#And then we start getting weirdly philosophical or psychological

[youve-been-etho-d]

I put this little ramble on Twitter but another bit of somewhat deep thinking I had was about strangers responding to vents. Venting and a person reading it and deciding to say something reassuring or comforting. On one hand in my current state it's just like, "You don't even know me, you're a stranger and I'm a stranger to you too, you can't attest to my character at all because you have no idea who I am", not in an aggressive way or with any malice, but just in a matter-of-fact way. But on the other hand there's just something about the concept of it. The concept of a stranger choosing to say something in response, they don't know you and you don't know them, but they're still taking a second to give you their best shot at comforting you or helping you or reassuring you simply because they want you to feel better or be okay. It's as simple as someone seeing that you're not doing too well and they want you to feel better even if they have no idea who you are. It's something so human and reminding that not everyone on earth has no compassion for others. Yes it's relatively easy for some to throw some comforting words out and it can take 2 seconds, but it's still someone deciding to do that because they care and they know it doesn't take much effort. You can try to water it down and say it's nothing really significant but you can kind of always flip it back around and say "But this part of it gives it some sort of meaning".

[secludedgarden2]

Reflecting on Belief in God and the Problem of Evil (2022)

It’s been a while, but I’m back. This time bringing a very unstructured free-form reflection on my recent thoughts on belief in God, this Ramadan. It is currently the 30th night of Ramadan, and I am kind of forcing myself to write something here to keep up the tradition. I’ll start by saying on the whole, my thoughts/opinions have not really changed from my last entry. But I have considered some things more for the first time recently, so I’ll detail those here.

The Problem of Evil really got to me this Ramadan. The “problem” being that if God is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good, why does He allow innocent people to suffer, through no fault of their own and not always due to the actions of other people, while some other people (like myself) do not?

And, who am I really to pray to God and ask for things that benefit me, or anyone, when a truly caring God should be doing these things anyway for other people?

There is no real solution to this problem, without having to give up one of the attributes. Perhaps God is not all-knowing, or not all-powerful, or all-good. The Islamic answer apparently is that unlike the Christian always-loving God, the Islamic God is a God that portrays a range of characteristics, including “rigour” or toughness, as well as love. But can I really tell a Ukrainian child right now in Kiev not to worry, because God is simply showing rigour, or that it’s Ramadan and therefore prayers of children will definitely always be answered?

Once you go down this track, it starts to feel disheartening to actually keep believing in the idea of prayer - which is a scary place to be, for a believer. But necessary also, of course.

The above thoughts occurred early in Ramadan. Then, later in Ramadan, after a lot of praying and dua (mine and other people’s), I passed my driving test. After this, all I could really say was alhamdulilah and thank you, God. My first words after finding out I passed was Oh, thank God. And at this point, it felt wholly ungrateful, wrong and dangerous to suddenly turn my back on everything and not appreciate God’s help. To believe that I did it all by myself would feel wildly arrogant. Of course, I did do lots of practise, which is why I passed, but still. Weirdly, though it follows no rational logic, my belief in God was strengthened by this.

Which makes no sense, right? Why should it work like that? Why should my belief in God be strengthened when things work out for me, when things don’t work out for so many others, despite this very fact being the thing that problematises belief in the first place.

A lot of the above is relevant more to my personality, than to logic/philosophical belief. But if there is an overarching theme, it is probably that belief in God feels right for emotional reasons, rather than logical reasons. But... that isn’t exactly new news.

It gets difficult to entertain this idea of devotion to God, or even love of God. I can follow religion for the philosophical utility of a framework to live a fulfilling and positive life, I can believe in a “guiding star” deity for when I feel lost or to remind me there is hope in the unknown, I can believe in a ever-present creator to humble me into appreciating that there could be something outside of all this, some truth that is only realised after life... but still, we hit practical problems when considering the real world. This is the other side of the chasm between religion and faith that I hadn’t considered before.

I don’t really have an answer to any of the above.

Do I still believe in God? Yes. Inexplicably.

What God, exactly? A singular God, a being beyond everything that exists, responsible for the creation of everything, and the possessor of some level of divine truth and understanding, and meaning, outside of everything. That which is impossible to understand, right now.

Why, do I believe in God? And what change does this make?

Because I was brought up doing so and ultimately feel most psychologically comfortable doing so, is the likely answer to the first. But “Because I want to” is the simpler answer. And that’s why anyone does anything, after all. You can’t change what you want.

As for the second question... I don’t know. Perhaps no change. Sure, I can believe in Heaven and Hell but ultimately I believe that we should look after one another, do good and prevent harm. That is its own reward and motivation, not the idea of being rewarded in another life. The utility of religion to lead a fulfilling life respects the idea that a fulfilling life is the goal. Not getting into Heaven, though that would naturally follow.

So I don’t really know where that leaves me. I haven’t come up with any grand theodicy. Ultimately though, even if everything was just made up by bored humans looking for meaning, that doesn’t necessarily make it any less real. I maintain that. 

It feels good to believe I am being looked after, though. And there’s no reason to take that way. Why do I get looked after, while others don’t? I don’t know. I don’t know why the world is so unfair. Perhaps it makes more sense to say then that I believe in God, and I try to do the right thing, above all else. Belief in God is the answer to a question, and trying to do the right thing is a big ongoing question to answer in itself. No attempt at justification, no attempt at explanation. I guess that’s the neatest way of looking at it.

Crazy to think, somewhere there will be objective answers to what’s out there. Who knows.

[autumnblogs]

Day 3: Vendetta against Bro

Welcome back to more Homestuck Liveblogging. Picking up with Nannasprite as she prepares to give John the Dirt.

https://homestuck.com/story/421

Sburb’s opening move is to take John’s Dad away from him. If @mmmmalo​‘s theory about psychological storytelling is to be believed, Sburb provokes fear and then manifests it in the form of a character’s antagonists. If you wonder why I bring them up so much, it’s probably because I’ve been reading their blog lately. I am almost always game for more Homestuck theorization, and would love to be able to reference more people and engage with their thoughts in my theoryposts and liveblogging, so if you know somebody with good takes, please pass them along my way.

The Incipisphere, like John’s name, was invoked into existence by player/character action, but paradoxically, has always been that way. By engaging with Sburb, John authenticates its retroactive existence, like a mailman taking a signature of receipt for a package.

When we engage with the fixtures of our cultures and material realities, we too, authenticate them. This can be good or bad - when we communicate with each other, recognize each other, we authenticate each other too. Observing and being observed is a mutual act of validation for everyone involved. I see you seeing me seeing you.

I’m full of horseshit again. Read some more horseshit after the break.

Content Warning for this one: Pedophilia Mentions.

https://homestuck.com/story/422

There’s a lot to unpack in this sequence of pages, and I’m almost certainly going to miss a lot of it, but I’ll come back to stuff that I miss as it comes back up in later pages.

As a Crucible of Unlimited Potential, Skaia can become absolutely anything, and the shape that it will take on will be influenced by the actions of the players. But it isn’t anything yet. 

This is the second time in two pages that Nanna has brought up the light-darkness dichotomy of the forces at play in the Medium, and after just talking about the act of mutual authentication through mutual observation, my brain is screaming the words Hegelian Lens at me. Might go somewhere with that too.

I also wanna call attention to the name of the Medium. As a story about stories, it only makes sense that the name of Homestuck’s main otherworld should evoke the field used to propagate mass communication.

https://homestuck.com/story/423

I’ve always thought that it’s interesting that of the two forces in the Medium, the players have natural allies in the form of Prospit. The choice here is not to act on behalf of one or the other, the choice is between Action and Inaction. Not doing something is itself, doing something.

https://homestuck.com/story/427

You Can (Not) Redo.

Sburb relentlessly drives its players forward. If you attempt to go back, or stay where you are, you will be punished. No getting your parents back, no getting your planet back.

What’ll it be John? Advance or Advance?

https://homestuck.com/story/431

John is extremely resistant to being made to do things that he doesn’t want to do anyway, even by Narrators.

More thoughts about Cake and Baked Goods in Homestuck and in relation to John. The other main characters baking is associated with in Homestuck are all women - The Condesce, Meenah, Jane, Nanna - and baking in general is pretty strongly associated with women, moms, etc. I’ve always thought it was a little out of place amongst Dad’s other character traits, which are definitively masculine. Maybe it’s for exactly that reason - baking is culturally feminine.

Maybe John’s resistance to baked goods is because he’s uncomfortable receiving feminine affection (especially, but not only from his Dad). It’s like getting kisses from your Mom in public or other public displays of affection between men and the women in their lives, or even men and other men in their lives. John is certainly pretty clueless about affection from women when he receives it later in the story. On the other hand, he responds very well to masculine displays of affection, like the aloof but ebullient cards he gets from his Dad, or the one-upsmanship between him and Dave.

 (I’ll have to think some more about the capitalism thing from my other post.)

https://homestuck.com/story/433

More of Rose seeing enemies in every shadow. Then again, could it be Jasper’s fault that they’re in this mess?

https://homestuck.com/story/442

I think the fact that we jump to this point in the past suggests that Rose is probably reminiscing about this spot, going along with my theory that when the Narration is focusing on a character, it’s also giving us that character’s stream of consciousness - we’re experience what Rose is experiencing.

That probably goes a long way to excusing the kind of puzzling, irritating experience we have of our first minutes with John. Due to his tendency to get distracted by things and forget how things work, we have to suffer through his own inability to navigate his disorderly environment exactly the same way he does.

Oh, so that’s why this story gets compared to Ulysses.

It is Jaspers’ fault that they’re in this mess. My hypothesis gathers more data.

https://homestuck.com/story/444

The third of the prose poems. Drat. Got to Dave’s Poem before I even had the chance to write about Rose’s Poem. Guess we’ll come back to this one later later.

https://homestuck.com/story/445

I’ve almost certainly missed a few of these gags by now but “Left him hanging long enough” is one of the jokes that Homestuck reproduces over and over again. Homestuck reproduces itself frequently, like variations on a theme. Its self-referential nature could be called incestuous, as it turns one-off gags into recurring gags.

https://homestuck.com/story/448

While Bro and Dirk are both definitely irony ninjas where Dave is just performing irony to get his Bro’s approval, I think all the irony is an effort to distance themselves from the fact that they really do sincerely enjoy the things they’re “ironically” into. That too, is probably ironic.

Unfortunately, the actual subject matter of Bro’s interests, while innocuous in a vacuum, are still extremely inappropriate to leave out where a thirteen year old can have access to them. Bro probably isn’t a pedophile, but between the martial education, and the uncomfortable degree to which he involves Dave in his sex life, his relationship with Dave recalls pederasty which is one of many, many links between Dirk, Bro, and the Classical Hellenes, and Monastic Shudo, a similar practice historically attested from their beloved Japan. (The term Platonic Relationship is called that because Plato is one of the first Greek Philosophers to argue that maybe it would be better for students’ education if they weren’t also sexually involved with their mentors? Or so the story goes.)

I may have a bit of a vendetta against Bro Strider, which probably has at least a little to do with the fact that, when I first read Homestuck, I got fooled into thinking he was kind of awesome, and it wasn’t until I was able to deal with my own childhood abuse and the fact that I had been indoctrinated with a lot of the very same toxic ideas bro inculcated in Dave that I was able to realize that Bro Strider is kind of a horrible guardian, so I have a sort of special ire directed at this character. Maybe I’m afraid in another life, I could have grown up to be that kind of creep. I’m glad I didn’t.

https://homestuck.com/story/449

All throughout this section, the narration suggests that Dave is both subconsciously aware that his Bro’s pasttimes make him uncomfortable, but trying to soothe himself by affirming them. So, in spite of my sharing some youthful confusion with Dave, the Narrative at least communicates to us from the very beginning that something is off about Bro.

https://homestuck.com/story/452

To interrupt my dark and brooding reverie, please enjoy some Skate 3 Glitches.

I guess here’s a good place to note that I am going to be using the #personal stuff hashtag to denote when a post contains me alluding to my own dark and troubled past.

https://homestuck.com/story/457

The password is six letters long, and based on the fact that it’s the most awesome thing that it could be, I have no doubt that it’s Strider.

https://homestuck.com/story/465

Yup.

https://homestuck.com/story/466

:)

It warms the cockles of me heart that Dave’s first inclination when he starts to flip the fuck out is to reach out to John Egbert.

https://homestuck.com/story/484

8^y

https://homestuck.com/story/485

Remember that one-upsmanship I was talking about? Any chance Dave and John get around each other, they talk each other down. I’m not sure if Andrew was saying anything about Toxic Masculinity at the time. I expect, like a lot of us, he didn’t have those words on his mind in 2009, but that’s textbook toxic masculinity, and I think when viewed as a complete work, Dave and John’s growth out of it is a sign of healthy maturation. Build each other up, boys, don’t tear each other down. In this life, we’re all we’ve got, and you owe it to each other.

https://homestuck.com/story/503

Leveling up is one of those weird things about Roleplaying Games that I didn’t realize until some point in the last two years is kind of an integral fixture of them. Overcoming hardships permanently makes you stronger in games that have an experience-level feature in them, and once you’re strong enough to beat a challenge once, you’re almost always strong enough to overcome that challenge in the future.

It’s a kind of storytelling that on closer examination is weirdly propagandistic, but it’s actually all over media. It’s pretty rare for a story to say “When you overcome a challenge, good job. You will have to overcome that same challenge again and again - maybe every day of your life.” The interesting thing, and I might come back to this, is that I think Homestuck actually takes this latter approach. Exactly the same emotional struggles they begin the story with are the ones they spend all 8000 pages of Homestuck agonizing over, and these characters will probably spend their entire lives wrestling with the baggage of their youth.

Suffering and toil is the fate of humankind, I suppose.

https://homestuck.com/story/518

Surrounded by Idiots.

https://homestuck.com/story/538

Saw is a story about a serial killer who subjects his victims to gruelling trials catered to make them face their own fatal flaws and emerge changed into better people, which is a lot like authorial scorn, which Andrew describes thusly in the commentary for Vriska’s introduction: “It's not as ill-willed as it might sound, but more of a universal principle of storytelling that for things to be interesting, harsh outcomes must befall those you create, in response to which they may thrive or fail. Which to the casual observer may read as hate.“. Lord English and Caliborn bear visual similarity to Jigsaw’s creepy puppet avatars, and serve as instruments of Andrew’s Authorial Scorn. Bro reproduces the same kind of creator’s hatred that Lord English bears toward all of Paradox Space, and reproduces it for the dubious benefit of his ward - Dave is to overcome the challenges thrust upon him in order to become strong.

https://homestuck.com/story/571

Dave does not care for being watched.

https://homestuck.com/story/588

If Dave’s first instinct for when he’s uncomfortable is to go talk to his friends, his second instinct is to attack.

https://homestuck.com/story/625

I don’t remember where I read it originally, it’s too far away in the past, but each of the items in the Rocket Pack is representative of one of John’s friends. The Cinderblock Dave, the Flower Pot Jade, the Violin Rose. John’s friends, his connections and bonds (Blood) tie him down and prevent him from indulging his most impulsive behaviors (Breath).

https://homestuck.com/story/631

In addition to Mad Science (or perhaps as an aspect thereof) John demonstrates remarkable lateral thinking.

https://homestuck.com/story/635

Alchemy has helped me get my thoughts in gear on a subject I glossed over the other day - the way the characters’ personality traits and objects fill the background radiation of the comic. In a way, the same thing is going on when the characters produce all kinds of neat shit from the odds and ends around their house as is going on when Sburb populates itself with symbols from the characters domestic lives. 

Clowns become a threatening symbol throughout all of Homestuck, basically because there are a bunch in John’s house from a Doylist perspective. From a Watsonian perspective, Sburb seems, through the vehicle of destiny, to deliberately latch onto things from the players’ lives that will help them to contend with their anxiety and trauma. John has bad dreams about clowns, and seems to conceptualize himself as a clown in his self-critical estimation of himself. Maybe even as a Dark Mirror of his aspirations to be an entertainer? Is a Circus Clown a funhouse mirror version of a stage magician? I don’t have a follow up to that question, but it makes me think. If you checked out the essay from Malo I linked earlier, you might recognize some other things that John is afraid of which characterize his session, like his alleged fear of heights, and his anxiety about confronting his Dad.

I think that’s all for this evening. Another 200 pages down.

Cam signing off, alive and not alone.

[chiseler]

Stolen Faces

Cinema is an art of faces, almost a religion of faces: on screen they loom above us, vast as a mother’s face must appear to an infant. We can get lost in them. The deepest thrill the movies offer may be the opportunity to gaze at human faces longer and with more unabashed, lover-like intimacy than real life regularly allows. Most often, of course, we gaze at beautiful faces, though cinema has its share of beloved gargoyles, mugs with “character” rather than symmetry. But the uncanny power of faces onscreen also anchors films about disfigurement and facial transformations, about masks and scars and plastic surgery. These stories summon all the fears and taboos, desires and unresolved questions swirling around the human face. Do faces reveal or conceal a person’s true nature? Can changing someone’s face change their soul?

Deformity is a staple of horror films, of course, from classics such as Phantom of the Opera and The Raven (in which the hideously afflicted man played by Boris Karloff muses, “Maybe if a man looks ugly, he does ugly things”) to surgical shockers such as Eyes Without a Face. But plot twists involving faces that are damaged or corrected, masked or changed, turn up with surprising frequency in film noir as well, where they are related to themes of identity theft, amnesia, desperate attempts to shed the past or recover the past. One of the grim proverbs of noir is that you can’t escape yourself. There are no fresh starts, no second chances. But noir also demonstrates the instability of identity, the way character can be corrupted, and stories about facial transformations harbor a nebulous fear that there is in the end no fixed self. If noir is pessimistic about the possibility of change, it is at the same time haunted by fear of change—fear of looking in the mirror and seeing a stranger.

The Truth of Masks

Two films about men who literally lose their faces take the full measure of the resulting ostracism and crushing isolation—and what men will do to escape it. Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another (Tanin no Kao, 1966) is based on a Kobo Abe novel about a scientist named Okuyama who has been literally defaced by a chemical accident. We never see what he used to look like; he spends half the film swaddled in bandages like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man, ferocious black eyes glinting through slits. Obsessed with people’s reactions to his appearance, he lashes out bitterly, insisting that all his social ties have been severed, including his conjugal ties with his wife. She tries to convince him that it’s all in his head and that her feelings haven’t changed, but her revulsion when he makes an abrupt sexual advance convinces him that she’s lying.

Okuyama believes that a life-like mask will restore his relationship with his wife and his connection to society. He has evidently not seen The Face Behind the Mask (1941), a terrific B noir in which Peter Lorre stars as Johnny Szabo, who is hideously scarred in a fire. This tragedy and the ensuing cruelty of strangers transform him from a sweet, Chaplin-esque immigrant to a bitter criminal mastermind, even after he dons a powder-white mask that gives him a sad, creepy ghost of his former face—more Lorre than Lorre.  The mask is merely a flimsy patch on the horrible visage that spiritually scars Johnny, and though it enables him to marry a sweet and loving (and perhaps near-sighted) woman, it can’t reverse the corrosion of his character.  

The doctor who makes a far more sophisticated mask for Okuyama does so because the project fascinates him as a psychological and philosophical experiment. He speculates about what the world would be like if everyone wore a mask: morality would not exist, he argues, since people would feel no responsibility for the actions of their alternate identities. (His theory seems to be borne out by the consequences of internet anonymity.) Unlike the one Johnny Szabo wears, here the mask bears no resemblance to Okuyama’s original looks, and the doctor believes the new face will change his patient’s personality, turning him into someone else.

When the mask is fitted, it turns out to be the face of Tatsuya Nakadai, one of the most striking and plastic pans in cinema history. With only a little help from a fake mole, dark glasses, and a bizarre fringe of beard, Nakadai succeeds in making his own features look eerily synthetic, as though they don’t belong to him. Sitting in a crowded beer hall on his first masked outing in public, he creates a palpable sense of unease, keeping his features unnaturally still as though unsure of their mobility, touching his skin gingerly to explore its alien surface. As he gradually grows more comfortable and revels in the freedom of his new face, the doctor tells him, “It’s not the beer that’s made you drunk, it’s the mask.”

Abe’s novel contains a scene in which the protagonist goes to an exhibit of Noh masks, highly stylized crystallizations of stock characters and emotions. In Noh, as in other traditional forms of theater that use masks, the actor is present on stage but vanishes into another physical being—men play women, young men play old men, gods, and ghosts. In cinema, actors impersonate other characters using their own faces—usually without even the heavy layer of makeup worn on western stages. Movie actors are pretending to be people they’re not, yet if we judge their performances good it means we believe what we see in their faces. When an actor’s real face plays the part of a mask, like Lorre’s or Nakadai’s, this strange inversion—the real impersonating the artificial—has a uniquely disconcerting effect.

At the heart of this disturbing film lurks a horror that changing the skin can indeed change the soul. Okuyama tries to hold onto his identity, insisting, “I am who I am, I can’t change,” but the doctor insists he is “a new man,” with “no records, no past.” In covering his scar tissue with a smooth, artificial skin he eradicates his own experience, and with it his humanity. The doctor turns out to be right when he predicts that the mask will have a mind of its own. Suddenly endowed with sleek good looks, Okuyama buys flashy suits and sets out to seduce his own wife. When he succeeds easily, he is outraged, only to have her reveal that she knew who he was all along. After she leaves him in disgust he descends into madness and random violence. He has become the opposite of the Invisible Man: a visible shell with nothing inside

Okuyama’s story is interwoven with a subplot about a radiation-scarred girl from Nagasaki, whose social isolation drives her to incest and suicide. Lovely from one side, repellent from the other, she looks very much like the protagonist of A Woman’s  Face. Ingrid Bergman starred in the Swedish original, but Joan Crawford is ideally cast in the 1941 Hollywood remake directed by George Cukor. Half beautiful and half grotesque, half hard-boiled and half vulnerable, Anna Holm spells out what was usually inchoate in Crawford’s paradoxical presence. A childhood fire has left her with a gnarled scar on one side of her face, like a black diseased root growing across her cheek and distorting her eye and mouth. Crawford makes us feel Anna’s agonizing humiliation when people look at her, which spurs her compulsive mannerisms of turning her head aside, lifting her hand to her cheek, or pulling her hair down.

Also perfectly cast is Conrad Veidt as the elegant, sinister Torsten Baring. Veidt went from German Expressionist horror—playing the goth heartthrob Cesar in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and the grotesquely disfigured yet weirdly alluring hero of The Man Who Laughs—to an unexpected late-career run as a sexy leading man in cloak-and-dagger films such as The Spy in Black and Contraband. When Anna turns her head defiantly to reveal her scar, Torsten gazes at her with a gleam of excitement, even of perverse attraction. She is confused and touched by his kindness and gallantry, helplessly trying to hide her sensitivity beneath a tough façade. Her broken-up, uncertain expressions when he gives her flowers or kisses her hand count as some of the most delicate acting Crawford ever did. Anna assumes that Torsten, the penniless scion of a rich family, must want her to do some dirty work, and she turns out to be right, but he also genuinely appreciates the proud, bitter, lonely woman who faces down her miserable lot through sheer strength of will.

People are horrible to Anna, nastily mocking her wounded vanity and her attempts to look nice. “The world was against me,” she says, “All right, I’d be against it.” She has found the perfect outlet, blackmailing pretty women who commit adultery. In one of the film’s best scenes, the spoiled and kittenish wife she is threatening retaliates by shining a lamp in Anna’s face and laughing at her. Anna leaps at the woman and starts hitting her over and over, forehand and backhand, in an ecstasy of hatred. This savagely satisfying moment is derailed by the film’s first grossly contrived plot twist, as the encounter is interrupted by the woman’s husband, who happens to be a plastic surgeon specializing in correcting facial scars. He offers to operate on Anna, and once the bandages are removed, in a scene orchestrated for maximum suspense, an absurdly flawless face is revealed.

The doctor (Melvyn Douglas) calls her both his Galatea and his Frankenstein: he views her as his creation, but isn’t sure if she’s an ideal woman or an unholy monster, “a beautiful face with no heart.” Her dilemma is ultimately which man to please, whose approval to seek: the doctor who believes her character should be corrected now that her face is, or Torsten, who wants her to kill the young nephew who stands between him and the family estate. This overwrought turn is never plausible; it is always obvious that Anna is no child murderer. What is believable is her erotic thrall to Torsten, the first man who has ever shown an interest in her. Crawford is at her most unguarded in these moments of trembling desire; Cukor remarked on how “the nearer the camera, the more tender and yielding she became.” He speculated that the camera was her true lover.

Anna undergoes months of pain and uncertainty for the chance of being beautiful for Torsten, and there is a marvelous shot of her gazing at herself in a mirror as she prepares to surprise him with her new face, brimming with hard proud joy. But he winds up lamenting the surgery that has turned her into “a mere woman, soft and warm and full of love,” he sneers. “I thought you were something different—strong, exciting, not dull, mediocre, safe.” In this same speech, Torsten reveals himself as a cartoonish fascist megalomaniac, which fits in with the film’s slide into silly, flimsily scripted melodrama, but sadly obscures the radical spark of what he’s saying. Anna’s character is shaped by the way she looks, or rather by the way she is looked at by men; the disappointingly conventional ending sides with the man who equates flawless beauty with moral goodness, and against the one man who was able to see something fine—a “hard, shining brightness,” in a woman’s damaged and imperfect face.

A Stolen Face (1952) follows a similar premise, much less effectively, and reaches the opposite conclusion. Paul Henreid plays a plastic surgeon who operates on female criminals with disfiguring scars, convinced that once they look normal they will become contented law-abiding citizens. He gets carried away, however, sculpting one patient into a dead ringer for his lost love (Lizabeth Scott plays both the original and the copy) and marrying her. His attempt to play Pygmalion backfires, since the vulgar, mean-spirited and untrustworthy ex-con is unchanged by her new appearance: she is indeed “a beautiful face without a heart.” That is a succinct definition of the femme fatale, a type Lizabeth Scott often played and one that embodies a fascination with the deceptiveness of feminine beauty. In The Big Heat (1953), it is only when Debbie (Glora Grahame) has her pretty face rearranged by a pot of scalding coffee that she abandons her cynical self-interest to become an avenging angel, fearlessly punishing the corrupt who hide their greed behind a genteel façade. She has nothing left to lose; pulling a gun from her mink coat and plugging the woman she recognizes as her evil “sister,” the disfigured Debbie asserts her freedom: “I never felt better in my life.”

Blessings in Disguise

Sometimes, people are only too happy to lose their faces. Dr. Richard Talbot (Kent Smith), the protagonist of the superb, underappreciated drama Nora Prentiss (1947), sees the bright side when his face is horribly burned in a car crash. He has already faked his own death, sending another man’s corpse over a cliff in a burning car. In a neat bit of poetic irony, by crashing his own car he has completed the process of destroying his identity, and no longer needs to fear he’ll be recognized. Losing his face is a blessing in disguise—or rather, a blessing of disguise. But the disfigurement is also a visual representation of the corruption of his character: his face changes to reflect his downward metamorphosis with almost Dorian Gray-like precision.

Car crashes are a kind of refrain in the film. The doctor’s routine existence veers off course when a taxi knocks down a nightclub singer, Nora Prentiss (Anne Sheridan), across the street from his San Francisco office. Talk about a happy accident: the nice guy trapped in an ice-cold marriage to a rigid, nagging martinet suddenly has a gorgeous, good-humored young woman stretched out on his examining table. Nora may sing for a living, but her real vocation is dishing out wisecracks (her first words on coming to are, “There must be an easier way to get a taxi.”) When the doctor mentions a paper he’s writing on “ailments of the heart,” the canary, her eyelids dropping under the weight of knowingness, quips, “A paper? I could write a book.”

It’s hard to imagine a more sympathetic pair of adulterers, but the doctor is so daunted by the prospect of asking his wife for a divorce that it seems simpler to use the convenient death of a patient in his office to stage his own demise and flee to New York with Nora. It’s soon clear, though, that some part of him did die in San Francisco. Cooped up in a New York hotel room, terrified of going out lest someone spot him, the formerly gentle man becomes an irascible, rude, nervous wreck. When the faithful and incredibly patient Nora goes back to singing for Phil Dinardo (Robert Alda), the handsome nightclub owner who loves her, Talbot becomes hysterically jealous. Unshaven and hollow-eyed, he slaps Nora and almost kills Dinardo before fleeing the police and heading into that fiery crash. He becomes, as the film’s evocative French title has it, L’Amant sans Visage, “the lover without a face.”

When his bandages are removed, he is unrecognizable, wizened and scarred, his face a creased and calloused mask. His own wife doesn’t know him, and when Nora visits him in prison his damaged face, shot through a tight wire mesh, looks like something decaying, dissolving. He’s in prison because, in an even neater bit of irony, he has been charged with his own murder. He decides to take the rap, recognizing the justice of the mistake: he did kill Richard Talbot.

This same ironic plot twist appears in Strange Impersonation (1946), albeit less convincingly. This deliriously far-fetched tale, directed at a breakneck pace by Anthony Mann, stars Brenda Marshall as Nora Goodrich, a pretty scientist whose glasses signal that she is both brainy and emotionally myopic. She is harshly punished for caring more about work than marriage: her female lab assistant, who wants to steal Nora’s fiancé, tampers with an experiment so that it explodes, burning Nora’s face to a crisp. Embittered, she retreats from the world, and when another woman, who is trying to blackmail her over a car accident, falls from the window and is mistakenly identified as Nora, she seizes the opportunity to disappear, have plastic surgery that miraculously eliminates her scars, and return posing as the blackmailer, to seek revenge. She goes to work for her former fiancé, who strangely fails to recognize her voice or her striking resemblance to his lost love.

The plot plays out as, and turns out to be, a fever dream, but this last credibility stretcher is too common to dismiss as merely the flaw of one potboiler. Plots involving impersonation and identity theft rely not only on unrealistic visions of what plastic surgery can achieve, but on the assumption that people are deeply unobservant and tone-deaf in recognizing loved ones. A film that underlines this blindness with droll irony is The Scar (a.k.a. Hollow Triumph and The Man Who Murdered Himself, 1948), a convoluted but hugely entertaining little B noir in which Paul Henreid plays dual roles as a crook on the run and a psychologist who happens to look just like him. John Muller, pursued by hit men sent by a casino owner he robbed, stumbles across his doppelganger and decides to kill him and take his place. All he needs to do is give himself a facial scar to match the doctor’s. Only as he is dumping the body does he notice that he has put the scar on the wrong cheek—the consequence of an accidentally reversed photograph. But the irony quickly doubles back: Muller decides to brazen it out, and in fact no one notices that the doctor’s scar has apparently moved from one side of his face to the other—not even his lover. (Joan Bennett glides through this awkward part in a world-weary trance, giving a dry-martini reading to the script’s most famous lines: “It’s a bitter little world, full of sad surprises.”) The assumption that people pay little attention to the way others look or sound seems directly at odds with the power that faces and voices wield on film, and the intimate specificity with which we experience them. But noir stories often turn on how easily people are deceived, and how poorly they really know one another—or even themselves.

In The Long Wait (1954), perhaps the most extreme case of confused identity, a man with amnesia searches for a woman who has had plastic surgery. Not only does he not know what she looks like now, he can’t even remember what she used to look like. Since the movie is based on a Mickey Spillane story, he proceeds methodically by grabbing every woman he sees, in hopes that something will jog his memory. The film is fun in its pulpy, trashy way, provided you enjoy watching Anthony Quinn kiss women as though his aim were to throttle the life out of them. Quinn plays a man badly injured in a car wreck that erases both his memory and his fingerprints. This is lucky when he wanders into his old town and discovers he is wanted for a bank robbery—without fingerprints, they can’t arrest him. Figuring he must be innocent, he goes in search of the girlfriend who may or may not have grabbed the money and gone under the knife. It’s an intriguing premise, but the ultimate revelation of the right woman feels arbitrary, and the implications of all this confusion of identities are left resolutely unexamined. Nonetheless, there is something in the film’s searing, inarticulate desperation that glints like a shattered mirror.

Under the Knife

The promise of plastic surgery is a new and better self, the erasure of years and the traces of life. Taken to extremes, it is the opportunity to become a different person. Probably the best known plastic surgery noir is Dark Passage (1947), in which Humphrey Bogart plays Vincent Parry, who visits a back alley doctor after escaping from San Quentin. Parry was framed for killing his wife, so the face plastered across newspapers with the label of murderer has become a false face that betrays him. A friendly cabby who spots him recommends a surgeon who is he promises is “no quack.” Houseley Stevenson’s gleeful turn as the back-alley doctor is unforgettable, as he sharpens a straight razor while philosophizing about how all human life is rooted in fear of pain and death. He can’t resist scaring Parry, chortling over what he could do to a patient he didn’t like: make him look like a bulldog, or a monkey. But he reassures Parry that he’ll make him look good: “I’ll make you look as if you’ve lived.”

During the operation, Parry’s drugged consciousness becomes a kaleidoscope of faces, all the people who have threatened or helped him swirling around. His face is being re-shaped, as his life has already been shaped by others: the bad woman who framed him and the good woman who rescues and protects him, the small-time crook who menaces him and the kind cabby who helps him. Faceless for much of the movie, mute for part of it (he spends a long time in constraining bandages), Vincent Parry is among the most passive and cipher-like of noir protagonists. When the bandages finally come off after surgery, he looks like Humphrey Bogart, and the idea that this famously beat-up, lived-in face could be the creation of plastic surgery is perhaps the film’s biggest joke. But Vincent Parry remains an oddly blank, undefined character, and he seems unchanged by his new face and name. In a sense the doctor is right: he only looks as though he’s lived.

The fullest cinematic exploration of the problems inherent in trying to make a new life through plastic surgery is Seconds (1966), John Frankenheimer’s flesh-creeping sci-fi drama about a mysterious company that offers clients second lives. For a substantial fee, they will fake your death, make you over completely—including new fingerprints, teeth, and vocal cords—and create an entirely new identity for you. There is never a moment in the movie when this seems like a good idea. The Saul Bass credits, in which human features are stretched and distorted in extreme close-up, instills a horror of plasticity, and disorienting camera-work creates an immediate feeling of unease and dislocation, a physical discomfort at being in the wrong place.

Arthur, a businessman from Scarsdale, is the personification of disappointed middle age, afflicted by profound anomie that goes beyond a dull routine and a tired marriage. When the Company finishes its work—the process is shown in gruesome detail, to the extent that Frankenheimer’s cameraman fainted while shooting a real rhinoplasty—the formerly nondescript and greying Arthur looks like Rock Hudson, and has a new life as a playboy painter in Malibu. He’s told that he is free, “alone in the world, absolved of all responsibility.” He has “what every middle-aged man in America wants: freedom.”

At first, however, his life proves as empty and meaningless in this new setting as it was in the old; even when the Frankenstein scars have healed, he remains nervous and joyless as before. After he meets and falls for a beautiful blonde neighbor, who introduces him to a very 1960s California lifestyle, he begins to revel in youth and sensual freedom. Yet something is still not right; at a cocktail party he gets drunk and starts talking about his former existence—a taboo. He discovers that his lover, indeed almost everyone he knows, is an employee of the company or a fellow “reborn,” hired to create a fake life for him, and to keep him under surveillance. His “freedom” is a construct, tightly controlled.

Arthur rebels, making a forbidden trip to visit his wife, who of course does not recognize him. Talking to her about her supposedly deceased husband, for the first time he begins to understand himself: the depth of his alienation and confusion, the fact that he never really knew what he wanted, and so wanted the things he had been told he should want. Seconds is a scathing attack on the American ideal of a successful life, a portrait of how corporations sell fantasies of youth, beauty, happiness, love; buying into these commercial dreams, no one is really free to know what they want, or even who they are. Will Geer, as the folksy, sinister founder of the Company, talks wistfully about how he simply wanted to make people happy.

There is a deep sadness in the scenes where Arthur revisits his old home and confronts the failure of his attempt at rebirth—beautifully embodied by Rock Hudson in a performance suffused with the melancholy of a man who has spent his life hiding his real identity behind a mask. Yet Arthur still imagines that if he can have another new start, a third face and identity, he will get it right. Instead, he learns the macabre secret of how the Company goes about swapping out people’s identities. Seconds contrasts the surgical precision with which faces, bodies, and the trappings of life can be remade, and the impossibility of determining or predicting how or if the inner self will be changed. For that there are no charts or diagrams, and no knife that can cut deep enough.

by Imogen Sara Smith

[littlestsnicket]

the witcher: the end’s beginning

Whenever I hear the netflix noise, I automatically start singing Look Away. Doesn’t matter that I haven’t actually rewatched ASOUE that many times.

i very much appreciate how they make this first monster fight look difficult (it gives such scale to how dangerous these monsters are when you compare it to Geralt fighting Renfri’s posse later). And Geralt’s not at all human eyes. The spidering poison is super unnerving and feral looking. Great introduction to the character. (per my understanding of the video game, he absolutely ate that deer raw, when he tells Renfri he’s full later, he is FULL OF RAW MEAT.)

so that paper 100% says kikimora on it. important a scene or two later. 

some of the costuming decisions aren’t 100% but I am a big fan of the set design. especially all of the candles. 

i want to squish renfri’s cute little face! (her costuming is also on point, i really love the specific red color of her shirt. Although on further examination, the fit is actually a little strange? Or the pleating doesn’t read right on screen all the time.)

“more and more i find monsters wherever i go.” yup... early introduction of *theme*

“I killed a rat this morning with my breakfast fork.” Got to love Marilka!

“You don’t scary me”/“That’s too bad.”

(Geralt will be a good adopted father to Ciri, he’s good with violent, headstrong teenage girls.)

Marilka lied there, the flier was absolutely for a kikimora. She is very deliberately intercepting him to take Geralt to Stregobor. And Geralt is just like, fuck fine? You do sort of get the impression that people refusing to pay him as contracted is something he deals with ALL THE TIME!

“I think that makes you a hero.” (aww, Marilka!)

Marilka and Geralt are so cute together (I think he likes people who will talk at him)

Geralt’s little smile when she says “girls can’t be witchers that’s the stupidest thing i’ve ever heard”

Gratuitous nudity? Nah, we’re establishing something about Stregabor with this. Also, it’s just sort of there... in the background, like we should barely pay any attention to it. (So, per the timeline, Stregobor has already tried to prevent Yennefer from going to the court she wants for no apparent reason. Stregobor is a bastard.)

“I seem to remember that Witcher’s don’t feel anything”

Aw, Ciri dressed as a boy handing out with some rascals. She’s wearing normal pants here... 

”Gross”, yes Ciri your horny grandparents are gross.

“Wizards are all the same. You talk nonsense while making wize and meaningful faces. Speak plainly.” Geralt is so done with everything. That’s how we meet him. I question the received fan wisdom that Geralt doesn’t talk very much. He’s just surrounded by people who talk A LOT.

How full of shit is Stregobor? It’s very difficult to tell. Does he actually believe his bullshit? What evidence did he actually have of these internal mutations? How did they die so he could autopsy them? Difficult to say. Also, there is something super weird about how Stregabor talks to Geralt, the way he’s moving and the tone of voice he’s using--like he’s trying to get in his head. Is it strictly psychological or is he attempting to do what he accuses Renfri of and manipulate him with magic? Make him kill Renfri?

“Pretty ballads hide bastard truths.” (Rewatching, this makes me think of episode 4, they’ve met Jaskier. I wonder if Jaskier wrote anything about Calanthe — there are so many references throughout the series of the power of song to change perception of the past, which changes the present.)

I can’t unsee how the bodice of Crir’s dress doesn’t lay quite right and the fabric is weirdly modern looking. (Her face when she is doing the kicky part of the dance--she’s so right, what the hell even is that.)

GERALT’S FINDING SHIT TO MAKE A POTION! 

“Queen Calanthe of Cintra, she just won her first battle” — if you are paying attention, the timeline stuff is actually pretty clear, the clues are all there. I was explaining to a friend that i have trouble watching things that are of midrange complexity; i can follow this and i can follow a sitcom, but I often have trouble following things inbetween. 

“Because then I am what they say I am” — Geralt is morally incapable of rehabilitating his own reputation, he’s too concerned he might deserve it

renfri says “no more princess” and then Geralt calls her a princess. He is SO DELIBERATE with words. 

The violence in this battle is something. The visuals are weird; it’s not torture porn, it’s frantic and horrifying. There is this unbelievable level of squelching and bits flying around, but very little blood. And I don’t think i’ve seen a battle sequence that is washed out in that precise way--the overcast sky reflects the sun everywhere until you can hardly see. That’s got to be a horrible circumstance to fight under. 

I hope we see Ciri comfortable enough to be this impetuous again. 

Does Mousesack know Stregobor? Why does he choose to tell Ciri a story where a wizard systematically kills young girls? There’s no real moral relevance or connection to what they are talking about, unless it is the cruel callousness of fate. 

Calanthe is so devastated when Eist dies :(

Ciri looks so scared and like the world is ending, talented actress, she’s wonderful!

Geralt’s giant monologue talking to his horse. Yeah, perceived fan wisdom isn’t quite right. He talks. He’s pretty verbal and good with words. He’s just so very careful around people and cultivating this very specific image.

“She took one look at me, screamed, vomited and then passed out. Yeah I thought the world needed me too.” I bet he is still thinking about Marilka calling him a hero. 

Back in Cintra... the color has shifted so drastically from the glaring white to the orange burning. 

Geralt is THERE, right NOW. escaping from the prison cell Calanthe put him in. DESTINY! But why?!?

The way Mousesack looks at Ciri when she does the magic yelling thing for the first time. He does not look surprised. 

“Find Geralt of Rivia, he is your destiny.” I should have counted how many times the word Destiny is said. I’m sure it’s off the wall. 

Note to self: Mousesack and Calanthe know that Nilfgard is here for Ciri. They say so. Were they too in denial about it to take appropriate action? Cause strategically, if they knew that, nothing they do makes any sense. And they could not have gotten new information since Calanthe went off to battle. 

Cintra doesn’t have a court mage, and hasn’t for ages. Pretty sure Mousesack is a druid, but is it hard to convince Calanthe to let him stay? (should get back to this train of thought in episode 4)

This bit with the soldiers handing out the poison drives home how scary Nilfgard is so much more effectively than seeing them graphically torture people. (Not that what we see of the slaughtering people isn’t graphic enough.)

Calanthe just tipping out the window gets me every time. The soundtracking is great, the way is gets quiet and picks back up again. 

Geralt is so fucking close to Ciri in this moment, but not close enough!

What is Renfi’s intent in sleeping with Geralt? Is it just because she wants to or does she have some ulterior motive? Does she think it will sway him? They both look at eachother so softly though. The way it is done in this weird prophesizing flashback is so strange. 

“You have to choose the lesser evil.”

Geralt goes from resigned fuck to snarling so so fast when it becomes obvious that Renfri’s posse is not going to back down.

“They created me just as they created you, we’re not so different.” — what does she mean by that? Does she mean it philosophically that they have both been badly mistreated by society, or is she implying that her mutations are deliberate. And she was created, like a Witcher. Not a coincidence of being born during an eclipse. If that was the case, Stregobor would know, possibly even have been the one to do it, that creepy fucking bastard. I don’t have easily searchable transcripts handy, but I *think* Geralt mentions something in another episode about how he’s found mutations to be deliberate. Going to keep an eye out for that. I’m proposing that Stregobor was out to create an army of female witchers and it went... badly and he killed them all off. Maybe he was even doing it to replace Tissaia and Aretusa. This could be a *thing*. 

I am 90% sure Geralt just grabbed the blade of the sword. Yup, he’s definitely holding the sword in his off hand by the blade when he kills Renfri. The fuck Geralt? Does that not hurt your hand?

Renfri’s giant eyes when she’s dying. God. 

So Ciri legit causes a giant crevice to form in the earth. WHAT IS SHE CAPABLE OF?!?

The way Stregobor looks at Renfri’s corpse. So upsetting. He doesn’t look at her like a person. Stregobor is definitely using the idea of Renfri’s mutation manipulating people to turn the crowd against Geralt; make him seem more untrustworthy and shut down any attempt for him to defend himself. Protecting Renfri’s corpse from horrible wizard dude is 100% in character for him. 

Shit. Geralt’s resigned but completely devastated face when Marilka tells him to leave and not come back. And she is so soft and quiet about it too, that must make it so much worse. And Marilka looks like she’s about to cry too--she’s lost something: her innocence, her chance to escape, both. What does she really, deep down, think of Geralt here? Will she lie awake at night wondering if she should have said something else? I wonder what becomes of her. What does she think about Stregobor after this? Her face though, she has to know something is wrong here. Does she leave Blaviken? Does she hear tales of Geralt the White Wolf as an adult? What does she think of them?

Close up shot of the pin he took from Renfri.

And then the clear visual cue that Ciri is the girl in the woods. If you just roll with it and assume things will get explained a little better later, this really isn’t confusing. You just need to let go a little.

[goldtips]

okay so ya girl is back at it again. this was originally going to be a reply to someone but well. it got out of hand. i shat all over babylon the anime a while ago and honestly kind of feel bad. there are definitely things that the show does that makes it stand out, esp as a seasonal anime bc you dont expect dir. to spend much time on them!!!! like if we’re comparing this to shows like fanservice anime or any .. mediocre seasonal isekai then ofc this show is better lmfao. the only reason i shit on it is because i expected this anime to be Better ;;;;;;;

mind, i’m not rescinding my statement - as far as i’m concerned, babylon is still a hella frustrating anime because it tries to showcase humans as nihilistic, utilitarian robots that don’t seem to consider the topic of suicide emotionally even though thats supposedly humanity’s defining trait ??? and it deals with the topic of suicide with the care of elephants gallivanting in the fucking savanna :))) the whole show has also been pretty lacklustre in terms of characterization, trying way too hard to be intellectual and feed edgy plot points instead of giving any development - the plot feels reactionary overall and placid rather than exciting. also, the fact that the anime started as a mystery / politico-legal sort of show just makes the transition from that to abstract theory even more forced...........

HOWEVER im promised im going to stop shitting on babylon so lets talk about what the anime does right shall we. more specifically,,, the biblical imagery!!! is great !!!! : D

the show is called babylon. in the old testament (ot), babylon is humanized as a “brutal, callous and proud” woman who “believed that she would reign over the earth forever.” in the new testatment the phrase “she who is at babylon” refers to the new world culture currently at war with the covenant community. in such that rome, as a mistress or whore of the new world, is seeking to seduce and subvert people of god, enticing men to fall “drunk with the wine of her fornication.”

yes,,,, a whore who uses sex to entice innocent men into complying with new culture? who believes herself to be akin to god and also in this context, above the law and morality - im gonna say its not too far a stretch to say that magase was intended to symbolise the whore of babylon.

however, that’s not all - links can be made between the enactment of the suicide laws and the seduction of new culture. who exactly is leading the front? kaika itsuki ( 齋 開化 ), who’s name literally means culture. that aint a coincidence. also, that weirdly-placed reference to roman law / norms during the suicide debate as a way to convince the masses to revert / adopt roman ideology??? also not a coincidence. :))))

in addition, there are two other major biblical events related to babylon:

the book of revelations; and

the tower of babel.

its safe to say that both narratives are being pushed atm.

revelations:

in revelation 17, the spirit of babylon decends upon earth through the whore. she arrives on the back of a beast with 7 heads, “arrayed in purple and scarlet”, “drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.” “seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.” the revelations also prophesizes that she will be defeated by a beast, but it is unclear as to which. there are two beasts in book of revelations. the first beast comes "out of the sea" given authority and power by the dragon/serpent. the second beast comes "out of the earth" directing people to worship the first beast, a "false prophet".

in a similar vein, nomaru had secretly vouched for itsuki’s, providing itsuki with the necessary resources for him to rise up in ranks and become the new mayor. the kanji for ryuichiro nomaru ( 野丸 龍一郎 ) contains both the kanji 野 and 龙 which respectively mean field (i.e. earth) and dragon. they are key references to the beasts of revelation

plus according to nomaru, it was also purely because of magase that the political struggle turned out the way that it did, meaning that she is ultimately the one controlling the entire operation. this mirrors the way she is sitting on the heads of the beast (i.e. the proverbial brains of the campaign that itsuki is heading) 

we also see that when magase uses her powers her eyes and hair glow in a sort of purple/burgundy color to support the imagery as well! 

the book of revelations is the final chapter of nt. it is merely an allegory of struggle between good and evil and doesnt refer to actual people or events. kinda like the show huh. nyyy way, we see that the protag john the apostle writes down what is revealed to him through visions to send it to the 7 churches :))

kinda like how zen keeps on seeing magase through visions and has to document !! his findings and report back to admin? ik this isnt exact but there’s a bit where he has to write down her confession and it really struck me as weird until this bit popped up, maybe that was included to as a way of tying in :))

tower:

according to the myth, there were plans to build a city and tower high enough to reach heaven - god who observes this confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other. why? because “now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”

while not entirely similar, we see recurring themes in babylon that deal with miscommunication and new ideology. the conflict mirrors the myth in that unity of language (or ideology in this case) and its subsequent discordance once differentiated. 

the interrogation scene in ep 4 deals with reconciling differences. magase asks whether those with different values should be accepted, despite them being contrary to norm. all this time, society has been developing an ideal set of norms - the entire country shares the same values and priorities with no deviation. growth has stagnated. in similar fashion to how god commands for many languages to be created, magase sows the seeds of doubt towards long-standing assumptions and moral values in order to create discordance and push japan into a state of new development

in the new campaign, itsuki proposes to apportion shiniki city from japan and instill new values. this confounds the population and sends them into disarray - the tower that they have created is crumbling, in similar likeness to the parable of babel.

SO TL;DR this show has a really cool starting concept i cant lie?????  i for one am not shitting on its supernatural elements (even though the flow was a little inorganic) in hindsight there’s no point in expecting a show called babylon not to delve into supernatural/biblical elements lol :)))

as a right hoe for imagery and philosophy/ethics, this gave me high hopes but the execution of everything else was way below average. why bring in a discussion about suicide that’s poorly researched + try to be edgy abt it and have the citizens to have support it so easily???? ruins the immersion so much

if the anime really wanted to focus on philosophy there should be some mention of ethical theory to justify his point. like, being aimlessly philosophical only ends up being flowery and pseudo-bullshit lmao. one of hte reasons why i was so frustrated with magase and zen’s discussion in the interrogation room. like woman what was your fucking point. its only wasting screentime if you don’t get anything from the conversation. the philosophy was so fucking unnecessary - babylon could have been executed as an in-depth political/psychological anime instead. WITHOUT THE SUICIDE.

this and the lack of good characters really bummed me out. i think that the show was expecting me to connect to some of the characters before they were fucking killed off but i didn’t end up giving a single shit about any of them so. :) the whole show feels more about the shock factor and gore than about interesting plot.

concept 10/10, execution 1/10

[abernathytm]

⌠ ELLE FANNING, 20, NONBINARY, SHE/HER ⌡ welcome back to gallagher academy, ELIZABETH “BOWIE” FITZPATRICK-ABERNATHY ! according to their records, they’re a FIRST YEAR year, specializing in UNDECIDED; and they DID go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of (messy, white-blonde hair, flushed cheeks, dirty converse, ripped clothing, destructive behavior, stacks of gold bracelets, lack of respect for others, wicked brilliance, cracked iphone screen). when it’s the (pisces)’s birthday on 03/13/2000, they always request their SHEPHERD’S PIE from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation. ⌿ kara, 26, she/her, pst ⍀

---  black adorned eyes or no make up at all, no inbetween, always humming to herself, only singing aloud in the shower or during a bender, writes on her hands, ink-stained on them and occasionally smudged onto her thighs. hates her family, but loves them and is close to her sisters in whatever way she knows how. messy room, messy relationships, messy life, messy white-blonde hair. flushed cheeks, dirty converse, ripped clothing, destructive behavior, stacks of gold bracelets, lack of respect for authorities, lack of respect in general, wicked brilliance, wicked humor, imperfect, careless, reckless, cracked iphone screen, dirty fingernails, black nail polish, unmade bed, unfinished joints scattered.  ---

+ Elizabeth Fitzpatrick-Abernathy, later referred to as Bowie, was born on March 13, 2000 in Spanish Fork, Utah, (the United States) to Dallon Fitzpatrick (mother) and Sheridan Abernathy (father). + growing up a devout mormon, a hyphenated last name was the only part of her family that could be considered modern.  + bowie is one out of six (1/6) golden-haired Abernathy Girls. + the Abernathy Girls is what everyone in spanish fork referred to them as. they fit into the town, but there was talk about the Abernathy’s often. you see dallon was only sixteen when she married sheridan who was thirty-six at the time. as far as bowie can remember, the couple had always been happy and healthy, but the age difference made them the talk of the town. + people in small towns always needed someone to hate. they had nothing else to do. so of course, the hyphenated family with the large age gap and six starkingly white, beautiful, pristine daughters were chosen. + at the age of seven, bowie got kicked out of her church choir for putting gum in a girl’s hair. the next time she (sylvia) arrived at school, she had buzzed her entire hair off and got made fun of for being bald. bowie laughed so hard that she got sent home for the rest of the week from school. instead of school, she spent the week attached at her sister’s hip and taking notes on how to grow up too fast. + all of the fitzpatrick-abernathy’s were musically inclined. when bowie was kicked out of her choir, the girls banded together and began playing music more at home. it came naturally. they all wanted to support the girl who didn’t speak. so they let her sing, encouraged her to ! the abernathy girls then began playing at church, at town events and eventually even further than that. the girls would still get together in current adulthood and play music on occasion. their music group then became known as “ The Abernathy Girls ” the same way they were known as such just by existing. + all of the parents that thought their children ought to have been in the spotlight for being well-liked or well behaved hated them. fake smiles were put on toward the family, but they spat behind their backs. + women even had mrs. abernathy over for tea and would pick her brain six girls, how does she do it, and so young. the truth was that they were looking for things to gossip about, to find out the darkness behind the abernathy’s that they knew must be there (it was though they never found it). mrs. abernathy would always be shown out before the time their husband’s got home. the women feared her youthful appearance, her glow, and beauty. it was like they thought dallon could TAKE something (someone) just by looking at it (them). + similarly, the town grew weary of the girls, never wanting the promiscuous, bad girls near their sons or daughters or boyfriends, etc. as if everything they feared about mrs. abernathy was also a gift she had passed down to her daughters.  + growing up with so many people in her home, there was never any room for elizabeth’s voice. she eventually found it to be easier to remain silent than to try and speak up. + the same sisters that would cut her off or tell her that what she had to say was stupid eventually begun calling elizabeth weird for never speaking and would poke and prod at her to get something out of her. instead of a verbal reaction, they would get something physical. for example, she bit down on her sister’s finger so hard that it went through the flesh and came off, causing her sister to have to get it sewn back together. + in this fashion, elizabeth found power in remaining unseen, while seeing everything around her. + she found that  ACTING OUT  got her family to care. + somewhere along the line, acting out became addictive. her behavior was no longer reserved for her family or even a product of her family but rather had become a part of her.   + twenty years later, bowie remains a mystery even to herself. + Abernathy’s were unapologetic. she is the Abernathy that is unapologetically wild, the rebel without a cause, always rebelling against her family in one way or another. + unlike her sisters, she can usually be found in black clothing with a lot of smudgy eye makeup. + she loves party dresses, black clothes, ripped clothes, and stacks of gold bracelets. + "fuck it" personality living an "i don't care" lifestyle. + carries herself in a way that is weirdly magnetic with a strut to her walk. + doesn't speak a lot until she gets to know you. speaks with her eyes and smile. + giant blue eyes are one of her identifying features and offers her an intense stare. + self destructive. + generally destructive, really. + makes you question why you were drawn to her destruction in the first place. + she has moments of what i like to call, "philosophical fuckery." + philosophical fuckery just means that bowie has a tendency to say things that are profound in a random fashion.  + there is something inside bowie that feels broken. + she sees people clearly for who they are, even if they don't want you to. she can see weakness, strength, and has the ability to get into people's heads.  + she is a watcher, first and foremost. this keeps her detached. + bowie’s scared of getting close to people and nowhere near in touch with her feelings. she’s absolutely ignorant about her feelings. + she has a go-with-the-flow, live-in-the-moment way of life that makes the only feeling she’s somewhat in touch with, her sexuality.  + the girl’s promiscuous, lusty and raunchy. + her extreme fear of intimacy is what keeps her detached.  + bowie CARES no matter how detached she may feel. + she is capable of love, but the feeling scares her. + trying to get to know Bowie Abernathy is like trying to bottle air. you are probably catching some of it, but there is no way of telling if the air stays in the bottle or not. + bowie is a thrill seeker. she loves the chase, she loves games, she loves talking in riddles, and loves to party. it's the only way she can successfully relate to people.  + she lives a party lifestyle even though she’s not yet 21. pre-gallagher was filled with raves and hard drugs. + she may be able to observe and analyze emotions, but she does not know how to handle them because emotions offer her no sense of control or comfort. + bowie is always in control of the situation, even if she's not talking. she is in control. she needs control. control is her comfort. + when she starts to get attached or fall in love, she starts losing that control in epic proportions and in epic fashion. + however when she sits on the sidelines silently watching a scene unfold, she is aware of everything and everyone. + she is the puppet master and has nuanced to pluck the strings if and when it interests her. + the needs of others do not affect her puppeteering. she can see what they need, how they will handle the situation, etc. but none of it affects her decision making; her decision making considers no one but herself.  + bowie needs to see a professional, has needed to for a long time, but with so many people in her family, the signs of her disorder had always been ignored or explained away.  + bowie has unconventional relationships. + most people are scared in new relationships, but when your brain does not function in the way that it should, it adds a whole new layer. we will call that layer: fuckery. + the added layer of fuckery causes bowie to get very close to BREAKING when she enters genuine and overly-close proximities with others.  + she can not handle the intensity and lack of control that love supplies. it weakens her defenses and allows for a mental break to occur. + she has yet to address the deep psychological issues that has lead her to doing hard drugs and using her family home as a party cave whenever she can get away with it. + bowie is not a reality-based person. her head does not process reality in a level-headed manner. this means that she is susceptible to manipulation and falls for manipulated realities. + since she already has a distorted reality, when someone else distorts it even more, it's hard to figure it out unless someone points it out. for this reason, she NEEDS the close relationships that hinder her emotional and mental health. + this chemical imbalance is the only part of bowie’s life that wakes her up enough to know she needs to find some sort of BALANCE, but it’s not enough to get the ball rolling all on her own. + bowie is addicted to the idea of "it happened, but it never happened." this is a tactic that allows you to change reality if you are not happy with it. + bowie comes across as controlled and confident and mysterious. + she is all-knowing, mysteriously holding the knowledge of everyone's deepest, darkest secrets.  + can manipulate a situation, but not for the life of her fix her own. + bowie plays games and parties har because it is the only way for her to feel close to anything you could possibly call pleasure or happiness. + falling in love and experiencing love, in general, makes bowie feel weak because she is not ready for the way it makes her feel about herself.

[letticetweedie]

For my Final Major Project, my chosen subject area is dance, specifically its relationship to the individual and how we use it to communicate. Because I want to explore the very anthropological side of dance, my starting research area was the way in which it’s technically explained, such as Keith Rose’s Crib Dance diagrams and the textbooks which depict the individual steps to the Waltz. This contrast between the more monotonous and organised side of dance compared to the more philosophical areas I know I want to investigate, will help me identify what it is I’m trying to pin down. Having done this, I have also done a lot of contrasting research on catharsis, and what it is to feel catharsis in everyday life. While often used in literature, a sense of catharsis is something I personally feel when I dance, and having spoken to a number of people, they agreed that they felt a feeling of “release” when they too were dancing.

It’s this research into the idea of psychological release and emotional freedom that led to looking at freedom as a whole, and how far we can ever truly be free. One fact I remember being told is that every person in the UK will see on average 5,000 advertisements. This bombardment of consumerism and marketing suggests that we are in fact never free, consistently influenced by what we’re told to want and arguably losing any sense of independence or free will. In one article written by J. Krishnamurti, he stated that “freedom implies being completely alone…You are never alone because you are full of all the memories, all the conditioning, all the mutterings of yesterday”. While this is a more conceptual way of putting it, Krishnamurti backs up this point of never being free, as we’re constantly weighed down by our own personal experience and emotion. However, if dance is considered to bring about such a sense of release and catharsis, is that why it’s so often resorted to in times of intense emotional strain? The intuitive and natural motion of moving to a rhythm or beat could arguably be the closest thing we can ever get to being completely free. Is dance used merely as a distraction from the problems we face in reality, or is it legitimately a means for exercising a sense of psychological wellbeing? This is a key point I want to explore within this project.

Another area I want to explore is that when we do dance, how far is our movement a completely natural response, independent of external influence. The history of dance suggests that trends and styles are common in society and that more often than not, we naturally imitate those around us. However, while eras of disco, street dance and raves show this trait, what I’m interested in is the nuances that separate us, the ways not only our individual experience and emotion dictate the way we move, but how our subconscious state also influences this. Furthermore, I also want to research into the aesthetics of dance – the motifs, colour and imagery we associate with dancing and how individual experience means these will never be exactly the same for any two people. For me, I associate positive memories of dancing with large rooms of people, of which at least 90% of the people immediately next to me are close friends and with a sense of glamour and fun. However, how far does this individual experience translate onto a subjective viewer? My personal relationship to dance, and how elated it makes me feel is a major factor that influenced the decision to study dance for this project. Additionally, I know that many others are familiar with this relationship to dance, therefore this project will hopefully be something that can be largely accessible and relatable. As the cathartic nature of dancing is something I relate to really strongly, when I’ve fully explored the area, and successfully pinned down what exactly it is that makes dancing so important to us as a species, I’ll know.

The cultural context of dance is something that I want to explore thoroughly – dance itself is such a social act, it’s impossible to ignore the cultural impact its had. As noted by Marusa Pusnik in their article on the “Cultural Practice” of dance, “dance occupies an important place in the social structure of all human cultures throughout history. Dance is most commonly defined as a way of human expression through movement”. The natural affiliation to dance as a means of communication has resulted in dance being the base of a multitude of cultures. For example, originating in Bharata Natyam, India around 400 years ago, Japan’s Kabuki dance is still practiced in homes today. While research and videos are hard to find, the dance still forms a significant part of the life of those who follow it. This is just one example of the hundreds, if not thousands of different forms and styles of dance that are used around the world. Consequently it’s clear that not only is dance a matter of an individuals response to music, but a group affiliation to a shared culture or origin, something that possible aids any feeling of displacement or isolation.

Additionally, the history of dance shows a close relationship between culture and society, how groups have used dance as a way of either rebelling or affiliating themselves with the ever-changing circumstances around them. As written in an article by the BBC, (‘6 ways disco changed the world’), The 1970s craze of disco for example was in response to Nazi regulations, limiting live music and allowing only records to be played. Following on from this, disco became a massive influence on later dance trends, as it was the first time someone could join the dance floor as an individual (prior to this you’d often need someone of the opposite sex to dance with). For the first time, individuals could be part of a larger crowd, a singular mentality of just wanting a good time. This also brought about the ability for something as simple as two men being able to dance together, as this was illegal until 1971, disco therefore acting as a form of social liberation.

For me, the subject of dance is interesting because of the impact it has on our mental state, rather than its literal use in art as a medium. In terms of artistic references and contexts, the artists I’ve been researching are less to do with the act of dancing itself, but more the themes they investigate and how they relate to my own practice. For example, Cildo Meireles and Andy Warhol are two artists I’ve looked at as part of my research into consumerist art. The way both these artists responded to the increase in consumerist culture and advertising reminds me of the way in which dance is used in rebellion or affiliation to the same things. Using motifs such as Coca-Cola bottles and technology (more specifically in his piece ‘Babel’), Meireles emphasises the theme of excess in the material world, the ways in which we’re constantly subject to and influenced by what’s being forced into our consciousness. Similarly, Warhol explores this excess in the form of colour, again looking at the ways the artificial world around us is almost inescapable. It’s these themes that I want to explore in relation to dance, how we use it to escape the very things these two artists are highlighting in their work and how I can reference this in my own work. Furthermore, both these artists strongly use motifs as a method of inspiring such themes, something I want to include within this project. Artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz does this in his work ‘An Autumn Lexicon’. Using items such as disco balls, coloured lighting and text, he creates an environment that is immediately reminiscent of a nightclub or party, and in turn, dancing. In relation to this, I want to further explore dance in its modern social and cultural context - how now, coloured light immediately carries undertones of some kind of party or performance. More specific references as well, such as bathrooms covered in crazy graffiti, weirdly lit corridors, glitter and neon are all motifs that I want to explore in relation to their social connotations. Again, similar to Warhol and Meireles, these things all inspire a theme of excess, something that dance seems to naturally attribute itself to. Dance has become a means for not only emotional release and excess, but also a medium in which we associate being our most self, allowing personal style to manifest itself, in turn leading the modern club-scene to be associated with excess of all kinds (for example glitter and neon). Ultimately, that is what I want my project to become. I want it to manifest itself as one large, crazy, fun collection of work – something that in itself is reminiscent of the overflow of emotion we have when we dance.

The continued exploration of the theme of experience is definitely something that is still present in this project, however the one difference in this work from what I’ve done before is that I want to explore how personal experience and intuition influences the way we move and the reasons for this movement. Rather than looking at the emotional response to the world around us, I’m more interested in the ways we translate this conscious experience and emotion into natural and intuitive movement, usually as a way for us to make sense of the mess that’s in our heads. In terms of the mediums and techniques I’ll be using, I hope to still be able to work very materially, only this time using materials that more directly relate to the subject area itself. The abundance of imagery and motifs, such as the disco ball, gives a lot of opportunity to work sculpturally, something that’s become really integral in my practice so far. Print on the other hand, while another method I’ve become increasingly confident in, is a medium I want to approach differently - dance is such a time-based, physical form, I’ll have to think about how I translate this onto the printed page.

[beneaththetangles]

BtT Light Novel Club Chapter 17: Infinite Dendrogram, Vol. 3!

It’s time to dive yet again into the world of Infinite Dendrogram! While the anime adaptation may not have won us over, the original light novels still look to be great, so in we go to volume 3! (By the way, if you have only been watching the anime adaptation, as of the time of posting, the adaptation has stopped just before reaching the material in this volume, so everything here is still spoilers.)

Before we begin the discussion: This novel can basically be divided into two parts: the first part features the “main story” from Ray’s perspective, and the second part features some side stories from other characters’ perspectives. As such, the questions will be split accordingly.

We have a bit bigger of a discussion group this time around:  @jeskaiangel and @gaheret are both joining me this time!

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What are your overall thoughts on the main story of the volume?

Jeskai Angel: The first half of this book is basically one big prologue to the next volume — I wonder if it should have just been numbered vol. 2.5 instead of 3. It deals with the aftermath of the Gouz-Maise showdown in the previous volume, and then sets the stage for things to come. Compared to the first couple volumes, the pace is a lot slower and the stakes are much lower. In the Xunyu-Figgy fight it didn’t really make much difference who won, unlike the climactic confrontations with Gardrandra and Gouz-Maise where a lot of lives (albeit tians) were on the line. I don’t hate this part of the book, but I don’t really love it either. It’s fun enough, but it also felt like the Xunyu-Figgy fight was just a needlessly drawn out plot device contrived to provide opportunities for foreshadowing (of which there is a TON).

stardf29: Yeah, I definitely agree that there’s not really anything significant happening and that all this is basically a huge prologue. (I mean, I did say I had trouble thinking of questions, so…) The fights are a nice diversion and a highlight of the battle system outside of what Ray and co. would likely be involved with (and should make for decent anime material for the action fans), but it’s definitely not the high point of Dendrogram.

Gaheret: For my part, I liked the main story, and will go on reading. I find the wordlers-ludos dilemma a quite difficult one, and also quite compelling. Not having read the previous two volumes or having any experience as a gamer meant that everything was quite new to me, yet it managed to give me an enjoyable time. I had to rely on my memories of Stephenson´s “REAMDE” at first, but everything (Masters, kingdoms and geopolitics, monsters, tians, powers, jobs, embryos, ultimate movements, levels of power, money, consequences of dying, death penalty, statistics, interactions, time, tournaments) was explained quite clearly and organically.

I liked the personalities of the main characters (Ray, Nemesis, Hugo, Marie, Shu), and even the minor ones have distinct voices. The international aspect of the VRMMORPG was very interesting for me, too. The focus of the characters who are players on appaerance and theatrics, and often roleplaying, is to be expected given the concept and was a very interesting aspect of it all. As people can change how they look and focus on the impression they want to give, they are for the most part idealized (and creative) versions of themselves. I was in the theatre club in University, and have participated in some roleplaying games and events, so the psychology of the performers is an aspect which I´m definitively interested in.

It is mentioned, for example, that Ray´s brother is a rich NEET in real life, while he himself knows in his head, but rejects in his heart, that this is a game. Certainly, to have a young prince of the Hermit Kingdom, seemingly a conscious and free personal being, ill from a plague with could kill him for good, or a child-murdering cult like the one described, could make it difficult to log out and, say, go to work or do homework. As for the tournament itself reminded me of Boku no Hero Academia, which I find to be a good thing.

This is truly half gamer, half isekai story, which means there are two contradictory logics for everyone involved. The fact there are ludos, “worldlers”, and even cults involed, and that the tians undoubtly have conscience means that there is something very interesting going on here from a philosophical and ethical point of view (torturing your enemies increases your Grudge ability? That´s kind of messed up). I found myself enjoying also the mysteries such as the real in-game status of Ray´s brother or that of Marie. I was astonished, in particular, for the level of detail devoted to the magic-technology explanation of the game mechanisms and the insights on the tian civilizations and societies, and the impact of the contemporary players in them.

In this volume, we start to see Hugo now as part of the Triangle of Wisdom, with plans to attack Altar, and we see his interactions with Ray given that. What are your thoughts on this?

Jeskai Angel: Ray is a weirdly / amusingly smart-and-dumb protagonist. Sometimes he proves quite perceptive and clever, and other times he’s painfully dense. I particularly noted instances of the latter in this volume, and one example of that is his dealings with Hugo. We the readers have meta reasons to expect Hugo to be important to the plot (his role in vol. 2, being a maiden’s master, etc.). I know Ray doesn’t have the benefit of our perspective, but he still comes across as strangely oblivious. Like, I don’t expect him to be so suspicious that he goes 1-v-1 in the middle of town, but couldn’t you be a little more observant / inquisitive when someone with a potentially suspicious (i.e. hostile) background starts saying / doing suspicious things?

stardf29: Ray’s obliviousness definitely is something. He’s definitely too trusting overall, but perhaps it’s that trust that starts to get to Hugo a bit.

Hugo’s side is more interesting to me, as he’s starting to wrestle with how he will soon be Ray’s enemy. I think that now that he’s actually gotten to interact with a Maiden’s Master like himself, but in Altar, he’s starting to realize how people might get hurt by the plan he’s part of. This is all still build-up right now but it definitely interested me in how it would play out later on.

Gaheret: I like good stories concerning friends at opposite sides of a conflict, such as Marvel´s Civil War. Someone who fights alongside you against a child murderer or an alien invasion might fight you when it comes to questions of what is the best here and now, and there may be legitimate ground for doubt. I think I would have liked to discover Hugo´s loyalties at the same time as Ray, too. I also find quite perplexing how he feels it morally necessary to give his friend a hint about something as important as an invasion, though perhaps knowing that this is a game is a part of it. But again, I have yet to read the second volume.

What do you think of Xunyu?

Jeskai Angel: Xunyu is weird and cool. Wiping out the bandits in the beginning, combined with showing all the deference from the court officials and even royalty, works quite well for establishing that this character is a big deal. Xunyu doesn’t seem to be strictly what we’d call “handicapped” (although I’m not really clear on that point), but she does rely on prosthetic limbs, which is a rather interesting touch to see in a video game, especially one that leans more fantasy than sci-fi. I also loved the hilarious confrontation where Ray mistakenly thinks Xunyu is kidnapping the ambassador, faces them down only to be nearly killed, but then Shu shows up, and the situation ends with Xunyu FLIRTING with Ray!

Tangent: I can’t help but wonder how Xunyu’s odd diction is represented in Japanese — that language doesn’t have upper / lower case letters like English, after all. I was also reminded of the way the easterners talk in the Cooking with Wild Game series; in that case, the translations deploy excessive / inappropriate commas to help convey the feeling that their diction is unusual.

stardf29: Yeah, Xunyu is an interesting one. Particularly once you find out who she is in real life (which is said in the premium-exclusive stories for this volume but not in the normal releases, so I probably shouldn’t go any further into that). She does have some fun interactions with Ray already and I want to see them “playing together” later on.

Gaheret: It is interesting how having to cope with inhuman abilities the human body is not exactly designed for apparently gives high-level players a somewhat inhuman instance. Xunyu, with her operistic behaviour, her violent, gory tactics, her implication in the politics of the Hermit Kingdom (it is very natural for tians to resent these immortal, theatrical, somewhat hedonistic strangers who play such important roles in their society, can avoid physical pain and achieve insurmountable powers in a few years, as the tian assassin narrator of the last story shows) and her monster-like appaerance, may be the most interesting case. It must require a lot of work to step into that role. At least, that cacogen-like way of talking seems to be a product of the talisman, not of her acting.

What do you think of Figaro?

Jeskai Angel: We already knew Figaro was powerful, so that comes as no surprise. What was more interesting to me was seeing how he’s buddies with Shu, and that’s more significant for what it says about Shu than about Figaro. Like, Figaro is super strong, best of the best. And Shu hangs out with him in animal costumes calling him “Figgy.” Especially considering that we also know Figaro is a solo player who doesn’t join parties, for Shu to pal around with him as he does implies something about Shu’s own status within Dendro (which has also been hinted at in other ways, of course). I also thought the reveal that Figaro’s embryo was his in-game avatar’s heart was pretty cool — we’ve heard that embryos can be nearly anything, but Figgy’s is the most creative, outside-the-box one we’ve learned about so far.

stardf29: Yeah, that is definitely the most unique Embryo yet. I’d wonder what kind of Embryo it is but we know that there are more types of Embryos than the ones we’ve been told of, and his may very well be one of those special types.

As for Figaro himself, one thing about him is that he’s one of the most “pure gamer” players we’ve seen so far. Given his dedication to solo play, such that he doesn’t get involved in the country’s wars, and only resolves the player-killer incident earlier because it intrudes on his dueling interests, he actually makes for a contrast with Ray, at least as far as we know.

And yes, it’s definitely quite telling that Shu is so close to Figaro. I’ll say that, as of reading this volume I pretty much had Shu’s identity figured out with all the clues, but since it is still technically a spoiler at this point, I’ll have to bear with it a bit longer…

Gaheret: I rooted for Figaro during the battle. Insanely powerful as he was, his powers had a more human vibe, and as a local champion against the high authority of an Empire, he was the underdog. The heart embryo seemed more integrated and organic than the multiple arms of his opponent, and as taking your enemy’s heart is a very ugly tactic, it was poetic justice that this turned out to be the case. Aesthetically, he being up against faster-tan-eye tentacular, lethal arms and a power that can extract organs, resist, then fight back was a satisfying experience. About his character, I got the sense that he is a veteran around Shu’s age, and more of a wordler.

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What are your general thoughts on the side stories in this volume?

Jeskai Angel: It’s a ton of fun and I enjoyed reading it much more than the first half. The second half of the book is a pair of shorter stories about what Ray’s party members Rook and Marie were up to back in vol. 2 while Ray was off doing the whole Gouz-Maise thing. They turn out to be surprisingly heartwarming tales, as Rook befriends a cowardly slime and Marie befriends a little girl. Each story provides some excellent character develop for its lead, and really helps sell me on Lucius / Nagisa, err, Rook / Marie, being realistic, relatable people (especially Marie!). It’s also cool seeing the author show off the ability to narrate for an extended period in voices besides Ray’s. The way Rook narrates his story feels different than how Ray narrates in the main story, and Marie’s narration is likewise different.

stardf29: I really like these sorts of side stories that look at another character’s perspective in any story, so these short stories are great.

Gaheret: To be frank, I’m not sure they are a good idea. I enjoyed Marie’s, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if it had happened as a part of the main story: the hints, maybe an encounter with Princess Elizabeth or the nobleman as the protagonist looks for clues about the Death Shadow, an indirect conversation where she reveals the reason why. That sort of thing. I think the sense of mystery about this kind of character is better served by evocation sometimes. It works for me in the case of Shu, for example.

The assassin and the escape artist.

So with this volume, we get the big reveal that Marie is actually the Superior Killer. What do you make of this reveal?

Jeskai Angel: First, Marie’s constant jokes and pop culture references were great. I’d forgotten what a strong narrator Marie is, and now I really want a whole volume told from her perspective. The main story has dropped a number of hints that there’s more to Marie than meets the eye, so a revelation was inevitable. Knowing what goes on vol. 4, I think it was smart of the author to place Marie’s big reveal here, where it can stand out and be exciting on its own, rather than get, err, overshadowed… (see what I did there?) by all the other big things occurring in the next book. The manner of the reveal is also satisfying. Marie’s story keeps teasing us with an escalating series of hints; it’s obvious something is up but the reader is still left a bit uncertain about where this is going, and it’s cool to see all the clues finally come together. One fun hint that jumped out at me this time, that I overlooked on my first read, was that Marie mentions that she used to publish a manga about a female journalist, and that’s what her Dendro character is based on. Later, Marie mentions that it was a shounen manga. And you blink and think, wait, what kind of shounen manga stars a female journalist? The switch to the tian assassin’s narrative POV was also used quite well, facilitating a suitably dramatic reveal — “I’m not using a high-rank job.” We confirm that Marie is indeed the Batman…err, the “Superior Killer,” and get the fun surprise of learning she holds the Superior Job Death Shadow (a super ninja-assassin). This volume really did save the best for last.

Gaheret: I suspected something like that (not specifically the Death Shadow/Superior Killer, but something of the sort) since she recognized the status of Shu. As strange as the tought of a girl wearing a suit and sunglasses in a medieval-like world is, I like Marie´s perspective, focused in the character she wants to roleplay, which is also significant for her as an artist, and a cool, idealized superhero (I didn´t connected this much with Rook or Rook´s story, I must confess). She is more of a “wordler” than Ray, and that is enjoyable in itself: she is acting, he is not, and she finds that interesting. Her decision not to tell Ray of her identity to keep the game interesting makes sense from a gamer perspective, but I wonder if Ray would think the same.

That said, her ironic distance makes me wonder sometimes, as well as the cold-blooded demeanor with which she lets the paralyed killer explode in flames after taunting him, and the conversation between her and the depressed nobleman. In the first case, she may have been protecting the princess, but even so. He was harmless now, and she points out how he could have been put in custody by the guard. Even if one doesn´t believe (against all evidence, at this point) that these are real people, to take life-or-death decisions while roleplaying cannot be helpful. It is a fine line to walk.

Jeskai Angel: I got serious Batman vibes from Marie. She’s got a secret identity, she metes out vigilante justice to street thugs while dressed in dark clothing, and when Marie left the assassin to get blown up by his own bomb, it reminded me of how Ra’s al Ghul dies in the movie Batman Begins (watch the scene at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJCxgt7Qb6k). Ra’s and Batman are fighting aboard an out of control train (which Ra’s set up) that’s about to crash. Ra’s taunts Batman about whether he’s willing to “do what’s necessary” and kill him. Batman answers “I won’t kill you, but I don’t have to save you.” Then he jumps out of the train, leaving Ra’s to experience a fiery crash of deadly flaming death. Is Marie morally obligated to save the man who is actively trying to murder the princess and her from his own bomb (a bomb he set off trying to kill her)? It’s an interesting dilemma, one I don’t know has a clear answer. How far does the idea of loving one’s enemies go?

Gaheret: That’s an interesting question. I would say that when you can save an enemy from a deadly threat without personal risk, not doing so is equivalent to actively killing him. That is, it would be moral when he is a credible and deadly threat to oneself (given her abilities, he is not), or others (maybe this protects the princess?), or a war operative warring against one’s people (as he commands an army, I would say Ra’s fits here). Just as one may shoot a person in those cases, provided that there are no other feasible means to stop him, one may let them burn or explode.

In a medieval world, perhaps it would be also legit as a mean of execution, where there are not functioning authorities (or at the authorities command). As was done with pirates on the sea.

What seems troubling, in this case, is that she explicitly notes that he would be taken care of by the authorities, were not for his stupid act. Plus, she is a player, so I don’t think she has a right to self-defense, if we consider him an intelligent being. But she may not consider him so, as he is an IA. In sum, this world is quite a paradox.

stardf29: If you ask me, the fact that there was an activated bomb in play is more than enough of a threat of danger that I would say that no one in Marie’s position was morally obligated to save that person. I would also say that, even given that players don’t “die” when they are killed, they still have some right to self-defense. After all, the effective 72-hour lockout can be very crippling, especially if there is a tian the player is trying to protect. In this case, Marie is trying to protect the princess, and being out for three days could result in serious danger to said princess–to say nothing of the chaos Prof. Franklin is about to wreak.

But yeah, I believe it is not selfish to prioritize self-protection over risking your life to save someone, if you are in a position where you can potentially save more people by remaining alive. There may be specific cases where someone should risk their lives, but in this case, given that the choice is between remaining alive to protect someone important to the country and risking her life to save a random criminal, I didn’t even see any sort of moral quandary for Marie here.

As for Marie’s reveal in general, it is easily the highlight for me here. Not just in how well it was executed overall, but also how we get to see her own story, how she got into Dendro and how she got interested in Ray.

One interesting thing about her is how her approach in the game seems to be role-playing a particular character of hers, that is largely different from herself in real life. I know this is a popular way for some people to play games: rather than treating it completely like just a game or playing as an extension of themselves, they play as a way of bringing a separate character to life. I think that fits nicely somewhere in between the pure “gamers” of the world and those like Ray who see the world as real.

What are your thoughts on Rook and his side story?

Jeskai Angel: I don’t recall Rook being the subject of as much foreshadowing as Marie, so it makes sense that his story doesn’t have the same kind of major reveal that Marie’s does. If anything, Rook’s story itself serves a vehicle for dropping clues that there are hidden depths to this character. Reading about Rook’s efforts to tame the Mithril Arms Slime, I was struck by how influential The Lord of the Rings is. Tolkien’s fictional metal, originally found only the Mines of Moria (Khazad-dûm to all our dwarven readers), has since turned up in a surprising number of other worlds (including, in this instance, a Japanese work). I wondered if Rook’s penchant for naming his creature after famous actresses is just a joke from the author that implies nothing about Rook himself, or if Rook the character is in-story choosing to name all his monsters after actresses. It was also amusing to be reminded that Rook really does take after Ray a little, in terms of being super smart and observant sometimes, but in other cases (e.g., “Catherine”) seeming oblivious to the weirdness obvious to everyone around him.

stardf29: Rook’s story is definitely fun to see how he goes about his taming work. Also, I am quite amused and curious about his fear of mice… That has to have an interesting backstory to it.

Jeskai Angel: Regarding Rook’s mouse incident, it’s interesting how Babi comforts him, and he says it reminds him of his mother. That feels like potentially a hint about why Rook ended up with the embryo that he did.

Gaheret: I usually do like stories about the bond between master and beast, but not in this case. I guess that when I hear «slime», I do not associate it with the wilderness, the animal life and the balance between the animal nature and the Master’s nature that make the proccess of taming so enjoyable. I’m not a fan of the pimp, neither as a concept nor as it played out here. I like Rook just OK.

What do you think of Elizabeth, the young escape artist princess?

Jeskai Angel: Elizabeth was fun, and I’m impressed at how the translation was able to convey that she speaks in a manner both childish and formal at once. The way she talked really sold me on the idea that this is a person raised as a prim and proper princess…who’s also still a young kid. I wonder how much of that is on the author vs. the translator.

stardf29: Elizabeth definitely seems like the sort of royal girl who feels constrained by her upbringing and responsibility and just wants to get away from it all for a bit. And we really do get a feel for just how “realistic” her character is. I bring that last point up because this week’s episode of the other VRMMO anime, Bofuri, had an example of what NPC sidequests would normally be like, with the NPC spouting pre-programmed lines even when they don’t quite match what actually happened. So yeah, that was a nice reminder of what games are generally like, and by contrast, how realistic Dendrogram is.

Gaheret: On the other hand, I found Elizabeth to be a very interesting character (even if the concept was a bit formulaic, as Marie herself notes). Aside from her being a tian, I like stories about family and royalty, which entails responsibility, danger and also a legacy, and the different traits of the three princesses are enjoyable, while the politics are complicated enough to make this interesting. I liked her better for coming back on her own after the fun. He being in danger made the story feel relevant and urgent.

====

Thanks for joining us for our Light Novel Club discussion! Because of how this volume was, it ended up being mainly about the various characters, which I think is fine since Infinite Dendrogram has so many great characters. Let us know in the comments what you thought of these characters!

Next week, we will be announcing our next two titles, so look forward to that! Here’s a quick teaser of what our next titles will be: – Definitely doesn’t drink Dos Equis – Back to where it all started

See you next time!

[lhs3020b]

The Fallen, by Ada Hoffmann

I recently finished “The Fallen”, by Ada Hoffmann. It’s the sequel to 2019′s “The Outside” (which I reviewed previously, you know, before you-know-what started).

This is a dark, introspective and subtly-disturbing book. It does what it does very well. I can’t entirely say whether I liked it, exactly - it’s lucid in places, nightmarish in others, and tightly-written. It certainly makes a striking emotional impression. However, I couldn’t say that I found this one to be classically-enjoyable.

What happens when cosmic horror collides with advanced AI and psychological horror? The results could well look a lot like what’s happening in this novel down on Jai.

“The Fallen” deals with the consequences of the events of “The Outside”. The outbreak on the planet Jai has not been any kind of cozy catastrophe; what Evianna Tallirr did has caused a lot of suffering.

And yet, and yet, even allowing for that, it’s not entirely clear that the abrupt apocalypse of the chaos is actually worse than the slow apocalypse that had been the centuries of the gods’ dominion over humanity.

The asenced-AI gods and their post-human “angelic” servants are trying to retain some control over the chaos-zone on Jai. It’s not going very well for them (though that said, it’s not really going well for anyone). In this novel, the mask  slips on the divine regime. Its oppressive and totalitarian character is on full display, with the side-order of farcical incompetence that realistic autocracies have. In the previous book, the gods’ spiritual dictatorship was somewhat-veiled - after all, human nations are at least technically self-governing, and if you weren’t “political” or philosophically-engaged, you could probably have a passably-pleasant life, as long as you managed to avoid heresy.

In this novel, the ugly side of the angels and their system is on full display. Scheming, backstabbing, vicious, petty, anti-intellectual, weirdly-bureaucratic - imagine the Imperium of Man minus the bolters and with ultra-modern aesthetics (if you can) and you’ve got an idea of what it’s like. Also, the angels’ behaviour is somewhat stupid - the novel makes clear that their own high-handed actions are driving public backlash against the divine regime. Later in the book, this boils over, into a semi-co-ordinated uprising throughout the chaos zone.

Unfortunately, the angels are quite happy to shoot unarmed, peaceful demonstrators, so the novel also treats us to what you might call the “limit case” for nonviolent civil disobedience.

That said, the uprising clearly had some effect. No-one was expecting the denouement, where the gods announce their full withdrawal from the chaos zone. It’s even implied that they weren’t expecting it themselves. Nothing previously had indicated that this was even possible. Meanwhile, there are hints that the gods are vulnerable in some ways - the soul-eaters are apparently very nervous about any form of heresy. The angels don’t question this - the book makes clear that angels who ask the wrong sort of questions don’t survive long - but it is curious. Perhaps heresy affects the process by which the gods absorb souls? Maybe heretical ones are less nutritous? It is implied that the AIs respond to some extent to the personalities of those they consume - it’s canonically-true that different souls go to different gods after death, after all.

As for the characters, none of them are in a happy place. Yasira is a complete mess, her mental state essentially ruined by the events of “The Outside”. The so-called Seven, her associates, have their own struggles. Tiv is doing what she can to keep the wheels vaguely on with their group, but it’s a struggle. Yasira’s state is so bad that she’s frequently semi-catatonic; the “good” days are the ones where she can be persuaded to eat, and the exceptional ones are where she gets out of bed.

Akavi the increasingly-rogue angel is back, and remains as much of a complete bastard as ever. I’m just going to note that I did not enjoy the parts of the novel that were viewed from inside his head, and leave that one there.

One thing “The Fallen” does well is psychological horror, and perhaps also what we might call sociological horror. It depicts abusive relationships and societies where these things are normalised, accepted, valorised. The gods’ regime itself is a sort of institutionalised system of abuse, with the entirety of mortal society as their victims. It is quite chilling. If you’re familiar with the behaviour of narcissists, there’s a lot of stuff here that will lift the hairs on the back of your neck.

So yes, this novel was a unique reading experience. As I said at the start, I couldn’t call it classically-enjoyable. However, I am curious to see where this series goes, so I will be reading the third volume when it arrives.

[oldshrewsburyian]

Could you recommend some of your favourite German & Austrian literature?

I absolutely could, and will! Caveat that very little of this is recent, because I read comparatively little contemporary literature, and because I live in the US most of the time, where I don’t have a lot of access to recently-published German-language lit. I’m going to presume, I hope not offensively, that including ur-classics on here is fine. I have less Austrian stuff on here than German, because I’ve never lived in Austria and browsed its libraries. If anyone wants to rec me Austrian stuff, do! Also, I am leaving out poetry (even my beloved Rilke!) and medieval stuff for the purposes of this list. Parameters being established…

Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werther. I love Werther. Flawless pacing, exquisite language, emotional realism… it packs a wallop, from first to last. If you’re reading in English translation, I recommend the Stanley Corngold. (Goethe’s Faust is a WORLD and I love it, and also it’s one of those texts that shapes subsequent literatures in innumerable ways, but also every English translation I’ve dipped in feels curiously bloodless.)

SCHILLER, you must read Schiller. I recommend Kabale und Liebe and/or Wilhelm Tell for starters, or if you would like the most gay one, Don Karlos. The Wallenstein trilogy is also good, but… less engaging, imho. Schiller’s essays are also good!

Heinrich von Kleist, Die Marquise von O… and/or Michael Kohlhaas. Caveat: I’m not emotionally attached to these works the way I am most of the others on here. But scenes and lines from them haunt me years after first reading them, so that must mean something.

Theodor Fontane, Effi Briest. Sex, gender, and anxiety about both (of course!) in the late 19th century. It’s hypnotic, claustrophobic, atmospheric, and incisive. It also has critiques of the imperial military state, because of course it does.

Arthur Schnitzler, Der Reigen. I have a soft spot for late 19th-century anxieties about sex and gender! This is another text dealing with that! (Also, it had an obscenity trial; fun times.) But if you’re looking for a German/Austrian contrast, you could perhaps hardly do better than Effi Briest – Baltic sea town, Berlin shops, angst and the north wind – and Der Reigen, set in the salons and back streets and theatres and public parks of Vienna.

20th century under the cut!

Thomas Mann is not my favorite; I am very sorry.

Robert Walser, Geschichten / Berlin Stories. These are charming vignettes about Berlin in the early 20th century, full of vibrancy and life and the joys of street food.

Walter Benjamin, Berliner Kindheit um 1900. This is a memoir, but if you want a look at electrified, modern Berlin and the joys and anxieties of childhood from a philosopher of language (!!) this is beautiful.

Stefan Zweig… I am overwhelmed by Zweig. His language and his ideas are dense and immersive. Try “Brennendes Geheimnis” to see how you feel about him.

Heinrich Mann, Der Untertan. This is a hilarious, dark psychological study of a stupid and greedy minor businessman who finds his identity through extolling an authoritarian leader, whose militaristic masculinity he tries to ape with pathetic results. It was originally published in 1918. It remains frighteningly apt today.

If you like surrealism, try Alfred Döblin, or Hermann Hesse’s Der Steppenwolf; otherwise, move onto…

Joseph Roth, Radetzkymarsch. I get a wild light in my eyes when recommending this novel. It is elegiac and savage; it is about history and memory and family and place. It is breathtaking in its scope and in its intimacy. It’s about the fall of an empire. It’s about identity. It’s about how little we know of those closest to us. It is mysteriously perfect!

Bertolt Brecht, Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder. I don’t understand the eye-rolling Mutter Courage gets. It might be because it is assigned in German lit classes (I think I read it 3?? times in my undergraduate days). But it is a savage and humane look at how war disrupts lives, and how it often reinforces the depressingly durable oppressions of class, gender, and disability. 

Hans Fallada, Jeder stirbt für sich allein / Alone in Berlin. This book breaks my heart. I love this book. Its chief protagonists are a working-class middle-aged couple (!!) and the book opens on an unthinkable loss: their son has been killed at the front. They voted for the Führer – he brought back jobs! he promised to restore glory! Now, though, the telegram reduces that promised glory to a bargain that suddenly seems suspect. They start distributing subversive cards, querying the promises of triumph… they’re so brave and loving, and they stumble clumsily towards a kind of mundane, imperfect heroism. 

Wolfgang Koeppen, Tauben im Gras. This is part of the so-called Trilogie des Scheiterns, so you know it’s not going to be cheerful. Taking place in postwar Munich (ok, an unnamed city, but Munich), it’s a slender volume that packs a punch, with a sweet interracial romance and the drone of planes and the realities of rationing.

Günter Grass I include mostly out of a sense of duty. My personal favorite is, weirdly, Das Treffen in Telgte, because I like novels that are about layered histories and the mess of flawed humans trying to implement important ideas. (Der Blechtrommel is, of course, THE Grass novel to read. Why do I not care more about it? I’m not sure. Convince me to give it another try, someone!)

Christa Wolf, Der geteilte Himmel. Hey, it’s finally a woman author! This beautifully imagistic novel is a quietly devastating look at the inhumanity of political and economic systems, and at the frailty of love. “Unbewußt gestattete sie sich einen letzten Fluchtversuch: Nicht mehr aus verzweifelter Liebe, sondern aus Verzweiflung darüber, daß Liebe vergänglich ist wie alles und jedes.” That line breaks me.

Patrick Süskind. If you want a look at dark German humor, try Süßkind. Das Parfum is brilliant but potentially Too Much (multiple women are murdered. For this reason I haven’t seen the film, but I thought the book was great.) Der Kontrabaß is a laugh-out-loud funny skewering of Kleinbürgerlichkeit. With music jokes!

Andrea Maria Schenkel, Tannöd. The truth comes out: when I read contemporary novels, they are often mysteries. This one is a compelling look at cultural isolation and its wide-reaching aftereffects.

Elfriede Jelinek, Rein Gold. If I say, “Are you interested in a feminist, anti-capitalist essay for the stage about Wagner’s Ring Cycle and its many receptions, you are either going to say, “Um, obviously,” or “…No? Who are you?” This is a very specific recommendation, I realize, but it is very much about Germany from the late 19th century to the early 21st.

[leaf-musings]

This could be why you're depressed or anxious | Johann Hari 

INTRO  (starting from 14mins 16sec)

For thousands of years, philosophers have said,

“if you think life is about money, and status and showing off, you're going to feel like crap”.

That's not an exact quote from Schopenhauer, but that is the gist of what he said.

But weirdly, hardly anyone had scientifically investigated this, until a truly extraordinary person I got to know, named professor Tim Kasser, who's at Knox College in Illinois, and he's been researching this for about 30 years now. And his research suggests several really important things.

TIM KASSER’S RESEARCH 

Firstly, the more you believe you can buy and display your way out of sadness, and into a good life, the more likely you are to become depressed and anxious. And secondly, as a society, we have become much more driven by these beliefs. All throughout my lifetime, under the weight of advertising and Instagram and everything like them. And as I thought about this, I realized it's like we've all been fed since birth, a kind of KFC for the soul. We've been trained to look for happiness in all the wrong places, and just like junk food doesn't meet your nutritional needs and actually makes you feel terrible, junk values don't meet your psychological needs, and they take you away from a good life. 

But when I first spent time with professor Kasser and I was learning all this,I felt a really weird mixture of emotions. Because on the one hand, I found this really challenging. I could see how often in my own life when I felt down, I tried to remedy it with some kind of show-offy, grand external solution. And I could see why that did not work well for me. I also thought, isn't this kind of obvious? Isn't this almost like banal, right? If I said to everyone here, none of you are going to lie on your deathbed and think about all the shoes you bought and all the retweets you got, you're going to think about moments of love, meaning and connection in your life. I think that seems almost like a cliché. But I kept talking to professor Kasser and saying, "Why am I feeling this strange doubleness?" And he said, "At some level, we all know these things. But in this culture, we don't live by them." We know them so well they've become clichés, but we don't live by them. I kept asking why, why would we know something so profound, but not live by it? And after a while, professor Kasser said to me, "Because we live in a machine that is designed to get us to neglect what is important about life." I had to really think about that. "Because we live in a machine that is designed to get us to neglect what is important about life." And professor Kasser wanted to figure out if we can disrupt that machine.

TIM KASSER APPROACH TO DISRUPT THE MACHINE

He's done loads of research into this; I'll tell you about one example, and I really urge everyone here to try this with their friends and family.

With a guy called Nathan Dungan, he got a group of teenagers and adults to come together for a series of sessions over a period of time, to meet up. And part of the point of the group was to get people to think about a moment in their life they had actually found meaning and purpose. For different people, it was different things. For some people, it was playing music, writing, helping someone --I'm sure everyone here can picture something, right?

And part of the point of the group was to get people to ask, "OK, how could you dedicate more of your life to pursuing these moments of meaning and purpose, and less to- I don't know - buying crap you don't need, putting it on social media and trying to get people to go, 'OMG, so jealous!”

And what they found was, just having these meetings, it was like a kind of Alcoholics Anonymous for consumerism, right? Getting people to have these meetings, articulate these values, determine to act on them and check in with each other, led to a marked shift in people's values. It took them away from this hurricane of depression-generating messages training us to seek happiness in the wrong places, and towards more meaningful and nourishing values that lift us out of depression. 

CHANGING OUR UNDERSTANDING 

But with all the solutions that I saw and have written about and many I can't talk about here, I kept thinking, you know:

Why did it take me so long to see these insights?

Because when you explain them to people -- some of them are more complicated, but not all -- when you explain this to people, it's not like rocket science, right?  At some level, we already know these things. Why do we find it so hard to understand? I think there are many reasons. But I think one reason is that we have to change our understanding of what depression and anxiety actually are. There are very real biological contributions to depression and anxiety.

But if we allow the biology to become the whole picture, as I did for so long, as I would argue our culture has done pretty much most of my life, what we're implicitly saying to people is, and this isn't anyone's intention, but what we're implicitly saying to people is, "Your pain doesn't mean anything. It's just a malfunction. It's like a glitch in a computer program, it's just a wiring problem in your head."

But I was only able to start changing my life when I realized your depression is not a malfunction. It's a signal. Your depression is a signal. It's telling you something.

A SIGNAL

We feel this way for reasons, and they can be hard to see in the throes of depression -- I understand that really well from personal experience. But with the right help, we can understand these problems and we can fix these problems together. But to do that, the very first step is we have to stop insulting these signals by saying they're a sign of weakness, or madness or purely biological, except for a tiny number of people. We need to start listening to these signals, because they're telling us something we really need to hear. It's only when we truly listen to these signals and we honor these signals and respect these signals, that we're going to begin to see the liberating, nourishing, deeper solutions.

[somedaypast-thesunset]

I'm giving it 30 days. Well maybe a bit more, but give or take 30 days. By the end of September I will take control of my life and I will be better equipped than three months ago. I'm not right now. I know mentally I'm not ready to not be fucked up by this because I don't have all the tools right now and I have to make a weirdly selfish decision to maintain this moderately unhealthy routine while I work diligently to be a better person. I'm not even ready to talk about it with others. I'm not out there like hey guys doing some self improvement reading this doing that because tomorrow it could stop and I could wake up in a shit attitude and want to die. And I'm not secure enough to compromise my character anymore like I don't want to be him basically because they talk so much and do nothing to improve themselves. I want to be better than that. I want to present a whole picture because no-one can complete it but me through active self improvement so I currently don't need anyone's opinion on these decisions I'm securely making for myself as I develop my adult person.

I'm not 3ven focused on being a "good" person. I just want to be someone I can live with. To be something that doesn't give me anxiety. Security of what I know and what I'm capable of.

Today we fought and he brought it to the cycle and I'm not sure exactly how I want to react so I am reacting very little but really want to focus on knowing my securities of my knowledge and what I want not just from this relationship (I told him it wasn't one but he's the one now saying it is) but from the people I fucking interact with. He refused to read my letters because he's "sad" but would not elaborate. I assume it's like he wrote her similar letters or maybe it's guilt that he's somehow leading me on. I am pumped full of hormones so I couldn't help but be sad that he was too sad to read something I wrote out of love where I describe his great attributes and the things he's been for me. I let it past. I was annoyed by another friend and expressed my related annoyance at their brattiness and not having alot of gratitude. He decided this was wrong and they could complain how they wanted. And you know, I'm not sure if it's right or wrong but I don't want to be around someone who doesn't "get it" because it's like a basic ass philosophical morality that all fucking religions have in common - be grateful. Know what you have and when you can complain. I hate the crackheads but I'm more concerned with my internal than my external because as I work on my internal I have more control over my external even in a shitty environment that could easily be soooooooooooooooooooo much worse.

He belittled the point to I could do better by getting a job so the other person can complain because Im not doing all I could be doing. I, however, have zero space to complain. Ever. It is seemingly never appropriate.

I was more offended that he judged everything down to having a job. Like I'm never doing better unless I've gotten a job. My hardships are all caused by me and I'm not doing enough. Yet for six weeks I've been dedicated as he jacks off and complains about how his mom treats him while he jacks off for free in her home as a 28 year old man. When I offered the idea that he might be privileged he immediately degraded the convo again that now he wasn't allowed to complain despite weeks of me listening to his complaints and hearing utterly repulsive nonsense from him. I've gone above and beyond for this person. I have probably given him the most outside of my father and my father wins by length of time because wow. I can't even repeat his shit because why am I listening to it? I am playing with something very dangerous and like longer than September I've accepted it but if I stop it'll be morally okay.

I told him it was upsetting because we don't talk enough about my improvements to make a sweeping generalization that I wasn't doing better because I didn't have a job. He attempted to say we all could do better and that he was lazy and that's why he is the way he is and all of his problems come down to physical fitness. I was now hurt that I was realizing nothing was changing. He was doing the same routine he had been for two years. He repeated he wasn't going to give me what I wanted and that he's already tried to break up with me before. He had clearly complicated and taken my original complaint personal because he's ungrateful and displays it all the time and feels self conscious about the judgement. I was now side swiped - I hadn't done anything but complain about someone else. I told him he was not a safe space to make those complaints so I won't do it again. I am still valid, by his own fucking argument, to complain. Period. I'll just control the space in which I do it because other people choose to take things personally because it's probably fucking true. My father did this alot. He offended people for being super super truthful but also humorous which makes up an asshole. And I don't want to be the asshole my father was but I still accept the attitude because he wasn't wrong. He told the truth. Even about himself.

He decided to end the conversation on his own accord as he usually does because "I never wanted this I told you I'm unhealthy". Even though four hours ago he's asking for nudes.

I called back and told him this wasn't fair. He asked to call me back in a few minutes and an hour later I got a text saying he's stuck having this big long convo because of his opinion that he has to whisper and never express and he's stuck in this and can't leave because ill publically shame him and he doesn't want that so he's just going to bed.

I was like wtf thanks. First of all obviously it's over since youre inferring I've trapped you by psychological force and there's no fucking real feeling there.

Secondly, he has gbs of porn of me. He could easily shame me just to get himself off for fucking fun not even to be inherently evil and that's literally as likely as me doing something to him. Like in our nature? Yeah it is. Would we do it? Unlikely but given the right circumstances possibly. So like we don't need to see eye to eye on this (we wont) but don't degrade it to a fucking abuse shame war.

Also, the I did not say it, this is manipulation by saying this he's putting it on me so if it happens he can justify all the feelings about ppl being against him so even if I've won, he's still won. Nothing changes.

But I've chosen to be offended that he's assumed this of me to a point that he's using it as an excuse. That's pretty flimsy and bullshit - if you want to leave, just leave.

Finally I reminded him that had he read my fucking love letters, maybe he would've felt differently.

Ironically I woke up with the intention to look up properties in pei. I thought maybe I'll invest just a bit more into this since he seems receptive but maybe fate made this happen to remind me to start nothing. Literally sleeping is time better invested.

I believe right now he will complete his cycle and realize he's shitty and probably come back around with a convoluted lecture and I'll let him. If he chooses not to then it's okay because he made the decision for me and I'll be even more free to recover as I will. But I think he will because my points were valid. He told me that people don't care and I think he should listen to himself because frankly I don't care about every fucking thought that passes in his brain. I don't. Some of his thoughts conflict with my thoughts and instead of arguing I just allow him the fucking space. Get a journal. That's all I can say. You want space? Get a fucking journal. No one cares. And if anyone says they're interested it's because it's a fucking trainwreck like no one wants this around them in reality. It's just interesting to watch unfold.

And I'm the last fucking one watching. I'm the last one encouraging him. The last one supporting and dedicated to him. I am building my support system in a healthy way for the first time and he's the last person I'd go to for support unless I need money.

I understand he's sick and I'm giving him space to figure himself out and honestly if he figured out I'm not supposed to be around and told me this in a mature, non random manner I would just go. I'd have closure. There's never been closure during these times. It's always open ended and when it's over "I never broke up with you".

I laid heavily on wanting to be able to share what I learned but not be influenced by his negativity. He said he would try but he knew it wouldn't work. And this was acceptable for him. Which I found outstandingly hypocritical. If nothing else it finally challenged the lingering beliefs that the things he told me so many times was never something that counted for him.

When I got off the phone I immediately said out loud, "I hate him" and hours later I honestly still kind of do. He's such a shitty person in his current iteration. I know he's been better and can be better and I don't want to be another dumb ass chick like oh you know I just want to help him because I've been that chick and I'm no longer forcing my help. I don't want to help him but I will if he needs it or when I identify times it calls for it. I'm not going to explain to him any further why this is upsetting because he will hang himself by continuing it and I will be away from him.

I will not let this go though and I will save that single message because he implies I have information to shame him in public with. If he finishes his cycle, I will continue to mention that he doesn't love me he just fears me. He's tarnished the relationship himself.

At first I was upset that I had sent letters and made a gift and sent him videos but then I wasn't because I'm a great girlfriend and even though I was and am vulnerable, it still makes me a great girlfriend. Whether he knows that or not is his own choice because the next man I love will be grateful as fuck for the love I give him and I will not be second best to someone else.

I know.

Why am I still willing to do this if I know it could be better elsewhere? I love him, I want him to be mentally well and hopefully have a life with him. Im upset his depression hurt me today. I didn't deserve it. And if the depression chooses to destroy our relationship, then fine. I'm tired of being hurt by it. I have my own shit to deal with.

Just in this very moment because I've decided 30 days I have to let things play out without my influence. I need to put my very best foot forward and present myself in a way I can be proud of. No "instant gratification" messages. I was within my right to respond to his very negative message though I would've like to not have. Because I also had that right. That is something to work on. But I did and my response was collected and reflected his own obnoxious beliefs. I stand behind my letters. I literally wrote on paper I want to spend my life with you it's like damn near a proposal. I had the confidence and commitment to do that. I didn't do that with anyone else. It was like defaulted into my first relationship like well this is what we do I guess just this forever. I mean eventually I wanted to because you're with them so long it's apart of you but I didn't proclaim this love. I have the capacity to do so. It wasn't even wasted on him because it's a love letter to myself. Like hey, look what you can give. I would be too scared to share that because I didn't want to be judged or maybe left or something but I did it and I was just like yes, I feel good. And if we aren't together it wasn't lies because this is how I felt at the time. I wanted to but we didn't.

Unfortunately this took up my whole evening. But it's been awhile since this has happened and I know the hormones definitely affected me so I think I'm more emotionally obsessive over it for that but I'm not distraught at all. It's very very important to break the cycle for myself. I participated in it by focusing on it for too many hours but my focus was healthy I think like it wasn't a breakdown of why I think he feels this way but how I feel about it and what I can do about it and how I can learn from it. I want to break it though and tomorrow will be important because I will not contact him. It's unlikely he will contact me anyways but I don't want to initiate it. I said nothing bad and placed the responsibility of breaking up back on him. He will hopefully wake up to my texts and sit on them but we've been in constant contact daily so he will feel the loss.

One month. I can do this. By fall I will have the things I want or I will be free from the binds that hold me from it.

I have the thought of still looking for properties. I'm more scared of this than the letters. I don't want to know what I'm missing. I don't want another failed life plan. It could backfire if I show them to him - he could feel pressured. At the same time I want to show him I'm serious. I want to set an example and maybe get him excited because this is stupid. And I feel like its smarter to start a plan so I don't wait a month and decide yeah let's do it when this could be the thing. I want to walk away saying like I wanted to do this and this I gave him this but he was too lazy to work towards it.

Of course you know what about this fight? That im trapping him? Im hurt but if I was serious about this is it more important than our potential future? It's not. His tantrum is not because I believe better things can come.

[sabstronaut]

If I Owned a Plantation

When I walked into my first day of English 106, I was not expecting the mind-blowing, misconception-revealing, philosophically-engaging psychological expedition I was starting. From day one, I was told not to find myself, but to make myself. By being exposed to Nietzsche’s teachings and being encouraged to educate ourselves on his life, I have begun to recognize that I can’t just listen to what I am told to do, I must constantly challenge the norm. Nietzsche thought differently than anybody else of his time. By declaring himself the Antichrist, he preached the death of God stating “We have killed Him. All of us are his murderers.” I have major respect for Nietzsche who was willing to work hard, to the point of literal collapse, in order to convey a firm belief which eventually drove him mad. His dedication to internal reflection is electrifying and motivational to me and began the entire analysis of my upbringing and influences.

In my household, growing up, I have been surrounded by the influence of my parents’ professions. Both held occupations that strived to maintain the wellbeing of others, my father being a pharmacist and my mother a director of Human Resources. While my father’s job helped on the physical side of wellbeing by actually constructing the medication to make sick people well again, my mother’s job helped with maintaining the psychological and social state of her current and future employees. Each of their jobs and ways of life strongly instilled altruistic values into my sister and I at extremely young ages. We were encouraged to volunteer and began our involvement in elementary school and from there the momentum carried us forward. Additionally, when I finished eighth grade my mom was forced to discontinue working, as she has an immune disorder and a life-threatening condition called Idiopathic Angioedema and my sister has Fibromyalgia, both regularly needing my assistance. With my dad traveling five days a week for work, I grew to be their caregiver during my high school years. This is a very noticeable lens that I have been able to see for most of my life, let’s call this one the altruistic lens. This lens shows in my college application essays, my resume, and most distinctly the occupation I aspire to have. But I know that this is not something that all children are taught at as young an age as I was. Not all of my peers walk through Wynwood, see the run-down state of living, and yearn to help those people. Not all of my peers would perform the simple courtesy of giving up your bus or train seat for an elderly or disabled individual. Not all of my peers wish to spend the rest of their life in an occupation that’s only goal is to help other people survive, recover, and thrive without any concern of the pay. The majority of actions I take, both presently and in the future, all revolve around this altruistic lens that has been inserted into my brain and is now seen with as much objectivity as gravity. Only after intense self-reflection did I realize that this was a very powerful worldview, my altruistic lens, that stems from the time I entered this world.

After reading the work of Du Bois and his ideas of “being a problem,” I began to imagine how my altruistic lens would shine through if I lived during the time of slavery as the person I am today. DuBois wrote about being free, but not really free, and described freedom as climbing a mountain because it means overcoming disrespect and ridicule. So with the altruistic lens that I have grown to have, I think that I would be a Cool plantation owner. For the sake of this essay, let’s ignore the second oppressed population who were seemingly unaware of their own oppression at the time, not sexually discriminate, and just hypothetically allow me, as a woman, to be the owner of this Plantation (disclaimer: I do NOT have any aspirations under any terms EVER to own/partake in any form of slave owning- in fact, the word ‘slave’ was not allowed in my household even as a joke [another instance of the altruistic lens]). As stated in Cool Rules: The anatomy of an attitude, “Cool is an oppositional attitude adopted by individuals or small groups to express defiance to authority.” Owning slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries was a basic symbol of social status. To own slaves was to show that you had wealth, authority, and class, therefore, no slaves means no respect. Nobody with slaves was cool. Nobody who had slaves expressed defiance to the social norms or authority. If I lived in this time-period as the individual with the altruistic lens I have I would adopt an oppositional attitude, defy authority, and let my slaves be free without a doubt. I would spend my life freeing slaves and giving them the proper life they deserve as the equals that they are in my eyes. I would risk my social status and life to give these individuals happiness. If this isn’t a realistic option than an alternative plan would be to treat the slaves I have as equals, for example: they would eat what I eat, sleep where I sleep, and I would spend my days in the field with them rather than beating and lashing them.  While I’m sure many people think this way, it has come to my attention recently that not as many as I thought do. I was taught to never be racist and accept everybody for who they are by my parents and grandparents and school assemblies, another lens of mine that is second nature. Although all of that teaching may have worked for me it can be seen clearly that it did not work for a sizable proportion of our country’s population presently as racism has become an even bigger problem than previously.  

While I can’t compare my position of oppression even remotely to that of the Black population, I do have a sense of the whole “I am free, but not actually,” mindset. Here I am, a 19 year old college student with dreams of becoming a doctor, a majoritively male dominated occupation, and on top of that an astronaut, ANOTHER male dominated field. A woman with aspirations as mine is not uncommon in today’s world which almost leads to an entirely inverse situation than would be expected as more medical schools are looking to take woman in order to even the ratio and expand their diversity. You could almost say I now have the upper hand! But, I will not be free for a long time. As I stated previously, freedom is synonymous to climbing a mountain: before I can live out my aspirations as an astronaut physician, I have 8-10 years of schooling standing in the way as my own mountain.

Another quote from Cool Rules: The anatomy of an attitude that spoke to me was, “Cool will change from place to place, from time to time and from generation to generation.” This speaks in my theoretical situation of being a plantation owner. Cool today defined by rebellion, narcissism, hedonism, and irony has nothing to do with setting slaves free, that was the Cool of the past. A new generation now exists, far different from that of the 18th and 19th centuries and Cool takes on a new form here and today. In Thompson’s paper, “An Aesthetic of the Cool,” he expands on the ancestors’ ability to “restore coolness.” Older generations have wisdom like no other, something I can personally explain from my own experiences. My grandparents are constantly sharing cheesy, helpful tips and words of advice such as, “never walk alone at night” or my personal favorite: “always wear sunglasses when you watch fireworks” (my grandma has weirdly said this one a few times). Although these don’t seem like the wisest words of wisdom, I do know that they have an abundance of worldly knowledge. Older people have experience in all realms and are crucial to communities such as the African ones mentioned in Thompson’s writing. These older generations help us to understand who we are and where we came from! They help us essentially bring back the past as if it never left.

As Nietzsche conveyed through his work, he believed you must know suffering to know pleasure. Not to say that my job as ‘Head of the House’ at such an early age was an even remotely true experience of suffering, but the daily stress of having to balance my own academics, sports, and social life on top of taking care of my sister, mom, and two dogs during the school week was a somewhat pathetic, yet decent concept of the not-so-average sufferings of an adolescent. I agree with Nietzsche in this sense- I did learn what pleasure was. I learned to look forward to my father’s arrival home every Friday night so that we could share the burden of the family for the weekend. I learned to greatly appreciate the days my mother is healthy enough to get out of bed and lessen my load. All of these learnings function as a vehicle of change for me. Oscar Wilde said, “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made.” This quote is sufficient support for my proposal of how I would have treated the individuals on my plantation. I would have helped create progress and I would hope that my learned virtues of equality and selflessness, the altruistic lens, would serve as a safe haven for the slave population.