#the fundamental disconnect in their childhood that still exists today

[darkacademiaarchivist]

THE FUCKING. NEW NIGHT VALE EPISODE????!!!! HELLO I AM DEEPLY UNWELL????

[jetherng]

Blog #5 Iron Chef

The nation that we were tasked with representing was Japan. Immediately after the project was assigned, the 9Eigths group began brainstorming ideas for the dish. On February 27th, we were given an opportunity to go out and do some field research. Such an opportunity was not wasted, as we went to Tani’s Kitchen in Westlake. In sampling a vast array of food, we explored different routes with which we could approach fusing Japanese and American cuisines while still being able to represent Japanese-Americans in a meaningful way.

After much deliberation, we resolved on California Camp Donburi, a reflection on the Japanese internment camps in World War II. Its fundamental structure is simple: soy sauce on hot dogs and rice, to show the lack of variety and substance in the rations of those suffering in the camps. Tsukemono, pickled vegetables, was also added, because in such hard times, one would make use of what was at their disposal. Further elaboration resulted in the addition of bacon bits and avocado to convey not only the United States, but particularly its West Coast, which is where these camps were built. Lastly, we added furikake, sriracha, and cabbage to balance the flavors of the dish and add to its simulated Japanese nature, with some very special meaning behind the inclusion of the cabbage.

Despite being assigned one dish, we went ahead and added a drink to the California Camp Donburi. This drink is the Hawaiian Matcha Soda, a symbol of the focal point of Japanese-American immigration- Hawaiian sugar cane plantations. Hawaii was one of the first destinations for Issei, or first-generation Japanese-Americans. From there, some moved on to the mainland - specifically to California and other parts of the West Coast. In Hawaii, many Japanese-American immigrants worked on the sugarcane plantations (including Ryan’s own family). The pairing of the two dishes represents the contrast between Japanese-Americans in Hawaii and those that were on the mainland. 

The symbolism behind the dish pairing pays large homage to the Japanese internment camps. The California Camp Donburi is representative of the Japanese-Americans on the mainland while the Hawaiian Matcha Soda represents those situated in Hawaii. 

From this project, we learned much about Japanese immigration and Japanese-American history:

Push

The first and only major wave of Japanese immigration into the US occurred during the decline of the Meiji Era. As such, our dish and drink closely represents the long history of the Japanese-American community, which extends as far back as the 1860s.

-The caste system was dying, but the strict social hierarchy of the Edo period remained, albeit modified. A strong example is the Burakumin people, who are ostracized and are subject to racism, even to today.

-The myth of Japanese “pureness” existed, and many Okinawans (who were not considered “proper” Japanese) moved to Hawaii

-Beginning at about 1870, the Japanese industrial revolution began as the leaders of the Meiji Era attempted to catch up with the West. Thousands of Japanese students were sent to the US and Europe.

-Many people wanted to simply earn enough money to retire and return to Japan

Pull

-The aforementioned wave of Japanese immigration occurred before the regulation of the Gentlemen's Agreement (1907)

-There was a demand for cheap agricultural labor due to the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which Japanese, particularly Okinawan, people were able to fulfill

-Many Japanese immigrants had farming expertise, allowing them to excel in agricultural labor within the United States

-For Okinawans, Hawaii had a similar climate and lifestyle, but with more economic opportunities without a strong sense of social hierarchy and racism for being Okinawan

Gen and Mia’s Interview

During our quest for more information on the local struggle of Japanese-Americans, we were able to speak to a fourth generation Japanese-American woman named Yunis in San Francisco’s Japantown neighborhood. Our conversation with Yunis opened our hearts and minds to the struggles of a Japanese-American person in the Bay Area. 

We found that her story lined up perfectly with the story we were aiming to portray with our dish and drink. Her great-great grandparents immigrated to Hawaii from Japan during the labor boom, working on sugarcane plantations. Along the way her family ended up in Berkeley, where she grew up. Speaking of her childhood she mentioned the trauma projected onto her by the older generations. The efforts by her parents to take the Japanese out of her in order to protect her from the racism and violence they were afraid to face. In this fear, her parents never taught Yunis the language, disconnecting her further from a culture her parents didn’t want her to remember. 

Her favorite food growing up were things like Spam and Vienna Sausage as her family didn’t have much money. With her father serving in the Korean War, she mentioned that he was used to eating Spam and Vienna Sausage. When asked about our dish, she recommended our group create an okonomiyaki style dish, as the Japanese needed to find ways to utilize the tons of cabbage the United States was sending over after World War II. While we were already set on our dish and side, we realized that we needed to add cabbage. Had we not met Yunis, we wouldn’t have known the impact of cabbage on Japanese cuisine after WWII so we added the ingredient in order to represent her story and piece of the history she shared with us. 

When speaking about modern day struggles, Yunis mentioned the sadness she felt when the COVID-19 stories broke. Seeing the racism, xenophobia, and discrimination directed towards Chinese poeple during this period showcased that not much has changed since her childhood. She wishes that the discrimination will stop. In order to see the mistakes we make today, we first must listen to and address the history of others. In order to hope for a brighter tomorrow, we must open our hearts to the stories and experiences of others. Yunis didn’t have a responsibility to speak to a group of college students working on a project but she did in order to share her own experience and teach us something about life, that we must address our traumas in order to avoid repeating them.

Thank you for taking the time to read through, and join us, on our journey in learning about the background of the Japanese-American people. While our dish may not do justice to their hardships, we’re proud to be part of the few that endeavored to understand it. 

Here is our recipe:

Ingredients: 

California Camp Donburi

White Rice

Hot dogs (spam is a great substitute!) 

Bacon bits

Tsukemono AKA Pickled Vegetables (whatever you can get your hands on, times are tough)

Pickled Ginger 

Sliced Avocado

Cabbage (use red for more color)

Furikake 

Soy Sauce 

Sriracha Sauce 

Hawaiian Matcha Soda

1/2 cup cane sugar

1 cup Water (for simple syrup)

2 teaspoons matcha tea powder

1 can pineapple soda

Ice (optional)

Recipe: 

California Camp Donburi

Step 1: Make the rice (do we even need to explain this?), put it into a bowl

Step 2: Take a hot dog, and slice it into tiny bite size pieces 

Step 3: Heat the hot dog slices up on medium heat on a non-stick pan, char them if you’re into that

Step 4: While hot dogs are warming up, slice an avocado into visualizing appealing sized pieces

Step 5: Place the avocado on top of the rice bowl, only on one side

Step 6: Place hot dog slices on top of that rice bowl, on a different side, we want it to look pretty

Step 7: Place tsukemono and pickled ginger on a seperate side of the bowl 

Step 8: Sprinkle with bacon bits and furikake 

Step 9: Dash a little bit of soy sauce on it to taste, not too much 

Step 10: Top with a sriracha sauce, to taste. 

Hawaiian Matcha Soda

Step 1: Boil 1 cup of water for every 3/4 cup of cane sugar - this creates simple syrup

Step 2: Sift 2 teaspoons of matcha powder into simple syrup, be careful not to use too much, this drink can become very bitter (and strongly caffeinated) with too much matcha powder

Step 3: Let it cool overnight 

Step 4: When you are ready to consume (and your California Camp Donburi is ready), combine the simple syrup matcha mix with 1 can pineapple soda

Step 5: This will create 2-4 servings, enjoy!

[androgyne-acolyte]

The “I” in Christ

Commissioning, Community, and Lessons From Hamilton

(My second sermon, for Confirmation Sunday. You can also listen on Soundcloud.)

This Sunday, a few of us are about to confirm our formal membership in this community of St. Andrew’s; we do this with a profession of faith, along with a promise to seek justice and resist evil. Not only does the process of confirmation ask the question of what it means to be part of a Christian community, but this passage from Luke (10:1-11,16-20) also poses the question of what it means to live out our own discipleship beyond the walls of the church — especially in an age where the image of door-to-door missionaries is something of a bad joke.

Perhaps Christianity’s best-kept secret is this: the actual gospel of Jesus is tremendously relatable to anyone else whose mission is also to seek justice and resist evil. These first disciples were instructed to bear one message: that “the Kingdom of God has come near” — or, to put it in more contemporary language, we might say “another world is possible”.

Jesus says to carry no extra gear, going out like lambs into the midst of wolves; greeting no one on the road, but traveling in pairs. This is a radically vulnerable commission — relying entirely on the generosity of strangers, who may not even care if you live or die — but it is also a commission of interdependence and reliance on one another. Sometimes, we might retreat by ourselves into the metaphorical desert for a while to figure things out. But when we go forth and proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven, we’re not meant to go it alone. And so, from its earliest moments, Christianity is lived out in relationship.

We also see this in how the very early Christians came together in table fellowship — the root of our communion ritual. Jesus and the disciples had caught on to something that’s borne out by sociological science today (this is why we also had lunch as part of our confirmation classes): deep down, our brain associates “the people with whom you eat” with “family”. This becomes especially resonant when we consider that Jesus’ ministry seems to have been responding, at least in part, to the breakup and dispossession of families caused by Roman encroachment on Jewish ancestral farmlands.

So part of Jesus’ message to these seventy disciples is about going out and finding allies — and through that work, making new and cohesive communities in a time of tremendous social upheaval. Then and now, Christianity creates familial structures that counter the systems of injustice in the world with a message of radical community and genuine connection.

The New Testament, in the original Greek, calls this concept of community or fellowship koinonia, literally participation, partnership, or sharing, with emphasis on the element of relationship; a koinonos, used in the Epistles to describe the disciples’ relationship to Christ and to one another, is a sharer, partner, or companion; a joint participant. So, when we become part of the Body of Christ, we become partners, koinonoi, in acting out God’s intent, “on earth as it is in heaven”. As Jesus says when he is asked when the Kingdom will come (later on in the Gospel of Luke), “the Kingdom of God is among you” (Luke 17:21).

So I suggest that we can look at koinonia — this radical companionship — as a concept that has four pillars. They are economic, interpersonal, internal, and political — and together, they answer a world of imperial domination and hierarchical, transactional relationships with the egalitarian, reciprocal relationships of a truly divine community.

Most of us grew up hearing the Gospel story of how a few loaves and fishes fed five thousand people. When Jesus says “give them something to eat”, the disciples respond with “but how can we possibly go out and buy enough bread for everybody?”. But Jesus had a plan — and we are told that “all ate and were filled” (Luke 9:10-17). This isn’t just a fanciful miracle story; in Jesus’ world, everybody gets enough. This is a total reimagining of our economic model. 

We see this principle carried out in the book of Acts, chapter 4: among the growing circle of disciples, it’s said that “there was not a needy person among them”, because people sold their possessions and shared the proceeds; “they laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need” (Acts 4:32-35).

“But that could never work!” we say, just like in the story of the loaves and fishes. I may not be an economic theorist, but my guess is that what gets in the way is our own self-interest; of course it won’t work if you assume that you and everyone else are just looking out for number one. The missing ingredient here is what the Bible calls lovingkindness, or what I call radical compassion — the key to the interpersonal aspect of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Remember, Jesus’ program is about treating people like family. And what happens when people feel safe enough, trusting enough, to be able to treat each other as a functioning family? “You’re in need? That’s okay, I’ll cover you.” — “Whatever happens, you’re still my sibling in Christ.”

This ideal of the family of God doesn’t end at the steps of the church, by the way. This is what Buddhist teachings mean when they talk about widening the circle of compassion: Talk to your neighbours. Look a panhandler in the eye. Fall in love with the immigrant kids down the corridor who won’t stop bouncing off the walls. Invite that raggedy backpacker down on Spring Garden Road to brunch. But, Jesus cautions, don’t make a big deal out of it; this is just what we do.

But again, we worry, just like the disciples: what if there’s someone in this community who’s really needy, taking up all the available resources and emotional energy? Perhaps that’s where a community can do its best work: helping a person become self-sufficient. Finding them a therapist, even if it means emailing every private practice in [the immediate area]. Finding them meaningful work in the community, something that provides for them and reminds them that their life matters. Granted, that’s extremely hard to do under late capitalism — but maybe that’s a specific challenge for Christians today!

We don’t claim to offer miracle cures here, but we do offer compassion and grace and walking with someone on the road to healing. And if you’ve bought into the Christian message, you’re already imagining the possibility of becoming whole — recognizing the image of God within yourself — and if you know any trauma survivors, you already know that that’s half the battle.

And to support each other like this, we have to be comfortable with being vulnerable. Paradoxically, that’s very hard to do in our white, English, North American church culture! 

My childhood pastor used to say that a good church has to be so much more than just “a club for nice people” — part of that is because niceness and civility as we understand them involve building very specific walls around yourself, so that no one sees the mess and the struggle underneath your calm exterior. But when others see that you’re a flawed, messy human too, they respond in kind. 

The very best of my church relationships are the very few people to whom I can confess almost anything, and they can confess almost anything to me. We inevitably find ourselves going deep; we have long conversations that are intense and sometimes unsettling, but I always come away feeling more fulfilled, more whole than I was before. And what is salvation in the original Greek but a kind of healing, or “making whole”?

That leads us into the internal work of the Kingdom of God. The hardest lesson we can hope to learn is to give up our preconceived notions of how things ought to be and what others are like. This is where contemplation comes in; it’s about letting go of our hangups so that we can see the bigger picture. This process of self-emptying seems like such a bewildering thought, but it’s a fundamentally liberating process. Just ask our Buddhist neighbours.

So, Christian community calls us to break free from our own self-interest by living as members of one body; as a collective of voices working together in constant dialogue. One might say that there is no “I” in Christ. 

And here is where being political comes in. When we live together in lovingkindness, in partnership, when we let go of our attachments to see things as they really are — we begin to see that this is exactly the opposite of what the world wants, both then and now.

We’ve heard [St. Andrew’s lead minister] Russ [Daye] speak of “sin” not so much as an individual moral failing, but as the state of a society propelled by self-interest and operating through systemic inequality, oppression, and violence. And when we see the big picture, we start to see that that’s exactly what’s going on.

A fully realized Christian life, lived out according to the principles of radical community, makes the scales fall from our eyes and highlights the terrible workings of inhumane disconnection and self-interest that our society is based on. That, in the eyes of our world, makes us dangerous. 

I recently had an extraordinary online conversation with another queer ministry hopeful, who is not afraid to state point-blank that “love cannot exist [or cannot exist fully] in a space where we are complicit in our neighbours’ suffering and exploitation”. We both agreed that a lot of us moderate Christians aren’t politically active because we can’t truly fathom how deep-rooted these systems of oppression actually are, let alone have any idea of how to stand up to them. 

But I invite you to consider that the kind of strong support structure that a fully realized Christian community can provide can be a living “no” to the Caesars of this world, and can empower us to speak our truth to their face, no matter the consequences. “We know love by this,” says the epistle of 1 John, “that he [Jesus] laid down his life for us — and we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1 John 3:16).

Perhaps, then, there are many “I”s in Christ — together, we are the pillars that hold up God’s kingdom.

However we choose to confront the Caesars of our world, we must always centre our love for God and one another in our actions. This can mean letting our hearts break at the injustice all around us — remember, we are called to be vulnerable! — but it also means means finding and creating opportunities to speak out and stand up for justice; equipping one another with the skills to do so; and lifting each other up in support when those opportunities come.

Let me tell you a story about one such situation.

On June 15, only a few weeks ago, the Pride festival in Hamilton, Ontario was confronted by a group of right-wing agitators carrying giant banners with homophobic messages, shouting slurs, and threatening physical violence. Shamefully, many of these people had the gall to call themselves Christian, using our faith as justification for their hatred and aggression. 

Hamilton police, for their part, did very little to protect the Pride marchers. 

(By the way, I’ve tried to rely on firsthand accounts of this situation wherever possible.)

What did happen at Hamilton Pride was this: after a similar encounter a few weeks earlier in Dunville, Ontario, where homophobes and counter-demonstrators spent six whole hours trying to drown each other out, an affinity group formed in Hamilton with a new plan. They built a thirty-foot-wide, nine-foot-tall barrier out of black cloth, practiced moving it around as a team — and when the right-wing agitators showed up, the affinity group moved their barrier into position and physically blocked the agitators off from the rest of the festival. They intentionally did not raise their fists to strike at anyone.

But — they still got beat up. As the original members of the affinity group dragged themselves away from the fists and helmets of these right-wing bullies, they looked around to see people they didn’t even know rushing to the scene and keeping the barrier standing. The barrier, incredibly, remained intact until the police arrived a full hour later, escorting the troublemakers out of the park with their hateful signs in tatters. 

Community. We lay down our lives for one another.

When asked why the police didn’t get there sooner, an eyewitness reportedly heard the officer respond, “Don’t you remember we weren’t invited to Pride? We’re just going to stand here, not my problem”. [x]

There are, of course, many more layers to this story than I have time to get into here. But the ongoing aftermath of this situation is worth talking about. 

The queer community in Hamilton was furious and disappointed, if unsurprised. Remember that there is a decades-long history of criminalization and persecution of queer communities by police, and of police turning a blind eye to homophobic and transphobic violence. That tension doesn’t go away overnight, and it is still very much with us today.

A few days later, a local queer activist named Cedar Hopperton was arrested, purportedly because being present at Hamilton Pride had violated their parole conditions related to a previous act of civil disobedience. (Like me, Cedar goes by the pronouns “they” and “them”.)

But here’s the thing: according to eyewitnesses, Cedar wasn’t part of that incident at Pride. They had stayed at home, where their friends came to them for support and first aid following the confrontation. When Cedar got access to the paperwork associated with their case, it focused almost exclusively on a public speech they had given at City Hall in the wake of the events. 

And while they had been heavily critical of how Hamilton police have repeatedly let their community down, they framed their criticism with a prophetic statement: 

“...what I am interested in is building community around people who [have] a desire to build a shared idea of the world they actually want to live in. I feel like that’s a higher bar [which] is worth working towards.” [x]

That is what those seventy disciples were sent out to find: The Kingdom of Heaven is near. Another world is possible.

In response to this and what would become at least four other arrests of queer community members, along with frantic attempts to save face by the police and by City Hall, the local activist community decided to go straight to the mayor. In a wonderful example of non-violent protest, some twenty people “dressed in gay masquerade attire” showed up on the mayor’s front lawn early on a Friday morning, and spent fifteen minutes making a ridiculous racket while planting hot pink lawn signs that read “The Mayor Doesn’t Care About Queer People”. 

Within an hour, the same mayor who had largely refused to comment on the issue of right-wing agitators harassing and assaulting people at a Pride festival was in the news decrying the lawn sign action as a “violent attack”, and vowing that the perpetrators would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

That afternoon, one of the organizers of the lawn sign action found herself cornered by no less than eight police cars. After being brought in for questioning, she was escorted by officers with assault rifles to the central police station, where she was held overnight. 

Only one of the right-wing agitators has since been arrested. The mayor, in a stunningly oblivious move, concluded the day by issuing a boilerplate supportive statement about the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

The organizer who was arrested following the lawn sign action (who has chosen to remain anonymous) had some insightful words that I’d like to share with you. For me, they may as well have been spoken by an apostle in the first century. She said:

“[This is] about us as a community getting stronger — and them being afraid of that. We know [that] because within five hours they mobilized an investigation, manhunt and takedown. We know because they confront us with shaking hands and assault rifles. We know because they [subsequently] responded to a queer dance party with eighty officers on a Friday night. We see it when they make desperate arrests; [like] Cedar for a speech at city hall.” [x]

Because when we start to make a dent in the facade of unjust power, the mask slips, and the true cruelty and desperation of the people at the top gets revealed; just like the crucifixion of Jesus laid bare the horror that the Roman Empire was capable of. And yet, in ways that we do not yet fully understand, we are told that Jesus performed one last radical act of turning the tables; using that humiliating, commonplace death as a jumping-off point into the coldest, darkest reaches of the cosmos, where he sowed the love of God into the very ground of the universe.

Our anonymous lawn sign activist continues: 

“In that, we can also acknowledge something else; we are winning. They are afraid of us and what we can do. They are embarrassed. They are losing ground.”

This takes us right back to Holy Week — when the authorities start planning Jesus’ arrest in the wake of the non-violent protest march that we remember as Palm Sunday, because they’re afraid he’ll incite the people to rebellion. When we start to successfully seek justice and resist evil, the powers that be, propelled by self-interest and sustained by systems of cruel inequality, are terrified.

She concludes with this wonderful statement of commission — and I’d like to think it can be our commission too:

“So let’s keep this up. Let’s keep getting into ... public spaces. … Challenging the things that harm us — even when they are institutional and systemic. … Let’s build towards the world we want to see – and share and learn those skills together. … Not just every four years — [I would add, not just every Sunday] — but every single day”.

Amen. 

July 7, 2019 (Confirmation Sunday) — St. Andrew’s United Church, Halifax

Selected further reading:

Center for Action and Contemplation, “Consumed with Love”

Queer Theology podcast, “A Community of Care”

Rethinking Religion, “Buddhists Don’t Have to Be Nice: Avoiding Idiot Compassion”

[portraitsofboston]

“I have this fundamental belief—I’ve had it for as long as I can remember—that I would not be attractive to anyone, that I would not find love. It made no sense to me logically, but it was something I believed. I struggled for a long time with that and then I said, ‘Okay, if that’s not going to happen, the least I can do is be happy with who I am.’ And I am happy with who I am, so it made no sense that someone else wouldn’t be. There was this disconnect between my logical side and my emotional side and I didn’t know what to do about that.” “Why did you believe that no one would find you attractive?” “For a long time I thought I was boring, and not physically attractive. Once I realized that, objectively, I was not that boring, all of my anxieties got pinned onto my physical appearance, and that’s something I still struggle with, although not as much as I used to.” “What has changed?” “I started going to therapy. It’s called internal family systems model, which basically considers you as a multiplicity of parts. So there is a self at the center of who you are, and it’s associated with emotions such as calmness and confidence and compassion, but there are also other parts of you that govern your day-to-day existence that are called managers in this model. They make sure you get stuff done and stay on top of things. Then there are parts of you that are exiles. Usually they have suffered some sort of early childhood trauma, and they are the parts that are most vulnerable. And a lot of what the managers do is to prevent the exiles from getting hurt. But that also prevents the exile parts from expressing themselves fully and being part of who you are. Then the third set of parts are firefighters, which in times of crisis can do things that are physically destructive. I don’t have many firefighters—I don’t do things that are physically destructive, which is why I am not worried about me. But I’ve had this part of me that has been in exile for so long that I still don’t know exactly what it is, but it has to do with attractiveness and love in a non-platonic sense. I made a list of everything that might have driven this part of me into exile, and each individual thing is so small, but the added effect of all of them is to keep that part out of my life, which is why I identified so strongly with work for so long. So the whole purpose of therapy has been figuring out what those parts are and getting them back into balance. The idea is that you then start thinking of yourself as a family of small parts. The goal is to bring about leadership from the self and not let those parts dictate who you are and what you do. Once you do this, you start seeing the rest of the world the same way, so it’s a very outward-looking model, not one focused on the inside. You see other people’s interactions in terms of the parts that they may have, and it lets you feel a lot more compassion for people, and for yourself—if you understand that every person is not just a single person and what they say and do is not motivated by who they are fundamentally because there is no ‘who they are fundamentally.’ That 'who they are fundamentally' is complicated.” Somerville, MA …. If you have never supported Portraits of America, please, consider doing so today: https://www.patreon.com/portraitsofamerica PayPal: portraitsofamerica@outlook.com or PayPal.Me/portraitsofamerica

[dreamofcentipedes]

Hello! I really enjoy reading your thoughts on Tokyo Ghoul, and I was wondering if you have any thoughts on where Mutsuki's character arc might be heading? (Besides Kaneki and Touka, Mutsuki's probably my favourite character, but I'm preparing myself for a lot of pain while still hoping for some redemption.)

Aw thanks anon! I have many thoughts on Mutsuki; maybe too manythoughts on Mutsuki, so do you mind if I go overboard and extend this questioninto a mega Mutsuki analysis post? I figure now’s as good a time as any.

(NOTE: Basedon Mutsuki’s internal monologues here, here and most definitively here, Ithink it’s clear that Mutsuki considers herself to be a woman and merelymasquerades as a man due to her fear of male sexual attention stemming from herchildhood trauma. Thus I will be addressing her with ‘she’ and ‘her’ pronounsaccordingly. Discussion below about ‘gender confusion’ and the like is entirely unrelated to transgender issues, and solely applies to these characters’ individual psyches.)

As soon as we see Mutsuki, we are instantly reminded of Kaneki - specifically Kaneki as he was at the start of the series, the persona we call Kuroneki. She has the same wide, innocent eyes and a similarly prim and proper haircut, with her head stuck in a book. And of course, if you were left with any doubts, the eyepatch vanquishes them immediately. As we get to know her better, we find out she is polite and kind but meek and easily frightened, without a great deal of faith in her own abilities. It’s not exactly subtle paralleling, but then, it’s not meant to be. 

Because while in :re, Kaneki is slipping out of the mould of his tragedy, there needs to be someone to take up the mantle of the tragic hero. The gift of a sequel series spared Kaneki from his death at the end of the original, but the author must maintain a balance - tragedy must have its tribute, and here is a person as ideally suited to the role as Kaneki once was.

In fact, Kaneki in his amnesiac ignorance ends up symbolically helping Mutsuki down the path he once walked. In the Christmas chapter - the same chapter where Kaneki’s own self-discovery takes a new turn with the gift of his mask - Kaneki offers Mutsuki a new eyepatch, without having a real reason other than instinct. He feels as though Mutsuki ought to have a new eyepatch because he subconsciously remembers how he changed in the past.

Mutsuki is pushed along little by little towards her ultimate revelation on Rushima Island throughout her time in the Quinx Squad, with snippets of the truth slowly revealing themselves to her. This evolution is sped along by several encounters with various characters representing different aspects of herself - the true self that she has been suppressing. Kaneki was the first, but the second of her doppelgangers was Torso.

Even before his torture irrevocably changed her, the two were already alike in their abusive backgrounds and, most importantly, their mental confusion between love and violence. Seeing one’s doppelganger is traditionally a harbinger of death, and in Tokyo Ghoul, an encounter with your doppelganger escalates your character’s tragic arc, often to that very final point. It is Torso who first begins to unravel the relative security she had felt living as a man, together with the web of lies Mutsuki had spun around herself to protect her. We learn more about Mutsuki as her own safeguards are torn down around her, much like with Kaneki before her. Our initial assumption that Mutsuki is transgender is disproved when we get deep inside Mutsuki’s head and it becomes clear that she considers herself to be a woman. 

It establishes that Mutsuki is comfortable with living a lie in order to protect herself - and if she’s willing and able to hide her gender from the rest of society, who’s to say she’s not hiding something from herself? But already, ever since Torso lands that first crucial blow against the safeguard of her false gender, she finds it quickly crumbling as she is compelled into situations like the Auction that require her to dress (and therefore be treated) as female, and it isn’t long before Urie finds out her gender and eventually Saiko too. Because it’s not just Torso that finds out, it’s also the reader. And once the reader knows, the author can begin gradually undermining her defences to fit her into the tragedy she was written for.

I’ll be talking a little more about Torso later, but for now I’d like to get to Mutsuki’s third doppelganger: Juuzou Suzuya. 

The two bond very quickly out of an unspoken connection to each other. Indeed, they share much in common: their sadistic tendencies, their reliance on gentle paternal figures to make up for their lack of a real childhood, and  the ambiguity of their genders stemming from their sexual abuse as children. The latter connection in particular is highlighted by the inclusion of Big Madam (also of confused gender) in the arc, reminding us of Suzuya’s past and making us suspect similar activity in Mutsuki’s, and by the two of them dressing up as women for the Auction. While Suzuya believes them both to be pretending to be women - both to be lying - the truth is that Mutsuki is actually being honest, suggesting a misunderstanding in Suzuya’s connection with Mutsuki. 

Although they’ve never discussed their pasts to each other in any great detail, Suzuya senses their similarity, and tries to help Mutsuki along by training her in the same lethal artwork that allowed him to cope and find purpose in this brutal world - until Mutsuki eventually even joins Suzuya’s squad. But again, Suzuya misunderstands how they are similar and how they differ. Suzuya’s trauma left him numb to feelings of empathy and love, and so he used his bladework, and the strength it gives him, as a distraction from that hole. Mutsuki is still connected to those feelings, only in a very twisted way. She instead starts filling that hole with knives, mingling violence hopelessly with her notion of love. There’s no better proof of that fundamental difference between the two than their individual reactions to Uta’s masks.

When Suzuya finally learnt how to love, he learnt to do it in a healthy way, and so he couldn’t bring his knives against the image of Shinohara because violence and love are completely disconnected for him - when he killed Big Madam, it was not out of personal desire for revenge (a reaction to the spurned love he should have been given by his maternal figure), but merely out of duty. Love can never involve violence, and violence can never involve love - those two sides of his personality are entirely cut off from each other. Mutsuki, on the other hand…

…sees the two as the same, having gone down the second of two opposing paths stemming from similar trauma. And so Suzuya’s attempt to aid Mutsuki only escalated her tragedy, just like Kaneki’s gift of the eyepatch, and even Torso’s warped attempts at love.

The last of Mutsuki’s parallels are solely antagonising figures. In the midst of the Auction, three of Mutsuki’s parallels intersect due to their mutual interest in her.

Mutsuki catches Nutcracker’s attention at the nightclub and she is quick to take advantage of her. She embodies the sexual abuse that made Mutsuki who she is today - only in reverse - and where Mutsuki covers up her sexuality, Nuts flaunts it. But like Mutsuki, Nutcracker just wants to be loved, and ends up expressing that desire in violent ways.

But as soon as Mutsuki escapes from Nutcracker, she runs straight into another of her parallels. Karren is another female character who masquerades as male, and whose actions, good and evil, are motivated out of a powerful desire for love. But she quickly finds herself battling for control over Mutsuki with Torso - yet another of Mutsuki’s parallels.

 After the Auction Operation forced her to confront her femininity by dressing up like a girl, she spent the rest of it wandering through a maze of her own mind, running into a grand total of three of her alternate selves all seeking to control her in this space alone. The effect? Mutsuki begins remembering the thoughts that she had locked up, presenting them to the reader for the first time:

But with these memories unlocked, a certain gruesome aspect of Mutsuki’s behaviour does as well, as we learn later on at Rushima.

Being attacked on all sides by agents of her inner psyche externalised, she is slowly pushed to a very dangerous point that requires a very dangerous spark to fully ignite. 

Ken Kaneki underwent his transformation as Aogiri started to gain power. Tooru Mutsuki underwent hers towards the end of it. The Rushima arc serves as an excellent parallel to the original series’ Aogiri arc, as Mutsuki finds herself trapped in the tragic hero’s role that was once Kaneki’s. But where once there was Yamori, now there is Torso. Mutsuki is trapped by Aogiri, all alone, in the hands of a mad torturer. Her hair becomes pale and dishevelled as Kaneki’s once did, and she remembers something vital about her family that kicks her transformation into motion. She adopts the nervous habit of her torturer, accepts her sadistic urges, and gives her torturer a taste of his own medicine.

And right afterwards, she goes on a battle spree, far more confident in her kagune and far more ruthless in its use. Mutsuki’s ability to suppress large parts of her memories lines up with the entire conundrum of Haise’s existence.

Urie functions as the Touka to Mutsuki’s Kaneki; someone initially cold to Mutsuki who warms up to her and becomes the most determined to save her when she’s captured. But even then, at the start of their heartwarming, but sadly doomed, relationship, Mutsuki only thinks to show love towards Urie after being wounded by him. As @linkspooky points out, she is completely accustomed to abuse by male figures at this point. For Mutsuki, love and pain are one and the same.

But where does all this lead? With all these parallels set up, where can we see Mutsuki’s journey finally taking her?

Nutcracker is dead. Karren is dead. Torso is dead. If the original manga is taken as a separate entity, in that world, Kaneki is dead. Is there hope in the precedent set by Suzuya? While I do think Suzuya will survive the series, I’ve already established the great point of difference between the two, and I think it will be what keeps Suzuya alive. You’re right to prepare yourself, anon. I don’t think Mutsuki has much hope of surviving this series.

Will she be redeemed? I think, before the hypothetical raid on :re that I believe will be happening soon (especially since Mutsuki has considered it as Kaneki’s possible hiding place), a confrontation with Urie may lead her to question her actions, but it won’t be enough to stop her. As she hunts for Kaneki in :re, she will find her efforts will come down to nought as members of the CCG begin defecting and her way is blocked by enemies. Her single last thread of hope will lead her to a God of Death, and as his scythe takes her eyes out she will deeply regret ever coming to this place, but all too tragically, all too late.

We’ve been given reason to doubt Suzuya’s loyalty to the CCG for some time now. He asserts his obedience too boldly for me to trust him completely. If he does defect, he would be ideal to fill Arima’s shoes and have Mutsuki meet the tragic fate that originally was meant to be Kaneki’s, especially since they already have the mentor/student relationship Kaneki and Arima would go on to have. To have these two, so similar and yet so different, fight each other to the end would be a fitting end for Mutsuki’s arc. Urie’s attempts at reason, like Touka’s before him, won’t be quite enough to stop her. I’m sure Suzuya would try not to kill Mutsuki…but I’m not sure it will be that easy. 

The tragedy will have its due.

EDIT: In case I’ve linked you to this, you can probably tell this is an old meta! So the Mutsuki analysis still stands, but ignore all the predictions - this manga is more optimistic than I hoped!

[pipothy]

A Complex Relationship with Body Confidence

I wanted to talk today about my experience with body confidence and the whirlwind many of you have helped me deal with over the past years.

As a warning, this post contains topics related to and mentioning sexual assault, rape (including details about bodily damage), dangerous levels of weight, mental health including body dysmorphia and a lot of personal stuff about me relating to those topics. If any of that will make you uncomfortable or you’d rather not know about it, this isn’t the post for you!

Body confidence is no strange issue to many gay men. Men are expected to be bulky and gorgeous, or pretty and perfect. This is no doubt something people are generally familiar with, so I won’t ramble about that context. The extra layers of complexity that ensue with the whole bottomshaming thing added on makes it a thorough minefield to navigate for any gay man. 

I was very thin throughout my childhood and teens. At 14, I was 4 stone. I’m sure you can do the maths, that’s dangerously thin. As a result, I was very weak. I struggled for a long time with my physical strength and having any stamina, and here is where the issues started. 

I felt unattractive, deeply unattractive. I shunned my sexuality because I’d rather not think about how attractive I was. Ignoring the problem made it go away, for now. But unfortunately, this wasn’t always to be. Thankfully, I came out throughout my studies at Sheffield. Less than thankfully, this brought back a barrelling wave of mental health issues and an all time low confidence. All my judgement that I had piled onto myself over my existence previous had hit me in one furious tsunami, drowning me in a need to be appreciated by other gay men. 

As my mental health waned, things went from bad to worse. Body Dysmorphia kicked in, where I would see myself as much physically thinner than I was, demeaning my self value. Sex, or sexual appreciation, became a coping mechanism. If I couldn’t be worth anything, the least I could do was allow someone to use my body. As you can no doubt foretell, this attitude doesn’t end well in the long run. If I had pleasant experiences, it briefly filled the black hole that I needed to fill with my own self confidence. If it was a particularly disrespectful experience where they did use me, I was left feeling useful at the time but even more discarded and worthless than before.

I couldn’t process compliments on my looks or aesthetic. I still struggle with that, so please don’t be offended if I seem to Error 404 when you provide a compliment on my looks, it’s taken a long time to reach that. But, I wasn’t equipped with the techniques to deal with this at the time.

Then came a very unfortunate experience. I was raped by coercion, leaving me absolutely grief-stricken. No one tells you how physical an experience the aftermath of such an event is. Crying as quietly as I could as to not wake them up and alert them to anything wrong, relieving large amounts of blood from down there and wondering if I’m ever going to be fine again, my bowels spasming due to the sheer devastation... and that’s only the start. Waking up in the proceeding days, I felt a furious disconnect from my body... like it wasn’t my own. I can’t explain it. It felt detached, in the same way that you can’t tickle yourself because it’s your body. But suddenly, it’s not your body... and it’s no laughing matter.

Regardless, the point of saying all this is to provide some context on my issues... not to speak about the intricacies of rape and how real all the stories about the aftermath are. Over my next few years, I’ve developed much better sexual confidence, much better assertion over my worth and really come out of my shell. But some things still ring, and it’s always when I’m around men who I consider prototypically attractive, but in particularly ones who put a lot of effort to look as masculine as possible. They feel threatening, because I allowed them to and I lived off them threatening my rights for their own gains. 

I am slowly learning that I am an attractive man. Even those words are hard to write. I furiously want to go back and change them, but it just conflicts with everything I’ve ever told myself. But even then, even if I am not... it doesn’t matter, because to the right people I am brilliant and beautiful. There’s no shame in not being someone’s cuppa tea. 

A long story short, I felt I needed ways for people to love or appreciate me because I was simply not worth loving. My childhood was quite barren in that respect, and troubling. Being physically fit or a gay people could idolise for such was just one of many straw men, on top of being a top academic performer, never losing and always having the means to impress people. I wanted to be loved and appreciated, and that’s the way I’d learned. Be useful to other people. But, no more. I am worth more than their use. My fundamental right to be cared for and loved is not to be sold short on me being useful. That was when I had the key I needed, which was self love. Allowing myself to be compassionate to myself for this barren upbringing unveiled my eyes to what you actually all love about me. I’ve learned I harboured some harrowing thoughts about myself, this included. I’ve spent so much time fighting these, so I could stand beautifully without being a tool of use to other people.

But for now, compliments are hard as I resist. Being around physically fit or masculine guys who I put “out of my league” is intimidating and anxiety inducing. Being hit on always comes with the scare of how they might use or abuse me. Sex is still a mixed back of a wonderful indulgence but something I need to be careful with given its emotional context in my life.

But I have come such a long way, and I am prouder of myself than you’ll ever know. I no longer put myself beneath them, I learned I stand tall in my own brilliant right.