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friend-dogor · 9 days ago

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actually wait in relation to the last post about ghibli and how it is aestheticized into bland and toothless images of comfort, it's got me thinking abt Ursula K Le Guin again

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.

(from The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, 1973, top of pg.2)

i think that the original post is guilty of this to a degree, seeking to refute the idiocy and simplicity of focusing on the "happy" themes of ghibli movies my instead shifting attention to the horrors and pains contained within the text—those which could be seen as intellectual, needing perhaps a more sophisticated understanding of environmentalism and geopolitics.

but, furthermore, i think i'm guilty of it even in trying to defend miyazaki's often returning narrative commitment to hope and environmentalism and anti-war sentiment and kindness—after the last tag, i wanted to add something about "i know that putting kindness above pursuit of power feels like a baby theme for babies" because it Does, to me. "be kind" is, like, the first and simplest rule most of us are taught as children, be kind, don't hit your brother, be kind, share, be kind.

i don't refer to this as one of his more challenging themes, of course, because why should i? we all know to be kind. of course, i refer only to topics of war and environmentalism and grief as challenging. kindness is simple!

(nevermind that one of the biggest challenges for myself and a lot of people i know is how to stop being cruel to oneself after decades of practice and learned examples and instead to learn to be kind and forgiving with one's own mistakes and failures and perceived flaws)

and i wonder two things: 1) is it possible that the self-aestheticization of miyazaki's movies (for example, the rapturous visual attention paid to food, the attention paid to soft chairs, pillows, small and pleasantly cluttered environments, with plenty of natural light, lush plantlife and endearing creatures) contribute to miyazaki's more "challenging" messages, and if so, that there's a degree of success in people remembering the thick-cut bacon and eggs on toast from Howl's Moving Castle before they think of Sophie Hatter's town on fire because of the king's war? Has Hayao Miyazaki succeeded in making war and destruction at once horrifying and banal, but a simple good breakfast fascinating and compelling? ——not to say that people who simplify the movie to Only the aesthetics are right. they still aren't. they exist in dialogue with the destruction and it's ridiculous to sever the two. but is it possible that the majority of people thinking first of the "cozy" elements of Studio Ghibli's work is not nonintellectual and reductive, but rather contributes to a larger point of attention?

2) i ought to find other examples of media which do not treat "happy" themes or "light" themes—(i struggle even to talk about the category i mean without dismissing it entirely as Simple, or mischaracterizing it. i mean things like kindness over power and compassion over fear, things like that) which do not treat the themes as childish or nonintellectual, but also do so without fetishizing violence and suffering as Special and More Deserving of Thought than Simple and Stupid Good Feelings so that i can kind of investigate this concept a little more

#rare personal post #this may perhaps be influenced by having watched frankie and johnny last night which i believe may be of the type of movie im seeking #for this media exercise anyway LMFAO #because it was a complicated and realistic movie i think which handled with deft touch the like.#terror of being alone vs the terror of being loved—hypothetically simple in theory. in practicality: the nightmare of opening yourself up #all without fetishizing or even showing in gratuitous detail the suffering that lead to the characters fear of the love which they want #(frankie from johnny—intimate partners in general—and johnny from his kids)#this is not to say i don't like stories which depict or even fetishize suffering i absolutely fucking do BUT #ever since i read omelas as a hs senior i've been aware of my own tendency to consider suffering intellectual and happiness stupid #and am trying to challenge that whenever possible #anyway this post exists mainly as notes to myself but if anyones reading it and hasn't read The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas yet.#do that some time! its four pages long and it's a really excellent thought exercise #this whole thing i think might be tangentially related to my “are true anti war movies possible?” project #post is unreblogabble bc like said its just notes for me 💖 media recommendations welcome tho

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little-paper-ghost-child · 7 months ago

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GODS I SPENT TOO MUCH TIME ON THIS

Here’s the first song story I did

It’s shit because I like barely edited it but whatever it’s done and going out into the world

Tw for: murder, child abuse, strangulation, police (idk if I should add more but Weh)

This is the song

Please remember!!! This is not based off of the song specifically and is just what my brain came up with!!

Anyways here you go

Alex combed his fingers through his hair as he stared down at the photo album. He didn't know how George had gotten a hold of it and he figured it was something violent, but it was still a monster load of unwanted evidence and a hurt in his stomach that worsened as he flipped through the pages. He and Ivan never looked happy per say but everything had seemed so much brighter back then, back before he was alex at all. While he scratched out any mentions of demetri, ivan, or emily, Noticeably, Though he cautiously checked every page and pocket, there was no mention of his father.

He had separate reasons for all of them to be defaced, three separate reasons for three separate things.

Demitri was crossed out because he was dead, he was an idea of what could have been and he was lost. His mother had named him that, and he would not let her have that pride, so he had erased demitri as his quietest form of retaliation.

Emily was crossed out because the bitch didn't deserve to be remembered. She didn't deserve anything she had. And still somehow, she got everything she wanted from the children she hurt and there was never a consequence in the world for her. She was a violent disgusting person unfit to be a mother or a person at all and he hoped nobody had to know her ever again.

He crossed out Ivan for much less angry reasons than the other two, he wanted Ivan to be safe. his little brother. He loved Ivan more than the world itself and hated himself for leaving him.

“Coward” is what the voice in his head called him.

“ monster. Coward. You left him to die in her care.” it gnawed at him every second of everyday and he knew he couldn't go back now. Not while there was evidence still.

“Soon”, he thought.

“Soon is good.”

So Alex continued his work of scratching and defacing all three of the people for all three of his reasons..

It was difficult to do what he needed all the time and never what he wanted, he still felt trapped even out of that hellhole,it really felt like the only difference was that the blood being shed was supposed to mean something.

—

George caught him off guard with the blow to the side of the head and Alex went skittering across the concrete floor.

He felt like everything was underwater and everything was all wrong.

“The fuck?” was all he could manage to string together as he tried to push himself up.

“I've had a change in interest,” George said as he lumbered over.

“Somebody knows how to pay better”

It took longer than Alex liked to form a coherent enough thought to make sense of that.

“To kill me?” choked its way out of Alex's throat while he frantically searched his pockets for any sense of self defense. George twitched a little as he wound up for another hit but didn't answer the question. Alex got to his feet and just barely dodged the second punch, He was racking his brain for something he could use- there was no way he could stand a chance in a fistfight. Alex made it to the drawer in his desk and pulled it open scanning for something, anything that could be used and came back with a letter opener. He thought for a second on how he could use something so small, which hurt considering the previous hit to the side of his head that was definitely less than soft, but he figured something out in the end.

As the larger man approached Alex pretended he could hear his little brother cheering him on, telling him that he could do it, but it was a cruel thing to do because a child let alone a child like Ivan would cheer for something like this.

When George trew his third punch Alex used his smaller frame to an advantage and ducked behind him as quickly as possible.he only had a second to do this correctly and so much of him didn't want this.

“Murderer” said the voice in his head.

“You leave your little brother all alone and you murder the man who has been helping you.”

Alex took a breath for nearly a second, jumped, and planted the letter opener in George's neck.

He made a squeak, and promptly fell over onto the cold concrete.

He was frozen, then. he was locked in place staring down at the presumably dead man

That he had thought was his friend.

“It's not your friend if you have to pay it to care” he reminded himself and closed his eyes tight.

Why did it have to be so hard?

Why did stuff like this come up?

Why couldn't everything just be okay?

Alex wanted so badly for everything to be okay, but there was no way to obtain something like that. He wanted it more than anything in the world and he would never get it, and even when things finally seemed to work out, it always went to shit.

Why did it have to do that?

Why did it have to be so hard?

Why did stuff like this come up?

Why couldn't everything just be okay?

It hit him in a second that all the evidence was gone. All the evidence he could possibly get rid of was gone with George, if everything was gone, there was only one place he was supposed to go.

—

Alex got in his car after he had finished defacing anything that he had left remotely close to a normal keepsake. He left the body, he didn't care. He knew where he was going, he remembered being dragged back by walk or car every time he tried to run away. He could practically hear Emily screaming at him that she swore he was trying to get them in trouble.That he was a disgusting excuse for a child. That his father was waiting for him at home.he could never remember anything but angry flashes after that.

Even though he knew the way perfectly, it still took something out of him to get to the right streets. He figured he had a concussion but now was not the time to worry about that. There was that, and there was the voice in his head as well.

“Why would you go back when you are just going to hurt? Murderer murderer murderer.you left little brother all alone to kill your own father, and you couldn't even find him. Why would Ivan want to see you ever again? Not to mention Emily will be there too. Can you really face her? Maybe you want to see her, because for all of the shit maybe you are a mama's boy. You probably failed to protect your brother. You are failing to stay away. Maybe Emily will hurt you again, maybe you deserve it. You probably even liked it when-”

“Shut up”, Alex said aloud. “I hate her and I hate you.”

he looked in the rearview mirror for the last comment, glaring at himself like it would leak through into his thoughts and make them go away. He hated remembering, hated thinking about it at all, hated her voice echoing around his head, but things would never change so he did his best to push her out of his mind for now.

As he turned the corner, one side of the road opened down a lake miles below. Alex weighed the possibilities of anyone finding him if he drove off and into the water, but he had heard that drowning wasn't exactly as quick and easy enough to make it all that tempting.

—

Alex got out of the car before he turned the street corner. He had grabbed his gun from the car, and the voice inside his head bubbled up to hiss at him.

“A gun?” it said. “Murderers use guns. Monsters use guns. What do you think that makes you? What are you going to do with it anyway? You could end up hurting ivan.”

Alex shook his head as if to shake the voice right out of his head and shoved the gun into his belt.

“It was just in case,” he told himself.

“Just in case anything went badly like it always seemed to.”

Seeing down the street he grew up on hurt Alex more than he wanted to think about.

“No” he thought

“Dimitri grew up here.” was easier to think about but only by a little.

Nothing was easy here, it never had been and it never would be but he would take what comfort he could get, and if that was by remembering a dead dream then he would remember but not connect.

As Alex walked towards his inevitable destination he scanned the roads and felt like a little kid again, recounting things that had happened in certain places. There was a tree that dimitri was once sitting under when a branch fell off, there were the bushes where dimitri had been bitten by a stray dog who roamed around, from which alex still had a small scar. There was the spot on the road where the police had been called the first time- and the spot where they had been called the second. And finally, there was the house.

Walking down the driveway he could see the trash bags all up one side of the fence. Piles of empty bottles and cans were shoved under the rotting porch and as he walked down the driveway Alex could smell the house reeked of beer and mold and filth.

“This was a bad idea” said the thoughts in his head.

“Your brother doesn't want to see you anyway. And you know what emily will do when she finds you-”

Alex forcefully shoved that voice out of the way and stared at the door. From inside there was something that might have been a yell, and something glass breaking.

He couldn't stall any longer.

After a minute all too short to prepare himself, Alex opened the door and went in.

—

The smell was worse on the inside.

The carpet was dirty and the ground was littered with all sorts of things that couldn't be safe for walking on, which made him more so glad he had kept his shoes on. Now that he was inside he could see that the disarray of the place had only gotten worse after he left, which made sense considering most of the cleaning was done by Alex himself, but was still upsetting to see. As he moved through the house, he remembered a thousand awful little things. Pins under fingernails, the feel of uncooked, moldy fruits or vegetables in his mouth, little cockroaches and worms that made homes in the mess. He didn't like thinking about it, remembering it made him want to scratch at his skin, made him feel dirty.

Nothing in this house was nice, but nothing had gotten under his skin until he saw the whiskey on the counter.

It was half empty and there was a dirty glass set beside it. Alex gaged like he was trying to throw it up, but there was nothing to throw up. He hated the sight of it, hated the burn of it, he remembered crying, crying made it worse.

For every cry he let out she would always pour a little more into the cup, a little more, a little more, until he stopped crying, sometimes he threw up, sometimes he fell asleep, sometimes he couldn't remember.

Alex’s hand raised instinctively to his mouth.

“you are going to throw up oh no, oh god no you feel sick you are sick and everything is wrong, stop crying you're only going to make it worse it burns you are suffocating it burns it hurts you are going to be sick you are going to throw up-”

The crash of something glass and a strangled yell upstairs broke Alex out of his headspace, and his focus snapped to the staircase. Alex ran up the stairs and turned the corner so fast he almost fell over. He barely even thought as he ran to the one open door, and he barely even thought as he reached for his gun.

—

Emily Volkova had never been a good person. She only hurt and ruined and broke people and things and really anything she could get her hands on. And her own two children were things remarkably easy to get her hands on.

Ivan was on the ground, just barely struggling against Emily, who had her hands around his neck so tight it looked like she herself was straining. She was never particularly strong but she had the advantage of being a grown woman fighting against a nine year old boy, and the advantage that the nine year old boy she was fighting wanted nothing more than for her to love him.

Alex could see ivans mouth moving, trying to choke out words that were lost to his excuse of a mothers screaming. Alex could barely understand what he was saying, but he didn't need to. What he did know was that Emily volkova had never been a good person, and that he was going to make her stop.

The sound of the gun cocking might have been what had gotten her attention, or she had just happened to notice at the moment he was leveling it to her head.

“Demitri, why the fuck are you here?” she said, barely loosening her grip on ivan. Her shock turned to anger turned to vicious manipulation faster than Alex could keep up with.

“Did your little trip go well? you leave right after your father so i have to take care of this stupid fucking kid by myself, why would you leave your own mother?”

“Shut up” was all that Alex said. He had built up all this hatred for this woman in his head but being with her now, seeing her, he hated himself for being scared.

She put on a face like she was hurt before shoving Ivan to the ground and getting up.

“dont tell me to fucking shut up you little shit. You would really shoot your own mother too? In Front of your little brother, the world out there has ruined you demitri.”

She took a step towards Alex and he had to fight himself not to step back, shaking as he tried to hold the gun in place.

“Ivan, close your eyes and cover your ears” he said, trying to see around Emily to his brother, who moved slowly and shakily.

“That's it.” Emily said with a little more fear in her voice.

“Put the gun down, Demitri, you can't do this to your mother.”

“You were never my mother, I was never your son.” was all Alex said before he pulled the trigger.

—

Alex didn't like guns all that much because they were very loud and sometimes made big messes. He didn't like this situation much at all but he had to make sure that Ivan was okay, Alex could wait for later. As he moved his way into the room, he locked eyes with Ivan and felt a gut wrenching tear in his stomach. He could feel how hurt this little boy was. Then, he could see it. The bruises around his neck were to be expected, he had a black eye too. Ivan was covered in bruises, over his arms and legs that Alex could see. He seemed to have little cuts too, burns or razor slashes, cuts from kitchen knives or cut up soda cans might have been in the mix too. Some looked new, some looked old, more than a few looked infected.

“Oh god ivan.” Alex said involuntarily.

Ivan just stared, shaking, scared.

“I'm so sorry.” didn't get a response either.

So Alex sat with Ivan for a moment, a few more, what felt like an eternity, until Ivan reached and grabbed a hold of Alex's coat sleeve, then buried his face in Alex's shoulder. Alex held on like he was going to lose him again.

He never wanted to let go.

Ivan was cold and he was shaking, Alex could feel it radiating off of his body. He felt a pull of guilt, but he buried it, that's not what either of them needed right now.

“I'm going to take you away from here okay?” Alex told him.

“I'm going to make sure that nobody hurts you ever again.”

He scooped Ivan up and carried him slowly down the stairs, whispering gentle reassurances that he knew meant next to nothing.

He just wanted it to be okay,

He just wanted Ivan to be okay.

Alex hated that this gentleness felt like a lie after all that he’d done, but as long as Ivan could be alright again he would fake a whole world.

Quietly reaching the bottom of the stairs, Alex shifted his hold on Ivan to open the door. The doorknob was sticky under his fingers as he turned the knob, opening the door to the porch. From the porch you could see the whole yard, and you could see Domonik Volkov standing in the grass.

—

Ivan could feel his older brother tense, but the way he was positioned, he couldn't quite see.

“What is it?” he wanted to say, but words couldn't find their way to his mouth. A man's voice said something in a language he heard grown ups speak sometimes and Ivan tried to squirm to look, but Demitri held him too close. His older brother slowly, very slowly, walked off the porch to a bush and very carefully sat Ivan down on the dead grass.

“Stay here,” he said to ivan.

“Stay here, and don't look over there, and cover your ears, okay?”

Ivan nodded, and turned in the opposite direction of where he wasn't supposed to look.

Alex gave his hand a tight squeeze and got up.

Ivan tried his best to cover his ears but his wrists were weak and his hands shook so he opted for cradling his face between his bruised knees.

It wasn't good sound protection, he could still hear the two talking, arguing in the language that he didn't know.

There was a word he did know though,

“Monster.” Demitri kept saying.

“Something-something-monster.”

.It sounded so cold off of his brother's tongue that the sharpness felt like a whole different person entirely, sounded more like mother if Ivan had to place it, but he didn't like to place the two in the same category.

There were sirens too now, they started far away but they kept getting louder and louder, and so was the arguing. The sirens eventually stopped and flashy red and blue lights painted the grass around Ivan with a fractured looking glow, but the arguing still went on. Ivan tried to pretend that everything was okay, that somebody was just having a dance party with some nice, police coloured lights.

The argument sounded more frantic now, like they were running out of time to be mad at eachother.

Everything sounded scary, the flashing lights felt dizzying and the yelling was too loud even when ivan tried to cover his ears and then-

The gunshot made everything go dead silent. Ivan squeezed his eyes shut so tight that he saw little spots in his eyelids. Somebody started walking over to the bush and Ivan looked up in hope but it wasn't Demitri, it was somebody that Ivan presumed to be a police officer. The officer scooped Ivan up in his arms and carried him to the back of his car where he gave him a blanket and stale cookie.

Ivan looked out at what he could of the scene, dead grass,lots of blood, the man that must have been the angry voice that weirdly looked alot like his father with a big towel over his face, and then dmitri, being arrested.

The eye contact was short, the brief message that his older brother sent was a fierce look and a nod.a nod as they shoved him into the back of the police car, as Ivan got driven away too.

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