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Minx First Reaction

Minx is fucking amazing. I just watched the first episode cause it was recommended by Charlie Jane Anders in her news letter and boy does this deserve the recommendation.

Minx follows our main character, who wants more than anything to create a feminist magazine but cannot get picked up by publishers. The one person that sees value in her vision is a sleazy smut publisher who thinks that it needs naked men to draw women in. As you would expect from the premise it plays a lot with feminism but it also addresses things like classism and racism. However it does it like with an amazing comic flare that makes it impossible to look away from.

My favorite character so far is a porn actress character that exemplifies the vapid blonde stereotype but she is brought on as an editor and starts reading feminist lit. It's so cool to see that stereotype defied. She is also just a ton of fun and is great at bringing the main character out of her shell.

#minx #tv

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2023 Eugie Award Finalists Discussion

For those that don't know the Eugie Award is a annual award for science fiction and fantasy short fiction. The award prioritizes unique stories, so I'll try to address that to some degree when saying my thoughts on each story.

“A Chestnut, A Persimmon, A Cunning Lie” by Michelle Denham

This one I honestly just didn't get. Like it is clearly emulating the vibe of a children's fairy tale where its a little strange, full of dream logic, and a touch dark. However I had assumed that there would be some sort of moral point because of this tone, but the only thing that could possibly qualify would be that sometimes it is easier to lie until you believe the lie than face grief. Can't say that message does much for me though. If you liked this story feel free to share your reading so that I can appreciate more.

“The Little God of the Staircase” by Meg Elison (The Dark Magazine)

It was a quite enjoyable story that centered around supernatural retribution against men that terrorize the main character, which proved rather cathartic. Can't say I would recommend this story for the reward since it didn't have any elements which I thought were particularly novel, but it was definitely a good read.

“The Pigeon-Keeper's Daughter” by Su-Yee Lin (Strange Horizons)

This one was one of my favorites but I fear I missed a lot of what was going on in the subtext. Not sure how much I can say about this but its beautifully weird and poignant. From what I can gather its about remembering where you come from even when you're far from home but there is so much else going on there. Its an absolute must read.

“Nine Theories of Time” by Spencer Nitkey (Apex Magazine)

I must admit I don't like poetry that much so there probably isn't a world where i would enjoy this some but I still feel like this is weak irrespective of my dislike of poetry. The actual story is a super basic set up of a father stuck in time (metaphorically) mourning for his son who died of cancer. This is told in poetry which consistently alludes to a connection to a fictional physics of time and how that relates to the way that the father grieves. Unfortunately the premise made it rather hard for me to take the science fictional elements seriously, so I didn't enjoy this very much.

“Quandary Aminu vs The Butterfly Man” by Rich Larson (Tor.com)

This one is that I think is just a hair better than "The Pigeon-Keeper's Daughter." This is a great update of the classic SF story of reckoning with the (in)humanity of a robot to the much more biological technology oriented future we seem to be moving towards. It has a very classic cyberpunk feel with a great cast of characters and a gripping story. Maybe this isn't the most unique story so it might not deserve the award but I sure do like it a lot and hope it gets other awards.

#eugie award #science fiction #short story #fantasy

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They Cloned Tyrone is Fantastic

They Cloned Tyrone is an absolutely hilarious look into not only blaxploitation film, but also the abuse that black communities suffer at the hands of both white society and the US government. It draws especially from the disgusting history of medical experiments conducted on black populations in the United States. While this sounds like it has no potential to be funny, it is constantly hilarious due to the great chemistry between the main trio, the ridiculous premise, and a healthy dose of racial humor. Despite the fact that it is a comedy it also ends with a serious call to action about building real community with those around you.

I would highly recommend this movie to just about anybody, it truly takes an impressive film maker to combine comedy and the soberly addressing the abuse of the black community but Juel Taylor easily achieves that.

#they cloned tyrone #film #review

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Emergency Skin Thoughts

4/5

Emergency Skin is a short story by N.K. Jemisin that relentless mocks capitalist ideology the apathy that it creates for its drawbacks. The story is told in a rather innovative way where the reader only knows what the AI in the main characters head and the other characters say. We are not treated to any of the MC’s dialogue or descriptions of the world (besides what the AI offers). This creates a very funny reading experience because the AI is relentlessly capitalist and racist so we see it describing everything on the socialist earth as being lacking, however everything it describes is objectively good so it has to try really hard to spin everything as a negative.

Overall the story uses a very innovative style of prose along with just being quite funny. I also happened to listen to the audio book narrated Jason Isaacs who was an absolute joy to listen to with his great accents and very funny delivery of the AI's lines.

I highly recommend this story cause its a fairly short and easy read and also free if you have amazon prime.

#short story #science fiction #nk jemisin

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Across the Spider-Verse is Disappointing

Spoilers Ahead

Absolutely stunning first half which devolved under its incessant need for fan service and quips. The first half features an overall heartfelt story split between Gwen and Miles both showing how they deal with identity, alienation, and the overall stress of being a spider-person. Gwen's part was shot beautifully with extremely inventive animation which is much more interested in expressing the emotional truth of a scene than the physical one. A review from Joy Sauce tells me the styles comes from the original Spider Gwen comic run.

Miles' story is shot much more conventionally however with the technical prowess that even exceeds the original spider-verse. This style makes it feel somewhat lacking compared to Gwen's section but that is a very minor gripe compared to how well it builds on the original's visual language.

These stories eventually culminate into their lives colliding again where they have a beautiful moment high above the city which really is the movie at its best. Unfortunately though the writing of the second half cannot hold up to the emotional heights of the first and the overall visual splendor. It seems to ask us to take it seriously while also directly asking us to laugh at how silly the situation is. For example, the spot who seems to be a bit villain at the beginning of the movie turns into one of the two main antagonists yet his demeanor is still much closer to a petulant child who wants to be taken seriously rather than anything that makes the audience genuinely invested in him. This ultimately feels as if it undercuts any stakes in scenes where he has speaking lines, yet the moment where he reaches his goal results in one of the best cuts of the movie so it ends up feeling unearned and hollow. The Indian spider man also feels guilty of this where he is impossible to take seriously yet is involved in some very pivotal moments. Not to mention his representation feels somewhat problematic.

However it is not impossible to do these types of silly characters well, the movies itself shows this with spider punk who despite being an over the top punk rocker is a legitimate emotional piece of the movie. Despite that over the top demeanor he regularly offers good advice and shares useful insight without losing any of the charm of his ridiculous performance.

Moving on to the other villain of the movie who feels just as lackluster as the first its Miguel the leader of the giant spider organization. His introduction to Miles in Nueva York is sabotaged before he even enters the screen by the incessant references in the preceding scene of Miles and co. walking through the spider city along with the captured villains of the multiverse. The movie takes that chance to slow down any plot development to give the audience time to ooh and ahh at all the referenced they can possible fit on the screen leaving me already in the mind set not to take Miguel seriously. This is then followed by a sequence of Miguel slowly lowering to lecture Miles while all the characters constly quip about how he slow he is lowering himself. Eventually him and Miles clash leading to a chase scene full of quips from every possible spider-person that was somewhat brutal to make it through.

This isn't even mentioning the reason that Miguel and Miles disagree which is that Miguel see canon events as something that can't be altered and Miles says everyone can be saved. Besides being meta without any real commentary, it also doesn’t seem like a premise that is good for character development. There seem to be two routes one where Miles ends up agreeing and does the same track as all other spider mans, and the other being he disagrees and does the same as all other super heroes and tries to save everyone. Neither feels interesting.

This criticism of course alludes to the point that nothing actually concludes at the end of this movie. All plot threads are left open and we are given no real resolution besides the knowledge that another movie is coming reportedly within a year. Ultimately it feels like I just watched half a movie that bogs itself down in references despite the stunning visual identity and important stories about identity that it has to tell.

#spider-verse #spiderman #film #review

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Toxic Masculinity, Alien Sex, and Marx: A short analysis of Dawn by Octavia Butler

I will likely post more about the xenogenesis trilogy since I am writing an essay about it and genuinely love the books.

Dawn by Octavia Butler is a book of multitudes with commentary from everything from the American slavery, colonial projects around the world, mutually assured destruction, and most importantly to this analysis what it means for white men to no longer control the means of reproduction.

First lets introduce what it means to have control of the means of reproduction. Means of reproduction is an obvious allusion to the Marxist idea of means of production which describes the capital required to produce a good. Marx advocates worker control of the means of production, so that workers would not longer have to be alienated from the jobs that they do since under the current system they are working for wages rather than towards any meaningful goal.

The means of reproduction are very similar and they "capital” that makes up the means of reproduction are both sex’s reproductive organs. Under slavery white men literally owned everyone else thus making them in control of the means of reproduction, but as black men and later all women gained so called legal independence rich white men still remain able to manipulate legal and economic system to allow them more thorough control of reproduction. This manipulation includes things like sterilizing “undesirables,” restricting access to abortion, marital rape, and just the general patriarchal set up of society.

In Dawn, Aliens, called the Oankali, save humanity from a post-nuclear holocaust earth, but in exchange require humanity to breed with them so that they can select for humanity’s desirable traits to incorporate into their genome. Yes this is eugenics. Through a type of Oankali, called ooloi, they sterilize all humans forcing any reproduction to be done through Oankali means.

This change causes many humans to rise up against the Oankali and try to kill them and those who collaborate with them. The demographic that rises up against the Oankali, however, is made up almost exclusively of white men people who have had the means of reproduction deprived from them for the first time. The women that decide to resist the Oankali generally seem to only do so because their partner refuses to submit themselves to Oankali hegemony. On the other hand, many of the women and people of color accept the Oankali as simply an inevitable change of master.

The response to the transfer of the means of reproduction to the Oankali shows the obvious truth that white men see themselves as the true controllers of human sexuality and when that is challenged they see it as a direct challenge of their masculinity. By defining their masculinity by control of sex, they see women as subservient vessels rather than full fledged human beings in their own right.

In order to deconstruct toxic masculinity, we must seize the means of reproduction, challenge the patriarchal myth that sex must mean control, and legally establish women having full autonomy of their own bodies.

#octavia butler #xenogenesis #literary analysis

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I’m sad that this video had to focus the vast majority of its effort focusing on the cesspit that was the comment section for the dragon maid video. Likely most of the bases that this video covered aren’t going to change people’s minds not because of the actual video but because those people aren’t watching the video in the first place.

I frankly had my own issues with the Dragon Maid video basically boiling down to the fact that it felt the video focused far more on one specific instance that wasn’t necessarily worth that amount of time dedicated to it. This video did a good job broadening the scope of the initial analysis from the Dragon Maid video. I think something that would help a lot of these problems is if people would actually critical engage with media as they watch it so that they could enjoy and piece of media and still recognize its flaws. For example, I love dragon maid, but you will not catch me defending how the show treats Kanna or Shota (the jury is still out on Ililu). I will even tell people going into the show to be aware that it does have issues with depictions of children in those characters, because it is important for people to be aware of these things.

Another thing was of course the problematic author angle. Death of the author is a tricky thing, but most of your points seemed to be around monetarily supporting the author so death of the author is frankly a moot point. If an author has done something you see as something you don’t want your money going toward, don’t spend money on the product. However don’t completely block yourself off from their work, if there is something you think you might enjoy form it; as a friend once told me, “Get Ender’s Game from a used book store.”

Unfortunately the video wasn’t able to probe much into either of these issue due to the fact that most of the response to the video seemed pretty vile with half assed arguments like “akshully the age of consent in japan is...” Then had to focus on talking about how fiction is not reality and fiction affects reality which most adults acting in good faith understand.

I wish Noralities luck and am excited to see more videos coming from her. I’m glad she didn’t end up getting pushed out of the anitube space by the backlash.

anyway new video

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Kyubey is frankly a creation that should be extremely familiar to anyone on the internet in the year of our lord 2021. He is the epitome of the hyper “rational” shitheads that insist that things are true because it is “rational” without realizing that this so called rationality is just a representation of their internal biases. For example, look at any of the people that insist because they took a biology class in high school they know that their is only two genders while ignoring the bevy of evidence collected by actual biologists and sociologists proving the opposite. Kyubey in canon represents these traits in that he talks about he only makes rational decisions yet when you examine the actions he takes it puts that statement in a rather different light.

When Sayaka interrogates Kyubey about knowingly leaving out the fact that in becoming a magical girl their souls are wrested from their bodies, Kyubey to prove his point about fighting advantages of soul gems steps on Sayaka’s soul gem to show her the pain that she would experience while fighting without it but then holds his foot there to torture her for the rest of the scene. He finally ends the scene by taunting her by emphasizing that she did get a wish out of it fully knowing that she is unsatisfied with her wish.

Based on Kyubey’s policy of only contracting girls, I suspect that Kyubey’s understanding of gender comes form initially coming to earth pretty early on in humanity developments possibly during some feudal periods and see that women in Europe and Asia were limited to the home and mainly did domestic and (more importantly for Kyubey) emotional labor. Kyubey then immediately extrapolated out that “this is just how humans work. Men do physical labor and women do emotional so I should only contract women because they are the emotional portion of this species.” Upon meeting trans people he probably thought that MtF people means create more of a resource for him so he should use that and FtM people decrease the amount of resources he has so that is unacceptable and he should work to prevent those people form realizing themselves. Nonbinary people he will of course encourage them to realize they are actually a girl regardless of their birth gender.

Notice that all of these reactions to trans people that Kyubey has revolves around his gender existentialist idea that women are inherently emotional and weak while men are inherently stoic and strong as I’m sure all of the know this idea has no basis in science. These ideas are instead based in the society that he was initially introduced to upon arriving on earth and their views on gender. If you want a perfect example of how the idea that women are emotional is baked into the society that we live in just look at the word hysteria, it comes from the greek work hystera meaning uterus and is used to describe people being overly emotional. Hysteria has even been used as a reason to institutionalize women for practically any reason a man in their lives saw fit and only ceased use in the 1950′s. So despite Kyubey think that he is completely rational and unaffected by human emotions, he is fully buying into the human construction of gender without actually “rationally” examining it.

Kyubey both actively seeks out trans women who are the in the closet/want to transition but can't in order to bank on their dysphoria, and actively tries to keep trans men in their 'egg' in order to contract with them

And then it also tries to gender nonbinary people in an attempt to categorize them, which would make things easier for it in the contracting department.

It doesn't get the whole gender thing but damn is it going to try to bend people to the way in which things benefit itself.

That's not even touching upon the fact that Kyubey benefits from transphobia

#pmmm #madoka magica #puella magi madoka magica

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Bringing Color Into Your Life With Super Cub

In my first analysis of Super Cub, I outlined Koguma’s journey in getting the first splashes of color into her life through obtaining and riding her prized Super Cub. I ended that analysis with the following paragraph.

Then as the ending sequence of the episode plays we get her same dull, grey morning routine to remind us that she hasn’t really become any less lonely. She just now has a spark of happiness as shown by her riding her Super Cub in full color as the ED plays, but there is still more to her journey; next she has to make some friends.

The following two episodes completed this mini-arc of Koguma bringing her life into full color. She achieves this through just the method I suggested: acquiring a friend. The first friend Koguma is able to make is Reiko, a veteran Super Cub owner in her class.

I find it extremely poignant that Koguma is only able to make a friend once she finds something that she can enjoy. Before Koguma falls in love her a Super Cub, she was an extremely gloomy person who frankly could not add anything to a relationship. Super Cub understands this and ensures that Koguma’s friendship with Reiko is mutual, since it blossoms from the shared interest in Super Cubs. Koguma is able to have someone guide her through the journey of scooter ownership and Reiko is able to share her knowledge of a hobby that she clearly loves.

Koguma initially meets Reiko when she incidentally mentions she owns a Super Cub during class and Reiko invites her to come check out her own Super Cub. While this is when they meet, they don’t truly become close here. Making friends is a process you have to meet, make a connection, then build a rapport. Koguma only actually earns the friendship of Reiko in episode 3 after the journey they go on to outfit Koguma’s bike with everything she needs. Eventually after fully outfitting Koguma and her Cub, Reiko volunteers her phone number to Koguma causing Koguma to realize how much she values Reiko. She thinks, “I don’t know if we can call each other friends; we’re fellow Cub riders. That may be a relationship that runs deeper than just friends.”

This realization precedes a beautiful closing sequence with a wonderful impressionist piano sound track that greatly contrasts the music of previous episodes by sounding utterly fulfilled instead of heart rending loneliness. The notes, that were spaced out before letting the silence seep into your heart, are instead seamlessly coexisting with a fullness that was completely lacking before. We are also getting the same establishing shots of her house we got in the first episode, which are now filled with color instead of having a dreary grey overlaying everything. Also mirroring the first episode Koguma is giving her speech about how she has nothing but this time it ends with “now I have a Cub. I’m sure that my Cub and I can go anywhere we want to.”

#super cub #anime analysis

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The Beauty of Humanity in The Case of Hana and Alice

***Spoilers Ahead***

The Case of Hana and Alice puts on displays the overflowing kindness of the human race, despite the fact that when we are stuck in the hell that is middle school humans can seem like the scum of the earth. In middle school we are in the absolute worst stage of our development we are trying to create our own characters yet we are stilled shackled to and dependent on our parents, which leads middle school to being a place with a bunch of people lashing out trying to create their own identities hurting those around them in the process. This creates an exceedingly hostile environment, which can easily make those within the inherent goodness of mankind. This movie recognizes this and asks us to take a step back and think about every time someone did something kind for you when they had absolute no reason to do so. The Case of Hana and Alice is full of these moments where it simply wants you to revel in the kindness of humanity knowing that it is offered free of charge whether you deserve it or not.

The movie begins in middle school which, as we all know, sucks. Alice wants to create her own identity separate from her mother, but since Alice is completely dependent on her mother this is of course impossible. The other characters we encounter in Alice’s class also have as similar struggles with creating their own identities, most notably Mu with her gothic mother. Since everyone in her class is lashing out it is turbulent and stressful and most middle school experiences are, and that is even ignoring the cult the Mu forms.

Alice’s curiosity and fun loving spirit is very nearly beaten out of her by middle school. She is luckily saved by a friend who through a series of events gets her involved with Hana to discover the secret behind the cult at her school. Alice’s imagination of course runs wild: who is this Judas? Why did he have four wives despite being in middle school? What is anaphylaxis? While all these questions were interesting to see unfold, Alice’s and Hana’s journeys were the real stars of the show. They displayed the world outside of middle schools; they showed the real beauty of mankind. They both had overflowing imaginations: Alice imagining the harrowing journey that they were to embark on, while Hana brooded on the notion that she might have killed someone. Both of these fantasies are beautiful to see play out in the characters’ minds where they seem so real yet as adults watching it is clear they are both entertaining childish notions.

When Alice confronts Hana to learn about Judas she is give the task to track down and follow Mr. Yuda to his house, since Yuda was “Judas’s” father but the name Yuda somehow became Judas through the middle school grapevine. Alice ends up following the wrong man, who upon realizing he is being followed offers to treat her to dinner and bring her back to her house. Upon informing Hana of this, Hana encourages Alice to leave thinking that “Not Mr. Yuda” is a kidnapper. Turns out he is just a kindly old man who wants to be reminded of youth. While treating her to dinner he shows Alice that despite the fact that he looks quite old there are still parts of him that look young and a smooth as a baby. On the way back to the train station they play on a swing set as they reminisce about the last time they were on swings. “Not Mr. Yuda” remembers the raising his daughter and his lost youth, while Alice remember her elementary school days and her lost childhood. This man is so kind to her as to buy her dinner and offer her transportation home with no expectation of anything in return. Despite the fact that she seemingly has nothing to give she is able to allow him to relive some of his youth with her and remind him of his younger days with his daughter on the swing set.

After Alice’s encounter with “Not Mr. Yuda” she reunites with Hana who is stalking the real Mr. Yuda they spend a while camping around Mr. Yuda’s apartment before deciding to call it a day and head back after getting ramen. Unfortunately with their orders stuck behind a large group they get up to leave at which point the group starts offering the girls their food not wanting them to go hungry.

Unfortunately they still miss the last train. Because of this, they end up spending a night under the stars. They end up sleeping under a truck, so when Alice wakes up when the truck drives away she thinks Hana is being dragged behind the truck. She then chases the truck roping in a ton of high schoolers on her mad dash to catch the bus.

Through their insane journey around the city in order to find the source of this strange rumor in the school they discover the wonder that exists simply in exploring and encountering other humans. They begin stuck in middle school at the whims of the bullies and general bad attitude of other middle schoolers, but as the story progresses they are shown the true faces of humanity the face of Not Mr. Yuda who was willing to help out Alice despite only knowing the she was stalking him, the face of the ramen bar goers who wanted to help a couple of girls get home with full bellies, and the face of the high schoolers who were willing to jump in front of a truck to save someone’s life. Through seeing these they begin to grow past the selfish attitudes of middle school and start to incorporate some of the selflessness that they see into their own lives.

#the case of hana and alice #anime analysis

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Thoughts on 86 ep 1-2

I am going to start with the good, because I find that if you only focus on the bad it ends up sounding bitter and making you a little bitter. The undeniable thing about 86 so far is that the production values are spot on. The OST is incredible of course; what else would you expect from Hiroyuki Sawano? I must also give some credit to the amazing 3d animation displayed in both these episodes. 86’s 3d animation is frankly the best I have seen outside of Studio Orange. The 2d animation was also great, but nothing outside of what I expected for A-1 considering the talents working on it. The 3d animated robots were able to make the fights feel super dynamic and enjoyable which is only heightened by the banger Sawano soundtrack.

Outside of the production the I really like the interactions between the 86. They all interact like one big family giving it a very homely feel whenever they are on screen, and this is expanded by the good character writing to make them feel as if they have depth even with hardly any screen time. This makes seeing Shin and Lena growing closer feel so much more meaningful, since she is in a way being integrated into that family structure.

Sorry to everyone that enjoys this show, but unfortunately despite the show's good character interactions it fails rather completely in world building. There is some small stuff, like why don’t they just have the 86 pilot the robots remotely instead of actually being in them and why does the para-raid act as a hearing implant rather than just using headphones, but these issues while annoying to the sci-fi fan part of my brain can be excused; unfortunately these issues are indicative of a bigger problem this story has with considering the consequences of things that happen in its story and lore.

Let’s take the main premise of this show for example, all the immigrants were ghettoized into district 86 which officially doesn’t exist. They then became known as the 86 and were no longer considered people. As far as we know, not a single person questioned this decision until 4 years later along comes be the main character of the show saying, “maybe we shouldn’t be using slave labor to fight for us?”. From what we are shown there isn’t anyone else that actually questions how society is setup and no one questioned the ghettoizing of the immigrant population in the Republic (I have talked to LN readers and this is true to them too). Because of this, the narrative seems to be treating Lena like a special snowflake who is very moe, responsible, and empathetic compared to the lazy and cruel other members of the military. Besides the obvious juxtaposition that causes you to ask why she is here if the military is so incompetent and cruel, this has another problem which is that it results in the narrative treating her with kid gloves. She interrupts and random history lecture for recruits by talking about how the “unmanned robots” aren’t actually unmanned and are operated by people, in any fascist regime this would surely get you taken in by the secret police or at least court marshaled if you’re in the military, but she suffers no consequences.

These decisions all seem rather silly, at least to me, so let’s ask why did the author make them. The author is clearly trying to model the society of the Republic off of Nazi Germany, but seems to not have a very strong knowledge of the history Nazi Germany. Believe it or not, not everyone in Nazi Germany supported the extermination of the Jews and some even fought against it. While Nazi Germany did work to hide any evidence that they were committing genocide by claiming that they were putting Jews in ghettos for their own protection, it is pretty clear that this was a cover up. No population is ghettoized for virtuous reasons. Noticing this there were many German citizens that worked to hide the Jews and actively subvert the Nazi government by spreading anti-Nazi propaganda and even committing acts of terrorism like blowing up railroads in order to hinder the Nazi war effort.

A logical question regarding this departure from the history of the event being alluded to by the story is of course “Why?”. I frankly think it is because this person is a liberal. To those not familiar with what the term liberal means outside of the American political context this may be a somewhat confusing statement. In this context liberal means, someone who supports capitalism and generally believes in slow incremental change as opposed to structural change. The reason why I say this is because we are only seeing someone working from inside the system to try and fix it rather than anyone trying to disrupt the system from the outside, like what happened in Nazi Germany. Since liberalism doesn’t believe in structural change they often attribute problems to bad people being in charge rather than an unjust system. You can see this in 86 by the fact that all the soldiers besides Lena are extremely lazy and cruel, so there are no effective, kind soldiers shown who support the regime. This is also ahistorical considering that many people who would be consider nice ended up becoming Nazis. I frankly think Full Metal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa did a great way of showing this through the fact that fan favorite Maes Hughes ends up becoming a Nazi. I’m sure as the story goes on we will get more examples of Lena trying to change the system from the inside, but I doubt we will ever get a good answer to why she chooses to assist a genocidal government in the first place other than the poor justification that she can more help from inside the system.

Overall this show is selling you the idea that this character and you by extension are so extremely special and virtuous for realizing what is happening to the 86 is evil, but says that the only way to actually help the 86 is to work within the genocidal system rather than actually moving to destroy the system.

#86 #86: eighty-six #eighty-six

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Completing The Last of Us was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in a video game

***Spoilers Ahead***

I have played a great many video games and have done all sorts of difficult tasks from braving the b-sides of Celeste to conquering Slave Knight Gael, but not have been as emotionally difficult for me than the hospital chapter of The Last of Us. When I initially began the hospital level after a couple of minutes of playing I needed to set it down. Playing it was making me feel sick. To think I through Joel was slaughtering all of these innocent people trying to save humanity, people who if this situation came to occur in real life I would gladly count myself among them. I was destroying humanity’s last chance at any sort escape from the hell world that they have been thrust into. I may be saving Ellie, but what world am I allowing her to live in by saving her: a world filled with selfishness like mine? A world where all goods are scarce and if you get unlucky scavenging you have to watch your best friends lose their minds while you can do nothing? All of this sent me into a spiral causing me to have to put away the game for a week unable to face the horrible actions that I must execute in order to complete the game.

To make a quick aside, it is not as if I don’t understand why Joel is doing what he is doing. I understand how he sees Ellie as a surrogate daughter; someone that he sees the reincarnation of his daughter in. I know how much that would kill me if I was in his position. The thing is if I was in his position I would be distraught, but I would not be willing to doom humanity. I would be even less willing to kill tens of innocents to do it. So despite me understanding exactly where Joel is coming from that does not change the fact that he is clearly a selfish person, who would be willing to doom humanity just to have a surrogate daughter to give him the fulfillment that his biological daughter was unable to give him due to here unfortunate passing.

Now it is just over a week over and I have just pushed through to the end of the game and hell yes did I cry, because that shit hurt. After slogging my way through a sea of corpses on the first floor knowing I had just executed these people for doing the right thing, I reached the second floor. A short combat encounter later I was crushed to find a recording finding Marlene’s message to Ellie’s late mother. I t turns out that Marlene elected not to kill Joel, because he was the only other person in the facility who truly understands how much it hurts Marlene to kill Ellie. Knowing that Joel isn’t the only person that understand the pain that losing Ellie will cause just really cemented for me that what Joel is doing truly makes him a monster, the worst kind of monster: a monster who I can complete understand the actions of.

After breaking into the operation room it felt as if I were killing representations of myself as I shot all three of the doctors standing in the operation theater preparing to save humanity. Marlene confronting me on the way really added salt to the wound. Killing her while she was offering me a chance at redemption after killing tens of people. She had already given me a chance by not killing me as soon as I brought Ellie and I squandered that opportunity once again in order to appease Joel’s obsession with Ellie. Then at the end of the game the final nail in the coffin for any chance of Joel being a good person he swears to Ellie that his lies about the fireflies not caring about her are truth knowing full well that she would have sacrificed her life for the sake of humanity as the fireflies intended.

#the last of us

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Thoughts on Ep 1-2 of Megalo Box 2

***Spoilers Below***

Upon watching the first episode I was unsure about whether this season would be able to deliver a satisfying story, since the only logical next step for Joe would be to die or to quit using painkillers and thus be forced to quit boxing. I had guessed that the first one was untenable since he is the main character and the second was similarly impossible since this is a boxing anime, but they have been able to pull off the perfect third path. This path is Joe passing the torch to the next generations of dreamers, to the people who are willing to risk it all for what they believe in. 

In the years since the end of the original series, Joe has become the traveling boxer Nomad, who is addicted to painkillers and whose body is very clearly being utterly destroyed by boxing. In his travels he encounters the boxer Chief, who despite Joe’s insistence that there be no rigged fights throws the fight between them in order to make money. Later Joe discovers that he comes from a nearby immigrant community and he is trying to save up money in order to buy the land they live on before it is sold to the highest bidder.

Their community is constantly harassed by those living in the town around them. Not only is there a local gang who physically harasses them, there is also a local business man who exploits them for profit, and they are generally looked down upon by the towns people. This show is taking aim at the ways in which xenophobia is manifested in society and revealing how short sighted and ignorant it really is. It is also profiling the traditions of the Mexican people through the Celebration of the Day of the Dead this episode showing that even through great hardship the beauty of a culture will always shine through.

Now that Joe no longer has anything to fight for, he finds a people who do; he finds Chief who is following the dream instilled in him by Gearless Joe. That dream is the dream of being able to start from nothing and build up a life for oneself. Upon seeing this determination in Chief and being reminded of his younger self, Joe endeavors to pass the torch to Chief and train him in order to win the next Megalonia. With Nanbu’s passing, it will be a great way for Joe to reflect on what Nanbu did for him as a coach through his own experience coaching Chief.

#megalo box #megalobox

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Thoughts on Episodes 1-6 of Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure

Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure is my first precure, and it has completely hooked me on the series. A couple months ago I endeavored to become more knowledgeable on the magical girl genre, because it housed some of my favorite works like Revolutionary Girl Utena and Puella Magia Madoka Magica. I started off by watching some classic, but once I head that a new precure season was starting up I endeavored to watch it week by week to educate myself more on the modern magical girl genre rather than solely consuming the classics. So after watching the first 6 episodes of this iteration of precure I have some observations (in short it is fantastic).

***Spoilers Below***

This iteration of precure seems to be about fighting against the urge to procrastinate, since the big bad is the Procrastination Witch and the Manatsu family motto is “Do whatever you think is the most important thing right this moment!” While this motto is a bit of a mouthful I feel like it will play into the main theme of this season quite well. I do love how the theme of procrastination plays into the cast of villains being terminally lazy; it makes them much more endearing characters that I almost want to root for. All in all though, the main theme is not particularly interesting because of how simplistic, but this seems in line for precure since it is a show for preteens.

One of the biggest and most obvious sub-themes of Tropical-Rouge seems to be makeup; this theme is so prevalent it is literally in the name, since rouge is a type of makeup used for adding color to your cheeks or lips. Manatsu describes makeup by saying, “Whenever you find it hard to summon your courage, you can use makeup to psyche yourself up.” She constantly espouses the empowering feeling of wearing makeup to her friends in order to get them hyped up to do what they need to do. The idea that makeup is able to summon courage likely comes from the idea that makeup allows women and girls to project a more confident exterior, which can allow people to build more confidence in themselves. This is then further reinforced when the cures’ transformation sequences has them putting on makeup to literally become more powerful. The cures even use their lipstick as their finishing weapons against the Dontwanna’s. It is going to be interesting to see if this theme is explored more, since it seems so essentially to the show’s visual language.

Tropical-Rogue also seems like it will draw a lot on the story of the little mermaid considering its prevalence in the episode that Minori was introduced. Due to this Little Mermaid theme, I assume Laura is going to end up having to make a deal with either her mother or the Procrastination Witch in order to become a human so she can become a precure to protect her friends. My guess is that the cost of her wish is that she’ll never be able to be the queen, but she is willing to sacrifice that for her friends. Then in the finale she’ll sacrifice herself and turn to sea foam, but she’ll be reincarnated (like at the end of the original Little Mermaid) so that she can become queen and remain friends with the other precure. Additionally, they definitely seem be be teasing a Manatsu x Laura romance due to how they met at a rock with a heart carved into it. This romance can help make Laura’s sacrifice to save the precures have that much more meaning.

Tropical-Rogue has also been able to hook me into a number of the character plotlines. The one I’m most interested in at the moment is Asuka’s plot with the student council president that made her disillusioned with the concept of allies. I always love seeing people learning to trust again after their trust has been broken. Minori’s plot also seems pretty interesting with her losing her passion for fiction after having one of her works rejected by someone she respects. As someone who is recently getting into writing it would be pretty disheartening for that I respect to call my writing shit, and I would love to see that explored.

TL;DR As any one who has read this can tell, I am loving this show. It has very interesting themes that I am excited to see explored more. All of the characters are so incredibly endearing and I already care about each and everyone of them immensely, so I am thrilled to see their character arc progress.  

#precure #pretty cure #tropical-rouge! pretty cure #tropical rouge #tropical rouge precure

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Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this blog as it says in the description is to store my thoughts on a variety of subject matter. This archive has a dual purpose: it is to both store my thoughts for my own future reference and it is so others can see and engage with my ideas. Everything I post here will try to serve those purposes, so it is very unlikely you will see any reblogs, jokes, or frankly any thing else that doesn’t scratch the analytical scratch in your mind.

What will be stored here?

Long form analysis of anime, tv shows, books, movies, games, etc.

Reviews of media I am consuming

Some personal narratives

Some political writing (I will try to make it accessible to someone from any place and time)

What is the "ask me anything" used for?

There you can ask me my opinion on any topic, but I most likely will only respond to media related questions (ex. asking my opinion on a show). Through this you can try to expose me to media I wouldn't normally consume in order to broaden my tastes.

What do I want from you?

For everyone reading this blog, I would greatly appreciate it if respond to any post you might like with comments, criticism, or even just a "Thank you. I liked that" anything is appreciated.

For everyone who read through that thank you for taking the time to learn about this blog. I am excited to go on this journey of intellectual exploration with all of you.

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Super Cub Ep 1 Thoughts

This is how you make a first episode of an anime. This was just fantastic words cannot describe how good it is, so I highly recommend everyone go and watch the episode.

The episode begins wordlessly conveying to you how lonely and hopeless the world is to the main character. We see long drawn out shots of empty landscapes with muted colors, we see her preparing a sad breakfast of buttered toast, we see her prepare of lunch of plain what rice and packaged flavoring, and we never once see another human being until after she leaves her house but even then they are at a distance. This feeling of loneliness is then further exacerbated by the impressionist soundtrack with it’s spaced out notes seemingly filled to the brim with longing for connection. I could feel my heart ache with every press of the piano keys.

The first time we see a spark of real color in the show is right as the main character starts up her Super Cub for the first time after having been graciously offered it by the owner of the scooter store. I would challenge any without a heart of stone to try not to smile at this moment; she is finally able to get a spark of happiness and her life, with that you can feel her destiny shifting as the scooter starts up for the first time.

Later in the episode as she takes a midnight trip to a local convenience store, the show uses one of my favorite songs of all time, Claire de Lune. The song starts with it’s lonely beginning as she lays in her bed afraid to ride the scooter after a scare with a truck she had earlier in that day, then as the song picks up she gets out of bed and chooses to ride the scooter, then right as the song is climaxing it cuts to her riding through the town enjoying the thrill of her Super Cub until the movement finally finishes in glorious harmony as she arrives at the convenience store.

After going into the convenience store, her bike fails to start up which causes her to just collapse in on herself with doubt. To everyone who has ever found a new passion then been hit with a set back this is a feeling you are quite familiar with: the feeling of not being good enough for something you love so you might as well give up. Just as she is about to give up on her hopes of scootering she remembers the user’s manual, and discovers that it is probably just out of gas. What an obvious solution to a question that was so thoroughly paralyzing the moment before, how silly would it have been for her to give up just because of that?

Then as the ending sequence of the episode plays we get her same dull, grey morning routine to remind us that she hasn’t really become any less lonely. She just now has a spark of happiness as shown by her riding her Super Cub in full color as the ED plays, but there is still more to her journey; next she has to make some friends.

#super cub #clair de lune

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The Slime Diaries Ep 1 Thoughts

This show has 0 right to be as good as it is. Believe it or not, I think I am going to enjoy this more than I enjoyed the second season of The Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. The anime is very obviously an adaptation of a 4-koma, which you feel in it's short, punchy scenes, and while that style mainly lends itself to comedy and fluff it is also able to build the world and give us some context for the extra happenings of the series. This episode showed a lot of how and why everyone in the Tempest Federation loves Rimuru; it is, in short, because of the fact that he was able to bring people together to give them protection and a purpose. We see this a couple times throughout the episode and it touched me everytime.

Don't let this review confuse you though, while this is a really fantastic 4-koma adaptation it is still a 4-koma adaptation which means that it likely isn't going to have any plot stuff or much that goes further than that is a cute moment. I was even doing some stationary excerises while watching the episode, since it doesn't exactly require one's full concentration.

#slime diaries #tensei shitara slime datta ken #that time i got reincarnated as a slime