#like 90% of my understanding of pop culture is not from watching or reading or listening to any of that shit

[onbearfeet]

Kat watches Moon Knight

Okay, so with the encouragement of several people on here and the emotional support of my roommate, I have finally (in February 2024) started watching Moon Knight, a show whose basic concept scares the shit out of me.

Context: I had an adopted older brother with DID. Note that I said "had". That's past tense because life treated him so appallingly poorly that he died (horribly, in prison) when I was 19. Part of that abuse was enabled by pop-culture depictions of DID in the 1980s and 90s that convinced everyone who knew about his condition (including the court system) that he was a walking time bomb.

One of my earliest memories is of my brother as a young adult, playing Super Mario Bros with my toddler self. Another is of him patiently teaching me how to make friends with a large dog. I never met any of his alters, afaik; I was small and cute and safe for him to be himself with, so he probably didn't need them around me. He was a profoundly gentle man when he was allowed, and it hurt like hell to see him turned into a monster in movies and on TV. I've turned off a lot of "psychological thrillers" in sorrow and disgust.

Ironically, I loved Moon Knight comics as a kid in the 90s, BEFORE he was retconned to have DID circa the mid-2000s. Because those comics came out right after my brother died in 2002 and leaned HARD into making people with DID seem like violently unstable monsters (for reference, see the cover of Moon Knight: God and Country), I stopped reading them around 2008, when I couldn't take being poked in the trauma by a comfort character anymore.

But I do love Werewolf By Night, and there's been a lot of good fic mashing Jack up with Moon Knight without dehumanizing anyone, and several people have encouraged me to try the show. So this post will be a place for my thoughts as I try to work my way through with my Essential Editions in one hand and my memories of my brother in the other. I'll add to it as I watch.

If this entertains the Moon Knight fandom or provides useful fic reference, so be it. Just don't be jerks on my post.

Also, anyone who chooses to be shitty about my brother will be eaten by bears. I don't make the rules.

Episode 1

Okay, we open with Steven as our POV character, and he's...convinced he's a sleepwalker. All right, not terrible. Steven is now a bumbling nerd, which is probably an improvement; good luck making a billionaire playboy sympathetic in the 2020s. Jake would be the logical everyman POV from the comics, but I understand from fic that he's got a different role now. I'm confused about the accent, but it's only episode 1, and Steven clearly doesn't yet know who Khonshu is, or that Marc exists, so obviously there's a ways to go here. (Is Marc ... undercover inside Steven? Ugh, this is a trope I have seen and do not like.)

Did Marc kill Steven's fish? Did Khonshu kill Steven's fish? I'm baffled by the fish. Which is a nice break from the larger anxiety. I'm gonna try to worry more about the fish.

The bits with Steven losing time and finding himself in odd situations were distressingly close to the old tropes, but both of those happened to my brother, so I'm not going to bitch about them quite yet. I want to be as fair as I can.

Oh, hey, I recognize Harrow from the comics. What up, dude. How's the cult biz treating you?

The end of the episode, with the jackal thing chasing Steven into the bathroom, came RIGHT up to the line for me. I realized that what I was most afraid of was that the story would assign "good" and "bad" labels to the alters--make Steven the sweet, innocent one and Marc (or maybe Jake, I guess) the monstrous killer. The early flashes of Steven covered in blood didn't really help allay that anxiety. And now Marc is demanding that Steven let him have control in a pretty threatening manner. But so far, it seems like the contrast between Marc and Steven is one of competence--Marc is better at fighting and Steven is better at ... panicking? Unclear. At least Oscar Isaac is playing the protagonist, so his character(s) might remain sympathetic. Nobody has been monsterized quite yet.

I finished the episode with every muscle in my body locked up, waiting for the emotional punch in the face. But I did finish it, and I think I'm gonna try episode two.

#kat watches moon knight #moon knight #marc spector #steven grant #i guess I'm processing trauma again #hello trauma my old friend

[endcant]

bear with me bc i am drinking THC lemonade

whenever my “people shocked by me being interested in consumer aesthetics counter” ticks up by 1, i know that i have failed to express myself on the internet. i am obsessed with commercial ephemera. it’s not that i like it… it’s something deeper. something… worse? better? something more embarrassing, at least.

the only time i’ve ever done psychedelics my profound realization was that i really, really enjoyed going to target. i like the lights. i am always commenting on the products and whether i think they are on trend or off trend for what i understand the target demographic to be. i love nothing more than to watch someone pick up an object, briefly imagine their life with that object in it, and then either put it in their basket or put it back on the shelf. even moreso when i’m watching a friend shop. even moreso when we can only window shop and that friend starts explaining to me what they would do with the thing if they had the money to buy it.

i studied american pop music history in college and i continue to study the history of bubblegum pop in my free time. i want to eventually write up a video or a series or something about the extended international history of teenybopper bubblegum pop. i am trying to learn music industry jargon old and new in my target languages in an attempt to gain access to information about these things that i can’t access in english alone.

i read early 2010s posts about how minimalism was the only morally righteous visual style with rapt fascination. i had a vaporwave phase exactly one decade ago. my friends in high school would bring me arizona green teas because they knew i would find it aesthetic. my advanced painting teacher hated it because i kept painting pale minimalist watercolor pieces that looked like 90s waiting room wall decor. my dream at the time was moving to santa fe and becoming a fine artist.

i was a proto-cottagecore blogger before cottagecore was named. i have well over 100 blogs, considering i hit 96 at some point during my previously mentioned decade-ago vaporwave phase. i do not bother to count anymore

as a young child, i used to go to the store almost daily with my parents and look for unfamiliar packs of gum so i could assess their packaging, flavor, and concept. i *really* cared about this. i got into this because i was given free packs of 5 gum and orange mountain dew at the halo 3 midnight release.

i learned HTML from neopets and i used to code gaiaonline themes and put them up on tektek. they sucked really bad btw.

i spent around 2 decades looking for the source of a single image of an anime river angel i saw on quizilla because she meant so much to me as a child about the power of what mere images could be only to find last year that the artist now draws hentai on pixiv and their art quality is now quite rushed. i think about this regularly when i think about creators i have idolized, and i don’t know what it means to me, but it feels like valuable information.

last night i couldnt sleep because i kept wanting to get on my phone to look at ancient greek vases on jstor

the worst part is i feel that the way that seeing ONLY consuming-or-not-consuming as the primary way to interact with the world is a serious mental roadblock for people in capitalist society. i think that consumer identity is a tool often used to warp the minds of citizens. i think that if i could go back in time and strangle edward bernays i would. i think that it is meaningful that american society has generated dozens of terms for “someone who is stealing or misusing a cultural signifier, or otherwise engaging with a culture or subculture under false pretenses/without doing due diligence/without participating in proper cultural exchange” over just the past couple centuries and that seeing and acknowledging the cycle is essential for anyone working in the arts

ive spent the past couple years reading up on historical art movements since industrialization to see how other art workers have dealt with their jobs being mechanized away, and ive decided to choose to value myself as a human animal who gets to experience the process of making things with my human animal body.

i am compelled to play piano when i drink red wine and i feel that i’m a fundamentally superficial being in function, but i can be more in purpose. like a poster. like a mask. like someone screaming so hard on stage that you believe them. that you look behind you to see what they are screaming at. i think in symbols and colors front and center, with verbal background chatter like an ever-tuning radio, and i am frustrated when people don’t understand that i am speaking my mind when i show them what i’ve made.

i care about aesthetics a lot. consumer and otherwise. it just so happens that i live in a capitalist society wherein the market attributes value to certain aesthetic information, which generates conversation about what certain images mean, what gives them value, what detracts from their value, what they are responding to, what responses they require in turn. but anywhere, anytime that there is a conversation about aesthetics, i want to be there.

i have always loved to perceive and to make, since the earliest stories anyone has to tell about baby cave. if i lost everything that makes me who and what i am right now, i believe i would still care about aesthetics. if there is anything left for even a cell of my body to experience, it would want to experience it beautifully and enjoy it deliciously.

happy 420

#we live in a consumer society -the aestheticer #this is just like #what its about #in da cave zone #🎤

[girlreviews]

Review #162: Different Class, Pulp

I distinctly remember Pulp having their moment in the mid 90s. I was 7 when this record came out, and I burned into my brain is the sound of whatever cool young presenter was rotating in at that moment (I’ll say this was probably peak Zoe Ball/Jamie Theakston era) saying “it’s Friday, it’s seven thirty, it’s TOP OF THE POPS”, and you know, I really absorbed a ton of music being glued to that show so religiously but I particularly remember Pulp’s videos airing because I really felt it and was like, what is this?

That would have been either Disco 2000 or Common People, it doesn’t matter anyway because I love them both. There are a few songs in life that have massive commercial success and infiltrate general popular culture. Sometimes that can really spoil it, because it’s everywhere, it gets overplayed, people aren’t really listening to it, they’re missing the point. To be honest, all of that is probably true for both of these songs, but again it doesn’t matter because I’ve never stopped enjoying them. They’re just as good every time I hear them. Every time. How is that? How?

It’s the subject matter that they’ve chosen to focus on. A particular nostalgia and way of life. It’s the incredible detail that you only know if you know (wood chip on the wall). But mostly it’s the way the emotion seeps out of literally every sound, verbal and non-verbal. Sometimes Jarvis Cocker lets out these little tuts or gasps and you can just feel his disdain and the roll of his eyes. He whispers “Deborah” in such a way. He plays with his delivery and tone so that if you are paying attention you can pinpoint the exact points where he switches from sweet earnestness and sincerity to cutting sarcasm and biting, snarling social commentary that is seething in resentment. There are few artists that can take “ooooohs” and “yeahs” and pack it so full of emotion:

What are you doing Sunday baby?

Would you like to come and meet me maybe?

You can even bring your baby

Ooooooh, ooooh oooh ooooh oooh ooooh ooh

Oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh!

On paper, you read that and think, that’s not great. But you hear it, and you think, damn that’s really something. How? HOW?

That’s just Disco 2000. I really am going to have a hard time not writing an entire dissertation on Common People. It’s incredible. The intro is just iconic, and everyone always loses their minds when it starts to play any time, any place. Rightfully so. It’s so clever. It’s so particular. It captures so well this very particular British feeling of hating, loathing, and having such disdain for rich people who cosplay as poor. We all know someone who’s been that person and it just rubs you the wrong way. Musicians and creatives especially who like to play pretend that they are starving artists when really they have a nice little bit of mailbox money and couldn’t even comprehend the reality of struggling with actual poverty. Their romanticization of being “working class” is condescending, insulting and pathetic. Summed up perfectly by this song, and delivered with absolute perfection, as if Jarvis is really trying to hold back losing his shit at someone. There’s a part where he inhales and holds his breath for a second, and it genuinely feels like he is fucking livid. Seething.

“Like a dog lying in a corner

They will bite you and never warn you

Look out, they'll tear your insides out

'Cause everybody hates a tourist

Especially one who thinks it's all such a laugh

Yeah and the chip stains and grease

Will come out in the bath

You will never understand

How it feels to live your life

With no meaning or control

And with nowhere left to go

You are amazed that they exist

And they burn so bright

Whilst you can only wonder why

Rent a flat above a shop

Cut your hair and get a job

Smoke some fags and play some pool

Pretend you never went to school

But still you'll never get it right

'Cause when you're laid in bed at night

Watching roaches climb the wall

If you called your dad he could stop it all

Yeah

Never live like common people

Never do what common people do

Never fail like common people

You'll never watch your life slide out of view

And then dance and drink and screw

Because there's nothing else to do”

Fuuuuuuck. You give us all of that, and on top of it, it’s an undeniable banger too. Iconic. I loved it when I was 7. I love it now. I’ll never, ever, be mad to hear this song.

Moving on, which I’m proud of myself for doing because it’s difficult for me to not spend more time picking apart Common People. I could easily go on, but instead I’m going to talk about Something Changed which is quite a different vibe from those two singles. It’s very sweet, and has lovely strings in it, just about how your life changes when you meet someone new and fall in love. Everyone spends time asking questions about how you ended up meeting, what if this, what if that? It’s really lovely. You can meet someone and suddenly everything is different — for better or worse.

Giving a nod to Sorted for E’s & Wizz, which, again, through their talent of perfectly describing specific scenes — I’m taken back to days of frequenting muddy festivals or going to some raggedy show at a pub in Camden that really felt like it wasn’t structurally sound and that if we didn’t stop dancing the top floor might actually fall beneath us. But it was okay you know, because we had our drinks and/or substances. Except, then comes the days following, which aren’t so good:

“In the middle of the night

It feels alright

But then tomorrow morning comes

Ooooh, ooooh and you come down”

Yes. You do.

2020 was the 25th anniversary of Different Class, and on social media it was being posted a lot with the question of what song was the best from the album. Everyone had a lot of opinions, of course, but my correct opinion is that Underwear is the best track. If for no other reason than for this line:

“If fashion is your trade

Then when you’re naked

I guess you must

Be unemployed, yeah”

Don’t go too much longer in your life without hearing this song. It’s classic Pulp, that same thing: earnestness, longing, sincerity, mixed with resentment and bitterness. Delivered perfectly. It’s like hearing someone expressing that they want to save someone that they kind of hate.

Something I think about all the time. And I mean all the time. Is how at the 1996 Brit Awards, Michael Jackson was performing Earth Song. It was this very hammed up thing where essentially he was portrayed as the messiah and it really obnoxious (although I loved this song, but in a comical kind of way, once sang it at karaoke — do not recommend). Anyway, Jarvis Cocker was genuinely appalled at the display and rushes the stage to moon MJ. What should have just been an amusing moment turned into a whole thing. There were children on stage and he was even questioned by police. It was all fine in that there was no serious wrong-doing found to have taken place, but his mental health sure did take a hit after that.

BUT I SWEAR, I swear, and I can’t find it and can’t find any evidence of it, but I swear on my life that in the following few weeks, Pulp were on TOTP again, and they made light of the situation by having Jarvis performing from a set that looked like a jail cell. It’s so specific I don’t feel like my brain could be making it up, but it’s possible I’m wrong.

They had broken up or at least gone on hiatus by the time I was old enough to see them live, which really hurt my heart. Fortunately they would reunite occasionally and I did get to see them at Hyde Park once. Now they actually tour fairly regularly, and are even returning to North America after a long-ass time, who knows. Maybe I’ll see them again. Maybe he’ll cover Earth Song (again, do not recommend).

#album review #music #music review #rolling stone top 500 #pulp #different class #jarvis cocker #common people #disco 2000

[icarus-suraki]

I've been thinking about a post that's been circulating here about the subtle racism present in Western/white danmei fandom (which is definitely there, whether one realizes it or not). And it reminded me a lot of 1990s anime fandom.

First, for the record, I'm white. Just so we're clear. Okay, moving on:

The DIC dubbed version of Sailor Moon was broadcast when I was 13, in 1995 (and I jumped right on it too). Around that same time, the SciFi channel was showing a handful of animes in rotation on Saturday mornings. There were a few dubbed anime and even fewer subbed anime on VHS at Blockbuster. 9 times out of 10, no one ever really knew how to pronounce "Neon Genesis Evangelion" or "Urusei Yatsura." And the general perception of "anime" in general was that it was raunchy at the mildest and only got progressively more pornographic from there.

But as these things started to appear in the US and be available to a wider audience, all these racist stereotypes of Japan and Japanese people started to surface too. To quote someone from the time, "Isn't manga the kinky stuff Japanese businessmen read on the train?" That was the perception: it's all dirty. (Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Ronin Warriors and some other early arrivals helped with that some, because they were clearly children's cartoons. But then we had to deal with the whole "children's cartoons" issue when looking at NGE and Miyazaki's movies. But I'm digressing and glossing over whole decades of localized anime.)

tl;dr: in the early and mid 90s, if you were a fan of anime you were very much a consumer of a "foreign" product.

So we loved it but there was a very steep learning curve when it came to actually understanding what we were watching, especially as the internet got bigger and better and we learned that, wait, there are outer senshi? There are whole other storylines?

And there was an entirely different visual language and cultural foundation to these shows (and later movies and manga and so on). Why the heck does she have a giant drop next to her head? Why is she holding that piece of paper? What does it mean to work at a shrine? A shrine to what? What's the deal with the cherry blossoms? Why does he have an expression like that on his face? What does it mean when the characters do this? And this was in the 90s, so the internet then is not what it is today. We had to fumble our way around and learn the details of these "foreign" cartoons, while contending with the stereotypes other people (usually adults lol) had about Japan, anime, and Japanese people. But we did learn! We'd read, we'd hit up the internet as much as we could, we'd talk to one another, we'd go to events and conventions and just try to pick up as much as we could. Because we were curious! We wanted to know!

We were lucky because within a few years we had Princess Mononoke in movie theaters (not many, but some) and Cowboy Bebop popped up and Gundam Wing came along and the internet got better and anime stopped being such a fringe interest and now there's better information and understanding (at least a little).

That's a long story to say that the Western danmei fandom needs to do the same thing: get down into the cultural source and learn stuff.

You have got to acknowledge that you are engaging with works from a culture that is not your own. You can't just slap Western concepts onto it and try to shove an entirely different culture into the framework of your own culture. That's not going to work. And, no, you won't understand everything right off. There's layers in here and you have to acknowledge that and start learning.

You're engaging with concepts and worldviews that are almost certainly not the same as your own, my fellow white danmei fans, and you have got to realize that. Step back from your notions and your expectations and, yes, your racism and stereotypes, and start looking at the complexity of an entire culture out of which a character you love has arisen.

Once upon a time, someone here on Tumblr wanted to do a presentation about how "magical girl" characters like Sailor Moon and Sakura Kinomoto were inherently feminist. The problem was that this person never even considered the ways "feminism" might look or be discussed in Japan. This person was imposing Western feminism on characters that were created entirely outside that worldview/mindset. Don't do that. It's unfair to the creator, it's unfair to the creator's culture, and it actually kind of stifles your opportunity for learning.

Will I ever understand Japanese culture as well as a Japanese person? Absofuckinglutely not. But I know more than I once did, which means I can enjoy more aspects of animanga than I used to. I can get more of it and I'm less likely to misinterpret the creator's intentions. I'm not that great at it and I love a good translator's note, but I can get more of some of it.

So dig in to the cultural foundations and stop shoving Western cultural concepts onto works that weren't created in that milieu. (Yes, I said "milieu!") Get curious! I am begging you to stop assuming and get curious! Ask yourself "why?" and then get to researching!

For your first assignment, stop writing fanfic where Lan Wangji sounds like a robot. He uses short, perfect, referential phrases because he's elegant and educated. In English, the most elegant characters use elaborate language. Not so in many Chinese works: the fewer and more perfectly chosen the words, and the more meaning lying within those words, the more refined and educated the character is. It's like he's so good with language that he doesn't even need to use it anymore.

At least, that's my superficial understanding at the moment. I've got tons more to learn.

So let's get learning and stop shoving our expectations, assumptions, worldview, stereotypes, and cultural baggage onto works that exist and were created outside all of that. Let the works stand on their own and learn their foundations.

#noises from issy #western danmei fandom #oldtaku #just some thinky thoughts #also i accidentally minored in asian studies #because i just got interested in japan and japanese culture #so you never know what might come of some learning #get curious #start learning

[finniestoncrane]

Hey finnie!! Congrats on 1k!!! You deserve it!!!!

I wanted to see if you'd do no 9 for me cause I'm so curious as to who you'd pick. You know me p well by this point but I'll still tell you about myself as if ya didn't >:]

So hey, I'm a mexican-american living in socal, I work full time as a post production assistant transferring every old from of audio and video you can think of to digital and im very passionate about media conservation. I have immigrant parents so the connection to my culture isent that far off- but I grew up in Southern California and it shows. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was a teen but later was rediagnosed with DID, I also have depression and believe I am on the spectrum. I love to draw and watch film when i have the time but mostly i just listen to audiobooks because i can do that at work. I've always had to work a lot, whether it's night shifts at the warehouse, 50+ hour weeks or nightclub gigs after work I'm always doing *something*. The fact that I have to work so much bums me out a Lot and I want to explode the concept of capitalism but that doesnt stop me from taking an absurd amount of pride in being a hard worker, I get it from my dad. I don't sleep very much, people always find it strange but no matter what time I fall asleep I will wake up 4-5 hours later without alarms and still feel well-rested. Like I mentioned I read a LOT cause I do it on the job, my favorite books are true crime and horror (Grady Hendrix is my all time fave author) but I also get through a ton of history books- mainly medical and historys of conflict. I watch movies whenever I get the chance, I love horror!! It's comforting to me. Most of my favorite films are from the 70s. Oh I love getting tattoos and if I had the money for it id get one everyday, I love the feeling a lot. I listen to a lot of different kinds of music, 80s pop and goth, old punk, 60s and 70s rock, oldies, 90s grunge and reggae, 2000s emo, rap and indie, modern industrial goth, old country as well as mariachi, corridos, reggaeton and Mexican rock. Really genuinely love most kinds of music, but my fave is anything I can sing or dance to. Like I said I have DID which is a pretty big part of me but simultaneously so small, after therapy I was able to get to a place where my alters don't really front unless there's an agreement to do so and it's mostly for comfort and healing reasons now but I live most of my life with one or more riding passenger seat if that makes sense? There's always someone I can talk to or ask for advice. My ideal night out is a night dancing at some alternative club or maybe karaoke at a dinky little bar. I also love to go on drives and like going to the beach at night to lay on the sand hearing the water until I get too cold.

I think I included way more than you needed but I'd love to hear who you'd pick and why :> 🖤

🎀 No.9: Ever Fallen In Love With Someone 🎀

tell me a little bit about yourself and i'll give you a rogue pairing a/n: ok this was... this one was difficult because i struggled to decide between two rogues (a variant of Mad Hatter being the other option) but i hope the decision i made was the right one💚 1k milestone info! 🔞minors dni🔞 • kofi • tag: finnie1k

such a noble cause that you work for! and you picked a key word, because harley is deeply attracted in every sense of the word to passion. doesn't matter what it is, if you're truly passionate about it she'll follow suit

heritage and culture is so important to harley too, and her jewish heritage is often overlooked, so she understand the connection and trying to maintain it or even strengthen it. she'd be so keen to share in someone else's culture and maybe even share hers with them

harley is a trained psychologist. she's a doctor. she has a degree. so any mental health issues she's so keen to try and help, without crossing any boundaries of course. she just wants the best for the people she loves and it's in her nature to try and talk through problems and find ways to fix things or make them hurt less

i frequently headcanon harley as someone who loves drawing as a way of relaxing or as an outlet, and i think she would employ a lot of art psychotherapy tactics. most of all, sitting with you and doodling while you draw and chat about your day would make her so happy

she gets hard work. first of all, it's not easy to study to become a psycholgist. second of all, it's not easy to work in one of the more intense asylums. and third of all, wielding a hammer while looking sexy is a herculean task believe it or not. but hey, if you hate capitalism, why not join her in villainy! or better yet, leave the crime to her and you can stay at home doing nothing all day, let her spoil you!

you would get sleep with harley around. she wouldn't be above bonking you on the head to make sure you're well-rested. 4-5 hours isn't enough, she insists on it. by that point she's only just starting to feel like she's spent enough time stroking your arm and watching you snooze, she needs at least another 2 hours on top of that.

true crime and horror are such harley vibes. she seems like she would love a horror movie marathon. the gorier the better for her though, and with some amazing kill scenes! and let's be honest, some 70s horror films have amazing death scenes in them so she can get on board with that

harley has a fair few tattoos, but nothing would make her giddier with sheer excitement and love than getting a matching tattoo (or 17) with you!!

i think harley loves dancing. she's a gymnast, it's pretty close in terms of movement. she probably has immense skills, albeit untrained, in most dance styles. so any kind of music is something she can work with. and karaoke would 100% be up her street, a cheesy love ballad that you can duet on, or the classic "girls just wanna have fun", but screaming it at an insane volume while she laughs with you

it's maybe not the same thing, but harley has harleen riding sidecar with her at all times. it's not always a good thing for her, since they don't share many of the same opinions, but you'd be a good influence on her, and maybe she'd start taking advice from harleen more often

#finnie1k #finnie writes

[mieux-de-se-taire]

Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge - Part 1

Revenge is my favorite MCR album, though Black Parade and Bullets are close behind. You can really see how they took the intensity, emotion, and boldness of Bullets and refined and perfected it. Every single song is an absolute banger that works well on its own but is even better within the context of the album. The concept is interesting and something you can explore if you want to but also not distracting or necessary to understand in order to enjoy the album. I also really enjoy the general look and style of the album and the era.

Helena - an instant classic, beautiful and tragic and brimming with anger and pain, a song that really helped establish MCR’s place in pop culture, I love the effect on Gee’s voice at 2:07-2:32 during the bridge and how everything comes back in at 2:38 after “When both our cars collide”, overall it’s a truly elegant and honest expression of grief and self-loathing (I mean “Just like the match you strike to incinerate / the lives of everyone you know”) and that’s not even touching on the music video. The music video is iconic and theatrical and beautiful, and it demonstrates MCR’s dedication to every creative and artistic aspect of their work. If you’re interested, I highly recommend checking out the making of video, which is a lot of fun and gives some insight into the creative process of the music video, and the outtakes video, which shows several full clips of dancing and the band performing. I especially want to highlight the performance from 10:01 to 13:24 in the outtakes version, in particular 12:09-13:24, none of which appears in the official music video but which is one of Gerard’s most emotive and heart wrenching performances that I’ve seen

Give ‘Em Hell Kid - great little song, some of the franticness and intensity and noise of Bullets (but cleaner) especially at the beginning, my favorite part is the ending starting at 2:06 when Gerard says “What’d you call me / well there’s no way I’m kissing that guy” followed by a sort of cacophony and then broken up when Gee says ”Yeah” with a fun effect on his voice, I also really like the wa-oh sounds at 1:25-1:28, overall a fairly short but effective and enjoyable song

To the End - one of my favorites, super underrated, some very fun lyrics, I always love the line “She drives at 90 by the Barbies and Kens”, my favorite part is the pre-chorus (”If you marry me / would you bury me / would you carry me / to the end”), I especially like the lead up to the final “to the end” starting at 2:36, I’m a big fan of the imagery and vibe of the song, it has dark aspects but it’s very playful and witty and more approachable than some of the heavier and more aggressive songs on the album. The song is based on the short story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner (The True Lives of My Chemical Romance, 103)

Prison - the most fun song on the record, the intro is great, I love the weird sound in the background at 1:02-1:05, (also, I thought the line at 1:05 was “they made me do pushups in track” for a long time until I read that it’s actually “they made me do pushups in drag”, which makes way more sense in the context of the song, but I just though it was funny he was airing unrelated high school trauma in his song about gay prison sex), my favorite part is at 2:06-2:26 with the screaming and guitar solo then followed by a moment of calm at 2:27-2:29 when Gee says “Life is but a” and then everything is brought back in at 2:30 when he yells “dream”, I also love his screams and how they work with the guitars at 2:47-2:52 and his weird little giggle at the very end, overall an amazing song and one of my favorites to listen to and also to watch live. Gerard’s intros to prison are fairly well known, and these are some of my favorites: moaning with audience, solo los muchachos take your shirts off, Detroit boys take your shirts off, and boys boys boys. Also, some fun facts, Prison was “inspired by [Gerard Way and Bert McCracken] sharing a kiss in a game of on-the-road truth or dare. (‘When you’re kissing a guy with a beard,’ Gerard said, ‘it’s different.’)” (The True Lives of My Chemical Romance, 93). And Gerard also said “‘When I sang “You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison”, I was running pornography in the room...I wasn’t wearing very many clothes either. I was in an attic that nobody was allowed into. I do remember Howard encouraging me to get pretty weird in there and I think I got weird in my own ways too’” (The True Lives of My Chemical Romance, 91).

I’m Not Okay - one of if not my favorite Revenge song (it’s so hard to choose though), immensely comforting to me for some reason, just hearing the guitars in the intro cheers me up, a feel-good song for me despite some of the dark lyrics, there’s just something deeply reassuring about it, which I guess is part of the point -- the assurance that it’s okay to not be okay and its very open and upfront nature, my absolute favorite part is of course the guitar solo at 1:52-2:06, I also adore the quiet part at 2:18-2:23, the line “I’m not o-fucking-kay” at 2:47 is another of my favorite parts, though everything from 1:52 to the end is brilliant, overall just an incredibly cathartic and wonderful song. Also, the video is just amazing, probably my favorite MCR music video, though I think Helena is more iconic and The Ghost of You is more cinematic. I love the intro and the whole fake movie trailer schtick and just everything about it. There’s also the making of video, which is hilarious (especially 2:47, 5:31, and 12:49), the outtakes version of the music video, which shows full clips (check out 4:43 and 5:56), and this kind of alternate video of the song without vocals, which shows clips of the band leaving the house to go to a show

The Ghost of You - another favorite of mine off Revenge, simple in a lot of ways especially in terms of song structure but incredibly effective, I love the contrast between the soft, slow, more melodic verse sections and the more intense, aggressive chorus, very direct lyrically but still beautiful and haunting, Gee’s voice is so expressive, my favorite part is the shift from the quiet bridge at 1:58-2:11 to the lead up to the final chorus at 2:12-2:37. The video of course speaks for itself since it’s an absolute cinematic masterpiece. The way it highlights the contrast between the chorus and the verses by switching between the dance and the soldiers storming the beach is brilliant. Then that one transition shot at 1:28, chef’s kiss, should have won an award for that alone. And Gerard’s acting (and Mikey’s too) is just incredible. My favorite part of the video is how after Mikey runs out and gets shot, Gerard in the flashback grieves as well. It’s really visceral, and I love it. The making of video is also really cool, as is the outtakes version

I was planning to just have one post for the entire album, but this got way too long. I’ll post the second half soon, hopefully.

#mcr #my chemical romance #three cheers for sweet revenge #helena #give em hell kid #to the end #you know what they do to guys like us in prison #im not okay #im not okay (i promise) #the ghost of you #album review

[vajigglejjaggles]

I can be both soft and hard at the same time. Just because I’ve shown you parts of me, doesn’t mean you understand the whole. I’m complex. I will hide the parts of me that I feel are too ugly to be seen. If all I’ve shown you is my soft side, it’s because I didn’t want you to see how destructive my thoughts, words, and actions can be.

But maybe I shouldn’t hide that part of myself. I do want to be loved, fully, one day. All of me, good and bad.

I love wide open spaces, forests and prairies. Anywhere in nature that makes me feel “home”.

I cry, a lot. I cry when I watch commercials about babies and animals. I cry over the state of the world. I cry over injustice. I cry when I feel genuine happiness, like a cloud hovering over me letting lose, whether happy or sad. I cry when I feel something just a little too much.

I love wild flowers, not cliche bouquets of roses. I love the smell of honeysuckle on a hot summer day because it reminds me of my childhood, before the reality of the trauma I grew up in set in.

I love horses and dogs. I love the smell of a puppies breath.

I love music, and how it makes me want to dance uninhibited, completely ignoring my lack of rhythm and balance.

I love the pain of a tattoo or piercing needle, because it helps the pain I feel inside escape without the result being an ugly scar I have to explain to whoever sees me naked next.

I love thunderstorms and standing barefoot in the rain, letting it wash away all of my intrusive thoughts.

I love riding down back roads, windows down, music drowning out my voice as I all but scream the lyrics that resonate with my soul.

I love dressing up, pretending like I’m classy and put together all of the time when in reality, I’m a chaotic mess of tangled hair in jeans and a plain tshirt.

I love my family even though I wish me were less dysfunctional & tighter knit. I envy the daughters that have good relationships with their parents and siblings.

I love to laugh. I’ve spent so many years not laughing, I will take any and every opportunity to let that hideous laugh erupt from my chest. When I’m left wheezing, gasping for air is when it’s the best.

I love fire, watching it burn wood to ash.

I love 90s R&B, country, alternative grunge, rock, indie, pop, hip hop, rap…but neo-soul will always have my heart.

I love ambient lighting, soft glows..easy on the eyes and mind.

I love driving around the city late at night, when the streets are mostly empty and I can imagine what life would’ve been like if I had left my hometown after graduation instead of following the path I found myself on.

I love love. I haven’t experienced it in two decades. Not the passionate, requited kind anyway. I love learning someone. The good, bad, and in between. The way they smell, the way they breathe when they’re at peace. How they like their breakfast, or coffee. What songs they listen to when they’re happy, sad, or in between. Their love language, so I can love them in whatever form they best receive it. Their dreams and passions, the things that make their eyes light up when they think no one is watching. All of the things that make them sad, so I can be the buffer between them & whatever it is that takes their smile from their face.

I love kissing. Passionate and full of emotion. I spent well over a decade accepting that I would only ever be kissed on the cheek - like some acquaintance. So when we agreed to divorce, I promised myself I would never indulge in anything that lacked passion and feeling ever again.

I love traveling, learning about and experiencing new cultures and ways of life.

I love talking, deep think pieces, not surface level chitchat.

I love tequila and the way it blocks all of my inhibitions.

I love twilight, fireflies, and the smell of hot pavement after a summer rainstorm.

I love books. Transporting to other worlds, feeling every emotion with the characters. The way the pages smell, the way the spine cracks when you open it. I used to read multiple novels a day, it was the most peaceful escape.

I love skating, riding horses, riding bikes, wading through a creek, watching rollie pollies, laying in green soft grass and making out shapes in the clouds.

I love showering in the dark by candlelight. It’s relaxing & intimate.

I love when someone tells me something reminds them of me.

I love my son. Some may think I’m a helicopter parent who isn’t allowing him to grow up but in reality, I’m just trying to preserve his youth and innocence for as long as I can. I’m lucky enough to have family who would do the same & make sure he is okay if anything ever happened to me. But, I don’t want him to look back at life and wish he hadn’t experienced “grown folk” issues so soon. I will support his innocence for as long as I can, because our children deserve to JUST be children while they can. I’m going to foster and feed his individuality, give him the space to figure out who he is and not who society wants him to be, defend him & protect him. It’s my job as his mother to make sure that I am not sending out another broken man into the world. He will know that emotions are healthy, be secure in who he is so that he doesn’t allow the opinions of others to influence his character or personality, and make sure that he knows how worthy he is. I cannot expect him to be good to others if I don’t show him that he should be good to himself first.

I guess I’m more than what I allow people to experience.

#me

[popmusicu]

From Nina Simone to Isabel Parra (?)

The truth is that I don't have a great affinity for pop music -or music in general- that was produced before the 90's, so the first classes didn't generate a great interest in me (sorry for the honesty), however, I do have an anecdote related to the "Hitsville - Soul, Motown, Black Culture & Music" class that I would like to share.

By the year 2012, when I was studying another career, I had a somewhat pretentious classmate who liked to play Jazz music while we were in the classroom. One day I heard this classmate playing a jazzman that caught my attention, even though I didn't like that kind of music, it was John Coltrane.

In those days there was no Spotify in Chile, and more than anything out of curiosity and to expand my musical ear I came home to listen to John Coltrane in a YouTube playlist, in those glorious days when YouTube had no advertising. It was interesting to listen to him for a while, but what was really important was when the playlist jumped to another artist, Nina Simone.

The song that appeared was "Ain't got no, I got no Life", and already with the first seconds of the song it captured my attention completely with that sad piano melody, however when Nina started singing it completely destroyed me because of the powerful lyrics and Nina's voice and interpretation capacity. I think it's one of the few songs that makes me want to cry every time I listen to it (in a sort of a good way), even if it's not a genre of music I enjoy very much. The version that I specifically like is not the most known version that you can find in the records, it is the live version that I will leave below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOwtHCTIhgE

Maybe I'm getting off topic, but after all it's my anecdote, so I wanted to share that somehow this song gives me a very similar vibe to another song that makes me want to cry, which is "Lo único que tengo" by Victor Jara and Isabel Parra. I understand that the significance and the contexts in which both are extremely different, however there is "something", a feeling that reminds me a lot. And I hope this resonates with someone reading this.

Thank you for reading me

Gabriel Avila Lagos

[backmaskedliedermacher]

Playing the Game

I've been listening lately to the band Bitesize, a late '90s noise-pop band sort of in the vein of Guided by Voices. The name could be a reference to Bitesize's GBV-length songs, or it could be a reference to lead singer Julia Serano's diminutive stature. 5'2" is on the short side for a cis woman, but not only is Serano a trans woman, I believe that she had yet to transition at the time of these recordings.

Bitesize aren't nearly as good a band as GBV. While there are some good riffs, the lyrics are for the most part pretty ordinary observations on life, without a lot of appeal or panache. Here, Serano is complaining about being advised to quit smoking. Here, she's singing about a crush on an aloof record store clerk. There's "Strapped for Cash", which is a song about not having any money. There's not really much in the way of allegory or insight here. "Double Knots" is better, a song about being an OCD person (the kind of person who sets her watch exactly seven minutes fast) waiting for a date for whom punctuality isn't exactly a high priority. I'm not OCD myself, but I find it relatable; it's not a perspective I hear a lot in music.

Great lyrics aren't all that important to me, but Serano isn't really a charismatic singer either. Bitesize aren't a bad group by any means, but their music is not the sort of thing I'd pay a lot of attention to or give a second chance.

But there's that one song, right? "Switch Hitter". Important enough to Serano that her record label is named after it. In the late '90s, I usually heard the term applied to bisexuals, but that's not the meaning Serano gives to it here. Serano's as direct here as she is in Bitesize's other songs. The chorus goes:

A year from now I'll be the center of attention I swear my mind's made up After I have my sex change operation

Truly, there were no signs.

Bitesize is a fairly obscure corner of Serano's work. Like most people who are familiar with her, I know her mainly through her writing. Whipping Girl was, and remains, a groundbreaking work in trans advocacy, and while it didn't shape my own transition directly, her work did and does influence transfeminine culture to a significant extent. My experience of transness wouldn't be the same without her work.

Serano's work is a lens through which I seek to better understand myself. This is what brings me to Bitesize. I think of myself as having a couple of things in common with Serano. First is age. Serano is a few years older than me, but only a few. I turned 23 in 1999. The year plays, for want of a better word, a dual role in my life. It is clearly history, nearly 25 years ago, and I do view it as such. At the same time, it's part of my lived experience. I have memories, strong ones, of my subjective emotional experience at the time. A lot of those memories, a lot of the way I processed my emotions pre-transition, are memories of music.

SIDEBAR:

When I think of 1999, I think of falling in love - falling in love, particularly, with the Beach Boys' "lost" 1960s album Smile.

Smile seems to have an unusual draw for trans women. I don't know why. Perhaps it's the counterfactual aspect of it. Something great, something amazing, that never had the chance to be. Something whose shadowy, hinted-at existence is a denial, a repudiation, of the false narrative foisted on the American public. Things could have been different. Brian Wilson could have been someone else, one of the Beautiful People.

It's this myth, in turn, that Jeanne Thornton deconstructs in her magisterial novel Summer Fun. The personal darkness. The sorrow. The failure. The empty hope. I probably should not have read it when I did.

When the completed Smile came out, rerecorded, as a solo Brian Wilson record in 2004, a lot of people were disappointed. I recall an insider in 2004 saying something to the effect of this: Smile is only about 10% of Brian Wilson. 10% of Brian Wilson is all that's left.

How much of me is left? How much was taken from me by decades of enforced repression and unrelieved dysphoria?

All of me. That's my answer, and I'm sticking to it. I'm not the person I would have been, I could have been in a better world, but the decades of trauma didn't reduce me, make me less of the person I am. I was not an entire person, not all there, in 1999, but I am now.

Lastly, the music of Bitesize is a creative work. Serano is best-known for her critical work, and critical essays aren't something that gets viewed as creative work. I think this view does Serano a disservice. One of the things I like about many of her books in particular is the way they hop between different ways of seeing. This approach seems to be somewhat of a trans specialty. Dual-role or otherwise, we know what it is to inhabit multiple worlds, lead multiple lives. Having said that, a song like "Switch Hitter" is personal in a way that her groundbreaking and influential essay Skirt Chasers isn't. This gives it value to me.

The value is not, to be clear, the opportunity to understand Serano as a person. I've had my struggles with parasociality, with the desire to understand others, living and dead, through their creative work. It's something I still struggle with. Appropriate emotional boundaries: Trans people tend to suck at them. That's what happens to people who get made outsiders. We construct ourselves from scratch, slowly, painstakingly. When I think of transness as a concept, as a shared identity, I think of what was left of Jon Ostrander after his body was destroyed by the Demon Core. I think of terrifying apparitions, of a disembodied nervous system floating through unmarked corridors and then vanishing. As a person, I am whole and complete. My transness, however… to be honest, it's a bit misshapen. A touch deformed. Thus I seek the queerness, explicit or latent, of others to guide me. This is particularly true of those who are older than me in Trans Time, those who came before me.

The first thing that strikes me about the chorus is the way Serano frames her transness. Being trans in '99 was all about The Operation - as Serano puts it in the chorus, the "sex change operation". I know it as genital reconstruction surgery, GRS. This is not a topic Serano tends to center in her work. Indeed, Serano has perhaps done more than any other single person to spread knowledge about the importance of hormones to the way we experience gender. So it's interesting to hear Serano phrase transition in purely surgical terms here.

To be clear, there's nothing remotely inconsistent about this stance. While Serano's work has never focused on surgical transition, she also more or less takes it as read that she's going to want GRS. It's more that… it gives me joy to see transness as an emergent phenomenon. It gives me joy to see how, both as individuals and as a community, we grow and develop over the years. In some sense I experience "Switch Hitter" as a disconnected nervous system floating through lo-fi corridors. A harbinger. Perhaps even a sign.

That said, the chorus is unique among Serano's lyrics in that it's not something I can take entirely literally. Maybe she did mean it that way. Maybe she thought that GRS was something you could get in a year, that there was no "real life test", no grueling process of gatekeeping, none of all that. That's the other thing, the difference in framing between "Switch Hitter" and her own description of her coming out process, her own reconstruction of herself, her history. To understand one's life as trans is, to some extent, to try to make sense and meaning out of the absurd. Abigail Thorn's representation of her struggles with the NHS is only the latest iteration of a long, grueling struggle trans people have faced throughout the entire history of imperialist European culture. In particular we all face these false narratives - in Serano's case "The Surgery" was certainly one, despite her longstanding desire for that surgery - that we have to correct, to extinguish. It gives me newfound appreciation for Serano, for her dedication to de-centering "the surgery" despite wanting it very much. Since a large part of my failure to understand myself was trans was down to my not wanting GRS (ironically pretty much immediately after transition I changed my mind and have since had GRS), Serano's work has definitely done me a solid.

What hits me hardest about this song, though, isn't the chorus. It's the verses.

I love seeing evidence of parallel convergence. Yesterday I saw a memed tweet by @aasterisms reading, quote:

"When Mary Shelley wrote 'I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other' god I really felt that"

(I don't use Twitter for mental health reasons and only reluctantly use Tumblr (also, strangely enough, for mental health reasons). I can't give a more precise link; I only have a screenshot.)

Did Aster know of Shelley's pivotal place at the root of trans studies? Did they know about Susan Stryker's essay "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage"? Amy Marvin wrote exhaustedly in "The First Trans Poem" about how we're always starting back in the same place, saying the same basic shit, making the same basic mistakes, and I feel that, I feel that hard. At the same time, there's something beautiful about it, something beautiful about the way we're always returning, always starting over again. When I meditate, that's what the facilitators keep saying. If you get lost, return to the breath. My transness is my center, is the breath of life to which I return. It is beautiful to me when Aster finds himself at Mary Shelley, at the twinned love and rage that drove Shelley.

And it is beautiful to hear Julia Serano, in 1999, singing about baseball. She's sings about standing out in left field: "I would rather be sitting in the bleachers hanging with the girls in the yellow T-shirts".

For me, like for Julia, baseball is one of the clearest, easiest ways for me to talk about my gender, to talk about being trans. I'm just a few years younger than her. For me, as for her, playing baseball was what boys did. I was an Altar Boy, I was a Boy Scout… and I played baseball. Nobody came down and forced me to do any of these things at gunpoint or anything like that. I didn't really give it a lot of thought.

To be totally honest, I loved baseball. I didn't want to be a cheerleader. I wished I could wear the uniforms, but once wearing it, I would much rather have wandered through the woods looking for interesting-appearing rocks than jumped up and down with the other girls cheering on the boys. I don't think fondly of the girls I went to school with. The bulk of them were cruel, vain bullies, no better than the boys who bullied me. They weren't the sort take kindly to fat, autistic dykes. I'd like to think I have few illusions about girlhood. It still hurts me that I didn't have a girlhood, not even a bad one.

Playing baseball was… a pretty good stand-in for being a boy. I loved the idea of baseball. I read baseball stories, and I liked them, when they were good. I had a subscription to Baseball Digest. I understood all the rules, even the Infield Fly rule (though I've long forgotten that particular rule). I watched The Natural and Field of Dreams over and over again.

Playing baseball felt like being on stage with Led Zeppelin. I clearly didn't belong there. I was totally inadequate to what I was supposed to be doing. Nobody cared, though. It was amazing. I'd stand up at bat and the team would cheer "Good eye!" at me when I didn't swing and the pitcher threw a ball and equally encouraging words the times I swang at the ball and, inevitably, missed. When I drew a base on balls I'd hustle over to first base, although since I couldn't actually run this still took longer than anyone else's saunter. I remember playing baseball fondly, as a magical experience that I loved.

Having said that, I clearly had no fucking business playing baseball. Baseball isn't just an idea, it's a performance, it's a lived experience. Not only was I bad at doing baseball things, I just wasn't interested in playing the game. I lost interest. I didn't pay attention. There were so, so many things I would rather be doing than playing baseball. I would look at interesting blades of grass on the field. I would turn around to watch the sunset. I would lose myself in daydreams. Oh, is the inning over? Do I need to come back to the dugout? OK.

Was I a baseball player? Fuck no. My baseball career was a farce, a ludicrous pretense, from day one. The people who chose to keep up the farce - well, you know, they were well-intentioned. I don't know that it did any good. All they did was enable me to pretend (badly) to be something I wasn't, and they could only do that for so long. Baseball, unlike gender, is a competitive sport. There are standards. You can't be a baseball player if you don't take a swing at the ball occasionally, no matter how good your eye is.

It didn't bug me that they let me play baseball. It bugged me that they stopped letting me play baseball, but it didn't bug me that they let me play baseball. The thing that bugged me most about baseball was that they wouldn't let Angie play. I loved the idea of baseball, but Angie? Angie loved to play. She practiced hard, and she was good at it. It was totally unfair that they let someone like me onto the team but didn't let Angie on. Because she was better than me? Yeah, a little bit, but mostly because she fucking loved sports, boys' sports, and the boys respected that. They did. On the playground at recess, not only would they let her join in, they picked her. They picked her because she was good, sure. Why was she good? She was good because she played hard. This wasn't something she was expected to do. This was something she wanted.

Gender… it really doesn't matter if you're good at whatever gender or genders you choose. There was no way I could fail out of being a man, no matter how shitty I was at it - and make no mistake, I was fucking terrible at it. I'm sure there are people who think that I don't girl very good. Those people are fucking delusional. I'm good at this, way better than I ever imagined I could be. Still, I guess people are entitled to their delusional, wrong opinions. What they don't get to say is that I can't be a girl just because, in their opinion, I suck at it.

Because even what they said was true, even if I had been good at being a man and I was bad at being a woman, I'm doing something as a woman I never did as a man. I'm playing the fucking game.

Hi. I haven't done this in a while. Bear with me, if you don't mind. I'm just getting my sea legs again.

[julicious]

Thoughts in early November

It's fall and it's eclipse season so I've been trying to take it slow. I'm reading a pretty good book about poisons and I already have a nice list of new books I want to read thanks to this tiktok. Not that my To Read List on Goodreads isn't already 374 books long but I mean, who's counting?

Almost every day I wake up and make a really delicious breakfast smoothie - it's healthy and it's absolutely tasty. I mix 1 or half banana with oat milk, Skyr (that's an Icelandic yogurt with a lot of protein), cocoa powder (mine is dark chocolate with salted caramel bc I'm very extra) peanut butter and sometimes hemp protein powder. Have I said it's delicious? If you don't feel like eating in the morning like me but also want to get some energy, this smoothie is perfect!

What I've been thinking about recently:

Friendships are hard - ever since summer I've been limiting my time around other people because I'd realized I was still a people pleaser and prioritized other people's needs over mine (it all comes back to my narcissistic sister, who would've thought?) - astrology and Saturn made me realize all this, so thanks to my heavenly father Saturn - but ever since I stopped to listen to MY needs, I started to feel less and less interested in hanging out with people. I don't think that's the answer either. So I've been trying to not completely shut off everyone even though that's what I'd like to do lol Alone time is simply heaven to me. Maybe that's my Pisces 8H Sun but nothing beats my own company to be very honest...

Korean is even harder - I've been trying to learn Korean for a while now and I just haven't given up because of my sense of pride. I do understand some things when people talk but it's not enough. I'm going to a Korean Language meetup with some nice people after a girl invited me to join, but everyone has different speaking levels so I'm not sure if it helps much. There are some tiktok accounts that have really helpful content though and this one here is probably the cutest ever! That little voice!

Obviously I've been thinking a lot about the elections and political uproar in Brazil but I've thought about it enough. I need a break. On to an equally frustrating topic:

The world keeps proving they have a misogyny problem - From Megan being called a liar for being shot, to Selena making a docu about mental health and people only focusing on her "bad friends" and gossip around her friendships and absolutely ignoring the whole message of the docu (including her own fans), it's all really astonishing. It's so easy to hate women because we've been conditioned to hate women and girls ever since forever. It's like a bad habit that you can't unlearn easily because it's ingrained into your whole being. I haven't read this book yet but read some parts of it and the topic is really interesting - Witch, Slut, Feminist: these contested identities are informing millennial women as they counter a tortuous history of misogyny with empowerment. This innovative primer highlights sexual liberation as it traces the lineage of “witch feminism.” Juxtaposing scholarly research on the demonization of women and female sexuality that has continued since the witch hunts of the early modern era with pop occulture analyses and interviews with activists, artists, scholars, and practitioners of witchcraft, this book enriches our contemporary conversations about reproductive rights, sexual pleasure, queer identity, pornography, sex work, and more. - It's around the same theme as the cult movie The Love Witch. Now during Scorpio season, would be the perfect time to watch it. Speaking of women and witches, can we talk about how amazing Julia Fox is? Her tiktok is one of the best out there!

Finally, some cool stuff this chronically online person saw recently:

I need this Sailor Moon makeup collection like RIGHT NOW. //This guy's series on pop culture in the 90s/00s "Pop Games of Thrones" is so fun. // Red Velvet's Bad Boy but as an 80s ballad? Yes! // The Billionaire's Bride Sign - okay this analysis of Uttara Bhadrapada (Vedic astrology) is super in-depth and made me have hope that I'll live the rags to riches life! I'm a UB Sun :) [not that I want to marry a billionaire, I don't think billionaires should exist!] // Have you seen this video of the BTS in Busan show? Absolute goosebumps! // For some reason I love watching this lady narrating Asian DIY videos, it's so fun! // This little kitty brings her human to college and picks her up again! The sweetest thing! (Btw I have no idea why this girl's university is at a cemitery). // Finally, this little girl shows me I should never give up! Such a cutie!

goodbye!

for some reason the sailor moon link isn't working above, so here it goes: https://www.tiktok.com/@clara.slays/video/7159166499867856129?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7156735195156350469

#julis thoughts

[jefelen-presents]

“Casey Jones: Live Wire” (2022)

Saturday, July 30, 2022 (1:23) JEFELEN delighted in serving as Associate Producer on "Live Wire", a twenty-eight minute action-comedy that narratively delves into age-old themes of wanting to be something bigger than yourself while finding relevancy in an ever-changing world, which is now available to watch in its entirety on YouTube™ for FREE!

http://www.chromaticphantom.com/film

Co-directed by Chaz Schoenbeck and Adam Michaels, who also co-wrote the screenplay together with Steve Chesworth, this authentically fun short was produced by Chromatic Phantom™, in partnership with Motion 66 Studios™ and Vantage Point Visuals™, as a nostalgic love letter to an enduring '90s worldwide pop-culture phenomenon that I've no doubt those reading this would be familiar with.

Custom masks provided by Villainous Prop Shop™.  Music by Wolfgrave.

While it's admittedly true that I don't typically avail myself to the production of fan-films (there's no money to be made when the license is rightfully owned by other parties), the genuine enthusiasm for the source material by those wishing to undertake this creative venture, not to mention their obvious proficiency in the cinematic craft, ultimately swayed my decision to the contrary in this particular instance.  Anyone who knew me back in high school, moreover, will likely understand my vested interest in a project such as this.

The short was conceived as a proof-of-concept for a potential feature-length adaption, or else to serve as a pilot for a possible ongoing series, so if you enjoy what you've seen here, please LIKE and SHARE -- the more eyes focusing upon this presentation, the better the chances for this to develop into something bigger!

I'd certainly appreciate any opportunity to collaborate with these talented filmmakers again in future...

#CaseyJones  #LiveWire  #ChromaticPhantom  #TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles  #WatchItNOW  #GOONGALA

Saturday, July 30, 2022 (1:23) Presented as distinct from >this< long-teased venture:

http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1061658513865284&id=100000634350634

It very much remains my desire to see this project completed someday, naturally, but that would quite literally be another story...

#2022

[lorenfangor]

Are there any places you think the books have aged poorly? You’ve defended the Auxiliaries and #40; where do you think the flaws are, if there are any?

ooh, interesting question

the obvious answer is the Civil War book, but at the same time that book was clunky and bad even when it was published. the Addy books from Pleasant Company/American Girl, and the Dear America diaries, were just some of the middle-grade and kid literature written about the Civil War and slavery that was available by the year 2000; I'm not going to give this book credit for being fair for its day when Meet Addy or Color Me Dark existed contemporaneously.

with that out of the running, I'm honestly going to talk about the animals, but not in the Science Marches On sense (I do have to accept that Animorphs takes place in a universe where dolphins are basically good, but that's beside the point)

I was a kid in the 90s and I could read in the 90s and I wanted to be a marine biologist growing up, so I devoured Zoobooks and My Big Backyard/Ranger Rick and the stuff the Kratt brothers put out, and I read every animal book at the library I could find, checked out The Crocodile Hunter on VHS, and watched nature documentaries as often as I could. We had a zoo membership so I could go see the animals there, and I played all the animal-focused Magic Schoolbus computer games. All this is to say that was pretty decently aware of how the pop science ecosystem treated animals and animal facts, and Animorphs is very of-its-time, and I don't think that's aged well for one main reason.

We're aware now of the focus on charismatic megafauna and other similar animals that dominated zoos and popular awareness for decades, and how that focus can prioritize conservation efforts for a small number of "famous" species (like koalas and giant pandas) while erasing or overshadowing work on insects and other invertebrates and "ugly" or "weird" vertebrates like Hellbenders or poison dart frogs. There was also a lot of moralizing in how animals were presented - mammals and birds good, amphibians and fish good, arthropods and reptiles and non-cephalopod invertebrates bad. A lot of animals were sensationalized and presented as disgusting or shocking or extreme, in part to incentivize kids to read about them, but that did contribute to a frightening public image.

This is why sharks are mindless killing machines, why Spawn the cobra doesn't get the same love as Fluffer the cat, and why Yeerks and Taxxons are terrifying and gross by sole virtue of how they look. There's a level of cultural context that's predicated on the assumption that you know how you're "supposed" to feel about different types of animals. It's easy for me because I grew up in that era, so I can understand what's being implied, but wondering things like "what cartilaginous fish hurt you, Applegrant" is a perennial frustration among new readers.

Plus, if you find termites or slugs or ants genuinely cute, or if you (like me) think sharks are sweet little babies who need to be loved, especially if you're relatively up to date on the scientific literature, it's frustrating to see these books rely on outdated widely-agreed-upon stereotypes and misconceptions (the wolf pack dynamics is one I'll let slide because it wasn't widely known yet that wolf packs didn't have strict dominance hierarchy) that only become more glaring the further away 1996 gets.

this is something I've seen first-time readers get upset by, particularly scientifically-minded ones, and it's another aspect of the era of publication that I really think deserves more context. nobody was trying to say certain animals were Truly Evil for no reason! we just... all kind of collectively agreed that if a species Felt Scary it Was Scary, which is being corrected now, but wasn't purposeful malice.

#animorphs #animorphs meta

[olderthannetfic]

It's really surprising that you're so well versed in older fandoms and yet participate in new popular ones (that cdrama, kpop) is this by design? Im in my twenties and my interest turnover is already way slower than it used to be

You know, that’s a really interesting question. I wouldn’t say it’s by design exactly in that I do tend to just follow what strikes my fancy, and I can’t force myself to want to write fic for just anything. (I find it easier to like reading fic without serious involuntary emotional investment, but writing takes more. Vidding I can do on command most of the time, but I don’t usually bother unless I have a lot of feels or I’m fulfilling someone’s prompt.)

However, me getting into BTS was 100% due to me wanting to understand BTS enough to explain to people who weren’t very interested but wanted to know what was going on in fandom lately. Under normal circumstances, I run the dance party at Escapade, the oldest extant slash con. We borrowed vividcon’s thing of playing fanvids on the wall--all of them set to dance music--as the soundtrack for the dance party. This means I’m creating a 3-hour mixtape of fannishness, which has amazing potential to make people feel in the know about Fandom Today... and equal potential to make them feel alienated if nothing they care about shows up. Only about 100-150 people attend the con, so it really is possible to make a playlist that feels inclusive yet informative--it just takes a huge amount of work.

Every year, I do a lot of research on which fandoms are getting big and look for vids from vidders people won’t have heard of, so there is an element of consciously trying to keep up with things. Generally, I only get into these fandoms myself if I had no idea what they were and then suddenly, oops, they’re my kryptonite, like the buddy cop android plot in Detroit: Become Human, which sucked me in hard for like 6 months on the basis of a vid.

(So if you’re into cross-fandom meta and associated stuff as one of your fannish interests, you tend to have broader knowledge of different fandoms, old and new, than if you’re just looking for the next place you’ll read fic. It’s also easier to love vids for unfamiliar things than fic.)

But though I was only looking for a basic primer on BTS, BTS has 7 members with multiple names and no clear juggernaut pairing, not to mention that AU that runs through the music videos and lots of other context to explain. The barrier to understanding WTF was going on at all was high enough that to know enough to explain, I had to be thoroughly exposed... And once I was over that hurdle, oops, I had a fandom.

--

In terms of old vs. new, here’s the thing: kpop fandoms in English and c-drama fandoms in English right now feel a lot like anime fandom in English did in the early 00s. I had a Buddy Cops of the 70s phase in the middle, but my current fannishness is actually a return to my older fannishness in many ways.

What do I mean about them being similar?

Yes, I know some wanker will show up to say I think China, Korea, and Japan are indistinguishable, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the way that I used to routinely meet Italian and French and German fans, Argentinian and Mexican, Malaysian and Indonesian and Filipino too. English-language fandom of SPN or MCU may have all those fans from all those countries, but it feels very American most of the time. English-language fandom of a non-English-language canon is more overtly about using English as a lingua franca.

It also tends to attract people who as a sideline to their fannishness are getting into language learning and translation, which are my other passion in life after fanworks fandom. (I speak only English and Spanish and a bit of Japanese, but I’ve studied German, French, Russian, Mandarin, Old English, and now Korean.)

Nerds arguing about methods of language learning and which textbooks are good and why is my jam. This is all over the place in English-language fandoms of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean media. Those fandoms also tend to be full of speakers coming from a Germanic or Romance languages background who face similar hurdles in learning these languages. (In other words, if you’re a native Japanese speaker trying to learn Korean, the parts that will be hard for you are different than if you’re an English speaker, but you’re also usually not doing fandom in English.)

There’s also an element of scarcity and difficulty of access and a communal attempt to construct a canon (in the other sense) of stuff from that country that pertains to one’s fannishness. So, for example, a primer explaining the genre of xianxia is highly relevant to being a n00b Untamed fan, but just any old thing about China is not. A c-drama adapted from a danmei webnovel is perhaps part of the new pantheon of Chinese shit we’re all getting into, but just any old drama from decades ago is probably not... unless it’s a genre precursor to something else we care about. Another aspect here is that while Stuff I Can Access As A N00b Who Doesn’t Speak The Language may be relatively scarce, there’s a vast, vast wealth of stuff that exists.

This is what it felt like to be an anime fan in the US in 2000. As translation got more commercial and more crappy series were licensed and dumped onto an already glutted market, the vibe changed. No longer were fans desperately trying to learn enough of the language to translate or spending their time cataloguing what existed or making fanworks about a show they stuck with for a bit: the overall community focus turned to an endless race of consumption to keep up with all of the latest releases. That’s a perfectly valid way of being fannish, but if I wanted that, I’d binge US television 24/7.

Anime fandom got bigger, but what I liked about anime fandom in English died, and I moved on. (Okay, I first moved on to Onmyouji, which is a live action Japanese thing, but still.)

Hardcore weeaboos and now fans of Chinese and Korean stuff don’t stop at language: people get excited about cooking, my other other great passion. Times a thousand if the canon is something like The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, which is full of loving shots of food preparation. People get excited about history! Mandarin and Japanese may share almost nothing in terms of grammar or phonology, but all of East Asia has influence from specific Chinese power centers historically, and there are commonalities to historical architecture and clothing that I love.

I fell out of love with the popular anime art styles as they changed, and I’m not that into animation in general these days. (I still own a shitton of manga in art styles I like, like Okano Reiko’s Onmyouji series.) I’ve become a filmmaker over the last decade, and I’m very excited about beautiful cinematography and editing. With one thing and another, I’m probably not going to get back into anime fandom, but it’s lovely to revisit the cultural aspects I enjoyed about it via live-action media.

BTS surprised me too, to be honest. I really dislike that early 90s R&B ballad style that infests idol music (not just Korean--believe me, I resisted many rounds of “But Johnny’s Entertainment though!” back in the day). While I like some of the dance pop, I just don’t care. But OH NO, BTS turn out to be massive conscious hip hop fanboys, and their music sounds different. I have some tl;dr about my reactions in the meta I wrote about one of my fanvids, which you can find on Dreamwidth here.

--

But back to your comment about turnover: I know fans from the 70s who’ve had one great fannish love and that’s it and more who were like that but eventually moved on to a second or third. They’re... really fannishly monogamous in a way I find hard to comprehend. It was the norm long ago, but even by the 90s when far more people were getting into fandom, it was seen as a little weird. By now, with exponentially more people in fandom, it’s almost unheard of. I think those fans still exist, even as new people joining, but we don’t notice them. They were always rare, but in the past, only people like that had the stamina to get over the barriers to entry and actually become the people who made zines or were willing to be visibly into fanfic in eras when that was seen as really weird. On top of that, there’s an element of me, us, judging the past by what’s left: only people with an intense and often single passion are visible because other people either drifted away or have seamlessly disappeared into some modern fandom. They don’t say they’re 80 or 60 or 40 instead of 20, so nobody knows.

In general, I’m a small fandoms and rare ships person. My brain will do its best to thwart me by liking whatever has no fic even in a big fic fandom... (Except BTS because there is literally fic for any combination of them, like even more than for the likes of MCU. Wow. Best fandom evar!) So I have an incentive to not get complacent and just stick with one fandom because I would very soon have no ability to be in fandom at all.

My appetite for Consuming All The Things has slowed way down, but it also goes in waves, and a lot of what I’m consuming is what I did back in 2000: journal articles and the limited range of English-language books on the history of m/m sex and romance in East Asia. It’s not so much that I have a million fandoms as that I’m watching a few shows as an expression of my interest in East Asian costume dramas and East Asian history generally.

I do like to sit with one thing and experience it deeply rather than moving on quickly, but the surface expression of this has changed depending on whether I’m more into writing fic or more into doing research or something else.

But yes, I do do a certain amount of trying to stay current, often as a part of research for fandom meta or to help other people know what’s going on. Having a sense of what’s big doesn’t automatically mean getting into all those things, but I think some fans who are older-in-fandom and/or older-in-years stop being open to even hearing what’s new. And if you’ve never heard of it, you’ll never know if you might have liked it.

#fandom meta #fandom history #Anonymous

[demi-shoggoth]

2021 Reading Log, pt 19

Almost 100 books and it’s only just July! This summer vacation, I’m averaging a book a day.

91. Medieval Bodies by Jack Hartnell. This is a look at how medieval people viewed the body, from medical, cultural and religious perspectives. It goes from head to toe, literally, organized by region moving from the crown down. The book is more interested in communication between Christendom and Islamic sources, and also covers Byzantium in some depth. I was not expecting it to be an art book, but it is. It features full color photography of artifacts and pages from medieval manuscripts. Some of these I’ve seen recently in Madman’s Library. One thing that I thought was very cool is that when quoting primary sources, it includes the original language, regardless of what language or what script it uses.

92. I Watched Them Eat Me Alive, edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle. This is a short (digest sized) compilation of killer animal stories from men’s adventure magazines from the 1950s through 1970s. There are five stories in total, as well as dozens of pieces of cover and interior art and short articles about some of the authors, artists and tropes on display. The stories themselves range from the ridiculous (an anthropologist is torn apart by killer flying squirrels!) to semi-plausible (a wounded mountain lion goes on a rampage, and only our square jawed hero can put him down!), but all of them are short, punchy and super gory. I would have liked if the book were physically larger (say, magazine sized) to reproduce the covers in finer detail, but this was a fun way to spend an afternoon.

93. Lizards of the World by Mark O’Shea. After last year’s similar Spiders of the World, I had very high hopes for this book. It was slightly disappointing only in that it wasn’t perfect, but it is still very good. The first third or so is an overview of lizard anatomy and behavior, and the back two-thirds are entries on each family, with full color photographs throughout. The parts that irked me was the reluctance of the author to abandon hierarchical Linnaean classification in favor of a cladistic approach, and a complete refusal to acknowledge that mosasaurs are lizards, which all paleontologists agree on. But this is the grumpy old evolutionary biologist in me grumbling. The stuff about living, modern lizards is all fantastic. The photographs are beautiful, and there are plenty of species covered I wasn’t familiar with. One thing of note is that some major lizard groups have been broken up, and the scientists are having fun with it. The armored lizards Cordylus have been split up and new genera named Ouroborus and Smaug erected to fit some of its former members!

94. Attack of the Flickering Skeletons by Stuart Ashen. A follow up to Terrible Old Games You’ve Probably Never Heard Of, with more reviews of broken, unplayable computer games from the 1980s and early 90s. This has somewhat of a broader scope than the first book. There are galleries of weird cover art, comparisons between arcade originals and their Commodore 64 ports, and a lengthy article about Hareraiser. This last being a scam computer game duology made to cash in on the popularity of the Masquerade book/treasure hunt in England. A fascinating little bit of British pop culture ephemera, and I’m glad it got a place in this book.

95. A Short History of Humanity: A New History of Old Europe by Johannes Krause and Thomas Trappe, translated by Caroline Wright. This is another European science book imported to the states, translated this time from the German. The original German title is The Journey of Our Genes: A Story About Us and Our Ancestors. Frankly, a mixed and matched title (The Journey of Our Genes: A New History of Old Europe) would fit the book better in my opinion. But enough about that. Krause is an archeological geneticist—his team discovered the Denisovians—and the book is about what we can understand about human migration by looking at DNA from remains throughout Europe and West Asia. The book was written with a polemical perspective in mind—to counter claims by modern nationalists in Europe to close borders, by pointing out that Europe was populated by multiple major waves of immigrants in the past, and that there’s no such thing as “races” from a genetic perspective. In the introduction, they point out that in 2020, the chapters about how pathogens moved with and through human populations will be more relevant than they seemed in 2017, when the original edition was written.

#reading log #biology #lizards #medieval art #european history #genetics #video games #men's adventure magazine #when animals attack

[scenics]

what's your favorite thing about wong kar wai's movies? why do you like his movies so much?

wrote this in the notes app at 3am. this got very long. wkw’s one of my fave directors of all time

first of all, i did not like wong kar wai’s movies growing up. my first introduction to wong kar wai was with in the mood for love, and i always hated how slow the movie was—i could not understand the value of two middle aged people walking circles around each other on when i was eight years old. my mother was particularly fascinated with the movie and every few years or so she’d borrow it from the local library just to rewatch it by herself, or with me as an unwilling audience. maybe she just really liked tony leung like everyone else did, or i didn’t understand what she was going through back then. now, she watches it a lot less, but ironically i’m the one who watches it on a regular basis. when i look back, i realize my hatred of in the mood for love stemmed from my rejection of my mother when i was younger, along with anything related to my culture/heritage. it was my way of reconciling the isolation i felt in my new home at a young age—i thought that rejecting any part of my past would allow me to assimilate better (and for the most part it worked until senior year of high school give or take). i can say now that my former hatred/rejection of wong kar wai’s greatest work—his magnum opus—makes me appreciate him a lot more. like my mother taught me, it is best not to hate if you can love one day.

my real love and fascination for wong kar wai started when i was 18. the week after my first week of college finals, i watched his entire filmography (excluding anything post 2046) in one long sitting. i was exhausted from an accumulation of things: college did not go the way i expected and i hated science with a passionate sincerity by the end of the year. that year, i had also not chosen to go home.  regretted not just going back to vietnam a lot and i spent the entire first year of college just missing it. i was mentally emotionally exhausted and homesick so i found immediate comfort and familiarity in wong kar wai’s films. all of wong kar wai’s films are based around the simple theme of connection, each character desires connection with another —whether through strangers like in chungking express or estranged lovers in a foreign city like in happy together. every character is lost in their own world of loneliness, but they’re not consumed by it as they constantly venture out to find a cure for their loneliness. there’s a sort of warm tenderness to their eternal loneliness. wong kar wai’s characters are all very simple, but that just makes them the more normal. he adds an amusing, yet charming aspect to a lot of his characters, which makes them all the more real. at the end of the day, they’re the most ordinary of people, but framed in wong kar wai’s romantic vision of the world. for me, i can see myself in a lot of his characters, especially as i’ve now settled myself into my twenties.

most of all, wong kar wai’s movies remind me of home a lot. more than anything. vietnamese cinema barely exists, and his films of hong kong are one of the only threads of my childhood memories captured in film. in his films, his characters loneliness stems from an urban isolation and a desire to find home. how can one constantly be surrounded by people, yet feel so lonely?  90s hong kong reminds me a lot of early 2000s saigon, right before true modern urbanization began to take foot. the saigon i return to now is not the place i grew up in, everything i once knew with familiarity has become foreign (you could argue the same for hong kong too). like both the main characters in happy together, i’m very much far away from home now, but what makes it worse is i don’t have a home to return to anymore despite it still being there. the isolation i feel here is much less comforting than the familiar isolation of asia, it’s an entirely distinct feeling i’ve come to differentiate. the night version of hong kong in fallen angels reminds me very much of saigon at night when i was little—when i would cling to my aunts back on the motorcycle. even more, hong kong at night is an unmistakable feeling—a true moment of limbo that you can experience nowhere else as the city seems to slow to a stop before starting up again (the dim sum scene in fallen angels reminds me of my uncle taking me with him to smalls shops buried deep in hong kong’s markets. in my opinion, the most crowded, dirty, loud places have the best food).

one of the things i also love the most about wong kar wais films are they are essentially “of an era.” context heavily influences his films, and watchers should understand that his best films are primarily made in the decade of hong kong’s handover from the uk to china.  looking back now, his films are representative of the end of hong kong pop culture culture. they’re the last threads of a former culture powerhouse in asia—hk cantopop, film, and tv throughout the late 70s to 90s had an immense influence on asian pop culture today. everybody knew and loved hong kong, because it was the only true source of quality pop culture in an age of barely any in asia. hong kong was the beginning of everything essentially. kpop even, i would argue, would not be what it is today without cantopop—many idols are modeled after the cantopop idols of the 80s along with western influence. it’s sad to see that hong kong’s impact has been increasingly erased over the past 20 or so years—hong kong is now a shell of it’s former self as it can never return to its former glory. wong kar wai’s greatest films are chungking express, fallen angels, happy together, and in the mood for love. they’re all made in the years predating or after the handover, and you can see the differences in feeling of each film as it nears 1997. happy together, aside from being a somewhat tragic love story, is also the tragedy of hong kong. the handover of 1997 seems to haunt that film as the characters are also far way from hong kong; they’re on the other side of the world. there’s a sense of fear and desperation that runs parallel to the main love story and i feel like people don’t see that the first time without an understanding of historical context. chungking express and fallen angels are two sides of hong kong—hong kong by day and by night—they’re wong kar wai’s love letter to hong kong itself before it disappears in the subsequent years (which it has sadly). both of those movies are time capsules of an era, they capture an atmosphere that is now gone in hong kong. 2046 is an extension of those four movies above—an imagining of how hong kong would be be 99 years after the “end” of hong kong as it is in 1997. and finally, wong kar wai’s greatest work is in the mood for love. it’s his magnum opus, and the true end of an era: for wong kar wai’s creative capacity, for hong kong pop culture, for the actors themselves. wong kar wai has been unable to follow in the mood for love successfully with other directorial features, it’s a masterpiece in itself in its inability for recreation. the movie speaks for itself, even maggie subsequently quit acting shortly afterwards because she felt she could never top that role—it was the end of her acting career in terms of era. everything that wong kar wai put out in the 90s is of an era, it cannot and never be repeated or recreated just as the old hong kong is gone (which is why his attempt to make sequels for those movies with blossoms and the chungking express sequel will be futile. wong kar wai does not realize that that era has indeed passed (and his his break up with christopher doyle has proved to be fatal for both of them).

finally, a small addition about wong kar wai as a director himself. he’s a cancer, very true to his nature, which explains how he can so fluidly translate and portray emotion in his films. they’re almost overflowing with tender emotion, but very much so in an implicit manner. i could never do that in anything i create, it’d end up being very much lynchian in manner, which makes me appreciate his films a lot more. moreover, wong kar wai has a certain way, an intimacy with all his actors. he brings out the best in them for only his movies, and that’s what makes him so special. also, i relate a lot to wong kar wai’s method of working ..the man is one of the worst procrastinators he’s worse than me. he almost never plans or writes scripts for his movies. most of his films especially in the 90s are very much “go with the flow” improvisation (u can see that the characters are very much the actors even it’s hard to distinguish). he was editing in the mood for love up to the last minute before final submission for cannes, that’s just how much of a procrastinator he was and why it’ll take him a million years to release the chungking express sequel. it’s amazing to think how all of these great movies from wong kar wai are technically equivalent to 2000 word essays submitted a minute past the deadline. what i imagine is how different would his work be if he’d planned ahead (how much better would my essays be if i didn’t write them at 3am?). but i guess we can all see how much he’s changed in the release of his criterion collection—-he’s not the person he once was and he can’t recreate the past.

if u read this far i love you thank u for reading my inarticulate nonsense thoughts. i hope u like wong kar wai a lot more than before

#asks #very inarticulate but articulate im sorry this took so long

[felinisfeloney]

u know u just hate CQL because it's different from the book. You're just angry it's not an exact adaptation and are mad it's good and is a great adaptation. U don't even understand censorship

ok.. so everything about this is wrong. It’s very wrong because wanna know something I watched the drama first. I was excited for the drama! I watched the first few episodes was a little confused (by that I mean my brain needed to get all the names and shit straight because I can only read so fast so I got a little lost on whos and whys) and then I went and watched the Donghua after reading 10 or so chapters of the web comic and then got to the novel. I got to the book last. I read fanfic before I got to the book. I wanted to savor my experience of the book. I wasn’t even registering the book when I first started watching CQL and noted how wrong it was as a show.

And it was all in the editing and the absurd amount of scenes repeating the same point over and over.

I love when adaptations are different. I love when a team can bring something into a new medium and in the process put in new and fresh energy into something I already enjoy. I hate adaptations that are so exact they render the existence of it being an adaptation meaningless. I hate when an adaptation doesn’t have fun with the joy their medium brings. Or just are so exact it renders reading the original format meaningless. I am a huge lover of both versions of Howl’s Moving Castle book and film for their differences. I would honestly hate to watch a version of Howl like the book not cause I dislike it but because I know the book as it is written in it’s entirety wouldn’t work in a 90 minute runtime. Maybe a miniseries at best. I enjoy and love the original FMA and am a supporter of anime’s writing their own endings instead just dragging shit out or waiting for the manga to finish. I think the Soul Eater anime is perfect for what it is and I have fun every time it ends.

I if anyone should have defended CQL for it’s changes. For having the Yin Iron plot. Because here is the thing I don’t even mind the Yin Iron in principle given it has an incredibly distinct role is writing around the portrayal of the undead something that chinese media is rather sensitive about for cultural reasons that I respect and believe are valid on their part. Having it be puppets instead of corpses doesn’t bother me. It’s pining a morality on an object and low key implying it’s this objects fault for being evil and tempting evil people. 

It’s the thematic emptiness. It’s the absurd writing choices and things set up but not followed through on. Moments that only exist to reach a beat in the book even though it doesn’t line up with the new plot they have made. It’s the repetitive ass scenes where the same information is given only one new person is in the room. It’s the annoyingly one note stage acting from everyone on scene.

It’s the boring camera angles and absurd editing choices that only further convince given the cast and how they are done this show was edited around profiting off having a C-Pop band for the main cast. The only part I give props on is set and costume design and even then it really shows that they had no interest in making these people look anything but like pretty with a bit of mud and stressed hair. 

How else will we get stan gif sets?

Even if I were to just touch briefly on the LGBTQ censorship I cannot stress enough that element is not my maim gripe. My gripe is that this show is trying to profit off of a writing and editing style that only wants to insult you. You wanna know something? If they just used less middle distance shots and more closer intimate angles you could have used the subtle art of film editing to convey gay. Pay close attention to that bad clip show from the Xuanwu of Slaughter arc and note how much is distance shots. How much is camera work that displays no form of intimacy between the characters. How it is all so awkward and stilted in silence. If you could make a bromance wangxian work for me I would acknowledge the inherent yikes but I would enjoy. I can’t even enjoy CQL because it’s not done in a way that makes me ignore that corporate checklist.

Imma say this hot take even with all the obvious and glaring animation problems so far scum villain’s self saving system is a better show than CQL

If I had no idea that MDZS existed CQL would still be boring

#fel speaks #cql #mdzs #meta