Black Ships
The Black Ships ( 黒船, romanized: kurofune, Edo period term) was the name given to Western vessels arriving in Japan in the 16th and 19th centuries.
Commodore Perry's fleet for his second visit to Japan in 1854 - Engraving from Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, Boston, May 15, 1852, Volume II, No. 20, page 305
In 1543, Portuguese initiated the first contacts, establishing a trade route linking Goa to Nagasaki. The large carracks engaged in this trade had the hull painted black with pitch, and the term came to represent all Western vessels. In 1639, after suppressing a rebellion blamed on the influence of Christian thought, the ruling Tokugawa shogunate retreated into an isolationist policy, the Sakoku. During this "locked state", contact with Japan by Westerners was restricted to Dutch traders on Dejima island at Nagasaki.
In 1844, William II of the Netherlands urged Japan to open also the mainland to trade, but was rejected. On 8 July, 1853, the U.S. Navy sent four warships into the bay at Edo and threatened to attack if Japan did not begin trade with the West. The ships were Mississippi, Plymouth, Saratoga, and Susquehanna of the Expedition for the opening of Japan, under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry. The expedition arrived on 14 July, 1853 at Uraga Harbor (present-day Yokosuka) in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Though their hulls were not black, their coal-fired steam engines belched black smoke.
Their arrival marked the reopening of the country to political dialogue after more than two hundred years of self-imposed isolation. Trade with Western nations followed five years later with the Treaty of Amity and Commerce. After this, the kurofune became a symbol of the end of isolation.
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the problem is that being single is seen as the consolidation prize, and not the natural neutral state of being-a-person. at the end of the movie or the book or the poetry, there is a person waiting for you at the altar, and they love you. if the play is a comedy, everyone gets married. the metaphor is about how you are not-whole. the metaphor is about how everyone is going to be happily-ever-after. the metaphor is that romantic love is the most important resource on the planet, not just all-love. all-love is not a thing, that is a disappointment. the treasure is not the friends we made along the way. the treasure is the girl you landed.
the metaphor is that you cannot be alone, that means you are broken. are you getting over someone? that is acceptable, you can be getting over someone, but not for long. you must be single because you would rather not be single. you must be single and looking to not-be-single. you must want to date, eventually.
friendship and community are never seen as being equal-to or even-better than romantic connection. that person is your one! you need to find them. you need to hunt through the sand particles until you can shift out some kind of gem. this is regardless to your own experience of the beach and the sun. you need to be somewhere with someone.
if you are taking this time alone to heal, that is so sad. everyone gives you this little pitying look. the understanding is that you are not actually happier than you were before you were single. it is seen as a sort of pity - oh, you are choosing yourself, making yourself the priority? - that isn't quite right. you must mean that you are making yourself ready for the right person. you are just laying the bed better this time. open up your heart. you'll find them, we promise!
what do you mean you're really-truly genuinely-very happy? you are probably misremembering what it was like to be in a relationship. and besides, once you meet your person, that time will look grey and bland and wasted. your person is the only way for you to see in color. so what if you have taken this time - for the first time in your entire life - to actually-for-real do the fucking work. you can be proud of yourself, sure. but the way we need to know that you got better is that you get a partner. you're healed enough for the next bad part!
people don't choose to be single, they just say they're choosing to be single - they actually mean "nobody wants to date me." it doesn't matter how many people you have gently rejected or how many times you've talked it over carefully in therapy. what matters is that you are single, and by all accounts - that means you are something worth our pity. your successes and life all seem pale in the sunlight. sure, you have done amazing things and finally found your way in life. what matters is that there wasn't a person in the room with you while you did it.
you want to tell them - that's the whole thing. i didn't know how to be alone in the room. i didn't know how to handle the silence. every moment was so sharp, and i kept choosing the wrong way to close the door. i have spent my entire life in the empty well, living in the ricochet of someone else's cruelty. for once i have built myself a ladder. for once everything i taste is all mine, every bite of sunshine and laughter. i have learned how to sleep out in the open with my memories. recently, they have started to purr.
your father rolls his eyes. listen. this isn't about you. i just want a grandchild in my future.
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It's disappointing to me that of the few takes I've seen on this bonus comic, they've pretty much singled Mithrun out as "the" racist elf. No, he's not the only racist one, he is the only one who doesn't have the desire to pretty up his language and try to make it look like he isn't. Lycion actively pointing out that "it's all short lived races around here"; and Cithis, Lycion and Fleki joking about what to call the short-lived races are both examples of this. They're still behaviours that show the characters see the short-lived races as inferior; they’re just trying to find a word to make it look like they aren't. It's giving the "I'm not racist but" vibes. Mithrun even says it himself: "That’s what we all used to call them." And I'd confidently hazard a guess that the other Canaries aren't so much shocked that Mithrun holds that viewpoint, but rather that he says it out loud.
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How do you do it….HOW
remove every letter in a text aside from A, T, G, or C -> convert to all caps -> remove spaces and special characters -> use the NIH's nucleotide blast tool -> find a picture of aminal
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