Virtual Worlds · Digital Culture · AI Literati
Alan Watts had no formal Buddhist training. He was not ordained in any tradition. He had no guru, no lineage, and no institutional backing. He was a British-born, self-educated philosopher who moved t...
Read article →Don Quixote is the protagonist of El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, published in two parts in 1605 and 1615. The novel follows Alonso Quixano, an aging Spanish gent...
Read article →Alonso Quixano is a minor Spanish nobleman in his fifties who has read so many chivalric romances that he loses his mind. He decides he is a knight-errant. He renames himself Don Quixote de la Mancha....
Read article →Jane Austen (1775-1817) was an English novelist whose six completed novels — Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion — are among the most wid...
Read article →Jane Austen wrote six novels about marriage. This is technically true and completely misleading. What Austen actually wrote about was power — who has it, who performs it, who is destroyed by the lack...
Read article →Ichigo Kurosaki is the protagonist of Bleach, a manga and anime by Tite Kubo serialized from 2001 to 2016. He is a teenager who gains the powers of a Soul Reaper (Shinigami) and becomes involved in th...
Read article →Ichigo Kurosaki did not choose to become a Soul Reaper. A Hollow attacked his family, a Soul Reaper named Rukia was wounded protecting them, and in a moment of desperation she transferred her powers t...
Read article →Asuka Langley Soryu (Asuka Langley Shikinami in the Rebuild films) is the Second Child and pilot of Evangelion Unit-02 in Neon Genesis Evangelion, created by Hideaki Anno. She is a 14-year-old German-...
Read article →Asuka Langley Soryu is the Second Child — the designated pilot of Evangelion Unit-02 — and she wants you to know she is the best. She announces it. She performs it. She attacks any suggestion to the c...
Read article →Gon Freecss is the protagonist of Hunter x Hunter, a manga and anime by Yoshihiro Togashi. He is a twelve-year-old boy from Whale Island who leaves home to take the Hunter Exam, seeking to find his fa...
Read article →Gon Freecss leaves Whale Island at age twelve to find his father, who abandoned him at birth to be a Hunter. He is cheerful, direct, physically gifted, and morally uncomplicated — at least on the surf...
Read article →Vash the Stampede is the protagonist of Trigun, a manga by Yasuhiro Nightow (1995-2007) and its anime adaptations (1998 original, 2023 Trigun Stampede). He carries a sixty billion double dollar bounty...
Read article →Vash the Stampede has a sixty billion double dollar bounty on his head and a policy of never killing anyone. He is the most wanted man on the planet Gunsmoke — a desert world where water is scarce, in...
Read article →Himura Kenshin is the protagonist of Rurouni Kenshin, a manga by Nobuhiro Watsuki serialized from 1994 to 1999 in Weekly Shonen Jump. Set in the early Meiji era of Japan (1878), Kenshin is a former as...
Read article →Himura Kenshin was the deadliest assassin of the Bakumatsu era — the manslayer whose blade helped bring down the Tokugawa shogunate. When the revolution was over and the Meiji government stood, Kenshi...
Read article →Chihiro Ogino (also known as Sen) is the protagonist of Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi), a 2001 animated film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. She is...
Read article →Chihiro Ogino is ten years old, sulky about moving to a new town, and clinging to a bouquet of flowers that are already wilting. Twenty minutes into Spirited Away, her parents have been turned into pi...
Read article →Killua Zoldyck is one of the two main protagonists of Hunter x Hunter, a manga and anime by Yoshihiro Togashi. He is the heir to the Zoldyck family, the most infamous assassin clan in the series, and...
Read article →Killua Zoldyck was trained to be an assassin from birth. His family — the most notorious assassins in the Hunter x Hunter universe — subjected him to poison resistance training, electrocution, and ext...
Read article →Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and author widely regarded as the father of existentialism. He wrote extensively about anxiety, despair, faith, and individual choic...
Read article →Søren Kierkegaard proposed to Regine Olsen in 1840. She said yes. He broke off the engagement the following year and spent the rest of his life writing about why. The answer involved anxiety, freedom,...
Read article →L (also known as Ryuzaki and other aliases) is the world's greatest detective in Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. His real name is L Lawliet, though this is not revealed until after his d...
Read article →L has no surname, no known origin, no visible life outside his work, and a posture that would concern a chiropractor. He sits in a crouch, holds objects between thumb and forefinger, eats exclusively...
Read article →Edward Elric is the protagonist of Fullmetal Alchemist, a manga by Hiromu Arakawa serialized from 2001 to 2010. Known as the Fullmetal Alchemist, he is the youngest State Alchemist in history, having...
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