week forty (1/10/22)

Princess Diaries 2

8/10

didn’t realise that chris pine was the villain of the movie :( are they not related in some way? like if they’re both in line for the throne surely they are related in some way. like he literally made a joke about showing her his family tree? they are cute. andrew is such a sweetie. very much underrated. i’ve never heard anyone talk about him but he’s lovely and good looking

something. about. the horror of being sent on an impossible (death) quest and obligations and hospitality politics. the trauma of not having a home, and then the trauma of being in a house that becomes actively hostile to you, one that would swallow you whole and spit out your bones if you step out of line. all of this is conditional, your existence continues to be something men want gone.

it's about going back as far as I can with the perseus narrative because there's always a version of a myth that exists behind the one that survives. the missing pieces are clearly defined, but the oldest recorded version of it isn't there! and there's probably something older before that!! but it's doomed to forever be an unfilled space, clearly defined by an outline of something that was there and continues to be there in it's absence.

and love. it's also about love. even when you had nothing, you had love.

on the opposite side of the spectrum, this is Not About Ovid Or Roman-Renaissance Reception, Depictions And Discourses On The Perseus Narrative.

edit: to add to the above, while it's not about Ovid, because I'm specifically trying to peel things back to the oldest version of this story, Ovid is fine. alterations on the Perseus myth that give more attention Medusa predate Ovid by several centuries. this comic is also not about those, either! there are many versions of this story from the ancient world. there is not one singular True or Better version, they're all saying something.

Perseus, Daniel Ogden

Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation, edited & translated by Stephen M Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephen Brunet

whateverrrrr

2023 REBRANDING ‘ME HAVING A HARD TIME BREATHING FROM ANXIETY’ AS ‘BREATHLESS AT THE PROSPECT OF GOING INTO NEW AND WONDERFUL AND UNCHARTED WATERS’

i hate how commodity and capitalism has ruined so much storytelling . i hate how sequels and prequels and whatever else all ring like merch sales; i hate that i as an author have to include any social media following i have as a marketable trait; i hate that everything feels like a xerox of a copy of a dream of a memory.

i hate that my nostalgia has been turned into profit. i hate that companies fear consumer backlash so no real commentary may be made; i hate that companies care more about quantity over quality. i hate that so many artists and creators are being overworked to the point of complete collapse rather than being allowed to tell the story their way. i hate that every point of representation has to be fought for. i hate it i want us all to go back to living in a cave .

when you sit with friends over a bonfire and the night is getting long and people start telling this slow, almost hypnotic story - in this quiet voice, like they don't expect you to listen while they say the most fucked up shit you've ever heard - that is storytelling. who cares if the punchline is car hand hook door. storytelling has always been about community, about us all sitting in the dark, choosing to fill the silence while the last embers are dying. we forgot that storytelling is spellwork. hallucinating together, our breaths held, waiting for the ending we already knew was coming.

JULIE CHRISTIE rests between takes on location for DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, 1965

Percy: (annoyed) You're an idiot. George: (smirks) Am I, Perce? Or am I just a man asking the hard questions? Percy: (more annoyed) You're definitely an idiot. Ginny: (irritated with them both) You're both idiots. Now keep it down, trying to focus!

(post-Deathly Hallows. after seeing Terminator 1 and 2 movies, Percy and George are discussing the possibility of robot uprising and Ginny is practicing Quidditch)

how long does gege plan to continue this actually

man. this song reminds me of physiology class

week five (4/2/22)

With Honors

brendan fraser. patrick dempsey. b-man frase gives me horrendous [redacted as it is a person I know irl but think the worst, most pretentious person] vibes. drink every time they call the homeless man “the bum”. “boy oh boy women are perfect” 💛. jeff 🤢. monty learning that people are people 😍. courtney suddenly forgetting that he’s a person as soon as he inconveniences her. sweet movie. got that feeling (the same one as after Map of Tiny Perfect Things)

Is it not possible to have a one-shot movie anymore. Like is it not possible to just tell a story and not wring it dry for profit. Is it too hard to just tell a story for the sake of it

i have a mighty need to have pizza and a blair witch marathon

Finished Mobile Suit Gundam: the Witch from Mercury and oh my god that series finale. One of the best I’ve seen in a while, probably the only one where I feel satisfied by the ending for the main ship.

(Spoilers behind the cut, plus some rambling as a casual Gundam fan - mostly of Wing/SEED/00 for comparison)

First off - explicit confirmation that SuleMio got married during the time skip? Can’t believe Bamco really said “Finale airs close enough to the end of June, let’s not only have both of them survive, but we’ll have them get married.”

I know there’s some people who think it wasn’t overt enough but if you ask me, this is the sort of ending Gundam does for their main ships. Like yeah Kira/Flay got pretty explicit but she wasn’t the End Game girl for him, that was Lacus and Kira/Lacus is super chaste in comparison (and we’re not going to get into the potential Unfortunate Implications of that here). But even then, in the SEED Destiny remaster finale all we get is a Big Damn Hug for them. The most we ever got for Heero/Relena was the moment where Heero tells her he’ll take out the leaders of both the Earth and Space Colony factions to lay the world at Relena’s feet for her to lead into a new era of peace. (There’s a reason the BL ships are way more popular in Wing fic than the canonical one! 😂) And as for 00’s Setsuna? He merged with an alien consciousness and essentially gets Put On A Bus for 50 years and reunites with his Princess when she’s 81 and blind.

Which brings me to my next point - because the lead writer for G Witch worked on Valvrave (trigger warning for sexual assault if you want to watch Valvrave - it was a late night anime and it showed), I was worried they’d either kill off Miorine in the series finale or put Suletta in a coma (highly possible with how Gundam technology works in universe, plus all the warning signs around Calibarn) to keep things “nebulous” between them and give the writers an out for not having a F/F ship final couple. And it’s not like Gundam doesn’t have precedent for that either - see the Zeta Gundam finale and what happened with Kamille (not sure if that ending got changed with the movies).

But no, we get an “and they lived happily ever after, making their dreams a reality one step at a time” for both girls. I couldn’t believe my ears when Eri referred to herself as Miorine’s sister in law. I started crying when I saw the rings, not just because that was Suletta’s dream, but also the fact that it meant they got married, and that they’ve just been put on a level above most other (Straight) canonical Gundam ships. (Seriously I can’t name another canonical Gundam ship where the characters met, dated, and got married in the course of their own series.) It also meant all the times Miorine reached out to Prospera by saying they’ll be family wasn’t just lip service but had some very real weight behind it. That the Ship Tease moments were meant to be real romantic relationship development beyond the sort of “fake engagement” set up they had in the beginning. And somehow just by doing that it also means they had a much stronger and better fleshed out relationship than what I’m used to for on screen main Gundam ships.

So there you have it. My (not so) hot take on the G Witch finale.

Final rating: 🌈/10, thank you for not Fridging/Coma-ing either Suletta nor Miorine, would watch again, would definitely buy and play their Super Robot Taisen debut game (assuming I have a platform to play it on). Second season could’ve been better with an extra ep in there especially with all the rapid fire politics and side switching, but at the same time I feel like it might’ve slowed things down a bit much so I’m happy with what we got. Also, Super Robot Taisen debut when, Bamco?

oh and before i forget i am trying to watch a new movie (to me) every week this year so if anyone has suggestions pls lmk

Tim jokingly sends Bernard:

Basically every night, but one night, he forgets to, and at first Bernard doesn't think much of it, but he still texts Tim anyway because they always talk before bed and say goodnight to one another, but cause Tim silenced his phone during patrol, he doesn't answer so Bernard slowly starts freaking out. After a few hours of spiraling and no replys from Tim, he goes to the manor and sneaks in cause it's past Tim's 'allowed to have people over curfew' and when Tim isn't there (cause Tim is patrolling as Red Robin, hence the curfew), Bernard goes into full panic mode, and he finds Red Robin on the street and Tim, obviously worried about Bernard, asks what is wrong and Tim doesn't know whether to laugh at how funny the situation is (and how paranoid his boyfriend is) or cry over how much Bernard cares for him, and so Tim is like "of course I'll help you, let's not get dramatic, I am sure he is not dead, oh, I'm sure he's okay, probably even closer than you think" and now he can't take out his phone cause Bernard will recognize it, and they won't actually find Tim cause Red Robin is Tim, and so they just go on an adventure all night and by the end of the night, Tim finally tells Bernard, and Bernard doesn't know whether to break up with him because he saw Bernard going through panic attacks and freaking out and he still didn't say anything, or if he should hug him and tell him how he's so glad he's okay, or if he should bombard him with questions about superheros, supervillains, and the like. He settles for a hug, a free pass for something major, and a discussion on a rooftop over 24 hour minimart coffee (that tim had to pay for).

Everybody is posting about some writer strike meanwhile I'm like "You guys are watching television??"