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Lusine let out a tiny sigh, of course they weren't going anywhere... Realistically, it didn't matter that much, it would take some time for Eden to reinstall the cores into their vehicles, and even if they got it done in a reasonable time, it would still be a while before they would be off. That meant they were, indeed, going to have to camp out here with the others now. She wasn't entirely happy about this, it did mean she was going to have to pay attention to that little killer, just in case she pulled anything else… But overall, Lusine supposed things could be worse. They got the cores back, which was the important thing, and it didn't seem like Sid was going to turn on them at the moment. That meant... Camping. It wasn't her favorite thing, but she accepted she'd be doing that when she left her little shack behind. Eden had managed to scrounge up some red meat from their host, which was certainly in Lusine’s interests. The state of the world had made good quality meat rather rare these days, she wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to indulge… Lusine tapped her fingers against her leg for a moment as she listened to the others recounting their own experiences, a small mumble escaping her, "The pessimistic way to view those smoking rigs would be that they were on their last legs… As for the rest of it, this world is probably doomed.” The elderly woman took a bite of the salted meat, savoring the taste for a brief moment. "No doubt,” Ida added, pensively clanging a tool against the hull of her D-Rig. She was the lone member of the group still hunched over her work at the outskirts of the fire, her work made more difficult by the chill and her lack of proximity to the heat. "Though I aim to avoid our own doom, in the immediate, at least." She leveled the wrench she was holding across the fire at Sid, scowling as she wiped at a smudge on her glasses. "I agreed to provide you salvage, not to follow you into the death trap that is Holloword. If you think I’m walking you lot into that hellhole you’ve got another thing coming." She let out a frustrated sigh. "I can try my hand at fixing the rig Magpie won for you, at the very least, that’s something I can offer… The rig she and this one won, I should say," she amended, gesturing with the tool in Skelly’s direction. "No, no, directions will be sufficient. I don't need that pile of junk working when I've already got the Behemoth," Sid was dismissive at best of the offer, "what you so scared of there, glasses?" A few moments where the only sound consisted of the bangs of Ida’s tinkering dragged on before she frustratedly tossed the wrench aside, turning back to the fire to sweep her eyes over the gathering, her eyes obscured behind the reflection of the fire as she finally set her sights on Sid. "You’re really not from around here, are you." It was a statement, not a question, and Ida walked back to the fire, taking a seat between Magpie and Skelly as she pulled her gloves off. "Why the fuck do you think you have the right to ask me where I am from when we have a ninja and some kind of warrior princess in our company" Alliyma was on her feet in an instant, her hand on the hilt of her blade, "The hell you just call me??" "Something I’d take as a compliment, personally," Ida intoned with a deadpan voice. She adjusted her glasses as she went on: "Holloword is dedicated to the excavation of the city it was before the collapse. It’s named for a series of massive letters they found, just sitting eroded on the hillside. Couple looked to be missing, so they took what they had, named the place Holloword. It’s a great big excavation, dedicated to reconstructing the past… Ostensibly." She leaned back. "Your worth in Holloword is based purely upon the worth of your salvage. You do all the digging and all of it goes to the higher-ups… to their leader Hav, in particular. And you’re lucky to get a crumb of bread in exchange for it. Salvage is your money, salvage is your food, salvage is your bed, salvage is your life." The light glinted off her glasses to expose the scathing look she was giving Sid from behind them. "No wonder you’re so excited by the idea of the place," she said grimly. "So what you're saying… is this Hav guy is sitting on a mountain of stuff." Despite Ida's best attempt, a fire had been lit within Sid. "We go in, knock down the king of the hill, take what we want, and live a life of luxury." Ida barked out a laugh, though it was clearly still laced with her dark mood. "Sure, sure… just beat Hav, nice and easy," she scoffed derisively. "Not like he got where he is by being the meanest bastard around. He’ll rip that weirdo core out of your rig, bash you in the teeth with it, and leave you to the vultures. If you’re lucky. You’re completely impossible." She turned away from Sid, leaning over to Magpie and muttering low, under her breath. "The second we have an opportunity, we need to get away from this man. He can get himself killed all he likes, but I do not intend to join him." She straightened, looking beside her to where Skelly sat, and then Lusine. "I don’t suppose anyone here has more sense than our extortionist savior here?" she asked sardonically. Lusine had stayed quiet for the majority of the conversation, her gaze drifting towards the sky as she let out a soft chuckle, “...When I was younger, I would have killed to visit Holloword. It was an amazing place, before the collapse. There was more to do there than the majority of the country…” It was easy to assume that she had been lost in her memories alone, but she turned her head back towards Ida, “Now, you are correct. It’s become a disaster, and I would heavily advise against heading there. A few travelers leaving the area had visited my home in the past and they did not have kind things to say about Holloword. If you want to steal from them, you’ll have your work cut out for you.” "Ida," Alliyma spoke again for the first time since her outburst, her face somber as she stared into the fire, "how many people are starving there?" Ida frowned, rolling her eyes up to the stars as she thought about it. ... Twenty thousand? Thirty? It’s the biggest settlement in this part of the wasteland, it draws people who wish it was…" she gestured to Lusine, sighing. "... the way it used to be, like flies to a light. Hell, the population might even reach into the hundred-thousands, I can’t say for sure." "They would be better off without their taskmaster?" Ida let out a long, reedy sigh. "Magpie, tell me: Am I wearing a sign on my forehead that reads ‘Please Interpret Everything I Say In A Way Opposite to My Point?’ You’re both impossible." Alliyma's silent response appeared pained, but Ida didn't seem to notice as she turned towards Skelly, raising an eyebrow as she took in the warped skin around the young girl’s eyes. "I’m so sorry to ask only now, are you alright? I think in the kerfuffle we forgot you took a strong hit in that duel, while dueling for everyone’s benefit. I suppose we all owe you our thanks, a Holloword outrider is not an easy thing to stand against. And even if you didn’t win, you provided a critical distraction for Magpie here." The direct question caused Skelly to jolt upright from her previous slouch. “Oh yes, I’m ok. Thank you for the kind words. Losing that duel in that manner… really put a damper on my spirits, in a way. I’m not exactly sure how to move forward from here, seeing as I couldn’t even compete with that deck…” Thoughts of Chaos Max rushing at her fill her mind. “Don’t think too much on it. The matchup was simply unfavorable,” Eden added on, “And it’s not as if you had many cores to work with.” "I'd be worried about dueling a Holloword duelist WITH a summon core," Ida added on by way of agreement. Lusine waved her hand in the air, “As far as losses go, that was a fairly tame one. Your opponent had a lucky opening and was able to capitalize on it due to your disadvantage. Child, if you let this get to you, you’ll never make it to where you need to go.” Skelly slouched forward, her bones cracking slightly. “I suppose so. But… I simply have no idea how I can move forward knowing that such a loss could be waiting in any moment.” The shrouded wanderer fell silent for a long pause before saying under her breath, “I wish I knew how to improve my deck from here…” Words dripping with frustration, spoken through clenched teeth interrupted the present conversation, "Why… am I… the only one worried about those people?" Alliyma had her hands on her knees as she sat with her back hunched slightly forward, contrary to her typical perfect posture. "Is that really what this place is like? Escape if you can and leave behind those who can't?" Ida hissed in a breath as she turned back to Alliyma, steely-eyed behind the glasses. "It's not that simple." Her words were blunt, simple, and dropped with the brutality of a guillotine. "I would love to do something about it, would love to have some way to help those back there. But it takes a hell of a lot more than one woman with a conscience to change a place like Holloword, Miss Alliyma. I couldn't and neither can you. That's the fact of it, none of us are happy with it, but all of us have to live with it." Ida cut herself off there, and there was a horrid silence that followed her words for four seconds that felt like forever before she rose abruptly and walked briskly back to where her rig was parked. The sounds of banging rose again, a touch louder than previously. Her face was turned away from the group and set in a grim frown. Alliyma similarly rose to her feet, kicking the dirt before storming off in the direction of her own rig. "So," Sid's attitude was seemingly unfazed by the gravity of the discussion, "anyone else got any fun wasteland stories?" “I’m only here because Master was looking for something she referred to as Olafoil. Is that fun enough?” Eden sighed, crossing their arms as they looked towards Alliyma stamping off, “Otherwise, being a relative hermit is nice.” Lusine let out a tiny chuckle, “Oh please, you got to see the village, and we’re here now, aren’t we? You can have all the adventure you want now, it doesn’t seem like we’ll be heading back right away.” "Um…not to derail what conversation we did have…" Mark finally spoke up, most likely surprising everyone if they forgot the young man was there. He glanced at the group, before feeling that jittery feeling he usually felt when talking in social situations. He hated that. "H-Have any of you…s-s-seen or heard the n-name Sheridan i-in your travels…? I-I’m looking for someone with that s-surname…" “Unfortunately, no.” Skelly curtly replied. After a few seconds, she sighed and asked the group in her soft but cold voice, “Do any of you ever feel like your monsters are… actual things outside of our battles? With personalities and such? Or is it just my bit of insanity in these wastes?” "I-I see…" Mark sighed, a little disappointed in the one answer he got initially, that and it ended up being a dud. "A-As…as far as the monsters…" he cleared his throat. "...I'm really unsure…" It was a weird question to be asked in general, but then again, Mark wasn't 100% in tune with something like that. At the same time, his gears shifted to a different topic...this time turning to Sid. "Sid...earlier...y-you mentioned...the Behemoth having a stealth field. How did you even acquire such a device...? Even more...how is that even possible??"

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Movie Two -- Millennium Actress Or: For How Much I Love This Movie, You’d Think I’d Learn How To Spell “Millennium” Properly First Try Yup, still a blubbering mess by the end of that. Oh, but there are some content warnings to get through first: The main plot is set off by a schoolgirl developing romantic feelings for a man whose age is not described but is definitely in adulthood, though the actual relationship is ambiguous and never even close to sexual. In the Feudal Japan film, the main character discovers her lover is dead and immediately goes to commit suicide. I’d also put a flashing light warning during the post-war montage from all the photography bulbs. Last week, I made an off-hand observation about the base similarities between this movie and Perfect Blue and noted that, despite that, none of the same themes made it over. Today, I would like to revise that statement. It’s not that Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress are two entirely separate movies tied together only by their production staff, it’s that Millenium Actress serves as its predecessor’s spiritual antithesis. If Perfect Blue argues that fictional stories, fictional representations of oneself, are a precipitous slope that one’s sanity might not come back from, Millennium Actress argues that it’s these same stories we tell ourselves that keep us going. I’m about to spoil the entirety of this movie, partially because the movie spoils its biggest twist about ten minutes in (an not in a “technically just foreshadowing it, you know, like a good narrative would” way but in a “Genya has the key that means the artist obviously never got it” sort of way), but mostly because the central theme of the movie is futility, that, despite knowing that it’s not worth it, that it can only end badly, it’s still worth it just to press on. The literal actual final line of the movie is Chiyoko saying, “After all, it’s chasing after him that I really love.” If I’m going to talk about this movie, I want to do it in a way that exemplifies those themes. That being said, if you’d still rather go in blind (and weren’t, ah, blindsided by that quote a sentence ago), you have my blessing. If any of that pontificating interested you, give me a few more paragraphs. Millennium Actress tells the story of Chiyoko Fujiwara, from her early life in 1930s Japan up until the modern-day. A chance encounter with a political dissident turns into a friendship (this is the romance listed in the content warnings) but before she knows it, he is forced to flee, leaving behind only a key, one that unlocks “the most important thing in the world.” Determined to find him, Chiyoko becomes an actress, with the hope that in her travels throughout the world and in film, she might find that man again and return to him what is his. In true Satoshi Kon fashion, it's a fictional biography (though the story was inspired by the life of Japanese film actress Setsuko Hara) told through the lens of a documentary, which itself is depicted in the blurring reality between Chiyoko's real-life quest and that of the characters she portrayed on the screen. It's not just her quest, though. Every character in this movie besides maybe comic relief character Kyouji Ida has a dream, an ideal they want to achieve, and each of them fails in that dream. Chiyoko obviously never meets the man who gave her that key. Genya, in turn, never even gets to profess his love to Chiyoko, Eiko views Chiyoko as an obstacle keeping her from starring roles, Otaki’s marriage to her is based on a lie, and so on down the line. On the face of it, that makes for a pretty depressing movie. However, I said the principal theme was futility, and futility requires one extra ingredient: In the face of a hopeless situation, the futility comes from knowing it’s hopeless, and that’s really what matters here. That’s the twist that Millennium Actress throws at people, that they all know. Now, this may seem contrary to the actual text of the movie. After all, the only ones who knew exactly when and how the man with the key died are Genya and the man who killed him, something Genya only reveals privately to Ida (and the audience) later. But I counter that argument with the final conversation, where Chiyoko talks about finding the man with the key in the afterlife. She knew he was already dead by then, and it didn’t matter. Why? Because that willful ignorance is more fun or, to use a more positive term, that suspension of disbelief, is more fun. This is what I mean when I say I want any viewers I encourage to see this movie to know about it going in. That’s why I audibled to that specific term, one that has a history of use in media criticism. The audience can probably guess from moment one what “the key used to unlock the most important thing in the world” is, just as Chiyoko can. But it’s more fun to treat it as a MacGuffin, a thing the plot needs to keep moving forward. It’s not special until the audience makes it so. Is the lie worth it? I mean, yeah, this is one of my favorite movies. “These things are still worth doing.” Yes, it’s one of those blog posts again. Part of me wonders why we keep running into this theme. I assure you, it’s not intentional. This one falls more closely to a sub-category that we haven’t quite explored on the blog, though: Why would you watch this knowing that it doesn’t end the way you want? Why would you want to experience the futility that I’ve already told you is there waiting for you by the end? There are two common answers to this. The first is simply that of catharsis. This is the argument that says that we do these things to experience the emotion in a safe space -- in the case of movies, a dark, hopefully silent room. I may have been a blubbering mess by the end of Millennium Actress, but I knew I would be, and, to be honest, it was a good cry. To provide the second reason, and perhaps the more thematically cohesive one in this case, I’m going to point to another piece of media, this time a musical called Hadestown, which was written by Anais Mitchel and directed by Rachel Chavkin. Now, the story in Hadestown is literally that of Orpheus and Eurydice with a sprinkling of Hades’ kidnap of Persephone thrown in there for good measure. I can’t spoil these, they’re literally older than the written word. The show asks this question of itself, though, in its opening and closing numbers. “It’s a sad song,” sings Hermes. “It’s a sad tale -- it’s a tragedy!” And the question is answered, “We’re gonna sing it anyway […] Maybe it’ll turn out well this time.” And that’s the key point, for both that show and the characters in Millennium Actress. Knowing how things are surely going to go does not deny them the fantasy that they might not. To draw on another Greek myth, I’m also going to draw a parallel to the myth of Pandora. After releasing the evils of the world from her box, Pandora finds one final thing left at the bottom: hope. In Millennium Actress, the almost-full moon is a recurring motif, drawn attention to by one of the few lines the man with the key has. “When the moon is full, there is nowhere else for it to go but to wane again. But on the fourteenth night, there is still tomorrow, and hope.” And that’s the comfort that keeps the world moving, that keeps Chiyoko’s search going, that pushes Genya to help her despite knowing more than anyone else the search’s true nature. It’s why I watch this movie. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll turn out for the better. -r Next time: The best Christmas movie don’t @ me. ←Previous Post -- Next Post→

So tomorrow marks the 3rd anniversary of my dad's passing. I've been feeling it since the beginning of April...kinda not looking forward to it due to my general emotions. Just in case: if I seem out of normal or if I seem distant or even if I end up lashing out for any reason...just know it's not intended.