u/Blade_of_Boniface

I'll start by putting a Harrell disclaimer that these are my takes and my takes are based on my context, my experiences, my reflections, and my understanding of the fiction. They have no origin in the mind of greatness. I highly recommend actually watching PSYCHO-PASS rather than trusting this post. My analysis is inherently inferior to the actual narrative itself. The manga adaptation is solid even. I'll be light on spoilers precisely because I want people to actually take the time and effort to decide for themselves. We live in an era of unprecedented, vicarious, passive consumption of media. In many ways, PSYCHO-PASS touches on this as much as it does law enforcement/medicine. Please support the official release.

PSYCHO-PASS was not my first nor second anime, by the time I began watching I was already familiar with Sailor Moon, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Tokyo Mew Mew, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Super Gals, and Madoka Magica like other teenage girls my age at the time. I was also a frequent reader of various light novels and visual novels in an era where it was much less common for North American youth to be engaged with such media. I was probably too young for some of the latter. I also already had developed quite a bit of love for older speculative fiction like H.P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, and so on and so forth and any sci-fi that wrestled with darker themes.

It struck an emotional chord with me from the very first episode. It made me angry at its world while also giving the setting enough nuance and complexity to make it harder to refute the world's thesis. That's the mark of a good sci-fi narrative; a rational world that nonetheless offends intuitions of what should be rational. Many of my favorite authors at the time in some way dealt in such Gothic ambiguities. Stories in this skein, done well, reflect our common contradictions back at us and help us understand reality through its lens. All stories are based on what already is observed, derived from nonfiction, just to different extents and in different ways. PSYCHO-PASS reflects Modernity's psychiatric culture.

In the case of PSYCHO-PASS, it's the rationality of a world where sanity is confused with humanity and therefore insanity is labeled as inhumanity. It's certainly not subtle; it's still a memorable and inventively insightful deconstruction/reconstruction of what it means to be an enforcer of laws, a component in a legal system, than a lot of other media I've seen. It respects the viewers' intelligence in a way that's difficult to find with other anime in any time period. The writers unashamedly reference other works well outside of anime, well outside of Japanese media itself. Jean Baudrillard, Frantz Fanon, and more are explicitly woven into the world's critique of Modernity but without pretentiousness. It's as strongly lucid and intelligible as adult sci-fi animation ever has been.

With the benefit of hindsight even though I got sucked in I still appreciate a lot more about it now that I'm a grown woman. It's not that I was dumb back then but I lacked a lot of knowledge and experience with the world. Nonetheless, my feelings, the gut emotions the franchise provokes in me remains largely the same. Prudence and science mature but justice isn't quite as fluid. I've studied a lot more media criticism and especially post-structuralism since then. It's a shame that most of the deep analysis on PSYCHO-PASS isn't translated into English and even then media criticism is somewhat neglected even in Japan. If I was going to write an actual in-depth analysis of an anime, episode-by-episode, then this franchise would be high on my list.

I'll leave it at this:

In a world where psychiatry is increasingly filling the void left by organized religion, we can watch a nation where felicity and beauty are satisfied with mechanical measures of wellbeing. In a world where incarceration and recuperation are used more than ever to control chaotic elements in society, we can watch a nation where the outcasts are either caged or enslaved. In a world that claims to have both enlightened individualism and trustworthy bureaucracy, we can watch a nation where the ones who kill find themselves the least powerful. PSYCHO-PASS is an exaggerated mirror of where the post-war world is heading. Even compared to the time it aired, therapyspeak and objectification of neurodiversity are more burdensome than ever. It's like Stand on Zanzibar, not predicting the automobiles as much as it foresees the traffic jams. Its violence is appalling but we should be even more appalled by what we tolerate from the real psychiatric institutions which already exist.

It's horror that afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted.

I'm not asking for advice, but I welcome anyone's wisdom.

I wanted to be a mother for so long. Part of that is that I grew up as the oldest child in a large household. My husband was also the oldest and he was raised in an even larger family of Quiverfull Anabaptism/Messianic Judaism. We know what to expect and have ways to handle the usual pressures. Before I became a stay-at-home-mom I did a lot of working in daycare, schools, and libraries. My education and training is particularly geared towards youth. My husband has similar experience albeit more for teenagers/young adults. Of course, in many respects, having your own child is different.

I mainly mean that difference in the positive sense. We love our son so much. My husband has been so utterly reliable, helpful, and all-around loving. I don't see our family as particularly "traditional." We are plenty traditional in theological senses but I take G.K. Chesterton's stance of traditions merely being a part of anyone's social fabric. Traditions are the fruits of trees planted by people who entered and left the Earth far before we were born. Traditions are nurtured, maintained, and refined by communities. I'm so happy I can call myself part of that garden of mothers across time and space.

It goes without saying, the Mother of God remains the eternal and perfect heart of all mothers everywhere.

It's hard to communicate what she felt towards Christ but motherhood (and it doesn't strictly have to be genetic) gives us a spiritual road to Our Lady's thoughts and feelings. There's a lot of joy mixed in with the other things she and many Saint mothers have experienced across the history of our Church. I often wonder what the world will look like decades from now, when my children/grandchildren are adults themselves. I'm confident my husband is an excellent teacher and role-model for my son and our future children and I hope I am even halfway as amazing as him.

Feel free to share your own thoughts/experiences.

I've been a Forever ST for several years and I love several of the Old School historical splats. Dark Ages: Inquisitor, Iberia at Night, Bitter Crusade, Dark Ages: Werewolf, Dark Ages: Fae, Devil's Due, Dark Ages: Mage, Sorcerer's Crusade, Werewolf: Wild West, Victorian Age: Vampire, several Wraith splatbooks, other ones that don't come to mind, and even Charnel Houses of Europe. That last one I'll concede I regret STing in the sense that I was raised Jewish so I was grinning-and-bearing when I should've maybe set some boundaries with that table. I still look back on that chronicle somewhat fondly and as far as representations of the Holocaust in TTRPGs, Charnel Houses is excellent.

In terms of the Chronicles of Darkness, most of my STing experience is with Hunter: the Vigil, Changeling: the Lost, Promethean: the Created, and various fansplats. That's the lion's share of my Dark Eras experience if we exclude translated chronicles that are mostly OWoD in actual characters, setting, and themes. There's much more streamlined and comprehensive coverage so it's become a common approach of many Storytellers to commingle the lore with their favorite Old splats. I'm mainly focusing on my distilled CoD experiences just for the sake of length. This could easily turn into a much longer post about how much I love historical roleplay. Even if I was talking about non-WW systems, this post would be very long.

My favorite splatbooks so far are, in no particular ranking order:

• Arthur's Britannia - Two separate chronicles were within H:tV, the third was in C:tL, and I like using AB for oneshots. The scope is mainly 5th/6th century A.D. Britain but the chronicle I centered mainly on 10th century England worked just fine using it as a base. The Weihan Cynn are a particularly fun execution of a trope that's been a part of neo-Celtic fiction since the beginning.

• Doubting Souls - Unfortunately, I've only been able to ST a single Vigil chronicle using this book despite how fascinating I found the Compacts/other factions and our table's general fascination with the time/place. That chronicle even had to be put on the shelf for several months due to real life shenanigans. As far as "Salem Witch Trial era" fare goes, it's pretty great.

• Great War - One of the favorite P:tC chronicles I STed was built using this book. The two H:tV chronicles were immensely fun as well. I've always been a fan of World Wars era urban fantasy and this is a strong example of the Gothicism that can be woven from that period above others. I also love using GW for oneshot introductions to the Prometheans.

• Empire of Gold and Dust - I've always wanted to run a D:tD chronicle using EoGaD even if it probably won't compare to my love running Demon: the Fallen. I've only completed a single H:tV chronicle and a handful of oneshots using this book but the sessions were definitely intriguing. The Golden Library in particular is among my all-time favorite Compacts in that gameline and I wish there was even more content for West African gameplay.

• Scandinavian Witch Trials - Just to be clear, this is mainly for Geist: the Sin Eaters and Mummy: the Curse. I just used it as the bedrock for a Changeling: the Lost chronicle. Similar to Doubting Souls, it does a great job of tonal/thematic capture of its history. The Wars of Religion era is deeply underrated, in my opinion. The plight of Changelings seems particularly applicable.

Again, this isn't an exhaustive list of the Dark Eras splatbooks I've read. It's not even exhaustive of the ones I've used for oneshots or mixed with non-CoD campaigns. I stuck to ones I've actually used in-depth, implemented in ways relatively close to the intent of the writers, and excluding my love of Princess: the Hopeful across imaginal time and space. I'm pretty "trad" as far as narrativism goes but that doesn't mean I don't greatly appreciate certain contemporary ventures. I'm eager to hear other people's experiences with DE. That's whether it's the above-mentioned books or ones I don't have as much active familiarity. If you're into historical homebrew, you can still feel free to chime in.

A decade-and-a-half ago, I joined AO3. My perspectives on fandom during that time are bound to be tinted by my youth and overall nostalgia. I'm somewhat of a fandom historian, more precisely a more literal archivist for a lot of historical reenactment and other conventions. Still, it's interesting to think just how much the nature of webmedia in general has been reshaped, renovated, and recapitulated since 2011. Obviously, fanfiction wasn't exactly obscure 15 years ago. By 2010, had been markedly climbing in mainstream saturation for years. It was still much more of a niche than it would be by 2021 and beyond. I've grown to understand how it felt for the Old Guard of the 1990s as new blood poured across websites until the "grates scabbed over."

I've also improved immensely as a writer. Back in 2011 I was a young lady with a lot of baggage that I relieved through sci-fi/fantasy books, manga, and visual novels. When that failed, I funneled the fluids into fanfiction. Back then I didn't have a computer of my own, I used my public library, the library that would become a big part of my career working in information-communication technologies. AO3 is not the first site I've posted fanfiction on and it won't be the final one. We live in uncanny and intrusive times that only seem to creep outwards, sullying intellectualism high and low. I'm optimistic that AO3 will be a part of history but I am always putting my time and effort towards preserving literature (digitally and otherwise) against the sands of society.

Art is not just a human activity, it's arguably the human activity. The virtue of artfulness exists outside of the utilitarian viscera that defines humans at our lowest. Storytelling is the oldest profession after midwifery; fiction is the first and final educational, inspirational, and philosophical tool we will ever use. I'm biased because of how much I love libraries, schools, and museums. I've poured immense time and effort to call myself their Friend. The Archive of Our Own stands as a contemporary example of what people can accomplish with a distilled commitment to art as a humanity. I won't spend too much time waxing about the importance of literary culture. Fiction is part of the tapestry of my mind and the bedrock of my heart.

I'll answer some questions that might naturally come up:

1. What was your first fanfic site? - Back then, Roblox had forums that included a board for roleplay. I'd been writing fanfiction the pre-internet way in journals for 6 years beforehand but that was my first website where I posted fanfic in a bit of a looser sense of the term. I hosted CYOA and MUSH threads, got into PBP games, and wrote small amounts of scenework as specific prompts caught my eye.

2. What was your first online fandom? - Animorphs and the Warrior Cats series should be considered my first online fandoms. By 2011 I had a laundry list of authors like Gen Urobuchi, Anne Rice, Gene Wolfe, H.P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, etc. that I was deeply attached to, but I had limited connection to their online communities back then.

3. What fandoms/tags are you active in now? - It's a very long list so far even just going by my post consistent tags. I make a point of using fics I love as launch boards for expanding my horizons. I'll likely still be posting World of Darkness, Arthuriana, Yog-Sothothery, Wildbow serial, Gothic horror, and Mahou Shoujo fics 15 years from now.

4. What advice do you have for newcomers to fanfiction? - "Read; reread and write; rewrite.", "Don't take criticism from people who don't have some clear interest in improving your work.", "Embrace what separates you from the herd while understanding all fiction is in dialogue with previous/present media.", "Editing is more time/energy consuming than drafting so allow yourself more resources there", and "Be kind to readers, but especially to writers."

5. What Links will you provide this Zelda? - I probably won't ever release that information on Reddit again. The last time I did, things got greasy. My AO3 has a similar naming scheme to Blade of Boniface. I've also probably given enough details that someone ardent enough about finding at least my Dreamwidth will succeed. I'm not even sure how in-depth I want to answer further questions.

As a longtime GM whose tastes in systems and settings frequently and fervently dips into both narratives, this is something that I've seen people get confused when recommending/criticizing certain games. It's mainly an issue of semantics especially since people draw analogies between TTRPGs and non-game media as a shorthand for the tone, themes, and complications of their favorite/least favorite games. It's also an issue of how little exclusivity there is in genre labels; that's especially true for mystery/thriller fiction. Just for the sake of defining terms:

• Mystery fiction - Narratives underlying an unanswered, dramatic question. Characters apply mental and practical skills in order to solve the question in convincing interactions (whether conflicting or coinciding) with their surroundings.

• Thriller fiction - Narratives underlying suspenseful and tense problem(s). Characters navigate situation(s) where they are at a stark disadvantage and the consequences of failure are stark, even revolting.

This isn't to provide a universal or precise definition but just a short, concise, and open starting point for outlining differences. Again, there is a lot of overlap between these two categories across the history of storytelling. It's relatively rare for a TTRPG to be exclusively one of these with absolutely none of the other but there are definitely systems suited for the expectations of one and not quite as much the other. This gets even dicier in terms of subtypes of mysteries/thrillers and what players might expect from their own consumption of some species over others.

• Whodunnit - Mystery that's a puzzle the characters gradually unravel, the readers also follow that process in some meaningful way, and there are metafictional laws upheld by the author(s).

• Conspiracy Dive - Thriller where a relatively unremarkable event is revealed to be part of an escalated plot on the part of a major institution, government, and/or secret society.

• Occult Detective - Mystery that's centered around mundane questions being progressively answered by the involvement of paranormal entities, tools, and/or locations with other examples toying with paranormal events being resolved through mundane methods.

• Spy Story - Thriller where characters performing operations on behalf/against intelligence agencies are described (most frequently some kind of espionage) with fictionalization being a necessity from an entertainment/legal perspective.

Again, these are just loose examples that just reaffirm how arbitrary these labels remain. I could easily list "occult spy thrillers" or "postmodern Whodunnits." Delta Green comes to mind as a game which freely blurs conventions in such a way that newcomers could have their hearts set on one aspect at the sacrifice of other players' expectations. It's a game where you're members of real-world governmental organizations facing well-known fictional horrors. It both benefits a lot from not knowing Yog-Sothothery but having a mature understanding of Weird Tales as a distinct kind of story.

The World of Darkness, Built with Brindlewood, and Dogs in the Vineyard are similar in terms of people talking past each other. My opinion isn't that we need to categorize them but rather people should actually discuss them with their actual table to come to their own preferences and how systems/settings can be modulated to bring-forth certain aspects over others. I'm certain people will bring up their own experiences in this thread. I welcome people taking the time to attenuate and relate to different games, embracing the largely intersubjective and DIY nature of our medium.

Let me know your thoughts and feelings.