6jan2024

Today's Epiphany, the 12th Day of Christmas, and I really wanted something upbeat and special, something that's celebratory to get the bad taste of the Jan 6 insurrection out of my mind...and as it happens, I think I found it, this article about researchers working with people who have dementia to create interactive robots for them.

Dementia is scary to me, more so even than cancer: I watched my inlaws, my father-in-law in particular, suffer from this condition, and his life, if I had to characterize it, was profoundly dull.

Grey, the way depression is grey.

There's been a certain level of (US) mockery heaped upon (Japanese) robots designed to help the ill and old, but I like this take better. One observation the author makes that struck me is that Japanese robots tend to be friendly (such as Astro Boy) whereas Western ones are combative (the Terminator). I kind of wonder whether this comes out of the fact that Japanese culture (however attenuated by modern technology) sees itself as a part of a harmonious whole with nature—with creation—whereas Westerners in general (& Christians in particular) think of nature as subservient, something to be dominated—a more combative attitude that then extends to our own “creations”, humaniform robots, which because of our psychology, live in a half-world between people and tools.

Nevertheless, creating a talking companion, or even an interactive tool that vibrates or changes colour in response to tactile cues, that is “nice” rather than creepy is a tremendously difficult task; and the inputs of patients? clients? those with dementia are absolutely critical, and I very much like this collaborative approach.

The other thing about the article is that it celebrates the humanity of people suffering this condition, finding joy and indeed some level of hope for their lives, which—to be honest—are mostly written off at this point.

So I s'pose it's appropriate that after a number of wrappings with a severely limited palette, today's—the 12th's—is bursting with colour.

5jan2024

Welcome to the penultimate day of my 12 days of giftwrapping:)

So, I (re?)watched the 2012 Wolf Children/おおかみこどもの雨と雪 (literally, Wolf Children: Rain and Snow) this morning (very early this morning, like 2–4am—insomnia sucks), a Studio Chizu production; they also did the 2018 Mirai (Future, or The Girl who leapt through Time), which I wasn't crazy about, and the 2021 Belle, which was their re-imagining of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, which I did like; though I'd say, out of all three films, the earliest was the most successful, at least for me.

As I was drifting off on the afternoon nap necessitated by the earlier wakefulness (I really think my dry January is gonna be sans coffee...) it occurred to me that there are some strong parallels between Wolf Children and Saga, both of which are splendid stories featuring half-breed kids who do not at all fit in.

Wolf Children tells the story of a human woman's effort to rear her half-(benign were)-wolf children in a Japan where wolves have been hunted to extinction and are “the bad guys in stories”; Saga is Brian K. Vaugn and Fiona Staples’ ongoing and brilliant comic about a child born to a magical horned human father, and technology-using winged mother, whose respective peoples are locked into endless combat; both sets of governments are attempting to hunt down parents and child to destroy what they represent, rapprochement—peace— between their cultures.

One obvious reason both these narratives appeal is that... both moms, in particular, go to a lot of effort to get their children to hide their father's heritage from their own (i.e. the mom's —Japan's human and the ‘wings’ respective cultures; and the daughters, experiencing the inability to be their true selves, find that limitation very constraining.) For parents or children who do not fit in, because they're trans, because they're autistic, because they've been adopted out of their birth culture, because they're first generation immigrants—oh, a whole lot of reasons, this is a tale that's gonna resonate.

But. As much as parents and children struggle to bridge the gap, even if it's just a generational one, there's also gonna be misunderstandings. And that can be hard, and very painful.

(Major spoilers for both to follow.)

There were some really unhappy commenters on Crunchyroll for Wolf Children, who hated that the wolf dad died very early on in the story (and worse, that his body was—literally—thrown away like garbage); likewise, ram-horned Marko, dies roughly halfway through the daughter Hazel's childhood; Hana, the wolf-children's mom, successfully bears a daughter and a son, named Yuki (Snow) and Ame (Rain) for the weather of their births; Hazel's mom Alana also become pregnant with her little brother hoped-to-be, but miscarries; the Robot Prince's son Squire becomes her de-facto brother instead.

Hazel and Yuki are both decisive, outgoing girls who must conceal their heritage, and are the narrators who relate their parents’, in particular, their moms’, stories.

Ame and Squire, the two boys, also share some similarities, most notably that they speak little and don't fit in very well. (Squire, though adopted by Alana & Hazel, loses both of his parents, so he in effect has Alana as a mom, as his biological mother is assassinated shortly after his birth, and loses his dad much as Hazel lost hers and at roughly the same point in his life—there is a lot of revenge based slaughter in Saga.)

We don't know how Squire's story will turn out, yet; but in the case of Ame, what the commenters disliked most were his seemingly cold-hearted choices: to become a (mostly) inscrutable wolf. However, the very structure of the story demanded that path. This becomes ever more clear when you look at the way both narratives are put together.

For example, both sets of kids have very realistic—and imperfect—moms: Alana undergoes a period of drug addiction, for example—but struggle to do right by their children: indeed rearing their kids to adulthood in the face of life-threatening discrimination becomes these women's over-riding life goal.

As the stories are at their core about families and rearing children, another parallel is that the parents have an older generation's help—Marko's parents, though initially less than thrilled by his choice of partner, commit (unto death in the grandfather's case, and prison in the grandmother's) to helping rear Hazel; in a similar way, the old man who growls at Hana's smiling and laughing when she moves to a remote, mountainous village (where she hopes she can rear her shapeshifting wolf children without having to deal with nosy neighbors and CPS wondering why she hasn't vaccinated her children) not only teaches her the basics of growing food, but leans on the entire village to help her, once he's convinced she'll stick it out.

If there are a lot of similarities in the way these two stories play out, it's because they're classic, romeo-and-juliet type narratives. Which is why it's basically inevitable that if Yuki chooses the human world, her little brother Ame will go the way of the wolf: this is because the story is about a mom supporting her children, whatever they choose.

As an individual leaning into his wolf side, Ame is not especially demonstrative or verbally communicative: he has no words for the fox who teaching him the ways of nature except ‘sensei’ —teacher. When his sister berates him for choosing to follow his canine rather than human heritage, he fights her the way two dogs (or wolves) fight, biting and snarling and chasing, rather than the words she uses. When he is ready to leave home at an adult age for a wolf (10 years), his (human) mother is understandably upset, because that's really young to let go of a human child: instead of tearfully telling her goodbye or even nuzzling her, he instead leaps up a difficult mountain path, howling at the summit to demonstrate to her that he appreciates her efforts in raising him (and my thanks to a CR commenter who provided this insight; also to another who read the manga to let us anime-only folks know that he does visit, bringing her gifts of food).

A lot (but not all!) of commenters found Ame's behaviour immature and inexcusable, instead of mature and rational, because they were judging him on human rather than wolf terms.

That Yuki and Ame would choose different paths was inevitable, given the story set up: the father died young because ultimately, the narrative is about the struggles of a human woman dedicating 13 years of her life to rearing her half-wolf children with only the vaguest idea how to succeed (in that sense, a metaphor for every parent ever, honestly, but especially one for parents whose kids are very different than them); and, just as those children's personalities are completely different from birth, so would their life choices be later on and their mom needed to accept this—the story was set up so that the hardest thing this woman has to do is let her child go forever, after putting her all into her kids, and what could be harder than letting a kid go into a way of life utterly alien to you?

It's not just trans people, I believe, who find these narratives engaging; I suspect, given Ame (and Squire's) cryptic communicative styles, folks on spectrum identify with the characters too. The love and acceptance—if imperfect understanding—these children receive is why these stories are so compelling, and in some ways, so similar: because love is love.

Er, and here we are, with a giftwrap I loved.

4jan2024

Well, today's entry is being posted a day late:)

Well, I did spend a fair amount of my time taking down the tree with my bestie, and that was a couple of days early, since I normally like to leave it up till Epiphany; though since there's still an hour or two of work left to do so perhaps I will finish taking the tree down and packing up xmas decors by the 6th (besides chopping the tree apart, on which I spend ridiculous amounts of time, but 25–100mm pieces of fir make great mulch: it's one of those meditative activities to be outdoors that I do around this time of year)

Nevertheless, I can see light at the end of tunnel, and I will finish this series:) And here's day 10.

3jan2024

Hey, welcome to day 9 of my 12 days of xmas giftwrapping:)

Today's evokes an elegant age, when men wore hats with their suits and women dressed up in furs—I'm kind of picturing Lord Peter Wimsy, I guess.

Yesterday's gift happened to be a box of ice-breaker cards, and one was ‘would you rather go back to the past, or into the future?’ Oddly enough, for a bunch of sf nerds, most people picked the past. Much as the unknown terrifies me, I picked the future. For one thing, the past didn't have very good treatments for colon cancer...

Mano Singham, over at FTBlogs, wondered why actors even have to pretend to smoke in period films (such as, say, a remake of Lord Peter—and hey, he's in public domain, but Harriet has another year or two to wait, I think) and one reason that immediately occurred to me is to illustrate—vividly—some of the downsides of the past, such as smoking.

Once I hit puberty, I got constant, painful headaches (thankfully not to the vomit-inducing level of migraines) and it wasn't until I experienced an extended period of unemployment that I was able to determine why: during that time I went to the grocery store and unemployment office^[1] and nowhere else (because I was broke); then, upon getting a job, I went to ...I think? a sf&f con, and walking past the hotel bar the smoke slammed into me like sledgehammer.

Instant headache.

(My dad smoked during my entire childhood, and my mom until I was 8 or so, btw.)

I'd been so constantly exposed to this noxious, carcinogenic poison that it wasn't until I'd moved out and been in a very constrained environment for months that I discovered the trigger. Airplanes used to allow smoking. Restaurants allowed smoking. It was everywhere. Even after there was a law to ban it in one-quarter of seating in restaurants, it still went everywhere. I hated it.

Smoking bans, which had pretty much become a non-issue by the time the f2s were born, were a life-saver for me. That simple rule meant so much. And then there was the EPA, and the reduction of smog, the lead taken out of gasoline...

As for the actors? Why no, I don't think they should have to inhale smoke of any kind—do the fake ciggies (as inert props) and CGI the smoke in after. We have the computational power to model those fancy fluids, now. Cuz I think it's kinda important to model the bad bits of the ‘good old days’, honestly. Cuz I do wonder, would the younger generation, even faced with the horror of climate change, really adapt to life back then? Smoking was only one of the many annoyances of the age, and I'm certainly not anxious to go back...

Oh, and here's day 9.

2jan2024

Hey, finally caught up on my 12 days of gift decoration!

The two decorating jobs featured today both are wrapped in the same (neutral white) paper, photographed in cloudy weather with the same camera, lens (& settings) yet look quite different: our eyes are incredibly sensitive to colour temperature, but the optic nerve and brain also adjust them continuously—stepping outside on a really bright, mid-day light will for a fraction of a second sometimes make everything look weirdly blu-ish before my brain's visual processing cuts in, and of course anyone who's ever bought sunglasses has likely noticed slightly odd colours, even with just the grey, until their ‘eyes adjust’.

Like many artists, I'm very sensitive to the colour of indoor lighting, so this article about the ways that LEDs fail, or at the very least, change fascinated me. At least till I got to the depressing bits, about cheap LEDs screwing up lives of poorer people.

I guess one of my many New Year's resolutions will be to finish reading it. In the meantime, a triplet of colour changing gifts.

1jan2024

Happy Public Domain Day!

Or, if you're living outside the US, Happy New Year:)

The big news on this front is the entry of the first iteration of Mickey Mouse (and to a lesser extent, Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh) into the public domain, something Disney fought by locking up this content for an extra...well, depending on how you count, 40 years.

Basically, my entire “working” life as an artist. It's been a long, long, long struggle, and my thanks go out to all those who have worked to keep our common culture available to all, to re-use, remix, and enjoy.