augerer

[augerer]

Jaime and Cersei’s romanticized idea of being one soul in two bodies is so fascinatingly destructive. So much of their relationship is based on this notion of fundamentally refusing to accept the other as a whole. Both of them want to shove the other inside of a box of their creation that is kind of antithetical to them as people. Cersei does use Jaime and her children as extensions of herself to achieve things that society keeps from her grasp due to her gender. It is a reaction to the brutal patriarchy she exists within that dehumanizes her and robs her of power. She locks Jaime inside this box where he functions as her sword, essentially. Then, the whole point of Jaime’s arc in ASoS is to establish that he is more than a sword, more than rituals of violence. To me, Jaime’s obsession with Cersei continuing past their childhood mainly stems from a tight clinging to the past. Following Jaime’s trauma, disillusionment, and increasing isolation due to his experience with Aerys, knighthood, and moral constructs, he views the relationship as the only concrete thing in his life and relies on it for affirmation and meaning. He also uses Cersei as a means of dissociation— filling his head with thoughts of her during the executions, “losing himself in her flesh”, hoping to prevent his nightmares through dreams of her— a way “to go away inside”. He also unconsciously never wants to move on from being that blissfully ignorant romantic boy that he was, so he desperately keeps the one thing that is constant (his twin sister - a constant from birth), and romanticizes a relationship that is not what he believes it is. He projects her onto a pedestal and obsesses over an ideal that does not exist, also putting her into the role of a perfect woman (“I thought she was The Maiden”), to turn the relationship into something pure that he can guard and revolve his life around. He puts himself in the position of a knightly protector figure to cope with his own identity crisis and the destruction of his self concept. He needs her in order to feel needed. They need each other for self-love. But, both of them also dehumanize the other in different ways, and to different extents. “You are my other half” is a twisted notion that prevents the autonomy and individualization of both parties. It treats the other as a half and not a whole. Not to mention the possible consent & communication issues it brings. “I am not whole without you.” You are, and should be. Truly dynamic of all time.

[augerer]

what do you mean you havent used mindfulness techniques to accept the state of the torture labyrinth as is yet. its like youre not even trying

[augerer]

Aggregation of Ruby Spotted Swallowtail caterpillars on a tree in the Yucatán Peninsula

[augerer]

full thoughts on every single halloween movie ig

Halloween

Yeah so what's genuinely interesting about Halloween is I think the sort of psychological realism. No one dies until like an hour in. It follows these White suburban girls on halloween, making plans to hang out, have sex, baby sit, teenage stuff. You think something's going to happen with Annie in the wash house but then actually she just lodged herself in the window half naked for nothing. There's a growing tension. And what's the tension? Well arguably my favorite scene of the whole franchise ever is the first one. A little boy murders his sister. That's fucking scary. It's Hereditary before Hereditary, to me. That sickness of oh god that's your sister! You're so little! And that with the psychological realism is the core conceit of the movie right. White suburbia is Eden, it's a paradise where you can smoke pot and your Dad is a cop and everything is okay. There is no evil left to be scared of at all, it's all outside the boundaries of the film except for the scariest evil, for White suburbia, the evil within. What if there's just something rotten at the core? And what if the cops that have never once hurt you can't help you either?

So it's scary but only for this particular time and place, it made me think of Poltergeist wherein White suburbia has to confront its own sins, how colonialism has built White escape and that is what tears it apart. The rotten thing is the Whiteness itself, and interestingly Halloween speaks to that too.

So what's the scariest thing that can happen? Why is the movie so scary? It's because I think these girls are set up so thoroughly, so realistically. This movie came out nearly 50 years ago but they all seem like kids. It's a slow movie. And I think what I like as a staple of these movies is that when people do start dying everyone can only scream for help. There's this sense of community of safeness that everyone thinks they can rely on that fails. The cops fail, the neighbors fail, and again it's this thing from within, born and bread and ti turned out wrong, that takes them.

Michael Meyers is entangled with this wrong sexuality too. It's interesting I don't think the teens are persecuted for the crime of having pre-marital sex in that the audience feels bad for them, Michael is evil. It's his perverted sense of sexuality that can't let a woman show her boobs without dying. In the classic movies THE trope imo, the thing that makes this movie more interesting is how Michael is interpolated as a lover. In this movie he comes in with a sheet over him, posing as this girl's boyfriend. Why the hell? That's like a lot of work he could just walk in and kill her lol, but it's interesting that in this movie and a few sequels he's indistinguishable from a lover. And he also of course killed his half naked sister after she had sex when he was just a kid. So this teen sexuality is perverted, it's made wrong and it's made dangerous by this outside evil. And sometimes what is wrong and evil can't be distinguished from what is right and fine. Scary. I don't think it' as simple as like teenagers deserve to die because they have sex, right, that's not the message because you're screaming the whole time they don't deserve to die! But there's a precariousness that wasn't there, this sexuality has been polluted as all of suburbia was polluted and now what is danger what is safe what is natural what is unnatural, it isn't clear. Super interesting theme I think. This false comfort of White suburbia and even being a teenager in this space.

Finally, one of the more compelling scenes of the movie is this particular mask reveal. In basically every subsequent movie when Michael is revealed he's burnt, shriveled, old. In this movie, he's just a kid! I went fuck! He's a kid! Because he is, he's young he's just some guy. And isn't that why it's supposed to be scary? Because you live in White suburbia and everything is normal and the cops love you but there's just something wrong, something off, there's a kid and he's just a person but he's doing all of this and suddenly you closed yourself off from the world and the Eden you built can't save you.

And then he's just gone.

2. Halloween II

A good movie, I think it becomes more gruesome and leans into the themes of sexuality that the first one is playing with too. Michael poses as a lover quite intentionally, slowly reaching his hands around a giggling girl before brutally dunking her in some boiling water (great scene, when she's sitting there and he's killing her bf out of focus in the back too that's awesome). It's more of a survival horror movie. I will say now I don't think any of the movies following fully encapsulate what makes the first movie scary, which is this thematic way in which the quaint and pure is made unstable, the way the home is made unsafe by something coming from within. It's in particular scary for this White sense of safety, this White idea that the world is at bay in the suburbs, but what about the evil rotting growing eating you from within? Where does it come from why is it just a kid and he leaves next door? Interesting! This movie plays more with how desire and danger can be inextricable, the facade of love and lust becomes evil. And Laurie just goes the fuck through it. There's some element of the slow burn psychological realism, the way individuals try to search and prepare but can't as there is a slow walk a slow creep of something unbeatable unkillable unreoncilable.

I suppose I haven't talked about Dr. Loomis, the foreteller of evil and the devil. He says Michael is evil beyond reason every movie, but maybe is it that we can't reckon with that kind of unnatural violence coming from seemingly nowhere? He's Cassandra, screaming that the devil is coming and always there are naysayers. And I think there's this tension this creates between Michael being a boy a person, which to me is scariest of all, and Michael Meyers being the devil, evil beyond personhood, but perhaps Dr. Loomis is also warning of this inevitably. White corruption, right. The rot, the death, etc.

So the movie is a claustrophobic, injured crawl out of this place that is built to heal you that is now only caging you in. There's a great powerlessness throughout the whole thing, there's greater violence too. And it's also about not being able to escape the nightmare of your own trauma, how it follows you. A functionally good movie, scary, tense, probing themes of sexuality, but I think less thought provoking than the first.

3. Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Okay so yeah it's not a halloween movie in that it is not about michael meyers... I do actually get the instinct to uh drop this guy. Perhaps they should have listened.

I kind of hated it at first but honestly it really grew on me, it's so incredibly stupid it does loop back around to maybe genius. The sci-fi campiness reads as a whacky episode of the twilight zone or goosebumps. A halloween mask factory is producing incredibly catchy mask commericals (set to the theme of london bridge is falling down) and these damn masks are taking over the nation. A dead beat divorced doctor dad has a mysterious patient death related to the omni present mask factory duh and ends up going to the mask factory town with the wayyy younger daughter of this dead patient to investigate. The town has weird vibes, you see that halloween is just a movie in this universe, there's some deadbeat divorced dad sex ig, and a woman gets laser beamed in the face to death. You learn finally that the factory is super evil because the irish people running it are reconnecting with their Celtic roots through uh putting pieces of stone henge in every single mask they're selling in order to turn children's heads into snakes and bugs. Which will resurrect a celtic god or bring about the apocolypse or some such.

What? you're thinking, how? It all makes sense but like logistically how shall they pull this off. Well obviously on halloween they're going to run another one of their super catchy commercials that this time activates stone henge (in the mask ofc duh) And they've lured every kid in america away from trick or treating at 9 PM (EST? PST? in each time zone as it happens? unclear...) through a mask give away.....

THAT"S BAD! So deadbeat divorced dad was at one point kidnapped by the mask factory but he escapes, killing everyone with mask technology except the main bad guy who laser beams himself somehow to god knows where (never seen again). And deadbeat divorced dad ofc also releases from the evil Irish mask clutches his new gf. He's flipping shit bc the commercial is still going to run soon and turn kids into bugs! But his new gf tries to kill him and when he fights back and kills her he learns she's a robot... was she a robot the whole time? did she get replaced by a robot? not for me to say.

finally deadbeat divorced dad makes a plea to all the channels running the evil commercial to turn it off and while two do the third does not and the movie ends with him screaming in the phone while the commercial is now running, begging them to turn it off. what a thinker. awesome, nothing to analyze super dumb. well its ofc about consumerism etc but like not well lol so fun tho.

4. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Meyers

Oops so no one really liked mask based horror in that way so they went back to Michael forever and ever.

So right the second movie introduced a bit of a motive for Michael. Which also detracts from the sort of senselessness yet the realness. Also clearly in the first one Michael begins killing young teenage girls who show their boobs or are vaguely pretty in this way that mirrors his sister's murder. It's the tangled sexuality, he cannot escape his conflicted feelings or desires, he even poses himself as a lover right. Yet we also get no window into his desires, it's an interesting movie because it's all implication. The way sexuality and this cycle of teenage sexuality is taunting him, bringing out this desire to kill perhaps. Or more concretely what we do know is that he is lurking, stalking, watching, then acts when sex happens just like with his sister. The inherent incestuous nature of it, the way you can't help but see Michael's sister in every girl he kills and imitates the boyfriend of. Michael really is the threat of predatory behavior, again perverted sexuality like incest. That's movie one, it's all actually subtle in the text. Michael doesn't have a special bond with anyone it's this cycle of violence at women who have sex, incestuous and perverted. And Michael, again, is sort of just a guy.

So movie two we learn Laurie is actually a target because she's Michael's much younger baby sister lolll. It's a bit silly ngl. Laurie has silly dreams about it. Okay.

Now, movie 4, Laurie is gone, just fucked off and left her daughter behind. Michael's an uncle! Uncy Michael... It's even more silly. Despite this I think 4 and 2 are very similar movies. So now Jamie (niece of Michael) becomes a target along with her adopted family. I genuinely enjoyed the adopted sister relationship here between Jamie and Rachel. Rachel is like the girls in the first two movies a sympathetic teenager who wants to have fun but also cares about her adopted sister. Rachel has a dick boyfriend who cheats on her so yippe she lives. Jamie gets a bit little girl screaming annoying but again you kind of root for the sisters and their sweet relationship. It is so interesting how much everyone screams for help even when no one is around, it's so much more prominent in this series it's a staple of the classics along with Michael being seen as a romantic partner. Again it's this sense of "I just can't be alone, right? Someone has to save me? I have relied on this community for years, I knew I could count on this" and being let down.

Once again we have Michael get confused for a romantic partner. The one's getting killed are the cheating boyfriend and the mistress, Michael attacks sexuality again . Also the ineffectiveness of cops becomes incredibly clear here as Jamie and Rachel get locked in a house by cop guy and suddenly they're trapped in there with Michael. What was thought to be protective is suffocating, is ineffective, is harmful.

So this to me is a continuation of the first and second movie quite faithfully, minus Jamie Lee Curtis. Again not as interesting as movie one as the second movie alone is like okay this guy actually survived being shot like six times. Then being burned alive. So Michael becomes much more supernatural, just a force and not something real that could happen two doors down if ur also in white suburbia. There's elements of this in the first one, this push and pull of being a kid and being evil, but now he is taking on legend which you can also see in the way he has become legend in the town. There's a mob after him that is also ineffective. The movies also feel more and more need to add explanation to why Michael is doing things, cobbling together a rationale more and more which actually renders things less eerily unknowable. In the end, entertaining most of all because you can think to yourself but maybe Michael just wants to get to Jamie to be her Uncy....

5. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Meyers

So I guess it is relevant to mention that halloween 4 ends with Jamie dawning a clown mask like Michael beginning of movie 1 and stabbing her mom. Huh, kind of interesting, something wrong with the genes or a trauma response?

Jamie is now mute and having Michael visions (I like to think I'm psychically connected to the cats I am uncle to so I thought this was highly realistic of course). And shes in some mental institute and her adopted mom is fine so kind of boring.

This psychic vision of Michael killing people situation makes the whole movie inherently sillier. They took the oh no it's Michael's familial connection thing pretty far here. In this movie Rachel dies for the audacity of taking her top off to shower smh.

Genuinely pretty uninteresting, it's a lot of Jamie mute screaming then screaming fr fr having visions of her uncle and kids running about and Dr. Loomis more and more inhabiting this role of like crazy guy who has seen this before not afraid to violently shake a child. I will say it leans hard into the theme of cop uselessness going so far as to make silly clown noises when cops show up or walk places which is fun keeps this movie in the universe of the first four (sans 3).

My favorite part of the movie is after Rachel dies her friend Tina is next and so after killing Tina's bf, Michael drives this guy's car wearing his mask. Tina is like omg babe can't wait to go to this party weird mask and kisses Michael on the lips. Like over the mask but yk. This genuinely seems to fluster Michael who doesn't kill her but speeds off with Tina. Tina is like omg r u giving me the silent treatment and Michael just stiffly keeps driving (not killing her....). Finally she's like ok pull over so I can get cigarettes jerk! And he does... he just pulls over and lets her get out of the car...

Then Jamie has an uncle vision and so the cops go to the gas station and Michael just kind of drives off.....

So like Michael kind of accidentally went on a date a bit, he didn't have to do all that, it's like he got nervous and literally was like shit she kissed me what do i do omg she wants cigarettes fuck fuck ok i'm out. He does kill her later but yeah romantic, confounding. Loved it.

6. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Meyers

They kind of drove the series off a cliff with this one. Like where do you go from this. So Michael before was grounded not in myth but the very real childhood murder of his sister. Then he becomes an unkillable legend. He becomes the boogeyman, a movie monster. Here they take it to uh druid cult whatever the hell. Turns out Michael has been killing because of a druid curse that drives him to kill when a certain constellation (thorn....) appears on Halloween naturally.

So Michael and Jamie (yk niece) got kidnapped by a druid cult who wanted to harness Michael's evil power. They also impregnated Jamie with Michael's baby what the hell it's actually a minro plot point ish, the incest, not related to previous themes.

It's just crazy. I think it's pretty silly but not fun enough as the third. A very clear attempt to give Michael, who kind of keeps getting more and more unhinged, killing just whoever, a sense of direction. This movie ends up kind of accidentally giving Michael an arch where he has to like break out of his cult indoctrination and kill the druid cult lolll. It ends sort of mystifyingly with Loomis getting the druid thorn symbol on his wrist, what does that mean why?

It subverts the interesting tropes of the first few movies, this evil from within, what is his purpose, why would a boy do that? How can a man do that? And gives it this easy logic, a curse of course! A boy would never actually do that ! But I don't know what if he did, isn't that the most horrifying part? I think adding this helpless level to Michael this bizarre cult druid logic, completely ruins what to me made everything so interesting. Like it is mysterious, it is this close to being real. No psych it's okay everything is okay a boy wouldn't kill, teenage girls wouldn't be brutalized for their own sexuality, White suburbia is okay it's just some cult meddling that drives senseless ritual violence. Boring!

I will say a really big plus of this movie is that Paul Rudd is in it and if you know Paul Rudd you, at some point, even maybe during the credits, can go holy fuck young Paul Rudd and watch the movie like and that's Paul Rudd doing that...

My favorite part of this movie was that this time Michael inhabits the role of a guy's romantic partner. This guy is like babe can u get me a towel and Michael hands it to him and the guy is like thanks babe. I like to think Michael is exploring his bisexuality <3.

7. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

So to map out the Halloween movies you have I would say 1, 2, 4, 5 in a very clear continuity and 6 kind of is loosely related but jumps of a cliff completely lore wise. This is the first reboot, sort of in place of 4. Jamie is back and I'd say this movie throws away the trope continuities of the first 6 and revamps the movie to be a girl boss movie about Jamie Lee Curtis being a troubled alcoholic Mom dealing with inter generational trauma but also being a badass.

It's the first to deal with inter generational trauma as the larger theme, rather then this perversion and lurking evil in White suburbia. It's set in this rich white private school so actually one might think there could be related themes of how inter generational trauma lurks in wealth (eh idk but something) but it more is a convenient location than anything.

Instead of Michael as a kid doing something unthinkable and horrible, this something awful that is the mold blossoming in peaceful white streets, he is more a representation of the inter generational demons coming back to haunt you. It's fine.

There's no Michael masquerading as a lover, no boob shot then kill, no dumb useless cops really, not even the classic scream for help above all else as much. It kind of feels like a movie to make Jamie seem kind of cool, she's so prepared, she's calling the shots, she decapitates him! It's awesome. And she does this while trying her best to be a good Mom, awwwww. It really is just okay, it feels so separated from the other movies and lacks the horror or intrigue the other movies have by playing with themes of sexuality and evil and evil in safe spaces or in lovers. It's more an action movie where Jamie saves the day and has a son to contend with. Oh brother!!

8. Halloween: Resurrection

Literally gasped OUT LOUD when I saw Tyra Banks. So kind of a sequel to H20 but sooo unrelated like bye Josh Hartnett bye Jamie Lee Curtis in the first five minutes but she did her best (i was ROOTING for you,,,,,,,).

Kind of fascinatingly early 2000's. Again dropping these tropes of also like high school kids who are dating, maybe having some dating troubles, wanting to have sex. Now it's college students on a very early internet days live stream exploration of Micheal Meyer's old house. It's so silly as a concept. Obviously old uncle mikey can't have livestreamers in his house so it's a live rampage of these dumb kids who are like pulling pranks and having sex on camera. We are so done with the babysitting plotlines of yore oh no. Instead of your average teenage girls just looking after kids living their life, it's very tropey college students obsessed with themselves, or fame or fucking or if your the girl who survives just being normal, she doesn't even want to be here... So Michael here is just like a scary guy. He is literally just the boogeyman, a guy who kills and is hard to kill. There's no theme here it's just a slasher which follows typical slasher archetypes (dick guy, slut girl, etc) in a way that is actually kind of disparate from the rest of the series.

9. Halloween

The only full kind of redo of the first movie and. Um so I just don't like Rob Zombie is one thing about me. I respect House of 1000 Corpses for the sheer audacity but I think his read on Halloween is all his worst instincts. The ambiguity of Michael's psychology is interesting, not only is it interesting but it is the very thing that makes Michael interesting. Like Michael is in a seemingly average family, his sister just has sex as a teenage girl does and Michael kills her. As I've said a million times this is interesting to me, this rot in White suburbia that seems to come from no where but is inevitable and so real. The sexual perversion inherent, the way that everything is fine or seems to be. There's not abusive Dad, toxic household, there's just a kid and he kills his sister and the fact of that without barely any context is so scary.

So of course Rob Zombie said okay Michael's family is like White trash and the dad is a textbook abuser, yelling at Michael calling him a pussy. And Michael's Mom (oh yeah you guessed it who else but Sheri Moon Zombie) is a stripper so of course the kid is fucked up!! Puked in my mouth. Michael is like speed running psychopathy just burning through pets and he even kills a bully and it's like wow so his fucked up dysfunctional white trash house made him this way! Like he kills his dad bc duh the guy sucked he was an abuser. And like idk broken record but the whole thing was Michael only killed his sister no parents it leads into that tainted sexuality theme. And why? We don't know and it's scary because suburbia is supposed to e perfect so what happened and now he's just lurking, no one did anything wrong....

It's just all too easy, like he got bullied and abused it is sort of pop psychology serial killer logic 101. It is highly uninteresting to think of Michael as your average twisted freaking cycle path.

Also the Rob Zombie of it all is so grating, like not only are there boobs it's like full frontal, it's stripping, so much women being sexualized which of course was happening but very gratuitous. Also the psychological realism is completely lacking, the dialogue is much worse. And omg maybe Michael just wants to connect with his sister, snooze.

10. Halloween II

Worse than his first one because there's a lot of point for point remake stuff that is fine in the first but he went full Rob Zombie on this one. What if Laurie became an angry belligerent "slut" due to her Michael trauma? Uhh put Sheri Moon on a glowing horse speaking to sweet baby boy Michael please and Laurie's name is angel actually.... And uhhh Michael dies but Angel is seeing mommy visions and maybe the serial killer is passed to her. Like it genuinely has these completely unrelated stripper fucking plots that seem to be there so we can watch an old man fuck a naked stripper then both of them immediately die.

The second (chronological) Halloween movie is about trauma and being stuck in your nightmare, this movie thought let's also do that but instead of this claustrophobic hospital environment where you physically cannot crawl away from the thing that haunts and hunts you (which we're going to throw away in 10 minutes) it's just a girl getting shitty therapy then going a bit nuts. Just dressing like a "slut " now and getting mad. Again quite uninteresting to me and very silly with these sheri moon horse visions I can't get over.

11. Halloween

So we're back to the good old inter-generational trauma theme. Set post halloween 1 (the actual og rob zombie found dead in a ditch) It's interesting I think there's something with horror movies thinking about how surviving a horror movie kind of might make you a crazy prepper who's crazy to your child... much like in final destination: bloodlines right. Like Jamie Lee Curtis (back again and let's forget Josh Hartnett is her son he's too busy taking his shirt off in Trap (as a serial killer wow makes u think)) fucked her kid up trying to prep her for Michael by being so paranoid and over protective and teaching her all this self-defense stuff. So that's the new theme of the series. But also an old theme of the series,,,

The movie is also a return to form in that there's a kind of dick boyfriend (re: H4), nice girl (grand daughter of Laurie/Jamie), and this killing on halloween that is both brutal but targeted.

Less of a Jamie girlboss movie as H20 (phew). And in that way it's a good movie in that it's well produced sort of follows these inherently fun and interesting build ups of tension where people get hunted and killed and Michael Meyers is just inevitable. I thought the scenes of him at the mental hospital were well shot and interesting.

But it kind of never reaches beyond its own form. It's a movie that follows the things on paper the other Halloween movies did, had realistic teenagers and realistic teenage relationships that fell apart and then Michael was there persecuting them. But this time with generations of trauma and knowledge grandmother, mother, daughter work together and use that inter generational baggage and crazy prep to set off a Michael trap that is also a house. Michael burns again. It's enjoyable and more well done than most movies and the theme of how trauma becomes something you pass down because of how it alters how you can view the world and treat your child, traumatizing them with your own fear is interesting. Michael again comes back as this form of trauma. It is empowering which to me makes it less scary and is also inherently less interesting a bit than the ogs.

12. Halloween Kills

Wish Paul Rudd was Tommy Doyle,,,

Whatever, kind of more of the same. Genuinely forgettable in that while there is a plot, there is more about inter-generational trauma and this time mob mentality stuff, etc. it's quite flat as a film. It again seems to have read the textbook on what to put in a horror movie then done that but there aren't even character archs, no psychological realism, no development except Michael gets closer and closer and closer. Just a movie.

13. Halloween Ends

Yeah so I think this logically makes sense as a means of thinking about Halloween contextually in modern times. I really liked the opening, it struck that chord of this horrible thing (thinking of Hereditary again) this time an accident. This guy kills a kid he's babysitting on accident and I really was like oh yeah that sucks, super horrifying thing to happen. A natural way to think about the horror of a child killing his sister (like how can that be, can a kid be accountable for that). I thought okay yeah how can you move past this, interesting parallel here. And then the guy goes like full Joker lolll.

It's again this inter-generational trauma, this time with poor dating choices. Like having this trauma and being attracted to the darkness in this guy who's kind of an outcast bc he uh accidentally killed a kid whoops. And again Jamie can't help herself but be crazy and even though she is right it's that over-protectiveness and inter generational baggage weighing on the movie.

But the movie foremost I think is about what Michael Meyers is in the modern day. Do we still find this senseless murder by a child in suburbia so scary? Is the way he comes from within, disrupts the perfect verdant garden of the White vision of paradise still so tormenting? What is in the consciousness now is the boy killer, the toxic masculinity to domestic terrorist pipeline that plagues Whiteness, that's the violence. I think the movie is at least making that argument and responding to that in culture.

So this Joker Boy goes from accidental killing to being validated in the eyes of the oldest serial killer on the books to killing and killing. And it's interesting because while the first movie again is about a boy who kills and you don't know why but he does and he does it again this movie takes a guy and then decides well he actually just got overtaken by a real evil. So it's just evil, the machinations of evil. He was good and then he saw Michael Meyers and he was bad. It's kind of a cop out. Like fundamentally Michael Meyers is who he is and that's scary, why? Why is he like that? Cult shit maybe or maybe he's a kid and there's just something wrong and the thing you think you're escaping moving out of the city in this White paradise is actually living amongst you. And that's such a huge horror. But this is just like a guy who was good totally and it's just a supernatural evil force that took hold. He could snap out of it. Michael Meyers is THE supernatural force that unsettles.

But Joker Boy takes on the Michael Meyers mask, it is clear he is this new threat to Whiteness, to what should be peaceful. But also in the end still killed by the GOAT himself. And then Michael dies fr fr. it is once again this big hoorah of generations coming together and healing.

Jamie Lee Curtis is healing and trying to be better and write what often sounds like a self-help book for final girls ig. Her love interest also accidentally killed someone like Joker Boy (foil alert) but their love is redeemed and found beautiful through the narrative ig bc Frank didn't succumb to evil.

It is overall an interesting meditation on horror, on what is scary about this man killing, on what that scary thing has become. Still though less interesting to me.

I think overall in this whole process I have only gotten more respect for the first. I'm talking about themes that I'm not sure are super intentional but regardless I think the sort of White horror of it all is baked into the text and is highly fascinating. It is scary because of the deep threat to whiteness or rather the threat of whiteness within whiteness, which is why the racial diversity of the newer movies is a bit surprising (not a comment on identity politics like should there be representation etc etc). But rather it is surprising and a bit like hmmm to see greater diversity to me in a horror story so invested in Whiteness and what is horrifying to White people and particularly white suburbia. It feels like these bits of representation (even the gay couple) were added on paper right, but also don't match up to the overall themes and actually muddy the message about how Michael Meyers haunts White consciousness in particular. Obvious statement but it's scary bc its scary, right. it's scary bc White people do worry about what lurks in the shadows of their homes, abt what lurks around the corner, abt suburbia being tainted like that etc. mostly because it already is...

Anyways I overall wouldn't say I love really any of these movies though halloween 3 i would recommend to any fan of campy movies. But the og Halloween movies and some sequels were quite thematically interesting to me. The first in particular shined by keeping things vague, by toeing this line between Michale as monster and Michael as person. The opening is still so horrifying just on paper, right? Brother kills sister. The fuck. What a horrible thing, for that to happen in such a place, to have such an elaborate set up of peace and happiness only for this murderer to return is so interesting. It's interesting because it's real, it's just a kid, it's your brother, your neighbor and something's wrong in what should be paradise. Whiteness is evil, it's already there, it's molding in there. It's the metaphorical looming evil at the core of Whiteness and it is also a person who has done something so unthinkable you don't know where to go from that. Yeah, I like that.

[augerer]

The Young King of the Black Isles

Maxfield Parrish, 1906

Oil on canvas, 51 × 41,1 cm, private collection

[augerer]

this is such unserious thinking. . .

a leftist understanding of racial oppression would be that it arises from material conditions not that it arises from a pre-existing bigoted belief

many defenses for white supremacy do in fact take the form that white people are good and others are bad, (i.e. there's the zionist narrative of 'made the desert bloom' which is about white people being capable, but also the narrative of 'these babies are potential terrorists', which is about people of color being evil and dangerous); there is not a single universal rhetoric around white supremacy

the fundamental tenet of leftism is in fact based on opposing the capitalistic system and the belief that the majority of "badness" (oppressive systems) in the world can be linked to capitalism, and furthermore the leftist theory on imperialism is that it arises from capitalism and the two are connected, and that the system of oppression which dominates global society wherein some countries are extracting labor and resources from other countries is in fact imperialism. also ymmv but i feel like liberal idpol is way more frequently "we need a [minority] in [position of power]" than it is we need to blame everything on imperialism. I am not sure the strawman of a lib who is constantly blaming everything on imperialism instead of something else which would have been more accurate is real.

seeing capitalism-imperialism as a driving force of history does not preclude the agency of nonwhite people because the history of imperialism also involves the history of anti-imperialist resistance and liberation. just as we shouldn't stop seeing capitalism as a driving force causing oppression in our society because that's giving too much credit to rich people or something. we can accept simultaneously that the imperialist-capitalist class and the imperialist-capitalist system dominates society and that working class and of colonized peoples and that they are also a great political force that is writing history.

[augerer]

ASOIAF where Ned is born as a girl

I mean we know Robert already was in love with Ned but *sigh* heteronormative society and all that

[augerer]

「帰路」

[augerer]

Field Trip - Part I

An IWATEX fancomic.

AKA "Tang goes outside"

[augerer]

admonishing teacher: and would you still behave this way if the earth cracked open to reveal an unyielding tract of slavering organs ?

naughty child: i would unveil my terrible opus

moral: the child's opus is too hideous to behold

[augerer]

It's a little fucked up that the past literally only persists in the form of its traceable effects upon the exact present moment. You would think that surely at least some little bits of the past that can't be deduced from the present state of things would nonetheless still be hanging around in some vague ghostly form, but nope! Completely gone forever! And yet however meanwhile, the present is so very rich in evidence of the past that you would think there's barely any room left for all the proper Now stuff. But somehow it all hangs together.

[augerer]

recent realization has been just how much of rgu is based on soviet art. we all know by now how ohtori's warping architecture is inspired by constructivism

but apart from that, the thing that makes rgu's cinematography special—it's usage of esoteric images to create visual new meanings + it's repeated shots of lined up objects—is so clearly Eisenstein

rgu directly utilizes Eisenstein's theory of montage—and it's my favorite usage of it too. it feels like the technique was created ex professo for rgu's cinematography. i could think of no better use for it. that girl sure is revolutionary.

[augerer]

a cosplay photo so old it was taken on actual film (which explains the streaks from my scanner) and the con we were at doesn’t even exist anymore. it was around 13 years ago actually now that I think about it.

[augerer]

hey guys if you’re planning on making a vaguepost on the dashboard can you message me with the details and some of the lore behind the vague post you’re making. a vaguepost for the dash and a detailedpost for me. because i like to know what’s going on. if you do this i will automatically take your side because you’ve done the right thing by letting me know what’s up. thanks in advance ❤️

[augerer]

moon landscapes, camelia