Addendum:

Now I can finally open up somewhat about my literary choices in my fic. At about the same time as I watched SIGNALIS, I happened to have an interest on a lot of things Jewish. It's sort of an idle interest, which may have began in my religious lessons, which of course involves the Bible and media derived from it. As expected from my impressionable years, my casual interest waxed and waned from time to time, and during the last few years, it became active, mainly for my idle concepts of an anime sitcom which is basically IDF in space, with heavy South Park flavor. Of course, never took off because I don't think it's gonna fly thanks to current events.

Another fun fact is about about the large contributions to science fiction by Jewish authors with Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison being two of the most famous examples, not to mention its representation in sci-fi media with Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy drawing inspiration from his heritage to portray Spock, especially the iconic Vulcan salute, based on the hand gestures used to perform the traditional Priestly Blessing which he witnessed during an Orthodox Sabbath service as a boy. Frank Herbert's masterpiece Dune series had Jewish elements where it counts, notably the concept of the Kwisatch Haderach (Hebrew: Kefitzat haderech/קְפִיצַת הַדֶּרֶךְ ) and Jews themsleves show up in his last written book, being used as a metaphor for decentralized survival. Perhaps it's synchronität. I claim no expertise on Jewish material, only enthusiasm, but I hope to give the material due gravitas as appropriate for my story and I also hope to control content creep which resulted in many of my fics stalling.

Lastly, the history and culture of the Jewish people and of course their religion is fascinating. Very few people in our world have their culture and religion so intimately and profoundly tied to their identity, with such an impact on how it shaped them and the larger world around. As such I found rather compelling. And they are surprisingly diverse. For many people, being Jewish can mean belonging to the Ashkenazi, Sephardic, or even Mizrahi branches, but lesser known branches exist such as Beta Israel from Ethiopia, the Cochin Jews of India and amazingly, the Kaifeng Jews of China, probably the easternmost extent of the people, having descended from Jewish merchants travelling east from Persia and settling in the city of the same name. My OCs' surnames were not randomly chosen, they were among the registered clan names of Kaifeng Jews in Imperial China; they were later absorbed into mainstream Chinese society with only vestiges of old customs left behind. This branch is experiencing a minor resurgence as their descendants are slowly uncovering their heritage and converting back to Judaism.

Of course I am fully aware of the pitfalls that come with handling the material I choose for my story. I'm fully aware how loaded it could be in some quarters. Better to at least acknowledge it than wielding it clumsily and sounding like a broken record.

See you in the next proper chapter.