Bunches of text

Wandering Son Reflections: Episode 7 – “Barairo no Hoho”

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 07:09:16 -0500

Wandering Son Reflections: Episode 7 – “Barairo no Hoho”:

New post on my blog.

Wandering Son Reflections: Episode 6 – “Bunkasai”

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 03:09:31 -0500

Wandering Son Reflections: Episode 6 – “Bunkasai”:

New post on my blog.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:29:23 -0500

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012:

New post on my blog.

Wandering Son Reflections: Episode 5 – “Natsu no Owari ni”

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 03:24:55 -0500

Wandering Son Reflections: Episode 5 – “Natsu no Owari ni”:

New post on my blog.

Doctor Who: The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 16:27:22 -0500

Doctor Who: The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe:

New post on my blog.

Wandering Son Reflections: Episode 4 – “Watashi no Namae o Ageru”

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:15:25 -0500

Wandering Son Reflections: Episode 4 – “Watashi no Namae o Ageru”:

New post on my blog.

Wandering Son Reflections: Episode 3 – “Romio to Jurietto”

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:10:17 -0500

Wandering Son Reflections: Episode 3 – “Romio to Jurietto”:

New post on my blog.

Project Treewars: Going in Circles

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 13:10:02 -0500

Project Treewars: Going in Circles:

New post on my blog.

Wandering Son Reflections: Episode 2 – “Kirai, Kirai, Daikirai”

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:04:47 -0500

Cross-posted from my blog. Read the original here.

This was originally posted in February of 2011 here. It has been updated substantially here.

You can watch the episode here.

Spoiler Warning

This episode switches gears and focuses mostly on Saorin. It also gives us a much-needed flashback that provides the backstory on the relationship between Shūichi, Yoshino, and Saorin.

Near the end of the previous episode, Shūichi runs out of his house, distressed, after an encounter with his sister. I didn’t get around to talking about that scene in that entry, so let’s touch on it here. When I was still struggling to understand my gender identity, I mis-identified the desire to be a girl with the concept of cross-dressing (as did a number of other trans people that I know). So, for years, I cross-dressed when no one was around (the fact that this is an amusing phrase in light of my current understanding of my gender identity does not escape me – I eventually realized that ‘cross-dressing’ was what I was doing when everyone was looking at me). And like Shū, fear of discovery was a huge thing. I waited, always, until I was home alone, or the rest of my family was asleep. I always feared a sudden knock on my door. I think Shūichi’s flight is best viewed in that context, in the mixture of shame and fear that is hard to escape when you feel like you are doing something deviant, something that your loved ones would disapprove of.

In his haste to escape his sister, Shūichi leaves half-dressed in only an undershirt and a skirt, and runs into Yoshino on a bridge. Yoshino offers her hoodie, commenting that Shūichi looks like a girl with a hoodie and a skirt on. This marks a reparation of their friendship. Which leads us to Saorin.

Saorin, up to this point, has only been seen briefly, and was then depicted as mostly quiet but emotionally unstable and prone to violent outbursts. In the first episode, she assaulted a classmate who insinuated that Shūichi and Yoshino had a relationship at one point. In this episode, we learn that she harbors a lot of resentment toward Shuuichi and Yoshino because of a love triangle that imploded at some point before the narrative picks up. Some time ago, Saorin expressed interest in Shūichi, only to find that Shūichi had already expressed interest in Yoshino. Saorin confronted Yoshino about it, and they both ended by expressing hatred for each other. Your basic love triangle story. I’d suggest maybe this is poly-fixable, but I’m pretty sure Saorin is way too unstable for that. More implicitly (and more importantly for our purposes), Saorin also seems to feel that she had already been left out because Shūichi and Yoshino had their trans experiences in common, and had bonded over them until Saorin felt like a third wheel.

Saorin comes across, in this episode, as fundamentally unsympathetic to the viewer. At the beginning of the episode she calls Shūichi and Yoshino ‘filth’ as she passes them in the hall. She also nearly assaults Chii’s friend Shirai Momoko (Momo), and when Yoshino expresses that they should perhaps set their differences aside, Saorin refuses.

Despite this, the episode ends with Saorin tentatively making peace with the rest of the group, after Sasa Kanako (Sasa), who has been trying to remain friends with both Saorin and the others, gets angry at their bickering and refuses to speak to them. So, it requires the coercion of her only remaining friend for her to stop being an asshole to the rest of her former friends. Like I said: unsympathetic.

The premise of the episode, though, seems to be that we should sympathize with Saorin. Ariga Makoto (Ariga) sums it up thus: “She’s got a rough life”. However, when juxtaposed to the issues the other characters are facing, Saorin (as portrayed so far, at least) comes across as whiny and privileged by comparison.

So, enough about Saorin, then. We don’t have time for whiny privileged girls who hold grudges. Let’s talk about Ariga, whom we just mentioned for the first time. He plays a slightly more prominent role in this episode, and seems to be Shūichi’s only (or at least closest) male friend. We also get a suggestion that he is also gender variant; Shūichi gives him a clover hairpin to match the one he bought in the first episode. In the same scene, they spend time chatting about private matters – notably, about the fact that Ariga feels he may be attracted to boys. This is the first explicit mention of sexual orientation on the show. Leaving aside gender variance (since all of the gender variant characters are still discovering their identities in this regard), Ariga thinks he might be gay. The line is a throwaway – we don’t dwell on it at all, but rather move on. Presumably, we will return to this later in the series.

On the subject of Shūichi and gender, the first relevant moment in this episode comes when Shūichi is called ‘a little girl’ as an insult by one of his male classmates; his response (unnoticed by everyone except Ariga) is to blush and then smile broadly. A similar scene happens when he takes his lunch to his older sister; one of her classmates says “he looks like a girl”, leading Shūichi to repeat the phrase, “I look like a girl”, with a happy look on his face.

These scenes, more than anything we’ve seen before, really work to differentiate Shūichi as being solidly transgender (as opposed to, say, a cross-dresser in the common understanding of the term). His response to being called a girl is joy, and I suspect it is stemming from a sense that it is the correct thing for him to be called.

On the whole, this episode is much more solidly put together than the first one – it has more cohesion between scenes, and the pacing is better. However, emotionally, it comes across as weaker. The first episode used a effective narrative repetition, with the ‘What are little girls/boys made of’ motif repeated through the episode, and the scene early on where Shūichi and Yoshino each narrate the phrase ‘I/we have a secret’.* The music and the dialogue are still top notch, but the overall narrative feel of this episode did not have as powerful an impact on me.

* The subtitles translate the phrase ‘We have a secret’, but since pronouns don’t indicate number in Japanese, it could potentially be translated ‘I have a secret’ as well. Or ‘I/we have secrets’, for that matter. I certainly think the translators chose well here, though.

Filed under: Media Tagged: Hōrō Musuko, transgender, Wandering Son

Why I’m excited about The Legend of Korra

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 14:19:24 -0500

Why I’m excited about The Legend of Korra

On absenteeism

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 22:56:52 -0500

So, I have fallen off the face of tumblr. Mostly this is because I don’t have that much time or energy to write lately, and when I do, I find writing about geek topics over at my blog is easier than deep, involved posts about social justice. And since, notably, I find myself writing, more and more, posts that include both geek and activist content, I am going to be using my blog as my primary place to write. I may or may not continue to post links to relevant content over here.

One thing I definitely plan on doing is reposting my Wandering Son Reflections series over at my blog, then continuing the series from there. I just read the first volume of the translated manga, and now I am eager to talk more about it.

So, come read my blog, if you like!

Doctor Who: The God Complex

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:46:53 -0400

Doctor Who: The God Complex:

I talk about some issues related to Feminism in this post, so I thought I’d share it with you all :)

Doctor Who: The Girl Who Waited

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:48:28 -0400

Doctor Who: The Girl Who Waited:

I write review/analysis posts of each Doctor Who episode over on my blog. This week’s is relevant to my interests over here on Tumblr.

Hello Tumblr!

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 11:52:47 -0400

I haven’t forgotten about you, Tumblr, I promise! I’ve just been… taking a break. Okay, yes, I’ve been writing another blog, but I needed to get some distance from the Social Justice scene, because I was rolling towards burnout.

But now I hope to be back! We’ll see how it goes!

Possibly The Most Important Thing in Let's Kill Hitler

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 12:55:00 -0400

keithjacks:

I’m just going to put this out there because I’m struggling with it. And it will probably be my focus for awhile, kind of like how something being wrong with Amy stuck with me the whole of part one.

The Doctor’s clothes are probably the most important thing in Let’s Kill Hitler. And I think we should keep an eye on them.

Read More

This is worth thinking about!

Doctor Who: Let's Kill Hitler - review, analysis, rambling

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 15:53:17 -0400

Doctor Who: Let's Kill Hitler - review, analysis, rambling

The slippery staircase, and other mixed metaphors

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 17:03:35 -0400

So, Ed Whelan, a conservative man who runs the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said the following in defense of the Defense of Marriage Act:

If the male-female nature of traditional marriage can be dismissed as an artifact and its inherent link to procreation denied, then surely the distinction between a marriage of two persons and a marriage of three or more is all the more arbitrary and irrational.

Whose side are you on here, Ed? Because you’re making all our points for us here. The distinction is arbitrary and irrational, and should be considered in those terms.

The key difference in our thinking here is that all of these things you see as horrifying, we see as liberating, necessary, logical. This is a fundamental disconnect - you are even able to see our line of reasoning, but you then stand that reasoning up as ‘obviously bad’, without bothering to explain why you think it is bad.

And that’s because there is no reason (that is, based in logic) for your belief; it is entirely emotional, founded on values you unquestioningly assimilated and never once stopped to analyze on the basis of whether they actually improve the lives of either individuals or communities.

Or, to quote professor of Law William Jacobson:

The polyamory slippery slope argument was met with derision precisely because it raised a legitimate point….

Yeah. That.

Please, just stop

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:49:05 -0400

Sometimes you apologize. That’s great, but it’d be even better if you could stop doing it altogether. I don’t want an apology, I want you to stop doing it.

More often, you make excuses. “Oh, I call everyone ‘man’. I use it gender-neutrally.” But even ignoring the sexism that entails, it’s disingenuous; you don’t call everyone ‘man’. When you talk to other women, (that is, women who are not me) you just say “What’s up?”, never “What’s up, man?”

Yes, I pay attention to that sort of thing. It’s relevant to the way I have to navigate social interactions.

So, please, stop lying to yourself. Stop clinging to your privilege and couching it as an unavoidable personality quirk. Stop insinuating that I’m not really a woman. Because that’s what you’re doing, every single time you say “Thanks, man!” or use the wrong pronoun. It’s painful, it’s annoying, and frankly, I’m tired of it.

Look. I know. It’s awkward. You’re still “getting used to it”. Sure. Except it’s been almost three months now, and you’ve been seeing me and interacting with me five days a week during that time. At some point “getting used to it” becomes “obstinately refusing to get used to it”.

Like I said, I’m tired of it. I’d call you out on it, but, well, it’s not like I have security against being fired if someone complains to HR. So, could you just stop? Is it really that fucking important to you that you not have to make a tiny alteration to your worldview?

Because I can’t handle this shit any more.

iamwhoiamandidontgiveadamn: lookoutsideyourself: stfuhatemonger...

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 15:10:00 -0400

iamwhoiamandidontgiveadamn:

lookoutsideyourself:

stfuhatemongers:

Um wow. That is a slippery slope if I have ever seen one.

I agree that churches should have the right to marry whoever they want to marry. However, there are many ways to get married aside from in churches, and the state should not be able to dictate who can and cannot get married.

Well, that was my attempt to take this Jason person’s sentiment seriously. “Poisoned by occultic beliefs”? You really are an idiot.

I’m amused that they have the face of “V”, but then I remember what Guy Fawkes was REALLY trying to do, and it seems appropriate.

And yeah…church weddings are just ONE option for getting married. I think it’s interesting that all people assume that ALL people entering into a non-hetero marriage (cause not everyone who is not hetero is “gay”…just a reminder) is Christian. What about pagans, satanists (the real kind, not movie satanists), atheists, jewish, muslim, hindu, buddhist…

Yeah…maybe we (the non-hetero community) should keep trying to separate this debate form religion so as not to erase the non-Christian non-hetero people who want to get married.

As an added note, and something that seems to get overlooked…

Marriage pre-dates Christianity. It is a custom that stretches back (at least) almost as far as recorded history. The Greeks did it. The Romans did it. It was done throughout the Heathen world. I don’t know a whole lot about Sumerian culture, but I bet they had marriage too (A quick googling shows that they did). Marriage has been happening in India and China and Japan and Java and countless other cultures since long before any of the Abrahamic religions found their way to them.

So, can we please stop talking about marriage in terms of the “purity of the Christian faith”? You don’t have some kind of monopoly on marriage. There are Jews and Buddhists and Muslims and Bahá’í and Heathens in the United States that perform marriage ceremonies too.

Christians: marriage doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to all of us. Get over yourselves and get some damn perspective.

Duke Nukem Forever should not exist

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 23:19:19 -0400

Duke Nukem Forever should not exist:

I wrote this angry rant over on my blog about Duke Nukem and rape culture.