I remember seeing Fellowship in the theater opening weekend, and it was an absolute struggle to finish because it was so bad. Second worst movie I've ever seen (worst was the 2nd one).
And of course I probably don't need to explain the myth of JP homogeneity, but this comes up constantly here - "It's their country, so immigrants are just guests."
And you have to understand, EUpeans do really hate this - it's very common to hear them go on abt, oh, isn't it just natural to hate ppl who refuse to assimilate?
And it's like, no? Like, nobody says that abt the Amish. Cultural purity tests are unAmerican.
These are all things you're not supposed to do in the US. There's no national language, we acknowledge each other's ethnicities - EUpeans hate it, but we call ourselves DE-Am, or JP-Am, or IT-Am out of respect for the fact that we're all equally USian w/o having to submit to each other's cultures.
Anthr thing is how all of this glosses over any history of colonialism or imperialism by hiding those demands for minorities to submit to their purity tests and erasing the actual contributions those ppl have made to the country and it's culture.
Sthng I point out a lot is that MAGA isn't creating right-wing mvmnts arnd the wrld - MAGA are actually desperately trying to emulate Europe and Japan.
Here's what I mean: a lot of EUpeans claim to have a "melting pot," but then put conditions on it...
just saw a demo at the station w/ banners saying "ANTI IMMIGRANT," and being honest, JP is one of the absolute most insane places to say that, bcz the entire JP economy runs on foreign factories, and wld collapse overnight if those countries stopped letting in JP immigrants.
You mention Tolkien but post a gif frm Jackson's slop trilogy. Are you sure you're actually letting your kids read Tolkien and not just trying to force them to watch your favorite slapstick action-comedies? That's honestly super weird parenting, honestly sounds borderline abusive.
Yeah, the appearance wasn't the problem with those awful movies, it was the terrible writing and Jackson's incessant need to cram as much slapstick comedy and quippy jokes into every scene he cld. So much wasted potential turned into pandering slop. Really set the tone for the new century.
I mean, the Japanese do that because they straight up don't understand the jokes. Even the tiniest amount of sarcasm is just seen as lying here. Typical prime time TV comedy here is literally just screaming and hitting people.
Not sure what that says abt AUS humor, but it's nothing good.
Yeah, we also have the stained glass and starfield lands, which are all basically made from the same materials - glass or stars. At least I can imagine drawing different mana from a mushroom and an onion.
Japan remilitarized in, like, the 50's. The first US-JP defense agreement actually had a clause obligating them to (JP demanded the removal of that clause).
One of the weirdest things abt not being suicidal anymore is that, even though this has been one of the worst years of my life, I have no particular desire to kill myself - but there isn't really a different emotion replacing that. The sadness and anger just...don't go anywhere or do anything.
All of the sequels explore gender roles insofar as Trinity is Neo's tough protector, while Neo's superpower is literally loving Trinity. In the 4th movie Neo basically only has shield powers and can't really fight w/o her, and it's more explicit w/ the idea of them being a complementary pair.
The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th are also very much about gender. The 2nd one even has multiple scenes focusing on the female orgasm and the male relationship w/ female sexuality (Neo/Trinity sex scene, Merovingian drugging a woman, Persephone's kiss, etc.)
But I couldn't remember the particular style of singing, and I tried to say, it's like Korean opera? Or shrine singing? And he was like, yeah, that's pansori. And he laughed, saying, no, he doesn't know anything abt pansori, he prefers modern jazz.
The other day I was at a tech conference dinner chatting with a Korean engineer, trying to find something we had in common.
He was maybe 50 or 60, so I thought he might know traditional Korean music, and mentioned the fusion music I've been interested in for a while, e.g., youtu.be/SmTRaSg2fTQ
