A Unique Vista from which All Looks Different
That was a crazy week. A madness week. The10show experience was incredible and working with JaQuavious and Amy was a treat. Of course as with every production, there was a lot of things I loved and a handful of things I'd have done differently in retrospect, but I was for the most part extremely satisfied. The show was about a topic that was near and dear to me. However, it was mostly a discussion of the ideas, and the conclusions it came to were very comforting, but also left a lot of work in the hands of the people experiencing the social phenomenon. I've been thinking about it a lot and I think it's inspired me to invest more energy in my social life, which is a great purpose. It remains to be seen if I'll get enough votes to continue onto the next round, but honestly I'm satisfied. I grew, I learned, I did a good job, and if I get it do it again great. If not, more time to focus on school, work, and developing my social life. All things which I think are much more important for me right now. I like to think that my emotional development I felt through the process can be felt by watching it, so I'll put a link to the show here. (It's Toasted Marshmallow Mocha). https://youtu.be/B6CCIt_oICk
The night after the show night of the10show, a bunch of the producers and actors all went to a local all-night breakfast place and chatted it up. It was enormously fun, and I found out more about and got more personally acquainted with many of them. At one point though, I think I over-shared. I'm not upset about that, live and learn, but I realized something very cool. We got on the topic of awful breakups, and I started to share what was for the largest chunk of my life, my worst breakup experience, and partway through, I just sort of lost motivation. I felt bad for sharing it, not because it was a bad story, or that it wasn't interesting, but that I literally didn't care enough about it to get through the whole experience. I felt like I needed to apologize for even bringing it up when the other stories had involved physical altercations and terrifying emotional manipulation.
And that's really only one example of how this show experience has suddenly shifted my perspective. I don't think I'll fully be able to describe how revolutionary this week was, but I'll try. A lot of the changes were cementing thoughts I had already, and putting them into a place of emotional understanding. I realized that while my progress was slow, college and financial stability is the best place to put my effort right now to reach more artistic fulfillment. I got more evidence that I am very artistically talented and confident enough to create and posit an expressive/artistic message. I realized that my feelings of loneliness are common, and that they're often overcome. (I give a lot of that credit to the play, but being looked up to as a producer was also very nice). I got more reinforcement that my rehearsal and leadership processes are pleasant to work with and effective. I mean, I feel very at peace and grounded. So moving forward, I'll be working less, doing school more, and socializing first. I would love to find myself in a fun relationship again.
This is a non-sequiter of sorts, but I wanted to mention it. I was sleep deprived and unable to sleep, so I did dishes for a couple hours while watching some garbage anime. And I do mean garbage, it's fun for me. I seek out the lowest effort, most banal, straightforward anime I can. It has simple formulas that it generally executes well or laughably badly, both of which is fun. It's a good example of a piece of art reaching for low fruit, succeeding, and having fun as it does so. But, the one I picked was a show called "Didn't I say to make my abilities average in the next life?". It's an extremely standard Isekai anime. Protagonist dies, and is reborn into a new world with incredible powers and memories from their last life. The only variation on this one from the standard mold is that rather than a young man, it's a young woman. And it's SO MUCH better. In most Isekai with male protagonists, the focus is immediately on the young women in the setting- what romantic interest is there to keep the audience watching and to googly-eye at the powerful otherworldly God child who's super powerful because of things that had nothing to do with his own effort. However, in this show, we're introduced to a female cast yet again, but they're exclusively her friends (that or I have literally 0 gaydar, I'm sure there's a little Yuri undertones, but let me continue for now). In this story, our protagonist wants to be normal so that she has friends and close relationships. It's purely through a clerical error that she's powerful (supposedly) because she asked to be average and so they averaged her powers to be between a worm and the most powerful creature in the world (some kind of elder dragon) and that ended up making her way more powerful than most humans. I'm getting off track, but I'll summarize. It was so cool to see a woman be empowered in a way that is so fetishized by young men. And rather than that lead to some strange reverse harem where the girl is surrounded by hot hunks who just want a piece, the characters that are interested are all women who like her for who she is, and that she shares her powers with to make them substantially more powerful. I dunno. It's still a trashy anime, I just saw something in it that I wasn't expecting and it was very satisfying.
I just typed 1 paragraph about anime that was longer than 3 about my own existential discovery and exploration. I'm fairly certain that there's a law somewhere that makes it so I can no longer hold public office now. What can I say, I love dissecting successful and unsuccessful art.
The night after the show night of the10show, a bunch of the producers and actors all went to a local all-night breakfast place and chatted it up. It was enormously fun, and I found out more about and got more personally acquainted with many of them. At one point though, I think I over-shared. I'm not upset about that, live and learn, but I realized something very cool. We got on the topic of awful breakups, and I started to share what was for the largest chunk of my life, my worst breakup experience, and partway through, I just sort of lost motivation. I felt bad for sharing it, not because it was a bad story, or that it wasn't interesting, but that I literally didn't care enough about it to get through the whole experience. I felt like I needed to apologize for even bringing it up when the other stories had involved physical altercations and terrifying emotional manipulation.
And that's really only one example of how this show experience has suddenly shifted my perspective. I don't think I'll fully be able to describe how revolutionary this week was, but I'll try. A lot of the changes were cementing thoughts I had already, and putting them into a place of emotional understanding. I realized that while my progress was slow, college and financial stability is the best place to put my effort right now to reach more artistic fulfillment. I got more evidence that I am very artistically talented and confident enough to create and posit an expressive/artistic message. I realized that my feelings of loneliness are common, and that they're often overcome. (I give a lot of that credit to the play, but being looked up to as a producer was also very nice). I got more reinforcement that my rehearsal and leadership processes are pleasant to work with and effective. I mean, I feel very at peace and grounded. So moving forward, I'll be working less, doing school more, and socializing first. I would love to find myself in a fun relationship again.
This is a non-sequiter of sorts, but I wanted to mention it. I was sleep deprived and unable to sleep, so I did dishes for a couple hours while watching some garbage anime. And I do mean garbage, it's fun for me. I seek out the lowest effort, most banal, straightforward anime I can. It has simple formulas that it generally executes well or laughably badly, both of which is fun. It's a good example of a piece of art reaching for low fruit, succeeding, and having fun as it does so. But, the one I picked was a show called "Didn't I say to make my abilities average in the next life?". It's an extremely standard Isekai anime. Protagonist dies, and is reborn into a new world with incredible powers and memories from their last life. The only variation on this one from the standard mold is that rather than a young man, it's a young woman. And it's SO MUCH better. In most Isekai with male protagonists, the focus is immediately on the young women in the setting- what romantic interest is there to keep the audience watching and to googly-eye at the powerful otherworldly God child who's super powerful because of things that had nothing to do with his own effort. However, in this show, we're introduced to a female cast yet again, but they're exclusively her friends (that or I have literally 0 gaydar, I'm sure there's a little Yuri undertones, but let me continue for now). In this story, our protagonist wants to be normal so that she has friends and close relationships. It's purely through a clerical error that she's powerful (supposedly) because she asked to be average and so they averaged her powers to be between a worm and the most powerful creature in the world (some kind of elder dragon) and that ended up making her way more powerful than most humans. I'm getting off track, but I'll summarize. It was so cool to see a woman be empowered in a way that is so fetishized by young men. And rather than that lead to some strange reverse harem where the girl is surrounded by hot hunks who just want a piece, the characters that are interested are all women who like her for who she is, and that she shares her powers with to make them substantially more powerful. I dunno. It's still a trashy anime, I just saw something in it that I wasn't expecting and it was very satisfying.
I just typed 1 paragraph about anime that was longer than 3 about my own existential discovery and exploration. I'm fairly certain that there's a law somewhere that makes it so I can no longer hold public office now. What can I say, I love dissecting successful and unsuccessful art.
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