bexical

[bexical]

your post ab eeaao + your personal thoughts on nihilism are so close to mine! i'm excited since i have never been able to coherently explain them the way you have (although this might be bc i share the beliefs?), the w and w+ combined with the resource sink terminology are stuck in my head now. i found your post scrolling the eeaao tag and now i'm just hoping we both figure more of it out. take care and thank you for writing and sharing!!

glad you found something you vibed with that helped put some of your thoughts into words <3

[bexical]

EEAaO: A (personal) journey to (and through?) nihilism

(spoiler-lite) (TW suicide)

So, EEAaO is a story about nihilism: to partly reiterate from my last post, the film depicts Evelyn's journey to nihilism (as guided by Jobu), presents two options (suicide and kindness), and finally shows Evelyn's choice (optimistic nihilism).

My teenage path to nihilism was… a little different. No kung fu movie star parallel universe or hot dog fingers, no IRS sex dungeon - I guess there was a little divorce (or at least hints of it).

So, what did it look like?

Jobu dismissively says at some point (paraphrased), "Right is a tiny box created by people" or something; we have all these grand concepts we've made up, but none of it actually exists - "Take the universe and grind it down… then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy" (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather).

What does exist? Just… atoms and whatever they're made of, flying around and colliding with each other. And if we are just atoms, or as one professor of philosophy (Alex, at Duke U) says, "If the brain is nothing but a complex physical object… then what goes on in our heads is as fixed and determined by prior events as what goes on when one domino topples another." And well… at the risk of veering off on a very separate tangent: if our thoughts are determined, if there is no free will… then how can anything matter?

(While we're on this tangent, I'll note that the above 'conclusion' describes where I was at as a teen, before quantum physics had really entered the philosophical 'conversation' in my head - just to briefly address the quantum physics counter to physical determinism.)

Maybe we're getting a little lost in the metaphysical weeds at this point - sure, as Jobu says, "we're just a random superposition of atoms" (or something) and like, why do I really care about some atoms - but then again, as Descartes notes, 'I' obviously exist since I think. Maybe I don't need to quite solve the philosophical question and determine where the concept of 'me' physically exists to accept that well, I do exist.

So… then what? What matters?

How about love?

Romance is omnipresent for teenagers. Pop culture loves love. But in real life? It… didn't seem to exist. As one friend liked to say, "love is just a chemical response in the body"; but even if we do allow for it to be something more than just a flood of oxytocin, we have to face the reality that nearly half of marriages in the U.S. end in divorce - and let's face it, of the couples that stay together, most are probably miserable.

And well, that was my experience as a teenager. For nearly all of my friends, their parents did in fact seem miserable. Some of them hated each other - but they would #staytogetherforthekids ! And I honestly don't know what's better in that case, staying for the kids or not, but I can say that the concept of a happy marriage seemed to be just as fantastical as unicorns, something that belongs purely to the domain of fiction (and even then, just barely: so much pop culture concludes with the wedding ending, but how often do we actually get a look in the lives of the happy marriage?).

But alright. Love is doomed, woop-de-do. What about, I dunno, career?

When I had motivation issues, my parents would always tell me - you need to work hard so you can get into a 'good' college => get a 'good' job => live a 'good' life…

But why? Why does any of that matter? (After all, 'good' is merely a tiny box created by people.)

Besides, after I die, it won't matter how rich I was, how 'good' my life was. Even if I were to become as 'great' as "Ozymandias", in a few millennia, nothing would remain besides a pedestal of my hubris.

And well… let's face it, I'm not going to be as 'great' as him (whoever the fuck he was). As a teen, I barely felt noticed - noteworthy. I mean yeah, if I actually killed myself, people would be sad, or something - but if I simply never existed, who would notice? I mean, I wasn't 'unlikable' per se, I had friends, but no one who… seemed to actively want me to exist. I was a smart student who made my friends laugh once in a while maybe, but was that enough value to be worth wanting around?

If anything, I felt my existence was of negative value - I was like Dr. Virus's metaphorical koel birds (from Three Idiots): my attendance at MIT, for example, meant one less spot for someone else, someone who would have likely thrived and appreciated their time there just as much as I did, if not more. Or, to take the environmentalist perspective, I'm really just a resource sink; it'd probably be better if I were just Thanos'ed out.

Prior to the events of the film, Jobu's goal is to find the version of Evelyn who can understand her - and I get that need. (Arguably, this whole post is part of some journey to bare myself in the hopes of being understood.)

At the risk of sounding like "oh I'm so unique" "you just don't get me" - well… I feel like people don't get me. Like there's this fundamental difference between me and other people.

I mentioned earlier, I'd say I didn't have the motivation to study and my parents would give me some whole spiel about I need money to live - and this seems to be an argument that resonates with people, at least on some level. Like, "yes, that makes sense - and maybe that doesn't quite motivate me in the moment - but as a general motivation, yes I value my life".

And I… don't?

I was chatting with two separate friends about the repugnant conclusion about if / where we felt the logic had gone wrong. I'll try to explain without getting into the nuances of the paradox itself: essentially, I made the claim that, given a world without me (W) and the exact same world but with me (W+), it's… at least non-obvious to me why W+ is better than W.

I mean, I do care about some things: I want the world to be fair and just, for the justice system to be accurate and appropriate, I want my friends to be happy and 'successful'; taken to a very broad abstract, I care about the quality of the lives of everyone else in the world. I might assert that philosophically 'Nothing Matters' but I still care about some things anyway.

That set of things just doesn't include my life - or even my happiness, for that matter. And well, it seems like that's not the case for… basically everyone I know.

At the risk of sounding a little tautological, it feels a little lonely being alone in thinking this way.

In some sense, I'm probably not actually alone in that thought though.

Like yeah, I don't know anyone personally who shares that mindset (or at least anyone who talks about it). But there are people: there are Joy and Evelyn, for instance, but there's also the abundance of philosophers who have pondered this before me.

I did note in the title that this is partly a journey through nihilism - and while that may be a slight misnomer (since, as argued in my last post, Evelyn does not abandon nihilism), it isn't that inaccurate.

Because like Joy, others have temporarily posed suicide as the answer. However, absurdist philosophers Kierkegaard and Camus found ways to move past that, 'through' the nihilism.

On the wiki page for absurdism, they describe the Absurd as "the fundamental disharmony between the individual's search for meaning and the meaninglessness of the universe" and describe the three solutions that K and C describe: suicide, a religious leap of faith, and acceptance.

Like Joy, I'm here in search for some solution besides suicide; like Camus, I'm fairly dismissive of Kierkegaard's religious solution, both for the matter of the 'philosophical suicide' (i.e. abandonment of rationality - a little confusing, given that actual suicide is simultaneously being discussed) and for other reasons; and, at least as outlined by K and C, that leaves me with Acceptance of the Absurd.

But when I tried to read The Myth of Sisyphus, in which Camus outlines his argument for acceptance… it was a fucking mess. Half the sentences were just nonsense, the other half were vaguely obvious yet somehow also nonsense? And the whole thing was written about 'Man' and 'His' search for meaning; I know that gendered language is 'just' how people wrote back then, but still. I gave up even trying to skim through it.

Evelyn's personal journey 'through' nihilism is guided by her husband Waymond: he argues that we must be kind. One line that stands out to me in particular is when he says that his choice is "strategic and necessary" - at the risk of overanalyzing a single line, what does he mean by 'necessary'? That, if we are to forsake kindness, we risk losing ourselves to cynicism?

I'm still working on my personal journey through nihilism - I'm philosophically unhappy with Kierkegaard's leap of faith and frustrated with Camus's presentation of acceptance of the absurd; meanwhile, the optimistic nihilism that Evelyn reaches is tempting but as of yet unconvincing to me.

Hopefully, I'll figure it out someday.

[bexical]

EEAaO: Analysis of a shot (and its reprise)

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once - great movie, would highly recommend for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet - but I won’t be getting into all of that just quite yet. I just wanted to take this moment to look into one particular shot. (Notes: there will be spoilers; despite having seen this three times, I might have some chronology details a little off - apologies if that is the case; and TW suicide)

Alright, so what is the shot in question? Part II of the film, “Everywhere”, starts with Evelyn back home, figuring out her taxes. She is holding a receipt that has had a swirling black circle drawn on it, clearly reminiscent of the Everything BagelTM - unsure what to do with it and seemingly forced to make a choice, she splits, with one choice putting the receipt on the left and the other choice on the right.

The shot returns at the end of the film: Given another chance to figure out her taxes, Evelyn is faced yet again with the question of where to place the Bagel receipt. This time though, she places it in the center - neither left or right (or both?).

So, Evelyn’s doing her taxes… I probably could’ve picked a more exciting shot than that, huh.

The reprise shot reminded me strongly of two video essays I saw a while back from Just Write: one of them describing Hegelian dialectic philosophy in Korra and another describing (among other things) the wants and needs of the characters in The Last Jedi, as best seen in a graphic at this timestamp. (Not to say this channel originates these ideas, of course - Hegelian dialectic originates at the very least with Hegel of course, and the wants/needs essay at the very least is citing another blog - these are merely the most noteworthy places I was introduced to these concepts.)

Now, Hegel was pretty racist, as argued here, but even that article allows for non-racist dialectics - with that out of the way, what the heck are dialectics, what're we even talking about?

To paraphrase from JW’s video (so, you know, this is a little indirect) - Hegel argues that good ideas can come from those we disagree with, and the dialectic has three parts: the Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis (which will, of course, have meanings slightly different from their English meanings but which I will not be clarifying). Let’s get into those three, shall we?

So, what is the Thesis in EEAaO?

Jobu presents the Objective Truth she has learned from the Bagel: If Everything exists, then Nothing Matters.

Her Thesis (or, at least, the first part) is nihilism, and her goal prior to the events of the film has been to find the version of Evelyn who can embrace this Objective Truth - partly so she can be a little less lonely, but also in the hope that there is another answer.

Because the second part of her Thesis is that, if nothing matters, suicide is the answer. The film doesn’t quite say the word aloud, but it’s fairly explicit: she tells Evelyn how, after having come to the nihilist conclusion, she created the Bagel to see if she could actually die.

And she’s disappointed. Someone else has seen the Bagel and, after that whole journey, ended up as a rock right alongside her. There is, seemingly, no other answer.

For the moment.

At this point, the film (in the form of the lovable Waymond) presents the Antithesis: Kindness.

Waymond has not embraced the Objective Truth that Joy espouses and that Evelyn accepts: instead, he is confused, and lost. But, he argues, even (and especially) when we are confused, we must still be kind; one version of him states that this outlook is both ‘strategic and necessary’.

The film presents Kindness as viable alternative - both in the scene as an alternative to violence, and conceptually as an alternative to Jobu’s nihilistic Thesis.

And finally, after having seen the left and right options, Evelyn places the receipt in the center; having been presented the Thesis and Antithesis, Evelyn chooses the Synthesis.

What is her Synthesis? This review from the Wired describes it as “Optimistic Nihilism”: while it embraces Jobu’s Truth that Nothing Matters, it rejects the (cruel) cynicism it briefly led Evelyn to and instead opts for Waymond’s Kindness. (The difference between the Synthetic option and the Antithesis is more subtle but perhaps worth noting: It approaches Kindness from the position of “Nothing Matters” rather than from a position of confusion.)

I honestly don’t have much more to say on the synthesis (especially not anything that hasn’t been expressed in the movie or the Wired review), but I did have one more thing to look at…

So, I brought up one other thing earlier: a graphic from another Just Write video.

Because I’m too lazy to screenshot it and incorporate an image into this post For accessibility reasons, let me describe it: the graphic presents the three main characters (Poe, Finn, Rey), each of them in between two characters representing two options (the main character’s wants and needs).

Admittedly, the analogy is imperfect: I wouldn’t classify the two options as representing Evelyn’s wants and needs respectively, and the wants/needs narrative is moreso that of the character rejecting their wants in favor of their needs, rather than a synthesis of two options.

The interesting and analogous part is the decision to represent a protagonist’s options with specific people: Finn’s want, self-serving moral ambiguity, is represented by DJ, and his need, a rise to heroism, is represented by Rose; Evelyn’s Thesis and Antithesis are represented by Joy and Waymond respectively.

Which is… an interesting choice. At the very least, this narrative tool is not a natural choice for me, as someone who writes primarily from my experiences and hasn’t had a specific person aligned with the various philosophical choices I’ve come across.

And again, as always, I don’t really have much of a conclusion - I’ve stated what I came here to state, and so, in the interest of saving effort, I’m just going to end it here, abrupt as it may be.

pce!

[bexical]

2022

What up bitches

#newyearnewme I've changed my name irl in the past couple months, thus the url change. Sorry for the confusion! (prev pzai if it wasn't clear)

It's been a bit - um. oops? my b

So, let's talk writing!

I finished draft 0 of act 2! Very exciting, was very proud of myself. I mean, I wanted to finish a draft of the whole book by the end of the year, but still, progress

I'd been aiming to finish draft 1 of act 2 - by the end of 2021, then Jan, Feb, Mar - and well, that's probably why I haven't been willing to show my face here for a bit.

I think I need to rejuvenate a little and get back into consuming media - I've really been piling up quite the backlog at this point. Gideon the Ninth is up there on the list, so I'll probably read that soon.

What else have I been up to :P

I've still been developing Hexworld! I'm… fairly happy with the progress. Ran my first playtest with >2 players and I mean it was kind of a #disastertrainwreck but I also got some good suggestions and a solid direction to take it.

of course I've been too scared to actually finalize another version and run another playtest but whatever it's fine

Been developing things like 'classes' and backgrounds and skill groups. I'm honestly not sure what I want to do as my next step though… which probably means my next step is figuring that out :P

idk, not much else to say? (or rather, I feel like there is but I'm not going to take this moment to interrogate what I do and don't want to get out in this #lifeupdate)

I've got a couple posts lined up in my head - who knows, maybe I'll actually write them up.

pce out!

[bexical]

A series of vignettes on Hope

A while back, a few friends and I did a small LARP together: we roleplayed a couple who met and married, fought, and initiated divorce proceedings, against a backdrop of the end of the world.

Before we started, there was a part where we were figuring out our characters. Wanting to play someone a little separate from my normal self, I chose ‘hopeful’ as one of my character’s defining characteristics.

So, a friend and I played a couple: we met on vacation on a beach in Europe, wined and dined; we fought over the suffocating impositions of monogamy on his freedom (which was… rather strange for me); and then we met in the divorce court, where we decided not to end our marriage as the world ended.

And while there isn’t really an objectively ‘correct’ way to play… I feel as though I misplayed that.

One time when I was a kid, I happened to be in the living room while my mom was watching Grey’s Anatomy. A character (who I’ve looked up to be Miranda Bailey) was telling her father – I learned, from you and mom, what a good marriage is, and what I have is not it. And if I want to show my children what love is by example, I cannot stay in this marriage.

When I think of hope, the ending of season 4 of Bojack Horseman comes to mind – I still listen to “Wake Up” every once in a while when I want to bring back how I felt, watching Bojack’s face light up while on the phone with Hollyhock.

(Of course, this sense of hope is… a little marred by the (well-deserved) ruination that follows.)

In the penultimate episode though of BH S4, “Time’s Arrow”, we go through Bojack’s mother’s dementia-ridden memories. That season (and that episode in paritcular) aim to ‘humanize’ this character, who has previously been “widely thought of as pretty horrible” and has been “presented as a villain”.

And at the end of the episode, Bojack offers her a “moment of grace”, even though, perhaps, she “has not earned that grace”.

It’s a common refrain in media – after fighting for a while, the parent and child will reconcile. In Moonlight, Boy Erased, Waves – to name a few that come to mind – the children always reconcile with their parents.

I guess that’s what audiences want to see? To feel like things will work out?

(An interview article from Vulture with creators of the show and the episode)

I recently saw Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. Great movie, lots of fun and lots of tears – I personally thought the middle dragged for a bit, but that’s irrelevant, that’s a discussion for another day.

This movie flips the script a little – the parent-child reconciliation thread is present, but the protagonist is the parent this time, not the child – Evelyn reaches out to her daughter and tries to connect.

And, well – I had a viscerally uncomfortable reaction to this. I… just, physically couldn’t.

So, I said earlier that I had ‘misplayed’ in the divorce LARP. Given that it’s a fairly binary choice at the end, I’m sure you’ve realized that I’m claiming that divorce was the ‘correct’ play.

“But!” one may argue, “you ascribed ‘hope’ to your character! Surely, staying together is the hopeful choice and thus the ‘correct’ play!”

And well… they’d be wrong. Divorce is the hopeful choice. And sure, it is also giving up – on one specific thing. We want everything to wrap up neatly and nicely – peaceful ‘death do us part’ endings to our relationships, parents reconciling with their children before they die.

But we can have happy lives without every aspect ending perfectly. There will be parts of our lives that will hurt and be messy – and we can still be happy.

Divorce might mean giving up on a marriage, but staying in a bad marriage – resigning yourself to something you know is broken, irreparably so, something that is quite possibly actively making you miserable – that’s giving up on happiness.

When I was in high school, I watched 5 cm/s for the first time. As a teen, I found the ending to be super depressing, but the friend who showed me the movie disagreed. And I saw his point then, but especially now, I wholeheartedly agree.

Hope is believing that, even if some things don’t work out – we don’t reconnect with our childhood sweetheart, we don’t reconcile with our parents before they die, we don’t save our broken relationship or marriage – we will move forward, and we can still be happy.

[bexical]

Oct ‘21

Recently, I realized something.

I was thinking about my finances and how long my savings can last me and started thinking about the fact that… it costs ~$100 each day, more or less, just to live, to pay for a roof over my head and to eat.

And I knew that number a while back, I knew that when I quit and made my plans. But I don’t think I really… understood it.

Every day costs $100. Was every day worth $100? When was the last day that was worth $100? If I spend 16 hrs awake each day, that’s ~$6 per hour - each hour I waste on reddit is throwing away $6.

It’s… been strange to think about. In some sense, it’s motivational - it’s inspired me to try to make each day worth it. In another sense though, it just… feels bad when a day doesn’t feel like it was worth it, like the past week feels like it wasn’t worth it.

Well. Here’s to trying to make every day worth it. pce

[bexical]

Moonlight and Alex Strangelove: On being neither straight nor queer

“Do you listen to Panic at the Disco while jerking off to pictures of vampires? [No.] Then you’re not bisexual.” - Dell, to Alex in Alex Strangelove

Well, that was definitely the weirdest way to get called out by a movie….

So, a while back (a year and a half ago) some friends and I watched Moonlight and Alex Strangelove on back to back weekends, and I’ve been mulling on some thoughts since.

Both movies feature a gay male protagonist, grappling with their understanding of their sexuality and how it relates to their masculinity. Notably though - in the beginning neither of them know but others sense that they are and tease/bully them for it.

Neither movie really questions that notion, that one's sexuality is apparent from one's nature from things seemingly unrelated to who they want to fuck, even from a young, prepubescent age. Chiron is (presumably) called a f*ggot while still a young child (10ish yrs old); when Alex says "Quite frankly, the idea that it's gay to think of sex as something that's meaningful and special is offensive”, he gets called out by his friend, who says “That's the gayest sentence anyone's ever said, dude.” Then, when each protagonist eventually is confirmed to be gay, the bullies and the 'just playfully teasing' friends are validated: they were right, even if he didn't know it, you can just tell, he's gay.

And I mean - what the actual fuck? I'm tired of people telling me they know better than I do whether I like cock or not. People have assumed I'm gay because I like flowers and butterflies, and my voice shifts octaves easily because I like to be expressive, and I give a damn about #aesthetic - all things that have nothing to do with fucking or dating - and then these movies come along and validate everyone who has said that I'm gay.

I mean, technically neither movie actually says "all boys who act gay are gay". But it certainly feels like it, especially in the broader scope - maybe I'm just not thinking hard enough, but it's hard to come up with any queer-coded straight characters besides villains. Maybe for some real gay boys, they actually were noticeably different: the original play behind Moonlight was largely autobiographical and perhaps that detail of others noticing the character's 'gayness' was true to the playwright's life, and a gay acquaintance of mine noted how his mother 'knew' he was gay from a young age. And so, while I don't mean to invalidate their experiences… I also can't help but feel like the stories in these movies invalidate my own, telling everyone that they were right about my sexuality, they know better than me.

And well… Fuck that noise.

Alex S takes it another direction as well. While teasing Alex, Dell says, “Oh my god, you’re gay! … No no no really, there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s the 21st century.” Much like in the episode “Gay Witch Hunt” from The Office, it’s established that we’re in a post-homophobic society, being gay is fine, and bullying a real gay person is homophobic and thus outdated and bad - but what if they’re actually straight? Then shaming them for ‘being gay’ is perfectly acceptable - it’s not an insult if it’s not true, right? It’s not like it’s still incredibly hurtful to be shamed for not aligning with bullshit notions of masculinity, and it’s not like it’s offensive to insinuate (or declare outright) that being gay is worth shaming.

And well, I’m tired of being shamed just for being me, especially in spaces that are openly queer-friendly but find it acceptable to bully me because I’m straight. I guess it’s worth noting, I’m in a fairly good place nowadays - for the most part, I do feel comfortable being me these days - but that wasn’t always the case. I’ve been in social circles that have made me feel like shit for seeming gay even while loving and accepting actual gay (male) members of the circle. Because it isn’t the gayness that bothers them - it doesn’t matter that much who I want to date or fuck - it’s that I’m just that little bit ‘not normal’. They know that there’s something wrong with me, but there’s no simple diagnosis they can accept (since, after all, I’m not gay). And so they tease, and they bully, and they don’t stop.

I’ve titled this post “On being neither straight nor queer” and I guess it’s as good a time as any to go into that a little. I’m not ‘queer’ by the most common definition: if we consider the two most widely accepted and discussed axes of queerness, I’m heterosexual and cisgender, and ‘queer heterosexuality’ is a controversial term at best. I don’t… really feel like I belong in queer spaces. But I’m also not ‘straight’ - to put it somewhat succinctly, my gender presentation seems to be so out of line with societal standards that people (queer and straight alike) just… don’t accept that I’m cishet.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I have a deep sense of not belonging, and well, this is one reason why. I don’t belong in either space, and I’m just…

Floating in a void, I guess.

[bexical]

Squid Game

Spoilers ahead

So, I finally got around to watching Squid Game since it’s been hyped so much, and well... it was rather mediocre. It does some things well: it has good characterization, and the actors do a splendid job. It was arguably good enough that I binged it in one night, more or less. But still...

It’s excessively predictable - this doesn’t mean that I saw everything coming from episode 1, but it did mean that a lot of events felt like foregone conclusions, and I ended up watching most of it on 1.5x speed. And speaking of twists: the reveal in the last episode regarding Player 1 is just bad, calling the entire premise into question (but not in an especially provocative way) and weakening the story greatly.

A lot of events are also super convenient, giving the series a very artificial feel. For example, at two different points, exactly the right number of people are alive so that the next event has nice round numbers. Other events are super convenient for the narrative: for example, the one guard who noticed the cop impostor in the honeycomb game is the same one who is killed later. The worst contrivance by far is the glass shattering at the end of the bridge round, critically (but not fatally) injuring Sae-byeok because they couldn’t figure out how else to kill her off - it’s not like Sang-woo would realistically beat her in a knife fight.

The biggest issue to me though was that, well…

Its discussion of capitalism is actually really tame.

A review from NME describes the series as a “cutting critique” of capitalism and praises it for its “thematic intelligence”. That appears to be the general consensus: Rotten Tomatoes summarizes critical opinion by describing it as a “sharp social commentary”); on the other hand, I'm much more in line with this NY Times review, which claims it merely has a "pretense of contemporary social relevance" - "there’s a difference between making reference to something and actually illuminating it".

The show starts off fairly strong: Episode 2, "Hell", gives us a glimpse of the characters' lives and illuminates how being poor in a real world setting is already hell, with numerous reviews praising the choice to set the series in the real world as opposed to a fictional setting like Panem. But beyond that, what does it actually say? Three of the five characters have mostly themselves to blame; the other two are arguably suffering because they’re foreigners. Who / what is the series criticizing? By contrast, Maid (which was #2 on Netflix behind Squid Game earlier this month) actually calls out some of the absurdities of American capitalism in its first episode, like the impossibility of the "pull yourself up by the bootstrap" mentality ("I need a job to prove that I need daycare in order to get a job?"). Squid Game doesn't do much besides remind us that it sucks to be poor, and well… that's not really that brilliant an insight.

To be fair, that's not the entirety of it. The honeycomb game in episode 3 does raise an interesting question via Player 119: what is this sick game, why do some people have it easier than others? There might be an interesting message about fairness in the series outside of this moment (though I’m not convinced) - besides that though, there really isn't much. Games 3 and 4 quickly turn the players against each other, but the zero-sum pvp nature of the games doesn't feel like an accurate reflection of reality. Though some specific things in life are zero-sum in nature, I would largely say that my success has not come at the cost of someone else’s, nor are my failures the result of someone else taking what could have been mine. People can thrive while working cooperatively, even (or perhaps especially?) in the hardships of a capitalist society.

(There is some discussion out there about whether or not the marble game in episode 6, “Gganbu”, was truly zero-sum or if both players could move forward. I personally don't subscribe to that theory: other parts of the show, such as winners of round 5 being given steak knives and the fact that prior years all had one winner each, all suggest that the players will not be allowed to remain cooperative forever. Even if both players could progress through the marble game, the game would eventually force the conflict - what would even be the point? In the end, it’s unlikely to me that players were intended to 'figure out' they could make it through together.)

I mentioned earlier that I do feel the series has good characterization. One of its strengths is how we see the main cast develop (or, arguably for the main character, remain stagnant), but ironically, I think the focus on the players is ultimately a detriment to any political insight the series could have had. While it does include a(n extremely cliched) portrayal of the hyper rich being amused by the suffering of the player class, there is hardly any interaction for the most part between classes. The workers are largely presented as faceless, interchangeable units; along with the Front Man, they are 'outside' the game. One incident in episode 3 is the singular moment that remembers that the workers are inside the game: the aforementioned player 119 stabs one worker in the eye and grabs another hostage; otherwise, the show ignores them in favor of focusing on the characters. As a result, the series has very little to say about forces external to the players (i.e. the working class) that hold them down.

There is a claim circulating through the fandom that these 'mistakes' are in fact intentional: the fact that the players ignore the workers and turn on each other is an allegory for how the lower class turns on each other instead of recognizing that their conflict is manufactured by the upper class; as another example, the unfairness in the games despite the Front Man's claims of fairness is actually an allegory for the unfair reality of life in the face of claims that the rich have earned their wealth fairly. For the most part though, I don’t buy it: that would be a stronger allegory if it felt like banding together could have helped, but round 5 for example was so… awkward for lack of a better term that this isn't the case; the Front Man's claims that the games are intended to be fair actually are largely true (though using a bullshit notion of fairness), and much of the unfairness arises from the hacky Player 1 twist and the previously discussed glass shattering contrivance, two events that already have other plot issues.

More generally, it’s hard to believe these details are intentional subtle messages because the series doesn’t earn my trust. Again, it does do a great job with some things - I like many of the characters (as characters, not as people), and it was narratively intriguing enough to draw me in. But there are enough issues (with other unmentioned things as well, such as the complete unbelievability of the police ignoring Gi-hun) that it just doesn't come across as the tight, well-constructed critique of capitalism that people are seeing it as.

[bexical]

Dear Evan Hansen

Heavy spoilers ahead.

Dear Evan Hansen was distressingly bad.

To be clear and fair - the quality was fine: the singing was great, the acting was fine; “Waving Through A Window” is a great song, and “Sincerely, Me” is hilarious. I’m generally bad at ‘noticing’ and praising good aspects of things, but for DEH I don’t think the quality was particularly bad.

But the story was infuriating:

The main character is a creep: I will never understand the obsession with romanticizing a plot where the boy crushes on a girl he doesn’t actually know, but this is somehow one of the worst instances of that trope. His crush Zoe only talks to him because he lies about having been her dead brother’s best friend and he conjures some make-believe affection from Connor, the dead brother (“If I Could Tell Her”).

One of the big inspirational pieces of the musical, “You Will Be found”, is built on the main recurring lie (that he was Connor’s best friend) as well as another one, that Connor was in fact the one who saved him after his fall. The truth (that most people, including Evan, thought Connor was a terrible person and that actually no one came to save Evan for ten hours after his fall) is wildly incongruous with the titular message, and to then hear the song spread virally (“Repost, the world needs to hear this”) was sickening.

It’d be one thing if the musical or the film understood how fucked up it was - people do fucked up things, after all, and there are interesting stories that explore those actions and their motivations and consequences - but they didn’t. “You Will Be Found” seems, as far as I can tell, intended to be as inspirational to the real world audience as it was received in-universe; the aforementioned song “If I Could Tell Her”, in which Evan lies to Zoe that Connor had some sibling affection for her, is presented as a cute start to a cute relationship; Evan is presented as a lovable (to the audience) outsider worthy of our sympathy instead of a someone who thrives in the lies he tells. He never really feels remorse or guilt (though I suspect the removal of “Good For You” in the adaptation process may have affected that), and he hardly reaps any consequences for his actions, not even a call out from Zoe for their relationship being built on a foundation of lies.

Let’s put Evan aside for now though and discuss the mental health theme. To quote a group I overheard after the showing we both watched, “What was the message? it was… really muddled.” The family of the suicide victim has *nothing* good to say about him: even his mother, who (theoretically) loves him and sees good in him, is unable to actually name such a detail. That’s... one hell of a message for anyone contemplating suicide. If we return to the big inspirational piece “You Will Be Found” (and we ignore how the lies affect the messaging), the musical affirms “You can reach… out your hand / And… someone will come running,” but that… feels strange to say, at the very least. In one of my worst times (a long time ago), I did reach out, and no one, no one, came running. I picked myself up, and (again, still ignoring the lies about Connor tied to this song) the lie that “You Will Be Found” is… uncomfortable at best.

I get the desire to tell a heartfelt story addressing teen anxiety and suicide… but the little messaging in this that isn’t awful (‘suicide victims are awful people; why should we mourn them’) is just empty platitudes (that somehow won the Tony for Best Musical??). It does not deserve the praise it receives (or arguably any praise at all) for failing so spectacularly to send a real, positive message about mental health.

One thing that frustrates me so much is that I actually really like the premise. There is an interesting story that explores a character like Evan who is anxiety-ridden and feels most confident in a lie. Evan is in fact a sympathetic character and can easily be redeemed: the story just needs to accept that he is also wrong a lot of the time (doing fucked up things does not automatically make someone irredeemable) and that he needs a redemption arc in the first place. The set up is pretty interesting: can we explore how fucked up Evan and Zoe’s relationship is and the betrayal of trust involved in it? Or perhaps we could explore how Evan processes his feelings about his own suicide in how Connor’s suicide (and the resulting Connor Project) are received? Maybe the story could treat “You Will Be Found” as the empty platitude it is and explore society’s simultaneous desire and inability to really discuss mental health topics?

Honestly, I’ve half a mind to do a rewrite of the script as a dark comedy (in the tone of Heathers, as an example) - it’d be a fun project for sure. Alas, I do have other priorities - but maybe, one day, I’ll pursue that idea.

[bexical]

Sep ‘21

So. Let's see.

I'm… pretty disappointed with myself these days. A while-ish back, I told myself I should be able to ‘work’ 10 hrs a day - we’re expected to work 8 hrs a day on jobs we don’t like, but I like writing and working on game design, so why can’t I?

But because nothing I do has a hard deadline, I just… don't do anything. I'm not on top of chores like cleaning my apartment or keeping my hair dyed, or of my finances, I'm not writing or keeping up with this blog. I am on top of dailies and events in Genshin, since those have deadlines; on a more productive note, I'm also keeping up with my current Duolingo Japanese streak.

To continue on that note - I've started an ASL class :D that's actually been a lot of fun. I was a little surprised by how quickly I picked up the alphabet, but I just tried an exercise reading as people fingerspell, and that's near impossible. But, I'll get there with enough practice, hopefully.

I did do some writing since I last updated. It was actually the first time I've written some more Firefower since my hiatus starting back in April-ish. It was only one writing session and it was almost two weeks ago (so I guess I've fallen into another mini-break?) - but still, it was good. It felt good, and I really, really want to get back into that space.

Speaking of feeling good - to get back into it after the hiatus, I spent some time rereading what I had written, and well… I liked it. At least part 2 - part 1 was cringeworthy at times, but part 2, I did genuinely like for the most part. It still needs work of course, but for its current first draft state, I'm really happy with it.

One thing that's possibly holding me back currently is that the next scene I've got is one that involves some ideas I've been mulling over - but, while writing some scenes in Fireflower can and did help me process certain thoughts, I feel like I'd like to actually process these in real life first (before tackling them in a more fantastical space). So, maybe I'll prioritize working on a post / series on those thoughts - it'll be in the same vein as the last one on being Asian American in scale (and that one... took me a solid week to write).

In other news - I mentioned back in July that I was working on a TTRPG. As is customary for me, I took a hiatus on that when I got stuck: I just couldn't figure out how to get multiplayer working.

Recently though, I started watching RWBY, and honestly just seeing cool combat (especially Weiss) reminded me how much I want to make this TTRPG work, and I got back into it. And well, I fixed the multiplayer issue (and it wasn't really that hard - I'd just given up really easily beforehand).

Been spending a little more time on it - currently focusing a little on ranged attacks, which has involved research into how bows were used historically (longbow volleys were at a rate of about 10 per minute, apparently… which coincidentally lines up with 1 shot per round in DnD 5e. As a note, it feels like longbows just don't fit DnD-like tabletops - they seem to have traditionally been used by armies firing volleys that would rain down on armies - shortbows might be where it's at though). It might be time to try and get another playtest set up, with an MVP of the new multiplayer and ranged combat rules.

Well, that's all for now! pce!

[bexical]

Being Asian American

This… is something I've been mulling over for a bit. It's been on the back of my mind for at least the past few months since the topic has kind of surged in the national conversation, but it's also just been something I've been thinking about for a good portion of my life.

So, I'm here today to talk about: What has being Asian (Chinese) American been like for me? How has it affected my life, and what does it mean for me?

(A brief disclaimer: This is a very personal take. While I do occasionally cite statistics and reddit historians (I do not use that term disparagingly), this is through the specific lens of my own life, filled with personal biases and anecdotal discussion. I obviously can’t and don’t intend to speak for all Asian Americans - my experience is not necessarily shared among all Asian Americans (or even all Chinese Americans or whatever), nor is any particular sentiment necessarily exclusive to Asian Americans.

With that out of the way…)

Primarily… it means I don't belong anywhere.

To be fair, there's plenty of reason I feel I don't belong in society. I've mentioned in previous posts that I don't fit neatly into society's gender and sexuality expectations, and I'm also arguably just weird. Still though, it would be remiss to ignore the effect of being Asian American. After all, I don’t even really have a home…

Is the U.S. my home?

It's hard to call a place home when its leader, an individual elected by its people, openly promoted anti-Chinese hate.

And sure, we can nit at little details: he didn't win a majority (he only won 46%, and she didn't win a majority either); not everyone who voted for him believes in his racist statements (they were merely okay with the racism); is it really racist to simply remind people the virus originated in China by calling it the Kung Flu? (yes. yes it is)

But in the end, it's obviously not just him. It’s Hollywood, it’s the dating market, the Bamboo Ceiling-

It’s… even history itself.

As far as I recall from high school history classes, U.S. history was full of white and black men and women, from George Washington to Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony to Martin Luther King, Jr. - but Asian Americans? I personally draw a complete blank. And well, Asian Americans were barely present: until sometime around 1970, Asian Americans made up less than 1% of the population. So, it’s not exactly a surprise that we don’t show up in the events that have defined American history.

American history is not my history. My earliest ancestors in the states are literally my parents, who moved here together from China; they didn’t even meet here. On a visceral level, I can’t picture myself in American history: it’s so devoid of people who simply look like me. I can’t see myself in America during the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, either of the World Wars. I have only a cursory understanding of what it would be like for me in Jim Crow era America. We Asian Americans didn’t even fight for our civil rights here: by the time the civil rights movement came to an end, as noted earlier we were still less than 1% of the population.

Okay but, who cares what history has to say, right? Maybe Asian Americans were absent before, but whatever - history was my least favorite subject, and it’s not like I live in the past, so who gives a fuck. Let’s focus on the present:

How are Asian Americans portrayed and viewed presently?

To borrow a tactic from Zootopia, let me ask a different question: Let’s take a superhero that’s a stand-in for America, such as (the obvious) Captain America, or perhaps Superman - could they look like me? Could they be (East) Asian?

Maybe that’s asking for too much - what about Tony Stark, or Bruce Wayne?

How about just a main romantic lead (of a generic film, i.e. not one specifically about Asians, crazy rich or otherwise)?

Now, as a disclaimer: Asian representation has been growing more recently. Henry Golding is gorgeous alongside Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick in A Simple Favor; speaking of Golding, it’s not quite fair to discount Crazy Rich Asians. And technically, there is a Chinese Superman - but he’s the Superman of China, complete with Chinese flag outfit, and not American. But still, Chinese superhero, that’s cool - and Shang Chi’s coming out in a couple days, and he is Asian American if I understand correctly.

For another disclaimer, it’s not like I’ve actually run numbers or anything - I haven’t surveyed America and found that X% wouldn’t be able to accept an Asian American Superman, or reviewed a list of American rom coms and found that only Y% have an Asian lead when Asian Americans make up Z% of the population. The feeling that these individuals couldn’t be East Asian isn’t necessarily based in fact.

No, it’s a feeling that comes from consistently seeing East Asian men be emasculated and desexualized en masse.

Because American men are always real men - while mostly white, they can be Black (e.g. Sam Wilson), but East Asian? We’re nerds, small and weak, academically successful perhaps but lacking the communication skills to be an actual competitive threat sexually or in the career ladder. My mother told me to be more romantic, like white boys; she cited other Asian mothers, who were in turn citing their daughters’ preferences for charming American boys over us nerdy Asian boys. In one high school summer camp, we got on the topic of ‘what is your ideal partner like? what about least ideal?’ and I listened to this girl describe her least ideal romantic partner as a short, nerdy East Asian boy (yes, race was specified) - and you know that felt amazing for me. And finally, lest we ignore what every topic on masculinity is secretly about - well, everyone knows the stereotype about East Asian penises.

And for me… it’s not like I could rage and proclaim that these are unfair stereotypes or find some sick pride in being ‘better’ than the stereotypes - I am short, and weak - and while I’m fine socializing with friends, I am terribly awkward in most career settings. What response did I have when society reminded me, incessantly, how worthless East Asian men are, how worthless I am?

Alright, I think it’s time to pack it up here boo hoo, toxic masculinity sucks. Besides:

Maybe it’s simply that I don’t belong in ‘white’ America.

That must be it, right? I have this deep sense of being ‘othered’ because I don’t belong to the majority, normative ethnicity in America - but nearly 40% of America isn’t white. Surely, I must fit in with them?

But political discourse on race in the U.S. has always treated the topic rather… black and white, literally and figuratively. Where do we fit in as Asian Americans? We’d like to not be discriminated against, like other minorities. On the other hand, the biggest political topic for Asian Americans recently has been affirmative action, where Asian Americans are in direct opposition to other minorities: anecdotally, I’ve heard of a number of Chinese Americans who voted for Trump solely to get a conservative Supreme Court justice who would remove affirmative action, and it’s not like I haven’t felt the negative effects of affirmative action, as an Asian American applying for a position at MIT and then a job in the tech industry. I’ve seen Twitter tear apart an Asian American writer for not being a ‘real’ minority, and I’ve seen vitriolic anti-Black hate in Asian communities.

And this has always been the case: Asian Americans have always been this ‘third group in a biracial society’ (to quote this fascinating reddit answer about Asian Americans in the Jim Crow South). (As for why, this other reddit answer discusses some of the motivations behind the white Americans who alternately treated (and even labeled) Asian Americans as white in some scenarios yet excluded them in others: spoiler, it was to ensure that opportunities didn’t leak to the Blacks).

So, in a political discourse that only really has room for black and white… there’s no space for us. We don’t belong in the conversation.

Fine then - What about China?

Yes, of course, my home must be China.

Where people look like me.

Where everyone in my extended family lives.

A place I’ve only been to once, after I had already matured to adulthood, with beliefs that run completely counter to those prevalent there.

A place where I can only use the barest of communication, just enough to ask “where’s the bathroom?” with a laughably atrocious American accent.

So yeah, there’re a couple of issues: mismatched value sets, a communication barrier. But really, the biggest issue for me… is actually the shame. And it’s not even the obvious, really terrible stuff like the awful authoritarian government and the rampant corruption… what honestly hits me the hardest is that the entire country has produced nearly nothing of cultural interest while I’ve been alive.

To be fair, how do you even create anything worthwhile with all the censorship? Right off the bat, homosexuality and fantasy (essentially) are banned (so I’d be completely fucked, given my two primary writing interests). And of course, you can’t complain about the government, or even insinuate that society might not be some sort of flourishing paradise. Top it off with a culture that focuses on STEM studies over creative ones, that values the collective over individuals - and it’s impossible to create art.

That’s not strictly true of course. Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle) is objectively hilarious. The Departed won Best Picture for straight up copying a Chinese movie, Infernal Affairs (though that’s technically a Hong Kong movie). Genshin Impact is beautiful (though it’s worth noting that the developers are self-proclaimed otakus); the animation in Black Myth: Wukong looks incredible. And I loved The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin.

But it still feels like so, so little. Korea has had an extensive music industry, and Japanese anime has been beautiful, producing many of my all-time favorite films and series. My favorite series, Avatar:TLA and TLoK, was animated primarily by Korean studios (Korra was partly animated by a Japanese studio). Ragnarok Online and Dragon Nest, two MMORPGs I played, were both created by Korean developers, as was Maple Story; Pokemon is a Japanese game.

My friends and I consumed so much Korean and Japanese content - but if I wanted something Chinese, so I could feel some semblance of pride in my ethnicity… there was nothing. Just a giant fucking desert - complete with two oases next door to taunt and shame me.

And there does exist a rich culture. There’s the martial arts, interesting mythologies, a long and rich history. Hell - I don’t love Chinese food, but I will add dumpings ‘cause they’re fucking delicious. But, even though all of this exists… it’s not my culture: I wasn’t really brought up Chinese. A lot of families will bond over food, especially the making thereof (e.g. the ending of the Pixar short, Bao), but my parents… weren’t about that. I didn’t do Chinese dance (unlike my sister) or kung fu; we barely celebrated holidays; as I mentioned, I don’t even speak the language.

And I don’t mean to blame my parents too much for all of this. After all, there are costs to not assimilating - I actually only spoke Chinese at a young age and was bullied for it, there’s a reason we switched to English only as a family. But the blame doesn’t matter - the result is, well-

I am culturally orphaned. China is not my home.

But obviously - I belong with other Asian Americans.

Maybe I don’t really belong with the rest of the U.S., or in China - but surely, surely, you might say, I cannot possibly argue that my ethnicity as an Asian American somehow distances me from others with that exact same ethnicity.

And you’re right. I am Chinese American - complete with the Tiger Mom, the STEM focus, playing piano and violin, interest in video games, anime, even the faux rebellious splash of dyed hair, the fucking glasses - of the six people in my recent office cubicle, four were East Asian men with glasses.

And whatever, sue me for being hypocritical. After whining for so long about not belonging - I hate fitting in. I am drowning in a sea of people who look like me - straight black hair, dark brown / black eyes, yellow skin, the fucking glasses - in orchestra, in AP classes, at MIT, in tech.

I think the moment I felt this pain the sharpest was fall of high school senior year, when I was applying to college. I needed to convince MIT and other elite universities that I was worth admitting, that I would provide something of value, something different from the bajillion other East Asian American (male) applicants. And when I looked back on my seventeen years on this rock… I couldn’t. I wasn’t a person, I was a stereotype. Yeah maybe I was good in my role - I outshone my classmates in the maths and sciences - but I had one dimension. And I hated it, I hated myself, I felt like I didn’t exist - no one would care if some faceless Asian American kid with no other defining features were to just… disappear.

And well - there’s also how society perceives East Asian men. how I perceive(d?) us. And I didn’t want to associate myself with… that.

So I began to distance myself - to define myself, in little ways, by how I didn’t fit the Asian American stereotype. And of course other Asians have done the same, so much so that it’s a stereotype of its own (yes I’m referring to the dyed hair). But, unhealthy as it may be, it worked - I feel like a person now. I am depressed and nihilistic, I love movies and animation, I love being creative and talking about sex, I’ve embraced the more feminine aspects of myself. I’m not just the Asian American stereotype - I’m me.

Alright, but who is ‘me’? Well, to understand that, let’s talk about:

Family

What does a ‘normal’ family look like anyway? We’re taught from a young age that a family unit has a mother and a father. And so far, my family fits.

But then there’s the siblings, the extended family. Visiting Grannie with sweets, having built-in peers in the form of siblings and cousins. I… didn’t really have that. With a 9 year age gap, my sister and I weren’t really ‘peers’ in any meaningful sense until fairly recently. While I do technically have extended family, they’re all in China and, besides one grandparent, I’ve only met them once, not to mention the language barrier. Speaking of grandparents, three of mine died before I was born (two of them essentially to Chinese communism). The concept of visiting grandparents and getting spoiled was… simultaneously ubiquitous as a trope yet alien to me - my grandpa was only ever in China or in my home, not someplace we could visit - and when he was home… let’s just say I was very similar to David in the Minari trailer.

Combine that with moving three times before middle school and well… I was a lonely child. All I ‘had’ were my parents. But, after a brief time, in which I conveyed and they understood my needs for food, sleep, and potty - our communication broke, around when I was 7. Something about me wanting to have fun and make friends conflicted with their belief that I should dedicate my time solely to my studies, that play was ruinous poison for my soul.

When I was a sophomore in high school, in early 2011, the Tiger Mom entered the national conversation. I was, of course, intimately familiar with the phenomenon - not only was my mother such a figure, but many of my Asian American peers had similar parents (which naturally compounded with my mother’s own tendencies and beliefs by encouraging her). Contrary to many Tiger parent situations, it wasn’t the high parental expectations that I struggled with - my own expectations for myself were fairly high and not altogether unachievable - it was the way that, beyond academic achievement (and, on some level, physical health - can’t go to MIT if I’m dead!), nothing else mattered. Socialization was discouraged, play was practically outlawed, as was dating. Meanwhile, western media and peers with more Americanized parents lived much freer lives, taunting me while I languished behind prison bars

I needed more freedom than that parenting style allowed. I was raised in a country whose central tenet is ~Liberty~; meanwhile, I was only permitted to use the internet in full view of my mother, and basically only to do homework. I did eventually stage my own revolution and gain some semblance of freedom, but the friction between my need to be free and their paternalistic beliefs led to near-constant conflict. I grew up with a lot of anger, and while it doesn’t necessarily show often, a lot of it persists within me and I can be a deeply bitter person.

I think the most damaging effect though of my Tiger parenting was actually the way it stunted my sense of agency, control, identity. The whole idea is that the parents know best: the best thing for children is to get into a good college, and the best way to do so is to focus on academics and a set of standard extracurriculars (i.e. piano and violin). And there’s some wiggle room within that track - you can play clarinet instead, it’s up to you if you want to take AP World History - but choosing to stray from (or, heaven forbid, leave) the path? Having the freedom to choose how to spend my free time, how to live my life - to take a college class outside my major / graduation requirements because I loved bio and chem and missed it? It wasn’t my life I was living, it was the life my parents had chosen for me. That was a big part of why, as I described earlier, at 17 I felt like I wasn’t a person - after all, what are we if not our choices? The little sense of identity I had was defined in rebellion, not just against the confines of the stereotypes of Asian Americans but also the confines of my parents.

That’s… a big part of why I feel so alone, even now as an adult. I socialize often, I have friends - but, as described earlier, I don’t have family. I couldn’t rely on my parents for emotional support - how could I talk to them about the shame of trying to date as an East Asian American male when they didn’t even think I should be dating in the first place? We weren’t even in the same textbook, let alone on the same page. When I’m at my most generous, I don’t necessarily blame them - when you boil it all down, we simply have different worldviews, having been brought up in two vastly different settings. But still - even at my most generous - I have to recognize that they just cannot provide what I need, and they will never understand me.

Whew. Alright, that was… long. Props to you for making it this far (and no shame if you skimmed). But well…

Why did I bother writing this?

Like I said in the beginning - this is something I’ve been mulling over for a bit. With the Atlanta shooting earlier this year, discussion of the Asian American experience began to circulate prominently in the national discourse and was continued in AAPI Heritage Month in May, and I naturally compared my experience with what I was reading. Even earlier though, a couple years ago, I wrote a post on The Farewell in which I talked about bringing one’s experience as an Asian American into art and well, that’s really what I want to talk about.

We talk a lot about diversity in art. One aspect is stuff like… having an Asian superhero, or having Asian characters. And there is certainly value in that - in being able to see myself in these roles, in reminding people that we are more than just shallow stereotypes - even in the simple acknowledgment that we exist.

But on a deeper level, there’s the diversity of experience: my life simply isn’t well-reflected by stories told by white people in America. One of the most tilting movie experiences for me was the opening of Love, Simon: the main character opens with “I’m just like you. For the most part, my life is totally normal” before describing his perfect little family, completely free for example from the strife of having parents of a different culture. I have never related less to a character - which would be completely fine if the movie didn’t open with such a presumptuous assessment of my life and a completely alienating assertion of what normalcy is.

Meanwhile, stories like Bao resonated with me, not just because of superficial things like skin tone or even things like the Chinese supermarket calendar, the pork bao itself, or the buns from the bakery - rather, it was the mother’s overprotectiveness, a trait that defined my own relationship with my mother. Likewise, I related to Sanjay’s Super Team because, even though the characters weren’t Chinese, it was one of the best depictions of the inter-generational divide Sanjay and I both experienced as children of immigrants.

So yes - it’s nice (and valuable) to see things like Henry Golding being hot, and Simu Liu being a superhero. But what I really want is to see these other themes explored - the lack of a loving home country, the cultural orphaning, the shame of association, the generational culture clash - that’s why, in Fireflower, I’ve written my main protagonist as a mixed race orphan, because I wanted to write about that feeling of not belonging to two opposing cultures and the disconnect from one’s family history. While there are plenty of stories that address discrimination (e.g. Mudbloods in Harry Potter, Dr. Seuss’s Sneetches), it’s only a small fraction of my Asian American experience - and sure, there are reasons it shows up: it’s important, and actually addressable (we can stop discriminating, but no one’s going to ‘solve’ the culture clash), and it’s the only part of the minority experience that the majority ethnicity is really involved in…

But the rest is still complex and interesting and a part of the broader human experience. It’s worth exploring… and that’s what I hope to do in my writing.

[bexical]

August ‘21

Hmm, let's see....

Honestly, not much to say. Been spending a lot of time on video games (mostly Hades - which has been amazing). Part of the issue is certainly the lack of a regular schedule, which creates a very nebulous sense of time - I'm trying to work on that.

I've been real excited about new movies showing in theaters again though - it feels like there's been a new movie every week that I'm excited to see. The Green Knight was... interesting to say the least - it'd be a stretch for me to say it was good, but I did really like certain parts (the piece with the lady by the lake was amazing, and the ending sequence was likewise quite interesting), and @Zola was funny and intense. Maybe that'll get me to drop a few blog posts more often and get back into it.

Really not much more to say for now. Hopefully by next month I'll be in the 'creative groove' whatever that looks like.

[bexical]

July ‘21

Alright, let's see.

It's been a little hectic recently for me. Most notably - I quit my job! I've decided to focus full time on... just doing creative stuff, namely writing and game design. And well, we'll see where that takes me.

It was... a little anxiety-inducing for a bit. It's scary taking that plunge - I'm not convinced that I can go back if I wanted to, and if things don't work out for me... I'm not sure what will happen. But I do believe this is the right path for me.

All that being said, I've just been taking this time to relax a little. I want to consume more - read more books, play more games. I've been rereading The Fifth Season - I forgot how much I love Jemisin's writing (maybe I should check out another of her series as well?). I've also picked up The Stormlight Archive at the recommendation of a friend (literally just picked up the first book from the library, haven't started). In the realm of games, I've been playing through a bunch of Hades and a little bit of Horizon Zero Dawn.

It's... been good. To relax, to not stress about things that, ultimately, I don't really care about. Looking back, it's weird to think how much I stressed about all these things at my job that don't really matter now, to me or to anyone else. And now, I can enjoy things and focus on what I do care about.

So, what am I working on?

Writing

Obviously, I plan to continue with Fireflower. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it recently but, as is often the case with me, I've been on a little bit of a hiatus. Self-esteem was at a pretty low point earlier this year - and I've (more or less) recovered from that, but it's always been hard to get back into Fireflower after hiatuses, and this one is no exception.

I'm not really sure how to just... get into it though. Perhaps if I set myself some more deadlines and enforced them... but I'm just as capable of that as I am of casting a Patronus charm =P

But, I haven't given up by any means. I've been mulling over the plot still, and soon (hopefully) I'll actually start writing actual words again. In the meantime though, I have been considering more actively pursuing other, smaller projects. A little fanfic here and there, some character pieces... I think it'd be good for me.

Game design

Woo! I've actually been pursuing a TTRPG idea for a little bit. I may have mentioned in the past here but if I haven't - sorry not sorry but DnD 5e just doesn't do it for me. The mechanics make combat frustratingly boring - and a good DM could make it better, but it shouldn't require nearly as much game design knowledge + skill to make a fun combat encounter as it currently does. (At a base level, my critique is: fights are static. Movement is fairly decentivized, due to opportunity attacks, and so characters settle in place and just... whack. And I say 'whack' because attacking is so, so repetitive.)

I had some decent progress and actually made a minimum viable product (MVP) that I'll start testing with some friends and stuff. It's still fairly limited: most notably, it only allows for one-on-one sword-on-sword combat; the next major aspects to account for are 1) one-on-multiple combat and 2) ranged attacks + magic. I'm a little worried the system as is can't easily be modified to accommodate these aspects, but... well, we'll see when we get to it. No idea what I'll do with this, if I get it to a more complete state - but, again, we'll see.

Well, that's all! I'll try to get some more blog posts here - I saw Jennifer's Body a bit ago and wanted to write up a thing about that, so maybe I'll actually finish that soon. pce out til next time!

[bexical]

June ‘21

Let's see, where am I at these days...

Actually, let me describe a week ago. I was excited about a project - and, even though it's a little meta, I was excited to be excited. It was such a rush... for a solid day.

I was a touch stressed about some things, but I decided - you know what? fuck it. imma just drop that noise - how bad can it really get? And, taking some inspiration from the likes of Katie Mitchell and her DogCop videos (from The Mitchells vs the Machines) or Rachel Bloom and her first video, "Fuck me, Ray BradBury" - I had an idea for a YouTube series. And not just the premise - I've got a full outline of 8 (short) episodes.

And since then... I haven't worked on it at all. I spend my free time (and not so free time) lying in bed on Reddit instead.

I'm just scared. I haven't had a lot of success with things for a little while, and I feel... incapable.

But I'm trying to gather my courage. It's hard, but I am working on it. One thing I've been thinking about is how I was in high school. Somehow, through all the stress - I have to do well on these tests, these competitions, get into a good school - I was remarkably laid back. Part of it was because I was doing well, and I was loosely self-assured in the notion that I would indeed get into a good school; unfortunately, neither of those apply now. But I'd still like to tap back into that mentality - and if that takes a little bit of arrogance in believing, without much actual reason, that my writing will be successful... well, what's wrong with a little self-delusion?

[bexical]

May ‘21

Let's see. um.

ngl, I've been in a #mood for a bit. The NY Times had this article on languishing the other day, and for a solid week everyone was just talking about #languishing. Including myself of course - and it was because there was this great new buzzword to describe how I've been feeling.

But at the end of the day, putting a name to the feeling didn't actually help much. Nor did the NY Times' follow-up article on flourishing.

Well, what would help?

I have had periods in life when I was flourishing. There was one month that stood out, particularly in how drastically different it was from the previous several months of deep languor: after several months dragging myself to do law school apps and feeling too much guilt to work on creative projects, I finished my apps and was finally free to work on projects again (I even commemorated it with a post back in February!). And when I say free, I mean like motherfuckin' Rock Lee dropping his training weights, right before he was brutally crushed, or like Icarus flying through the sky.

I'm not going to go into what's generally been up - but writing wise, I can say something more concrete than "I fell into the water because I ignored the warnings of hubris". At the start of April, I said I wanted to work on a rewrite of Soul - and then, I got distracted by a fight scene in Fireflower. Which was all fine and good (and even possibly unrelated to the following), but then, when I tried to return to it, I just wasn't excited about it the same way I was when I sketched my thoughts about it at 4AM one Sunday morning.

I decided to give it up for now and get back into Fireflower - and I did make some good progress there. But I finished a chapter and started the next one - and I just got stuck. I didn't know how to move forward there. I just... don't know how to write this scene - and as the saying goes, if you're bored writing it, your readers will probably be bored reading it. This isn't just something to power through - it's something I need to figure out, to find another angle.

I think... I've fallen out of love with the project. Hopefully just temporarily (and it's not out of reason to assume so - I've felt similarly low about the project in the past. I think.) - but I don't know (/remember) how to fall back in love with it?

Or rather... I have an idea. Read through what I have again, reimmerse myself in it... but I'm scared. What if I hate it? Or simply find it... lackluster. Not only would it be in character for me, with my characteristic apathy/distaste for most fiction, but it would also revelatory of that ever-present fear: that I'm not good at writing, that I don't have something worth writing that I’m worthlessnothingunlovable.

I can do it though. I can make it through this.

[bexical]

“I’m sure you’ll get accepted”

We like to tell teach other "you will succeed". In all fairness, it's better than the cruel and hopeless alternative: "you will fail". It's easier, in some sense and for some set of involved parties, to be positive with each other.

But failure happens. It's unavoidable. Okay, maybe there are a few for which literally everything goes their way, but for the rest of us - life has failure. There are rejections, for schools and jobs and other positions. Relationships, marriages, even friendships end sometimes.

And that's fine. It may not have felt like it as a melodramatic teenage boy when my first relationship was falling apart, but I've moved on and been in other relationships that have in turn ended and I'm fine at the end of it. I've been rejected from positions that I really, really wanted - but in the end, I'm still fine.

I mean, yeah - it sucked. I still wish some (many) of those things had worked out, and it's hard not to feel like my life could have been better if only this thing or that had worked out.

But I can still live and even thrive in a life full of failure. And we have to - because, again, failure is unavoidable. When we assert to each other, over and over, that "you will succeed" "you'll get in" "your relationship will be fine" - with each affirmation, we assert that the alternative is an unthinkable impossibility. But it's not, and it's foolish at best to try to convince each other of this.

I remember my first big failure. I had great grades all throughout elementary an dmiddle school, and i was in all of the academic clubs. And then we had audtions for model congress and, being a disaster at public speaking, I stumbled my way through an index card speech and failed to get in. It wasn't a particularly selective team - there was a fairly large number - and I still failed to make the cut. And, I was devastated. I couldn't really process what had happened - and how could I? The concept of failure had previously been mere fiction.

I still have a hard time dealing with failure - not that there's anything wrong with that, failure sucks. I've kept myself stuck, hoping and trying to fix a situation that was never going to get better, because the idea of failing was too hard to deal with. I've fallen into a despondent state when it seemed like I wouldn't be accepted to various positions. Life's hard.

But in the end, I try to remind myself - even if this particular thing doesn't work out, I will still be fine eventually. Sometimes, I can even back that up with actual reasoning, but even without it... I think that's what we need more of. A reminder that, regardless of how any given thing turns out, we'll be fine eventually.

[bexical]

I am little

"Don't bother unless you're 6'" I can hardly dream of occupying the same world As those towering skyscrapers I lack both height and muscle A weakling made of skin fat and bone

"The opinion of one [vapid and tasteless] individual is irrelevant" The world churns on and my voice is drowned out Not for want of volume   - I am screaming to be heard But because no one is listening

"You're so smart, you can do anything you want" The past looms over me Adorned with medals, accomplishments With arrogance and hope Looking down on my failure-induced paralysis

"You all look the same" Black hair and yellow skin, eyes framed like all the rest A drop in a billion-sized sea Of math and A's, piano and violin Slanted eyes and inferiority

"You are made of stardust" A speck of dust on this oh-so-joyful merry-go-round Hurtling through the vacuum of space Bumbling through the chaos of life My existence is insignificant, and the moment I vanish will be likewise It will be just as

little