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Sunday, August 22, 2021

Pirate Princess Dropped:

This is a feminist, female-oriented show and I can't stomach it any more.  You can really tell this was made for an American audience.  It looks like anime and sounds like anime, but is really an American cartoon, because it's fixated on American values.  Every female in the series is strong and smart and worth more than her body, and every male is either idiotic, violent or evil.  It reeks of America's view of the world.  The very first thing the beautiful princess does is cut her hair so short it's practically a buzz cut.  Because we can't have women looking like women, now can we, that would only be reinforcing stereotypes.  I hate to see this sort of thinking infecting anime, the last refuge of feminine females.  If this sort of show becomes popular there really will be nothing left to watch on Earth.

Meanwhile, during my 29th re-read of '100 Waifus,' I spontaneously thought up a solution to the problem Yui posed Christopher in chapter 53, and inserted his response in chapter 55, the chapter he's giving job counseling to all his waifus.  I love how re-reading the story can offer new insights into the story and thus improve the story.  If I hadn't been re-reading this chapter I never would have thought of it and thus the book would've been stuck with a subpar solution forever.  Yume gave Yui a puppy to make her feel better, but that isn't a long term solution for boredom.  This is: 

  "Yui, you once debated between a musical career and a teaching career, so why not become a music teacher?" I proffered. If she couldn't do any more, why not teach? As the proverbial phrase went.

  "Does my experience with the guitar really help me conduct a school band?" Yui questioned her credentials.

  "With perfect memories, anyone can become skilled with an instrument quickly, even me. What you can impart is something more important, your musical sense. Or maybe even your ability to pull people together and perform as one. Playing well is one thing, but children will need your leadership to go beyond that, to making music and friends they'll remember forever." I pitched.

  "A vision of my very own. . ." Yui repeated my advice to herself. "Getting children excited and happy with music, generation after generation, so that they can write the songs I can't anymore. . ."

  "Maybe this is what you've been waiting for." I encouraged.

  "Maybe." Yui echoed breathlessly in agreement, looking out upon a whole new vista of possibilities.

* * *

As I've already reached chapter 53 of my re-read, it won't be long now before it's finished entirely.  I did notice there were a lot of 'justs' in the later chapters, but they didn't bother me anymore so I left them alone.  Maybe I was just too lazy to do anything about them because I'd already had to stop and cut so many earlier.  I prefer to think they aren't dense enough to pose a problem and serve the story well though.  That certainly lightens my workload.

The only other edits I've needed for these later chapters is to reduce Earth's population from 15 billion to 'over 10 billion,' which is more in line with the U.N.'s population forecast for the 22nd century.  Accuracy is necessary for believability which is necessary for immersion, and by keeping the number vague like this I can sound more accurate.

Still, to come up with a whole new sequence that makes a waifu happy and really proves Christopher's worth, that right there justifies this 29th edition in spades.  Now it's obvious why things are still going well 18 years later in Chapter 57.  It isn't many words, but this is a huge improvement to the book.

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