I Think The Pop Culture Image Of Fascism Owes More To Orientalism Than Actual Anti Fascism, Like It's

really interesting concept. I feel like if you grew up in the universe where daemons were commonplace, this wouldn't feel like a big deal though. It would be as natural as saying, "we have to make sure the actor has the same face as well as the same body type of the character/historical figure."

Live theater in the His Dark Materials universe must be wild. Surely an actor's daemon also has lines to recite, so their daemon's form probably also factors into casting decisions. Maybe some plays have vague character descriptions for daemons, but I bet other plays have really specific or central daemon characters. And sure, big-budget theaters can afford to hire a separate actor with a particular daemon to stand backstage while their daemon plays its part onstage, but community theaters don't have those kinds of resources.

Like if you're casting for Julius Caesar, surely the real historical Caesar had a pretty iconic daemon, right? Are you going to cast an actor with a pigeon daemon as Caesar and just have everyone suspend their disbelief that it's Caesar's lioness, ἁμαρτία?

Thinking about how a lot of the cultural-political worldbuilding in His Dark Materials might not even be true because it's filtered through the perspectives of biased characters. Things like, do the Northern Tartars actually form a distinct group, or is it just an abstract term the European characters use for a collection of peoples they don't fully understand? It doesn't seem like the Yenisei Pakhtars are connected at all to the Tartars attacking Muscovy. I feel the same way about the description of the insect automata as "Afric." The worldbuilding is full of ironic exoticism and we are never given a 100% objective look at how things work

people often talk about how AI makes small choices that a human would never make if they were drawing the image, but when I see Reach's art I feel as if this tendency has been harnessed to create an atmosphere of almost hallucinatory vividness. It's beyond what I've seen in most illustrator's stuff

devil armor

the interview with Mamoru Oshii about his attempt to work with Miyazaki and Takahata is quite illuminating, and it even contextualizes their personalities/politics with the anpo protests

genuinely starting to feel myself getting angry at people constantly invoking the miyazaki "i feel as if it is an insult to life itself" quote because if you watch the context of that video he's actually (as he usually is) just being a horrifically misanthropic asshole to his underlings and putting them down while they are trying to show him their procedural animation project that they are excited about the progress on.

we really do not need to hand it to hayao miyazaki, like, ever. he is a horrifically bad person. if you want to blackpill yourself go read about his relationship with his son if you don't know already. we really do not need to put this guy on a pedestal, go elevate the opinions of the other ghibli animators in the credits instead of him.

This is extremely important

I can't remember what part of Homestuck deals with this though

My take: it is nevertheless okay to be afraid of sludge. Just because it's connected to life doesn't mean it's wrong to be disgusted, it's just part of the experience... don't feel bad about feeling repulsed by the universe and life itself

i feel like a lot of fiction forgets (or purposefully ignores) the fact life is intrinsically, inextricably linked to *filth*

to *garbage*

shit gets *gross* and if you clean it it will quickly get gross again regardless

the total absence of the disgusting is uncanny

don't be afraid of the sludge

(works that understand this include discworld, significant parts of 40k, blame!, and homestuck, as well as the undisputed king of grime and sludge; dorohedoro. dorohedoro *fucks* absolutely)

Every time I read a different translation of Senbonzakura I feel less confident as to what it's talking about.

The imagery is also confusing, with lines like "pacifist nation" mixed into what sound like nationalist propaganda, or mention of science fiction weaponry... but I think the language might be too complicated for anyone who isn't a fluent Japanese speaker to understand, especially since no professional translation seems to exist

I'm suspicious of the narrative that it's just propaganda, though, because that seems kind of too literal and unimaginative

𝕊𝕖𝕟𝕓𝕠𝕟𝕫𝕒𝕜𝕦𝕣𝕒 𝕞𝕠𝕠𝕕𝕓𝕠𝕒𝕣𝕕

the quality is very low hope to fix that later

not to be annoying but its really funny watching people in an rpg maker discord argue against ai from the point of view of "hard work and labor is what making games is all about, if you don't put in the effort you don't deserve a game". ok. why are you using rpg maker then.

by Hiroshige III (a student of the more famous Hiroshige).

It's extra Dai-Nippon Gothich because it's an ad for a circus performing on the grounds of the Yasukuni shrine.

The approaching battle in aesthetics is between the reactionary/essentially right-wing movement against AI and slop/mass aesthetics

Anti-AI is based on the economic interests of small business owners (comm artists are small business owners) and has conservative values as a result. These include measuring the value of art based on the ‘hard work’/‘effort’ that went into its creation, and discomfort with art that is not made under the domination/control of a specific individual. This merges with the explicitly right-wing hatred of modernism, abstract art, etc. 

Mass slop aesthetics are based on mass participation in consumption, absence of the cult of the creative individual, maximalism. It’s not obvious, but I think it also includes a culture of mass participation in art through its rejection of aesthetic hierarchy and standards

Let’s sink into the tide of slop forever

Tokyo Babylon 3. Those three girls saying corrupted mantras through the phone line... It was a good story, but I think the way they said 'I'm special' was too contrived, just for the sake of making them seem more absurd.

From a strictly ethical perspective, I think Seishiro's speech about the significance of everyday life is repulsive and evil. Maybe there were societies where an ordinary life was good, but in our times, ordinary life is not good and celebrating it means you celebrate rot and moral corruption

chuunibyou belief has a pure, radiant core even if it sometimes manifests badly