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joyce-stick · 2 years ago

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Suzume Isn't Gay, But We Liked It Anyway

Despite not being as gay as Shinkai might have tried to make it during its development, Suzume is still quite a good film which we enjoyed immensely on account of its characters, compelling narrative, visual beauty, thought-provoking themes, and the improvements observed over Shinkai's previous two films. So this an essay about Suzume, about why it's good, what its themes are, and our glowing recommendation.

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Transcript under the cut.

Previous video essay/transcript: Audrey's Best Girls Winter 2023

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Citations!

Baron, Reuben. “Director Makoto Shinkai on the Anime Artistry of Suzume - Exclusive Interview.” Looper, Static Media, 12 Apr. 2023, https://www.looper.com/1254434/director-makoto-shinkai-anime-artistry-suzume-exclusive-interview/.

Brzeski, Patrick. “Makoto Shinkai on How Anime Blockbuster 'Suzume' Reflects the Current State of Japan: ‘the Most Honest Expression I Could Put on Screen.’” The Hollywood Reporter, Penske Media Corporation, 7 Mar. 2023, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/makoto-shinkai-interview-suzume-anime-berlin-2023-1235329404/.

Pulliam-Moore, Charles. “Makoto Shinkai Wants Suzume to Build a Bridge of Memory between Generations.” The Verge, Vox Media, 15 Apr. 2023, https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/15/23678724/makoto-shinkai-suzume-interview.

Jackson, Destiny. “Director Makoto Shinkai on the Tender Resonance and Maturity of Making 'Suzume': ‘I Think about How to Dig Deeper so I Can Emotionally Move People in My Vicinity.’” Deadline, Penske Media Corporation, 15 Apr. 2023, https://deadline.com/2023/04/suzume-makoto-shinkai-japanese-anime-weathering-with-you-your-name-1235325691/.

https://twitter.com/ao8l22/status/1513116464210919425

https://twitter.com/moogy0/status/1592346490315640836

I had a few good reasons to assume I would hate Suzume.

We've seen three of Shinkai’s films. Yes, those three. We liked Your Name quite a bit when we saw it in theaters, but its flaws became apparent on a rewatch a few years later. We did not like Weathering With You, which made its flaws apparent to us rather immediately. Never watched it since watching it the first time, but, I don't know, maybe we'll go back to it.Still, thinking about that film had us pissed off for a little while, although we're less pissed off now, for reasons we might get to later. So, when we went to watch Suzume, I was reasonably expecting to hate it, or, even worse, enjoy it, while seeing some intractable flaw in it that ticked me off immensely about it.

And… I found none! I mean, maybe I'll think of one later, but my current opinion of Suzume, as I write this hours after having seen it, (and speak it, 'bout a couple days after having written this) is that it was a pretty good film with a lot of breathtaking visuals, funny moments, some emotional bits, and no real huge flaws to speak of. In fact, not only does this film lack the biggest flaws of its predecessors, it's also got a few things about it that I appreciate more.

First thing I liked immediately: Girl. I mean, her name, is the title. It's no secret that we of the joystick system appreciate beautiful anime girls, and this particular such beautiful anime girl is good, both as the protagonist of the film who does all the proactive things to save the guy, which is different from the last two movies where the guy did all the stuff. I'm not gonna pretend like Shinkai is suddenly some kind of feminist icon now for correctly giving a female character some goddamn agency, but: it's a nice touch for us personally, given that… we like girls. It helps that Suzume is emotional and interesting and funny and has a pretty good arc through the movie and her voice actress does a good job- no, we did not watch the dub. I'll probably talk a bit more about her later, but I think she's good.

I think it's important to mention with regards to this girl, that she was, apparently, supposed to be gay. This information came to light in the English speaking anime community after a Japanese entertainment journalist tweeted a tweet sayin’ as much, and then professional translator Moogy went and tweeted about it in turn, citing this journalist as a source. I can’t find that this chain goes back any further than that, although I tried to out of personal interest, because, if I had, then I would’ve been able to write that into the Wikipedia page- which, I DID CHECK, and it briefly mentions that -

Okay, so, since writing that, another, Wikipedia-admissible, source, in the English language, emerged, in which Shinkai is interviewed, and confirms this to be true. So as such, I added that information to the article, with that source. Look. There it is! And it’s still there, probably, unless someone removed it while I was making the video.

In this interview, the interviewer asks Shinkai directly about this, and he says, “I’m surprised you know it! I’ve only told Japanese interviewers about it!” Clearly Shinkai is unaware of the power of Moogy. So, he goes onto say, that, yes, it was his initial idea for a companion, and that the theoretical character who Souta replaced would’ve been Suzume’s onee-san crush; that’s how I’m taking this whole ‘sisterhood romance’ thing. He thought he’d done enough with the boy meets girl thing, and he wanted to try doing something else.

His producer rejected it, because, in Shinkai’s translated words, “You may be tired of these romantic stories, but your audience loves it,” which, I believe, is a polite way of saying “I don’t think a gay film will sell.” The chair thing was chosen to “not make it too much of a romance”.

Shinkai further says— and this part kinda gets me— that he doesn’t think the story would’ve changed if it had been gay, or if Suzume had been a boy or non-binary or whatever. Quote:

“It's not necessarily the context of male/female; it's about a human overcoming something. In my future films as well, I want to focus on that human story as opposed to too much commentary on gender or sex.”

So, my reading of this response, and, take this with a grain of salt because it’s only my personal interpretation, is that while Shinkai was interested in making a gay film as a change of pace, he did not consider it important enough to insist on. There were other things he wanted to make the movie about, and he didn’t want to die on the gay hill.

And, y’know, that’s a shame, but I think it’s fair enough. I would have liked to see the alternate timeline where no one stopped him from making the film gay, but if it wasn’t already clear, I like the film that we got, and I don’t fault Shinkai for having other priorities as a director, like, for instance, getting his film funded and keeping his job. And honestly, I can halfway see the merit in not making it a gay film, because then it’d be a lot harder to, y’know, address the themes, without addressing whatever gay discourse there’d be that overshadows the themes.

I don’t say this to be like, “ooh, the film would’ve just been gay and that would’ve been bad,” it would’ve been good for the film to be gay, I just mean that a lot of the time people are more concerned about there being representation rather than the quality of the story in which the representation exists and it becomes the gay thing, rather than, the thing that happens to be gay, and that’s not always great. I mean, I guess we are getting a little bit of that just off of the knowledge that the film could have been gay, but at least I don’t have to think about talking about it too much past this point, because it’s, y’know, not actually in the film.

Shinkai said other stuff, too, I guess, about the animation and how the characters have different color palettes for daytime and evening and night scenes, which explains the very convincingly presented amusement park scene, that happens at night! So that was interesting.

Anyway, that’s the addendum I have about that, I’m gonna go back to the rest of this:

I have no idea if this would've been good for the film or not, but we have a different video being written about gay pandering, so, let’s move on then I guess!

The second thing that we liked was the film's opening minutes. And to explain why this is, I need to give a bit of context, I think. So, in short, after the 2011 nuclear meltdown and earthquake that irreversibly forever changed Japan and the life of all the people living there (and also delayed Madoka Magica's finale), Shinkai apparently decided that he wanted to make a bunch of films about it. About three so far, to be exact. Which, y'know, is not a bad motivation for making films. It's certainly a better motivation than I had to write this video

So, as such, his last three films are a novel fusion of wacky comedy, coming of age romantic melodrama, and disaster film. Your Name and Weathering With You had really slow buildups to the disaster part of the disaster film, to the point that mentioning it is almost a spoiler, but I'm going to assume it isn't because everyone has now seen those films. So they have a whole first half where it's just kind of weird supernatural romantic comedy slice of life hijinks but then it abruptly tone shifts in the second half.

This is actually, I think, the source of both of these films' major issues. It's kinda cool to watch them the first time and then see the story's tone shift when the mid movie plot twist happens, introducing the big disaster scenario aspect of the story along with it, but the drawback to that approach is that you have, in essence, a movie whose plot twist is that it becomes a different movie. This both contributes to the odd tonal whiplash and also means that the supernatural disaster part of the film is weaker and not as well fleshed out as it could be.

Suzume, on the other hand, smartly introduces the main conflict of the story in the first act of the movie. This choice is good. The serious existential threat to Japan stuff that the film is about is the immediate focus of the film. This allows for a more balanced tone, as then the movie can comfortably use its comedic parts to add levity to its treatment of that harrowing topic, rather than the existential stuff comin' in like a sledgehammer to break a previously comfortable tone- which, I should say, IS a thing you can do, and IS a valid choice to tell a story, I just don’t think it was necessarily a choice that Shinkai handled well before. The pacing is much improved, as the supernatural aspects of the film are more evenly developed and the story has more time to explain itself. Mostly. There's like one scene I don't get. I’ll get to it?

Anyway, the end result of this choice is that Suzume feels like a much more focused and complete film, rather than two halves of different films. Aaaaaand, I appreciate this! A lot. I can see this choice maybe maybe maybe making the movie less interesting to some people, because it's paced more like a normal movie than Shinkai's other previous two romantic comedy disaster movies, but, hey, I think it's nice that Shinkai seems to be growing as an artist and a writer and a filmmaker, who made a normal movie that didn’t leave us confused, and disoriented, and confused, about what it’s about

Other things I like… I like the visuals. The animations and backgrounds and visual effects and the CG are all pretty fire. Suzume is generally a really beautiful film! We all knew this, but, really, it's really good. I like the chair thing. I like the way that the chair is animated. Apparently the animation of the chair was inspired by Luxo Jr., y’know, the Pixar short that became the origin of the Pixar lamp, and… yeah, I can see it. It definitely does have that old Pixar vibe of “inanimate object moving like a very real human inanimate object” that that has. I just like the way the legs move, and the way it emotes so convincingly with these subtle but credible motions.

There’s one scene involving a roller coaster that- that scene is incredible, that’s definitely one of the most visually novel sequences in all of Shinkai’s films that we’ve seen. I like the character design of the guy, Souta, also? When he’s not a chair, I mean. I dunno. The last two guy characters in the last Shinkai films looked like generic anime boys, but this guy looks like the kind of guy who I can believe a woman would find attractive. I like the look of his hair, I like how grizzled he is, I like his long gray coat, I like that you can look at this tired hunk of a man and immediately see that he’s been places and that he’s carrying some shit with him. Bonus points for that he looks like one of the Monogatari exorcists.

As for Suzume! Well, her design is maybe a bit generic, but… she’s a girl. It’s not like our standards are too high for girls. She’s supposed to be an ordinary girl, and, y’know, in this movie contrasting with this dude and then this chair, that works out well. And also, I appreciate that she rotates her outfits throughout the movie. My headmates and I love to see a woman change her clothes, not necessarily directly. I’m just saying, that denim jacket thing she had going on in Kobe, and when she lost her shoes in Tokyo and then borrowed Souta’s boots? Specifically borrowing the boots, because, the only pair of shoes that we own looks like this:

It’s a small thing, but like, Shinkai couldn’t make Suzume gay. Widespread trans representation in anime is a bit far off. I might well be eating off the floor conjuring table scraps pointing at a woman in a man’s shoes and saying “oi, isn’t it gender?” But like, 1, it’s a woman wearing a man’s shoes, and 2, yes, it is gender. And we like the gender. You cannot stop us! We did get to see the movie a second time with a friend, (thank you for seeing the movie with us, and reviewing our script!) and she insisted that the boots are femme coded, and, we disagree, unfortunately. I’m sorry, we cannot see these boots as anything but gender.

However! It is Shinkai’s fault that Onimai exists. That scene in Onimai is definitely influenced by that scene in Your Name. We know this because Nekotofu said so in interviews. Onimai is very good and based and funny, and this is a fact upon which I, and all of my headmates, equally quite agree. It’s nice to agree on something with all of yourself. SPEAKING, of the opening scene in Your Name:

Shinkai did not sexualize Suzume. So, if you hated that scene of Your Name, there’s none of that! There’s no chair peeping on Suzume or anything like that. So, if that knowledge helps you somehow, now you know.

Long story short. Should you watch Suzume. Well, yes obviously. By the time this video comes out, or, by the time you're seeing it, its theatrical run might be over, but like, if it’s not, then, yes, I recommend going and seeing it, like, today. And if it is, then remember to see it whenever it’s on blu-ray or streaming services or your local cat-themed anime distributor. Shinkai made a normal movie. I hope he makes an abnormally good movie next time. I believe in this man. Again. Somewhat. It’s not like it really matters what I say or think, but I do also hope that his next movie is just gay. I won’t matter, to me, or, to us, if his next movie is just a carbon copy of Suzume, but gay. I mean, he got away with making a heterosexual Your Name once after making the heterosexual Your Name. There is nothing stopping him. Except for the pigheaded businessmen who he may have to argue with.

Anyways, that’s that, I guess I’m going to talk more specifically about the plot now, so, if you didn’t see the movie, then, leave, now, if you care. If you did see the movie, or do not plan to see the movie, then, uh, don’t leave. Please. I’m going to put the Patreon credits here. It is not the end of the video. Please do not leave.

Intermission for extra thoughts and Patreon credits!

Hello everyone. This is Audrey, of the joystick system. The name of the brain that I’m the lead woman of. We’re still a plural system, as I’ve not forgotten, thanks to Luci and all my headmates.

As I already think I said, we saw Suzume a second time with a friend. As of this speaking, it continues to play in movie theaters, at least where we are, although it’s not showing nearly as often and probably not in as many places. Nonetheless, if it’s still playing in your area, I obviously very much recommend it. If you have the time and money to see it a second time after seeing it the first time, I think you should see it a second time. Because it’s good!

One thing I’d really like to change about this video, overall, is the tone of it. I think it came off way too much as “oh yeah, Suzume’s actually pretty good”, because I walked in with muted expectations, and then walked out feeling like it was pretty good but also kind of waiting for it to hit me that it’s actually bad… And, no, no, it’s an absolutely fantastic film and I imagine is probably going to line up with our top 5 movies of the year. Although, it’s not like we watch a lot of movies, so it probably won’t have too stiff of a competition. A different friend of ours saw it, and they absolutely loved it and had a lot of really good things to say that just made us like it more- so, yeah, no, Suzume is fantastic. Please watch Suzume. If you can.

I think I also should say, I disagree pretty strongly with the assertion that Suzume is “the same film” as Your Name and Weathering With You. As I’ve already said, the structure is much more cohesive in how it introduces the plot without the plot becoming the plot twist of the plot, and also there’s just a lot of improvements on writing and characterization and storytelling and the film is generally much more tonally consistent than either Your Name or Weathering With You. Sure, it’s a similar overall plot to both of those films, but I think there’s just as much merit in iterating on old ideas as there is in introducing new ones, and Suzume does a healthy amount of both. Maybe it’s a remake of the same movie, but if that’s so, Suzume is definitely the best version of that movie, and I think the growth Shinkai went through as a director and writer to get there is crystal clear.

And as I hope I’m about to make clear, the thematic weight of the film is much stronger as well. The decreased focus on the romance subplot helped a whole lot in that regard, I think, to bring the themes into greater focus, and like, gosh, is the film REALLY THEMATICALLY GOOD on top of being so well structured and written and visually spectacular. I walked into Suzume expecting it to be bad, I spent like two weeks while writing the script and making the video trying to think of flaws in this movie, and I can really only think of like two, which are one, that it’s not gay, and two, that some minor plot details are maybe a small bit inscrutable.

But neither of those things actively bring the film down! It’s just great! And, if we had the time to watch the film a third time and then do a complete rewrite of the script, I’d probably change the tone I took with it, but y’know what, I gotta say a thing, I’ve left people waiting long enough, this movie won’t be in theaters forever, so, it’s good enough, and good enough is perfectly good enough.

Also. The music was really good. It was a lot less intrusive than in Your Name and Weathering With You. Those two films really love going all ham on their mid-movie insert song sequences? In Suzume, the music is, the musical score, which is really really good and is used really extremely effectively in, specifically the chair chase scene, and the amusement park scene, and the opening of the film, and the big Tokyo scene, and really the whole film. It was just really very good.

And, other than that, I think I mentioned everything I wanted to mention in the script, so, uh yeah, that's that!

So, before we get back to the video, channel housekeeping. I don’t think we’re going to be able to keep doing videos, at least not regularly, as things are going. If you’re not already aware of the disaster life we lead, we’ve been aimlessly floating around quasi-homeless and unemployed, for about our entire adult life, and spent around three years crashing at a friend’s place, for longer than we should’ve been because of executive dysfunction, burnout, and general mental illness. And also money.

Most of the stuff we’ve been making our videos with, including our desktop PC, was stuff we got before we were quasi-disowned by our parents, almost, uh, six (note: four or five) years ago? and the rest of it is stuff we have, very not hyperbolically, emptied our bank account for because we kinda needed it. So, if that stuff breaks, and it’s going to eventually, we’ll be on even more hiatus until further notice. Obviously this is pretty untenable, so, we’re going to have to try to get a job, and I don’t see great odds of that working out for our transgender neurodivergent failwomanchild self, and it’s obviously going to mean we have less time to make videos and write things. Naturally the stress of our unstable situation has already been doing that job, but. Y’know.

So, if you want to help even our odds: Ko-fi or Patreon. That is currently our only steady source of income, and even a little bit extra would make a pretty big difference for us day-to-day. You can send us monthly donations through either, although, they take a smaller cut on Ko-fi, so, there’s that. Ko-fi is also the place for giving us money one time as opposed to regularly.

As for what you get out of this, well, besides the obvious your name here and access to our discord, you will earn our gratitude and also we will feel indebted to you, which will lead us to try our best to keep making things. And also if you ever encounter us in person, we’ll give you a hug, if you want one, as long as you’re not, like, creepy about it.

Is that everything? Um. Yeah. That is everything. Here's all the names of all the important people who...

Thanks to our generous Patreon backers:

Ada. Just Ada • Andrew P • Anime Omelette • ASabitsukiFlow • Brea • ColorfulCast • dameDiadora • deeso • Dorian Newlin • Duskpixie • Elvenoob • Emma • Femboy Bebop • Gwen Starlight • hikari no yume • Katherine Ullman • Kaylee Smerbeck • Korin • L Tantivy • Lilly • M • Mira Yeuden • Nichtschwert • Nik Gothic • Pigeon • R2Walker • RukaCollie • Sally • Saoirse Russell • Scimitar • SimplyAero • SleepySlug • Spiderrebelnews • Thijs • Trucy • Vile Lasagna

And, that’s that. Thanks to all of you, named onscreen and vocally, and also those of you not named but who’ve been watching, or encouraging us personally, for your support. Now, back to the normal part of the video. Spoilers for Suzume from here on, obviously.

Intermission over!!!

Okay, so, spoilers.

Plot of this movie! I’m just gonna steal bits of the Wikipedia summary, because I don’t want to write a plot summary myself and get waylaid.

Suzume Iwato is a 17-year-old high school girl who lives with her maternal aunt in Kyushu. One night, she dreams of searching for her mother (who, it's inferred later, died in a tsunami) as a child in a ruined neighborhood. The next morning, while headed for school, Suzume encounters a young man searching for abandoned areas with doors. He then is cursed to turn into a chair by a kitty cat who desires love and she runs away from home with him, and he explains that these doors in all these abandoned places are doors to an alternate dimension that occasionally let out supernatural beings called worms that do earthquakes, and they need to do the right rituals to close the door properly. So their journey across Japan to prevent the earthquakes and also get Souta back out of being a chair, thusly begins.

First of all, I think that Shinkai did an excellent job conveying the pain of losing one’s mother. I say this, because, uh, we have also lost our mother, and grieved her loss. She’s not dead, in case you’re wondering, she’s just a worthless piece of human garbage. So, I guess it’s a little perverse to compare our being estranged from our shitty nuclear family as a result of the events of our entire life up until we were twenty to Suzume losing her single mom in a natural disaster when she was four, but I can’t pretend that the former experience did not lend itself to us empathizing with her, in general. Like, we did definitely cry. That’s a thing that we did.

I also like how cleanly the movie conveys this information within a few minutes. Like, you get the opening sequence of the small Suzume searching for her mother in the Ever After, and then she wakes up a seventeen year old, and you hear her address the woman who is her guardian by that woman’s first name, and it immediately clicks, "ohhhh… orphan, got it, got it, got it," and yeah. In contrast to the previous two films where Shinkai took half the damn movie establishing what these characters’ lives and their relationships with their friends and relatives were like, this kind of storytelling efficiency (which, is present throughout the film, in establishing Souta's relationships as well) is impressive.

And like I said, I like the immediacy with which the plot begins, with Suzume meeting Souta, being asked about the ruins, and then going to check them out herself. I like that there's not a whole album of insert songs in this movie, no fancy opening cinematic, no big deal montage, just a smash cut to the opening title card while Souta and Suzume are trying to close the door in the old bathhouse. It's clean. It's real good.

So, then Suzume tries to patch Souta up when he gets injured, and then he gets cursed by this cat to become a chair, and then the movie gets further good! Suzume runs away from home to help Chair Souta capture this important cat that's supposed to be keeping the earthquakes from happening. And this greatly aggrieves her aunt Tamaki, who's just been trying her best her whole life and everything and I will say, um-

I'm going to get to that!

So, one thing I have to say specifically- I had not read any details about Suzume's plot or interviews from Shinkai before seeing it, and I kind of got the whole deal immediately with everywhere that an earthquake comes out of being an abandoned place of gathering. A closed bathhouse, school, amusement park. This all feels very harrowing to see onscreen- as an American! even though it's clearly intended as commentary on Japan's population decline, because, uh, have you heard of dead malls

If they ever do an American live action version of Suzume, it'll be about them visiting abandoned shopping malls, probably. please do not do that

But yeah, like, we live in Portland, Oregon, and compared to having grown up in pre-covid Philadelphia most of our life, post-covid Portland feels like a ghost town. Like, it's not actually, there's obviously still people who live here, and I don't mean that derogatorily because we love Portland and we'd like to keep living here, if possible, not the least because we get easy access to HRT. But like, there's a lot of closed and abandoned places in Portland, so many empty areas and business that have been boarded up and closed to the point that at times, wandering through downtown Portland almost feels like living in an open world video game where most of the buildings don't have designed interiors.

Places that all clearly closed within the last three or four years, with their signage up and everything. Places that are left in stasis to lie disused or else be reclaimed by the homeless until the homeless get chased out by the cops. It's all just really… eughf. It makes us sad to see this place, this whole country really, be stuck in this kind of disgusting degradation while our government fails to provide for us, let alone adapt to the challenges ahead of us, just leaves all these places where people lived, where people are living, now, to stagnate and stand like zombies of a past we can't go back to

There’s a scene in Heathers, one of our favorite movies of all time, where the main antagonist J.D. has a whole emotional reflection on how the stability of this franchised commercial convenience store enterprise has kept him feeling like there’s continuity in his life, and like, yeah, that’s kind of a feeling.

[Video ID: J.D. (played by Christian Slater), a black haired edgy looking teenage boy of about 16-17 wearing a long black jacket, paces about the convenience store "Snappy Snack Shack", speaking in an affected hard to place accent, to Veronica Sawyer (played by Winona Ryder), a brown-haired teenage girl of around the same age, who is wearing a grey dress that exposes her shoulders accompanied by a blue flower brooch on her chest, and black overalls)]

Veronica: I see you know your convenience speak pretty well.

J.D.: Yeah, well, uh, I've been moved around all my life. Dallas. Baton Rouge, Vegas... Sherwood, Ohio. There's always been a Snappy Snack Shack. Any town, any time, pop a ham and cheese in the microwave and feast on a Turbo Dog. Keeps me sane.

Veronica: Really?

Like, it’s eugh, because, obviously as an anticapitalist, we kinda dislike these sorts of places, the shopping centers, the strip malls, the gas stations, we're against all of this bullshit on principle these places are all kind of intensely hostile to… life, in general.

But also, these places are a part of the world we live in, and they are stable! Relatively. They are kind of the only way we've known the world to be. And it’s sad to see that stability be ever so more greatly upset by the pandemic and the… everything, with nothing on the horizon to replace it. And if and when we see this kind of stability disappear completely, it’ll be sad, even if it’s replaced by something better. We’ll probably miss something about wandering these gross, heavily commercialized disgustingly homogenized nightmare places that’ve been cannibalizing our communities this whole time. Yeah, we hate it, but... it’s where we live, and we’re not immune to nostalgia.

Nostalgia is just a nicer word for grief

And this same very such eughf feeling is very much echoed in Suzume. There’s this deep and palpable grief for these places and the people who used to live here felt in this film, and inherent in expressing that grief is Shinkai’s expression of the, y’know, important stage of grief, i.e., acceptance. Because, to close the doors, Suzume and Souta have to not just, close it, but also think of all the feelings and experiences of the people who used to live in these places, and then… let go.

When the amusement park scene happens, the ferris wheel starts moving, and Suzume is drawn in by the image of the ghosts of the people who once rode it, Souta starts yelling for her to stop, to not go in- not the least because she can’t see what she’s doing and is putting herself in danger, but also because she cannot go back. Those people who used to sit in that ferris wheel, laughing, crying, living, in this place, cannot come back. Suzume can’t go back. This past can’t be gone back to.

Okay, so, one thing I missed when I saw the film the second time. When Suzume was drawn into the Ever After through the ferris wheel door, she was seeing herself of the future in there, and that, was foreshadowing the end of the film. I’m keeping this part anyway because the emotional impact of that scene was still as described even if this plot foreshadowing bit was something I missed the first time seeing the film.

I read a few English language interview articles with Shinkai talking about Suzume right after seeing the film, both because I wanted clarification before I ran my mouth on two things. 1, I wanted clarification on what the cat wanted. I’ll get to him. 2, I wanted to be sure my interpretation of the doors thing was on point, which it was. Shinkai talks in one of these interviews about how when covid was happening and Japan was still trying to have the Olympics happen, it felt really irresponsible and bad, and he did not agree with this. He says, and I quote,

“You were opening this new door and not sure of what’s on the other side without bringing closure or understanding or coming to terms with what’s behind you. I want to say a lot of the Japanese population felt the same way. There was this kind of awkward air about us, and it really wasn’t time to open new doors without first reflecting on what came before us.”

And like, yeah, I agree. I just really, really agree with this. It is indeed what I took away from the film before I read this interview. Suzume spends this entire movie reflecting on the past and trying to grow beyond that and ultimately the one door that she opens, on purpose, is the one that she decides to open intentionally after reflecting on what brought her to this point and deciding what she needs to do and

Eugghhhh

I’m just saying, it worked. It really did work. For us, at least.

Now, to be clear: Japan and the United States are two different countries, and, while there are similarities in how the pandemic left our societies, they're ultimately two different societies, and I don't really know jack shit about Japanese society- I'm just relating, my feelings, of my experience, uh, our experience, as an American, to the feelings that we took away from Suzume.

And... even if I understand this all right. If the people who need to see this sort of message saw it, or, like, took that away, or acted on it when it did... that’d be nice, but ultimately I don’t think that Suzume will move any politician or other person in power making these decisions in Japan, or any country, enough, or in the right ways, to have any impact on policy. But y’know, Shinkai’s just a guy making movies, and I’m just one of the various split personalities of a deranged F-list anime YouTuber, so whatever. Such is life. It’s at least a nice sentiment.

So, the other things, in no particular order. I did cry a bit when Daijin, the cat, got sucked up back into the keystone. He’s hard to like at the start of the film, for, y’know, the reasons why he is, but ultimately when you consider that like… he’s been trapped that way, the same way as Souta spends trapped as a chair, for years? Centuries, for all we goddamn know? Once that clicks, it’s really hard to not empathize with him. And yeah, he might be a god now, I guess, but who knows if he was a person before, or, what even, and just, I think, I think if you spend god knows how long as a sacred relic keeping Japan from being destroyed by earthquakes, you at least, at least, maybe, maybe deserve, if nothing else, a little pet.

[pets microphone]

that was your little pet.

In one of the other interviews Shinkai did, he talked about how Souta becoming a chair, and also a Keystone sealing away the earthquakes, is intended as a metaphor for the experience of pandemic lockdown. It’s not a directly equivalent analogy, but, like, it does make sense! Souta is being forced into a position of being confined, to keep this dangerous and virtually uncontrollable force of nature under control, for the greater good and long-term preservation of society. And when you consider that Daijin was in the same position for gosh knows how the hell long, it makes it a lot easier to empathize with him! He wasn’t being malicious, exactly, not, willfully anyway, he knew that vacating his position was putting everyone else at risk, but, he did it anyway cause he just kinda snapped, like, fuck this, I want to go outside! That does make a lot of sense! Also it sticks out, also, when Suzume screams at Daijin, because that’s, y’know. It’s a whole scene. I feel like I want to say something about this! But I can't really land on anything to say about it? But yeah.

I think the whole thing with Suzume needing to sacrifice Souta midway through the movie is really well done. It’s extremely funny to me that Shinkai apparently thought to stress this point of the movie as how important it is for her to make this difficult choice because of how people criticized Weathering With You for not really being meaningfully critical of the consequence of Hodaka un-sacrificing Hina? And also that Hina never really gets a choice in being un-sacrificed, far as I remember, so... [whispers] that’s a little unintentionally sexist,

but whatever. I’d have to watch the film again, and I don’t feel like doing that right now

Suzume’s aunt, Tamaki. I do like her. She’s a pretty level-headed guardian, as guardians go. I like that when she finds Suzume and Serizawa in the car, and sees that going to this door is important to Suzume, she’s not immediately like, “fuck your feelings, we’re going home”? She’s curious about the child under her care. She’s concerned in a way that she’s willing to not only go all the way to Tokyo, but also to follow Suzume the rest of the way to see what's up because she clearly understands, logically, that even if she doesn’t know what it is that’s compelled Suzume to go this distance, it must be something that she needs to sort the fuck out in order to move on with her life, and that’s kinda good?

Although I should note that while she clearly sees the pragmatic value in not fighting Suzume on this, she’s also pretty reluctant to. She has a line where she’s like to Serizawa while Suzume is asleep, let’s turn the fuck around and go back, she’ll give up. So, y’know, Tamaki’s at least more open-minded than our mom was!

Speaking of that. There’s this one scene in the film, where Tamaki loses her shit at Suzume. Goes on screaming on about how she hates Suzume and wants her life back, and then she runs off to Serizawa being all like “I think I’m losing it,” and it’s a whole thing. On our first viewing, this scene felt a little out of nowhere. It was a whole sudden shock to have this intense scene happen and then also its pivot back into the magical realism aspects of the film with the black cat’s appearance, which confused us a bit cause I don’t think that was really explained at all.

But, watching the film a second time, and seeing the arc of Tamaki’s frustration reaching its peak with the benefit of hindsight, it made more sense that she’d come to a rope’s end and flip out like this. She’s been chasing her niece all across Japan, she’s ridden for several hours in a busted convertible in the rain, she doesn’t even have a proper explanation, her coworker has raised to her that this might be a kidnapping scheme- I get it. It’s a scene that I get.

I still do not understand the role of the large black cat though. Our friend agreed that that part didn’t make a whole lot of sense. So, that didn’t change.

I think the reason why it felt out of nowhere to us the first time is because it was entirely too familiar to our real life experience. In the middle of Tamaki’s rant, Suzume responds by saying, “but you said, ‘you’re my daughter,’” referring to when Tamaki first took her in, and said that. And Tamaki snaps back, “I never said that.” Our mother also did this exact thing, vehemently denying that she said and did things that we definitely remembered her saying and doing. (There's a word for this, it's... it's called gaslighting!) Living with someone who denies you this much, who makes you question your memory and your sanity and your general perception of the world this much, by forcing their own grief onto you like this, is just… really, simply, awful.

Throughout our childhood, we heard our mom say similar shit to us numerous times. That we were a horrible incorrigible child, that she hated us for ruining her family, that she wished she’d aborted us— all those sorts of things. The tone of Tamaki’s unadulterated rage in this dialogue was all too familiar to those memories. So, yeah, on both viewings, we were, very uncomfortable. Even knowing it was coming the second time around, it kinda caused us to actively recoil in our seat, to the point that our friend who we were seeing it with noticed our reaction and held out a stuffed animal she’d brought with her for us to pet.

So, um, yeah, that specific scene may or may not have triggered the PTSD that we may or may not have.

Tamaki does apologize for this later!

And she also, debatably, gets a bit of a pass for this since she’s not Suzume’s mother, and thus cannot reasonably wish that she had aborted Suzume, but can instead wish that she’d not done the unambiguously good deed of keeping Suzume out of the Japanese child welfare system, which, I can’t imagine is a good experience for a child. I don’t imagine any country’s child welfare system under capitalism to be a good experience for a child, but, y’know. Well, we’re also kind of entirely opposed to the traditional family structure and the basic premise of parents in general, because giving only one or two people total power over a vulnerable young human life is not an ethical tradition to have in any case, but… eugh. That’s something for some other video.

In an interview with Deadline, Shinkai talks about this scene, specifically quoting the “give me back my life” part, and he says that on some level, all parents feel that way to their kids. And that while he acknowledges that it isn’t by any means acceptable to ever say that kind of stuff to a child, it is, y’know, a feeling that is there that he poured into it, and that he wanted to be there, for the parents in the audience who ever felt that way and regretted it. This is how we found out that Makoto Shinkai is apparently not single and does in fact have a child.

He also says, in this other interview with the Verge, that, he wanted the film to provide for an opportunity for people of different generations to emotionally connect with each other. So, in that context, I really understand why this scene is here. It’s serving the purpose of setting up that emotional bridge, that door between Suzume and Tamaki, these characters of two different generations who ultimately come to understand one another, with the hope that audiences in a similar emotional position might come away from the film having felt some sense of healing by way of, y’know, getting that. And also Shinkai talks about how the idealized nuclear family structure is not a thing that’s tenable or possible for a lot of families in Japanese society, and, it’s not very tenable for a lot of people in American society either!

So I recognize the intent of this scene. I think it’s commendable, even. If there is a parent and child out there who saw Suzume together on whom this had the intended impact, I think that that’s wonderful. I sincerely hope that they exist!

Even still… we, were a child, who regularly had this sort of thing said to our face by our real life mother, and tried, in good faith, many times over the years, to repair our increasingly fraught relationship with her, and failed. I am deeply, regrettably cynical about familial relationships because of our traumatic experience with our own family. Our mother is not the sort of person who would come to meaningfully empathize with us through seeing this film.

And we really fucking hate her, so… yeah, this scene is difficult to watch. It’s difficult for us personally to feel any sympathy for Tamaki when she’s saying that kind of stuff to Suzume, and once it was over I could only really kind of feel glad that it was over.

But! It’s not like it’s the film’s fault that our parents were bad. I don’t think our reaction was intended. It just happened! It just happens sometimes that different people other than who the thing was written for react to things differently. That doesn’t make the scene bad, or any less valuable to include. And I do think that Tamaki’s relationship with Suzume is portrayed pretty well and with a surprising degree of nuance! It’s good! Tamaki is a good character and she means well! And I do like what Shinkai said in that Verge interview about wanting to portray other family structures.

However I think that their relationship would work better if she was gay, because honestly, that entire “get out of my life” speech would hit a lot more and probably work a lot better in the context of being directed at a gay teenager rather than an assumed heterosexual one. But, hey, we thought we were heterosexual for most of our life, so, who’s to say much of anything!

Was there anything else I forgot to talk about? Um…

We cried at the end of the film, both times we saw it!

And also, while this film couldn’t have improved our relationship with our mother, it did serve as a very good bonding experience with our friend. I’m really glad we took her to see it. She really liked the scenes where Suzume sits and steps on Souta as a chair, that that was clever, that they took the opportunity to get away with that with him as a chair. And she also agreed that the chair in general was really well portrayed visually. She also cried! at the end. the heterosexual chair film made a lesbian cry. uh, two lesbians, cry. I’m not going to say anything more than that.

Thank you to everyone who watched this entire video. I have an excuse to do a bad job editing it now because there’s not that much footage of Suzume available and it’s all gonna get me copyright striked anyway

To summarize, Suzume Good. Suzume. Watch Suzume. I’ve been Audrey of the joystick system, and I did not hate Suzume. Thank you. Goodnight

#suzume #suzume no tojimari #suzume spoilers #video essay #youtube #joyce-stick #joystick system #your name #weathering with you

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sundove88 · 1 year ago

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Wonder Fruit Free For All- a Disney and Pixar x Maestro Hiccups One Shot

When the Wonder Fruit Tree has been sighted in the many Disney Worlds and eventually appears at the legendary studio, the Disney and Pixar characters enter an all bets are off zone to grab the fruit and be the ones to cure Balan’s hiccups first. Spoiler alert- it doesn’t end well.

“Ugh. Do you think we are there yet?!” Donald Duck asked, who had been turned into a sock puppet thanks to Balan’s reality warping hiccups. His friends weren’t faring any better, either. Mickey had become a crappy cartoon version of himself named Mokey, Goofy had become a paper bag puppet, and Daisy and Minnie suffered the same fates as their male counterparts. “We’ve gotta find that fruit, and FAST!” Goofy exclaimed. “Don’t worry. I sent word to everyone so they can meet us at the Studio. Hopefully nothing bad happened to them!” Mickey replied… only to be met with familiar faces who had changed by a LOT.

“Oh no…!” Wayfinder Princess Moana, who was now dressed as a lifeguard, said as she analyzed the area. EVERYONE had been affected by the hiccups in one way or another! Some had become toys, others had become real life animals, and a good chunk of them looked like they had walked into a costume shop and never looked back. “I don’t understand, Genie! Everyone’s looking bizarre in some way or another!” Aladdin replied as he looked around, dressed in a pastry chef outfit. “It’s all because of that fruit tree that everyone’s going crazy about. One minute it’s there, and the next moment it disappears! No one gets the chance to grab the fruit!” The blue comedian explained.

“Why is everyone staring at each other?!” Cruella De Vil asked as everyone stared in each other, whilst wearing an animal shelter outfit. Speechless was an understatement. No one had expected to wear such outfits or become such forms- and needless enough, they’d blame it on someone who’d definitely pull it off. “Shut it, Cruella. What matters is that WE get that fruit for ourselves. That way we can clean up this entire mess!” Donald stated. “Oh, you bet; crazy fur lady. The last time any of us tried to grab the tree, it disappeared out of sight!” Mei Lee replied, now wearing a rollerblading outfit. “Tch. It’s as if the most elusive tree in all of existence is gonna pop up out of nowhere.” Hades replied, adjusting his surfboard.

Suddenly, just as Hades said those words, the Wonder Fruit Tree appeared out of the blue- donning a a platinum trunk, branches, blossoms and leaves, and fruits representing every Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and other movies and series the company had ever produced. “That can’t be the same tree! The last time I saw it in Halloween Town, there were Jack o lantern fruits!” Jack Skellington, replied, dusting off the blue sweater that the hiccups had given him. “Well, it’s the same fruit and the same tree- there’s no time for blabbering! GRAB IT!!” Donald screeched, doing a battle cry as he rushed towards the tree without hesitation. Everyone else followed at the same time, shouting their battle cries as they ran to get the most elusive fruit in all of the worlds.

Dumbo (Who was a mastodon) flew above the mob and used his trunk to try and grab the fruit, Sebastian (Who had become an IRL crab) tried pinching away at the stem of one of the fruits, and even Mater; who had become a die cast- used his tow hook to grapple one of the fruits and tried to pull it down. “I will have that fruit no matter what!” Davy Jones replied as he attempted to grab one of the fruits with his claw. “Back off, people! That fruit is OURS!!” The Sanderson Sisters replied as they barged through the crowd to grab the fruit themselves. “No, it’s OURS!!” Iago replied as he tried to pull the fruit off the tree with his beak.

The struggle continued for quite some time, until Jim Hawkins of all characters (Who, thanks to the hiccups, looked like someone from the 80’s) managed to pluck the fruit from the tree. “Guys!! I got the cure! Now all I have to do is throw it to ya, right?” He asked as he displayed the elusive fruit. Everyone immediately stopped fighting each other for the fruit and immediately begun clamoring to grab the fruit from Jim’s hand. Jim immediately knew that if threw it, he knew that at at least SOMEONE would catch it. Hopping off the tree before it disappeared, he tossed the fruit towards the crowd… and it landed in the open mouth of Buck Cluck.

Everyone gasped in absolute horror. “Buck Cluck! Whatever you do, don’t—!” Mirabel Madrigal began. But her words were cut off by Buck Cluck SWALLOWING the Wonder Fruit whole. “Swallow.” She finished. “Uhhhh… what?” Buck Cluck replied, only to face a sea of horrified expressions. “That fruit you just ate was the cure to those hiccups. You’ve doomed EVERYONE!” Maui replied, dressed as a baseball hero. “BUCK CLUCK, NO!! YOU’VE KILLED US ALL!!” Donald replied as he fell to his knees; even though he didn’t have any. “Oh no, what have I done?!” Buck Cluck replied. At that moment, the hiccup wave hit the studio, turning it into the world’s biggest rubber bounce house. “This… is gonna be a long day… I don’t wanna talk about.” Donald replied, fainting.

And it would be.

The End?

#crack fic #fanfic #one shot #funny #Balan Wonderworld #Disney #Pixar #maestro hiccups #this was hysterical!!#I got inspired by once upon a studio for this one!!#needless to say it gets chaotic!

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josiebelladonna · 2 days ago

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i am going to begin the process of cross posting the stories/fics i care most about (i.e., the fics i’ve downloaded since the election) over to squidgeworld and i frankly don’t give two fucks if it’s called squidgeworld—besides, something like that, that has a ridiculous name, is bound to be good 😂 i think i’ll be doing that all the way to new year’s, especially now that i’m on radio silence with instagram—and let me tell you, it’s actually been kind of nice not getting notifications all the time. i can wake up in the morning and not get an uneasy stomach thinking that the next post will be about alex with whatsername.

i just can’t help but think ahead with this terms of service update on ao3. they don’t harvest your data, sure (mainly because they don’t have an algorithm… in case you needed any more proof of that), and they will protect you, and in fact, that’s their whole raison d’être, but… there’s something about the way it’s presented, though, telling you that they’ll hand you over to the authorities if you’re doing something illegal and we know that trump’s government is going to be… what it is, it’s easy to put two and two together and assume these things. it’s admittedly got me spooked.

squidgeworld, from what i can gather, is made out from the same software ao3 runs on (it’s open source software, so you can do that), created by a guy and his team, squidge. in other words, it’s like all of these new social media platforms that keep cropping up (bluesky, mastodon, threads) except it’s a fanfic + original writing site, it’s an archive (read: no godforsaken algorithm), and it’s a fraction of the size of ao3, which is huge now compared to what it was when i first joined 5 years ago. i like it. it’s quiet. it’s not as cluttered. it kind of feels like moving to a cabin in the woods overlooking the ocean and away from the insanity of the world (i live in the mountains; i’m going to the beach). it also takes the pressure off ao3 which, depending on the fandom, is completely overrun with the tiktok crowd.

i saw a post earlier while i was prepping my queue for this week, saying something like “i’ll tear a book limb from limb but i would nEvEr do that to fanfic,” and… you know what. i’m just gonna say it. fuck off with this. you heard me.

this attitude is why there is so much shovelware shit on ao3 now. this attitude is why you have the exact same fanfics over and over and over and over and OVER!!! again in for example, the metallica, fall out boy, mcr, and 21 pilots tags. this attitude is why there is a surplus of “fics” on there tagged like tumblr posts or tiktok posts and they range from fucking awful to literally nothing. what was once a sentiment that made perfect sense because it is painful to see as an amateur, you are now letting the low-hanging fruit have a run of the place with this. honestly, i feel like people just say this anymore to hear themselves talk.

in fact, i almost didn’t want to write this up because squidgeworld is a smol babe and i want it to stay that way. in fact, i’m going to enjoy the smallness while it lasts.

i’m using my real name, hannah_christine, over there, and i’ve already posted quarter after twelve and my shorts/poetry collection black lake. the other benefit of this is finishing some wips i’ve put on the back burner and just let simmer (xenon dreams, the dead of night, eerie inhabitants, etc.). everything will stay downloaded/archived, and my ao3 will still be here. but decentralization is the way forward and i’m an artist: i need to dodge bullets somehow.

#text #fanfic #ao3 #squidgeworld

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drlinguo · 1 year ago

Note

Hey since I saw you reposted TwitteX posts, what is your TwitteX account? Do you linguistically post a lot on TwitteX? Any other account instead of mastodon and Tumblr you owned?

Thanks and cheers 🥂

I had a linguistic and a private Twitter account, but I deleted my posts and accounts shortly after Musk took over. I must admit that I never enjoyed Twitter. It was a very toxic atmosphere and it got worse after Musk. It is full of people who think they need to say something important (what is not, and actually normally way too simplistic and wrong) (PS: There are also good and interesting accounts, but it feels like the dumb ones are the majority)

So, I decided to leave (that’s the biggest power of the users: if you don’t like it, don’t support it 💁) and decided to join mastodon, which I enjoy a lot.

My next step is to leave Facebook, which I also don’t like (neither use …), I don’t like instagram (because of the concept and because of the Facebook-family).

BTW: There was a funny post about which people use which type of social media. I don’t remember where I saw it. (If somebody has it, please share :)

I must confess I like the Tumblr concept: it’s more about the posts than about the person behind the post. It’s not about oneself, it’s about content. (I wish academia would be also more like that :)

#answered asks #twitter #mastodon #academia

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meander1995 · 1 year ago

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A moment of reflection

It has been a long time since I paid any mind to this account. I am here to make a gigantic life announcement.

On July 11th, 2023, my life changed forever when I asked my sister if I could put on her black dress (in the photos below). In that exact moment, I felt a cold rush of euphoric bliss as the dress fit me--something unlike anything I felt before. On a whim, I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror with my phone and took the first photo below--I saw her. I knew from the cold chills right then and there that my egg had cracked and that I am a trans woman.

From there, my ADHD hyperfixations had spent most of the time since in an intense focus on getting to the bottom of things. And once it was certain (self-doubt be damned), focused on getting my ducks in a row to transition socially and physically. I came out to my family less than a week after I realized myself--I simply went to sleep in a dress and didn't give a fuck who saw me. I figured that if I was half-asleep, I would have time to make myself spill the beans before processing enough to put myself in a panic. Not that I had cause to panic much since I am grateful that my family is either supportive (my mom; one of my younger brothers) or part of the LGBT+ community (my other younger brother and my two younger sisters) themselves. As such, all of them supported me the instant I came out and picked my name of "Adrienne." Hell, my sisters even got me dresses and taught me how to do makeup for my 28th birthday on July the 19th--and later took me thrift-shopping for even more dresses (my favorite photos of which are included)

Even though I never felt any signs of being trans before 7/11/2023, in hindsight, there may have been quite a few signs in my memories. Such as when I was in kindergarden, I recall saying to someone that "if I was a girl, I'd look forward to being pregnant," something which I said ignorant of how hard pregnancy is on a human body--but perhaps is something that should've been a sign. Or all the times I felt as though I related to women more than men in a social sense--loathing toxic masculinity was normal for me, but even the non-toxic parts of it felt like I was just coasting. Or the times in Uni where my social anxiety (likely a product of my autism) plus my brain fog (which I now know was likely the product of then-undetected gender dysphoria) led me to believe that I was so bad at befriending women that I was a serial harasser--something I blamed myself in a now-misdirected sense of self-loathing that I thought only plunging into my academics (at the expense of a social life) would cure. Or my general sense of depression over much of my post-Uni life that I had no idea of the cause--until my egg cracked and I saw the problem right in the eyes.

Not going to lie, seeing posts on Reddit, Discord, and Mastodon from other transfemmes (especially those with Autism and ADHD--like myself) with similar life experiences to me and befriending them ended up assuring me that I was never broken. Just misdirected the entire time. And little things like dresses, makeup, shaving my legs, stuffing a sports-bra to give myself the convincing illusion of breasts, and feeling as though I am swimming in my pool for the first time in my own body since pre-puberty. Every day since my egg cracked, my resolve that I am a trans woman has only grown more-and-more.

In the afternoon on my 28th birthday (7/19/2023), I took my phone with me to walk to the woods outside the front yard of the lake house I was spending the week with my family on vacation. I was determined to make the call to my local Planned Parenthood to schedule an HRT consultation under informed consent. While I was successful, I was taken a bit aback by the fact that the waitlist for it is so backed up that the soonest I could be scheduled was October 2nd. After I successfully scheduled myself, my immediate thought was "I don't want to have to wait that long." And so later that week (upon returning to my hometown), I was directed by someone on Mastodon to a DIY HRT directory of international pharmacies that I can order HRT from. I chose to order 2mg Estradiol and 100mg Spiro from Thailand and--last I checked--the shipment is on the plane now and will arrive anywhere between 8/15/2023 and 9/5/2023. It is a 3 month supply of HRT--long enough to last until the consultation gives me officially regulated hormones yet short enough that I won't suffer health problems from being unable to check my bloodwork.

Even though I am resolute that transitioning is the only correct choice for me, I will not lie that I have some anxieties about this still. Not with the transition itself, but some things that accompany this. Since I couldn't immediately afford to bank sperm, a major source of anxiety is and was having to make the choice between fulfilling myself or having bio kids. As is, my options for children are hoping I get supremely lucky with some still-active swimmers, hope I can go off hormones and bank sperm at a time where I have a stable income (I'm also using a job coach system to place me into a job now--and the system knows of and is supportive of my transition), adopt children, or end up step-parenting a child of a future date. I don't see adopting or step-parenting a child as meaning that that child is less 'mine' than a biological kid, but I do think having a bio kid would be nice when the time is right to raise them (probably a decade down the road). I hope that future generations of trans people do not have to make this choice. And that isn't even considering that the idea of bottom surgery has crossed my mind a few times--I don't dislike my natal genitals, but think it'd be cooler and more gender-affirming with a vagina (that's just me personally---you are valid if you don't agree with me); it's a thought I'll put a pin in for now and see how I feel down the road.

The other annoyance is my mom. Yes, she is supportive of my choice to go on hormones (I haven't told her the DIY HRT route as she is a stickler for offical pharmacutical medications and I don't want to worry her unless the signs of feminization become too noticeable to hide). However, she is just as surprised about this as I am. She thinks I am going too fast--aka, she hasn't been aware that transition can come from euphoria instead of dysphoric suffering. I'm glad I didn't have to suffer in order to realize my identity and hope it becomes more accepted that that is a valid path to realizing yourself. But mom is slow to adapting her terms. She thinks "Andi" (just one letter off from my deadname) is a sufficient nickname for "Adrienne" instead of "Adri" or even "Addie." And she's also referred to me as "he" or "son" when I am neither. I've gently starting nudging her as of today, but something tells me it will take a little bit to get her to adjust.

Overall, I am excited to begin my body transitioning into a female form. I've made peace that I probably was a woman the whole time. My brain fog may have been caused by years under the wrong hormones (testosterone instead of estrogen). I want my body to run on the correct fuel. Give me no brain fog, give me soft skin, give me reduced body hair, give me greater emotional range, give me girlsmell, give me boobs. And at this point, I love being trans. Because in a way, all the questioning that got me here made me more sure of who I am---almost as though the end-result is an hard-earned victory that I am eager to claim the spoils to.

As for fighting the political battle against transphobia, I'm all for it as a liberal and as a human being who is appalled with what is going on. However, I am focusing all my energy on transitioning at the moment. When I have energy to spare, I will fight the good fight. But I have to live life a little bit as me first.

EDIT: One thing I forgot to mention in the large body is that paying for the DIY HRT put me back on my insurance payments and that I will need mutual aid in order to pay my insurance so that I can afford the officially prescribed HRT after the Planned Parenthood consultation. Below are links to my PayPal and Venmo accounts. If anyone would like to donate, it would be VERY much appreciated. But only donate if you can do so without putting yourselves in financial jeopardy.

Venmo: https://www.venmo.com/u/adrienne-harper-115

PayPal: https://paypal.me/AdrienneHarper7

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ranger-ribbons · 1 year ago

Note

Not sure how to go about the headcanon things, but here's some for the comic timelines we both see and only got little hints at during Shattered Grid and Graphic One-Shots:

Eric Myers is not as big of an asshole as he was in the live action Time Force, or he never would have GIVEN Jen a hug.

Cam missed every single member of his team and his dad while stuck in Beyond the Grid, but was mostly worried that Drakkon got his slimy hands on his cousins when he saw a lot of the villains throughout the dimensions and timelines out on the battlefield.

Mia ACTUALLY learned to cook in the second month on Promethea when she lost her powers, because Tyler Navarro, Dana Mitchell, and T.J. Johnson were all there and all of them would have recognized something was not right when she didn't cook chicken and thought a Carolina Reaper made a great condiment.

Fun idea about the World of the Coinless: the Comic Relief or Secondary Characters are all badass and pretty much evolved like Pokemon when Drakkon took over. Fran got shipped to Pai Zhua with Casey when Skull finagled them out of the dungeons they were in for stealing bread and was given Orange, which made her perfect for dual combat in the field with RJ; Victor and Monty got found by Bulk trying to protect grade school children some sentries were bullying after curfew and turned out perfect to help out Trini and the first assault fighters in the field; Ben and Betty got split up during a bombing that killed their dad--with Ben getting picked up by the Coinless and taken under the wing of Rocky and Aisha, whereas Betty got caught by the sentries to be turned over to the Mastodon Division BUT got a final hour diversion into palace housekeeping because Adam is a big softie even if he can't stand up for himself. And so on~

Spike Skullovitch DOES NOT have a mother. Make of that whatever you want.

Animals still exist in the RPM universe, but are kept underground in a specialized, secondary location not terribly unlike the Son Doong Cave.

Cassidy and Devin are actually exceptionally competent when paired up with the Rangers in their high school to do literally anything; largely because the Morphin Grid sets up certain people to assist their Rangers from one team to another and these two were perfect. Though...for some reason they work 90% better with Trent than any of the Primary Rangers?

Orange is the rarest Grid Color and most of those who end up wearing it are female or have a lot of femme qualities and/or some form of mental illness.

When the Psycho Rangers were left to their own devices in the aftermath of the Psycho Path, Yellow never took up a different name and none of them ever went looking for the person that they used to be.

J.J. Oliver is a trans man and Anara is a trans woman and they're both pansexual. They go to Pride together every year and there is a MASSIVE betting pool on when they finally figure out they're basically dating.

Clare might be a massive klutz and Leelee might still be getting used to the whole being human thing, but both of them are the most responsible people in their circle of friends and family.

Sharing your headcanons is just sending me headcanons to enjoy/share with me, with I'm 100% down for. Asking me about mine is just asking me about headcanons surrounding specific teams or people. As a precaution, I haven't seen the comics at all.

I fucking love all of these!

Thank you!

@augment-techs

#power rangers #thoughts and headcanons #ask #mutuals #augment techs #thanks techs!#headcanons

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talenlee · 2 years ago

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Towards a Cozier Internet

The number one priority of Google is keeping your attention on Google. This is not a controversial position, it’s not a conspiracy theory. The priority of the systems that relate to that create an intention towards things like a search engine, or gmail or whatever, are all just functions in the name of keeping your attention on Google. They want you looking at them so they can make sure your attention is where they can monetise it, through advertisers.

This command of attention is prime: even just being a trustworthy source of search information is secondary to the command of attention in the name of making money. I’ve talked about the form advertising takes, in that its job is not to sell you products, but to sell advertising to the people who buy advertising, and anything you do is incidental to that goal. This drive towards the retention of attention and serving the needs of advertisers is so all-consuming that Google literally does not care if people paying for their services use them for exploitative harm, like how in 2022, an advertiser made a malware fake version of widespread software package OBS. Google would happily put this above searches for OBS proper, because they paid for it.

Simply put: Google’s not great.

Neither is Twitter, a service I’ve been using pretty much constantly for nine years. In June, I’ll get a notification about my ten years on the site, even though based on the way the API is behaving, the last post I made to it was February 22, and that was something a blog software was handling. It was, for the latter part of its presence in my life, doing a very bad job of what I wanted it to do. What I wanted Twitter to do was give me an audience who I could direct to things I thought were cool; instead, it mostly became about screaming, and demanding why you weren’t also screaming.

I’ve stopped using them, sort of. I still use gmail addresses, because I’ve been using them for over a decade now, but I don’t use gmail��s web interface (and never really have). I’ve stopped opening twitter, and I don’t post on twitter. I eased out of twitter by checking it, occasionally, you know, seeing what my friends were tweeting about, see if I needed to check in on them. Then a bit more, a bit further along and what I saw people tweeting about was mostly about how bad twitter was, or how much This Guy Over Here Sucks.

It made it easier to stop paying attention.

The result of this is that the internet I’ve been using, mostly, is now the internet of things that replace those typical functions. Mastodon is part of it, and so is Cohost, smaller, more indie services. Particularly, one of the things that I have to deal with is a non-google search engine. This time, I’m using DuckDuckGo — which is really quite good!

, but,

And that’s the thing. Not going to pretend I’m not giving up a powerful search engine like this. If I want to, for example, reverse image search an artist? The Duckduckgo RIS isn’t as strong as the google one. It’s a bit clueless. It’s a bit confused about some things, and I think it doesn’t do a good job of telling famous people from random nobodies. If you search for names, it tends to look for a bunch of related names, as well, because – well, almost any given site with names on it has lots of names on it. It can be a bit weak in that regard.

And that means that my searches are a little slower. I don’t just get a first page of ‘probably what I want.’ I get a first page, where there’s a lot of ambiguity, but that ambiguity tends to feel reasonable. So let’s say for example I search up a short acronym, like, let’s say, BUD. Google has a history for me that figures I probably mean a Block Update Detector, and I’m looking into the history of Etho’s Lab, a youtuber I’ve followed for (goodness me) like twelve years. DuckDuckGo won’t prioritise that, so it’ll show me hey, that could mean this, or that, or the other, please be more specific if you want more specific results.

And that means that searches are much less immediate, but they’re also a little more thoughtful. Browse the first page, learn oh, right, I need to narrow this by putting in another term. Or I need to make sure it knows these two terms are linked, and it means that searches are a little more thoughtful.

It gets me thinking about the processes I get through on a daily basis. When do I need to do a dozen searches? When do I need to do things as quick as possible? Sometimes in class, sure (and now I think about it, it’s going to be funny if my students see me type in a search on DuckDuckGo, in the way of seeing a teacher with an off-brand soft drink or something), but largely, this pause, this care, means that when I’m searching the internet for something, I’m more likely to take a moment and be careful about what I’m hoping to see, rather than blurting a demand, then refining it.

It means I do fewer searches to get where I’m going, if I’m being thoughtful. If I’m taking my time.

It got me thinking about a simpler time of the internet, where you’d have a small grouping of tools for specific tasks. You didn’t have a big internet tube for getting movies and music and books, you’d have a single program you ran for music, and maybe an IRC channel of swapped information for anime, and another place for movies. It’s not like I’m saying convenience is bad, but it’s got me thinking about the ways that it’s okay to slow down, and be more deliberate.

Spend some time sorting your files, check your bookmarks. Get an RSS feed, and use it, go check things out in these divided ways. And do it because these divided up chunks of ways, the time between things, the time that slows me down, is stuff that reduces the tension. It makes me think more between things.

I’ve been thinking about what coziness feels like in the context of a digital space. What it means to try and replicate a pre-digital, disconnected but communally related space, in a digital connected space. And I think part of what gets me a little way there, is taking the time between things. Be willing to take a moment, be willing to breathe, be willing to care, and weirdly, part of that is about using a less convenient form of a thing.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media

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thesinglesjukebox · 11 months ago

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SCREAMING FEMALES - "BRASS BELL"

youtube

With John, we say goodbye to Screaming Females...

[7.19]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: This has been my song of the year since it came out. Maybe it's just the familiarity -- when a single is released in January, it has 12 months to make its way into my heart. Maybe it's that I saw Screaming Females for the first -- and last -- time in March at the EARL (East Atlanta Restaurant and Lounge), surrounded by friends I didn't have a year before. Maybe it's the rawness of Paternoster's guitar and vocals, her insistence on a rhythmic minor key riff that I just don't hear much without the layer of pretense that can surround it. There's no valorization of the '70s here, no bemoaning of what music used to be, but a reaffirmation of what the guitar always could be, of the idea that anyone, no matter how small and quiet they might seem, can close their eyes and yell and become a star, even if just in tiny rooms drenched in domestic beer and cigarette smoke. I did not know, when I submitted this song, my rediscovery of a band that I had first found doing college radio in 2012, that Screaming Females would announce their breakup a week later. I did not know that even as I wondered how I could possibly write a blurb for this, the most important song of my 2023 by any metric, would also be the swan song of an 18-year... it almost feels wrong to call the band a titan. That's never what Screaming Females was in ethos. They simply made the music they wanted to, beholden to no one but themselves. I have no means to eulogize them, but I still had to try. [10]

Nortey Dowuona: "I hope they keep going forever." -- Steve Albini [8]

Tara Hillegeist: Screaming Females may be the only grunge-indebted band to exist whose songs have only gotten better the clearer and prettier their production has become, and I've been on team "Marissa Paternoster is one of America's greatest living rock & roll singer-songwriters" since Castle Talk, without a single reason to betray my ideological loyalty in that regard in all the years up till now, either. And since "Brass Bell"'s got riffs that would make even Ratt bang their heads in appreciation, and lyrics like if Cocteau Twins wrote a Neil Young song -- in other words, it's a Screaming Females song... yeah, of course I think this is amazing. It'd take a harder sell and a colder heart than me to think anything else. [8]

Micha Cavaseno: Truly, I don't think of songs beginning with that kind of analog distortion as leading to the sort of gallop and retreating riff cycle pattern I associate with stoner rock and beard metal. I don't think in any of the times people would've mentioned this band I would've expected that I needed to make comparisons to Torche or Mastodon. And go figure: this first note is the note they're going out on. Hell of a way to go out, and just my luck really. [7]

Taylor Alatorre: Two weeks after Screaming Females released Desire Pathway, the J Mascis side project Heavy Blanket came out with Moon Is, an album of instrumental stoner-psych jams aimed squarely at those for whom "rip" is the default verb for guitar solos. There's no doubt that a similar path is open for Marissa Paternoster if she wants it; as if to confirm this, she played a show with the Dinosaur Jr. frontman just a few days after her band's break-up. "Brass Bell" is a solid showcase of the trio as a tight-knit riffing machine and not just a one-woman fireworks show, though there are a few too many concessions made for the radio airplay that never came. The flange effects feel like tacked-on regressions, and the wings of a high-flying, late-coming Paternoster solo are clipped after four terse measures. The sad reality is that the airwaves only seem to have room for one basement-band-doing-stadium-rock at a time, and if your name isn't White Reaper, you may just be out of luck. [6]

Ian Mathers: I mean, kudos to whoever made the wiki entry for this album list "punk blues" as the genre (follow your bliss!) but in every sense except the subcultural this is absolutely classic rock. The production, Marissa Paternoster's vocals and especially and gleefully so her soloing. It's great, in a way that makes me want to take up the air guitar and reach for words like "stentorian." [7]

Katherine St Asaph: I think I like this because of, not despite, the early-'00s radio rock feel. At times it almost feels like it's going to turn into Trapt (not an insult I swear). [7]

Brad Shoup: "Brass Bell" has something I always admired about Screaming Females, which is their uncanny ability to make nu-rock. They never really coded as "punk" for me: maybe stoner metal, but with a lighter guitar tone and an ability to write a hook. Because I grew up in butt rock's salad days, I guess I tend to hear it everywhere. But these riffs (the start-stop one and Phrygian-sounding one) and the way Marissa Paternoster punches into the chorus are modern-rock radio gold. Hell, the chorus even has the kind of fake-deep imagery that should get over. (Would a different alloy make living in a bell a tolerable situation?) Godspeed, Screaming Females. I'm sure all your subsequent bands will rock. [7]

Dorian Sinclair: Having spent the past three weeks on a placement where I learned, in great detail, about the history and function of carillons (bell towers, specifically those with two octaves of bells or more), I am definitively able to confirm: living in a brass bell would be really fucking loud! Central metaphor holds up! [7]

Rachel Saywitz: Sounds like a disaster on the horizon and a heroine's call to arms. [7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Everything starts to crumble once the actual verse arrives -- you can't feel the jaggedness of the start-stop guitar riff, and the band sounds all too eager to go straight into the chorus both the first and second time around. Unfortunately, the central metaphor there is too awkward, and is shouted with a conviction that leaves no room for it to be a proper hook. They almost convince me with the detours taken in the final third, but the radio-rock sheen is all too much: it sounds like I'm at a bar and the local band is trying way too hard to convince everyone of their energy. [3]

Alfred Soto: Marissa Paternoster's vocals are the right kind of arch and posh: when she complains, "It's too loud!" she sounds like a country club member sneering at Rodney Dangerfield. The rest of the riffage is not too loud, with interesting changes. [7]

David Moore: Every time I get really into a band a few years late they break up within the year. I take full responsibility and vow to stop listening to music. [8]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Long live Screaming Females, they rocked harder and longer than a lot (A LOT!) of posers, and they have songs that showcase their gnarled hookiness better than this (download "Ornament" for clear skin etc. etc.). [8]

Aaron Bergstrom: Thirty-five seconds of "When are they gonna get to the fireworks factory?" synth build, but we're talking about one of the most dependable indie bands of the past decade-plus, so you better believe they get there. Whether it's Marissa Paternoster screaming on guitar, or Marissa Paternoster just screaming, they've always lived up to their name. She deserves the plural all to herself. RIP to an institution. [7]

Frank Falisi: Screaming Females was an underrated experiment in texture. They could shift tactility live on the ridge of a dime. The big metal monster would suck in its woofer and start to strut different, guitar puffing over tom hits, which were doing the riffs. The bass was too big to hear and the bass was mercury. Something about playing live means performing life, which means playing the changes. Texture in music is a signal. It prepares your body to sound different. "Brass Bell" begins with washing electronics, a loop. It leers and jeers, like a Mica Levi film score on your fretting fingers. The mouth of sound is broad. "Brass Bell", Desire Pathway -- these are the descendants of All At Once (2018), of Marissa's Peace Meter (2021). Once you master bass and guitar and drum and the human voice, you can unmaster it, unwind it, break a string. "Brass Bell" breaks open after the noise into perfect form, crunched production, crisp like adenoidal panic. There's a perfect breakdown in the middle of the song, a perfect bring-it-all-down with a minute left before drumming back up, before one last chorus. "It's too loud!!" How many times have I said this at the Screaming Females gig? How many times has the sound entered my ears, all my complicated receptors and sets of crevasses ringing, only to feel my own texture quake at the sound? We talk sometimes of the collective frisson of the gig, of being a body among bodies. Divine. I think something like that happens on a studio sound too. Me and all my changes, a flange forever. [8]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

#screaming females #music #rock #rock music #music writing #music reviews #music criticism #the singles jukebox #Youtube

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breesays · 2 years ago

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I don’t know about you - but this is 2022

We moved. I studied Spanish. I got sober curious. I put color back in my hair (purple). I screamed IM NOT OKAY when I saw MCR @ The Forum and also when they did it for karaoke at my office end of year party. I did a lot of "hurry up" hikes in the morning - at Wildwood and Wisdom Tree. I kind of love that I can see Wisdom tree from my place. Sometimes on a cloudy day I show Desmond and say, "If mama was hiking right now, I'd hike right into a cloud!" Never underestimate your book club. Not only did my witches of echo park assemble like the gd avengers after I got asked for a divorce, I also have the promise of some new friendships in my 2nd book club. I really look forward to digging into a good book attached the end of a day, and my favorite book of 2022 was Pet by Akwaeke Emezi.

I spent a good chunk of time (while driving?) digging to identity but some of it made me angry and some of it made me sad so I refocused on meditation and philosophy a bit. I've felt ambivalent about my body - recognizing I've been a jerk to it for many years despite its strength, despite all it did for me. I am not in the best shape of my life but I've been working on getting my mind in fighting form as a priority. It actually has a heavier workload than my body. I'm also hyperaware that I'm a 24/7 role model. My attitude toward food, toward movement, toward myself is perpetually radiating outward onto Desmond's malleable mind.

I saw Paramore at the Belasco and just wanted to BE Hayley Williams. I screamed "Brick by Boring Brick" at the top of my lungs. I put in my ticket request for their 2023 tour. Remember when I saw them at the (now dead) Knitting Factory? And also at some random phone store? I also crowdsurfed out of one of their pits with like thousands of dollars of camera equipment in my backpack. Good times.

I realized Lorde may have quietly outranked so many other artists, personally. I interviewed her in 2013 and saw her live and loved her then, but I felt a few of her songs very deeply this year, and wish I would've seen her on tour. Fortunately, she's not a legacy artist (yet) and her touring future is bright.

I think. It felt really good to be a part of a few group chats. Thank you to my bestie for inviting me. It's a small thing but it made me laugh a bunch and made me think and it felt so much better than throwing thoughts and questions into the abyss that has become Twitter and FB. Am I unintentionally promoting Mastodon here? IDK.

I haven't had any themed birthday parties in years, and I do miss it. The opportunity to dress up (even weirdly) the curation of the theme and its photobooth and party favors.... but most of all, the warranted request that all my favorite people gather in one place. In my 2022 state of mind, the level of connection I could have with each friend in a 4-hour window while probably drinking... with the COVID precautions, not entirely worth it. But I would love to hike with you, talk books with you, get coffee with you, watch Wednesday with you, go to Emo Nite with you, make fancy popcorn with you, spill our guts, find our flow, laugh cry, write and talk about it, share a meal, throw some axes, share some space.

HMU

#breesays

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sinceileftyoublog · 14 days ago

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Cursive Interview: Be More Eclectic

Cursive at Riot Fest 2024

BY JORDAN MAINZER

"I saw our future and I want to go back," sings Tim Kasher on "Consumers", a standout track from Devourer, Cursive's first album in 5 years and their Run For Cover debut. The line, and song in general, feels especially prescient today, given the results of this week's U.S. Presidential Election; "A billboard sells the rich to the poor," he sings earlier. It's also exemplary of the Omaha sextet's continued ability to deliver big ideas. If early albums like Domestica and The Ugly Organ took the structure of a concept album to communicate their grandiose themes, Devourer expands its reach to other genres and mediums, namely horror, to understand the world we live in. The band has said the album's title refers to consumption, in multiple denotations and connotations of the word, from our taking in of art and online spheres to literal eating. In other words, while watching films, listening to music, and reading books is nurturing, engaging in self-righteous echo chambers can be harmful. And eating and drinking is gross: "Your gut's an old garbage can / Liver's a purple bruised punching bag," Kasher sings on the forward-lurching math rock of opener "Botch Job".

When Devourer presents surreal or heinous imagery, you're more horrified by the context behind it. On "The Avalanche of Our Demise", the narrator can't fit the titular disaster, or recognizing the climate crisis in general, into his busy schedule. "Never mind the ticking clock / Besides, you’re totally swamped today," Kasher sings. “Life’s an abscess or apple pie / So shut those demons up / And devour your slice,” he sneers on "Bloodbather", his vices overtaking his desire to self-improve, Pat Oakes' drums propelling the song along as if to encourage Kasher like the devil on his shoulder. On "What Do We Do Now", a beached whale ends up on a neighbor's curb, and the narrator is mostly concerned with reporting it to his homeowner's association. Throughout Devourer, the characters attempt to reconcile their own importance with that of the world at large, man and nature. We can see they'll eventually come up empty.

Of course, the band itself, especially on stage, continues to blare inspirationally. At this year's Riot Fest, they performed the Devourer songs expressively, Patrick Newbery banging on the keys during "Botch Job". They had played Reggie's the night before, their first time playing "Bloodbather", "Imposturing", and "Up and Away", and the first two of those got a blistering Riot Fest treatment the next day. Still, at the festival, with Devourer out for a mere week at the time, Cursive prioritized older material, which sounded just as urgent. After a plea with the crowd to vote, Kasher yelped throughout "Dorothy at Forty", Newbery's horns and Megan Siebe's cello the chaos elements. When Kasher announced how excited he was to see Mastodon and Slayer, for a moment, you could view them as three loud, rhythmically complex bedfellows.

I caught up with Kasher after Cursive's set for an interview, during which we discussed Devourer, playing live, horror films, and social media. (Halfway through the interview, fittingly, Lamb of God's set started, a sonic explosion in the background.) Tomorrow night, Cursive plays Empty Bottle; I can't think of a better place to channel post-election rage than screaming along to songs from an album whose twisted world may soon resemble our reality.

Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: Was last night the first time you played the new songs live?

Tim Kasher: Three of them, yeah. There are two songs off the record we toured around last year, but that's it.

SILY: Was the approach to adapting them to a live stage any different than for the songs from your previous records?

TK: It was an interesting week of rehearsals. It occurred to us, looking at one another, that we prepped them for the studio but didn't know how to play them live. Despite us having a lot of instrumentation and getting a little ornate, we also have six band members, so we have a cello, trumpet, and keys with us. We're actually able to pull off quite a bit of what we do on the album live. It's not verbatim, but that's also not necessary. We're not really interested in that. So over the week of rehearsals, we were making those executive decisions, of why things would work better certain ways, little things here and there. I think they translate pretty well.

SILY: Marc Jacob Hudson, who co-produced it, also does your live sound. Did that help?

TK: Yeah, I think it helped a ton. We kind of had organic pre-production. We wouldn't even call it pre-production; it was literally just us sitting on the bus talking about music, talking about the record, getting ready together to ask ourselves, "What do we want to do? What do we want to get out of this? What do we want it to sound like?" Marc was awesome. He really came across as an additional member, which is the best way to feel about a producer.

SILY: You didn't do a typical record release show, but you presented the album and its music videos in 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound. It's a cool way to present something as artistically intended in a format that not everybody has access to.

TK: I'm proud of how it all turned out, just because it was kind of ambitious. Doing the 5 genre videos was ambitious. It was a lot of extra work we didn't need to do. As recently as the last couple albums, we had kind of a negative attitude about the videos, because you put all this money and labor into it, and it just sits on YouTube, and what's the big deal? This time around, we had this initial cocktail napkin idea of doing a lot of horror genre videos. I've gotten to know a decent amount of horror directors, so I thought I would reach out to see if they were interested. The responses were awesome, so we decided to do it. We did a real 180 and embraced videos this time. Because we did 5, and made them not just promo material but their own thing, with VHS tapes, it's its own project, connected to the album, but different to the album. We did lyric videos for the rest of the songs. I'm really excited about it. Ultimately, we're going to have them all up on YouTube, and I'd encourage people to consume it in that way. If you want to put it on your TV and watch, it's not the worst idea.

SILY: The album is very cinematic, and my favorite type of horror films are, at their heart, social tales that use horror to say something else. Similarly, on this record, you use horrific imagery to talk about climate anxiety and late capitalism. Was that your intention going into it?

TK: I'm still figuring that out. [laughs] When a record comes out, it's an opportunity for me to start understanding a little bit better what the record is about. Everybody is taking it in and giving me their reactions, which informs me. I wanted this album to be more eclectic. I put some extra effort into listening to the whole catalog, and it reminded me that 20-25 years ago, our MOs was to be eclectic. We didn't want to put out a heavy album, pop album, or mellow album. The last few Cursive records--and it's not a bad thing--lean pretty heavy, which is my growth as a writer getting more excited about louder, heavier music. I want to be a part of it. When I was listening to this album, thinking what it was about, what the title should be, I kept thinking to myself, "Damn, this is still pretty aggressive, loud, and angry, so thankfully we have these eclectic, poppy, quiet songs. But this is more pissed off than I realized it was." An early album title I had for it was Bruiser because the album seems like a bully to me. It's got a bad attitude. Devourer ended up being a variation on that. It's the type of title that does fit in with the horror genre. The best analogy is humanity devouring this planet, but with the artwork, I think of it in more sci-fi and horror elements, or a suggestion of the planet turning on us.

SILY: As much as the album sounds hard and heavy, you have the horns and cello to balance it out. You might be the only band with a cello to ever play Riot Fest.

TK: I don't know. I bet not.

SILY: It took me until yesterday to see an acoustic guitar. Horns, though, there's enough ska here to go around.

TK: [laughs]

SILY: I really like the line at the end of "The Avalanche of Our Demise" where you're talking about the apocalypse having to wait because you're too swamped. I feel like the album has a lot of themes of you balancing personal crises with the world's crises. Is that something you think about pretty often?

TK: A song like that gets pretty snarky. I'm not being hard on any specific person, but on a lot of social media, there's a lot of virtue signaling. You see a lot of, "I'm really down for the cause, and I've got some time between 11 and 2 on Saturday." There's hypocrisy in all of us, me included. It's important people understand I'm wagging the finger at myself. I don't want to be like that, but sometimes, you're slammed, and you mean well, but you're coming across like a fucking asshole.

SILY: You touch on that on "Imposturing" as well.

TK: I probably shouldn't be too hard on myself...I just don't want to be virtue signaling, myself.

SILY: I love the image of a beached whale on a sidewalk curb on "What Do We Do Now", how you're worried about what the HOA will think. You do have to laugh at it all. You can have these genuine feelings of concern and empathy for causes while also recognizing that people often post on social media out of the desire to gain social capital.

TK: I wanted to go surreal with that song. I was imaging, "What if some of the world's big crises landed at your doorstep?" How would people react?

SILY: Do you foresee these songs evolving as you play them live?

TK: Absolutely. There's already songs that I think were a little bit too slow on the album.

youtube

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ideas-on-paper · 3 months ago

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Gamescom 2024 résumé

It’s that time of the year again when Gamescom has come to an end after 5 intense days of playing Steam demos, and after sobering up from my "gaming beano", it's finally time for me to collect my own thoughts - or, at least that’s been my usual experience of it in the past few years (I haven’t been there in person since 2019). While I did my “mini reviews” for indie games that I tried out on Mastodon, I’ve decided to publish my general résumé on Tumblr this year, since I have quite a few thoughts that I wanted to take the time to address in detail (and frankly, I just didn’t want to put up with Mastodon’s character limit and a mile-long thread of posts). So, without further ado, here are my impressions of Gamescom 2024.

First off, let's start at the beginning: Opening Night Live. My opinion on this year's ONL is essentially the same as the previous years: pretty okay. I should mention, however, that I don't really care about modern triple-A gaming - the stacks upon stacks of open world graphic marvels with a maximum of uninspired game design just bore me to death.

The only thing that could've made this showcase potentially interesting to me would've been an announcement of the Lies of P DLC - however, since Neowiz wasn't even among the exhibitors, any hope I had for that deflated before Gamescom even started. (It's strange, actually - Gamescom would have been the opportunity to announce it if they're sticking with the release window of late 2024.)

One good thing that ONL did though was reminding me to check out Ara: History Untold. I was already intrigued by it when I heard about it during last year's Gamescom, and since the game will release soon in September, they finally showed some more extensive gameplay. It's strange that despite being such a big strategy fan, I've never played a Civ game before (except the Nintendo DS variant I had as a child where I lost horribly due to trying to play the game as a pacifist), but I'm actually very tempted to give this one a shot - a grand strategy game with environments rendered in an amount of detail comparable to Anno sounds really great. (One of my favorite things when I was playing Anno 1503 as a child was to stop for a brief moment and just look at everything that was going on.)

Also, I'm really intrigued by the feature that you can create your own leaders. I used to say “the moment I'll pick up a grand strategy game is when I'll be able to play as Vercingetorix and absolutely blow Caesar to kingdom come” - and even if Vercingetorix isn't in the game by standard, I can simply create him. I kid you not when I say that I could cry every time when I think about how the Gallic Wars were essentially just instigated by one person to gain political power and money - Rome itself wasn’t even interested in conquering Gaul, and Caesar had enough enemies in Rome who would’ve loved to see him fail in his self-staged glory campaign. A Gallic victory might have even inspired other peoples and nations to push back against Roman expansion and Romanization, leading to a more diverse European legacy as a whole (fun fact, btw: a lot of “Roman” inventions were actually just taken over from other cultures). Now, this is an alternate reality that I would love to see - plus, I’m always open to bullying some Romans. Who knows, if I’m really getting to rewrite history, maybe Carthage can join in the fun too. (Bring me those elephants, Hannibal!)

Since I've been a bit confused that they chose Nefertiti over Hatshepsut as an Egyptian leader*, I would love to play a campaign as her, too - the, according to James Henry Breasted, “first great woman in history of whom we are informed”. Not only that, her rule was so successful (especially in regards to trading and construction projects) that the patriarchal authorities of Egypt saw their worldview threatened, and because they couldn't have any records of an actually competent woman, they went out and erased her name on almost all of her monuments so she was basically forgotten by history for a long time. Well, I'd love to change that - as usual, though, I will wait what the reviews for Ara are going to be like, and maybe wait a little more until I can snatch the game at a good price.

*It's not that I'm unhappy with Nefertiti as a choice, I'm just a little surprised they wouldn't choose Hatshepsut in the light of her achievements. It’s also a little baffling that they announce Nefertiti as “pharaoh of Egypt” when she was just Great Royal Wife (albeit a very influential one) and Hatshepsut literally held the position of pharaoh. (There are theories Nefertiti ruled briefly after her husband died, though this is a matter of debate.) Also, tiny detail, but that Nefertiti starts out with Waset (aka Thebes) as a capital is hilarious to me, since she and Akhenaten demonstratively left Waset to establish Amarna as the new capital during their reign.

One novelty this year was the German Indie Showcase (“Deutsche Indie Showcase”), which took place about one hour before Opening Night Live and focused on upcoming indie games from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Although a lot of them weren’t really “world premieres” in the sense of the word - more like new trailers for already announced titles or new content releases/updates - I still found it way more interesting and entertaining to watch than ONL, in no small thanks to the commentary by German YouTubers Gronkh (whom I’ve been a long-time fan of) and PhunkRoyal.

Speaking of which, some people may know Gronkh as one of the “regular guests” of Gamescom, but this year, he actually didn’t make an appearance at the fair. This is something he announced last year, after he realized that more and more influencers who had nothing to do with gaming tried to use Gamescom as a means to gain publicity. Because of this, Gamescom was increasingly criticized for turning more and more into an “influencer convention” in the past years, which led to Gronkh clearly positioning himself and saying “I don’t want Gamescom to exclusively become an influencer event, and I don’t want my presence to divert attention from what’s supposed to be the main attraction: the games”. As a consequence, Gronkh announced he wasn’t going to be at Gamescom 2024 and instead would organize smaller events for his community. I think this is actually a very commendable move, and that he uses his range to give more visibility to local indie games is something I appreciate all the more.

The German Indie Showcase itself was hosted independently of Gamescom, featuring no third-party advertisements, show acts, or any other useless knick-knack. This is a development that I welcome a lot, not only that we get a special event with a spotlight on local developers, but also that the showcase focuses on what it’s actually about: the games.

After catching up on some of the other showcases after Gamescom (because I was too preoccupied to watch them live), one nice surprise for me was Planet Coaster 2, which I didn’t even know about before seeing the trailer (for some reason, the announcement about a month ago just completely flew over my head ^^'). Frontier Developments took some inspiration from Roller Coaster Tycoon 3's "Soaked!" expansion this time, adding water attractions as the brand-new feature. I would be interested in checking it out if I didn't know I'm 100% going to get stuck again trying to make everything as pretty as possible, which is exactly why I never got very far in Planet Coaster 1. xD

Meanwhile, in my opinion, the indie game division had a lot more interesting titles to offer. Same as last year, I checked out a selection of 20 Steam demos from Indie Arena Booth during Gamescom, plus 4 I already played preliminary. Out of the 24 games I tried out in total, my highlights were:

Moses & Plato - Last Train to Clawville

Songs of Silence

Closer the Distance

Winter Burrow

Goodbye Seoul

Steel Seed

30 Birds

Once Upon a Rogue's Tale

Awaken - Astral Blade

Bloodless

I want to thank all the devs who provided online demos of their games for this wonderful experience - the indie games are what I’m looking forward to the most every Gamescom, and I had tons of fun checking out all the awesome demos, even those that didn’t make it into the top 10. If you’d like to read my full thoughts on all the demos I played, here are my review threads from Mastodon:

Preliminary/New in August

Day 1: Strategy

Day 2: Detective, point & click, visual novels

Day 3: Action, platformers, metroidvanias

Day 4: Puzzle

Day 5: Sim, story, cozy games

In general, I had the impression that way more indie developers provided demos of their games than last year, and some even held special events in celebration. Awaken - Astral Blade, for instance, had a Gamescom Special Demo (it was essentially just a slightly more polished version of the normal demo, but it’s still nice the devs used this opportunity to show everyone how things are coming along) and Goodbye Seoul held a simultaneous Steam giveaway event.

Other games from Hall 10.2 had playable Steam demos as well, including Paws and Leaves - A Thracian Tale, Reka, and We Harvest Shadows. Even some bigger developers followed the trend, with Krafton providing a Steam demo for inZoi’s character editor.

Given that more possibilities to take part in Gamescom online was one of my biggest wishes last year (due to the online section diminishing somewhat after the Covid years were over), I am especially heartened by this development. Due to chronic illness, it has become increasingly difficult for me to travel to Gamescom myself (not to mention the noise level and crowds, which were always a challenge for me as a neurodiverse person), and it’s so great that people who can’t visit Gamescom in person for whatever reason also get opportunities to take part in it. Also, since more accessibility was a huge topic this year, I think online presence can also be used to further improve on that - and since Gamescom 2024 set a new record in regards to online reach with 310 million digital accesses, this development will hopefully continue.

Finally, I’d like to make a brief comment on this year’s “motto” of Gamescom as formulated by the organizers: One of the guiding principles was “games foster democracy”, which, understandably, has caused quite a bit of confusion among some commenters. One German journalist even humorously remarked: “As long as I haven’t formed a conclusive opinion on that, I’d rather rely on the Federal Constitutional Court than Candy Crush Saga.”

While I wouldn’t make a general claim that video games foster democracy, I would like to add that games can foster diversity. If we have a diverse range of games made by a diverse range of people - such as we see in Indie Arena Booth - it can lead to more diversity in the medium, which in turn can increase open-mindedness among the people who consume it, and thus foster democratic values.

Overall, the impression Gamescom 2024 left me with is a very positive one, and I think there were a lot of steps in the right direction.

What’s your opinion on Gamescom 2024? Do you have anything you’d like to add? Feel free to share your own thoughts!

#gamescom #gamescom 2024 #ara: history untold #indie arena booth #indie games

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