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sleeplessgreaser · 2 months

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Animal Room (1995)

Directed by Craig Singer, starring Matthew Lillard and Neil Patrick Harris, this movie is WILD. If you like Matthew Lillard, or you just enjoy strange and obscure movies, it's possible you've heard of this one! Well, I decided to write an essay on it, because I have autism I love this movie for some odd reason. Also, it is impossible to google information about this movie so consider this my version of Wikipedia for the movie, Animal Room.

WARNING: This movie, and the following post, contains a lot of dark themes. Please be aware that this movie includes murder, suicide, peer abuse, substance abuse, domestic abuse, animal abuse, rape, religious themes, satanic themes, gun violence, and very graphic depictions of pretty much all of the above.

Still interested? Alright, let's get into it then. (Also, this is really long, sorry.)

This movie is strange, confusing, terrifying, shocking, and downright disturbing. It supposedly takes place in the near future, though the exact year isn’t defined, and this can be seen through odd clothing styles and the occasionally weird setting choices. I would say a lot of it is inspired by the suburban gothic dystopian genre? (Niche, I know, but stay with me here.) Topped off with a hint of The Matrix… are you still here? Okay, cool, because it’s only going to get weirder.

First off, we need to know all of the characters, and there are a lot. Many characters have their names mentioned in passing, and as a result we don’t really know who is who, so I will do my best to explain them all.

The first person we see is known as Pink, played by Ryan Payne Bell. He’s a pale redhead with frizzy hair, typically seen wearing a bowler hat and trench coat. Pink is a part of Doug Van Housen’s gang, who we soon find hanging out on the pier of a seemingly abandoned carnival. Doug, often referred to as simply ‘Van Housen’, is played by Matthew Lillard. He has jet-black hair, styled in a messy bowl cut, and he wears multiple different outfits throughout the movie, always consisting of whites and blacks. His style could only be described as “modern vampiric”. (Which actually makes a lot of sense, once you get to know him.) His girlfriend, Shelly, played by Lori Heuring, has long blond hair and can usually be found hanging off of Doug’s arm. The other members of the gang include Eddie, Porky, and Hinge. Eddie LeMaster, played by Brian Vincent, has short brown hair and is usually wearing a leather jacket or a sleeveless shirt. Porky, played by Eddie Malavarca, can easily be recognized by his bright red (sometimes black) bandana and curly black hair. And finally, Hinge, played by Dechen Thurman, has straight brown hair that comes down to his shoulders and is always carrying, if not actively reading, a book.

As far as I can tell, the hierarchy of the gang is as follows: Doug is the leader, Shelly is his “consort” of sorts (she isn’t really treated as part of the gang, but more like an ally who gets special treatment), Hinge is Doug’s confidant while Eddie is the main instigator, and Porky and Pink are the goons who hang around just to be a part of the fun and do what they’re told. Hinge and Eddie seem to be important to Doug – Eddie is loud and excitable, likes to start shit and cause chaos, while Hinge is quiet and reserved and silently encourages Doug’s bad behavior. We see throughout the movie that Doug is often annoyed by Eddie’s behavior (along with Pink’s and Porky’s), whereas with Hinge he seems to enjoy his company. We see him often leaning on Hinge’s shoulder, listening to him explain complex topics or just zoning out while Hinge is reading a book. Their relationship is subtle, as Doug treats Hinge as if they were friends, meanwhile with the other three he’s a bit more leader-ly.

Eventually we meet our protagonist, Arnold Mosk, played by Neil Patrick Harris. Arnie is a young boy, with short blond hair and thin glasses, who is actively dealing with a drug problem. In his free time, Arnie sneaks into the school auditorium and takes hallucinogens while sitting out in front of the stage. He has no friends (minus Gary), no social life, and he talks like an absolute nerd with a cynical, nihilistic, and severely depressive outlook on life. Here’s an actual quote from him when someone asked him “What happened?”: “Oh, nothing untypical. Barbarians rarely capitulate.” … I mean, come on. Is it any wonder he gets bullied?

Anyways, we learn that the school has designed a special “class” of sorts for troublesome students, and Arnie (being a drug addict) has to be a part of that class. As a result, he’s become a target for Van Housen and his gang – well at least, he’s become a bigger target than before. There are two adults in the school who are important to the story, the principal and a teacher who acts as Arnie’s therapist. Principal Jones, played by Stephen Pearlman, is the secondary antagonist of the story, as his choice to continue the use of the "Class for Troublesome Kids" is the main issue for our protagonist, and Doug Van Housen’s abuse is simply a result of it. Meanwhile, Doctor Rankin, played by Joesph Siflavo, is Arnie’s only advocate on the schoolboard as he actively argues against the use of the "Class for Troublesome Kids" or, at the very least, that Arnie doesn’t belong in there. Throughout the movie, Arnie visits Rankin’s office to confide in him about his troubles, and in turn Rankin tries to convince him to stop using drugs.

This special class, known by the students as the ‘Animal Room’, seems to be either an all-day class or at least a homeroom for the students that are assigned to it. Principal Jones claims that the class is for the sake of the 95% of students who are not troublesome, and that the 5% who are should simply be kept away from the rest so that the majority can succeed. However, this means that the 5% of students who are not a part of the “good” population are rounded up together and left to fight amongst themselves. This classroom is found in a basement area, at the end of a long hallway filled with short flights of stairs and graffiti, and security guards sit (or, most often, sleep) outside the door. In this classroom, we find Doug Van Housen and the rest of his gang (minus Shelly) and some other students who have been deemed troublesome, such as ‘Baldy’ (more on him later) and Arnie. This room is filled with shoddy desks and chairs, cement walls lined with pipes and ductwork, and a single television which is always playing the same thing: a recording of a man dressed in all black, similar to the security guards, with slicked back hair and wearing matrix-style sunglasses. This man is usually inaudible, but is always speaking in a very authoritative tone and staring directly at the camera. Watching this TV seems to be the only thing in the classroom the students are “permitted” to do, although there is rarely a teacher, or even a security guard, inside the room to stop them from doing otherwise. If things start to get loud, however, the guards outside will come in to stop it.

Next, we meet Gary Trancer, played by Gabriel Olds. He’s Arnie’s only friend, and apparently has been his friend since they were kids, but in the past few years they’ve grown apart. Gary’s girlfriend, Debbie, played by Amanda Peet, apparently either temporarily dated or had a one-night stand with Eddie LeMaster, and as a result Eddie holds a grudge against Gary for “stealing his girl”. This, combined with Gary’s brave attempts to protect Arnie from the school bullies, makes him into a target as well.

Now that we know all the characters and their roles, let’s get into the actual story. First off, we truly learn just how bad things are at this school when Van Housen’s gang ambushes Arnie in the bathroom, and I’m begging you to skip the rest of this paragraph if you’d rather not be horrified by something that is so terrifyingly real it truly sickens me. Ready? Doug begins to beat Arnie, while Pink and Eddie are taunting him and Hinge is flicking the light switch on and off like it’s some kind of nightmare. We see Porky walk out of a bathroom stall, buckling his pants, and the boys grab Arnie and drag him into the stall, while he’s struggling and crying. Doug, who’s standing over the toilet facing Arnie, grabs him by the back of the head and shoves him face-first into the bowl filled with Porky’s shit. Arnie is gagging, suffocating, and essentially being drowned, until finally he stops struggling and allows himself to go still. The gang leaves him there, gasping, coughing, and puking on the floor of the bathroom. This scene may not be as bad in writing, but actually watching it play out legitimately made me feel sick.

Soon after, we see Arnie and Doug sitting in the principal’s office – Arnie, looking half-dead, and Doug playfully giving himself paperclip nails. The principal sits down and begins to scold both of them, as if Arnie had been equally in the wrong, and then proceeds to deal out zero punishment.

We then see Doug making his way home. He walks through a cemetery, passes by a lone guitar player sitting on a small dock playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (No. 14 in C-sharp Minor). His home is a giant mansion, and when he walks in he immediately strips naked in front of his butler, then walks up the stairs, leaving the butler to pick up his clothes. Meanwhile, Arnold is having a hallucination about being at a bar with creepy old men, presumably the one where he got his drugs, and is being strip-teased by a woman in white lingerie while a baby cries in the distance.

I warned you that this movie was wild, and it's only going to get wilder from here!

The next thing that happens is that Van Housen’s gang, along with Shelly, bursts into the home of Shelly’s family (Shelly being Doug’s girlfriend, in case you forgot). Her mother is upstairs taking a bath, while her father and brother are sitting at the table eating dinner. Once again, if you'd rather not be traumatized by the horrifying actions of Doug Van Housen then I suggest you skip the rest of this paragraph. They start taunting and torturing her father, who is confined to a wheelchair and begins to have trouble breathing. Eddie grabs a trash bag and pulls it over her father’s head, suffocating him for a moment before dragging him out of his chair, meanwhile Doug has climbed the stairs to interrogate Shelly’s mother, who is now wearing a bathrobe. Doug asks for the gun owned by Shelly’s father, threatening to rape the mother among other things. She slaps him, then gets the gun and asks him to leave. As the gang heads out the door, Eddie hangs back and pulls Doug aside, whispering something. The camera cuts to Shelly’s mother, sitting on the stairs, and Eddie walks up, grabs her by the hair and drags her to the bedroom as she screams.

I warned you, this movie is disturbing.

Later, in Dr. Rankin’s office, Arnie tells him a story about how a group of thugs once beat up Van Housen, and how slowly, over the next year, each of those thugs disappeared and were eventually found dead.

Later that day, Gary visits Arnie’s home to discuss how they’ve grown apart. He wants to reconnect, and they talk about going on a trip to the Caribbean, something they had always dreamed of doing back when they were children. They decide to finally take that trip in the summer, as soon as their final year of high school is over and before Gary has to leave for college. It’s important to note that Gary is the only person in the school, besides Dr. Rankin, who treats Arnie like a regular human being. Everyone else, even casual peers, see him as a freak or weirdo. Also, once Gary leaves, Arnie scolds his mother for being a drunk, and for acting weird when Gary came to visit. (To be fair, she was acting very weird, but it was obviously out of innocence, and I don’t think she deserved to be scolded like that by her own son.)

When we get to see Doug Van Housen’s room, we learn a bit more about who he is as a person, and Why He's Like That. Religious paraphernalia, paintings and statues line the walls alongside gothic hanging lamps and candles. His bed has a gigantic headboard, and we see him lying in bed wearing reading glasses, looking through a book that mentions King Henry VI.

We now get to meet Baldy, played by Huckleberry Fox, in the Animal Room. He’s drawing at his desk, while Van Housen’s gang is discussing hypotheticals, and Doug walks over and begins messing with him. Doug starts nosing the side of Baldy’s face, whispering in his ear tauntingly, then spits on the back of his head, where we see he has a tattoo of a ghoul. Baldy jumps up, turning around to yell “Why are you such a filthy scumbag?!” The gang all jump to defend him before a guard walks in to break it up.

Arnie has a hallucination about the carnival, where he finds the rotting corpse of Doug Van Housen wrapped up in plastic like a game prize. Doug asks him, “Do you see what your friend did to me?”

We cut to Baldy, who is helping to run a recording session for the band, Misfits (yes, the real band), and Van Housen’s gang is sneaking into the studio. When he isn’t looking, they sneak into the room and grab him. The band, on the other side of the glass (which is apparently one sided, as they can’t seem to see the events on the other side) begins playing again while the gang begins to interrogate Baldy for calling Doug a “filthy scumbag”. After a few minutes of torment, they shove Baldy to the ground and Doug begins slamming his head into the floor. The others look afraid, Eddie yells at him to stop, Baldy is bleeding and has gone limp. Doug wipes a hand over Baldy’s face, kisses his forehead and says “Goodnight.”

We then cut to Baldy’s father, sitting at home and staring at a picture of him, then we cut back to the gang who has now moved to their usual hangout on the carnival pier.

Shelly arrives (she must have gone home for a bit, since she had been there when Doug killed Baldy), and she’s holding a small rabbit. Porky and Pink are cooing over it, and Shelly brings the rabbit over to Doug for him to hold. She watches as he twists the bunny’s neck, killing it, and she begins crying and screaming hysterically. Porky and Pink decide to escort her home, Hinge and Eddie leave soon after, and Doug is left alone.

Pink, who is now seen walking around town, is cornered by Baldy’s father who pulls out a gun and shoots him. He falls dead on the street.

At school, in the Animal Room, Eddie pulls the fire alarm. Everyone is evacuated out of the building, but Doug corners Arnie and keeps him from leaving. Doug begins telling him the story of Job from the bible. Oh, and also he tells Arnie, “I want your blood in my mouth.”

Later, in Dr. Rankin’s office when Arnie is recounting the event to him, Rankin admits to Arnie that he’s going to be leaving the school due to a job offer. Arnie leaves, and when we next see him he has a gun. He pretends he’s pointing it at Doug, then considers pointing it at himself. We see him sitting in the school hallway, leaning against the lockers and fiddling with the gun. He puts the gun in his mouth, and a teacher and janitor catch him before he pulls the trigger. He points the gun at the janitor, who pulls out his own gun and shoots him.

Arnie ends up in the hospital, in a coma. His mother and Gary are there with him.

Van Housen’s gang, which has now dwindled to only four members, is once again hanging out on the carnival pier. Gary approaches them, holding a gun and pointing it directly at Doug. Doug makes Hinge, Eddie and Porky leave, then stands with his arms out, daring Gary to shoot. Gary screams, shooting off five rounds, each one missing Van Housen. Doug walks to Gary, carefully taking the gun from his hands. He shoots the last round into the air, then leaves with his friends.

Debbie (Gary’s girlfriend) is throwing a party. Gary is there, but sitting alone in another room, away from the other guests. Through the doors come bursting Eddie and Porky, behind them is Hinge who has Doug hanging off of him. As Doug steps out from behind Hinge we see he’s sporting a brand new look. His hair is slicked back, and a dark red circular mark is branded onto his forehead. His face is pale, and he’s wearing all black. The gang leaves, and it’s just Gary and Doug, alone.

Doug says he’s going to hurt Arnie as soon as he’s out of the hospital, and Gary tackles him. They immediately begin throwing punches, until Doug gets his hands around Gary’s throat and begins choking him. Doug tosses him to the ground, then pulls out the gun he took from him. Doug sits down on the floor, setting the gun in front of him and Gary grabs it, putting it directly to Doug’s forehead who then pulls his hand down to point the gun into his mouth. Gary backs away, dropping the gun fearfully.

Doug says, “Gary. I will be there when your children wake up. I will be there when you get married. I will be there at your next birthday. I will be there when little Arnie gets out of the hospital. You hear what I’m saying to you, Gary? I will always be there.”

“I will always be there.”

On the wall is a decorative sword. Gary takes it down as Van Housen holds his arms out, once again inviting him to make a move. Gary slashes the sword across his chest, mimicking Doug’s corpse in Arnie’s hallucination. Doug falls limply to the ground.

The police are called.

Officers walk into the room.

Doug is still holding the sword.

They shoot him.

My Thoughts:

Okay, so first of all, Gary was too good for this world. He was the only likeable character in the entire movie, and I was devastated when he died, especially because it was so sudden and they really make you think he’s in the clear. Second, Doug Van Housen, and his group, are absolutely fascinating to me. Their dynamics are just so intriguing, especially the one between Doug and Hinge. Of course, there are so many oddities about this movie that it all feels like a fever dream. The clothing choices, the symbolism, the dialogue, it’s all so wild.

Honestly, I don’t know if I would recommend this movie. On one hand I think it is fascinating, and could be very interesting to some people, but on the other hand it is hard to understand and will likely just leave you questioning things. You’re telling me Doug Van Housen has killed at least five people and faced no charges for any of those murders, when clearly everyone knows he did it? And then when Pink is killed, no one mourns him, and his death is barely even recognized by the characters. Baldy’s father had two seconds of screentime: mourning his child, and shooting Pink. That event is never acknowledged after that. Then, Shelly was so in love with Doug that she forgot who he was, she forgot that he’s a psychopath. She thought she was special, but she wasn’t. He kills her rabbit and then she’s gone, and we don’t see her again. And what about her family? They tortured Shelly’s mother and father, and they just chose not to press charges?? And last but not least, Arnold, who ended up in a coma, is going to wake up one day and find out that his only friend is dead. He was already suicidal, his mother might as well pull the plug and let him go because as soon as he finds out about Gary he’ll probably try to off himself anyways.

Really, the only way to truly understand the movie is to watch it for yourself. As far as I know there is basically no way to buy it anywhere online, and no streaming services have it. Thankfully, someone on youtube has uploaded the whole thing for free. You can find it easily just by looking it up! If you want to know when certain things happen (so that you can skip them or skip to them) or if you have any questions regarding the movie, feel free to shoot me a message or leave a comment!

#animal room #animal room 1995 #doug van housen #matthew lillard #neil patrick harris #obscure movies #movie review #sleepless rants

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lord-squiggletits · 1 year

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One of the thing I love about IDW Op is that he's technically an atheist war pope. It's interesting that he didn't believe in religious aspect himself but was willing to use it for the power. Made his character more complex to me. Do you have opinion on this topic?

I have a lot of mixed feelings about it tbh. On one hand, I think being an atheist/agnostic fits IDW Optimus' character well (I've tried to imagine him as religious and just...can't), but on the other hand, I kind of have a problem with the way most media depicts religious people, and it's a bit disappointing that the Matrix has canonically been associated with multiple miracles (reviving OP and Hot Rod from death, creating new sparks, even Primus/Rung being able to make them) but Optimus still calls the Matrix 'nothing but a bauble' at some point like. Really bro? So there is a part of me that is disappointed at the Matrix being treated as a Plot Device rather than a proper, respectable religious thing. On the other hand, that's just not what the story is about, and I can't call a story/character bad because it didn't go in the exact direction I wanted.

TLDR: I think Optimus being agnostic/atheist makes sense for him, but I really dislike the way it was handled in the story because it feels more like it was used as a plot inciting device than some sort of journey of Optimus trying to discover his purpose. Also, the way he interacts with other religious characters had a lot of wasted potential, so I just feel like it wasn't written in a very interesting way? Basically, the writing is such a mixed bag of interesting concepts with mediocre/bad execution that I can barely focus on the in-universe implications and mostly just get mad at Barber's writing.

My feelings are also complicated by the fact that I don't like Barber's writing at all (it's like 90% dislike and 10% like) because of how bad he is about prioritizing plot over character emotions and stuff. Earlier on in phase 2 it seemed as if Optimus was genuinely curious about his religious role as a Prime and asked the Camiens for guidance on who he should be as Prime (Windblade, Aileron, the Mistress of Flame). In Death of Optimus Prime, OP literally wished he was dead when he woke up. He made a very big deal about how he's Orion now, not Optimus. In Dark Cybertron he had a whole crisis about whether he's Orion or Optimus. Basically, he was set up to have a huge identity crisis (especially since the war is over and leadership of Cybertron fell to Starscream), but any amount of introspection was quickly derailed into PLOT PLOT PLOT OPTIMUS ANNEXES EARTH AND FIGHTS GALVATRON. The story just devolved into bullshit plot on Earth that was just action, action, plot, things happening, with pretty much no room for the characters to stop and breathe and talk and have relationships with each other. I barely felt any emotional investment for most of exRID.

I think the only scenes we got with Optimus actually getting to reflect on this new role of his was 1. when he first met Aileron and asked her and 2. when he's telling Aileron he doesn't believe and then Pyra Magna comes in and gets mad at him.

Speaking of Pyra Magna, the story writing also annoyed me because from the moment she was introduced, Pyra Magna was SUPER self-righteous about how she should be the Prime instead of Optimus and she said that she would try to make Optimus into a better Prime. But then guess what happens? Her and Optimus barely talk and Pyra Magna is basically just there to form Superion and punch people :/ And then later on when Onyx Prime is introduced, all the sudden Pyra Magna goes from having strong opinions about what a True Prime should be and believing she's destined to be the true Prime........ to talking about how she's never trusted Primes and she left the Mistress of Flame for trusting a Prime too quickly??? I know Pyra Magna isn't Optimus, but the reason I'm bringing her up is because she seemed truly religious and opinionated, she SAID she was going to "teach" Optimus things, she seemed like she was set up to be a rival to Optimus, but instead they barely have interactions and the ones they do have early in the series end up being retconned later by Barber's shitty writing that puts plot over consistent character development so. :/ I really expected Pyra Magna and Optimus to have some meaningful interactions, some mix between a rivalry and a mentor/student situation, but instead all she does is shit on him like half the case of exRID/OP and it just made me mad.

(There was also Slide who went from worshipping Optimus to saying that his leadership style is "literally fascism" and monologuing about how Optimus is a conqueror while fighting Unicron and Trypticon is being killed in the background. She's so fucking annoying and comically stupid that I genuinely thought she was going to betray them or do something evil just because she was so unhinged.)

But if you want my actual in-universe opinion on atheist pope Optimus, I do think it's an interesting concept. It shows off Optimus' sense of duty where even though HE doesn't believe, he thinks that what other people think of him his more important. He sees that being a religious figure can help him do what he thinks is right, so he willingly plays that role as a means to a greater end. He's already a "patriot and hero" to the Autobots thanks to his military feats; he's used to being venerated (sometimes to unhealthy degrees) and knows how powerful his influence can be whenever he makes political decisions. I think that he basically saw the Camiens' worship of him as just a new form of the admiration he was already used to receiving. He's spent his whole life commanding armies so simply adopted the colonists into his ranks as well.

(Also, side note, it's so fucking hypocritical for Pyra Magna to call Optimus a piece of shit for "using belief, but not believing" only for her herself to admit a few volumes later that she's never trusted Primes. Why do you wanna be one so badly then if you think Primes are so awful? If it's because you think you could do a better job than past Primes, that literally makes you the same as Optimus, who is also trying to redeem the title of Prime, so you have no right to be punching Optimus in the face lmao. But I also genuinely can't tell if that hypocrisy is supposed to be deliberate or if Barber just did what he usually did and ignored character emotion/motivation/self-reflection in favor of shoving some backstory in for Pyra Magna that tied her to Onyx Prime.)

At least Optimus tried to discourage the blind worship and used the Camiens to do things he had already spent his whole life doing (fighting genocidal colonizers aka Decepticons and protecting organic lives) so I don't really see it as out of line for Optimus. It shows how IDW OP can be a politician as well as a military leader. I think it shows how Optimus can be clever and take advantage of his reputation to achieve his political goals (protecting Earth) and it makes him a more realistic character. Sometimes things that are good aren't done through noble means. Sometimes people do good things by being not very nice.

Also, for what it's worth, I think IDW OP is less manipulative than someone like Starscream, who constantly flaunted his "Chosen One" status while admitting he didn't believe in it (or wavering in his belief) and doing things like creating secret police and trying to kidnap sparklings. Like damn at least Optimus risked his life in the same battles he asked his followers to fight in, he ruined his reputation for the sake of protecting Earth from the Decepticons. Even if the guy is an atheist pope at least he puts his own ass on the line for things he believes in for the sake of protecting people who pretty much hate him lmao. That's why I'm more inclined to view Optimus sympathetically; he's living a lie for political means, but his politics are literally "protect humans and Earth from the bullshit war and destruction Cybertronians forced onto their planet", and the burden of leadership is making him depressed and passively suicidal, and eventually he literally sacrificed himself by jumping into a black hole to save millions/billions of people so like. Let the guy fucking rest lmao.

#squiggle answers #idw op love #hot take but when you think about it #if idw op hadn't annexed earth then cybertron would have had no allies against unicron #unicron would've destroyed all the other planets and come to earth #then the humans would probably be unprepared for the battle and not used to working with cybertronians #and they might all have died #and also the remnants of the cybertronian race would have had no planet to live on #so like. i'm just saying this to put it on the record #OP is pretty much directly the reason why earth the human race and the cybertronian race aren't extinct #which i think makes him a very effective and realistic politician/military commander #he did shit things because that's the nature of war and politics #but also without his presence then the world/galaxy would be immeasurably different probably for the worse #which is why i get so mad when people just go 'he did bad things!' and hate him because of that #yes. he did bad things. he also did good things #he's a fucking military commander did you expect him to be a squeaky clean uwu daddy who's nice to everyone and has never done anything bad #sorry the ask was about religion but i also derailed it into idw op's politics #i thought this would be like a 10 minute answer but fucking OOPS #i should've been in bed like an hour ago

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whifferdills · 2 years

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I would love to see a list of movies from the last five (or ten or fifteen or whatever) movies that you've really loved, if you'd wanna share it? I definitely agree with you re: people decrying how "all modern movies are just CGI fests" because THERE IS SO MUCH VARIETY OUT THERE, you just gotta look around a bit! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

thank you for this ask! i love talking about my opinions <3

in terms of movies from the past few years:

We're All Going To The World's Fair (horror-adjacent new media trans* coming-of-age)

Titane (trans-adjacent black comedy/body-horror gore fest/found family drama. sweet, and even sweeter in the context of how fucking weird and uncomfortable it can get)

Memoria (a movie as a space to occupy. sound design as narrative thrust. a thought you can't get out of your head (a trepanned skull found during the construction of a highway). the impossibility of communication, and the importance of it regardless)

Everything Everywhere All At Once (generational trauma, the deep complexity of a fraught but loving mother/daughter relationship when it is also first/second gen immigrant, and straight/gay. butt plug fight scene. sausage fingers made me cry in the theater)

The Humans (horror sort of? psychological drama. funny. the house is a major character & Amy Schumer is sympathetic)

Drive My Car (slow bittersweet meditation on grief, performance, and human connection) & Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Hamaguchi made 2 movies in 2021????how. but again: human connection, and the space a narrative can make for us, the words it can give us, a plainspoken honesty and room for your regret and anime blu-rays)

maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore (essay-film. language, myth, nature, and community)

Bacarau (surreal genre-mash town-under-siege story. Udo Kier as the personification of western colonialism. idk how to summarize this one it is A Lot, 10 pounds of movie in a 5 pound bag)

Lover's Rock (music, community, the casual intimacy of a house party. beautiful, joyous little thing. all of Small Axe is good but this especially)

Shirley (a good biopic? again, not-quite-horror...creation, invasion, psychosexual weirdness. the terror of being seen/the seduction of seeing)

laying it all out you can def see what my tastes are lol. & there's been a fair amount of 'really liked it but either the affection faded or it never bumped itself from Really Like to Love'. Faya Dayi, Macbeth, The Night House, Candyman, Annette, Swan Song....also some things i like bc i think the actor is super hot (Green Knight, Who You Think I Am).

i actually don't mind CGI-heavy things or at least feel like the fault is in the execution and intent, not the media. i really liked Matrix: Resurrections for ex, but even things that ARE resolutely slick theme park rides with zero "redeeming values" & filmed entirely with the world's most alienating green screen can be good theoretically i just think MCU etc gets bogged down in shit that is supposed to make you care about the characters but never does. a parallel universe MCU where every movie is like 90 minutes, has no serious continuity, and exists just so we can watch superheroes fighting supervillains sounds kinda dope actually

#world's fair is not explicitly trans but when i found out the director was a trans woman i was like #yeah that makes sense #deep thoughts with whifferdills #moving pictures

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appleciders · 3 years

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i felt like breaking down the unsinkable eight’s birth family dynamics! it got long so i’ll put it under the cut

fatin and shelby are both eldest children with two much younger siblings. nora and rachel, obviously, are twins w/ no other siblings. martha has sisters, plural, and according to field note #115 she also has a brother who recently moved out of the house. the fact that it was her that moved into his room, not her other sisters who she apparently shared a room with, makes me think she’s a middle child? (this is an edit: in my og post i thought she was the baby of the family a single mom, and then a kind anon corrected me and i rewatched parts of the ep. she could still be the baby, i guess, but i’m not sure.) dot and leah are only children. and then toni is also an only child, but she’s been in foster homes with foster siblings for what seems like most of her life, or else staying with regan (her gf) or martha (the sister that she chose).

so we have two eldest daughters, a middle (or youngest, unclear) child, two twins, and three only children. fatin and shelby both have married parents with (in fatin’s case) a clusterfuck of a marriage or (in shelby’s case) an unbalanced partnership where one parent lays down the law and railroads the other in household decision-making. nora and rachel—and leah too—seem to have happily married two-parent households. martha’s dad appears in a flashback and presumably he and her mom are still together but it’s not certain as they only share one scene and he’s not really mentioned otherwise (and toni calls her “ms. blackburn,” not mrs). dot has a single dad and i don’t think there’s any talk of her mom. toni has two absent parents (dad completely absent, mom in and out of rehab) and has grown up in foster care.

and i’m just thinking about how this informs where they’re all coming from?

like obviously dot had to carry all of the weight of her father’s illness and didn’t have adults or siblings to share that responsibility and grief with (or to have to take additional responsibility for). that’s a really isolating experience and i think it really sets her up to be as self-sufficient and exhausted as she is

nora and rachel’s lives have been hugely shaped around their twin-hood, in a complex matrix of competition and protection and insecurity and love. because there’s just the two of them, everything about them is so compared and dichotomized (the athlete vs. the brain, the intense one vs. the shy one, etc) and they’re constantly perceived as a unit (“will your sister go [to stanford] with you?” “why does everyone keep asking me that? god!”) it also goes without saying that rachel’s aptitudes don’t align with the interests her parents share with nora, which is what drove her into seeking their approval through diving in the first place

i don’t think we see shelby acknowledge her siblings at all, but fatin has that heartbreaking moment with her little brother where it’s clear she loves him and he loves her a whole lot. both she and shelby seem to be heavily pinned under the weight of one of their parents’ expectations—shelby, to be the perfect pageant-winning, god-loving, (heterosexual) optimistic social butterfly, and fatin to excel at her music and reach juilliard level. some oldest daughter level pressure right there

martha is the sweet one of her big family, the “innocent” one, the one who was meant to be protected and then wasn’t, who clings to her childhood all the harder for it. when martha fights her sisters, it’s to the death, but that’s normal—she seems to love her culture and her family deeply. and she sees toni and says yeah, come on, i’m your person, too. no running away on me, you promise? and toni has become another sister and she loves her but toni can be a lot and martha puts that on herself to handle, so of course she has some resentment to vent by 1x04

then there’s toni, who has lived most of her life with other people but doesn’t have any blood she’s ever been able to rely on—who is terrified of losing regan and martha because if she loses both of them, she loses regan’s parents and ms. blackburn and then she’s alone again in a system and a situation that doesn’t care if she sleeps on a truckbed outside. and as much as martha’s family loves her, she feels like she’s perpetually the outsider, cared for only by proxy. by her own admission, without marty, she doesn’t “fucking matter.” and bro that’s just a message that’s so clearly soaked down to her bones it’s heartbreaking

and leah...just really does have only child vibes to me. i don’t have a deeper read on it than that, sorry leah. spent a lot of times with books as a kid because she had a lot of free time?

#the wilds #there's no point to this i just felt like thinking about them #anyway i'm not gonna tag everybody lol #but i just!! love them all!!!#sometimes u need to ramble incoherently abt ppl that don't exist #the wilds meta

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endlessdoom · 3 years

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Line in the Sand

3 maps by various authors.

2021

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/115829-line-in-the-sand-team-mapping-challenge-beta-1-out-now/

MAP01: Rejecting Dignity, Evicting Royalty by Worm318 and Weirdsandwich

A beast, a magnifcent beast! This gigantic map starts with the classic exploration system that reveals little by little the real magnitude of the map. I have to mention first that the creative premise of this WAD is that each map was made by two authors, each having a respective part of the map for their own pleasure and should not cross over to the other side of the other author's map, hence Line in the Sand. While it is a bit difficult to find the true distinctions of each author if you don't know much about each author's repertoire (and also if they are so good that they are able to create a unified and well planned map) each map section can feel the true major effort that went into it. In this case we have one that encourages exploration, combat in enclosed areas and gives us a fantastic feeling of fantasy or medieval exploration thanks to a great MIDI accompaniment. While the length of the map easily exceeds 25 minutes, or more, depending on your play style, at no point did I ever feel truly lost or disoriented. There are a multitude of paths but each one is interconnected in such a way that we end up exploring something new and always arrive at the destination we are meant to reach. With only two keys needed to reach the exit, the flow of the map is quite enviable and fantastic, creating an excellent sense of progress that does not stop and remains stable, as well as a good gameplay that is pleasantly graded. A great map from start to finish. 4/5

MAP02: Reawakening into Samsara by ViolentBeetle and Pegleg

The second and penultimate map. Less large than the previous one but with a similar quality that borders from shoulder to shoulder. With a more drastic style that changes from room to room, the map starts off with a bang by throwing us into a small arena with Cacodemons and Archies ready to do a good job of us. After this introduction the map opens up and we are welcomed into a cool acid and platforming section, full of enemies and plenty of opportunities to approach and fight. The map evolves in this way, following a simple but attractive scheme of new room " new combat " new reward " repeat. This formula creates a great map that does not feel the same at any time, offering a great variation both visually and in gameplay in every minute that we go playing, creating a great atmosphere of fighting in which we feel as if we were really fighting in a hellish fortress. Add to that one of the best MIDIs I've ever heard and we have a map of orgasmic proportions. Complex in terms of its visual appeal but with an understandable layout that encourages you to play it without stopping for a single second. Fantastic to the hundred and a real gem to enjoy if you like those maps of unstoppable action. 5/5

MAP03: Chaotic Plateau by 4MaTC and Surreily

As a kind of error in the matrix, we have a map that combines two visual styles under a graphic progression system where small patches and fragmentations of the map show a combination of the different themes. Like two dimensions fighting to dominate each other, all in a modest and simple way that sets its priority under vanilla. On the one hand, it is also a challenging map with a multitude of paths and surprises that make navigation quite complex, reaching points where we will probably run into a wall and not know where to go. A pity, taking into account that the map is incredible from an aesthetic point of view, proudly showing a giant and extensive architecture that combines different modes under a clear division thanks to the ''line in the sand''. With a progressive but challenging gameplay, you can expect a few minutes playing this solid beast. 3/5

End.

Overall:

» Maps created by multiple authors is not a new thing to the community. It has probably been done since the beginning, like the Doom 2 maps made by Tom Hall and then finalized/tweaked by Romero or Petersen. A practice that back then was born out of pure necessity to get a deadline or simply because the situation required it. On the other hand, this method of working is one that can also result in a combination of different styles working in synergy to deliver a monument to cooperation and extravagance. Introducing Line in the Sand, a compilation of 3 maps made by a total of 6 authors, each working in pairs for each map, so each map is made by no less than 2 authors. The main concept of this WAD is that the maps are not only worked in cooperation, but also have a certain distinctive feature: The maps are ''divided'' by a line, hence, Line in the Sand, and no author should leave his line or retouch the other section. The result? An interesting amalgamation of concepts and visuals that works successfully to deliver something different and entertaining. From the beginning we will realize that despite being only 3 maps, each map is a beast on its own terms. These are huge maps that will undoubtedly take you more than 20 minutes to complete, or up to 30 or more if your game mode is that of the patient and explorer. Each map makes incredible use of stock textures to create a design that is appealing to the eye and nostalgic to the heart, designed with great care and attention to detail. Huge fortresses that expand to the limit of drawing or gigantic hellish caves full of labyrinthine paths and demonic hordes. You have it all. Each map feels like a fantastic adventure; a journey through the vanilla world where we are presented with a set of fantastic art designs that work fantastically well with each mapper's style. Thanks to the simple but interesting rule of drawing a line that divides the maps in half, each author has enough freedom to expand the map to their liking or, if they wish, create a cohesive style that works side by side. This trifecta of maps shows you that under good hands, great things can be created if you set the boundaries well and follow a clear idea. But of course, as is to be expected from massive maps, we can also expect massive combat. All maps have more than 300 enemies in UV, some reaching twice that. However, contrary to what you might think, this is not slaughter, but a precise form of gameplay where combat is based on a progressive flow of more difficult encounters per turn. Some may throw you into direct combat from the start, but the massive map design will also give you more than enough opportunity to take different approaches to the encounter. Die, revive, repeat, die. Sure, I don't think you die a lot (at least I didn't die more than 5 times in one map) but the idea of it is that even if you die many times, you always have a plan B, C or D for your next attack. Many strategies are open thanks to the set of decisions in the design. Sometimes you can take a different route or completely ignore a certain encounter. As I said earlier, the maps feel like a journey through a battlefield, as you decide where to go and where to fight. Line in the Sand is a project with enormous potential. While it's sad that the rest of the maps have not been finished, this trio of maps does more than enough to make up for it with their fantastic design and fun gameplay. Just to say that it personally took me over 1 hour to finish all 3 maps, I can tell you that I am more than satisfied with the result. Of course, big also means that if your navigation skills are not very good, you might get lost, but that's the important thing about these maps being so open and promoting exploration: getting lost is part of the fun. In conclusion, a great explosive project.

#doom #wad #gaming #review

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euesworld · 3 years

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"Here it's another moon over the sky and here I am thinking about you, too complicated and complex for ordinary people like me.. I feel as if I have woken in the matrix. Yet here I am dreaming of your smile, dreading closing my eyes cause should I ever not see you for 10 seconds then I would be unwell.. it's scary, you know? Putting so much trust in another not to do what everyone before them has done, it takes a lot.. in the beginning it was easy, but then the older you got, the harder it got and here we are. Me sitting in a room staring at the ceiling wondering why, why do you love me?? How can you love me when at times I don't even love myself?? I don't know the answers but I know you love me but I'm afraid, afraid of the day you will leave me too.. but I hope, you know?? I have lots of that, but I'm afraid you will go.."

3 am thoughts and 2 am, hahaha.. some dumb rant of mine - eUë

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holocene-days · 4 years

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what are your favorite jonas and martha scenes in season3?

oh my god they KILLED me this season!! i always loved jonas and og martha (moreso on my rewatch before s3) but the way jonas and alt-martha interact kills me because like.. she’s the person he loves most in the world but isn’t at the same time and she has no idea who he is but they’re literal soulmates, the origin of everything, adam and eve, and then the angels at the end who save everything and everyone.. s3 for them was just... a lot lol

as far as moments go, one that majorly stands out to me is when they’re in martha’s room after visiting the middle aged version of her and the interaction they have right before they kiss and then have sex is so perfect... like the way she’s like “when you walked in the door i swear i knew you like i had seen you in a dream before” WHICH SHE HAD WHEN SHE WAS A KID BUT IT WASN’T A DREAM!!! and then she gets sad and insecure and upset and is like “the martha in your world.. what was she like? was she like me?” because she knows he loved that martha and she starts crying and then he puts his nasty ass gross dirty fingernails hand on her face to comfort her and then HE starts crying and she also strokes his cheek and UGH THE WAH THEY LOOK AT EACH OTHER AND THE VULNERABILITY OF THAT MOMENT IS INCREDIBLE THE CHEMISTRY IS INSANE like the moment is so delicate and quiet and there’s barely any dialogue for the whole like 2 minutes or so of that moment besides her lines but it’s so so vulnerable and you can tell they’re both scared and confused because they’ve just been told they have to save the world in like 2 days and they both need comfort and he loves the other version of her but not her and she knows that but she needs him in that moment and they’re both crying and ugh i could go on forever about that moment (AND THEN HOW LABRYNTH SONG PLAYS LATER DURING THE MONTAGE WHEN THEYRE HAVING SEX.. THE L Y R I C S like genuinely fits them and the show so perfectly and i’ve thought about making a lyric analysis breakdown of that song in relation to them and the show lol)

and the scene in front of the cave where jonas is explain the suicide mission they have to go on to alt martha and is like “we’re the problem.. we’re the glitch in the matrix”... which is a direct callback to the scene og martha and jonas share in the very first episode where they’re like “déjà vu is a glitch in the matrix” “or a message from the other side”.. THE TWO DIFFEFENT WORLDS ahskdhajs the whole show was in front of us the entire time and i have a post explaining this moment in detail (and other ones that i’m describing here that i’ll link when i’m not on mobile) but oh my goodness realizing that the theme of glitch in the matrix was actually THEM the whole time.. incredible

oh my god wait and speaking of the cave the moment earlier on in the season after she cuts her face and they go to visit eva and he’s like “this is wrong, i’m wrong here” and she’s like “this is wrong??” (they literally just had sex the night before) and kisses him passionately and then just walks away and how that’s a DIRECT parallel to the scene of them in the rain in 1x9.. THE WRITING IN THIS SHOW

oh my god and then later in the cave when he returns the question (after having just met alt martha again for the first time) and is like “the jonas in your world.. what was he like..?” and they’re both crying and THE LOOK ON HER FACE BECAUSE HE DOESNT KNOW WHAT THEY DID TOGETHER AND THAT THEY HAD THAT NIGHT AND THAT THEY KIND OF FELL IN LOVE AND THAT THERE IS NO JONAS IN HER WORLD OH MY GOD UGH and then the blue glitter starts twirling through the air and they both look at it in awe and sadness with tears cascading down their faces because they both know this is their fate, they’re about to sacrifice themselves and not exist anymore and it’s so beautifully filmed and they know it’s what they have to do but they’re about to die so it’s so sad ugh

and then the FUCKING LIGHT TUNNEL SCENE and how he and alt martha have known of each other their entire lives despite living in different worlds and not realizing it until they’re on a suicide mission to save the world.. GOD and the way when they meet up they just looK at each other and know that this is the moment they have to go and jonas sets up the time machine and they walk forwards into the light, hand in hand, leaving their fates of becoming adam and eva behind and instead becoming the angels that save everyone

and then their death scene... the way they realize seeing themselves as children wasn’t a dream, it was a MEMORY!! and martha is like “is that all we’ll be now, a dream?” and they’re both crying AGAIN BECAUSE THEY BOTH CRIED THE ENTIRE SEASON TOGETHER and they start glitter fading away into gold and jonas looks at her, finally peaceful because he’s completed his hero’s journey of stopping his own existence despite he’s about to die, and he says THE LINE to martha one last time “we’re a perfect match” and reaches out his hand for her to hold and she holds it back and he steps closer and says “never believe anything else” and they they both fade away together... i just.. it was the most perfect ending to their story ever and i’m so so happy with the way that scene was done.. the fact that as he’s dying he reminds her that he loves her and that they’re soulmates despite that not being HIS martha or his alt-martha that he spent all that time with.... and they both have no idea that martha is pregnant with their child....just leave me in a puddle of tears

anyways jonas x martha 4ever i love them (og and alt) and their dynamic is just incredible and the way they interacted and pieced together what they had to do in season 3.. so incredible and beautiful and bittersweet and heartbreaking.. also yeah anytime there was any sense of parallel to something earlier that was then repeated between them drives me CRAZY and gets me SO emotional bc the show is all about repetition and time and so the parallels are all symbolic and the creators of this show are pure genuines for the way they craft this and lisa vicari and louis hofmann are just so brilliant and their performances as martha and jonas and the chemistry they have and the strength and vulnerability and complexity they bring to both of their characters.. just incredible i can’t say enough wonderful things i love them and this show so much <3

#SO MANY FEELINGS RN #dark netflix #jonas kahnwald #martha nielsen #alt martha #jonas x martha #martha x jonas #lisa vicari #louis hofmann #asks #this just took me like 30 minutes to write ahdkdj its what they deserve <3333

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strangertheory · 3 years

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The fictive alter theory holds a lot of weight for me particularly when we consider instances where El did not have powers (s3), or did not use powers when they would've been useful (I'd guess this would be a 'fronting' scenario). The scene that jumps to mind for me is when Dustin asks if she can open the AV room door in s1 and she just seems stunned. One might on the first interpretative layer assume she is struggling to understand, but she seemed quite astute in other scenarios.

Yes, absolutely. [For anyone looking for context, this Ask is regarding this post]

(As a sidenote: I think that El’s ability to open and close the gate as well as certain doors might be relevant to her role as a gatekeeper in the DID System, too.)

This is one of those moments that I feel like it was a good idea to share my incomplete ideas and theories on my blog even though I’m still piecing together the details and will surely have new thoughts and observations a few months from now when I actually take the time to write up this “second layer” theory. Thank you for submitting this Ask and sharing your thoughts about this!

There are always these little things that once I start to notice them I keep second-guessing myself and wondering if it’s all just a case of apophenia or if I’ve found something worth making note of for future reference and deeper understanding of this complex (and mysterious) fictional world that appears to operate by hidden rules that are just out of sight and yet oddly familiar and seem to work very similarly to other concepts that I’ve become familiar with.

Some circumstances might not always have (or need) an explanation. It is ultimately a fictional story. But the attention to detail that the Duffer Brothers have put into the Stranger Things universe is so very evident in not only their discussion of their own work but also simply as evidenced by their work itself: this series has so much carefully planned detail in each part of its construction, and I am very eager to continue to learn more about the series’ internal logic and what may (or may not) explain important things about this story and its characters.

Many films that are on the Stranger Things 4 Video Store Friday List have me contemplating what sort of meta layers exist in the series and how they plan to artistically represent them visually, metaphorically, and perhaps literally in seasons 4 and 5. Inception, The Cell, The Matrix, Inside Out, Welcome to Marwen, and The Truman Show (among others.)

I do strongly suspect that all evidence points towards Stranger Things being about a DID System and alters and internal worlds. The way in which they’re exploring this artistically so far, however, has me considering a number of hypotheticals. I do wonder at times whether we are always seeing events taking place in the external world or if certain locations are internal worlds or whether certain events are fantastical or dream-like representation of memories or feelings rather than taking place in a literal sense. The Upside Down is the most obvious contender for being an “internal world” but the runner ups in my mind are Hopper’s Cabin and the mall basement with the intimidatingly deep elevator shaft and the very long hallway and the “evil Russians.” (And who knows, perhaps Hawkins itself is an internal world? It certainly doesn’t exist on a real map in the same way that other series locations such as Chicago do.)

I can’t wait to see what they reveal to us in season 4. I hope that the creators begin to pull back the curtain just a tiny bit as we near the conclusion of the series. I expect a certain degree of revelation to be necessary to the resolution of a lot of the main conflicts in the story itself. I believe that pulling back the curtain on their own lives will be an important part of these characters’ journeys.

#stranger things #stranger things theories #stranger things theory #the did theory #stranger things analysis #stranger things meta #stranger things 4 video store friday movie list #video store friday

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life-observed · 3 years

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The Moral Peril of Meritocracy

Our individualistic culture inflames the ego and numbs the spirit. Failure teaches us who we are.

April 6, 2019

David Brooks

By David Brooks

Mr. Brooks is an Opinion columnist. This essay is adapted from his forthcoming book, “The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life.”

Many of the people I admire lead lives that have a two-mountain shape. They got out of school, began their career, started a family and identified the mountain they thought they were meant to climb — I’m going to be an entrepreneur, a doctor, a cop. They did the things society encourages us to do, like make a mark, become successful, buy a home, raise a family, pursue happiness.

People on the first mountain spend a lot of time on reputation management. They ask: What do people think of me? Where do I rank? They’re trying to win the victories the ego enjoys.

These hustling years are also powerfully shaped by our individualistic and meritocratic culture. People operate under this assumption: I can make myself happy. If I achieve excellence, lose more weight, follow this self-improvement technique, fulfillment will follow.

But in the lives of the people I’m talking about — the ones I really admire — something happened that interrupted the linear existence they had imagined for themselves. Something happened that exposed the problem with living according to individualistic, meritocratic values.

Continue reading the main story

Some of them achieved success and found it unsatisfying. They figured there must be more to life, some higher purpose. Others failed. They lost their job or endured some scandal. Suddenly they were falling, not climbing, and their whole identity was in peril. Yet another group of people got hit sideways by something that wasn’t part of the original plan. They had a cancer scare or suffered the loss of a child. These tragedies made the first-mountain victories seem, well, not so important.

Life had thrown them into the valley, as it throws most of us into the valley at one point or another. They were suffering and adrift.

Thanks for reading The Times.

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Some people are broken by this kind of pain and grief. They seem to get smaller and more afraid, and never recover. They get angry, resentful and tribal.

But other people are broken open. The theologian Paul Tillich wrote that suffering upends the normal patterns of life and reminds you that you are not who you thought you were. The basement of your soul is much deeper than you knew. Some people look into the hidden depths of themselves and they realize that success won’t fill those spaces. Only a spiritual life and unconditional love from family and friends will do. They realize how lucky they are. They are down in the valley, but their health is O.K.; they’re not financially destroyed; they’re about to be dragged on an adventure that will leave them transformed.

They realize that while our educational system generally prepares us for climbing this or that mountain, your life is actually defined by how you make use of your moment of greatest adversity.

So how does moral renewal happen? How do you move from a life based on bad values to a life based on better ones?

First, there has to be a period of solitude, in the wilderness, where self-reflection can occur.

“What happens when a ‘gifted child’ findshimself in a wilderness where he’s stripped away of any way of proving his worth?” Belden Lane asks in “Backpacking With the Saints.” What happens where there is no audience, nothing he can achieve? He crumbles. The ego dissolves. “Only then is he able to be loved.”

That’s the key point here. The self-centered voice of the ego has to be quieted before a person is capable of freely giving and receiving love.

Then there is contact with the heart and soul — through prayer, meditation, writing, whatever it is that puts you in contact with your deepest desires.

“In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us,” Annie Dillard writes in “Teaching a Stone to Talk.” “But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other.”

In the wilderness the desire for esteem is stripped away and bigger desires are made visible: the desires of the heart (to live in loving connection with others) and the desires of the soul (the yearning to serve some transcendent ideal and to be sanctified by that service).

When people are broken open in this way, they are more sensitive to the pains and joys of the world. They realize: Oh, that first mountain wasn’t my mountain. I am ready for a larger journey.

Some people radically change their lives at this point. They quit corporate jobs and teach elementary school. They dedicate themselves to some social or political cause. I know a woman whose son committed suicide. She says that the scared, self-conscious woman she used to be died with him. She found her voice and helps families in crisis. I recently met a guy who used to be a banker. That failed to satisfy, and now he helps men coming out of prison. I once corresponded with a man from Australia who lost his wife, a tragedy that occasioned a period of reflection. He wrote, “I feel almost guilty about how significant my own growth has been as a result of my wife’s death.”

Perhaps most of the people who have emerged from a setback stay in their same jobs, with their same lives, but they are different. It’s not about self anymore; it’s about relation, it’s about the giving yourself away. Their joy is in seeing others shine.

In their book “Practical Wisdom,” Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe tell the story of a hospital janitor named Luke. In Luke’s hospital there was a young man who’d gotten into a fight and was now in a permanent coma. The young man’s father sat with him every day in silent vigil, and every day Luke cleaned the room. But one day the father was out for a smoke when Luke cleaned it.

Later that afternoon, the father found Luke and snapped at him for not cleaning the room. The first-mountain response is to see your job as cleaning rooms. Luke could have snapped back: I did clean the room. You were out smoking. The second-mountain response is to see your job as serving patients and their families. In that case you’d go back in the room and clean it again, so that the father could have the comfort of seeing you do it. And that’s what Luke did.

If the first mountain is about building up the ego and defining the self, the second is about shedding the ego and dissolving the self. If the first mountain is about acquisition, the second mountain is about contribution.

On the first mountain, personal freedom is celebrated — keeping your options open, absence of restraint. But the perfectly free life is the unattached and unremembered life. Freedom is not an ocean you want to swim in; it is a river you want to cross so that you can plant yourself on the other side.

So the person on the second mountain is making commitments. People who have made a commitment to a town, a person, an institution or a cause have cast their lot and burned the bridges behind them. They have made a promise without expecting a return. They are all in.

I can now usually recognize first- and second-mountain people. The former have an ultimate allegiance to self; the latter have an ultimate allegiance to some commitment. I can recognize first- and second-mountain organizations too. In some organizations, people are there to serve their individual self-interests — draw a salary. But other organizations demand that you surrender to a shared cause and so change your very identity. You become a Marine, a Morehouse Man.

I’ve been describing moral renewal in personal terms, but of course whole societies and cultures can swap bad values for better ones. I think we all realize that the hatred, fragmentation and disconnection in our society is not just a political problem. It stems from some moral and spiritual crisis.

We don’t treat one another well. And the truth is that 60 years of a hyper-individualistic first-mountain culture have weakened the bonds between people. They’ve dissolved the shared moral cultures that used to restrain capitalism and the meritocracy.

Over the past few decades the individual, the self, has been at the center. The second-mountain people are leading us toward a culture that puts relationships at the center. They ask us to measure our lives by the quality of our attachments, to see that life is a qualitative endeavor, not a quantitative one. They ask us to see others at their full depths, and not just as a stereotype, and to have the courage to lead with vulnerability. These second-mountain people are leading us into a new culture. Culture change happens when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy them. These second-mountain people have found it.

Their moral revolution points us toward a different goal. On the first mountain we shoot for happiness, but on the second mountain we are rewarded with joy. What’s the difference? Happiness involves a victory for the self. It happens as we move toward our goals. You get a promotion. You have a delicious meal.

Joy involves the transcendence of self. When you’re on the second mountain, you realize we aim too low. We compete to get near a little sunlamp, but if we lived differently, we could feel the glow of real sunshine. On the second mountain you see that happiness is good, but joy is better.

#meritocracy #David brooks #spirit #individual #ego #community #love #success #failure #self #culture #happiness #joy

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luciality · 3 years

Note

Me, who uses discord for nothing other than to stay in contact with my friends and family that I have no other way to contact:

https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/discord.html

https://stallman.org/discord.html

Here are two good places to start (to start! please continue doing your own research!) if you want to help yourself and your family and friends.

I am of the opinion that it is unethical to use discord for ANY reason. My post was not just about fandom wank, but also mostly about user freedom and safety. I have used discord in the past (and currently do for my friends’ weekly hetalia stream), but it is an informed, measured choice with steps taken to mitigate the harm done (virtual machine, proxies, no account, web client only), and if given the choice I would absolutely nuke the discord server farms.

Some great alternatives to look into are XMPP, Jami, and the Matrix protocol.

Matrix does text chat and voice chat through the Element client, which is avalible for web, windows, mac, linux, android, and ios. Element also has built in integration with Jitsi, so video chatting is just as easy (imo even easier) as using discord with no configuration needed (unless you’re setting up a home server, but I’m gonna assume you’re not xD). I could go on about the pros and cons from a technical and freetard standpoint, but truthfully I’d recommend Matrix/Element for people who want something that justwerks and have baby duck syndrome in regards to discord. There are other clients too, but if you like discord, just stick with Element and either the matrix.org server (works fine for the tech illiterate and lazy) or one of the other popular ones. (I use halogen.city)

XMPP is a wee bit more complex, but I bet you’re already familiar with it! If you’ve ever used google hangouts (ew) or jabber, you’ve used the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (xmpp)! Xmpp does chat and is capable of voice chat through the Jingle extention protocol. If you want video conferencing you’d have to manually set up a Jitsi room yourself which isn’t hard at all but it’s worth mentioning that xmpp does NOT support video chat. There are lots of different xmpp clients and servers (or you can self host), so you might have to do some looking around and pick the best one for you.

There’s also Jami which I’ve personally never used but I’ve heard great things about. It’s a gnu project, decentralized (p2p, xmpp and matrix are both federated), with support for text, voice, and video chat and is availble on windows, mac, linux, ios, and android.

Also you can easily make and use bots for Matrix and xmpp, but idk about Jami. Matrix and Jami have built in encryption (super easy, you don’t have to do anything extra) but with xmpp you have to set it up manually in certain clients, and you have different encyption standards for xmpp so yeah it’s a bit more complex.

And yeah, that’s about it. Rereading this ask, I’m concerned as to why my post upset you so much that you came into my askbox to tell me you use discord. Why not just block my post? Why do you need me to know you use discord? Why do you care what I think of discord users? What did you expect to come of sending me this?

Did you expect me to say something along the lines of “Oh yeah! I just meant that fandom wank is bad! Your use case is totally fine! I wasn’t talking about people like you, I just meant that people should be nice!”? Because that’s not going to happen. Your use case is just as bad to me as those massive rooms full of fandom wank, because my issue isn’t with the users, what people say or how they behave on there. My issue is with Discord.

I hope this helps, anon! I hope you share this information with your discord-using friends and family and perhaps talk to them about switching your group chats over to a service that is more respecting of your freedoms!

Also @ouidius, I think this post might help to answer your question from earlier as well!!!

#shut up luci #not hetalia #long post #uhhhh yeah sorry anon if this comes off as rude i swear i wasn't trying to be rude #answered #anonymous #i really hope this helps someone out there #sorry for this i'm just really passionate

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the-hoarse-bard · 3 years

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The presidential suite was nice enough. There was a bar, a pool table, a meeting room even. Soon enough, Boone, ED-E, and I had all made ourselves comfortable and we waited for Benny to show. Soon, the intercom next to the elevator popped on, and, as I expected, Benny's voice came from the other end, "Hey baby, this little meet and greet of ours? Chalk me up as a no-show." Exactly as I'd expected from the snake. I asked Benny where this left us, "Nowhere. Now do me a favor and die this time, okay kid?" I told Benny he was a dead man next time I caught up to him, he just laughed, "Baby, there's not going to BE a next time." As the intercom went quiet, I heard the elevator ding, and we all took positions around the door.

It was a good thing we'd reclaimed our weapons from Swank. As the hitmen came out of the elevator, they were met with a hail of bullets, leaving the suite an absolute bloody mess. Them handled, we headed to Swank to see where Benny had scampered off to.

Swank informed us that Benny had, thankfully, not absconded right through the front door, and he'd been seen running scared back to his private suite. We could probably catch up to him there. Swank even gave us a key and pointed us to the right elevator.

We searched high and low in the suite and couldn't find hide nor hair of Benny. But we did find a very interesting secret room in his closet, containing an odd securitron with a smiling face displayed on its screen. To our utter shock, it greeted us with a cheery, "Hi there! Call me Yes Man! I'm a model 87b securitron! I've been programmed to be extremely helpful! Unfortunately, no one ever put any restrictions on who I'm helpful to! That was probably pretty dumb, huh?" I asked why Benny would have a securitron, and the robot responded, "Oh! Benny uses me for lots of things. Like analyzing and decoding Mr. Houses data network. He was planning to use the platinum chip to upload my neuro-computational matrix into the Lucky 38 mainframe to take over the strip! You see, the chip is actually a super complex data storage device. Like a holotape, but way more advanced!"

Well, Yes Man has certainly resolved a FEW mysteries. Like how Benny found me in the first place. That's when the surprise wore off and I remembered to ask where Benny went, "Oh! He used his secret private elevator to get away. But I know where he went. The only places on House's network with hardware that can read the chip are the Lucky 38 and Fortification Hill! You should check there!" Fortification Hill.... Legion territory. Great. Well, no way Benny is slippery enough to get past them, doubtless he'll get captured.

As I turned to leave, I had an idea, and I turned to ask Yes Man what I'd have to do if I wanted to take over Benny's plan to depose House.

#story post #Fallout New Vegas #Will #Yes Man

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hillnerd · 4 years

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ptsd/c-ptsd, therapy & writing

(This is written by someone with CPTSD - I am not a mental health expert, and am just writing from my own experience! )

So a lot of writers want to incorporate PTSD and C-PTSD into their fiction. Sometimes people get it super right- other times I’m left cringing. I wrote this to help writers know more about it, then it also ended up being something I sent to a friend with PTSD as it got into it so she’d know more what the therapy process is like.

So! What’s it like to have PTSD? PTSD therapy vs regular therapy-How are they different? How are they the same? What does PTSD therapy consist of?

Trigger warning:

I will be describing therapy, talk of other disorders like anxiety and depression, and might use some 'you' talk - example 'once you've gone through this, then you start to feel better.' This will also skim over child abuse, suicidal ideation mentions and trauma in general- Read w/ caution if you are sensitive to this

general overview to PTSD and C-PTSD

I am diagnosed with PTSD, but it's actually C-PTSD*

C-PTSD or Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder differs from PTSD in that it's more for people who have had chronic environments of trauma/abuse for years - and is currently proposed to have a certain symptoms not listed under PTSD symptoms.

Much of these symptoms have more to do with how one relates to other people, their self perception, and generally their learned behaviors in order to protect themselves long-term. PTSD is more about a specific event, of series of events that occurred in quick succession.

Despite the lack of official diagnosis, therapists treat people for CPTSD all the time- they just use a lot of the same tools they would for PTSD.

Not everyone who experiences trauma or battles develops PTSD, but there are factors that make you more inclined to develop it.

What is PTSD like?

There are many ways that people manifest PTSD/CPTSD symptoms.They are easy enough to google and be familiar with, but what's it ACTUALLY like for me.

a hair-trigger startle instinct I have had a few times where my husband is up at night, and I didn’t realize he was in the room- then I see the outline and start screaming- and can’t stop for like 2 minutes- then the crying settles in for 30 minutes. My traumas had nothing to do with strangers in the night. I just have a super intense startle instinct that sends my whole body into panic mode sometimes.

Hyper-vigilance- trying to control everything around you to keep you safe, and being super on edge keeping an eye out for how things will fall apart. Making sure things are locked, being extra wary of people, wanting to not have your back to people, perking up at every little noise etc.

issues sleeping- insomnia, light sleeping, & nightmares- Sometimes reliving a memory, or just having intense dreams that leave you exhausted the next day you can barely function. This ties in with hyper-vigilance a lot- so falling asleep and staying asleep can be hard.

Depression and anxiety- pretty self explanatory- but it's common to experience these, and for pills to not necessarily be that helpful without the therapy. Sometimes anxious self destructive thoughts and memories start haunting you and making you freeze up or panic, feel like you’re going to die/be left alone by everyone etc. Sometimes emotional abuse from your past starts coming up and haunting you and you feel all your selfworth leaving your body leaving behind nothing but the want to sleep all day/cut yourself off from people - at times this can turn to suicidal ideation and other really dangerous behaviors and thoughts.

Sudden mood switches/panic responses usually a trigger for these switches is something associated with your trauma- but basically when something associated with our trauma suddenly comes up sometimes it causes us to start having feelings and emotions that feel out of whack for the situation at hand.

Example: When I was a five I was beaten and locked on a sunny porch of a 2 story building with a sliding door. Once my husband blocked me on the way to the door so I wouldn’t accidentally walk into some freshly painted furniture on the other side of the sliding door. I immediately panicked and angrily screamed at him to’ let me GO! fuck you!!! when he’s the gentlest man in the world and has never ever been anything but kind and wonderful with me. Then after the rage wore off I was like crying and so sorry.

I’m usually not an ‘angry reaction’ person- I’m usually a freeze/cry type- but yeah.Sometime people get panicked in crowded places, or if they feel someone is mad at them, or if they feel trapped, or if they feel like they’re being abandoned.

Sometimes I’ll get super manic and impatient/snappish if there’s not a plan on what we’re doing at a crowded place (really it’s because I want an escape plan/safe place I know we can always go to- and feel vulnerable when it’s a lot of people standing around without a plan and feel like I’ll get lost/abducted)

intrusive negative thoughts

It’ll be the darkest weirdest repeating thoughts that you associate with emotional upset. In ptsd treatment there is a lot of going through the events and rethinking your conclusions you’ve taken away from them. It’s simplified a lot in shows to a simple ‘it’s not your fault’- which, yeah, that’s the crux of it- but the actual work of it is super intense, exhausting, and so much more in depth.

unhealthy coping mechanisms so a lot of people with ptsd will find ways to cope to help them fill an emotional void, or to cover up feelings etc. There are tons of ways people do this. Some will do extreme things like drugs, risky behaviors, drinking a lot etc Example: They experience a ‘violent retraumatizing’ moment like a pet getting killed in front of them- then later to cope have casual sex and drink too much in order to numb their emotions and not think about them.

A lot of ‘avoidance’ and ‘overdependence’ can be a part of ptsd. Like you might avoid certain things like the plague, or constrastingly might start using people or things or substances or food like an emotional crutch/security blanket instead of coping in a healthier way or learning to be independent.

Self protective steps you take might be super over the top, or self-destructive and borderline suicidal.

Sometimes trying to repress all your emotions and not express them is something you do to protect yourself.

This can be all over the map really- there are hundreds of examples!

triggering moments of your ‘Stuck points’

Stuck points are thoughts that keep us from recovering. Stuck points are concise statements that reflect a thought – not a feeling, behavior, or event.

Example of stuck points: 'If I let other people get close to me, I'll get hurt again', 'I am useless.' 'I'm broken', 'I can't trust anyone in authority', 'People will reject me if they get to know me/see me at my worst’ ‘I’m a monster.’ ‘I’m worthless’

These can come up and you won’t even realize it at first. You’ll have something super innocuous happen and all of a sudden you’re on the verge of a breakdown, angry and/or panicking for seemingly no reason.

These intense emotions will hit you and don’t feel like there’s any thoughts connected to them- there ARE thoughts behind it of course, but it takes a bit of deconstructing to figure it out though and realize ‘ooooh, there’s the thought train that was bubbling under the surface! I didn’t realize because thinking through my emotional processes was something I wasn’t allowed to do during my trauma- so now I don’t know how to instinctively do that even a little.’

Examples in fiction

Harry Potter in Order of the Phoenix where he is yelling at the drop of a hat when he feels abandoned/rejected by everyone. His reactions are so CLEARLY PTSD related to me. Actually, I think he has CPTSD and it just got to a tipping point due to the traumas he experienced in the graveyard.

Hunger Games Books Probably the best portrayal of PTSD, of books I’ve read, is Hunger Games. The movies glazed over it a bit- but the books? Oh man, they nail it so hard.

HP and Hunger Games both have protagonists who are great portrayals of ptsd. The anger, the disassociation, the depression, the nightmares, the inability to identify with humans at times, the self protective steps that are unhealthy, the coping mechanism of avoidance etc.

Disassociating

People describe this in tons of different ways, but personally I think of it like body/brain numbness. All of a sudden it’s like a blankness comes over you, almost like that hazy way of daydreaming, only instead of daydreams it’s nothing but a buzzing blankness with maybe like slight almost invisible undercurrent of panic. It’s like the body is paralyzed, and you can’t act or think or do anything but stare or numbly move a bit- it almost feels like your soul just left your body for a bit and you’ve been consumed by a white room of emptiness. Not a black void- it’s not being lost in darkness- it’s like being lost in the light, if that makes sense? Like think of a blank why void like in The Matrix where the whiteness goes on forever.

Flashbacks

In tv shows they often show it like it's a hallucination or something. Flashbacks are typically shown as a person basically becoming delirious and having visual and audio hallucinations, then perhaps even becoming violent to those around them because they literally see something different than what is real.

Again, this is my experience- but flashbacks have never worked like that for me. I more disassociate, and then all the emotions of that memory hit me, and in my brain I’m able to see bits and pieces of what happened back then, or even the whole thing- it’s like a SUPER intense memory/daydream/nightmare just settles in there for a bit- and you feel all the full emotions of it for a bit- can suddenly feel the sensations of it too at times-but at NO point am I actively moving about in a real room around people getting them confused with the past and lashing out at the hallucinations.

I’m just sitting there, or crying there- and if someone in the room with me were to talk to me they might have to get my attention because I'm deep in that daydream/flashback- but I’d hear them and see them once I realize I’m spacing out. The most outburst I’d have would be to not want anyone to touch me- or get super startled from someone touching me then pushing them away from me. That’s very different than the crazy shit they show on TV and movies sometimes.

BAD EXAMPLE: One particular one that still makes me mad is when that had Owen from Grey’s Anatomy sees a fan- then get ‘triggered into a ptsd episode’ where he is unblinkingly choking out Cristina as she begs him to stop for a long time. Like…. It’s one thing for someone to be startled and have their instinct be to strike out- that’s a very different thing from what they portrayed. If they wanted to show him as ptsd dangerous- which is worrisome to me as people with mental health are stigmatized enough- but if they wanted to- it would have made much more sense for her to startle him somehow and for him to just blindly strike out before he realizes it. With combat training, he could very well have instincts that aren’t safe when he’s over sensitized and startled.

What are the main treatments for PTSD?

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)

CPT is the main treatment for PTSD. It is highly structured, and the majority of it is writing and worksheets. There is a LOT of writing and talking out about your trauma, writing and talking about how you process it, and analyzing it.

Beyond the traumatic memories, there is also noticing the behaviors you have that are related to your trauma and how they come out in every day scenarios. This leads to:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

This is not about processing past events, but about processing current behaviors/reactions and trying to slowly change those behaviors over time so that they are healthier reactions/coping mechanism in place.

Exposure therapy- Reliving memories

For PTSD some people do a lot of reliving the trauma memories by describing them in detail, every tiny detail they can think of- and basically reliving them, but then trying to reroute the emotional response to them.

Some people are SO repressed that this is a very difficult thing for them to access- both remembering the memory, but also knowing what their emotions were/are. These memories of trauma aren't always easy to remember/re-feel/access and that can be frustrating.

I personally am REALLY GOOD at reliving memories- in fact I'm so good that we have been avoiding it for a bit because i go straight into flashback mode way too easy (more on flashbacks and how they work later)

There are ways of doing this that are more than just revising the memory through talk therapy, that I haven't done and would require research on your part:

virtual reality to revisit the place

watching videos or listening to recordings of the event and talking it through

exposure therapy that's more about getting used to sounds/smells/words that are triggering

The main point though is to process the emotions tied to that event and not make your brain default to that flight/fight/freeze mode when triggering things happen.

IMPORTANT TOOLS FOR THERAPY

If a person hasn't had much therapy, CPT/CBT has a lot of learning for that person, and a LOT of trying to identify emotions and really feel them, so one can process them.

Grounding techniques/exercises-

techniques used to sooth/calm a person when activated- there are like thousands of these guys out there- I think everyone is a bit familiar with them- like breathing exercises in yoga? Basically it's a way of regrouping and centering yourself- 'grounding' you in reality, instead of letting your brain go off on a tangent/emotional rollercoaster.

It's basically any way you can snap your thinking out of your anxious thoughts and concentrate on something until your re-calibrate and are calmer.

Personally the breathing techniques make me freak out- so I don't use those. :P Ones I find helpful are ones like 'Name every color you can see.' or 'go through the alphabet and letter by letter name an animal that starts with that letter.' and 'hold an ice cube in your hand and concentrate fully on every sensation you're feeling.'example example

-CBT and CPT WORKSHEETS

god, SO many worksheets.

Here are some helpful links

https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/cbt-cognitive-behavioral-therapy-techniques-worksheets/ --- This page covers cognitive distortions really well, and has some helpful resources and worksheets.

https://trailstowellness.org/resources This page has a lot of great worksheets for trauma.

https://www.psychologytools.com/professional/problems/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/- unfortunately you cannot access the documents here without paying- BUT you can read what the docs are, and how they will be used in a therapy setting- so can use that as a launch point for what sort of worksheets/phrases to google.

I specifically worked from Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD: A Comprehensive Manual a lot.

What is the structure of PTSD therapy?

First session

The first thing I had to do was fill out a questionnaire (PTSD test , cptsd questionnaire) to make sure she thought the treatment was appropriate. We talked about this a bit, what symptoms I had, talked over examples of it. I'm comfortable with therapy so this wasn't so bad for me, but I can see this being very difficult for people who aren't as comfortable in this setting and would need to be walked through it more and have more questions as they might not have a lot of self-awareness. We discussed goals, what could be achieved, and generally what it would be like. We went over the first worksheet and I was given homework of figuring out what my stuck points are.

Sessions after that

Each session we begin with typical therapy for a bit 'how was the last week? Were there any events I should know about?' Then we go over the worksheet I filled out, and analyze it, talk about examples, or apply it to trauma memories.

What is trauma therapy LIKE?

I always try to have the next day or so as free as possible after therapy, because afterwards I am wiped out, exhausted, and sometimes super triggered and crying afterwards.

The analogy I like to use is cleaning out a closet you keep hoarding stuff in:

Your house is your life, your brain is a closet, and PTSD/trauma is a messy hoarders type hidden away in the closet. When the door to this closet is closed you can almost pretend there isn't a mess there at all. Y ou close the door by being in denial, not thinking about your trauma, not acknowledging or processing it. You just keep stuffing the trauma into the closet.

But the longer you let the closet stay like that, the worse the situation gets. Soon that closet door keeps busting open and all sorts of crap falls out when you don't want it to. Freakouts, hypervigilance, meltdowns etc. The crap in the closet starts to multiply.

Ever seen Hoarders or Marie Kondo? You know how people are crying over t-shirts and crap and the house looks WORSE for a while? That's trauma therapy.

In therapy you have to open the closet door, take out ALL the crap you've been hoarding in the closet, process it, organize it, and then put things in order again. Every single box of trauma needs to be looked at then put away- The goal is to throw out the intense intrusive emotions tied to the junk. You have to keep your memories- but you don't have to keep holding on to the behaviors they've formed, the turbulent emotions, and the intensity of it all. During therapy at first it's fine. Kondo is walking you through it and it's all just fine and dandy- then you are faced with this HOARD of CRAP you have to work through- and it's SO overwhelming. My anxiety and depression got way worse for a while. Like, I was on EDGE and having nightmares and it was horrible. But then once you've processed the memories, and start actively applying what you've learned and start using grounding techniques more and more- things do get easier.

I am not fixed. I am not cured. I will have to continue to work through stuff- It's that whole 'healing is a not a straight line' thing. Like, there are times I regress and I hate it. :P But it's gotten a lot better.

IF YOU GUYS HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS I’M HAPPY TO HELP.

I figure this can be an ok resource for people who don’t know much about ptsd except what it says on like webmd (which isn’t that accessible to me) and want to write about it (or want to just know more about it)

( *C-PTSD has not been considered an official different disorder from PTSD for all that long. In fact, one technically can't be medically diagnosed with CPTSD in america yet. PTSD is diagnosable and has been considered an official disorder for decades, but C-PTSD has not been named a disorder of its own yet in the official guidebook of psychological disorders in the US (DSM). I think they might have JUST recognized it in the UK guidebook (ICD). I know it was proposed for the 11th addition.)

#ptsd #trauma #writing ptsd #writing trauma #mental health

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valkblue · 3 years

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Being a Behavior technician requires a certain amount of dedication to the job — the rigorous type, bordeline rigid. That’s what is expected to be at peak efficiency regarding analysis protocols and diagnostics for host service and calibration.

For that, Vivian thinks she might be the worst tech in her department.

— masterlist, AO3

Chapter 2 on 12

Chapter wordcount: 3,340 Rating: General Warning: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ same as usual: swearing and technobabble!

Author’s notes: Bad behavior tech, bad!!

Have a good time reading, and my askbox/messages are always open! 💙

— Chapter 2

There were some days, like this one, during which Vivian and her team were called back in the night; a group of guests went all trigger happy and their mess had to be cleaned up somewhere between the Abernathy Ranch and Las Mudas. And since the narratives and hosts had to be back in rotation asap, the techs’ nighttime was reduced without thinking twice.

Maybe it didn’t look like it, but this job was really taxing sometimes.

That being said, shortly after 6AM, Vivian went back to her room for a few extra and well deserved minutes of sleep before resuming her diagnostics routine. An hour and a big mug of coffee with cereals later, Vivian was back in the elevator which took her down to the Behavior department level.

In the soft lighted glass room, a host was sitting on a wheeled stool. The light brightened when Vivian entered.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting," she said on a hushed voice as if she wanted no-one but the offline host to hear her while letting the glass panel shut down slowly behind her. "I had a rough night. Looks like you did too…"

Ironically, he hadn’t been part of this night’s massacre. No, all those involved were already back in rotation for quite some time. Her first subject of the day, however, had only been victim of his own storyline, needing only a quick check-up and Vivian’s all clear before being back on his loop.

She sat on the stool in front of the host, doing her best to ignore his nudity, and unfolded her tablet on her knees; she had to navigate through several indexes before connecting to his signal for a couple update history checkups.

"Bring yourself back online, please," she ordered, without raising her voice.

The command only seemed to take him out of his thoughts.

"Can you hear me?"

"I hear you alright."

"Off character, for now, please."

Vivian loved to talk to them in character… but, for her diagnostics, she had to ask them to reduce their emotional affect — which was more a guarantee of efficiency than an actual need, though.

"There’s been modifications in your attributes last month," she stated as she was discovering the changes. "Several characteristics got… Who the fuck did that?!"

Vivian had an answer to that already, as she was going through the log; someone from Narrative — that she would brand as asshole — had been pretty heavy handed on self-preservation and aggression, and on top of that they also nerfed curiosity, patience and courage!

There was pitiful justifications from the tech about an adjustment request from their sector after some of the host's alleged wanderings, blamed on his curiosity. But all this was more about making him keener to answer provocation while still being enough of a challenge for his opponents — hosts and guests alike. Vivian didn’t like what kind of freedom Narrative techs were taking with the hosts’ attributes, carefully calibrated by her co-workers and others before them; it wasn’t as simple as changing percentages on the fly in any way they saw fit!

It was a delicate and very important step for any host's cognition, for them to even function at all, as much as for the continuity of their fucking narratives!

Vivian took a deep breath and the time to check the quality of the host’s interactions since the modifications but the results only ended up fuelling her rage. So, she commanded:

"Archive this configuration and open the previous one. Confirmed?"

"Yes."

Vivian smiled, satisfied. On her tablet, the attribute matrix seemed now way more familiar than the last.

"We’ll leave 1.5% more in self-preservation… since they thought it best to give you a few more to endure their bullshit," she grumbled. "And then… 0.5 in aggression for them not to come back to lay it on thick! 6.5 will be more than enough. No need to go all the way up to 10!"

Vivian confirmed her modifications before looking back at the host.

"What d'you think?" she asked, without really expecting any answer from him. “No imbalance or discomfort?”

Modifications could sometimes cause hiccups in the hosts’ cognitions, close to an uneasy feeling. There were other ways to know but Vivian preferred to talk rather than relying only on the screen readings.

"No, I’m fine."

And from what Vivian could read now, he wasn’t lying. Although, browsing his history, she noticed a worrying peak of stress at the time of his "death". It would seem like a normal thing from anyone's standpoint but from which of a host and their technician's, however…

"Your last interaction recorded a peculiar rise in your stress level. What caused this?"

"A… thought."

His mumblings were recognised as improvisations by the tablet. Despite her surprise, Vivian said nothing of it.

"What thought?" she encouraged him instead.

"My family. I’m supposed to be responsible for… my wife, and my daughter."

Vivian noticed the normal occurrences of his cognition in the scrolling of his code.

"But… I can’t help it, I’m out of place, there."

He was getting out of beaten path a little with this comment.

"How are your relations with them?"

"Acceptable."

He kept a few seconds of silence before adding:

"My daughter, I think something’s wrong with her."

"Between you and her?" she asked, for clarity’s sake.

"No…"

"Analysis: what prompted this observation?"

He looked hesitant. On the tablet, still no conflict.

"Her interactions are limited," he then said.

Vivian hesitated too; should she report this observation? Perhaps it was relevant for a potential issue somewhere else…

"It must be my fault."

The tablet, however, reported a new improvisation in that answer.

"Your fault?! Why?"

"I… I should enjoy being home."

According to the datas scrolling up, that was a scripted answer from his guilt library but despite that, what took Vivian aback was the tears running down his cheeks. On the screen — distress, confusion. That wasn't the affect class linked to it. But she didn’t suppress his emotional response…

Instead, she glanced carefully through the glass panels around them; her closest colleagues were two cubicles away, doing the same thing as her. Well, maybe not exactly; once positive that no-one would catch her, Vivian leaned forward a little to put her hand on her subject’s cheek, wiping the tears off with a gentle brush of her thumb.

She could have calmed him down with a simple word, or even with a tap on the right button on her tablet but… what would be the point? Vivian didn’t want to, not with him. And to be honest, as much as she was sincerely touched by the faithfulness of his emotion, it was also convenient for her that he would bring such a topic up.

"Children have a short memory but a quick mind…"

Victor Hugo said that first. And Vivian was quoting him today with something else than Philosophy in mind; she had just use a voice command — her voice command. A simple little script she sneaked into the host’ complex code architecture. More or less mixed with the rest of it, encrypted and virtually unnoticeable without knowing what to look for, it gave the recipient host the ability to keep in their memory, in a hidden and compressed partition, all the events happening between the activation and deactivation of said command. Conversations, feelings, impressions… Everything was there. And everything would remain, even after each reset.

The host couldn’t access it at will without hearing the command, and for what Vivian had noticed so far, it didn’t interfere with his narrative, alter his attitude, cause any glitch nor any pain.

According to her analysis, it was only perceived as a distant memory, one of those leaving an undescribable feeling or a sense of déjà-vu…

Despite the severity of her infraction, Vivian was quite proud of her small "innovation". And she had chosen this one, host ID# MG73368928764, to receive her creation among all the percentage of the park’s population her team had in charge. She had chosen him because of his responsiveness in analysis, because he hadn’t been in any big narrative for at least ten years, because she had already noticed a few oddities in his code, because there was something soft in his eyes, a little extra something…

And quite frankly? Because he was the one who inspired her to create this command, based on an idea that has been on her mind. Because she wrote it for him.

Ever since she arrived in the Behavior department, Vivian had done quite a lot of analysis, calibrations, and had many occasions to talk with plenty of hosts, in character mode or not. And the guys from the Narrative department had done such a good job in writing all these characters, their lexical bases, just like her colleagues from Behavior, in encoding and calibrating all that work into each host put in their care!

Or at least, that’s how Vivian was seeing things back then.

But this particular host caught her eye more than any other; she had quickly noticed how much he was calling upon his improvisation engine compared to others and the feeling of having an actual conversation with a well aware person was sometimes so baffling that, against all common sense, Vivian furthered it. Not to mention the frustration she felt that he could never really recall anything else than what his logs allowed him to, after each diagnostic. But since the installation of her script, the inference frequency in his dialog chains increased. And he was calling upon it with even more fluency.

To the point that their sessions became a real pleasure for Vivian!

It was selfish, she realised that… but she wanted him to keep something from it so badly, something from her, just like she could think back on their conversations with emotion. Those past ones were lost for him but, now, he could remember all those that followed the installation of her script.

Vivian smiled when he focused on her.

"Hello, Lawrence."

He looked hesitant for a second, like a man still not fully awake yet. No alert or conflict from his inference engine on her tablet.

"Hey…"

At his answer, Vivian smiled to him again, and so did Lawrence, even if he kept something a bit shy, uncertain, numbed. In that intermediate state, it wasn’t like coming back to the warmth, the liveliness and the responsiveness of the character mode but it wouldn’t be as cold as the analysis mode could be. Even though he was reverting to his usual demeanor.

Vivian didn’t program that; this semblance of a balance had set itself around the integration of the script in the depths of the core-code. But she liked the result.

"How are you, today?"

His drawl was back when he answered:

"Well enough, I’d say. Like after a real good sleep…"

Vivian grinned, amused.

"Perfect."

"And you, how are you?"

The spontaneity of Lawrence’s question took her by surprise.

"Well… um, I’m glad I can talk with you a bit," she finally answered. "Do you remember our last encounter?"

"21 days and 11 hours ago."

This time, the answer was delivered almost without accent; the question had triggered an analysis type of answer.

"And do you remember what our talks were about?"

He would have to query in his archived and encrypted memories to be able to answer this question. If he had it "right", then it would mean that everything was in order.

"Yeah, I told you about my folks, my… my drives. And that project you worked on for some time. It was a secret."

"It still is, Lawrence," she reminded him softly.

"I can keep a secret."

That wasn’t something he needed to convince her of! And she was less wary about him than about any other technician snooping in his code like the guys from Narrative did between two of her maintenance sessions. She gritted her teeth, frustrated and annoyed, by the limits of her authority on the modifications decided in high places, and on whom…

It was her fault, really; she shouldn’t have grew attached to a host like she did to Lawrence, but now things were the way they were, and it wasn’t possible for her to purge her memories and rewrite her affections as easily as a few lines of code. She was only human, after all!

Vivian brushed her boiling emotions off with a brief sigh before fully focusing back on Lawrence, asking him:

"Did this script cause you any issue since our last encounter?"

He still looked slightly numbed as he answered:

"I… I don’t understand…"

"No interference with your core-code?" she rephrased.

"No. None."

Not to brag, but she suspected that much. The only persisting worries she had were the saturation of his memory, provided that could actually be possible. Normally, the hosts’ memory was wiped between each rotation; then, there was no telling what could really happen if a unit gathered too much data. Vivian might as well be ending up editing her script to overwrite the oldest logs… She hesitated, biting her lower lip then tried a new question:

"No saturation?"

"No."

She gazed at him for a long minute before looking down on her tablet and stating, more to herself than to him:

"Maybe… maybe you’d rather be rid of all those… memories."

She held back the word "useless".

"No, not at all!"

Vivian frowned but a shy smile appeared on her lips.

"Why?"

"'Cause memories are priceless," he answered. "The good ones just like the bad… That’s what makes one remember where they’re from, and who their folks are. It’s what shape one’s life…"

And she followed the improvisation notifications on his dialog chain, but the irony in all this also made her feel somewhat bitter.

"Do… do you know where you are, now?" she asked.

"Ain’t so sure," he answered, holding her gaze, frowning. "Feels… like a dream I already had…"

That wasn’t far from the truth, indeed.

"And it’s gonna be time to wake up, now."

"Alright…"

Unfortunately, Vivian didn’t have all the time she’d love to give him. She tapped on her tablet, biting her lower lip; all of his levels were green, nothing to report — he had her all clear.

"Are we gonna see each other again soon?"

The question made her raise her head, almost stunned; Vivian wasn’t on the interface where she could follow his dialog chain anymore but didn’t need it to recognise improvisation.

"You… you’d want that? I mean…"

She cleared her throat, mouthing a silent word, before rephrasing:

"Would you like that?"

"Sure!"

That answer pleased Vivian, anyway; she felt herself blush and stumbled upon her words until something coherent came to her mind.

"Well then, I… I’ll do my best. I promise."

Lawrence nodded, apparently satisfied, and Vivian held his gaze while taking a short breath.

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

This time, it was Edgar Allan Poe’s prose Vivian had chosen to end her script, and stop the recording of his memories. None of what would happen after hearing those words would remain in Lawrence’s memory, unless she or another technician botched the wipe before sending him back in his narrative loop.

Vivian stayed with him until the cleanup was complete then disconnected the signal after putting him offline; she was already late for her next session but didn’t hurry all that much to tuck her tablet and get up. It was pissing her off to let him there, like that…

She let out a brief sigh then, after a look at her watch, she finally but reluctantly left the room.

The day didn’t only seem too long to Vivian; around 10PM, it had really started to drag on and it was about time to leave her be. Especially if some other guests were planning to unload their barrels during what little time she had left to sleep!

At least, Damon Dyers kept things cool on his side. Margaret had managed to get footages of his arrival in Sweetwater and his first steps in one of the easiest narratives, according to her, but she didn’t seem disappointed when offering them to take a look at those videos she had already viewed a good dozen times since on her tablet. She had been very chatty about his clothing, narratives, adventure companions, and even taking friendly bets on what he would do next…

"Everybody’s gonna be hyped like crazy outside when his review’s gonna hit the park website!" laughed Thawal, finishing what would be his last coffee cup for today.

Charles snorted.

"As if Delos needed more of that…"

Margaret nodded in approval, all the more when Luke added:

"No joke, that’s better than any of those stupid casting headshots! It’s the best career boost he could hope for, right now!"

"Not to burst it for you but, nobody is gonna see this outside," commented Vivian. "It was hard enough for Marge to get them in-house, so I can’t even imagine getting them out!"

To what Luke shrugged.

"Do you really believe that?! There’s nothing a few bucks under the table can’t buy, and footages instead of a crappy picture in Sweetwater is no big deal, I’m sure! It’s not like it’s IP or some shit…"

Margaret scoffed.

"I didn’t pay, not even fucked anybody to get them,” she muttered, openly cynical, as if her thoughts were escaping between her gritted teeth. “I’m trash but I didn’t stooped that low yet."

With Charles laughing like a braying donkey in the background, Luke corrected:

"That’s not what I meant, Marge! But yeah, thanks to prove my point all the same…Even Marge managed to put her hands on it, without shaking down her pockets or her ass, so imagine what you can get if you’re ready to drop some cash!"

Luke’s rhetoric seemed to get the point across as it was followed by a moment of silence around the table, and the tablet in its center, on which the patched-up hour of video feeds was still going.

"Anyhow, it makes nice memories to bring back home…"

Vivian pulled her attention away from the screen to stare at the focused — mesmerised — face of Thawal. He was right, it would make nice memories…

She bit her lower lip and turned back towards the tablet; suddenly, Dyers wasn’t the center of attention anymore, not even a guest who came to show off in the park — there was nothing else than people, hosts or guests it didn’t matter, listening to a more charismatic man than the others carrying a tune next to a player piano for the pleasure of his audience. And far from being corny or just lame, the scene even had something charming.

"And you said he’s going to Pariah, after that?"

Charles’ voice cut Vivian’s thoughts short.

"Yeah," answered Margaret. "He got there yesterday, I think…"

Margaret searched her video directory and selected one that spreaded across the entire screen; they could see Dyers and his two friends, lead by Teddy, on the trail of the narrative they had picked — a bounty hunt, if Vivian understood everything.

"It’s so fucking epic, Marge!" bursted Thawal, leaning over the tablet as if he wanted to dive in it. "Looks like another remake of the Magnificent Seven…"

"Except they’re only four," Charles snarked.

Thawal and Margaret glared at him, which made him laugh even more.

"I know, right?" Marge then admitted.

She turned towards Vivian, beaming with happiness. She smiled back but her mind was already elsewhere; somewhere around Las Mudas, she wasn’t quite sure yet…

On the screen, Dyers was continuing his adventure, like larping or a life size fanfiction. Now that Vivian was thinking about it, it had been a while since her last vacation…

She could maybe use her special employee discount, and do so to hold her promise?

#ocs #oc:vivian #my writing #fic:improvisation only #full diagnostic series #westworld fic #westworld fanfic #ch:lawrence

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Memento and the Significance of Sammy Jankis

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

“Have I told you about Sammy Jankis?”

On March 16, 2001, Christopher Nolan announced himself to the world with the US release of Memento. Not that everyone heard him straight away.

Despite garnering rave reviews on the festival circuit, Nolan’s mind-bending jigsaw puzzle of a movie failed to land a major distribution deal in the States. In the end Newmarket Films, the independent production company bankrolling the project, took the plunge and distributed it themselves.

Memento went on to earn more than $45 million at the US box office from a $4.5 million budget – a huge sum for an independent film.

Within five years, Nolan would move on to bigger and Bat-er things, but Memento remains among his most ambitious and effective films to date. A non-linear neo-noir that doubles up as a psychological thriller, it’s a film that continues to offer up subtle surprises on repeat viewing.

Guy Pearce takes centre stage with a mesmeric performance as Leonard, a man with short-term memory loss trying to track down his wife’s murderer. His pursuit is hampered by an inability to create new memories.

It’s a similarly disorientating experience for viewers who must piece together Leonard’s story while it plays out in reverse order. Allied to this is the story of Sammy Jankis, played by Stephen Tobolowsky, which intersperses that of Leonard’s and plays out across a series of black-and-white scenes shown in chronological order.

Narrated by Leonard, from an apparent recollection of a case he took during days as an insurance investigator, like our protagonist, Sammy also claims to be anterograde amnesiac – and that’s not all they have in common.

The film continues to alternate between the two narratives, with Leonard obsessively telling the tale of Sammy to anyone who will listen, before the two stories eventually converge in a climax where their shared plight becomes painfully apparent.

Despite its modest budget, Memento boasted an impressive cast. Pearce had shot to mainstream fame with LA Confidential a few years earlier while Joe Pantoliano, who played Leonard’s helper/fixer Teddy, was an established figure in the business along with his co-star from The Matrix, Carrie Anne Moss.

There was even a role for future Sons of Anarchy star and Nolan favourite Mark Boone Junior as the underhand manager of the motel where Leonard lives. Tobolowsky more than held his own though.

A seasoned character actor, by the time Memento came around he had enjoyed a memorable turn in Groundhog Day as the hilariously grating insurance agent Ned Ryerson. But it hadn’t been without its drawbacks in the years that followed.

Tobolowsky explained to Den of Geek: “The good news and bad news of being Ned in Groundhog Day is, guess what? You’re going to be Ned in Groundhog Day for the rest of your career. A lot of times when people are in comedic roles and want to do something more dramatic, it’s not available to them. Especially with something like Groundhog Day. An actor like me could get an opportunity to be in a drama but it might not work out because the audience would still see Ned Ryerson. Not this role. Sammy Jankis was so remarkably different.”

Landing the role of Jankis proved remarkably different too, starting with Nolan’s script, based on a short story written by his brother Jonathan called Memento Mori.

“My agent called me up and said John Papsidera, a casting director, wanted me to take a look at this script. John had a reputation for doing really unusual and generally good movies so I was very happy to. A standard first draft script is usually around 120 pages before a producer or director gets their hands on it. Because of the way it is formatted, one page should equal around one minute of screen time. I got the screenplay for Memento and it was like the Old and New Testament combined. I had never seen a script so big. I don’t remember the exact page numbers but it was in the 300s.”

Having seen his fair share of scripts over the years, Tobolowksy was apprehensive about reading what looked like the equivalent of “Gone with the Wind times ten.”

“I was thinking to myself ‘Oh God, this is going to be terrible. ’I even said to my wife, ‘ I know it’s going to be awful. It’s three times longer than normal but I’m going to read it just to be a good sport.’ I start reading and I’m halfway through and my wife comes in and I’m saying ‘damn it, damn it’ and she says ‘Terrible?’ and I say ‘No, so far really great but there’s no way these writers can continue at this level. It’s going to crap out by the end.”

“I get to the end and I throw the script across the room and my wife hears me, comes in, and says ‘Terrible?’ and I say ‘No, quite possibly the best script I’ve ever read.’” Nolan’s script was unlike any Tobolowsky had read, bringing the filmmaker’s vision for the movie to life in stunning detail.

“Chris and Jonathan wrote it in a way where they describe exactly what the camera is doing. Everything was perfectly described and you got a picture of the movie in your head, backwards and forwards in time. It was mind-blowing. I called up my agent immediately and said I had to meet Chris Nolan. I had to talk to him about Sammy Jankis.”

Despite few lines, the role of Sammy was a significant one. A part that much of the film’s plot ultimately rested on. Determined to make the role his own and shake off the ghost of Ned, Tobolowsky met with Nolan knowing he had a unique selling point when it came to the role.

“I said ‘Chris, I didn’t come here to read for you. There’s nothing really for me to read, but this is what I want to tell you: this is quite possibly one of the best screenplays ever written. You are going to have actors all over this city that will want to be in this. However, I am going to be the only person that wants to be Sammy Jankis who has actually had amnesia.’

Chris said: ‘You’ve had amnesia?’ and I was like ‘Yes, and this is how it happened…’”

Tobolowsky explained that during surgery for a kidney stone, doctors had used an experimental drug in place of the standard anesthesia.

“I’m a big guy, like six foot three and 210 pounds, so they gave me a new drug that they had been using on bigger people. It means they are able to give instructions to the patient like to get up on the operating table, rather than have orderlies lifting them. The patient performs the task and then forgets it had happened. It worked the same with the pain.”

It led to what he describes as “drug induced amnesia” as the medication worked its way through his system. “I would be in my living room and then boom! It was like I was just born. The worst was when I was standing over the toilet and suddenly didn’t know if I was about to pee or if I had already peed. Fortunately, I heard my wife yell ‘you finished ten minutes ago!’”

The description of his ordeal was enough to convince Nolan he was the man for the job – but that was only the start of the challenge for Tobolowsky.

“It was the most difficult part I have ever played in my life. When you are an actor, the thing that moves you through a scene is your motivation. But when your character can’t remember anything, you don’t have that.”

In order to better portray Sammy’s damaged mind, he began by breaking down the character’s actions into behaviors marked as either old or new.

“There are the old, every day, behaviors we don’t think about like making breakfast. The rote nature of that behavior means you might do it quickly, almost mechanically. Then there is the newer stuff that takes longer because you are trying to understand what you are doing for the first time.

“I had met people who have lost their memory, through Alzheimer’s or an accident, and noticed how these old behaviors were still familiar to them.”

This attention to detail was not lost on audiences.

In one small but memorable moment, Sammy greets Leonard at the door of his home with a look Leonard initially believes to be recognition and proof he is faking his condition.

It’s only later, when Leonard begins to understand his own plight, that Nolan has us revisit that same look, only this time with the realisation Sammy’s expression is instead one of desperate hope with that complex duality perfectly conveyed by Tobolowsky.

“That look was about putting out a message saying ‘I am sorry I may know you, so I don’t want to embarrass myself or you by acting like I don’t know you,’” Tobolowsky explains.

Later, after Leonard has rejected Sammy’s insurance claim, his wife, played by Frasier star Harriet Sansom Harris, decides to test the theory for herself by having him administer shot after shot of insulin, in the hope he will realise his mistake before she suffers a fatal overdose.

It’s then that we see Tobolowsky channeling the mechanical, emotionless actions of old, going through the motions of giving his wife the shot, as he has always done, oblivious to the tragic implications for both characters.

But Sammy is oblivious, with Tobolowsky’s emotionless, robotic approach to the repeated injections – something he has done for years – adding a layer of tragedy simultaneously to both characters.

“We all worked it out together in the moment. You let the truth emerge from the scene in the moment the camera is running.”

However, the true significance of Sammy in the wider story of Leonard only fully emerges later in the film after the latter’s revelatory encounter with Teddy.

It’s Teddy who reveals that he has been using Leonard to kill criminal associates. He claims to have tracked down the real “John G” behind the murder of Leonard’s wife years ago and, most tellingly, that Sammy’s story is actually Leonard’s, created to absolve himself of guilt.

Which begs the question: Are Sammy and Leonard simply one and the same person? And, if so, did Leonard kill his wife by accident?

While some degree of ambiguity remains, Tobolowsky says such notions played into Nolan’s decision to include a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment where Sammy, holed up in an old folk’s home, is for a brief flash, replaced by Leonard.

“Chris played with the idea on set. He said he had an idea for a moment where he would replace me with Guy. He wanted to try that out. That was determined while filming, the idea of the switch, which cements the idea of the two characters being one and the same.

“Chris was mining the depths of his script in the moment, which takes nerve as an artist. “

Reflecting on the experience, Tobolowsky only has positive memories of his experience on Memento, and the commitment shown by Pearce – particularly when it came to the tattoos that serve as reminders to Leonard of his past and forgotten present.

“Guy Pearce was just magnificent,” he says. “Every day, he would be in the chair getting those tattoos put on or removed. There would be long make-up breaks to get them adjusted perfectly and Chris would have it so that we would be shooting while Guy was in the makeup trailer.”

“Chris was a fabulous director to work with. Full of good humour and insight. The entire shoot was filled with energy and fun and that came from the top. I knew right away I was working with somebody very special. Chris takes chances.”

Tobolowsky holds his experience on Memento in the highest regard.

“When you do a lot of shows and movies, the idea is not how many you can squeeze in, it’s about which ones mattered to you. The work you did that affected you as a person and an artist. Something like Memento is profoundly affecting with the questions it asks.

“What haunts me about Sammy Jankis was that idea that if you cannot remember what you do, both your sins and your blessings, what kind of hell are you in? That final scene where Sammy is the old folk’s home, there is this question: Is he at peace? If you don’t know what is happening to you, what is your life? And what happens to Leonard?

He also credits the film with changing his career for the better.

“After I did Memento, I was considered for all sorts of roles that I wouldn’t have been before. It broke the Groundhog Day mold and showed what I was capable of.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“There have been so many movies I have been in. Some terrible, some mediocre and a few classics. It always comes down to the script and director. Memento is one of the good ones. It’s a masterpiece. There’s nothing quite like it.”

The post Memento and the Significance of Sammy Jankis appeared first on Den of Geek.

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thanksjro · 4 years

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More Than Meets the Eye #11- Soak the Matrix in Lemon Juice and Break Out the Hairdryers

So, small problem.

Prowl realized he was in the wrong comic run and had to split.

But not before yelling at Orion about how stupid he thinks this National Treasure bullshit he’s trying to pull is, and makes a request that Chromedome be left out of this whole mess.

Why the fuck wouldn’t you tell him that?

Bye, Prowl. See you later, I guess.

Chromedome and Roller have brought in some help for the heist from the local college. These students were super gung-ho about stealing the Matrix, not because they’re agents of political chaos, but because the Senator has his name attached to this little project. They feel a certain debt to the Senator, since he’s been doing his best to protect them from the Functionist Council.

Gee, wonder who that truck is.

We get a little rundown of our new friends, while Chromedome has a minor temper tantrum in the background.

Skids is also a member of this group, labelled as a super-learner, enough so that it may not even be a voluntary thing on his part.

In the present day, Swerve’s returned from stealing things from Trailcutter’s room, apparently totally unaware of what’s happened to his roommate. You’d think someone would have gotten in contact with him about that.

I mean, maybe? You did say you liked purple.

Swerve lets it slip that this isn’t the only story time circle Rewind’s hosted in an attempt to get Rung’s brain back up to speed… which makes me wonder just how often the medical staff on board the Lost Light actually check on their patients, if Ratchet had been surprised that this event was happening today.

Swerve makes fun of Tailgate for needing to open up the wiki so he can keep track of what’s going on, then goes over to call Rung the wrong name. Swerve is very lucky Rung is essentially in a coma right now, because that’s probably the only thing keeping him from trying to strangle our resident barkeep.

Whirl helps Rung express himself by playing with his eyebrows, a trait which, now that I think about it, probably only exists for expressive purposes, considering that his eyes are covered by his glasses and we can’t see their shape.

Rewind saves Rung from being played with, perhaps solely because he’s a historical constant.

So you’re saying Rung gets around. Nifty.

Rewind decides that they’ve taken enough of a break and it’s time to get back to the juicy stuff, completely blowing off Ratchet’s professional opinion about what to do with Rung.

Nothing gets in the way of story time.

Nothing.

In the past, Orion Pax is poking Skids in the face, specifically in his mini Matrix tattoo, which is giving him ideas. Skids is a little weirded out, but this isn’t about Skids, now is it? Chromedome goes to pay a visit to a coworker to get things set for the madness that’s about to unfold.

My boy! My beautiful boy!

Yes, Ironfist, before shooting himself in the head and having his spirit broken by the horrors of direct combat, used to be a cop. Everyone’s a cop in IDW, at least for a little while. He’s also missing his faceplate, and isn’t nearly as cute in Milne’s style, but we can’t have it all all the time, now can we?

Chromedome’s feeding into Ironfist’s fanboy nature, pretending to be just as much as a nerd as he is to call in a favor. In exchange for getting Ironfist’s Delta Magnus body pillow back from their boss, Chromedome needs to borrow Ironfist’s one-to-one replica of the Matrix.

I mean, you practically are already, but the sentiment is appreciated. We haven’t gotten to the point where we’re comfortable with thank you kisses yet, and it’ll be a while still.

While the Senator and company gush over Chromedome’s good job, Roller pulls Ratchet and Orion over to the side for a little chat.

Roller doesn’t trust the Senator. He’s done his research, weighed their options, and he really isn’t sure about this guy. Turns out that Orion isn’t the only guy who’s been modified to fit a Matrix without his consent. Honestly, I’m with Roller on this one; that’s mad creepy to be loading the bases like that.

Orion doesn’t really see it that way, though.

Only one of these things was ever a secret, my guy. You worked with Whirl, he was in your precinct for crying out loud! At least he admits to his ignorance.

Back in the present, we check in on Rodimus’ investigation. Looks like we’ve got our answer on who tried to kill Red Alert.

It was Red Alert.

First Aid explains.

Fascinating.

Rodimus fails to see why exactly Red Alert would choose to go this route, because A) he doesn’t know that Red Alert knows about the dirty little secret in the basement, and B) despite probably having depression, may not be the type to have suicidal ideation. It’s true, those types of people exist!

Oh, this is a savior’s complex thing. Nyon really fucked you up, huh Rodimus?

After Ultra Magnus gets Rodimus to stop accosting the doctor, they’re faced with a sort of moral quandary.

IDW’s More Than Meets the Eye! Come for the space adventure, stay for the rumination on whether it’s ethical to allow a mentally ill person the right to self-termination!

After consulting with Drift, because it’s always important to get a second opinion, Rodimus agrees to put Red Alert in cold storage, to remain until their quest is finished and they’re in a place that’s better for his mental health.

Anyway, back to the heist plotline.

Orion breaks down the plan for everybody: the basilica is nearly impossible to break into, but they’re going to do it anyway, because this is the past, and we as the reader already know that things go alright because Chromedome, Ratchet and Skids are still here and Optimus Prime came into being.

Roller will hack the sky spies, make things look all hunky dory, while the rest of the boys magic carpet up to the top of the building.

Looking mighty relaxed there, Glitch.

Glitch is probably sitting down to conserve as much energy as possible, because his job sucks some major chrome- he’s got to keep the detector beams off, using his outlier ability, but it really friggin’ hurts for him to do it. He’s going to have to do it for an extended period of time.

Glitch really got the short end of the stick in all this, didn’t he?

Okay, so I was wrong, Skids uses his grappling hook a fucking shit-ton in MTMTE. Today, he’s going to use it to lower Orion down into the basilica so he can crack open a cold one and steal the Matrix.

Things can never just be simple, can they?

Over on Roller’s end of the workflow, Chromedome’s irritated that he’s got to babysit the Senator. Chromedome spends a good portion of this story arc irritated at stuff, in case you couldn’t tell.

In this case, the Senator agrees that having Chromedome stay back was probably unnecessary. Or at least, he did, until he noticed that the Academy of Advanced Technology is burning to the ground on live TV.

Then the wall explodes.

Things can never just be simple, can they?

Back on the front lines, Orion tags out and Ratchet tags in, because the locks on the Matrix are mad crazy hard to undo and they just don’t have time for pussyfooting around with all that. Ratchet is apparently a master lock pick. Must be those magic medic hands.

Even the Matrix being full of Fiji water is no match for our CMO, as he makes quick work of the bomb and removes it. Hooray! Now we just need to pull him back up and we’ll be all set to leave.

Or at least, we would be, if Glitch wasn’t the dumbest bitch alive.

Ratchet braces for an explosion.

And braces.

But it never comes, because Windcharger has magic arms and zero patience for facing his own mortality.

The boys haul up Ratchet and the bomb, fly on out of there, then Orion jumps off the slab they’re floating on because Roller was supposed to call and he hasn’t. I’m going to hazard a guess and say that Roller might be a bit preoccupied at the moment, and it isn’t by the television.

That is a BIG BOY.

“Cleanse and control” was what Trepan’s idiotic tattoo said, so there’s a good chance that our buddy the Senator is about to go the way of Pious Maximus in a minute. Or at least, he would if Orion Pax didn’t embrace is inner monster truck and punch a hole in the big boy holding the Senator like Lennie does a rabbit.

Kroma isn’t one to let the opposite side have all the cards though, as he holds a gun to Roller’s head and suggests that the Senator be given to him, lest we be down a cop in this story that’s simply awash with them. The Senator, being the nice guy that he is, goes willingly to his doom.

Be a lot easier if we knew your name, bud.

The Senator is taken away, but Kroma leaves Orion with the other big boy, and he’s not playing nicely. Orion helps himself by way of domestic terrorism.

But that’s not the end of the story! Oh dear no!

After the explosion, Orion unearths Chromedome, and they make tracks for the Institute. Small issue with that though:

Well, dang.

Thus ends the tale of the Matrix heist, the mysterious Senator, and Chromedome’s awkward relationship with Prowl. Our storytelling session ends with the sound of the alarm, and everyone runs off to see just what the hell’s gone wrong now. Only Skids hangs back to take Rung to the medibay, but not before trying one last thing to help his partner in vent-crawling out.

Man, all they had to do was annoy him and everything would have been fine? Rewind’s going to feel so silly for all that work he put into this.

Back in the past, Orion’s digging through the remains of the Rodion police station, when a robot comes up to him, saying that they have a mutual friend who asked him to find Orion if he ever went missing.

The mutual friend was the Senator.

And the robot is Zeta, who would become Zeta Prima.

The Senator was really playing the field with all these Matrix reformattings.

Speaking of the Senator, he’s just arrived at a The Institute, where they’ve decided to not only shadowplay him, but also empurata his whole deal just to be assholes. He just wanted to be beautiful, on top of conniving, but I guess we won’t be having any of that anymore. Not that it’ll matter.

Because vanity is illogical.

No wonder Whirl’s so goddamn angry all the time.

#transformers #jro #mtmte #shadowplay #issue 11 #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #comic script writing

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