#like ive seen people make fun of how you can see the cutoffs of where they stopped painting/drawing cels and whatever

[muddlemore]

i know the funky phantom is heavily made fun of for its poor production quality and this might be cope BUT ive always seen the errors as a great look at animation development

like not only are we ever gonna get to see behind the scenes of the show but visible cel markings and frames are so fucking cool to me in general and i love getting to see them in action

[cheesymovie]

okay so I’m alone in my dorm @ uni and I’m bored as all hell & i’ve has a recent fascination w old movies??? & u reblog stuff about old movies all the time so I’m just wondering if u have any suggestions?? I wanna watch some good/fun ones but I have no idea how to find the ones that don’t suck!! always a sucker for the ones that have gay subtext but like. any suggestions at all would be so appreciated thank u queen

oooooh yes!!!!!!! you came to just the place! im just gonna list some of my faves, hang on cause this is gonna be a LONG one (im not sure what your cutoff for Old is so i just went with 1960)

silent:

wings: really well done visually, also features the first gay kiss in history (ofc the context is different, but it’s there!)

nosferatu: the legendary spongebob character’s origin story! the music is wonderful in this, it’s very Artsy, just one of the greatest horror movies ever (it’s a bit slow at times but most silent films are)

the cabinet of dr caligari: REALLY cool from an art perspective, the sets are incredible, i love german expressionism, another great one for when you’re in the mood to get Spooky

steamboat bill, jr: buster keaton is a legend for a reason, this is my personal favorite of his. theres also something very unique and charming about silent film slapstick that i just adore, and this is a wonderful showcase of it!

the gold rush: basically the same reasoning as above, but with charlie chaplin. also this movie has a lot of genuine emotion you dont often get from silent comedies!

sunrise: a song of two humans: a must-see for silent films, it has super intriguing visual effects that really give a dreamlike quality to it, as well as great acting for the limited medium

show people: a really sweet classic romance that also gives you a nice (if not totally accurate) taste of The Movie Biz @ the time

metropolis: one of the first sci fi movies ever. visually STUNNING like nothing ive ever seen, also a bit of a workers of the world unite moment

noir/drama/general Serious Stuff: 

the big sleep: SEXY! the plot is hard to follow but it’s worth it for the characters and also just all i can say is. hot - it’s about a murder or two!

the maltese falcon: actually makes sense and like. Says Stuff abt humanity. gripping plot and nuanced characters -about a bird statue and the knights templar also human nature but also who could forget a murder or two!

sunset boulevard: absolutely enthralling characters, script, plot, performances, all of it! - it’s about a murder!

rebel without a cause: HUGE gay subtext with this one, one of the original Teen Movies

kiss me deadly: interesting!!!!! i was intrigued from start to finish w this one and you probably will be too

strangers on a train: one o those Psychological Thrillers, interesting n well acted - it’s about The Concept of Murder

north by northwest: super fast paced spy action movie that also #makes you think

murder, my sweet: another classic phillip marlowe story with that fast talkin detective dialogue i love so much - it’s about a murder! (my sweet)

double indemnity: the height of Cynicism in noir, not even any detectives in this just bad deeds and Tension -it’s about a murder or two!

key largo: just a hotel full of intriguing characters all At Odds with each other and the concept of heroism

random harvest: kinda cheesy amnesia plot but comes across well with good acting and dialogue

the lady vanishes: about a lady. who vanishes. funny at times and has that Classic hitchcock tension before he really landed on his final style

casablanca: “here’s lookin at you kid” “i think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” just. one of the most iconic movies of the whole Classic Era and for good reason!

to have and have not: basically casablanca BUT consider this- i love Them (them being humphrey bogart and lauren bacall)

comedy/romance/general Light Stuff:

the thin man series: one of my absolute all time favorites! it’s just a story about two rich people who only love each other and alcohol getting dragged into solving various mysteries. my favorite thing about this is how much you can tell they love each other, like they’ve been married for years and just banter back and forth in a way founded on mutual respect n adoration which is So refreshing to see in classic movies!

it happened one night: i ADORE this movie! it’s a classic road trip comedy with a ton of bizarre side characters and hijinks, and also basically Invented the rom com genre. they’re also genuinely in love in a very cute way! it’s just sweet and fun and one of my fav movies of all time

arsenic and old lace: a dark comedy about old lady serial killers, brothers who think theyre theodore roosevelt and frankenstein (respectively), and Love. it’s super bizarre but a real joy to watch!

it’s a wonderful life: makes me sob every single time and leaves ya with that fuzzy warm feeling inside (recommended for christmas/winter viewing)

duck soup: i mean it’s the most iconic marx brothers movie, what more can i say!

bringing up baby: just a real wacky romp where it’s the lady and the tiger, with a whole lot of silly comedy

my man godfrey: makes fun of rich people n has a big loud ensemble cast (also romance)

the shop around the corner: they fall in love through letters but hate each other in real life! :0! bonus points for jimmy stewart’s voice

abbott and costello meet frankenstein: the title says it all. completely joyfully stupid movies like these are a big reason why i love old movies!

roman holiday: audrey hepburn’s debut movie. really sweet, has an ending that makes me cry

death takes a holiday: super interesting experimental concept not seen often in this era - Death literally takes a holiday and has to deal w life n love n all that

sabrina: a very nice and well acted little romance/cinderalla story w sprinkle of comedy

the philadelphia story: another Classique rom com with a love triangle n some nice fast-paced witty dialogue

musicals:

singin in the rain: one of the first classic movies i ever remember loving. every second of it is just. ah chef kiss

guys and dolls: very fun!!! just emblematic of good ol showtunesy musicals as a whole 

top hat: fred astaire and ginger rogers!! need i say more?

on the town: really fun music n choreography, generally engaging to watch

cabin in the sky: an all black cast with a ton of great songs n talent! 

the great ziegfeld: a really lovely period piece about 20s live shows with stunning costumes/choreography

gentlemen prefer blondes: it’s classic baby!

meet me in st louis: very sweet very fun lots to love

an american in paris: kinda ran out of juice near the end here and realized Musicals is the Same. anyways watch it gene kelly is charming and can click his heels together 

horror/sci fi

dracula: sexy. iconic. what more do you need

frankenstein: really has a Heart unlike a lot of these, also Iconic

bride of frankenstein: made me cry! see above but like, More

just realized im listing all the universal monster movies, so just, watch Any of those for a good and cheesy classic horror time

the day the earth stood still: a real cold war era movie about aliens and morality

plan 9 from outer space: a HILARIOUS so-bad-it’s-good old sci fi movie, highly recommend 

them!: giant radiation ants babey! really good effects for the time n well done suspense

honorable mention: this is past the cut off date but watch santa claus conquers the martians oh my gosh it’s the epitome of old b list sci fi and it never fails to send me n pals into a regular Laugh Riot

[solipsistful]

categorizing the bipolar disorders is weird

WHO WANTS THE L O N G E S T INFODUMP, 1,500+ WORDS GO

I... didn’t actually incorporate citations into this (hindsight: 20/20), but if anything stands out, feel free to ask and we’ll point you to sources.

The Formal Criteria

As it stands, the bipolar spectrum is diagnosed primarily based on the idea of a linear “mood spectrum” and how close you get to either extreme, with some extra requirements around how long episodes last (chronicity). So, canonically, the spectrum goes:

Bipolar I: Mania, depression

Bipolar II: Hypomania, depression

Cyclothymia (sometimes called bipolar III when people are making a point of the spectrum): Hypomania, chronic mild depression (dysthymia)

So first off, chronicity: Technically, there are requirements for how long a state has to be in order to count as an “episode”. One week (or until hospitalization :V) for the manias, two weeks for depression, and for dysthymia, technically two years.

These cutoffs are fundamentally arbitrary. It’s why there are quite a few ways people get around it. One major group of bipolar NOS is just episodes that aren’t long enough; the DSM-5 proposed a condition for further study of depression with not-quite-long-enough hypomanias (maybe “technically” what we have ;P). I think originally the idea with chronicity was to exclude the rapid mood shifts that might be better captured as emotion dysregulation a la borderline, but that’s morphed a bit. “Rapid cycling” officially means more than four distinct episodes in a year. Now, we have “ultra-rapid cycling” for multiple in month, and “ultradian” which completely removes any chronicity requirement and refers to multiple episodes in a day.

I think some of the difficulty with chronicity is a problem with what exactly a mood even looks like. There’s a reason we’ve heard some folks actually prefer the language of “manic-depression” over “bipolar”, because two separate poles? lmao. Mixed episodes are common – I’ve heard that in bipolar type II in particular, time spent in a mixed episode tends to outnumber the time in straightforward hypomania (*waves*). Plus, mixed states are often the most problematic – suicidality goes way up compared to depression alone.

Mixed states are kinda by definition hard to categorize. People have tried. The most sensible categories I’ve seen are actually the ones that hide the mixed-ness. That sounds strange, but categories like “dysphoric mania” and “agitated depression” can definitely be seen as fundamentally mixed – the hate and emptiness of depression while manic, the energy and irritability of mania while depressed. It’s why we say both “mixed” and “agitated” for our brand of “lots of the energy and irritability but also misanthropy and anhedonia” – whaaat’s the difference. But even those only work for some people some of the time – often times, the person themself just has to figure out their own “categories” for their episodes. Mostly mixed episodes just tend to be a jumbled, manic-depressive mess.

At least personally, we can see why mixed-ness would cause confusion with chronicity. We’ll get irritable at something in the environment and stay that way for a while before falling back to the “baseline” depression. That’s not “cycling” to us; it’s that the irritability and resulting energy need a target, plus the mood reactivity of atypical depression (I’ll address that in a few more goddamn pages).

Funnily, though, the definition of a mood spectrum doesn’t quite stop there. Something that always strikes us is the mania-hypomania distinction – the formal distinction between types i and ii. The way folks lay out the disorders, you’d think it’d be a quantitative, scalar difference – that is, maybe 3 symptoms from the list is hypomania, but 5 makes it mania. That’s how minor and major depression work! But actually, the difference is based on two things: Is it impairing (in particular, are you getting hospitalized or arrested)? and are you psychotic? Say yes, mania. No, hypomania. Technically, you could have two people, one who checks off more of the formal criteria but neither of those key questions, and another who just barely passes the cutoff but got arrested for something like kleptomania, and they’d be hypomanic and manic respectively. That said, it’s not just meaningless arbitrariness: some other not-readily-apparent things actually fall out of that distinction:

As I said, mixed states practically typify type II in particular.

Type IIs tend to spend way more time depressed – a number we’ve seen suggested is upwards of 40:1 depressed:hypomanic (bipolar I, more like 3:1). Therefore, it’s super hard to actually catch (“Wait, was that hypomania or just my annual week of feeling better?”) This gets particularly relevant when talking about soft bipolar.

I’ve also heard it suggested that type IIs tend to spend more time in any non-baseline state longer a higher percentage of the time than type I. There really does seem to be an inverse relationship between how “extreme” a mood is and how long it lasts -- cyclothymia being the other end of that, with basically no time at baseline, but no major depression.

Type II tends to come with more suicidality (see: mixed episodes), so smack that in people’s faces if they call type II “not as bad” as type I.

“Soft Bipolar”

So, with that, you know how I said there were three categories of bipolar? SURPRISE, THERE’S MORE. There are a few different schema, but I like Fieve & Dunner’s -- they’re the ones who first laid out bipolar I, II, and III, after all. It’s just that the other three don’t get as much specific attention:

Bipolar IV: Hypomania or mania caused specifically by anti-depressants

Bipolar V: Seemingly unipolar depression in people with bipolar relatives

Bipolar VI: Mania without depression -- unipolar mania, basically. A weird category that might not actually exist. Funnily, all a bipolar I diagnosis requires is a manic episode -- it just happens that people diagnosed as such almost always experience depression as well. I don’t really know much else about it.

Every so often you’ll see other categories. For example, I’ve heard folks suggest that seasonal affective disorders that only present with depression might actually be a bit bipolar-y.

Bipolar V is the fun one, for me, and is what most often gets called “soft bipolar.” An important first note is that bipolar V has a habit of becoming bipolar IV so, yknow, there’s something there. Another is that sometimes you’ll see “soft bipolar” used to refer to bipolar type II -- here, the idea is that anyone who “seems” unipolar depressive but “actually” belongs on the bipolar spectrum somewhere must have type II, because type II in particular can be so hard to catch -- it’s just thought that maybe the patient just hasn’t noticed their hypomania.

Why would someone with a unipolar presentation belong on the bipolar spectrum, anyway? Other than just the desire to group together the possible genetic causes, there are actual effects: Bipolar depression looks different than non-bipolar depression. This is actually the trend for all bipolar depressions, but only becomes particularly relevant when depression is all that is being experienced in the first place. Specifically bipolar depression tends to be:

Atypical, not melancholic. (Atypical doesn’t actually mean uncommon here. Those terms refer to specific historical things -- melancholic was described first, so atypical was the “other”.) But what makes a depression atypical is, specifically:

Mood reactivity -- the ability to sometimes feel good because something good happened, even if that feeling goes away really quickly.

The opposite of certain melanchonic symptoms -- weight gain instead of loss, and hypersomnia instead of insomnia.

A weird personality thing: being super sensitive to rejection, even outside of any mood episode.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A really physical feeling of fatigue called “leaden paralysis”

Resistant to SSRIs and other meds that are specifically anti-depressants, but helped by mood stabilizers and other bipolar-focused meds (sorta obvious in someone who actually fits a canonical bipolar presentation, but a bit unexpected if it’s “only depression.”)

Or, even if an SSRI helps, it will randomly stop working much more often with bipolar.

Or an SSRI might just kick off mania.

Irritable -- of course, here you get into the difficultity with “is irritable/agitated depression actually mixed”, but irritability alone isn’t traditionally marked as not-just-depression.

Psychotic. You can technically have unipolar major depressive disorder with psychotic features, but some folks think that that makes it a bit more soft bipolar (the association between bipolarity and psychosis would be aNOTHER DAMN ESSAY, but the short version: their immense conceptual separateness is very much a matter of “some dude in the past said they’re different”. They’re clearly at least genetically related.)

Starting earlier in life, and steadily worsening. Some (lucky) folks experience just one or two episodes of major depression and that’s it. Bipolar doesn’t do that, and repeated mood episodes have a habit of getting slightly more extreme each time they happen.

The above, sans psychosis, is how we self-diagnosed as bipolar, even before we started delineating mood episodes. ;P It’s a bit weird to ask a psychiatrist that no we don’t experience hypomania but please put us on lamictal instead of trying yet another anti-depressant -- she was kinda hesitant at first, and apparently noted us as probably bipolar type II while simultaneously explaining that lamictal is often used off-label for depression (cough, probably actually folks with soft bipolar).

So

So, you have a cluster of diagnoses where you have just a few formal criteria (what counts as a mania, hypomania, minor depression, and major depression) but actually a lot of shared features that aren’t necessarily suggested by the criteria (atypical depression, type II suicidality vs. type I, etc.) -- which leads to some suggested alternative criteria that would center things like the atypical features or mixed episodes and thereby potentially incorporate “unipolar” presentations, almost in contradiction with those formal criteria at the outset.

- Ace