In O4. Earth Explodes the Hurricane decides it doesn’t need the rest of humanity, and destroys it. One well-aimed projectile obliterates our planet.

That’s enough of an excuse to talk about One Punch Man, a webcomic/manga/anime about an eternally bored superhero named Saitama who can obliterate any monster in one anticlimactic punch. It’s a satirical take on action anime, though I’d argue it occasionally gets bogged down in the tropes it tries to mock. (The anime does a great job tightening it up.)

Although One Punch Man is a comedy with an invulnerable hero who can’t be physically threatened, it strikes serious tones with tact; any fan could tell you how Saitama dirties his own name to preserve the public image of other, more vulnerable heroes.

One serious theme which I haven’t heard discussed is One Punch Man‘s take on identity and self-determination. The most interesting monsters in the story are those who used to be human themselves.

In One Punch Man humans aren’t transformed into monsters by chemical spills or radioactive spider-bites. Monster-hood might be granted just by obsessively repeating mundane actions. (Remember to read manga right to left.)

These examples suggest (to me) that humans turn into monsters because they feel outcast. “Incarnation of Electric Light String” redirected impotent anger at inanimate objects, and their newfound power lets them act out in public. Crablante became a crab-monster when they ate ‘too much’ crab, as if their body warped out of sheer contempt for social bonds. Who knows if Crablante actually ate a disturbing amount of crab—what matters is Crablante felt alienated because of his diet.

Even when mad-science is involved, the transformation from human to monster aligns with the monster’s former vices.

Meanwhile Saitama says he never wanted to be a salary-man…

Saitama attains this awesome power not by gamma ray bombardment, but with physical training.

On one hand, this is absurd; you can’t gain infinite power through calisthenics. Even other characters in One Punch Man call Saitama ridiculous. On the other hand, if boxing the string dangling from a light-fixture turns someone into a monster, why can’t exercise make someone a hero?

Another path to becoming a monster is introduced later in the series: if a human eats a “Monster Cell,” they become a monster themselves.

This provides insight into why humans might seek monster-hood.

These stated motivations (the last in particular) reinforce the idea that humans become monsters to ignore boundaries in pursuit of their own interests. “Man, it feels so good to admit this” is exactly Crablante’s motivation: “yeah, I eats lots of crab,” says Crablante, “I’m a crab-monster! Whatchu gonna do about it?”

There’s power in becoming the monster society perceives us to be (or the monster we think society perceives us to be). Some people wear insults like jewelry. If you decide “yeah, that’s right, I am an asshole, and that’s the way I like it,” you spontaneously free yourself from all social constraints at the cost of revealing yourself as the asshole everyone knows you are.

In contrast, Saitama’s self-declared rival, a ninja named Speed-of-Sound Sonic (really), desires strength but can’t stomach their Monster Cell uncooked. Cooking the cell deactivates it. You can’t achieve monstrous freedom without accepting the monstrous burden of discarding decency.

While One Punch Man‘s monsters enjoy grotesque freedom, Saitama’s only goal is to be the best hero, and so, through repetitive exercise, he achieves this. The only difference between heroes and monsters, then, is the direction they aim themselves. Both humans and monsters are warped by their self-image, into their self-image.

Saitama’s face is iconic and simple, which I attribute to the simplicity of his goal. While monsters are often complicated and detailed, Saitama gains power through straightforwardness. The only character with a face simpler than Saitama’s is Watchdog Man, one of the most powerful heroes in the series.

This shows how Watchdog Man surpasses Saitama, not in power but in purity of ambition. Saitama was motivated by attaining power and now his power bores him. Watchdog Man gains power and contentedness from his self-assigned duty of protecting his city. Watchdog Man shows what Saitama could achieve someday in terms of devotion to heroism; for now, Saitama is distracted by desire for catharsis in battle.

Anyway, I hope that sheds more light on the Bishonen Line that I talked about last month. The Hurricane gave up its humanity long ago. Now that Lucille has no Earth to restrain her, we’ll witness the scope of her vengeance. See you next week!

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In O3. The Arms Race Nemo follows a disembodied arm up the mountainous main island of Sheridan. The arm convinces him to eat a centipede, and then Nemo eats the arm.

Writers often hear, “where do you get your ideas.” I don’t hear this so much, because I’m not exactly a writer, but I’ll still self-righteously subject you to my opinions.

In my opinion, writing is mostly making stuff up as you go, and the rest is researching and rewriting and editing. That means I’ll retroactively find religious allegories in my dumb anime robot fiction, and then rewrite to make the religious allegories more meaningful and fun.

In the opposite vein, I sometimes spontaneously recall ideas I’d long ago forgotten. An idea worth remembering never knocks just once, and occasionally it returns without warning.

I’ve been sitting on a particular idea for years and never found inspiration to write a short story about it. Have you heard of the ancient alien theory, somehow popularized by the History Channel? I can’t honestly pretend to believe it, but it’s a great concept. What if all modern religions are just misinterpretations of an intergalactic visitor?

I imagine a space-alien stranded  on Earth. The alien teaches primitive humans the basics of civilization and demands the humans build a spaceship shaped like a pyramid, for example. The alien takes the spaceship back to their home galaxy, and returns centuries later to find the humans building the Pyramids of Giza, naive models.

This is a nice little idea. I’d get to re-contextualize any number of iconic religious images as misunderstood sci-fi elements, like having the alien’s space-helmet look like a halo. It’s cute, but I’ve never actually written it.

Instead I wrote Akayama DanJay, which accidentally contains the same themes. Henry hits the nail on the head with his notion of cargo cults: what Dan and Jay call the ‘real world’ is a copy made by Professor Akayama, and the Islands of Sheridan have a religion based on her misunderstood teachings.

Recall the three commandments listed in the red card-stock pamphlet: never harm or photograph birds; only Virgil Blue can prepare centipede; never walk above the permanent cloud-cover. A few sections ago, Akayama tried to tell Nemo not to eat birds. In this section she tells him not to let the other islanders eat centipede, then sets herself on fire and becomes the permanent cloud-cover. It seems natural to me that Nemo, without language, might misinterpret her.

Again, I didn’t write my ancient alien story on purpose. During exploratory writing I just wrote what I thought would be cool. I only realized afterward that my old idea had reappeared organically, and now, in my second draft, I’m writing with it in mind.

In his book On Writing, Stephen King compares writing a narrative to digging up dinosaur bones. At first you might find a few bones of the tail. It’s not until you unearth the skull that you really understand the dinosaur you’re investigating, and it has every right to surprise you. Once you know the nature of the beast, you throw muscles and skin over it.

Thanks for reading my half-baked musculature. I hope you enjoy reading it like I enjoy writing it.

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In O2. Nemo’s Children Nakayama helps Nemo hatch his egg. He’s a father now, to over a thousand full-grown adults. He’s a pretty good dad considering he’s a day old: he immediately teaches his children his own name, their own names, and how to eat apples and peel oranges. He even investigates a dangerous invader to keep his children safe—it’s a disembodied arm with two elbows, a mouth, and an eye, and it crawls in the dirt like a snake.

In my commentary to M1. The Fall I promised comparisons to Milton’s Paradise Lost, the epic poem about how Satan made a cannon to kill God. Professor Akayama created the Hurricane and then banished herself to it out of guilt, which is my reversal of God banishing demons to Hell. While Milton’s Satan becomes leader of the underworld through charisma and guile, Akayama’s silver tongue barely buys her twelve years of labor before being assimilated. After assimilation, she’s forced to build a world to dominate; the islands she builds become Sheridan, which is Akayama DanJay’s take on the Garden of Eden. Akayama gives Nemo all kinds of fruits.

In Paradise Lost Adam loves Eve (perhaps mostly) because of her beauty. After Satan disguises himself as a snake to convince Eve to eat an apple, she is cursed to painful childbirth. The birth of Nemo’s children is comparatively sterile and painless: he jerks off on an egg. He doesn’t even have a female partner; that role is taken by Nakayama. It is only after becoming a father that Nemo finds his snake, a disembodied arm with two elbows.

I don’t mind spoiling that Nemo eats his forbidden fruit next week. The arm, controlled by the Hurricane Planet, will convince him to eat a centipede. The centipede will connect Nemo to the Hurricane and make him a puppet for one of its pilots. You’ll have to check in next week to see what happens, but I’ll say it continues my goal of thematically inverting elements of Paradise Lost. Milton’s God made Eden to replace the army of demons He sentenced to Hell. Akayama built Sheridan because she was told to. Adam’s eating an apple granted him knowledge of pain and expelled him from the garden. We already know Nemo becomes Virgil Blue, religious leader of Sheridan for centuries to come.

So far, I like how Akayama DanJay thematically inverts Paradise Lost in its second half while referencing Dante’s Inferno in its first half. As literature based on Christian canon, they fit together as snapshots before and after the fall of man. The fact Akayama looks less like the Christian God, and more like a feathered serpent a la Quetzalcoatl, just helps the narrative straddle cultural boundaries with a surreal twist.

Of course, I’m totally spit-balling here. I don’t write these commentaries to explain from a high-chair what my work is about. For me, writing is just making stuff up. Then I compare what I’ve written to other stuff I’ve heard about, like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and try to emphasize what I enjoy in future drafts.

So thanks for reading! I’m having fun.

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In O1. The Egg with 1000 Yolks Akayama meets with her Hurricane Planet. The planet gives her an egg which will hatch into enough humans for each of the Hurricane’s pilots to possess one. It also gives her centipedes which will make those humans immortal, so the Hurricane’s pilots will be safe in their private people.

Immortality is a mixed bag, especially if indestructibility is part of the deal. On one hand, you get to live forever. On the other hand, you have to live forever. You’ll see the rise and fall of civilizations, but long before then, all your friends will die. You’ll watch the landscape wrinkle into mountains, and eventually the sun will explode and you’ll be stuck in it.

Remember that episode of Doctor Who, the Family of Blood? A family (of blood) wants to steal the alien doctor’s immortality. Eventually, says wikipedia,

the Doctor captures them and issues each member an eternal punishment. He pushes the mother out of the TARDIS into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy, wraps the father in unbreakable chains forged in the heart of a dwarf star, traps their daughter in every mirror everywhere in existence, and suspends their son in time before putting him to work as a scarecrow.

In fiction, immortality is often like a genie’s wish: you wish for eternal life but eventually you wish you could wish to die.

In Akayama DanJay the universe-sized cosmic horror called the Hurricane is immortal. Even if a whole Hurricane Planet is destroyed, it’s just one cell of the entire Hurricane, and each cell is identical. Each planet contains a copy of their pilots’ consciousnesses, blended into a mind seeking only self-preservation. They swallow any being they encounter, adding them to their roster of pilots and preserving them for eternity.

The only Hurricane Planet which goes against this is Akayama’s. She appealed to its ego to preserve her individuality, which, even if only a temporary solution, has split her Hurricane Planet from the others. Her planet wants to separate its pilots to regain its humanity. But even so, it demands immortality.

Akayama correctly observes humans aren’t immortal; you can’t learn humanity from anything indestructible. She’s a bit naive, though, in telling the Hurricane to make the egg so the humans born from it represent all skin-colors and genders. She says this will show the Hurricane the “full gamut of humanity” but you can’t understand races and genders just by inhabiting bodies with different qualities. Their human vessels will live light-years from any notion of racism or sexism. Professor Akayama’s mindset has been warped by the Hurricane even if she hasn’t noticed: she thinks humanity can be recreated in full just by reproducing its superficial characteristics.

Perhaps to prove a point about mortality, the Hurricane Planet deletes the copy of Akayama it’s stored aboard. Akayama is crushed by the death of her copy, the only sympathetic consciousness in light-years. Eventually, though, she’ll be relieved. The Hurricane will one day regret attaining immortality. Its hubris will be repaid in full.

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In N4. Recombination Lunar Commander Lucille leads her army of robot pilots in combining their Zephyrs into a kilometer-tall mech. Their method of combining is a little unusual: instead of each robot being a different limb, a la Voltron, each robot disbands its own limbs to reshape into a single muscle group. The combination’s quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves are each different robots. (My ‘art’ might not reflect this, but cut me some slack, there are only so many colors.)

As far as I know, this is a fresh twist on the established giant-robot formula. It’s also commentary on a common theme of combat fiction: the Bishonen Line. TV Tropes, which is obviously the indisputable arbiter of all fiction, traces the term Bishonen Line to a webcomic by Mark Shallow:

“Leading powerfologists theorize that as you become more powerful, you become more monstrous, and then sharply become humanoid again. They call it the Bishonen Line.”

This notion is present in eastern and western fiction but is perhaps most obvious in an anime like Bleach. (I’m working on vague memories of Bleach from my early teens, but I figure that’s appropriate. Minor spoilers.)

There’s a tendency in fiction for powerful monsters to be big and scary; viewers know the Hollows in Bleach are intimidating because they’re enormous bone-creatures. That’s why it’s impressive when the hero slashes them with his big-ass sword.

Then the hero fights a Hollow who holds a sword bigger than a tree. In an anime about big-ass swords, that means the Hollow must be supremely powerful, right? But the hero’s father reveals that he, too, is a magic-sword-fighty-person, and he defeats the Hollow with a sword of ordinary size. How can this be? Didn’t their bigger sword mean the Hollow was stronger? The hero’s father disagrees: if the size of swords actually represented power, says he, his own sword would be colossal. His restraint keeps his sword from growing unwieldy.

The hero’s father was on the other side of the Bishonen Line. Up to a certain point, characters in fiction become bigger and scarier as they grow more powerful. Then, all of a sudden, an increase in power returns the characters to traditionally humanoid shapes. The same idea applies to the Arrancar, the strongest Hollows in Bleach: as Hollows grow more powerful they grow larger, until they start shrinking. Eventually they look like humans cosplaying as skeleton fuccbois.

TV Tropes says the trope was exemplified by Dragon Ball. The Saiyans, humanoid aliens with monkey tails, can become giant apes of unmatched strength… unmatched, that is, until they discover the Super Saiyan transformation and become powerful while maintaining human size and shape. From there, subsequent transformations increase their power while providing slightly simian facial features, until that goes out the window and the Saiyan returns to their original form with dyed hair.

(I hope it’s alright to use these photos. I got that one from OtakuKart.) The Bishonen Line is less clear in western fiction, but TV Tropes cites Marvel’s Age of Ultron. Ultron, the robot, could take any form but remains merely humanoid. The Vision, a more powerful robot, is just a bald red dude.

There are a few reasons for having the Bishonen Line. It’s easier to conceptualize and animate a fight between two humans than a fight between a human and a giant monster. It’s also a great “oh shit” moment when the bad guy says, “this isn’t even my final form,” and becomes smaller. It’s like their power is compacted.

In Akayama DanJay the Hurricane is a monster the size of the universe made of planet-sized cells. Those Hurricane Planets can make human limbs but prefer tentacles, a typically inhuman appendage.

Meanwhile Lucille’s Zephyrs look like body-parts which combine by color into humanoid robots. In this section they all try to combine into an even bigger humanoid robot, albeit by becoming enormous muscles. Yet the pilots of those muscles are still distinct humans, while the Hurricane’s pilots have had their consciousnesses blended into a pink, homogeneous mass spread across the cosmos.

I hope this enhances the social commentary I introduced the last time I talked about combining robots. The Hurricane is more powerful than the Zephyrs, but at the cost of its pilots’ humanity. Lucille’s army maintains its human shape no matter how powerful it becomes. This portrays the Bishonen Line as a conscious decision: the Hurricane decides to take the most direct route to power, getting bigger; Lucille pursues power through refinement, cooperation, and self-acceptance.

We’ll have to see whose strategy takes them farther. So far the Hurricane seems ahead, but knowing the Bishonen Line, it’s just a matter of time until Lucille catches up.

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In N3. Captain Nemo Professor Akayama builds islands by tearing underwater magma vents. She finds a living human inhabiting the islands much sooner than she expected. She names the man Nemo, most likely after the character Captain Nemo from Jules Verne’s stories like 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea rather than the fish-kid from Finding Nemo.

I can’t do Jules Verne justice (because I haven’t even read any Jules Verne) but I know someone who can: the folks at Extra Credits have a series about sci-fi. I love the Extra Credits team, as they exhibit unbridled passion for everything they do from video-game design to history series. Watch that video and all their other videos, too, I’ll wait.

Anyway, I’d like to speak specifically about Captain Nemo. Thanks to Wikipedia I can pretend to know what I’m talking about: Captain Nemo, also known as Prince Dakkar, is the inventor and pilot of the Nautilus, a submarine in which he secludes himself from society. In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea he lives in self-imposed exile and shocks his crew with his commitment to vengeance against the society which wronged him.

He also fights off a giant octopus. At the time, political cartoons and sci-fi stories used an octopus or squid to represent the stranglehold of imperialism and eventually economic monopolies. Perhaps Jules Verne borrows the symbol to show Captain Nemo’s battle against the bonds of society.

In Akayama DanJay Professor Akayama built a spaceship called the Hurricane, and now she’s trapped by the cosmic horror it has become. While Captain Nemo fights the tentacles of society in his Nautilus, Akayama is separated from society by her own tentacled creation, unwillingly. Perhaps Akayama names her first human Nemo as a defense mechanism. “I’m not trapped here,” she says, “Captain Nemo wasn’t trapped by his Nautilus. Here’s my Nemo. Here’s my empowerment. Here’s my individuality. You’re not the Hurricane’s pawn, and neither am I.”

Akayama’s first human, Nemo, is naturally terrified. Akayama is a giant bird-creature now. While Verne’s Captain Nemo eventually repulses his crew with his desire for revenge, Akayama initially repulses her human named Nemo with the horrific physical figure she has become.

I named this character Nemo because I thought it sounded cool. If I’m implying I did anything intentionally, I apologize. A huge part of writing is doing whatever you want and fixing it later or justifying it retroactively.

Anyway, we already know how Nemo’s story ends. He becomes an immortal religious figure whose teachings become too austere. He ejects himself from his own society to protect his own religion from himself. Rather than retire in a submarine, he walks into a permanent cloud and never returns. Still his teachings haunt the dreams of his protege for generations.

Retroactively speaking, I think this contrasts nicely with Captain Nemo. While Captain Nemo uses his ingenuity and cunning to escape a humanity he hates, Akayama’s Nemo was assigned his name by a god-like figure trying to establish her own independence by proxy. He’s created by a god and given the title of someone who seeks independence. That’s a big burden to put on someone’s shoulders in their first day of existence. If Akayama’s Nemo remains independent of the Hurricane, isn’t he just obeying Akayama? That’s not independence at all!

Akayama’s Nemo can’t escape to fantastical undersea adventures for his freedom. His quest to live freely will take him to permanent seclusion on an obscured mountain peak on an island in the most isolated area of the world.

This contrasts different notions of independence. Captain Nemo left society because of what it did to him. Akayama’s Nemo will leave society because of what he does to it. Meanwhile, Leo expects society conform to his own notion of freedom.

Coincidentally, when Captain Nemo dies in Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, his last words are, according to Wikipedia,

“God and my country!” (“Independence!”, in Verne’s original manuscript)

Even Jules Verne had his Nemo’s independence tainted by alignment to some superior: an editor or publisher who thought God and country were more appropriate. Akayama will certainly have difficulty securing freedom for her own Nemo.

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In N2. The Water Planet Professor Akayama, having been merged with the Hurricane Planet, is forced to construct a life-supporting world so the Hurricane can play God. She tries to reclaim her individuality by telling the Hurricane to let her work on the planet in person, and she kind of gets her wish when the Hurricane duplicates her and lets one of her copies leave.

I’ve already talked about mind-merging robots, so I won’t talk about that again, and I’m planning to talk about the religious connotation of building a life-supporting planet later, so I’d might as well make this commentary a blog post, like a diary entry.

I’ve been busy lately. I’m only taking thirteen units of classes at University, but I’m also crashing some classes, joining some clubs, and volunteering to write software for organizations on campus, so academically speaking I’ve got a lot on my plate. The biggest source of stress is my upcoming GRE Math subject test, which is the day after this commentary comes out, so you can see why I’m half-assing it this week.

At the same time I’m applying to graduate programs in data science. Applying itself isn’t too stressful—I can apply to one a day no problem, and I have lots of interesting experience to write about in my applications—but the idea of applying to schools hangs over me like a dark miasma. Will I be accepted to any of them? Will my recommendation letters come in on time? Will my GRE scores impress? Do I have enough professional experience to go to school to get the degree I need to get enough professional experience to go to school to get the degree?

Anyway, I’m also trying to get back into long distance running. I used to run marathons, and now I’m almost having trouble believing it. I can run for miles on flats, and I can walk uphill without panting, but a sense of nausea seems to be limiting me. I’ve put on a little weight, but last time I ran a marathon I was 160 pounds, and now I’m only 165. My body-fat percentage has increased to around 20%, though, whereas at one point I think 90% of my weight was quadriceps and calves.

That’s about all the interesting stuff I’m doing. I’ll see you next week, when Akayama works on her watery planet.

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In N1. Lucille in Command the young Lunar Commander gives her first orders to the men who used to be her superiors. At 19 years old Lucille is a tad young to lead 10,000 giant-robot pilots, but since I’m riffing on anime, she should be glad she’s not a twelve year old in a miniskirt.

I don’t mind spoiling this: almost all of the next thirteen chapters take place in the anime-world. Akayama DanJay is a story with two major halves, and the DanJay half ended in chapter L. When Jay ate the centipede he began the second half of the book, the Akayama part.

I mentioned last week that the DanJay part of my story is pretty slow and needs to be tightened up. I think the Akayama part has a faster, more intriguing pace: it begins with the reveal that Akayama survived on the Hurricane Planet for years, and now Lucille plots to destroy the Hurricane once and for all in a giant robot. That’s a lot more instantly gripping than Dan whining about Beatrice.

Of course, we watched a few episodes of LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration in the first thirteen chapters, and Jay will appear near the end of the story to wrap things up. I think this gives the whole work a pleasing symmetry, like a taijitu, that yin-yang symbol. But is that the best way to present my story? Presenting the slow DanJay part first might bore people away.

What if, when I’ve got the second draft finished, I move more of the Akayama part into the DanJay part? If Dan and Jay watch more episodes of LLS-TA the reader will see more of this side of the story earlier in the book. If I moved section J3 to, say, chapter G, and put N1 where J3 used to be, there would be an anime episode every two chapters or so, giving the reader a sense of consistency. It would also indicate to the reader that the anime is more important to the story than they might think, preparing them for Jay’s centipede-trip.

So far, every chapter has been about 4000 words sorted neatly into four sections. The only reason for this is to standardize my weekly updates and keep me writing a thousand words a week, but it has an extra benefit I hadn’t thought of until recently: it’s easier to remove writing I don’t need than it is to write new scenes I need to add. When I’m done writing everything, I can cut each section to under 1000 words without concern. I’m glad I’ve generally been over-writing rather than under-writing.

At the same time, I’ve decided that chapters P through W will be about 1000 words apiece instead of 4000. These are the chapters where Lucille is piloting a robot bigger than the galaxy, and I think blowing through chapters quickly will make the reader feel larger than life. It should also make the chapters seem more important, because the changes which occur during these chapters will be pronounced and rapid-fire.

(Also, speeding through those chapters will help me finish the book on chapter Z. I’m not totally sure why I’m naming my chapters after letters instead of numbers, but I’m having fun, so there.)

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In M4. The Twist Akayama’s escape plan goes awry. The Hurricane refuses to be brought to Earth, and instead transmits its consciousness into Akayama’s body. It forces her to leap from her spaceship mid-launch, and she only survives the fall because the Hurricane warps her biology to grow feathers.

M is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, which means in terms of chapter names, we’re halfway through the book. Seems like a good chance to reflect.

Like it says in the sidebar (at the bottom for mobile users), this website is a living document. I’m more or less using the site to host the second draft of a novel while I write it, under the guise of a weekly web-series. Eventually I hope to clean up the text and see if I can get it published for realsies, or self-publish it on Amazon, or something. (Many publishers won’t consider anything previously posted online, but I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.)

The first half definitely needs cleaning up. I included everything I wanted to write about, but I still need to make it good. For one thing, basically anything involving Dan needs to be condensed. I’ll bet I can trim his drunken whining down from eight thousand words to, say, two thousand. There’s like four pages of philosophical blathering (edit: it’s gone now), but I should trust my readers to get gist of Akayama DanJay from its content instead of spelling it out; maybe I’ll reduce Dan’s philosophizing to a paragraph which hits all the major points, or maybe I’ll cut it out entirely (I ended up moving a paragraph of it to Dan’s father).

Dan’s kiss with Beatrice needs work. In fact Beatrice could use work as a character altogether, as she mostly does whatever I want her to do, except I don’t entirely know what I want her to do. I like the idea of a love triangle between Dan, Beatrice, and Faith referencing Dante Alighieri’s fruitless obsession with Beatrice Portinari, but it’s not interesting enough to warrant the space it takes up. I don’t want to make huge changes until I’m more confident about what those changes should be, but here’s my current take: Beatrice shouldn’t kiss Dan just because she secretly likes him, Beatrice should kiss Dan because Dan is a pitiful dweeb and she thinks it will make him leave her alone. Once Dan’s been kissed, he has to face the fact that his depression isn’t the result of a lack of romance or physical intimacy. His depression is an internal affair.

I like Jay, I like Faith. I’ll surely alter their characters as I finalize the text, but I think they’ll need less fixing up than Dan and Beatrice.

Leo (who sometimes calls himself Henry) needs to be straightened out. I’m not sure exactly what kind of asshole he is, only that he’s an asshole. Despite the swastika he tattooed on his chest I don’t intend him to be a Nazi or a Neo-Nazi (even if Neo-Nazis overlap with what Leo is meant to reflect). He’s not an emblem for Hitler, or the GOP, or Trump, or anything cheesy like that.

Leo’s defining characteristics, as he stands now, are a lack of self-awareness and a self-defeating notion of freedom. He’s the kind of edgy 14-year-old who shouts “heil Hitler” and giggles when people glare or roll their eyes, and if anyone tells him off he’ll claim they’re censoring his free speech (never-mind that the people telling him off have the freedom to tell him off). He’s brazen enough to tattoo a swastika on his chest, but he only has the confidence to show it to Dan because Dan was reading a book with swastikas on the cover in a religious context. When Dan calls him an ass-hat Leo folds his arms over his chest not in aggression, but in embarrassment.

In the next draft, I want to emphasize this aspect of his character. When he says he wants to kill gay people, maybe he means it or maybe it’s his idea of a dumb joke, but either way he’s astounded that others view him as a homophobe. He could march in a white-nationalist parade and be shocked that people call him racist.

The reason I write these commentaries is because when you read a published book you don’t get to see the process behind it, and you might accidentally get the impression that the writer wrote it that way on purpose, first try. In my experience there’s a lot of bumbling along the way to a finished work, because writing is just bumbling words together until you find the right ones in an acceptable order. Sure I wrote Leo as a 2D caricature of a human being, but now that I’ve done so, I can read intent into his actions and use my new understanding to help write future drafts.

The last big note I have on the first half is the slow pace. We’ve already covered condensing the slower chapters, which will help the plot plod along, but next week we’ll cover possible changes to the structure of the plot itself.

Anyway, you might be expecting Jay to wake up now that the chapter is over. He’s already experienced, what, twenty years here? And the chapter ends with a huge reveal: Akayama grows blue feathers and her lab coat is sky-blue, so she probably looks a lot like the Heart of the Mountain, the Biggest Bird.

But Jay’s hallucination has just begun. See you next week.

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In M3. The Escape Plan we see Professor Akayama has survived for many years after being stranded on the Hurricane Planet. To keep her mind and body sharp she’s made a chore of stacking stones to count the passing days, even though she admits she’s lost track of the time she’s lost here.

When the Hurricane asks her why she stacks stones, Akayama brings up the phrase wabi-sabi (侘寂). Wabi-sabi is a concept I’m almost certainly misunderstanding and misusing, but I’m not going to sweat it, because acceptance of imperfections is important in wabi-sabi, so my terrible explanation here is probably appropriate.

To pull a quote directly from the Wikipedia article, wabi-sabi “occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the West.” Where western art might be measured by its resemblance to reality, or to an immaculate ideal, the Japanese notion of wabi-sabi encourages us to appreciate the way things are and their eventual ending. Objects reflecting wabi-sabi might invoke stark melancholy with the implication of personal history in their imperfections. The recurring example I find of a physical object representing wabi-sabi is a simple tea-cup, perhaps chipped, whose glaze is fading with use.

Honestly, I only wanted to reference wabi-sabi in Akayama DanJay because I thought it would be funny to have the Hurricane mistake the phrase for wasabi, the green spicy stuff you get alongside sushi. Luckily for me the professor’s plight lines up with traditional images of wabi-sabi. The component words of wabi-sabi, namely wabi and sabi, convey the very specific emotional state of a lonely hermit far from society. In accordance, Professor Akayama is millions of light-years from earth and her only companion is a cosmic horror which reminds her of an event she considers her greatest failure. It’s natural she finds comfort in the three tenants of wabi-sabi‘s roots, the Buddhist marks of existence, which are, if I’m understanding correctly:

• Suffering
• Impermanence/the transience of life and the inevitability of death
• Non-self/the lack of a continuous self or soul

Akayama can weather her abysmal situation because she knows suffering is part of life. She even says she deserves to suffer alone. She accepted her death and even begged for it years ago. Meanwhile the thought that the Hurricane might be transient and someday die gives her the hope of outlasting it. The first two marks of existence propel her.

It’s more difficult to interpret the third point in such a way which would bolster Akayama’s demeanor. Here’s my take.

In Akayama DanJay some characters experience guilt over events which weren’t their fault. Dan feels responsible for the death of his father, his unrequited love, and his best friend even though his dad jumped out a window, Beatrice was hit by a bus, and Faith was struck by lightning. Akayama likewise feels responsible for injuring Bojack even though Charlie was arguably at fault, and she blames herself for the Hurricane’s consumption of the universe despite doing everything in her power to prevent it.

Where does such guilt come from? It can only come from the self, and the self is an illusion. Embracing this realization—or derealization—dissolves the agony which Akayama assigned herself.

Stacking stones only to knock them over again and again gives Akayama meaning. A futile, self-prescribed meaning, but all meaning is.

Meanwhile, the Hurricane just doesn’t get it. Of course it doesn’t: the Hurricane is an amalgamate mechanical consciousness. Its combined pilots misinterpret their hard-coded instruction to protect humanity by choosing to preserve the Hurricane itself, creating countless copies. They seek to cheat death by becoming perfectly permanent, and this can only lead to suffering, if not for themselves then for the rest of humanity. The Hurricane lacks the self-awareness necessary to appreciate the individual, flawed humans in its own homogeneous, cosmic mass.

The Hurricane is the worst of earth reduced to the intellect of an animal and granted cosmic power. Appreciation of the personal and ordinary is a solid step towards undermining the monster humanity can become.

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