realize how weird it is that you are blaming an Asian agency for a hit piece published by a western publication?

What was interesting though was that, as example, the online merch store Cokodive made a statement on their IG page in which they said the following:

So even they, who could’ve directly benefited from selling the magazine, decided that it wouldn’t be right because that article is a travesty. It’s a small thing in the grand scheme of things, yet it shows that it isn’t just ARMY who are being “sensitive little snowflakes who can’t take criticism” but also others outside the fandom who also see the disrespect within the article and its blatant negativity and lack objectivity.

Personally I saved the pictures but I refuse to give views directly to Billboard when it comes to the “Things you didn’t know about BTS” video as well as the behind the scenes clips of the members regardless of how beautiful they are. And I refuse to give their website and this article any more clicks than I already gave them while reading the article in the first place.

You can be critical of an artists success, you can wonder how they, specifically, managed to become as successful as they did, but what you can’t do is completely ignore shady practices of other artists while attacking those who don’t partake in any of them simply because they manage to fill stadiums and get #1s without those practices. At the end of the day, just like Forbes once said that BTS don’t need the Grammys but the Grammys need BTS, in the same way BTS don’t need Billboard and their shady articles and twts, but Billboard needs BTS for clicks and views and therefore revenue. 

As longtime ARMY it also saddens me having watched Bangtan become more and more disillusioned with the US market, as well as ARMY going through the same thing. Then again, like Namjoon said in the article, it isn’t their goal to become mainstream in the US, all they want is to have a big tour and that’s it. Nothing more.

As twt says: this article should’ve just stayed in the drafts.

[bondsmagii]

omg you read we need to talk about kevin? what did you think? i went through a whole range of emotions, most of them bitter & negative, bc i saw too much of my mum & brother in eva & kevin, something i’m still working through. i started off hating eva bc i projected my resentment towards my mum onto her, but i found myself sympathising with her a bit more towards the end. it’s helped me sympathise a bit with my mum too. this book has probably had the most lasting effect on me than any other!

man, I love that book. I first read it years ago and liked it then, but I recently reread it and I loved it even more. it's such a brilliant book -- profoundly uncomfortable and incredibly bleak, but I think it asks so many important questions that, face it, most people are too scared to even acknowledge. it simultaneously asks the huge taboo of a question -- what if you regret having your child? what if a child is just born bad? -- and also combines it with that other big question: why do kids shoot up their schools? the nature vs nurture debate has been absolutely raging for years regarding children who commit violence at school; as someone with an academic interest in this particular crime, it's one I've banged my head up against multiple times. people seem to always be firmly in one camp: the parents are to blame, or the kid is just evil. nobody seems to consider the interaction between these two things, and how it's always ultimately a choice.

the book is a pretty intense read for me, as I'm sure you can relate. the difference is that while you can see your mother and brother in Eva and Kevin, I actually see myself and my mother in Eva and Kevin. I was an unwanted and a resented child. my parents did not want to have me. I was what my parents referred to as "a surprise", said in the same tone as you would describe a sudden house fire as a surprise, or bad news at work as a surprise. the major difference between my parents and Eva and Franklin was that they had me very young (they would have been 19 and barely 20 when they found out, and 20 and barely 21 when I was born) and this most certainly added to the resentment. my father was always away for work, often getting to go to some pretty interesting destinations; my mother wanted to be the kind of woman who wanted to be a stay-at-home mother, but she hated it. like Eva and Kevin, my mother and I were very, very alike in personality and what we did and did not want out of life, and we were engaged in some level of warfare for my entire childhood. while I wasn't quite on the level of Kevin in terms of blinding my siblings and whatnot, I was quite the terror as a child. by the time I reached my teenage years I was uncontrollable and my parents had given up trying. I could not be punished. I did not care. any punishment they did hand out, I was maliciously compliant to the point of infuriation. I'm sure my parents could argue that I was born evil, and indeed that's what they told the extended family. I admit I was not an easy child. however -- I was a child.

I did not ask to be born, and when my parents made the choice to have me and then resent my existence, that was on them. a child knows. a child can tell when he's not wanted, when he's an inconvenience. I knew it very well, from an early age. my parents' resentment of me resulted in them abusing me right up until I left home. I was like an unwanted pet, except they couldn't dump me off at a shelter. no, they never laid a finger on me physically, so they can claim they didn't abuse me -- but emotionally and psychologically they were abusive, and especially in my teenage years, they neglected me severely. (think along the lines of being left at home alone for extended periods with no food, no money, and no way to get supplies as we lived in rural Ireland and the closest supermarket was 30 minutes away. this was not something they did out of malice, but rather something they did because they did not consider me at all. they forgot my existence, most of the time, or they deemed me so inconsequential that making provisions for me was a task that could be forever put off.) understandably this made me hate them in return, and I took great pleasure in being a little shit. it was all I had. nature vs nurture, which is it? my parents weren't exactly nurturing, and they taught me very bad behaviour -- but at the same time from the moment I was born I had my mother's personality, predisposing me to being a little shit. even now, grown up and after many years of working on myself, I still find myself fighting the urge to be as cruel and as judgemental as she could be; likewise I see those positive qualities she had, that she could have shown more of if she had put the work in like I had. we went from being furious carbon copies of one another to an example of the best and the worst case scenario.

basically what it comes down to is choice. Kevin and I had a similar situation going on, but Kevin chose to try and find what he was looking for in mass murder, and I chose to try and find it by getting out of my house and never returning. I mentioned earlier that I have an academic interest in the kind of crime that Kevin committed; since the age of 17 I have been researching these things, and now have expertise in several specific incidents. I bring this up to illustrate that this crime was on my radar when I was around Kevin's age, when I was suffering from the same problems as he was. thousands of kids find themselves in this position, yet so relatively few commit the act. why? it's choice. nature, nurture -- it doesn't matter. there comes a point where you have to make the choice, and honestly? it's chaos theory, baby.

as well as researching this kind of thing I'm also an amateur meteorologist. I love weather. I love trying to work out what makes it tick. and weather is a good example of what I'm trying to say here. weather cannot be predicted. we can get decent ideas, but at the same time we never really know for sure and also weather acts differently every time. there are too many variables. it's the entirety of the earth's atmosphere we're talking about here. identical weather conditions can arise time and time again, and each time the weather is different. a sunny afternoon one day is a washout the next. this is because -- and I broadly sum it up here -- there are so many tiny variables that we cannot possibly predict how they will change the weather. and I mean it's tiny variables. I'm sure you've heard of the butterfly effect -- this comes from the idea that a butterfly somewhere on the coast of Africa can flap its wings, and this tiny reverberation can spread through the atmosphere, creating a bigger and bigger ripple, until a hurricane smashes into the Gulf of Mexico. tiny atmospheric changes all interacting in ways we cannot imagine. this is why some kids shoot up schools. it's easy to look at psychology broadly, but no two people are ever the same. siblings growing up in the exact same house are not the same. identical twins, genetically identical to their very DNA, are not the same. tiny, tiny events, microdoses of chemicals in the brain, exposures -- they all change us in subtle ways. two people -- Kevin and I -- can grow up with almost identical familial issues and outlooks, but Kevin shoots up his school and I study my ass off and get myself to university to escape my parents. why? I don't know. I don't know what tiny little things might influence me one way and another kid in the other. personality, brain chemistry, waking up that morning and having enough or not -- I don't know. it's chaos theory. the variables are too small to say. nature vs nurture are only two variables out of millions. it's an oversimplification.

so to go back to the book -- who do I blame? neither of them. it was a perfect storm. we could say Eva didn't help, but I know of plenty of kids with decent parents who still committed such a crime. we could say that Kevin was just born bad, but there are plenty of people with his resentful outlook on life who don't commit mass murder, or any harm against anyone whatsoever. it's like how every tornado comes from a supercell, but not every supercell will spawn a tornado -- that final genesis point is unknown to us. we just can't predict it. there are no easy answers. there is no simple formula. we just don't know, and that's what makes Kevin's story -- and its real-life counterparts -- so terrifying.

[leggyre]

hello i have a writey

unprompted oc ramble bc boi am i hyperactive

okay so quick stuff about rimi <- this is what i wrote when i started writing notes bc i wanted to illustrate it but then uuuuuuuuuh 8 paragraphs

he's fated but also chanced in a way which makes him one of, if not the, most broken cog in the machine his space travel property is emotion but it works in a sorta broken way that he has no control over

the regular way an emotion traveler/wanderer works is, in simple terms, 100% effective cheerleading. they can "connect" with people's minds in a way, making it easier for a group, no matter how large, to act as one. a more specific way to describe it is that they have control over all the energy carried by all people in a group, and are able to redistribute it however they like. the emotional aspect of it is generally a side effect, with the intensity of a feeling being altered by how much energy one bears, but it can be used as an advantage - for example, it could use to extinguish a feeling that is incapacitating an ally's actions, or fuel motivation towards a goal. (so basically theyre the person playing the RTS)

rimna's connection with other minds is far more limited. he can't freely manipulate the energy within his connections, only identify it. he can tell the exact intensity someone's emotional state carries -- because he can feel it. He does, in a way, have a shared emotional charge with the people he connects with, but the energy he has to handle actually comes from himself: he generates it on the spot.

(bit of a footnote before we go on: energy generation is NOT a common thing, even for someone who's chanced. people who generate energy are hunted down pretty fast but he dissipates it in a way that is very subtle most of the time. this is like the biggest reason pox likes him so much(aside from the fact it sees him like a lil puppy lmao))

so he generates a whole load of energy on top of what he already carries by default. depending on the situation, it might be manageable! connections with people he knows well are generally uneventful; he knows what they feel and can, in a way "synchronize" with them(or, as the cool kids these days say, vibe). it starts getting harder to handle it when he can't keep up with other peoples' emotions(..which sadly he can't most of the time); an unpredictable intake of energy is stressful and overwhelming, it messes up with his head, he can't think clearly, and, if it ends up being too much, he'll eject it all at once.

(footnote number TWO he doesnt really have control over who hes connected with; he tries to stay detached from ppl to keep it from happening but if you interact with him and youre like really upset or smth he straight up can't stop it)

this is where we get to the fun part we all love :) he can turn all of that energy into sorta-physical stuff. that's where all the cereals and co come in; they're all a product of this process. they aren't exclusive to extremes, however. he'll occasionally just project anything he has going on to remain "stable", creating small objects, usually plush toys he carries around, which can keep on being "charged" throughout a day until they become sentient creatures. he can manage himself without doing that, he just prefers doing it anyway.

the energy of projections dissipates slowly (though sentient projections do so at a faster rate), which makes its insertion in the energy cycle very subtle. to those who can identify it, it's noticeable that an unusual amount of energy can radiate from places he's been, but it's much harder to find out he's the source

and so, finally

fucking context

[sinceileftyoublog]

Philippe Cohen Solal & Mike Lindsay: A Pop Tribute to Outsider Art

From Left: Mike Linsday, Hannah Peel, Philippe Cohen Solal, Adam Glover; Artwork by Gabriel Jacquel

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Outsider visual artist and writer Henry Darger’s fame was essentially happenstance, so it’s fitting that Philippe Cohen Solal’s decades-long obsession with Darger is chock full of coincidence. In 2003, the member of longtime neotango group Gotan Project found himself with a day off on tour in New York City and decided to venture over to the American Folk Art Museum, a choice that would change his life and culminate in Outsider (¡Ya Basta!), April’s collaborative album with Tunng’s Mike Linsday, the first adaptation of Darger’s words in music. 

At the museum, Solal, unaware not only of Darger but of outsider art in general, saw a Darger work, and, as he told me over the phone earlier this year, “fell in love.” Looking closer at the details of the work, he saw something he recognized: the name Kiyoko Lerner, who had lent the work to the museum. The very same name of a woman he was set to meet the next day in Chicago as recommended by a mutual friend back in Paris. The friend suggested they meet due to their love of tango. “We met and talked a bit about tango,” he said, “but quickly, I asked her about Henry Darger.” She began to tell him exactly who she was, the story that’s become increasingly well-known in the annals of Chicago cultural history.

Lerner and her late husband Nathan (himself a prominent Chicago photographer) were Darger’s landlords; Nathan discovered Darger’s work in his “very messy room” shortly before Darger’s death in 1973, most notably his 15,000+ page novel In The Realms of the Unreal as well as his magazine-traced illustrations and watercolors accompanying the book. (The book, a fantastical epic about child slave rebellions, would go on to inspire visual artists and musicians for decades; indie rock band Vivian Girls took their name from characters in the book, and Darger would even be referenced in The Venture Bros.) Nathan immediately knew he had something special, and he and his wife took control of Darger’s estate. Darger would start to become formally recognized by the art world, his work prominently featured in museums and documentaries. Nathan died in 1997, and Kiyoko would continue to operate as head of the estate and donate her collection to various museums across the world.

In 2006, Kiyoko flew to Paris and met up with Solal at the first Darger exhibition in the city, at La Maison Rouge. It was immediately when he left the show that Solal had the idea to make music inspired by Darger’s art. “At the time, I didn’t [even] know that [Darger] wrote lyrics,” Solal said. “I had no clue.” In reference to Darger’s war between children and adults, Solal had the idea to write “adult music for children,” or vice versa, and wrote a track that wouldn’t even end up 15 years later on Outsider. He visited Kiyoko at her Chicago apartment. “I spent a few days immersed in his art. I didn’t know precisely what I wanted to do, and then I discovered he wrote lyrics. It very much changed the project.” Nobody had thought to put Darger’s lyrics to music, and Solal wanted to put his stamp on the increasingly large pool of reinterpretations of or references to Darger in the arts and culture world at large. Kiyoko put him in touch with art historian Michael Bonesteel, who led Solal to more lyrics.

Not wanting to go at it alone, Solal got the idea to do a collective project adapting Darger’s lyrics to music with various friends. He reached out to the likes of Calexico’s Joey Burns and Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner, but Lindsay was the one who really stuck. Solal and Lindsay were fans of each other’s bands, and the latter visited the American Folk Art Museum while on tour at Solal’s recommendation, he himself rediscovering Darger’s work. In 2015, there was another Darger retrospective at the Paris Museum of Modern Art, and Kiyoko, who attended, suggested to Solal that he reveal his song adaptations of Darger. “I didn’t tell her I only had one song at the time,” he laughed. That was his inspiration to reach out to Lindsay. “I thought maybe I’d do a 5-track EP. I called Mike and reminded him of my project and asked him, ‘Are you ready to work on that with me?’”

Solal and Lindsay separately wrote the melodies and basic arrangements of the songs that would end up on Outsider, and they recorded and produced the record together. Lindsay introduced Solal to Northern Irish musician/singer/multi-instrumentalist Hannah Peel, who would voice the Vivian Girls. Solal asked Adam Glover, a singer he knew through his manager, to be the voice of Darger himself. (“He was very young...but he can sing like Sinatra or Dean Martin,” Solal said.) The four created an album with Darger’s words using traditional pop instrumentation and song structures but also children’s instruments; Peel even created her own music box to play some of the melodies. Sometimes, the words were spoken, as on “Hark Hark, My Friend, Cannon Thunders Are Swelling”, while other times the vocals are isolated in harmony, as on “We Sigh For The Child Slaves”. “We know more about Darger as a painter and visual artist, so it was important to have Darger as a storyteller,” Solal said. Furthermore, the group wanted to capture the raw spirit of Darger’s art by rendering the voices distorted, shifting their pitch to make them sound almost out of tune. The instrumentation, meanwhile, ranges from slinky electric guitars to strings, and even barroom-style piano on the penultimate “We’ll Never Say Goodby” [sic]. “With our small team, it was lean and simple to do this music,” said Solal. While most of the titles and words were taken directly from Darger, down to the spelling of “Goodby”, the album touches on Solal’s story, too. Instrumental interlude “851 Webster Avenue” is named after the address of Lerner’s apartment Solal visited for the first time, when his fascination with Darger really took off.

Solal can’t exactly pinpoint what ever fascinated him about Darger, both in general and as the world changes, but he has some clues. “At the time, what was interesting to me was it was clear [Darger] was a self-taught artist, and maybe I felt a bit moved by that because I’m a self-taught musician,” Solal said. “I never went to music school, but I understood that without any specific art education or practice at an art school, you can create something...Henry Darger is an amazing example of someone who created his own world.” Darger’s style of illustration, his drawings traced from magazines, made up for the fact that he wasn’t a technically great drawer, and it complemented his heightened sense of color. Moreover, Solal feels kinship with some aspects of Darger’s childhood. Part of the inspiration for In The Realms of the Unreal was that Darger himself was sent to an asylum that put children to work. “When he was a kid, everybody called him crazy,” said Solal, “But I’m sure he didn’t think he was crazy. I remember when I was 9 or 10, I thought I was crazy. Nobody called me crazy, but I thought I was.” He found commonalities in, simply, being misunderstood.

Solal also questions what it means to be an “outsider” artist; in reality, Darger spent most of his time inside, confined in a room creating fictional worlds. Funny enough, according to his diaries, he was fascinated with the weather, tracking the accuracy of the predicted versus actual weather, but that’s about all for the outside world. On the day JFK was killed, for instance, Darger had nothing about it in his diary entry. He chose to interact with the world through the magazines he would trace, and through collections of items like Pepto Bismol bottles, National Geographic issues, and broken glasses. He wasn’t much for interpersonal relationships. Not only was Nathan Lerner unaware of Darger’s artistic enterprises, but neither were the young artist couple with whom Darger actually shared his apartment. Solal thinks that Darger’s resistance to presenting himself as an artist was as a result of his childhood experiences. “If the outside world was not so mean to him, maybe he’d be less scared to show who he was to the rest of the world, even just to his neighbors,” he said. “It’s funny that we call him an outsider. He was more an insider but was protecting himself from the outside world.”

Perhaps, subconsciously, the more that creative folks learn to look through Darger’s eyes, the less likely his, or any genius goes unnoticed. Solal remarked that many of the folks involved in Outsider almost had to “unlearn” their craft. Andrew Scheps, who mixed the album, at first didn’t know the context and gave Solal and Lindsay a product that was “too clean;” Lindsay explained Darger’s story and the importance of having strange-sounding narrative effects in the records. “When he worked [after that] on the mix, we found Henry was back in our songs,” said Solal. The individuals involved in coming up with animated videos for each of these songs, French animator Gabriel Jacquel with art direction by Pascal Gary (aka Phormazero), also had to abandon their fundamentals and learn to draw like Darger. Overall, exploring his work provides admirers like Solal the opportunity to dig deeper, from figuring out how to bring Outsider on stage to “finding new ways to tell the story,” like podcasts, interactive maps, short films, and Spotify playlists of Darger’s favorite music. “This man is full of mysteries,” he said. “I hope my future is Outsider for a while.”

[oldtypenewtype]

7 years ago I had this article professionally translated. 1986 is considered to be one of if not THE defining years of the medium. In this article Newtype intervies 21 anime industry leaders to discuss what’s wrong with the industry, ways it can be fixed or just their gripes with with it all. A true snapshot of some of our anime heroes while they were younger.

*reposting article altogether in one post.*

アニメの予言者21人

21 Prophets of Anime アニメ大予言'86 Grand prophecy of Anime ‘86 今、アニメ界に求められているのは、こんな企画だ！私はこんな企画を出す！1986年のアニメ界をリードする21人が業界の問題点と自らの解決策を語る。これを読めばアニメの未来が見える。 This is the project needed by Anime world now! I propose this project! 21 leading personnel in Anime world in 1986 talk about problems in the industry and their solutions. You can see the future of Anime by reading this.

Page 46 & 47

(Article Title)

1985 was a flat year in the animation world.  Let’s ask the hit makers who hit the home runs on how to put an end to this situation.

HAYAO MIYAZAKI (writer and director of “Laputa: Castle in the Sky”)

(Blurb)

What are the animated works that the young ones, the ten year olds to fifteen year olds want to watch? Doors will surely open if you keep them in mind.

It’s unthinkable that new hope can come out of TV when one episode from a TV series needs 3500 cells to be drawn. On the other hand, in movie theaters as well, there are no films that will mobilize moviegoers other than anime fans. I think that filmmakers have forgotten the basics of selling movies.  Collaboration films intended for overseas markets are all the rage,  and even though I want the fans who are in Japan to see these films, they can’t and all I’m left with is frustration.  Only deterioration can come out of this situation.  Actually, there isn’t even one anime today that is aimed at older kids in elementary school to kids in middle-school - the very kids who should be watching anime.  (The anime available now) is aimed at younger kids at elementary school and then jumps straight into anime for college kid anime maniacs. It’s a tough time for fifteen year olds who are put aside by society.  Twelve year olds to fifteen year olds are the kids who need the most comfort and yet the situation now is that they get their comfort from handheld video games.  Those who produce animation are losing sight of their targeted audience.  The remaining anime fans are making anime that they want to watch, and this is a symptom (of the present situation) that is beyond redemption. This is why video animation is still backward in terms of its production, and only its format is new.

If one has an earnest approach, children will definitely react.  This is a real example - in a run-down middle school, in his morning greeting, a new principal said, “I don’t determine a person’s value by his or her grades or appearance”.  Miraculously, all misbehavior was gone from that day’s afternoon onwards.  What children want has always had just one theme - an adventure that saves the mind and heart.

(Caption for illustration at the top of the page)

The hero “Pazu” and heroine “Sheeta” from “Laputa: Castle in the Sky”.  Mr. Miyasaki comments that “For a young lad, living at all times in itself is an adventure.  The reason why Japanese adventure novels are boring is that the hero (in these novels) makes a living out of going on an adventure.”

SUGII GISABURO (executive director of “Touch”)

(Blurb)

What people want nowadays can’t be found in data.  What is the secret of the hits “Night on the Galactic Railroad” and “Touch”?

Honestly speaking, if anything, I genuinely make animation to match my desires, not thinking that today’s animation is trending towards this way, or future animation should be this way.  In other words, I think a great deal about my daily life, figuring out what is lacking and coming up with desires felt by everyone else.  I just happen to be a person who creates, so I vent out those accumulated desires and discontent and let them combust in my work.  

My works are quite heavy in terms of cycle and tempo, whether it be “Night on the Galactic Railroad” or “Touch”.  I sometimes think if this kind of heaviness is ok or not.  But that is because I have a desire for this heaviness, and also because I have this easy pleasure within me.  Instead of work that is borne out of being hung up just on data, I think work that is borne out of my inner natural desires is more acceptable to people.  In the meantime, “Touch” will be shown as an hour and a half movie in the spring so please look forward it.

ISAO TAKAHATA (producer of “Laputa”)

(Blurb)

Movies that make the mind and body come alive are what’s important.  As for me, I am trying my hand at my first live action film.  I am shooting a documentary.

I think nowadays, the thing that a lot of people working in anime has forgotten is the excitement they felt watching adventure movies when they were kids, the kind of excitement that even your body moved spontaneously.  In that sense, I think that works such as Hayao Miyazaki’s films should be brought out to the rest of the world and after (producing his) “Nausicaa”, I am still producing.  When kids’ minds are liberated, there’s no reason to think that they won’t spontaneously move.  In this day and age dominated by computer games, a lot of kids’ play involve just using the brain and nerves so I’d like them to experience things that energizes the blood and makes the body dance. The difficulty is, I think it’s a difficult time now to have a situation in place wherein you let them experience adventure.  If you can’t make people believe in the world portrayed onscreen, you can’t pull viewers into the adventure onscreen.

It’s not that I’m not doing my real job as a producer.  I am now producing a live action documentary movie set in Yanagawa in Kyushu.  It is about how our Japanese ancestors developed towns which utilized waterways.  There is also a part in the movie that has graphic illustrations using anime.  It’s less than 2 hours and is slated to be shown after the summer.

MAMORU OSHII (scriptwriter and director of “Angel’s Egg”)

(Blurb)

This is a warning!! Please reduce the number of collaboration animes before Japanese animation is annihilated.

If I’m going to be severe about it, I’d say that I want all collaboration animes gone.

Those who work in big studios and places with systems in place may not feel a sense of crisis yet.  But in the case of freelance animators like us who work together and put together a workplace and disperse once our anime is done, a part of our actual work is outsourced.   Recently however, the small video studios and finishing studios that we outsource to are loaded with collaboration work.  Japanese animes can’t compete with collaboration animes in terms of profit so when that happens, we just have to rely on the goodwill of the studio bosses, or make them feel the same way we do with regards to the contents of our work, or by chance see an opening and aim for that, or appease them or plead with them.  We can’t work in just that kind of a situation.  That’s why it’s almost impossible to make highly compact and solid animes in Japan now.  Even without going that far, it’s almost impossible to make even decent animes in the country today.  In fact, anime TV series are almost all in shambles, and I can’t even be optimistic about the video quality of the anime we have now.  In this kind of situation, I can’t help but seriously think if next year, our ideas can be made into anime.

(Caption for illustration at the left side of the page)

A girl from Mamoru Oshii’s original video anime “Angel’s Egg” (drawn by Seikou Nakura).  Mr. Oshii revealed that he is having a hard time because there aren’t enough animators to make even just one anime video.

YOSHIKAZU YASUHIKO (director and screen director of “Arion”)

(Blurb)

I haven’t decided yet on what I will make after “Arion”.  I will not take part in the new Gundam series.

I am very busy now with screen work for the anime “Arion” which will be shown in theaters on March 8th.  But as far as I’m concerned, I’m conscious  of the fact that this is my anime for 1985.  Therefore, I haven’t decided yet on what my anime will be for 1986.  I feel like I want to take a break for a year.

“Arion” is quite restrained for an anime to be shown in movie theaters.  I’m happy that this movie is being touted as “the” main animation movie this spring but conversely, it’s a shame that there aren’t a lot of big anime movies for theaters.  It’s already been decided that “Arion” is going to be shown in top-class movie theaters throughout Japan.  It just shows how much anime has received recognition.  I’d like to wait for animes that will pick up on this trend.

With regards to anime TV series, I was in charge of character design for “Z Gundam” this past year but I’ve decided not to be involved at all in the sequel’s new series.  I think it’s better to relegate “Gundam” to the younger animators, starting with Hiroyuki Kitazume, who have grown so much in their craft.  Now I sincerely think, if only someone as good as Kitazume were around eight years ago to help with “Gundam”, I would’ve been saved…

(Caption for illustration at the bottom of the page)

The heroine “Lesfina” from “Arion”, which was produced, character designed and screen directed by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko.  This is the drawing touched-up by Mr. Yasuhiko.  As we have discussed in a series of character designers in last month’s issue, he breathes life into his anime characters, showing genius capabilities.

(Box at the lower left side of the page)

If there were animes like this I’d watch it!

MASAMI YUUKI (manga artist)

As a rule, the three things I’d like to see are: “something that isn’t originally from manga”; “robot animation that isn’t dark”; and “in one year, a collaborative anime by Osamu Dezaki and Akio Sugino for release in Japan”.  I can watch TV anime while casually lying around but I’d like anime that I wouldn’t be able to take my eyes off of the screen, something that is both easy to watch and amusing.  And as written in other magazines before, I’d like to see Mr. Hayao Miyazaki’s version of “Atragon”! (Translator’s note: “Undersea Warship” in Japan)

YUUKI KUDOU (actress and singer)

I’d definitely watch anime that’s fun to watch, anime that will make me happy.  At any rate, I’d like a hero on the side of justice who will beat the hell out of the bad guys and put them in a bind.

RYOKO YAMAGISHI (manga artist)

If there were an anime like Disney’s “Fantasia”, I’d watch it!

Pages 48 & 49

(Article Title)

Major producers from each of the anime/production companies talk about their hits for 1986 and foresee what their companies will be producing

KENJI YOKOYAMA (Toei Animation Co.)

(Blurb)

The new hit TV show Gegege no Kitaro from the fall of 1985 which received top ratings reflects modern times.

This is what I’ve been thinking with the third conversion of Gegege no Kitaro into animation.  One is the change in children’s thinking with regards to ghosts/monsters.  Of course “Ghostbusters” and “E.T.” have influenced this change, and now kids consider ghosts almost as pets.  So in this way I think that if you match the present mood and go in the direction of lighter anime, you’ll be able to create different things from before.  Children’s lives are too managed now, so they’d want an outlet to vent too. And in a society that has too many things and where, if you have the money, you can buy anything, things like the Toyoda Company fraud scandal and shady investment journals can also be construed as monstrosities. This anime has this overall theme: In the ideal world of Kitaro, monsters, people, animals, grass and trees should all co-exist so I thought I’d have various new approaches within the anime.

As a new endeavor, our company is going into video anime.  It’s called “Amon Saga” and we’re not just going to sell it in video format, (I’m also hoping) we can show it in any movie theater even for just one week otherwise it’ll just be too sad.   Especially with regards to original works with names that aren’t well known, I think it’s dangerous to rely on just one production studio. After “Konpora Kid” ends, beginning February, we’re planning on animating “Kinka”, a serialized manga in the weekly magazine Shonen Jump.

(Caption for illustration on the left side of the page)

A figure from the very popular “Kitaro”.  They can’t keep up with the demand for a ghost eraser that they’ve produced and now it is a hit product.  It’s also been decided that there will be new movie releases for this anime in the New Year and in the spring.

EIJI YAMAURA (Nihon Sunrise Co.)

(Blurb)

Find common ground with your viewers and defeat this lethargic mood!

Sunrise has now expanded into six studios and at any given point in time, we plan to work simultaneously on two to three anime TV series, video anime, anime for movie theaters and collaboration anime.  Overall, anime today is manga magazine-driven, so our question is how far can we go in staying on an original anime track. Robot animes have vastly decreased in number, so conversely, I think this is a chance for us to come out with epoch-making anime.  I’d like to make anime that will allow us to seriously converse with our child viewers.

TOSHIMITSU SUZUKI (Artmic Co.)

(Blurb)

Making anime that will be understood by the whole world!  The robot anime boom is shifting from transformation-type robots to robots that merge into one.

Speaking of Japanese products in the international market today, mechanical products come to mind.  This is also true in the animation world since Japanese robot animes are extremely in vogue.  Especially in the American market, they already have transformation-type robot animes, so animes that have robots that merge into one are new to them.  We’ve already exported “Beast King GoLion”, following that, (we’re going to export) “Dancouga Super Beast Machine God”.

We at Artmic plan to make animation that can be exported to foreign markets and we also are also keeping in mind to configure these anime with universal values.  The video anime “Gall Force” is the first step in that direction.

NOBUO INADA (Tokyo Movie Shinsha Co.)

(Blurb)

Our track remains the same - making collaboration animes for foreign countries but we also have new anime.

I can’t necessarily say that the present state of anime is good.  But the passion for anime during the anime boom of “Gundam” and the like was an anomaly so I feel that the state of anime now is the real one.

As you may know, not only do we make anime for Japan but we also produce anime for foreign countries.  It’s a difficult situation for us now to concentrate on anime just for Japan because of production costs.  It can be said that Japanese anime should be improved from the very basic level.

In 1986, we plan to have “Little Nemo” and in the fall, an anime for movie theater release by the duo Desaki and Sugino.  At any rate, we’re doing our best.

JUNZOU NAKAJIMA (Nihon Animation Co.)

(Blurb)

We’re aiming for improving the quality of our masterpieces and we’re also trying our hand at new anime!

As you may know, our company has mainly been making masterpiece animes for more than fifteen years but I think we’ve made a habit of making similar anime.  But we’ve been able to improve on our animes’ degree of perfection precisely because of the buildup of our experience in animation.  We’re also working hard on our technology, and on the authenticity of our masterpieces.  At any rate, we’re trying to make anime that is still interesting to watch even after five or six years have passed.  Next year, we plan on making “Pollyanna” after “A Little Princess Sara” ends, and a new SF series called “Space Sagittarius”.  We’re also going to have one TV special around May.

HIROMICHI MOGAKI (Tsuchida Production Co.)

(Blurb)

Just like what we did in “Tsubasa” and “Kimengumi”, we’re adding our original flavor to animation adapted from manga!

Even with regards to animating manga, the time when you aren’t creative when adapting something is over - just like our approach to our anime “High School! Kimen”.  In manga, the fun is enclosed in a comic cell.  Differing from that, we were able to bring out fun that moves freely (in the anime format).  (Our decision to) put two episodes in one anime has also been well-received.  We are also planning to have an anime TV series next year but all will depend on how long “Captain Tsubasa” will last.  Captain Tsubasa’s storyline is that the finals will end in March, and the European leg will begin.  This will catch up with the manga version’s storyline so I’m thinking of making a new one or taking a temporary break.

MASAYASU SAGISU (Eiken Co., Ltd.)

(Blurb)

Please watch the cooking scenes in the manga  “Oishinbo” animated in a live-action format.

The anime “Sazae-san” is going to be seventeen years old.  I think that the things that last for a long time are not manga for boys or manga for girls but manga for adults such as “Sazae-san” that has a family theme.  But there aren’t many of this kind of anime today.

There has been a lot of SF space anime but nowadays it’s quite possible for kids to go to space someday.  But the world of “Sazae-san” where the grandma, the grandpa, the old maid and the troubles they encounter while living together is farther than space in today’s world of nuclear families.  Conversely, this makes Sazae-san’s storyline fresh.

For next year’s anime, we are developing our plans to animate Mr. Shinji Wada’s manga “Pigmalio”.  We’d also like to do SF action animes, and a totally new genre -  animating Big Comic Spirit’s serialized manga “Oishinbo”.  Following a ten-year cycle, monster animes might come out next year but we’d like to try out new genres.

HIROSHI KATO (Ashi Production Co.)

We are developing original videos for the anime “Dancouga”

Our company has concentrated mainly on original anime and we are continuing with this direction in 1986 and beyond.  Even though our animes are popular, I don’t know why we are edited a lot.  Even “Dancouga” which originally had fifty-two episodes was reduced to thirty-eight and the final story was changed.  We are going to sell a one and a half hour video in March and we’d like to include the real final story in it.  Seventy percent of animators in Japan today are working on collaboration anime. The pay (for collaboration anime) is more than double, so we have to do something about it.  

TOSHIHIRO NAGAO (Kaname Production Co.)

I’d like to see different kinds of SF anime.  “Windaria (Once Upon a Time)” is the first step in that direction.

Generally speaking, I’d like to go with polar opposites - simplistic anime that has funny gags and anime that explores heavy themes.  I think our company would like to take a short break after “Windaria” ends and then we’re going to do a lighter anime.  We’ve also talked little by little about producing an anime TV series, but can we really do it with the present situation?  Companies we outsource to are doing a lot of collaboration anime and we don’t have the confidence that we will win the price war and if we dabble in (anime TV series) incorrectly, it will be a death blow.  With this situation, it seems like we will be concentrating on video anime for now.  With regards to the direction of our anime, we’d like to consider doing SF anime with our own touch and foray into different parts, for example, making modern anime like “Radio City Fantasy (Machikado no Marchen)” that merges footage and music.

(Caption for illustration on the left side)

“Mujigen Hunter Fandora”, one of the original video anime from Kaname Production Co..It is said that the second part will be released in March.

YUUJI NUNOKAWA (Studio Pierrot)

(Blurb)

“Magical Emi, the Magic Star” will end in February.  We’re working on the anime that will follow this.

Ever since our “Dallos” anime, anime in the video anime genre have increased, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to foresee what’s ahead.  But I feel our viewer base will return to children after the continuous increase in anime fans.

In our animes’ genres, it seems that we foray into unprincipled things but through trial and error, we are at that stage where we are aiming for our own style.  In 1986, we plan to stop producing transformation-style anime after “Emi” and we are now working on an anime with a witch theme, with a nod to our very first anime.  We have also decided that we will make a sequel to “Rumic World”.

(Box at the lower left side of the page)

If there were animes like this I’d watch it!

MIKI TORI (manga artist)

And yet there are only a few animes wherein you can feel each anime’s distinct character.  I understand that anime is a group effort, but like manga, the director’s tastes dominate.   If the time comes when the writer can say “that is good but this is also good”, I think that anime will become more vibrant.

AKIO YOSHIDA (manga artist)

If I’m going to watch, I might change the channel if they’d revive anime like the long adventure animes of Toei.  It would feel just like watching the movie “Mothra”.

YUKI SAITO (actress and singer)

I was in a manga research group when I was in high school so all I watched were anime from Sunrise.  I like “Gundam” and “Ideon”.  If there were anime in that vein, I think I’d be obsessed again.

Pages 50 & 51

(Title)

A Glance at the Anime World: The Hit men and their Predictions

SHOJI KAWAMORI

(Blurb)

It’s important to have interesting anime that will be universally accepted!

I haven’t really watched TV anime these past two years.  Once you get rid of a habit, it’s not good.  Once you distance yourself from anime, you won’t even be able tell which anime is good and which is bad.  It’s scary to think that I’ve been watching anime by force of habit.

I also haven’t watched that many video animes to be fussy about it but I feel that video animes have become closer in form to manga.   I can’t say though that it’s already at the serialized manga level, but it’s just a matter of time.  But if you’re going to make video anime and you don’t make it differently from TV anime, it will be a waste.  Probably change the design a bit…just like what Mr. Oshii is doing.  Once your attempts go beyond the realm of attempting things and once you’ve achieved something basic, I think we’d probably be able to see the direction of video anime for the first time.  If I were to create video anime, I’d like to make a short sixty minute one, something that is highly concentrated and can’t be fully “digested” in a TV anime format.  Sixty minutes is too short for a movie and too long for TV, and I think it is a length that is untapped and put aside.

Compared to video, TV’s strong point is that you can make serialized anime on TV.  Nicely put, TV is a medium wherein if you don’t have “ordinariness” (badly put, “mass appeal”) you won’t succeed so in this sense TV is a more demanding form of media than video.  I also don’t like the trend wherein anime that don’t appeal to the masses are turned into video anime.  I think that video anime should also have universal appeal.

For 1986, if there are proposals that come my way, I’ll do them.  I still don’t know exactly what I’m going to do.

TOMOKO KONPARU

(Blurb)

With regards to video anime, I have “The Super Girl” and I’d like to try my hand at a new kind of animal anime.

Anime is said to be on a low note right now but I think that the number of anime being produced now is just right because there was a time when the anime that was being produced went over the production capabilities of those in the anime world.  I even think that the number should be reduced by just a little bit more, but only if the quality is improved.  It seems that 30 animes will be released in 1986, but I think that in terms of quality, (those that aren’t good) will be culled.

I don’t have any children yet but as a housewife I don’t think that anime has a bad influence on children.  Since I was little, I myself grew up watching anime.  Even now, from the standpoint of someone making anime, I don’t want to forget about the children.  But on the other hand, I also think that mothers who just park their kids in front of the TV to watch anime isn’t good either.

The anime following “Hai Step Jun” will be “Maple Town”, an animal anime but I don’t want it to be anime with just “good” characters in it.  I want to try making anime for young girls, which will be a new thing for me.

ICHIRO ITANO

(Blurb)

There must be anime that only young animators can do!

I think that mass media has a very strong influence on children.  I want people to be more conscious of that.  I feel that anime that is being made today just to make money is overly increasing - animators don’t question things, or assert themselves.  An extreme example is the Lolita complex boom of late.  If a person is being shown something like (a Lolita anime) from way back (from childhood), that person’s imagination takes precedence instead of the ability to adapt to another human being, and stress builds up as a result.  I think we should oppose this current reality, and as for myself, I plan to try different things.  I wonder what I’d be able to do before I turn thirty-five, and I also think that you can learn from failure.

MITSURU KANEKO (MK Productions)

(Blurb)

The computer is absolutely infiltrating the anime world.

It’s possible to think that in the future, the possibilities of computer graphics will first be used in the industrial fields.   For example, the depth maps of the Japan Coast Guard just have numbers on them now but if you input these numbers into a computer, you’ll be able to see valleys (under the sea) that continue for miles as video images.  And if this (technology) presses forward, for example, there is an (American) masterpiece special effects movie called “Fantastic Voyage” wherein they (physically) made the sets and then shot the film but in the future, you can make the movie set by inputting data in a computer.

Speaking of another side (of this technology), take the example of video images shown on large screens that have been demonstrated at an expo.  Just like what was shown in the expo, video images and 3D images shown on dome-like screens can only be made using a computer.

In this way, the spotlight is now aimed at anime as a means to (showcase technology).  Animation’s possibilities will also become limitless as it will need to respond to the diversification of people’s demands.

(Caption for illustration on the right side of the page)

This is Cindy, a young girl from a biker gang in the anime “Megazone 23 Part 2”.  Mr. Yasuomi Umetsu’s character design is original, as personified in this drawing.  This anime has a different kind of appeal compared to Part 1.

KEISUKE FUJIKAWA (scriptwriter of the anime “Once Upon a Time” or “Legend of Fabulous Battle Windaria”)

I researched and compared the recent trends, the trend in fans’ consciousness about anime and anime programs and from around last year, it seems like the age of wanting “salvation” has come.  I think that in so many ways, we are being stifled and we are seeking breakthroughs.  I think that how anime as a medium is going to lift this issue up is going to be important.   Even “Once Upon a Time”, which we will show in 1986, takes up issues of the present times.  I’m putting emphasis on what I will say to the youth of today through SF that has stories of people in it instead of just hardcore SF.  For this year and the next, I’d like to dig into aspects of the youth in different ways.  I’d like to make anime that makes viewers think that there is something out there that matches their present selves perfectly.

(Caption for illustration on the left side of the page)

This is Anasu, the heroine of “Windaria”.  Illustrated by Ms. Mutsumi Inomata, this character personifies the pure themes of Mr. Fujikawa’s anime.

YOSHINOBU NISHIZAKI (producer)

(Blurb)

I’d like to make a video anime that will be a preview of a movie theater anime

With regards to “Odin: Photon Sailor Starlight”, I didn’t make excuses and I haven’t commented on it but there are clear reasons why that movie ended in failure.  That anime was originally a one-hour program, twelve episode TV anime - in other words, it was an anime made to be aired for twelve hours.  I think there was a big mistake in the producers’ thinking that they could digest this into a two and a half hour movie.

I used to say that after 1955, there wouldn’t be a hit anime made for movie theaters.   The same thing is about to happen in the video anime world.  If the overproduction of low-quality anime continues, there will definitely be a backlash.  It seems that the most basic idea during planning anime has been forgotten.  And this basic idea is this: things expressed through anime must rouse people’s imaginations.

We’re planning on releasing an anime for movie theaters on July 9, 1986 based on “Desler”*.  But before that we’re planning on selling a promotion video about the movie in April.  In making this video, budgetary issues, which have always been a concern in video animes, have been set aside so I’m planning on making it in the same high-quality as the movie.  I’m also thinking of releasing a trailer of the movie at the same time.

*Translator’s note: Desler is a character in the anime “Space Battleship Yamato”.

(Box at the lower left side of the page)

If there were animes like this I’d watch them!

FUJIHIKO HOSONO (manga artist)

I like the works of Mr. Hayao Miyazaki.  I heard that he said that he wanted to make an anime about the Period of Warring States (in Japanese history) so if that anime is made, I’d definitely want to watch it.  Personally, I’d also like Mr. Miyazaki to make ninja anime.  With regards to other animators, I like Mr. Mamoru Oshii, the one who made “Beautiful Dreamer.

SHOJOTAI (a singer/actress trio)

Reiko: Among animated characters, I like Peter Rabbit.  I’d like Peter to guide me into a dreamy nature scene.

Miho: I really like Phillips. I’d like to plunge into a world adventure with a kitty cat.

Tomo: More than anything, I like Snoopy.  I’d watch any number of animes with Snoopy in it.  I’d like to watch happy animes.

[ladyhearthkeeper]

Please tell us more about how you were raised like a Victorian lady. I would like to be accomplished too.

Hello :)Thank you for your ask. I will try to answer it the best way I can.

Well, the main thing is that in my education more emphasis was given to building my manners, broadening my mind and my taste for art, music and literature, religious obligation rather than a career.

This is a quote from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen that expresses what I mean by accomplished like a victorian lady :

“No one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with.  A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, all the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”

“All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”

So these would be more of the superficial (yet important elements) of what makes a lady accomplished.

To that, one needs to add a foundation. A proper victorian lady was raised as a believing woman. This provided her with a space to work on her soul but also provide kindness to her community and those in need.

Even though I use dear Jane Austen to explain this, I think Margaret Hale from Elizabeth Gaskell’s North & South is a better example. Examples help us find what we want to work towards.

Now that we have a framework, here is more about me…

I was encouraged to read all kind of books, in any genre. Back when I was a teen YA wasn’t really a thing so I read proper books. YA are nice but they are not enough to broaden a young mind. I mostly read classics but I didn’t stop at that. Books were my best teachers. Later, when I realized that I wanted to become more ladylike I even read guides written in the 19th century for young ladies. You can found them at the Project Gutenberg. Books like this one.

It helps that I studied literature, with a particular interest in 19th century novels. Victorian ladies were well read and had a lot of knowledge. So I think it’s important to choose a good subject to study, not as a mean to earn money but to broaden your scope. It doesn’t have to be frilly, it can be science, technology etc. The goal is to learn more.

I joined the choir (I regret not knowing an instrument but I would like to remedy that one day), took painting classes since I was a kid, and learned how to embroider, sew, and crochet. I still eagerly learn new skills. Activities such as these also helped me to have a sense of what is beautiful. Of course, I was also taken to the museum and to concerts, and taught about nature. Learning to attune your sense to beauty is important.

The more you learn how to do, the more you become accomplished. To take the time to learn something new, gives you patience but also substance. Especially if you dedicate yourself to the mastery of a skill or a subject. 

Contrary to what one may think, these ladies did not lack depth nor intelligence. It wasn’t only about knowing how to hold a smile.

I’m lucky to be from a culturally diverse background. It gave me the opportunity to learn many languages but also about how to identify different types of social cues in different cultures. All this to make sure I keep my behavior attuned to those of around me and not make them uncomfortable. If you know about someone else’s culture or background you know how to make them feel at ease.

So yes, knowing how to hold herself in society is also part of what makes a lady accomplished.

I was taught by my mother how to behave with others, especially men. It’s about having a sense of propriety. How to receive people and to honor invitations. How to hold a conversation. But I learned more from observing rather than actually being taught.

I was also taught how to make condolences visits, how to support bereaved people, how to be supportive with people who need help, how to be part of a community. Of course, charity work, volunteering have played a big part in my life too and have given me the opportunity to go beyond my own self. Keeping a good inner life is what gives a graceful quality to our outer behavior. It’s more important to work at being a good person than learning a new skill.

All these things I’ve listed in the previous paragraphs can be explained more thoroughly if you wish. But I wanted to mention them because being a victorian lady is more than being good at playing the pianoforte. Lady Catherine de Bourgh would approve.

Most of these things are drawn from my own religion but they reflect the values of 19th century Britain. So maybe your own ethics can help in the matter.

I’m not a social person, I am more of a wild creature of the woods. But I have been so used to being aware of my behavior towards other people that in spite of my mood, I can keep a serene agreeable countenance. Not always unfortunately but most of the time. So much that one day, after leaving party I told my friend that I didn’t feel social at all and I was glad I was going home and she was surprised because I talked with everyone and remained interested in what they were saying. 

It’s not about being fake (please don’t do that) but of not imposing your mood on others. That doesn’t mean saying yes to everything and forcing yourself to be social all the time, but it’s knowing how to hold your own when you don’t feel like it. It’s about saying ‘ok I don’t feel that great but I’ll deal with this after I’ve honored this social situation and once I’m alone or with intimate friends or family.’

I think deportment is also very important. I was vaguely taught about it (I attended some ballet classes as a kid but I didn’t continue)  I think the practice of yoga has helped me better understand how to use my body gracefully. It’s about understanding how to hold yourself, it flows outwards from your own sense of worth and dignity.

Here’s a good illustration from Elizabeth Gaskell’s North & South :

« And as he looked with this intention, he was struck anew with her great beauty. He had never seen her in such dress before and yet now it appeared as if such elegance of attire was so befitting her noble figure and lofty serenity of countenance, that she ought to go always thus appareled. She was talking to Fanny; about what, he could not hear; but he saw his sister's restless way of continually arranging some part of her gown, her wandering eyes, now glancing here, now there, but without any purpose in her observation; and he contrasted them uneasily with the large soft eyes that looked forth steadily at one object, as if from out their light beamed some gentle influence of repose: the curving lines of the red lips, just parted in the interest of listening to what her companion said—the head a little bent forwards, so as to make a long sweeping line from the summit, where the light caught on the glossy raven hair, to the smooth ivory tip of the shoulder; the round white arms, and taper hands, laid lightly across each other, but perfectly motionless in their pretty attitude. »

This is what I mean about deportment. It’s not about the surface but poise, an inner serenity and openness to the world. 

But, without telling you the whole story, I have to just add that the character described here, Margaret Hale, is not only defined as a lady by her behavior at this party but also by her behavior in times of loss, with people in need of help or even people behaving in an uncouth manner. She is also characterized as a lady in her kindness and generosity towards others. These are key to being a proper victorian lady. For this, volunteering for a good cause can benefit your character immensely.

How to be gentle is also an important thing.

Most ladies had servants but they still knew how to run a house and keep a home. These skills are also important but more tedious to describe.

Those are only a few points that I’m exploring but there are many other things that can be said in the subject. And I don’t think there is just one way to go about it. But reading helps, it can help you identify what you want to emulate and what to avoid. I could give you a list of books that can inspire you if you want. :)

Now, having said all of that, I don’t think I’m an expert on the subject. And I’m far from being a perfect lady. There’s a lot of room for improvement. But when I read those novels I feel like these women were raised the same way I was and I feel understood. I don’t think it’s necessarily how everyone should be. There are other skills that I struggle to learn and that would help me better navigate in this world. Skills that were not necessarily taught to victorian ladies...

I simply wasn’t raised to be a career woman (there’s nothing good or bad about it, it’s just how it is) but I was raised to be an accomplished lady. 

I hope this wasn’t too long, and I hope I answered your question. If not, you can ask again. Thank you for asking I enjoyed replying to this.

I’m sorry for any spelling mistakes or forgotten words. I’ve notice I’m more prone to these recently.

[fipindustries]

list of comics i made so far

i already shared the list of all the novels i tried to write throughout my llife so i see no reason why not to do the same with the comics i tried to work on. no i should clarify, with my lists of novels there was a clear cut distinction between what was a novel and a short story so to parse one from the other was an easy task. it should be known that i wrote hundreds of shorts stories that i havent shared with anyone. now a similar situation occurs with my comics, i have done hundreds upon hundreds of little comics, short jokes, little skits and short lived strips through my life, so in order to give this list some weight and not make it longer than the bible the criteria i used was that it had to be something i did on a regular basis or that tells a self contained story with a beggining middle and end.

now without further ado, lets begin!

spike Vanderville (age 7)

you can tell i was way more into comics than i was into novels from a young age. done with pen and folded paper, it was the story about a young kid called spike, whose design was heavily inspired by bradley from sticking around, who had magical powers which allowed him to manipulate reality. it was a mix of harry potter and a series of illustrates short stories that came in a magazine in argentina. his best friend was a scarecrow with a pumpkin head that he had brought to life, his archnemesis was a fat bully.

curiously enough i was so passionate about this project even though i had no idea what i was doing and no talent that i actually did like three full colored issues of it. my family was really proud of me. sadly those comics are completly lost to time

andrew and the monkey (age 10)

this was the classical story about a boy and his best friend the talking animal. one page comedy strips done in pen and paper. nothing too clever, just a way for me to try lame jokes mostly stolen from spongebob squarepants. not much else to it. i tried to do like a revamp in 2014 but it was short lived, as you can see the jokes didnt get any less lame

FIP industries (age 17)

mostly done in digital. yes as you can see fip is something that has followed me my whole life in quite the variety of mediums. there were as a matter of fact multiple attempts to make this comic a real thing but time and again they would peter off as i saw that my skill was just not up to the task. i think i have talked more than enough about fip industries on this blog, one interesting thing is that if you follow the link you will come across a lot of proto ideas that i had before they cemented and took their definite shape in the novel (and even after the novel i kept retconning and retooling things over and over again, fip industries is an ongoing thing that will probably last my entire lifetime)

Disregarding Reality I (age 20)

the first iteration of disregarding reality, a humorous strip done in pencil and paper, a fairly short lived affair, lasting no more than 3 months. the entire premise of the comic was an MRA activist and a feminist live together, they are friends, they argue a lot. remember 2013 guys? back when this whole politics bullshit truly kicked off online? this was before gamer gate, mind you. but by that point i had seen more than enough of it on tumblr and i was like “someone should do some scathing commentary with wit and penache” and that someone had to be me. mainly inspired by commics like f@nboys and el goonish hive and a thousand billion others that were so popular back in those halcyon days.

i got bored of it pretty quickly and it wouldnt be until three years later than i would finally decide to re-start the project but until then...

Strangers in the forest (age 21)

here comes a rather productive era in my ouvre, ink and paper, based on a short story i wrote, its about an eldritch monster pretending to be human and a ghost girl, killed by her father. they have a dispute because the monster wants to eat the corpse of the girl but the ghost doesnt want to give up her bones because its the one thing that tethers her to the mortal plane. they eventually resolve their dispute. by this point i was actually, unironically trying my best to do comics which i felt looked professional.

Song of a nightmare (age 21)

another one based on a short story i wrote. ink and paper, a private detective wakes up in the middle of the night and sees a mermaid lying in bed next to him. he spends most of the comic trying to figure out how the hell is this possible. still one of my favourite ones and certainly one of my family’s and friends favourites as well. a rather poetic tale, strongly inspired by argentinian fiction and their propensity towards magical realism, i was reading a lot of cortazar back then.

Aika (age 21)

as you can tell i was on a fucking roll that year. ink and paper, this was a story based upon a simple and basic idea that i had in my mind for years and years. i always liked the concept behind the movie “the kid” where bruce willis mysteriously comes across himself as a kid. so of course one day i came up with the idea, what if you recieved a visit from your future self... but she was a woman?

this is probably the most aggresively trans story i ever wrote in my life, it is literally about a guy realizing they are trans and breaking down over it. here is the giant kicker, i did not realize at all what i was doing. i was completly unaware of what was going on here, i was still deep deep in the closet and not even realizing i was there. it really is astounding the honesty and the rawness with which i wrote this comic and it went all over my head. a perfect example of “im such a great ally lol”

oh also there is time travel i guess. my main impetus (beyond whatever my subconcious was forcing me to do) was my desire to make a complete clusterfuck of a story, i was a huge fan of homestuck, i had read fleek and demon, i wanted to do my own take on a hypercomplicated time travel puzzle plot. other things came out on top of it but i didnt noticed them. fucking hilarious

Hello Agatha (age 21)

a comedic strip about a wacky pixie dream girl having wacky adventures with her wacky friends, one of which is a man with a toilet for a head. what a gut buster, what a knee slapper!

there is not much to say about this one, wacky surreal comedy was always my favourite and so time and again i would try my hand at it but it is surprisingly hard to do!

The /co/ ventures! (age 20 - age25)

an ongoing project done in multiple mediums. i think i said more than enough about this in here and here. it was me practiscing comics, practiscing my humor and adding my tiny grain of sand to the 4chan culture. i am proud to say these comics were actually very well liked there and that i would be recognized without a name or signature of any kind, just on the strength of my style.

the vest kind of madness (age 22)

probably one of the projects in which i put the biggest amount of effort to make it look professional. traditional inks and digital colors. a crossover that i cant believe never happened in comics considering how obvious it is. Rac Shade, the changing man and delirium of the endless, the two flagship vertigo characters associated with madness. clearly a match made in heaven.

to this day im flabbergasted i seem to be the only one to think of this.

Disregarding Reality II (age 23)

another work where i have already spilled rivers of bytes explaining my thought process behind it. after having a no good, terrible, very bad day, finding my self aimless and without purpose, deep in denial and depression, i decided to give my self a big project to have something to get me out of bed every day. these three guys came from the depths of my mind to save me.

this time leaning a lot more on silly humor and surrealism than political commentary, still insanely proud of how much i managed to make this last, almost three years, well over 200 pages! and in here i found the inspiration and the creative energy to tackle all sorts of diverse projects of which we are about to see all about.

Mama Bird (age 24)

my masterpiece.

by far the best comic i ever did. a kid with a bird for a mom. hilarious, touching, heartbreaking. it was a concept that i had come up with when i was 21. back then it was supposed to be exclusively a humorous comic strip but then i found a dramatic angle for the story and that was when everything clicked into place. that was when i realized this was a comic i had to do. and i did it. it took me five months but it was well worth it. still insanely proud of this one

Soft boys (age 25)

a weird experimental little story where i decided to sit down and deconstruct one of the most popular superpowers. super elasticity. more akin to me just mashing my toys against each other than me trying to tell a serious story. i am actually really happy with some of the art here and some of the sequences presented. particularly the final one where a brick joke twenty pages in the making finally pays off.

Hexen Snatch (age 25)

a semi spinoff to my novel FIP industries, we focus on a side character that managed to survive after the events of the novel and how they’ll manage to survive further beyond that. insanely soaked by the magical world of pact by widbow i wanted desperatly to share my own take on magic, every page is accompanied by a little text where i expand upon the lore and the way magic is supposed to work on this world. i really like the prose on those snippets and the ideas they work almost more that the comic itself with which i was not happy at all when i was working on it. i didnt like the character design, i didnt like how the art in general was coming out, i didnt like the pacing of the story or how superficially we were getting to expore this world in the comic proper. i had to take a very long hiatus just to accumulate the will to finish the comic and once i did i feel it really petered off without much of a satisfying payoff.

on some level i blame the exhaustion and frustration that i came out of this comic with for the fact that i ended up quitting disregarding reality soon afterwards.

Maxplosive (age 26)

another project that has followed me across multiple mediums. came up with an idea for a videogame back in 2015. saved it on the back pocket for a while, used it as a story within a story on my novel fan.tastic, practisced a couple of animations with the characters and eventually decided that, if my skills at videogame making were not enough, i had at least more than poven myself as a comic artist so maybe that was the definitive medium in which this idea would have to exist.

the original idea was to tell the story in two parts, the first half would introduce the character and the videogame as if the comic was a playthrough of the game. all fun and childlike and innocent. then the second half was meant to explore the life of the main character as an adult, how being “a videogame protagonist” had ruined her body, her mental health and her life. i tried all sorts of weird stuff with the format here, using reciclable assets, static camera angles and generally presenting the whole thing as if it was a videogame.

sadly the project got too big for my breaches, i was fucking exhausted back then, swamped with a bunch of other projects, my job, other responsabilities, unsatisfied with the story and with no idea where to take it. eventually i got tired, decided to skip a day, then the day became a week and then the week became a month and by then i had to face the facts, i was just no longer able to continue the comic. and so i quit not only maxplosive but disregarding reality all together.

i still did the occasional comic here and then but it wouldnt be until the very end of 20-fucking-20 that i was finally inspired to tackle a new project, my newest one, my last one....

Lapsarian (age 27)

an interesting experiment, i decided to do the whole comic in one sit and then post it chapter by chapter on a weekly basis. a surprising result of this was that i managed to do in one month the same amoung of pages that would have taken me 5 months back when i started disregarding reality, is good to see that after al this time i still got it.

took me a while to get the hang of it again and find my own style once more but once i armed up it was smooth sailing for 40 pages all the way to the end. but what is this comic even about?

its... weird, with full disclosure and no shame, it is mostly a fetish story about big lizard creatures commiting vore. the milkman had already shown me that i could do those types of stories and no lighting would come from the heavens to strike me down so i said, why not as a comic? i like to think that beyond the fetish content it is still a decent story in its own right, an interesting feedback that i got from this is that people are suprised how earnest it is, one saying something like “this is the best pitch for a fetish that i was never interested in”

Conclussion:

looking back on this im surprised, turns out i was a lot more prolific and working a lot more regularly than i expected, in here are documented ten years of creative output that never seems to wane. it was fun to do the roundabout trip and see how my style, my technice and generally my work ethic evolved through the years. another nice thing to see is the multiple formats, the multiple tools and mediums i experimented with, i find myself constantly trying new things, new methods, new angles, new interesting ideas for how to make a comic (without even getting into what to make a comic about).

something i always knew about myself was that drawing is a fundamental part of who i am, it is something that just cant be taken away from me and that will always be a part of my life one way or the other, is good to see it so plainly, in black and white, on this list. here goes for what i might be able to do in the future

[carriagelamp]

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: The Poetry of Mister Rogers

This is an anthology collection of the various poems and songs that appeared in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, with art by Luke Flowers. It is exactly as zen as you think it will be. If you are in need of something soft, loving, and affirming right now in the terror that is 2020, go pick this book up. I read it all over the course of two days and feel like a better person for it.

Asterix in Britain

I decided to watch my french Asterix movies on a whim the other week, and that got me rereading all the old Asterix comics I grew up with (Asterix and Obelix All At Sea, Asterix the Legionary, Asterix and the Black Gold, Asterix and the Great Divide, Asterix and the Secret Weapon…) I decided to use in Britain as my representative though because to this day it’s one of my all time favourites, and it’s one of the first ones we ever owned — while the others my brother and I collected avidly over the years (any time we were allowed to pick a new comic out of the book store) I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have this volume at home. There fun, detailed illustrations, goofy puns, over the top slapstick, and endless love between the characters seriously melts my heart every time I pick them up. Though I have to admit, the Secret Weapon sure is a bigger shitshow than I realized as a kid…

The Barnabus Project

This is a new Canadian picture book I’ve been meaning to get my hands on for a few months. It is very neat. It’s a bit more of an involved adventure story than you often see in picture books, while still not entering the domain of graphic novel or chapter book. It’s about a company that genetically engineers “perfect” pets for the public to buy. But deep beneath the storefront, well under the streets, are the sinister labs where the “failed” projects are kept, waiting to be recycled back into parts. This is where Barnabus lives, and this is where Barnabus and his friends must break free from. A thrilled little book with adorable art!

Bunnicula

This is actually my first time reading this book, though I’ve meant to ever since I was a kid. For anyone that doesn’t know this classic, it’s told from the point of view of the family dog, who witnesses his owners bring home a strange new pet: a pet rabbit named Bunnicula, with black fur that looks like a cape and the strangest teeth ever seen on a rabbit… The housecat is even more alarmed, and the two of them begin to investigate the strange occurrences going on around the rabbit and protect their family from sinister forces. It’s a very cute chapter book and a nice soft intro to the “horror” genre without going quite as dark as Goosebumps.

Care Bears: Unlock The Magic

This was… hm. Something. It was cute. The art of this graphic novel has certainly modernized the care bears from their original style, but it’s not a bad thing — the simple, bold shapes are actually pretty enjoyable. You have the care bears on a mission to protect the land of these strange new creatures from dark, “heartless” forces. Overall, if you’re in the mood for something soft and nostalgic that’s been transported into 2020, it’s not a bad read... though I can’t say it wow’ed me.

Emma and the Blue Genie

Another adorable novella (chapter book? Somewhere between the two?) by Cornelia Funke who I don’t think is capable of writing a bad story. Like all her books, this one is charming and whimsical and feels strangely classic. Emma and her wiener dog Tristan sneak out of their house one night for some peace and quiet, and discover an unusual bottle that washes up on the shore. When they release it, a small blue genie is released and Emma learns of the horrible events that befell him and his master in a far off land. A horrible yellow genie stole the source of his magic, forcing him into this small, weakened form, and has besieged the land now that the blue genie is out of the way. The blue genie seems to heartbroken that Emma can’t help but promise her help, and accompanies him across the sea… A fun little story for anyone that enjoyed Aladdin.

The Erth Dragons: The Wearle

The first miserable failure of a book I read this month. I couldn’t finish it and didn’t even try. It sounded like cool scifi dragons, but what I got was a pack of sixty dragons off exploring. A team that included a grand total of three female dragons. Who are there for, it seems, breeding. One of which is fridged immediately to jump start the main character’s story. This is a book I may have read in middle school, but I was thrilled to realize I actually have choices now and don’t need to tolerate this shit. Do not fucking bother, the world building is obnoxious as well.

 Flawed Dogs

Now this one was a delight. As quirky and bizarre and charming as Berkeley Breathed’s work always is. This is a novel that starts with a prized pure-bred dachshund, Sam the Lion, one who is a once in a life time example of doggy bred perfection. However things get mixed up on his way to the snobby dog-show-loving owner who purchased him and he ends up instead in the arms of a young girl who adores him as only children can, completely indifferent to any “perfection” he may have. The happiness of girl and dog fosters resentment in the household’s other dog, a show dog who is pampered but not loved. So begins a horrible sequence of events that sees Sam cast out of the house, horribly mutilated, and left to fend for himself in a cruel world. Flawed Dogs manages to deliver both dogs with rocket-propulsive farts as well as grim questions about what the nature of life, perfection, and vengeance means to a wronged party who has had his life destroyed beyond all recognition.

This was my favourite book of the month, and I would HIGHLY recommend it, but maybe give it a miss if you’re squicked by animal brutality because this book delivers very funny moments, very heartwarming moments, and very upsetting animal abuse in fairly equal measure.

The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell

The second disappointing book of the month. I’ve heard so many good things about this series! About how it’s gotten so many kids to fall in love with reading and series and more complex narratives! I’ve been really excited to read it, because I love me a twisted fairy-tale. Unfortunately this seems to be a very good series for kids, and a very poor story for adults who are used to the tropes of a basic fairy-tale inspired fantasy novel. The writing was unfortunately bland and it was chockablock of clichés and stereotypes that are frankly rather unappealing. Maybe things get better as it progresses, but the series didn’t hold my interest for long enough for me to find out. Honestly, it just made me want to go and reread Inkheart instead.

Little Tails in the Jungle

The Little Tails series is an adorable blend of picture book, comic, and nonfiction educational. It shows Chipper and Squizzo as they adventure around different ecosystems and interact with the wildlife there, sharing interesting facts and trying to keep out of trouble. It’s a pleasant read for an adult that likes well done wildlife art, and fantastic for kids that are craving accessible nonfiction content about animals.

When Santa Fell to Earth

My second Cornelia Funke novella of the month. This is a Christmas favourite of mine, and I reread it around December every couple years or so. In this story, Nikolas is a young Santa who is on the run. The North Pole has been taken over by a faction of Santa’s who have given up on the traditional values of Christmas and have decided instead to focus on a more sterilized, corporate type of Christmas, one with clear present transactions and a hefty bottom line. Any dissenting Santas are hunted down and dealt with. Nikolas is one of the sole surviving rebel Santas who has managed to stay ahead of the Santa hunters… or he had, until his reindeer panics in a thunderstorm and sends his caravan crashing down to earth, to broken to lift off again. Stuck at the side of a little residential street, Nikolas befriends a couple of local children who help him, his elves, and his angels try to get things sorted out and ready to go before Christmas — or the Santa hunters — arrive.

Wintersmith

More Pratchett, and in this case another seasonally appropriate read. This is the third book of the Tiffany Aching series, in which Tiffany, a young apprentice witch, joins her mentor at the secretive dark morris dance, a ritual that happens in the winter to welcome the changing of the seasons, just as the regular morris dance heralds summer. Tiffany, though, doesn’t just hear the music but feels it in bones, and before she knows it she finds herself compelled to join in, to fill in a strange empty spot she can’t look away from. She does, in fact, find herself dancing with the Wintersmith, and now there are snowflakes coming down with her face crafted into them, frost that lovingly spells out her name, and a winter that doesn’t seem inclined to leave anytime soon. Tiffany made a mistake, and now people are going to die if she doesn’t do something.

[pluto-art]

- PINKY AND THE BRAIN - EXPERIMENTS -

Below the cut is a personal project on the much more morbid side. Animal lab experimentation is always something I’ve found equal parts horrible and fascinating. Once in a blue moon, I’ll do research on the subject out of curiosity and/or for storytelling purposes. Even as a kid, I found this of interest, and when watching Pinky and the Brain I was always a bit disappointed that we never saw more of what the characters actually went through in the lab during the day. Granted, there’s a reason as to why this was never shown, as a child audience had to be kept in mind, yet still I pondered about it....

Over the last few days, I’ve been churning out compositions based on internet findings -- old and new experiments that rats and mice are put through, many of them humane, some of them very much not. It was an eye-opening journey for me artistically and otherwise, discovering what I’m comfortable drawing and what I never want to sketch again, as well as learning more about this realm of the scientific world.

WARNING: SOME GRAPHIC CONTENT BELOW THE CUT. If needles, patients dealing with the effects of cancer, and general portrayals of pain bother you, I wouldn’t bother venturing onward. I not only drew out experiments that the characters might have gone through, but also describe all of my findings in detail and provide video footage to go along with it. While I didn’t go full-on vivisection or anything, some of this might still be disturbing, so I’m taking extra precaution.

All of the images below are “color-coded” and graded. The experiments start out fairly tame, then get worse... and worse... and worse. The backgrounds reflect this, going from fairly light to quite dark.

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Experiment #1 - Tail Flick Test

A fairly harmless experiment. The subject is mostly restrained, leaving only their tail exposed. An intense light beam is projected onto the exposed appendage, with the animal flicking their tail when the pain/heat becomes too much. This test is utilized in basic pain research and to measure analgesic effectiveness.

I wanted Brain to wear an expression of deep apathy -- he’s done this a million times and will probably do it a million times more. At this point, he doesn’t even care anymore.

For the background, I simply copied an environment in one of the videos I found.

Video example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzrA1tDTfkQ

Experiment #2 - Rotarod Performance Test

Another experiment that’s generally harmless. One or multiple subjects are placed on elevated rotating rods so as to measure such things as endurance, balance, grip strength, and more.

I imagine Pinky would enjoy this test, as he’s familiar with running on a wheel and actually enjoys more strenuous activities. Brain, on the other hand, would only participate via sheer force. He’d also be more prone to fall after a shorter period of time, getting tired faster than his cage mate.

Video example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v56MtrmWAs0

Experiment #3 - Shot (General)

Nothing special. Just Brain about to get shot.

This is all highly exaggerated, of course. A mouse would simply be held firmly, not strapped down, for a simple injection. Also, I can’t imagine why they’d be shot in the face, although Meg told me that scientists tend to draw blood samples from a mouse’s cheek. Need to look that up. I wasn’t at all going for accuracy here, but rather how it might feel -- how scary it would be.

Experiment #4 - Sciatic Nerve Constriction

An experiment in chronic neuropathic pain, due to the central or peripheral nervous system sustaining damage. Under anesthesia, the animal’s sciatic nerve is exposed via skin incision. The connective tissue between the biceps femoris muscles and the gluteus superficialis is cut. The nerve is then loosely tied with four chrome gut ligatures so to occlude, but not arrest, blood flow. The wound is sutured, the animal is given 24 hours to recover, and then both hindpaws are tested for pain sensitivity. Sounds terrible, but it’s certainly not the worst of the experiments I researched.

I have no idea what’s going on with the coloring in this. Again, going for feel more than accuracy, but the hues are way too calm.

Information link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22433911

Experiment #5 - Writhing Test

Particularly cruel test in which acetic acid is introduced into the system, inducing severe internal pain. The typical response includes writhing, abdominal retraction, and stretching of the hind limbs. Despite the test being withdrawn in 2004 for unethical reasons, it is still employed by some.

This was my favorite one to draw. Although the lighting and shading are not the greatest, it made for an interesting experiment. I did not intend for the lines to be so bold, but it kind of turned into an almost comic-style illustration. I ended up playing around with it a bit and like the result enough to post it.

I would not watch the video below if you are squeamish. It is difficult to swallow. On another note, you may find the “Empathetic Behavior: Emotional Contagion in Mice” section in the second link of interest. For cage mates in particular, if one or both mice were injected with the same acid, and allowed to observe one another, an injected mouse would writhe more if its partner was also in pain. I can’t help but imagine Brain and Pinky in this type of situation....

Information link #1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3543562/

Information link #2: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/writhing-test

Video example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib63O4F856w

Experiment #6 - Transgenic K5ras Mouse / Nude Mouse (Combination)

Experiment in which cancer is induced in the system. Nude mice are bred for a number of tests, and are used for this one, as well.

My least favorite to draw, but my favorite to color. One particular experiment I found showed a tumor in every follicle on a mouse’s muzzle. Was trying to go for this look, albeit exacerbated.

Information link #1: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(98)70203-9?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982298702039%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

Information link #2: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/08/weirdest-lab-mice/

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Bonus:

This is based on a test that I found absolutely hilarious. There’s a certain chemical, called W-18, that’s been on the drug market for... some years. The potency of it is supposedly insanely high, although this has never been proven. It’s basically a research chemical (created at a university in the 80s) with analgesic properties that were shown to be “painkillers or blockers of the painkilling effect of morphine in mice”. Mice, not humans. To quote a specific article:

“... when they first injected some of these chemicals into the animals at a dose similar to aspirin, the mice stood up for about a minute and fell over unconscious. They remained unconscious – for five days. But they weren’t dead. They were still breathing. And when they woke, they seemed fine, other than being really hungry and thirsty.”

They literally keeled over from the supposed potency of it. From what I recall, they don’t even know exactly what it was doing to their system, other than the fact that it knocked them out. I just find it funny that they were completely fine after awakening days later.

Although the pure smell of it wouldn’t cause such a reaction, I liked the idea of it in picture form and so depicted Brain simply taking a whiff before passing out.

Information link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkroll/2016/04/30/w-18-the-high-potency-research-chemical-making-news-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt/#2c45a5dd4757

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Experiments researched, but not implemented:

- Tail dipped in ice cold water (mentioned here: cold water) - Morris water maze - Porton Down nerve agent test(s) (the worst; not even sure how I’d depict this)

The Porton Down tests sounded so indescribably cruel that I simply couldn’t bear to put Brain or Pinky through either of those, much less draw them out. It was the most horrific of the experiments I found, second only to a story about a French physiologist in the 1700s/1800s who performed, I believe, vivisection on live, six-week-old puppies. There’s a limit and that’s my limit. Even the cancer-based composition above was difficult to create. I legit felt dirty drawing it.

Researching these subjects was incredibly interesting, and I came across a few articles that touched on animal experimentation and the question of whether or not it’s ethical. Should such practices continue? It’s more complicated than a simple “yes” or no” answer. Some tests are fairly harmless, whilst others border on the inhumane, and some are downright cruel. Some people say that, without testing, there would be a lot less medicine on the shelves to assist in relieving and curing our ailments, whilst others argue that 90+% of the time the testing done is unnecessary, the results yielded by the subjects dissimilar to those that would be shown by humans and, henceforth, stating that the inaccuracies are numerous. This particular article offered up what I thought was a pretty genuine and interesting debate on the matter:

Pain in Lab Animals: How Much is Too Much?

In an interview with Dr. Jeffrey Mogil, a neuroscientist, he mentions that:

“You have complete control over everything in mice. Within limits, you can do whatever you want as long as you minimize pain and suffering of the subjects.“

Full interview: https://www.integrativepainscienceinstitute.com/latest_podcast/sex-differences-in-pain-and-pain-inhibition-with-dr-jeffrey-mogil/

While many establishments do follow the Animal Welfare Act, other laboratories still implement unethical practices. Also, the rules for what constitutes as acceptable in regards to tests that can only be performed without painkillers or anesthesia administered is... nebulous.

Thankfully, there is a number of lab testing equipment on the market specifically designed to be more humane and less stress-inducing to its subjects. These restrainers, for example, allow the animal to “walk in” without having to be physically forced backwards into a container:

Restrainers

Here is another example of testing that is relatively pain-free:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4401362/

It’s simple and inexpensive while still allowing scientists to perform tests.

Below is a video showing how a type of rotarod works, one that doesn’t place the rods too high and provides a cushion underneath in case the subjects fall:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T38fDS2i13k

This tail flick analgesia meter comes installed with a cut off timer to avoid damage to the animal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgaStZt143o

So there are options. How often are such options utilized in the field? I have no idea, although there are laws that should be followed and, from the sound of it, generally are adhered to. Not everyone in this business is cruel. Though you do have your occasional psychopath who performs very morally questionable operations behind closed doors, I believe that this is a great exception to the rule, and that there are a lot of laboratory workers who genuinely want to inflict as little pain as possible upon the animal. Just an opinion. I don’t have tons of evidence, but it seems like most people are sane. Lol.

Most of the experiments I inflicted upon Brain because, I think, Pinky is so pure that I have a hard time imagining him sustaining any kind of extreme pain that would genuinely hurt him. Also, he borders on being freakin’ masochistic, finding pleasure in a lot of painful situations, whereas Brain does not. Brain has been through a lot, mentally and physically. It seemed more... “appropriate” to put him in these situations, as terrible as that sounds.

All of that having been said, I never want to do this kind of exercise again. While a lot of it was interesting, and some of it even fun, parts of it were legitimately painful. The cancer one.... I felt horrible....