#mini-essay

This is not a good article. It is describing an obviously true phenomenon - Gen Z kids aren't as gung ho about Harry Potter as Millennials are - but attributing that to the fact that the appeal of the series is steeped in the politics of 90's liberalism:

That’s why millennials like Harry Potter a whole lot more than younger generations do. The story captures a worldview that is no longer attractive to young people jaded by the experiences of economic decline, political polarization and spiraling identity politics. They have fallen out of love with Harry Potter because they have fallen out of love with the worldview the series represents. Which is to say that young people have fallen out of love with liberalism.

So this argument is pretty dumb because, well, I've read the books; obviously the politics are not the appeal? But to take this argument seriously, it is pretty dumb for two more objective reasons. One is that Harry Potter is still incredibly popular - something the article itself admits to, even it tries to couch it in riding on the coattails of its Millennial success. But that isn't really true, as Harry Potter is still one of the most read children's books in the Anglosphere. If you are going to say something like:

You don’t see this [decline] with fiction like “The Lord of the Rings” or “The Chronicles of Narnia.” Sales of those books may rise and fall in response to new film or TV adaptations, but those franchises aren’t bound to a particular generation in the way that Harry Potter is bound to the millennials.

You should probably prove that the Lord of the Rings books are selling much better than the Harry Potter books today! But you can't, because while sources disagree (this info isn't public) they are at least tied and Harry Potter is probably selling more. (Let alone the Chronicles of Narnia, lmao) The relative decline from the release-era peak requires no explanation; the same thing happened with Lord of the Rings, which absolutely was catapulted into new cultural relevance by the 2000's movie trilogy.

The other hole in the argument is that while a longer term generational decline is quite possible - maybe Harry Potter won't have the staying power of Lord of the Rings, it isn't as good of a book series after all! - the book's political themes are not going to be the cause of the decline because it had almost nothing to do with its success. After all, the book series was a global phenomenon well outside of the epicenter of 90's liberalism! As Tanner Greer outlines:

Look, I lived in China. I taught English literature there. An entire generation of Chinese kids was obsessed with these books. They were obsessed with them despite the fact that none of the things this essay says about '90s liberalism applied to them. Their political ideals were not, and are not, the political ideals of millennials in America and Britain. Their sense of good and evil is different. Their memory of WWII is different. And yet they loved these novels.

Another commenter in this discussion noted that the series was serialized in Urdu in newspapers in Pakistan! Pakistani readers in, uh, 2002 did not buy into "political liberalism", to put it lightly.

As Greer also comments on, the article is making a hash of both its timeline and its object of reference; it is confusing readers with fandom. The fandom for Harry Potter was a peak of intensity that Millennials experienced that, obviously, Gen Z never will. But fandom is always a pretty small slice of the readership of a book; it does not define its legacy. And in this case, it is a deeply unrepresentative slice, because Harry Potter has the unique honor of being the ur-fandom that shaped the newly-born internet of the 2000's. There are a lot of reasons why this happened that are outside our scope here; but the result was that being an online nerd in ~2005 meant Harry Potter was the foundational point of reference for anyone who was even adjacent to being a nerd. There are probably years where literally the majority of fanfiction being written online (in English) are Harry Potter fics. Gen Z is clearly incapable of experiencing that.

And more importantly, in this era it was a pretty apolitical point of reference. The 2005 internet definitely leaned liberal; but it was not the political battleground nerd spaces would become in the 2010's. The political memes of Harry Potter were generally backdated onto the series as time went on. This stuff:

We interpreted our politics through the lens of the wizarding world, comparing those we disagreed with to the books’ main villain, Lord Voldemort, and carrying signs with slogans like “Dumbledore’s Army” and “Hermione wouldn’t stand for this!” at Women’s Marches.

Is all Trump-era meme shit. They couldn't cause the success of the books unless they had a Time Turner (zing!).

But while the article itself is making a hash of things, there is a very oblique version of this argument around politics that is more fruitful. Why were Chinese and Pakistani kids reading Harry Potter in such droves, after all? Is it because the books were truly that universal in their appeal? To some degree, yes - JK Rowling is no literary savant but she absolutely knows how to spin a good yarn for a children's book. The series could never have maintained its momentum if she didn't. The books aren't good enough to achieve what they did alone though; no book is.

Instead they had the fortune to be published in the 1990's... the peak of the era of Pax Americana that defined modern liberalism. The United States - and therefore culturally the Anglosphere - was at a new height of economic & cultural dominance. The USSR was gone, Hollywood was running roughshod over global film, and the new technology of the internet was spreading across the globe but was primarily housed in the US - supplementing culture but not yet displacing the old centers of cultural power. The Harry Potter books became the most successful books in the Anglosphere, and that definitionally meant they were the most successful books in the world. People in China & Brazil wanted to read them as organic readers, for sure. But they also wanted to be "in the know" about the hot new thing. The thing everyone in this new era of mass media was talking about. You had to read it, because "the whole world" was - and the world had the liberal West at its core.

The world has moved past that now - megahits in China frequently outearn American hits and neither side notices, everyone is now in their own cultural microbubbles of K-dramas or 90's Indie music, and so on. The economics of culture in both within and between countries has changed dramatically. I think it is possible you will "never" have a success quite like Harry Potter again, because the world that enabled it is gone.

But there's one through line that I want to take a quick look at: This episode was so impressionistic, showing the world through Laios's eyes. The most obvious example is of course the childhood memory sequence where the wild camera movements, loose line work, and stylized color choices give you the impression that you're inside a fuzzy but pivotal childhood memory, but it's also there in more subtle ways throughout the whole episode.

Take for example, the way the living armor moves in the flashback vs modern day. Back when Laios was inexperienced and unprepared, the armor moved like a terminator - quick, robotic, inhuman. The lack of anticipation makes many of its movements startling and unpredictable.

But after skipping ahead to present time, the armor now moves more loosely and sloppily. It's still intimidating for sure, but more like a zombie than a killer robot. It lurches forward with uncoordinated movements and the arms swing clumsily after the rest of the body.

This could signify that the armor hasn't moved in a long time (or even just a different vision from a different key animator) but to me, it most importantly signifies a shift in perspective from Laios. Laios is now much more experienced, has a party that's got his back, and is armed with an insatiable curiosity. (and insatiable tummy rumblies) Where the living armor was previously an insurmountable threat, now it's a puzzle to be solved. How does it work? CAN I EAT IT?

There's so much more to talk about, like how after Laios's big epiphany, he's' suddenly bathed in bright sunlight throughout the entire rest of the episode! This post was adapted from a small piece of this video where I break down the whole episode (or as much of it as I can cram in 10 minutes) so if you enjoyed this, check it out! Thanks for reading.

I saw this quite of Tana French going around and it made me question it.

How can anyone have a talent for anything like that? Does it mean that they are more love-able for simply existing? Does it mean their personality makes them easier to be loved?

Does it also mean that some people aren’t good at it and never will? How can you really be love-able? Does it mean being carefree? Wearing your heart on your sleeve?

Is this a way to justify that some people are so hard to love, they basically shouldn’t expect it?

Or is it like when people say that “nobody will love you if you don’t love yourself first”? Or “you can’t really love others if you don’t love yourself”? Both are statements that people tend to say a lot.

I’d rather stand with Laura Snelling, Matt Joseph Diaz, Bethany Smith and others.

People shouldn’t have to love themselves to deserve love. If you have a mental illness, then it’s so much harder. If you went through dark shit, then it can be so difficult to even see yourself in a good light. If you see bullied, gaslighted, or treated in ways that weren’t okay. If you didn’t really experience love...

Does it make it easier? Probably. Mainly because If you think you deserve stuff, it’s easier to set boundaries; you can be firm and say no without feeling guilty.

But if you can’t truly and honestly love yourself, that shouldn’t mean you can’t be loved by anyone else, or that you can’t love.

That message is terribly harming, yet people keep repeating it all the time.

No one that has any kind of mental health issues choose to have them, and “getting over them” is hard and can be the work of a life time; so repeatedly telling them that they can’t be loved or love unless they love themselves first, it means that they should loose hope.

When you are at the bottom of the pool, you don’t really think one day you’ll be able to float.

And being told that you don’t deserve love until you manage to fix yourself ... it’s not true.

Everybody deserves love, right?

Let’s take a quick look at the ending scene of Lupinranger vs. Patranger again:

I love this scene for a lot of reasons, and not just because it’s hilarious. Throughout the episode, Tsukasa has tried desperately to hide the fact that she likes stuffed animals, only for Keiichiro to very casually reveal that he knew for almost as long as he’s known her. Cue the rest of the team nyucking it up and the episode ending on a happy note. But the real reason I love it is because it reveals more depth of Keiichiro’s character and also what a great friend he is.

I know what you’re thinking. “Great friend!? He just revealed Tsukasa’s secret!” Well just hold on a second. Look at that last picture just above. Does that look like a “Nyeh nyeh nyeh! This will go great in my blackmail folder!”-face? I don’t think it does. And now let’s look at Keiichiro’s face while the rest of the team teases Tsukasa.

This is not a “Haha! I got you!”-face. This is a “You know what I love to do? Chew.”-face. He doesn’t look smug or teasing because he doesn’t think he has anything to look smug or teasing about. He doesn’t see anything funny or earth-shattering in what he just said. Need more proof? Let’s go back to the beginning when Sakuya asked Keiichiro if he knew any of Tsukasa’s secrets (Sakuya, who asks that?).

And yet he did know her secret. So why did he say that? Was he lying? Well since it’s Keiichiro and his head didn’t explode from the exertion of doing something dishonest, I doubt it. Besides, his voice and facial expression in this scene don’t make it seem like he’s lying, so why did he say that despite knowing the fact that she likes to hug stuffed animals?

Because he didn’t think it was a secret. He didn’t think there was any reason for Tsukasa to hide it because he didn’t think there was any reason for her to be ashamed by it. Because he didn’t see anything wrong with it. He didn’t see her hugging a stuffed animal and think “God, how girly!”, he saw her and thought, “Oh, my friend likes stuffed animals. Neat. Welp! Off to go chew something!”

“On the first day of the Senate he allowed nothing to be discussed but the funeral of Augustus, whose will, which was brought in by the Vestal Virgins, named as his heirs Tiberius and Livia. The latter was to be admitted into the Julian family with the name of Augusta; next in expectation were the grand and great-grandchildren,” (Tactius, Book 1, Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb).

Funny thing, I opened my book today to read a few more lines before breakfast and I had already read this part, but thought nothing of it. It matched up to what Suetonius wrote and that’s cool. But as my eyes caught it this morning, I suddenly realised something very important.

Augustus clearly had love for his wife until the day he died. The not only helps prove Livia to be merely looked down upon by historians, but is possibly telling of a harmonious relationship.

While writing the will, Augustus could have easily exiled or executed Livia for ‘her crimes’. Not only this, but it is understood that he would not hesitate to do so given Augustus placed his own daughter Julia in exile. It is possible to think Augustus was older when he wrote his will, which is possible. However, being in a position of power, it would make far more sense if Augustus wrote his will far before his death. But this leaves one to believe that it is possible he was ‘unaware’ of Livia ‘being evil’. When one has a sense they are to die and it was clear to Augustus through many signs he was about to die, he would have most likely re-evaluated his will. Hence, if needed he may have rewritten it.

“Originally there were two modes of making wills; for people made their wills either at Calata Comitia, which were appointed twice a year for the making of wills; or they made wills in procinctu, that is, when they were going to battle; for an army in movement and under arms is Procinctus,” (Smith and Long).

It is important to note Augustus was the most powerful person in the empire, so this rule of twice a year may have not applied to him. Also, if Livia was ‘evil’ he would have realised that at some point before his death. He married and lived with her for a very long time. It would have been difficult for Livia to ‘hide’ the fact she was ‘evil’ for that long. It is not an impossible task, but doubtful when truly thought about.

So, given that Augustus did not exile or harm Livia (or Tiberius for that matter) upon his death, it is clear that Augustus loved her. If a minor scandal can cause him to exile his own daughter who he raised and loved, it would not seem far fetched that he would execute Livia if she was in fact ‘evil’. No, when he died, Augustus wanted her to be a part of his family for the rest of her life. He showered her with honours and clearly wanted to know she was loved, even though he was gone. 

Damn, I’m gonna cry now. Anyhow, essay over. See you all later and as for Tiberius, I think Livia may have still cared about him and Augustus didn’t want to make her sad.

Sources: http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/annals.1.i.html (Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb)

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Testamentum.html (Smith and Long).

A video about me talking about the Cell Games. Giving you guys the script for those who don’t want to listen to my voice.

The pitch of Roommate (as seen here) is that of a "real time" romance simulation:

What makes it real-time is that the game progresses in sync with the Saturn's internal clock. In that way [main girl] Ryoko is just like a real girl; she has her own daily habits and lives her life accordingly. So if you start the game in the afternoon, you might not be able to meet her because she's at school [...] The purpose is to enjoy living together with Ryoko in real time and communicating with her.

And this is exactly the kind of way-too-convoluted gimmick that sacrifices gameplay functionality on the altar of conceptual novelty based on random technology add-ons present in new-gen consoles of the era that I just love. Obviously the concept of starting a game and having the main girl not be present so you cannot play is completely asinine - but think of the realism!

Between that and the discount-Sadamoto 90's character designs, I wanted to see it for myself; so I spent way, way too long setting up a Sega Saturn emulator. In my experience early CD-ROM-based consoles often require much more bespoke set-ups to get working, in this case custom BIOS files in the emulator firmware directories, and JPN-language ones at that for this game. But I got it to work and oh yeah, this is some early "digital" console era crust:

Playing this game is just painful. The clock of course means that you essentially can't play it at all - looking at YouTube comments on the very few Let's Plays and such that exist, people are reminiscing about how they could never find Ryoko because their schedules didn't align. One person even comments:

This game is for NEETs and shut-ins

Which is a valid demo I guess! But it doesn't really stop there - your house is a "fully realized" 3D environment of bare walls which you navigate with clunky controls. Let me log in and take some screenshots...

Jesus Christ it's 10 pm and you are cooking dinner?! The one time I don't want this ghost popping out of the cracks in the floorboards, I swear...

Okay, got rid of her (She broke a plate -_- you moved in yesterday, girl):

You walk, in real time (step by step) through this pixel museum just...hoping that one of the rooms will contain Ryoko and proc a dialogue event based on the time of day. There is a little more to it than that but that is essentially the gameplay. This would, very obviously, be simply better as a straightforward visual novel.

But you see how that just isn't as cool in 1997, right? This is the era where the fidelity of graphics and the technology for simulation is progressing at a rapid clip, and everyone wants to see the boundaries pushed. Roommate isn't the first "real time simulation" game, but it is the most pure, the one fully committed to the bit. Your house is completely mapped out, the girl has her routine, you walk step by painful step through the rooms because this is "real", you are living it. They even use a live photo for the outside of the house to sell the aesthetic (and also save money):

Ryoko is waiting in the kitchen of that house when you come home from work, putting on an apron, ready to cook dinner. For you.

Assuming you get home at whatever fucking 30 minute window the game decided to gatekeep its gameplay behind! But of course I exaggerate - it wasn't that bad (there are little mechanics you can use to set some schedule times in the game for example), player tolerance for bullshit was way higher then, and you were expected to buy strategy guides for these things. So even though it was panned by critics on release...it was a sleeper hit with a devoted fanbase.

Which means it got a ton of sequels and ports! We don't have to go through them all, though I will share my favorite factoid about the first sequel - "ROOMMATE ~Ryoko in Summer Vacation~" from the wiki:

The character designs are significantly different from the previous game (especially Ryoko's brown hair and large breasts).

Priorities, baby. But some of the ports are interesting because of the changing tech. A version was ported to the PlayStation, which does not have the internal clock a Sega Saturn had. But coincidentally it did have the PocketStation, a handheld GameBoy/Tamagotchi hybrid expansion tool that did have an internal clock and could sync with the game. It also let you track Ryoko's schedule and play mini-games, with some very adorable animations as you can see in this ad for the product that featured Roommate:

This device absolutely reminds me of the Disc Fax system discussed in my Miho Nakayama essay - a very niche product biting off more than it can chew making games overly complex to play but allowing things that would otherwise be impossible (and this one was a good deal more successful at least). Here it allowed Roommate's central gimmick to function - and is super cute, honestly I would buy a standalone tamagotchi version of this game.

The PS1 also couldn't quite handle how the game was built for the Sega Saturn graphics-wise, and as such a bunch of the 3D elements were sanded off into 2D simulacrums - most notably the house:

Which, despite this being a technological downgrade, is way better! It looks adorable, you can actually see what is going on and where Ryoko is, and you can navigate it way more cleanly. God, did...hold on let me tab back to the game...yeah, is there no clock in the original game on screen. That is insane. Anyway the PS1 version had a lot of these cute little graphical additions, even right on the title screen:

It is definitely the better looking version, which is a classic tale - in 1997 the "bleeding edge" of 3D graphics were impressive to players, even through their roughness. Now they just aren't, and so the retro charm of designs that are optimized what the mediums of the time could reliably handle have a lot more appeal.

There was also a PC port in 1998, which did exactly what I suggested and added an "adventure" mode where you could ignore the clock system. They definitely learned over time what worked and what didn't; but the appeal of the gimmick is what first sold it to players in the end.

All of this is to say, don't play Roommate, and if you do just emulate the PS1 game instead of torturing yourself with the Sega Saturn version. Oh...you weren't gonna play a Japanese-only abandonware 90's not-even-eroge dating sim to begin with? Ah, well, yeah, I guess that makes sense.