Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

This is a hell of a movie list. Nearly 300 "hauntological" films. I have heard of maybe 5-10 percent of these. :O

https://mubi.com/lists/hauntology

Now I'm sitting here reading articles about "hauntology" and pondering if there's any way I can use what I'm learning to season Parallax's blander elements a little.

I mean, it's a reasonable theme. The Vek-10 are total hauntology bait: their ENTIRE IDENTITY is defined by their "versioning" system and thus their culture is dependent on its preservation and revision of the past. Everything they do is basic on legacy code. And their godlike-ancestors disappeared completely: BDO-452 IS LITERALLY HAUNTED BY ONE. PARALLAX IS A GHOST STORY.

Mixolyne culture... well, it's tempted to shoehorn them into a hauntological theme, but you know, the thing about the Mixolynes is that they're fundamentally fae. Hauntology requires a restless, eerie, transmuted past intruding on the present. You need to remember yesterday in order to do that. This is more than can really be expected of the typical Mixolyne.

Now, the Mixolyne Elders on the other hand... So that's where I'd go if I did want to chase this with the Mixolyne, tie it up in the spooky generational themes of having scheming immortal parents who remember EVERYTHING and blithe recyclable children who remember NOTHING...

I just like this. I don't even know the context. It just fits my mood.

“If I am getting ready to speak at length about ghosts, inheritance, and generations, generations of ghosts, which is to say about certain others who are not present, nor presently living, either to us, in us, or outside us, it is in the name of justice.” -- Jacques Derrida

"Rafer Guzman of Newsday wrote that 'celluloid is such a warm, friendly old format that it seems unlikely to contain the spirit of, say, a child-eating demon.'" -- the Wikipedia entry for Sinister

Poltroon! I sentence you to twelve thousand years of Boards of Canada's Geogaddi fan videos.

And then fourteen thousand years of John Carpenter's "Cigarette Burns" (which is excellent by which I mean it is nightmarish XD ).

And then sixteen thousand years of old educational filmstrips about getting along with others.

I'm watching the horror movie Sinister, and it's actually somewhat decent-- arguably a Hauntological horror film.

But it occurs to me that it does take place in the Internet Era, and if this dumb SOB had only gone straight to /r/occult...

Within 20 minutes the locals would have had the demon's SSN, cell number, True Name, binding ritual, least favorite vegetable, and the contact info for eight pipe-hittin' Lamassu motherfuckers just lookin' to get Bronze Age on his ass.

@zx3 @JulieSqveakaroo @balinares Have all y'all seen Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai? That film and all its references to the Passing Of An Age has been setting very heavily with me lately. It's been a lot of comfort.

@balinares And I can't even read logs. Far too painful for far too many reasons, lost friends being one of the most prominence. (That plus the fact that me circa 2005 comes across as so CRINGE -____- )

@balinares It definitely came as a shock to me. I've peeked at some of my old follower lists from LJ accounts recently and... yeah. Lost track of so many people I swore I'd never lose track of. We got blasted by cultural change we could never have seen coming and we're still picking up the pieces. *hug*

It especially blows my mind that something as seemingly simple as "a queer-friendly freeform text RP scene" would turn out to be so damn hard to preserve. Especially NOW where i meet people every freakin' day on Birdsite that would have fit in perfectly.

@JulieSqveakaroo Maynard was the best Bad Influence. <3 You could tell the writers were secretly rooting for him, same way you could tell Nathaniel Hawthorne was secretly rooting for the pagans...

@JulieSqveakaroo Yeah, I have vague memories of an "in the army" season. I'm actually kinda eager to watch the show's failures, too, so I'm excited. XD

@arilin While I'm not necessarily *calling* nor *asking* for "Lovecrafting" to start meaning "cringingly, pathetically, neurotically racist," I have to admit I'd find it really funny and well-deserved. XD

holy fuck i found the first four seasons of dobie gillis on the torrents

this is actually kind of a holy grail for me-- it's a gold mine of lost 50s culture, not to mention a trope mother for scooby doo and a ton of other "four kids and a mascot" shows. it's even-- modestly and very timidly-- countercultural in places.

also if you don't feel anything at all for zelda gilroy then you probably don't feel anything at all for velma dinkley and while i wouldn't say i don't want to know you, i don't think i will ever truly understand anyone who doesn't have it at least a little for velma

@balinares When this is all over, I really want as many of us who will still speak to each other to get together, somehow somewhere, and basically have our own Big Chill/Return of the Secaucus 7* moment.

(*two very similar films about a bunch of ex-hippies reuniting in middle age and taking stock of their lives)

@balinares Yeah. *hug* Yeah.

@hystericempress Yeah we were amused by NFTs enough to ponder them as a shot-in-the-dark income source for Peggy, until precisely the moment we realized their solution to the energy-consumption problem was "As soon as there is one, we're gonna implement it for sure! ^_________^ " Fuck, no. The whole thing reeks of tulip panic anyhow and if there's no way to ethically scam it without pissing out carbon, it's not worth it.

@Leucrotta Yeah, I do try to factor somewhat for "stressed out people don't think laterally very well." What frustrates me is when they have time to think it through and STILL double down on it-- when you find out "Oops, no, that wasn't casual BS hyperbole, you actually believe this is literally fucking true and reality really is that simple. YIKES."

@001zlnv I mean, that's basically ME, and some of these people should even KNOW that. -__-

Let me put a fine point on it: if you literally can no longer imagine a SINGLE decent person coming out of a hated out-group -- not one person who is questioning that ideology, had it forced on them, and are wrapped up in its social circles for reasons beyond our control -- you are the fucking problem and I have ideological commitments far beyond leftist politics that require me to dislike you intensely.

And I don't have anyone in mind here -- it was _mostly_ a Twitter thing that triggered this -- but I am increasingly willing to set friendships on fire over this fanatical shit. -___-

Although there *are* three or four conversations recently where somebody was solemnly lecturing about something that totally contradicts my experiecne, and the only reason I took a dive is that I just didn't have the fucking energy. And maybe it's time to start finding that energy.

no seriously, i am really starting to feel the same malaise with my fellow leftists and their willingness to drastically oversimplify reality to fit their ideology that i did towards christians just before i bailed out on them

the difference here is i don't have anything to bail to

i wish i could go to the politics gods and say "yes, are you looking for any beta testers"

i am so fucking sick of simple answers and convenient dogma

I had a post.

All that's left is "god fucking damn you people."