Wishalloys

Daily reminder that Dirk Strider made a physical representation of his brain at 13 years old just to have someone to talk to, only to have the sentient AI he created echo back his worst fears for three years, driving him deeper into his isolation.

Daily reminder that Dirk Strider still managed to be one of the most human of the kids, fighting for his best friends and feeling guilty for years that he couldn’t give Roxy a relationship with the only human being left alive because he couldn’t betray himself and deny his lack of attraction to women, even if it would doom their species.

Daily reminder that Dirk Strider broke up with Jake English because of a mutual lack of understanding in how to communicate - the two dealt with their isolation in opposite ways and he couldn’t bear feeling like a drain on his best friend, no matter how much he loved him.

Daily reminder that Dirk Strider has to live with the knowledge that his brother was abused for years by some iteration of him, and he can never truly make right on that because the actions were not his own.

Daily reminder that Dirk Strider is one of the most deeply broken Homestuck characters and to treat him as a one-dimensional villain/bully is to do a disservice to his incredibly poignant writing. There is so much to be said about a character that is shown to be cruel and abusive in one circumstance ACTIVELY CHOOSING to fight whatever part of him is predisposed to be that way, and sacrificing himself not one but twice for the greater good.

BUCKLE DOWN KIDDOS BECAUSE TODAY WENDY’S GONNA TALK ABOUT HOMESTUCK AND HOW IT PERFECTLY TACKLES THE REPRESENTATION I GET MOST FIREY ABOUT.

in the english-speaking world, the apple is a symbol of destruction primarily because of the biblical story of the tree of knowledge in the garden of eden.

because of this story, the apple came to mean not only sin and destruction, but also maturity, knowledge, (catastrophic) change, free will, sexuality, and defiance of god.

sburb takes its players at the onset of puberty, displaces them from their childhood homes, destroys everything around them, kills off their guardians, and forces them into a tumultuous and dangerous world. in return, they become immortal gods and create a universe (with strong sperm + egg symbolism to boot), they are bound to a system of heroism and justice, they are taught the secrets of existence, and they are allowed more power over their own lives than they’ve ever had before. they lose their childish innocence. they grow up.

I originally gathered these for some friends of mine but I decided to share it here on tumblr as well so ayy

Hopefully reading some of these theories will help you shape how you view the Evangelion universe and understand it better!

I don’t know how much of this Hussie intends, but he clearly has at least some background in myth, so you never know.

Casual reminder that Jade is not the only sibling to act out her self-hatred via proxies

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Oookay so well today I remembered that certain sea creatures have blue blood instead of red, and after doing a little research on the subject, I realized that the entire troll hemospectrum could possibly be feasibly explained with different amounts of the different proteins hemoglobin, hemocyanin and hemerythrin! Sorry if it’s a little too sciency for one’s tastes but do let me know if I’ve gotten anything wrong!

oh no, no, no. It’s going to happen. I’ve been worn out by a full day of painfully forced socialization, and I’m tired, and I’m going to get emotional. This is me getting emotional. I’m so sorry everyone who has to witness this. Here we go. We’re going on a journey.

Poor Karkat. Poor terrible, horrible, sweet, awful Karkat.

I mean let’s break this down. For one, Alternia demonstrably wasn’t great. We saw the struggles of Signless and Redglare and Summoner and the countless lowblood efforts to rectify this horrible system of death and racism and abuse; in some ways it seems abstracted to the point of not mattering, because who can actually care about a bunch of hypothetical off-screen galactic-scale genocide, anyway? It’s asking too much investment. “Badass” works because its scope almost defies practical imagination.

But when we see how some characters have inherited the values of Alternia and hurt each other in terrible ways— and this applies to almost every troll in the cast— It’s regrettable. These are children that inherited a hugely oppressive and destructive set of social values that ultimately proved detrimental in their lives and relationships. There’s a reason half of them died a few days into their isolation on the meteor, and beyond that, more reasons why they’re generally unhappy and unstable and unfulfilled.

And that’s the point! That’s the point, I think, not only of what’s going on here with Karkat, who openly celebrates the values of his culture— but in all of homestuck. It’s a story of kids that have to deal with the problems lent to them by their guardians, their parents, their social predecessors; even the cancer of the humans’ session is passed on through the genetics of the frog made by trolls. They deserved better, but tough shit. Somebody came before them, and that asshole wrote the book, and now they have to work with the shitheap they’re given. The narrative makes an argument against Alternia that is strong enough even with Karkat lauding it here; we have to consider the context of his character’s voice, and the giant overshadowing theme of inheritance. I really don’t think this is meant to be taken at face value.

I mean, think about it. This very rant characterizes his ancestor as a Worthless Idiot. Ouch.

Ultimately, it’s more self-derision about his mutation under layers of indoctrinated patriotism. And that’s too bad. He’s the worst version of himself when he’s trying to live up to that utilitarian, merciless idea of the “good troll.” His blood color doesn’t make him worthless, and even that becomes symbolic for his other very strong qualities that Alternia would meet with similar disdain. That respect for Condesce and the empire comes at the expense of his self-worth and ultimately his happiness; that’s the price Alternia asks from him.

So here is the rough draft for my “Anime and Feminism 101” panel that might be happening at San Japan. 

A few notes:

This is obviously not a transcript, but just the ppt slides. I’ve timed myself going through them with the commentary I want to add, and it takes about 30 minutes to go through it.

It is subject to change between now and San Japan.

If you have any suggestions/corrections, PLEASE add them! 

I disagree with so much of this. I am getting fed up with Western audiences in general but especially with anime (since I am Japanese). This is culturally imperialist, white feminist drivel (but it’s not only white women that do this) and it reeks of hypocrisy - you can’t preach this kind of stuff when the West is also sexist. If you are not Japanese then you don’t have any right to decide which parts of our media are definitely sexist or feminist. I can’t believe you were trying to “educate” people on this topic at a god damn panel.

Hell, the Western market contributes to less than 1% of the anime industry and Westerners are probably one of the worst things for the industry. The majority of them practise piracy and don’t spend a cent yet continue to complain about the quality of anime, demand that studios produce xyz and even whine when their free fansubs aren’t released on express. I once saw some people on a Hourou Musuko post recommending that everyone use KissAnime instead of Crunchyroll because Crunchyroll didn’t have a large selection (since it was legal and was a pay-to-use service created to support anime producers)…just how spoiled are you people?

There is no such genre called “Girl Coming of Age” and the “Magical Girl” genre was a huge contributing factor to the popularisation of moe (fanservice through infantilsation). Funny how you have Madoka and Sora no Woto listed as “feminist series” when they are both moe shows aimed towards adult males. Many people were discussing how Madoka was pretentious lolicon but no one on tumblr thought about the social context until Urobuchi’s interview spread over to tumblr. Misty/Kasumi from Pokemon is still sexualised, she was often used for fanservice scenes (which may not have appeared in the English dubbed versions) and Pokemon’s primary demographic is young males. This kind of “innocent fanservice” is very common among kodomo anime but again, you won’t realise anything without being raised in the culture.

I’m also rolling my eyes pretty hard at how you want anime to subvert gender roles but also believe anime is feminist for presenting girliness as a strength. Japan is a very conservative society and girls being encouraged to be feminine through children’s TV is a way of keeping gender conformity. That’s not a feminist message. There is so much pressure in Japanese society to follow these gender roles. A tomboy is seen as lacking in submissiveness and feminine charm and will often be told in her life that she will be unworthy of marriage and will never be a “real woman”. 

The standard for a “girly girl” is much higher in Japan and girls that don’t reach it are viewed as “manly” since masculinity is the default. This was largely a result of Western imperialists threatening Japanese men (wow what a surprise) after the Meiji era. These Japanese men decided that they would have to become tougher and that they had to stop the “feminization” of their culture by instilling stricter roles onto the Japanese population.

This is reflected in video games such as Persona 4 where Naoto pretended to be a boy because she wasn’t as feminine as society told her she should have been. She wanted to be a detective but to do that she would have to avoid being seen as a weak girl and to gain respect by posing as man. All you tumblr anime feminists went off to interpret her as a trans man and continued to piss on anyone that tried to tell you otherwise. Chihiro from Dangan Ronpa is another example of the problems with these strict gender roles. Don’t project your Western values onto Japanese society.

Often times tomboy may not be considered masculine from a Western perspective, and in fact very feminine instead. Many Japanese feminists are arguing for an abolition of gender roles on children’s TV, they don’t want presenting either masculinity or femininity as a strength. Japan is a traditionalist, homogeneous society with a deep focus on collectivism. If boys and girls were encouraged to focus on their own traits rather than doing just what their gender expected them then that would be pretty damn feminist. 

You are applying Western politics onto Japanese media while practising cultural imperialism and you don’t give a fuck how actual Japanese people feel about it, you just want to boost your ego as you post long-ass essays about anime onto tumblr to prove how much of a “feminist” you are. Why did I never see anyone call out Hayao Miyazaki on his bullshit in “The Wind Rises”? He was glorifying the designer of the Zero’s Engine, Jiro Horikoshi. It was a fighter aircraft that was built with Chinese and Korean slave labour, then used to massacre these peoples. Nah, you were too busy crying over his disdain for otaku and wondering whether Kill La Kill was a metaphor for puberty.

I wanted to thank the person who wrote this long rant, I wanted to praise them to heaven’s high, but it turns out, they deleted their blog. Well, figures that the one person with the courage to make tumblr face reality with first hand knowledge would be bullied off the site as soon as they dared to raise their voice. This is why this community has been making me sick lately.

This rant covers the exact things I have been trying to say for THREE YEARS, but every time I try to, I am shut up with the words "You are not Japanese shut up you d not speak for them". Well, here you have it from a Japanese person. Are you happy now?

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Madoka Magica, but calling the Anime that said “Only girls have enough PMS to be magical” feminist is like calling Pizza “diet food”. And interpreting Naoto and Chihiro as trans will always be a headcanon and nothing else. Heck, most people don’t even realize that the American localization of P4 greatly toned down Chie’s Social Link to hide the fact that she has giant complexes because of her being a tomboy a considers herself an “unworthy woman” and actually LOVES being called “girly” or “docile”… Things that would be considered an *insult* in Western society.

While “Death of the Author” is a legit way of interpreting a work and SHOULD be practiced, erasing the cultural context behind it entirely is ignorant and nothing else. Educate yourself on the society and culture behind a work before you call yourself an authority on it. You don’t HAVE to be Japanese to understand these things, but you need a honest, true will to read into the issues from many, MANY sources and try to grasp them with all your intellectual capacity. This is how an academic approach works. This is how you learn to be truly flexible and tolerant. This is how you avoid being a TRULY bigoted, spoiled brat. 

Japanese society is not American Society. Applying American standards when interpreting a Japanese work doesn’t make you progressive. It’s the equivalent of criticizing 100 years old literature as if it had been written yesterday. You can’t do that. Anachronism is the same as Cultural stew. Differences will be differences. The world is not America. Finally get that idea out of your head, please.

And, most of all, do NOT find yourself entitled to complain about a medium you do not invest money into. This is the reason I only watch Fansubs when I plan on buying enough merchandise to make up for my inability to pay for watching the series. If you want a voice on a matter, you also need to invest into it. You cannot demand to have a voice without investment. It doesn’t work. 

Japanese Anime industry doesn’t give half a damn about the Western Market. They do not earn money off us. My japanese friend wasn’t even fully aware that there was a market for Anime and Japanese videogames in the west until she met me. Now she uses dubbed Anime and localized Persona games to improve her English skills and has interesting discussions about localization and differences in fandom with me. But before that she was completely unaware of our existence. Also, by the way. She is a textbook fangirl. She would be considered as girly as they come in a Western Standards. But the thing is? She considers herself a “very boyish tomboy”. Because, by Japanese standards, she is. 

(This has been requested, so now I’m making a TL;DR version of the Ancestor timeline with all the facts that we know of and that I can remember.

The whole thing is very long so I’m going to put a read more in there. I hope you find it helpful! :D)

The Condesce appears on Alternia and grows up to kill the previous Empress and becomes Empress herself.

Dualscar, The Grand Highblood, Darkleer, Mindfang and the Dolorosa appear as grubs on Alternia in no known order.

They grow up.

purified-zone replied to your post:Could you explain mythic role in general?

w-what

:p

1) The Classes are story Archetypes(the different types of stories a protagonist can have), the Aspects are different conceptual aspects of Reality which provide the themes, settings, and concerns which that story concerns itself with, and the hero is the Individual protagonist who’s story it is and through whom the story is expressed.

2)Each person has their own unique perspective on what Life and Reality mean, and what is important and interesting in life. The Aspects represent this, that Aspect of reality you are “assigned” being the one which you have the most intimate involvement with, then this involvement is expressed through a certain basic story-shape, which is what Class is.

3)Heroes are Embodiments of the 12 Aspects of Reality. They are Avatars of the 12 Aspects, examining themselves by endlessly playing out a series of 12 Basic Stories through the lens of the infinite variety that recombinant, multiversal Reality can provide via Personhood.

4)A summary of each individual’s sum total of all possible behavior in all instances, made by either an entity or a vaguely intelligent system(The Game maybe, or P-Space itself), applied to them “anachronistically” from the Individual’s perspective since their Title is assigned before they actually start influencing Reality through their behavior in a serious way(by playing The Game). The important thing to understand is that whatever assigns Title exists outside of Time and Space, and so from its perspective all the things that Hero could do have already happened, are happening, and will always be about to happen, simultaneously. All those points exist at the same “distance” from the one handing out Mythic Roles.

5)Mythic Role -Class and Aspect- are just Game Mechanics; what sort of Powers a Hero can draw from, and the pool of “Abilities” they have to channel them through.(For example; a Necromancer casts Dark Spells, but a Death Knight channels Dark Magic through physical attacks and Auras. Ditto Priests and Paladins with Light)

6)The Game’s Mythic Roles are the same as the Mythic Roles we assign Mythological Gods and Hero/ines. Zeus is King of Heaven; Athena the Goddess of Battle, Civilization, and Crafts; Odysseus the Champion of Craftiness; Achilles the Champion of War and Agency. Gods and Hero/ines are archetypes; symbolic simplified-people embodying certain philosophical and moral perspectives, and their stories are stories we are actually telling about ourselves, our society, and our lives, to ourselves, through that symbolism.

i hope you see this anon because my timezone is terrible and i do not think anyone in a reasonable geographical region is awake right now but

there’s the authorial answer and the character answer, right. like from an authorial standpoint the reason jake talks the way he does is because he’s created from grandpa harley, who was based on the trope of, like, a colonial-era explorer dude, so that’s why he sounds vaguely britishy.

but the issue of whether or not jake speaks with a british accent is totally not settled! personally it’s my headcanon that he has an american accent and just uses ridiculous words. actually a lot of jakeisms are outdated american slang (especially jazz age stuff like “sockdolager” and “slipped me the mitten”), or just goofy-sounding (“ay caramba”, “sure as god made little green apples”, “kicking christ in a dirty diaper”). like if you’re interested in writing or RPing jake, i think skewing too british and throwing in too many bugger offs and sod thats is a good way to make it sound subtly un-jake-like.

anyway yeah, jake lives isolated on an island but i think that contributes to the problem. his only guide for how to act is movies, and his only human contact has been with jade, who i like to imagine probably raised jake by encouraging him to be himself and do whatever he wanted. he probably watched one too many old movies (or like 300 too many) and had no one to tell him not to use that kind of language. if you do headcanon him with a british accent that is also hilarious because it means he probably started affecting one deliberately at some point. there’s no one to tell him that that’s an odd way to talk until he meets the alpha kids over the internet.