Tag Archives: xenoblade

xenoblade and what lies beyond the morally grey

i like xenoblade 2 cuz it’s a world where ppl *are* fighting for each other but failing. and how our fragility and mortality kinda guarantee that. (we’re too small and ignorant for it to be otherwise.) and what you do after you realize that.

for the most part, you know who the good guys and bad guys are. not only is that refreshing, but it allows the narrative to deal with harder moral questions (questions that are actually complex, not the typical morally “grey” junk that hobbles so much literature).

the real world is full of wonderful people, miracles, divine intervention, beauty, nature, peace, healing, the gamut. and we’re *still* a mess. and that’d be true even if the intentionally cruel ppl weren’t with us (it’d be less severe tho).

and i think it’s precisely this space where the most healing, the most wise, the most creative, and the most valuable writing occurs.

the space im talking about: the discussions about goodness that can only come *after* we’ve fully committed to doing good, and only with ppl who trust us to *choose* good and whom we trust back.

and trust is so important because we need to handle stuff that hurts us and scares us and terrifies us and we need to be challenged in our beliefs, but for all that we really, really need someone we can trust.

[originally formatted for twitter, so please excuse the choppiness]

xenoblade and les mis and clannad and ssss.gridman

xenoblade 2 & 3, les miserables, clannad, and ssss.gridman are the stories that just made me genuinely and powerfully happier. there’s not a lot of fiction that does that. ive enjoyed a lot of stories. But this is something far deeper than being compelling, truthful, or profound.

and maybe to drive the point home, i have a minor and half a master’s in spanish literature, and i’ve read in a lot of different movements and traditions. i’ve been looking for these stories like my life depends on it lol.

i love truth (as i can distinguish it), i love thought-provoking stuff, i love to be moved. i’ve written trying to figure out the magic, but i hate to write about these texts themselves because i just want ppl to experience them; anything i say points towards that because i cant capture what’s so important myself.

“Truth, it seems to me, is known only to the person who is affected by it; and if he chooses to communicate it to others, he automatically becomes a liar. Whatever is communicated can only be falsehood and falsification; hence it is only falsehoods and falsifications that are communicated … What matters is whether we want to lie or to tell and write the truth, even though it never can be the truth and never is the truth.” (Thomas Bernhard) It’s stuff where i can tell they’re fighting to get the truth through with all they’ve got.

“purify to the eyes of the impure”

“It is one of us women who must speak (now that men have not) of the sacredness of this painful and divine state. If the mission of art is to beautify all, with immense mercy, shall we not purify, to the eyes of the impure, this?” – Gabriela Mistral on pregnancy

she wrote a series of poems after witnessing the harassment of a heavily pregnant woman while traveling. she was criticized for these poems, which spurred her to write this note (of which i can only include the beginning) to defend her work.

Gabriela Mistral herself never had the chance to marry or have children.

I think it’s appropriate to say we’re doing worse at this even than when she wrote. Children and mothers and fathers. It’s what matters. If we cannot do right by them, we have failed beyond recovery.

work is a scam, at least half of ideology is a distraction, all that matters is doing right by families

This is not about Xenoblade 3, but Xenoblade 3 got me thinking about this