“Everyone in Our Family Were Prepared to Suffer and Die For Christ” by Archpriest Vladimir Pravdolyubov, the Reverend Rector of St Nicholas Church in Kasimov, Ryazan Oblast
Some New Martyrs and Confessors in our Family
Kasimov, Russia
I was born in 1931 into an Orthodox family, within which were a few new martyrs and confessors. My father, archpriest Sergei Pravdolyubov, was glorified as a confessor. Besides him, my grandfather Anatoly Pravdolyubov, my uncle on my mother’s side archpriest Mikhail Dmitryev, and my cousin on my mother’s side the reader (and soldier) Yevgeni Feodorovich Dmitryev, were all glorified in 2000 at the Jubilee Council of Bishops for their martyrdom in 1937. Up to my birth, my father had already been arrested two or three times (the labor corps in 1918, more often than not, started with arrest). He was three times faced with the possibility of death. I was the sixth and last child in a family in which everyone was ready to go without, suffer, and die for Christ. With that in mind our family appeared to be a little island of like-minded people, which made life much easier. I’ve carried two events from my earliest childhood days, which I learned from the conversations of my elders. We lived very poorly, and one day my 15-year-old sister, Sophia, asked mama for sweets, and in reply mama told her “Pray to God for him to give you sweets.” And so she placed a 1-year-old me on a stool, after which she climbed on the same stool, and we started to pray. As a grown woman she explained, “We probably got atop the stool in order to get closer to God.” Right after our prayer an older woman arrived and said, “I’ve wanted for a long time to bring some candy to your children and decided just now to do so.” So, Sophie and I received as we had asked. Second was when in 1935 my papa was arrested. They led him from the jail to the police station for interrogation directly past our window. I yelled at the window, “Papa, where are you going! Papa! Come home!” which brought the adults to tears. Another episode from my childhood happened thus (I also do not remember this myself, knowing only from recountings). Some nuns, who were part of the church choir with us, placed me on a stool at the reader’s stand to read the Six Psalms [Ps. 3, 37, 62, 87, 102, 142 greek numbering]. I read fairly well, but suddenly fell silent at some point, and tears poured down my face. One of the nuns continued the reading, and I was taken off the stool and placed on a small bench to relax.
The Strictly Aligned Orthodox Position
Patriarch Sergei
The clergy in Kasimov were friendly. They rallied together especially at the time of the revolution and collectivization. The soul of this brotherhood was my father – archpriest Sergei. He preached excellently, and his sermons were taken by other priests and read in their own churches. This is connected to a certain event. Preceding this was a great tragedy: the clergy of Ryazan with the bishop at its head joined ranks with the Renovationists (a state-sponsored church in league with and preaching from the pulpit the ideals of the communists). The Most Holy Patriarch Tikhon forbade them and placed in Ryazan the very energetic Bishop Boris (Sokolov). This bishop, set against by the persecution of the clergy, said from the ambo, “Your priests are only striving to plunder your pockets! Have they explained the liturgy to you?” and the people raised their voices saying, “They’ve explained, Master!” What had happened was this: Father Sergei in his own Holy Trinity Church had delivered a series of sermons with explanations of the liturgy. The priests, with permission from Father Sergei, read them in their own churches just before the bishop’s arrival. And in general, the priests had tried hard together to work out the correct relationship one should have to the realities of that time, about which the words of Father Sergei were often decisive. Before the clergy, besides others, laid two problems. First, how to relate to the new emerging society – the Party, Komsomol, trade-unions, collective farms. Secondly, how to relate to Metropolitan Sergei (Stragorodskiy) and his actions. The fact that after the Declaration of 1927 there were no “forgotten ones”, is largely due to the service of Father Sergei. Still St Tikhon in his epistles implored believers to not be infected by the malicious authorities who so hate the church. But the position of His Holiness Sergei (Stragorodskiy) (“Being strictly Orthodox, we must be loyal citizens of our country: her joy must be our joy, and her sorrow our sorrow) – altogether not an “unacceptable compromise”, but a strictly aligned Orthodox position, which appeared in all force in the years of the Great Patriotic War. Father Sergei specially noted that the apostles commanded subjection to authority, not out of fear, but out of conscience at such times that heads of the government hunted christians, like under Nero. He loved to refer to the First Epistle of the Apostle Peter: “Fiery Temptation”, in which it says that there were burnings of christians in bonfires, especially colorfully depicted in the novel by Sienkiewicz “Quo Vardis”. Citing the words of the apostle: “But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.” (1 Pet. 4, 15-16), Father Sergei pointed especially to the words “busybody in other men’s matters”, connecting to them any resistance of authority. The authorities order “renounce Christ!” – after the examples of the ancients say “I cannot!”. — “We will jail you!” – obediently, without any protest, go to jail then. As such our clergy preserved their unity around Patriarch Sergei. Such this hard question for many was decided. As a result of such relations to authority the first question was resolved. If membership in an organization demanded renunciation of God (ie. the Party, Komsomol and from it the pioneers and little octobrists), to be a member was forbidden, whatever deprivation or torment may be threatened for nonparticipation. However, if renunciation of God is not required of you (such as in the trade unions and collective farms) then it is not only permissible to be a member, but if the authorities require it, then you must. And to slogans such as “Trade unions are the school of Communism” or “We don’t need Chirst, but we need collective farms” one need not pay attention (of course one should not pronounce such things oneself). To see that such a position was relevant to our day, it is enough to remember the turmoil over the INN. (translator’s note: the INN in many post-soviet countries including Russia is a taxpayer identification number. When the measure was introduced by the Russian Federation there was a panic in some religious circles, Orthodox included, urging believers not to get an INN due to seeming resemblance to the idea of the Mark of the Beast in the book of Revelations. The clergy leading the charge against the INN recanted their positions)
Thus begins a new translation project for myself. My goal is to translate piecemeal the book Православные христиане в СССР: голоса свидетелей published in 2018 and to my knowledge never translated into English. As we Orthodox attempt to live and practice our faith in an unchristian society I think we can find solace and advice from our counterparts in last century’s Russia who were living in much a similar, perhaps worse, circumstance. Bear with me as I am slow to translate. Thus follows the foreword which I have just translated.
–YaBoyKen
Forword
The people whose voices are heard in the pages of this book lived a long, wonderful life. The seminarians of the Sretensky Theological Seminary, with the blessing of the abbot of the Sretensky Monastery and bishop of Yegoryevsk Tikhon (Shevkunova), carried out a great and unique task: to interview dozens of people who were born in the first and second halves of the 20th century. Those who remember the Great Patriotic War, the famine and devastation. Those who remember our victories and our defeats, the repression of the Church, the revival of post-war Russia, the feats of the new martyrs and confessors of the Orthodox faith, and also the revival of Orthodoxy at the tail-end of the 80s and beginning of the 90’s. In these reminisces everything is interesting: the daily life, spiritual life, and liturgical life of ordinary people along with the clergy of that time. People spoke about that which was forbidden to read about in the history books, and which can only be found out from the lives of still-living witnesses to the past. Interesting also are the descriptions of certain situations throughout their lives, through which shine the best human qualities: kindness, sacrifice, patience, humility, and love. In the pages of this book the past is revived and the hidden and miraculous providence of God working in people’s fates is revealed to us.
34 “And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?37 For what can a man give in return for his life?”
Insofar as Peter rebuked Christ, who wished to hand over himself to be crucified, Christ called on the people, and in the hearing of all, gave a pointed speech, with the main aim of countering Peter: “You don’t approve of my taking up the cross, but I tell you, that not you, nor anyone else will be saved, if you do not die for virtue and truth.” Notice, the Lord does not say, “The one who would not want to die, die,” but the one who wants to. “I,” he says, “do not force anyone. I call not to evil, but to good, but as such, someone who does not want to will have no reward.”
And what does deny (reject) yourself mean? We understand this when we find out what it means for others to reject. For someone to be rejected by someone else: perhaps father, brother, or someone else from the household, and that, if we were to see how they beat him or drive him to despair*, how they pay him no attention nor treat his ailments, having become completely alien to him. Such is what the Lord commands us, in order that for his sake we would scorn our body and not spare it, should they beat or blame us. Take up your cross, it is said that it is a shameful death, since the cross was considered at that time the tool of shameful punishment. And as such, many crucified were bandits, so he adds that with this crucifixion it is necessary to have certain virtues, denoted by the words: and follow me.
Insofar as this same command to deliver oneself to death would present itself as terrible and cruel, the Lord says that it, on the contrary, is highly people-loving, since “He who loses (his life), destroys his own soul, but if for my sake and not like a bandit executed or one who commits suicide (in these cases the death is not for my sake), those,” he says, “will be saved, will gain their own soul, while those thinking they will gain their soul will destroy it, if in the time of torments they do not stand firm. Don’t tell me, that that last one will save his own life, as even if he were to gain the entire world, all is useless. Salvation cannot be bought with any sort of riches.” On the contrary: those gaining the whole world, but destroying their own soul would give it all back as soon as it catches ablaze, and with that in mind would be expiated. But such expiation there is not possible. Here their lips are obstructed, and those after Origen** say that the state of the soul changes for the better after it is tormented adequately for its sins. And they hear, that there in no way is it impossible to give for the soul some recompense, and that it suffers only so long as would be necessary for satisfaction on account of their sins.
38 “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
Merely inner faith is not enough. It takes a confession of the lips. Since man is two-fold, his sanctification must also be two-fold: sanctification of the soul through faith and the sanctification of the body through confession. Thus, if one is ashamed to confess their crucified God, the he too will be ashamed to acknowledge such wicked servants of his when he comes, not in a submissive manner, not in humiliation, in which he appeared here before and for which some were ashamed of him, but in glory and with an army of angels.
*the more usual translation of убивать is “to kill” but in the context it made more sense to me for it to be the alternate translation **this passage was unclear to me as to whether “которые влед за Оригеном” was in the sense of those who followed his teachings or those simply chronologically after his time. This it was unclear in my reading whether this was a refutation (had it belonged to the heretic) or a celebration of the view stated (had it been formulated to counter his views).
The following is an essay I wrote for a class on Dostoevsky and “Russia and the West” and which I wanted to share here since I have not been writing much else and I am proud of the level of work I put into this thing.
Dostoevsky is considered the eminent Russian Christian author of the 19th century and among the greats of 19th century authors generally. What distinguishes Dostoevsky’s Christianity in the hearts and minds of many is how true it seems to the command to be “not of the world” and the theme within his specific sect’s tradition of resisting the “spirit of the age”. This stands in contrast with the religion of Tolstoy who, while remembered by virtually all as a giant of Russian literature, at times even above Fyodor Mikhailovich, yet who’s religious ideas don’t resonate with many mainstream Russian Orthodox thinkers or clergy. To further dig in this idea, I would like to point out that recently glorified Saint Justin Popovich wrote his first doctoral dissertation on “The Philosophy and Religion of Dostoevsky”. In other words, Tolstoy is not considered primarily a religious thinker whereas this is Dostoevsky’s defining trait in the eyes of many.
Fyodor Mikhailovich is also deeply concerned with how Russia relates to the west, especially in the realm of philosophy. In particular it appears the bulk of his philosophical writings tackle two questions: that of materialist utopianism, and the inherent goodness of man. What is the West’s position on these issues, at least insofar as Dostoevsky perceives them? Firstly, that man is inherently good, and that a utopia can be achieved by solving the material needs of mankind, the later conclusion being derived from the former. Throughout his works, Fyodor works to dismantle these ideas either directly or indirectly primarily through his characters. It is for good reason that some speak of a “walking talking Dostoevsky villain” when poking fun at someone acting in an exaggeratedly evil or despicable manner. Yet in another sense if we take that at face value we may be surprised when we see characters like Demons’s Stavrogin and Crime and Punishment’s Raskolnikov being written as essentially good characters who despite this commit evil acts, even without having anything to gain by it as is the main theme in the later case.
In fact, we can take these two characters as representing arguments against the two facets of Western Philosophy as Dostoevsky sees it mentioned above. Stavrogin is the answer to the idea that man will be good if he is free of want for food shelter and other necessities of life, since he is the son of a wealthy woman, and is universally loved, thus should theoretically be free from the want that drives people to evil deeds. In Raskolnikov’s case we find someone who is even someone extraordinarily good-natured and likable brutally killing an elderly woman simply to prove to himself that he could do it. This last part is probably the most pervasive among his works, that is the innate human aim for freedom of will, which Dostoevsky identifies as the aim that can drive someone to forsake all his other self-interest.
In fact, it may be better to word the first question a little bit differently, rather than “is man good?” it is better to ask “is man rational?” Its basically the consensus of western philosophy that man is at least capable of rationality in theory and that if he attains to reason then most if not all of his problems (at least morally) may be solved. By western philosophy I don’t just mean Dostoevsky’s contemporaries either, though certainly people like the utopianists were in his sights, he cuts the tree at the base so to speak when the narrator of Notes from Underground asks in jest, “who was the first to proclaim that man does dirty only because he does not know his real interests?” (Notes From Underground, pg. 20) which directly references Socrates who is recorded by Plato as saying, “No one willingly pursues evil, or at least what he takes to be evil; human nature forbids that; furthermore, faced with the choice of two evils, no one will choose the greater if he can choose the lesser.”
This question over the root of evil, and whether man would choose it if he knew better, is also a point of contention between the Eastern and Western religious and moral philosophies of the time. I say this in particular respect to Thomism, at the time the supreme view of the Roman Catholic Church, seen by Dostoevsky as the main rival to Orthodoxy globally. Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica says in particular, “For evil is the absence of the good, which is natural and due to a thing. But that anything fail from its natural and due disposition can come only from some cause drawing it out of its proper disposition…But only good can be a cause; because nothing can be a cause except inasmuch as it is a being, and every being, as such, is good,” (I.49) what is being implied here is that evil is the lack of good and not a thing in and of itself. In a sense this “evil as lack” can be seen as aligning with Socrates on this subject. Yet through the underground man Dostoevsky proposes what I’ll call “positive evil” or evil as positively defined. Throughout the first part, the underground man attributes many of his actions as being merely out of wickedness, and “fully understanding their real profit, would put it second place” (NfU pg. 20) thus willing evil even should they know intellectually that what is righteous is their profit (as is the common view of all Christian sects). Why is this basic conception so important to how one renders the Christian faith? Because the first few pages of any bible will explain that man fell from grace not through ignorance but through irresponsible gain of knowledge, specifically knowledge over what is good and evil. Thus, we can see Dostoevsky here as an apologist arguing for what he sees as the biblical view that man fell because he gained the ability to, seeing what is good and evil, willingly choose the evil. Here a good question for further searching (which I have not time to do) would be whether Dostoevsky’s conception of “Positivistic Evil” has its roots in the Eastern Fathers or whether this is his own invention whether based on his interpretation of Scripture or something else.
Dostoevsky’s second grand grievance with Western Christianity is what he perceives as rampant worldliness. Here we see his criticism strikes out at both Catholicism and Protestantism. St Justin Popovich in his article entitled “Достоевкий о Европе и славянстве” says, “Проблема Европы, по сути – проблема римокатолицизма;” then he goes on to quote Prince Mishkin’s long monologue from The Idiot which he argues is a vehicle for Dostoevsky’s own thoughts on the matter, “Католичество – все равно, что вера нехристианская,…Да, нехристианская, – это во-первых. А во-вторых, католичество римское даже хуже самого атеизма. Атеизм только проповедует нуль, а католицизм идет дальше: он искаженного Христа проповедует… По-моему, римский католицизм даже и не вера, а решительно продолжение западной Римской империи, и в нем все подчинено этой мысли, начиная с веры. Папа захватил землю, земной престол и взял меч” (Popovich, Ch. 11 Par. 6). In Winter Notes on Summer Impressions a similar charge is leveled against Anglicanism in short order, “…an Anglican minister would never visit a poor man…It is a religion of the rich and undisguised at that.” (Winter N. Pg. 51) therein saying Anglicanism is much the same except it is worldly mostly in the sense of money matters.
All this is but a single angle by which Dostoevsky attacks the notion of the West. People will necessarily become like what they worship, so if they worship Christ then they should at least in some sense become like Christ. From this angle we can see why Fyodor is so extreme in his criticism of the Western religions, going so far as to call even the most similar to Orthodoxy among them plainly a non-Christian faith. It is because in his view the collective western archetypal man worships money and earthly power. He puts it so plainly as to say they literally worship Baal, a biblical pagan god which he associates with money. He was not alone in his parallels to non-Christian religions as his contemporary, St Theophan the Recluse, calls Roman Catholicism, “восстановление язычества наперекор христианству”, since, “На Западе Папа, отпав от Церкви, первый принял корень языческой жизни – гордыню” (Феофан Затворник, свт. Созерцание и размышление: Краткие поучения. М.: Правило веры pg. 282,283). All this is to say that there is, in the minds of Dostoevsky and his contemporaries, a fundamental issue with Western thought that prevents their faiths from approaching true Christianity, and one that isn’t necessarily defined by how they understand the procession of the Holy Spirit or the use of azymes vs leavened bread in the Eucharist. That is to say this issue is, in their minds, deeper than the canons and the theological texts.
But what is Dostoevsky’s idea of correct Christianity? We see what he hates about the rivals to his native religion of Eastern Orthodoxy, but he speaks very little about how he understands his own faith in contrast, at least in the areas that we generally think of as points of division between Eastern and Western sects. Dostoevsky almost completely avoids the problems of actual theology, never the word filioque slipping from his pen even to lambast it as far as I know. Yet there is one issue on which he sees Russian Orthodoxy as distinct from the other forms of religious thought, “I believe that the most fundamental spiritual quest of the Russian people is their craving for suffering,” (Diary of a Writer, pg. 36). To Dostoevsky the image of Christ is two-fold: the cross and the tomb. Christians regardless of creed all desire the empty tomb, to be resurrected and renewed, to avoid death, that ancient enemy of mankind that Christ is depicted as trampling underfoot in the icon of the Harrowing of Hades. What Dostoevsky wants to emphasize, I think, is the Cross, not as a single past event, but as a signpost showing how we attain to the resurrection that follows, that is by suffering. Indeed, this is plainly biblical, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it,” (Matthew 16:24-25 ESV) and likely the result of his only access to literature being the Russian New Testament during his time in Siberia. To alleviate material suffering is the chief aim of all western philosophy of the time, especially those of the utopian socialists and of the capitalists that would dominate the globe in the following century, a principal problem of western thought to Dostoevsky.
How this fits into the religious issue is complicated and somewhat uneven. For with Catholicism its not really ingenuous to say that there is no room for suffering or even sanctifying suffering as is central to Dostoevsky’s train of thought. One cannot read John of the Cross, for example, and come away with the impression that the Roman Church only cares about being comfortable and avoiding suffering. This accusation is perhaps more appropriate for certain of the protestants who, to an Orthodox eye, appear to have completely stripped their faith of the ascetic rigor inherent to the ancient church and, if we take a perhaps less charitable interpretation of the Solas, embrace doctrines which require no action at all from them besides mental acknowledgment of God, thus enabling these sort of materialist tendencies. What I have just said is uncharitable and is not a legitimate attack on protestant theology really, but it highlights a certain train of thought I think Dostoevsky engages in frequently. That is to say he speaks of Protestantism and Catholicism not in their “de Jure” state, that is their canons and confessions or official theological positions on issues, but in how they actually operate in the societies of which they are a constituent part, in other words its “de Facto” state. Nothing in the Articles of Faith need to say anything related to the topic for Dostoevsky to plainly call Anglicanism the religion of the rich, because it in his view confesses this by the actions of its ministers and as it serves in its function as practically a religious branch of government in the Empire that worships Baal.
Actually, this last point is interesting to note with regards to how Dostoevsky uses religion in an extremely broad sense. In Winter Notes on Summer Impressions Dostoevsky basically talks about Anglicanism and the Englishmen as interchangeable pieces, or rather as sides to the same coin. His critiques of Anglican ministers are immediately followed by a jab at England itself, wrapped in all the apocalyptic melodrama of Baal not even demanding worship since he expects it of them regardless (pg. 52). This betrays what I’ll call a “Civilizational View” after Sam Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order from which I get this notion. This sort of view draws up and divides the world along grand multistate groupings called “Civilizations”, that according to Huntington are to a greater or lesser degree identified along broad cultural and especially religious lines. I think that Dostoevsky treats the religions of Protestantism and Catholicism as mere aspects of a greater entity called Western Civilization and indeed, though this has been previously quoted from St Justin’s essay I will reiterate this sentence from The Idiot, “римский католицизм даже и не вера, а решительно продолжение западной Римской империи” here we can read “Western Roman Empire” as being a dramatized reference to the modern West. A rational question would now be “then what of Protestants?” well he addresses this himself in Diary of a Writer where he argues that the Protestants are existentially attached to Catholicism, “were…Catholicism to come to an end, the protestant sects would of necessity be destroyed,” (pg. 193). Thus, it may be more helpful, rather than tackling them as separate with regards to how they relate to Dostoevsky, to say that Dostoevsky is more concerned with they’re being of a holistic “Western Christianity”.
But does Dostoevsky also treat his own Orthodox Church in this way? By this I mean: does Fyodor think about Orthodoxy, not as positively defined by what it believes about the person of Jesus Christ and the Church as the body thereof, but as a constituent part of an “Orthodox Civilization” centered on Russia that opposes those forces he hates coming from the Occident? Certainly, its conspicuous that when he talks of the spiritual quest of the Russian people, he doesn’t mention Orthodoxy as was quoted before, as though Orthodoxy is somehow just a piece in this network of moving parts defining Russia’s path forward. There’s no mention even of the other Orthodox lands which, being of one church with Russia, should theoretically share a spiritual quest. What of Greece? These are really all just questions for the time being as I’m not prepared to answer, and Dostoevsky speaks little of the Church as an institution regardless. However, I still think it worth recognizing that when he talks of Orthodoxy by name its usually to smugly compare it with the great enemy and precursor to the antichrist Western Christendom, “But does our calm, humble Orthodoxy resemble the judicial, gloomy, plotting, intriguing and cruel clericalism of Europe?” (Diary of a Writer pg. 453). In the previous we see both points I have been expounding regarding the lack of doctrinal comparison and the broad identification between religion and region in the mind of Dostoevsky, which I think is a subject worthy of far greater analysis than I’m able to perform.
Here I think is a proper point to conclude my musings, as I’ve exhausted already what I am able to definitively say on the matter and am already delving into the realm of speculation. As for what I’d like to pursue going beyond what I have mentioned in this paper is to explore what type of religious genealogy Dostoevsky may have. Are his ideas concerning suffering present in the Russian religious tradition? Maybe even in the Eastern Christian inheritance generally? We can say that probably his cynical views about the inherent badness of the west would be in great contrast to the Eastern Fathers of old, ironically especially around the era of the schism, as the division then was primarily one of pure doctrine and liturgics. About the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, about the use of azymes in the Eucharist or the forbiddances thereof, etc. Thus, it is certainly worth investigating this: to what extent Dostoevsky’s religious views attempt speak for Orthodoxy at large or whether they are his invention.
spoilers: CLANNAD (major), Muv Luv (extremely minor [just the below image])
prelude to disaster
Why does everything need romance? “Well,” you may begin to say, “you actually don’t need romance and media that is absent it is actually better,” to which I’d say you are the king of fools and I will momentarily be drawing, quartering, and dragging your innards through the streets behind my car. Things aren’t made worse by romance, but a bad romantic plot can ruin a piece.
This actually testifies to the pivotal nature of romance to almost every genre of media. Romance adds a special flavor of drama that is felt in the very core of our being. It taps into something uniquely human, in that we do not merely mate, or even merely mate-bond like some other monogamous species of animals (though we know from psychology that we certainly do do this as well), but we weave this drama around not only the act of romance: marrying, intimacy, and children stuff; but we have constructed an entire complex around even teasing romance. This is to say we are drawn to even stories about the feeling of being in love. Observe any story that is labeled a romance, particularly successful ones, that run for significant lengths of time: so live TV shows, anime, manga, long novels, ect. How much time of these pieces of media do the characters spend together, as a couple? The answer is almost none of it. Because the point is not necessarily to display the day to day realities of human intimacy, and works that attempt this have to be extraordinarily well-crafted to keep its spark without being so saccharine-sweet it breaks our suspension of disbelief. The real point is that romance is something baked into our DNA to be invested in the results of, and such it isn’t a source of drama that has to justify itself like others. We may have to be convinced that any other goal of a character is actually worth the effort put forth, but something like romance needs no justification beyond “wow that girl is really cute of course he’d want a relationship with her” and thus we immediately understand how happenings in the story relating to this goal would play on character motivation. Its one of the view kinds of drama that can insist upon itself.
I talked in a previous article about how reading Kubo-san makes me want to kill myself but how I couldn’t stop reading, and it’s precisely for this reason. A finished romance has no drama, unless its dysfunctional, which the audience doesn’t want for characters they’ve come to love. So, the goal of the author of a romance story is to know when to bring down the hammer and functionally end the story by bringing about the happy ever after, and it’s in their interests from a business perspective to drag this out as long as is plausible in-story.
One exception is if post-getting together there is some aspect of the relationship that causes further drama to be farmed for reader tears/laughs. CLANNAD is one such story where there is a build-up to and point where Nagisa and Tomoya get together and begin their relationship, and the story does not end with that, rather continuing on into the early years of their marriage after the end of school. This is because the writers of CLANNAD are talented enough to not have to rely on this intrinsic self-insistent drama that comes with romance, and have other plots that intersect with the main romance plot and keep the reader interested. Primarily, the question of parenthood is central post-getting together, as not only does Nagisa become pregnant, but Tomoya from the moment of their engagement has had a bad relationship accelerating to worse and worse heights with his father, complicating the relationship he has with fatherhood in general.
Then, Nagisa dies in childbirth. She dies in the act of making him a father.
This is the massive difference between using romance as a tool in crafting a narrative much larger than the mere feeling, and using it as a crutch so you don’t have to work so hard to get a potential reader invested.
CLANNAD is fundamentally not a story about warm fuzzy feelings or being enamored with a girl who has a pretty face and a nice body i tak dalye though it certainly includes that. It touches on a fundamental idea of love, of which romance is a type and shadow of. Lets think for a moment about the other “routes” in CLANNAD, and notice how most of the drama of these tales, while heavily involving romance, really are about its intersection with something else. Take the twin routes, what is the main idea? Is it not the sisterly relationship Kyou and Ryou have? In a real sense, the fact that these girls have anything to do with Tomoya is only to bring the details of this relationship to the light, and to give the audience a window through which to see it. Or Kotomi, my favorite route in the entire game? How important is her relationship to Tomoya, really? Is it really anything more than a narrative tool to connect her and the reader to the past she lives her entire life in the service of, which has infinitely more to do with her late parents? Or even the non-Nagisa routes that are explicitly in the romantic quadrant so to speak, like Tomoyo. Tomoyo’s route is explicitly about the weight of responsibility and the importance of one’s goals. This route actually makes the argument that Tomoyo and Tomoya made the right choice deciding to not be with each other (temporary, though that wasn’t evident at that moment in the story) given the obstacle he was to the preservation of the cherry blossom trees, though this shouldn’t be read as a disregard of love since this goal is in service to her love for her brother.
All this is to say that romance in media, in our stories, is so important because it is the most basic instinctual reflection of our need for love. For connection to other human beings. It’s even a type and shadow of deeper love, love for your family, your friends, your fellow man, and even the love of God for mankind (see the Song of Songs). So keep on loving one another, even and especially non-romantic love, as fun fact: you will never be romantic with most people you meet. But you still must love them, because that’s what makes us true humans: that we love one another.
“Well, of course, the laws of nature, the conclusions of natural science, mathematics. Once it’s proved to you, for example, that you descended from an ape, there’s no use making a wry face, just take it for what it is. Once it’s proved to you that, essentially speaking, one little drop of your own fat should be dearer to you than a hundred thousand of your fellow men, and that in this result all so-called virtues and obligations and other ravings and prejudices will finally be resolved, go ahead and accept it, there’s nothing to be done, because two times two is – mathematics. Try objecting to that.
“For pity’s sake,” they’ll shout at you, “you can’t rebel: it’s two times two is four! Nature doesn’t ask your permission; it doesn’t care about your wishes, or whether you like its laws or not. You’re obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently all its results as well. And so a wall is indeed a wall . . . etc., etc.” My God, but what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic if for some reason these laws and two times two is four are not to my liking? To be sure, I won’t break through such a wall with my forehead if I really have not got strength enough to do it, but neither will I be reconciled with it simply because I have a stone wall here and have not got strength enough.
…
And who knows (one cannot vouch for it), perhaps the whole goal mankind strives for on earth consists just in this cease-lessness of the process of achievement alone, that is to say, in life itself, and not essentially in the goal, which, of course, is bound to be nothing other than two times two is four – that is, a formula; and two times two is four is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death. … But still, two times two is four is a most obnoxious thing. Two times two is four – why, in my opinion, it’s sheer impudence, sirs. Two times two is four has a cocky look; it stands across your path, arms akimbo, and spits. I agree that two times two is four is an excellent thing; but if we’re going to start praising everything, then two times two is five is sometimes also a most charming little thing.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
“It’s the same as it was with Kinzo. Beatrice doesn’t exist. This is a fake illusion of a witch that Natsuhi created, believing that she thought up a brilliant plan to overcome hardship by borrowing a witch’s power. The only reason it looks like the two of them are drinking together is because Lambdadelta, the Game Master and the one who is telling the story interpreted it that way. If you stare without a fragment of love for Natsuhi, you won’t see illusions like that. That’s why with my eyes, all I can see is Natsuhi all alone, drinking her tea in silence.”
Frederica Bernkastel, Umineko When They Cry
spolers (major): Umineko When They Cry
I’m sure you have all heard as a kid the common parable said, “if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, did it make a sound?” to which you probably answered whoever postulated this that “duh, it happened because you said it yourself at the beginning.” The root of the parable is the question of how the truth is established. Now the existence of our parable defeats itself since it sets up the actual happening of the event as a prerequisite, but let’s imagine some such tree that falls somewhere such that there are no witnesses, it has no effect on its surroundings, and no one ever discovers its felled remains, and let’s pretend I’m not telling you right now about this tree. Did this tree fall? Who’s to say? How would we confirm this one way or the other? What’s your source? Is it better to assume a tree is felled or standing when evidence is lacking? This is in short, an adaptation of the problem in physics of Schrödinger’s Cat in the Box, which the namesake used to explain the illogical nature of the photon. In its adaption to popular media (and not physics) it often means that two contradictory events are both the truth until the lid to the box is pulled off, until the One Truth is observed. Only one version of reality survives this process.
I intentionally use the word “survive” here as this dilemma is central to the plot of the immensely popular visual novel Umineko When They Cry wherein the protagonist Battler Ushiromiya attempts to “kill” the illusion of the Witch by proving the existence of a human culprit in the murder of his entire family, essentially opening the box and eliminating the possibility of Beatrice the Golden Witch. This paradoxically happens within a mystical space outside of the world of the “game board” on which all the various versions of the murders are carried out. However, this fantastical battle is mirrored by the plot involving Ange Ushiromiya who was left behind the night the Ushiromiyas were murdered and thus survived the onslaught along with her aunt Eva Ushiromiya who survived while on the island, and now ten years later is attempting to unravel the mystery of how her parents died. However, Ange has more clues than we would in the case of the cat box. She has the mysterious letters in a bottle that started washing ashore shortly after the massacre, supposedly from the Witch of Rokkenjima, laying out the plots of the games that Beatrice shows Battler in the fantastical world.
Ange is thrown into her quest by an important character: Frederica Bernkastel. Bernkastel appears to Ange as she looks out over the city lights from the opposite end of a safety fence, about to hurl herself down onto the hard cement. Bernkastel offers Ange a deal: help her defeat the Illusion of the Witch and Bernkastel, as the Witch of Miracles, will search the possible fragments, or universes, for one in which her family or at least Battler, her brother, comes home. Ange accepts, and steps off the building towards Bernkastel, who we are meant to assume uses her powers to make a miracle occur: Ange survives the fall with no major injuries.
From here Ange becomes a sort of mediator between the fantastical fight with the witches in the “other world” still in 1986 and the real world of 1998. She also represents the hinge of the fight between magic and logic presented through the story. Here, by searching out the truth in the first place, rather than accepting the letters in a bottle as the truth or going with her instincts in blaming her aunt and only survivor Eva as the obvious culprit, Ange firmly plants herself in the camp of logic at first and in the fantasy world serves as one of Bernkastel’s pieces in her game against Lambdadelta.
We have to take an aside to explain what Bernkastel’s role in this tale is, in that her side represents the side of logic. This is reflected not only in her stated goals and actions from her very debut, but in her personality. She is cold and ruthless. She is a witch who, having beaten her last game (she was Rika Furude, or a side thereof, in Higurashi When They Cry) has wandered bored for 1000 years before the start of this game. She looks at the participants of this game with no love, as she self admits in the quote, and also self-describes as the cruelest witch in the world, save maybe for Featherine Augustus Au(au)rora who “taught me to eat flesh”. In discussing Bernkastel we also have to discuss her second hypostasis Erika Furudo, who acts as her self-insert in the games. Erika is cold and cruel, even psychotically so. She self-describes as an “intellectual rapist” who will stop at literally nothing to uncover what people want to hide. This literally nothing includes severing the heads of several people, including a little girl, who were playing dead in an attempt to trap her opponent in a logical trap and prove him wrong.
I think its clear to see how the author, Ryukishi07, feels about cold logic and rationalism in this game. These characters are the villains. And what about the proponents of magic? The number one real advocate for magic is Maria Ushiromiya, a little girl who should she have survived would be a tad older than Ange, who reads her magical grimoire religiously and for a long time believed in the contents thereof. Maria suffers abuse at the hands of her mother, Rosa, but leads a happyish life after magically animating the doll Rosa made her named Sakutarou, allowing him to speak and play with her on the many lonely nights Rosa abandons her in order to go to “work” (more often than not, at her favorite company, that of men). She is supposedly in an Alliance of Witches with the Golden Witch Beatrice, of whose existence Maria is the number one believer, claiming to play with her in real life every time she’s on Rokkenjima. However, Rosa, in anger after a shopkeeper informed the police of her neglect, destroys Sakutarou in front of Maria, believing Maria’s odd behavior and belief in magic to be the source of all her own problems. After this Maria turns to the darker side of magic, conjuring spells to kill her bullies among other things, thus also turning to a darker version of the Golden Witch Beatrice for a companion, the kind of witch who may well murder the Ushiromiyas. Trough this we see that Ryukishi07 wants us to see this character as worthy of our pity, which comes from love, and a victim of having her love betrayed. One of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the whole novel is when Kumaeda is tearing apart Maria’s grimoire in front of Ange to torture her and right before its page’s destruction we find out that the common refrain of “Uuu-uuu” that constantly pours forth from Maria’s lips is a spell to “get along with mommy.”
But why? Why would the novel seemingly be advocating for the magical solution as the one we should lean towards? Why as Dostoevsky says, is two time two equals five sometimes a pleasant thing? Dostoevsky lays it out incredibly honestly through his character of the Underground Man, in that he says the most annoying part of two plus two is four is that it stands there even when he’d rather it be something else. Now this at first seems rather selfish, just wanting to defy reality because it’s unpleasant. But in Umineko this is also the case, and the reason why the good ending is that in which Ange choosing to believe that the obviously fake magic trick performed by Beatrice is real magic. If she defies all the forces trying to keep the lid on the cats box, forces that result from the love her family had for her, she will in return defile the legacies of said family. There is the book of the One Truth in Umineko, it is held by Ikuko, in which the logical answer to the tale lies. Bernkastel gives us a vision of what that book may hold: Ange’s parents hunting down and killing all the members of the Ushiromiya family, except Eva, before being killed by a remote bomb set by Shannon dressed up as Beatrice. Maybe it would also have her beloved brother Battler being the culprit along with them, as in Bernkastel’s personal game with the player. This would require Ange to give up on love, to sacrifice the love of her family for the sake of knowing the One Truth, the knowledge of which will help no one, serving only the morbid curiosity of herself and the “witch hunters” obsessed with the case.
In Dostoevsky’s terms there’s also a surrender of love that comes with the total yielding to logic and rationale becoming guiding lights for society and morality that he see’s occurring in “our unfortunate nineteenth century.” Where considering “one little drop of your own fat…dearer to you than a hundred thousand of your fellow men” is what logic and all rationale dictates. And knowledge for the sake of knowledge is not exactly valuable either, if it doesn’t serve to better things. This “serving to better things” may in fact just be a more charitable spinning of the more honest “being to my liking.” What good is all reason if it teaches humanity to be selfish and only look out for oneself, since there’s no God and no rule other than survival of the fittest? And its not even science or the discoveries therefrom that Dostoevsky necessarily rejects, even that all-consuming problem, especially for christians like himself, of evolution: to my knowledge he never tries to deny outright. But, he here rejects their inappropriate application to subjects with which they do not naturally concern themselves, ie those who try to scientifically solve the human condition, or to come up with an empirical morality, or the communists who attempt to min-max society and optimize suffering out of existence (paradoxically causing the individual person-turned-statistic to suffer immensely). All these turn humanity into something less than human, into a cog in the machine, into a system to be optimized like one would an actual machine in a laboratory. It lacks the love for mankind that Dostoevsky found so important.
“The whole work of man seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
and about the God-man that he thought was Love incarnate he says
“If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
This last statement is of vital importance since it shows how radical his notion of the truth is. Here we have to assume that by Truth he means that empirical logic-derived truth, lest we make him out to be saying he’d just delude himself. He’s saying that the notion of Christ, and by extension the love of Christ, is so important to him that he would immediately be distrustful of anything “proving” that the truth and Christ were opposed, even if it were well-done enough that it would otherwise convince him. He would remain with Christ and not the truth, he would remain with Love and not the Truth.
And in Umineko we see how Ange catches a whiff of these things. In the fantastical world Ange is shown a world in which she is a little girl again among her relatives at a fun party, where Bernkastel’s witches game involving Battler and their parents killing everyone is merely a fun logic game that Battler solves and has a good time with. Then, in 1998 Ange has to decide whether to stop Ikuko from opening Eva Ushiromiya’s secret diary and revealing the One Truth to the world. This reveals the real meaning of that last vision of the fantastical world: refusing to open the box and see whats inside preserves that warm memory of her family, a happy family who couldn’t have turned on and murdered each other. If the box is opened, if the book is read by all the “witch hunters” who, like Erika, want to intellectually rape the deceased and Ange’s memories of them, then the only undeniable truth will probably be something like that game Bernkastel showed Battler. Ikuko decides to not open the book at Ange’s request, despite calling the event. The outrage over this also has the effect of dampening desires to see the contents at all. Thus, the love of her family is preserved in her heart, whatever the One Truth may have been.
Another factor at play in magic’s realness in Umineko is the idea of something “holding it’s magic” even after gaining a logical explanation. When Ange is commanding the stakes of purgatory to kill her enemies, we can reasonably assume it is actually Amakusa killing them with his very tangible non-magical guns, but to Ange it is *real* magic. And her coming to that means she would likely still think this if she saw him shooting out of the corner of her eye. Its a magic that doesn’t just hide in this shadows and unknowns. This is why when she accepts her role as the Beatrice of 1998, she presents as so much more powerful than the Golden Witch. Its why she’s able to give Maria rest finally, by repairing Sakutarou as the Witch of Regeneration, something Golden Beatrice failed to do with her “fake magic.” This is also important to Dostoevsky as a christian, as it affects how one looks at miracles. In the Brothers Karamazov, the brethren always verbally dismiss the miracles attributed to Zosima as perhaps having some sort of natural explanation but in their hearts still consider these things miracles. After all, even if Zosima somehow knew that that woman’s son was actually alive by some unconfirmed info he has, or that he figured out from some clues, is not telling his mother not to give up hope still the work of God? Think for a moment, if the parting of the red sea is proved to be possible by some meteorological phenomenon (as there are some who hypothesize) would this cheapen it? Would this make it not a miracle. I say: not so! It would still be a miracle and still from God. And while not totally analogous, its how the stakes of purgatory possibly being .45 caliber ammunition doesn’t make it not the magic of Ange Beatrice. And Bernkastel does, despite her cruelty, keep her promise to Ange. Ange later in life is contacted by Tohya Hachijo, who turns out to be an older Battler Ushiromiya who was taken in by Ikuko after surviving the disaster on Rokkenjima, and who lost his memories, not identifying with her brother but still being remorseful at having avoided meeting with Ange on purpose.
In short, the question of truth and fantasy, of magic we’ll choose to say, in Umineko and Dostoevsky are both tied to the idea of love. Love is the most important thing in the universe for both Ryukishi07 and Fyodor Michailovich. In Umineko, magic comes with loving another, seeing and sympathizing with their weakness and inherent illogicality. Kanon and Shannon cannot logically be two people, but the Ushiromiyas saw the illusion by loving Shannon and sympathizing with her weakness even to illogical extremes. Neither can Sakutarou be alive and talk with Maria, but Maria’s love for her mother made it so, and a momentary lack of love in reciprocation is what killed him. Perhaps it really is just the logical thing to look out only for oneself, or to see everyone as part of the anthill, as a machine that merely needs tweaked, but those are worth tossing in the trash bin if it means preserving the love not just for the abstract idea of “mankind” but the potential to love each and every individual man and woman. Without love, none of this can be seen.
“It sometimes happens that a person in despondency thinks to himself that it would be easier for him to be destroyed, or to be without any feeling and consciousness than to remain any longer in this unaccountably tormenting state of mind. One should try to get out of it as quickly as possible. Beware of the spirit of despondency, for it gives birth to every evil.”
Saint Seraphim of Sarov
Higurashi When They Cry is a novel that for most of its runtime deals with fear of the unknown, with mystery, with trust and friendship, with the later being the central theme of the whole work. But when we examine the story as a character study of the main character, Rika Furude, we see a story of despondency and all-consuming despair at one’s circumstances.
There are hints throughout the novel’s opening chapters that Rika is not as normal as she pretends, and it is revealed in the last of the “Question Arcs” that she has knowledge of all deaths before they occur and revealing this “other Rika” to Akasaka who is colder, more listless, maybe even a bit scary. We also are hereafter presented with this other Rika several times throughout the Answer Arcs. In Meakashi, Rika tries to inject Shion with the cure to Hinamizawa syndrome, and when she fails decides to kill herself gruesomely rather than be tortured to death, all while acting out of character. But it’s in Tsumihoroboshi that we get extremely explicit details regarding the nature and circumstances of Rika Furude.
Firstly, Rika knows when and how she will die, in Tsumihoroboshi this is by being burned to death and cut up into small pieces. Specifically we pick up that Rika lives through and remembers all the previous parts of the novel we’ve read. Secondly, that she numbs the dread of this revelation by taking advantage of her child’s physiology to get disproportionately drunk on wine she hides from her roommate Satoko. Thirdly, that there is an “annoying person” Rika talks to who is also aware of her situation and dissuades her both from the bottle and from hoping in her situation’s improvement. We find out that this person is the true identity of Oyashiro-sama, Hanyuu.
This part about Hanyuu dissuading Rika from hoping too much is due to an anology used to describe how Rika’s soul may die even if her body is immortal. She has essentially a finite amount of hope “coins” she can spend on any given world, and when she runs out she will “die” or her soul will essentially give up. And so Hanyuu essentially arrives at the conclusion that Rika should conserve these coins to continue living, simply biding time until chance does the heavy lifting for them. Both these options are forms of despondency and represent the single biggest existential threat to Rika Furude’s character.
Though Rika resists this to an extent, we do find that by the time we’re hearing about this that she has already succumbed to a state of listlessness. She talks about fate in a way that makes herself entirely without hope. She loses interest in life generally as well, as we are given descriptions on how she just gives up on certain entire worlds if things go poorly. Namely when Rena refuses the medicine Rika says she has already given up on “this Rena Ryuugu” and “This Hinamizawa” and simply wants to get it over with so she can have the next doomed world. I can think of few people who wouldn’t become lethargic, despondent, and straight up despair-filled if this was their prospects for existence, and had been for a hundred years.
This also causes Rika to start to dissociate, considering herself something other than the little girl her parents raised and that her friends fell in love with. Maybe, she wonders, is Rika Furude even still human? And thus, she refers to her self as a witch several times, and takes on the persona of “Frederica Bernkastel” who will be one of the main villains in Umineko, a subject for a future article.
This is all a reflection of how despondency affects the soul. We may never be trapped in time loops that cause up hundreds of years of mental torment, but we’ve probably all experienced what in this case is the result. And it is no less dangerous when coming from “lower” causes like general poor mental health, lifestyle, or spiritual ailments. Despondency is a slow and sure killer of the soul, like a poison that slowly slows the beating of the heart. Just one less beat per minute and so on until it stops completely. Caring is what makes us human, and what drives us to do anything of meaning. We love because we care about others and we do what is good for our health and our souls because we care about ourselves and care about God. If we don’t give a shit about anything, then what is there to do? Just wait around to die? This is the danger of the philosophies of nihilism and fatalism, though the mindset can be contracted from other sources of course.
Of course she does not stay in this state forever due to the other side of the Main Character coin, Keiichi Maebara.
Keiichi is the foil for Rika. He represents absolute determination to defeat fate, and his success at the end of Tsumohoroboshi bolsters Rika’s hope in escaping the maze and living past the endless June of 1983. Even when in Minagoroshi when he is unassisted by a literal miracle like that which allowed him to save Rena in the previous chapter, he by sheer determination breaks down the biggest obstacle hindering Rika’s happiness not relating to her fated death: Satoko’s uncle. This is an obstacle so burdensome that in the fragment world we are told by a disembodied narrator (which many, backed up by the manga adaptation, say is the alter-ego Frederica Bernkastel) that if Satoko’s uncle returns, Rika immediately gives up on that world and simply watches the tragedy play out from there, the height of despondency.
So with this duo dynamic we have Keiichi who, despite in theory only having one go at it, one world, still manages to break down fate, or at least tries really hard to: first in small things like the results of the party game, and then in great things like Rena’s fall into madness and Satoko’s abuse at the hands of her uncle. In Rena’s example we see the contrast in their characters sharply contrasted. See how Rika reacts to Rena even slightly resisting her attempt to offer Rena salvation. Then compare that to Keiichi who risks life and limb to bring her back from her mental Hell. And Keiichi’s seemingly superhuman will in defeating the fate of Satoko’s abuse. Tatarigoroshi is one of the most heart-wrenching chapters, quite on purpose, in order for the victory over that fate, hard fought and earned by everyone’s efforts (Keiichi’s being central), to have such a sweet impression. This of course becomes the source of Rika’s will to fight fate and it is through this that she decides to once again give her all to escape her own death and unhappiness. In this way, the entire action of the novel from Rika’s perspective is the fight with and eventual overcoming of her despondency, which enables her to defeat her secondary foes.
“That’s all for tonight! We overcame this tragedy!! We’ll never doubt each other again. We’ll be united forever!! No matter what disaster might befall us, don’t think we’ll ever yield!! Who cares about tragedy, who cares about disaster? Even if the script is written by demons, we’ll tear the whole thing to pieces!!!”
I hate this stupid manga so much it is really hard to express in human language, and I cannot wait for the next chapter to come out. It has the exact same sort of MC personality as many manga in the “cuck core” genre of media in that he’s entirely limp-wristed and frankly a total mind-numbing idiot inside and out. Yet somehow I must enjoy reading since I have not missed a single chapter drop since last year.
I see this in my dreams. It haunts me, it tracks me down and slowly kills me. It watches the light drain from my eyes without emotion. Not even hate or pleasure in having killed me, just indifference.
Here we have a female character, Kubo, who CLEARLY likes this guy named Shiraishi who’s whole gimmick is no one can see him, and she teases him throughout the early series. Over the first 50 or so chapters they grow closer and start hanging out outside of school too. This is where in the real world most people would recognize that if they are hanging out with a member of the opposite sex mono e mono that perhaps one or both have romantic feelings. And this is what is implied, and so from here the frustration and derived suspense comes from seeing these characters slowly break out of their cowardice.
EXCEPT this actually ISN’T what is happening because in the recent chapters (120 onwards) we find out that they are JUST NOW deciding they kind of like eachother and as a result are immediately making moves, or at least Shiraishi is. This is frustrating in the extreme since it makes the characters involved look like they have an even more fundamental mental handicap like what have you been thinking these last 100 chapters? Its like they spend zero time self-reflecting like “huh wow I sure am spending disproportionate amounts of my free time with this person, do I perhaps have feelings for them? Of course not! How else would this manga keep having material to continue?” I think there was maybe a change in direction at some point after the “friend group” is formed. I think there was a clear arc towards Kubo and Shiraishi coming to grips with their feelings and resolving the plot by chapter 100 at the latest, but they decided to introduce the friend group and are now making much of Shiraishi asking Kubo to hang out alone, as though the friend group has always been around and Kubo and Shiraishi being a set-apart duo is somehow a novelty. Its like they expect me to take 40 benadryl and forget I read the early chapters.
The worst part is this character is “wow just like ME” which is what keeps me reading. This manga has a hex on me that keeps me glued to every new chapter. Every new chapter makes me more mad and strengthens my resolve to Shion Sonozaki but every week I make sure to take time out of my busy schedule to read it. It’s like having a heroin addiction. The only time you feel good doing heroin is the first time the rest of the times is just to avoid withdrawal. Its like watching how middle school me saw romances play out on the page. I thank God periodically that he barred me from a lot of media until a certain age (though the devil was allowed to cripple me with Hetalia in freshman year) because something like Kubo would have ruined me forever. Same with CLANNAD but thats more a case of mercy being had on the franchise in that I only became a fan when I wouldn’t shit it up for anybody who knew me who might consider watching/reading it.
Anyways, Shiraishi needs to get the girl and fight in the robot or whatever. I will continue to pack-watch this manga because I don’t think it will be good but it scratches a certain itch that makes me unable to turn away. Also Kubo makes the reading experience worth it with her seemingly dual personality; the author not being able to decide whether she’s going to be a teasing Nagatoro type or a simple saccarine-sweet ideal girl for the MC. Either way its cool. Anyways if chapter 200 comes and goes and they aren’t a couple I’m flying to Japan.
Being an American, I’ve often thought about what it means to be a nation, since America seems to many to lack some markers of what makes a nation a nation, or a separate cultural entity. Or at least that’s what I’ve heard, though I’m not really convinced.
Well, there is for one a common language, which is according to many one of the defining boundaries separating nations (as defined separately from states), and I got to thinking how this manifests itself with American and other nationalities.
I think this is a big reason why the United States as a cultural identity stubbornly retains its exceptionalism, even (or maybe especially) in mundane aspects of life, like measurement systems. In this way Fahrenheit and feet and pounds have become a part of the American dialect of English. Its something that I think transcends politics really. If you talk to an American “patriot” or someone who at least has a decently good opinion of their country, they’ll strangely make a big deal of cultural relations with Britain, hyperbolically treating the UK as some sort of blood-enemy of the US due to the revolution. Even going so far as to oppose any sort of official sympathy towards the UK after the Queen’s passing, when the UK has on multiple occasions done the same for the US, even playing our anthem over the BBC on such occasions. This is just a historical anachronism since in reality Britain is our ally and, barring 1812, has been so for quite a long time, even while those who fought the revolution were still alive.
Part of this is plain ignorance, or an attitude that comes from residing in the center of our worldwide Empire, but I think there may be something else to it as well. My hypothesis is that its a sort of automatic response trying to make sure American identity is separate from this extremely similar cultural entity called the Anglophonic Commonwealth (UK, Australia, NZ, and to a lesser extent Canada) through a fake notion of cultural hostility. Its a sort of “nation building” exercise, as well as an exercise in nostalgia that marks a search for authentic grounding of ones identity. It makes sense when you see that, though American culture absolutely dominates the globe, its exclusively through windows like Hollywood which many, especially in less cosmopolitan areas of the country though certainly within cities as well, have grown to despise as the “elites” which every contemporary culture despises, none more so than America. Its telling that you can find people on both extreme ends of the political spectrum who believe with absolute certainty that the elites in Hollywood (note that this is often the place mentioned even before DC) are all secretly pedophiles who actively traffic children to rape. And this isn’t to say that this is unfounded, especially after the speedy uneventful hushing of investigations around Epstein and those connected with him, but it is telling about the attitude towards the rich and powerful that it is so *believable* that anyone owning over a million dollar in liquidity is a pedophile, culturally accepted as the worst of the worst thing you could be ever, even after being a murderer.
All this to say that this most hated group of people is also the group responsible for creating the cultural works of the United States, principally its movies. I was talking with a french friend of mine and he said, “its the common stereotype that Americans don’t like any real culture, but only Hollywood,” he continued, “and I know its not true since I’m familiar with the tradition of American folk music which is really similar to this that we’re watching (a Hungarian folk dance we were at while speaking), but even so who could blame them considering its almost all we watch here abroad as well!” note I am paraphrasing since this conversation was not held in English, and I’m sort of combining some scattered conversations (not that I think he’ll find this and demand a correction lol). All to say that this main organ of American culture is also the most derided, perhaps except Netflix which we discussed in a separate conversation as being all propaganda, but that’s a different topic.
But, if an American wants to find authentic organs of their culture aside from Hollywood, what should he turn to? Those in the country may turn to a sort of regionalism, touting their local culture as separate and superior to the whole. And its true these are often more organic expressions of culture than that which can be cooked up by a handful of people. But this isn’t really available to city folk, who we shouldn’t neglect in some sort of ruralist declaration of ourselves as “the real America” or worse yet as not being real people due to their “unhuman” lifestyle (yes, I have seen this argued, in case you’re wondering).
I can’t speak really to anyone else’s experience but I didn’t experience much of a culture shock moving from rural Ohio to Chicago, and there are studies that conclude that even taking into account the strong regional identity the South has, America is pretty culturally uniform for a country of its size. Think of China, not much bigger than the US but incredibly culturally and linguistically fragmented, though they still attempt to call these separate languages “dialects”. Or German-Bavarian dynamic; Germany, a country inside which can only fit 3 Ohios and 0 Texases, has a regional identity group (Bavaria) so separate from itself that their native language is unintelligible with the standard dialect and inside which you won’t see anyone showing signs of considering themselves German outside of places legally required to do so like government buildings (plenty of those blue checkered flags though). Compare that to the US’s most obvious division, the North-South divide: not only is Southern English intelligible with the Standard, you would I think be hard-pressed to find even the most Dixie-pride imbued places refusing to identify themselves with the United States as a whole, essentially meaning this regional identity still takes a back seat in people’s minds to the overarching American identity.
So, okay if we grant all this, is American culture just an American accent with some folk music and tales (Johnny Appleseed and the like) sprinkled in? Well, if this is just an accent and not a real culture, then what country has a real culture? What separates the rather novel development of the American culture from the cultures of Europe, which I think few would argue don’t exist, aside from time? And even then, what national cultural uniformity could we even speak of in Europe before the advent of Nationalism? American culture has all the makings of a “real culture” by any metric in my view. We have a fairly uniform language, a tradition of folk music and stories, and even a founding myth in the semi-canonical status of the Founding Fathers (whose opinions and intentions are still invoked by politicians on both aisles, something I don’t think most countries even do with their founding characters).
This rambling came to me after an argument I had with a certain person who demanded I show him what shared values Americans had if America as a nation really existed (this was about whether American citizens had a duty to defend their nation if the government was unsavory which is another topic) which I really am not convinced you could do for any country. I think when people speak of the deculturation of America they may be confusing it with the advent of commercialism especially with regards to Hollywood’s grip over the country, which I think is fairly uniformly considered a bad thing by the public. Either that or they may have a standard for culturation that is maybe impossibly high, since its derived from looking at the past as already sorted and organized by those in the present. In my opinion, culture just is, its not grandiose nor does it need to be. In fact, the more one if able to neatly organize and explain what exactly a culture is, the more it seems to me to reek of being made up by a small group of people and not being an organic development (I have heard this is the case for Scottish Highland culture, but I haven’t investigated it myself much, so if you’re a scott, plz don’t get mad at me).
tldr: American culture exists (present tense) and if its not real, then I doubt the reality of all cultures
There once lived an old couple in a house by themselves. One day the old man said to the woman, “Woman, you go bake some pies and I’ll go to fetch fish.”
He caught some fish, heading home with an entire cartload. On the way he saw a fox curled up into a ball.
The old man left his cart, came up to the fox, and it lie there, not stirring, as though dead.
“This’ll be a treat to the wife,” said the old man, as he swept up the fox and lay it on the cart. He continued forward.
But the fox seized this moment and began to quietly steal the fish away from the cart. After having stolen all the fish, the fox took its leave.
“Well, old lady,” started the old man as he arrived, “what a collar I’ve brought for your coat!”
“Huh? Where?”
“There, on the cart. I’ve brought it along with the fish.”
He then led the old lady to the cart where lay no collar, and no fish to boot. Only harsh scolding for the old man.
“Why you..! Even now you’re taken in by deception!”
There it dawned on the old man that the fox had not been dead; he burned with anger, wanting to do something but not being able.
Meanwhile the fox had gathered up all the fish scattered about the path into a pile, sat and was eating. The fox was then met by a wolf:
“Hey, Kumushka!” said the wolf.
“Hey, Kumanek!” replied the fox.
“Gimme some of those fish!”
“Catch some yourself and eat.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Alright, see this is how you catch them like me: you, Kumanek, stand on the river and release your tail into the ice hole. Fish will cling to your tail on their own. Sit a while and see if you don’t catch any.”
So the wolf went out onto the river, set his tail into the ice hole; this business was during the winter. So, he sat, sat all night even, his tail being completely frozen. He tried to get up, and there was nothing.
“Ah, look how many fish have fallen, I can’t pull them out!” he thought.
Just then, some old women are coming for water and started to scream, seeing his grey figure:
“Wolf! Wolf! Beat it! Beat it!”
They left and arrived back running and started to thrash the wolf: one with a beam, the other with a bucket. The wolf jumped and leaped, tearing off his own tail in the process and, without looking back, ran.
“Well,” he thought afterwards, “I’m going to pay back that Kumushka.”
All the while, the fox, having eaten the fish, was dropping by trying to see if she couldn’t succeed in pulling something together. She climbed into a hut, where some old women were baking blini, and hit her head hard on a tub with dough in it. The women became livid and ran after the fox, chasing her off.
After this ordeal she met again with the wolf.
“That’s how you teach, eh? I’m all beat up after your lesson!” the wolf exclaimed angrily.
“Eh, Kumanek,” said the fox, “blood is gushing from your tail, but I have a brain, so I was gotten in a more painful way than you, having hit my head fairly hard. I’m forcibly trudging along even now.”
“Ehh that is true…,” said the wolf, apparently calming down and beginning to sympathize with his friends plight, “Kumushka, sit on me and I’ll take you wherever it is you’re going.”
And so the fox sat on the wolf’s back. As he carried her along, she sat and quietly spoke to herself:
“The broken carried the unbroken…the broken carries the unbroken”
YaBoy™︎KenⓇ 