On Adulthood

I don't necessarily think being an adult comes from "having responsibilities" or "having your shit together" or having "stopped doing childish things." (Because I haven't really achieved any of those.) I feel that I began to become an adult when I began to have an "inner life," and I credit reaching a certain level of literacy for that. Having the faculties to read adult society's newspapers and magazines, to watch the news, to read "real" books that weren't for kids. To understand them, to form my own opinions, to leave the mental garden of childhood.

The internet was a revolution. We were the first generation to use it to help us grow up. I felt like I was becoming a citizen, with all the meanings that word entails. I could begin developing my own philosophy and outlook, as opposed to having parents or teachers tell me what they should be. I think that was a big part of being an adult. Posting on the Mobius Forum.  It was the first time I was able to have people talk TO me as opposed to talking AT me the way adults do with a child. MoFo was anonymous, where no one had to know my age, education, race, sex, class. It was a place to simply develop a life of the mind at a time when otherwise a kid isn't considered a real person, but sort of an extension of their parents.

Obviously life is a continuous progression, nobody blooms overnight. But I do think, among many many other things, that that was the start of it.

Also, I think of adulthood not necessarily as maturity, but as agency and freedom.

• College was where I finally met warm, kind and funny people who were real peers in both an intellectual and emotional sense. (You have no idea how happy I was to be out of high school and all its shallow retardedness, lawl.) 
• Going from riding a bike, to figuring out the bus and subway routes, to learning to drive and literally expanding the physical boundaries of my world. 
• Entering an adult relationship where the love was deep and reciprocated and getting engaged so we're socially acknowledged as a household. 
• Getting my own apartment where I felt it was really, finally, a home to call my own. I could decide what there was to eat, what the furniture was, who got to come over, what events I could plan. I was the first of my friends with my own apartment, so my social circle started to revolve around My Place. It's pretty awesome. 

All the transition points where I felt I became more adult have to do with agency. If anything, responsibility and boring-ness makes me feel more like a child. Adulthood isn't about going to work and paying bills, where you have to do arbitrary menial things because someone told you to, where you have to wear uncomfortable clothes and be on your best behavior, where people dictate your schedule and where you're embarrassed of the things that make you truly who you are.

 Women and Fantasy Armor, Continued

People seem to think that feminists are OFFENDED by attractive women. Yeah, there are plenty of attractive men in games too. That’s not the point. The point is that men are usually the subjects of games, while women are the objects. Simple test: “Do I see myself as this character, or do I see myself fucking this character?” (Roughly. Wish-fulfillment author avatars are stupid in themselves for non-sexism related reasons.) It cuts both ways: Bishonen guys in anime or Japanese RPGs are just as bad.

Some thoughts on women's fantasy armor

 I hate the argument that “women aren’t strong enough to wear armor” or “women are agile, not strong.” First off, this is stupid. Secondly, besides the fact that armor is more maneuverable than most people assume, female armor mostly shows up in fantasy, a genre often known for its poetic or cinematic breaks from reality. A man can cleave his foe in twain in slow-mo, but a woman with good upper body strength breaks suspension of disbelief? Wut?

Besides, fantasy isn’t about what people “should” do. If you think about it, an illiterate, but pure-hearted peasant really shouldn’t become the king. Maybe the heroine should have learned a more agility-based fighting art. But she didn’t, because she must be a knight, like her father before her!!!111 Well, why not? If you can use “it’s not real life” to justify skimpy armor, you can use “it’s not real life” to justify a 16 year-old waifish elf girl in full plate one-handing a zweihander.

Playing the devil's advocate, yes, skimpy armor occasionally allows people to "dodge," though not as often as video games would have you believe. Real life sometimes imitates art. There’s an Indian martial art called Kalaripayattu that emphasizes flexibility and flying leaps. It’s amazing to watch. Weapons include swords with shields, daggers, and a whirling, whip-like sword. The male practitioners fight in thongs or loincloths, and give each other therapeutic oil massages as part of their Yoga practice! If these were ladies in D&D, people would be screaming “sexist”. Ironically, the women practitioners IRL are more modestly dressed due to religious conservatism. So yes, in certain traditions, fighting naked or in little clothing is perfectly feasible. But I’d still rather have a woman be unarmored than stupidly armored.

I personally dislike the idea that skimpy female armor is to distract men. Not from a realism perspective but from an artistic one. A good action hero has agency. His badassery stems from doing things, not in the influencing of other people to do things. If a lady warrior wears impractical armor to mess with men, it’s exactly the same stupid, sexist argument that was mocked in a widely-linked anti-feminist bingo card: “Women have all the power over men- you can reduce us to an uncontrollable jelly of lust!” I’m not like, outraged that a woman warrior is sexy- that’s appealing also- but I like to see a female warrior, when she’s on the field, rely more on her skills than on head-gaming men.

In a non-sex-related example, sensitivity is important in a female surgeon, both as a doctor and as a woman. But in her professional life, more emphasis should be placed on the job’s primary medical skills, not secondary social skills. If some medical drama about her only showed how damn NICE she was and didn’t show much actual surgery, I’d be pissed.

An anthropologist once noted that in all societies she’s observed, little girls aimed to please. Little boys aimed to excel. I want my women heroes to excel.

I wrotes a Retriever editorial. Let's see if they print it.
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As a recent alumnus, I'm writing to commend Chris Cook on his excellent editorial about UMBC's proposed name change. However, since both "Maryland State" and "Maryland Institute of Technology" have problems, as mentioned, I'm officially nominating another alternative, "Poe University." As in, Edgar Allan.

Say it with me. "I go to Poe." Fun to say, easy to spell. Much, hopefully, like UMBC, Edgar Allan Poe is THE famous Baltimorean, a local source of pride with international prestige. Yes, dropping "Baltimore County" keeps us from sounding like a community college, but let's stay proud of Baltimore. Our school already has the academics and the athletic caliber, and we're only getting stronger. What we need is pride and identity. "Maryland State," while better than what we've got, is, frankly, a name from Genericopolis. We're a Baltimore landmark, and trying to separate ourselves from a vibrant, unique, and historical city is a missed opportunity for both communities.

Baltimore is already the home of the Ravens, and its slogan was "The City that Reads." UMBC once housed Hillcrest, a 1920's criminal insane asylum turned frat house turned K-9 training facility. The AOK Library is itself pretty eldritch; if you stay there too long at finals time, you'll go insane. What are those spooky monoliths by the Commons garage? Is somebody bricked up in the Dining Hall? Why is the campus laid out in circles, and do they have mystical properties? While we're at it, let's rename the Administration Building to "Freeman Hrabowski's Dark Tower." Such a scary place, with narrow, menacing windows....

I can see it now: "The Pit and the Provost."

This is a silly tangent, but the campaign is serious. Yes, we are a good school. A smart school. But myth is powerful. Myth is what makes a young kid say, "When I graduate from high school, I want to go there." Myth is the unifying force of nostalgia.

Think about it.

"How's your new job?"
Letter to my cousin, February 1st, 2010

HI!! It's been a while since I've talked to you.

My job is okay. In terms of practical matters, the hours are very good, and the office is in an old townhouse, so it feels cozy and not officey at all. There are six people, so it's not huge. I'm glad to have a job in general, which keeps me from dying of boredom, and my parents are happy for me. We can finally eat dinner and have a conversation like normal human beings, instead of it being an interrogation: "When are you getting a job?"..."Have you thought about asking at..?" "I know a certain person who says they could introduce you to...." "Well, X's daughter went to school for Y and now is doing Z..."

When I was in college, I was asked, "Are you getting a job for the summer?" and in high school it was, "Have you applied for college?" and in middle school it was, "Have you done your homework?" and in elementary school, it was, "Stop making so much noise, your mother is tired." So not to be told to do something, which has never occurred for as long as I can remember, is pleasant for a change.

It's nice to make my own money, too. Even though life is less fun, maybe Big Aunt can retire in the next century. Maybe I can buy a house, get married.... In the United States, everybody who is somebody "gets a house." It's part of that same vague, universal dream everybody has for their future. Everyone has the same dream, of a big house with a car and a tree, a nice kitchen for Sunday breakfasts and family dinners... etc. I daydream about it, but now it's a little closer to reality. It's frightening. It seems slightly unreal to me too, so I am taking it day by day, and setting small weekly goals. Last night, when I was lying in bed, in the twilight between wakefulness and sleep, it felt like I had dreamt up the last month, and it was actually Christmastime (there was snow on the ground, which created that feeling), and any minute I'd be waking up and opening my presents.

It's encouraging to be able to have some money to spend. I can donate to charity without having to feel like I'm begging my parents for it. I gave some money to the earthquake relief in Haiti, and that made me genuinely happier than spending it on myself. I go to concerts and shows now. It makes me feel like I'm a "patron of the arts," which was an aspiration of mine as a teenager. When I was young, I always pictured myself as one of those elegant, cultured, and beautiful people. Actually, I've discovered nowadays that only senior citizens and retirees generally go to those things. Oh well. Now as an adult, I'm enjoying myself, but I wonder if I wouldn't be just as happy with less going out, but more free time. It makes me a little fatalistic, like... "I never chose to grow up, it just kind of happened to me. What makes me happy hasn't changed, only the sort of things I'm expected to do about it."

At work, I'm to be helping people prepare their taxes, which in the U.S. are due April 15. That adds to the nature of the place where it feels more like I'm preparing for war. The hours are slowly getting longer and the work is beginning to pile up. (There's a saying that to cook a frog, you stick it in a pot of cold water and slowly warm the water up bit by bit, whereas if you try to throw it in hot water immediately, it hops out. I feel like the cold water frog.) I get the feeling that no matter how fast I learn, I'm not learning fast enough. I'm trying to not let that get to me. I can only do what I can and nothing more.

Another result of this seasonal nature is that I still perceive time like a student. I feel that these next few months are simply yet another semester, and that I'll be cramming for "finals." That's not the case, of course, but I try not to think too hard about the future. If I start to think about things like "am I going to do this for the rest of my life?" and "will this make me happy?" and "is this all there is to life?" then it gets a little overwhelming. I'm looking forward to Lent, actually. It seems like it will bring unifying purpose to my worries.

I had a dream about being in Hong Kong with you and Ming Tak and my Aunt. We were taking the cable car up the side of some green, forested mountains, and there was a garden filled with pavilions, small temples, pathways, and small arched bridges, all of gray polished stone. I asked about it, and somebody said, "Oh, it looks very old, but this place was built only a few years ago," and that's why I'd never been there. Even so, I thought it was quite a pleasant place.

That is what is happening to me. Sorry if it is long. I've been out of practice with writing letters.

Love,
Angie! (xiao bao: small bun)

In response to an essay by Sara Douglass in defense of fantasy: (From my comment on Talvikki's DeviantArt journal)

"Escape from the modern world" is not a defense that fantasy fiction needs right now. Actually, right now, "escapism" is its most severe condemnation. I think with her anti-modernity argument that Sara Douglass has argued for fantasy's appeal, but not for its value. So, this right here is a critique of a fantasy apologetic from someone who is herself an apologetic.

No, modernity, rationality, and science absolutely aren't antithetical to wonder. Diving oceanic depths, reaching into far-flung outer space, smashing infinitesimal particles into clouds of light and heat add more to the imagination, not less. Logic and science only oppress the imaginations of people who weren't very imaginative to begin with. Rapidly changing, highly diverse cultures feed the garden of my soul (as Sara Douglass puts it) more than an idyllic medieval village or pristine wilderness. If you look at medieval illustrations, even classical myths and Biblical stories are given contemporary, provincial settings. Peasants thought Jerusalem was just around the corner and imagined Joseph and Mary as better-looking, bourgeois versions of themselves. They were fundamentally incapable of imagining life drastically different from their own. Sarah Douglass argues that knowing everything makes the world seem safe and lifeless, but science isn't about (and never can be about) knowing everything, it's about finding new things. That's as pretty opposite of the mundane as you're going to get with any philosophy.

Good fantasy doesn't tap into some vast, ancient, unchanging archetype, but acts like a funhouse mirror to everyday life. It takes the ordinariness of our lives and exaggerates it into Other, such that we recognize it as truer than reality. Assume that we run with the supposedly generic, Western medieval fantasy world, which despite my criticisms, I adore. Say, a world where the printing press was the dangerous cutting edge of modernity, or women unchaperoned were risque, or armed men weren't that "noble knight" schmaltz but just as proud, vindictive, and tragic as rival drug lords or CEOs. This is a world where its appeal comes not from somber ancientness, but from chaos, change, modern life run riot, not knowing "how it ends", from making all old things anew. Is that world really different from our own? Tap water is boring until we're confronted with the logistics and sheer beauty of a Roman aqueduct's soaring arches. Never mind light bulbs, or microwavable food. Good fantasy makes us see our own world with new eyes.

For a space of time between September 2007 and May 2008, I was catechized into the Roman Catholic faith in a series of hour-long classes in basic theology taught on Sunday evenings to a group of three or four college-aged catechists. Also, angels were born, God made, bread and wine turned into the Body and Blood. I was baptized and confirmed.

I find in telling people about it that the recounting differs depending on the audience. I tell atheists or non-Christians something like, “It was the religion I saw in the movies,” or “I graduated and was unemployed for a period of time and wanted to give myself purpose.” These are true, but wholy insufficient. Christian audiences get something like this, emotive and experiential "testimonies." These latter examples are also wholly insufficient because they fail to capture both the friction, humor, and the controntationalism involved in my conversion.

Two years ago I would looked you in the eye and said, “Prove to me the soul exists,” the soul being like phlogiston. Fire burns and people love, but that proves neither the soul nor phlogiston. Among atheists, if you think an invisible entity exists you’ve gone quite mad. For a while when I was learning to pray in a small (kind of weird) praise and worship group, I felt I was babbling into the air, trapped in a room with a bunch of loons. I’m still not used to the waving hands in the air and ritualized glossalalia and the crying. I feel like I’ve deeply failed somehow in not dealing with reality.

I’ve disappointed a good number of people. I told a friend of mine, and she said, “What, Roman Catholic?” and I said, “No. Martian Catholic.” “But nobody converts in!” she replied.

My alternate response: “No, I’m taping your reaction for a modern art project.”
Response: “Oh, thank God!”

Other reactions:
Friend: “A Bible? I’ll piss on a Bible!”
Mom’s coworker: “Your daughter’s Catholic? I thought she was too smart for that.”
My mother: “Why did you become Catholic instead of Christian? It’s not that I’m disappointed in your choice of religion, just that you gave up your freedom.”

My mother’s Buddhist/atheist. She enjoys “subtly” passing me religious pamphlets on how to become Buddhist. Catholicism to her is the religion of White People. She grew up in Macau, a Portuguese colony, and then Hong Kong, a British colony, where her family survived on church handouts. There’s a level of patronization and humiliation to the whole affair that I on some level used to feel, a feeling of loathing and oiliness I used to feel regarding missionaries, who have now (partially) morphed in my mind to heroic explorers and social activists.

I’ve changed political and ethnic identities somewhat. Politically, I used to be “moderate,” but supporting contraceptive use (a stance taken by around 90% of my generation) has suddenly made me an “extremist,” for example. I suddenly feel weird for expressing formerly rather mundane opinions. But I also feel continuity with 2,000 years of history. I feel that Latin is my language, and Augustine and Aquinas are my thinkers. I feel that the Church and all the angels and all the saints are behind me there massed, an invisible winged army.

I feel on some level that this broken, wondrous and imperfect faith is mine.

My religious sentiments cycle now between apathetic and effusive, depending on the time of the ecclesiastical year. During Christmas and Easter I could not love any more, and then I fall into doldrums in the summer. In the depths of sorrow between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, come those agonizing words, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Those two words are probably the root of all antisemitism in the course of human history. This is an ideology that kills people. In the thousands, in the millions, so many bodies that if they were all in one place you wouldn’t have room to pile them and the smell would blister skin and boil lungs and peel paint from walls. This is an ideology that hoovers money and oppresses women and perverts human sexuality such that people feel driven in some blind animal way to molest small children.

O ye terrible arcane obtuse thing that’s in my head, get out! You ancient, ardent mystical frustrating beautiful incomprehensible glorious transcendent tyrant, get out! (Why do I love You?) Don’t say I never sacrificed anything for You! I’ve lost the ability to disbelieve, such that I can no longer even conceptualize the depth of what I’ve lost.

And yet... kissing the cool, dry wood at the foot of the cross on Good Friday, one forgets. One marvels at the greatness of such a gift given to one wholly undeserving. How we have wronged You, Lord. And the rest... for that time of tender sadness, awe and reverence, the rest is irrelevant.

What wondrous love is this, o my soul?