HeightsのWutherする頃に

it's cool how they have a reference just for Fukiko's hair... not exactly a braid, but the component of her hair that's somewhat analogous to one. So elegant...

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it was illuminating to be in Japan and see how this side of Ghibli is much more prominent over there.

I don't hate their creative works, but I hate how they are held on a pedestal above other anime, and seen as superior, more 'wholesome...'

I hope other things become more popular

I feel as if studio ghibli films being reduced to their 'cozyness' would be tragic if not for the fact that it is a deliberate branding thing for them. from the ghibli museum to the revolving door of hot topic collabs, miyazaki and/or the people he puts in charge of these things are aware of how desirable the worlds within ghibli films are. even at that, how meaningful is the politics of howl's moving castle being motivated by miyazaki's outrage at the 2003 iraq invasion when you examine it alongside the actual text of the wind rises? what does the environmentalism of ponyo mean when faced with the massive amounts of waste generated by ghibli merch you can get at wal mart? i'm straying from the point here but

this was an officially licensed product that was released to promote grave of fireflies

also, this kind of tautology prevents you from being able to have insight or perceive new aspects of the world. "art is what they put in galleries" is directly limiting you to your own cultural preconceptions and refusing to imagine them being totally wrong. If you have this attitude, you can't say stuff like 'wild bee hives/termite mounds are art because they have secret aspects that are not for practical use' (I just made that up) because they aren't in galleries or made by artists

the sociological posture to interesting philosophical questions is so damn annoying. "art is what they put in art galleries, math is what mathematicians do". an active turning-away from an interesting question, towards a boring non-answer. people should throw tomatoes at guys who say this

another universe with different laws of physics

precure deep fried

The hidden aspect of this (and something I feel this analysis doesn't get) is that there's something missing in our society that can only be filled with a good vs. evil battle. It probably corresponds to a mass ritual in ancient times. But altered and filtered through a moral framework which is not natural to it... people want to be heroes to get immersed in a moment of violent intensity and cosmological forces

there's a fun thing about the eventual perfection of the "random crime" in the hero video game because it calls to how the desire to be a hero is also a desire for people to be in trouble, because you need people to save, and crimes to solve, and if there are no crimes there are no heroes, and

why would you complain about a super hero who can run out of things to do? shouldn't that be a good thing? to want to save those who are hurt one must need people being hurt. you are the same as your enemy you fucking imbecile

Coherence

A pattern I notice in 'writing advice' is that the ideal that gets promoted is to restrain and tightly organize every element in order to produce a single overall effect.

It is not so good that this is commonplace. Writing needs space to be incoherent and disjointed. This is what will allow writing to be truly alive. In a functional aesthetic world, there will not be a need to sever 'useless' growths from the body.

Getty Center, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (photographer is John Beasly Greene)

One of the colossi of Memnon. His set of photos were the first taken of these statues

It's really hard to understand what is and isn't bodily autonomy when it comes to social pressures. Do people want to alter their bodies or are they being pressured into it... but really, there is no such thing as an authentic individual self that can make these decisions free of pressure. We are social pressure, it's part of us just like our bodies

Beginning sentences with "And" is a reference to Biblical Hebrew. It was used by the translators of the King James Bible because they wanted to preserve Hebrew grammatical patterns. It is unlike Latin-based grammatical rules. There's no reason not to begin sentences like this. After all, the King James Bible is very beautiful writing.

I wonder if any English-speakers began sentences with "and" before the influence of Bible translations?

you can pry starting sentences with 'and' or 'but' out of my cold, dead hands

Always be sus of ideas that confuse the value of art with technical skill, talent, or hard work. There's a reason people used to think of it as 'divine inspiration' -- artistic success, is mysterious, arbitrary, and about getting possessed by supernatural organisms