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Saint's monologue

KARMA

I really forget to post

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i like when things are bad in an interesting way compared to good in a boring way. Creativity with a lack of technical skill is where the Good Shit happens.

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That first Polish-language encyclopedia was right about dragons. "It is hard to defeat a dragon, but you have to try." That is in fact a definition of "dragon" that cuts to the heart of the matter and covers all the essentials.

A dragon is something that A) is very hard to defeat and B) must be fought. That's it. That's all you really have to know when approaching the subject.

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A QUICK GUIDE TO TRANSCENDENTAL HORROR

the ecstasy of the agony by sean t collins / annihilation (2018) / apostle (2018)  martyrs (2008) / jennifer’s body (2009) / the vvitch (2015)

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Iliad adaptations: all of us are great people except king Agamemnon, who's the only villain, and he's basically forcing us into committing war crimes against these helpless trojans uwu.

Homer's Iliad: if there's 10000 of us, then there's 10000 different reasons to fight this war. We do nefarious things because war is dark, and it's made by men.

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A keeper of the old lords from the bloodborne boardgame I picked second hand because i like how it looked

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Or as Strunk and White said in Elements of Style (to the best of my memory), "Feel free to ignore everything in this book rather than write something inelegant."

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the flesh putrefies, the machine rusts, and the divine corrupts, and so the rot remains supreme

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NO LIVE ORGANISM CAN CONTINUE FOR LONG TO EXIST SANELY UNDER CONDITIONS OF ABSOLUTE REALITY EVEN LARKS AND KATYDIDS ARE SUPPOSED BY SOME TO DREAM

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i’ve been thinking about this video nonstop since the first time i saw it

the jaunty walk perfectly in time with the music. the tip of the hat the unaware or uncaring bystanders. the shaky camera with random zooming. the fact that this is seemingly happening in a park. this is peak media i can’t get over it

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lets give it up for pleasures of the flesh !!

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Also. Another important theme/message of this version of Ratatouille would be how folks can break cycles of abuse, instead of perpetuating them just because “this is how things are done/how things are”:

Colette is a young fine dining chef in Paris. She learned how to cook professionally in one of the most toxic work cultures on planet earth, and she steeled herself and pushed through in order to excel. After Remy convinces Colette to teach him how to cook, she tries to at first to replicate the ways she was taught in the kitchens of her past, the ways she’d always taken for granted as the only ways to train a rookie into a chef worth anything: brutally reprimanding him for mistakes, raising her voice, letting those ghosts of previous head chefs rise up inside her. And then, in a moment of lucidity, she looks into his big, wet, little rat eyes on a particularly difficult practice day, and sees the hurt there, the confusion, the shame… and she feels her heart quietly break for her younger self and for him, that they both took this kind of abuse, and feels her heart break for her current self, too, about how she’s let herself turn into the kind of chef her younger self had nightmares about, a monster who could make a green cook with big dreams cry.

Trying to replicate this teaching method had been emotionally trying for her, too, and this is the final straw: she shouts this particular epithet or turn of phrase at him, sees how he looks at her… and she flashes back to when that same thing had once been shouted at her through a haze of steam from across a narrow, crowded line when she was in the weeds, her hair falling out of its kerchief and sticking to her neck, the old fan on the wall doing nothing for the hot, humid air but circulate it weakly around the kitchen, and she’d let the sauce split again, how could she be so stupid—

And she decides that she never wants to see that look in Remy’s eyes, or any young cook’s eyes, ever again.

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Ratatouille would have been a better and potentially much more interesting story if Remy had partnered with Collette instead of Linguini. Two underdogs with talent and passion forced to maintain a dangerous ruse. Fiercely independent Collette giving up temporary control of her body to a creature who, despite the insanity of a rat wanting to cook professionally, she can relate to on a personal level and who she does want to teach. The inner conflict of wondering if Remy’s growing talents are eclipsing her own, if the praise their food is earning belongs more to him than to her. Her guilt over feeling resentment and jealousy towards this little guy who wouldn’t have a hope of realizing his talents if not for her trust and protection. Both of them unraveling the mystery of that sweet but bumbling kitchen boy with the obvious crush on Collette being Gusteau’s secret son, and working together to thwart the new evil owner’s plans to stop Linguini from claiming his birthright. The message of the movie not being this weird, almost smug “some people are born with talent, some people aren’t, and that’s how being a ~great artist~ works”, but something more like, “if you have a dream, you deserve to pursue it, and be supported and encouraged in your pursuit of it, even if other people tell you that, because of some intrinsic aspect of yourself or the circumstances you were born in (like being a human woman in the restaurant industry, or being a literal rat), you have no place pursuing this dream. Also, raw talent can only get you so far, and skill and passion existing in the right balance is key.” I’ve been thinking about this for seventeen years. I’m breaking my silence

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It's weird how geological time works. Eras start and end bit by bit over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. That sounds like a big uncertainty but that sort of timescale, on which the climate can overhaul itself completely and entire species rise and fall, is instantaneous compared to the age of the earth. Any hypothetical sentient creature would have no idea it was living through a major turning point. The Silurian slid into the Devonian as land plants became A Thing and insects started to wonder if 'pilot' might be a good career path, but there was no one moment when one thing ended and another began. That's not how that works...

... except for the Cretaceous. The Cretaceous had a Last Day and it was probably in April, and then the next day it was the Paleogene.

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i didn't really notice before it was pointed out to me, but in the iliad, traumatic injury only has two outcomes: immediate (or near-immediate) death, or a short period of recuperation before the injured person can return to battle apparently no worse for wear (see diomedes, odysseus, menelaus, agamemnon, etc etc). there are no slow lingering deaths or infections or persistent disabilities or amputations. and i suppose that works narratively, because "X kills Y during his aristeia" is a definite triumph while "X injures Y who lingers in a bed for two weeks before succumbing to a secondary infection" is a lot murkier honour-wise. so the warriors just don't experience those things in the world of the iliad.

BUT if you take a step back and consider the epic cycle, the soldier philoctetes sits abandoned on the island of lemnos while the events of the iliad takes place, and he experiences nothing BUT infection and disability because of his permanently festering leg wound. (as someone with a medical education i admit i'm fascinated by the vividness of the descriptions of the odour, pus, swelling and pain)

it's like philoctetes is forced to endure the infection and lingering wound the rest of his army is spared. and then, when they finally rescue him and bring him to troy in the final year of the war, the physician podalirius (who was presumably present a decade back when philoctetes first got sick) completely heals him straight away! i know there are various related prophecies, but it also seems like the location is a crucial factor. i'd like to imagine it's the gods who want to keep the plains of troy so straightforward, full of binaries and no middle ground: a thrown spear can either hit or don't hit, an injured warrior can either die or return in a few days.

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hi did you know that ancient mesopotamians buried their dead under the floors of their own houses to always be close to them? i can't write a poem about this but by god i will write a master's thesis