chippyyyz

[chippyyyz]

Living his best life

[chippyyyz]

i promise to shoot the man i accosted in the alleyway unless he gives me his wallet. he says "this is just like rokos basilisk". i say "what?", and the man says "ah so you don't already know. i know information which is dangerous to you, and may cause unquantified but large amounts of disutility to you if you know it. give me the gun or i will tell you this information". obviously i wouldn't believe him, except omega previously told me that my next victim would be right about everything he said. so im inventivzed to shoot him before he can speak, but a weighted average of all human beliefs implies murder will be punished severely in the afterlife (so the tiny probability any god is real doesn't cancel itself out across different gods). instead i lunge forward and hold a cloroform rag over his mouth, knocking him out. now i need only fear earthly reprisal, and my accomplice (who is my alibi, due to our distinct resemblance) is a perfect copy of me. since ive precommitted to kill myself if i get ratted out (as has he, since we're perfect copies) i know im secure. in a way he precommitted before he even existed, though since that idiot thinks he's the original he doesn't realize it. hey what if i could credibly predict that he would commit to other things before he existed. he could- oh goddamn it what a waste of cloroform. before i leave to begin bringing about the existence of a vindictive superintellegent ai i pull the wallet from the mans pocket- $0 dollars. just another night for me, just another night

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[chippyyyz]

Travisiin Ghoul Submission by WillWeaverRVA

[chippyyyz]

cool thanks 👍 looking forward to it

[chippyyyz]

hard cider was invented when someone decided to make beer that tastes good instead of bad

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[chippyyyz]

literally every music genre has at least one album that will absolutely change your life if you give it a shot

[chippyyyz]

Fuck it, I didn't want to make a post on this but it's bugging the hell out of me so let's exorcize the thought.

Lilo and Stitch is an extremely good children's movie. I've been working at a daycare for over five years now, and out of all the children's movies I've shown to an auidence of twenty or so school-age kids (i.e. between the ages of 5 and 12), the only movie that's held their attention as well as Lilo and Stitch is The Emperor's New Groove, and the only one that's held it better is An American Tail. Of those three, Lilo and Stitch has won the vote of "what movie we will watch" the most. It not only entertains kids, but emotionally captivates them from start to finish, because it very thoroughly understands how to engage children on their level. It's a smart, tightly written children's movie.

The feat of story-telling genius it pulls of lies in its ability to reach both where children's imaginations want to go and where their lived real-world experiences lie - most children's movies focus on one or the other, but Lilo and Stitch dives deep into both. On the imagination side, there's Stitch's whole plotline of being a little alien monster being chased by other weirdo aliens onto earth because they want to stop him from running amok and causing havoc (which, of course, happens anyway in fun cartoony comedy/action spectacle). On the real-world side, you have Lilo's plotline of being a troubled little girl who has an abundance of very real problems that, like an actual child, she struggles to comprehend and deal with, as well as the many adults in her life that care about her to some degree but all struggle to fully understand her. Kids want to be Stitch and run amok and cause cartoony havoc. Kids, even the least-troubled kids, relate to Lilo, because all of them have been in a similar situation as her at least once in their lives.

Balancing these two very different stories, with very different tones and scopes to their respective conflicts, is a hard writing task, but Lilo and Stitch manages to do it in a way that seems effortless with one very powerful trick. The two plots are direct mirrors to each other, complete with the characters involved in each having foils in the respective plot. To break it down:

Stitch, the wild and destructive alien gremlin who everyone has labeled as a crime against existence, is Lilo, the troubled young girl who's viewed as a "problem child" by all the adults in her life. In both plotlines, Stitch and Lilo are facing the threat of being "taken away" from the life they know because they act out, and in both plotlines, we see that this is an unfathomably cruel thing to do to them and will not actually solve the problems they have.

Dr. Jumbaa, the mad scientist who made Stitch because making monsters is what mad scientists do, and who had no intentions of ever being nurturing or parental to anything or anyone in his life, is Nani, Lilo's older sister whose parents died when she was young and now is forced to act as a parental substitute despite not being mentally or emotionally prepared for that responsibility yet. Both Dr. Jumbaa and Nani are trying to get their respective wild children in line with what society wants them to be, and both are struggling hard with it because they in turn have a lot of growing to do before they can actually accomplish that.

Pleakley, the nebbish alien bureaucrat who ends up being assigned to help Dr. Jumbaa despite being mostly uninvolved in creating the whole Stitch situation, is David, the nice but mostly ineffectual guy who's crushing on Nani and wants to help her but doesn't really have much he can provide except emotional support. Ultimately Pleakley and David prove that said emotional support is a lot more helpful than it seems on the surface, as they give Jumbaa and Nani respectively a lot of the pushes they need to become better in their parental roles.

The Grand Councilwoman, who runs the society of aliens that is trying to banish Stitch forever for his crime of existing, is Cobra Bubbles, the Child Protective Services agent who is in charge of deciding whether or not Lilo needs to be taken away from her home forever for, ostensibly, her own good. Both are well-intentioned and stern, with a desire to follow the rules of society and do what procedure says is the most humane thing to do in this situation, but both lack the understanding of Stitch/Lilo's situation to actually help until the end of the movie.

Finally, we have Captain Gantu, the enforcer of the Galactic Council who is a mean, aggressive, sadistic brute but is viewed as a "good guy" by society because he plays by its rules (well, when he knows can't get away with breaking them, anyway), who is the counterpart of Myrtle, the mean, aggressive, sadistic schoolyard bully who is viewed as a "good kid" by other adults because she plays by the rules they established (well, when she knows she can't get away with breaking them, anyway). Both Gantu and Myrtle are, in truth, much nastier in temperament than Stitch and Lilo, but are better at hiding it in front of others and so get away with it, and often make Stitch and Lilo look worse in the eyes of others by provoking them to violence and then playing the victim about it - in fact, both even have the same line, "Does this look infected to you?", which they say after goading their respective wild-child victims into biting them.

The symmetry of these two plotlines allows them to actually feed into each other and build each other up instead of fighting each other for screentime. The fantastical nature of Stitch's plot adds whimsy to the far more realistic problems that Lilo faces so they don't get too heavy for the children in the audience, while the very real struggles of Lilo in her plotline bleed over into Stitch's plot and make both very emotionally poignant. When both plotlines hit their shared climax, they reach children on a emotional level few other movies can match - the terror of Lilo being taken away from her family, and the emotional complexity of that problem (Cobra Bubbles pointing to Lilo's ruined house and shouting at Nani, "IS THIS WHAT LILO NEEDS?" is so starkly real and heart-breaking), is matched and echoed in the visual splendor and mania of the spectacular no-way-this-is-going-to-work chase scene where Stitch, Nani, Jumbaa, and Pleakley all team up to rescue Lilo from Gantu.

The arcs of the characters all more or less line up. Nani confronts her own failures to be a guardian and parent to Lilo and resolves to do better and learn from her mistakes. Jumbaa, who through most of the movie protests to be evil and uncaring, nonetheless comes to not only care for Pleakley, but more importantly for Stitch too, and ends up assuming the role he never wanted but nonetheless forced himself into from the start: he is Stitch's family. Hell, the moment that reveals this is really clever - Stitch goes out into the wilderness to try and re-enact a scene from a storybook of The Ugly Duckling, hoping, in a very childish way, that his family will show up and love him. Jumbaa arrives and, coldly but not particularly cruelly, tells Stitch that he has no family - that Stitch wasn't born, but created in a lab by Jumbaa himself. But in that moment Jumbaa is proving himself wrong - because Stitch's creator, his parent, DID show up, and did exactly what happens in the story by telling Stitch the truth of what he is. It can't be a surprise, then, that later in the movie Jumbaa ends up deciding to side with Stitch, to help him save Lilo, and to stay on Earth with his child.

David and Pleakley go from being pushed away by Nani and Jumbaa respectively to essentially becoming their partners in the family. The Grand Councilwoman and Cobra Bubbles finally see how cruel their initial solution of isolating Stitch and Lilo from their family would be, and bend the rules they are supposed to enforce to protect and support this weird found family instead of breaking it apart. Gantu and Myrtle are recognized for the assholes they are and face comeuppance in the form of comedic slapstick pratfalls. And most importantly, Stitch and Lilo both get the emotional support and understanding they need to thrive and live happy lives as children should be allowed to do. It's like poetry, it rhymes.

It's a very precise, smartly written movie. It's a delicate balancing act of tone and emotions, with a very strong theme about the need for family and understanding that hits children in their hearts and imaginations. It's extremely well structured.

...

So it'd be kind of colossally fucking stupid to remake it and start fucking around with the core structure of it, chopping out pieces and completely altering others, with no real purpose beyond "Well, the executives thought it might be better if we did this."

[chippyyyz]

I'm coming to realize how vital it is to keep a running list of shit you did in the past few weeks so that you can participate in small talk. It's literally not anything to do with them being interesting at all it's just having Something to say to give people even the barest thing to hold on to. It's so you don't get into the "what have you been up to" "nothing much what about you" "yeah same" trap. Literally just say something.

What have you been up to? Um well it's getting warmer so I've been having to brush my cat every day.

Like no it's not that interesting of a thing to say. But now they can respond to it. They could say, man yeah it really is heating up, I've been trying to think of things to do inside more often. Or, oh you have a cat? What's their name?

Like. It's Something. All you need is Something. And if you're like me and your brain immediately goes blank upon entering small talk then keeping a list will help you remember things to say.

[chippyyyz]

Check out the bonus panel on the site!

SMBC ◆ PATREON ◆ INSTAGRAM ◆ BLUESKY ◆ STORE

Buy this comic as a print!

[chippyyyz]

This implies the existence of a third type of guy

(guy who prefers planes to stars) can we pretend that shooting stars in the night sky are like airplanes

(guy who has no plane/star preference) we dont need to pretend anything about planes or stars

[chippyyyz]

sometimes i forget that kim's actually REALLY funny

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[chippyyyz]

have you watched any like prestigious anime movies? things like satoshi kon works, ghost in the shell, ghibli movies?

I've seen every Satoshi Kon film, I've seen every Miyazaki film except Totoro, I've seen Akira, I've seen Ghost in the Shell. I've also seen somewhat more obscure stuff like Jin-Roh, Angel's Egg, and Memories.

GitS was actually a major inspiration for one of my pre-Bavitz novels, but I don't care much for it. The film is like 90% really boring talking about a plot that is supremely difficult to follow (even after rewatching), then an awesome, awesome climax action scene. That climax is so good it kinda overwrites how dull the rest of the movie is. WIW even has a nod to it, with the evolutionary tree in the museum.

Kon's good, though I think Perfect Blue towers over the rest of his work. I used to really love Paprika, even listing it as my 6th favorite film as one point, but the more I rewatch it the more the cracks show, so I'm a lot more lukewarm on it now. I didn't care much for Millennium Actress or Tokyo Godfathers. Not bad films by any means, but didn't leave a big impact on me.

As far as Miyazaki, Nausicaa is one of my very few 10 out of 10 films, and I also consider Princess Mononoke and Boy and the Heron to be masterpiece tier. There isn't a bad Miyazaki film except Ponyo; even his more obscure efforts like Porco Rosso are better than most things out there. He does sometimes have baffling flaws, though, like the perfunctorily abrupt ending to Howl's.

Akira's awesome. Goes the opposite route of GitS by saying "Yeah don't try thinking about the plot, we're not explaining all this shit from the manga" and it works, the film is cool as fuck.