BLM Update 2: Preference vs Prejudice

This one is not as informative as the previous post, it's just a think-aloud session.

As I was considering my own self-biases in my thinking towards others I think it was inevitable that I would begin to ask the question of preference vs. prejudice.  When is it "okay" to gravitate towards some people rather than others based on their traits?  Despite a lot of people's claims otherwise, this issue is about as black and white as the actual skin color of Black people and White people.

Consider for example a wide spectrum of statements:

"I don't date Black people."

"I'm better friends with people whom I perceive as female rather than male."

"I'm attracted to people with red hair."

"I only date Asians."

"I'm not attracted to women, only men."

"I'm only friends with other White people."

"I tend to dislike Europeans."

"I have a thing for older guys."

I'm sure you could show these statements to any number of people who would be MORE than willing to point out which ones are "racist" or biased vs which ones are "justifiable", but the reality of the fact is that statements and thoughts like this carry enormous social baggage that it doesn't really make sense to ignore.  When someone says "I would never be friends with a Black person." it's so easy for us to point to it as a marked example of prejudiced racial bias, but when we hear "I'm straight.  I only date women." suddenly it's an everyday comment that nobody bats an eye at.  Is it because 90+% of people we know are also straight?  Is it because you get a free pass to "date" anybody you'd damn well like but as soon as you exclude certain groups from your friend circle you're being prejudiced?

This issue has maybe bubbled up a little more to the surface in recent times because people are suddenly being told (or more like, they're finally listening) to confront the racial biases inherent in our everyday lives and suddenly a lot of people are perhaps realizing (or just confirming) that they only really associate with people of similar racial and ethnic backgrounds.  It's a natural extension, then, to ask oneself, "Is that...okay?"  And yes, you should probably ask yourself that even if you "have one Black friend and hey...that makes it all okay right?"

I don't know WHAT I was expecting when I searched up what other people thought of this issue but it sure as heck wasn't a lot of reflective and deep thought.  It seems that the world would have us believe that there is a very simple manifesto for how to interact with other people in this world.  You become friends with people of the same gender, you follow codified rules (see "Billy Graham Rules") for interacting with people of the opposite sex, you "date" people of the opposite gender so that you can get married and raise two children in a wonderful little family unit.  I...don't even know where to begin here.  For those of us who are not trying to fit into the pretty little Hallmark-standardized picture of society these guidelines are laughable at best.

So like all other complex issues, these sorts of questions really beg for critical thought, not blanket statements.  Using "Racism is baddddd.  Don't be racist!" as your guiding principle is useless, but using "Treat every single person the same." as a guiding principle is equally useless.  If given the choice between surrounding myself with people who treat me very poorly and people who treat me very kindly, I think I'd have a pretty good idea of which I'd choose.  But of course, if I made a snap judgment on an entire class of people and assumed that they'd treat me poorly, that's called prejudice and it's not doing me any favors nor anyone else.  It's important to examine both the context behind our tendencies and biases as well as their effects on our social interactions.

For myself, for example, I find that most of my friends are people whom I identify* as female, and I also happen to be physically and romantically attracted to people whom I identify as female.  I surely have racial biases in my social interactions as well, but they're dwarfed by my gender biases by far (we're talking order of magnitude), so we've gotta start there if anywhere.  Race doesn't exist in a vacuum after all -- race, gender, culture, nationality, ability, ... all intersect (see "Intersectionality") in forming social identities.

A couple of questions beg to be asked...

"Am I mostly friends with females because I make friends with people whom I'm attracted to?"

To answer this question it helps to ask other questions, such as "am I attracted to most of my good friends?", and "is attractiveness a quality that I find desirable in a friend?".  As well as consider scenarios such as "If my female friends switched bodies and were male friends to me, how would I feel toward them?"

These are all very personal questions and nobody can really answer them for you.  If you honestly just enjoy being around people you find more attractive, maybe that's just what is good for you.  Perhaps attractiveness is something you find desirable in a potential life companion and by spending more time around people that fulfill that criteria you hope to find one.  That's totally your prerogative.   But it's important also to realize that if you choose to only spend time with people whom you find attractive, you are by virtue also NOT spending time with a whole swath of other people.  Could it be that those other people would have provided a great amount of value to your life otherwise?  Again, this is simply for you to answer.  What's important is not an abstract sense of whether you are being "shallow", but whether the way in which you carry yourself matches with what is actually going to make you happy.

So let's say I'm mostly friends with girls because the traits I value in friendships happen to be more traditionally associated with females and femininity.  It's 2020 but even in today's world there's simply no denying that the institution of gender forces =drastic= differences in upbringing, perception, and opportunities (mostly for the worse) based on perceived gender.  So I'm pretty sure that if you removed gender from the world entirely and placed everyone in identical robot bodies I'd still end up making friends with more people who were previously female.  In other words, if I'm selecting based on these traits themselves, then maybe I'd end up with a bunch of female friends simply because the deck is stacked towards that.

But of course, there are still more questions that need to be asked.  For example, am I =really= judging people by those traits?  Or am I perhaps using gender as a shortcut to place people in a bucket before I've even gotten a chance to evaluate them?  If I look at all of the males that I'm choosing to not be friends with (and conscious or not, that is a choice), is it because they lack these traits?  Or is it simply because they're male?  If I meet a stranger in a social setting, am I likely to treat them differently before I've even met them, based on my gender perceptions?

Because it's fine to prefer "feminine" traits (although the underlying fact that I have to call them "feminine" is a problem with the world).  And it's even fine to reason that because of that most of my socializing is going to be with females.  But once I find myself cutting off an interaction with a man before I've even given them a chance, that's when I need to check myself, to think about my prejudice, and to consider whether it's really doing me a favor, or simply making me closed-minded.

Gender dynamics are of course blatantly obvious in social dance, so those of us with experience in that space have already experienced some of these "question-raising" situations.  Most leaders are male.  Most followers are female.  As someone who leads the majority of the time, I dance with mostly women.  Does that make me sexist?  Obviously not....that's simply the numbers.  But there's always that time when you happen across someone dancing a non-traditional role.  And in that moment, if your reaction is, "Oh....actually, I don't like this", then maybe you ought to consider why that is, and whether you're being honest to yourself about your preferences and prejudices.

And it gets more complicated than that.  Of course it does.  Because when a lone woman encounters a man in the street instead of another woman, you bet your ass that she's going to be "prejudiced" against him, because statistics don't lie.  Don't forget that sometimes people don't even have the privilege of even being ABLE to avoid prejudgment.

Though the ways in which race, gender, and sexuality are perceived in our society can be....problematic, to say the least, the fact that we are trained to look at these facets differently can perhaps help elucidate the nature of our biases and tendencies.

In writing this post, I can't claim to have found all of the answers, but I think I've got an idea of what the right questions are.  And that, of course, is the important first step.  To think about what you should be asking yourself.

Personally, my considerations toward gender preferences have changed a lot over the years, but bumping into this subject made it clear that there is still a lot of self-reflection and evaluation to be done.  I am no longer in the misandrist "boys are stupid throw rocks at them" phase of my life, but I also can't claim to have the experience necessary to really be satisfied with my approach to this problem either.

Anyways, lately my BLM homework has taken the backseat as I've been turning this over in my head instead.  But I feel like it's impossible for me to try to tackle any racial biases I may have without also stopping to look at the huge elephant in the center of the room.  I think something like this really needs holistic thought and reflection.

*Why am I wording this as "people whom I identify as female" rather than "people who identify as female"?  It doesn't happen to matter in my actual circle, but it's because we're trying to talk about my own judgments and classifications of people.  In this context it's already a given that the focus is on my perception rather than the other person's view of themselves.  Of course, everyone is entitled to their own gender identity and it would be grossly disrespectful to say that I "still see xyz as gender A" when that is not their identity because even if that's true, it isn't something worth saying or hearing.  But in the case of a stranger for example, I would by definition only be able to perceive a notion gender identity that is derived from my own preconceptions.

Yeah, it's been a short while I guess.  Let's see what I can remember...

I had a fairly meh week this week as far as mental health goes.  Nothing crazy or out of the ordinary, that's just sort of how it goes sometimes.  Just like a physical cold, it just means taking a bit more time for self-care, and taking time off work if it ever gets bad.

If you missed it, I ended up trying rapping/singing for my latest One Hour Compo.  It's certainly a far cry from my normal chiptune fare, but perhaps the more normal people ("normies", as it were) may find more enjoyment from this kind of stuff.  I'll have to experiment more with it in the future.

In other news, some of my music got licensed for the recent Adventure Time: Distant Lands Episode 1 film.  I don't follow Adventure Time, but it's pretty good regardless that my music was used for something like this!  Though I'm not exactly sure how it was used yet, I still need to watch the thing.

I've started watching "3 Nen A Gumi" aka "Mr. Hiirage's Homeroom", a J-Drama about a high school teacher taking his class hostage and then subsequently turning the hostage situation from what is initially perceived as a malicious threat to an exposition on society, bullying culture, but most of all "keyboard warriors" and internet herd mentality, particularly as it relates to social media and the practice of perpetuating things online with a disregard for both critical thinking as well as human empathy.  It's ok so far, I'm mostly watching this because I'm curious as to how it tackles these themes, which seem exceedingly relevant in today's world where misinformation is........well, I'm sure I don't even need to get started on misinformation....

BLM "homework" has continued, though I think I missed doing an assignment yesterday.  On a somewhat related but unrelated note, I'm hoping to begin participating in the Letters to Strangers project when I get a chance, here and there.  I've got some other writing to catch up on as well...

ALTTPR runs continue, as always.  I'm considering entering some ladder races, but we'll have to see if I actually end up carving out time for that, it's a tossup whether I will, honestly.

I booted up Master of Orion 2 again randomly; one of those classic games that is just fun to go back to every once in a good while.

Last time when I wrote about A Mortician's Tale it turns out I was literally a few clicks away from the end of the game, so I had already seen pretty much all of what the game had to offer, haha.  Overall the "overarching plot line" doesn't tread any new ground or anything, nor does it really try to, but that's not really the point of the game I don't think.  It does a good job of making you think about death, and consider it as an actual part of life, as well as to at least question what kind of attitudes you personally would like to hold with regards to funerals and the passing of others.  For example, do you think of funerals and remembrances as being for the benefit of the deceased, or for the benefit of the bereaved?  This question is never explicitly asked of course, but the situations that come up lead you to ponder these questions.  A Mortician's Tale isn't a revolutionary game and perhaps it's not necessarily going to be appreciated by a ton of people, but it doesn't overstay its welcome either.

I think Fortune-499 has been the favorite of the picks of the games that I've discovered through the itch.io charity bundle so far.  It's a mix of good writing together with clever mechanics that is really enjoyable.  There's a part that basically features Cassandra being subject to what could only be called a terrible case of mansplaining...I think that was particularly poignant for me, and really helped me buy into the character conflict of Cassandra being taken advantage of and (pardon my french) having to put up with a ton of sh*t.  Good writing...to me so far it is like an alien form of magic...

In cooking endeavors, I made sous vide pork chops for the first and second times!  They aren't half bad, it's nice to finally have pork chops that aren't just dry well-done pieces of cardboard.  In addition to that, I think I've added cacio e pepe-based pasta dishes to my repertoire now; I've been starting to make that a little more often and it's a pretty nice pasta dish!

Got some o-rings for my mechanical keyboard!  (halfway through applying them at the moment)  I have Cherry MX Brown switches on my keyboard, which have a tactile bump but no clickityclackity typewriter noise.  Adding the o-rings is a rather subtle modification, but "softens" the impact ever so slightly from hitting a key all the way as well as "dulling" the noise.  I wasn't sure whether I'd be a fan but I think I do slightly prefer the feel with the o-rings.

Have to keep on fighting, lest we begin to slip.  The closer we get to slipping, the harder we must fight.  For once you lose hold, it becomes even harder.

Just remember...every promise that you make is, perhaps, another promise that you break.

But if I could lend my strength, to those around me, who are in pain, and those around them, who are suffering...

BLM Update #1 - BLM as a class

There are a LOT of voices shouting things about the ongoing blacklivesmatter movement and so far I've mostly avoided saying anything of my own because I prefer to find quieter spaces to speak rather than enter a discourse that is already so "noisy".  It's been a few weeks since I've started diving into this stuff though, so it's about time for an initial post.

I've always hoped that my blog can provide a journaling of my own thoughts and experiences that others can connect to in a more personal way.  In the same vein, I'll be attempting to reflect upon and provide some updates with my experiences with blacklivesmatter.  My intent is not to tell you that you should follow the same models and patterns as I have (though you are welcome to do so if you wish), but simply to give you personal thoughts of what it might look like to incorporate this movement into day-to-day life.  I can't claim to be the best at this, nor the most knowledgable...far from it.  But amongst all the call to actions I've seen, I haven't heard any stories about personal everyday people things, so here we are.

Well, that's already more than enough of a foreward...let's get into it, then.  I'll try to start with the more abstract stuff and then narrow in on concrete things later.

For brevity, I'll simply use "BLM" to refer to the blacklivesmatter movement as a whole (which of curse is not to be confused with the "Black Lives Matter Foundation", which is an entirely different thing).

BLM as a class

My basic model for incorporating BLM into my day to day life has been to treat it as a sort of class.  Classes require you to do readings, listen to lectures, complete homework assignments, and do research projects.  And yes, every once in a blue moon, you might get a pop quiz.  BLM is much the same way for me, and the number one thing that I would tell anyone hoping to get involved in the movement is simply to DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

Let me drill down into some of the various ways in which the "BLM is like a class" analogy makes sense to/for me.



BLM takes time

Deconstructing systemic racism is a project that takes time, even if we are talking about the small bubble that is your own daily life.  If you don't feel like you can fit an extra 3-unit class into your current daily schedule, you might want to evaluate just how effective you can be and what your level of commitment is here.

On the plus side, you're in charge of your own course curriculum.  If this movement is important enough to you that you really want to dive deep and are prepared to do a lot of work (you need to do the homework!) for it, then by all means, give yourself a larger workload and bump your unit count up to 5.  If you feel like all of your free time is eaten up by this other "Surviving in a world of Covid-19" course that you're struggling to pass, then maybe you can think about taking BLM as an introductory seminar instead.  Sure, you won't come out on the other end with as much knowledge and training, but sometimes that's all you have the space for.  And hey, there's always next semester.



You're "behind"

There are a lot of people (including myself) who are just now starting to realize that BLM (and various associated issues) are important to them.  Qualms about herd mentality aside, that's a great thing, it really is.  But one of the first things you have to realize is that these issues are....really not new, not by any stretch of the imagination.

So yes, you're showing up for this new class and you're really eager to learn but...unfortunately, you registered a bit late.  And by "a bit late" I mean many of your peers have been enrolled in this class since they were born.  You've really got some catching up to do.

This could just be me, but in my personal opinion, being late to the party isn't really something that is particularly worth advertising.  "Hey guys!  I know you've been working hard for months to learn all the material in this class, but guess what, I'M HERE NOW!"  Now, if you put in the effort (do the homework!), I'm fully confident that you'll be able to pass the class with no problems.  But let's just not get carried away here.



Asking for help

I think a lot of people's first instinct upon thrusting themselves into #hashtag blacklivesmatter might be to ask others to give them a rundown.  "Can you help teach me about racism?"  "I really want to help, what are some things I can do?"  Yeah, about that......so like, imagine that you've just stepped into a class that's been going on all quarter and you turn to your neighbor and say "Hey!  So...I know we've got this midterm coming up, but I just signed up for this class yesterday.  Can you quickly teach me what we've gone over in the past 2 months?"

Do.  Your.  Homework.  Asking other people to educate you feels disrespectful of their time, and of the course itself.  There's an entire syllabus for this, you can't just skip all of the work and suddenly go from zero to hero.

Now, that doesn't mean you can't ask others for help.  But there's a big difference between "The homework is too hard...tell me how to do it..." and "So I read the textbook, but I'm really confused about this problem.  I think you need to use recursion, but I'm stuck trying to figure out a recurrence relation because..."  People will always be much, much happier to engage with you after you've put in the effort.  That applies across all subjects, not just this one.  It's OK to ask for help when you're stuck.  It's not okay to ask for handholding before you've tried.



Cheating

I really want to encourage everyone interested in this BLM "class" to try to be effective students of learning.  Yes, it's perfectly possible to scrape a passing grade by copying your friends' notes and by having them do all the work on the group projects while you simply show up for the presentation.  But if you do that, I feel like you're really missing the point of this class.

There are going to be students that are in this class just because they felt like it was "required".  If you want to treat this class as "just another general education requirement" and are taking it simply to prove that you're "BLM certified", then go ahead, do whatever you want.  Skip the homework, cheat on the tests, sure.  But I really hope that you're better than that.  (You're also going to need this knowledge if you ever hope to continue on to the higher-level versions of this course, etc.)

Keep in mind that copying your neighbor's answers or looking up the homework questions on stackoverflow is not a foolproof strategy.  I mentioned earlier that the "Black Lives Matter Foundation" is entirely separate from the BLM movement.  The "Black Lives Matter Foundation" is in fact an organization that's unrelated to the Black Lives Matter Global Network.  It's got a single paid employee whose goal is to "bring the community and police closer together".  A ton of folks (I'm talking $4 million dollars worth) have mistakenly donated to one thinking that it was the other.  Why?  Because they didn't do the homework.  I'm not here to tell you whether you should donate to or shouldn't donate to.  I'm just saying that if you want to "hashtag defundthepolice" you probably ought to do a little research before you donate to an org that "brings the community and police closer together".



Learning styles

Okay, let's face it.  Not all of us are go-to-lecture people (case in point....myself).  That's totally fine -- one of the things that we've hopefully learned through our education is that everyone has different effective learning styles.  It's on you to figure out how to work best in this class.

Do you want to....

"Watch speakers and lectures" -- There are numerous talks and videos on BLM subjects that you can stream for FREE from the comfort of your own home.

"Read the textbooks" -- Try reading through a few books on this topic (of which there are countless).  And I'm sure you've seen a billion articles on the interwebs about this by now.

"Form study groups?" -- Find a partner or two whom you can talk with regularly about BLM.

Heck, if you learn best by =taking tests= there's even a bunch of those out there that you can go through.

Not everyone's involvement with BLM needs to look the same and I'm sure you can find your own role in all of this.  Are you going to participate in nonviolent protests?  That's great, especially since I'm sure there are many who can't because they are ill or otherwise unable to.  Are you going to confront other family members and have frank dialogues with them regarding BLM?  That's great, especially since there are many people who are unable to do so due to barely being on speaking terms with their family.  Are you going to donate to (hopefully well-researched) organizations that will use your money to further good causes?  That's great, especially since there are many who simply don't have a stable source of disposable income that they can donate.

Everyone can find their own means through which to pursue this common goal of justice.  For myself, I'm not comfortable having a discussion about this with my family members, so that's off the table.  However I happen to have a handwritten letter hobby -- I can tie that into BLM by writing to legislators regarding relevant policy decisions.  We all have our part that we can play and I'm not going to judge you based on which you slot into.



Daily homework

Took a lot longer than I expected, but we're getting into my actual practical experiences now...

So, so far my self-assigned courseload for BLM has been "do something related to BLM every day".  I've kept that up so far, and hope to do so for some reasonable period of time.  Maybe a daily thing doesn't make as much sense for you as much as a weekly thing, that's totally fine.  Daily just happens to be a good cadence for me, while still allowing me a good amount of flexibility based on whatever else I happen to have going on that day.

Here's some examples of things that I've counted to fulfill my "daily BLM assignment":

- Watching a few TED talks given by people on color on what it's like to live in America, how we treat race, etc.
- Reading an article about white fragility
- Reading an article on "allyship" and what it means to be an "ally"
- Watching "Just Mercy", a film about a black civil rights attorney that is free to watch this month
- Literally looking down the "100 Greatest African Americans" list and clicking Wikipedia links on names that I recognized but didn't know much about
- Reading and learning about Muhammad Ali specifically cuz hey, boxing, that seems interesting
- Looking up my local police policies to see where they fall
- Contributing to non-profit organizations through my employer's donation matching program
- Doing initial searching into legislation such as the Justice and Policing act that is currently being pushed through the legislative process
- Writing this blog post....(took longer than I thought it would...)
...

I want to stress that I the amount of effort that I dedicate to this each day is sometimes a decent amount, but oftentimes it's very low and I'm OK with that.  I've literally had a TED talk playing on my second monitor while grinding out some daily quests on Ragnarok Online and that happens to be two things that I can comfortably do at the same time -- actually it works out shockingly well.  Could I be focusing more on whatever video I happen to be playing?  Sure, but I'm making it work for myself and that's what counts.  It's not a race here.



Research

Even if none of us ever learned any of the =truly relevant= (read: shameful) history of our country back in Social Studies class, my hope is that we at least came out of our education with some sense of how to approach a large project that requires some sort of research and critical analysis.

Depending on what you self-assign for your BLM workload, you're probably going to undertake some larger, more "vague" projects.  Don't get caught in the trap of operational procrastination!  It's important to take these larger goals and break them down into microtasks so you can profit from checking off little checkboxes each day while making forward progress toward an otherwise-daunting task.

One example of a larger-scale "project" might be donating money to an organization(s) related to BLM issues.  You could just click on the first twitter link you see and call it a day, but here in this class, that's....barely worth a "C", honestly.  You can do better.  Come up with a breakdown that might look like this:

- What organization(s) should I donate to?
  - Should I donate to a larger organization or a grassroots organization?
    - What is generally more effective?  I should look up what other people have said about this
    - Search what are the most well-known BLM organizations and why.
    - Search what organizations are local to my city/county
- What is this organization going to do with my money?
  - I should look up what this organization has done in the past.
  - I should look up what this organization says they are going to do in the future.
- Is this organization trustworthy?
  - What are other people saying about them?  I should look up external comments on them
  - Who is leading this organization?  I should look them up.  Are there actual people of color running this organization?
- How much money should I donate?
  - I should think about whether I want to donate one-time or setup a recurring schedule

For myself, an eventual project is to use my voice to affect change via writing to legislators.  Here's what that process might look like.  This one has a bit more detail because I've already started digging into it, but there are still a lot of blanks to fill in.

I'm concerned about Police brutality, accountability, and injustice.  If my local community has issues with these things, I should write to my legislators to suggest change and express my opinions.
- What is the current state of the police force in my local area?
  * It turns out my local area has a unified public safety model, where staff are combination police+fire+emergency responders.  My local area is also known for being extremely safe and having a low crime incidence.
- Looking at https://policescorecard.org/, my city is rated as a "D-" for Campaign Zero.
  * I'm not going to take this at face value.  Where did this rating come from?  The rating seems to be "B" for police accountability and approach to policing, but "F" for police violence.
  - Where did the "F" come from?  Are these statistics artificially inflated because there isn't enough data?
    * For example, 100% of the times police said they saw a gun, it was never actually found.  This got assigned the lowest possible score...but there was actually only a single incident here.  So 1/1 = 100%.  That's silly.
  - policescorecard.org also says that the police have only adopted 2 out of 8 recommended campaignzero policies
    * Is this actually accurate?  I should verify with the actual department policies.  Fortunately the department itself has already issued a public statement regarding this where they reference specific sections of their policy.  In some cases the policies might have been updated and in other cases the policy might actually more reasonable than the policescorecard.org rule?

- If there is a problem with police behavior, how are the officers held accountable?
  - Are the violations escalated to a third party or are the policing officers responsible for enforcing themselves? (as is the case in many other places)

- What has the city council said on this issue?  I should look up past meeting minutes.

- I found a website that has a pre-written letter regarding defunding the police
  * I should evaluate the points brought up by this letter.  Do they actually make sense or not?

(Repeat all above steps, but for the state level....etc.....)

...

Does it feel like I'm writing a research report?  Yes, in a lot of ways, it does.  That's how it is.  Turns out that public education was.....ok, well I can't in good faith say they always really excelled in teaching us how to do this kind of stuff, but they gave us a good start, in any case.  Use those skills.  Do your research!



Motivate and enable

I've constantly said that you should do your homework but I think collaboration and cooperation is great and highly appreciated as a lot of us are all taking this class together (and a lot of us are....unfortunately behind where we ought to be).  Just remember that there's a difference between someone making a study guide versus copying homework answers from a friend.  The goal is for everyone to =learn= and contribute, so I think it would be cool if we could help make that as easy as possible for each other.

Share some strategies that worked for you, if you'd like.  If you have a cool "daily BLM assignment", maybe other people would be into it too.  If you found a grassroots organization that you researched and think is worth donating to, share it with other folks in your area and tell them WHY you think this organization is worth donating to.  Maybe ask a friend if they want to join you on a protest walk?  Above all else, I want this class to seem easy to get into, not confusing to start (....even though it's actually really hard and tough and miserable..........ugh).



This post is way too long so I'll save other thoughts for later.  I guess this ended up just being the "Treat BLM as a class" post.  I feel like this post is long enough that I probably said something silly in the middle of it, so apologies in advance if I was being dumb anywhere.  (We can't learn learn unless we allow ourselves to make mistakes, and correct them....)

I'll probably just split the BLM stuff into separate posts.  That one will come a bit later, I guess.

As far as other stuff goes...

I had quite a number of conversations with friends in the past week, which was nice.  Seems that there has been a lot of stress going around lately...which I guess is understandable.  People probably feel like there is a lot going on, because, I guess, there is.  But as always I do my best to keep plowing forward at a slow pace.  Always.

I started playing A Mortician's Tale, a narrative "death positive" game where you play as a mortician running a funeral home.  I approached this game with a bit of trepidation, as I wasn't too sure how well the "mechanics" would fare and it has gotten some mixed reviews.  It seems to be on the shorter side, so I imagine I'll finish it soon enough.  So far I would say that even if the game isn't perfect, it has its heart in the right place, so to speak.  It feels a little rough around the edges, but I think it does hit the notes that it's trying to hit, at least for me.  If nothing else, it seeks to make you think a little more about something that is usually not spoken about, which I think is always a good thing.

I did another Link to the Past / Super Metroid crossover rando run, just for fun!  I was feeling not so well yesterday, so I gave myself a break and just chilled out.  I didn't do half bad, even despite being rusty in SM and messing up a bunch of stuff.

This week seems to be a little bit more experimental as far as cooking goes; I don't have many of my fallback staple dishes planned, and instead have tried to figure out how to work with some ingredients that I'm perhaps not as comfortable with.  I'm sure it will be to mixed success, but well, that's kind of the idea, isn't it?  You take the things that work and then continue to do them.  Just like everything else in life.

I've been slacking a bit on letters, but I checked and it looks like I have a good handful to work on in the coming month or two, so like all things important, that will be coming back to me...

Ally

I think that in order to consider myself as an ally, I will need to have done those things when the opportunity arises.  It is not a matter of "being willing to", it is a matter of having actually proven that when the line was drawn in the sand, I had stood on the same side as those I was trying to help.  It's not something that I can claim for any group.  Maybe not even any person.  But perhaps someday, I, and my fellow "aspiring allies", will have their time.

But where was the staircase?  Where were the small steps along the way, that I missed on this path?

Reading all the shade being thrown around at JKR and the Hogwarts house system, it's finally become more obvious why I never liked house Gryffindor.  The "good guys" house...I always knew that if I were to be sorted, I would wish for anything but Gryffindor.  The house of crusades, of righteousness, of heart, action, and exuberance.  Go to Gryffindor if you want to be a main character.  Blegh.  No thanks.  I pledge my allegiance to the MtG color green.....because the natural way is best.  The way where nothing needs to change.  The way that things were meant to be.

Perhaps the coolest MtG experience I've had was when I 4-0d the Khans of Tarkir prerelease with a really strong Temur (green-blue-red) deck.  Primarily blue-green splashing for a bit of red...apparently Mardu (white-red-black) was winning at most of the tables, with an aggressive go-wide strategy involving a morph that spawned 3 1/1 goblins, and the card Trumpet Blast, which gave +2/+0 to all your attacking guys.  But my deck was a tempo-oriented deck, one that preyed on everyone's greedy 3-color mana bases and slow morph plays.  I'd play a 2/1 on turn 2, attack, play the 4/2 bear for 3 on turn 3, then on turn 4 I'd cast savage punch in order to kill a thing and then attack for 8!  I had a morph, icefeather aven, that was a 2/2 flyer for UG, but could morph for 1UG and bounce a creature to its owner's hand.  I feel like a lot of people played that card as a morph for value when they ought to have just played it face-up.  Sure, bouncing a thing is good, but getting a wind drake and then paying 3 mana for a bounce spell is just.....slowwwww.  Compare that to just getting a 2/2 flyer out on turn 2 and start chipping away at their life total.....

Anyways, the point was that it was not only a strong deck, but a neat deck to play, since I really enjoyed tempoing out people, and the best part was that I've always known that Temur is sort of my closest affiliation to MtG colors and wedges.  I've always been faithful to the virtues of Green, but I also dabble in blue and red at times.  Probably more blue than red, though, which I guess makes it even more fitting that the deck I did so well with was simic-based.  It was a rare time in a limited player's lifetime when the deck you ended up building with the pool ended up not only being the best deck but fitting both your personality and playstyle.  Yeah, I still remember playing that deck, to this day.  I crushed that event too, the only match that was any difficulty was the last one (against someone in my play group at the time)...a Mardu deck which ultimately I won over with the strength of Sagu Mauler.

Well, okay, I guess we can catch up on actual happenings too.  It's hard to know what to write though, for a multitude of reasons.  But I know I have had thoughts, so we'll just start with whatever I end up remembering.



She is gone.  The "Kagome" person, she is gone.  Of course, I always knew she would be, she was destined to leave my life, as another had once before.  I told her as much, too.  I knew.  And it seems now that that time has clearly passed.  Thinking about that person's name, I'm not 100% sure how to feel.  Being with this person reminded me so strongly, of the one that I've never forgotten.  I guess I miss them both.  But it is hard to imagine that I would ever choose to hold onto this thread tightly.  For not only did I know from the beginning that things would end, but I knew also, that she was only a reminder of whom I really wanted to see.  That person, whose absence seems...unfair, even.
And yet it always astonishes me, how "the girl of the four winds" is still in my life, even when those two are not.  And yet, even if I stop reaching backwards, I must never stop remembering.



itch.io has a massive charity bundle on sale now and even if you care nothing about supporting the NAACP and community bail funds, you should still get it because the amount of value there is insane, like....insane, like, what???

I've been making my way through some of the games this weekend, since....well, playing games is apparently what I needed to do.  I played through all of Fortune-499, an interesting little card-based game which I enjoyed.  While I think there were aspects that felt slightly (and I mean slightly) not as "elegant" as I would have liked, that's really a minor complaint, and overall I found that it managed to simply.....stay interesting.  I think it was a great mix of game mechanics and narrative and each chapter tries to throw something new at you.  I feel like the pacing of the game (if that's the right term) felt really nice because of that.  The aesthetic is well-done too, these little details like the transition that happens every day really help put a nice bow on the whole package.  Very nice.

I played through the hilarious Astrologaster as well, a narrative-based comedy choose-your-own-adventure game that involves you playing as a "doctor" who reads the stars (read: "bullshits everything") to diagnose his patients.  I'd recommend really sitting down and playing through this in one sitting if you're going to, simply because I feel like it would be really awkward to come back to it after getting halfway through and having forgotten all of the context that informs your decisions through the game.  I found it difficult to keep everything straight in my head towards the later part of the game, but somehow managed to squeak by with a license at the end -- huzzah!  It did a really good job of giving you some interesting challenges in terms of trying to figure out what choices would lead to a "good" outcome, often having you balance honesty with people-pleasing as well as external concerns and future consequences.

I tried out Interstellaria briefly, but it seems a bit more intimidating (and unfortunately not as user-friendly) than I had hoped.  I'm willing to try giving it another chance (the soundtrack!), but I'm tempering my expectations for that one, as I know it's supposed to not be the most polished game in existence.



In the meantime, I've finished Illusion of Gaia!  Crazily, I also managed to find this really long critical analysis/writeup of Illusion of Gaia, which was certainly interesting even if not super groundbreaking.  IoG (or "Illusion of Time" as it is also known) is an interesting game, as I've said before.  I think it does a few things right, and some other things fairly mediocre.  But as with Secret of Mana (perhaps the prime example), sometimes bundling together some mediocrity with vibrant visuals, GREAT music, and a world that "looks and feels great" is really enough to get a game through all of its flaws.  I never knew this before, but it turns out that you can fight every single boss as Will (not freedan or shadow), though doing this for some of the later bosses is just plain tedious (pharaoh queen would just take forever....), and doing it for the hardest boss in the game (the vampires) is a very legitimate challenge, perhaps even harder than beating the "secret boss" Solid Arm.  I'd have to say Illusion of Gaia starts to kind of fall flat near all of the final sections of the game.  For most of the game, once you finish a dungeon, you simply move onto the next area, but for some reason once you get to Ankor Wat and the Mountain Temple, you have to backtrack through the whole dungeon in order to exit.....couple that with the sequence in Rivermia where you need to wait for the lily pad, plus the Pyramid which has you switching forms over and over again...not to mention waiting in like in Euro, as well as fetching the girl 3 apples.....there's suddenly a LOT of tedium that gets introduced and none of it is particularly good.  At least combat is more interesting, as you know have some additional abilities to play around with (read: "mess around with and take more damage than if you had just done the simple thing").  The boss rush at the end isn't super engaging either, as all of the bosses are easier this time around (due to being Shadow), though the vampires are still challenging as ever.  The final boss is more or less a pushover, so yeah.  What really drags IoG down at the end, though is the slllllooooooowwwwww dialogue throughout all of the ending sequences.  Thank goodness I had a fast-forward function available to me there.

Anyways, this now clears me to try Terranigma again, if I so choose...I have heard good things about this game, and apparently it has a bittersweet ending of some sort, but I'll try not to get my hopes TOO high.

Oh, I should also mention that I finished the entire alternate puzzle mode of Panel de Pon, yay!

Also randomly started playing through Full Throttle.......but I mean, I guess this ought to not be a surprise to anybody anymore, that yet again I've taken a game from....*checks*....1995, and randomly decided to go and play through it.



I've been continuing to read through Animorphs here and there (got through book 6...ok, I'm not very far yet, I admit)...also came across a random thread on twitter praising KA Applegate for being super supportive of the BLM movement, as well as...you know, writing a so-called children's book series that talks about slavery, war, xenophobia, child soldiers, morality, humanity, ... I haven't gotten to all of the more heavy stuff (that all comes later on in the war...) but we're getting there.  Yeah...just thinking about it, I still recall reading book 48.  It was late at night and I was using the desk lamp in my bedroom at my parents' place, listening to Sixpence None the Richer.  Hearing the song "Tonight", at the ending of that book, when Rachel is supposed to figure out what to do, and she just...doesn't know.  It's left unsaid what happens, and I think that's actually really good writing.  Because the impact of that moment would be gone, if Rachel just decides what to do.  You'd have the answer.  But you don't.  You don't know what happens.  You don't know what Rachel should do, or should have done.  Just like her.  And all the while, Leigh Nash was singing, "Tonight it's time....choose a direction...if you fail...you can make a correction...."



I love meowmie.



Randomly watching some more of HealthyGamerGG, and such, actually feels.....great.  There's this element of human contact and conversation that I think I couldn't really identify as a missing block in isolated life, and I think hearing supportive voices and seeing people help each other, even if not directed at myself, is invigorating.  And I think =past= even that, I think just hearing someone break down problems and emotions in such a rational and relatable way is quite useful.  I think it's like.....I don't know if this happens to other people, but when you hear or watch or even read someone's speaking or writing a lot, I think sometimes you begin to formulate an internal monologue or rationalization in their words, in their style of thinking.  And I think that's actually really helpful, in a lot of different situations.



Speaking of people helping each other out...last but certainly not least (the opposite, really), I've been trying to embark on this journey that several others have been.  There are some things to do, many things to do, really.  But for now, the first thing to do is simply....to do my homework.  Abstract plans are hard to act on, but if there is anything I am good at, it is taking what seems like a giant boulder and chunking it up into bite-sized pieces such that I can make progress, and then make progress, and then make progress again.  And I hope that someday, =we= will make progress....make progress....and continue to walk forward.  What is overwhelming, hopeless, and impossible all at once becomes something easier to digest when it becomes a tangible thing.  HealthyGamerGG talked about that too, actually, as a form of Operational Procrastination.

So yes.  We will try, and try, and keep trying.  And we each have our own small part to play in this thing.  I already know what I hope mine to be.  For now, I'm just making my way there.



I donno, I mean....I guess I could write these blog posts with a bit more context and explanation.  But sometimes blogs are ok too, without explanation.  When you don't really know exactly what I'm talking about, but you can read that there's a sentiment behind it.  Does every art piece need its "point" to be explained in order to be appreciated?

I have always taken my past as my own burden.  It is mine and mine alone to grieve, for everyone else who truly understands it exists only within the past itself.

But now it is time for me to grieve for the past of others.  A story that is far longer, and far sadder than mine.  One that has also been forgotten by those who did not care.

Motivate, not humiliate

We can be in this together, if we choose

What does it really mean?  To be an ally?

My friend wrote a statement on this, 5 years ago.  But perhaps it's clear that I'm not yet fully equipped for this.

How would I be able to help a stranger against all odds if I am not even able to help a friend when it's easy?

For us, and everyone else, the road towards learning these lessons is a hard one.  But you've got to fail in order to learn.  And you've got to try in order to fail.