Episode Notes

Hello and welcome to this very focused and concise Question Bucket episode. We only got two emails, so we definitely didn’t somehow record for four hours straight in a delirious frenzy of topics.

Anyway, we start with an attempt to encapsulate our read on Major Kusanagi and how it relates to our political worldview, bringing in and diverging toward other topics like Iceland’s Nobel Laureate Halldór Laxness, the way public policies funnel those suffering from poverty into the military, the anarchist utopianism of Zhuangzi, reparative justice, Major Kusanagi’s ideological attachment to Section 9 and the power it provides her, and finally an answer to a question about micro machines.

We then answer a question about foundational media for us (Chrono Cross and Icelandic music for Niamh, Prince and James Joyce’s Ulysses for Connor) before diving headfirst into the “non-anime” topics we brought. Niamh is talking about Persona 3 Portable and how its portrayal of self-harm, savior complexes, and kink are deeply hurtful and honestly just fucked. As Niamh says in the cold opening disclaimer for this episode, this part of our discussion in particular gets pretty heavy, so please be careful around the Content Warnings for this episode if you may be triggered or affected by discussions of things like self-harm, abusive relationships, biting and blood kinks, etc.

Connor tries as best he can to follow that up with a look back at The Knife’s Shaking the Habitual and its position as an abrasive album that engages with the music that came before it and also might point towards some of the queer music that came after.

We finish out answering a question about how to survive grad school, and how maybe our perspective on grad school is uniquely bleak because of the particular cruelty of the program we both attended.

Sorry for being a downer.

Works Cited in this Discussion

“If you want to understand me better as a person, play Chrono Cross” by our very own Niamh

“A Better Lover” also by our very own Niamh, published by ZEAL

Content Warnings for this Discussion

Brief Mentions of Online Harassment
Discussion of Abusers in Queer Communities and Breaking Cycles of Abuse
In-Depth Discussion of Self-Harm, Trauma, Abuse, and Savior Complexes (2:12:44 to 2:23:20)
In-Depth Discussion of Kink, Teeth, Biting, Bloodplay, Painplay, the Erotics of Negotiation, and Consent (2:23:20 to 2:42:46)
Discussion of the Pressures of Grad School

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