#nietzche type stuff

[ablndfsh]

I ate a tangirine cup and a brownie and I feel like I can kill god

[zozammer]

Dark Hair

Big proponent of the goo, hot chocolate stuff.

I was born normal, perfectly happy and ready to Rock. And I had potential to love, and be loved.

(So go figure. It’s been a rocky ride so I wouldn’t be past that word haha.)

A friend wrote to me the other day, said she found some letters I wrote to her in the ninth grade and they made her smile. They also upset her slightly because the letters had bouts of sadness, of darkness, that’s what she said anyway. I laughed it off and said I was grateful because I have a wicked sense of humour as a result of. That actually brought me some perspective. I’ve always been a bit sad, a bit dark, it’s been a relatively permanent fixture and reaction to my surroundings. It goes away, as it did in boarding school, when I’m in the presence of warmth and love. It goes away completely in ‘utopia’, in a progressive and equalising community.

I’m fine when I’m playing, acknowledged, and therefore shining. I’m actually great when I’m institutionalised; the irony is I’m perfectly built for tribes and communities, where my role and assimilation are clear. The black sheepishness is actually a great addition to the stew and makes for truly wonderful and funny times. I’m now thinking of mutton ha.

In Buddhism they say, ‘know yourself and you know everyone else’. So I guess everyone feels a bit out of sync when they’re out of love.

In a free, enlightening, and kind world, I am absolutely fine. But the world isn’t like that. I don’t really have false hope for any sort of love, even though I know that’s what will heal me inside. A lot of us who experience psychic pain are also emotionally vegan lol, in a sense that we derive our love from activities and small pleasures. Like food, or cooking, or art or reading. Maybe everyone is in psychic pain and we’re living in harsh times because it’s the most narcissistic time in human history, at least in terms of romantic love, if not platonic. We’re also experiencing a sex recession which also means that humans are having the least amount of sex ever recorded in history, even though we have greatly liberal norms today in comparison; ironically, this hasn’t created more intimacy, rather, left us the loneliest generation yet. I’m really happy for the ones who have managed to find partners who regard them as whole and familiar.

Me, on the other hand - I’ve had wild tales and interesting chemistries to say the least. I’ve been driven up the wall by the patriarchy (and perhaps driven some right under too, all is fair); been deemed incomplete and offered interesting mirrors by genteel Bandra boys, posh private school narcissists, deluded Apple fanboys, trolls, bullies, predators, older attached men, disturbed proletarians, creepy climbers, or even intolerant neo-patriarchs. That said, no offence taken. I’m just as deluded, neurotic and even perhaps a little narcissistic myself. I hold little or no hope of ever being in love because I hold no delusion of anyone ever being able to see what I can see, and consider any of it beautiful or relatable. But mostly, I have yet to ever feel whole in their presence and through their lenses and validated in the spectrum of their ideals. Sometimes self-love can’t make up for the way their politics seem to clash with yours, and the new symbols that emerge in the process. And then you just have war, which is often substituted by art as a peace offering.

We can all shout “Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!” and “Go Green!”, support our friends at Pride but the optimism doesn’t really translate into our innate senses of self and the allowances we make for what we think is lovable and acceptable. Very much cruising at the meat market for partners or friends, ones we think are good enough, to whom we can attach our identities with loving truisms. We type out ‘fuck capitalism’ in bold, most self-righteously on our latest androids and MacBooks. We collectively cheer on Greta on the field, as we continue to smoke our packs of cigarettes and chomp on our quarter pounders from the benches. We say ‘we love all sizes’ but we pick on the chubby ones anyway, because they symbolise weakness on a primal level, all the while sipping on our flat whites and turning to Nietzche in search of deeper throats.

Do I hope to meet a friend/lover who is my intellectual, emotional, and physical equivalent? Plato insists that the highest form of love between two people is ‘philia’, or friendship - the love that exists between two individuals who expess a likeness and kinship, and can move towards life sharing common goals and grow in ideals. So I guess what I’m saying is, I think I need to make friends with my other half inside first, for there to be communion outwards. It’s a fuck ton of work.

What I can hope for, is healing and being at peace and making art without others picking at me during the process, therefore isolation is my current answer. Although, it’s more sustaining and extremely beneficial when you have inspiring teachers and a healthy community. The healing doesn’t start without forgiveness, and I don’t know how long that bit is going to take. I’ve been praying though. I can hope for art and making some consistent change, understanding nature more, and living out my ideas to fruition.

Being solid in plan and execution and hopefully the work will be strong enough, to survive the politics of a place.

[spamzineglasgow]

In Response: Toward Passion According

Following an encounter with Jazmine Linklater’s pamphlet, Toward Passion According (Zarf Editions, 2017), Tawnya Renelle reaches out to Jazmine and what follows is a heartfelt, incisive exchange of thoughts around poetry and awe, movement in words, embarrassment, the body in writing, intimacy, reading and lyric theory. 

Dear Jazmine,

> I am reading your collection today as I sit in my pajamas on my couch. The rain is coming down and with my cup of coffee by my side I am snuggled up and ready to take in your words. I know you don’t know me, but you should know I often read in my pajamas. I am enraptured already with your collection after reading the quote that acts as an entrance to the poems. I feel I should explain to you what I am doing here before I go any further. And really what I am doing here comes from one of my favourite quotes about poetry by Jenny Boully, ‘Poetry is an instant, an instant in which transcendence is achieved, where a miracle occurs and all of one’s knowledge, experiences, memories, etc. are obliterated into awe.’

> You see I find so often that a review of a poetry collection attempts a summation of the poems and while I think that is important, for me, poetry is a moment captured. It is a moment when time stops, and lines take hold of the reader. So, I thought I would write you this letter as a living way of reacting and capturing each moment of awe as I read along. As a poet myself (who would love such a response from a reader) I thought I would share it with you. Apologies if it is presumptuous to assume you will enjoy this.

Her Stammer

> I have read the poem three times now and I am returning again and again to the lines ‘Beyond text~body~milk~blood beyond/(wo)man beyond contact beyond’ and it feels like a kind of returning to knowing, a kind of remembering of something I have always known. You ask me in the first line of the poem to ‘Remember you are elsewhere’ and I am in these lines elsewhere and beyond to a deep knowing and I feel caught by them and held there.

The world as (h)is

> I am falling in love with your use of / and () and I will admit that I have scanned the collection to see if it is used again and again and it is, I am filled with sheer delight and a kind of envy as well. I write words on the page and rarely play with the power of symbols to add to language, to deconstruct and to challenge language and to ‘enunciate sexed/un-(kn)own/ed.’ I like stopping a reader and slowing them down and your use of / and () truly does this and I am grateful for it. It makes me consider the words we use and what they can mean.

               Heroines Female heroines                reclaim the elsewhere

Before I continue, I feel I must both confess and tell you something. The confession is that my knowledge of mythology is limited, but I want to thank you for carrying me through Artemisia/Susana/Abra/Judith/Diana/Artemis with gentle care and a way that I felt despite my knowledge I understood the poem.

> The thing I wanted to tell you is that I see connection and serendipity everywhere, it is just the kind of person I am, and I wonder if you do too? This last week in Liverpool with a friend I got a new tattoo of deep significance, a reclaiming of myself, protection of myself, and an embracing in my strength and power as a woman. I am finding this poem echoing those emotions for me.

Bacchic Dance

> I read this poem and went forward to the notes and then returned to it again. I love seeing the many and varied influences of other poetry on your words. And after my second reading I sat for a while with these lines:

so all in name & lyric

                        so all & all unknown

                                                    like this          like this

                                                         & this & this

And I thought about the unknown and the multitudes of this and like this that I know and don’t know. I also studied the page, your words moving like dance across the page in motion and my eyes dancing along with them.

Ritual Dance

> I am reeling and spinning in this poem and it is the moment of the previous dance that has sent me into this state. And I am sitting now on my couch with lines that have moved me into the space of obliteration into awe with a collapsing of my knowledge and experiences. ‘we are plastic arts: viewer, sculptor, painter, piece/bridge gaps ‘tween worlds: even when they’re spelled’ and Imitate art advert/incite desire, embody ideal.’ I think about the body a lot, I write about the body all the time and these lines have left me with so much to think on, the dynamic body that moves and stays still.

> And now though I read the poem in between (‘Pyrrhic Dance’) I am in ‘Lyrical Dance’ and I think this is my favourite poem of the collection, though I can’t say for sure yet as I can see the last poem on the next page. But in order to tell you what lines left me sitting here on this couch moved and contemplative I would simply have to type out the entire poem. So I will say I adore the use of second person in a poem, the way it brings me in as a reader ‘I want you condensed’ and I am not the you that you write to, but I know a you so similar that this poem felt as though it came beating out of my own heart ‘body re-build measure my line’ and I want to thank you for giving me such a beautiful moment this morning.

Tryst

> Here I am at the end and my mind is blown (I wonder if this is very American of me to say) but your note says that the structure of this poem follows a film Cleo de 5 a 7 and I am learning French because I am going to Paris in January, so I have immediately added this to my watchlist. And then the poem is a response and reaction to moments in the film just as this is a review/response/letter/reaction to your poetry. I hadn’t known that at the end of my notes of reaction that you and I would crescendo in a kind of writing moment together ‘cut, like a poem’ in a moment by moment reaction. I am so happy and grateful for these words ‘A line in itself says nothing. But if you/use it to say something it says what you wish.’ So perfectly does it sum up what I hope I have done in this response.

> I will leave you here. I didn’t want to ask you questions about the poems, I simply wanted to live and (re)act and (re)spond to what you had written. And I hope that you saw

Response as review

Moments captured

Obliteration in  a line

                                                           Toward Passion According

                                                                         Yours Truly,                                                                                   Tawnya

~

 Dear Tawnya,

> When I received your email asking me to respond to your response to my poems I was full of excitement, feeling honoured that someone had engaged with my work and wanted to engage with me as a consequence—and then my trepidation set in—how much are these poems my own? I wondered. I began worrying at the edges of a half-remembered something: John Ashbery, in interview, trying to explain his relationship with time and how poems from back then, whenever, have slipped—are continually—slipping away from him, no longer belong to him, despite being reminded and asked of specifics.

> Now, I feel very removed from the (my?) work, as I read your response to the epigraph—I don’t have a copy of the pamphlet here, can’t remember the exact words of the quote—I can’t quite remember it. But I am taken by the Jenny Boully quote you cite—not a name I know, but a feeling I recognise—I like the quote very much. I think I agree.

> I’m pleased that one of your motivations was to capture your own response, moment by moment, as you read—I instinctively approached your letter in the same way; didn’t want to begin reading until I was ready to write in response.

> However, I must be honest now: you respond to my poems, and I cannot write instantaneously—I have to read, heart beating—feeling embarrassed and nervous——

> I’m really struck by—because in all honesty it makes me feel a little uneasy—your phrase ‘as a woman’. In hindsight, I think that my own relationship with ‘woman’, or maybe my relationship with myself ‘as a woman’, at the time of writing this pamphlet was much more settled than it currently is—which I don’t think is to say that it was settled, even then. At the start of your letter you mention the epigraph from Luce Irigaray, and what I think is most interesting about the book that it comes from (Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzche) is that—it feels, to me at least—or felt, at the time—I may be/have been really wrong—that in this text she is trying to undo, or rethink and make some reparations for, the infamous essentialism of her earlier work. Like she’s asking for forgiveness maybe, though I’d have to return to the text to point out where and how I think she’s doing that. Being ‘woman’ is so torn—historically such a marginalised position, but nonetheless still constructed of such artifice, whether wielded for empowerment or subjugation. Denise Riley’s Am I That Name? really helped me to locate my instincts in something like feeling (‘it is called feeling but is its real name thought?’ is a line of hers I often think) somewhere like ‘knowledge’? I often wish I’d read that book sooner.

> I’m relieved that you jumped forward to the notes section and saw that some of my lines are quotes! When I’m writing I always feel like, if there’s a thought I’ve been circling around, or something I’ve been trying to formulate for ages and it’s just not coming out right, if I come across my exact feeling in someone else’s poem then that serendipity should be honoured, and so I do often quote and credit other poets. So, I suppose I do often see connections, in response to your question. I think the art I love the most is the art that sends my mind spinning off in a million different referential directions all at once.

> Your response to ‘Lyrical Dance’ is so interesting to me, because I have actually been thinking of it lately. Studying for my literature MA, I’ve been reading lyric theory. I suppose I’ve been thinking about the poem because, my first thought, when I started reading this stuff, was—oh no, what have I done! I’ve written something ridiculous because I didn’t know anything about lyric. But the more I read and the more I learn, I think, actually, feelingly, I got it (something?), even then, from the poetry, not the theory—and so I am learning (even if retrospectively) to trust my instincts, and so your response to this poem, especially, comes at the perfect time. I am so pleased it speaks to you in the way you describe. It’s so strange to think of the generalised-specific reader-‘you’ actually being someone—being you!

> Thank you for engaging with me in this way, and bringing my poems back to me differently. Can I quote you? ‘I am so happy and grateful for these words’. I hope you find my response to your response heartening, as I have found yours.

Yours truly,

Jazmine

~

Toward Passion According is out now and available to purchase via Zarf Editions.

~

Text: Tawnya Renelle and Jazmine Linklater

Image: Zarf Editions

Published: 12/1/20

[enlightenedcomplexity-blog]

Kaptain Kool

I grew up in rural Rochester Michigan. It’s the type of place you think of when you hear the word Midwestern. Everyone was the pretty much the same, did the same thing, went to the same school. I was right in the groove of everything and went with the flow because it was all I knew. What did this include? Catholic school, football, basketball, baseball, going to church, and going to someone’s birthday every other weekend. Or so it seemed that way. When 2008 came my family decided to move permanently to Florida. It wasn’t as traumatizing as one might think only because I travelled here my whole life. What was kind of traumatizing was the cultural upbringing I had with my mom’s side of the family. I feel like family is the root of where you learn your morals. This is where my ideals come in related to the readings.

Where I was from, everyone earned what they had and even if the generation before had money, nobody really made it that noticeable. Knowing the value of a dollar, if you earn your own money then spending it however you’d like is… cool. As I got older, I saw how life was so much easier for the kids that were handed everything. I have been well off my whole life but what my parents did was make me work for what I have. Everyone has different situations, but in mine, I feel like having “skin in the game” makes you hungrier to get what you want and also makes you appreciate it that much more when you have it. I think that seeing this common theme in a lot of my friends made me lazy until I realized that it was given to them rather than working for it. Cars, school, lavish 3 hour meals at expensive restaurants the list goes on. Even being surrounded by the mentality that everything will be taken care of makes me less motivated. My grandpa from Sicily also opened up my eyes to this way of being, way of thinking. Coming from Italy with a couple hundred dollars, all he did was grind. Even after he made it, at 82, he still works.

There was something he told me when I was young and it wasn’t until I matured that I understood it. He said that you are the product of your surrounding and the 5 people you hang around most are ultimately who you are. I don’t think this could be more accurate. This state of mind was mainly in high school and transitioning into college. I knew my parents wouldn’t hand me anything so I had to actually make a move to get what I wanted. My parents have always tried to help me with growing up but sometimes you don’t want to hear it. “Go to that event and meet new people”, “read these books to open your mind to new things”, “go get a job at the tennis club”, “start meeting your teachers”, “get out of your room when you study”…. Ultimately I believe that whatever your stance is on any given situation/thought is how you interpret it and how you take action on it, if any action at all. “As We [contemplatives] … are those who really continually fashion something that had not been there before: the whole eternally growing world of valuations, colors, accents, perspectives, scales, affirmations, and negations. … Whatever has value in our world now does not have value in itself, according to its nature—nature is always value-less—but has been given value at some time, as a present—and it was we who gave and bestowed it. Only we have created the world that concerns man! (Nietzsche). I interpret this quote as people can make whatever they have in life as important or unimportant as they feel. Take for example the idea of sex. By some it is a sacred act, only performed when the time calls for it. This can be marriage, anniversary, whatever. For others, sex is a pleasurable act that can be done whenever they feel the need to. So which is the correct way of thinking? Neither! I think this is what Nietzsche was trying to push (among other things) that you don’t have to let someone define what you do as right or wrong, cool or uncool, holy or unholy. What’s cool is making your own definition of your own life. As Gore Vidal said it “Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzche talks about humans being on a constant tightrope. “Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superhuman- a rope over an abyss.” I think the animal part is the way of our human nature seeking constant homeostasis and being comfortable. Whether it’s, studying for something hard, speaking in front of others, or talking to the pretty girl, humans naturally want to remain comfortable. This is why I think many resort to drugs or other pleasure seeking things to escape reality (the hard stuff). This is the animal side. The other side is the superhuman. Achieving feats that take hard work. We have seen these (almost) literally superhumans in our past before. Let’s look at Steve Jobs. Not everyone will reach this level of success (in monetary value or fame). “All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man?” But was Jobs really cool? Jobs took the ideals of what Woz made up and presented them to the masses. Jobs was good at this but he was never content with what was at hand, always continuing to fins the next best thing. If we look at Woz, he could sit in his little space making computer parts for weeks on end and was happy in the realm that he was in, he accepted it. Woz had no “end” goal but created because deep in his soul, that’s what he wanted, even needed to be satiated.

Tennis was the only sport where I spent long hours perfecting my game to go on and compete. I was on a tightrope in the beginning. Seeing the good players at the club and where I wanted to be was a big leap. With that being said, I knew that I had to do more than what my opponents at my level were doing to be a better player. Instead of staying at one place, I shortened my learning curve by doing one thing I could do by myself in tennis… Serving. I showed up an hour before tennis practice started when nobody was there and took out the big basket of balls just to work on my serving. Then practice started. The people I practiced with and I went through our drills and conditioning, and when everyone packed up to leave, I stayed another hour to work on serving. Some days I really wanted to not stay the extra hour. I knew by practicing my serve I would have an advantage combined with my height to give my game the extra push to go to the next level. Several months went by and sure enough my serves got so good that winning games, even matches became a lot easier. My tightrope was either being complacent or getting to the next level that required a lot of work. But this didn’t mean that I was improving my game for approval by my parents or coaches. Even more, I knew that I wasn’t going to play D1 at a college either. I did it because I simply liked the physical/mental challenge.

This was a snowball effect for a lot of other things I did too. For anything you want to accomplish, consistent dedicated time is required. I translated this into my studies and my relationship with my parents. I nurtured the relationship with my parents by setting aside time each week with my mom and dad to do things that we both enjoyed. This led to them wanting to help me more with any financial needs that I had as well as being more interested in each other’s life. As cliché as it sounds, I also improved my grades. I half-assed a lot of things in high school and got away with a B, sometimes an A, but towards the end of high school it wasn’t working. So, as I did with my other ventures, I set away dedicated time for my classes and slowly got my grades up. Honestly this was probably the hardest one because the subjects we were learning seemed so pointless and had little to know value outside the classroom.

Go out and be cool. 

[sublimeredviolin]

Depends of my mood... are so many things I like or to think of: Interesting facts, difficult subjects to understand where learning is defined as a process that implies altering the existing skills and to acquire new types of information; despite loving art, I find everything in physics could be applied to one or more real life examples and this is a brilliant subject; media studies, business studies, various languages, English literature, exploring into the realm Nothingness is one of my absolute favorite things to discuss, Nietzche and his idea of the super-human, things like quantum tunneling, wave particle duality, anything that can breakdown complex structure for simple minds etc. I also like stuff that are actually worth looking into (what someone's brain fails to understand) I used to like sacred geometry, but not anymore. Astrophysics is very interesting, art history, good music, good humor or jokes, how animal kingdom can teach us a thing or two since are capable of great depth of emotion and complex systems of social cooperation, they also have a point of view etc. And not at least Literary devices: Accumulation, Analogy, Anaphora, Aside, Allusion, Archaism, Bathos, Blank Verse, Caesura, Cacophony, Digression, Dramatic Irony, Ethos, Eristic, Eulogy, Expletive, Elision, Epizeuxis, Farce, Hamartia, Hubris, Haiku, Hypotaxis, Invective, Innuendo, Induction, Isocolon, Mood, Motif, Nemesis, Naturalism, Logos, Litotes, Pun, Prosody, Paradox, Perspective, Parataxis, Pedantic, Sestina, Sarcasm, Semantic, Rhetoric, Rising Action, Simile, Utopia, Vignette, Tmesis, Truism, Zeugma etc.        

[beengonetoolong]

Back to Euthyphro so I can explain to myself why I suddenly truly believed in God in a stuffy little classroom when I’ve been alive and looking for years. So again, Euthyphro is a self-proclaimed prophet of ancient greek religion, so he believes the Olympian gods. It is important that, unlike other religions that believe in multiple gods, like Hinduism, the religion of ancient Greece held that there really were different, distinct, deities. Hinduism, which is interesting in this context, has multiple deities but because it does not claim to understand the characteristics of the divine, or “brahma”, so the deities are personal connections to the same ultimate reality, or underlying reality. There is an important distinction between those ideas, an ultimate reality, a true form of the divine, and the Greek gods. Xenophanes (Of Colophon {i mean who else yeah} was born 570 BC didn’t get to hear about Christ) (Which makes it more persuasive that God can be found in each individual if they follow the path of logic) (I’ll get to love and caring and all that icky stuff later) (It’s not icky it’s important) (Anyway) is also accredited with “One god, greatest among gods and men, not at all like mortals in form and thought.” He was particularly against the things that Homer wrote (Iliad, the Odyssey) made the Greek gods and the Greek concept of the divine into a really shiny unrealistic soap opera. (1) (“But what do we behold when, no longer led and protected by the hand of Homer, we stride back into the pre-Homeric world?” -Nietzche, Homer’s Contest). 

If horses had hands, (sorry what a terrible way to start a sentence damn) or oxen or lions, or if they could draw with their hands and produce works as men do (symbolic thought) then horses would draw figures of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and each would render the bodies to be of the same frame that each of them had (Also credited to Xenophanes). 

Homer’s Greek gods were fighting all the time, desensitized to violence. Rather like another type of being we know. 

Why must the Greek sculptor give form again and again to war and combat in innumerable repetitions: distended human bodies, their sinews tense with hatred or with the arrogance of triumph; writhing bodies, wounded; dying bodies, expiring? Why did the whole Greek world exult over the combat scenes of the Iliad?

 (2) (I fear that we do not understand these in a sufficiently “Greek” manner; indeed, that we should shudder if we were ever to understand them “in Greek”)

But what lies beyond the Homeric world, as the womb of everything Hellenic? For in that world the extraordinary artistic precision, calm, and purity of the lines raise us above mere contents: through an artistic depiction the colors seem lighter, milder, warmer; and in this colorful warm light men appear better and more sympathetic. (Nietzche, Homer’s Contest) 

[This goes on to the quote in parentheses that is 1]

If Xenophanes doesn’t roll in his grave, I think he was about as fed up with media (of sorts) desensitizing the world to violence, as Suzanne Collins. Basically. But Xenophanes goes on, saying that the objects of our media, and the objects of our God or our gods, are usually false praises to ourselves. The Greek gods portrayed in the Iliad and the Odyssey were not divine, they were Degrassi. 

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Princess Principal 1 | Youkai Apato 2 | 7O3X 2 | Mahoujin Guru Guru 1 | Classroom of the Elite 1 | Saiyuki Reload Blast 2

Princess Principal 1

Welp, it’s a war plot, which normally fares badly with me, but it looks like female anime James Bond, which normally goes down well with me because I loved the Alex Rider and Young Bond series growing up.

Wah? It-It’s English!

Wa-hey! Kajiura. That probably explains the English song (because wasn’t he on Re:Creators too?). Update: No, Re:Creators has Hiroyuki Sawano.

Sometimes this is England, sometimes this is Germany. It’s strange exactly how well the German and English parts go together.

Black Lizard? Like Edogawa Rampo’s phantom thief?

That metal object called Cavorite…it reminds me of Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing. Haven’t read it, but I love the style of it.

*shakes head* Only in anime would you have ninjas in steampunk London.

Oh gosh, lil bun girl’s voice is whiny and my ep keeps freezing for some reason that isn’t buffering but otherwise I’m impressed. It’s solid in most ways, and the music is perfect for it! It might be just the thing I need to brighten up my season alongside Katsugeki.

Amy Anderson is an English name so I don’t take much issue with it, but it just sounds a lil’ cliché.

There’s CGI in this, but it’s hard to spot because it’s disguised so well.

Who the heck is Kimble? Update: They explain who he is later…

The last man that gets his butt kicked by the ninja girl…LOL.

This ED is English, too...but what the heck is a “dancy conspiracy”?

Youkai Apato 2

I noticed Yushi used haikei (Dear Sir...) which is very formal.

I swore “cigar” was referring to giving Reimei one, but heck. Cigar is his dog…wolf…canine, dangit.

Antiquary? Eyepatch man has no real name???

Oh gosh. Please just get me out of here, I’m not interested in Hard Drinking Party Girl number 384123847098…

Long haired Hase!!! Oh. His name’s Ryu? Okay then.

H-Hey, this just stated that being a weeb is a two way street. It’s vaguely reassuring, actually…

The anime staff didn’t even bother to show Yushi stopping the bleeding. So was it Yushi or was it the removal of the spirit that stopped the bleeding, or what, exactly?

Why are you worried, Akira???

The lunch is from Ruriko, isn’t it?

In the end, I think I’ll say (and I think Yushi would say too) Ruriko is best girl.

Kuri? So that’s the kid’s name…

There’s something ultra sad about Yushi going, “What is a mother, anyway?”

This is still the subpar show it was last week, but it’s a keeper until I decide the lineup. I did indeed get my long-haired Hase, which is a bonus.

7O3X 2

Urgh, they bring the memories of the first ep right back. Can people please stop using fanservice as an incentive to watch more, as engrossing as it may be for certain parts of the audience?

There appears to be someone shoving Mari from behind at the end of the OP…

Wasn’t Napoleon born in Corsica?...Yup.

You gave a question about an anime term…in anime. *rolls eyes* That’s real bottom of the barrel stuff, but the answer is “absolute territory” (zettai ryouiki).

That’s cute, Shiki has an electronic dictionary…

Holy moly! The zettai ryouiki joke worked on me! Plus Gakuto likes zettai ryouiki! Guh!!!

Zettai ryouiki works less and less the more you see it, like a joke. So a zettai ryouiki gag would naturally be the same.

Actually, I think quiz bowl isn’t that popular with girls because some girls are afraid to be geeks, as unfortunate as that is. It kills diversity in certain circles…like the IT industry…

There seems to be a blanket of sadness over this reunion between Mari and her friend.

“Home field”. Dang, opposite answer!

Cache what? Oh, uh, i-it’s a type of wraparound clothing…I know that style, I just didn’t know it had a name.

Recession? Oh dangit! I studied stagflation a few months ago! It happened during the 1970s in America, which is one factor as to why Japan became such an economic powerhouse at the time.

English folk songs? (Really?) I dunno who wrote them, so…I learnt something today.

So Mikuriya Chisato (just another darned reason to watch this show) is a fairly typical shonen rival. Smug as all get out. Not like I’m cursing myself, he’s not hot but he’s easy on the eyes…

Dangit Mikuriya! I was gonna Mallory too! The question is who said “Because it’s therez’ to “Why climb Mount Everest?”, right?...The question is “Why climb the mountain?”, but same diff, people.

Ramsar Convention? Never heard of it.

Sugar honey ice tea, this one seems to be a group based on historical stuff. Congress Dances appears to be a movie based on the Congress of Vienna.

LOL, the scat question was funny just from the strange sounds. The noises that should have followed “doo bee doo bee” must’ve been “doo ba doo ba” then.

Oh! “In the manner of the chapel” is acapella! I thought it looked like something I knew. (Hah, it does help for me to be a former pianist sometimes, eh?)

Dangit, I thought I knew the Newton one, but I blanked out. CV stands for “character voice” – naturally I’d know that one.

Ah, the tale of the underdog. Always makes for riveting drama, it does.

Gahaha! I was completely lost on the literature questions, but man, I laughed so hard at the zettai ryouiki joke. Seems they were building up to something after all. Plus, Chisato’s so amazed, I laugh even harder, that smug butt.

Oh yeah, I wonder why Shiki was in his school uniform, even though Mari wasn’t?

The silhouette from last time is present. Probably a transfer student into Buzou who’ll help the quiz team, knowing anime…There’s Yukirin (or whatever her name is), with the glasses on her head and the scarf around her neck.

“After stripes, Fukami’s preferred-” – I’d presume that’s “After stripes, Fukami’s preferred style of headband is what?” or something like that. You can see she’s wearing an American flag headband in this segment, so I’d say stars or plain pink (like you can see sometimes, like in the ED). Wha-huh? Why does Gakuto know that??? Oh no. Does that mean it was a fanservice question, about Fukami’s panties??? Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, noooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*panting and trying to recover from the previous realisation* This show’s boilerplate. It’s got good things to offer, but it also has…*shudders* fanservice. Persistent fanservice. Depending on how bad the new entries this week are (the entries in question are Mahoujin Guru Guru, Classroom of the Elite and Gamers), there may be a chance for this to go on hold (because that’s what I do to shows I can’t be certain about).

Mahoujin Guru Guru 1

ANN said this was alright, so I’m using it to determine whether I should stick on with some of my boilerplate shows (specifically Hina Logi, which doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy inside despite its attempts at schoolgirl SoL, 7O3X, which is fun to play with but has fanservice and Youkai Apato, which is overall lacking).

Holy anime, Batman! This thing’s 24 minutes! (I kinda knew that from ANN categorising it as such, but that still had an element of surprise when I saw it on CR.)

The cutesy artstyle doesn’t suit this show. It would be better doing a Gugure! or OPM thing with switching between two styles (chibi and detailed).

Uh, subbers? Why is “Boering” “Jimina”???...Oh, okay. Jimina can mean a lot of different things when in different contexts, but it would mean “boring” in this context, so they went with a deliberate typo on “boring”. I see.

It’s already making me laugh at the mention that this sign would make great firewood. I foresee great things from this show.

Bado’s basically an “I took an arrow to the knee” guy, right?

“No reply. It’s just a corpse.” – LOL.

Oh gosh. Not the magic granny! (sarcastic)

Yeah, I kinda lost interest, but that’s because this is meant to riff off RPGs and ye olde fantasy, right?

You can’t just ride on weird faces alone to carry your humour. I can see how this is funny, but I’m not laughing simply because I find the overreliance of funny faces to convey humour is a bit overused.

Oh. They did it again. Ainshent = Ancient.

Suddenly, these guys go the DN Angel route with the training. Well, it’s better to start in medias res than to have to train from no power at all…

I think it works better with dramatic voice acting. Read the “the money covers that” quickly like the “spoken by” of an ad, then read the “all you get is cash!” with a voice that you use to tell scary stories…and you’re set.

Oh gosh. It’s fanservice, and right after I was complaining about it in 7O3X too…

Arabian blonde girl is so shiny, I can’t see…*bumps into something*

See? I knew he’d take the sword! Not only do they spoil that in the promo material and the eyecatch, Heroes Prefer Swords (to quote TV Tropes)!

Okay, Karamatsu-Nike. Hold up.

No, the counter guy said it was a heavy iron sword, right?

A-hey. So Nike switched to the dagger? Yeah, I thought I saw that dagger previously too, but he’ll probably get the sword someday…or maybe he just bought both. I don’t give any cares for these guys.*shrugs*

This thing is produced well, but mmhmm. I saw an inbetween fram of bishie eyes, and I like me some bishie eyes.

Wait, the monster always wanted to do a monologue? Guess that’s all kinds of villains’ shtick, not just big baddies. (almost laughed, but that kind of joke dies too quickly)

Was that mage perhaps…*gasps* Magic Granny? Noooooooooooooo!

When did he notice her?! (almost laughs, but not quite)

There’s a Laughing Man, an Anpanman and the word shippai (failure).

Well, as a comedy it fares better than Hina Logi, but because it’s a high fantasy parody, it’s sucking at its own job. Sorry, but I’m going to put you on hold. I think I need to reevaluate you with the sound on. Sometimes, I felt like I should laugh, but didn’t because I genuinely couldn’t find a reason to, either, which is kinda rare for me when it comes to comedy. I can see why people like it though.

Classroom of the Elite 1

For some reason, this has glowing reviews, so…let’s see what the hype is about.

Okay, you’re quoting Nietzche. *side eyes* If there’s two things I know about Nietzche, it’s 1) he has some good quotes under his name and 2) he always comments on the state of humanity’s evil. I love to quote the “if you stare into the abyss…” thing, so at least you have my attention.

Classroom of the Elite…Episode…what? It’s a Classroom of the Elite episode. We know that already.

*Googles furiously* I knew it! “Heaven does not make one person above or below another” is a Fukuzawa quote (from An Encouragement of Learning, which I had to learn about from nkhrchy)! However, using two quotes in succession has less effect than just one.

I think it is in my country, you get fined ifyou get caught not giving up your seat to those who need it (including elderly people), so I see the girl’s viewpoint more.

Oh great. *sighs* I start to wonder where the show will go as soon as I see Seiji Kishi. All of the man’s works I’ve seen so far are hit or miss. Ranpo Kitan had a terrible plot but eyecatching visuals, while Tsukigakirei was plodding enough to make me yell at the screen a lot.

Was that a bear in a uniform? I wanna see a bear in a uniform the same way as Mechazawa (Cromartie)!

Man, these pink eyes are weird.

This brunette seems to be a future class rep. You can see it written all over his mannerisms and dialogue…which is exactly what protag thought too, it seems.

The phone’s like a PayPass…?

Horikita? Like that 3rd year?

Fairy Mart, LOL.

*sighs* Of course he’d focus on her assets…urgh.

Doesn’t “uji” mean something along the lines of “surname”, come to think of it?

“Quilsilver” (sic).

Gah-hah (half laughing), it looks like Starbucks! Guess that’s not surprising, knowing how some girls are into their skinny mocha lattes with the soy milk and quinoa. Then again, that’s stereotyping, so that’s mean.

Ayanokouji is hard to read, but I can predict his thought process like we’re completely in sync (which I guess is meant to happen in a show like this). Horikita’s pretty expressionless too, meaning this comes off similar to Sagrada Reset – there’s potential, but the quality of the character writing is hard to determine.

I think Horikita suspects Kushida wants to hang off the dudes. Like something out of Legally Blonde.

Only a dude writer would make a girl mention her underwear so casually…*grumbles*

Since I read ANN prior to watching this ep, I knew the twist, but it was handled competently enough.

“Sapere aude” appeared during the ED. It means “dare to know”, and was first mentioned by Immanuel Kant. I learnt about it in politics, and heck, for a series that relies on lofty quotes like this, it does make sense to include it.

The words in the ED, if not Japanese, are German and Latin, along with a sentence or two of French and some English (because I spotted “…the root of evil”).

This style, that involves a lot of pink…I should’ve known is was Seiji Kishi and Lerche. It vaguely smacks of Ranpo Kitan!

I’m not sure what way this is going to go, but I can say I’m at least intrigued because there does seem to be some strong writing behind this. That means Hina Logi is going on hold.

Saiyuki Reload Blast 2

The gangster feel of this is great, y’know? The perfect way to kick back any day. (Unfortunately, if you want to know how I’m going on Gangsta, I still have it on hold…that was a lil’ subpar compared to what I wanted to cling to that season.)

Just out of interest… Well, here’s a better indication. That’s a pretty long road trip. However, the distance between Adelaide and Darwin (both Australian cities) is longer (3030.61 km or 1883.13 miles or 1636.4 nautical miles if measuring by driving distance on the same site as that second link), so…the Saiyuki guys have no right to complain.

“A salt lake…So a lake filled with salt water.” – You don’t say…I bet there’s a specialised term for that in Japanese, but still.

Float? Like the Dead Sea?

It’s funny how these guys use both magic and science. It’s something I’ve been trying to write ever since “The Future is Crimson”, because being able to combine both into a show smoothly indicates you’re a great writer (at least, in my opinion).

Like, enough with the camera blood splatter and “shooting through” the camera. Otherwise, I’m happy with this battle scene.

Seeing ancient China through a Japanese person’s eyes instead of through my parents’ Chinese version of jidaigeki-style live action dramas is…really something else. I think that’s one reason I’m so attached to this. (In case you’re wondering, yes. My parents watch a lot of old Chinese live action dramas. My dad especially is fond of things involving Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping if not those weird period dramas I just mentioned.)

They have credit cards in this period. That’s…hilarious! Then again, we’re talking about dudes with a dragon/jeep and a gun in what seems to be ancient China. Go, anime! (partially halfhearted) (shakes head knowingly*

The more the enemy lady (who appears to be Gyokumen) talks, the more I think of Queen Beryl from Sailor Moon and the more I get hit in the nostalgia. Ah, the 90s. Those were some good days of anime.

Gahhaha, the Sanzo party is full of debauchery, yet I can see why they’ve spawned so many anime seasons and specials.

“Looks like you did get here in the nick of time.”

The Sanzo party sound so unmotivated when they go, “Urasai”.

These extra things really ain’t funny, but…well, it’s almost like seeing an AU of these guys in the modern day. Including, and up to, watermelon smashing. An anime can’t go without at least one watermelon smashing scene if it’s got a beach episode...or it’s summer, which is just a big excuse to show a beach scenario anyway.

Update: After much thought, I regret to say that 7O3X and Youkai Apato are going on hold. The Reflection, which I intended to check out originally, will probably be out on the 29th while I still have Gamers! on tap next.