I aim to share a few data storytelling posts here in the future to explain some of the more complex spreadsheets I’ve created, but I want to introduce this career transition by sharing images of some of my earliest worldbuilding spreadsheets (dating from roughly 2005~2011). It’s from a project where people can enter dreams a la Paprika or Inception. I won’t be sharing more information than that, but if you’re like me, the data itself will pique your interest and inspire your imagination.
Read moreaddendum
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Because nobody reads this blog, I can leave links as broken as I wish, fixing them whenever and updating anything as I please. Okay, okay, even if I acknowledge you, Imagined reader, it’s easier for me to proceed as if I’m talking to myself. It’s easier to face the world if I Disappear Completely a la Radiohead. I’ve written a whole short story about how social invisibility can be a superpower.
That said, I will likely need to clean up my act when I get even a smidge of publicity. So once book promotion begins, I guess? But one of my social media role models is Hank Green, who often posts TikToks that he later deletes upon changing his mind. I might just do that. Permanence is overrated.
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Hey! Hey! Hey! Music Champ was a Japanese music variety show on Fuji Television hosted by the comedy duo Downtown" [...] and featuring "live performances (of recently released songs) from popular artists, chat segments and other fun and games."
When I was a kid, me and my siblings were so obsessed with anime that we’d even watch it on non-English language channels. We would watch Dragonball GT and Dr. Slump in dubbed Spanish on Canal 5. (Rest in Peace, Akira Toriyama). We also watched the International Channel which would play random anime like Votoms alongside Hey! Hey! Hey! Music Champ, K-dramas, and other things that bored me at the time. I did recognize some of the musical artists they brought on, however.
I still don't know how to talk about the nostalgic aspects of my childhood that draw upon other culture’s popular media. Half of everything I love about California is from Chicanx and indigenous cultures, but to what extent can I claim their presence in my childhood? I feel instead pressured to claim those expected elements of Blackness that were lacking from my upbringing.
Ah well. Byecha!
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When I was a kid, I used to believe that after you'd died, you could look down at Earth and see anyone who was thinking of them, anyone engaging with their art or remembering their name, or…
What an obvious belief system to take in from pop cultural belief! I was probably too into Homer, The Reluctant Soul back then.
But the thing about religion is that God becomes more real if you believe. Jinn enter your nightmares and you can feel them during day. Your conscience grows stronger and louder, so plugged into the spirits are you. You can feel their eyes of the past, of all who came before watching, judging—or was this just me?
Maybe I was just unable to cope with the fact that some of my favorite creatives might not be able to feel the love I had for their work. I willed for my emotions to cross time and death to fuel them or hold them. I build an ansible of love.
In any case, I'm sending my love and hope to every unnamed baby on this database. Our lives have now intersected. I envision your mothers—one of my mothers may be among you—and bear the world in gratitude of them.
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Personally, I think (know) that Arabic and French names are the best Black names. If your name is something like Yusuf or Mammoud or Naima and you're a six-foot Francophone with a burnt umber skin tone, you're literally genetically superior to everyone else.
Senegal is full of God’s chosen people and this is just facts. I don't make the rules. I was trying to convince my partner to go together, and that saint seriously considered it even though our to-visit list is hella long and I was upfront about wanting to visit countries with lots of hot people. Bless him.
I also told my partner that if we have twin boys, I am naming them William and Thomas. Everyone thinks I’m joking and his older sister even took it as a sign I’m not serious about having kids, But no, I will not be reasoned with. I love those French men who made an anime movie to match their Black people music, love them more than anything. Plus, twin boys are so uncommon that it’ll be a sign if it happens .
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Fun fact: The Japanese equivalent to a cringe Brennalyn/Everleigh-type name is a kira * kira name.
My naming sense in Japanese is so overpowered that I tell one of these from an ancient name from a retro one from a contemporary one. A girl named Aki is likely younger than a woman named Akino who is likely younger than a woman named Akiko—the names hint at their generational cohorts. Even over my 25~ years of watching anime, I've noticed a shift in character names from longer names like Atsuko or Hironobu to shorter names like Mio or Ren. There’s been a similar shift in all the actual people surrounding the industry, of course.
I wish every culture made animation so I could pick up cultural differences while ostensibly turning my brain off. Learning about other cultures shouldn’t be work, darn it! Let me develop a nuanced understanding of the different vehicles of Buddhism while watching cute girls fight each other!
PS: movie cast and crew staff lists are a good place to find culturally-specific names for stories when the culture in question doesn’t readily offer name trend data.
addendum
1. This is a reference not only to Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio (the original is so good, btw, it’s a proper mess. I’ve never seen the Disney film tho) but also the cult 90s original video anime Key the Metal Idol. Its dubbed opening and ending songs are so peak that I miss that era.
I’m generally obsessed with all characters who feel they are insufficiently human, whether due to trauma, queerness, neurodivergence, or more fantastic and symbolic forms of Otherness.
2. This is a reference to the Japanese children’s song 一年生いちねんせいになった /When I Become a First Grader, which has so infiltrated the pop cultural consciousness in Japan that it shows up in anime/manga including Hitori Bocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu, Sexy Commando Gaiden, Komi Can't Communicate, Iruma-kun, Planetes, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, Beelzebub, and so on. It’s usually the social awkward character who declares this goal, and it strikes me as so childishly optimistic that it’s funny for me to declare.
Research supporting Dunbar’s number indicates that the most friends one can reasonably have is more around 50, whereas 150 is the upper limit for “meaningful contacts,” but I want to agree with the researchers who believe that these upper limits are likely not neuro-deterministically written into our brains. But what do I know?
addendum
1. An ex-friend once insulted me by calling me “boy-crazy” and I decided to end the friendship, however casual, then and there. It was partly because they were older than me yet resulted to name-calling when I divulged a personal conflict to them, but it was more so because they seemed more inclined to label than to understand. I’m quick to let go of people who offer me little support or companionship but make light of my attempts to seek what I need. I’ll readily claim that flaw or tendency.
The identity of this person doesn’t matter—I’m more interested in themes and patterns than I will ever be in calling out individuals—but they continue to represent a persistent fear of mine: that my desire for romance will make me look frivolous. Even though that desire is grounded in the desire to be seen and understood and is very similar to the reasons I write. Accordingly, my tendency to lean on romance as a principal conflict is likely due to my understanding romance in fiction as an easy proxy for self-actualization.
There’s a related Zadie Smith quote I’ve been trying to find—I think it’s from Changing My Mind:
Since the beginning of fiction concerning the love tribulations of women […] the “romantic quest” aspect of these fictions has been too often casually ridiculed: not long ago I sat down to dinner with an American woman who told me how disappointed she had been to finally read Middlemarch and find that it was “Just this long, whiny, trawling search for a man!” Those who read Middlemarch in that way will find little in Their Eyes Were Watching God to please them. It’s about a girl who takes some time to find the man she really loves. It is about the discovery of self in and through another. It implies that even the dark and terrible banality of racism can recede to a vanishing point when you understand, and are understood by, another human being. Goddammit if it doesn’t claim that love sets you free. These days “self-actualization” is the aim, and if you can’t do it alone you are admitting a weakness.
Emphasis mine.
Romance in YA fiction often works along similar lines where the multiple options in a love triangle represent the different selves that the protagonist can choose to become. I’ve also read (wish I could find this essay as well) that Jane Austen’s work and other Regency novels function similarly, but the choice of partner is even more weighty in that it was one of the few choices women had at that period. The nature of her chosen partner would set the tone for the rest of her life in all ways from class to community.
While the shape of female life today doesn’t hinge so heavily on whether one is partnered or unpartnered, it does still reshape it radically. Personally, I think that one’s choice of partner can be an assertion of values.
I think that there are endlessly many ways to choose a partner and that the inability to understand what someone’s partner offers them is, in part, an inability to understand that person.
I think that people best grow through interdependence and every person I’ve been with—yes, even the “filmmaker” with a lisp and too strong a taste for alcohol—has offered me something I needed at the time.
I think that community/family/friends/partners cannot easily substitute for each other and that it’s unkind to tell someone they have to make that substitution if they don’t want to.
Most importantly, I think there’s nothing wrong with wanting romance, especially if you already have family, friends, and community.
Anyway, I could never be boy-crazy because I’m panromantic.
2. I hope that if any friends are reading this blog, they recognize my no-friends jokes as Maya making light of her weak social skills, indelible (albeit unoriginal) sense of loneliness, and frail support network rather than taking it as a personal insult. It’s almost a fun little paradox: my close friends accept me enough to let me joke that they don’t exist, but my colleagues are insulted unless I call them friends to please them.
(Side note: Don’t worry! Even I have tact enough to call colleagues and acquaintances “friends” as a politeness. Even I can follow American social norms.)
This habit of mine is similar to how my partner puts up with me claiming that I will leave him for PinkPantheress or SZA or whatever out-of-my-league Black girl I’m currently entranced by. This joke is better the less attainable she is—ideally, there’s an age gap, an ocean between us, and she’s in a serious relationship of her own. Ideally, she's two-dimensional and maybe even part monster. Ideally, I will witness her on a screen or a stage and then return to my partner’s place to give him ten times as many hours of my finite life. If my actions show love, can’t my words remain jokes?
Honestly, I’m jealous of Hitori Gotoh’s friendships. I know, I know, they’re anime schoolgirls so of course they can do unconditional acceptance to an extent no living human can. But it would be nice to relax a bit more, let my honest anxiety and despair show without watching my back for insult, offense, and misinterpretation. I want to be honest with folks that I am still learning to trust others, feel safe, and develop intimacy. But it often feels like others want me to perform a wellness I haven’t yet achieved.
jk! I didn’t mean any of that. I’m fine, actually.
I’m surprised I can’t find any mention of the Fowlerian Engine online.
Does the internet not know what it is? The Fowlerian Demon? Named and developed by Karen Joy Fowler? Taught to us by Clarion instructor Andy Duncan? Practiced by Kelly Link? Who got it from Kate Wilhelm? Who co-founded the Clarion Workshop? And called it collaboration with Silent Partners?
In any case, I don’t think the engine/demon is mine to share but Kelly Link describes the process pretty well in the linked interview. Kate Wilhelm’s linked excerpt is very helpful too, and now I’m tempted to buy the whole book, Storyteller.
PS: Wonderbook is a perfect, wonderful, best possible craft book for speculative fiction writers and I want to recommend it to everyone.
PSS: my Silent Partner is a chaos agent who has to rubber-duck through ideas, so she’ll/I’ll sometimes say ridiculous things because I can. My partner calls this “just saying stuff,” like when I threatened to get him invested in the sport of Kabaddi or decided to become the Superpopeimam who peacefully presides over all the Abrahamic religions.