#i think my first real exposure was the movie‚ which i recall vaguely

[australianklaviergavin]

I think the best part about growing up with Ace Attorney so omnipresent in my life without actually playing it has got to be the weird parasocial relationship I have with all the characters. Phoenix Wright is literally like... My uncle. Like, yeah, that's Mr. Wright, he comes over for the holidays sometimes... ???

[thefloatingstone]

More of a suggestion if you wanna watch a Holocaust film that isnt so traumatic as Schindler's List or the Pianist, Life is Beautiful is actually a really good film on the subject even using the theme of "humor can get you through the worst"

I think I am vaguely aware of "Life is Beautiful".

I think a big problem behind movies that deal with the Holocaust is that there is a very fine line between accurate portrayal in a way I can emotionally handle, and a portrayal that sanitises the event to a degree where it becomes insulting (see: Boy in the Striped Pajamas).

I still find Maus to be the best balance in terms of fully giving a first hand account of the full horrors of surviving the Holocaust but due to the presentation of being both a book as well as the art giving just enough degree of separation where I don't feel like I want to die afterwards for a full month after finishing it.

It's difficult tho because I can never fully predict WHAT will trip up the little switch in my head which makes a WWII set story deeply traumatic for me to watch. I have never watched "Saving Private Ryan" but I have no interest in doing so. Because I watched History Buff's video on in and the clip of the kid lying on the Normandy beach crying for his mom bothered me so much I completely swore off ever watching the movie.

It's a really difficult balance and I try my best to listen to people's experiences with war films and how hard it hits, specifically around WWII (although not always. For instance I also have 0 interest in ever watching "Come and See" based on its reputation and I can't remember if that is WWII adjacent or if it's specifically the Belarusian war. Either way I know the movie's reputation and despite Mosfilms making it free on their youtube channel, I know I can't handle that one.)

I feel it's worth mentioning that when I was 16 we studied WWII in high school for a month or so, and our teacher had us watching recreation footage of the Nuremberg Trials which included real life footage taken by the Allies of the concentration camps. And when you're 16 that kind of imagery hits extremely hard and puts things into a much more realistic perspective. (also pretty sure I read Maus for the first time when I was 16 as well but I can't fully recall)

Although in all honesty, most historically accurate films upset me greatly depending on the subject matter. Weirdly enough, I do better with documentaries revolving around these types of subjects than I do film. It's probably something to do with emotional separation which documentaries tend to have versus film which specifically design themselves for emotional response.

Anyway I'm rambling.

I think I have had enough exposure to the Holocaust in narrative media where I would rather stick with watching documentaries about the subject matter I haven't watched before, and just sticking to re-reading Maus and similar accounts in book form. Rather than watch narrative movies about the subject itself.

That being said tho, apparently there's a 4 part miniseries from 1978 called "Holocaust" which, after being released in Germany, was so affecting that during the discussion panel that ran after each episode had German citizens phoning in either enraged saying the show was purely fiction and nothing of the sort happened, or in contrast, SEVERAL German citizens phoning in to confess how in 1938 they participated in Kristallnacht. I might be able to watch that one. And although it is about fictional characters (for the most part) I also need to finish Osamu Tezuka's "Adolf" which I stopped halfway due to how upsetting it was. As well as continue my man Shigeru Mizuki's manga "Showa" which I also stopped reading for a short time to take a break from the events at the start of the series (I haven't even gotten to WWII in that manga series yet. So I don't know if he covers the holocaust specifically as he is writing pure from a Japanese point of view).

Anyway my point is, I am very careful with my exposure just because I have severely upset myself in the past regarding this subject matter. So I'm always trying to find methods to learn more about the subject matter from accurate sources in a way where I won't severely cause lasting emotional damage to myself. But because of that I tend to avoid films and rather seek it out elsewhere.

[chrisemrysfics]

And here I find in my draft a ramble about maturity, in relation to fiction.

It’s not made to be like a proper speech, just rambles read over to make sure there’s a progression of logic and it makes sense. I added more so you can see where it gets a bit less ramble and a bit more clean, but it’s all just, feels sharing.

I post this because I don’t feel I expressed what I do here in the way I did here, and I feel so very strongly about this.

If you want to take one sentence out of it that I really loved once I wrote it, it’s this one: an act can be immature, but a person is never immature, they are always as mature as their own growth and journey has lead them to be.

With bonus of: maturity is not intelligence, to say you aren’t mature enough for something is, in fact, intelligent of you; but to react in immature actions is still nothing about being non intelligent, your maturity is an aspect of yourself in itself, the same way intelligence is another, and age is actually another, because while age can limit the level of maturity you can achieve (due to the brain still growing and also the limit of experiences you can have the younger you are), different people at the same age can be more mature or less mature than each other.

And extra bonus: fiction is, I dare say, almost always meant for people who can handle it, with the expectation that those that cannot handle it will avoid it (close tab, close book, change channel, blacklist, etc). Because that is the mature reaction to have, to avoid what you cannot handle (and minimize your exposure to it). Which is why mature people will not listen to immature reactions, and “defend” the source of the immature reaction, because they can recognize it isn’t a mature reaction, and hope to make the person grow in their maturity to realize the mature reaction is to avoid, not censor.

A quick addition based on my mostly fandom based meta just before: fiction is also the only place, only thing in existence, where you can experience and learn from an infinite number of experience, all the while being safe. It is the only place you can safely discover your limits, and grow your maturity through the fictions you can handle, as you discover different ways a topic, experience, etc can be experienced. Fiction is a mirror of reality, but reality can harm us, and fiction is unable to, and once we are mature enough to react maturely to what we can or cannot handle, we can make use of fiction to learn and know ourself and navigate the real world better. And it’s the other reason mature people will protect the freedom of fiction.

was talking about maturity and i remembered when i was young teen, maybe 13, or maybe even 12, and i asked to use internet, and a neighboor-friend (big brother like) helped me make a forum account and mom was close by too, and with my neighboor we made a joke in my profile (i can recall it still, we wrote “and god created pikachu!”).

things had been going well (i think he showed me some things too), mom wasn’t hovering but was around and sometimes looked to, it was a fun, happy moment.

and then someone messaged me and insulted me, angry that i mis-used god’s name.

needless to say, i got really confused and hurt and i cried, it’s very vague in my memory then but yeah i know i was hugged, and my neighboor replied for me and told the person off and made sure to nail in the fact i was a teen.

once i calmed down, mom asked me what i wanted to do, and i told her, i dont want to try for now, and i didnt, because i had enough maturity to realize i wasn’t feeling mature yet to handle these kind of people and the wild cards of internet.

in the same manner, i was maybe mid teen, maybe even 15/16 or closing in to 17, its lessened now but back then i was really, really squirmy with g/ore and b/lood and ho/rror. however, i cant recall if i saw a bit or saw another and had handled it, or if it was curiosity, but i recall asking to watch Alien (cant recall which one). Its possible i watched one that i handled and wanted to watch the first one, or again, just curiosity. anyway mom just asks to make sure, and i cant for sure if i was alone watching it, but what i recall is being really shaky after, like, growing really anxious in the night and being too afraid to sleep.

that night i slept in mom’s room, and agreed i should not watch ho/rror movie for now (and i believe i didnt try for years).

both of these to say: this illustrates that some things cannot be handled if your mind hasn’t reached enough maturity and also that it IS mature to back away from something you cant handle. mature also is different than adult, this is why we can see teens handle mature topics, but the fact is, minds mature with time and no matter if you feel, or genuinely are, a mature teen, your mind is still growing. there are mature topics, stories, discussions, etc; that you just cannot properly handle.

it is natural to feel distress when your mind cannot properly handle something, but it is immature to blame the content, because the mature thing is to back away. it is also a sign of a lack of maturity of your mind, if you cannot process the complexity of a topic and why people speak of it in different manners.

a lack of maturity is not being stupid. but intelligence and maturity are two different things. if you are intelligent, you should be able to understand you can still lack maturity.

chances are, if you think you are mature enough, and you arent, you’ll encounter topics you cant handle and lash out at the topic rather than pause and ask yourself if you were mature enough for it.

this is also why you’ll see mature people supposedly “not listen”. its not that we dont listen and defend “bad” things, its that we are mature enough to be able to dissect it, and we can see you aren’t mature enough. we arent “defending bad things”, we are trying to make you understand it’s about maturity.

when we say you can love a villain, for example, it means you are mature enough to appreciate a villain and still know they’re a villain and their acts are wrong

when we defend s/exual content and “problematic” content, its because we know the complexity of humanity and we are mature enough to differentiate fiction and reality, and the layers of them, and how they interact together, and how different people have different experiences reading fiction.

The whole reason fiction is often labelled with age as warning is that, in general, someone below that age is not mature enough to properly handle it. Some people of that age can, in fact, handle it, but not all. In the same manner, not every experience of something complex can be “good” or “bad”, because it is possible to have the people involve be mature enough to make it a good version of the experience.

However, the whole reason fiction is so, so important is that it is the only thing that exist where we are 100% safe and yet able to see, learn, experience, all sorts of things. If you need to understand a topic, especially to discover your own limits, you’re safe to do so through fictions, but you aren’t safe to do in real life. And because fan fictions are made by people who are everywhere, who are all kind of people, you will find a much larger range of experiences written.

As a final note: I don’t know how often you, we, hear it, but it is totally okay to feel repulsed by something, and it is totally okay to realize you aren’t mature enough to handle a topic or a specific way something is expressed, or just to admit to yourself that you aren’t as mature as you thought you were. Maturity is something that grows, and everyone has their own pace. Again, maturity is not intelligence, you aren’t stupid if you aren’t mature, and you will notice I’m not saying “immature”. I think, honestly, an act can be immature, but a person is never immature. You are mature, but your maturity evolves, so you are always mature at the level that you have achieve at any moment. Some people grow their maturity at faster rate, some need slower ones.

But I think I love this idea: an act can be immature, but a person is never immature, you will always be just as mature as your own evolution lead you to be. You are mature to a certain level, and you can be more mature with certain topics. And I feel that the first lesson in maturity for any given topic is when you learn not to react with immature actions for the each topic. You already are so, so mature when you are capable of not reacting with immature actions. You never have to “accept” something to be mature. Maturity is when you are able to recognize what you can handle, and what you cannot, and to be responsible for your own comfort.

To demand others to not create content that you can’t handle is an immature act. To avoid the content is a mature act, because you recognize others might need that content, and that the content is not meant to you directly. In fact, I dare say that in general, people who share content, create fiction, only ever aim it for those that can handle it, and expect people who can’t to avoid it.

Yes sometimes you can stumble on a content you can’t handle, but the mature reaction is to say “okay I can’t handle that” and just leave. Close the tab, change channel, stop the movie, close the book, ask for the subject to change if you’re speaking with someone or with people, etc.

[comicreliefmorlock]

So here's a fun game. What are, let's say...10-15 pieces of media (books, tv, movies, whatever) that seem to have been made JUST for you? why?

*cracks knuckles*

Surprisingly, not all of these will be Tanith Lee.

…however…

{And this goes under a cut because this is going to be a very long, verbose post. A really long, verbose post.}

1. “Tales from the Flat Earth” by Tanith Lee

These books are essentially like sitting by a crackling fire on a cool summer night beneath the glimmering night sky while a smiling crone cards wool and tells you the stories that come from a time aeons before your birth. I have never in my life found a quartet of books–let alone one book–that have so completely and absolutely captivated me. From the first page of “Night’s Master,” I was gone.

Not only the language–breaking the fourth wall and referring to “words lost when the world reformed itself in the chaos”–but the characters… Azhrarn, the personification of Wickedness who saves humanity with love. Uhlume, the personification of Death who faces a form of mortality and is forever changed by it. Chuz, the walking embodiment of Madness, who is gentle to those under his domain and understands that he cannot understand why he does what he does.

Ferazhin and Narasen and Sivesh and Simmu and Jornadesh and Kassafeh and Zhirem and Azhriaz and Dunziel… Names I have never forgotten because they all but sang to me. A flat earth that holds the best and worst of humanity, often balled into a single person, with Underearth and Innerearth and Upperearth holding gods that have grown so distant they no longer recall humans were their creation at all. 

I have always loved mythology and these books? These are myth.

2. Pan’s Labyrinth -dir. by Guillermo del Toro

I’m not from Spain or know Spanish. I knew nothing about the Spanish Civil War when I first saw this movie. And this was the first film I saw that cemented del Toro for me as the only man I would ever trust to turn Tanith Lee’s books into cinema. 

I love fairy tales, mythology and folklore. And when you read enough of it, you see how bloody it actually is. How terrifying it is to realize that you’re not the only one in the world, humans aren’t the only ones, there are creatures on the midnight side of reality that share space with you. 

And I never really liked the Disney version of fairy tales with “happily ever after” and weddings. 

This movie was literally like watching something I’d imagined for myself. The acting was fucking phenomenal, the sets and costumes were off the hook and the comparison of “fairy tale horror” and “real horror” that overlapped just blew me the hell away.

And Doug Jones… Doug Fucking Jones. I never respected mimes until him and now I give all the respect. Being able to act, to breathe real life into a concept and a costume until it becomes a character you could picture walking through a forest or peering around a corner while not being able to use your own voice OR your own facial expressions is a kind of magic I think does not get enough appreciation.

DOUG FUCKING JONES, LADIES, GENTS AND GENDER REBELS.

3. Fatal Frame - Tecmo

I’m a writer/reader, not a gamer. When I have downtime or I want to relax, I almost always gravitate towards a book instead of a video game. The few games I’ve played purely for my own enjoyment have usually been MMOs and involve roleplaying.

Except for the Fatal Frame series.

Survival horror is my favorite game genre and I lamented when Resident Evil became more “survival action” than survival horror. (Fuckin’ lickers in the original Resident Evil game oh my god.) I wanted a survival horror game that had some meat to it, had something really compelling about it.

And I found Fatal Frame.

I love Japanese mythology. I especially love Japanese ghosts. For some reason–maybe out of sheer novelty because I, being an ignorant American raised near the US-Mexico border, have had little exposure to it–Japanese ghosts are my absolute favorites. Yurei (and the other subclassifications) just have something to them that I haven’t found in other mythologies. I’ve read and reread Oiwa and Okiku’s stories, been fascinated by the concept of the Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai and wanted more of what I found.

Which Fatal Frame provided.

Not only do the game mechanics work beautifully for someone as easily startled as I am, but the story behind each individual game is achingly intense. The intricacy of the interwoven histories, the rituals, the underlying question of “was all this really necessary or was this a priesthood trying to stay in power”… I love absolutely everything about these games. 

4. “The Blue Sword” by Robin McKinley

I’m not going to lie–this book took me forever to actually read. The first two pages were so achingly boring that I had no fucking clue why my mother had recommended it to me.

And then one day, bereft of anything else to read, I flipped through it. I still distinctly remember the line that made me stop and go “wait, what?” – “…your horse tells me where you’ve been…”

me: wait what horses can talk in this? wtf? *flips to the beginning and sits down to fuckin’ read it*

Slogging through those first few pages? Worth it. Because Harry/Hari/Harimad was the first heroine I’d ever encountered that I could imagine myself being. She was too gangly and not particularly pretty and kind of clumsy. She didn’t draw admiring eyes everywhere she went, spent a lot of time going ‘I can’t do this wtf’ and had aches and saddlesores.

Meeting Harry felt like seeing myself on a page for the first time in my life. And seeing someone with flaws like me going through adventure and fighting and succeeding and failing and getting a happily ever after felt like a warm blanket. Like someone had written a book just to tell me: “It’s okay that you’re not beautiful or graceful or soft-spoken and elegant. It’s okay that you’re clumsy and a goof and your hair is fuzzy as fuck because you can be a heroine, too.”

5. “Whoever Fights Monsters” by Robert K. Ressler

No, I’m not a serial killer. :D Nor am I an FBI profiler.

However, after reading “The Silence of the Lambs” by Thomas Harris for the first time in ninth grade, I was fascinated by serial killers. Like… how did they do it? How did they get away with it? WHY did they do it? What kind of person did things like this? I wanted to know so much more and I started grabbing every book on serial killers that I possibly could find.

And the reaction of classmates and teachers who saw my reading material was… less than stellar. Even my mother was vaguely worried about what I was getting out of reading all…that.

It felt like my fascination with serial killer psychology was a flaw in my character that no one else seemed to share. Until I read “Whoever Fights Monsters” and saw Robert K. Ressler talking about the exact same thing. He wasn’t a “sicko” or a “freak” or a “lunatic” or a “killer-in-training” for being fascinated by the psychology of humans who could treat other humans like a moment’s disposable entertainment. 

And suddenly, neither was I. 

6. American Horror Story: Hotel - FX

‘American Horror Story’ is entirely my thing. Interwoven narratives of fascinating (and often awful) people combining “American horror history” with interpersonal storylines? Yes, thank you, I’ll take a dozen.

This season in particular, however, is just more for me than any other. 

Maybe it’s the vampires that are self-obsessed and not particularly powerful but end up with petty grudges and complaints. Or the ghosts that bitch and whine at each other, find consolation together, use Twitter and spend their long, long days doing little more than drinking, smoking and obsessing over their lives and deaths. Maybe it’s the single location with so many years of history weaving together like a book of short stories. 

I love ‘Hotel’ because it feels like Brandenburg to me. I could so easily see the entire season taking place in my fictional city and mentally insert my own characters into the show without losing a single step.

Also Kathy Bates is absolutely glorious and I desperately wish to be a tenth as glamorous as Liz Taylor. 

7. “The Butterfly Garden” by Dot Hutchinson

Books about serial killers? Yes, please.

Books about serial killers told by a victim who barely survived and understands what trauma really means? Yes, please.

What especially got me about this book is my thing for dioramas. The first one I ever remember seeing was in the El Paso Museum of Archaeology (yes, I’m from El Paso, Texas) and it always both frightened and fascinated me. 

^ This one in particular would keep me motionless for ten or twenty minutes at a time, kind of terrified at a house within a building and then absolutely enthralled at a house inside a building.

And the dioramas mentioned in “The Butterfly Garden” were akin to those in “The Cell” –some terrible, awful glimpse into someone’s mind that was visualized and externalized in a permanent way. 

8. “War for the Oaks” by Emma Bull

I love the fae. 

And I also have read enough to know that those sprightly little fucks are terrifying and humans are rarely left unscathed by them.

This book was my introduction to “urban fantasy,” much as Charles de Lint was my introduction to what I consider “mythic fantasy” and a city that felt so much like my own. 

And what was so quintessentially, absolutely me about this book–other than the main love interest being the Phouka :D :D :D–was the underlying theme about creativity.

It’s a driving force, a magic that humans have. It’s uniquely human (as far as we know) and often the only talisman against the dark that we’ve got. With creativity, there’s magic. There’s a spark of something beyond the mundane realities of survival. Creativity is a sword and shield all in one, complete with a lure to bring others along with you.

Whether it’s through music, art, poetry or graphic design, creativity is the actual drive for immortality that pushes us to reach beyond ourselves and touch those we have no possibility of seeing or speaking to in our own short, real lives.

9. Good Omens - Neil Gaiman/BBC

I loved the book when it came out. I didn’t expect to love the mini-series. I especially didn’t expect to love the mini-series for the #IneffableHusbands.

I won’t belabor the point about why this is on my list. The #IneffableHusbands tag on my OOC blog is enough. :D

10. What We Do in the Shadows - Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi

Vampires who are as absurd, incapable and oblivious as me? Yes. All of my yes. 

Having played the old World of Darkness tabletop games for years--and absolutely fallen in love with them--I found this movie and was in absolute heaven. These are vampires I can actually imagine hanging out with. These are vampires (and werewolves) I can envision walking around a city.

Noble creatures of the night don’t seem real to me (aside from the obvious reasons.) The supernaturals in this movie? They felt like people I knew. Like people I could meet or characters I’d written myself. 

I like the fantastical being put into the mundane--which is why my genre is ‘urban fantasy’ although I have such an eye-twitch about it being all supernatural detectives chasing various pieces of ass now--and I especially love it when the fantastical doesn’t outweigh the mundane.

Imagining vampires vacuuming and riding the bus fits in nicely with my desperate belief (and hope) that the fantastical isn’t JUST imaginary but actually exists. 

{And there, I’m restricting this to 10 or we’ll be here all NIGHT.}