When the creators of the show are actively abusive and you don't want to indulge in the content for the day that's posted, but the fan content is so amazing that you can't help yourself anyway
(Personal ‘Being A Certain Kind Of Autistic’ Moment:)
(You ever think you’re too hinged? I was gonna say for the internet but since covid so many of the neurotypicals in real life are actually worse.
Like someone has an inappropriately strong emotional reaction to the benign, and you’re like ‘okay they’re triggered, walk away with no eye contact’. Then you see other people doing it. And more and more. Not about the same things, different things, random things. And you’re just… Is it me? Am I too hinged?
I’m not saying I’m never triggered but I always tell myself ‘hey before you interact with anyone, stop being such a freak’ if I feel like I’m in danger of being rude to or about a Human Person. And I know that’s autism training, learning to catch yourself; but also clearly not everyone bothers, even the neurotypicals anymore hence irl situations where you’re just watching some 55 year old woman go off on a receptionist over literally nothing.
Like you’ll watch people stew themselves to a rolling boil over things they’ve…made up in their head? When they could just…not do that? Or could assume the best? Like they pre-order rage for things that haven’t even happened yet. Not like political things where you could argue that it could incentivise action but like raging about how film/book in a series/event is going to be so terrible, beyond simple mental prepping for disappointment.
It’s like I feel too mentally healthy compared to everyone else. But even plenty of irl people I know who absolutely wouldn’t consider themselves (or be considered by me as) mentally unwell in any regard are like this.
I know me having the flavour of autism where ‘everything has to have a reason, but when you understand what it is you don’t feel the need to be upset about it anymore’ kind of makes this worse. Because that’s not how real people feel things. But I dunno. Feels like it’s getting…more, doesn’t it? I mean it is, must be, had a Doctor Who episode kind of about it a week ago. But it’s got me feeling autistic alien again. Even on the autism site.)
there's this thing where you can't say certain words or phrases or breathe a certain way or touch something for too long or nudge the book that's been collecting dust on your bedside for two years because anything and everything could turn the world against you
i can't sleep at night because my breathing doesn’t feel right and the prayer i said five times in row doesn’t feel right so i have to get up open the door turn the lights on retrace my steps until my feet start aching from how bad i need it all to make sense to fall into place to not hurt the people i care about because guilt makes your heart sink like stone and i still haven't learned how to swim
fox reads me poetry until fox is all i think about until the world isn't so scary and the static in my brain is quiet i tell fox good night i say i love you but it's rarely there so i say it again over and over because repetition speaks things into existence until it piles up on top of each other until i can gather it all in my hand and squish it together like putty and use it to close up everywhere the hurt is leaking through
exposure therapy sucks. it's not that i can't touch door knobs or cross the threshold or have to wash my hands so many times or that i have to click the lock and turn the bathroom lights on and the bedroom lights off and the doorway lights on and the people around me have to say good night with an inflection that tells me i won't die tomorrow because i don't know what my brain wants more often than not
words have so much weight and i haven't told anyone i love them and meant it because i’m scared if i do i will doom them to my fate of picking at nails and skin so i use loopholes like my life depends on them. i say it with breaks in between. the pauses are periods so it's a string of words not a curse set into motion it'd be nice to breathe without having to think about what i can or cannot say
instead i send poetry, i say read the orange by wendy cope listen to 400 lux by lorde it's not a love language because language was made to share love babel was a death sentence there are many words i want to say but can't say but roland barthes says, i've got nothing to say to you but it's to you i want to say this nothing
The goodbyes that start and end Past Lives (2023) are deliberately staged to echo each other: with Hae Sung on screen left, Na Young / Nora on screen right, and shot in unfussy, clean coverage. But the flashback to them as 12yo doesn't reuse the original shot.
Instead, it's been re-staged, ostensibly to make it integrate better: it's shot a night; the blue of the door is more prominent — connecting it to colour of the garage door in the present, the orange of the sodium vapour lights Nora in both past & present; and her face is positioned roughly in the same point in frame so our eyes don't move over the cut.
So when they do cut to this shot, it doesn't "pop". Rather, we feel the past sneaking up on the present, while the present reimagines the past. The quiet stillness of the moment encourages us to feel the space with meaning and emotion. It's a powerful, deeply affecting scene created through gentle and wise filmmaking.