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.
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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?
3. An ex-friend once insulted me by calling me “boy-crazy” and I decided to end the friendship, however casual, then and there—not so much because they were older than me yet resulted to name-calling but because they seemed more inclined to label than to understand. I am also easy to let go of people who offer me in terms of support or companionship but make light of my attempts to seek those who offer what I need. 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 if that desire is grounded in the desire to be seen and understood—very similar to the reasons I write, honestly. Accordingly, my tendency to lean on romance as a principal conflict is likely due to my understanding romance as an easy proxy for self-actualization.
There’s a 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.”
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 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.
In short, I could never be boy-crazy because I’m panromantic.
4. 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 sense of loneliness, and frail support network rather than taking it as a personal insult. It’s almost a fun little paradox: my real friends accept me enough to let me joke that they don’t exist, but my fake friends are insulted unless I call them real to please them.
(Meanwhile, 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.)
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 and rejection.
jk! I didn’t mean any of that. I’m fine, actually.