Listen to the Rain

After nearly 200 hours, I'm finally at the point in Vintage Story where I'm in a position to to the (vintage) story. I have some teleportation stones (from the Ruststones mod) charged up so I can make the dozens-of-miles-long trek north to the Resonance Archive to figure out what's going on with it. I'm glad I discovered there's an overland route, so I don't have to make a canal to the northern ocean. In a couple weeks, I should have a review and I can move on to Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.

But that's not why I'm writing this post. The real reason is that I'm hitting the same wall I usually hit in these long games. It happened when I played my heavily modded games of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas (each of which took about 200 hours), it happened in Stardew Valley, it happened in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and it's when I start off very excited, and I make big plans, and I stretch out the gameplay as long as I can, and then there comes a time when my motivation just...peters out, and I start rushing headlong toward the end so I can finish. There's no specific point where the switch is thrown, and I can predict when it will happen. In Vintage Story, I had a bunch of plans for what I was going to do when spring finally came again, all the crops I would plant and the upgrades I did to my greenhouse to prepare for it, and now it's looking like it'll be pointless because I'll beat the game before it's warm enough to put any seeds in the ground.

Some of this is just that I'm doing too much of the same thing and want a change. For example, it didn't happen in Baldur's Gate II. Maybe because I played it in bits in between the other things I'm doing. On the other hand, even though there's a whole route and revamped content in Night in the Woods that I haven't done yet, I haven't gone back to it yet after eight years. And this is in contrast with literature--there I often don't want a book to end, and I know some of that is because I write reviews of all the books I read so finishing a book means I have homework, but I also write reviews of all the games I play so there's no difference there. And of course, books obviously don't take 200 hours to read unless you're reading the Talmud or something, and Daf Yomi means you stretch that out like I stretched out my Baldur's Gate II playthrough. So what is it?

Okay, between this paragraph and the previous one I stared out the window for a while and you know, I actually thought of a possible explanation--action. Video games are an active medium, they require you to do things to complete them. Even the most text-heavy visual novel requires you to make a plot-relevant choice occasionally. Books (and TV shows etc) don't require any action, they just require absorption of information. So maybe what I'm actually getting sick of is the repetitive actions, and what's more, the constrained possible range of actions. In Vintage Story I can move blocks around, explore, craft, fight monsters, farm crops, and so on...but there are very few NPCs to talk to, no character sheet to level, no job classes to pick, etc. The mechanics have been basically the same for those entire 200 hours and what I really want is a set of new mechanics. Order of Ecclesia has platforming challenges, gimmick boss fights, and killing monsters for their glyphs. Vintage Story has...well, I've heard it does have a gimmick boss fight but it doesn't have any of the rest of those. It'll be a big change.

You know, I didn't actually expect to come up with a real answer when I sat down to write this, but it also explains why I tend to pick very different games. Just look at the list of games I played in 2024 and you'll notice I never played the same type of game twice in a row. The closest were River City Girls and Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, but the former was a co-op beat-'em-up and the latter was almost a metroidvania, so they were still very different. What I'm looking for is mechanical variety.

I kind of exist adjacent to most fandom endeavors. Despite my long presence on Dreamwidth and Livejournal before it, I've never really participated in any fandom communities. I have a fanfiction.net account and have used it to read maybe half a dozen stories ever, and I have an AO3 account and have used it to post a single story and haven't read anything on that site at all. Of the stories I have read, some of them aren't on fanfiction.net--like the old classic Children of an Elder God that I read while it was updating at university. On fanfiction.net I read Aeon Natum Engel--you can see my interests here, in the intersection of cosmic horror and giant robots--and...I think that's all I can remember? I have a bunch of stories I turned into ebooks with the intention of reading them and then just never did. Part of it is that I'm not at all interested in romance in fanfiction. I found one Stargate/Cthulhu crossover fanfic, an area I had thought would be ripe with potential, and never ended up reading it because 1) it was abandoned 2) it was Stargate: Atlantis and 3) it was mostly slash. The only part I remember is that the nanoswarm cloud in the original Stargate: Atlantis was turned into a rogue shoggoth in the fic. I read a relatively short fic about what if Harry Potter were raised by the Culture (which I really appreciated because it did not assume that the Culture Minds automatically understood magic, they were baffled how an owl traveled thousand of light years from Earth to poof into a room on an Orbital) which ran about nine chapters before it petered out.

I have read a lot of Let's Plays, and some of them approach fanfiction by using video games to tell a story. I read the Final Fantasy VIII Altimate Rewrite, which was very good but also never finished. I read a long narrative let's play of Morrowind that was originally hosted at morningstarlady until it was purged and moved to Dreamwidth, which was then hosted at lady_morningstar until it was locked and limited to access only, and is now seemingly being remade (again!) using models from The Sims at aeronwen. I only got partway through the previous version (they were very long), but I think they never finished as well. You can probably see where the source of me being leery of reading fanfiction comes from, here.

I guess the most fanfiction I've ever read, now that I think about it, are the stories set in The Night Land. I read every single story on that site and keep thinking about buying the books, especially after the untimely death of its maintainer.

The reason I brought all this time is because last night I thought "I wonder if that old Sailor Moon website I found back in the day is still around..." and it turns out it wasn't, but it's still available on the Wayback Machine. Sailor Moon Expanded ran from the late 90s through the early 00s and...well, I have to admit that while there's a ton of fanfics I've never read any of them. At the time, 2010, I had never seen a single episode of Sailor Moon, and wouldn't watch any until Sailor Moon Crystal came out several years later. The part that drew me in was the meticulously-expanded bestiary, maps, and cultural information on the Dark Kingdom and the Silver Millennium, which was envisioned as a magic-based solar-system-wide confederacy that ended with the sealing of magic after Queen Beryl attacked the moon. Or, as I described it at the time, "The war between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts when the Unseelie Court wanted summon Cthulhu."

The other reason is A Dark, Distorted Mirror, a Babylon 5 AU fanfic that assumes that the inciting event of most of the plots in the early series--the Earth-Minbari War, a war where the vastly-technologically-superior Minbari curbstomped the humans for two years, only losing a single capital ship in all that time, until on the very moment of victory as they annihilated Earth's last defensive fleet before suddenly ceasing fire and surrendering--did not end with a treaty. As a result, Earth was glassed, most of humanity was killed, and the series is much less hopeful in tone. I did actually make it through the entire first book but tapped out when I had four more books of around 200K words each left, around the size of a doorstopper fantasy book. That one is still online and is finished, though, so maybe I should go back and read it.

I apply to fanfiction nowadays the same principle I apply to fantasy series--once the author finishes it, maybe I'll read it.

If anyone has any recommendations for finished, good Cthulhu crossover fic, I'm all ears. I had a lot of hope for Aeon Natum Engel until the author blew it up with a "rocks fall, everyone dies" sudden ending. They then declared they were going to re-write the entire thing better and higher quality, and I read the first chapter of Aeon Entelechy Evangelion and, when I saw how overwrite and baroque it was, I said to myself "This will never be finished" and stopped reading. And, well...it was never finished.

Reading because I last read these 25 years ago and it turns out there's been multiple other books written in the same world since then, including some with Sithi as protagonists. And then I get to this quote:

"Then know this," Jiriki said stiffly. "Though the years that have passed since we were sundered from the Hikeda’ya – those you call the Norns – are as numerous as snowflakes, still we are one blood. How could we take the side of upstart men against our kin? Why should we, when once we walked together beneath the sun, coming out of the ultimate East? What allegiance could we possibly owe to mortals, who have destroyed us as eagerly as they destroy all else…even themselves?"

None of the humans but Binabik could meet his cold gaze. Jiriki lifted a long finger before him. "And the one you whisperingly call the Storm King…he whose name was Ineluki…" He smiled bitterly as the companions stirred and shivered. "Ah, even his name is fearsome. He was the best of us once – beautiful to see, wise far beyond the understanding of mortals, bright-burning as a flame! – if he is now a thing of dark horror, cold and hateful, whose is the fault? If now, bodiless and vengeful, he schemes to brush mankind from the face of his land like dust from a page – why should we not rejoice? It was not Ineluki who drove us into exile, so that we must always hide among Aldheorte’s dark trees like deer, wary always of discovery. We strode Osten Ard in the sunlight before men came, and the works of our hands were beautiful beneath the stars. What have mortals ever brought to us but suffering?"

Elf prince like, "Yeah, my undead great-uncle wants to kill you all after you killed most of us and stole all our land, and honestly maybe he's right. Can you tell me why I shouldn't join him, human?"

Every time I portray elves in a TTRPG, there's always something of the Sithi in them.

Laila is two and a half years old!

In the two year and four month update I wrote about how I was worried about her sentence usage, but she's been making up on that score. We taught her "I want [x]" and she picked up on it very quickly, and we've been quick to enforce it too. Of course, she's a toddler, so she gets derailed halfway through. She'll point and say "This. Bite." and then I'll say, "I. Want. Bread." and she'll think a moment and say "I...want...mohlow!!! [marshmallow] and then point to the kitchen cabinet where sashagee keeps her hot chocolate supplies. She know what she wants and what she wants is dessert.

She started her early intervention therapy after her assessment which showed her as almost a year behind in speech. After the speech therapist's first visit, she asked sashagee if the assessing therapists told her anything when they did Laila's assessment, and when sashagee said it was over Zoom, the therapist did a 😐 face. She has since said that she's positive she won't be seeing Laila after her next assessment and that most of the kids she sees don't talk at all, or barely. The occupational therapist had a similar reaction and that one I was there for--she interacted with Laila for an hour, and then rather than telling us what her plan was to help Laila get on track, she asked us if there was anything we waned her to work on. Laila is clearly not nearly as bad as the Zoom assessment would indicate.

Lately, she has really taken to Judaism, by which I mean that she'll sometimes take two cups from her dish playset, put them side-by-side like Shabbat candles, cover her eyes with one hand, and start trying to sing. And her current two favorite books were sent to us by PJ Library--one is called Fridays Are Special, about Shabbat preparations including baking the ḥallah (her favorite part), and the other is called Hoppy Hanukkah!, about a family of rabbits getting ready to celebrate Ḥanukah. That book is still a little advanced for her, but she's asking to read it. Book progress!

Also, she's finally helping mama in the kitchen. After watching a Kimono Mom video about a フルーツサンド (cream and fresh fruit sandwich), she helped sashagee make the cream and put the sandwich together and then got to eat it while wearing her Totoro apron:


Once again, I can use the Chiyo-chan cooking icon.

What other ways will she grow and change?

Re: the listening entry in my last post, I was listening to their episodes on Dracula and they brought up a point I hadn't thought about, relating to the very beginning of the book. We know that the coachman that comes to pick up Harker is Dracula in disguise, and that Dracula lives alone in his castle except for his vampire brides. He carries in Harker's luggage himself as well. And soon after arriving, he offers Harker dinner:

The light and warmth and the Count’s courteous welcome seemed to have dissipated all my doubts and fears. Having then reached my normal state, I discovered that I was half famished with hunger; so making a hasty toilet, I went into the other room.

I found supper already laid out. My host, who stood on one side of the great fireplace, leaning against the stonework, made a graceful wave of his hand to the table, and said:—

“I pray you, be seated and sup how you please. You will, I trust, excuse me that I do not join you; but I have dined already, and I do not sup.”

[…]

The Count himself came forward and took off the cover of a dish, and I fell to at once on an excellent roast chicken. This, with some cheese and a salad and a bottle of old Tokay, of which I had two glasses, was my supper. During the time I was eating it the Count asked me many questions as to my journey, and I told him by degrees all I had experienced.
-Bram Stoker, Dracula

So, with no servants, who cooked the chicken?

…

Dracula cooked the chicken.

Answering questions provided by fiachairecht! For the first five people who ask, I'll ask you questions too.

1) What's your favourite raid in FFXIV?

Hmm, this is a hard question.

In terms of aesthetics, it's probably The Weeping City of Mhach (pronounced "Vaḥ"), a ruined city of demon-summoners in the middle of a swamp. Their bound demons are still there, so it starts with swamp monsters and zombies and then gets more demonic as you approach the city, ending with a magical weapon system based on the secret boss from Final Fantasy IX and a surviving sorceress who transformed herself into a demon.

In terms of mechanics, it's The Orbonne Monastery, featuring beloved Final Fantasy Tactics favorites Mustadio Bunansa, Agrias Oaks, Cidolfus Orlandeau, and Ultima the High Seraph as, respectably, a giant killer robot, a literal avenging angel, a death god (canon), and Ultima the High Seraph. The first fight has a lot of dodging sniper shots and facing particular directions, the second has picking up divine swords and shields and using them at the appropriate times, the third fight is a lot of running in and out, and the fourth fight involves avoiding miniature version of bosses from other raids and navigating a maze while dodging attacks. I love it and I wish that it wasn't so unpopular.

Plus it has some of the best voice acting of any fight in the game. With quotes like:

Agrias
"The hearts of men are black with corruption and must needs be cleansed!"

"Seven shadows cast, seven fates foretold. Yet at the end of the broken path lies death, and death alone."

Ultima
"Denizens of the abyss! From ink of blackest night, I summon you!"

"To maintain order, one must first have control."

But the real standout is Cid:

Cid
"I am Count Cidolfus Orlandeau. Your journey ends here."

"Open your eyes to the darkness, and drown in its loveless embrace. The gods will not be watching."

"Misfortune hangs heavy on a head once held high. Such is poor cover for when the heavens fall."

"To live by the sword is to die by the sword. There is time enough for regret in the flames of hell."

And his limit attack:

"I have been called the god of thunder. You will now know why! Upon my holy blade the very world lies in balance."

"And
now
the
scales
will
tip!"

It made it baffling when I got to the Nier raids later and there was no voice acting. Nier raids win for music, though.

2) What's a book/album/[insert choice of media category here] that feels like it was made just for you?

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik, which I always describe to people as "Jews vs. the Fair Folk." One of the major problems with so much European medievalish fantasy is that there is no European Christianity without Judaism, not just because of historical outgrowth reasons but because we were the eternal comparison point for Christianity (this is explicit in some Christian writings, where they state that G-d keeps us around to show the dangers of "rejecting" Jesus). Spinning Silver is still an obvious product of modernity--there's a joke in there about the Christian servant thinking the Jews are casting "spells" over their bread (because they're reciting the blessing before meals in Hebrew) and this does not lead to accusations of witchcraft and pogroms like it probably would in real history--but also there are ice faeries demanding the heroine turn straw into gold, which she refuses to do on Shabbat. What more do you want?

3) What's a place in Japan that you've not yet been to that you would like to visit?

The Sea of Japan coastline. I've been there very briefly, to Tottori dunes and to 出雲大社 izumo-taisha and Matsue, but otherwise I haven't really been there at all. There's some beautiful beaches on the side of the islands and it's generally more rural since it's not on the Tōkaidō. Having lived in a rural area for years there, the cities are nice but rural life is where it's at. There are plenty of small towns next to fabulous natural wonders that I bet get almost no foreign tourists because no one knows they're there, or even places like Sandankyō in Hiroshima which is well-known and beautiful but not on a train line. I could spend a whole two weeks on that coastline.

4) Do you prefer being a player or GM in TTRPGs, and why?

GM. My primary interest in fictional worlds is in worldbuilding, in seeing how the setting works and where the assumptions lead. Just lately I've been reading up a ton on the Second Apocalypse book series because it has a lot of non-standard metaphysical worldbuilding assumptions--"morality" is a measurable property of the universe like gravity or mass, which means that it's possible to scientifically prove if someone is damned to hell or not (and it turns out like 99.99% of people are) the same way you can do a blood test, or to show that snakes are holy and pigs are profane--but I've never actually read any of those books and probably never will.

What that means is that I love doing a bunch of setting creation and finding a way to integrate that into fun gameplay without doing an infodump (i.e., the thing that Tolkien got right and so many fantasy authors don't). For my Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom game I had a hierarchy based on video game history, so before the modern stuff based on 8- and 16-bit games there were fallen arcade game precursor civilizations, like the crabs from the Mario Bros. game, the flying demons from Ghouls 'n' Ghosts, or an empire of Donkey Kongs. I get my fun worldbuilding exercise, the players get to find the overgrown ruins of a Kong Imperium temple-city in the jungle, and we all have a great time.

As a player I don't usually get to participate in worldbuilding and (maybe paradoxically) the RPGs that do allow it for players are ones I don't like to play that much.

5) What surprised you most about becoming a parent?

How much and how little human children know. I had no idea that humans had to be taught to laugh and smile. When Laila was born, she could cry, and otherwise she had a blank expression and we could really only tell what she was interested in by where she was looking. It was really funny when I was playing airplane with her, because I'd be holding her above my head and flying her around and she was just 😐 the whole time, but by her eyes we could tell she was really enjoying it. When she started laughing, she went through a few iterations of laughs, including one that sounded like a hacking cough and one that sounded like she was gasping for air, before settling on her current cute baby giggle.

On the other hand, I also didn't realize infants can instinctively swim. When we took Laila to the mikvah, I had to let her go into the water so she would be completely surrounded, and as soon as she went underwater she immediately closed her mouth and stuck her arms out, exactly what you need to do to slow your descent and make sure you don't inhale any water.

But honestly, the thing that surprised me is how much I love it in a way I did not expect. I realize that I'm not to any of the hard parts (though we had an any% hard part speedrun thanks to her spasms), but I think modern American culture focuses too much on the difficult parts of parenthood and not the joys.

Plus, yeah, evolutionary conditioning. It really is different when it's your kid.

So it turns out that Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker, professor of Urdu and South Asian Studies; creator of the Tékumel setting, one of the first major TTRPG settings not based on a pastiche of European history; and author of Empire of the Petal Throne, the RPG based on that setting, was a neo-Nazi who sat on the board of the Holocaust-denial journal Journal of Historical Review and wrote a book called Serpent's Walk:

Serpent's Walk is a novel where Hitler's warrior elite--the SS--didn't give up their struggle for a White world when they lost the Second World War.

The book was published by National Vanguard Books, the same group that published The Turner Diaries. I found a pdf online and paged through it and it's basically Richard Spencer's version of modern neo-Nazism where multiculturalism leads to whites dying out so every race has to form their own nation-states back where they "belong," along with claims that it'll somehow be done without violence. The main character is a mercenary who starts up thinking this is a bunch of Nazi bullshit and, over the course of the book, slowly gets convinced that that fascists are right. It explicitly includes a lot of justifications for Barker's own situations--there's discussions of how high-caste South Asians are "Aryan" (Barker's wife was Pakistani), a meeting with some American Black Muslims who also talk about segregation (in that Muslims should live apart so as to make sure they rule their own states and govern them by Islamic Law)--the book talks a lot about Islam, which puts Barker's conversion to Islam in a more sinister light--some random Holocaust denial, claims that we secretly control America through the media, the works. There's also apparently some past war where Israel conquers most of the Middle East in the backstory and deports the Beta Yisrael, amidst all the standard antisemitism. And it ends with the main character as the neo-Fuhrer, all non-Nazis dead (after they just can't peacefully let AmeriKKKa live and launch a surprise attack or something, apparently), talking about the Thousand-Year Reich and asking "Would you like to read other books in which the good guys win?"

There's more in this reddit post. The part that really stands out to me is the quoting of an archivist who was going through Barker's old papers:

My reaction, as it had been when Phil had done things like this in the past, was "Oh, Phil, WHY?"

as it had been when Phil had done things like this in the past

Phil had done things like this in the past

I'm sorry, what?

I don't really have a dog in this fight, since I've never played in or run Tékumel, just read about James Maliszewski's campaign over at Grognardia and read Raymond E. Feist's Kelewan books which are, let's say, heavily inspired by Tékumel. But I do feel bad for the people who loved Tékumel. It was niche but one of the famous weird settings, drawing on Barker's background in South Asian studies to create its future history, not full of knights and orcs and Caverns of Chaos.

It's true that Lovecraft and Howard's work both also reflect their bigotries, but the difference is that we've acknowledged the problems, had the conversation, and moved into the phase of reinterpretation. The question of whether Tékumel will survive this is a real one, since apparently the Tékumel Foundation has known about Barker's Nazism for a couple years and just kind of hoped no one else noticed, which reflects far worse on them than how the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society's FAQ literally begins with "How can you support or promote the works of a terrible racist like H. P. Lovecraft?" The Tékumel Foundation will need to have its own reckoning and after their past behavior, it's not clear that they're equipped to do it. I suspect it might be some time before mention of Tékumel is greeted with anything other than "Tékumel? Isn't that written by a Nazi?"

For my own part, I was slightly interested in Tékumel but honestly Skyrealms of Jorune is weirder anyway (even if less meticulously developed), and Mechanical Dream beats them both for oddities. Hell, even Exalted steps away from knights and orcs. There's plenty of other RPG material out there for me.

Gurney Halleck never once plays the baliset, 0/10 stars, worst movie ever.

A couple weeks ago I got a Facebook invite from cillic informing me that he had rented out a movie theatre with a ᑐᑌᑎᑕ showing last Sunday. I hadn't seen him or heather.eisele in almost two years, since New Year's Eve 2019, so sashagee asked her parents if they could watch Laila, we drove over to Rosemont where the theatre is, ordered food when we got there, and arrived just in time to watch the trailer for the new Batman movie they're coming out with and then ᑐᑌᑎᑕ began.

( Spoilers within )

I have the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy on the top of my re-read list--it's one of my favorite fantasy series, and while it doesn't really have much cultural cachet, it should--and just today I was remembering one of my favorite passages, when the hero Simon is in the Sithi (elven, basically) city of Jao é-Tinukai'i.

( Excerpt from 'The Dragonbone Chair.' )

I love that. The way that they're both speaking the same words and drawing completely different meanings from them. "You may not go there"--Simon assumes it's a rule that he's being bound by, but it's not. It's more like a physical law.

I reused this scene in my long-running Exalted game, when the Lunar Endless Chase (played by sephimb) was planning to invade the citadel of the Deathlord The Walker in Darkness to steal the monstrance (think phylactery) of his Abyssal lover The Reflection of Their Glory Undimmed. It even played out exactly the same way. Endless Chase suggested sneaking in, and Glory told him that, "The living may not enter the Ebon Spires of Pyrron." Endless Chase got angry, thinking that she was still somehow loyal to the Walker and trying to enforce one of his edicts, but she said, "You don't understand. The living may not enter the Ebon Spires of Pyrron" and clarified there was an ancient curse that would kill anything living that entered. Then they went on a quest for some way for Endless Chase to be dead for a while so that Glory could sneak him in.

They got caught, of course, and that led to a pitched battle that resulted in Endless Chase sacrificing himself to kill the Walker in Darkness and save his love.

One of my fondest memories of that game.

No, not the novella by H. P. Lovecraft, though that is legitimately one of my favorite horror stories ever, and is my father's favorite horror story.

A month or so ago I saw a bunch of people posting on Facebook about a BBC Adaptation of the short story, done in the style of a true-crime investigative podcast like Serial and updated to the modern era. That sounded great to me, and I finally worked through it today, finishing the last few episodes all in a rush.

I'm not much of a true crime enthusiast other than the few books we've read for book group (In Cold Blood, etc), but I really liked this adaptation! The original work already has the same structure, with the conspiracy in the past that kills off Joseph Curwen and Dr. Willett working with Charles's father and the mysterious gentleman to kill off Curwen in the present, so making it two people working on a podcast called "Mystery Machine" and the people they rope in to help them fits the structure. Even the fundamental changes to the occult elements work, because it's still about a conspiracy down through the ages to rule the world.

It's only ten episodes and the longest is just over half an hour. I highly recommend it.

I was pretty busy last weekend.
( A tale of party after party )

Tonight I'm doing something once more. As is the way of my people, I'm going out to Chinese food! meowtima is going too, so I imagine it'll be wonderful. Going to need to make space in my stomach for the food.

This kind of weekend is something that I used to absolutely dread, but I had a blast. It was great and I was looking forward to it the whole time, but I admit sitting here and writing this with no other real obligation is pretty nice. I do have to go shopping and go pick up a package, but that'll take an hour at most. Then dinner tonight, and tomorrow I'm doing nothing. What a lovely few days.

Currently listening to H.P. Podcraft's episode about The Street, but the jokes about Lovecraft's xenophobia aren't quite so funny now in 2018...

I'm still coughing, though all my other symptoms have gone away. I'm blaming it on the pneumonia I had as a high school student--my yearly winter cough finally went away after a decade, but I'm still weak against respiratory infections. I bet the weather isn't helping either--as much as I love chill and rainy weather, a warmer summer would probably be better for getting over a cold, now that we know the old wisdom is right and cold weather really does contribute to colds.

Speaking of health, I mentioned my slight back pain to lisekatevans, and how going to ACEN and sleeping on a hotel bed finally confirmed for me that it's probably not just the result of sleeping on a shikifuton, and she suggested that yoga might help. I was sitting the way I often do, legs crossed one on top of the other, feet off to each side, and she mentioned that it was pretty similar to the cow's face pose and some people take years to get to the point that they can do what I do naturally. Maybe I should consider it--I've only done yoga twice ever, and only once with an actual instructor at a Shabbat on the Lake event. I've never had a reason to seek it out, but back pain, even if mild and mostly only right after I wake up, is something I want to head off at the pass.

My father-in-law dealt with back pain for decades, and I think it was a major contributor toward his death.

Yesterday I started reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a book I've heard so much good about but never read. Now that I actually know something about superheroes and the history of comics, I love it. I almost cried at the origin story for the Escapist, the hero dreamt up by the novel's protagonists. Two Jewish kids in New York, with big mouths and bigger dreams, who just need the perfect character in order to break into comics. And thinking of what's happening in Europe, they develop the Escapist, who can break any bonds and enter any prison, and talk about putting Hitler being punched on the cover.

One of my favorite descriptions of G-d is in the Amidah, where he is called מַתִּיר אֲסוּרִים matir asurim, "who frees the chained."

That too was wishful thinking, since Josef Kavalier's family went to extraordinary measures to get him out of Prague, but they failed. He had to smuggle himself to Lithuania and then to America through Japan thanks to one of Chiune Sugihara's visas, and he was still only successful thanks to having family in America. Plenty of Jews were not so lucky, and many of them died. I've seen article about how the Golem of Prague was the first superhero--strong, fast, impervious to pain and injury, super-humanly moral, and dedicated to justice--and that echoes really loudly in the book. It's especially nice to read in a time when atrocities are being committed in our names.

"Never again" is now.

...so that's my life. Got more serious than I expected at the end, there, but it's all I could think of on the L as I was reading.

Annoying male protagonists are the scourge of fiction.

So I'm reading the latest chapter of 世界の中心で、愛を叫ぶ for today's tutoring session and get to a Romeo and Juliet-esque part where Sakutarō and Aki talk about how they want to get married. Aki points out that she's only 16, and that people think that they might change their minds. Sakutarō talks about how marriage is about being able to support themselves in society and does that mean that sick people who can't support themselves shouldn't be allowed to get married (だったら病気なんかで自立できない人たちは結婚しちゃいいけないのかってことになる), referencing something that happened to his grandfather. Aki sighs at Sakutarō's tendency to jump to the extremes of any argument, and then the annoyance starts:

「社会的に自立するってどういうことだと思う？」
彼女は少し考えて、「働いて自分でお金を稼ぐってことかな」
「お金を稼ぐってどういうこと？」
「さあ」

"What do you think it means to support yourself in society?
She thought for a little, "To work and earn money, I think."
"And what does 'to earn money' mean?"
"Well."

Everyone knows the Socratic method is the best way to endear your girlfriend to you.

He then goes on to say that money is the reward for various skills, which, okay, and then goes off into left field:

「それなら人を好きになる能力に恵まれている人間は、その能力を生かして人を好きになることで、お金をもらってなぜ悪い？」
「やっぱりみんなの役に立つことじゃないと、だめなんじゃないの」
「人を好きになること以上に、みんなの役に立つことがあるとは思えないけどな」
「こういう現実離れしたことを平気で言う人を、わたしは未来の夫にしようとしているんだわ」

"If that's the case, for humans who are blessed with the ability to love other people, why is it bad to earn money by making use of that ability?"
"If it's not useful to everyone, it's no good, right?"
"I don't think there's anything more useful than the ability to love."
"And I'm trying to make someone who calmly says such off-the-wall things my future husband."

Thus demonstrating that Aki has a reasonable grasp of economics, because the ability to love has a high supply and the demand for any particular person's ability to love is low. But that's not enough for Sakutarō, since this kicks off a page-long rant about what love means and how it's better for humanity to be wiped out by a meteor if it doesn't value the ability to love.

To Aki's credit, she doesn't feed his ranting. But I can see why the English title--and apparently, the proposed Japanese title before the publisher convinced him to change it--for this book was Socrates in Love. Sakutarō's response to anything is engage in grand works of adolescent philosophy, but unlike Socrates he's lucky if his musings have any connection to anything in the real world. And Aki tolerates it, maybe even finds it endearing, but that doesn't make it fun for me to read.

Can I read a version of 世界の中心で、愛を叫ぶ from Aki's perspective?