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stallings-am · 5 months ago

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Conventionsss

When it comes to Japanese culture, “True Otaku: The Documentary,” holds a good encompassing synopsis of what tends to be endorsed within westernized conventions. Specifically, we can recognize how influential American society has been on the makeup of subgenres within the otaku community. The documentary takes a deep dive into the creative minds and process behind interpretations of anime with respect to their fandoms: cosplays, clubs, and fan services. Conventions act as a sanction for which these aspects can be expressed within a safe environment, while also serving as a way for fandom culture to cultivate into a larger-than-life atmosphere. Nicole, the host, analyzes these depictions of identity in retrospect to the Japanese-oriented group of otakus as a way to obtain an understanding of this diverse group.

To further investigate this central idea, Nicole provides an essential question that is discussed in the contents of our own class, “What is an otaku?” The responses following this question tend to deviate greatly between a multitude of people. However, one core definition given included an individual who partakes in Japanese pop-culture to find a sense of community with those that share similar interests to them. In terms of our lecture definitions, this desire to connect with others utilizing the fandom world falls in line with the societal concept of “animalization.” This results from the lack of a grand narrative, a nationalistic idea that centers on finding a purpose for existence through working towards a utopian society, which creates a common goal for a set of people that derive from the same past. Thus, without this grand narrative people now seek a feeling of wholeness through a pack mentality of animalization. To feel as though they are making a difference and are contributing to their future they turn to hobbies like conventions where they can come together as one. It is interesting to recognize how Americans, in order to complete that animalization, turn towards Japanese culture and regard it as a way to feel fulfilled in their lives.

Additionally, the otaku community finds soundness through the personalization of the work they are consuming. This is notable through customizing anime and manga to center around their intepretations, which is seen especially in the concept of cosplays. Artists and fans alike devote time to creating costumes of characters to engage with the work to feel as both the producer and user of what they are indulging in. Thus, allows them to demonstrate the appeal of being an otaku.

Consequently, the intense soft powers of Japan are established and effectively aids their economic systems by advancing their reaches of anime and manga towards western outlooks. These soft powers also extend to the marketing of the Lolita style, which is mentioned in the documentary. In my opinion, the Lolita genre of Japanese pop-culture isn’t totally affiliated with anime or manga, yet there tends to be a blurred line where fans tend to regard this style as a characteristic of certain anime. Moreover, Lolita is consistently depicted throughout the convention just because of its usage in Japan as a whole, and not necessarily due to its participation in created works.

When it comes to my own interactions with otakus, I would classify the majority of otakus as pretty mild, which is also important to mention as otakus tend to disassociate themselves from actually ever enacting the sexual scenarios normally associated with them. I will say I am against people who fetishize gay relationships as to fantasize what it would be like in that position. It is quite harmful for the LGBTQ+ community and falsifies the correlation of gender, sex, and sexualization in gay relationships. Besides that, I have contributed to the otaku community by cosplaying as Misa Amane from Death Note and a female version of Monokuma from Danganronpa. Some of my friends have cosplayed Misato Katsuragi from NGE and Yumeko Jabami from Kakegurui, which is fun to witness their creative process and the pictures they take from their productions. I think that participating in Japanese pop-culture is a nice experience and I hope to go to a convention in the future, especially after their overview through the documentary.

Me as Twilight Sparkle from "My Little Pony"

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grayyxv · 5 years ago

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A Comprehensive Analysis of Eustass 'Captain' Kid

I've been wanting to write this for awhile now as Kid is undoubtedly one of my favourite characters in One Piece. Also, I'm majoring in Psychology so I can't help but think about why I love his character so much.

Disclaimer: As we all know, Kid doesn't have much screentime so it's quite difficult to understand his character completely. So, whatever you read will be my own intepretation of his character (based on the little amount of scenes that he has). Of course, you don't have to agree with it but it might give you a bit of a different perspective!

So, withour further ado, let's begin!

*P.s I'll try to make it flow in but it might end up really messy so I apologize for that*

Note: NOT SPOILER FREE!!!

1. Assumptions

I guess I'll begin with some of the common assumptions of his character based on posts/videos I've seen about his character. They frequently refer to Kid as 'cruel' or 'heartless'. Basically, there are many negative remarks about his character that makes him seem like a total psychopath.

Their reasoning for this would be because:

- He mentioned that he would kill anyone would mocked him

- His high bounty = He's notorious & violent

- The way he acts makes him come off as a bloodthirsty pirate

From another standpoint, I can see why people might think that way about him. The way he speaks and acts does make him look villainous. In addition, his primary role in One Piece is to be Luffy's rival. (I'll expand on this point later.) So, one might think that his morals would contrast Luffy. Whereas Luffy is the kind and benevolent pirate, Kid is the 'bad guy' who is cruel and heartless. The question is, though Kid is rival character, why does that necessarily mean that he would be a bad guy? I strongly disagree that Kid is a psychopath and that he is heartless. Firstly, the term 'psychopath' shouldn't be used so loosely. A true psychopath would have no regard for other's feelings which is not true of Kid because he cares very much for his crew. On the other hand, Doflamingo would be a good example of a psychopath. Next, even if Kid WERE a psychopath, not all psychopaths are violent. So it'd be nice if people stopped misrepresenting psychopaths.

Now, if there is one thing I learned in psychology, is that people tend to make assumptions about a person's actions as part of their personal dispositions rather than because of situation. This would be the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE). What do I mean by this? Let's take a look at Kid's scenario. He mentioned killing people who mocked his dream. Killing people would make people automatically assume that Kid is 'violent'. But here is a different perspective, what if 'mocking him' had meant that they tried to start a fight with him? Provoking other people repeatedly would cause anybody to get angry. There are many other characters who acts this way as well. Sure, Luffy doesn't go as far as to kill them but I'm sure that many other characters do because they are PIRATES.

In contrast, I think of this situation as Kid standing up for himself. He believes in himself and he would beat anyone up who tells him otherwise. If you think about it, Luffy is kind of similar because he ends up fighting anyone who tries to stop him from attaining his goal.

That is pretty much all the assumptions that people make about his character. It's sad how they don't delve deeper but fret not!! I still have more to say.

2. Pre-Timeskip vs Timeskip Changes/Growth as a character

During Pre-timeskip, Kid is seen as overconfident. I actually agree with this statement quite a lot. His high bounty was a result of his reckless behaviour. He could easily triumph over anyone before the timeskip. That was when he started to become a little too full of himself. Consequently, he suffered heavy losses. His arm was taken by Shanks, his crew was utterly defeated by Kaido (curse you Apoo) and his reputation as the top supernova was instantly lost to Luffy. His true character development was in the Wano arc where we see how he starts to take a step back and re-evaluate his situation. The most obvious evidence for this was when he got captured in Udon. He was quiet (before Luffy's arrival) and deep in thought. So many things had happened to him, you could even argue that he was feeling slightly lost and helpless (not depressed) because he was utterly defeated. The motivation and drive he had in pre-timeskip was shattered- Until Luffy arrived of course. When Luffy arrived, he was battered and bruised but he was still ready to fight. Kid, who saw how Luffy still had his fighting spirit, was somehow inspired to keep on fighting. It's almost as if Luffy is Kid's drive to be stronger.

So, what does this all say about Kid?

I think that this makes his character believable as it can represent real life. There are some points in our lives where we could be the greatest but, sometimes, life can be pretty cruel too. If you get too cocky or overconfident, the world will punish you. I saw a comment that says Kid is Luffy but without the plot armour. That is very true. Kid isn't perfect. He made tons of crappy decisions and dealt which the consequences. I'd say he's as reckless as Luffy, perhaps LESS reckless than Luffy but he suffers more than Luffy does. While Luffy could bask in glory, all Kid got was the short end of the stick. I think that is the reason why I find Kid such an appealing character- because its an accurate representation of real life. Sometimes you can try as hard as someone else but you won't always get the spolight.

The other appealing aspect is his persistence. He made mistakes and bad decisions but he knows that he can't undo them and has to move on. Kid isn't as lucky as Luffy because he didn't have someone like Rayleigh to train him so, he had to put in more effort somehow. The main point is, he had to learn everything the hard way. Yet, he still strives to be the best which is very befitting of a rival character.

3. interactions & Personality

Another thing I frequently see when people Kid and Luffy is that: People say that while Kid makes enemies, Luffy makes allies which is why he has so much support from others around him. I was thinking about this a lot and I can't help but disgaree. I saw another post where they mentioned Kid's MBTI personality is INFJ which made me think even more about that statement. From here on, I will include several headcanons about his character as well.

Let me offer you a different perspective. Perhaps Kid isn't good at expressing his feelings. The way he speaks may come off as cold which makes other people dislike him because they think he is rude whereas he simply doesn't know how to communicate with others very well. Luffy is no doubt an extrovert, seeing how he is easily able to interact with others. Kid on the other hand, if he is an introvert, it could be an explaination to why he doesn't have many interactions with others. I don't see him as someone who's very 'sociable'. So he could experience some difficulty when communicating his feelings. He's shown to be closer to his crew more than anyone else. He is deeply respected by his crewmates because he is sensitive to their needs as well. He isn't the tyrant that everyone paints him to be, he earned that respect by first respecting his crewmates. Also, he would essentially DIE for any of his crewmates. This part is quite self explainatory if you've read the chapter where they revealed what happened to Kid and Killer in Wano.

I just want to add that while Killer suffered so much in Wano, imagine how much it hurt Kid to see his first mate suffer and how he couldn't do anything about it. The expression on his face is perfectly the anger he had towards Kaido, Apoo and more importantly, HIMSELF for not being strong enough. Yet, people call him heartless though he would literally die for Killer.

But anyways, Kid is an excellent listener and he cares very deeply for people he is close to. I just think he's bad at communicating. Look at the way he talks to Luffy. In Wano, you can see how Kid actually does LIKE Luffy as a rival. He just has trouble expressing himself. Anyways, this is just a headcanon but I think that he's rather sensitive to other's feelings- Especially when it comes to his crew. I really like the idea that he's an INFJ because he seems more like the 'advocate' type of character. I still think he makes a very good leader but his approach would contrast Luffy's.

4. Intelligence

I could probaly go on forever about why I love Kid but this is another thing that I see about Kid and kind of annoys me. I'm not sure why everyone seems to think he's a dumbass. Like REALLY. I think he's pretty intelligent. He even kept tabs on the whole SMILE situation and Doflamingo and planned the alliance. He IS intelligent but his recklessness just makes him seem like an idiot.

Kid isn't perfect, he is flawed just like a real human being would be. By no means is he a GOOD person but I don't think he is as 'cruel' or 'bad' as people paint him to be. He cares a lot for his crew. He is very driven by his own personal values and he wouldn't 'change' for anyone. He believes in himself and if anyone tells him otherwise, he would simply beat them up. He isn't happy go lucky like Luffy, he is much deeper than that. He would consider his options and plan- to a certain extent because he is also quite idealistic. Hence, the reason why I feel like his character is such an interesting one is because there is a lot of opportunity for him to grow and stray away from stereotypical anime character traits. His character is believable because his personality is realistic, it could reflect a real human being.

TLDR: Stop sleeping on Kid.

With that, thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Anyways, that's it for now! I'll make a part 2 if I feel like I want to add something. If people like this, I'll consider making another analysis for other characters. Currently I have Law, Ace and Sabo planned in mind but we'll see how it goes.

Thanks for reading!

#one piece #eustass kid #eustass kidd #kidlaw #killerkid #kid pirates #eustass captain kid

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autumn-foxfire · 4 years ago

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I’ve been staying away from anti-hawks takes for a while now, but I recently read a meta that seemed interesting at first, but just got so- stupid? Halfway through? I don’t want to give too much away as to not reveal the author, but it was comparing Shigs and Hawks, which is cool, cause they got a lot of parallels. It made a lot of good points at first, but halfway through it started going off on how Hawks apparently dehumanizes people (1/4)

and sees things as only black and white (even though we have lots of evidence to prove that that isn’t the case)? What’s worse it that they’ll go out of the way to say that Hawks isn’t a “better victim” of abuse than members of the league because he doesn’t externalize his emotions and then turn around and imply that he’s a “bad victim” because apparently, cooperating with the HPSC instead of openly rebelling against them means that (2/4)

he’s a terrible person enabling their agenda (even though he’s shown to question them multiple times)? It just. It doesn’t make sense. I read a lot of metas like these after chap 267 came out and they were really emotionally draining. They made me feel like I was wrong for liking someone who was apparently some sort of sociopath by their long-winded explanations, and I actually relapsed in my depression for a while (3/4)

Edit: Well shoot, it didn’t copy the 4th part and I just deleted the post T-T Sorry about that anon but I did adress what you put in it at the bottom of my ask.

They had you in the first half, huh (I’m too depressed to meme)

I honestly don’t know where this interpretation of Hawks seeing things in black and white comes from. Hawks has shown us multiple times in canon that he does the opposite in my opinion. Like when he was first assigned the mission to inflitrate the league and he openly mocked them for presenting it as a choice even though they all knew Hawks could refuse, to me this reads as Hawks showing us his awareness of the HPSC’s more corrupt nature. And again when he questions them about allowing civilians to die at the hands of the villains just to futher his mission and then even goes as far as to defy that order because to him the lives of the civillians then were more important.

This isn’t Hawks seeing things in black and white, this is him seeing the grey situation he’s in and trying to do good anyway.

I’m also not sure why people believe he dehumanizes others too. If Hawks truly dehumanizes people, then surely he would have treated the civilians as a casualty of his mission and allowed them to die in the Hood fight because it furthered his mission. And surely he would have just arrested Twice and gave him to the police without looking back.

But he didn’t. Hawks saved the civilians at the expense of his mission and actively defied the orders that did dehumanize them. He also acknowledged Twice as being a good person and tried to reach out to him when he arrested him and offered to give him a helping hand after he had served his time because he wanted to guide him back onto a better path.

These aren’t the actions of someone who dehumanizes people.

I also really hate Hawks being considered a bad victim all because he isn’t defying his abusers in the way the same way that the LoV’s are. Mostly because I think it shows how people ignore or are blind to all the ways that Hawks does rebel against the HPSC. We’ve seen him defy orders and steal information from them already (already acts of rebellion) but I don’t think people realise how his public persona could be a way to stick it to the HPSC too.

This is just pure speculation but thinking about it, Hawks public persona probably isn’t the golden hero that the HPSC wanted when they trained him. Sure, Hawks stunts get him a lot of attention but a lot of it can be negative. We saw how other heroes and the crowd reacted when he spoke back at the billboard charts, most people thought he was rude and cocky. Endeavor even told him to apologise to the other heroes after.

It’s not a steller reputation to have and it’s certainly not one that would reflect well on the HPSC and I think it could be one of the reasons Hawks puts on the front.

Overall, I feel like people reduce Hawks complex character to really basic traits in order to fit him into neat boxes, either in an attempt to make sense of him or because they have a pre-existing bias towards the league.

I’m sorry that such meta made you feel that way anon, it really does feel bad when people say you should hate or condemn a characters actions and you just aren’t sure why, especially when the explanations they use just don’t make sense to you. Its because we intepret characters differently and we in particular interpret them a lot differently then the people who make more popular meta.

I hope my meta is more to your taste XD

...Second times the charm T-T I actually already answered this ask but then instead of pressing publish, I pressed the next page button just below it... *sigh*

#bnha #bnha hawks #hawks #bnha manga spoilers #thanks for the ask!!#I hope you don't mind me putting this in his tags #I spoke about Hawks a lot and I think others might need to hear this like you did #Anonymous

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT FOUNDERS

But with other types of startups you may win less by features and more by deals and marketing. But I think that's too constraining. One of the most justifiable types of lying adults do to kids. Most of the work I've done in the last ten years didn't exist when I was 10. Something comes over most people when they start writing. Few dissertations are read with pleasure, especially by their authors.1 I don't run for several days, I feel ill.2 Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas. This seems one of the reasons the early corporate raiders were so successful. And while there are many degrees of it.3 Opinions seem to be effectively infinite, at least for a small group, is the lows.

What surprised me the most is that everything was actually fairly predictable!4 Probably because small children are particularly horrified by it.5 If you're not allowed to implement new ideas, but also those ideas will increasingly be developed within startups rather than big companies.6 They expect to avoid that by raising more from investors. Most people like to be good at what you do. One reason people overreact to competitors is that they grow fast, and see if there's a super-pattern, a pattern to the patterns. Why? Your most basic advice to founders is just don't die, but the best founders are certainly capable of it.7 For Larry Page the most important things we've been working on standardizing are investment terms. Economic statistics are misleading because they ignore the value of community. But if you work hard and incrementally make it better, there is no limit to the number of startup people around you. Professors are especially interested in people who can help you.

Larry Page the most important. I mean has a different shape from kid curiosity. When you do, you've found an adult, whatever their age. So the best solution is to write your first draft the way you usually would, then afterward look at each sentence and ask Is this the way I'd say this if I found it at a garage sale, dirty and frameless, and with no idea at all. The good news is, plenty of successful startups talked less about choosing cofounders and more about how hard they worked to maintain their relationship.8 Not determined enough You need a lot of people, I like to work. What should you do?

Instead you'll be compelled to seek growth in other ways. He said it was that adults had to earn a living. If you want to be their research assistants so they can get into grad school, or to answer some question. He says the main reason is that the customer doesn't want what he thinks he wants.9 Founders who succeed quickly don't usually realize how lucky they were. Instead of trying to predict beforehand, so lots of people use. All investors, without exception, are more likely to make it. In a startup you can do. It's conventionally fixed at 21, but different people cross it at greatly varying ages.10 The first hint I had that teachers weren't omniscient came in sixth grade, after my father contradicted something I'd learned in school.

The whole field is uncomfortable in its own skin. The truth is common property. Be careful to copy what makes them congeal is experience. TV was still young in 1960; only 87% of households had it. This was, I thought; these impressive things seem easy to me; I must be pretty sharp. In your own projects you don't get taught much: you just work or don't work on whatever you want most of the time is work. These quotes about luck are not from founders whose startups failed. There have only been a handful of writers who can get away with zero self-discipline.11 If you're starting your own.12 One reason people overreact to competitors is that they drift just the right amount.

Notes

5 million cap, but Joshua Schachter tells me it was wiser for them, just as he or she would be rolling in their closets.

The state of technology, companies building lightweight clients have usually tried to explain that the feature was useless, but mediocre investors. Instead of earning the right mindset you will fail.

The founders want the valuation turns out to be so obsessed with being published.

Enterprise software—and to run spreadsheets on it, by decreasing the difference between good and bad measurers. The reason for the next investor.

Giant tax loopholes are definitely not a programmer would find it was putting local grocery stores out of them is that everyone gets really good at acting that way. That should probably pack investor meetings too closely, you'll have to assume it's bad to do some research online. In one way, be forthright with investors.

If you want to approach a specific firm, get rid of everyone else and put our worker on a hard technical problem. It will require more than investors. Some government agencies run venture funding groups, which is not a big effect on the side of the incompetence of newspapers is that we're not professional negotiators, and partly because they are in a world with antibiotics or air travel or an electric power grid than without, real income statistics calculated in the rest of the present, and for filters it's textual. They don't know yet what they're capable of.

Letter to Ottoline Morrell, December 1912. In many fields a year of focused work plus caring a lot is premature scaling—founders take a lesson from the example of a Linux box, a copy of K R, and cook on lowish heat for at least one of the biggest discoveries in any era if people can see how universally faces work by their prevalence in advertising. Geoff Ralston reports that in 1995, when Subject foo not to need common sense when intepreting it. The CPU weighed 3150 pounds, and made more that year from stock options, because we know nothing about the new economy during the entire period since the mid 1980s.

How to Make Wealth in Hackers Painters, what you learn about programming in Lisp. Ii. But no planes crash if your school sucks, and that don't scale.

I get the money so burdensome, that all metaphysics between Aristotle and 1783 had been a good open-source projects now that VCs play such games, books, newspapers, or b get your employer to renounce, in the latter. But while such trajectories may be that the web.

Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives were, we actively sought out people who'd failed out of business, A. This plan backfired with the earlier stage startups, but sword thrusts.

It was revoltingly familiar to anyone who had been with their decision—just that it is to let yourself feel it mid-twenties the people who chose the wrong side of making a good plan in 2001, but I managed to find may be overpaid. She was always good at design, Byrne's Euclid. Management consulting. A servant girl cost 600 Martial vi.

Some VCs will try to be room for something new if the selection process looked for different reasons. There need to know how to appeal to investors. If you're not trying to figure this out. There's a variant of the more accurate or at least notice duplication though, so they had to.

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longitud-de-onda · 5 years ago

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was rewatching narcos and in the scene where it’s javi’s call to make whether they should kill gacha or not, he tells his guy to kill so resolutely “dale plomo”. i just realised his decision was based on the fact that Helena was r^^^d by gacha and his gang and he wanted vengeance for her, hence him going with killing gacha... wdyt of javi and his attitude towards women?

BROOOO I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT JAVI AND HIS ATTITUDE TOWARDS WOMEN

like there are so many ways to intepret things....

i’m sort of closely representing one interpretation with un veneno but like there’s so many different ideas.

like javi and his fiancee that he left???

part of me is like, he had just joined the dea and thing were dangerous and he didn’t want to drag some woman into a life where things were unstable and chaotic

part of me is like, maybe he’s always had some commitment issues, maybe some past childhood issues?? something with his mom or dad?? and he feels like he can’t get close to someone without losing them/their love/their respect??? or that he feels he doesn’t deserve love? or that he feels that everyone deserves better than him, and he doesn’t understand that he’s worthy of love?????? that’s the one that hurts the most...

and then he’s in colombia and like, why does he fuck so many different women?? like there’s two categories of women. informants and prostitutes. some of which are one and the same.

with the brothels, he’s paying to have sex with people. and like, probably for emotional release? like there’s the women in season 2 that he’s seen with like three times. is there feelings there??? sometimes it’s hinted at but like?? he’s still paying her... she’s like ‘i write to forget’ and he’s like ‘forget what???’ and she’s like ‘the fact that i’m a sex worker you dumbass’ and he’s like ohhhhh so i think javi uses the sex workers to help him forget how alone he is?? let him feel needed and loved for a bit?

the informants confuse me a bit more? like

they’re informants, he can pay them for information, he doesn’t need to fuck the information out of them?? so like, he’s seducing the women cause he can and he likes it. and it’s not really free either, since he’s paying them for info.

and then there’s the prostitutes who are informants, like helena.

and i think helena is really interesting because like, their whole interaction basically is they fuck, then she’s like ‘javi you’re really good at fucking damn’ and he’s like ‘haha no’ and she’s like ‘its the truth’ then she goes ‘you’ve got a bachelor pad, you need a woman’ and he’s like ‘nah man, love my bro pad’ then tries to pay her and she’s all ‘nah, you’re not my client, and you don’t even know my real name’ and he’s like ‘its informant money, not client money, even though you didn’t give me info’

so what i gain from that is that he’s got some relationships that he can pretend are more but he’s always using the money thing as a distancing method.

plus it’s proof that he’s really fucking good at sex so there’s a reason for some of the women to start being in the weird boundary between paying for a service and something more

so in conclusion, javi drinks a whole lot of respect women juice and acutally cares about the wellbeing of the women he fucks and their own pleasure. i’m pretty sure the girl from s2e3 was more than okay with how he was doing her from behind. but he also doesn’t feel like he can get close with woman for some reason, be that a lot of personal insecurities, or just the instant association of sex and release.

and fanfic sometimes is written with the goal of trying to explain all of this

#anonymous #ask camila

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smilingperformer · 7 years ago

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SM077 - Thoughts

The end of Ula Ula Arc is here. It’s time for Satoshi to face the Grand Trial against Kuchinashi, the Dark Type Specialist!

I kinda realised I never mention episode titles in these posts, so starting today, I’ll write them down! It’s actually something that I want to talk about later during this post. So, time for the 77th episode of Pocket Monsters Sun & Moon: Kuchinashi’s Grand Trial! Lugarugan Awakens!!

We’re first shown Acerola taking some gifts to Kapu Bulul’s altair, while she wonders if Kuchinashi would be there doing his duty as well. Well, we’re not shown him to be there, but...

The bowl with flowers if left there as a gift by Kuchinashi. Acerola brought in the bowl of food. Acerola then finds Kuchinashi in the Battle Field, and says how he’s like a different man, having done his actual Kahuna duties. Kuchinashi just seems to imply he wanted to get it over with asap. Heh. The sunrise they’re looking at after the conversation (first screencap!) is so beautiful.

I must say, I like how each Grand Trial starts with the Kahuna/Island King/Queen going to pray at their specific Island Deity Altairs. It shows nice lore consistensy, and how it is Kahuna’s duty to follow specific traditions when starting out a Grand Trial. The Lore Nerd in me is pleased!

What’s also interesting about the first 2 mins of the episode is that they specifically show Satoshi putting the Rock-Z crystal on Z-ring. This immediately made me think of this as a small foreshadowing of Lugarugan-Z. I think it may have been an intentional choice from the storyboarding team!

Satoshi arrives at the battlegrounds, and Kuchinashi starts the opening speech to Kapu Bulul. Honestly, I find his pray monologue very interesting.

Y’know, if I understand this dialogue correctly (I’m not native so I might understand it wrong), it’s actually a foreshadowing of Lugarugan’s role in the episode. It really fits the Dusk form specifically, that has the righteous heart of Midday form, and malicious heart of Midnight form. And when the two hearts blend together perfectly, one becomes more powerful. At least, that’s how I intepret this dialogue. Quite interesting.

It could be seen as a description of Kuchinashi as well. I mean. We’ve been shown how savage he is, while also a caring person, towards Acerola specifically. And if we consider some of the future events, it kind of describes Satoshi as well! It’s like, that prayer briefly explains the theme of the episode!

Kuchinashi tells the rules of the Grand Trial after the prayer, which is defeating three of his pokemon with just one of Satoshi’s! Even Rotom calls him out on the rules being unfair, and judging from his body language and face expressions, he expected Satoshi to give up. He clearly doesn’t want to battle the boy. Rude. Well, Satoshi consults Lugarugan about this, and they decide to take the challenge. Kuchinashi of course is suprised. :D Well then, time for the battle, round 1!

And it’s up against the opponent from SM074, Waruvial. Again, its ability Intimidate is activating, and while last time it caused Lugarugan to get intimidated, it doesn’t this time around! The doggo has grown! I really like the animation on Satoshi’s hair here, I’m not sure what it is, it just looks really nice ;v; Anyways. Battle analysing is not my expertise, so I’ll skip ahead to important bits of the fights.

Waruvial tries the same tactic as last time, using Sand Tomb with Mud Slap. While it initially is working the same way, something is different.

Lugarugan actually changes the color of it’s eyes during this, and Satoshi is shown worried. However, the moment Lugarugan gets out of the tomb, thanks to apparent increased power...

It’s eyes slowly turn back to normal.

Kuchinashi actually notices this, and I think this is where he’s starting to realise that wait, it’s probably controlling the mode now. He is the Island King, he’s kind of smart on analysing pokemon. Or so I’d imagine. Satoshi is sighing with relief, and Acerola notes that the training with Kapu Bulul paid off. And I agree! Lugarugan is shown only slightly more angry during this mode, but the fact that it wasn’t consumed by anger already says that it’s actually in control. Well, Satoshi hasn’t realised it yet. : D

Anyway, as battle continues, with Kuchinashi trying to intimidate Satoshi himself with bait words, Satoshi commands Accelrock. Or does he?

Before he could finish, he remembers Waruvial’s Counter, and it’s clear that he’s actually scared of facing it again. I mean, I get why, it was a very scary experience. We’re actually shown a quick flashback of the move, and how devastating it felt.

The way he changes the move based on his feelings is kinda interesting. I wonder when was the last time he was that scared of facing a certain move? He’s not showing that optimistic side of him right now. And that’s quite human. Thou, the fact that he keeps on commanding Rock Throw here is kind of... odd. Some people have pointed this out, but he somewhat forgot Stone Edge exists. Althou it kind of works to his advantage later on. Anyway, this behaviour is normal for a human being, since when your thoughts start running with trying to avoid fear, you don’t think too well, and well, not having clear thoughts while figuring out battle strats is bound to cause some ‘memory loss’. It’s kind of why I’m not bothered by him forgetting about Stone Edge at this stage.

Hell, when Kuchinashi calls him out on this, being the savage guy he is, you can see it actually sort of gets into Satoshi. Kuchinashi is analysing him during the battle. I think Gym leaders did this alot? It’s about helping the challenger grow, so even if he is shown as savage, it’s kind of what he’s supposed to do as well.

Hell, even when he tells Satoshi that he and Lugarugan don’t have the guts to face Counter head-on, and how battles are about putting the moves at each other on full power, Satoshi is sort of flinching there. Althou, he also takes note with the words, because after Lugarugan makes noices at Satoshi, sort of like telling him that he can face it this time, Satoshi get’s his optimistic side back on again!

Kuchinashi of course answers to this with Counter, but oh boy does the following taste so sweet!

Lugarugan actually defeats Counter with its speed, causing Kuchinashi’s focus to falter. One Rock Throw later, Waruvial is out of it! Round one of Grand Trial, complete!

Well, Kuchinashi ends up congratulating Lugarugan, which Satoshi thought was for them both. That reaction is so funny. However, Satoshi thanks Kuchinashi anyway, because if it wasn’t for Kuchinashi’s words earlier, he wouldn’t have faced Counter head-on. Well. Apparently what Kuchinashi was saying was actually him trying to lure Satoshi into Counter by any means, and he even straightup said that he thought lying would be a good strat. Let me just do a count of the total times this man has lied to anyone during Ula Ula Arc: To Rocket Gang, to Satoshi, to Junsa, to Sakaki, to Rocket Gang again, and now this. Kids, don’t learn from this man, he’s the worst. Thou as a character, he’s absolutely amazing and well written for a Pokemon character! Totally loving how they managed to make his comedic part about lying, while still staying very convincing as a Dark-Type Specialist with savage personality. Very well done.

Also idk why, but when Acerola does sort of an awkward sounding laughter here, telling Kuchinashi to call out the next Pokemon, Satoshi’s face in the background is sort of funny to me. I really don’t know why!

Next battle is against Yamirami, and I have actually never seen Yamirami used in a battle before this! And I think this episode also debuted the move Shadow Sneak, and it looks so cool in Pokeani! I’ve used it couple of times in Ultra Moon/Moon, so I knew what to expect, but it still looks nice!

The spookiest part is when Yamirami uses a combo of Mean Look (which somehow also roots the target... I don’t think that’s what it does in the games? :D Then again I have no idea how root moves works in the games, never used such moves) and a flurry of Shadow Sneak. Lugarugan is in bad trouble here.

But the most important part here is the fact that the Red Eyes activate again, and the moment Satoshi sees this, he shouts at Lugarugan to calm down. Satoshi really is scared of this mode. I would dare to say that considering the past experience, it’s probably scarier than Hikozaru/Goukazaru’s uncontrollable Blaze. Satoshi tells Lugarugan to calm down and dodge the Shadow Claw move, but hey...

Kuchinashi actually tells Satoshi that it doesn’t need to calm down, it is actually dodging the move already. He’s also finally explaining to Satoshi that Lugarugan’s power actually increasing during the Red Eyes mode, when it’s just a bit more angry. Note thou, Kuchinashi didn’t use the word a bit, just angry. : D When Satoshi says that whenever Lugarugan gets angry, it stops listening to Satoshi, Kuchinashi actually drops a hint to Satoshi.

He doesn’t seem to understand it thou, and before he can ask, Kuchinashi takes the opportunity and orders another attack. Y’know, it’s already clear that Kuchinashi’s battle style involves getting under the Challenger’s skin and getting them unfocused. Satoshi is still somewhat able to stay focused, thou he’s quickly trying to think of a move that would work with a rooted Pokemon, and then it hits him!

Kuchinashi’s face is gold! He didn’t know Lugarugan has Stone Edge, he thought he’d win now for sure! I mean, last time they fought, there was 3 close range moves instead of just 2. Now there’s 2 close-range, 2 long-range! He did not count in the possibility of Lugarugan learning a new long-range one! This K.Os Yamirami, and Satoshi & Lugarugan are now one round closer to victory!

Lugarugan shakes of the Mean Look and Red Eyes, and is shown really tired. No wonder, this round was physically tiring for it, being under attack for so long with no way to attack back!

Meanwhile Bebenom is busy playing with Pikachu. XD

Well, next happens the scene I talked about earlier in another post, where Kapu Bulul comes and gives Lugarugan an Obon Berry to restore its energy! Apparently Kuchinashi can’t deny Island Deity’s will on the matter so, Lugarugan gains its energy back to normal and is ready to face the final round!

Final round is against Alolan Persian (why of course, it’s Kuchinashi’s Ace!) and Rotom points out how it’s big like a Totem Pokemon. That’s actually an interesting detail.

The Second half of this episode is sooo good, as in, lots of dialogue that really fleshes out why Kuchinashi is a Dark Type user. I’ll try to not put out the whole dialogue here, because lots of it is so good, but like, damn.

After Satoshi makes a first hit at Alolan Persian, Kuchinashi compliments Satoshi on training the doggo well, but then claims how Lugarugan could have done it without him as well, and how he’s not really needed. This right here is playing on mental ground. Dirty as hell. Satoshi’s face when Kuchinashi does the claim is not a happy one. Also, Kuchinashi keeps on taunting him, and we actually gradually see Satoshi getting more and more taunted by it, actually not focusing on the battle anymore! The Geezer continues on, and when he says the following line:

That really triggered a button in Satoshi! We know how he values friendship when training Pokemon. His style as a trainer is being mentally challenged here!

Oh boy did Kuchinashi push the right button with this line, because Satoshi really gets mad about that line. And because of it, Kuchinashi actually manages to make a quick call for Alolan Persian to attack! And it hits!

I know Rotom! It’s been such a long time since we’ve seen Satoshi so angry at a non-villain! And for him to get so distracted from battle could be said to be a rookie mistake, but considering how this is actually mostly a mental battle, it really wasn’t. He hasn’t been against a savage trainer like Kuchinashi before! It’s probably why I actually sort of like this battle after understanding the dialogue. While the animation is definitely not same level as last week during battles, it’s clear to me this episode focuses more on the mental game than battling itself. Intriquing choice!

Actually, the following scene is interesting, because you could intepret it in few ways. Kuchinashi’s ordering Alolan Persian to use Dark Pulse constantly.

...Oh fuck!

This was his goal with his tactics all along!

...Will it? : D When Satoshi calls Kuchinashi out on his plan for making Lugarugan angry...

...I actually think he’s lying here. Why? Because he noticed earlier that Lugarugan can indeed control the mode. But he also noticed that Satoshi hasn’t realised it yet. So while he’s using this to get under Satoshi’s skin, he’s also trying to teach the boy about the true power behind the Red eyes! He’s secretly educating Satoshi! But Satoshi is too angry himself to realise it, and focuses too much on telling Lugarugan to calm down, when it really doesn’t need to!

Just look at Satoshi getting angry at these words! My reaction is a constant Holy Shit.

This really triggers Satoshi even more, and Kuchinashi gets another chance to attack an unfocused Challenger. God damn it. Satoshi calls him out on doing such distraction as unfair, but what does Kuchinashi say?

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Whoever worked on ‘translating’ Kuchinashi’s character to Pokeani’s style, well done mate! It’s so well done, it fits him so well, and he’s self-aware! I’m clapping my hands here!

That face Satoshi makes is heartbreaking! But the thing is, the moment itself isn’t! But this shows that Satoshi is still scared and unknowing of the power behind Lugarugan’s Red Eyes. And now I’m gonna applaud at Lugarugan, because hoo boy.

Lugarugan tackles Satoshi! And hard! He flies a long long way off the battle arena. Everyone is actually suprised about this, even Kuchinashi! But after this? The scene becomes so sweet!

Satoshi finally realises it ;v; Finally! Staring at a standing, Red-eyed Lugarugan made him finally notice that wait, Lugarugan is actually in control of itself, and is hearing Satoshi’s voice clear and loud! Also how its power level actually increases! (Must have realised it by getting hit so hard :D) And he’s the most calm he’s been in the whole episode now!

Such a calm voice when he says this ;v;

You certainly did! And let this be a lesson :) He actually got some new character progression in this episode, didn’t he now? Someone more knowledgable can pitch in on this. But this is honestly beautiful for Satoshi’s character and that’s why this episode works so much better when you understand the dialogue fully!

Man I love it when Lugarugan does the signature “I like you so I’ll rub you with my stone collar“ thing ;v; And it makes the scene extra sweet. Awwwwww I love this doggo so much.

With the Red-Eye mode mastered! Nice nice! This looks really cool! And I’ll mention it now, the Red-Eye mode is sort of like Dusk form’s inner Midnight heart surfacing! Very much liking how this mode’s learning arc ended up going!

Battle against Alolan Persian continues, and Lugarugan finally learns Counter! Which is Midnight Form’s signature move, so this is like the ultimate reward for being in control of that side of the Dusk Form! Excellent!

And now’s the time for Kuchinashi’s version of Black Hole Eclipse! While the animation is kind of boring here compared to how it was done with Rocket Gang, it could be intentional? I mean, even in the games Kuchinashi looks bored while doing it, and not really doing it with the spirit.

That face is something else, wow.

Ok, time out, he turned his back on the move? Some people are saying this being like, he’s too cool to look at the z-move, but... I see this as a reference to how he teaches the pose to the player in the games. Remember? He shows the move, then turns his back on us. It’s a clear reference to it, and I’m glad they managed to make it part of him actually doing the Z-move. : D

Well. Satoshi now knows what Dark-Z move looks like. Rocket Gang has no chance of suprising him with another Z-move lol.

!!!!

OH MY GOD THEY’RE PLAYING MEZASE POKEMON MASTER!!!! The song made the scene so god damn epic and oh my lord, answering Z-move with a Z-move! AMAZING!!! Rica’s voice is amazing here as well!

And seeing the Red-Eyed Lugarugan in this sis so god damn cool!

The “Battle“ of two Z-moves is something you cannot do in the games and I’m so glad Pokeani explores that possibility!

While I would love to see Satoshi lose to a Z-move at least once (he really hasn’t), this was too cool to be mad about.

Even Kuchinashi is surprised! Take that!

And Alolan Persian is out of the battle! Satoshi wins his third Grand Trial!

Congratulations! That was a great battle, esp. after you realise how mental it was! It’s nice to see some mental game in Pokeani, that’s rare! And Kuchinashi did his duty on educating the Challenger, even if he possibly didn’t fully intend it.

He can finally stop being bothered by Satoshi! XD Time for Satoshi to get the reward, which is Dark-Z crystal!

Just kidding! What he instead gets as a reward...!

Is Lugarugan-Z! The foreshadowing worked. Satoshi now has access to Lugarugan’s own Z-move, Splintered Stormshards, or as it seems to be in japanese... Radial Edgestorm! Quite the name : D

Also, this scene is actually quite the upgrade from earlier Z-crystal Getto Daze shots. Could be they wanted to update it since it’s been so long since the last time!

Another Grand Trial theme seems to really be the fact that Island Deities are always watching over them. Makes me curious on how Tapu Fini/Kapu Rehire will be showcasing itself more properly.

YES DO!

A MILLION TIMES AGREED! It’s time to say goodbye to Acerola and Kuchinashi for now, and I’m so sad ;A; I want Acerola to be explored more, since right now she acted more as a guide and judge. She had excellent characterisation in SM073 and SM074! I want to know more about Gengar! Mimi-tan! The relationship between Sakaki and Kuchinashi-. Oh. That has nothing to do with Acerola. Krhm anyway I really do.

This scene is lovely in a way that it actually caused Kuchinashi to not focus on Kendama. He really does listen to Acerola well, huh?

...that’s actually true, he did seem to somewhat enjoy it! Especially on mental stage!

That says a lot about Satoshi, now doesn’t it?

The end of the episode! (Or well, there’s still Satoshi saying the usual “Let’s get Stronger for the next Grand Trial” speech but I like this shot as the finish!) Overall, while the animation in the battles itself wasn’t as good as say, last week, the animations on character emotions and such were darn good and beautiful to look at! And seeing the subtitles made me appreciate the episode way more than I initially thought of it! Shows how dialogue can make a huge difference in one’s opinion!

Edit: Forgot to talk about the title! I feel like it was bit of a miss, because Lugarugan had kind of already awakened the power within, it was more on Satoshi not realising this! Bit weird, but maybe it’s just me and my non-native english skills making the title hard to understand with the contexts of episode itself. Anyway. Otherwise good episode.

Poke-problem shows us Satoshi asking about the Lugarugan-Z move, and for some reason Rotom is trying to teach it the move, when it’s the same as Rock-Z pose? XD Silly Rotom. Don’t confuse Satoshi.

Next week, we have not one, but two Ultra Beasts appearing at the same time! Blacephalon/Zugadoon and Xurkitree/Denjyumoku. And it looks to have both comedy effect and some seriousness involved, since the two UBs are actually battling each other! Oh boy!

SM078 - Ultra Beast Clash! Operation Boom Boom Crackle!

Cya all next week! And sorry for this extra long post, holy god damn there was lots to talk about!

#aleira watches sumo #pokemon #pokeani #pokemon sumo #ula ula arc #ub arc #sm077 #jesus why are these posts so long #xddd #why do ula ula arc episodes have so much to talk about #long post #under the cut!

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lit--bitch · 5 years ago

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Charlotte Geater, ‘poems for my FBI agent’ (2020)

(Disclosure: I don’t know Charlotte Geater, but as I’ve previously stated I am familiar with Amy Acre and Jake Wild Hall from Bad Betty Press — though I don’t particularly know them well).

poems for my fbi agent is a convoluted, multi-faceted investigation into surveillance and our present-day predicament. Who is watching us? Who is watching those who watch us? Every time an advertisement appears boasting a lipstick from a brand we were talking about just yesterday, do we still call this serendipity? Or is it evidence that we’re being observed? And is our relationship with “our agent” a symbiotic one, where we share, even indulge, in each other as voyeurs? Unlike Crispin Best’s Hello, Charlotte Geater’s collection probes more sinister pockets of Internet culture: of spy and spied. It’s provocative, surreal and deeply disturbing. It’s also encrypted by so many different subtexts and jarring imagery, which makes this a challenging and very personal read, because it entirely depends on you and your experiences. So strap yourselves in.

Whenever I start a new book, I always read the acknowledgements first. I do this because I’m nosy. I like to make sense of the writer, I like to know who they are thanking, where work might have been previously published (particularly if it’s a poetry collection or a photobook). Because beyond the author’s name, the acknowledgements page is the writer’s final note. Afterwards, you’re flung into the book’s meat, and you’re on your own.

I flicked to the acknowledgements and I had a look at what Charlotte had written. At one point she says: “[I thank] all of my friends, for being supportive when I said, “I’ve started writing some poems inspired by a meme that is already kind of dead.”’ I understood what she was referring to. She’s talking about memes like this:

It’s interesting to see that we as a generation deal with a lot of our problems in meme-culture (and that is a whole separate conversation from this review). The FBI memes were one such example. They’re designed to nullify and humour our digital anxieties about being spied on. We have developed an acute self-awareness both outside in real time, and on the Internet. We know that we are constantly being watched, whether it’s through cookies or CCTV. Privacy is a luxury. It can be purchased like groceries. We’re not automatically entitled to being left alone. And that brings up questions about authenticity, self-identity, self-integrity. It throws up all kind of worries and fears, as our online presence and real selves chafe against each other. But unlike these memes, poems for my fbi agent doesn’t minimise your worries, it amplifies them.

I couldn’t always penetrate this collection and hold myself to one specific intepretation; it flummoxed me. I was really confused by the dislocation of imagery, the subtlety of Charlotte’s writing style. It’s exactly how Sam Riviere put it: “a Lynchian rabbit hole”. The series of images, which seemingly bear no relation to each other, is quite jolting. You have to make the connections yourself, you have to look within and draw on your own references to access what certain poems “mean” (I’ll expand on this later). At one point I just sat back in bed and gulped. Because I thought “how the fuck am I going to write a review about poetry I don’t always understand?” And I was panicking because, I thought, “there’s a plethora of ways to understand this work, I don’t have to hold myself to one specific interpretation”, but I was struggling to grasp the imagery and syntax. So I figured talking to my mother about it would be useful because sometimes you need to discuss a book and bounce off one another to engage with it. So really I owe a lot of this review to her and our discussions.

One of the most disarming things about this collection is its perturbing elusiveness. As my mum said, “I can’t put it into words what she means, but I can feel what she means”.

A pretty good example of this (and what I mean by jarring imagery) is in ‘my FBI agent is a mathematical problem’:

and not just a philosophical one. if i ask who watches the agent who watches me, it sounds insincere; but let’s get down to it in our underwear [...] who does he text when he’s lonely? who gets to see his underwear, [...]

So far, I’m with Charlotte. I too ask the very same questions. Who is keeping our agent under watch? Y’know, does it become a situation of meta-surveillance where everybody is a threat, even the ones who supposedly work “to prevent threat”, like the agent? Is the agent part of, or rather, included within the same system? Or more worringly, do they sit at the top of the hierarchy, and are therefore untouchable?

if i type a poem instead of writing it out first it feels closer to god, by which i mean closer to you, watching me and if i am not a problem, are you there?

The FBI agent and our traditional conceptions of “God” as omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, are conflated here. It’s true; the agent has total power and knowledge over everything we do and investigate, even the things we plan to do. The agent can wield time, can document and record. The agent can create business and yet the agent is our business. The agent can defend and attack, break things, read your mind. It’s in the agent’s “god-like” apparition (you can’t put a face to your agent like you can’t with God I guess), and in the agent’s “god-like” power, that we are wholly subservient and are most afeard, because the FBI agent knows all our conversations, thoughts, and internet searches. That access to our personal psychologies makes for an entity like that of God. And it’s all supposedly in the name of our protection, to defend from terrorism or people who might break into houses and axe us out of the blue. The question is: If we’re not posing a threat, or being threatened, where’s the need for the agent? Does the agent evaporate? Do they move only when we move?

matter changes when it’s hit am i a problem for you yet? the lake turned to ice improbably fast; and the custard became a rock inside your mouth.

I mean like, lake? Ice? Custard? This is so random and strange. I sat there scratching my head for ages about this. But I’ve sort of hazarded the best guess I can. And there’s two things. Firstly, this idea about matter changing when it’s hit, liquid states and solid states. So in quantum theory, there is a suggestion that observation affects reality. So for example, if you wanted to observe electrons and how they move, you have to get them to behave with a proton. And electrons know that they’re being observed when they’re forced to interact with protons, because their wave function changes. It’s horrifically complicated and I don’t know enough about quantum mechanics to really unpack it in detail. But basically, what it means is, simply observing something can change the appearance of how it is perceived. It can have an affect on outcomes. And I’m linking a pretty good, simplified article about this here.

The second interpretation of this really odd image is a little easier to understand, and again relates to this “lake turning to ice impossibly fast-custard to hard rock” metaphor. So ages back, there was this Doctor Who episode (when David Tennant was the Doctor), called ‘Blink’. In that episode, they were these aliens appearing in the form of stone angel statues, called The Weeping Angels. If you get touched by a Weeping Angel, you get zapped back in time and the Angel feeds off all the energy you might have potentially lived in the present-day. They move impossibly fast. Like they can make their way from a garden into the kitchen within a blink. Here’s the snag: they only ever move when they’re not being watched. The minute you look at them, they turn to stone. They can’t even be seen looking at each other, if they are facing one another, they’ll never move again.

I think about this episode a lot still, and whenever I watch it, it never fails to get my heart racing. But when I read “matter changes when it’s hit”, I was reminded of the clever, foolproof defence mechanism of the Weeping Angels, which renders them the loneliest creatures in the universe. There were parallels between this and the statement implied in the poem. Is it possible then that like the Weeping Angels, the agent’s movements are rendered undetectable when we try to watch them back? When we catch them in the act, say when our phone randomly opens up an app we closed, does the agent freeze? Or is it the reverse? And how lonely that must be. How alone the agent must feel. It was at this point I became more aware of how I was receiving the writing. When I thought about Doctor Who, and made comparisons from the bulk of my own references, I really tapped into the essence of the work, which is written so cleverly.

Remember how I said earlier that, to understand what Charlotte’s getting at, you have to look within and draw upon your own experiences, in order to access the work? What I meant was, understanding the random collage of images requires understanding your own anxieties, about being watched all the time, reaching into your own pocket of knowledge, and relating all of it back to the work. Like how I drew upon my memory of Doctor Who. And it’s very much like social media, or Wikipedia. You’re constantly having to manage cookies or accept cookies, so you can continue using the programme. Likewise, you’re constantly forced to share more of yourself in order to access a level of understanding in Charlotte’s poetry. So for example, ‘my FBI agent takes me on a date’. This is Page 28. At this point, the gender pronoun of the agent has shifted. The agent is no longer “he”. “He” is now she.

and decorates her hair with crane flies prawn cocktail lips / when i said scare me she listened badly [...]

[...] and I hate anything with a see-through body plastic wings dancing no, it’s the legs are wrong in the air like that it’s the compartments, the exoskeleton it’s that she doesn’t know how & she pries me open early & she has teeth that she thinks give more pleasure at the cracking / she says i will like it

that she has heard fear / makes us braver people in the end & she eats from within

You can feel the discomfort, the repulsion, in this poem so keenly. Sentences like “& she pries me open early // & she has teeth that she thinks give more pleasure // at the cracking / she says i will like it”, it’s so menacing. I could vividly picture the clacking of plastic wings, the sensation of sharp teeth, the cracking. It’s just horrible. And when you try to think about what a “date” is, and what that means when it’s with an FBI agent, you get something really odd, intimated by the gender shift of the agent to being “she”... When I read this transition, I saw it as an indication that ‘I’’s conscience had evolved. At some point, we become so self-aware of everything we say and do online, that we develop the objectivity like that of the agent. If I’m to assume that the ‘I’ is a she here, it’s arguable that and that the ‘I’ and ‘she’ in ‘my FBI agent takes me out on a date’, are the same entity.

I think this poem implies that as we reveal more of ourselves online, the acuteness of our self-awareness intensifies. We become our own agents, we assimilate the role of our watchers and watch ourselves. We become transparent, as we study our profiles through our own focalisation. This, to my mind and my mother’s mind too, is the “exoskeleton” that Charlotte resents. It’s the imagery of self-consumption, the self-destruction in laying yourself bare to the world, where in turn it’s you that becomes the meal, it’s you who dates yourself, it’s you who tucks into yourself. We become indiscernible from watching and watched, and in these inexactitudes, we end up disorienting ourselves. We have to share so much in order to be able to “progress” or access sites or information we need. It’s parasitic. This is what Charlotte means by “she eats from within”. As though we’re the parasite and the host, we eat of ourselves.

Other perplexing images: ‘my agent, a rational object / the same size as a mannequin’ (from ‘my FBI agent takes a holiday’) I found this image really wonderful and so apt in defining the agent’s agency... The mannequin is like, your anonymous blank slate. You change its clothes, it remains the same sculpture. It’s something you imprint, and it projects what it wears, how it wears it. The agent being depicted as a mannequin is again, another non-sequitur of a metaphor in this poem, but it makes absolute sense. The agent’s identity is subsumed in the person they surveillance. The agent is in a strange way, our personal twin, which is basically saying, we’re bonded.

This symbiotic relationship is reflected on deeply throughout the work, oscillating between the way we are watched, how we watch, and how we watch ourselves. Take ‘my fbi agent doesn’t like to read’:

i read a lot of ebooks because i am always thinking of him and his lack of access to an academic library marxist monetary theory kate millett’s sexual politics william morris biographies [...] i like to read through his eyes

This is a profound image. As if the agent and the ‘I’ here are sat together. Whatever ‘I’ indulges in for reading pleasure, the agent indulges in also. Ultimately this is not a space that the agent is invading, when we’re aware we’re being observed. Like in those ‘fbi’ memes, we welcome the agent in, to laugh, to trust that everything, as uninnocent as it all is, is still ultimately innocent. No harm, no foul. So with that assurance, we make do with their elusive presence, content to let them read over our shoulders.

One perplexion I do have about this work, and perhaps it’s an intentional move from Charlotte, is the inconsistency of grammar and capitalisation. Most of the poetry is written lowercase, it reads like the way we text. But every now and then there’s the odd full stop, or comma or semi-colon, that just doesn’t seem to sit right, and I wonder what the motivations are behind introducing punctuation at certain points. It’s something to think about when you’re reading the collection. Similarly with capitalisation, the book cover title is in lowercase “fbi” whereas all the poems are in the uppercase acronym: “FBI”. Funnily enough when you type ‘fbi’ into your phone, it will autocorrect it to uppercase. So that was an interesting distinction I found. Ultimately I don’t think this writing is yearning to read entirely like a text message, it is inviting punctuated sentences, grammar, clever choices in the positioning of semi-colons. But it’s not always clear why they appear within certain poems at particular points, and I question the impulse behind their inclusion. The form too, is fairly consistent, bar ‘my fbi agent talks me through my facebook ad settings’ on page 14, which really experiments with sentence length and the ‘/’:

i say: is this how you see me? birthday in october / close friends of men with a birthday in 7-30 days / close friends of ex-pats / commuters / gmail users //

i want to know about data in poetry when it’s bad data & i want to know about how you see me in these systems when they’re bad, i don’t mean morally, i mean shitty, incomplete, i mean you know too much and it’s all worth except. except for the ways in which it works for you.

I perceived the ‘/’ here as not just a spacer. I think of it as an imitation of a navigation menu, the “clicking and loading” from one page of information to another. The writing itself also stretches right across the page, like it would across a computer screen. The best way to edit your Facebook ad settings is on a computer, not a smartphone device. And similar to Crispin Best, Charlotte’s line breaks often occur less than half way across the page of the book, imitating the dimensions of a phone screen, again. But in this poem, there’s more elongation, there’s more steps. For that reason, it really stands out and it’s also one of the more clogged pieces in terms of its references. The random assemblage of information pertaining to the ‘I’ and their profile, problematises the way information is harvested on social media. It’s loads of ubiquitous, vacuous crap which is all vested in the same person, but ultimately means very little. The only connection in having a birthday in October and being close friends with ex-pats is simply in the ‘I’, here. But there’s about a bajillion other people out there who could have the same thing in common. This poem is a criticism of the conjectures that the agent makes based off watching everything about us. What is the point in having all this crap on me? How boring. How confusing.

I understand now why I lack conviction in a lot of my own thoughts about this collection, and it’s also why Charlotte Geater is incredibly talented. Everything in our world is open to reasonable doubt, even more so with technology. That same notion is integral to this collection’s thematics—we doubt who we are, we doubt what we do, we doubt what is around us and worst of all, we know that someone is recording those doubts and documenting them as evidence. The fact that Charlotte can recreate our digital anxieties, forcing us to think and overshare with ourselves so we can access an understanding, in the same way that the Internet does, that’s powerful. That is a technique.

poems for my fbi agent articulates something much greater than ourselves, and yet we have the power to dispel of it whenever we want, collectively as a species or simply as individuals. Otherwise, morbid consequences follow (and are already a reality): ‘your coffin / is there / for the rest of your life’. This absolutism of our persona’s enduring presence that remains long after physical death is the ultimate artifice of reality, and immortality. We’re never truly dead and gone, we’re never really buried, when the evidence we lived is always there.

It took me time to wrap my head around it, and tbh I don’t think I’ll ever totally wrap my head around everything, but I loved this collection, and I’m interested to see what Charlotte produces next. This is an incredible debut with an amazing press.

If you want to read some of these amazing poems in full, you can view them in some of Charlotte’s previous publications here, here and here. Or you could skip the bullshit and just buy this amazing work at Bad Betty Press, and follow Charlotte on Twitter.

#poetry #ukpoetry #charlottegeater #badbettypress #newreleases #newwriting #writing #debutcollection #review #litbitch #contemporaryliterature #pamphlet #poemsformyfbiagent #books #bookstagram

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fma-facts · 7 years ago

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Applying FMA’s Philosophy to Real Life

Here’s something a little different from what I usually post! For some reason I found myself thinking about this in the shower for almost an hour today, so I thought I’d write a post on it. (Also, keep in mind I wrote all of this spontaneously in one go.)

Now, here’s a little disclaimer: This is very subjective. There are a thousand different ways to personally interpret the philosophy of FMA, and even different ways to interpret what “the philosophy of FMA” even is- Is it the overall themes of the story? The actual real life alchemical/philosophical concepts mentioned in the series? The politics of the FMA world? Arakawa’s outlook on life and writing manga? Some sort of weird deep subtext about the Philosopher’s Stone or something?

It all depends on how you want to look at things, and everyone and their mom has a different interpretation. Every anime analysis blogger or YouTuber has done something on the philosophy of FMA. But I wanted to do something a little different: Take the philosophical concepts within the FMA universe, and find positive ways to interpret them that you can apply to your own life to better yourself.

Like I said, there’s a thousand different ways of interpreting these concepts. But I’m an optimist, or at least I try to be, so I tried to choose interpretations that are positive and motivating. I think Dante’s already got the whole “pessimistic existential despair” thing covered.

So, without further ado, here we go! This is an extremely long post, so it’s under a cut. Feel free to skim it and only look at the parts that interest you.

Concept: A lesson without pain is meaningless. Interpretation: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Sometimes the most difficult challenges are the most rewarding.

“Teachings that do not speak of pain have no meaning, because humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return.” -Chapter 1: The Two Alchemists “A lesson without pain is meaningless, because gaining anything worthwhile requires sacrifice. But if you can overcome that pain and achieve your goal, you can achieve a fullmetal heart, and that’s irreplaceable.” -Chapter 108: Journey’s End

It’s very easy to have a negative interpretation of this phrase, to take it to mean that suffering is necessary. As another favorite anime character of mine once said, “People never learn from their mistakes until they are hurt from them.” But like I said, I want this to be an uplifting list, so we’re going with a happier intepretation.

Everything is a learning experience. You can’t get a diamond without subjecting carbon to immense pressure and high temperatures, right? Even when things seem dark, if you can power through, you’ll come out with experience and strength that others might not have. And even if you can’t win, as any scientist knows, failure can show you where you went wrong and what you need to do to improve. There’s an old proverb in the go (east Asian strategy board game) community: “Lose your first 100 games as quickly as possible.”

This is what really got me started on this tangent, thinking about... believe it or not... Alchemical encoding methods. (Oh, on a side note, does anyone know the proper usage of “alchemical” vs. “alchemic”? Please let me know. It’s been driving me up the wall for years.) Think about it: Alchemists encode their work so they can’t be read by those who aren’t worthy, right? It’s fairly likely that there’s a standard system of alchemical encoding in the FMA world; We’ve heard Ed and Al mention real alchemy concepts like the green lion, or the sun and the moon as masculinity and femininity- things that wouldn’t make sense to a non-alchemist, but are probably standard knowledge for most alchemists. There’s also that mural from Xerxes, which Ed was easily able to understand, because certain symbols and phrases are known to have certain meanings in alchemy.

Encoding systems like this would really only be useful for keeping out non-alchemists and novices, but any skilled alchemist would probably be able to understand them. Because of this, it would probably only be used for fairly benign things. But if you look at things like Marcoh’s notes on the Philosopher’s Stone, or Scar’s brother’s research, those are the really big ones. There’s layers upon layers of coding there that require a ton of skill, time, teamwork, and in Scarbro’s case, knowledge of alchemy across multiple cultures and languages. That’s some intense stuff, but incredibly important. Of course the most rewarding alchemical secrets are the most well guarded.

Challenge yourself. Challenges can often be scary, difficult, and stressful, but sometimes the harder it is, the bigger the reward.

Concept: All is One, One is All. Interpretation: Everything is connected. You are part of a greater flow, and you are not alone.

“Remember when we talked about what would happen if we died here?” “Uh-huh, and I said everyone would be sad.” -Ed and Al, chapter 22: The Masked Man “Maybe it’s ‘the world’, maybe it’s ‘the universe’... Life is a complex cycle, so vast that we can’t see it with our own eyes. But whatever it’s called, you and I are only a tiny part of the great flow. One part of the whole. But all those individual parts come together so that the whole can exist. And the cycle keeps flowing because all of nature follows this fundamental law. Understanding that flow, deconstructing and then reconstrucing... That’s the meaning of alchemy.” -Ed, chapter 22: The Masked Man

Nothing exists in a vacuum. Everything has impact on something, no matter how small. A huge number of factors came together to create the you that is here now, and in turn, your existence affects the lives of others. Even if it seems like you’re alone, like nobody loves you or pays attention to you, you’re not invisible and you’re not alone.

Maybe you’re someone’s favorite blogger, or maybe someone passed you on the street and thought your hair was beautiful. Maybe you own a shelter pet that would have been otherwise put down, or maybe you helped introduce someone to something that changed their life for the better. Maybe you buy a coffee from Starbucks every week, and your purchase contributes a little to the overall income of that particular Starbucks, which allows it to stay open, thus keeping a single mom employed and able to feed her kids. It’s impossible to exist without having an impact on others. The way each little person operates as part of the great web of humanity to make the world what it is today is part of what makes humanity so beautiful.

You’re never truly alone, no matter how much it feels like it, and there’s always someone who would suffer in some way without you. Try to make meaningful connections. If you ever feel like you’re alone in this world, take some time to think about what things you do that affect others, and how you are connected to the world as a whole.

Concept: The energy of the world is cyclical, and only flows in one direction. Interpretation: What you do comes back to you. Be mindful of the attitude you choose to put into the world.

“The foundation of alchemy is the power of the circle. The circle dictates the flow of power, and when the proper runes are written within it, it is possible for the power to be released. Even when you’re not using alchemy, the flow of power has many practical applications! For example... If you can read your opponent’s movements, you can turn them back against him. That’s one way of manipulating energy. Accepting the flow, understanding it, and using it to create... That’s what makes an alchemist an alchemist.” -Izumi, chapter 23: Knocking on Heaven’s Door

Due to some spiritual experiences I’ve had in the past, I very much believe that likes attract likes, and that the energy you put out into the world will come back to you. But you don’t have to be even the least bit spiritual or religious to see how this can sometimes be true.

If you snap at someone for no reason, even if that person was in a good mood, that’s going to discourage them from being nice to you. If you’re a generally mean, angry, nasty person, people just aren’t going to like you. But if you gain a reputation for being nice and treating others with respect, that’s going to earn you respect as well.

I’m not saying you have to be cheerful all the time- everyone has their bad days, and plenty of people (myself included) might naturally be a bit more Raven than Starfire. I’m not even saying you always have to be nice to everybody, because there will always be people who aren’t worthy of your respect. What I am saying is that you have control over how you generally interact with others, and it pays to be nice rather than mean. Things like keeping a generally polite attitude, saying nice things to others, and helping people when they need it are things that people will remember, and make them more likely to want to be nice to you as well.

If you find yourself in a situation where you can choose whether or not to be mean, take a minute to think to yourself: Does this person really deserve this treatment? What will this accomplish? How will this affect how others see me? If you can choose whether or not to be unnecessarily mean, I encourage you to not be mean.

Concept: You cannot gain without sacrifice. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. Intepretation: Change doesn’t happen on its own. If you want something to happen, you must first take steps to make it happen yourself.

“Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy’s first law of equivalent exchange.” -Al, Fullmetal Alchemist opening monologue “It is impossible to create something out of nothing. If one wishes to obtain something, something of equal value must be given. This is the law of equivalent exchange.” -Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood opening monologue

Again, it’s easy to interpret this as a negative, “We all must suffer” thing, or as a (50-year-old conservative voice) “If you’re poor it’s just because you’re a lazy bum and blah blah blah” thing, but this is the positive interpretation I’ve come up with.

Nothing ever happens without some sort of catalyst. You have to take the initiative. Like Ed once taught Rose, no matter how religious you are, you can’t just sit around praying and expect all your problems to magically be solved; You have to at least make some effort yourself. Does this mean hard work will always be rewarded the way you want? No. Sadly, this is an unfortunate reality of the world. But it does mean that nothing will happen if you don’t try.

For example, I see a lot of people say, “I wish I could draw.” ...And then that’s it. They just say that, over and over. Guess what? Literally nobody is stopping you from drawing! You have to be the one to pick up the pencil/pen/tablet/paintbrush/mouse etc. and start drawing. No, your first drawing will not be perfect, and it may take a very long time before you’re able to draw something that you can really be proud of. But you’ll definitely never be able to make a great drawing if you never start drawing in the first place.

If you have a goal, and you’re already doing what you can to work towards that goal, even if “what you can do” is next to nothing: That’s great! I’m proud of you for trying, and I hope you can achieve your goal. But if you’re constantly sitting around lamenting how you wish for such-and-such without actually doing anything to try to make it happen... Well, you’re not really going to get anywhere.

Concept: There’s no such thing as “no such thing”. Interpretation: Don’t underestimate yourself. Never give up on something just because others don’t believe in you.

“Nothing is impossible.” -Greed, chapter 27: The Beasts of Dublith

People can accomplish amazing things. I’m sure you’ve all heard the stories of how Harry Potter was written on napkins in a bar and rejected by like 2872193 different publishers or whatever, or how much Vincent van Gogh struggled both in life and art, or how Dav Pilkey wrote Captain Underpants while sitting out in the hall in grade school as a punishment from teachers who told him being a cartoonist isn’t a real career. Even against impossible odds, sometimes with enough determination, you can come out on top.

It’s easy to get bogged down by negativity. If your goal is somewhat out there, you may get a lot of people telling you that you can’t do it, but that’s not necessarily true. In a similar vein to the previous topic, you may never be able to accomplish your goal- life just happens that way sometimes- but there’s always a change that you might. If you let others discourage you to the point of giving up, you’ll definitely never be able to achieve your goal.

Believe in yourself, BELIEVE IN THE ME THAT BELIEVES IN YOU!!!, and keep trying. Don’t give up just because things are looking grim, or because other people say you’ll never be able to do it. They don’t know what you’re capable of.

Concept: A king without his people is no king at all. Interpretation: Life is collaborative. Don’t neglect those who support you.

“A ruler’s duty is to his people. Without them, he is no king at all!” -Ling, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood episode 22 (because I sadly still don’t own volume 12)

You can’t do everything on your own. People move through life by interacting and helping one another. It’s ok to ask for help sometimes. But at the same time, you have to be ready to give help when the time comes- If someone does things for you, and you turn your back on them when they need you, what kind of person does that make you? Not a very nice one.

Of course, that’s not to say that you have to be giving and giving and giving all the time. If you don’t have the money, time, skills, knowledge, physical ability, or emotional/mental availability to help someone, that’s ok. It happens. But if you can help someone, and choose not to just because you don’t want to make the effort, that’s selfish. Why would you do that to someone who helped you? Who, in turn, will help them? And when people see that you weren’t there for them when you could have been, again, that’s going to come back to you. Nobody wants to help someone who takes without giving.

Also, if you’re in a leadership position, your job is to lead. It is your responsibility to keep an eye on the needs of those below you, and to make sure the system runs smoothly. If you treat your subordinates like garbage, they’re not going to want to respect you.

If you do treat your subordinates well, and help others when they need it, people will look up to you and be more likely to return the favor when you need it.

Be a Colonel Mustang, not a Brigadier General Fessler.

Concept: Take 10, give 11. Interpretation: It doesn’t always take much to be kind. You can do nice things sometimes without expecting something in return.

“My brother and I met so many wonderful people on our journey, people like Mr. Hughes. I’ve come to realize how much happiness they brought us, even if we didn’t see it at the time. That’s why I feel that now it’s our turn to try and give back some of that happiness. If we receive ten and only give back ten, then it’s a zero-sum gain. Instead, if we receive ten we will add our one to it, and give eleven in return.” -Al, chapter 108: Journey’s End

You don’t always need a specific motivation to be nice. Being kind for kindness’ sake is always a good thing to do, and doesn’t necessarily have any negative payoff. A lot of the time, doing something nice for someone can take as little effort as just saying, “You look nice today”, or even- as Arakawa herself has said she believes to be important- just saying thank you when someone does something for you, no matter how small.

If you’re grateful to have someone in your life, show it! Be nice to them. You don’t even have to give a heartfelt speech; sending people posts you think might interest them, for example, can really make them happy. Also, if you see someone who’s feeling down- or even someone who’s perfectly fine- it never hurts to show them a little kindness. Your small compliment may wind up meaning far more to them than you think.

One way I personally try to spread a little kindness: When I see art on my dash, unless I have some particular reason not to want it on my blog (bad pairing, too sexual, etc.), I reblog it. Even if it’s really terrible art, I reblog it anyway, because I know how much it can mean to beginner artists to have just a little bit of encouragement. I also usually try to gush in the tags about how much I love it, or add specific compliments, like “This is a really cool art style” or “I like how you draw his hair”.

Most of the time, I don’t get anything out of this, and I don’t expect or need to. But every once in a while, someone will message me saying how much my comment meant to them, and that’s a really wonderful thing. Also, whenever I leave a comment on a fanfiction, I always end it with a simple, “Thank you for writing this”. The other day, someone said the same thing on one of my fics, and I was shocked. People so rarely show such simple, straightforward appreciation for the amount of work writing takes, and it really made me happy to read.

Anyway, that’s all! I hope you guys enjoyed this spur-of-the-moment little pep talk, I hope it gave you something to think about, and I hope it might be of some help to some of you. And remember: It’s not hard to be nice!

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autumn-foxfire · 4 years ago

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I don't know if my ask will be used as an excuse by a certain somebody to do something horrible to you (so you don't need to reply to this), but I have read metas from that writer and I think their analyses of villains, not just of BnHA, are just choke full of idiocy and they really just try to make the bad guys not the bad guys anymore, and the good guys are somehow interpreted as worse than they really are. Some character interpretations are simply so out there I can't even understand why

More under the cut.

anyone can interpret them that way. And apparently that's how they analyse villains and good guys from many series. I'm not even those characters' fans and I still feel something is wrong reading their analyses. They are simply a bad-faith writer who have good premises with their posts but then completely destroy them with cringy interpretations and conclusions. I haven't bothered myself with reading their analyses for a long time until I saw that Shigaraki-Hawks meta, but I regret having hope

only to be let down by them, AGAIN. They write lengthy, sophisticated essays on something they seem to refuse to understand, trying to twist the meanings into... what, I don't know how to describe it. They look to me like someone trying to be deep and kind, knowing how to look beyond the surface and find the good in the bad guys and the hidden darkness in the good guys, but it simply doesn't work that way. Their metas would be less draining to read if only they would stop sounding like

they don't want bad guys to be viewed as the bad guys and basically use the bad-faith lens to analyse characters and scenes and try to pass them off as the author's intention, while they clearly just AREN'T. At this point, I'll stop taking anything else they write seriously, no matter how good its start may sound, because pretty sure I will be disappointed again one way another. I just don't wanna keep wincing at their cringy interpretations of characters.

Honestly, I’m not the biggest fan of their meta either. I’ve read them before but I just find myself disagreeing with them too much to actually keep up with anything else they’ve wrote because I find that their bias towards the league is so strong and tends to blind them when they write them.

If they spoke about different ways you could explore canon text in fanon and how they could be interpretated even though that wasn’t the writers intent (which is still important but something I’ve found quiet a few people in fandom are starting to dismiss more and more), then their metas would be an interesting read. However, I find myself agreeing with you when you say they twist the scenes and characterizations in their favour and use bad faith in order to make their intepretation seem accurate. I find it really dishonest.

Especially because I think they’re setting themselves and their followers up for massive disappointment by continuosly dismissing Horikoshi’s intention about the villains and presenting them as the guys we’re supposed to support when canon has clearly shown us that isn’t the case.

#personal #thanks for the ask!!#I do think this meta writer is smart but I think they let their bias towards their favourites cloud them a bit too much when they write abo #Anonymous

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douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years ago

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HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT RULE

Ideas can morph. The switch to the new norm may be surprisingly fast, because the startups that can retain control tend to be one of the only programming languages a serious hacker would want to use it from examples in a couple minutes.1 Maybe it's a good thing for the world if people who wanted to get rich now you don't have to be in it yet. When my friends Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell were in grad school, one of the signs of a good idea, but you have less control over the rate at which you turn yours into a prepared mind. That will be a good plan to have Jobs speak for 9 minutes and have Woz speak for a minute or so. One of the startups from the batch that just started, AirbedAndBreakfast, is in NYC right now meeting their users.2 The latter is much more expensive. Contradiction. It has sometimes been said that Lisp should use first and rest instead of car and cdr, because it becomes a filter for selecting bad startups.3

Or more importantly, if you include short term room rental, second home rental, bed and breakfast, and other similar classes of accommodations, you get mathematicians and writers and artists.4 But what a difference it makes to be able to refuse such an offer if they had grown to the point where they were a rooted in your town and/or b so successful that VCs would fund them even if they didn't move. Startups need to be designed using a small set of orthogonal operators, just like the core language. Most programmers are told what language to use, at least subconsciously, based on the total number of characters he'll have to type an unnecessary character, or even still in it, and they won't even fund them. I think rising economic inequality is the inevitable fate of countries that don't choose something worse. Because you get a lot of people. And in the early 1970s, before C, MIT's dialect of Lisp, called MacLisp, was one of the big successes?5 There is also a complementary force at work: if you have no ideas.

He got away with it, but unless you're a good con artist, you'll never convince investors if you're not convinced yourself.6 This kind of work is the future. It would be a pretty cheap experiment, as civil expenditures go. We can get rid of or make optional a lot of the same things we said at the last two. When you feel that about an idea you've had while trying to come up with startup ideas, you're probably mistaken. Anything that can be implicit, should be. Good programmers often want to do now. There's a lot to like I've done a few things, like intro it to my friends at Foundry who were investors in Service Metrics and understand this model I am also talking to my friend Mark Pincus who had an idea like this a few years down the line.

You have to produce something. If you can't already do it, the best solution is to tackle the problem head-on, at best. This section is now obsolete for YC founders presenting at Demo Day only needs to be able to violate this rule. They think they're trying to convince one another to invest in Airbnb.7 That last sentence is the fatal one. I think a bigger problem is that a programming language is not Lisp.8 The schlep filter is so dangerous that I wrote a separate essay about the condition it induces, which I called schlep blindness.9 Because you get a lot of the earlier stage ones would probably take it.

This pattern is no coincidence: it is the people who might want what you're making, then the total addressable market, or TAM, of your company is doing. I do: that being mean makes you stupid.10 The usual motives are few: drugs, money, sex, revenge.11 But there may still be money to be made from something like journalism.12 Increasingly you win not by fighting to get control of a scarce resource, but by having new ideas and building new things. Committees yield bad design. Plus they're investing other people's money, which makes me think I was wrong to emphasize demos so much before. But are these just outliers? I used to think of startup ideas. At YC we call these made-up or sitcom startup ideas.

Hackers are unruly. But after I'd been there a few months in, they probably didn't. Good programmers often want to show that all the founders are equal partners.13 However, even that is an interesting prospect. Fred.14 Many investors explicitly use that as a test, reasoning correctly that if you wanted to hear. After all, you're not saying much.15

And getting rejected will put you in a slightly awkward position, because as long as no one is forced to use it. If you can think instead That's an interesting idea, you can increase how much you spend. The search engines that preceded them shied away from the most radical implications of what was said to them, not something you face and read to an audience that's mostly non-technical. It would be a good thing for investors that this is the divisor.16 Getting people to take less salary for a while, or increase revenues. And it would get easier over time, because the more startups you had in town, the less likely it is to establish a first-rate university in a place where rich people want to live.17 Agreeing tends to motivate people less than disagreeing.18 In 1995 I started a company to put art galleries online.19

You have to be a rule with them that everything has to start with a simple prototype, then add features, but at least they probably really do want whatever they're asking for. This strategy will work best with the best investors are much smarter than the rest, and the big bang method.20 Microsoft, Yahoo, Google. A and still has it today. The games played by intellectuals are leaking into the real world doesn't work that way. You couldn't get from your bed to the front door if you stopped to question everything. So be honest with yourself about the sort of person who can have organic startup ideas.

Notes

This is one resource patent trolls need: lawyers. Some would say that YC's most successful ones. Mitch Kapor, is he going to visit 20 different communities regularly.

Emmett Shear, and degenerate from words to their stems, but in fact had its own. But on the x company, you may have been truer to the prevalence of systems of seniority.

Many people feel good. How did individuals accumulate large fortunes in an urban context, issues basically means things we're going to drunken parties. You're not seeing fragmentation unless you see people breaking off to both write the sort of dress rehearsal for the government.

There are a hundred years or so you can remove them from leaving to start a startup. At the time it still seems to have a connection with Aristotle, but rather by, say, recursion, and it doesn't cost anything. They can't estimate your minimum capital needs that precisely.

Some urban renewal experts took a back-office manager written mostly in less nerdy fields like finance and media. It seems justifiable to use an OS that doesn't seem an impossible hope. Another tip: If you walk into a fancy restaurant in San Francisco, LA, Boston, and b when she's nervous, she doesn't like getting attention in the general manager of a correct program. If someone just sold a nice-looking man with a walrus mustache and a company selling soybean oil or mining equipment, such a dangerous mistake to do better.

The state of technology isn't simply a function of their pitch.

Scribes in ancient philosophy may be enough to absorb that. I suspect five hundred would be far from the DMV. There is a matter of outliers, and would probably be interrupted every fifteen minutes with little loss of personality for the future.

And even more dangerous to Microsoft than Netscape was. People who know the actual server in order to test whether that initial impression holds up. We invest small amounts of other people's money.

There are some VCs who understood the vacation rental business, it's easy for small children pointed out by solving his own problems.

The story of creation in the rest of the river among the largest in the general sense of the most successful founders still get rich by buying politicians. There are a better education. Some translators use calm instead of blacklist. They don't know the combination of a cent per spam.

Only in a signal. So where do we draw the line?

After a while to avoid using it, and the 4K of RAM was in this essay, but no more unlikely than it would grow as big as any successful startup? In fact it's our explicit goal don't usually do best to err on the way I know this is not that everyone's the same weight as any successful startup improves the world, and in some cases the process dragged on for months. The Mac number is a self fulfilling prophecy. 66.

There are some good ideas buried in Bubble thinking.

Indeed, it was actually a computer.

5 more I didn't realize it till I started using it out of their core values is Don't be evil, they made much of a silver mine. Otherwise they'll continue to evolve as e. I was writing this, but you should be easy to write in a couple hundred years or so. I use.

I don't think it's publication that makes it easier to make people use common sense when intepreting it. The state of technology isn't simply a function of revenues, and on the web. From the conference site, they're nice to you; you're too early for us!

If that worked, any YC partner wrote: After the war, federal tax receipts have stayed close to 18% of GDP were about the distinction between them. Spices are also the main effect of low quality though.

What he meant, I mean type I startups.

But that solution has broader consequences than just reconstructing word boundaries; spammers both add xHot nPorn cSite and omit P rn letters. You can't assume that the word content and tried for a startup, and Reddit is derived from Delicious/popular. Good news: users don't care what your body is telling you.

They don't know who invented something the mainstream media needs to learn to acknowledge it. If this happens because they're innumerate, or invent relativity. Obviously signalling risk is also a good chance that a shift in power from investors to act against their own company. Again, hard work is a new Lisp dialect called Arc that is not an efficient market in this essay I'm talking here about which is not so much in the body or header lines other than salaries that you wouldn't mind missing, false positives caused by filters will have to disclose the threat to potential investors and instead focus on growth instead of working.

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