A few days ago, I received mail from my job informing me that I was permanently laid off and unable to be part of their relocation program which means that I was effectively fired. The official day of the firing was on April 6th, 2020, which is noticeable because this is the day that so many high-profit businesses will be getting free money from the government. It seems that instead of the $500 billion of free government money preventing businesses from laying people off, businesses have pocketed the taxpayer money and laid people off anyway in the US. That’s what happens when you elect a moron as your country’s leader.
That being said, I am not distraught. I suspected something like this would happen eventually and it is happening to millions of others throughout the US. I’ll just have to pick-up the pieces whenever the Coronavirus-19 Pandemic is effectively settled. Millions of others are suffering the same circumstances and half of them probably eagerly elected the moron in charge of the country who is clearly unfit to keep it together during a time of crisis. All the apparent gains from the stock market since the 2008-09 crash have been wiped out with the Federal Reserve pumping taxpayer monies to companies to keep them afloat so that investors can sell the overpriced stocks while US taxpayers are left footing the bill for what was bad investor decision-making instead of allowing the so-called capitalist economy to naturally cause them to lose fortunes due to the upheaval in the stock market from the Coronavirus-19 pandemic.
This current crisis is an opportune time for people. Instead of being perpetually depressed and horrified with images of the end of the world floating in people’s minds, I think it is more important to look at what you can accomplish at this moment in time. There are many unspoken and unrealized advantages to this current crisis. Lower stock prices means famous companies who suffered from the colossal losses these past couple of months are sure to bounce back once the pandemic is over; this’ll be after however many more bodies pile-up because of the incompetence of the current Presidential administration in power which argued there was nothing to worry about regarding the Coronavirus-19 until it was too late to stop an outbreak. If gambling on the stock market doesn’t interest people, they could focus on writing any type book that they’ve never had time to do before. I’m working on a Fantasy Novel at the moment, it’ll probably be very short and not very good, but why not spend time doing something productive? Other than that, there’s the backlog of movies, television shows, video games, anime, and books that people increasingly never had time for that we have time to take part in now instead of worrying incessantly about the Coronavirus-19 pandemic which we have no control over.
There’s so much opportunity to do something productive, so don’t waste time worrying on factors you can’t control and miss out the goldmine of free time that’s right in front of you.
hey i wanted to know your thoughts on this post https://eirikrjs.tumblr.com/post/133624987272/sorry-for-being-rude-but-the-criticism-about because you cited it as a bad post
I’m confused by your message. What did you want to know regarding my views about it?
oh sorry i’ll clarify. in your smt discussion w beadman post you linked the post as maybe an example of “nonsensical travesty that has become Eirikrjs blog” so i was wondering what about that post specifically was bad
Everything, really. I’ll just list them down in numerical fashion:
First: The most obvious problem that people, not just myself, have picked up on is that he’s calling Atlus perverts for making those designs while very awkwardly zooming in on them in the most inappropriate and awkward manner to make his point. He shows no self-awareness about this creepy and self-contradictory behavior. Now, they’re fiction so I’m not against his freedom of expression to do that, but he’s trying to argue the content is objectionable in the most bizarre manner that makes his behavior even more objectionable than the content itself. Basically, it comes off as creepy to people.
Second: He is actually the one sexualizing those characters, not Atlus. If Atlus had made panty shots, ass shots, or breast shots like Ecchi or Hentai anime then Eirikjrs would have had a point. Yet, we are not talking about that kind of content. All Atlus did was have different styles of dresses where the thighs were shown. That’s not sexualizing the characters, if these were young boys and their thighs were shown (such as via wearing shorts from some type of sports get-up) then this wouldn’t be considered sexualizing them. The camera doesn’t zoom in or show any of the characters from some sexualized camera angle at any point in both games. They’re just futuristic/medieval/modern versions of dress styles commonly used for each respective style.
Finally: Eirikjrs is the one being sexist and projecting his sexism onto Atlus’s artwork. His spurious accusations are driven from the belief that depicting women having clothing that shows their thighs is somehow morally wrong. This is a deeply conservative and misogynistic view of shaming women due to what feminists call “The Male Gaze” and the demand to cover them up is simply the support for traditional religious values that are antagonistic towards female liberation and self-expression. He’s projecting his own misogynistic views onto Atlus Japan as an easy target by constantly referring to them as ultra-nationalists . . . simply because they’re Japanese people. He even tries to portray the side quest that Atlus added about the Japanese nationalist who caused havoc and suffering as somehow a pro-nationalist position which made no sense.
To be blunt, and apologies if this sounds callous, I’ve just stopped reading his content because it seems to me that Eirikjrs is perpetuating his own racism against Japanese people and his own sexism against women as the contentions of a Social Justice underdog who is vilifying people that don’t have any knowledge of what he’s doing and can’t defend themselves. When I call him out on this or when Beadman points out that what Eirikjrs is doing makes no logical sense, Eirikjrs would just threaten to delete comments and demand people not continue talking on his blog when they object to his material. The only people reading his content seem to be people who uncritically agree with him.
oh ok, thanks for the info and quick reply. i was only familiar with eiri through his smt art book scans and i don’t really read his blogposts since im not knowledgeable on religion. his post has some merit but i wanna focus more on my own thoughts, actually. ill respond to your points as they are numbered
1. “The most obvious problem that people, not just myself, have picked up on is that he’s calling Atlus perverts for making those designs while very awkwardly zooming in on them in the most inappropriate and awkward manner to make his point…” yeah, the zooms weren’t needed since you can plainly see the girls have their thighs out. i think this was done to prove a point, but it is clumsy if anything.
2. “He is actually the one sexualizing those characters, not Atlus. If Atlus had made panty shots, ass shots, or breast shots like Ecchi or Hentai anime then Eirikjrs would have had a point. Yet, we are not talking about that kind of content. All Atlus did was have different styles of dresses where the thighs were shown.” ass or breast shots, iirc, don’t happen with human protagonists. maybe to demons at times. i agree with you on that. that aside, and this doesn’t have anything to do with eiri, the consistent skimpy outfits do indicate sexualization. these women often fight so you’d expect them to be as well-armored as the male protagonists, but they aren’t. yes, they often have weapons, but i would never want to get into a fight in a minidress. i have an smt blog and i’ve gotten a few asks about nozomi specifically since her original smt iv outfit was a full red leather biker-esque armor that was turned into short shorts and a little jacket with a plunging neckline. the transition from the more practical “battle-ready” outfit to her new one is motivated by a preference for female characters to show more skin.
outfits aside, sexualization in apocalypse (i use this game as an example since its the freshest in my memory but im sorry if i get details wrong since i havent played for a while) is also found in the plot, specifically scenes with toki. ex: awkward 15 yr-old meaning when she is overcome by the gas in zouchouten’s temple, toki calling nanashi “master” even when she isn’t being possessed, that vaguely sexual scene in the cosmic egg, etc. not to mention the Very bad mephisto dlc. though it isn’t “canon,” its part of the game and its gratuitously sexual.
3. “His spurious accusations are driven from the belief that depicting women having clothing that shows their thighs is somehow morally wrong. This is a deeply conservative and misogynistic view of shaming women due to what feminists call “The Male Gaze” and the demand to cover them up is simply the support for traditional religious values that are antagonistic towards female liberation and self-expression.” i don’t think he suggests that, but I care less about what he has to say and more about the subject of the post. as a feminist and a woman myself i find the characters are constructed through the male gaze. in this case, the male gaze demands that the smt girls wear revealing/impractical clothing.
as an atheist, i agree it would be wrong to say that they should be covered up out of religious compulsion. it is also just as misogynistic to dis-empower your female characters impractical or gratuitously sexual outfits that don’t correspond to their setting. it makes no sense to have their legs/thighs and/or chest exposed in an apocalyptic or otherwise violent wartime setting. i’m sorry for getting a little repetitive, so ill wrap up. empowering the characters with the cool, proper armor that is often given to the male protagonists would be more “liberating.” demons such as lilim and succubus wearing revealing clothing complements their lore, but the same doesn’t apply to the smt girls.
4. i haven’t read enough of his material to agree or disagree with you and it doesn’t seem to be related to atlus and sexism, so i’d have to look into that myself if i feel curious.
sorry for such a long reply haha, but thanks again for clarifying. im super interested in feminism in smt so thanks for your input
Well, I would disagree with them being gratuitously sexualized. Even if they were sexualized, it wasn’t in any gratuitous fashion typical of Anime and Western cartoons. The beach DLC in particular had both men and women wearing beach outfits showing skin, so if both genders are being sexualized, then why is that a problem? The Target audience in Japan for Apocalypse is 14-15 according to its Japanese rating system, which coincides with the age of most of the characters. The only reason most of these SMT games have a higher rating in the West is due to the religious criticism in the games.
Regarding the armor, while I do think you have a solid point with Nozomi. Asahi’s outfit isn’t atypical of any denizen of Tokyo even if its not armor. Isabeau’s outfit wasn’t atypical of adult women in her setting. Even if we grant that Nozomi and Isabeau were sexualized, it wasn’t gratuitous. As a point of comparison, Rikku of FFX who is 15 years old according to the game has scenes where the camera focuses on her ass when she’s in scuba diving gear. That can credibly be argued to be gratuitous, but simply having designs that show thighs doesn’t seem to be gratuitous even if we grant that there was a sexual undertone which barely seems to be there outside of a Beach DLC and the Beach DLC itself sexualizes the male characters too.
On your point about Toki, that seems to be a deliberate narrative decision for the themes of Apocalypse. Toki’s love is purposefully depicted as disturbing, creepy, and upsetting (it’s made obvious in the Cosmic Egg dungeon with the body and psychological horror of the scene you mentioned), I’d say it had to do with the themes of love as betrayal and – without going into excessive detail – Atlus’s criticism of Islam since the entire latter-half of Apocalpyse is a subversion of Islam’s Judgment Day Prophecy.