#I’m a adult for peets sake

[bowserplush]

You know as ironic as it is

Support workers are meant to make me be able to access life better

All they’ve done is made me want to hermit more

[mtvswatches]

Underrated rom-coms that I absolutely adore *chef’s kiss*

In no particular order. Click the titles to see the trailers.

The Truth About Cats and Dog - Uma Thurman and Janeane Garofalo star in this 90s gem. Janeane’s a radio host and vet who falls for one of her callers after helping him deal with his dog. Uma is her neighbor and ends up impersonating Janeane by her request because she is very insecure about her appearance. Meanwhile, she maintains amazing phone conversations with the object of her affection. First female masturbation scene I ever saw in movies. Female friendship is strong in this one.

Sleeping with Other People - A kind of homage to When Harry Met Sally if it was set in the 2010s and was much raunchier. After a chance encounter at university, Alison Brie has sex for the first time with Jason Sudeikis. They only meet again many years later and strike up a friendship in which they both dispense relationship and sex advice to the other. Each of them has their own hangups, and time and again rely on each other to get through stuff. The story does develop in the way you’d expect, but both leads deliver great performances and you can’t help but fall for them as they fall for each other. There’s a scene in particular that gives me a lot of feels and made me swoon over Jason Sudeikis, which had never happened before. (Spoiler alert: this scene.)

While You Were Sleeping - Sandra Bullock in one of her earliest, breakout roles. This is one of those movies with a #problematic lead whose behavior is probably criminal, definitely creepy and if you really start dissecting it, you realize that the heroine is actually the villain (My Best Friend’s Wedding, I’m also looking at you.) Anywho, Sandra is a lonely, single woman who works in the booth at a train station or something and daydreams about one of the daily commuters, Peter Gallagher. She ends up rescuing him after he falls to the rails. He ends up in a coma, and because of a misunderstanding, his family believes her to be his fiance, and she enjoys so much living out this fantasy that she fails to correct them. But his brother, a very swoony Bill Pullman, is suspicious of her and in an attempt to figure out whether she’s lying or not, they end up spending a lot of time together and well, you can figure out what happens later.

A Lot Like Love - I guess this one was a more deliberate attempt to recreate and modernize When Harry Met Sally. Starring Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet, it tells the story of a boy and girl who meet at the airport and end up spending a day together and forming a unique bond. Throughout the years, they keep crossing each other’s paths, and each time they grow closer and more intimate, although the timing is never right. You can guess the rest. It’s a very sweet movie with an absolutely amazing soundtrack. 

Definitely Maybe - Raise your hand if you’ve loved Ryan Reynolds and watched pretty much everything he was in since you saw him in 1996′s Sabrina The Teenage Witch with Melissa Joan Hart. Anyway, if you’re a fan of love stories that span years and How I Met Your Mother but hated the ending, you’ll love this one. Ryan’s character, now divorced, retells his three most important past relationships to his curious daughter after she asks him how he met her mom. While that relationship obviously didn’t have a happy ending, reminiscing about his past love life helps him figure out that there may still be a chance to hold on to the one who got away. 

The Wedding Date - With a plot seemingly straight out of fan-fiction - single woman hires date to go to sister’s wedding in England where she’ll run into former fiance - this movie is extremely tropey and predictable. Yet, it kind of works for me. Dermot Mulroney is extremely dreamy, and the UST between his character and Debra Messing is palpable. 

Before Sunrise (and Before Sunset and Before Midnight) If smart dialogue and beautiful backdrops are a huge turn-on for you, this is your movie and your saga. While the plot is virtually non-existent - two young adults meet on a train in Europe and end up spending a day together in Vienna - this is one of those movies that are brilliantly written and in which the dialogue is the plot. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy play wonderfully off each other and you almost feel you’re watching the events transpire in real-time. There is something wonderful about watching two people slowly fall in love with each other as they talk and get to know each other in a way that people rarely do. There’s also the charm of knowing there’s an expiration date to their encounter and the desperation of not wanting it to the end. I adore this movie, this couple, this saga, this director.

Reality Bites - Yes, I do have a thing for Ethan Hawke. Sue me. This is 90s Wynonna Ryder at her best and Hawke at his broodiest, bad-boy-est. This is the quintessential Generation X movie (that’s actually the title the movie was given in my country...) in which you see twenty-somethings struggling to become adults in a world that keeps changing the rules. It touches on many issues that are relatable to young adults while at the same time giving you an insight into this group of friends who try to navigate adulthood while remaining true to who they are. Wynonna and Ethan have insane chemistry, and their scenes together still give me butterflies. 

High Fidelity - A heartbroken John Cusack, who owns a record store and is obsessed with making lists, decides to make the list of his top five breakups, hunt down his exes and have heart-to-hearts about why they think their relationship didn’t work. He views these relationships and breakups as formative experiences that led him to where he is today and ultimately affected his most recent relationship, which he thought was the one. Great soundtrack, great cameos in minor roles, and John Cusack, for fuck’s sake, what more could you ask for?

Chasing Amy - Granted, this one probably doesn’t hold up so well in this day and age. I mean, comic book writer Ben Affleck falls for lesbian Joey Lauren Adams and actively tries to have her switch teams? Hmmm. Even when I watched this back then that part definitely felt ... wrong. Yet... I’ve always felt the message of the movie about sexuality - and ultimately about love - was that it is complex and it fluctuates and that we are kind of doomed if we keep slapping labels on ourselves and holding ourselves to the standards of said labels. There are definitely homophobic lines, but it’s a very interesting movie to watch mostly because of Alyssa’s character and her journey in the movie. Give it a try and tell me what you think. 

Just Friends - Another Ryan Reynolds flick, arguably more of a comedy than a rom-com but feels underrated either way. Former fatty Ryan has made a name for himself as a music producer or something after he escaped his hometown and the friend zone (I KNOW) he inhabited during his highschool years. Having to take care of pop star Anna Faris (who is absolutely hilarious in this movie), he ends up accidentally returning to his town and running into his high school crush and best friend again. Now exuding self-confidence because of his looks, he decides he will get her to sleep with him to fulfill his teenage fantasies. As he attempts to woo her, he slowly reverses to his high school appearance, which undermines his confidence and brings his issues to the surface. It’s a silly, fun movie that doesn’t pretend or aim to be anything else, and both Ryan’s and Anna’s comedic skills are brilliantly displayed in it. You’ll laugh a lot, is what I’m saying. 

[nichknack]

Trying Through the Trauma Character Themes

I got hit with the writing block stick so, to tied you over for TTT content, here are some character themes:

Evan: Bad Liar; Imagine Dragons

Pun aside, this song really fits where Evan's character arc is taking him in the next few chapters. The uselessness and hopelessness present in the lyrics and tone shows him at the lowest of lows and the subtle determination demonstrates the moment where he has to put his anxiety aside for the sake of his (and his friend's) future.

Connor: Branded; Natewantstobattle

We go from a song that fits the end of a character's arc to one that fits the start. Just a quick note, most of these are going to be me complaining that having the POV restricted to Evan is really annoying when it comes to getting into the minds of other characters. If there are any scenes you guys want from another character's perspective, just tell me and I'll write it (spoilers permitting).

Back to Connor. Before Evan arrived at The Ward Connor saw himself as a complete and utter monster and his powers as a curse. He fully expected himself to break any day and get sent to The Basement. Now he has some kind of control over his powers, he's free from that burden. This is the main reason he cried the first time Evan used his powers to calm him down, it was a release of all the tensions and fear that had been building since the moment he became a Patient.

Zoe: Praying; Kesha

To say Zoe has a complex relationship with her brother in TTT would be an understatement. While she does love her brother deep down, she fully believes Connor to be the reason she became a Patient. She sees this moment as the moment her life ended. She lost everything; friends, family, the chance to find love and live her life to the fullest all swallowed up by the reality of being used as a weapon by the government. Even though she sympathies with Connor and wants him to be happy, she can't forgive him for that.

Jared: Thunder; Imagine Dragons

This song is just Jared's backstory in a nutshell. Like pretty much all other Patients, Jared's normal life was stripped from him the moment he gained his powers. The lyrics from Thunder's verses are who Jared hoped to be as an adult. Successful, the centre of attention, those one-in-a-million stories of an average jo hitting the big leagues. That all changed in a split second. However, Jared being Jared, he pushes those feelings deep, deep down where no one can find them.

Alana: StopRewind; Natewantstobattle

I'll be the first person to say Alana’s character gets snubbed in TTT. My original plan was for her to play a bigger role (and while her powers will prove to be pivotal later on) she’s really more of a background character.

This song matches her wish to escape to what she views as a happier time. Her powers is all about escaping to a place far away from her problems and that’s exactly what Alana seeks to do, even before she became a time traveller. Be it by getting good grades, getting the right job or being around the right people Alana wants to make her future self as happy as she can. However she often forgets about the present.

Will: Wired Wrong; Steam Powerer Giraffe l Bones; Natewantstobattle

Will is a peak example of the POV thing I mentioned earlier. Will actually has two songs, both for the same reason. Like Connor, Will’s powers took an unimaginable toll on his mental health. This wasn’t helped by the fact that he had huge trust issues stemming from the fact that everyone at The Ward is either stressed, sad or angry, and thus had quite a significant ‘Shadow’ around them. Because he fully believed that shadow=Evil, Will quickly became paranoid and trapped in his own head, both things demonstrated in Wired Wrong and Bones.

The boy is an example of “Cool motive, Still murder” is all I’m saying.

Dr Sherman: Sandcastle Kingdoms; Natewantstobattle

I can’t really get into this because spoilers but let’s just say Will and Connor aren’t the only one who’s mental health is tanking because of their powers.

Dr Peet: Malfunction; Steam Powered Giraffe

I did t think I was going to like Peet as much as I did. Peet was inspired by two of my favourite trans creators: Bunny Bennett from Steam Powered Giraffe (The woman singing this song) and YouTube Lily Orchard. Both of these women IRL have a very blunt no-nonsense attitude when it comes to helping people, so, Peet does too. At her core, however, she really does care for the Patients in her care and would go full mama bear on anyone who dared to hurt them, themselves included.

Jacobi: The Ghost of You; My Chemical Romance

Ah. Everyone’s favourite edgelord security officer.

For those who don’t know, Jacobi’s general discontent towards The Ward and Patients come from the fact that his brother, JJ, was a Patient himself. Jacobi became determined to work at The Ward to see his brother, but of course when he arrived JJ had long since turned 18 and was no longer there. To Jacobi, Patients and The Ward are what killed his brother.

Parchman: Just one Yesterday; Fallout Boy

Do I need to explain this?

[innuendostudios]

I Want It To Hurt: Thoughts on Night in the Woods

[massive spoilers ahead, but I’ll warn you before we get to them.]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the ending of Night in the Woods. Finished the game a couple weeks ago; it’s pretty much the only game I’ve managed time for other than 20-minute bursts of Nuclear Throne when I’m waiting for footage to render or just decompressing between obligations. I have a weird jumble of feelings about the game, many of them deeply appreciative and some... confused.

These capsule reviews aren’t meant to be any kind of consumer advocacy, but if you’re waiting for me to tell you whether or not you should play the game: yes. Whatever else I say, yes, you should go play Night in the Woods. You may not know what you think of it by the end, but if you’re the kind of person who reads my stuff, you aren’t going to regret playing it.

The game’s protagonist, Mae, seems exquisitely designed to remind a certain type of person of themself. I might be one of those people, or, at least, I was when I was Mae’s age. Mae is a 20-year-old college dropout living with her parents in her jerkwater hometown, unsure of what to do with herself and generally unwilling to talk about it. Her town's economy is drying up and it’s a lingering question whether it will still exist in a decade or two. Everyone’s out of work or working for less than they deserve. Most of her friends from high school are still there, working the same jobs, playing in the same bands, eating the same crappy pizza.

It’s horribly familiar. When I was 20, I was piddling around community college with no motivation to transfer to a university. My dad had been laid off during the pre-Recession recession and hadn’t seen comparable pay since. I spent most of my time hanging out in coffee shops in my own jerkwater town, chatting up all the kids who’d never moved away, killing time. I worked my first job at the video store that was also a liquor store, around the corner from the hardware store that was also a deli. Our local businesses were also dying, save the few that secured a spot on Main Street, though by the time I was 20 my town was becoming a bedroom community for San Francisco and, instead of turning into vacant buildings, the local shops were getting muscled out by Peet’s Coffee and Jamba Juice. We even had our own parallel to NITW’s annual Harfest, but we called it Pumpkin Festival.

Admittedly, I was never a delinquent like Mae, and never managed to play in a band, even badly, so the sequences when I got to smash fluorescent lightbulbs and play bass were a kind of wish fulfillment (Mae’s bandmates sound for all the world like they’re covering Joy Division). And it’s moments like these that create the simple pleasures of Night in the Woods. It’s a game where stealing pretzels to feed to some rats you found in an abandoned parade float constitutes a major time sink and a minor, beautiful victory. Like, maybe I’m a fuckup but I can keep some rats alive and that’s not nothing. It’s a game where the conversation trees talk about the selling out of the working class, about punching fascists, about anarchy. It’s a game where the critical decisions you make are about who you want to hang out with on a given evening. (For the record: I agree that Gregg rulz ok but as soon as I realized that Bea didn’t like me very much I decided, oh no, I’m gonna make this girl my friend. So I saw pretty much none of Gregg’s or Angus’ optional content in my efforts to be best buds with Bea, and I regret nothing.)

So this game is something special. Play it. Let’s talk about the ending.

*SPOILER TOWN*

If I had sum up my overall impressions of Night in the Woods, I guess it’d be a more extreme version of my feelings on Oxenfree - somewhere over the course of the game I went from actively liking it very much to just kind of respecting it. Only more complicated than that.

OK, so Night in the Woods hints at a larger, darker plot from pretty early in the game, and such a thing was directly teased in the Kickstarter pitch, so by the time such things make their way into the game we’re all amply prepared for it. We’ve known all along that "there’s something in the woods.” I’m still not sure how to put into words my feelings on what that something is.

OK, OK, here goes: in the early stretches of the game, Mae has dreams that hint at what her mental state is up to, but as the game goes on, the dreams become more and more consistently about confronting giant animal gods. She also sees what appears to be a ghost man kidnap a kid at Harfest, but no one else sees this. Mae becomes convinced that there’s some kind of ghostly power that’s getting inside her head, while her friends worry that she’s cracking up. Still, they help her investigate various ghost stories around town, for her sake, and Mae’s health visibly declines and her dreams get more intense, until one night she finds herself communing with what may or may not be an utterly indifferent God who does not care about her or anything that lives on Earth.

Eventually, Mae and her friends track the ghost men into the woods and it turns out they’re not ghosts, they’re local men in hoods who are some kind of death cult. They believe they can keep the town from dying by kidnapping and sacrificing undesirables to the demon goat who lives deep beneath the old mines. They tell Mae that this is what’s been visiting her in her sleep.

So: Mae thinks she may be dealing with ghosts or God, the cultists think it’s a demon. Meanwhile, Mae’s friends think she may have some poorly-treated cognitive issues - turns out Mae had some kind of psychotic episode years back where she hospitalized a boy because she just couldn’t see other people as people anymore, and she’s been grappling with this disconnection for some time and going to college without good treatment may have made it all much worse. And maybe all this talk of careless gods and demon goats is just Mae dealing with the ugly parts of her own psyche.

Anyway, so Mae’s friends straight up shoot one of the cultists with a crossbow and then cause a mine cave-in that dooms the rest, which is, no matter how you slice it, a pretty sharp tonal shift from what most of the game has been. And, before escaping, Mae has a vision of sorts, where she feels herself sucked underground and once again confronting some kind of supernatural being.

And she just talks to it. She says she’s done disassociating from people. She knows that maybe nothing lasts, that maybe her friends will all drift apart and her town will die, but if that’s what’s going to happen, she wants to accept it. If everything disappears in the end, she wants it to hurt when it does.

The question, then: in this moment, are you, the player, talking to God? A demon goat? Or the dark parts of a mind in need of treatment? Or, a similar question: is the town dying because of the stagnation of wages, the shipping of jobs overseas, the failure of government to support small towns? Or is because the town needs to sacrifice to the beast that lives in the mines?

The game doesn’t have an answer for you. Instead, the game’s stance seems to be: whatever the answer, it’s out of your control. Be it economics, fate, religion, superstition, or mental illness, it is not a mystery you can solve, a villain you can shoot. It’s something you will have to live with, day by day. It is inexorable that, on a long enough timeline, everything ends. Maybe it doesn’t matter why. When you stare into a void, maybe it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking to God, a demon, or your own broken mind. Maybe what matters more is what you say.

You may never know the truth. So hold on to what’s good and live with uncertainty.

I feel like this is a very profound thing for a game starring an anthropomorphic cat to say. I also can’t shake that it felt more profound when I typed it out just now than when I experienced it myself.

As a person from a jerkwater town, who’s spent his entire adult life working his ass off and yet perpetually broke, who’s spent the last five years grappling with depression and anxiety and the radical acceptance it takes to know that his thoughts can sometimes be extremely alien to him, and who has walked the long path from Christianity to wishy-washy agnosticism to weary atheism, I feel this moment should have slugged me in the gut. I can’t think of a single game that would say such things, and I can’t think of a game that seems more explicitly tailored to my sensibilities and experiences.

But while I respect the hell out of Night in the Woods’ ultimate message, I still feel conflicted about how it plays out. I don’t think the game is wrong to veer into odd genres at the end - so many of its themes are internal and philosophical that literalizing them in order to build to a climax feels like a smart decision. I don’t know if it’s that the game spends such a long time raising questions and then kind of rushes the answers. I don’t know if it’s that Mae and her posse seem a lot more credible cracking wise and worrying about money than shooting people with crossbows. It’s certainly hard for a game about normal people with normal problems to throw in highly abnormal problems for the final hour.

I don’t know if I maybe just need to play it again.

I feel like the more I think about the ending, the better I understand it, but I still can’t say with confidence that I like it. And my appreciation of the game seems deeply rooted in the front half and not the final third.

And I don’t know when I’ll have time to go back in and play it again. For now, I’m glad I played it once. Whatever it was, it was certainly something.

[artsed105]

Title: “When Will You Come Back?”

(Week 8 Reflection - late submission)

---------------

Lyrics: 

Born in 98, 18 years old,

Next court date, expect to be told,

I'll be behind bars for two lifetimes,

Ain’t that something, for a couple of crimes.

Product of your environment,

Is that why you get to leave?

Could you live like me?

It’s hard for me to believe

When will you come back? 

I enjoyed your arts program.

Let me help you put away chairs.

Thursdays and Fridays, they don’t compare [shoutouts Frank & Carlos]

We met you once today,

perhaps you won't return.

Until September, or later,

I hope you’re still here when the court adjourns. 

------------

Summarize: 

This late creative connection was developed after our Friday visit to Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall. When we were there wrapping up the day’s activities, one of the youth named Carlos asked Laurel when we would come back. Laurel told Carlos about the summer fellowship and its related programming, but Carlos adamantly asked when we would physically return to the Hall. After concluding that the classes wouldn’t be returning until next Fall quarter, or late September, Carlos replied that he might not still be at BJN. 

After a rewarding day of arts activities and discussion, this was definitely an eye-opening, first hand experience of the realities of the school-to-prison pipeline, the prison industrial complex, and the issue of mass incarceration/ juvenile justice system summarized in Carlos’s one question. I felt particularly inspired to work this content into this quirky song that takes particular influence from Girlpool - I’m not sure if there is any explicit reason for this connection, but the musical qualities scream angst. 

Connect: 

Larry Brewster’s article, titled “The Impact of Prison Arts Programs on Inmate Attitudes and Behavior: A Quantitative Evaluation,” is practically a lengthy statistical analysis of the positive effects of arts programming in correctional institutions. Much of the article feels like common sense to us after taking this course, but I realized that it is important to put these statistics in perspective; if we didn’t have the knowledge gained through the class and the numerous texts throughout the quarter, many of these numbers would be perceived as ground-breaking evidence of arts programming’s potential for reducing discipline and recidivism. Arts education, both in those with prior arts experience and those without, was found to increase “life effectiveness skills” (a somewhat problematic term, but for the sake of this article it is constructive) such as intellectual flexibility, self confidence, achievement motivation, time management, emotional control, social competence, and active initiative. 

One aspect from the article I would like to point out is that the studies found “inmate-artists were far more likely to pursue other educational and vocational programs than inmates without arts experience or education.” I found this particularly inspiring after meeting the youth inmates at BJN, because I hope that they continue to find inspiration and mental stimulus through arts programming whether they remain in BJN or are transferred to adult facilities. Laurel put it best when she told Carlos that he should remain in touch with the program in order to hopefully develop a program at whatever prison he would end up in - the transfer of power and determination from Laurel’s hands to Carlos’s was visibly noticeable, and proved to be a tangible empowerment through the hopes of arts accessibility. 

“The Beginners Guide to Community-Based Arts” was a relevant read as it brought up many facets of community-based arts programming, with direct application  to the first hand experience of teaching artist Rhodessa Jones. Jones worked as a dancer/ aerobics art teacher for the California Arts Council, and she mentions that her goals included “meet(ing) their bodies with their minds through conversation, improvisation, and exploration that directly connects to their lives.” The combination of aerobics with readings proved to stimulate many of the incarcerated women to physically activate their bodies, which in turn influenced activation of their spirituality. The connections between the spirit/ mind and the body are often overlooked, and  spiritual conclusions and thinking are catalyzed when the psychological structures separating the two are broken. This is an important aspect to remember when creating programming for incarcerated folks, and Frank summarized it best: Thursdays is for the mind and thinking, and all that other shit. But Fridays is where you get to do stuff, its more fun, and you start making connections with other people. 

I found that the reflection section of the Development Guide was particularly important, as it was one of the few sections that places more pre-determined emphasis on the facilitator and not the students. By this, I mean that many of these standardized teaching guides often enforce subconscious means of pre-determining everything, although in reality teaching is very improvisational and requires facilitators to nurture students into a relationship where the subject/ topics are of mutual interest to everyone in the learning environment. This is also important to consider when developing correctional institution programming: how relevant is Plato to incarcerated youth? Only as relevant as you can express your own personal interest in the subject! 

Ellington Peet