Disco Elysium Is Pretty Pessimistic, And I Think That's Why It Works So Well, But The Conversation With

Stop motion movies are so comforting and joy and a lot of it is insanely underrated and deserves way more attention

Can we stop acting like two people deeply loving each other has to mean they have something romantic or sexual going on? Can we stop talking as if platonic love just can't be that deep? Because that's not true. Platonic love can be just as deep, and sometimes even deeper, than romantic love. What I'm saying is, we need to stop putting romance on this pedestal and act like every other form of love is less important.

Messi the Dog as Snoop in Anatomie d’une chute (2023) dir. Justine Triet

I don’t think I am physically able to put, A Little Life, Jude St. Francis, into words of how he makes me feel.

I’m reading a lot of people who are angry at Jude for k-lling himself in the end: and then there are people who are angry the way he was written, which was Jude’s belief of “I deserve this pain” and “no, I won’t go to someone who will help me.” And let me just cast in my 12 cents.

Jude believed that he deserved to be hurt and should pay for his “badness” by punishing himself. He was told at a young child that he was wrong, bad, wicked, over and over by people he believed where good and were their to take care of him, example? Brother Luke.

But why didn’t Jude stop? Even after he was hold he was good and kind, why did Jude believe he would keep hurting himself? Simple, he believed that it was just who he was and how he was to be treated. I’ll explain, when someone is raised to believe that they are the best, and that they should get everything they want and everyone should do everything in their power to get them what they want. And when you tell that person they need to be humble, they are going to tell you off and continue in there ways and thinking. Jude is the same way, he was told he was wrong, and everyone else who was trying to tell him he was good, he wouldn’t believe them. He couldn’t allow himself to believe it because he saw love as a lie.

He believed that hurting himself was just part of him, something he had to do. Like brushing your teeth and taking out the trash, he had to hurt himself because it was who he believed he was. It was his identity. And he was afraid that if he took away that self loathing and self hatred, he wouldn’t know who he was.

And that’s where William comes in. William helped him understand who Jude was. Something to be loved, and cared for, something to want to come home too. Sure Harold also showed him this, but it wasn’t the same relationship. William loved Jude without reason, but Jude believed that Harold loved him like one would love a puppy. You bought the puppy, therefore you must take care of it. But this does not mean that Jude didn’t see Harold love for him, he couldn’t see why or how he could be loved from a Father relationship.

William proved to Jude that no matter what he did, William would be there. William wanted Jude to be better, William took steps to making sure Jude was getting better, William set up healthy walls to tell Jude to fix himself, seek help and to take care of himself. And with William help, Jude gave himself a new identity. He was not completely whole, but he was seeing himself of something deserving of love, and to be cared for. And when William died, Jude lost that part of himself. Jude couldn’t see himself of someone deserving of love because that one person who he believed could loved him with all his scars and walls down was gone.

Even with everyone around Jude telling him that he is loved, he couldn’t believe it, or had a hard time believing it because it was all words to him. He saw their actions as something he should be angry at because they were made out of sympathy and not out of love. And even at the end of the book where we see Jude get better and start taking the necessary steps to getting better he still died in the end.

And that is what is the biggest pill to swallow in the end. At the end of the book, we all fell in love with Jude. Each of us grieved for him, I cried harder over his death and mourned for Jude harder than I have ever wept for someone I knew personally. In the end, Jude still died. And for this reason, I can’t put what this book makes me feel into words. This book makes me feel that I need to go in a room all alone and just stare into the stars and wait till my body is ready to keep on breathing.

As a person who chronically wants to end their own existence I saw myself in Jude. I saw his pain, his sufferings and understood why he believed he was “made for pain” or “made to suffer.” And this is the same lie I was telling myself for years, I said it so much that it never accorded to me that I deserved anything else until someone showed me the reason why I should be loved. But Jude died believing that people saw him as a burden. And I don’t have a response for that. Other than just unending tears.

Koisenu Futari’s Kazu-kun: one step further into the amato-normativity discussion

So. What’s up with Kazu-kun. Why does he deserve his own post.

Kazu-kun starts as a background character, and then progressively becomes the third main character of the show.

And I love him. Which is not a small feat because I started out hating him. And all of it was very much on purpose.

Kazu-kun, I believe, exists as a vessel for the allo audience.

He’s there to asks all the questions the allo viewers are asking themselves, and then to learn and grow from the answers, and become both a friend to our protagonists and an ally to aroace people in general.

He exemplifies the arc the allo viewer would ideally go through while watching the show.

The thing about Koisenu Futari is, it’s a show made from the perspective of aroace characters, for aroace viewers. It’s about our fears, our insecurities, our experience with amato- and allo-normativity, our lives.

And it’s good thing! It’s a significant part of why I love it so much!

But it also means that it’s risking loosing it’s allo audience a bit. (I’d be curious to know how many allo people have watched this show at all tbh). Almost all the other allo characters in the show exist so our protagonists can experience being faced with yet another form of amatonormativity. Kazu-kun exist so an allo character can experience being faced with aromanticism and asexuality.

And it impacts his entire character, including and especially the flaws that made me hate him at the beginning.

Part of it is, of course, because a character needs flaws to grow out of, as the most basic way to write a character arc.

For example, he begins as the most Straight Man™ ever. He thinks Sakuko belongs to him because they dated in the past (are kinda technically on a break the situation wasn’t clear the expectations were very different), thinks cooking is easy and a woman’s job and of course doesn’t know how and thinks it’s perfectly normal because he’s a man, absolutely cannot fathom how a man could not be sexually attracted to a woman he’s even somewhat close to.

All those traits are flaws he will overcome as he grows and becomes a better man.

But part of it is also traits he needs to play his role well.

He is, for one, a very nosy character, with a strong sens of entitlement that means he’ll stop at little to get his answers. Which of course makes him absolutely insufferable at the beginning! I spent almost all of episode 4 wanting to slap him! But it’s a necessary character trait for him to actually ask out loud the questions the allo audience is quietly wondering about. If he was a proper and polite Japanese man, he wouldn’t be asking those questions, and therefore wouldn’t be fulfilling his role in the story.

And then he learns. All his questions and indiscretions get him somewhere, which is a much better understanding of aroace people. And with some luck, the allo audience learned with him, without needing to invade actual aroace people’s privacy!

(yes I’m still salty about ep4, why do you ask. just because it was narratively necessary doesn’t make it any less hard to watch)

To be perfectly honest, from a pure character development perspective, I think he changes a bit too quickly. But, well. The show is only 8 episodes. Also that’s my only complaint about this show.

He first learns how to cook, and most importantly, instantly apologizes to Sakuko for asking her to cook like it was nothing. This ability to 1) recognize when he was wrong and 2) apologize for it, is key in his whole development and one of the main reasons I’m ready to accept that he did a 180 so quickly.

Cooking, of course, if a synecdoche for every gendered expectation about couples. He’s not just learning how to cook, he’s learning that the things he was taught to expect from his future wife actually take work and are very much doable and enjoyable as a man.

Most importantly, he learns that romance is not the only register he can use to interact with women; in this case especially Sakuko. In fact, at the end of episode 4, he offers that since she is aroace, they could have a QPR together.

(the show doesn’t call it a QPR, doesn’t use the word at all, but that’s exactly what it is, both the actual arrangement between Sakuko and Takahashi, and what Kazu-kun offers to Sakuko)

So, big points for getting what Minori can’t seem to grasp in ep 6: QPR are not reserved to aromantics! Really important lesson that a lot of allies never learn.

In this specific case, I don’t think it would have worked, and it can very well be interpreted as him refusing to let go. I don’t think a QPR with the woman he’s still very much in love with is a good idea. And while he has learned a lot, he’s still pretty new to the whole thing, and I think he’d still have too many expectations that would end up hurting Sakuko.

And once Sakuko has taken the time to think about it and tells him no, not only does he listen, not only doesn’t he get upset, but he immediately reassure her that they are still friends and will keep being friends.

In that way, this whole journey of his allows Kazu-kun and Sakuko to get back the easy and joyous friendship they seemed to have lost when they broke up. Which is both the biggest and final proof of maturity on his part and the best thing he got from the whole adventure.

Once he understand that Sakuko and Takahashi are aroace and quite happy with it, he also becomes their first defender. He tells Minori off twice when she steps out of line, and is ready to correct one of their colleagues when he assumes that he and Sakuko are a couple. Good example of how to be an ally.

Faced with micro-aggression (or even overt and intentional aggression), minorities:

might get overwhelmed by emotions and are almost certainly more sensitive to it than allies

are less likely to be listened to if they correct the person, because they are a minority

often cannot afford to be angry or aggressive or anything other than incredibly diplomatic about it without being told off, a problem allies face a lot less

Hence why a big part of allies' job is correcting other privileged people. Great ally-ship, take notes everyone.

In conclusion, I said last time that Minori and Haruka exemplify how amatonormativity also harms allo people. I’d argue that, with all this:

Kazu-kun shows what allo people have to gain from getting rid of it.

(his best friend back, at least one new friend, a new vital skill, and a lot less expectations)

Downton Abbey S3E5 demonstrates how a well-written death can affect the audience beyond the screen;

Sybil was a side character for most of the show, but she had her moments to shine, especially during the war when she was working at the hospital, which is pointed out by Thomas when they hear of her death. Thomas's reaction in particular is one that stands out in terms of how well-written the scene is - it would have been easy to have him be cold about the matter, considering his insistence that he doesn't care much about their employers in earlier seasons, or to have a mild reaction of vague sadness at most, but no, Thomas, who was until now always cold and cynical, sobs. He tries to keep up his facade when Anna checks on him, tries to insist that Sybil wouldn't have cared if he had died, only to sob even more when admitting - more to himself than Anna, really - that she would have cared.

It's an especially heartbreaking scene to watch when remembering that the only other times he had previously shown this kind of desperate vulnerability were when he decided to get out of the trenches, after he figured out the scam, and - and! - after the death of Edward Courtenay, an experience he shared with Sybil. The first two can be argued to be selfish, in the roughest terms, as they are about Thomas, but the latter two and the pure grief he displays for both someone he was romantically interested in and someone he pretended not to care about speaks volumes in terms of who Sybil was, and that even after she is dead already. It's fascinating to see the scene in this light, how 'even' someone like Thomas, someone with little regard for the upper class, was touched by Sybil's life and death to such a degree that he will openly show this amount of pain and general emotion over her loss.

Alongside Thomas's, there are other particularly touching moments in this episode as well, of course, with especially the reaction of Daisy - who had been in a bad mood for the entire episode - standing out as one that shows how the news break her away from her jealousy; Mrs. Hughes referring to Sybil as "the kindest being in this house" with this barely contained sadness and, a bit later, hugging Daisy for comfort as well pushes this further, even if Mrs. Hughes has been established as having a bit of a softer side.

All of these small details just in the reactions of the servants show how well this episode and the show as a whole are written in terms of how they handle difficult emotions and especially grief. The reactions of the people around the deceased are always so much more powerful in touching the audience than the actual death itself. Wonderful writing, here the same as with the deaths of Edward, Lavinia and and William.

You think disaster just falls over the sky? No. We have come step by step towards this fate.

FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE 霸王別姬 (1993, Chen Kaige)

LITTLE FOREST (2018), dir Yim Soon-rye

Hannibal s1e7 "Sorbet" | s2e7 "Yakimono"

Amores perros (2000)

Dogs shouldn’t have to put up with us.  The characters in Amores perros create a cruel world, or perhaps they think they can only succeed in an illegal manner.  But there are dogs in all of these people’s lives, too.  They come in many forms, but they suffer in similar ways.  Cofi is a rottweiler who has a very “no thoughts head empty” energy during many scenes.  But he is a killer.  In another world Richie is like a toy but suffers because his masters are incompetent.  He gets lost under the ground and maybe dies. Iñárritu understands the experiences of his characters and uses them to great effect.  The dogs in this film are vessels for empathy.  They distill their owners’ existences down to the most powerful truth.  Much blood is spilled but the dogs are constant.  It is a cruel experience for the audience because there is no rest for them; they simply have to survive the film. 

Amores perros represents Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s best and worst instincts.  It has all his talent but also all his worst impulses.  He adopts a narrative structure like the films of Quentin Tarantino or others, a tapestry of characters interweaving.  The camera moves with a hand-controlled panic to pull us into the world. We constantly bump into other narratives, one line intersecting with the other as these characters affect each other in small or large ways.  Minor details in one moment are important in others.  Iñárritu creates a trap for his characters and then has doubts if he wants to engage.  At times he has great power.  It’s exciting and sad.  I too aspire to be a radical liberal turned doggo-tor.  But it’s incredibly hard to watch the scene when all the dogs in our protect die because Cofi only knows one way of life.  Humans destroy the lives of dogs.  I openly cried for the final minutes.  We cannot learn.  We cannot change.  Young people never learn to find healthy outlets for their emotions.  The only way to succeed is to offend and cause suffering.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says ‘Cofi’ or ‘pandejo’.

Grainy TV footage.

Crazy baby toys.

An advertisement for Enchant appears somewhere.

Sick ‘00s beat drops.

A sum of money is named.

BIG DRINK

A part title appears onscreen.

The narrative jumps perspectives.

A scene isn’t abjectly miserable.