I just did, and thus must presume I am missing necessary context, because I don't know what I might be missing.
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Going forward, links to content from Twitter (now X) will no longer be embedded. Pre-existing links should not be affected.
Top Level Canon Reviews - relaunched!
- Thread starter Leila Hann
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- Colorado
Gonna have to agree with Horatio, your previous post still reads like you're making a bunch of massively insulting generalizations and stereotypes. The first and second scenarios you describe absolutely do happen, but they can't happen everywhere outside of 'areas with coherent indigenous populations' or option 2 would've strangled option 1 to death.
- Location
- Patriarchova
I can't comment on the frequency of real versus fake claims of Native American ancestry among whites, having read no data on the subject, but in Pepper Anne's fictional case it could very easily be either.
In any case, my takeaway from (and criticism of) the episode is that it doesn't even matter if it's real or fake, because it's had no bearing on who or what her family are for generations. It's effectively fake for her no matter what her genome says.
In any case, my takeaway from (and criticism of) the episode is that it doesn't even matter if it's real or fake, because it's had no bearing on who or what her family are for generations. It's effectively fake for her no matter what her genome says.
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Love it when people talk down to actual First Nations people when they open up about their lived experiences. It's just fucking great.
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
In Australia, there has been some fearmongering among conservatives that white-passing people have been lying about their Aboriginal heritage to claim government benefits. Which has affected actual Aboriginal people.
However, from what I've heard the situation is different in America, as they don't at all have the same welfare system we do, especially for Indigenous peoples. Aboriginal Australians also haven't quite gotten the same 'noble savage' treatment Native Americans have (not to the same extent anyway), so an Australian would be less likely to claim Aboriginal heritage for exoticism than an American would.
Like in America though, a white-passing Aboriginal person would probably not try to draw attention to it, else they be singled out.
The claim in Australia that people would lie about being Aboriginal for welfare reminds me of the claim that people will identify as trans just to get in women's bathrooms. I.e. too much effort and loss of privilege that a genuine bad actor wouldn't bother with.
I bring up all this stuff about Aboriginal Australians since it'll be relevant a couple of reviews later.
Incidentally, I had the same thing happen to me recently over my autism
However, from what I've heard the situation is different in America, as they don't at all have the same welfare system we do, especially for Indigenous peoples. Aboriginal Australians also haven't quite gotten the same 'noble savage' treatment Native Americans have (not to the same extent anyway), so an Australian would be less likely to claim Aboriginal heritage for exoticism than an American would.
Like in America though, a white-passing Aboriginal person would probably not try to draw attention to it, else they be singled out.
The claim in Australia that people would lie about being Aboriginal for welfare reminds me of the claim that people will identify as trans just to get in women's bathrooms. I.e. too much effort and loss of privilege that a genuine bad actor wouldn't bother with.
I bring up all this stuff about Aboriginal Australians since it'll be relevant a couple of reviews later.
Incidentally, I had the same thing happen to me recently over my autism
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So that would be the sort of missing context I was asking for, which was not present in the original post...
- Location
- Colorado
Okay, went back and reread AKuz's post a fourth time, not seeing where they claimed to be First Nations themselves?
If you or AKuz want to say you've got First Nations ancestry and experienced those things I'll take you at your word, but if you're going to try to expand that personal experience with some members of a racial group to every single member of said group I'm going to tell you you're full of shit.
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, it seems rather unreasonable to assume that everyone is going to automatically know that Akuz is a First Nation woman. I've posted long enough and consistently enough in N&P that I know but I could easily imagine a newer user or someone who restricted themselves to other subforums not necessarily knowing.
It doesn't seem reasonable to finger wag people for not possessing racial telepathy.
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SCP 5031
- Location
- Patriarchova
This review was commissioned by @Humble-Bee.
The SCP Foundation. Most of you are probably familiar. Almost all of you have probably at least heard of it. Originally started by some weird fiction aficionados from 4chan (this was back before it was a nazi shit-swamp, when it was simply an ordinary shit-swamp), the Special Containment Procedures Foundation is a (very loose) continuity of short stories that take the form of in-universe case files from a paranormal containment agency. The SCP Foundation scours the world for monsters, cursed items, reality distortions, etc, puts them away in secure facilities, and tries to make people forget they ever existed.
Since the heart of the SCP project is a wiki that anyone can add to, the quality of the entries is...well, about as variable as you'd expect. And also as consistent as you'd expect, but that aspect is a feature rather than a bug. Since its inception, the project has had a strongly anti-canon approach. Multiple overlapping continuities exist within the SCP mythos as writers connect their additions with one another's, recurring characters within the organization start to emerge, etc, but they all contradict each other just as strongly as they tie into one another. It's a textbook example of a pick-and-choose setting, and was always intended as such.
With the amount of popularity, spin-off media, and general pop-cultural penetration the SCPF has enjoyed over the couple of decades since its inception, it's also an aspirational example of ground-up collaborative fiction managing to hold its own even in an increasingly corporate-controlled media landscape.
Anyway. SCP-5031 is an interesting case within the project's own continuity space. It seems to almost be a commentary on the different visions that various writers have had about the world of the SCP Foundation, particularly when it comes to their portrayal of the fictional organization itself. Reading some entries by some contributors, one would get the impression that the SCP Foundation is a heroic organization doing everything it can to protect humanity from supernatural horrors and sometimes having to make hard choices and painful sacrifices to do so. Others (probably the majority) have it as a dystopian, illuminati-like conspiracy horror nightmare with its tendrils corrupting nations from within, and its leaders posing more of a threat to human wellbeing than the monsters and artifacts themselves do. Sometimes it's portrayed as a hypercompetent organization with hundreds of thousands of fanatical agents and unlimited material resources. Other times, an underfunded, in-over-its-head bureaucracy that's about to fall apart under organizational stresses or get suborned by its own "imprisoned" monsters (if it hasn't already been). And everything in between.
So, case 5031 sits on the nexus between these attitudes toward the setting, tugging a little on all of them and seeming to intentionally bounce them off of each other. I also feel like it's throwing shade on some overused monster concepts by grabbing some of the most recurring traits from insipid SCP "creature feature" articles and then pulling the rug out from under them.
The contained entity itself is a vaguely Silent Hill-looking monster that seems to phase out of existence entirely while being looked at, but viciously kills and eats anything it can sneak up behind. It doesn't show up on cameras either; the only way they even know what it looks like is from watching its shadow. The initial case file implies that the creature was found terrorizing a suburban community, as insipid creature-feature SCP's often are, and was taken captive by a Foundation field team after a difficult battle. Said file also has instructions in place for keeping the beast safely contained within a featureless steel vault, and recommendations to avoid poking at it any further.
However, this case file also has a header added to it, written in a somewhat frustrated-behind-a-mask-of-professional-neutrality tone, saying that this document is out of date and in need of revision on account of subsequent research on the imprisoned SCP-5031.
What follows is the journal of a newly promoted SCP Foundation research director as he takes over this particular blacksite, familiarizes himself with its contents, and is promptly appalled at this creature having been thrown in a box and forgotten about for ten years.
The initial file didn't even mention that the monster had been screaming nonstop for years since its imprisonment.
The new site director makes changes to SCP-5031's cell, including trying different foods, music and other sounds, etc, and noting the effects on the creature's behavior. Music and better food seem to make it scream less. Introducing toys for it to play with stops the screaming entirely, though it takes it a while to learn how to play with the balls and other objects given to it without damaging them. It also demonstrates the ability to choose favourite toys, meals, and ambience from lists of options, and to understand symbolic representations of these options well enough to indicate its choice.
One memorable line, describing the creature amusing itself with bowling and basketballs given to itself, mentions its manually dexterity improving with practice, and it currently being at the level of "a human toddler."
Another, even more memorable section, is the following:
"SCP-5031's stress levels rose immediately and drastically" is a line that got to me. Especially juxtaposed with its attitude toward living creatures demonstrated previously, when it was starving and frightened either in the wild or during its earlier captivity.
After this point, the director starts cautiously introducing blindfolded caretakers to the cell, and the creature not only doesn't harm them, but also begins to demonstrate preferences for some human handlers over others.
...
The way it's all written feels a lot like the communication experiments that real life scientists have done with apes, or cetaceans. I get the impression the author of this piece has read some primatology research papers.
...
Typical of SCP articles, the origins of this creature are never revealed. The implication is very clear that wherever it came from - other planet, other dimension, who knows - it arrived on Earth as a feral child, and underneath the ferality it has the same self-awareness, emotional range, and possibly the same intelligence as a human child.
Eventually, it learns to arrange letter-blocks to proactively communicate with its handlers. And also, after being given opportunities to mix and match its foodstuff and to play with increasingly complicated mechanical toys, to prepare its own meals and compose its own piano music. A watershed moment comes when the director and its favorite in-person handler give it an excess of ingredients and lets it cook in sufficient quantities to serve in the facility's cafeteria for lunch that day. The final journal entry reads as follows:
I spent the entire read waiting for the other shoe to drop. Either for the monster to have been tricking them into letting their guard down, or for some random mishap to cause it to flip out and rampage, or for the director to be replaced by a new one who sends the monster back to eternal solitary confinement while cackling and twirling his moustache, or for the CURRENT director to take off the mask and go "we've learned all we can, time for the dissection." But nope, it never happens.
Apparently, some later contributors even have SCP-5031 taking part in the Foundation's field operations, fighting worse monsters alongside its favourite humans.
Friendly and/or cooperative creatures in SCPF captivity are nothing new to the project, and neither is the concept of the organization using some of its wards as assets in various capacities. There have also always been the occasional wholesome/feelgood articles sprinkled around for variety, in moderation. You don't normally see them co-occuring with the "don't even blink" type monsters, though. Or with the "SCP Foundation is running torture pits" portrayals of the organization, or even with "there are differences of attitude and methodology within the organization itself" ones.
Like I said, Case 5031 almost seems to be more about the different attitudes of the WRITERS than it is about different sides of the fictional agency and setting.
The SCP Foundation. Most of you are probably familiar. Almost all of you have probably at least heard of it. Originally started by some weird fiction aficionados from 4chan (this was back before it was a nazi shit-swamp, when it was simply an ordinary shit-swamp), the Special Containment Procedures Foundation is a (very loose) continuity of short stories that take the form of in-universe case files from a paranormal containment agency. The SCP Foundation scours the world for monsters, cursed items, reality distortions, etc, puts them away in secure facilities, and tries to make people forget they ever existed.
Since the heart of the SCP project is a wiki that anyone can add to, the quality of the entries is...well, about as variable as you'd expect. And also as consistent as you'd expect, but that aspect is a feature rather than a bug. Since its inception, the project has had a strongly anti-canon approach. Multiple overlapping continuities exist within the SCP mythos as writers connect their additions with one another's, recurring characters within the organization start to emerge, etc, but they all contradict each other just as strongly as they tie into one another. It's a textbook example of a pick-and-choose setting, and was always intended as such.
With the amount of popularity, spin-off media, and general pop-cultural penetration the SCPF has enjoyed over the couple of decades since its inception, it's also an aspirational example of ground-up collaborative fiction managing to hold its own even in an increasingly corporate-controlled media landscape.
Anyway. SCP-5031 is an interesting case within the project's own continuity space. It seems to almost be a commentary on the different visions that various writers have had about the world of the SCP Foundation, particularly when it comes to their portrayal of the fictional organization itself. Reading some entries by some contributors, one would get the impression that the SCP Foundation is a heroic organization doing everything it can to protect humanity from supernatural horrors and sometimes having to make hard choices and painful sacrifices to do so. Others (probably the majority) have it as a dystopian, illuminati-like conspiracy horror nightmare with its tendrils corrupting nations from within, and its leaders posing more of a threat to human wellbeing than the monsters and artifacts themselves do. Sometimes it's portrayed as a hypercompetent organization with hundreds of thousands of fanatical agents and unlimited material resources. Other times, an underfunded, in-over-its-head bureaucracy that's about to fall apart under organizational stresses or get suborned by its own "imprisoned" monsters (if it hasn't already been). And everything in between.
So, case 5031 sits on the nexus between these attitudes toward the setting, tugging a little on all of them and seeming to intentionally bounce them off of each other. I also feel like it's throwing shade on some overused monster concepts by grabbing some of the most recurring traits from insipid SCP "creature feature" articles and then pulling the rug out from under them.
The contained entity itself is a vaguely Silent Hill-looking monster that seems to phase out of existence entirely while being looked at, but viciously kills and eats anything it can sneak up behind. It doesn't show up on cameras either; the only way they even know what it looks like is from watching its shadow. The initial case file implies that the creature was found terrorizing a suburban community, as insipid creature-feature SCP's often are, and was taken captive by a Foundation field team after a difficult battle. Said file also has instructions in place for keeping the beast safely contained within a featureless steel vault, and recommendations to avoid poking at it any further.
However, this case file also has a header added to it, written in a somewhat frustrated-behind-a-mask-of-professional-neutrality tone, saying that this document is out of date and in need of revision on account of subsequent research on the imprisoned SCP-5031.
What follows is the journal of a newly promoted SCP Foundation research director as he takes over this particular blacksite, familiarizes himself with its contents, and is promptly appalled at this creature having been thrown in a box and forgotten about for ten years.
The initial file didn't even mention that the monster had been screaming nonstop for years since its imprisonment.
The new site director makes changes to SCP-5031's cell, including trying different foods, music and other sounds, etc, and noting the effects on the creature's behavior. Music and better food seem to make it scream less. Introducing toys for it to play with stops the screaming entirely, though it takes it a while to learn how to play with the balls and other objects given to it without damaging them. It also demonstrates the ability to choose favourite toys, meals, and ambience from lists of options, and to understand symbolic representations of these options well enough to indicate its choice.
One memorable line, describing the creature amusing itself with bowling and basketballs given to itself, mentions its manually dexterity improving with practice, and it currently being at the level of "a human toddler."
Another, even more memorable section, is the following:
"SCP-5031's stress levels rose immediately and drastically" is a line that got to me. Especially juxtaposed with its attitude toward living creatures demonstrated previously, when it was starving and frightened either in the wild or during its earlier captivity.
After this point, the director starts cautiously introducing blindfolded caretakers to the cell, and the creature not only doesn't harm them, but also begins to demonstrate preferences for some human handlers over others.
...
The way it's all written feels a lot like the communication experiments that real life scientists have done with apes, or cetaceans. I get the impression the author of this piece has read some primatology research papers.
...
Typical of SCP articles, the origins of this creature are never revealed. The implication is very clear that wherever it came from - other planet, other dimension, who knows - it arrived on Earth as a feral child, and underneath the ferality it has the same self-awareness, emotional range, and possibly the same intelligence as a human child.
Eventually, it learns to arrange letter-blocks to proactively communicate with its handlers. And also, after being given opportunities to mix and match its foodstuff and to play with increasingly complicated mechanical toys, to prepare its own meals and compose its own piano music. A watershed moment comes when the director and its favorite in-person handler give it an excess of ingredients and lets it cook in sufficient quantities to serve in the facility's cafeteria for lunch that day. The final journal entry reads as follows:
I spent the entire read waiting for the other shoe to drop. Either for the monster to have been tricking them into letting their guard down, or for some random mishap to cause it to flip out and rampage, or for the director to be replaced by a new one who sends the monster back to eternal solitary confinement while cackling and twirling his moustache, or for the CURRENT director to take off the mask and go "we've learned all we can, time for the dissection." But nope, it never happens.
Apparently, some later contributors even have SCP-5031 taking part in the Foundation's field operations, fighting worse monsters alongside its favourite humans.
Friendly and/or cooperative creatures in SCPF captivity are nothing new to the project, and neither is the concept of the organization using some of its wards as assets in various capacities. There have also always been the occasional wholesome/feelgood articles sprinkled around for variety, in moderation. You don't normally see them co-occuring with the "don't even blink" type monsters, though. Or with the "SCP Foundation is running torture pits" portrayals of the organization, or even with "there are differences of attitude and methodology within the organization itself" ones.
Like I said, Case 5031 almost seems to be more about the different attitudes of the WRITERS than it is about different sides of the fictional agency and setting.
Iris-Iven-Ibis
Interested-Idiot-Immortal
- Location
- You know
SCP 5031 also known by its nickname yet another murder monster it's definitely a fan favorite amongst the SCP Community for the aspects you discuss it is articles like this one that shows the humanity of the members of SCP staff in-universe and I too have a soft spot for it
People often split SCP into the old, where every contributed piece was just some random scary monster, and the modern, full of experimental writing and diverse genres, so this being an article about writer attitudes rings true to me.
One fun meta aspect is that the initial report from the previous director has a bunch of writing tropes the community negatively associates with the mediocre very early times, like the arbitrary measurements and the bullet-point list of random facts, so the article is kind of a 'too late, I already drew you as the soyack and me as the chad'-meme.
One fun meta aspect is that the initial report from the previous director has a bunch of writing tropes the community negatively associates with the mediocre very early times, like the arbitrary measurements and the bullet-point list of random facts, so the article is kind of a 'too late, I already drew you as the soyack and me as the chad'-meme.
thenew
#1 Masters of the Bazaar Fan
- Location
- My Lodgings
Ah, SCP, one of the many, many obsessions I've had over the years.
Yet Another Murder Monster is one of my favorites, up there with 🜆, The Coldest War, There Is No Antimemetics Division and I Am At The Center Of Everything That Happens To Me. Just a genuinely really clever thing to pull with the format. The Foundation being made of people is usually one of the best ways to sell an article to me; be it the heavily-consumed-by-ideology aspect (often addressing the issues with how utterly arbitrary "normalcy" is), the SCP-173 "bunch of nervous nerds with some budget poking at something with a long stick to see what happens" or the kinder side occasionally showcased by articles like this. My favorite line is this one.
Yet Another Murder Monster is one of my favorites, up there with 🜆, The Coldest War, There Is No Antimemetics Division and I Am At The Center Of Everything That Happens To Me. Just a genuinely really clever thing to pull with the format. The Foundation being made of people is usually one of the best ways to sell an article to me; be it the heavily-consumed-by-ideology aspect (often addressing the issues with how utterly arbitrary "normalcy" is), the SCP-173 "bunch of nervous nerds with some budget poking at something with a long stick to see what happens" or the kinder side occasionally showcased by articles like this. My favorite line is this one.
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What's that one? DuckDuckGo has failed me.
Definitely the first horror story I've liked as horror, and probably the only example I know of explaining the monster actually making it worse. Which is to say, I really liked the first sequence and didn't like the second, though I did enjoy sirpudding's stuff in between.
thenew
#1 Masters of the Bazaar Fan
- Location
- My Lodgings
That one's the God of Acids, SCP-7709.
Babakiueria
- Location
- Patriarchova
This review was commissioned by @ArlequineLunaire.
This is a work that I don't feel all that well equipped for, as it was made by Australians for Australians about Australian race relations in the 1970's and 1980's. I'm not Australian, I've never been to Australia, and I only know the very, very broad strokes of the country's colonial history. So, I'm sure there's a lot in this 1986 short film that's going over my head. I'll try my best, but I'm warning you all ahead of time that my best is likely to still be lacking.
Babakiueria is a mockumentary, purportedly from a dream-logic-y alternate world in which dark skinned people (played mostly by Australian aboriginal actors) have settler-colonized a continent inhabited by native white people. The title comes from the opening scene, in which dark-skinned explorers wearing 17th century European uniforms land on the shore (in anachronistic motorboats, for some reason) and plant a bizarre flag on the soil before the baffled eyes of some white picknickers. When the captain asks one of the natives what his people call this place, he says "Um...it's a barbecue area." To which the captain replies "Babakiueria. I like it."
Over two centuries later, the nation of Babakiueria has declared independence from the bizarro-European empire that established it, and a supermajority of dark-skinned settlers have taken almost everything and pushed the white "Native Babakiuerians" into ghettos and reservations. The rest of the movie is a proper mockumentary, following a Babakiuerian anthropologist as she tries(***) to explore the state of the modern Native Babakiuerian community and its difficulties integrating into mainstream society.
Think along the lines of "Live From Joburg," the short film that "District 9" was eventually adapted from. All the way down to the comically unsympathetic narrator.
The mockumentary rotates between three basic types of clips. Some are from the time the anthropologist spent living with a native family on their reservation (which looks like a whitebread suburb, only with less maintained houses and lawns). Some are taken from interviews with Babakieuran politicians and police officers overseeing the native communities. Some are free-floating coverage of traditional Native Babaqieuran cultural practices and social events, filtered through the most paternalistic whiggish lens imaginable.
The strongest bits are probably the ones where she's interviewing the host family about how they feel about their treatment by the government, and "innocently" reminding them that there will be thousands of black Babaqieurans watching this so they should choose their words to make sure they have the desired impact. The actors they got for the parents do a really good job at portraying strenuously-suppressed terror as they whisper platitudes about how things are okay, they get how it is, there's maybe some room for improvement but things are mostly fine, really.
This hits its most intense point toward the end of the video, when their older child gets taken away to be raised by a black family, and they have to smile for the camera and talk about how glad they are for the greater opportunities this will give her. The narrator says that she understands how sad they must feel; it's like that time she had to say goodbye to her own mother, before she went away on vacation one time.
When the family's younger child tries to speak up in earnest, his father drags him away from the camera whispering about how if he's not careful they're going to lose him too. The narrator doesn't seem to notice.
...
Apparently, Australia was doing this well up until the 1970's. Generally in the case of aboriginal children who had white blood in them, but probably not exclusively that case.
I figured Australia had a history of this, since most of the Anglo settler states do. I didn't realize they were doing it more recently than, eg, Canada. So, I learned something.
...
Another standout was the interview segments with the Babaquieran "Minister of White Affairs," especially when he had to justify his approval for a project that would expropriate a huge section of native land - with a financial district, major roadways, and suburbs in it - to set up a nature preserve.
Apparently, this character is based on John Bjelke-Peterson, who governed the state of Queensland throughout the seventies and eighties. He seems to have pioneered a lot of the extra-deranged rightwing policies that the Australian federal government itself has adopted in more recent years. Aside from being about 95% Hitler with regards to labor rights, aboriginal rights, and the environment, he was apparently making it illegal for women to travel out of state to get abortions in the seventies. Might have directly inspired the current US Republican party on a few policies.
The narrator tries to ask him hard-hitting questions, but she folds so quickly - and effectively falls back on his own positions in more pseudo-humanitarian terms during her solo segments - that she doesn't even seem like a well-meaning liberal ignoramus so much as a malicious rightwing plant hired to legitimize the new expropriations. The most suspect bit was when, right after teetering on the edge of acknowledging the existence of state violence against the natives, the narrator shifted gears and did some cultural coverage of native traditions that glorify death and violence - like Veteran's Day parades and sportsball tournaments - in order to immediately construct the narrative of a bloodthirsty warrior culture that requires fire to be fought with fire. I don't think I've seen well-meaning liberal ignoramuses do this. I have seen rightwing concern trolls do it. At least, in the countries I'm more familiar with.
Maybe that was the intent of the filmmakers, maybe it wasn't, but that's how she comes across to me. Again, if I was more familiar with Australian politics I might have a better idea of what she's coded as.
...
Another interviewee is a white "pick me" police chief who's been leading crackdowns against what are theoretically his own people. Implicitly a result of either an "adoption" program like the one we saw the host family be victims of, or just a profoundly cynical and/or self-hating individual. He's able to be more openly, vocally racist than the politician is, on account of his skin color giving him a pass. Presumably, that's the entire point of him holding the office that he holds.
Alongside this character, we see a recurring clip of some black schoolchildren singing a racist nursery rhyme about white drunkenness and suicidality, only to be joined in the last few instances by a couple of white classmates standing at the periphery of their little throng.
The final few clips have the host family dispossessed of their house and property, not too long after the loss of their daughter. They get shipped off to a barren wilderness somewhere with the clothes on their back and little else as part of an "opportunity program" meant to foster prosperity via adversity. The son runs away, and is implied by the final shot to have become a terrorist of some stripe. The narrator has her most punchable line at all when, after seeing the now-childless couple being driven away, she emotes about how she'll always remember her time with them fondly, and how she's sure they will do the same for her.
...
The reason I describe this as a dream-logic world is because...well...the sense of time and place are sort of all over the place in this movie. That's probably intentional, to add an extra layer of more lighthearted humor to contrast the hard-hitting social commentary, but I personally found it more confusing than it was worth. Probably a me problem rather than a movie problem, but like...for example, in the opening scene we see the natives wearing modern white person clothes and barbequing steak and hot dogs around modern-looking grills and park benches. The invaders are wearing 16-1700's naval uniforms, but landing in modern-ish motor boats.
In the modern mockumentary section, it seems like we're still at the same tech level. While we see the struggle of traditional Native Babaquieran lifestyles trying to persist in the modern world - depicted as crumbling underfunded suburbs and crumbling underfunded commercial districts with crumbling, underfunded eight lane highways connecting them, that the anthropologist narrator cringily exoticizes with every word she speaks over this footage - we never even get a look at what the colonizers' society looks like and how it differs. The most we get to see is the inside of a politician's office and a few rooms of a police department. I understand that imagining a whole alternate society for these bizarro-settlers would be both beyond the scope of what the movie is trying to do and undermine part of the joke, but like...I don't know, my autistic-ass mind just has trouble engaging with this without constantly banging these questions against it.
I guess part of it is that the aspects of traditional whiteness being played with here - the suburban sprawl, the giant highways and parking lots, etc - are things that only exist because of the conditions of settler colonialism in our own world. There's a reason you find so much more of this shit in America and Australia than you do in England. Which once again forces me to wonder what the hell the settler Barbaquieran cities look like, if they were built in identical conditions but apparently don't look anything like this.
...
Anyway. People who ARE more familiar with Australia seem to almost unanimously love this movie. The fact that this film was largely created by aborigines certainly vouches for its sincerity, if nothing else. I personally liked it, both for the cunning bits of double-edged humor and for how well it aligns with what I know about the patterns of late Anglosphere colonialism in general, but I'm just not familiar enough with the concrete details of Australia to feel more strongly. If I was, maybe I'd outright love this piece. Or maybe I'd be more critical of it.
This is a work that I don't feel all that well equipped for, as it was made by Australians for Australians about Australian race relations in the 1970's and 1980's. I'm not Australian, I've never been to Australia, and I only know the very, very broad strokes of the country's colonial history. So, I'm sure there's a lot in this 1986 short film that's going over my head. I'll try my best, but I'm warning you all ahead of time that my best is likely to still be lacking.
Babakiueria is a mockumentary, purportedly from a dream-logic-y alternate world in which dark skinned people (played mostly by Australian aboriginal actors) have settler-colonized a continent inhabited by native white people. The title comes from the opening scene, in which dark-skinned explorers wearing 17th century European uniforms land on the shore (in anachronistic motorboats, for some reason) and plant a bizarre flag on the soil before the baffled eyes of some white picknickers. When the captain asks one of the natives what his people call this place, he says "Um...it's a barbecue area." To which the captain replies "Babakiueria. I like it."
Over two centuries later, the nation of Babakiueria has declared independence from the bizarro-European empire that established it, and a supermajority of dark-skinned settlers have taken almost everything and pushed the white "Native Babakiuerians" into ghettos and reservations. The rest of the movie is a proper mockumentary, following a Babakiuerian anthropologist as she tries(***) to explore the state of the modern Native Babakiuerian community and its difficulties integrating into mainstream society.
Think along the lines of "Live From Joburg," the short film that "District 9" was eventually adapted from. All the way down to the comically unsympathetic narrator.
The mockumentary rotates between three basic types of clips. Some are from the time the anthropologist spent living with a native family on their reservation (which looks like a whitebread suburb, only with less maintained houses and lawns). Some are taken from interviews with Babakieuran politicians and police officers overseeing the native communities. Some are free-floating coverage of traditional Native Babaqieuran cultural practices and social events, filtered through the most paternalistic whiggish lens imaginable.
The strongest bits are probably the ones where she's interviewing the host family about how they feel about their treatment by the government, and "innocently" reminding them that there will be thousands of black Babaqieurans watching this so they should choose their words to make sure they have the desired impact. The actors they got for the parents do a really good job at portraying strenuously-suppressed terror as they whisper platitudes about how things are okay, they get how it is, there's maybe some room for improvement but things are mostly fine, really.
This hits its most intense point toward the end of the video, when their older child gets taken away to be raised by a black family, and they have to smile for the camera and talk about how glad they are for the greater opportunities this will give her. The narrator says that she understands how sad they must feel; it's like that time she had to say goodbye to her own mother, before she went away on vacation one time.
When the family's younger child tries to speak up in earnest, his father drags him away from the camera whispering about how if he's not careful they're going to lose him too. The narrator doesn't seem to notice.
...
Apparently, Australia was doing this well up until the 1970's. Generally in the case of aboriginal children who had white blood in them, but probably not exclusively that case.
I figured Australia had a history of this, since most of the Anglo settler states do. I didn't realize they were doing it more recently than, eg, Canada. So, I learned something.
...
Another standout was the interview segments with the Babaquieran "Minister of White Affairs," especially when he had to justify his approval for a project that would expropriate a huge section of native land - with a financial district, major roadways, and suburbs in it - to set up a nature preserve.
Apparently, this character is based on John Bjelke-Peterson, who governed the state of Queensland throughout the seventies and eighties. He seems to have pioneered a lot of the extra-deranged rightwing policies that the Australian federal government itself has adopted in more recent years. Aside from being about 95% Hitler with regards to labor rights, aboriginal rights, and the environment, he was apparently making it illegal for women to travel out of state to get abortions in the seventies. Might have directly inspired the current US Republican party on a few policies.
The narrator tries to ask him hard-hitting questions, but she folds so quickly - and effectively falls back on his own positions in more pseudo-humanitarian terms during her solo segments - that she doesn't even seem like a well-meaning liberal ignoramus so much as a malicious rightwing plant hired to legitimize the new expropriations. The most suspect bit was when, right after teetering on the edge of acknowledging the existence of state violence against the natives, the narrator shifted gears and did some cultural coverage of native traditions that glorify death and violence - like Veteran's Day parades and sportsball tournaments - in order to immediately construct the narrative of a bloodthirsty warrior culture that requires fire to be fought with fire. I don't think I've seen well-meaning liberal ignoramuses do this. I have seen rightwing concern trolls do it. At least, in the countries I'm more familiar with.
Maybe that was the intent of the filmmakers, maybe it wasn't, but that's how she comes across to me. Again, if I was more familiar with Australian politics I might have a better idea of what she's coded as.
...
Another interviewee is a white "pick me" police chief who's been leading crackdowns against what are theoretically his own people. Implicitly a result of either an "adoption" program like the one we saw the host family be victims of, or just a profoundly cynical and/or self-hating individual. He's able to be more openly, vocally racist than the politician is, on account of his skin color giving him a pass. Presumably, that's the entire point of him holding the office that he holds.
Alongside this character, we see a recurring clip of some black schoolchildren singing a racist nursery rhyme about white drunkenness and suicidality, only to be joined in the last few instances by a couple of white classmates standing at the periphery of their little throng.
The final few clips have the host family dispossessed of their house and property, not too long after the loss of their daughter. They get shipped off to a barren wilderness somewhere with the clothes on their back and little else as part of an "opportunity program" meant to foster prosperity via adversity. The son runs away, and is implied by the final shot to have become a terrorist of some stripe. The narrator has her most punchable line at all when, after seeing the now-childless couple being driven away, she emotes about how she'll always remember her time with them fondly, and how she's sure they will do the same for her.
...
The reason I describe this as a dream-logic world is because...well...the sense of time and place are sort of all over the place in this movie. That's probably intentional, to add an extra layer of more lighthearted humor to contrast the hard-hitting social commentary, but I personally found it more confusing than it was worth. Probably a me problem rather than a movie problem, but like...for example, in the opening scene we see the natives wearing modern white person clothes and barbequing steak and hot dogs around modern-looking grills and park benches. The invaders are wearing 16-1700's naval uniforms, but landing in modern-ish motor boats.
In the modern mockumentary section, it seems like we're still at the same tech level. While we see the struggle of traditional Native Babaquieran lifestyles trying to persist in the modern world - depicted as crumbling underfunded suburbs and crumbling underfunded commercial districts with crumbling, underfunded eight lane highways connecting them, that the anthropologist narrator cringily exoticizes with every word she speaks over this footage - we never even get a look at what the colonizers' society looks like and how it differs. The most we get to see is the inside of a politician's office and a few rooms of a police department. I understand that imagining a whole alternate society for these bizarro-settlers would be both beyond the scope of what the movie is trying to do and undermine part of the joke, but like...I don't know, my autistic-ass mind just has trouble engaging with this without constantly banging these questions against it.
I guess part of it is that the aspects of traditional whiteness being played with here - the suburban sprawl, the giant highways and parking lots, etc - are things that only exist because of the conditions of settler colonialism in our own world. There's a reason you find so much more of this shit in America and Australia than you do in England. Which once again forces me to wonder what the hell the settler Barbaquieran cities look like, if they were built in identical conditions but apparently don't look anything like this.
...
Anyway. People who ARE more familiar with Australia seem to almost unanimously love this movie. The fact that this film was largely created by aborigines certainly vouches for its sincerity, if nothing else. I personally liked it, both for the cunning bits of double-edged humor and for how well it aligns with what I know about the patterns of late Anglosphere colonialism in general, but I'm just not familiar enough with the concrete details of Australia to feel more strongly. If I was, maybe I'd outright love this piece. Or maybe I'd be more critical of it.
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Incidentally, I was introduced to Babakiueria through a university course, specifically one on Aboriginal Relations. Same thing with the more recent film The Furnace.
I can vouch that there are some things here that could fly over the heads of modern Australians (I wasn't even born yet when Babakiueria came out). E.g. I didn't get that character was based on Bjelke-Petersen, and I only knew who Bjelke-Petersen even was due to my research on late 70s Brisbane bands like The Saints and The Go-Betweens (naturally he was a big reason most of them had to flee Queensland pronto).
I'm also surprised there was no mention (that I can remember) of there being no Babakiuerian treaty. Unlike Native Americans and Māori, Aboriginal Australians never had a treaty with European settlers; there was even a hit 80s song about this. Not that having treaties helped Native Americans and Māori that much.
One thing I'd say has gotten funnier about Babakiueria with age is how the film retroactively feels like it's parodying Great Replacement theory. AFAIK, that wasn't really a thing in the 80s. True, Aboriginal peoples aren't usually the targets of that theory, but it's not like people that racist can tell the difference
I can vouch that there are some things here that could fly over the heads of modern Australians (I wasn't even born yet when Babakiueria came out). E.g. I didn't get that character was based on Bjelke-Petersen, and I only knew who Bjelke-Petersen even was due to my research on late 70s Brisbane bands like The Saints and The Go-Betweens (naturally he was a big reason most of them had to flee Queensland pronto).
I'm also surprised there was no mention (that I can remember) of there being no Babakiuerian treaty. Unlike Native Americans and Māori, Aboriginal Australians never had a treaty with European settlers; there was even a hit 80s song about this. Not that having treaties helped Native Americans and Māori that much.
One thing I'd say has gotten funnier about Babakiueria with age is how the film retroactively feels like it's parodying Great Replacement theory. AFAIK, that wasn't really a thing in the 80s. True, Aboriginal peoples aren't usually the targets of that theory, but it's not like people that racist can tell the difference
"Oh My Goddess!" E1 vis a vis "Verthandi in the Middle" Ch1
- Location
- Patriarchova
This review was commissioned by @ArlequineLunaire
"Oh My Goddess," also sometimes translated as "Ah! My Goddess," "Ah, My Goddess!," and various other permutations, is an anime/manga series that's had various incarnations and adaptations from the late 1980's up through the late 2010's. Put simply, it's basically Japan's answer to "I Dream of Jeannie." Down-on-his-luck guy somehow ends up with a submissive kami gf; paranormal sitcom shenanigans ensue.
I know a little bit about OMG (lovely acronym) going in, via cultural osmosis. Goddess GF is named Belldandy, apparently a Japanified version of the Norse fate goddess Verthandi. She doesn't actually have anything to do with her mythological namesake, though; my impression is that the creator just whimsically took an exotic-sounding name from a mythos that wasn't well known in Japan at the time. Her powers are also considerably more low-key than the English translation "goddess" would suggest (Japanese kami are much more variable in power and importance). I think there are some other divine entities that show up as recurring characters to complicate the couple's lives together.
Also, I've been spoiled on the inciting incident for the series. By amusing coincidence, the very first commissioned review I did (the Konosuba pilot) actually featured a parody of it. Belldandy appears to the male lead to grant him a wish that he'd somehow earned himself, and he unthinkingly wishes she'd stay with him. The parody being that in OMG this was an innocent misunderstanding, whereas in Konosuba he does it to fuck her over on purpose and she totally deserved it.
Finally, I've also heard that there's a been a bit of culture war discourse about this franchise over the years. Unavoidable given the premise; "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie" are no different in this regard. We'll see how I end up feeling about OMG through this lens by the end of the review.
Anyway. I'm going to be reviewing the first episode of the 1993 OVA, alongside the first chapter of a kinda-sorta fanfic written by @ArlequineLunaire. What she's told me is that her story, "Verthandi in the Middle," has a broadly similar premise to OMG but does much more with the Norse Mythology connection (not that that's saying much, necessarily, since OMG literally just took the name and nothing else).
The OVA pilot has a very efficient introduction, letting the viewer get a sense of who the protagonist is and what his status quo was like quickly while propelling him toward the disruption. Morisato Keiichi is a booksmart but socially clueless college student who tries to do right by everyone, but mostly just gets taken advantage of as a result. We open on him playing dorm secretary for his older "senpai" dormmates, sitting in place and taking phone calls even as the evening wears on and his stomach growls.
On that note: I couldn't find a subbed version easily, so I'm watching the dub, and what was the deal with Japanese-to-English localization back in the nineties, seriously?
The nineties look weirder and weirder the more retrospect we have to look back at them in.
While hastily calling takeout restaurants trying to find someplace that isn't closed for one contrived reason or another, Keiichi accidentally dials the "Goddess Help Line" and is informed that he has been granted authorization for one wish. While he's trying to figure out what just happened, Belldandy teleports into the room and invites him to go ahead and make his choice.
Keiichi is sure that this is a prank. It would be just like his senpais to hire a stripper or something to mess with him, as they won't stop giving him shit about his shyness and inexperience with women. Not sure how he thinks they could have managed the part where she phased through the wall in a prism of lilac-colored light, but for all I know he's a stage tech guy and has already figured out thirty different ways to pull that trick off.
He still thinks this is a joke when he decides to play along by saying "okay, be my girlfriend forever then." It of course isn't one, and the lightshow produced when Belldandy (temporarily? Until the time of Keiichi's death, I assume?) sheds her divinity to take on mortal form.
He believes it now. Unfortunately, he also isn't sure what to do with the situation he's landed the two of them in. And is even less sure what to do once the senpais come home and promptly evict him from the dorm for violating their strict "no girls" policy. No chance to explain himself. No hesitation or delay.
Experience tells me that if I question this, multiple readers will direct me to extensive documentation of this being 100% accurate to how college dorms in Japan actually are. So, I won't question it, and instead simply be glad I didn't go to school in Japan.
Anyway, the pace picks up quickly after this point, as Belldandy uses her powers (including limited telekinesis, clairvoyance, and healing abilities) to help guide him to some new housing as quickly as possible. Keiichi, for his part, drives them where they need to go in his motorcycle-pod (okay, how the hell was he not already getting dates when he drives that certified pussy-magnet around?) and tends to her when she overuses her powers and faints. Between the two of them, they're able to eventually get to an abandoned shrine at the edge of the city that seems to have once been the home of one of Belldandy's kami buddies. Which Belldandy eventually pretties up into a liveable home for humans as well as herself. And...also, Keiichi's little sister somehow finds out where he is almost immediately and comes to stay with him while she looks for more permanent student housing for herself. And somehow his senpais also all find out, but they're cool with him now, and throw a moving-in-party on his and Belldandy's behalf.
Also, the senpais pretty much have to have been among ONE's artistic inspirations lol.
The little sister arrives with money from home, which Belldandy suggests is part of the greater divine force at work behind the granted wishes. Belldandy and entities like her aren't all that powerful, but the power behind the company she came from is, and it's warping reality to give the two of them the opportunities they need to let Keiichi's wish be true in spirit as well as letter.
The episode ends when, after the party, Keiichi finally asks Belldandy why he of all people was chosen to receive one of these wishes. Belldandy doesn't give him a straight answer, but implies that it's got to do with karma. Which, well, to be fair: Keiichi's main stated motivation during their search for new accommodations was concern for Belldandy, and not wanting her to have to live homeless after he was responsible for bringing her here. When they arrive at the shrine she eventually guided him toward, she's still unconscious from overexertion, and he decides to give the one blanket he has with him to her while laying on the cold, hard floor shivering all night a few feet away from her. He's running a fever by the time she wakes up in the morning; good thing she can heal people. He's definitely characterized as someone who the Powers That Be might have decided could use a break.
As for Belldandy herself...well, she's an odd one. Odd in a way that makes me unsure how exactly to read this story in the context of gender politics.
The thing about Belldandy is that she's not remotely human. She (and presumably the other agents of the Goddess Relief Program) is characterized as sort of a "spirit of helpfulness." She doesn't seem to want anything except for her client to be happy. She doesn't register any surprise or regret or sense of loss after he makes his wish. She's clearly not an automaton; she's self-aware, takes initiative, has a few personality quirks of her own, and seems to genuinely experience emotions of her own. It's just that all of these things are geared - from the level of base instinct on up - toward helping others, and right now she's been pointed toward Keiichi. She's almost like some concepts I've read about what a friendly artificial general intelligence might look like.
The thing is...is the entity I just described an interestingly alien character to see a human lead try to build a meaningful relationship with despite the differences, or is it just some bitter asswipe's idea of The Perfect Woman?
I'm really not sure which it is.
The ambiguity of this also makes me look a little side-eyed at the allegedly goodhearted Keiichi. Is this (minus the magic and the temporary homelessness) what he was always picturing when he imagined a "girlfriend?" Does he consider this better than what he'd always pictured? From this episode alone, it's hard to tell. Notably, some of his dialogue when he's trying to find a new place suggests that his urge to provide for her is less "I'm responsible for this person's situation" and more "my new girlfriend is so beautiful I need to treat her like the goddess milady she is." Translation difficulties can badly misrepresent these sorts of thing, so I opted for the charitable interpretation in my summary, but that may or may not be the way it's actually written.
I'm also of two minds about the thoughts going through Keiichi's head as he thinks about Belldandy the day after their shrine-rehousing. On one hand, she's an attractive woman who genuinely wants to be his girlfriend (albeit for reasons that don't quite map to any human desire to do so), and sexual thoughts are totally natural in that situation. On the other, their dynamic up until then was - despite her powers doing a lot of the heavy lifting - a fairly paternalistic one, with her lesser familiarity with the mundane details of the world forcing him into a mentor-ish role. Combined with the kinda-sorta parental dynamic of him bringing her into the world and being responsible for her conditions, it makes it...I dunno. Kinda creepy, in a way that maps to the same sort of regressive gender roles.
That said, I did at least giggle when Keiichi wondered if "something might happen to" him if he had sex with a kami. I don't think his dick actually will catch on fire when and if they get to that point, but the possibility appears to have crossed his mind.
So, lots of ambiguity on account of translation questions. And lots more ambiguity on account of how extreme patriarchal views of women are indistinguishable from xenofiction.
Anyway, "Verthandi In the Middle." The title is probably a play on "Malcolm In the Middle" that ties into Verthandi's place as the middle of the three Norn sisters of Norse mythos (the three embody the past, present, and future, with Verthandi being the present). Going off of the first chapter, this story plays things fairly close to its anime/manga inspiration in some ways, while wandering far from the concept in others. Notably, it leans much more into the comedy side of OMG's comedy-drama mixture. Very Terry Pratchett-ish sort of dry humor in its treatment of gods trying to make their way in an evolving human world.
It also differs in having Verthandi as the protagonist. In first person narration, no less.
VitM takes OMG's premise of Verthandi and some other goddesses (the other two norns, in this version) running a wish shop and weaving fate to the whim of their customers, and Verthandi being sent to visit a mortal man in person as part of a wish-granting. However, this time it isn't a client who she's sent to grant a wish to, but rather she goes to scope out the subject of someone else's fatewarp to check the results. Also, the man she's being sent to check on is a serial killer, and the wish was to get him to stop serial killing. I'm guessing he prooooobably isn't going to be her love interest this time.
I wish I could say I liked it. And I also wish it was easier to do this with works that were written by people I know, much less the person who commissioned the review. But, @ArlequineLunaire told me that she wants me to treat this like any other work I'd review, so.
This chapter is a goddamned mess.
Character motivations changing from paragraph to paragraph. The narrator arbitrarily changing her mind about whether she's going to be explicit about being an ancient goddess, or try to hide it from the reader. The style of humor is Pratchettesque, but with a few exceptions the jokes don't actually land.
An exception to this is the characterization of the three nornir. Skuld of the future frozen in perpetual adolescence, currently going through a goth phase and using zoomer slang that neither of her sisters can understand. Urd as a grumpy old woman who's always twisting the other two's arms. Verthandi herself as a slightly neurotic, sort of spineless sad sack constantly being tugged and pushed around by the other two. I feel like that does speak to how it often seems like time works. Especially when one takes the deterministic, fatalistic view, as you'd expect a story about the Fates to do. That aspect of the chapter essentially works, and managed to be a little bit funny at times.
But...I'm sorry, it's just really badly written. There's not much else to say for it. Aside from commenting on Verthandi being the POV character as opposed to an inscrutable outsider as per OMG, there's not much for me to compare and contrast either.
"Oh My Goddess," also sometimes translated as "Ah! My Goddess," "Ah, My Goddess!," and various other permutations, is an anime/manga series that's had various incarnations and adaptations from the late 1980's up through the late 2010's. Put simply, it's basically Japan's answer to "I Dream of Jeannie." Down-on-his-luck guy somehow ends up with a submissive kami gf; paranormal sitcom shenanigans ensue.
I know a little bit about OMG (lovely acronym) going in, via cultural osmosis. Goddess GF is named Belldandy, apparently a Japanified version of the Norse fate goddess Verthandi. She doesn't actually have anything to do with her mythological namesake, though; my impression is that the creator just whimsically took an exotic-sounding name from a mythos that wasn't well known in Japan at the time. Her powers are also considerably more low-key than the English translation "goddess" would suggest (Japanese kami are much more variable in power and importance). I think there are some other divine entities that show up as recurring characters to complicate the couple's lives together.
Also, I've been spoiled on the inciting incident for the series. By amusing coincidence, the very first commissioned review I did (the Konosuba pilot) actually featured a parody of it. Belldandy appears to the male lead to grant him a wish that he'd somehow earned himself, and he unthinkingly wishes she'd stay with him. The parody being that in OMG this was an innocent misunderstanding, whereas in Konosuba he does it to fuck her over on purpose and she totally deserved it.
Finally, I've also heard that there's a been a bit of culture war discourse about this franchise over the years. Unavoidable given the premise; "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie" are no different in this regard. We'll see how I end up feeling about OMG through this lens by the end of the review.
Anyway. I'm going to be reviewing the first episode of the 1993 OVA, alongside the first chapter of a kinda-sorta fanfic written by @ArlequineLunaire. What she's told me is that her story, "Verthandi in the Middle," has a broadly similar premise to OMG but does much more with the Norse Mythology connection (not that that's saying much, necessarily, since OMG literally just took the name and nothing else).
The OVA pilot has a very efficient introduction, letting the viewer get a sense of who the protagonist is and what his status quo was like quickly while propelling him toward the disruption. Morisato Keiichi is a booksmart but socially clueless college student who tries to do right by everyone, but mostly just gets taken advantage of as a result. We open on him playing dorm secretary for his older "senpai" dormmates, sitting in place and taking phone calls even as the evening wears on and his stomach growls.
On that note: I couldn't find a subbed version easily, so I'm watching the dub, and what was the deal with Japanese-to-English localization back in the nineties, seriously?
I hope someone talks about plans later this episode.
The nineties look weirder and weirder the more retrospect we have to look back at them in.
While hastily calling takeout restaurants trying to find someplace that isn't closed for one contrived reason or another, Keiichi accidentally dials the "Goddess Help Line" and is informed that he has been granted authorization for one wish. While he's trying to figure out what just happened, Belldandy teleports into the room and invites him to go ahead and make his choice.
Keiichi is sure that this is a prank. It would be just like his senpais to hire a stripper or something to mess with him, as they won't stop giving him shit about his shyness and inexperience with women. Not sure how he thinks they could have managed the part where she phased through the wall in a prism of lilac-colored light, but for all I know he's a stage tech guy and has already figured out thirty different ways to pull that trick off.
He still thinks this is a joke when he decides to play along by saying "okay, be my girlfriend forever then." It of course isn't one, and the lightshow produced when Belldandy (temporarily? Until the time of Keiichi's death, I assume?) sheds her divinity to take on mortal form.
He believes it now. Unfortunately, he also isn't sure what to do with the situation he's landed the two of them in. And is even less sure what to do once the senpais come home and promptly evict him from the dorm for violating their strict "no girls" policy. No chance to explain himself. No hesitation or delay.
Experience tells me that if I question this, multiple readers will direct me to extensive documentation of this being 100% accurate to how college dorms in Japan actually are. So, I won't question it, and instead simply be glad I didn't go to school in Japan.
Anyway, the pace picks up quickly after this point, as Belldandy uses her powers (including limited telekinesis, clairvoyance, and healing abilities) to help guide him to some new housing as quickly as possible. Keiichi, for his part, drives them where they need to go in his motorcycle-pod (okay, how the hell was he not already getting dates when he drives that certified pussy-magnet around?) and tends to her when she overuses her powers and faints. Between the two of them, they're able to eventually get to an abandoned shrine at the edge of the city that seems to have once been the home of one of Belldandy's kami buddies. Which Belldandy eventually pretties up into a liveable home for humans as well as herself. And...also, Keiichi's little sister somehow finds out where he is almost immediately and comes to stay with him while she looks for more permanent student housing for herself. And somehow his senpais also all find out, but they're cool with him now, and throw a moving-in-party on his and Belldandy's behalf.
Also, the senpais pretty much have to have been among ONE's artistic inspirations lol.
The little sister arrives with money from home, which Belldandy suggests is part of the greater divine force at work behind the granted wishes. Belldandy and entities like her aren't all that powerful, but the power behind the company she came from is, and it's warping reality to give the two of them the opportunities they need to let Keiichi's wish be true in spirit as well as letter.
The episode ends when, after the party, Keiichi finally asks Belldandy why he of all people was chosen to receive one of these wishes. Belldandy doesn't give him a straight answer, but implies that it's got to do with karma. Which, well, to be fair: Keiichi's main stated motivation during their search for new accommodations was concern for Belldandy, and not wanting her to have to live homeless after he was responsible for bringing her here. When they arrive at the shrine she eventually guided him toward, she's still unconscious from overexertion, and he decides to give the one blanket he has with him to her while laying on the cold, hard floor shivering all night a few feet away from her. He's running a fever by the time she wakes up in the morning; good thing she can heal people. He's definitely characterized as someone who the Powers That Be might have decided could use a break.
As for Belldandy herself...well, she's an odd one. Odd in a way that makes me unsure how exactly to read this story in the context of gender politics.
The thing about Belldandy is that she's not remotely human. She (and presumably the other agents of the Goddess Relief Program) is characterized as sort of a "spirit of helpfulness." She doesn't seem to want anything except for her client to be happy. She doesn't register any surprise or regret or sense of loss after he makes his wish. She's clearly not an automaton; she's self-aware, takes initiative, has a few personality quirks of her own, and seems to genuinely experience emotions of her own. It's just that all of these things are geared - from the level of base instinct on up - toward helping others, and right now she's been pointed toward Keiichi. She's almost like some concepts I've read about what a friendly artificial general intelligence might look like.
The thing is...is the entity I just described an interestingly alien character to see a human lead try to build a meaningful relationship with despite the differences, or is it just some bitter asswipe's idea of The Perfect Woman?
I'm really not sure which it is.
The ambiguity of this also makes me look a little side-eyed at the allegedly goodhearted Keiichi. Is this (minus the magic and the temporary homelessness) what he was always picturing when he imagined a "girlfriend?" Does he consider this better than what he'd always pictured? From this episode alone, it's hard to tell. Notably, some of his dialogue when he's trying to find a new place suggests that his urge to provide for her is less "I'm responsible for this person's situation" and more "my new girlfriend is so beautiful I need to treat her like the goddess milady she is." Translation difficulties can badly misrepresent these sorts of thing, so I opted for the charitable interpretation in my summary, but that may or may not be the way it's actually written.
I'm also of two minds about the thoughts going through Keiichi's head as he thinks about Belldandy the day after their shrine-rehousing. On one hand, she's an attractive woman who genuinely wants to be his girlfriend (albeit for reasons that don't quite map to any human desire to do so), and sexual thoughts are totally natural in that situation. On the other, their dynamic up until then was - despite her powers doing a lot of the heavy lifting - a fairly paternalistic one, with her lesser familiarity with the mundane details of the world forcing him into a mentor-ish role. Combined with the kinda-sorta parental dynamic of him bringing her into the world and being responsible for her conditions, it makes it...I dunno. Kinda creepy, in a way that maps to the same sort of regressive gender roles.
That said, I did at least giggle when Keiichi wondered if "something might happen to" him if he had sex with a kami. I don't think his dick actually will catch on fire when and if they get to that point, but the possibility appears to have crossed his mind.
So, lots of ambiguity on account of translation questions. And lots more ambiguity on account of how extreme patriarchal views of women are indistinguishable from xenofiction.
Anyway, "Verthandi In the Middle." The title is probably a play on "Malcolm In the Middle" that ties into Verthandi's place as the middle of the three Norn sisters of Norse mythos (the three embody the past, present, and future, with Verthandi being the present). Going off of the first chapter, this story plays things fairly close to its anime/manga inspiration in some ways, while wandering far from the concept in others. Notably, it leans much more into the comedy side of OMG's comedy-drama mixture. Very Terry Pratchett-ish sort of dry humor in its treatment of gods trying to make their way in an evolving human world.
It also differs in having Verthandi as the protagonist. In first person narration, no less.
VitM takes OMG's premise of Verthandi and some other goddesses (the other two norns, in this version) running a wish shop and weaving fate to the whim of their customers, and Verthandi being sent to visit a mortal man in person as part of a wish-granting. However, this time it isn't a client who she's sent to grant a wish to, but rather she goes to scope out the subject of someone else's fatewarp to check the results. Also, the man she's being sent to check on is a serial killer, and the wish was to get him to stop serial killing. I'm guessing he prooooobably isn't going to be her love interest this time.
I wish I could say I liked it. And I also wish it was easier to do this with works that were written by people I know, much less the person who commissioned the review. But, @ArlequineLunaire told me that she wants me to treat this like any other work I'd review, so.
This chapter is a goddamned mess.
Character motivations changing from paragraph to paragraph. The narrator arbitrarily changing her mind about whether she's going to be explicit about being an ancient goddess, or try to hide it from the reader. The style of humor is Pratchettesque, but with a few exceptions the jokes don't actually land.
An exception to this is the characterization of the three nornir. Skuld of the future frozen in perpetual adolescence, currently going through a goth phase and using zoomer slang that neither of her sisters can understand. Urd as a grumpy old woman who's always twisting the other two's arms. Verthandi herself as a slightly neurotic, sort of spineless sad sack constantly being tugged and pushed around by the other two. I feel like that does speak to how it often seems like time works. Especially when one takes the deterministic, fatalistic view, as you'd expect a story about the Fates to do. That aspect of the chapter essentially works, and managed to be a little bit funny at times.
But...I'm sorry, it's just really badly written. There's not much else to say for it. Aside from commenting on Verthandi being the POV character as opposed to an inscrutable outsider as per OMG, there's not much for me to compare and contrast either.
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The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, of all shows, also has a fairly similar inciting incident.
OMG does have a little more to do with Norse myth. Belldandy's still meant to be associated with the present, and the other Norns do show up (not a spoiler since they're in all the marketing for the series).
I'd say OMG also deserves a gold star just for being an anime set in college. That's a rarity now, let alone back then.
Your analysis of Belldandy also reminds me of a Care Bear, albeit humanoid and there to cheer up an adult instead of a child. There's even one called Wish Bear who has similar-ish blue, white, and yellow colour scheme. Even the name 'Bell Dandy' sounds like one a Care Bear Cousin would have.
You also won't be surprised to hear that VitM Chapter 1 didn't have a beta-reader, mostly because finding betas on SV can be kinda difficult.
I will say Verthandi being inconsistent on hiding her identity was because she doesn't care about doing so, but Urth insisted on it
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Or he's too tired to think of that part.
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It does bring the funny mental image that his senpais just go all out when pranking him and use outlandish special effects.
Oh the Norse theming thing is only in the name? Too bad.
Yeah I wish more anime was about college.
Great Greedy Guts
Ceterum censeo Vigilam esse delendam.
Huh. I wonder if Keiichi asking for her was an adaptation change or a translation one? Reading it as a teenager I remember him asking (still in that not serious way) for someone like Belldandy, making it more of a twist when she sticks around, nevermind that it still happens immediately and she's on the cover. No idea which is more accurate, though.
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I've been told that this adaptation makes things a bit sleazier than the original, so you're probably right.
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I admit I commissioned the OVA since it's the shortest incarnation of OMG, the 2005 TV series being standard anime length and the manga having run for twenty-six years.
But my favourite OMG incarnation would actually be the spinoff Adventures of Mini-Goddess. Though as it's a gag series where each episode's only five minutes long, I haven't commissioned it since I doubt there'd be much to say about it
But my favourite OMG incarnation would actually be the spinoff Adventures of Mini-Goddess. Though as it's a gag series where each episode's only five minutes long, I haven't commissioned it since I doubt there'd be much to say about it