On identity projected and otherwise.

 Generic fantasy was the bread and butter of my middle school years obsessed with Neil Gaiman  and war-hammer. Terry Gilliam and Ultima. I read old rune-quest editions my uncle gave me. And bought the legend of Areslan  and other odd fantasy anime.

Final fantasy 7 and 9 were my two favorites I would eventually include tactics and 4. Thought ultimately 7 and 9 lead me down the road of a love of science fantasy.

Phantasy star has always been a obsession but I have yet to see the credits roll (I don’t like endings)

The visual language of Amano and the ideas that shape the more pulpy language of Michael Moorcock are at the core of my aspirations in all of my creative endeavors. 

Zen influencing the opposition of this part of my soul. A cold painful acceptance liberating in its tender expression of submission to the will of the universe.

My personal mandala is made pulp authors and chiptune music.

I don’t know why I am listing all this crap… I know there is no merit in a list… yet I like lists. I like identifying and understanding. Of doing my best to understand these limitation of mine without being as cliche as I could be.

I went through a phase where I did not like generic western fantasy. No longer booting up old Commodore 64 games that were describing microcosms as worlds. I can be excessively sentient-mental with a tempering distance from own perspective being my only saving grace from a deafening laugh at my own limitations.

I obsessed over Japanese pop culture from the 60s and 90s and everything in between. This fascination I think in many ways has comparable relationship to that of the British Invasion music where people sold us our roots as an export. (Rock n’ roll is the pop efficiency of country with the authenticity of blues) Wizardry, ultimat and rogue. Are the foundation of the rpg. And though I love nausica for the alienating perspective and enjoy it for broadening my own limited western perspective. I feel Hayao Miyazaki has a similar relationship western science fiction and fantasy. Our culture as alien and intriguing in-spite of our differences.

Yet I am going through a phase much like he did. Where I while not resenting the differences appreciate that the most I can have of a deep love of Japanese pop culture and Chan influenced Zen Buddhism is a misreading. Potentially deep but still an interesting flawed deep misreading.

Cultural appropriation is valid but goes both ways.

On a genetic level racial identity is culture as a series of expectations applied to someone’s skin pigment. And every skin pigment brings with it a series of expectations… yet they are arbitrary. So when I say I am coming home of sorts to a love of cliche western archetypal fantasy what I am saying is I understand a bias of foundation. Of a kind meditative preoccupation with my identity before I knew about anime and japan I already had opinions on what I was exposed too as a kid and those shape everything seen afterward. Non of us can escape this fact.

The problem with America is it doesn’t really have a culture. It is a cultural stew and people make assumptions not as much on accent but color pigment and bank account size in this country,

Though Usagi Yojimbo was made by a Japanese comic artist it is in the western tradition if only because the creator said so.

Ultimately what we are involved in is a series of identity crisis created by the experiment of the USA even existing. I don’t understand it because I am in the middle of the storm.  But depending on the color of my skin pigment that would shape how this expression of identity is interpreted yet every time we go to cliches and assumptions and project onto another we create a friction that creates real problems. Culture is what gets in the way of every handshake and hug.

Because identity is based off of exclusion. To be someone you say who your not. To validate identity to enforce that difference. And whether intended or not resentment becomes projected and infused in the excluded. They then say if I am not you I am this. 

Thinking about in these terms it kinda increasingly dawns on me I just want to exist. But every word and act caries so much weight and history by an expectation we are born into that I simply don’t known how we go forward without some major change because the game of cultural musical chairs scares me.

What do we do to come together? And would you do it if you could?