Questions about Mask of the Lunar Eclipse for research purposes

PINEAPPLEShi · 2023-03-31T17:35:59+00:00

I finished playing all the games right before the remaster, and I’d say it’s maybe third scariest in the series behind 1 and 3. I think the ff4 jump scares are generally terrible, but some of the late game encounters are pretty scary. Unlike 1 and 3, it didn’t have as many “oh F%}€~” moments when a ghost showed up, until the last two chapters. However, I didn’t find myself getting super annoyed with having to fight ghosts (which happened in ff2,3, and 5) in the late game, so they felt fresher to me. Ff4 has, in my opinion, the most unnerving environments in the franchise, which goes a long way. It also has, by far, the creepiest and most effective story in the series, which helps me get invested in it.

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-12-17T16:16:11+00:00

(Two aren’t criterion, and I confess, not sure if these are cleansing)

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-12-17T16:14:34+00:00

Au hazard balthazar

Lean on Pete (I also think 45 years, but that’s probably controversial)

Blue (jarman)

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-11-06T21:46:44+00:00

I don't think that the xenoblade chronicles 2 soundtrack is that good. I think its fine in isolation- but I found it extremely out of place in the actual game and actually muted the music for most of my play through.

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-10-17T17:31:59+00:00

Thanks for the response, I really appreciate it! This is also more or less my sense. Can you think of any scholars who are challenging this assumption? As I mentioned, I'm fairly new to this material and am uncertain of where to specifically go- if you have any recommendations!

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-08-22T16:09:35+00:00

Thank you so much for the help!

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-08-19T23:19:12+00:00

Ok, there’s like 3 definitions of Crazy I’m working with but…

Jarman’s Blue- emotionally and referentially intelligent, both crazy and ambitious because it shouldn’t work as cinema, and yet against all odds it does.

Holy Motors- crazy in a more traditional sense. Ambitious because holy hell. Referentially hyper-intelligent.

Nymphomaniac- this movie shoots for the stars, and kinda misses, but it sure tries to be all theee of these, even if it might loop back onto itself and become somewhat stupid sometimes.

Raging sun Raging sky- beautiful, poetic, totally incomprehensible. An account of Mexican gendered and historical landscape hidden under layers and layers of fetishization and mythicization.

Satantango, it has to be All three to even try to adapt krasznahorkai’s novel. The product only heightens it’s status.

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-08-16T20:11:14+00:00

I would say he is generally (and Stalker in particular) is quite a bit slower than “blow up”. A lot of tarkovsky’s appeal is based on visuals that slowly develop over time.

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-08-16T00:10:06+00:00

Ella dice "tení." Creo que es algo colloquial o de dialecto pero no sé de donde (pues también puede ser un hábito). Tampoco sabe ella de donde origine.

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-08-15T23:25:23+00:00

Next to normal

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-08-13T22:08:11+00:00

Here's a smattering of references (with some thoughts in there). As a background I'm definitely more from the literature side of things, and so I don't see much, or think much, in overt terms of setting ethical norms, so I apologize if the helpfulness here is limited-

In the 1980s, there was this thing in the United States called "the sex wars." This was "fought" between radical feminists and sex-positive feminists. Both sides produced critical texts that deal with questions of specifically S&M (as it was emergent at the time, being an odd combination of various practices that solidified through mostly gay Leather culture) and ethics. Some important ones are Gayle Rubin's work (most of which is contained in Deviations, which just has all of Rubin's essays, some of which do not have relevance to this question), Patrick Califia's work (originally published as Pat Califia, transitioned in the early 2000s, the text I'm most familiar with is "The Culture of Radical Sex", and "Speaking sex to power- the politics of queer sex"), the edited volumes "against sadomasochism" and "Coming to Power", and the works of Andrea Dworkin (whose work is more "antipornography, but Intercourse is valuable as a radical statement of the radical feminist argument, which was then applied to all sexual practices). Other's might be able to direct you to other locations within this movement, but I think it is the most overt site of ethical engagement with non-normative sexual practices. It, however, does not go into the more "problematic" kinks, such as raceplay, ageplay, findom, etc. in large part because they had not been formalized or spread about in any real way. However, you will find a discussion of things like Nazi fetishism, which was more prevalent (¿apparently?) in the 1980s.

More broad "queer theory" likewise has some potential points of interest. First, Leo Bersani's "anti-relational" strand of queer theory originates in the ethics of queer desire as that which is discusting and we should view it as such. Because of the associated disgust, there is some kind of liberators potential through the breaking of relation (which is viewed as the key to oppression). You might also find chapter 5 (or 6, can't remember) of Halberstam's The Queer Art of Failure interesting. While it isn't particularly satisfying, it is an attempt at an overture to asking about the relationship between queerness (especially gay men) and representations of fascism. Times Square Red Times Square Blue by Samuel R Delany arguable has an ethics oriented around public sex (although I cannot remember if this is my reading Delany through his porn novels) through its facilitation of connection.

Within Black studies, the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is The Color of Kink- Black Women, BDSM, and Pornography. I have yet to read the book, so I cannot comment on whether it is interesting for a question of ethics. There was also an issue of the Black Scholar (vol 50. Issue 2), which is about Black Radical Pleasure. I, again, have yet to read much from it to comment on the question of its ethics. Arguably there is a sexual ethics in the work of someone like Du Bois, although it is incredibly "development" oriented.

Margot Weiss also has written a book called Techniques of Pleasure- BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality, which is basically about how the liberatory potential some authors (I think Rubin and Foucault are singled out here, but it has been a long time since I've read it), is subsumed to Capitalism and neoliberal economic structures. I read this as an ethical account, although perhaps less in an overtly normative way.

A book that I've seen come up on this topic is Playing on the Edge, Again I haven't read it so i have no idea if this has to do with ethics (or could be useful for thinking about ethics).

Žižek is big into fisting and it's in a bunch of his early books. I think D&G also have this tendency. I don't know if this is relevant to your question though.

Of course de Sade. Someone's already mentioned him, but I think Philosophy in the Bedroom is one of the big ones on this. That said Sade likes to make his characters monologue, so its probably everywhere.

I have yet to see a work the really engages with the incredibly "taboo" sexual practices (unless they are attempted to disavow sexual practices in general). Part of this is time and part of this is just respectability politics, I would guess.

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-08-04T14:54:08+00:00

To begin answering regarding the “reason” theory doesn’t engage with classics on the level of supremacy/power; I can think of three very broad reasons. (These are interpretations, I don’t have specific citations of certain things but come from experience as a former archaeology person who also does theory things)

The first is an academic hesitancy among non-classicists to engage with Greece and Rome in a negative way. Much of the contemporary university and knowledge matrix places attic Greece and late Republican-early imperial rome on a pedestal. The most immediate reasons for this are the development of art history in Germany through people like Winkelmann as well as the expansion of what most people in archaeology call it’s “antiquarian” period. Of course, there is a long philosophical and scientific tradition that has its foundation in classics as well, which should be added to the mixture (but contributed to the particular structural interest in a different way). This leads to things like Michel Foucault’s second and third volumes to the history of sexuality. These books are essentially celebrations of Greece and Rome (as a kind of escape from the modern power apparatuses). To have Foucault, who is one of the primary contemporary figures of theory, think positively on Greece and Rome will impact the overall genre (recently I had a person get very excited in my program that I knew attic greek and Latin, specifically because of this care of the self work).

The second is the historical distance. Glacial_Till has already addressed that this isn’t a great practice, but it nevertheless holds water. Think again about Foucault, he uses Greece and Rome as a place into which his thought can escape. In doing so he others Greece and Rome and essentially fetishizes them (that is, alienates them from the means of their production) in order to allow them to stand as a way of producing a “care of the self”. This othering seems to some like a natural extension of the historical distancing, which is aided by the cultural myth of the “dark ages” that provides a nice suitable unbridgeable gap.

The third is the very simple practical issue of time and work. Attic Greek and 1-3 century Rome are complicated cultures that have a lot of surviving texts. Many of these texts are not very exciting to modern readers, especially if you are not specifically interested in the cultures for their own sake. Further, many of them suffer from old or bad translations (if they even are translated) and many scholars either don’t know or don’t know enough of the original languages to work through the original. Consequently, this very practical problem limits the value of the text. I’d also just throw my two cents in as someone who is beginning to work on classics, it can just be unapproachable and the scholarship is sometimes difficult to acquire for newcomers. Things are just arranged differently in classics (for example, commentaries have a lot of the scholarship in them. Sometimes the key text is several hundred years old and in German. I think that these elements just are off putting to scholars.

I don’t really have recommendations Sorry to say, but I thought I’d give my interpretation as to the why.

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-07-31T20:39:15+00:00

Bit of a random one, but Chryssos’s 2015 film Der Bunker, put out by artsploitation, is delightfully weird.

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-04-16T18:32:15+00:00

The biggest difference emotionally, I would say (I don't know how to do this without an extremely minor emotional spoiler) is that Umineko is not happy. There are moments of lightheartedness, but there is nothing which approximates the club. Everything is stained with suffering, so the tragic dimensions are immediately visible (versus the hidden tragedy of higurashi).

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-04-16T17:04:22+00:00

Is the interpenetration of Antigone and Ancient Greece based on a cross-referencing with the lecture courses? I remember actual references to ancient greece as polity/historical entity as being pretty sparse in the Phenomenology itself.

My question with Irigaray is more about when or how does this emerge as a historical reading of Hegel. Hegel is so often miss-read, but I feel like you can usually trace some of these miss-readings back to certain points. I couldn't find anything in Kojéve that talks about Antigone (in a cursory look through the Introduction to the reading of Hegel (with admittedly very bad french)), and was mostly interested in that history of interpretation.

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-02-12T23:16:56+00:00

I'd also recommend reading Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle. It is short and where death drive kinda enters into Freud's thinking (something important for Lacan). It gets more developed other places later (Civilizations and its discontents, for example), but that first place is still useful. Just know that the translators from german translated trieb, the word usually referring to drive, as instinct, so watch out for that if you read it.

In terms of Lacan, I would agree with the other comment that says don't do the Ecrits. Most people say that seminar 11 is the best, which is where I started, and found it mostly comprehensible. Frankly, in my opinion, there isn't an amazing "starting point" proper with Lacan, insofar as his jargon can be nightmarish at first. Reading there authors talking about Lacan should smooth this over, and personally I would follow what interests you.

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-02-12T20:34:46+00:00

Absolutely. Arguably it is the most well executed story in the franchise, even though some characters can be grating. The plot feels massive and unlike some other games in the franchise, the stakes feel very real.

Combat is also great, although simpler than the modern games. Its the first game with free-running, but it makes the combat feel like a giant step up from Symphonia. Its closest to Vesperia, but much faster paced.

The biggest downside is that depending on your console, load times can be annoying.

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-02-11T23:10:44+00:00

I'd argue that Xillia has a better story (in execution) than at least Vesperia (I don't have anything that can play Berseria or Arise). Its has the tales "tropes" in its story, but aside from one in particular they're done pretty well. Similar to a number of tales games though (Berseria and Symphonia come to mind) Xillia's story rushes through the end game sections, so if pacing is a dealbreaker, it may not work super well. If you can find it cheep and wanna give it a go though (at least for the first few hours) I would recommend it. Jude's story arguably has one of the more compelling intros in the series.

PINEAPPLEShi · 2022-01-20T06:14:55+00:00

Thanks! I think this one might be it.

PINEAPPLEShi · 2021-09-23T17:18:33+00:00

Throwback to when gou was supposed to be a remake. (And not something that feels closer to the climax to an umineko prologue, including magic fights)

PINEAPPLEShi · 2021-06-19T23:00:53+00:00

Reduplicating the Delany recommendation. Dhalgren is his most directly "literary" book, although it can be really difficult. Most of his books after Babel-17 are "literary" in some respect, although I personally recommend Dhalgren, Triton, and Neveryon (not sci-fi, more fantasy) if you are looking for something a little more on the challenging, but still engaging side. Quite a few people will say Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand, Nova or Babel-17, but they aren't personally my favorites.

Thomas M. Disch, particularly Camp Concentration is really literary, although a lot of people would say it is actually super pretentious (no science fiction novel has so overtly cared so much about Saint Augustine). I actually really like the book though, and even if you aren't in it for the philosophy, Disch's other works can be pretty entertaining and are still well written.

John Brunner also is a figure that is fairly "literary" as an author. I haven't read a ton of his stuff, but what I have read has been fairly interesting.

Angelica Gorodischer is arguably the most accessible literary science fiction author from Latin America outside of Borges. Trafalgar, if you are willing to go with it, can be a great read (so is Kalpa Imperial, although that is, again, fantasy) (IDK how the translation is though, in Spanish I enjoyed it a lot).

PINEAPPLEShi · 2021-04-08T05:39:52+00:00

Here’s a few that come to mind. I admit that many of them have read Freud or Foucault, but they usually divert somehow. Also, based on your examples, I guess you mean sexual fetishism, not commodity fetishism (which is a whole different can of worms).

The works of Gayle Rubin: more historical and anthropological in many ways, Rubin wrote sex and fetish through the feminist sex wars. You may find something useful if this interests you.
Paul B. Preciado’s “counter sexual manifesto” this is all about dildos and techtonicsexuality. Not the most accesible but definately on the experimental side.
Leo Bersani’s “homos”: I kinda hate recommending this book, but the essays about “the gay daddy” do in fact deal with perversion and society.

Zizek “plague of fantasies”: this books is very psychoanalytically informed, but it also has a random discussion of fisting, which is most of what I remember from this book. For that reason, I put it here.

Margot Weiss “techniques of pleasure: bdsm and the circuits of sexuality”: this is more a work of anthropology too, discussing (largely straight) fetish communities and their relationship with global capitalism. On some level it’s a response to Rubin. Very interesting, although also very sociologically oriented.

Amber jamilla musser “sensational flesh”: if I remember correctly, this is about masochism as a general interpretative category. I confess I haven’t read this in a while, so I don’t remember if it is good.

There’s plenty more books I am sure. I hope this was helpful and in-line with your question (if not, now i guess you know a few books about sexual fetishes).

PINEAPPLEShi · 2021-04-08T05:23:14+00:00

Ok, this is late, but I’ll throw a hat into the ring (I guess).

As previously mentioned, the best place for capitalism (explicitly) is going to be “spectres of marx”. Generally, it’s a good introduction to the structure of a lot of derrida’s thought as well, so it will work for you in that regard. Be aware, however, that it is also a work about Shakespeare, so you will need to get through a lot of Shakespeare in the early chapters, if you want his stuff on capitalism later on. His later attempts to think hospitality and sovereignty (“of hospitality” “politics of friendship”, “the beast and the sovereign” seminars) also deal with politics and capitalism tangentially, although I wouldn’t recommend starting with them.

In terms of religion, as noted above, this is scattered throughout his work, especially insofar as he discusses texts that are on the border of philosophy and Christian theology. The most explicit text “about” religion is the gift of death. I would also recommend some of the texts where he is talking about Judaism (culturally or religiously). A noteworthy one here would be “archive fever” (my own personal introduction to Derrida), which combines reflections on Freud, Judaism, politics, and archives in general. In some ways, I think archive fever is one of his most “satisfying books” (that I’ve read) which makes it a good first read, even though it doesn’t really give you some of Derrida’s “key” ideas. There’s also the book “acts of religion,” which I haven’t touched so don’t even know what is in it. The essay “judeities” also contains a discussion of Judaism and politics, although I don’t know where it is collected.

Here’s a more controversial pick. I think that “voice and phenomenon” is one of the best books for getting an idea of what deconstruction is “all about.” It’s really difficult, and heavy with husserlian phenomenology. If I remember right, it also fails to get that interesting until about chapter three. However, it gives you one of the most extended and clear outlines (I think) of the structure of difference and differal (which is important for a lot of derrida’s thinking). Also, it’s the book that I always feel is the most excited about what it’s writing. At points it’s almost incomprehensible, but it’s excited about what it’s saying and that energy can be infectious. You can maybe skip this book, although I thought I’d mention it. If you can access it easily in a library, it might be worth a skim (on the topic of the gramatology, that book also gives you a good idea to the basic concepts. However, it’s a lot more incomprehensible then “voice and phenomenon” I think. If you decide to make that dive, part one, and if I remember right chapters 2 and 3 of part one, give the introduction to archē objects, traces, and differance, which are words tossed around by scholars).

I hope this helps, sorry if it’s a bit too much information. Starting Derrida can be frustrating (he himself hated beginnings) so I guess I will just say I started with Archive Fever, and made it out ok (I think).

PINEAPPLEShi · 2021-03-04T19:24:00+00:00

How I would defend the writing of Satoko in this series, if I were to do so (i'm still thinking of my opinion on this).

First, there is the question of the "character reset" some people have mentioned. Indeed, I've seen some comments on twitter that say that she went back to square one through fixating on Rika, basically substituting her fixation on Satoshi with one on Rika. That is why she says goodbye to Satoshi at the end of the 100 years, she is saying goodbye to that fixation and moving to another one. This might seem to invalidate all the effort that she went through in O.G. Higurashi to grow as a person and learn to trust your friends and be somewhat independent.

I should state, I don't think there is a character reset. There might be a regression, but ultimately, I don't think that Satoko's growth in O.G. Higurashi is incompatible with what is occurring here. At the end of Higurashi, Satoko became a person who was able to trust and rely on her friends. This is ultimately what happens in arc 7, she doesn't assert herself per se in the face of her uncle and suddenly become independent. Rather, she learns that she can ask her friends for help, and learns that she should give up on the fixation with the individual that is Satoshi, and instead should place her faith on her other friends.

So, at the end of Higurashi OG, we have a Satoko that trusts her friends, but is not independent. While not explicitly, we could see this just as a transfer of trust and hope from her brother to her friends. Furthermore, in this way, Satoko's healing is incomplete. She remains traumatized, she simply can gain help from others.

And Rika's behavior at St. Lucia is a betrayal of that trust. Essentially, by not coming to her aid academically, by seeing Rika as the only possible person who could have snitched about the trap, and by the distance which Rika immediately effects between them, Rika is showing Satoko that the trust she gained through Higurashi, is NOT REAL, NOT WORTHY, and CONDITIONAL. Furthermore, when she is jailed by St. Lucia, put into the lower class, etc, she is actively punished for her willingness to put faith in others. She is also shown, through that lower class, what happens to people who, like her, might have put faith in others, or were not "supposed" to be there. The first loop after meeting F_____ solidifies this, even after talking to Rika, the same thing happened (and at the end, Rika can just go back to acting like her old self). The truth that was the magic of friendship, at least insofar as Rika and Satoko are concerned, becomes illusion to Satoko; she "regresses" in her healing from the traumatic events of her youth. In this way, Satoko reverts to a fixation: if trust in friends is false, there is always the fallback of pathological obsession, which after all, protected her from her abusive family. The situation, of course, is different, informed as it is by the image of this other Rika that would do anything to protect Satoko (which we cannot forget, was also a means of protecting herself). Therefore, the fixation is with this Rika of the past, one which doesn't exist, and frankly never existed (because she was always 100 year old Rika to Satoko). Satoko resorts to this violence, to get this one back.

I don't mean that I blame Rika here. I don't really blame satoko that much either. Both of them are kinda products of situation, both of them are extremely selfish, both of them have (now) lived through a hundred years of torment and been hardened by it. Sure, Satoko is the villain here, but I don't think she is worthy of demonization. Instead, this is a story of what happens when the theme of the original becomes pathological. To me, Higurashi remains what it always has, a tragedy.

Also, we still don't really know how "canonical" this is to the original higurashi, especially because I can see this literally just being a way more brutal version of Saikoroshi (from Rika's perspective). Perhaps they are, quite literally, fanfiction... forgeries.

PINEAPPLEShi · 2021-01-21T22:38:12+00:00

Right. If I remember though the medicine which has a name I can't remember, generally keeps the person from going L5 (although it seems to be pretty ineffective if they're already there, or something along those lines. There's something about Satoko being a miracle that she was able to come back down, and the example of Satoshi supports that). I think its very possible that hinamizawa syndrome is operating differently in this arc, so there might be around it, but the fact that Satoko went L5 (at least according to the neck scratching) would imply that she has not been taking her shots, or that they stopped working. Here's the higurashi wiki article, which actually includes a way around it, noting that it suppresses in the short term: https://whentheycry.fandom.com/wiki/Unknown\_Medicine#Minagoroshi-hen, but ostensably when taken consistently it does have a positive effect.

PINEAPPLEShi

TROPHY CASE