Zeal's World

a place to self-promote

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Chi no Wadachi / Mabataki no Oto

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Reading Discussion: The Matter of Seggri

Hello! This month, my Discord server is going to be reading "The Matter of Seggri." You can use this as an opportunity to read it and share your thoughts via text, and there will also be a live discussion the last week of the month.

This is one of my favorite Le Guin short stories, and that's a lot coming from me as a Le Guin obsessive who's read nearly all her published fiction. "The Matter of Seggri" is a Hainish story from The Birthday of the World collection. It plays out as a series of writings on a strange planet called Seggri. In it, Le Guin handles gender in some of the most interesting ways I've ever seen. I already have ideas on how I'm going to lead the discussion, and I'd love your contributions!

Join the Plato's Cave Dwellers server to take part. Organizing for the event will take place in the Platonic Academy channel, where you can also feel free to share non-spoilery reactions as you read. If you'd like to discuss any other Le Guin works, we have a Literature/Books channel as well. Again I've read all Le Guin's novels and nearly all her short stories, so I am down to talk about her life and career any time.

Hope to see you there!

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reading discussion on the first four chapters of RD Laing's The Politics of Experience

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Vinland Saga: Didactic Storytelling Done Right

Vinland Saga is one of my favorite manga of all time.

This piece has been in the making a long time. I'd be interested to see whether or not people agree with my assessment, since "didactic" is a word with negative connotations.

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some of my best work if I do say so myself

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The Existential Horror of Chi no Wadachi

The manga Chi no Wadachi, variously translated Blood on the Tracks and A Trail of Blood, made quite the sensation on first release.

I just finished my piece on Chi no Wadachi! I put a lot of effort into this one because I love the story so much. I definitely don't discuss all possible angles in this post, but I hope I've provided a basis for further analysis. Enjoy!

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Three Ways of Reading Xenogenesis

Science fiction is a genre with unlimited potential, but very few works live up to its promise as well as Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis. In t

Hey there! In this piece, I describe three different ways of looking at Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series, which I hope will provide new directors for analysis. Enjoy!

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Intro to the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K.

Hey guys, I wrote a long post which provides an introduction to all of Ursula K. Le Guin's fiction! It should be helpful for anyone who would like to get into her work, complete newbies and casual fans alike. I avoided spoilers as much as possible while going into enough detail to give an idea of the premise and appeal of each book, including all of her published novels and short story collections. Enjoy!

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The Wire, We Own This City, and the Evolution of Racial Politics in America

The Wire (2002-2008) and We Own This City (2022) are both David Simon shows set in Baltimore which focus on the institution of policing.

Here's a piece I wrote comparing The Wire and We Own This City and how they reveal the evolution of race relations in Amerca

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"When I say jump, you say how high"

Or, the logic of institutional abuse

In this piece, I provide a series of vignettes from my life, all of which relate to the logic of institutional abuse. For years, I've tried to write about my experience in a mental hospital, but I kept getting bogged down in details. This approach helped me to describe the factors which led me to end up in the hospital, as well as capture the pervasive oppression that the powerless face when under the sway of institutions.

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Is Christian Tragedy Possible?

As everyone knows, there was no Christian tragedy, strictly speaking, because the content of Christian values—for it is a question of what v

I don't even know how to describe this one.

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The Mystery of Billy Bat

Art, History, and Urasawa

An essay on Urasawa's Billy Bat with a focus on its themes of creative expression and human history

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Everybody Knows? An Analysis of Exotica (1994)

If you look up Exotica (1994) in a search engine, you’ll likely come across images of a girl in a school uniform doing a strip tease.

Piece I wrote on Atom Egoyan's Exotica

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Banana Fish: A Unique Shoujo Manga

Banana Fish is a very interesting example of a shoujo manga.

A piece I wrote examining how Banana Fish's politics and central relationship make it unique among shoujo manga.

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Angel's Egg

Faith and Doubt in a Fossilized World

I revamped an old, short essay of mine on Angel's Egg, focused on how the film allegorizes the loss of faith.

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A Sontagian Reading of The Lord of the Rings

In this post, I want to articulate Susan Sontag’s arguments regarding art, morality, and politics in her essay “On Style.” In order to do so

I wrote a piece of criticism which attempts to use Susan Sontag's "On Style" to describe the political implications of The Lord of the Rings.