Overthinking the apocalypse

Flower Diary: The lost diary of a young lady. Advanced magical theory mixes seamlessly with youthful ponderings.

Been thinking a lot about luddism lately, in part because the social media addiction synergises so competently with the mental fatigue I was left with after my last bout of covid. and I have been thinking about things like:

The other day I was reading Emily’s Inheritance, which deeply disappointed me because it's that bait-and-switch where a story that looks like fantasy getting sci-fi rationalisations, and as a fantasy enjoyer that ruins it for me.

But in addition to that it's also straight, like not in any particularly invasive way, just by default. And thinking about that as I read, I understood why I obsess so much about that sweet sweet rep ever since stories with lesbians in it became a thing I can access.

I was describing to someone the way that charming little European cafés are absolutely the ideal environment for me to write my thesis (as long as I leave cellphones and other devices home), and how I was getting a hell lot of text written, until I budgeted and realised the degree to which my family very much cannot afford me going every other day to charming little European cafés. And how silly I feel at my inability to replicate, at home or in public libraries or parks or anywhere else, the whatever-it-is that makes the café environment work so well for me.

Based on my unreasonably obsessive dives into the themes of Asellus from 1997 SaGa Frontier, background lore, prototype concepts, multiverse ideas from gatcha games etc. etc. (1, 2), this is how I'd make a more fleshed out Asellus chapter as a SaGa Frontier mod, if I was able to make mods. Of course this is tailored to my personal interpretation of the texts, but I do not mean it as purely creative fanfic; everything is motivated by my understanding of abandoned concepts and underlying themes.

I thought I would make an analysis of how SaGa Frontier uses a lot of kendō terminology, but Sevon already did most of the job. I still have a few remarks and I sent them as a comment, but I'm saving a copy here in case Wordpress spam moderation silently eats my comment or something.

Fig. 1: Kirikaeshi, a kendō exercise (＊写真はイメージです).

Assorted mysteries that passed my mind while writing the analysis of lesbian themes in Asellus' plot. Heavy spoilers for everything in SF1.

White Rose: Look, Lady Asellus! It's the new T-shirt for Asellus' chapter! Isn't it cute? Asellus (internally): Dammit, right on her squishies… Red Turnip: Girl you look great in this! Very fresh! Asellus (internally): Red Turniiiipppp…!! (Fan comic: Sugiyama Daria (Dah) on Pixiv.)

I've been drawn to the yuri scenario in SaGa Frontier (1997) for almost three decades. I realise my strong feelings about her are in part because we had so little going on back then—Asellus was a formative experience, and not just for me; finding some actual representation for our confused experiences was a landmark for many a young lesbian gamer. But I do think this story is a landmark for more reasons than mere nostalgia; for one thing, it's one of the first sapphic scenarios ever written by a woman in this medium, in an era when much tamer stuff was heavily tabooed both in Japan and abroad; it was written as a direct challenge of sexist tropes in videogames, 17 years before Gamergate; it discusses the psychology of sapphic desire, beyond the dehumanising trope of “the pure-hearted bond between pure girls of purity who love purely”; and I am fascinated even by the twists and turns of mask-and-signal in this game, by the way a super obviously overtly sapphic character is still prevented from stating it out loud, the way the game must come up with an excuse for plausible deniability—despite this very type of queerbaiting being called out in the game itself (Zozma MVP \o/), many years ahead of when yuri culture collectively took to question the implications of “Class S” relationships.

Asellus' drama as a half-Mystic is that of being the only one of her kind, and here in the real world, too, she's an alluring anomaly; like the gothic court of Château Aiguille, she stands as a piece of liminal art, outside the flow of time.

So when I was writing the brief history of early yuri in console games, the Asellus analysis section grew more and more and accrued author quotes and etymological footnotes and whatnot, until it was way bigger than the entire rest of the post. I have therefore given Asellus her own glass coffin… I mean, her own entry in the blog series.

Once at a Hbf there were some immigrant-looking folk (Turkish, as it turned out) selling traditional candy like, in a super pushy way, and I went talk to them half because I like sweets and half because I like being sweet-talked (hey the latter is a super rare experience in Germany, yes even including salespeople, I knew something was sus with that couple but I like to live dangerously ok. Yes, she was pretty. haterz gonna hate~).

I'm just thinking aloud with the keyboard here, I don’t think this is interesting to anyone but dunno.

The other day I was reading The Yuri-ika special issue on yuri culture (Yuri-bunka no Genzai; #12, December 2014), and thinking of how there was a period when some people cared a lot between distinguish pornographic vs. non-pornographic pop-media, and in the West “yuri” was used for the porn side of the divide, while in Japan “yuri” was the non-porn side.

Later I found online a Japanese list of yuri movies, and included is Queen Crab (2015) by Brett Piper, which focuses on the relationship between a woman and her giant killer crab. Which I concur, it's totally a yuri movie. But that made me think of how many different definitions of “yuri” I've seen, usually trying to delineate a specific feeling by contrasting it with some other type of sapphic fiction.