Robert Rees

  • The one where Ranma learns about consent

    I’ve been re-reading Ranma ½ recently (as well as watching the anime on streaming). In a world that is very vexed about gender and identity the comic has a new dimension to me. Ranma generally seems very relaxed about his gender fluidity and while he frequently expresses dismay at his situation and desires to find a way to fix his masculine identity as the books progress he increasingly seems at ease with his female identity, using the same name across both and eventually not even concealing the truth from his classmates or even seeming concerned about their sexual desire for him.

    Generally I find Rumiko Takahashi quite reticent on the issue of sexism and harassment, acknowledging it and expressing anger but equally often contextualising into comedy. Judgement of female beauty norms and, later, bottom pinching and underwear theft are shown as being distressing to their victims but the male perpetrators suffer no real consequences for it.

    In the chapter called “A kiss in the ring” though Ranma in his female form is kissed by Mikado Sanzenin, something that moves him to tears and then declare that he is angry for the first time in his life and that he wants to kill Sanzenin. The blaze of rage is quite unusual in a generally light-hearted comedy. Akane, Ranma’s fiancée, speculates that it is because of the same-sex nature of the kiss but Ranma’s dialogue focuses on the Mikado’s arrogance in treating Ranma as he wishes. What we would more likely frame as consent and sexual assault in our times.

    As usual Mikado is spared any serious consequences for his actions but it is striking as a point where emotions literally boil off the page and the victim is able to translate some of their emotional pain into physical revenge.

  • I lay there thinking, This is a miracle. Oh God, you’re saving me. I don’t have to do this picture any more. I was shocked by the feeling of relief that passed over me. Showing up for work every day, feeling unwanted, feeling like an underling, was an oppressive experience, and this injury could be my release from that prison.

    I’ve known this feeling but it feels very validating to know that even Al Pacino has had this feeling and while shooting the Godfather no less

  • I really enjoyed Birds of Prey: Megadeath, the plot may have got tangled towards the end and the fights repetitive but the basic concept of the heist to save found family was solid. The thing that really sold me was the art of Leonardo Romero who has a modern take on the classic Marvel style.

  • Audre Lorde by Djavan Guy

    I heard this track, Audre Lorde, on Cerys Matthews show and loved its laidback beat and mix of poetry and lyrics.

  • I’m really enjoying using Proton Docs, it really feels like a worthy competitor to Google Docs

  • Spiderpunk is set in a universe where Spiderman has unwittingly (but happily) destroyed capitalism in the United States. Quite a wild premise, who would have thought an ingrained ideological system could be brought down by punching the right guy?

  • The Interstellar Spaceship was such a fun build with a push action engine fairing, lots of cool details and printed bricks rather than stickers. #Lego

  • I’ve been using Bookmarks recently to help get a view on some titles that are in my reading backlog and I’ve been enjoying it and its book recommendation articles.

  • I tried reading *Maison Ikkoku” again recently, a comic I loved as a student. It hadn’t aged amazingly well, I’d forgotten how misogynistic it was. The characters aren’t meant to be likeable be seemed to really lack heart.

  • I went to the Cartoon Museum this week and one point it kind of draws this line between Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Dan Dare and Judge Dredd.

  • Universities and small business aren't working as intended

    A number of things seem not to be working in Britain today but these two separate articles on the effectiveness of entirely different areas government spending (universities, The Economist (£) and small-business, The Guardian) both point to the same policy remedy of allowing research and development to be incentivised by simplifying the accounting in mid to large national-based companies (but why not all?).

  • Paul Young chocolates, which are a bit of a Christmas tradition for us, ceased trading in August. A bit of a sad discovery but I guess people buying chocolate once a year doesn’t really pay the energy bills.

  • Ukraine commentary from November

    Two interesting points from newsletters on Ukraine last week.

    The first is regarding security guarantees in Europe from Phillips O’Brien’s The Two Futures

    What this war has shown is that there are two realities for a European state: being a full NATO member covered by article 5—and everything else.

    Russia’s aggression has consolidated NATO but leaves those outside the alliance exposed and with no real choice but to seek inclusion at some point in the future. The article also comments how Russia goes out of its way to avoid provoking an alliance reaction that will crush its remaining conventional force.

    The other was about the strange double-standards on Russia’s ineffective offensives from Lawrence Freeman in Why “not losing” is not tantamount to winning.

    Whatever limited progress has been made has come at an enormous cost. Zaluzhny claimed on 10 November that Russia had suffered some 10,000 casualties since 10 October, and had lost over 100 tanks, 250 other armored vehicles, about 50 artillery systems and seven Su-25 aircraft.

    Even allowing for some exaggeration these are staggering losses, which if experienced by Ukraine would have led to gloomy questions about their ability to stay in the fight, and the wastefulness of their tactics. Somehow it is now assumed that in an unaccountable system, with soldiers taken from minorities and the poor, these casualties barely register in Russian society and cause no political backlash.

    I’ve been wondering why when Ukraine suffers losses “realists” start talking about some fantasy of a land deal that will be acceptable to Russia but when Russia loses material that makes it difficult to continue to project any power globally there are not demands for Russia to start to specify attainable war aims.

    There is something unpleasant in the idea that all these lives lost in fruitless offensives are meaningless and of no consequence to their own people. The article talks about the signs of change in the Russian attitude to the war and I can’t believe that a country can continue to lose at this rate and it has no impact.

    Clearly democracies with citizen soldiers need to think about casualties differently to systems that are inherently coercing compliance. Ukraine needs to think about how to conserve itself as a nation. However it has been a long time since we’ve seen an imperial power manage to maintain control of an unwilling population. For the defenders not losing looks a lot more like victory than the occupiers.

  • Two elevated racecourses in #ForzaHorizon this week, both pretty good fun

  • Siobhan and Tom’s marriage in #Succession is one of the most complex, sad and unedifying depictions of a marriage I’ve seen on #Television for a long while. It also felt more real and rich that the idealised relationships fulfilling the needs to a story arc. It isn’t just complicated, sometimes it is horrible too.

  • I’m really enjoying the neon stylings of Horizon Midnights. The aerodrome in particular is insane.

  • The Peripheral

    The themes of crisis and collapse along with a clever take on time travel makes it feel very different from conventional sci-fi.

    It also features one of the most believable sibling relationships I’ve seen on screen in a while where love and loyalty is mixed with resentment and misunderstanding in appropriate measures. It is refreshing to see a family relationship where both parties make mistakes and unreasonable demands of each other and with the same frequency as positive support; where pettiness mixes with high stakes. At one point Flynn demands her brother leave her room with all the force of countless teenage rows.

    After the excellent initial episodes which are more like two feature films than regular television the pacing gets a little uneven with a hillbilly crime element that isn’t as good as Justified or even Sons of Anarchy. The flashbacks into the life of Wolfgang while helping to emphasise how dreadful the collapse was doesn’t really move the story on or help with the flow of the main plotline (and the major feature of Gibson’s fiction I would say is narrative drive).

    There was a lot to love about the dark adapted future it portrays. One moment that I felt was really well-observed is when the augmented reality is switched off to reveal how depopulated and damaged London is. Wolfgang/Wilfred explains with a frankness that the illusion of a busier city is for the mental health of the living inhabitants. Later he discusses with his adoptive sister the effect of the implants he wears that supress memories of his real family who, she suggests, were killed in a brutal massacre that he doesn’t actually wish to remember. This are damaged post-humans, almost propped up and made minimally functional by their enhancements rather than cybergods.

    Chloe Grace Moretz does the bulk of the heavy lifting on the performance front but Gary Carr and Alexandra Billings also turn in some good work. I also enjoyed JJ Field’s turn as Lev but there was an element of panto to his malevolence so it might not be to everyone’s tastes.

    One of the biggest things that makes me want to see a greenlight for more seasons is the cliffhanger of the final episode where as a viewer I wanted confirmation that the sacrifice of the protagonist had been redeemed. It feels like the story is really just getting started.

  • I think this is intentional but it feels disconcerting to realise that Fire Emblem: Three Houses is about creating religiously inspired child soldiers.

  • Gave Cloud Gaming on the XBox a go this evening, so far it seems better than Stadia but I need to see a game that has a kind of top-end graphics requirement

  • I found the latest Extreme E Grand Prix in Forza Horizon 5 really hard. Even with a tune I mostly ended up cheesing the races with sidewipe cornering. The cars handle like tanks and feel like it’s making an elephant take the racing line.

  • I just wrapped up playing Carrion which was interesting gruesome and a Metrovania that was just on the edge of my tolerance level. The pixel art for the fleshy monster protagonist is very gooey satisfying.

  • It’s frustrating that the current UK government will do anything in its power to avoid putting up Universal Credit to the point that it is now costing more to inefficiently deliver support to the wrong people than to just swallow an ideological objection and do the obvious thing.

  • From Fathoms micro plastic pollution of the environment is now so pervasive that there is virtually no ecosystem in the world and certainly not in the oceans that is now not infested with plastic. There seems to be no way it will break down in our current natural systems. 📚

  • I started playing Backbone again this week, it’s pixel noir art style is unique and the background details of the lives being lived parallel to the story is a delightful exercise in minimalist storytelling.

  • Started playing Forza Horizon 5 this weekend. Amongst the free cars I got on starting was a Mitshibushi Lancer with seems to make offroad almost trivially easy as it’s so ridiculously fast. Or maybe I haven’t got my difficulty set correctly yet…

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