Thread by @selentelechia

watched pirates of the Caribbean tonight

I feel like popular movies, even relatively recent ones, used to be...smarter?

like yeah it's got a silly tone at the start but there are so many little clever details establishing that the characters are paying close attention

maybe I haven't watched enough recent movies or I'm only rewatching the ones seen as good

jesus christ this movie is almost 20 years old

but even the recent disney stuff seems to be getting dumber or more heavy handed in certain ways

or some aspect of the storytelling craft on display is getting weaker

tangled was a tighter story than encanto, for ex (to compare two that were targeted at the same age)

encanto is the most popular recent one and while I enjoyed it, it is *so* heavy handed

tangled had some subtlety

encanto? none whatsoever

probably shouldn't whine about new movies being worse until I see more of them

I know there are some good ones but they're Serious

the big "fun" movies kinda suck tho

moana was boring and also heavy handed (the character moana had like. nothing. to her. Maui was fun ig)

I guess the best comparison with pirates is the marvel stuff

I really liked a few of the older ones but even those couldn't remotely compare

the lack of tightness, cleverness, subtlety, or whatever...feels related to the utter lack of libido

Guardians of the Galaxy was entertaining but also absolutely sexless

and the sequel was fucking duuuuumb

god, even the latest Dune kind of lacked a real Id, Eros, something like that

and they're still trying to write romances and "gets the girl" arcs I think, but without any of the spiciness

spark

*something*

ah, there's a thing that is necessary for me to perceive what I'm calling "libido" that overlaps a lot with what I'd call "spirit" or "play"

encanto had almost zero *play*

again, I'm not trying to be all "back in my day," but I really don't watch movies that often, and never really have, so I'm comparing stuff that was big enough to be on my radar ten, twenty years ago with stuff that is similarly "big" now

for whatever reason, I'm really drawn to watching movies at the moment, so you're all going to have to suffer through my bad film criticism

there's definitely something about the way that supposedly desirable male characters are portrayed

a projection of an...innate sexual harmlessness that makes them totally implausible as love interests, to me

I don't find anything hot if it doesn't have a chance, however small, of burning

Dune! the fuckers managed to desex DUNE

(yes I've read that blog post you're all linking ❤)

back to encanto

absolutely positive none of the adults except the grandmother have ever fucked

the world feels "small" the way a lot of kids' movie universes do, but encanto's world also felt *dead*

I could intentionally tweet engagement bait but apparently it's just as effective to post my honest, unfiltered, in-my-bones thoughts about everyone's favorite films 😅

I owe @sashachapin a great deal for pointing out that writer's block is about failing to be honest

do modern storytellers even want to be alive

to feel real pain and real stakes and real sex

something goes awry for every generation, of course; for the millennials, I think it's this

"energetically emaciated" is another way I might put it

don't you want to confront the world?

don't you want to grow up?

it doesn't mean you stop having fun, I promise

quit thinking about the horrors of the world and put your body in the line of fire until one of them takes you out

where is your fire

where is your earth

stop "writing POC and trans characters!!!"

go watch hedwig and the angry inch until it sinks into your skin

and understand that *that* is the real fucking deal

grow up!!!!

even peter. freaking. pan. had more maturity than this.

u know that caution is supposed to facilitate desire, right?

desire, will, fire, libido...they come first

https://twitter.com/chaosprime/status/1572786306266333186?t=YBfScFC80qrUQ9edgwT8IA&s=19

please understand that I'm not speaking from a place of ignorance

I understand the appeal and I'm yelling because most of my cousins, most of my high school classmates, are spiraling into smaller and smaller lives like they're putting on layers of armor and it's a LIE

they're eating themselves alive and pulling out their feathers and trying so hard to believe that this will turn out to be a life well-lived

all that we have in abundance, and we chose an abundance of caution

having a kid broke the spell, I think

could've easily gone the other way but I was luckily already primed to be wary

in the limit, you can't protect your heart

especially once it starts walking around on its own

that's not what your heart is for

I don't even know how to tell the kids I grew up with that they're going to miss the call to adventure

they're holding oh so very still in the hopes of protecting the soul that they had as children and it won't work, it CANNOT work, the world is not safe and you are not safe, in any sense of that phrase

"the only thing you can't exchange for your heart's desire...is your heart."

remember that the devil will recite scripture

I'm begging you to remember

https://twitter.com/selentelechia/status/1572790614046941186?t=yubmNKtoofETZShpIuPv-w&s=19

https://twitter.com/eigenrobot/status/1572792700046393345?t=JJZ26y9HRhWbCbYuu6HxBw&s=19

jesus was not a safe man either

and I think he lived quite well

I just remembered

some classmates struggling with the story of him driving the moneychangers from the temple

and cursing the fig tree

and a generation that needs that *explained*

or needs to grant him an exception because he was the son of god

has utterly lost the plot

the point of the story of jesus is that he did not *get* a special dispensation to act in ways that men are not supposed to act

what kind of son of god needs to have his actions justified

if you already want to die, you might as well do it by living

pursue a better death than one you're giving yourself, however slowly

https://twitter.com/cometothisHouse/status/1572796046073532416?t=sDG6kkPEY_fExLDYZFlgcw&s=19

I almost didn't add "if she does"

because of course if she dies I'll be broken

but the 5yo girl didn't deserve that kind of cowardice

and neither do I

and neither do you

https://twitter.com/selentelechia/status/1572738374229958661?t=FOlbs-0RePSPN_ZIgBnEAQ&s=19

you are an animal and you are a soul and if you let them, they will dance beautifully together

when you feel that blip of discomfort as you brush up against the blooming and buzzing confusion, just...stop for a second, before you rearrange yourself to fit into a new and smaller box

and ask yourself whether that blip was a warning...or an invitation to dance

I didn't intend to be pulpit pounding, I just wanted to talk about movies

but I come from a very long line of reverends 😅

be not afraid; thou art god

I love you and I want you to live