After talking about it for a few years, I finally sat down with some friends to watch Kiki’s Delivery Service. Given that this is one of my friends’ favorite movie, I let her pick the version we watched and so we settled in to watch a high-quality VHS rip of the original US publication of the movie. My friend cited music and some artistic choices as the reason for this selection and I, who had a vague idea of what the movie was about (burnout/depression/growing up/loss of creative spark), went along with it. I’d never seen the movie. I didn’t have an opinion. I knew that a lot of people had very specific and very strong opinions, but I didn’t really know why. After watching the movie though, I kind of get it. The specific songs chosen back in the day lend a very particular feel to the movie and, since one of them is right near the start of it, I can understand how changing the song would change the tone of the movie rather strongly. I also understand that the decision to make the cat, Jiji, speak again at the end of the movie is important to a lot of people and that it significantly changes one of the final notes of the movie, not to mention how a viewer might feel as they watch the credits roll and move on with their life. I only very recently saw the movie for the first time, so it wasn’t a very formative experience for me and while I am tempted to see how the more recent edition of the movie feels with the altered music and a story that ends more closely aligned with its Japanese source, I don’t know that I want to spend another couple hours on it (this isn’t a statement about the quality of the movie or anything, just a reflection of that fact that I don’t like to rewatch movies in quick succession). I will probably watch the movie again someday and maybe then I’ll watch the more recent version just to compare how it feels, but I really don’t expect my opinion to change that drastically since most of how I feel about it has little to do with the song selection and more to do with how burnout and creative work is depicted.
Continue readingCritical Analysis
The Harmful Continued Cultural Relevance of Dune
I don’t like Frank Herbert’s Dune. If you’ve read anything I’ve written about the movies or my previous post about disliking Dune, you know this already. In fact, if you just want my general thoughts about the book, you should read my post about my dislike for Herbert’s first novel and leave it at that. This post is a much more specific discussion of what I disliked, why I disliked it, and why I think Dune should be left to collect dust in the period of history in which it was first published.
Continue readingHuman Interaction With The Environment In Scavengers Reign
Spoiler Warning for Scavenger’s Reign. I’m going to be going into detail about the plot and major events of the show in most paragraphs except the one immediately after this one (to hopefully prevent you from accidentally seeing any spoilers before you can read this and can click away if you don’t want to read about what happens in the show). Also, before you read this post, you should probably check out the spoiler-free review from last week to make sure we’re all on the same page.
Also, Massive Post warning. This baby might take you half an hour to read.
Continue readingThe Purpose of Themes and Subgenre Tropes in Chained Echoes
This post will contain spoilers for the game Chained Echoes beginning in paragraph five (the very first sentence of the paragraph is a themaic spoiler and they only get more specific from there).
The older I get, the more I’m aware that everything is about something. Intentionally, unintentionally, and sometimes widely varying based on who is interpreting it. Sure, I learned this truth a long time ago, but it only ever seems to get more and more true as time goes on. I mean, I studied English Literature, always enjoyed reading comprehension tests or assignments in grade school, and though it took me a while to really grasp this idea in high school, I have been leaning into it ever since. This is not a new idea to me or even most people (I hope, though the state of the world makes me question how many people are capable of grasping nuance). I compleely set aside the idea that we aren’t constantly, and frequently unintentionally, showing whatever is on our minds through what we created the time I realized that the story I was writing in high school was about me and the horrible family life I had. Once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it. Even when I redid the story in my last year of college and tried to be more intentional about what the story was about, I still found myself uncovered interpretations and metaphors I hadn’t intentionally written into it. This is why I tend to rewrite rather than revise these days, since it helps me figure out if the underlying issue is actually a part of the story or just something that was weighing heavily on my mind while I was writing. I don’t mind this stuff showing up in my writing, though, since I’m a firm believer in needing to write things out so I can learn what I’m thinking, but I generally try to be aware of it.
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