Thoughts about things I like

I tend to write about the things I like whilst trying to find the philosophy in them.

[toshimon-97]

The hidden inventory arc of jjk really stuck with me in quite a lovely way.

In particular the dialogue between Gojo and Geto with their little jabs at eachother and the menial bullshit they're nattering about before the more tense and dramatic moments kick in (one example that sticks out to me is the short line about Gojo changing his home screen on his phone to that celebrity girl he finds hot). It just captures a certain feeling so well, or maybe it just speaks to my nostalgia in a way I want to intellectualise.

It just reminds me very strongly of being sixteen and spending the whole summer with my best friend just being outside doing nothing in particular, talking about nothing in particular. One bit of imagery that really captures it for me is that one shot of them walking whilst drinking the cans of coke, it's just so evocative of those feelings and those times, in large part due to the mundanity of it.

It's something I found really endearing, and maybe even a little impressive as this is coming from a show that I really don't watch for its writing.

[toshimon-97]

Itachi's epistemology (and why I think it's such a clever choice)

During the buildup to the fight between the Uchiha brothers, Itachi says something which stuck with me, probably because I study philosophy and it was overtly philosophical but that's neither here nor there.

Itachi's words are as follows: "Each of us lives, dependent and bound by our individual knowledge and our awareness...All that, is what we call reality...However, both knowledge and awareness are equivocal..Ones reality might be another's illusion, we all live inside our own fantasies."

I just think this is such a fantastic character choice because it's using Itachi's view on perception, and thus knowledge in order to tell us about his character.

Given that he thinks perception is a good source of knowledge we can roughly infer that he is some sort of empiricist, we are able to gain knowledge about the world by experiencing it using the five senses is one way of wording such a view.

Another implication of this quote is that we can ONLY gain any worthwhile knowledge from these experiences, and this all culminates in an understanding of the universe which is then called reality.

Now the thing that really interests me is that he seems to be some sort of anti-realist about truth, talking about how each individual has their own reality constructed from their individual experiences.

This is such a clever choice for his character because Itachi's whole gimmick is that he's a master of illusion and genjutsu, and especially with his signature technique Tsukuyomi, which does the work of constructing the sense data which constructs reality, and so, sceptic that he is, he understands fully that it is entirely possible that he too is under a similar technique and is just none the wiser (a glaringly obvious Descartes reference if there ever was one). I think this is such a lovely bit of characterisation because of course such a talented illusionist would take such a radically sceptical view of things, and how he would come to distrust his own senses and reality as he toys with the reality of others through his technique.

[toshimon-97]

Few things more painful than being just absolutely awful at a hobby you really like. Like yes I've been at it for years consistently. No I will never improve. Yes we exist.

[toshimon-97]

For a show that's so OTT and melodramatic for much of its runtime, I think one thing that's weirdly grounded and realistic (though I mean this as a positive) about Naruto is his relationship with Sasuke. Of course there's the really dramatic fight scenes and whatnot that you need to have in a successful battle shonen but the actual narrative beats of the relationship in the abstract resonate in a very real way with the experience of having to live as a straight man and being in love with another man who has to be straight due to societal expectation or whatever else it might be. I might do a longer post about this one day and really dig into just how gay those boys are.

[toshimon-97]

Gerson and a different type of freedom.

Much like the knight who I wrote about in the previous post, Gerson breaks the formula set up by Jevil and Spampton by not being driven mad by the shadow crystals, meaning there is another view on freedom to discuss. I think there are three key components to this: the decision to ignore the shadow crystal, hope, and justice. This all culminates in a rejection of nihilism.

Gerson takes a very flippant attitude to the shadow crystal, completely disregarding it. This in a symbolic sense is Gerson taking a very "ignorance is bliss" approach to the whole shadow crystal thing because (as I've mentioned in earlier posts) the implication with the shadow crystals is that they grant some sort of knowledge which sends the holder into a nihilistic spiral which gives them the view on freedom we've already seen before. Although Gerson is now less knowledgeable, he's not being corralled into a specific view, granting him the freedom to develop a worldview not dominated by this nihilistic view on freedom.

This contrast makes me think about the idea that if all you think about is freedom and becoming free, you're gonna be less likely to achieve the freedom you want, on account of the pursuit of this ideal confining you a single set of actions and thoughts in the form of dogma.

After this, Gerson is then able to use hope as his guiding light (there is a motif in the dialogue of hope being associated with light) which leads him to the ideal of justice.

The idea of justice being the key to freedom strikes me as a little bit Kantian. Kant writes about how we are all fundamentally free and respecting the freedom of others (which is treating people justly) is how we preserve our own freedom, because the idea is if we don't encroach on anyone else and act morally, we can do whatever we want.

So in this move of ignoring the shadow crystal Gerson allows himself to have hope, standing in stark contrast to the nihilism and pessimism we've seen prior to this and gives him the ideal of justice which is what leads him to freedom, as he isn't obsessing over the pursuit of a thing.

[toshimon-97]

How does the roaring knight embody freedom?

The roaring knight serves as the beginning of a pattern carried on by chapter four of the secret bosses not following the formula set up by being hidden characters that are driven mad (presumably by the shadow crystals and their effects). First of all, you must meet the knight. They show up at the end of chapter three regardless of what route you take during the course of the chapter. Second of all, unlike the two previous secret bosses, the knight's boss theme does not include the freedom motif, nor is there any dialogue to draw on to infer any particular view on freedom.

Of course I acknowledge the knight is an incomplete character and we are yet to see much of their important character moments, but I find it fun to try and draw these links based on what we have.

The main thing that caught my eye is that when you beat the knight fight, they drop a shadow crystal which is chipped from their sword, which implies that whoever the knight is (which is beyond the scope of this post) has access to the shadow crystals and is thus more likely to be the one, or connected to the one, distributing the shadow crystals to the other secret bosses (though based on chapter 4 I am led to believe the knight is personally giving out shadow crystals to the bosses).

With what we have right now, we can only really say how the knight embodies freedom, rather than connecting it to some philosophy, as we haven't seen anything but them aura farming and having no feats outside of cutscenes.

From this I think the knight embodies freedom through leadership. If they are the one handing out shadow crystals (and the knowledge implied to be found in the possession of shadow crystals) they have control over the proliferation of this nihilism seen in the other secret bosses, and the more they proliferate these ideas the less opposition they will face in carrying out whatever mysterious bollocks it is they truly want. But I suppose that's all I can say with basically one boss fight to work with while still cramming it into this freedom theme

[toshimon-97]

Spamton and his fight for freedom

This is somewhat of a follow up to my previous post where I explored Jevil and his philosophy of freedom, and so now I want to talk about the [[number 1 rated salesman 1997]] himself. I think there is a nice contrast to jevil in how he thinks of freedom and how that manifests in his story in chapter 2. The nice thing about spamton is that there is a bit more to sink my teeth into because he plays a slightly larger role than jevil in his respective chapter.

The main contrast I noticed between spamton and jevil is that where jevil sees freedom as something internal (that can be achieved through a shift in your mindset) spamton appears to consider freedom as something of an external force, evidenced by his frequent references to power. This means where jevil can be think of as someone who has achieved freedom, spamton is in a battle to become more free through his pursuit of power.

One thing I've never seen mentioned though is how this links to his characterisation as a salesman. If freedom is what he seeks, and power brings you freedom, then of course spamton would want to become filthy rich by being a salesman as in becoming filthy rich you are, whether you like it or not, exploiting others (or in other words exerting your power over others). When this fails after the disappearance of the voice on the other end of the phone he then seeks a more brute force approach to freedom leading him to his NEO form. When this form is achieved the puppet motif gets really on the nose with spamton literally hanging from strings. The interesting thing is that by cutting these strings spamton falls lifeless and defeated. To me, this seems to imply that freedom for spamton (or perhaps anyone given deltarune's themes) as he is reliant on these strings for his continued ability to act. Perhaps this could mean that without these things that hold us down and technically fetter us (in spamton's case his love of money and pursuit of power) are necessary for pushing forward in life and constructing an identity as without them we are nothing, and are effectively lifeless.

Another interesting thing is his reference to heaven. Spamton talks about getting big and seeing above heaven, almost turning himself into a deity due to his belief in the absolute nature of power. Not existing within paradise, but above it, in a way comparing himself to God. This is similar to Jevil's individualistic freedom I discussed in the previous post. If Spamton does become powerful enough to be considered a God of sorts, only he can be truly free as in order to maintain his freedom he would have to exert his power over others in order to ensure that no one becomes powerful enough to violate his ability to choose (and therefore undermine his freedom).

I've enjoyed writing these two little analyses of freedom in deltarune, freedom is a philosophical topic I am unhealthily interested in and applying it to works of fiction I enjoy and using that as a jumping off point to stimulate discussion about interesting topics is something I find really fun and really useful for getting to grips with different interpretations of a certain concept or idea

[toshimon-97]

Jevil was right about freedom.

Jevil is my favourite deltarune character by FAR. In his insanely brief appearance he provided one of the most entertaining parts of deltarune's story thus far and I fell in love with him throughout my time completing his quest and beating his boss fight.

What with this being deltarune and one of its main narrative themes being freedom (or lack thereof) Jevil wastes no time getting to yapping on about the concept and I just find his outlook to be fascinating (and right)

Granted he MAY be a mad man ranting and raving from the walls of his prison and unable to leave without interference from the fun gang™ but his mind is far more liberated than the rest of the darkners. If you'll indulge my over analysis it reminds me of certain philosophies that I'm aware of (namely some stoic and Buddhist beliefs I'm aware of and the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Stirner). He has totally decoupled himself from the goings on of the external kingdom where everyone is so caught up in the politics and prophecy and drama of everything going on, shifted his perspective with the help of whatever mind breaking eldritch knowledge he received and now in his own world he is completely free. In embracing chaos and rejecting the order and stability provided by falling in line with the ideas of the rest of the kingdom he has found freedom, a unique and individual freedom, which links to him talking about how lonely he is, due to the fact that his freedom is individualistic and no one else has reached the same conclusions as he has

I for one think this is the correct view of freedom, that it is an internal process that you have to undergo by letting go of ideas that were thrust upon you and you were forced to accept without thinking about why those ideas are there. I enjoyed writing this I will probably do one for the other freedom boy (spampton) in the coming days

Ps: I kept the philosophy fairly brief for the sake of time but I'm more than willing to elaborate on anything if anyone would like me to :p

[toshimon-97]

I just finished my first cyberpunk play through

Thoroughly enjoyed my time with this game. I've had it since release where I played it for about three hours and then put it down because until a couple of weeks ago (probably due to a combination of hearing about the game's poor reception on release and my general dislike for rpgs at the time). This time round though the game really sucked me in. I felt really engaged in the setting and the characters, and I was very impressed by what I feel is a realistic depiction of what a hypercapitalistic society would look like if we had that sort of technology (disregarding the satire that the game slips in whenever it can). I really enjoyed V's dynamics with both Jackie and Johnny, two of my favourite characters for very different reasons as you might imagine. I found myself more easily to project myself onto V and enjoy the rp of the rpg despite them not being a total blank slate (also let me just comment on how amazing V's male voice actor is I really love his accent it's so sexy) which kept me engaged in dialogue exchanges because I was able to really think about what I would do in the situations V was in. As a result I was really pleased with the outcomes and endings I got because they were tangibly related to decisions I made. So yeah good game might buy phantom liberty and continue the budding obsession