juushika

I went to another of the play reading with my folks last week, this time with preemptive intent and on an intentionally-purchased third ticket. It was a double bill of one-act plays: Aria da capo by Edna St. Vincent Millay and No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre. Dad asked me to make a list of future play readings I wanted to attend with them; simultaneously, I had a catastrophic breakdown.

I acknowledge 1) that breakdowns are going to be par for the course—they always have been, even during my better periods, and this is not a better period; and that 2) hormones may have contributed to this one. But this felt so inexplicable, until I got the email saying he'd purchased tickets for all the readings on my list: this is a Thing we are doing Together to have Quality Family Time Before Dad Dies.

Which, to an extent, is what every social event in the history of family interactions is—all that sets this apart is timescale. My anxiety and introversion mean that I'm not good at "just hanging out" togetherness, so the plays are a great find: I love artsy fartsy shit, I write essays for my folks after the plays (sometimes literally: an email about the character of Joseph Garcin/Vincent Cradeau in No Exit, exploring adaptation, parallels to Sartre, and the Nazi occupation of France, all because my father wasn't sure why the character had been executed—my dad called it an "the extensive followup"! it was not! it was the highly edited version!), it's an engaging social thing. But the overt indulgence of it, of "we'll stand in line to grab you a third ticket," of "I bought tickets for all the plays you mentioned," was the reminder of why it's so important to capitalize on these opportunities.

Things are good, my dad's doing well. Treatment so far has had the best possible outcome, and they're looking at plans for what's next; he has symptoms and side effects under control; he's making longer-term decisions re: work, etc. Things are about as good as the could be, which, admittedly, is a low bar. But things are okay.

And I was okay, again by relative scales: I never forgot what was going on (how could I?). But I'm excellent at burying feelings under media consumption; I couldn't sustain that unmitigated misery into months and it became other major depressive episode; I was sleeping during the day so that I could wake when Devon got home—which didn't make him any less busy, but made the loneliness easier to deal with. The houseguests even left (although things are still set up for them to return, so I guess I just get to hang on tenterhooks re: that, indefinitely!), although this is counterbalanced by every fucking thing going wrong (my ereader cover broke! audiobooks are making my tablet crash! my life is a tragedy of errors outside my control!). But then my sleep started to degrade into three-hour snatches that made the edges of the days fuzz and blur; I hovered in panicked stasis until Devon came home, but then broke down or passed out as soon as he showed up—

There's no especial value in recording the sequence of a breakdown, and I'm not sure that doing so benefits me (what is the balance between self-knowledge and wallowing, between honesty and shame?); but things got bad and I didn't know why, until the email about tickets yesterday, and then I realized afresh that my dad was going to die. I had some more, big sad; I took my anti-anxiety meds and then slept for a really long time; maybe putting the pieces together has allowed me to go through and out of this particular episode. Maybe I'll relapse when this initial sense of rested relief passes. Absolutely things will get bad again in the future, because surrounding circumstances won't go away and can only get worse.

But right now, in a cold clear morning after many consecutive hours of sleep, I have a certain amount of closure about this particular episode.

It always makes me angry when the good things trigger bad times, It's frustrating and unfair. But the good things are still worth it—quality family time! the plays were good!—and the bad times are inevitable. (That's also frustrating; also unfair.)

TW emetophobia, pet injury, cancer, death, suicidal ideation, fucking hell what a really optimistic opening to a post!!



A belated but sincere thanks to those that commented on my post about my father's cancer; that I haven't responded is just because talking (in general, but about that in specific) is hard, and not especially personally productive. But one-sided condolences are. Cancer has been the worst thing in my life for too many years now—

which is such a truism: cancer, this one equalizer, this pinnacle of disease; I've never read it and now you could not pay me to do so, but I always hear in my head "the emperor of maladies." Not because cancer is worse than other diseases, but because it's so prevalent and diverse and always life-changing. It killed the first pets I ever looked after on my own (rats); killed my grandmother, killed my family's dog, killed Mamakitty; changed my sister's life; and now this. It's so common as to be memetic, which rouses its own sort of anger as I transform into the person whose anxiety is triggered by "this post is giving me cancer" jokes

—so it helps to have it validated as being as awful as it feels. I mean, I know it's awful, insofar as I can internalize anything. But validation and confirmation helps, even (especially!) from halfway-strangers who have no reason to lie to me about how awful cancer is.



Cancer on the day-to-day is pretty unremarkable, though. Chemo is going; I'd hesitate to say "going well" because my dad doesn't cope well with discomfort and has always aggressively treated his health concerns, and now here's something effectively untreatable where discomfort is a baseline. ( Borderline navel-gazing re: chronic illness. )



We had a traditionally non-traditional family homemade pizza night for Thanksgiving; my uncle flew in for the weekend. And because literally nothing can go right, Devon got sick that evening with a stomach flu! and then I caught it a few days later, despite that we spent like four days in separate rooms with zero in-person contact and I was really lonely. Mine was comparably mild; either way I think we both prefer this to a chest or head cold. Throwing up sucks, rather a lot, but there's almost a sense of pleasurable privation to be limited to broth and eggs and crackers, and being able to breathe while sick makes it far easier to sleep it off.

Prior to that, Gillian had bitten his own damn self while going after a flea (and I knew cat mouths were full of nasty, but had somehow assumed that they were immune to their own nasty even though that makes very little sense; and indeed, I was hugely wrong because) and gave himself a huge abscess! which cleared up on its own, and in fact the vet didn't even treat it*, just the fleas (thank goodness, as Frontline/Advantage weren't working); so while the bald patch is now growing in beautifully and the fleas are almost dead and none of the cats are, my summary here is

could unrelated things stop being shit for, like, five minutes

we are all very tired, all the time.



* The vet ripped out mats and with it fur surrounding the wound, ripped off the scab that was forming, and said that because it was plenty open and the tissue looked healthy we could let Gillian look after it just like cats had been doing for thousands of years, not even an ecollar required. A vet after my own heart! as I am also of the school of "supervision is good but nature knows best for dumb stuff like this".

Went to my first Pride on Sunday, with Dee. I only had the energy for the parade, so we left after that and didn't go to the gathering; I'm not sure how that would have changed my opinion of the event.

It was remarkably more corporate/sponsored that I was expecting, and I was expecting plenty—although I do feel like the front-loaded that stuff, which we appreciated & which made for a better final impression. I am of mixed feelings re: some police marching in uniform, the number of companies on display, about acceptable/sanctioned activism vs. what's valuable to the community & in current political climate—the same conflicted feelings everyone's having lately, I'm sure. There were little things, like the company members with aggressively doctored signs, which helped me find a middle place between fears and ideals.

When I was trying to talk myself into going (leaving the house is hard!), Teja and I made a list of What Would Make Pride Worth It: 1) to belong to a community, 2) to support that community, 3) to actually be a present roommate who goes-with, and/or (in any combination), 4) that feeling I got from the recent St. Johns parade: that Portland itself is tolerably unshitty, as things go, and I am grateful for unshitty things especially now and can stand to be reminded they exist.

(The local Montessori school marched in rainbow flag colors at the St Johns parade and I had a moment of realization that, when I attended Montessori, that's not something my school would have done; we were weird hippy liberals but essentially white liberals, who recycled and biked and misgendered trans* people. But the intent to do better was there; it helped to make me who I am. Times have changed. Portland is not Corvallis. And, in the least, the local Montessori school is doing better.)

2) was distantly, approximately achieved; 3) was bare-minimum achieved, but I guess that's the best we can expect of me; 4) occurred, however complicated by thoughts re: the commercialism of Pride, as above.

1) was difficult, is difficult.

At the MAX station on our trip into town, we talked briefly with a woman going to Pride, a woman that had been active within the community for some 40 years, who told us briefly about her work in the community, and about GLAPN; who asked if this was our first Pride, and welcomed us, and told us we would meet friends there. It was a lovely interaction.

We did not make any friends. Did you know that if you don't talk to people and skip the actual gathering part, you don't make friends? A lot of my pre-event angst came from just being a crazy person, but part of it was that I do want 1) to belong to a community—and I don't. Community means interaction, and I'm barred from that, predominately by the crazy (also by the way I conduct my relationships ... which is influenced by the crazy). It would be easy to tell someone else in my position—and believe it!—that their identity isn't defined by the fact that they appear straight or monogamous or cis, but when all of that is rendered moot (albeit in it a frustrating, unfulfilling way) by circumstance then ... it's hard to feel that, to be convinced by it. (Especially relevant given recent conversations online re: identity politics, queer as a slur, LGBTQIA+/MOGAI acronyms and definitions; consider intersectionality while policing identity, and that mental illness can complicate everything from gender expression to romantic/sexual relationships.) Portland would be a great place to make friends, to socialize literally at all, to engage in this community and in other communities which are important to me. And in six years, I've done none of that.

But at the same time, there were fat shirtless people, hairy people, sagging-bare-breast people, and that outreach—the visual but also unexpectedly literal outreach of it, of bodies I don't normally see, obviously non-conforming people, people in triads, queer couples, was viscerally effective. A lot of the world doesn't feel allowed to me—and maybe that's something I still need to work on, or maybe it'll always be a barrier, I don't know. But the world was there, and it still feels present within me. A sum positive experience, I suppose? I feel fragile in the wake of it, and exhausted (my back absolutely gave up the ghost even on pain killers, and it was 80° and the sun came out halfway through—thank goodness for parasols—so a significant portion of the exhaustion is physical), and despondent; and hopeful.

There have been a number of interim posts since my last post that have not been written outside my head, because I am a perpetual bundle of busy and tired, consistently overstretching my limited capabilities to do politics and be scared about the state of the world.

One post: I did skip Thanksgiving, and my parents didn't come up after because inertia is a thing. But Dee went up to Washington for the holiday and Devon did drive up to see me for the day, just for a few hours. We made in-no-ways-traditional vegetarian hot dogs and mac & cheese (with hot dogs in it); it wasn't enough, but it was significantly better than nothing and I'm grateful.

Another post: practicing by doing the easy political phone calls on answering machines does (barely) make it easier to call real alive people. Somehow, that doesn't make it any less terrifying to forget about time zones and call places which are still open and unexpectedly staffed by alive people.

Another post: I have managed to leave the house, once or thrice. Snow helped (as sidenote: cats staring at snowland), because I missed the end of autumn and refuse to miss winter, too. We had snow + freezing rain, but then snow that stuck around, approximately pristine, for a few days. The latter was lovely.

* * *

Today my parents came through Portland and had lunch with me; they're headed northbound to spend the holidays traveling, including a trip to see my sister in Seattle. It was exhausting but in productive ways, almost entirely my fault—because over coffee I nonchalantly asked why I had which aspects of Jewish upbringing and how my extended family/various cultural aspects affected it, as one does.

I have, for obvious reasons, but especially as Hanukkah approaches, been thinking a lot about what it means to be Jewish and particularly to be Jewish in the face of forced assimilation and, you know, facism (how are these are sentences I'm writing and why is this the real world and can it stop), and also of the narrative of "Hanukkah isn't our most important holiday, and its cultural importance is actually a symptom of forced assimilation, but this year it certainly has extra thematic relevance"—because I was raised with Hanukkah and Passover and not much else, although my parents say there was an occasional Rosh Hashanah, which I think I remember; for me, there was no "more important holiday." It seems like some of that was because of how things lined up with Christmas/Easter and thus with school schedules, but it's also because that's what my father grew up with; his experience was inconsistent (Sabbat sometimes, but not always; Hebrew school and a bar mitzvah for him but not his brother; Hanukkah/Passover/Rosh Hashanah was all he celebrated, too) which has passed through the generations (Allie and I never had any formal religious education; our cousin did).

I grew up on the opposite side of the country from my Jewish grandparents, who always wished they could see us more often, who tried to cram a lot of Jewish Things into the whatever contact they had; they sent me Jewish novels and celebrated holidays with us less, I think, because those specific things were important—they weren't religious, their own practice was inconsistent—but because the identity was important.

White-passing half-Jewish cultural Jew is approximately as distant from the thing as one can be, and I understand the factors, the time, the literal distance, the way that assimilation works and why I have the background that I do. But I also have that identity, and its ... cultural expectation, I suppose, of persecution and persistence. My ancestors came from Russia, and immigrated before the Holocaust; that was not their personal story but it was their cultural story, and they taught me that, too.

I suppose I wanted an easy answer, an, "ah yes, your grandparents always wanted to practice these aspects of the faith with you, and you can now cling to them at least for their cultural significance even if you don't believe." But I didn't get that, I didn't get a "more important holiday" that can enable to me a real Jew. And I don't know where that leaves me, except that this diaspora experience is as real for me as it has been for my father and for his parents, and they are real Jews, so, maybe, I am too.

We also talked about how, for me, politics et al. isn't something to be countered by optimism or hope; that I live within communities where everyone will not (and has not) survived difficult times, and that but for the grace of Devon and August and my parent's financial support that could include me; and I think it's the first time I've ever mentioned suicidal ideation to my parents. My sister's cancer changed things for my family; we've learned to proactively accept and value of each other as we are, and the way that's effected how my parents view me—that they take me at my word when I talk about my experiences and health—as been huge. These are not things I would have felt comfortable sharing, years ago. I'm glad I can now, and the conversation wasn't all politics and Judaism and fascism, I also told them about Dare's antics and Dad showed me this video of him falling off his bike on the way to work. It was a worthwhile afternoon. But I am now very tired, and nothing really feels better.

I'm headed down to Corvallis soon, but we put it off a day and Devon is coming to get me, at some crazy early/late hour when we can skip holiday traffic, so that I can still see him and get my gifts without trying to navigate Amtrak/exhaustion/crazy.

Last month was my birthday. Dee's family came down just before it (her brother and I share a birthday); her brother stayed a few days and her mother stayed some time longer. I went down to Corvallis in the middle of her mother's visit, to see Devon and go to dinner with my family. When I came back up I housesat for a weekend while Dee drove her mother back up north.

The company was lovely and only a little introvert-taxing. Dee, her mother, and I went down to Powell's for an afternoon and Dee bought me my birthday gift of books: three CJ Cherryh novels (one a reread) and the Steerswoman series that I just finished and loved. I went in with my alphabetized, color-coded* to-buy list and still barely managed to hunt everything down and make purchasing decisions in a reasonable amount of time. I'm used to feeling harried when I go book shopping, but I dream of one day having time to browse.

* colors since updated to reflect Powell's room colors, because it's a useful mnemonic and also pretty

The trip to Corvallis was mostly miserable, and I blame that on myself. Birthdays have become harder and harder, this one especially so, and when I see Devon I always dredge out my worst in some subconscious expectation that he will fix it. I've never matured, never become self-reliant; most of the frustrations in my life exist because I am a dependent, not a contributor—thus the long-distance relationship, living circumstances, material goods both frivolous and essential that I don't have, untreated health issues, &c. It's easier to get away with those things in your twenties, when people assume you just haven't grown up yet. But with each birthday, it's more obvious that I will never grow up; my maturation was halted by mental illness and now all my energy is forever diverted into dealing with the crazy. I'm aware that birthdays are universally fraught, but this one was especially dour.

Devon gave me Nagisa Momoe Nendoroid I've wanted for a while, though. That was good.



Nagisa/Charlotte/Bebe is one of my favorite characters of all time. I love her creepy/cute imagery and the way she changes the tone of PMMM; and while I had arguments with PMMM: Rebellion—and normally dislike mascot-/moe-bait characters—I loved her in the film. It's powerful and narratively-appropriate to turn a witch into a person, and, cutesy and mascoty as it is, I resonate with the cheese thing. I've called her Our Patron Saint of Cheese, and it's not quite in jest: she's an icon for the frustrating longing of what we want and can't have, which is indulgent and foolish but remains legitimate, none the least because it indicates why we can't have it (see: fan theories re: her character). There are a lot of things which would make my life better: if I were self-reliant, if being a dependent were financially viable, if there were societal accommodations for my dependency—all valid wants, so the smaller wants are valid too, even when petty or obsessive or in the form of a cute figure. And I have so many wants, small and large. To have her seems to prove the rule; still, I love her, my idol of wanting, so well-timed to my birthday-related frustrations.

When I saw my parents, they didn't have a gift, they just asked me to provide a wishlist of things I needed or wanted, with a subtext of "we can tell you don't really have the means to look after your basic needs; can we help via a birthday gift?" which is true, thoughtful, and hit too close to home: another reminder of the tie between my longings, my disability, and my age. I still need to write that list.

Anyway. I came back into town, had a quiet weekend housesitting the cats which I absolutely consider an auxiliary birthday gift. And then I was hit by a week of debilitating back pain, which (knock on wood) has since passed and which had no trigger, cause, aid, anything really; it was out of the blue and unrelenting. And as soon as that began to clear, my keyboard blew up. It did a low-key, static "acts like you spilled water on it" crosswiring, but no water had been in its vicinity for a year so fuck if I know; I unplugged it, made do to a shitty wifi keyboard; got fed up with shitty wifi keyboard, plugged my old one back in, and it worked perfectly again in a sort of universe-provided bit of gaslighting, "none of your frustrations or problems are real, ahahahahaha"—and then 24 hours after that it broke again in precisely the way it had before. I don't know. A new keyboard is here now, because unexpected necessary purchases don't trigger aforementioned anxieties at all, my old keyboard is probably possessed by capricious minor demons, and the answer of "how do I keep breaking keyboards when I've become so careful with them?" is probably: cats, who are less careful, and covered in fur and litterbox dust.

I've been reading a lot, gaming a lot, caught up with Critical Role which is, in itself, vaguely terrifying because it was such a long, immersive journey to get here; I am fervently not in my own head, because the only way to cope with the anxiety "I am not a real adult who can engage with life" is to refuse to engage with anything. I have my Bebe figure and I adore her. Everything else has been sort of shit, for reasons which stem from me, my vulnerability and inability and this persistent longing for a life different from my own, but, again: these reasons are real.

I have tried and failed to give even one shit about Marvel, and my social circle has said only good things re: Captain America and Hydra, so I’ve basically been able to put the whole thing aside as addressed, if not resolved

but then I read Tor.com article (which I won't link) about how this is one of many drastic character changes in comic history, and will be forgotten in time, and exists mostly as an clever, bold bid for attention and money, and that they the writer plan to give Marvel both.

This is the thing about a self-selecting social group! I forget there are other people out there saying harmful, false things with the reasonable tone of a tempered majority opinion!

( This is personal, and private, and not particularly reasonable, and all about Nazism. )

Title: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers Book 1)
Author: Becky Chambers
Published: New York: Harper Voyager, 2015 (2014)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 410
Total Page Count: 187,610
Text Number: 551
Read Because: about a thousand BookTube recommendations, buddy read with Teja, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The crew of a wormhole-tunneling ship makes a long haul to their next job, a planet occupied by a strange, violent race. So: what it says on the tin, but only nominally because plot is not the point; rather, the journey is a mere vehicle for interpersonal exploration. The crew and their interactions span a wide variety (which is almost satisfactorily alien), and the messages within are often hamfisted but as obviously well-intended. It's creative, snappy, sappy, heartfelt; rather like Mass Effect on a smaller scale. But all of this was ruined for me by one plotline: Ohan's, which is ultimately about ( spoilers )—a message that hits me close to home and which I find inexcusable. This perhaps shouldn't eclipse the rest of the book's more successful diversity, but, for me, it does. I can't recommend this, or forgive it.


Longer form, more anger, explicit spoilers, as posted to tumblr:( Read more... )


Shorter form, more swearing, as sent to Teja: ( Read more... )

Teja and I have remarkably similar responses to the novel, despite our different tastes (he has more tolerance for feelgood, I have more demands from narrative structure) and the fact that illness and autonomy isn't a hot button issue for him. We've had a lot of back and forth chatter about most character's arcs, which—while not always positive—certainly indicates that these arcs are engaging. We both were disappointed in the dearth of plot, and the fact that the mega-arc was the least developed and most redundant of the bunch. But the book is a promising combination of elements, and I can see why it's had such positive reception; to me it feels like Mass Effect, and he compared it to Firefly—speculative/found family opens the narrative to a lot of creativity and feels. If it hadn't been ruined for me by Ohan's storyline I still wouldn't've loved it, because the tone was too cheesy for me, and he didn't either. It's hard to call a book with such an obvious, weighty, and varied interpersonal focus "insubstantial," but it sort of is nonetheless.

I am sitting here after very little sleep, waiting for August's bloodwork to come in—

—thinking about affect, and the fact that, whenever a bad thing is happening, one part of me is having an emotional reaction and another part of me is judging my emotional reaction: is this appropriate? is this authentic? am I performing "sad" or "scared"? When my outward expressions are insufficient, I'm never sure if it's because I'm still processing or because my reluctance to express creates an inability to experience. And always is the certainty that all of it is pretense, even when there's a concrete, external cause. This complicates the experience of bad things, becomes a sort of meta-anxiety.

I know where that self-doubt comes from. It's the natural result of an adolescence and young adulthood being told that all my negative feelings and expressions were drama-mongering, and an adulthood with an invisible condition that likes to go stealth, leaving me with comorbid tremors and depression but unable to feel the underlying pain. But I wonder when that sort of armchair self-psychoanalysis has run its course; at what point does knowing the root of a problem fail to excuse or alleviate it?

—eating chocolate: Madécasse: Sea Salt & Nibs, 63% cocoa. Picked this up because it was on clearance, and to my surprise the company seems sincerely mindful. But the chocolate itself is only so-so. I'm a percentage snob and this is way below my grade; regardless, the soft, sweet, fruity chocolate doesn't work well with the crunchy, strong, salty inclusions. The inclusions are sprinkled on the back of the bar, which looks nice but makes for irregular flavor and texture. This isn't awful and I want to like it very much, but I wouldn't get it again.

—and getting August's results! All is well: her bloodwork is normal, other than indications that she may have been fighting something off, which is consistent with her stomach issues and is already being treated with medication (metronidazole). She's still on bland food and still not eating her normal amount, but her food intake is slowly increasing, all her other symptoms have cleared up, her water intake is fine, and she's had little behavioral change. Unless things get worse/fail to get better, she should be fine. We still don't know what caused this; probably an undefined stomach bug or indigestion.

Now I can sleep mindlessly watch Star Trek for a week.

Yesterday I discovered bullet journaling, which sparked way more feelings than any journaling system should rightly warrant. I keep a Moleskine, for review drafts and notes; I love the efficiency of marking dates in my Google calendar; I keep an exhaustive list of media to consume and media consumed. There's an absolute appeal in the idea of a consolidated journal, especially written all pretty and neat, and tangible.

But. I switched my to read/watch/etc lists to a digital format because it was easier to annotate and to access, since I can use OneNote offline on my phone. Ditto a digital calendar, also because Devon/messenger systems can add to it, also because it provides alerts. My review notes are by necessity not amendable to bullets. And here's the thing about to-do lists, which is basically what a bullet journal is in long form: I don't have daily responsibilities, I don't have classes or deadlines or a social schedule; I have intentionally withdrawn from any level of society where I might have to do a certain thing or meet a person at or by certain time.

That withdraw was intentional, and it's what keeps me sane; I'm aware that, insofar as my starting point is "too crazy for real life," I'm lucky that I'm able to live this way. But this sort of hyper/aesthetic/tangible organization is so much my thing that realizing I have no use for it is a bitter reminder that my starting point sucks, that what I escape is also what I'm forbidden.

It does make me want to keep an index in my Moleskines, though, to mark the occasional unfinished thought/longterm reference item. It makes me wonder why there's no bullet journal equivalent software, because customizable calendars and entry formats are beyond the scope of printing but would be achievable digitally. And it makes me wonder how much tangibility matters—I write my review notes longform both for convenience and as a part of my thought process, but switching to digital for my media lists has made them significantly more useful and easier to maintain. How important is tangibility for to do lists? Depends on the person, I suppose.

And it makes me want to do what first popped into my head as "bullets chronicling each day," and keep not a list of to-dos but have-dones, not reviews but single statements about media ongoing consumption or moment by moment thoughts—the intended purpose of my Tumblr, but I'm so given to long-form writing and my anxiety makes me paranoid about talking about something while still consuming it, so my Tumblr never really gets used that way.

And it makes me think about the irony of thinking about doing a thing, any thing, instead of actually doing anything.

A Simple Plan, film, 1998, dir. Sam Raimi
A straightforward but effective take on the premise of a small, uneasy group forced into a conspiracy. It's discomforting to watch for exactly the right reason: everything feels justified yet is obviously unacceptable, and that tension provides significant immersion and momentum. The ending is overwrought and hinges on coincidence, but to be honest I didn't much mind. If you can overlook the limited scope and obvious flaws of the film (the all-white, nearly all-male cast among them, although there's some interesting class dynamics at play), this entirely satisfying.

( A Simple Plan as unusually intimate relationship, crossposted from Tumblr. )

Jupiter Ascending, film, 2015, dirs. Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski
This reminds me of YA literature: consumable trash filmed through a female lens—which doesn't make it magically non-problematic, but does make it a refreshing take on wish fulfillment. I don't care for the amount of spectacle; the action scenes in particular grow wearisome. But to my surprise, I love the my-love-interest-the-bodyguard dynamic, male as powerful and useful but subservient to female choice—full disclosure, this is a trope I adore (see: my love for Enslaved), but I'm still surprised that Jupiter Ascending pulled it off so well; I shipped the hetero leads and, let me tell you, that never happens. Anyway: not great, but a different and much improved variety of trash, and worth two hours of my time.

Big Hero 6, film, 2014, dirs. Chris Williams and Don Hall,
This should feel like merch bait, and it's so emotionally heavy-handed, and the antagonist(s) are shallow and I could do without the manpain motivation, and the end is predictable. And yet: I cared; I cared immensely. It's manipulative but effective, the character design is simplistic but charming, and Baymax is phenomenal. This is how to do mascot characters! Make them adorable and a little silly but also make them central to the story, make them the emotional lynchpin as well as the comic relief. (Great soundtrack, too.)

Kill la Kill, anime, 2013, Trigger
I loved Gurren Lagann, which was successful because it looks a simple concept and spiraled (ahahaha) it larger and larger—it was a deceptive, brilliant, effective device. Kill la Kill isn't simple and it certainly isn't brilliant. It's so energetic and ridiculous that it takes some time to adjust, but I did—and I enjoyed the show. To my particular surprise, I like the emotional and interpersonal arcs; they're hamfisted and obvious but have just enough underlying nuance, and the result is endearing. (Most especially, Mako.) But the plot's a mess. Spiral Power is an entire show worth of fridge brilliance; clothing-is-evil-except-not-also-fanservice lacks cogency and purpose. Is it unfair to compare this to TTGL? Probably, but oh well. Kill la Kill had bits I liked but as a whole was an unsuccessful successor.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (When the Cicadas Cry), anime, 2006, Studio Deen
Let's all take a moment to appreciate just how well the When They Cry series handles bad ends. They become tools to explore how a limited cast reacts to wildly different stressors, to explore multiple permeations and sides of the same story, and, best of all, the cumulative effect of the bad ends is the whole point. There's no frustrating dissonance between persistent viewer memory and reset character timelines—instead, the gap between them is the core the plot. Of course, the series originated as a visual novel—but games screw this up all the time! When They Cry is an aware, engaged, utterly satisfying take on the trope. (I've talked about this in length on Tumblr, crossposted below.)

The art is simplistic. The empty-eyed psychopathic tendencies of apparently all schoolchildren can be repetitive, although Keiichi's paranoia is a compelling change of pace. Higurashi isn't hugely refined, to be sure. But the scenery-chewing is its own delight, and what this series gets right I simply adore.


( Let's talk about Bad Ends )


**( Bad Ends and player PoV in Ib (and 999) )


And written 2016: ( I just finished Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai, aka season two/the answers arc )