I've just started reading Dungeon Meshi and I had to share some context for a Japanese-culture joke that I actually got for once!

When I was in college, there was a little independent theater that mostly showed foreign & independent films, plus midnight cult classics, monster movie Mondays, and a monthly? amateur short film festival that was also a gong show*. I didn't make near enough use of this theater and I regret that to this day, but one of the movies I did see there on a Monster Movie Monday was Matango.

Spoilers for Matango below, if it wasn't obvious.

Matango (1963) is a Japanese monster movie by director Ishiro Honda, who you're most likely to know as the director of Godzilla (1954). Matango is generally considered his darkest film. Also, weirdly, I've heard a rumor it might be a major inspiration for Gilligan's Island? And I can kinda see it?

Anyway, it's about a group of people who are shipwrecked on an island full of radioactive fungus. Everybody's pretty leery about eating them, because the shipwreckees found an older shipwreck, including a ship's log from its (now-absent) survivors saying the mushrooms cause hallucinations - but they're running low on food so eventually some of them say y'know what, fuck it.

The mushrooms turn out to be not only hallucinogenic, but also addictive and infectious - you can tell how long someone's been eating mushrooms based on their level of mushroom disfigurement. The mushroom eaters hunt down the holdouts and force them to eat the mushrooms too. Only one dude escapes the island, and in the last shot of the film we see - dun dun DUN! - even though he got away without eating any mushrooms, he still got infected and is turning into a mushroom person.

So the implication is that the travelogue guy ate from a Matango-style walking mushroom, and got transformed into one himself for his trouble. And because it's a funny side page instead of main comic continuity, Marcille understands the implication and is freaked out by this.

What's funnier to me, though, is Laios's nonchalance. You just know that if he understood the cultural reference, he would be fucking drooling at the thought of a monster he could both eat and turn into.

Dumb asides about that independent theater's film festival below the cut.

* The Gong Show was a 70s TV talent show where if someone's act sucked, they'd ring a big gong to cut them off. In the case of this short film festival, there was a 2 or 3 minute grace period, after which one of the organizers shone a light on the gong. Once the light was on the gong, the audience was allowed and indeed encouraged to shout "gong!" if they weren't enjoying the current film; if there was enough shouting, the host would ring the gong and the film would be cut off. From a creator's perspective I imagine this must have been humiliating; but from an audience and I suppose business perspective, it was crucial to keeping the event fun and well-attended. Very few people would have paid 5 bucks to spend their Friday night screening a bunch of poorly-paced, masturbatory student films. Instead, the threat of the gong encouraged locals to make short funny videos that would have done numbers on Tiktok if it had been around at the time. (An example I still remember 15 years later: shots of someone's hands assembling a cheese sandwich while Duel of the Fates plays. Cut to show the guy throwing the sandwich into the air, just as the music is climaxing. The guy is in jedi robes, activates his lightsaber, and swings at the sandwich. Cut to the sandwich falling back onto the plate, cut in half, grilled from the slice out. The guy picks up one of the halves and takes a bite. End of film.)

I only saw the audience not be ruthless about gonging a boring film once. An out-of-towner entered a short about a woman losing her child during the Holocaust. Not depicting an actual series of events, you understand - just symbolic shots of stars of david and swastikas and a woman and her child frolicking in a field and then DRAMATIC SLOW-MO on a shot of her spinning around and then gasp! The clothes are empty!

During the intro (every entrant gave one before their film was shown), she mentioned that it had won some other local film festivals, but she didn't think it was going to play as well here. I get the impression she hadn't realized this was a festival attended by normal-ass people, and was rather embarrassed about how poorly hers was going to go over. But, nobody wanted to be the first one to boo a film about the Holocaust, and so everyone patiently waited through her maudlin piece of crap film. (When your film is already dragging, for the love of god, don't add slo-mo .)

so! couple of months back, me and family went on holiday to a self-catering cottage in the backcountry, and when we weren’t having a grand old time getting lost in the wilderness i spent my free time, not writing for this blog, but watching random youtube videos. somehow this led me to watching a lot of six the musical animatics. i dunno, i’ve always liked horrible-histories-esque modern retellings of history, and i was reading a historical fiction series about the six wives of henry viii anyway

trouble is, this stupid blog has been keeping the silm muses much more active than they otherwise would be, and that was even more true when i was trying to churn out a new headcanon every day. i got interested enough in six to start looking up fanfiction, and i guess the settings were similar enough the muses started talking to each other? and then i remembered that ‘seven brides for seven brothers but it’s the fëanorians’ post, and then i thought that even those hellspawn would probably still make better husbands than henry, and then my brain worms started matching them up

so yeah, that’s how this list of which son(s) of fëanor i’d pair off with each wife of henry viii as portrayed by six the musical came into existence (and specifically as portrayed by six the musical, even if they’ve been dead for half a millenium trying to pair up actual humans who actually existed with my goofball interpretations of someone else’s ocs feels skeevy, and also like it would require way more work than this list deserves.) there’s actually an au growing in my head to support a context in which these couples could happen, auuugggghhhh. anyway, i’m sorry

catalina: caranthir. admittedly this was the last one i came up with, there’s a bit of pair-the-spares going on here, but i do feel like they’d have a very functional dynamic. given how temperamental they both are they argue less than one might expect; they’re good at setting and negotiating boundaries, and while they snark at each other constantly whenever they have business to take care of they go in as a Team. catalina also feels like she’d absolutely refuse to tolerate hellbeast bullshit, so naturally i’ve stuck her with the most down-to-earth of the bunch. they’re not the loudest, but they’ll build a solid place to return to when shit starts exploding

anne: curufin. she is a tiny bundle of playfulness and cheek and pure blazing ambition, and i think curvo would vibe with that. they would scheme together, they’d go into every social engagement with a plan and try to manipulate everyone around them, with mixed results. they’d definitely get up to, if not the most shenanigans, the shenanigans with the most collateral damage, and i feel like their skillsets would complement each other in a way that would nicely maximise that damage potential. whatever their big project as a couple turns out as, it’ll rapidly escalate into Anne and Curufin Burn Down Valinor. or early modern england. or both!

jane: maglor. okay this isn’t just me putting the woman who wants a big family with the habitual child thief (though i will admit, there is some nice synergy there.) it’s more that they’re both survivors, in a way, they both have this resolve deep down that could weather anything the world threw at them. i feel like they’d be one of the quieter couples in this set? sneaking out of court parties to wander the gardens and laugh at each other’s terrible jokes. they’d skirt around the edge of things together, softly enough so as not to be noticed, watching the world go by. and if it came to that, i think she’d wait for him

anna: celegorm. look the essence of anna of kleve is living in a gigantic palace doing whatever the hell she wants and not giving the slightest fuck what anyone thinks of her, and i feel like celegorm would be amenable to that. they don’t actually spend that much time together, he’s off in the woods and she’s chilling in her big fancy house, but when they do meet there’s always winks and finger guns. speaking of guns, their most common Couple Activity™ is going hunting, but you’ll also find them trading stories about the nonsense their social circles get up to over booze. they don’t usually show up for ~events at the same time, but when they do, they cut a swathe across the hall so efficiently you’d think they’d planned it in advance

kitty: ambarussa. this isn’t even a romantic thing, i just want them to be friends. i want her to go on adventures and have fun and be happy and not have to worry about guys at all, you know? they’d be the ‘two dumbasses and an enabler’ kind of terrible trio, i think, the twins getting up to the stupidest shit and her cackling in the background. absolute terrors, cause so much trouble, and they always try to dodge the consequences to varying degrees of success. and then they all head off home, promising to see each other the next morning and make even more mischief tomorrow

cathy: maedhros. i picture them having these long elaborate discussions about philosophy and ethics and religion and the differences between their worlds and all kinds of other things, these fascinating debates that go on until one of them notices it’s 3am. their interests don’t overlap 100%, but they have this shared fondness for big Projects that they always end up supporting each other in. you don’t see them talking much in their formal public appearances, but in private or when they’re just hanging out they’ll banter back and forth with the kind of carefree ease that comes from how comfortable they are with each other. she’s significantly more low-key than he is, but when push comes to shove she is just as intensely opinionated and willing to defend her ideas. should the time come, she would stand up to him like nobody else could