I Want To Play Fallen London Again But The Problem With Fallen London Is That While You're Playing It's

giving eraserhead baby a happy childhood

Going through tsumihoroboshi now and holy shit I see how ya came to Rena falling into Q. Question is: did she fall into Q in more recent years or did she fall into the reactionary current earlier with something like gamergate or even earlier with something like Wakefield's vaccine scare?

The term 'Pastel QAnon' refers to, specifically, a conscious attempt on the part of QAnoners to reach out to and recruit new agey and more "crunchy" audiences. It feels genuinely surreal to point this out but even like 10 years ago being a New Age type/embracing nonsense about vaccines etc wasn't uniformly coded as "right-wing." QAnoners actively worked to bring them into the fold. To put it mildly, this aesthetic, of new-agey health stuff, pastel instagram infographics, etc, is all extremely heavily coded as feminine, or at least used to be. Rena, coping with previous traumas, superstitious by explicit ideological choice, and armed with a battery of complexes about her femininity, is ideal grist for this mill. I have very little trouble seeing her falling down a social media rabbithole sometime during the pandemic. This is arguably what we see happen.

Selected pages from the Rothschild Canticles, c. 1300.

The canticles live in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and are fully digitized. :)

Mild hot take but I don't think a Gnostic or Buddhist or Kabbalistic reading of Revolutionary Girl Utena is necessarily incorrect. I'm used to people dismissing readings based on those assumptions out of hand but I don't think that's quite fair.

Not that this layer cancels out the more obvious and central stuff about gender and fairy tales of course, especially given how heavily gendered Gnostic and especially Kabbalistic symbolism is.

(A thorough reading of Utena from a Kabbalistic symbolism lens sounds interesting but very much beyond me at least, lol. Maybe if I ever read Wolfson and Idel.)

Still while I'm confident the show does flirt with more esoteric and mystical ideas I don't think it views organizations built around those ideas very fondly. Most esotericism is premised on exclusiveness coming from possession of secret knowledge and the groups which position themselves on that ground (the Black Rose society and to a lesser extent the Student Council itself) are portrayed as cults, more or less.

The reason Battler has a veil--part of Battler's epiphany is surely the realization that the truth cannot actually be seen in reality unless it is in some sense concealed. In order to "grasp" Sayo he must accept the logic by which Sayo hides herself.

(Article the screenshot is from here. Need to clarify that the author of the article is not himself a monarchist, though it's funny that that needs clarification.) https://einsofist.medium.com/of-a-veiled-sovereign-8f2c3a887257

Art idea: give Battler a witch outfit? He deserves better than his normal clothes plus a cape (a dress would be neat but whatever you think fits his style)

Here you go! You have no idea how psyched I was to take a stab at this LOL

ty to @fisheatingowntail for suggestions/ideas on brainstorming this!

was talking with a friend who pointed out that higurashi is the one horror franchise where the characters having phones would actually make things much worse and decided to game out how the internet would ruin the casts' lives.

Rena: fullly Pastel QAnon-pilled. Has not been vaccinated and believes that hillary clinton is a lizard person. shows up to local school board meetings with a cup of her own menses she's ready to fling at people.

Keiichi: either one of the rare people stupid enough to actually become addicted to porn or he becomes like. Mr. Beast. He's not naturally unscrupulous and probably avoids scamming people but in the absence of real friendships he's the most dedicated and successful hollow attention-hound in human history.

Satoshi: learns about femboys and starts posting pics of himself in a maid dress. Is manipulated by channers into posting lewds of himself on social media.

Mion: learns about non-binary people and goes oh. OHHHHHH. begins to consider if moving to the city for a bit might help her find some new ways of expressing herself.

Shion: reigning moderator of r/femaledatingstrategies. locked in a neverending duel for control of the subreddit with Kyrie, who does not know that her mortal enemy is a teenaged girl.

Rika: somethingawful deadender. has not left the house in years. tweets with dril-like concision.

takano: basically just that rocket scientist dildo saleswoman convincing people to engage in white supremacist mass shootings. honestly the internet doesnt change her very much it just makes her an even greater danger to society at large.

irie: dont even need to say it do i

satoko: we couldnt quite figure her out. friend argued for 'general-purpose replyguy hater,' i argued 'fandom anti.'

yeah

With only the footprints in the mud, this level of reasoning is possible for Furudo Erika. What do you think, everyone!?

mon oncle