Traverse Fantasy

Finally! I've been wanting to write about this for a while, but I've struggled with deciding whether or not I had anything worthwhile to say. Then, I realized, when do I ever not talk just to say things? I'm not an expert about any fucking thing, and this is no different. I'm just a serial chitchatter. I can't help but constantly compare Daddy Yankee's Legendaddy and Rosalía's Motomami when I listen to either of them. Even on a superficial level, they have a lot in common. Both are reggaeton albums that came out in March 2022, and only while I'm writing this did I realize that both titles are parental portmanteaus. Maybe subconsciously I could not help but compare Daddy and Mami , and how one might read either as defining itself in contrast to what the other is not (as one tends to do). Regardless of their titles, thematically, both albums are long-form declarations of each artist's mastery over reggaeton as a musical genre and cultural force. How...

When you're the only secondary character who's male and have no choice but to be yaoi bait. Returning to the topic of Sword Art Online ! A couple months ago, I watched the last two seasons of the anime adaptation for the first time since they adapted an arc from the novels that I only read half-way through. I ended up totally hating it, but couldn't put a finger on it. This is my attempt to figure out why. When you take the original novel as a standalone work—that is, as it was first composed—it’s clearly not very interested in “plot”. Although there is an overarching story as the game is cleared and, more centrally, as the romance develops (culminates?) between Asuna and Kirito, the work is far more fascinated by the characters, their sensations of virtual reality, and their implications for experiencing them as life. Kawahara weighs sword fights equally with cooking, fishing, marriage, murder, and even sex. 1 The plot, both of clearing the game and of the romance betwee...

Smaller post! I've made a deranged change to the structure of Resourciv . Every team now acts at random intervals; initially, this can be once every 1 to 20 years, but the maximum possible frequency will decrease as individual teams discover communication technologies (not important yet). This means the game gets "faster" as time goes on, but not arbitrarily. I don't like the tendency of later Civ games to railroad history. I'm thinking especially of the three-era system announced for Civ VII , and even the global era system in Civ VI , where historical eras are global rather than entered by individual civilizations. I don't like eras in general, since they reflect a specifically European teleology of history. However, it's better when (at least) these eras are civilizationally specific rather than imposed globally. It's even worse when specific cultures are put into specific era-buckets in Civ VII . Combine that with the world literally expanding bet...