Exceptionalism

I believe there is a division in people. I believe that some of us out in the world are exceptional. I believe that some of us are capable of crafting a life and future regardless, and sometimes in spite, of circumstance.

This divide is not something I mean to state out of arrogance. A part of me feels apprehensions in writing this because even I can imagine the ridicule and opposition that comes from saying something like, "These people are superior, and these people are inferior." However, this is not my claim. My claim is simply that there is a division.

Earnestly, it could be argued that a person who is almost purely the result of circumstance is the lucky one here. An existence like that can be guaranteed. It can be distilled into a series of conditions that we maybe could then make essential for human beings in society to maximize happiness. Because earnestly, I think most of us would be perfectly happy with the simple life. Most would be satisfied with finding a lover, starting a family, and accumulating wealth for their progeny so that they may do the same. With a religious figure present to answer the unanswerable, for all those swirling torrents of difficult questions and emotions, you can call upon some god for comfort.

If maximizing happiness is our primary motivator, then yes, this does seem perfect. But it is in the "others" that our problems begin to arise. In order to craft this system that maximizes happiness, you must give people a set of rules to follow. A system works on a series of dos or don'ts, cans or cannots. In most cases, most people are able to follow these rules. Being able to see these rules and being able to follow them makes it easy to belong. However, because of this, it is possible to be wrong. If assimilation means happiness, then why would some people be so driven to fight against that assimilation? You could almost consider it a mistake of the human condition.

Very often, for human beings to consider a system legitimate, they need need to have a scapegoat or otherized group to channel their negative experience onto. This is a fault of human cognitive dissonance and if we are to truly create a great system for achieving simple happiness we need to cast aside this type of reasoning and see how these exceptions arise in the first place.

For this example I am going to be speaking about the LGBTQ community. These individuals shouldn't  be such a target of hatred from the systems that allow human simple happiness, but unfortunately, it appears for a great many that a part of creating this simple happiness is creating objects or states of being to channel ire into, a simple way to hand wave their internal conflicts without actually confronting them themselves. And the non conformist expression and statistical rarity of someone in the LGBTQ community makes them an easy target for things like the Abrahamic religions. If belonging and happiness were so readily achievable, then why wouldn't people who are gay or trans simply cast away those aspects of themselves to allow assimilation? It appears that there is this fact of the matter for these individuals: that happiness cannot arise without also expressing their LGBTQ identity, this aspect of their identity is intrinsic and cannot be changed. If that was not the case, they wouldn't exist—there is no incentive to do so in systems that would kill or hurt them in response to this being expressed. That is reason enough for me to believe that those are aspects of consciousness that cannot be chosen or disregarded when we consider the systems we build society from. These cannot be the things we target as "undesirable" if we are to build society to maximize self actualization and happiness.

I do believe these people could be granted this simple happiness if the systems that allowed for it would accept these people, which is why this is not necessarily an argument against simple happiness for all. You do have to completely overcome and redefine existing systems for this to happen - but systems are malleable as long as the core of simple living is kept strong, and it can prove those results to the masses. Simply change the arbitrary rules, held in by claims of tradition and the discomfort of social conditioning. 


Their is another roadblock to establishing simple happiness and this will come from an individuals ambitions towards knowledge.

Knowledge is a burden. As a person learns about the inconceivable vastness of the universe, the immeasurable-ness of time, and the fallibility of the human mind (prejudice, memory, manipulation), you begin to see an abyss. People can lose themselves within it or feign ignorance towards it. A lot of philosophy is built on people looking in terror towards that abyss and then choosing ignorance or a convenient answer in the face of it.

The lucky ones can bury it away and choose the simple life after brushing against it, but the ones that cannot become our scientists, philosophers, and artists. Those are the people who, after looking into the abyss, never stopped questioning it, so in response, they started to look for answers. The tragedy being that, in the light of every answer found, two more questions surfaced. Their quest for answers either stops due to death, or when the weight of infinite ignorance makes them step away in fear—causing them to seek simple happiness, delusion, or hedonism. If the pursuit is endless, why bother?

In the throes of adolescence, humans seek identity. After years of being defined by the family unit, a property emerges in the brain that demands independence. Because you cannot create material independence, you instead seek out independence in your identity. You begin to challenge conventions for the sake of it. To know what it feels like. You are attracted to the progressive because it is exciting, new, and different. You seek out different cultures and different perspectives because they differ from those that you grew up with. Just experiencing these things makes you feel individual.

Simultaneously within this intellectual searching also comes the experiencing of romantic relationships. Those two distort from one another, and because the libido is so strong and insatiable during adolescence, romance typically takes the majority of attention, and all other pursuits also occur in service towards romance. The exploration of certain thoughts or aesthetics will only occur if they also happen in service of sex and companionship. This may lead to a person casting aside their religion, seeing the grand tapestry of the world, and knowing about the many unique ways people live their lives. This is the first step into deconstruction: Why is it this way?

People may flirt with these concepts but never in a substantive way - just a neat thing to consider and feel smart and unique considering. The breakthroughs in thought do not occur because eventually, material independence comes to us, and the fruits of our romantic relationships result in children. And in the pursuit of sustaining that material independence and ensuring the safety of your children, you choose the simple happiness. It is natural, noble even, when framed that way.

However, in some, there is this will to truth. People who, in the face of the question "Why?", begin to seek answers, and in the face of these answers, begin to deconstruct them. If this is the answer, then why is it the answer? It cannot be cyclical or self-existent; every answer needs a reason for being an answer. The terror in this pursuit comes when the questions no longer have answers. You cannot substantively prove life after death - you cannot conceive of it. You cannot substantively prove God - to say you can perceive God is true arrogance.

So the responses are either endless meandering for the answer, or the three mentioned before: delusion, hedonism, or to fall back into the simple happiness.

But to wrestle with these to me is proof of a division of human beings. There are those who simply and easily assimilate, and those that cannot help but feel the drive towards deconstructing all. This doesn't help an individual. These ways of thinking wouldn't exist if its only purpose was a simple, happy life. If that was the case, then assimilation would be easier for all of us.

But this is a division of the mind - an intellectual division. I also believe there to be a division of spirit within humanity. The ability to transcend circumstance is exceptional. For a person of upper-class birth to stay within the realms of the upper class is not a reflection of will; it is the expected result. This goes for all class levels. If you are born middle class, you are most likely going to stay middle class. If you are born poor, it is expected you will die poor. People are typically a direct result of circumstance. This is only natural. The conditions we are born into compound onto themselves to ensure the same outcome in the future. The systems produce the people.

A poor family has access to poor schools, a poor school has access to poor resources, poor resources lead to a poor life, a poor life leads to poor choices - and then you have kids amongst all of this poorness. An upper-class child has access to the best schools, the best resources, the best opportunities; of course they make "the right choices." Even if they make poor choices, they have access to the best resources—of course they'll recover. And the poor person who has poor resources? When they make "the wrong choices," then they receive the worst punishment for it. They don't get the best lawyers. They don't get therapists. And people act surprised when this person stays destitute and poor.

The upper class isn't so because they are intrinsically better people, the middle class isn't so because they are intrinsically average people, and the lower class isn't so because they are intrinsically evil people. Their systems produce the same people.

Then what is the explanation for those born of poverty who ascend to a higher class? Exceptionalism. I believe most classes of people make roughly the same amount of mistakes. And this context keeps them staying within the confines of that class. So to ascend class means you must make fewer mistakes, and you must make exceptional choices. You have to exhibit endurance that is exceptional, you must have willpower that is exceptional, and you must have drive that is exceptional. Do not get this confused with luck. People can know a guy who gets them a job that assimilates them into another class—that is not exceptional. Being exceptional means having the ability to make choices based off the results you want, not as a result of peer pressure.

It is in this intersection where I believe the most exceptional of us lay: within the intersection of intellectual exceptionalism and spiritual exceptionalism. To have one of either makes you exceptional, but to have both is exceedingly so. Unfortunately, the people who have both qualities do not seem to be the happiest of individuals. In fact, these maybe the most hopeless. To have the ability to say exceptional things, think exceptional things, create exceptional things; but for what? Upon realizing you can achieve through your own efforts, you then have to ask what those efforts are for. Most in this situation fall into hedonism or aim to change society for the better—fundamentally shitty society and culture in their wake. Of course, even then, is the work ever done? Is there a pleasure that leaves you entirely satisfied? Is there such a thing as an absence of injustice? It's enough to make a man throw up his hands and give up.

But this begins the trap of knowledge. You cannot unknow these things. If you stopped at the beginning, you may have been able to delude yourself into living the simple life. But now, even if you were to try and live it, you would be haunted by the fact you are distracting yourself from your own knowledge.

So what is the solution? The most ancient one comes from the Hindus and the Buddhists. These problems have been so integral to the human experience that the oldest surviving religions are based off of them. They state that one should detach. Your suffering is because of your attachment to worldly things. So let go. Realize the body is just a shell, see that the universe just is, and you can just be as well. It's nice; there's a reason such beliefs have existed for so long.

However, I prefer to look at things a little differently. The suffering is the point. That's why you keep going. We see the suffering as the thing we are trying to get rid of, the thing in the way of our contentment and happiness. Suffering is the succor to greatness; it is the tempering of the soul. The great misgivings of humanity are a result of giving into suffering, whether that is escaping it or trying to find the easy way to overcome it. Finding convenient, easy answers to our problems in the face of the suffering—such thinking gave rise to things like Nazism.

This human condition is not about getting answers or arriving towards a utopia. It's about self-mastery in the face of it all. It's about deconstructing and understanding at the deepest level we can achieve in our lifetime - so that those problems can be chewed on further by the next generation of exceptional thinkers. Why else would we be given these faculties? We speak on the intelligence of other creatures in comparison to our own - as if there even is a comparison. The chasm of understanding. The ability to even consider, to consider and deconstruct infinity, to be able to understand the intelligence of other creators. Surely the point is to march forward towards infinity. Finding answers to the once unanswerable. Tearing the fabric in our understanding with new discoveries. Leading us to have to start anew. No other creature can, so we must.

Escaping the suffering isn't the point. The suffering is the point.

Just Existing

 Knowledge - Facts, they give us this impression that we are coming to grips and a better understanding towards the totality of what human experience has to offer. As if the human experience can be itemized and inventoried. However, in the same way knowledge expands our understanding, it also narrows our vision.

Not all aspects of life are meant to be picked apart and atomized for the sake of optimization. Some aspects of life and the self are deeply intrinsic and rooted in the soul, our very being. Human experience isn't just a commodity, it is a unique tapestry of life and lived emotions. Your humanity isn't quantifiable. It cannot be optimized because it isn't labor, it isn't code in a terminal. It is life. It is "You".

We try to find the path to being a perfect human, but there is no perfect human being. And in attempting to find the answers to being our ideal self we turn to the outside and dilute the very core of our uniqueness. Influenced by those who sell us on the idea of happiness and connection as a market imperative - a way to make money off of us - not for the sake of our internal well being; We expose and dissect the most private and vulnerable parts of our selves in a very vain attempt to be come the most optimal human. But an "optimal human" isn't a better human, its not a loving human.

There a couple aspects about this that I've been considering.

The first is that when you constantly look for the answers to your problems and you find those answers outside of yourself - you are robbing yourself. When you relinquish the hard questions and hard decisions away from yourself you also relinquish your grip on life. Your life is no longer your own. It is of great help to seek guidance or advice but not if it is in cost of your own agency. You must take actions because they are what you want to push forwards to. When your solutions and ideas are your own then your life is yours. The obstacles you face are ones you are more willing to overcome because they are obstacles you chose to face. Not the obstacles the most calculable best route had you face. Your progress is a result of you. There is the flip side of this, where when you seek answers outside of yourself what you'll turn up is hopelessness. Cries of impossible odds, that crabs in a bucket mentality where every time you begin your escape you're brought right back down. In the perpetual company of participants to the race to the bottom. When we speak of institutional or systematic issues we often forget the point of it is awareness, so that we may fight against and overcome such things. Not use them to validate our stagnancy. Yes, the circumstances in which you were born in may have very well put you much further away from the finish line, but you can still win.

The second is that we may be too focused on defining ourselves so much so that we lock parts of our personality and experience away. To define is to narrow, make brief and explainable. In coming to grips with ourselves we rigidly give the various aspects of internal selves labels. To feel like we are part of a community, to lessen the possibility of scrutiny and confusion from others, we will sand off all the corners and craft an easily accessible (boring) version of us. We get caught up in the outward presentation we forget the person we truly are. The chaotic, unruly and sometimes ugly internal self. But with the chaos is also beauty and moving expression. Those parts, they can't really be put into words. I think in giving ourselves the grace to not define those parts to allow them the full breadth of their expression, without the narrowing terms or words, we allow those parts to move us. We can feel more. When we try to quantify and explain the most abstract and spiritual parts of ourselves we diminish their very strength and weight.

Perception

 Perception. As an individual, there is no greater tool in your arsenal than perception. The Stoics spoke about it - "Our life is what our thoughts make it". The spiritual masters in the east have created centuries worth of practices based off of perception: Yoga, meditation. These are beliefs, ideas, foundations, fundamentals formed in the B.C times of human existence. Throughout even the earliest parts of civilization, philosophy, and education there has been this understanding that our reality and our perception of reality are intertwined so tightly they are indistinguishable from one another. They are one and the same.

The things we find sexual or attractive, a direct result of culture and shared perception; beauty standards. The objects of desirability result from what you've been told is desirable and whether you've allowed that perception to attach to your own personal perception - making your desire towards this thing a reality.

CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, the most extensively used and effective tool in psychology. This is a psychotherapeutic process that forces you to identify thought patterns, recognize them the negative ones as unwanted, and then dismantle and replace or overcome them. It uses exposure therapy, a form of rewriting trauma and impulse reactions through overloading them with positive or neutral perceptions on the same subject. A brute force reconfiguration of your perceptions that completely reshapes you reality. CBT calls upon you to look at that which hurts you and then reclaims its ability to do so. Its a tried and true formula. This is one of the most basic forms of psychotherpy but is undeniably one of its most effective.

A person who can achieve great things is one who believes that they can achieve great things. Self efficacy and your belief in how much you control and your propensity towards positive outcomes go hand in hand. The Locus of Control. A person who believes they are in control of their outcomes tends to also have high self esteem and self security. They are able to withstand negative life events with more resilience. All because of perception. The difference between "Things happen to me" and "I make things happen" is enough to make you a stronger person, measurably so.

This doesn't exactly mean you can just think your way into happiness and success. Concepts like that are also crafted in the mind and aren't even understood by those who spend their lifetime quantifying it. Contentment isn't a goal that is reached. Contentment doesn't result as a matter of simple accumulation. Contentment is a long never ending process of evaluation and reconstruction. Contentment is forever spontaneous and fleeting - you must always keep it in reconsideration. Unfortunately most people don't reshape their conception of contentment until those moments where they are at the end of their ropes.

Maybe there's a sense of shame that people feel in reaching towards contentment. The higher functions of our intellectual brain equate being fine with "good enough" as tantamount with just giving up on your passions and dreams. To be fine with what you have is to kowtow to a mediocre existence.

Stoicism and Buddhism answer this by asking you to "Just Exist". They get to that conclusion in very similar ways but their definitions of just existing are very different. Regardless there is this understanding that we are the masters of our own universe. That feeling and being are one. That experience is a matter of curation, not simple passive observation. But observation is the very thing that gets you to be able to curate your existence.

Communication

The greatest human skill is communication. We are such empathetic creatures that we can draw out of someone delightful joy or crushing sadness trough images alone. This ability to convey and connect is the most human aspect of the human being, To not engage in such is a waste. Whether that is through debate, literature, art, music, comedy, or sex - I believe to be fully human is to communicate as often and as effectively through your preferred means.

You don't have to have the gift of gab or be an excellent painter, but you must find your medium of communication - regardless. Some do it by thanklessly laboring for another - showing their care through physically exhausting themselves and devoting precious time for the benefit of another. That is a form of communication I find to be truly remarkable within the framework of my personal philosophy. But that is just one of many approaches available to the individual. Regardless of the approach you choose, make use
of it.

There's an enrichment that comes from communicating. There's a breaking of barriers and a hailstorm of love that crashes upon you when you are able to accurately and effectively show your emotions and intentions to another. But that us where the difficultly lies: showing your emotions. As a human being - to be fully human - is to be quite vulnerable and embarrassing. The most powerful of emotions are usually the ones we deem immature, adolescent, or primitive.

This may seem quite reductive, but a lot of feelings and lengthy diatribes on one's ethics can be boiled down to: Boo [This Thing] or Yay [This Thing]. You may try and add depth to it by extrapolating just how deeply it effects you or by adding flowery language, but ultimately a lot of feelings boil down to whether you like something. How it just kinda makes you feel when you get down to it.

In that way you might be able to argue that the person who can write eloquently, compose brilliantly, or paint vividly would have the upper hand in obfuscating the overall embarrassing aspects of these feelings, but they honestly do not. You see, in every medium of communication there is an immature or adolescent way of going about things.

Cringe, that's the word we use most nowadays to describe these portrayals of communication that fills us with embarrassment after being expressed. Every form of communication has aspects within it that can be identified as "cringe" when wielded in a certain way. So regardless of the form of communication and your proficiency in it there is always a worry of coming across as cringe, as embarrassing. This worry is destroying you, it is holding you back.

Communication is the greatest human skill, it is our most important skill, use it. Many - if not all - interpersonal problems are a result of a lack of communication or miscommunication. If you want to know someone's thoughts or intentions, ask them and then observe their actions (and how they reflect in respect to the spoken thoughts and intentions). So many people build a vile portrait of others in their brains. Not because of what that person has done or said but because of person hasn't done or hasn't said.

These "hasn't"s fester in the brain and within their mindscape morphs this human into a vindictive creature, a selfish creature; when in reality this person was just busy or such at communicating. Or they are afraid of expressing themselves. Afraid to express themselves because they the other person would find them gross or weird if they expressed all the things they want to express to this other person. And those nevers become a list of regrets that tether themselves to us. Weighing us down.

A lifetime of feelings never expressed. Thoughts never shared, another piece of you repressed. A part of you hidden away. More and more of yourself that you won't allow to live. It makes you blank, numb. All of what you feel, all that you experience. It is all interconnected. When you push one emotion down, you push them all down. Your body, your soul, it gets one message and it's not "don't feel this thing" it's "don't feel". When you choose to not express specific aspects of yourself around other you are not telling yourself "I don't want to express this part of myself" you are telling yourself "Stop expressing"

In order to be human you need to be embarrassing. You need to be vulnerable. You need to be cringe. To be cringe is to be free. When you allow yourself to feel the full spectrum of emotions then you get to experience life with the full spectrum of emotions. You get everything out of this life rather that what you've allowed yourself to get out of life.

 

Life Goes On.

Life goes on. It is inevitable, it is constant. There is only one absolute guarantee and that is: Time moves forward. With time many great things may happen, many tragic things may happen - regardless, you cannot change the fact that things will happen. Randomly. Chaotically. Sometimes as expected. Sometimes suddenly. No matter what, they will happen.

So it seems the best way to take it all as a healthy functioning human being is consistently and peacefully. Have your daily tasks, your to-dos, and fulfill them with passion and earnestness. Have your hobbies and let them enrich you, take time for the things that you smile and make you whole. Love those that love you back. Take the world as it comes, don't panic - just do what you need to do and take solace in the fact that you are making an effort.

All that can be asked is that you care and that you try. Regardless of whether you approach it with anxiety and dread or with tranquility and a steady hand - the results, materially, are often very similar. The primary thing that determines the quality of your work and your effort is a combination of knowledge and experience, something that comes with time.

So if the results may largely be the same materially, you have to take it from the perspective of yourself and your mental landscape. If the quality of work is not something you can conjure up spontaneously, then you are best inclined to not add that extra stress and worry.

I think a lot of our anxiety is a result of perception. We worry largely for reasons outside of ourselves. Maybe we worry about coming off as apathetic, or lacking urgency. You cannot force earnestness, especially not in bouts of panic. Because panic, anxiety, it doesn't stem from what's best, it stems from consequence. Imagined punishment. Why live under the tyranny of your brain's delusions?

Even when you do well under the pressure of anxiety you never feel content - you just feel relief. The task is done and all it did was bring you back to a place without fear. It's miserable. This is why you can't let your primary motivator be the avoidance of hurt, the avoidance of imagined consequence. Let your motivator be enrichment.

Intellectual enrichment, the enrichment of your relationships, personal enrichment. When you fail under those circumstances, you'll probably do better next time. When you fail while under a state of anxiety and fear you just become avoidant - the last thing you need is to be avoidant. This life is for living, not fearing. Do not create a life of fear. Create a life of acceptance and forward motion.

You can only apply what you know. You've only done what you have done. What you know, what you've tried, what you can do in the future, all come from living. So let yourself live.

 

Wild Arms: Standard JRPG - Bogged Down By It's Simplicity and The Design Trends of it's Time

Wild Arms is one of those "hidden gems" I've heard of for awhile. Framed as this often looked over JRPG worth the time and consideration of gamers, unfortunately eclipsed by the release of Final Fantasy VII. I am curious of how it got this reputation. I hate to make accusations like: "People are blinded by nostalgia" because those same words have been used to disregard some of my own favorite pieces of media but I earnestly cannot help but feel that way after having experienced Wild Arms and what it had to offer.

During the half way point of my playthrough I had this feeling that my ending thoughts of the game were going to be something along the lines of: simple story, simple combat, but tight and not too difficult - makes for a nice casual playthrough for JRPG veterans or a beginners entry for those new to JRPGs. However three core things come together to make the experience begin to falter and really drained me by the end. These three things being:

1. The Encounter Rate
Wild Arms has an impressively high encounter rate. I am talking every few steps sometimes.

2. The Slowness Pace of Battles
These battles can be painfully slow. The worst example of this happening with enemies who inflict       status ailments, further slowing down the battle with LONG spell animations and wasting your            subsequent turn healing the conditions.

3. The Labyrinthian Dungeon Design
This should be a HUGE positive for me. I love dungeons - they are some of my favorite parts of            RPGs

Wild Arms has some incredibly interesting and fun dungeons. Puzzle focused with each character acquiring a number of tools to provide different layers and types of solutions to the puzzles within each dungeon. On top of these neatly designed puzzles comes these maze like corridors that test the player's awareness and memory - filled with a great amount of treasures that are always helpful and never feel like a waste during your playthrough. Seriously fantastically designed areas that are brain scratching and feel like more than just padding. If only you could explore them without so much struggle. When your dungeons are long and they are sprawling the worst thing you can do is make a player unable to explore them and take note of their environment. I had a reoccurring problem in Wild Arms where I was unable to create a mental map of the area I was exploring because of the amount of time I spent in battles. I would begin exploring an area, only to be hit with a random encounter, this battle would take a minute or two, then I would take a few steps and then be hit with another random encounter, after which I would retrace my steps a bit refamiliarize myself with where I was because my mental map of the area had began to blur after spending so much time in battle. Rinse and Repeat this process until I completed the area. This high encounter rate is further exacerbated by the fact that Wild Arms is simple. The battle system could even be called brain dead. I don't hate this on the surface- sometimes an affair of: Pick your strongest attack --> Heal when needed --> Repeat, is what I want. But for the battles to be this simple yet take so long only serves to bore the player. This boredom became frustration when these battles kept me from progressing and feeling like a master of my environment with the dungeons. 

I wanted to enjoy the game - but the game found it necessary to keep me from experiencing it most interesting aspects.

Wild Arms has ambition. It feels like it has some ideas it wants to show the player. The whole project feels like it comes from this place of excitement and inexperience. The wild west flavoring is inspired but is underutilized - the game largely feels like a standard JRPG fantasy - but with sprinklings of the steam powered machinery. While everyone is using Swords and Sorcery your main character will occasionally pull out a FUCKING ROCKET LAUNCHER. Its charming - but it doesn't go far enough. The designs of enemies are wild. Very little standard JRPG monster fodder - many of these creatures are terrifying or wacky beyond description.

Bird with metal hands and spiked purple shoes

Lizard Plant Maneater thing with tendrils???????

They have a Flatwoods Monster! This is one of my favorite things ever! You have to understand how much I want to like this game.

Even the big bads have these really interesting designs - some of who fall into the realm of ninjas - super off kilter in comparison to the demon dark knights. I feel its obvious that the team had unique ideas and wanted to implement them into their own RPG but the ideas themselves never get to have the proper spotlight they deserve because of the simple combat and the high encounter rate that was typical of older JRPGs. Rebalance and tweak some numbers and this game could work so much better. Truly a shame.

I Want Media To Be Genuine, I Think........

 I am over media discussion. I am over media journalism. Its almost all this trite circle jerking. A bunch of "informed consumers" fighting over how informed they all are. We are in an age of endless content. An age where all the scratches in your brain can be itched by the most targeted and focused pieces of media. You can be appealed to in ways never seen before. Perfectly crafted algorithmic formulas concocted in the offices of our corporate overlords to be poured into the ever further decomposing  mindscape of the masses of hungry consumers. Should you be appealed to though? Do you know what's good for you? Have you noticed that since we have damn near automated and assembly lined the process of creating art that we just get the smallest variations on the same things? Every video game is the "Dark Soul of X" or is "Like X and Y had a baby" or "A battle royale with influences from X". Its derivative. Everything is derivative, and its all derivative in the worst ways. Not in the way that an adolescent new to creation wears their influences on their sleeves in their first attempts at expression. That's endearing, that's inspiring. This is cold. Calculated. Manufactured. These are small turns of the dial made to see if the end result is more profitable. "They like extended universes, Marvel is real big, so we need to make sure all of our projects relate and connect and converge" "They like crafting stuff. Look at all these survival games, look at Minecraft, they are huge. We need to put in a crafting system." "They like competitive multiplayer where extended play sessions are rewarded, so lets implement a perk system. And we made it so this multiplayer aspect of our game is their primary avenue of social interaction - so if they fall behind we can make it so they can just pay their way into parity with their online friends."

The worst part of this is that it is rewarded. It is greatly rewarded. We love our small iterations on the SAME FUCKING FORMULAS. We have been convinced we need to consume all of these tiny iterations, quickly and obediently. 60 - 80 hour experiences we need to finish this month because the next 60 - 80 hour experience is fast approaching and we can't fall behind. God forbid you fall behind. If you fall behind you might not be a part of the conversation. A pointless, worthless, unfulfilling conversation. Drivel. The same conversation you had on another game just like it a few months back. Just to keep up your "friendships" with filler. Because that's what friendships are, right? Opportunities to talk about media! Not to experience life together. Help one another accomplish life goals or projects - we don't have the time for that anymore. We have to use that free time to CONSUME MORE. 

Video games are bad but anime is the true embodiment of this. The logical extreme. With the isekai genre being a stark showing of this philosophy on making tiny changes to a formula until it brings the bank. A slice of life high school anime with some small change or area of focus. In the late 2000s we had this small "genre" of shows which we called "cute girls doing cute things" where the "cute things" could be literally anything. Driving tanks, Mahjong, Surviving the zombie apocalypse, Band class, Just trying to graduate high school, etc. Its been going on in this medium since its insurgence. The medium is almost entirely defined by this derivative and  iterative nature. Hundreds of mech shows. Hundreds of shonens that tweak that formula Dragon Ball created. Hundreds of high school comedy shows that are similar to Azumanga Daioh. Hundreds of "regular Japanese dude gets transported to another world with amazing powers" isekai shows. Its the nature of the damn medium. Its insular. Anime is influence by other anime. Who's roots all go back to one brand new take within the medium decades ago. This works because of the Japanese Otaku culture and its increasing isolation and lack of families. A path that we in the western world are walking towards all the same. We work more, interact less, and birth rates are falling more and more. Moving towards media to fill those voids. This piece of media made me feel happy for a moment, and this one did the same, so if I found something that was like these two things put together then I'd be twice the more happy! Without ever realizing the profound parts of these things didn't come from the superficial things we identified. 

We like to trick ourselves into believing that there is some easily identifiable to formula to happiness. Its human for us to believe this. We always want an easy answer. Eat this superfood and you'll be healthier and live longer. Stop eating processed grain. Consume less sugar, but avoid artificial sweetener. Take this pill for pain. Just deadlift more and you'll muscles will strengthen and your back won't hurt as much. That's what media has tapped into. Add a little bit of this and a little bit of that with a sprinkle of this and you got a hit. Never understanding that at the root of it all - its the human aspect we value the most. When you play something like Undertale, beyond all the concepts and fun ideas and all the "its like Earthbound meets a shoot-em-up and a visual novel" bullshit, what you have is a cohesive piece of art with a clear vision and emotional impact. There's a clear passion and something being told. Emotions that are genuine being conveyed to you. Passion evident in the lines of dialogue and the scenarios presented. Sometimes it doesn't even need to be upfront, it can be obscured, but the sparks it creates in the consumer's soul causes a fire to erupt. Think of Dark Souls and its lore, communities of people piecing it together into a rich tapestry for the awe of any seeking it out. All because of the aesthetics and odd language used. This VISION, so human, so alluring. It can't help but compel us into taking a dive into it. 

When these pieces art land they greatly impact the landscape of whatever medium they fall into. A paradigm shift occurs. We think its because of the new mechanics or the new approaches but we never seem to understand where the ability to create those new mechanics or approaches come from. They come from a person or people trying to convey. A person or people trying to communicate something, and in trying to find the way to communicate that something they find that what was before just can't communicate what they hold deep in their heart(s) in the way they want, so they must create an approach all new. We become so deeply impacted by this combination of human expression and approach but put all of the weight in the approach. Shove ideas into that box and come short - missing that human aspect that gave it it's gravity. This is where so many attempts at representation fail. Misguided social critics may have you believe its some sort of conspiracy involving the woke mob or some garbage (where if you follow the breadcrumbs far enough you learn the roots are blatant anti-Semitism) but the issue is that they shoe horn in representation and it rarely comes from these minorities themselves. These aren't minorities creating minority characters to tell the stories of their minority experience. These are calculated business decisions made to save face and create good rapport. Its not genuine, and while the social critics aren't ok with it for that reason (their reasons truly stem from dark places) this is why I am not ok with it.

Affirm Your Convictions, Not Your Distress

Through the lens of the many in your life your issues seem small and simple. They have disregarded these issue's emotional weight or have chosen to detach themselves emotionally from them as to not even have to deal with the emotional baggage in the first place. I know you believe that your ability to exist and thrive is contingent on support. On some level all humans are under that belief, we are social creatures and hate being outcast or othered. Some people go through great trials in what seems to be in spite of disregard - as if the naysayers became fuel to their fire, while others appear to begin to become whole as they find their support group and can truly embrace the ascent up the snowcapped mountains knowing they have some warmth to come back to. Even these however can beget an individual's downfall. The descending opinions of others that a person used to stoke their flames leaves them unable to differentiate worry from malice and that flame that once guided them becomes the flame that consumes and destroys them. The belief that you need constant support becomes a crutch for a foot you kick and scream that is broken without you realizing that in times you weren't even paying attention you had been walking strong on it all along.

The undercurrent beneath all of our progress, all of our triumph - is ultimately ourselves. I believe when we do right, we ought to do right because we believe it to be right. It is the worst part of us that demands recognition, it is the worse part of us that demands compensation. Those that have gotten those things: medals, titles, money; never is it enough that one time. You get on that hedonic treadmill and demand more and more, rather than being okay with well enough. We think that if only we had this or if only we had that - we would be better off. All of those thoughts are just distractions from what really matters: doing the work. You do the work because you believe it is the right thing to do. You do the work because you believe it ought to be done. The work should be well enough. Your reward should come from a contentment of the soul, not of the oohs and aahs of passerby.  Those that want to understand you will put in the effort to understand you, you will not have to explain yourself to them. If they do not want to understand you, do not hold contempt or ill will towards them - that's just you setting yourself back further from the work you ought to do, another distraction. 

You will have to fight this battle everyday. To believe the work is done when it has been done is foolishness. Everyday you must sweep the floor. Everyday a layer of dust accrues upon it. For every day dust is there, it must be swept. The mind is the same. Everyday you will feel helpless, you will feel unheard, you will feel unappreciated, you will feel anger, you will feel that need for revenge, that desire to show them how wrong they are. Those feelings are pointless, what matters is the work. Do the work. The work that you know to be right, the work that gives you peace of mind, the work that builds your character

Disregard the Person, Not the Lessons

 Becoming decent, maybe even exceptional, comes from realizing that you ought to not adopt all the philosophies, lifestyles, and principles of great men or discount them entirely upon finding out the flaws in their character. Rather you take the best, hold it close to your chest, and use that to facilitate your own self actualization. It's only in accepting the potential pitfalls of being human do you allow that greatness to be cultivated within yourself.

No matter the seeming perfection of past figures, dig deep enough and you will find ugliness. As humans are aspiring and transcendent so are they pitiful and disgusting. To ignore the potential ugliness inside you is to ignore all the potential good as well. The only way to have a life of neither is to live a life of stagnation and mediocrity. Can't have the lowest of lows with no highs to compare them to. You can't realize the depth of your accomplishments without seeing the traps you could've fallen into. To walk the path of potential is to walk the path of temptation. Greatness is measured by how much of that potential was realized despite the temptation, regardless of the temptations we fell victim to

Redefine Time

My most deadly mental trap for productiveness is convincing myself to not do the things I want because I don't have a full day to start doing them. I work swing shift and fall asleep immediately after coming home, so when I wake up I have a solid amount of time before I have to go to work, despite this I will refuse to let myself enjoy or be productive with this time because it is not a day off.

I need to redefine and come to an understanding with time. How long does it take to start reading a book? You can be through the majority of it in just a few hours. I have a few hours, so just read the fucking book. Even on my days off, I typically only really do these things within a 1-4 hour window and will feel very satisfied and content with them, and I have this time before work so i ought to use it! Even just one hour of some mindful consumption will do wonders for my mood and ability to enjoy the rest of the day.

I Want To Be Present

At times I  feel I am on a treadmill of sorts, emotionally speaking. There is this desire that arises where I want to feel the contentment and satisfaction of a day well spent, where I wish to get all I can from an activity and feel a real enrichment from it. The great paradox in this being that the more I desire such, the less I am able to achieve it. With that desire is an expectation that actively keeps me from embracing the activity and present moment for all that it is worth. Instead of engaging in all that can be engaged with I am constantly waiting and looking for the moment where it will all align and I can become full immersed and enveloped in the full nature of the activity. With every moment where I haven't become entranced is another moment I worry about time wasted. "I only have this small time to enjoy this, why can't I enjoy it" Every thought and worry another reason I can't begin to enjoy that small time I define as the only time.

I trap myself with these things. When you delve into self help literature and videos the problems and solutions are for the undisciplined. How to start cleaning up your messes, planning your day, taking care of your body, eating right, making your goals more concise and precise. These are all essential and helpful. These all sell, because these are the things people typically have trouble with, but what of the person who is disciplined? What of the man with his shit together but just can't find that solid contentment and enrichment that makes a life a life well lived. That's the predicament I find myself in oftentimes. After attending to all I I need to attend to, I long for leisure but I won't let myself enjoy that recreation. And that inability to enjoy my time outside of my tasks will then funnel back into me not being able to perform those tasks as well as I believe I ought to. Bringing me to the beginning where I have to get my discipline back in order before even considering enjoying any free time once again, just to be brought back to the same predicament of not being able to get what I need out of that free time and the cycle starts anew.

This is why I call it a treadmill. I am running repeatedly along the same cycle over and over. There is a slight irony to it all however. The solution is simple. The solution is to stop overthinking. You need to be present. I need to be present. Its deceptive in its simplicity however. Because the next question is how do you be present? A question that is seemingly impossible to answer. A question that is the foundation of the whole Buddhist religion. A question that is answered without words and experienced in full entirely internally. I think I find my beginnings in being present by grounding myself. Asking myself questions, opening my soul. Asking why my body feels a certain way. I go for the physiology, because I know I have learned to hide away and ignore my emotions, and that's how my body manifests those emotions even if I am not aware of it. "I am not relaxed. There is a tension in my stomach and my legs. My head has the smallest niggling of a headache and no matter the comfort of my seating I cannot help but slouch." I ask myself why I would be feeling that way physically. "Is it uncertainty? Stress? Worry?  Are those the emotions my body is hiding from me? What could be the reason I am feeling those emotions? What may be the cause of those feelings? Should it be affecting me in the ways it is currently?" I am opening up a dialogue with myself and allowing a decompression to transpire. I am letting my feel. It is when I let myself acknowledge the very things my body is not letting me feel that I can feel. This subconscious coping mechanism is more than a nullification of negative emotions, its a nullification of all emotion. So when I open those emotions up, feel them, and then let them pass, it in turn lets me feel positive ones as well. The emotional undercurrent of my recreational time can finally sweep me up and lose me in its luster. I can feel it. Becoming present in that moment is to feel that moment and all its offerings. The feelings of the activity become the feelings I am experiencing. An experience I can finally have because I let myself feel again after hiding away that capacity for empathy. 

Reason For Being

In the past, whenever I asked myself the question on why I wish to be alive I would always tell myself "To experience all the art I could." This externalized my desire for life to an object that wasn't tied another person or tied to my own success or circumstances or image of myself - things I saw as the objects others would begin to feel suicidal over.




When I chose this as my reason to live I always told people it was because of the power of art. How human beings can produce a series of words, a confluence of sounds, a collection of brushstrokes on canvas, an interactive medium; and experiencing these things can evoke extreme sensations within me. I can laugh until my face turns red and my breath seems impossible catch, I can become inspired and driven on a day I had already written off, I can mourn the death of a person who was never real yet feel the pain of grief, I can be compelled to eccentricity in a system that demands conformity. Its a beauty that cannot be ignored, a beauty that only humans are capable of. This ability to create and affect others through that creation. I loved that beauty.

But I've begun to deconstruct even that. Really dig to the roots of that belief. Why do I value that? And I've come to a reevaluation of my reason for being.




I want to experience what it means to be human. I want to feel the full spectrum of experience that this life has to offer. I want to let it in and accept the nature of things. I want to understand all it means to be a human being. I valued art because it gave me an external way to experience those emotions after a life of repression and hiding away my humanity, I called all those feelings that didn't further me in a practical and professional way as unnecessary and robbed myself of feeling the full extent of my LIVED experience. I want to get all I can from my perceptions, from my time on this earth, the people I meet, the bonds I share. I catch myself sometimes, I see that I am doing it again - clouding and shrouding my soul from being a person, being a human - I want to never know that feeling again. I want to bear my soul to the nature of being. To take in all I can be given in this small timeframe of infinity I lucked into the opportunity to experience

Suicidality

 I have a lot of personal history with suicide and suicidality. My mother, very likely took her life (can't be confirmed due to no note or witness to her overdose), my uncle killed himself by jumping off a bridge in the town I currently live in, and one of my closest friends Kyle killed himself during a manic episode a couple years ago. Now within the context of these three people, they all had bipolar disorder, and I have been diagnosed with it - a notion that terrifies the hell out of me. With each individual you know personally that has committed suicide, your personal chances of doing it yourself shoot up drastically. 

I have only personally come close to suicide two times within my life. I've been depressed, felt hopeless, have dealt with having a ton of general apathy towards existence; however I have only ever come close to actively taking my own life twice. The first time was a little over a year ago, the night before I had a dream that felt like it had lasted a whole half decade on this earth. I had lived this alternative life where my relationship with the first girl I had truly loved worked out, I had felt each wave of affection, passion, putting together broken pieces that comes with a long term relationship with this girl in that one night. Within that same dream, I was next door to my best friend, Terry, and I was still in good standing with my friend Juan who I had recently had a falling out with and we just lived and enjoyed life together. It was all I wanted at that point, that companionship, that romantic closeness. I was in a relationship at the time that was in hindsight very obviously me attempting to resolve the trauma I had with the girl in that dream, Val, so I was dating this hopelessly codependent person to prove to myself that I could've taken care of Val, as our relationship ended during this time when she was fearful of her mother cutting off the family and I had begun to throw myself in to 50 hour work weeks so that I could support the both of us; and as I reach the point where it seemed to be a reality, she broke up with me. As well during that time I desperately longed for deep connection, some comradery. I wasn't getting it from my partner, I was lying to their face without even realizing it. At work I was very well liked but it was all paper thin, sure everyone liked me, but they didn't know me deeply. They hadn't gazed upon my soul.

So when I woke up from that dream, I cried, I cried a lot. I mourned a life I very literally dreamed of. I loved the lie my brain constructed so much, nothing outside of it felt worth fighting for, a reality that wasn't that which I had lived in that dream was not one I wished to be around for. The ephemeral "what ifs" we distract ourselves when we refuse to accept the past, all those hypotheticals we ponder and consider, they became real for me in a night. Every wish, every desire my soul ached for at that time was given to me and was then taken away from me that day. I hated everything that had become at that moment. A person who had been content and accepting was ripped of those delusions like it was nothing. I wanted nothing more than to stop that, I hated having to grieve that world. I believed myself to not be a person chained by desires of the could have beens, never believed myself to be man with regret. But I felt regret for life that I deeply believed could have been. A life that felt to be all my fault to had not been obtained. "If only had I made better choices" "If I had only understood them more" "If only I had done a better job at keeping in touch" The only thing that kept me over the edge was I instead became insolently angry at others when they tried to get my attention during this state of crippling depression. I focused on that anger and let it distract me until those feeling got repressed, like all my other feelings have been. Another step into the cess-pit of alexithymia. I wasn't emotionally intelligent enough to try and understand  what my brain had begun to try and communicate to me subconsciously. I pushed it down and went forward.

The second bout of suicidality I had was this year. For some reason I had felt compelled to listen to my friend Kyle's favorite album, The Hotelier's "Home, Like NoPlace Is There" I hadn't ever listened to it in full before, never gave it a deep listen. So that time, in mid February of this year I came across two songs on that album.  "Your Deep Rest" and "Among The Wildflowers". Those songs felt like daggers. In their contents were commentaries directed sniper accurate at me. I was called out. I felt I failed that friend, I felt I could've saved them, but I didn't do all that could. All the wasted time cascaded over me, I could've done so much more to keep in touch, make them feel safer, I couldn't accept what kind of friend I had been. "A good friend could've made it not happen" "A good friend could've given them more reason to live, to stay". This time I hadn't distracted myself from the emotions, I didn't cry though. I was numb. I felt a clawing lack of anything. An existential vast nothing. I had no ties to where I was. It could all end and I wouldn't mind, a true nothing would feel better then this nothing full of dread, a nothing that made my throat burn and stomach hurt, made me shake and sweat but freeze and shiver at the same time. I just worked a lot to distract myself from this one. 

I've come to a lust for life recently. For as long as I could remember I have been fighting. I was surrounded by failed adults. I never had an example, a role model. All of the relationships I was exposed to as child, Toxic. They had no discipline, complete slaves to their desires. The people who were supposed to have my best interest in mind had done everything to ensure that I was given the worst of opportunities. I have such a deep love for Terry and his dad, Andy, because these were the only two people I can point at and say were the two positive influences I had. But in all the other adults, I had grown a resentment. I had to prove something to them, prove something to myself. I had to prove it could be done, if you white knuckled it, gritted your teeth, put in the work, had the discipline; IT COULD BE DONE. I wanted to show them that they didn't have to fail me if they just had the will, what they lacked was strength and I was going to show them what real strength looked like. And I did it. I worked my ass off. I reached the top of my workplace. I was the king on his throne, a throne built on the hate filled temper tantrums of a kid that wished he had been able to live. I did it. I proved to myself that with determination and discipline I could make it, but I wasn't happy. While I could prove to myself that success was a possibility, that it was within my abilities; I never even thought to ask myself what I wanted for myself. I was so busy in my pursuit to show up these adults that I never even begun to ask what I wanted. I wasn't living for myself. In a bitter irony, I had come to realize that those adults still ruled and controlled my life, just now it was through trauma instead of their actions. So I started taking steps towards what I wanted. 

I gave up that top position, I couldn't begin making the steps I wanted if I was working 60 hours a week.  I couldn't make the steps I wanted if I kept that position and the weight it carried. I stepped down. Stepping down let me break up with a person I had no love for, let me run from their hold on me. Stepping down gave me the opportunity to spend time with the girl I do love. A girl who was a coworker. I had heard for so very long that you should never date someone you work with and I let those words control my decisions. But now, I was ready to do things for me. I was ready to forgo all that conventional advice. I knew what I wanted. I had been watching her for so long. I felt the chemistry and happiness between us. I knew her for two years. She was at the end of her relationship and I was not going to let this pass me by. I knew if I hadn't taken my chance then this would've become yet another what if, another regret that I didn't want to live with. So I started flirting, hard. I made her fall deeper for me, feelings that we always knew that there, but were too scared to let be revealed. I pursued something I wanted, purely for me, a declaration of the person I was, a person I was hiding away. She's beside me right now, and there isn't a single doubt that it wasn't the right decision. She's the best thing to happen to me since I have become an adult. I am so very happy I listened to myself. I listened to what my soul wanted. And thats what I have started to do, I have begun to listen to my soul. It always had the answers I just chose to ignore them. Always concerned myself for what was optimal, what was going to give me the most gains, I minmaxed life. Never made me happy. But letting my emotions poke through, emotions that weren't anger or bitterness, that led me to some happiness. 

I do think those years of rigorous work helped to get me there however. I gave myself quite the safety net. It became easier to listen to my heart when the next meal became a guarantee. When  I could consider stuff like fasting for the hell of it instead of fasting because all that was for dinner was air. I don't have to worry so much about the stability of my future because I've professionally secured it with my accolades and experience. And those adults? I have truly forgiven them and love them, I don't carry that resentment anymore, but thats for another long spiel. I have learned to forgive. Truly forgive. Learned to accept. Truly accept. Right now I am the  happiest I have ever been. 

Your Anime Looks Bad - "Overlord"

Overlord really looks like shit. I've been watching a fantasy anime from the early 2000s animated by Studio Bones and the outstanding presentation of that compared to a show made a decade later shows the weakness of Overlord's aesthetic. Overlords biggest issue has always been how it looks. The bland, static, sterile backgrounds, the sharp, grotesque character designs, and the over-saturated color scheme that somehow is unable to come across as vibrant really bogs the show down. In the 2000s fantasy anime Scrapped Princess the backgrounds have a great sense of depth and scale and their softness and painted look creates these inviting landscapes. The characters- while very simple from a design standpoint - are very distinguishable and befitting of the world they inhabit. They aren't jarring and goofy looking. While you can argue that Overlords character look that way because they reflect the mindsets of their otaku creators (Momonga's past companions) and their over the top sensibilities that still doesn't doesn't excuse how poorly they are drawn or the characters outside of the Nazarick tomb.

Wonderfully drawn and composed still from Scrapped Princess

Now Overlord is above and beyond Scrapped Princess in the "fun" department and the fantasy world that Overlord does take place in exists for the sole reason of getting the piss taken out of it. However that doesn't mean that the world needs to be so low effort and ugly. Overlord just looks really cheap and honestly that detracts from the appeal and accessibility of the series. Scrapped Princess constantly shows you evocative images of its fantasy world; the wicker like designs of its rice fields, the college art student-esque monolithic figures in its plains, the varied clothing of its inhabitants from the military, church monks and the main cast themselves. Scrapped Princess understands that in order to gain a viewer's investment in a fantasy world they need to provide them with an interesting unique setting worth exploring.

A pretty poor screenshot from Overlord, showing its cheap presentation

As an anime loving idiot I do wish that people cared more about how it looked. This is a largely visual medium and those visuals are a huge part of the appeal. Even in Overlord if it weren't for the hyper-exaggerated expressions its demented characters make the viewer wouldn't get to anywhere close to the effect the show was going for when portraying their outlandish personalities and that why visuals matter: they help with conveyance. This conveyance is absolutely paramount to driving home a show's message, setting, characters, a lot of things okay.

Look at the scale in this frame, the vastness it conveys, and the mood the color palate is bestowing. Scrapped Princess is full of these moments.

"Small Girl Saves Show" "Romance a Shit"

How do I properly access a show that bases its central plot around a romance with no meaning? The show's romantic elements were never its selling point and the characters are never going to progress in any meaningful way and you can kinda get that just from how its framed. Is it okay for me to get angry at the lack of any romantic progress? Should I allow myself to get angry at the lacking progression? I always find myself watching these romantic comedy anime that I know won't deliver on the goods but goddamn it I can't help but want to see some actual romance happen.

Engaged to the Unidentified is another "It's fine" romcom anime that uses the aforementioned pointless romantic set-up to justify the characters being together and while I'm used to this I'm not okay with it. There's a certain kind of anger arises within me when I see a pair of characters experience romantic tension just for the show to almost immediately return to its comedic tone to tease the viewer. Its not that I even find the romance engaging or that I care if it ever progresses in any manner, Its the fact that the narrative thinks it can have it cake and eat it too that makes me livid.

Engaged to the Unidentified has this hilarious conflict of interest within the confines of it narrative where obviously the plot is set up to be this romance between the Female and Male interest but ends up never focusing on them because they are the story's most uninteresting characters and to focus on them is to make the story a boring slog with no energy.

The only thing that keeps Engaged to the Unidentified from being a pain to watch is its actual main character: the character Mashiro and studios Doga Kobo immaculate ability to produce a consistently pleasant atmosphere with their presentation. If not for these factors this show would of went from a 6/10 to a 3/10.

Shiki - Narratives and Catharsis

Shiki seems like an anime hellbent on the idea of never providing the viewer with a traditional sense of structure and release. A show never with a clear central character, rarely clear on providing answers or motives, a show where its apparent that most characters are heavily meditating on the situation they are in but where you are rarely shown that meditation. A narrative that plays out in an unbelievably drawn out fashion, only to be punctuated with a break neck paced ending once everything unfolds that doesn't include many conclusions or ends tied.

The show very much challenges the viewer on why they continue to watch the narrative unfold. The narrative holds no heroics, very little empathetic characters, the villains motives are never very clear or engaging, and no meaningful relationships are on the line, so why continue watching? The intrigue of the show, for me at least, is this question of why and the study on how people react in times of disaster. When the shit hits the fan in this show, the human characters who before were ruminating on the ethic and moral quandaries of the situation they are in, throw that right out the window and become absolutely brutal when the weight of the decision "us or them" is presented to them. However that comes near the very end of the series and up until that point you are left twiddling your thumbs.

You see its not that the show is slow or paced poorly, no on the contrary it is paced excellently and isn't necessarily slow. The story beats of the anime don't come in at a slow pace rather these beats are presented without huge impact or are very similar to others. The snowball doesn't roll down the hill gathering mass and momentum rather this is more akin to the rock slowly gathering moss until somebody comes along and just decides to destroy the rock. Not something very cathartic or in line with the traditional 3 act narrative but is strangely alluring and engaging in a metatextual sense.

The Argument Lies in the Execution Not the Concept

I recently watched the third season of the anime Overlord. Overlord is an asinine isekai that embodies the idea of power fantasy and "fake it till you make it". The show is great fun because of the great unbelievably unhinged lengths it goes to explores these ideas. Its not enough for the protagonist to be bland and an obvious self-insert - no - hes also super powerful (and every character he comes across is just another pawn to show off his awesome power) and every women ends up creaming themselves in awe of him. The power fantasy it is employing is not hidden in anyway; they're not pretending that there is a worthwhile mono-myth narrative here, everything presented is done to further its power fantasy. This aspect of the show isn't the problem with it - its the selling point. This is why I take great issue with the reviews for the show and its subsequent seasons on MAL. Many of these reviews claim that Overlord is no better than a show like SAO because of its power fantasy nature. These claims are idiotic because they state - in essence - that the concept of the power fantasy is the issue not the execution. SAO's issues are not the result of the concepts and ideas it attempts but how it fails to present those concepts in the context of its narrative. Overlord has a lot of leeway and excuses to make up for any plot contrivances in its narrative because the show doesn't take itself seriously at all and doesn't have anything at stake. SAO does take itself seriously and presents itself as something to be taken seriously. Overlord is goofy. Overlord is stupid, but its stupid fun - which makes all the difference.

I don't know where people got the idea that what a series sets out to do is what determines its quality. The themes and messages something attempts to get across should be irrelevant to one's critique of something. They seem to get the first step of critique down at least - identifying intent - but they forget the - how well do they do it - part which is where the actual critique comes in. Maybe this is why people see AnoHana or Your Lie in April as good shows, because they explore themes they deem as worthwhile.

I don't know.