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A Dark and Stormy Weekend

Aka: Jun’s CPW experience; 7/21: “Tell us about your CPW as a prefrosh.”

I visited MIT two times before comMITting. The first time was for the 2015 MIT Science Olympiad invitational, and the second was for CPW.

Both times, I was cold, miserable, and lonely. When I found out that other people were having the time of their lives, and that CPW was the reason they comMITted, I felt even more lonely.

Preparations

The best laid plans of mice and Juns often go awry.

I had high hopes for CPW. People told me it was a weekend of fun and friends and excitement. There would be so much to do, they said, that you’d have at least two or three things you’ll want to go to every hour. And the CPW catalog itself was so promising. There were so many kinds of food I liked. The event descriptors radiated sunniness. I imagined spontaneously meeting people, the kind that you forge magic with and whose conversations linger in your head even as the hours since your encounter elapse.

Being from southern California, I braced myself for the cold and packed accordingly. In contrast, my CPW schedule was relatively lightweight, where I would have at least a few hours every day to meander around campus and drop by impromptu to any especially interesting events. Even my fly-in time was later than most adMITtees I’d met at that time--I figured Thursday night, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning were sufficient time to explore a medium-sized campus. My only real goals were to stay fed, sleep enough so that I didn’t miss my flight home, and visit all the dorms. People told me the latter was super important, because every dorm had its own unique culture. A lot of those cultures sounded really cool and hardcore, and I hoped I would vibe with one of those.

It didn’t go south immediately. There were two other kids from my high school who were there with me, and I had some online friends (from Olympiads) who also got into MIT. Sure, I didn’t click at all with any of the kids I met at the airport. They didn’t seem to want to talk to me at all, even though some of them definitely hit it off right away, but whatever, right? It was going to be a decently large school, and I already knew some people there.

Slowly, I started to realize that the odd distance I felt on the shuttle to MIT wasn’t just a fluke.

I watched as people moved in packs, despite having been here for barely a day, and I observed the way they interacted so happily with their groups. I usually assume that friend groups are onions, where there are various circles of closeness and layers that peel off because they are secretly not wanted, because that’s most of the friend groups I have observed or been a part of up to this point. But...but these groups. Everyone seemed to like each other. There was no tension bubbling under the surface or passive aggressive jabs. Sure, they just met and so would have no reason to be cruel to each other. Regardless, it reminded me that I had yet to meet anyone with whom I felt comfortable being that vulnerable, that quickly.

MIT: +1

Things which made me love this school.

Speed Friending on Thursday night was like a little blip of hope. I met one of my online friends, Roger, with whom I had swapped Science Olympiad exams and talked to periodically. He turned out to be just as cool in real life as he was online. A little more awkward, but that is inevitable. After Speed Friending, I thought, “Hey, maybe there are more people I mesh with around here.” I think I met a few of those at the Breakfast of Champions at the ZBT house, on Saturday. A lot of them didn’t end up comMITting, but it was still very nice to meet them.

Sneaking into Tangerine Tours (where they take you up to the roof of the dome): Right before we were supposed to congregate in Lobby 7 (groups of ten!) for the tours, I was chatting with a freshman friend of mine. When I brought up having to leave for the Tangerine Tours, she communicated interest in going, and so we went...right when everyone was finalizing their groups of 10. We could not go in without such a group, and so had to devise other ways of getting in. My friend is a very smart cookie, and she concluded that there are only really 2 places on main campus where you can store that many prefrosh. We checked both of those, and pronto...They were in 26-100. We walked in, and they gave us the evil eye, so I panted very hard and told them, “We got lost.” I’m sure they suspected that we weren’t actually lost, but that’s how we got in even as other people who arrived in Lobby 7 before us got sent home with citrus fruits and empty hearts.

Visiting the dorms with my high school friend was also mildly nice. We prioritized a lot of the same things in dorms--friendly atmosphere and cleanliness in very equal amounts--and so we shared opinions on what we saw. I remember going up to one of East Campus’ floors (one of the fifth floors), marveling at the murals, seeing a huge “WE PUT THE BEST IN ASBESTOS” signs, sharing a glance as we immediately remembered someone mentioning EC and an asbestos problem, and hightailing it out of there. Similarly, we both really liked Next because there was a piano and it seemed very homey.

Speaking of Next: Next Act was amazing. My friend’s host was involved in the production, so we managed to sneak in. The play being shown was The Little Mermaid, so I immediately prepared myself for disappointment. As a hardcore Hans Christian Andersen fan, I vehemently abhor bastardizations of his work. (It’s why I will hate Frozen as long as I live. It took something as creative and unique and touching as the Snow Queen and replaced it with some clumsy tale about sisterhood with sisters who are virtually strangers. Similarly, a huge part of A Little Mermaid’s poignance was the fact she chose to sacrifice her life instead of killing the prince, and she gained a soul from it.) I was not disappointed at all. Yeah, the mermaid didn’t die at the end, but the singing was fantastically beyond what you’d expect based on MIT stereotypes, and the ship captain during the storm threw the wheel into the air and yelled “Jesus take the wheel!”. They also incorporated a running gag about Voldemort which was very appreciated.

Remember that high school friend mentioned above? Ironically, one of my better memories of CPW is wandering around and realizing that even though MIT was our dream university through all of high school, we were feeling so very disillusioned by it all. We were even more conflicted because CPW was so much worse than any prior visits to MIT, and we both had friends at MIT that we liked and felt somewhat similar to. It felt so odd to see those friends, with some of our characeristic traits, fit so well while we felt so ambivalent. It made us feel even more lonely amidst the hordes of people having fun. Every cloud has a silver lining. Over a tray of Stud-bought sushi, we realized that there was someone else who felt similarly out-of-place.

MIT: -1

Things which made me not love this school.

This was not at CPW, but it sort of sets context for my hopes and worries. I went to the Class of 2020 reception that was held in my local area and met a lot of other accepted students from my county and nearby. The kids were all very nice. What was not so nice was the immediate realization that 1) we didn’t share that many common interests and 2) talking with them (much less bonding) was excessively difficult. I hoped that at CPW this impression would change.

The oodles of small activities I went to through the days, such as Cookie Decorating or Dumplings. Many, like the former, were very void of conversation, just people eating cookies. Whenever people did talk, it was because they already knew each other. The latter just...ended up not happening though  I spent way too long hunting down its location.

Chemistry Olympiad reunion, where years of Top 20 Finalists congregate, was supposed to be a place of camaraderie. I had looked forward to it for a very long time, even though my Chemistry Olympiad camp experience was a bit...dicey. There were some older friends I hadn’t seen in a long time there, and there were also a lot of prefrosh campers I’d never met before. See, I qualified for Top 20 in 2014 when I was a high school sophomore, but failed to qualify in my junior year. There was a whole crop of 2015 kids for me to meet. Instead of feeling companionship with them, I saw that they already had their own dynamic going on. When I tried to talk to them, they seemed very reluctant to look me in the eye or engage me deeply. It was disappointing especially since I figured I’d at least get along with my chemistry kindred. (They’re all very cool people, now that I have befriended them! After CPW, when things were less hectic.)

Tangerine Tours, though it was not all bad. I was very excited for this! Current students kind of hyped it up when I talked to them (“There’s this tour thing where you go on the roof; my friend can tell you more. You should do it.”) so I was very eager to go. But once I was on it, I really wanted to go home. In 2016, the CPW weather machine which ensures sunny skies for the impressionable prefrosh was broken. On the roof, it was ridiculously cold even in my down jacket, thermal leggings, and scarf. Even worse, due to the number of people, we moved so very slowly. In hindsight, I should have left after the first roof, but my curiosity and expectations got the better of me. And 4 AM in the morning, I really regretted my decisions. Don’t get me wrong, the tours are pretty cool, but it was not worth the cold and the many hours I had to stand in it.

ComMITting: “Why did you commit then, Jun?”

In which I think carefully about my future, and what I want to be.

When I went home, I went home exhausted and disappointed. I didn’t imagine MIT as a magical wonderland,but I’d hoped I could have made more friends or at least struck more connections.

Then I got a good night’s sleep and thought over the issue of college selection. I realized, perhaps, CPW is not the best experience to base my choice off.

First, CPW is high energy and ultimately superficial. As a slow-to-warm-up kind of person, I was unlikely to forge any deep bonds from it. And second of all, looking back on my life, this feeling of isolation wasn’t unique to MIT. I felt it with every friend group I’ve ever been a part of--that horrible (and later proven true) feeling that there was a lot of fun and gossip going on, and I wasn’t included in it at all. I could go to any college’s visitation weekend, and I would still feel elements of this exclusion.

I hoped that Caltech’s PreFrosh Weekend, slated for the weekend after CPW, would go better. It marginally did because I gave up on socializing and studied chemistry by one of the ponds.

When I decided to come to MIT, it was because I sat down and weighed all the factors. MIT gave me good financial aid (comparable to my other offers), so that was not a factor to worry about. I knew that I would major in either chemistry or chemical engineering, and MIT was top notch in both. In addition, I had a few upperclassmen  friends who were going here, so it wasn’t as if I would be absolutely lonely. MIT is far from Southern California, but that was not necessarily a bad thing. I live 30 minutes away from Caltech, and the thought of my parents visiting me on a whim without any warning is a somewhat unnerving thought.

Furthermore, I knew that all those kids I felt so alien among would one day become successful--the leaders and engineers of tomorrow. I would have to navigate among them someday if I wanted to grow as a person and professional. It is better to learn their ways now, I thought, rather than to try and mingle with them when we were all enigmatic adults.

In the past, I might have shied away from people I didn’t immediately get strike it off with or persisted in my seclusion, surrounding myself with objects of fascination. There were many things I did like about MIT, and it would be very conducive to my aspirations.

Perhaps, now was the time to leave my comfort zone and finally grow up.

And so, in the back of my dad’s car, on the way home from the Chemistry Olympiad Nationals exam, I decided to comMIT.

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My Life and Pokemon

The long road to my current obsession. 

I live my life as a slave to Pokefanaticism. Just when I think I am free—that the lore of Pokemon will no longer excite me—there will be some other aspect of the franchise that will draw me in. I suppose it’s not too unlikely--this franchise has multiple manga storylines, an anime, many movies, and way too game continuities to keep track of. And yet again, for the fourth time, I am drawn in.

Both of these are Pokemon. Semantically, they are the same type. 

A rundown for those who may not have heard of or seen this franchise: Pokemon centers around these creatures called Pokemon. We’re not quite sure if they’re animals, plants, or household objects, because they are all of the above and also dragons.

But  we know is that they are all birds, because they all hatch from eggs.

Even the Ice Cream Pokemon.

Humans and Pokemon have a mostly mutualistic relationship, where they feed and help each other. Humans can catch and train Pokemon to battle each other, a process which is said to help both the human and their Pokemon. The storylines focus on different aspects to varying degrees, thus appealing to more people. It’s very common to find fans who have only played a specific series of the games, or only read the anime, or only played the card game.

My run-in with Pokemon first began in 2006 when I was eight and saw people playing with Pokemon cards. They all seemed like cool and well-adjusted people, so I thought, “Hey, if I play Pokemon, maybe I’ll become cool and well-adjusted too!” I bought some Pokemon cards because they were cute. I still flip through them sometimes.

Little me then set my eyes on the Pokemon games themselves. I really wanted to play Pokemon Emerald, which came out in 2005. It was hot off the griddle and looked absolutely packed with content. (It was. I still assert that it was one of the pinnacles of Pokemon main game development, even if I’ll have to fight one-hundred-and-one people who will try to convince me that ORAS is a better game. Literally, in order to beat some of the optional Emerald endgame content, you had to do calculations and strategize.)

There was only one problem.

My parents don’t believe in American food, Chipotle, Costco cakes, chicken tenders, or video games. They thought the latter would completely derail my life and firmly refused to get any consoles for me.

And so I learned to settle at a young age.

I settled for the anime. You know, the one about Ash, the annoying, forever-ten-years-old kid with the z’s on his face who refuses to evolve his Pikachu because merchandising and publicity said so. 

You might have heard bits of the age-long discussions “Who the heck is his dad?” (because only his mother has ever been revealed, and we don’t think his father died in the War) and “Why is he still ten?” He’s been ten for nearly twenty years now. 

That was a ridiculously childish show, where every episode had the same exact plot except the bad guys got increasingly better at crossdressing. Even 8-year old me could plainly see this and rant about it. The anime is pretty much responsible for many people delegating the entire Pokemon franchise to the “kids only” section of their heads, even though there are many parts of Pokemon that are...not so child-friendly. For instance, in the manga, there’s a scene where the villains kill the protagonist’s father and then decide to burn him so he can’t be revived.

But what the anime did right, and what no other branch of Pokemon has quite successfully captured. is the magic and spontaneity of battle and the vibrance of the Pokemon themselves. Sure, the anime characters are almost all some variation of “good-hearted and way too cheerful”, but they still had heartwarming and unique interactions with their Pokemon. The lack of human focus also allowed for entire episodes based on specific Pokemon and Pokemon families. And they would often showcase rather esoteric Pokemon too, which is great, because when you have hundreds of critters and your franchise only wants to promote the ones everyone already knows about, everyone else tends to slip through the cracks. People will wax lyrical about how Pokemon Adventures (the most well-known manga) brought forth increasingly complex, dark, and trashy plots, but it never really allowed you to observe the cute critters and watch battle mechanics because you would be too focused on whether or not the main character’s really annoying love interest was going to die.

Perhaps some of the introduced plot twists in the anime were rather...lame. Ash gets a badge at some point by accidentally triggering the sprinklers in a Rock type gym. Rock-type Pokemon are weak to water, and so he won. Regardless, that was pretty funny and shows how Pokemon actually interact with their world outside of battle (which may or may not be really violent dog-fighting, depending on who you ask). I quickly became entranced by the cute little mons dancing around, showing off their quirks and abilities, although the formulaic plot and pattern of the episodes easily bored me. You can only watch “Team Rocket shows up, tries to steal Pikachu, and then are lambasted into space” so many times.

Then, in 9th grade, I learned that instead of watching a bunch of too-peppy ten year olds duke it out, I too could take part in this violence. At that time, I was taking Fundamentals of Programming. The class itself was okay, but we were also learning Alice.

Thanks, Carnegie Mellon.

I mean, it wasn’t a bad programming language. It’s drag and drop, and most of the graphics have mansions in the Uncanny Valley, but it is far superior to Scratch. You could make some pretty sophisticated animations and games.

There is only so long you can gaze into the empty eyes of Alice Liddell.

And so we discovered the joys of Pokemon Showdown, a website where you could battle real life people. There are various tiers of battling you can partake in--each tier has its own unique limits on which Pokemon you can use--and the one we always battled in was “Random Battle”, where you and your opponent are both given a completely random, computer-assembled team. It was easy and quick, since we didn’t have to think about team-building (which takes literally eons) at all.

My peers and I became very involved in this. I remember battling out of boredom one day, picking the one-time username of “Grack 331” because Mr. Grack taught Fundamentals of Programming in Room 331. Out of the blue, my opponent messaged me: “Do you go to Troy High School?”

Turned out he was very bored in Robotics class and also indulging in the pleasures of virtual dog-fighting. (Although Generation VI asserts that this helps build a mutualistic bond between you and your Pokemon that will allow them to strip themselves of all humanity and inhibitions. This sounds like BS, but it does sort of hold up--Pokemon with human trainers are able to reach new levels of power. Given that some of Pokemon got the short end of the power stick, that’s pretty important.)

In this era, I became entranced with the complexity of battle mechanics. I learned about movesets, stats, and breeding. All were important considerations in selecting and creating powerful Pokemon who could counter almost everything thrown at them. In Pokemon, there is a concept of weaknesses and strengths. Think of it as a very complex 18-way game of rock-paper-scissors, except you could be rock and paper (and maybe have some scissors DNA lurking in there somewhere), and even if you were only rock, you could probably learn paper-like moves if your father was a piece of paper. Almost every Pokemon, regardless of strength, could be honed into a fine weapon capable of sweeping any opponent. (Well, except for Sunkern.) It was simply intriguing to see the way people play movesets and team compositions to their team advantage. I watched as very savvy battlers set up the field so that a pathetically weak pokemon could overpower opponents of huge power.

I think what ultimately stopped me from getting too into competitive Pokemon battling was the community. Interspersed between all the nice people, you had the hardcore fellows who believed in might over all else and delighted in tearing down others. They’re the kind of people who would go and curse you out if they didn’t like the way you battled, even if they literally didn’t know you at all.  My high school was already toxic enough--I really didn’t need more toxicity in my life. And so the second phase of my Pokefanaticism waned.

The next era came in the summer after 12th grade. Like everyone else, I started playing the darn new-fangled Pokemon Go (PoGo), where Pokemon appear as you walk around. You then throw balls at them and try to walk around more so that you could “catch them all”. I didn’t expect to like PoGo, because it looked like it would lack many of the features which drew me to Pokemon. There was no battling mechanic at all, no real human-Pokemon interactions, and the Pokemon themselves did not do much except engage in very basic battles and roar at you when you tapped them.

In here lay the ingenuity.

The game is so simple that there is literally nothing to distract you from ogling the cute mons. There are some noticeable patterns like “Water Pokemon tend to appear near rivers” and “Ultra Balls are more likely to capture Pokemon than normal PokeBalls”, but you really don’t need to understand very much to enjoy PoGo. Just look at the extremely simple catching mechanic, where you toss balls at Pokemon until one sticks. In the main console games, you have to think about weaknesses, properly trapping Pokemon so that they don’t run, inflicting status conditions like poison and paralysis, and picking the most optimal ball from an assortment of over 20 PokeBall varieties. (Things have gotten better, but PoGo is definitely a “appeal to as many people as possible” sort of game. Though it’s expanded its roster, it still focuses overwhelmingly on Kantan Pokemon and events, even though the last Kanto games Fire Red and Leaf Green came out in 2004. After all, when most older people think of Pokemon, they think of the Pokemon they grew up with, even though a lot of those critters had very clear design issues. These Pokemon happened to be Kantan Pokemon, Generation I.)

Thus, Pokemon Go lured in players who otherwise would have never touched Pokemon. The most hardcore players I’ve met understand all the in and outs of PoGo, but very little about the lore behind it. Heck, I met someone who had no idea that Mega Evolution is a thing, even though it is such a huge part of the games and advertising.

There’s nothing wrong with being a casual player, because I’m a casual fan for many franchises and I can still get a lot of enjoyment out of them. The problem (and why a lot of people are getting increasingly irked by Pokemon’s reattempts at mainstream approval) is when your games get dumbed down and gimmick-fied to appeal to more people. Take, for instance, the recent Pokemon Let’s Go! Series. It’s cute and all, sure. Many fans, me included, would rather see all that effort geared towards Sinnoh (Generation IV) remakes. Sinnoh is a grand region with so much lore and possibly the best Champion of all time. And yet, what do we get? We get another return to the most hackneyed region, because it’s the one everyone grew up with and remembers.

I digress.

No matter how I feel, I inevitably fell. PoGo preyed on me where it mattered. It fed on my love for cute things and targeted my tendency to hoard things. Just look at my nail polish collection.

And before I knew it, I was taking extra long laps around MIT just to get more mileage and losing weight. Sometime in my sophomore year, I discovered the MIT PoGo community. This broadened my horizons. I could now engage in “raids”, where you take down an extra powerful opponent with your “friends”. Just two months ago, I was carefully planning my day so that I could go to important raids. I remember getting my timeslot for an exclusive raid and realizing that it conflicted with a presentation I had to give. So like a normal person, I hunted down one of my friends who was free, carefully arranged teams, and gave my PoGo community the details of his appearance so that they could find him if necessary.

So what snapped me out of my PoGo craze?

I rediscovered the complexity which had drawn me to the franchise in the first place. It all began a week before my second 7.05 exam, when I decided to check out the web series Pokemon Generations (again). It is a 18-episode official webseries, where each episode is five minutes or shorter. Apparently, they couldn’t afford to pay for longer episodes. Unlike the anime I described above, it stuck closely with the game continuity and was definitely darker and grittier without becoming edgy. The animation was also very sharp (whether or not it’s “beautiful” is hotly debated) and detailed.

I’m not sure why I decided to rewatch a series, however short, during this time. Maybe it was to actually view it; the first time around, my involvement dropped drastically after Episode 5. This iteration, I began watching with more attention to detail. In Episode 8, which is an episode that explores, “What if Team Aqua, the evil team that aspires to become global warming and raise sea levels, actually succeeds?” I noticed that someone refer to one of my favorite villains, Shelly, and she looked...very different. 

I expected the one on the left; I got the one on the right.

At first, I thought, “Maybe there is another Shelly,” even though Pokemon takes great pains to not repeat names. A few moments of googling told me, nope, same character. As you can see, Shelly used to be a fiery redhead. This was extremely distinctive, because everyone else on her team was either bald, brunette, or lighter brunette. I loved her when I saw her in the anime, because she was literally the only person during that arc finale who was competent. Her redesign (right above) was also pretty snazzy, but it’s also fairly jarring for someone who wasn’t expecting it.

In my googling, I discovered two things. The first thing was that many of the older Pokemon games got remade, where the plot was rewritten, the regional fauna elaborated upon, and the characters redrawn. The second was that despite these clear differences, and the fact that there are so many main console Pokemon games, all of them (yes, even the originals and the remakes) are supposed to fit into the same continuity.

Here, my foot fell into a rabbit hole. When my friend gave me a copy of the game Pokemon Soul Silver, my entire body sunk in.

 See, all this time, I had never really gotten up to date on the progression of the pokemon universe. We have 7 generations so far—each generation bringing forth a new region and new pokemon—and I had never really learned about anything after Generation IV. Being extremely young back in the day, I learned about the individual regions but never stuck around long enough to learn about their remakes. A lot of game developments also happened in the meantime, and it turned out that the Pokemon universe actually was a collection of Pokemon universes, where each continuity differed by maybe just a few details that eventually became huge life-changing inventions/events. Formerly, we assumed each game was somewhat standalone.

You might have noticed that so far, I haven’t really talked a lot about the humans of the Pokemon world, because I didn’t put too much attention into them. They’re fairly flat battling fodder in the original.  

But with the remakes, due to changes in creative direction, a lot of the humans in the games got more characterization. It was not a lot, just enough for you to feel the presence of a personality growing in there somewhere. And with the realization that their world(s) were so delicate and easily-disturbed came the potential for character development and interactions.

Immediately, I immediately became intrigued by how all my favorite characters back in the day had changed. Some are not too drastic—Clair from Gold, Silver, and Crystal was a...witch that starts with a b back then, and Clair from Heart Gold and Soul Silver (the remakes) is still that. Others are sweeping. Courtney from Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald turned from a somewhat sly but also underutilized admin into a mentally unhinged and eccentric scientist who may or may not secretly have psychic powers that allow her to see the results of her actions. (Not that it stops her in pursuing her dangerous goals. Some contest that her visions of the world’s destruction might not actually be visions, but rather, disturbed fantasies. People are weird.)

And here I discovered a perplexing paradox.

I am very character and worldbuilding focused. If I were given a choice between a hardcore plot and really good character interactions, I will always take the latter. The fandoms which have jumped out to me are all fandoms with well-developed characters, even if the plot is weak. My Little Pony, for instance, is very slice-of-life, and many of its attempts to a plot are cliched and clumsy. However, the characters undergo a lot of individual growth and have extremely nuanced interactions that allow me to overlook plot issues.

The Pokemon games have neither a complex plot nor an intense character focus. (Really, the anime doesn’t either. Hence I stopped watching it.) The plot is quite literally: you, as a ten year old (somewhat older in subsequent games), venture out into the world and battle people. Along the way, you get called along to save the world since child endangerment isn’t a thing in this universe. After you defeat the Champion, the strongest trainer in the land, you can catch all the Pokemon that exist in your region. This is a very simple plot. Yes, there’s a lot to catch, and a lot of content and wade through. It still doesn’t change the fact that the trainers are basically fodder for you and that the entire setup is made to appeal to kids. What sort of parent would let their ten year old child wander out into a wilderness where there are threatening creatures in the fucking tall grass? There are so many, many other questions.

Look at this cutie, who you might encounter on your journey. Except its Pokedex entry reads:  “It is whispered that any child who mistakes Drifloon for a balloon and holds on to it could wind up missing.” -Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver

And then one day, as I was playing Soul Silver and trying to decide how some of these characters even functioned, it hit me why I kept coming back to this franchise.

In order for this very simple and formulaic plot to work, the world in which it takes place must be very complex. At the least, it needs to be radically different from ours. The process of understanding this foreign world and how they have adapted is what makes Pokemon so appealing.

Let’s start with an aspect of the Pokemon games that is mildly well-known: the extreme youth of the main character, especially when compared with what you can do. You’re in the early years of your adolescence, and yet you can summon gods while priests and lorekeepers trained to deal with them can’t (ORAS). Sure, this is all the result of a game mechanic that’s supposed to entice younger kids. Real Pokemon training would probably be very dangerous and arduous, because Pokemon are basically dangerous weapons that could kill you. No one wants to play a game about what is basically dog-training but where the dogs are also nukes.

But if the Pokemon world were real, training would be very dangerous and require lots of patience. And most certainly, no one would send out their ten year old into the wild. One can dismiss all of this, rewrite canon for their purposes, or comb through the dialogue and events and develop a reasonable society in which things like this can become accepted.

And so my current obsession is constructing a reasonable and nuanced headcanon where characters are distinct and multidimensional. This is twofold. It is always mind-broadening to see how other people have interpreted the context clues and gotten creative, in the form of fan art, headcanons, and fanfiction.

There is a special whimsy about the Pokemon world which makes it especially appealing despite all the plot voids which exist in it. It is a world of really weird people and really strange life motivations. You have the mishmash of multiple tropes, Chosen Ones who are passed over for you despite being more magical and gifted than you’ll ever be and a lot of heartwarming goodness where you would expect none. People take baths with their venomous Tentacruel, they get their dreams ruined, they drop their balls…what more could you want?

Thanks for letting me know? 

I imagine in a few months, my Pokefanaticism will wane once more. But soon, as more content and more oddities are added, it will flare up again and again. Generation VIII is coming out in late 2018, after all.

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In Defense of Maseeh: Other Factors of Dorm Selection

Aka: “What vexes you?”

Look, as a longtime resident, I make “Maseeh doesn’t have culture” jokes regularly. If you define culture as a cohesive vibe of people with lots of deep-rooted traditions, we really don’t have much of a culture. That’s what happens when you are literally a revolving door of people. There are definitely upperclassmen around, but the freshmen percentage is still pretty high.

But I think what really irked me enough to try and draft a defense of Maseeh (a dorm that has no problem with filling its rooms--the opposite, really, given how many forced quads we have) was sitting in the Terrascope lounge and hearing someone who had clearly never lived in Maseeh say, “The only thing Maseeh people do with floors is stand on them.”

I resisted the urge to get up and talk to her (civilly with a slight hint of friendliness, of course, because that is the best way to coax stupidity out of people).  Instead, I let her words stew in my head for a bit. Slowly, I realized that her statement was only the tip of the annoyance iceberg floating around in the sea of my cranial fluids.

When people talk about dorm selection, they will almost always mention that culture is the most important factor, where “culture” refers to the community and the activities they do as a community. I totally agree with this assertion. You need to pick somewhere you feel completely comfortable at. But here’s the thing: it’s not really culture itself which is important. What really matters is the sense of peace you’d feel if you picked the right dorm, a state of happiness which is enhanced if you genuinely love your people and what you do together.

Furthermore--and this is what always grinds my gears--when people talk about picking culture as so so important, they often also say things like, “Picking a dorm for its amenities and closeness alone is not a good way to pick a dorm”.

And Maseeh, our lovely Castle Dorm, is known for its amenities, closeness, and lack of “culture”. (Also its bulky meal plans, but that’s usually a source of consternation, not joy.) Even if it’s not mentioned explicitly, it’s sort of obvious which dorm people have in mind. Either that, or McCormick which lies 100 feet away, and the latter has a cohesive enough theme for it to be spared from the “no culture” hammer.

First of all, Maseeh does have a culture...of sorts. I agree it’s nowhere as strong and cohesive as that of EC’s or Next’s or wherever’s, and we do lack the distinct floor vibes of many other dorms, but after having lived here for two years, I can safely say that the lack of a strong “culture” is a selling point.

Communities are nice, but they take a lot out of you in terms of time and emotional energy. And if you happen to find that you don’t quite mesh with the community you’re placed in, you’re in a position where you can see everyone around you becoming friends and making plans while you are in some sort of limbo where they do try and engage you, but you’re just not their type so there is a limit to their success. This happens more than you think. People might pick a dorm because they liked a few residents they met at CPW, and you know what they say: a few members do not define a dorm/sorority/any organization. Other times, prefrosh find a dorm with internal clubs or activities that line up with their passions...but common interests do not mean similar personalities. And yet again, in the hectic nature of REX lotteries, where you’ll likely be asked to move to a new room, one can get accidentally placed in different houses or floors than what they originally intended to join.

Even for people who do fit in, I’ve heard stories of denizens whose commitment to their living group gets questioned because they were too busy and thus had to disappear for a while.

But since Maseeh doesn’t have such strong traditions or persevering communities (though we do try, sometimes), you don’t have these obligations, and you don’t suffer the chances of exclusion. And in terms of what the Castle Dorm does have (it’s always a bad idea to define something as what it isn’t), the Maseeh vibe is very chill and all-over-the-place, which is why people say we don’t have any particular culture. Because Maseeh doesn’t select very strongly for any particular personality types, it attracts a diverse cast of personalities and interests, so you can still find friends within your dorm. Combined with the natural friendliness of most MIT students (let’s face it: most of the kids here are fundamentally good-hearted and nice, if not somewhat awkward), you have a welcoming living community that will readily let you in as you are. I’ve disappeared for weeks, either in my room or who-knows-where. Of course, I won’t be as close with people as I would have been if I stuck around, but my commitment and belonging to the LL community doesn’t get questioned. It’s almost as if I never left. And if you are one of those people who want a posse, you can still get one. Just show up to the lounge more often instead of getting stranded on main campus at 3 in the morning because you’re afraid of the dark.

We absolutely do things with our floors even if we don’t distinguish between them. Heck, we’re the one of the only dorms where the room you are assigned to over the summer stays your assigned room. Since differences between floor culture is marginal, there’s not too much of an incentive to switch floors although living on the Lower Level or Floor One does present a more close-knit experience. Our floor activities may not be as hardcore or l33t as the things you do with your floors, but we enjoy our camaraderie very much. Usually, we just eat oranges or play Smash together (with a few food orders, interfloor competitions, and retreats throughout each semester), so I guess maybe that’s not much to write about. Regardless, it’s perfectly lovely and just enough for me and many others.

And second of all, venturing down the ridges of my annoyance iceberg: “culture” being upheld as a sacred criteria. There is more to your dorm experience than “culture”, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with picking a dorm for material comforts such as closeness to campus, well-lit rooms, and clean walls. Your room is your last sanctuary, and you can never think too much about your comfort in it. (Unless your roommate is a horror, in which case, I’m sorry.)

MIT students like to downplay the importance of things like cleanliness and amenities in your dorm experience, even though for many of us, that stuff is important. It’s sort of like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs--if your basic needs for food aren’t fulfilled, you won’t have enough in you to worry about self-actualization. Similarly, if your living conditions discomfort you on a fundamental level, you’re not going to be able to adequately enjoy your friends or study. Your mileage may vary; this still holds true.

I stayed in Burton-Conner for CPW, and let me tell you: although everyone there was super nice, every moment I spent in that dorm brought me extreme discomfort. The dinginess of walls and the showers and the floors bothered me so, so much. I think that alone prevented me from ranking BC above the halfway mark on my dorm preferences form even though everyone I met there, regardless of floor seemed very decent and sweet. When I visited East Campus, all the paintings and engineering were rad as hell, but I couldn’t stay in there for more than literally an hour or two. It just…it didn’t sit right. And don’t get me started on MacGregor: I love singles, but the thought of sleeping with my face to that brick wall repulsed me on a primal level. For a lot of people, none of this matters. For me, it did. During the semester, just thinking about going back to my room in Maseeh brought me a sense of ease.

Like my other peers, I absolutely agree that you should pick a dorm based on what you think you will fit into. But there is more to “culture” that must be considered, and even so, you should carefully question what brand of “culture” you truly want.

[junyuyangsbloggerapp-blog]

Blogspirations

Or how blogging caught my eye. 

When I read blogs, I read two types of blogs.

The first is that of drama (drama: “an exciting, emotional, or unexpected series of events or set of circumstances”). Drama can be both positive or negative. Maybe someone is feeling sad and enraged. They want you to read their blog and donate to their shady GoFundMe, or to help start a smear campaign against their enemies. In happier times, maybe someone is trying to find a long-lost relative and finally succeeds. The second sort of blog is that of analysis. This is a rather broad category--it could be something like a book deconstruction, where a blogger reads a book or series of books and then talks about why or how it’s problematic, or a social commentary on people and their issues, or a good make-up review.

 As for my overall blogger inspiration, I will list two names. The first is My Lacquer Cabinet, ran by Melissa and Terra. This is a nails blog, with an emphasis on indie nail polish. Melissa usually shows swatches, and I really enjoy her swatch posts since she has accurate photos, beautiful nails, and detailed descriptions of the polish formula. (This can be very rare. In a world where filters and Instagram are a way of life, it’s not uncommon to get bloggers and swatchers with stunning nails...that are so photoshopped you can’t recognize the polish color in real life. It’s rather disheartening really; the stockist most famous for their overworked photos, LiveLovePolish, is also one of the best known indie nail polish distributors.)

But what really sold me on My Lacquer Cabinet was their (now-deleted, not sure why) series where each of the two women found a picture and commissioned a custom polish based on it from roughly 20 or so indie polish makers. The goal there was to show how different people, with very distinct styles, interpret the same picture. It was interesting how a few different takes kept showing up. The first picture Melissa used was a picture of her husband wearing a blue and red jacket and sitting in the snow, and so there were quite a few variations of “blue base with red and white glitter”. And yet, as people focused on different parts of the picture, I saw interpretations I would have never considered. One person seemingly ignored the husband in the picture and went with a snow-white polish...that turned out to have a rather strong blue shimmer. Yet someone else came up with a polish that changed colors between the white of the snow and the blue of the jacket.  The indie nail polish community can really get heated over the prospects of people “duplicating” other people’s polishes, and this series showed that if two people are doing collections centered around the same inspiration (the plethora of Game of Thrones collections that have come out these years, all of which will have a Daenerys polish), you’re bound to get some similarities. I thought this idea was ingenious and a fresh breath of air from the oodles of cosmetics blogs that do nothing but show pictures. (Which is good! I appreciate them greatly, but this Picture from a Polish series was just so unique.)

Another blogger inspiration--and a larger one, because she talks about a wider array of topics--is Jenny Trout. She really was the one that kicked off my blogging curiosity a while back. When I was younger, “blogs” conjured images of short fluffy pieces filled with way too many photos and coats of sugar. Sort of like poorly made cannolis—too simple and too sweet, leaving you feeling empty afterwards. Yes, a pictures speaks a thousand words, but please tell me what you think. Pictures are not always specific.

What I like about Jenny’s blog (jennytrout.com) is that she writes analytically, and she writes honestly. Her “Jenny Reads” series was my first exposure to her blog, and they are my favorite part of her blog. She reads poorly written and problematic books and gives a rundown of her reaction and analyses as she plows through them. Her most famous is her reading of the Fifty Shades of Grey series. It was written during that era when everyone was telling everyone, “Fifty Shades of Grey is a Twilight fanfic” as if it were a profound, little-known statement that explained why it was so horribly written. (It really doesn’t; there are a lot of good Twilight fanfics out there. Some probably have better writing and characters than the original content.)

I was drawn by the freshness and nuance of Jenny’s approach to the series. Her opinions were unique and fleshed out than the sea of banal, buzz-word filled posts that all repeated the same shallow information. Jenny not only dissects the problematic relationship in the series (and pulls concrete and subtle evidence, as well as good fanfics on the topic), but as someone in the BDSM community, she also pulls together sources and personal experiences to show how even the renowned sex scenes are horribly researched and ultimately harmful. Jenny, being a romance writer, also does a bunch of reporting about happenings in the romance writing community. I do not read much romance, but she analyzes publishing and writing dynamics in a way that is educational to anyone.

If I were to speak for MIT bloggers, it is definitely Selam who is most inspiring. Ultimately, discovering her blogs—especially the one about college dating—was what pushed me to apply so late in my MIT career, because her writing is genuine and personal and yet so helpful and mind-broadening, and it’s the kind of influence I would want to have on people. She writes deeply about topics that are interesting and relevant, even if it’s something people don’t necessarily want to hear (in a world where there’s an increasing emphasis on presenting a well-curated facade of nonchalance). When you read her blogs, you feel and you get invested because she’s given you something to truly think about. I remember reading “it’s ok it’s not ok” and it lingering in my mind for a long time after, struck by the experience of her loss and ruminating about the concepts of anhedonia in those around me. I would have never imagined reading something so personal and so poignant on a college blog. Yet I did, and I can say I am better for having seen it.