Terminator Meets Lone Wanderer – Blame! Movie Review

When you are nursing a broken toe and ordered bed rest, Netflix is the way to go. The cherry on top is to pass the time watching a movie that explores humanity’s existential struggle for survival against an out-of-control, dystopian machine world. 

I know, I wasn’t really in the mood for:

Say hello to Blame! Yes, that exclamation mark on the title is not a typo. Much like the 2017 movie Mother! this anime and manga series is titled Blame! (The movie may be about humanity’s struggle for survival, but little do you know about my struggle to write this review while fighting against spellchecker with regarding capitalizing after an exclamation mark.)

Like any other dystopian title, Blame! focuses on humanity’s tenacity in the face of oblivion. The movie has plenty to show in the dangers of technology overwhelming society, as the characters essentially live that experience every waking moment of the plot. 

Care to guess what motivates them to keep fighting the good fight? It is the most powerful weapon of all:

Just kidding. When it is survival of the fittest, in a desolate world, family doesn’t have the usual definition. Instead, in Blame! it has more to do with community and connection. One could argue that this is even imposed by the very reality our characters face, driven as they are by a raw instinct for survival, amid gradual annihilation. 

So who are they? 

Meet the Electro-Fishers. 

They are a small and desperate band of humans trying to survive starvation within “The City”, a colossal megastructure that functions as a Dyson sphere (not a new vacuum model), engulfing what was once the Solar System. 

  • A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that completely surrounds a star to capture its power output. 

Continuously expanding and featuring incomprehensible architecture, the City hosts rooms as vast as planets, and environments where basic physics can shift unpredictably. Its scale is such that it is peppered with fragmented zones of ruined, ancient cities separated by miles of industrial scaffolding. 

The Builders guide the City’s persistent encroachment in outer space. They are automated, unthinking machines that continuously, wait for it, build and expand the structure. Protecting and “safeguarding” the City are the deadly Safeguard robots. They are the Terminators of Blame!, except they are far more nimble and creepier. 

Tasked with hunting down and eliminating any unregistered human presence, the Safeguard are among the primary obstacles, including the City itself, that the Electro-Fishers must confront in their battle for survival. 

You might wonder how it got to this in the first place. Well, that’s the definitive mystery of the movie, and unfortunately, we don’t get a very clear answer, but a walking symbolic exposition of the issue at hand: Killy. 

Killy is our “sort-of” hero in this story. He is a mysterious cyborg who traverses the massive City in search of a human who possesses the Net Terminal Gene to restore order and stop the City’s expansion.  

With Killy, there is no “Come with me if you want to live” or “I’ll be back”. Rather, the cyborg is a silent companion of the Electro-Fishers who assists them against various enemies. Killy lets his actions speak for themselves, and for the most part, we as an audience, along with the Electro-Fishers, are left towonder about his true intentions and purpose. 

The movie’s ambiguous ending perfectly mirrors the themes of the story, its world, and the characters’ personalities. Killy’s journey to find the Net Terminal Gene reflects humanity’s persistence in the infinitely expanding City. Throughout his quest, Killy’s stoic nature contrasts with the humans’ deep desire for companionship and a place to call home. 

The premise of Blame! is a familiar sight for sci-fi fans in general, but the movie and the manga series stand out for the sheer creativity of the world in which the story unfolds. The terrifying and magnificent scale of the City remains an eerie focal point of our characters’ struggles and really puts into perspective the seemingly impossible stakes at hand. 

At the end of the day, who doesn’t like watching humans fight the good fight against a desolate world that is practically out to kill them? That is Blame! in a nutshell. 

The movie explores transhumanism, runaway AI, genetic markers as access controls, and cybernetic warfare. All this across an artificial, solar-system-sized City. After finishing the movie, I only had more questions, and while that is not really what a moviegoer would want, I think it is a great bait for those curious cats out there who might want to take a sneak peek at the manga. 

There is a lot more to Blame! in the manga series, and you can find it on Amazon Kindle or at your nearest library’s digital collection. On the other hand, the movie still stands as a decent, but quite condensed, adaptation of the work as a whole.

A Mini Vacation

When family visits, time flies, especially when cross-country travel and a wedding are at hand.

After a long time, here was a chance for me to unwind, regroup, and realign for the rest of the year.

Once the festivities were over, my creative pipeline was all set for the big return. Unfortunately, a yet-to-be-unpacked suitcase came in the way. Literally.

Yes, yours truly is now all wrapped up in bed with a fractured toe.

After my encounter with said static pulverizer, I endured a few trips to the hospital. Realigning my toe was a novel experience; then came the buddy tape and a possible loss of circulation, and, lastly, a run-in with a podiatrist discussing my options moving forward.

The final verdict: I’m stuck with a medical walking boot for the next month.

I’m now enjoying my life at a relatively slower pace: one boot’s width at a time.

So while my toe bone gradually pulls itself together, I’m finally able to pull my weight in sitting down to write again and get back on the proverbial “creative writing horse”.

The crappy part of all this is that, as nature goes, my body’s energy is mostly being siphoned off towards fixing my bone.

That leaves me acting the better part of The Summer Carol, Mr. Ajay Peter Scrooge, stuck in solitary confinement, and contending with the ghosts of the nostalgic pre-injury past, grumpy injury-present, and exciting post-injury future.

But, as always, I like to look on the brighter side. Now, with this injury, I don’t have an excuse to run away from my writing, and there is a lot to do on that front.

Over the course of the past year, I have been gradually building up my efforts toward my goals in creative writing. In the past six months, I have made some progress, submitting my stories to publishers and magazines.

The waiting period for a response continues, but in the meantime, I’m ramping up efforts to pull together an author site that will serve as a connective hub for The Pensive Reverie and my revamped (currently under construction) science writing blog, The Procrastinating Scientist.

It also helps that I finally get to have more time on my plate. With my daughter starting primary school very soon and my wife jumping into her practicums as a medical tech, I get to tweak my daily schedule to focus a bit more on my creative pursuits.

The encroaching silence of my home is a little unnerving. There is also the melancholy that accompanies seeing your kid grow up so fast. But writing about it helps, and so do all the other exciting projects awaiting completion.

With that said, you can expect to see me as a regular again, albeit dealing with the frustrations of a broken toe, and with another entry to share very soon!

The Lost Artist – Chapter 3 – From Imitation to Emulation

Good artists copy, great artists steal. – Steve Jobs

I guess, according to Steve Jobs (not Picasso, who this quote is often misattributed to), that makes me a good artist. But, and there is always a but, I find nothing wrong with starting your artistic journey by imitating the work of masters. For example, Japanese manga artist Toyotarou is famously known for imitating Akira Toriyama’s iconic art style, and imitation is just the beginning. The keyword is mastering, much like Toyotarou, who mastered Toriyama’s style and is now his official successor for the Dragon Ball Super manga.

Mastering brings about real learning, and the latter happens when you start asking questions. In my case, those same questions were spurred by a wish to develop my own style and evoke a sense of originality in my artwork. This is still a work in progress, no thanks to my on-and-off approach to my art (after all, I’m the lost artist).

So, let’s go ahead and refine Jobs’ quote to better suit our situation,

Good artists imitate, great artists emulate.

Imitation is akin to scratching the surface. You get to replicate a specific style, subject, or technique. It is still a valid approach because it allows you to build muscle memory and also trace the footsteps of another artist. Unfortunately, imitation lacks creative development or personal perspective.

Emulation is all about internalizing the process of imitation. This comes from asking questions. You ask why a specific artist’s style is effective and apply those rules to your own unique concepts. The point here is to ask enough questions and frequently so that you internalize the answers you find and make them part of your own distinctive style. You aren’t necessarily “stealing” but combining your personal alchemy and perspective to build something completely new.

Long story short, imitation is great for practice and reverse-engineering a craft. On the other hand, emulation is transformative and fuels your creative process by helping you deconstruct your idol’s technique, build your visual vocabulary, and, most importantly, discover what you don’t like.

I have been doing a lot of emulating, and trust me, it is so much fun to discover the tricks behind an artist’s work. Though not a recent example, my first step towards emulation began when I did an illustration of a classical, animation-style baby with Aaron Blaise for his Procreate course.

Frustrated that the baby’s anatomy wasn’t coming along like Aaron’s, I realized I was basing my work’s perfection on another’s metric. So, I threw it aside and made my own rendition, inspired by my then-baby daughter:

Could it be better? Yes, absolutely. There is always space to improve, but only if you allow it for yourself. So, to all those good artists, like me, who are out there, you are not alone in this seemingly Sisyphean effort towards mastery. Try emulation for a change. Don’t just imitate; study other artists for your own learning, ask a lot of questions, and then put it all to use in your own masterpiece. Most importantly, make sure to judge your final piece by your own metric and yearning for mastery, not that of those you are emulating.

Graduating as a Parent

More than three years ago, in early 2023, I wrote a post about “What to Do When You Can’t Do Much – Dad Edition”.

Nothing could have prepared me then for the maelstrom of challenges that awaited right around the corner. Now, three years later, so much has changed and so fast. I liken my experience thus far to sailing the stormy seas aboard a rickety boat. From a multitude of health issues to layoffs and personal losses, it has been a vicious cycle of emotional and mental whiplash. But, throughout it all, there has been a steadying presence in my life. The same presence whose company I spoke about in my old post: my daughter.

While I’m still the full-time work-at-home father, my daughter has graduated from being a baby to an actual “kid”. Back in 2023, I described the transformation of designing my life around my child’s needs as a major challenge. A family friend commented then that things would get easier as my daughter gets older, and that I would become nostalgic about these hard times. For a guy running on 4-5 hours of sleep, that statement was neither convincing nor encouraging.

In retrospect, I find myself completely agreeing with it. Becoming a father is the best thing that has ever happened to me. For one, your kid makes you realize how important it is to keep track of your own health. Why? Because that is the only way you can keep up with them. The same applies on the mental front. Kids draw so much from their parents’ emotional and mental energies. In my case, my daughter has become my pillar of motivation. I’ve leaned on her support as much as she continues to lean upon mine.

We are now a few days away from her preschool graduation, and to be honest, it kind of feels like a mini graduation for me as a parent. The last five years of my life have been a roller coaster of lost dreams, career derailments, personal loss, and just about all the chaos one could ask for. I certainly am not where I wanted to be five years ago. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve made progress in areas that I originally thought impossible.

For starters, I’m now working full-time as a freelancer and gradually building a committed career in the creative arts. I’ve become a published science writer and have continued to pitch successfully. I’ve even become more consistent in writing this blog!

In a few more days, I get to graduate from the slight stupor of the last five years and become more productive in my professional ambitions. It is a “productivity” honed and sharpened by the wisdom I have gained as a father, all thanks to my lovely daughter, who also gets to explore a new world of her own. We are both taking small steps towards bigger victories, and while it may seem to be at a slow pace, if there is one thing I have learned, life isn’t always about how fast you reach your goals, but about what you learn along the way.

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier

Writer’s Corner – Daydreaming Your Next Story

Ideas are writing’s currency. They are also a dime a dozen. Writers feel considerable pressure to put their best work on paper. For starters, their ideas must be unique and interesting enough to catch the reader’s attention. What follows then is the story, and it has to live up to expectations. Overall, it is a tall task, so it is no wonder many writers feel a sense of dread when they sit down and stare at the muted, blank white page on their desk. Fortunately, I’ve learned to bypass this fear. That very same blank, white page speaks to me of opportunity and an inescapable sense of freedom. Personally, I find writing offers a sense of escapism, and the best ideas appear when you let your mind drift freely. In other words, you learn to master the art of effective daydreaming.

Daydreaming comes naturally to me. Even now, I fondly recall spending my lunch breaks in my high school’s garden. I would lie down on the grass and watch the clouds above, enjoying the silence and solitude. These sessions were also primetime for my creativity. My mind would swim with random thoughts, the initial sparks of ideas that I would incorporate in my stories later. I still daydream to this day. Much like an artist’s sketchbook, I have one of my own filled with one-liners and random thoughts that serve as sparks for stories I formulate later. When I switched to writing as a full-time career, I realized I could make a few tweaks to this daydreaming hobby of mine and better harness it for my creative purposes. 

For starters, I leaned on a little bit of science to help me out. We have all heard the classic line about the need for a writer to read other books and learn more about the world to write their own book or come up with new ideas. There is scientific grounding for this. Reading primes our brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN), the neural autopilot responsible for daydreaming and spontaneous imagination. What we read and take in about the world around us shapes the visual, emotional, and social content of our daydreams. Essentially, reading fuels our subconscious, but that is not all there is to it. How we read also makes a difference. Silent reading leans on our visual cortex to decode words. This means there is less room for our brains to wander. On the other hand, audiobooks don’t care about our visual channel. This allows the brain’s DMN to drift and generate daydreams much more frequently, causing you to zone out of the narrative and sink into your thoughts. 

So, how do we leverage this? Since reading fuels our subconscious, it helps to take frequent pauses. Stopping to reflect on what we are reading, like the sensory details, character motives, or underlying themes, allows our minds to actively construct the story’s world, rather than push the narrative forward. In this manner, we get to experience and deeply immerse ourselves in what we are reading. These pauses also help trigger your DMN and transfer what you have read from short-term to long-term memory. Contrary to belief, the whole process prevents cognitive overload. Throughout, we remain engaged with what we read. Similarly, by switching up what we read, we can also prevent our daydreams from becoming repetitive and diversify our ideas. Using this combination of neural simulation and schema activation, where we experience what we read and activate our working memory (cause the reading mind tends to remember things, no matter how small the detail), we continuously fuel our subconscious. 

When our minds drift, the intake becomes real estate in the form of mental models or schemas that later serve as the foundations of the thoughts and ideas that populate our daydreams. To get to this point, we have to begin by slowing down, and that’s a major no-no in a day and age when everything moves at breakneck speeds. My success in this aspect came from natural circumstances. Once you become a parent, you don’t have as much time for things you love as you did before. Similarly, when you do get the time, you are too tired to make the same level of progress. So, you’ve got to adopt the turtle strategy. Small and slower, but consistent, bites towards greater goals. I applied this approach to my reading (audio and visual), writing, and social media intake. Obviously, when you have a kid, much of what you read or watch also follows their preferences. For the last few years, my daydreams have largely focused on ideas for children’s stories, fairy tales, and fantasy. Recently, I have switched things up and started gradually getting back into my favorite genre: science fiction, and right on cue, I have enjoyed my latest palette of dreams about apocalyptic scenarios and hard sci-fi survival horrors.

So, for writers who are struggling to find ideas for their stories, I suggest setting that pen aside and letting your mind unwind. Take some time during the day and daydream. It may not feel like it, but you are still making those writing milestones by letting your mind drift. Support your mind’s supposed “procrastination” by tailoring your cognitive intake of the world around you to match your writing needs. This can be through books, newspapers, podcasts, TV, etc. The only disclaimer I place here is to be mindful of your intake and not let it slip into overindulgence that pulls you away from the actual writing. Oh, and have a writing journal! You’ll never know when those random ideas and scribbles come together to make the perfect story! 

Take it from the legendary Poe,

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

What It Means to Live – Hirayasumi – Manga Review

I’m a glutton for slice-of-life manga, and Keigo Shinzo’s Hirayasumi now ranks amongst my favorites in this genre.

A quick disclaimer: the manga is not yet complete, and I have only read the first seven volumes.

So, let’s get straight to the meat of it. What does “hirayasumi” mean? The word is actually a portmanteau of two Japanese words: hiraya, which means a single-story house, and yasumi, which means rest or break. The title of the series is, in fact, a literal reflection of the story’s main ethos, which is all about living a slow, peaceful, and carefree life. Our main characters, Hiroto and Natsumi, are cousins who live together in this cozy one-story home.

Hiroto inherits the house from Hanae Wada, an 81-year-old woman with whom he becomes acquainted and whom he affectionately calls “Granny.” The logic of an old woman giving away her inheritance for an acquaintance doesn’t make sense, and is the bait that drives you into Hiroto’s daily life. Within the walls of this one-story home, we get to indulge in Hiroto’s day-to-day exploits alongside his cousin, the people they befriend, and the unique circumstances that shape their lives.

Peppered throughout the story are flashbacks that capture Hiroto’s time with Wada and help inspire him to move forward with his life.

Besides Hiroto and Natsumi, there is an engaging cast of characters that Shinzo weaves into the story, each with their unique backstory and take on life. Despite their individual differences and personalities, the cast of Hirayasumi is connected by their insecurities. Each character’s story is riddled with subtle insecurities that shape their decisions and misadventures. These insecurities illustrate their alienation from life, a reality expressed through questions like, “Where am I going with my life?”

This is a common feature of the slice-of-life genre, but Hirayasumi provides a uniquely breathtaking and bittersweet experience as we immerse ourselves in the lives of these characters.

Behind Hiroto’s cheerful countenance, there is a deep sense of remorse and nostalgia for dreams and ambitions that he ultimately couldn’t live up to. In contrast, Hiroto’s cousin, Natsumi, endures the daily frustrations that accompany the pursuit of one’s dreams and expectations.

Similarly, with the other characters we meet in Hirayasumi, there are diverse worlds to explore, all centered on the fragility and, by consequence, the beauty of life: its uncertainty. The manga’s art style complements the characters’ ordinary yet raw and genuine emotions. For my part, I related most to Hiroto’s remorse over an unfulfilled dream and Natsumi’s frustrations as a creative trying to establish her future. Hiroto’s struggle to find closure and Natsumi’s efforts to cultivate her own path truly struck a chord in my heart.

Writing, especially in recent times, is a career filled with uncertainty, and there are days I find myself questioning my own resolve and drive. Hirayasumi has much of that emotion and more. There is also a point to be made about how the main characters fall back on their relationships to anchor their resolve. Friends, family, and connections can take us a long way and help resolve our personal insecurities and misgivings in the most unexpected ways.

Most importantly, to the extent I have read so far, the manga emphasizes the importance of being willing to take a shot at your dreams. Every chapter offers the reader something memorable for contemplation, be it the nostalgia of younger days gone by or the simple pleasures of life we often miss. Much like how Winnie-the-Pooh says, “Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering,” Hirayasumi reiterates, “Don’t pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world?”

In today’s fast-paced world, where we all face the pressures of living up to the judgments and stereotypes that proliferate in society, Hirayasumi reminds us that sometimes, taking a step back, enjoying the moment, even when it means simply “doing nothing”, holds genuine value.

With an upcoming anime adaptation set to premiere in January 2027, Hirayasumi is a gem of a manga by Keigo Shinzo, and I highly recommend it for all you slice-of-life savants out there. A live-action adaptation is also available on Prime Video, covering content up to the first 6 volumes of the manga.

The Lost Artist – Chapter 2 – Finding a Focus

Around three years ago, and a few months to count, I wrote the first chapter to this series. I know what you are thinking. I could certainly do with some consistency. Unfortunately, life isn’t too kind to a set schedule, and, as it happens, things fell by the wayside. Fast-forward to the present: I’m now a writer-artist hybrid working hard to find a balance between these two creative endeavors. That is where today’s narrative on focus comes in.

For a creative, time is an invaluable asset. Unfortunately, most of us don’t get the time we would like on our projects. This means you have to make some tough decisions. I’m the kind of guy who has multiple interests. In other words, I tend to take on too many things at once. This has been a recurring issue since the start of my creative journey, but I was finally able to resolve it over the extended break since the first chapter of this series.

The catch was to find a focus. Sounds easy, but it is not so simple. For an amateur artist, the smallest questions loom the largest. Like, where do I start? The answer can take you down a rabbit hole of diverse perspectives and destinations. The real trick to getting your journey started, I’ve found, is to tailor and focus questions within the lens of your needs. For a writer-artist hybrid like myself, this helped narrow down a lot of my interests.

From choosing a medium of choice to the fundamental skills related to a specific path, all of it can be identified if you tailor it to your goals and interests. The good news? There are many resources out there that can help with this.
The bad news? It takes time, just like any other creative process. If you can combine your inherent focus (guided by what interests you most) with patience, the answer comes a little quicker. Or, you can also take the scenic route: try everything out there and see which one lands.

In my case, this translated into action by exploring art that is already out there. It is akin to sending out a feeler to see what piques your curiosity and interest the most. I spent a few minutes every day just engaging with artists out there (across various platforms like YouTube, Pinterest, Udemy, DeviantArt) and learning the realities of the trade. Not only did this help identify the specific media that I wished to master, but it also helped identify the creative path I wished to take as a writer-artist: storyboarding. I’m now in the process of consolidating my artistic focus toward mastering the skills and tools of this trade.

Now, what worked for me may not necessarily work for everyone else. At the end of the day, I find that art is often guided by intuition, and the same could apply to our intent. Take what you like and set aside what you don’t, without overthinking or being too hard on yourself.

Here are a few resources to get your mind jogging:

(i) The Draftsmen – hosted by Stan Prokopenko and Marshall Vandruff, it covers studying masters, composition, and overcoming art fears. Also, make sure to check out Stan’s very own Proko.com, an invaluable online art education platform with high-quality tutorials on various topics, including drawing, painting, and anatomy.

(ii) The Virtual Instructor – one of my earliest influences, and whose website hosts a treasure trove of lectures and project-oriented tutorials that can pique your interests in various media.

(iii) Jazza Art – another of my early influences, Jazza is a phenomenal artist, but what really helped were his videos on finding inspiration and general advice on how to get your artistic journey started.

(iv) Aaron Blaise – a legend in the industry, Aaron’s site is a treasure trove of everything you would want to get from an actual expert.

And, when you get the time, follow along in my art journey at LockeInArt!

Colors of Inclusion

I spy, with my ‘kutty’ (little, in Tamil) eye, something that is… 

These are the words to a classic, interactive game. They are also the very same words I hear every day when I take my daughter to preschool. It is a solid 20-minute trip where we spy on the colors of the world, or at least that is the theme my daughter likes to stick with. 

And there are a variety of colors to catch in our neighborhood. There is the ever-blue sky, the wispy trails of white clouds, the grey roads filled with those darn potholes (a tradition of Calgary), the iridiscent blue-green of the screeching magpies, and many more.

Between the two of us, I find that my daughter has an eye for detail that I often miss. I guess that is the way with children, and on that point, they also tend to be quite straightforward with their questions. For us adults, long immersed in the seeming monotony of daily life, these questions can throw us off. 

That is exactly how I felt when, one day, my daughter said, “I spy, with my ‘kutty’ eye, something that is brown. Appa, it’s you!” So far, so good, but then she asked, “Appa, why are you brown?”

Taken aback by her question, I simply said, “Because I am.” 

Of course, as always, that response was not enough, and what followed was a series of “Why, Appa? Why?” 

By the time I had dropped her off, our conversation had meandered from catching the colors of our local neighborhood to discussing people of color, my daughter’s own complexion, and what it meant in today’s world. 

In a day and age when the world seems so monochrome in its ways, my daughter’s questions were like that blade of light caught on the edge of a broken glass, creating a piercing caustic. Growing up, I’ve lived the experience of standing on the sidelines, solely for being a person of color. I would never want that for anyone, including my own kid. 

An increasingly globalized world creates a reality in which various forms of difference often set the seeds for division. Of late, the latter’s effects have been more pronounced, with isolationism favored over inclusivity. My daughter’s simple question was a throwback to a discussion of survival methods in such a world, especially when she and I were on opposite ends of the complexion spectrum. 

Interestingly enough, being Indian helped in this context. I hail from a nation defined by diversity. Living away from home for much of my life only deepened my appreciation for my culture. Every now and then, I find myself opening a window into my culture’s past, learning something new, and sharing. This became one of those occasions.  

In an attempt to address my daughter’s questions about people of color and the evolution of diversity in modern times, I came across the Navagunjara. 

The archetype of a composite being, the Navagunjara, is a creature from Indian mythology (the Mahabharata) composed of various body parts and rendered in bright colors that each hold a specific meaning. 

Body PartSymbolism
Head of a roosterAwakening and vigilance, spiritual consciousness
Neck of a peacockBeauty, rhythm and divine elegance
Back of a bullSteadfastness, strength and dharma
Lion’s waistCourage, leadership and vitality
Trunk of an elephantWisdom, prosperity and memory
Tail of a serpentTransformation and cosmic energy
Human arm holding a lotusConsciousness, purity, and divine intent
Leg of a deerGrace, agility and innocence
Leg of a tigerPower, ferocity and protection
Reference: https://maavni.com/blogs/pattachitra/navagunjara-art-symbolism-odisha-culture

Carl Jung postulated that the universality of human experience is encoded in our stories. These stories have often been expressed through mythological symbols. The Navagunjara is that and more; it is a reflection of the human psyche. The creature’s whimsical anatomy is symbolic, with every disparate part forming a cohesive whole that represents unity in diversity.  My daughter’s reaction upon seeing the Navagunjara was a simple, “It’s beautiful.” She was drawn to its brightly contrasting hues, and the creature’s eccentric anatomy. The metaphor of inclusion was hard to miss, and there was my answer. 

Much like the Navagunjara, I explained to her, we were distinct in our own ways. From our physical appearances to even our personal beliefs, we were separated by a world of differences. But these differences were also our strengths. It spoke to the wholeness and balance we felt when we were together, all because we were different. Those differences challenged us and also provided the incentive to communicate. 

Of course, I had to simplify a lot of this so that my daughter could understand. As a simple example, I related to our differing preferences in ice cream flavors. This didn’t stop us from enjoying eating ice cream together. All that mattered was that we made the right order at the cashier so that we were equally satisfied, and to do that, we communicated. 

The Navagunjara is a metaphorical reminder that true beauty arises from a harmony that is rendered in our differences. It is a message of inclusion, compassion, empathy, sustainability, and global citizenship, in which our connectivity speaks to our greatest strength: solidarity in diversity.  

Or as my daughter put it, there is a lot of space for different colors in the world. 

Writer’s Corner – Navigating AI as a Writer

In the summer of 2022, I started hearing murmurs about OpenAI’s upcoming release of an AI-powered conversational chatbot that would presumably be a game-changer. There was a sense of dread in the writing industry, with some of my colleagues and friends bemoaning the potential impact of this technology on the field and their careers. Later that year, on November 30, 2022, OpenAI released the first iteration of ChatGPT. 

It has been nearly four years since. AI tools are now just about everywhere. From chatbots, coding assistants, and workflow automation to writing, image, and video generation, there is an AI tool out there to suit everyone’s needs. I’ve already crossed paths with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Copilot, Perplexity, Grammarly, and many more. My take on all of it is similar to a popular character (who confronts the reality of his success, achieved through years of effort and hard work, becoming a poor and cheap imitation) from one of my favorite anime: 

I have followed the development of ChatGPT and other AI tools very closely and approached their use with great caution. Adaptation is part of the writer’s journey. It has also been a central characteristic of my personal journey regarding new technologies. Hailing from a small town in Madurai, I didn’t come across a compact disc until the early 2000s, when I had the opportunity to attend an international private school. There I was, packing floppy disks into my backpack while my friends were working with USB drives. A few megabytes were my data domain, while others were advancing to gigabytes and terabytes. This pattern of catching up and adapting to emergent tech has persisted throughout my life. It has been both a frustrating and a great learning experience. 

Being slower has helped me assess and adapt to new trends cautiously. Today, in my day-to-day life as a writer, I see AI (in its various forms) simply as a tool and an imperfect one at that. Take ChatGPT, for example, it is essentially a Large Language Model (LLM) in action. Chat is trained on vast amounts of data, including publicly available internet content, books, and articles. It recognizes patterns and generates text without directly storing any information. This approach entails a Pandora’s box of ethical challenges, including potential bias, inaccuracy, intellectual property concerns, and data privacy issues. Like its brethren, Chat is both beneficial and harmful, depending on its use and oversight. That last part can apply to any tool, in general. The funny thing is, none of this is new. It’s just that AI tools today bring a boatload of abilities that, at one point, weren’t possible. 

Remember this guy? 

Clippy was a primitive, rule-based AI (yup, you heard that right) that helped predict user needs and offer help on the go. You can call it a predecessor of sorts to modern generative AI. Clippy also used early machine-learning techniques to analyze user actions and offer suggestions. In a way, Clippy is the granddaddy of modern chatbots. 

Go back a little further, and you have this guy: 

The ’60s and ’90s had AI that followed hard-coded instructions. These AI programs could predict statistics and algorithms but couldn’t do anything more than what was already coded in. Here, we have Dr Sbaitso, an AI speech synthesis or text-to-speech operator program released in 1991.

As AI tools proliferate, they have sparked extensive discussion about privacy, mitigation, transparency, and more. Careers and fields are undergoing a transformative era where jobs and roles are being realigned and remade. The art of writing is also riding this wave of change. AI tools have improved and expanded accessibility and productivity for the average user. Where once you would hire the services of a working professional, say a graphic designer for a specific design task, AI tools make it easy for the uninitiated to be able to come up with something on their own. As such, some tout that AI has levelled the playing field, but I disagree. Rather, I find that AI has significantly elevated the ceiling for talent emergence and recognition.

In my line of work, AI tools have helped streamline parts of my writing pipeline that were tedious or lacking. Much of this doesn’t involve the actual writing. Rather, it mostly concerns the brainstorming and research phase of a given project. Googling things is easy enough, but sometimes there are nitty-gritty details that a basic Google query may not necessarily be effective for. Tools like ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude do make it easier to find what you need on the web, IF you know how to prompt them properly. This whole process is quite analogous to my reaction when Wikipedia first came out. The online encyclopedic database blew everyone’s mind. At the same time, it was imperative for users to remember that Wikipedia is a collaborative, open-editing platform. This means anyone with an internet connection can potentially alter content, creating opportunities for errors, vandalism, and bias, especially on controversial topics. Back then and to this day, I use Wikipedia as a decent starting point to gather information. I don’t take anything on its page at face value; instead, I cross-check with the provided bibliography or supplement my notes with further research.

AI tools are just the same for me. On the one hand, I use them to ease the brainstorming and research phase of my writing. This can involve finding an obscure passage related to a specific work or prompting the AI to provide working examples of a writing concept I may find confusing when a cursory search on my end does not yield what I want. It is a collaboration in which the AI tool serves as “sound board” of sorts, enhancing my efficiency while supporting my originality.  I do not let the tool dictate my writing. Rather, I let my writing dictate how I use the tool. This helps me maintain my authenticity, voice, and critical thinking. As a tool, AI is just another cog in my creative process. I remain the director. On the other hand, AI tools have helped me identify areas for improvement in my writing process. Grammarly, for one, has pushed me to further study and build on fundamentals, including grammar, style, and composition (in fact, it was my persistent mistakes in these departments that got me reading “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White). 

Using an AI tool for coding doesn’t necessarily make me proficient in programming. The same logic applies to writing as well. One still has to learn the skills of the trade to have the basic know-how and to keep improving. AI tools for writing often seem like a shortcut, but an overreliance on them may potentially come at a loss of one’s personal voice, that most critical aspect of your writing that makes it original and, simply, you. AI tools geared toward writing are as much a means to enhancing your efficiency as they are in helping you identify weaknesses in your writing. Working and improving in those areas is on the writer.

At the end of the day, the actual writing is my very own personal journey, untouched by AI.

Fighting Demons and Overcoming Generational Trauma – K-Pop Demon Hunters Review

She can sing and dance; she has all the fans; she has two best buddies, a caring manager, and all the popularity one can desire. Still, behind her seemingly joyous disposition lies a subtle sadness that offers a window into her personal turmoil. This is Rumi from K-Pop Demon Hunters.

I know I’m a little late to the K-pop bandwagon, but I really didn’t expect this movie to hit me as deep as it did. Back in 2013, when Frozen was released, I remember the hysteria that followed suit. The songs from that movie were just about everywhere, and it got tiring pretty fast. BUT, after becoming a father and watching Frozen with my daughter, I could understand the hype. Still, I didn’t rate it very high on my list of animated movies. K-Pop Demon Hunters, though, is a whole different story.

I had the movie on my watchlist for quite some time. After my daughter kept mentioning Rumi frequently from her dayhome visits, I realized we might as well sit and watch the movie together. There I was on a Friday night, with a bowl of popcorn in my lap, getting ready to enjoy the movie with my family. An hour and a half later, my daughter gets ready for bed, and I’m sitting with a lump in my throat. The songs were great, and the animation was absolutely terrific. The comedy and gags (especially those hinting at a comical self-awareness of K-dramas) also landed really well. Most of all, the incorporation of cultural elements and a story that, while being simple and sweet, carried deeply profound messaging, hit hard.

Rumi, our protagonist, is part-demon and part-hunter. Rumi’s mentor, Celine, counsels Rumi on her mixed identity and maintains that it is a truth that must remain hidden until it can be “fixed.” Rumi keeps that secret, one which evolves into a generational trauma where one “must keep our fears and faults hidden”, and struggles with her fragmented identity while hiding it from her closest friends and Huntrix teammates, Mira and Zoey.

But, as we all know, the longer you keep such a secret, the heavier the burden. Rumi feels the weight of her identity come crashing down upon her once she meets her counterpart in Jinu, lead singer of the demon boy band (yeah, you heard that right), and a foil to Rumi. Jinu’s own regrets and guilt mirror Rumi’s struggles. The story revolves around how these two characters connect, reconcile their feelings, move forward, and a whole lot more.

I’m currently undergoing therapy to deal with some stuff in my personal life. Part of that involves third-culture kid syndrome, some generational trauma, and a dollop of internalized emotions and experiences. Put it all together, and you get me, the grown-ass adult sitting with a lump in his throat after watching K-Pop Demon Hunters.

This movie works really well on so many levels, especially with its messaging towards accepting differences and oneself, even with all our faults. Sometimes even the most well-intentioned wishes can cause hurt and pain, and sometimes this can come from those closest to us. In these moments, I’ve learned that you can find strength by trusting yourself and letting your emotions flow rather than repressing them. Being vulnerable about your emotions and misgivings don’t make you weak. It takes great strength to speak what is in your heart, and it is the best way forward to accepting oneself.

As Rumi and Jinu sing it, “We can’t fix it if we never face it.”

K-Pop Demon Hunters is a perfectly well-balanced movie for a diverse audience, and all the more reason that it has found great success. The ending certainly leaves you wanting more, and I’m glad to know that a sequel is in development. Rumi goes from hunting literal demons to battling the one within herself. The mystical barrier of the “honmoon” she has vowed to protect is a beautiful metaphor for her inner struggle and the repressed undercurrent of her emotions. Finally, her willingness to find strength by accepting herself and sharing that truth with her friends, who, in turn, embrace her, brings it all full circle with Rumi no longer hiding but shining, as she was born to be. In a way, I think that’s something we can all do for ourselves.