#dangerous to know

[silentagecinema]

oh to cry is to feel

[summers-in-hollywood]

Anna May Wong for Dangerous to Know, 1938. Photo by Eugene Robert Richee

[ennaih]

Every Film I Watch In 2023:

130. Dangerous To Know (1938)

[letterboxd-loggd]

Dangerous to Know (1938) Robert Florey

July 9th 2023

[ghost-oftheriver]

work all night on a drink of rum

daylight come and me wan go home

stack banana til the morning come

daylight come and me wan go home

come mr tallyman tally me banana

daylight come and me wan go home

come mr tallyman tally me banana

daylight come and me wan go home

lift six foot seven foot eight foot bunch

daylight come and me wan go home

six foot seven foot eight foot bunch

daylight come and me wan go home

day

me say dayo

daylight come and me wan go home

day

me say day

me say day

me say dayo

daylight come and me wan go home

a beautiful bunch of ripe banana

daylight come and me wan go home

hide the deadly black tarantula

daylight come and me wan go home

lift six foot seven foot eight foot bunch

daylight come and me wan go home

six foot seven foot eight foot bunch

daylight come and me wan go home

day

me say dayo

daylight come and me wan go home

day

me say day

me say day

me say dayo

daylight come and me wan go home

come mr tallyman tally me banana

daylight come and me wan go home

come mr tallyman tally me banana

daylight come and me wan go home

dayo

dayo

daylight come and me wan go home

day

me say day

me say day

me say dayo

daylight come and me wan go home

[perrieedwards]

i feel like people are skimming over the uk riots in a way that makes me want to tear my hair out. muslims in the uk are in active danger. immigrants in the uk are in active danger. refugees in the uk are in active danger. people of colour in the uk are in active danger. asian communities in the uk are in active danger. black communities in the uk are in active danger.

there are massive far right riots throughout the country right now and people like fucking elon musk and nigel farage are inciting it and still have a platform to speak. people have used three young girls deaths, people's genuine grief in southport, to try and gain traction for their own racist bullshit and it's working.

a lot of refugee charities have been forced to close leaving many people without support, homes, funding, food, etc. if you aren't able to donate please consider sending a message via the conversation over borders campaign! it will send a hopeful, welcoming letter to a refugee in the uk. there is also a guide to staying safe here.

please do your own research and donate to refugee charities, anti-islamophobia charities, mosques who are trying to rebuild after being destroyed, counter protesters, here are some i've heard positive things about but the list is extensive; southport strong together (support for the southport victims and their families), southport mosque rebuilding, riot repair fund, middlesbrough vulnerable residents, nasir mosque rebuilding, hull help for refugees, bristol welcomes migrants,

[demaparbat-hp]

Existential Nihilism Squad™

[uncanny-tranny]

I think so many people are so deeply alienated from themselves that they have no clue how to exercise their free will and autonomy. For some, this alienation runs so deep that they are afraid of their own autonomy and humanity. It is completely understandable why one would have those feelings, but it can be worrisome.

I want to help others who feel this way, so here are small things I have done to exercise my free will:

Add "guilty pleasure" songs to playlists and actually listen to them (I have a ton of late 1990s-early 2000s music I listen to now proudly that I never listened to in the past out of shame)

Getting the décor item, bath set, bed spread, ect. in the patterns you like, even if it's "childish" (I got a dinosaur-themed wastebasket from the kids' décor section and I adore it)

Taking a new route to get to a place you go to often

Eat dessert first

Celebrate well, and often

Collect things that are "odd" or don't seem like an "acceptable" thing to collect (somebody on my "for you" page collects dandelion crayola crayons and it was so cool!!!!!!)

Incorporate one new piece in an outfit you wear frequently (e.g., a new chain, a necklace, ribbons, bracelets, ect.). Challenge yourself to add onto the outfits if you feel up for it.

Sing along to songs without worrying that you sound "good" or your intonation is completely accurate

Read a book from a genre you weren't allowed to read as a kid (comics, thrillers, mysteries, anything!)

Walk without having a specific destination or goal

Pick up a new craft without expecting yourself to master it or to ever be "good" enough. Get your hands messy.

I don't want to shame anybody for not feeling as though they have free will or that they are exempt from exercising it. However, I wanted to give ideas so that you might read this list and find your own ways to express your intrinsic autonomy and will. You deserve to be a person, to feel alive, not just living. That is what our lives are for.

[zooophagous]

I wish people understood more that animals go through puberty just like people do, and that "teen" animals will have new and often unpleasant behaviors as they grow and try and figure out their place in the world.

Many of the animals I see being rehomed are right at the one to two year old mark, when maturity is still an ongoing process and their behaviors get more intense. Be patient with them! They DO grow out of it!

Aster was a holy terror until he was almost 3 and now he's the best cat I've ever owned. If you can't deal with these changes, adopt a mature animal instead of getting a puppy or kitten, because it's more likely than not they will have a turbulent teen phase.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

sick of this anti-aging obsession. let's go in the opposite direction. i want more characters who are hardened & grizzled & have a face lined with the harrowing tribulations of time--and then halfway through the narrative u find out they're 27

[mischievous-thunder]

Logie bear's full of adamantium and alcohol, Wade. What else do you expect?

[maxgicalgirl]

Being a “Fun Fact !” kind of autistic is all fun and games until you get halfway through sharing an interesting tidbit and realize that it probably wasn’t appropriate to share in polite company and now you have to deal with the consequences :(

[hunter-rodrigez]

I love how Discworld introduces Granny Weatherwax.

She is introduced as a witch, but it's not actually clear if she can do any magic for quite some time. At first all she does is herbal medicine and Headology, aka make-believe, mind tricks, placebos and basically tricking people.

Even when it becomes clear that she flies around on a broomstick and can project her mind into other living things, it's still not obvious if she can do any magic beyond that.

And then she and her buddies magically move an entire country 15 years into the future, and it becomes very clear that she's not only very much capable of doing magic, but she's one of the strongest, if not the strongest magic user in the entire world who can do stuff like summon death himself with nothing but a candle, and I am not even sure she really needs the candle.

Compare that to the wizards. The first impression you get of them is that they're powerful magic users, I mean they are wizards in a fantasy world, people fear them for their magic, and they got a whole magic college, so they must be powerful, right? They even look down on witches because they "don't use real magic"... and because they're usually women.

Granted, the very first (and best) wizzard we're introduced to can't even do any magic, but he seems like an outlier. Then you hear more and more about the magic college and other wizards, and it becomes clear that most wizards are arrogant and lazy fucks who can't do much magic beyond basic fireballs, turning people into frogs and maybe teleportation. Even the head-wizard of the college was completely helpless after running out of juice from a single teleportation spell.

Even when all the wizards become incredibly powerful, thanks to circumstances beyond their control, all they use their magic for is building really tall wizard towers and raging wars against each other. Wars which are ripping holes into reality, which threaten to release unspeakable horrors from the unspeakable horrors dimension.

Like... the books used most reader's assumptions and expectations, aka 'Headology', to make them underestimate Granny Weatherwax while overestimating the Wizards.

Just *chef's kiss* world building.

[chloesimaginationthings]

I know Vanessa regret saying this in the FNAF movie,,

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

We all know the semi-canonical ‘all the Robins know to hide/duck inside of Batman’s cape, even as adults’ thing.

We also know that Danny ‘is LITERALLY a ghost’ Fenton sucks at remembering his own intangibility while ALSO forgetting to look ahead of him.

All I’m saying is, Danny Fenton (or Phantom, if you’d really like) would absolutely SLAM into Batman on accident while running on roof tops and Bruce ‘Brooding Instinct’ Wayne doesn’t even think twice about letting the kid hide and scanning around for danger before there’s a record scratch of ‘wait who tf is this?’ kicks in.

[stromblessed]

Mizu, femininity, and fallen sparrows

In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.

If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.

So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.

I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?

However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.

Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)

And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.

Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.

It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.

Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?

While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:

She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.

You see where I'm going with this.

When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:

And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD

When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.

MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS

No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.

And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:

Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!

The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.

And, uh

Yeah.

I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.

But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.

Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:

But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.

There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.

After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:

"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.

Kind of like another bird in this show: