Coded

Getting an autism diagnosis means you start seeing traits in others, particularly fictional characters. I only realised now I think why I was so obsessively drawn to Dale Cooper is he's autistic AF. Even without that knowledge applied to his character development, he is an extension of Lynch and his idea of a perfect boy scout.

Coop is meticulous, attentive and particular, especially about the food he eats. His breakfast orders are very specific, his coffee has to be to his liking. He appreciates the sensory nature of food. He hates disorder, while he copes with it, we don't see it always working. He's naturally inquisitive to the point he overlooks certain commonalities with people's behaviour, he doesn't conduct himself in the most casual of manners, he might miss a joke or two. He's forthright and has an innate sense of justice, he's able to respect command despite disagreeing with it, he follows orders but still questions authority. When he loves, he loves completely and not lightly. Sometimes he trusts too implicitly and pays the price for it while never shifting blame. I think he resonates with me more as I am now as opposed to me seeing myself in Laura's shadow more as a teenager. Reading My Life, My Tapes, he carries that childlike naivety into adulthood, he suspects something's amiss as a kid but can't identify precisely why. His flaws are very lovable. He makes fatal mistakes, and carries his regrets.

I can't watch Benny and Joon now I see her as autistic as well. Removing the schizophrenic aspects of her behaviour, you can fit her better into autism, particularly in terms of rigid need for a schedule and controlled environment, emotional dysregulation and her hyper-intelligence. She's incredibly smart and talented but infantilised by Benny because of her outbursts and erratic behavior. Knowing what I know about psychosis being a comobidity, you could evenly readdress her as an autistic adult. Having a neurological disorder like this can affect the brain in terms of hallucinations and inability to socialise effectively. Every time I hear CCH Pounder tell Aidan Quinn Joon needs to be with her peers, I hear him say in my head, "She hates her peers." That's basically where I've landed, if you forced me to socialise with other autistic kids it would still be hell for me. She's more capable of figuring people out, it's her childlike appearance and behavior that gets her belittled, and looking like a big kid is apparently an autistic trait, we don't appear to be what society considers old. (Having had someone say from a medical perspective I don't look like a 40 year old backs that up, it's not just people telling me that).

I can come up with other characters had I the energy but these are two in particular that are standing out more. I would prefer people recode someone like Cooper as autistic instead of having the representations we have now, like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory (I only realised his last name is Cooper too, so were they borrowing from Coop?) My generation had to grow up with Dustin Hoffman being the only representation available, now they're still using boys for most live action depictions and girls for cartoons. You could sit down with the Mane Six of MLP and find traits in all of them. It could take hours if you sat with your friends and mentioned popular fictional characters. I can't do that. We all saw it in Wednesday and in part with her friends. Now it's glaringly obvious, you may see it where it wasn't intended. I love Abed from Community but only to a degree, some of his behaviour is a gross exaggeration but what's on the surface with him is usually just under with the rest of us, if we unmasked, we'd be Abed.

Queen of the Damned and the goth cringe era.

I watched Interview out of extreme boredom but then decided to give Queen of the Damned for a fucking lark and it's so fucking camp and stupid I'm smiling already. Just knowing this has Australian stank all over it as well makes me giggle like fuck. I don't think I bothered beyond a couple of viewings over a decade ago.

I wasn't a Korn fan but the soundtrack kinda makes sense and slaps a little, Lestat sounding like Jonathan Davis essentially makes sense. The opening credits are just the music videos Lestat described, corny as fuck (pun intended) and in line with what Manson and his ilk were doing around that time. Ugh the shit lawyer from the Castle (he's a bad lawyer not a bad actor, Tiriel Mora) is in this as the band's manager, not just Burt Newton's son. Plus the journos are supposed to sound like Brits but there's one Aussie accent in the audience and god almighty is it excruciating. Of course this is after The Matrix when we still got to put our grubby paws over American productions so we could get kickbacks.

The first kill scene is absolutely lame and neutered, there's no blood in this so far, despite being R. There's a small refrain of music that sounds like something out of the Never-Ending Story. There's tonal shades from the Crow in this as well, it really was borrowing heavily from late 90s grunge and goth. The soundtrack is pretty good it's more amusing Stewart Townsend sounds like every lead singer from then. (They manage to find a bunch of Jonathan Davis sound-a-likes for this soundtrack).

The Talamasca's got other Aussie actors, I swear I must've blanked them all out. Getting the blood tears and a more accurate representation isn't worth the epic cringe level on this. The Dr Who from the bad movie (tbf I didn't hate this) is playing David, a much, much younger David but fuck, at least he's in it. Oh, and I forgot Marius is Lestat's maker in this. I always forget they shoehorned the second book in here but botch it up anyway. I have erased about 95% of this movie from my brain. I totally get Magnus isn't that interesting and Marius is, but Lestat's making is really flaccid. Marius is using Lestat the way Armand wanted Louis, they get younger conduits to the outside world. Christ, even Marius's collar looks like a pair of bat wings. This also sets up the idea Lestat's ego was too big to go ignored. There are enough liberties taken with this you can't say it's a good adaptation. Anne did at least contribute but I think her version is barely in this.

Visually, it's not a terrible looking movie. It's lit terribly, (I think some is day for night) it looks cheaper than the original but it's not shockingly bad. It's really the acting that fucks it. The temple where Akasha's kept is how I pictured it structurally but the stone looks fake. Lestat's ego-driven nonsense really comes out of him being Akasha's pet. I didn't picture her as I did in this since the copy of the book I had depicted her as a tall white woman, which is erroneous really. The horror elements are absolutely cliche as well. I can see why I forgot so much of this because it's so horribly forgettable. It's desperate to seem creepier than it is. It's also hard not to think what other franchise derived some of its looks from these movies, but the make up in this (the vampires anyway) is pretty fucking bad. To be fair, I think I subconsciously borrowed from this for something else as well.

The special effects aren't much better. Playing Jesse and Lestat as lovers really only fits in this movie. He negs her for the most part while she plays groupie. This seems heavily forced from a producer perspective, you had to give Lestat a love interest despite Jesse being much more discerning and less fan girl. (The little Aussie fan girl was from Heart Break High, I think, I wish I could remember, her face is so familiar.)

Marius gives Lestat shit for being gauche which is hilarious. A lot of this seems to be more like what winds up in the Prince Lestat, where he's peak brat. 

The sound effects in this are absolutely god awful too. The soundtrack actually does so much heavy lifting to keep this from being legitimately terrible, it's more or less the only thing they got right. It seems it should be more visually grandiose than it is.

Lestat hangs out on a satellite dish that was probably in the Dish. Seeing so many Aussie soap stars in this does to my brain what it did during the Matrix, I was just noping all the way to the nope bank because I knew they weren't American. If you didn't know who they were, it probably didn't wreck your experience as heavily as it did mine. It really played out like these kids thought they were going to get a leg-up in the Hollywood scene rather they were there as cheap labor and I can't seem to get people to understand that aspect when it's a well-known trope that smaller budget movies depend on lesser-knowns and the Matrix fit that profile. We facilitated a lot to those movies and people just ignore our contribution.

Jesse still comes to the show despite getting an eyeful of what Lestat's really like. It gives off more Buffy and Angel vibes. Marius plays with David's psyche. The plastic devil tridents in the audience are so fucking laughable, yes, this is Melbourne's finest goths and they show up with Red Dot Halloween props. So adorbs. So much of this is Anne's idea of what Lestat would be as a rock star, so this scene could've been so much worse than it was.

And here come the laughably dressed, poorly made up ancients, who needed way more introduction than they got. This whole scene wants to be more epic, but it's failing in parts. It was a pretty big ask to pull this off so they did their best, I guess. To be absolutely fair, this music is probably better than what Anne was thinking of considering this was supposed to be 80's rock, not late 90's. Marius bemusedly going along with the whole concert shit while Lestat fights off the fiends is hilarious too. He's like a happy little kid reveling in this. The audience thinks it's all fakery which is fun until Akasha yeets Lestat out of there, which is sorta cool I guess. Akahsa also has Suicide Squad Enchantress vibes. Lestat also gets an American Beauty rose petal bath, which was all the rage back then.

I get why laymen thought there was a lot of fucking in these books. Lestat's still not getting laid, FYI. I did ship them when I was reading the book.

Maharet's house is more stony than I pictured too. But she's not much of a redhead, which is stupid, but Lestat's not a blond. So for all the bother they did trying to be authentic they still fucked this shit up. Pick a lane, movie. Pandora's just decked out in a cheap looking belly-dancer outfit. It wasn't hard to pull off a lot of these looks from a costume shop on the cheap, goth fashion also included a heck of a lot of turn of the century coats and dresses which were horribly impractical in Australia, but I was tempted to buy a very cool long coat from one store. We lost a lot of goth/punk clothing stores in the last ten years.

This final confrontation has absolutely no gravitas, it's so fucking lame. Akasha's reign of terror is just a courtyard and a beach of bodies, the scale of her butchery is toned down. Lestat's just simping for her, he doesn't want to kill Jesse except she's down with it, like she can somehow get him back off Akasha. Jesse's fundamentally boring in this, none of the characters have any fucking depth at all. God, Bert Newton's son looks so fucking stupid. Maharet is stuck against wall in the background with her hands up and you're meant to think she cannot move. Khayman says nothing, looks like an idiot and dies, same with Pandora. They barely establish Akasha's the font of life, it's more she plays herself by letting them drink from her so Lestat can rip her to shreds. Mekare not being in this at all makes sense but sucks anyway, the explaining the mute twin and Maharet being blind would take too long.

Lestat and Jesse give David the journal back which is fucking dumb too, then tempt him with immortality. Jesse put on some black eyeliner and sports some teeth and she's all happy to be Lestat's girlfriend and shit and they get to just spend immortality as obnoxious 20-something goths. Marius rocks up to "kill" David, which is just ick as well but playing Marius as some trickster god is fucking lame too.

The soundtrack continues to hold up the lame, goth baby ending. I can imagine so many kids loving this outside the context of the book.

It wasn't utterly bad but it's still absolute trash. You could genuinely watch it without seeing the first movie, there's really nothing that crosses over,  not even Louis, and he didn't play a big part in it. Louis has to take a backseat to other characters in the series, it makes fucking sense. But then they all got ignored or butchered by AMC anyway.

I've heard a few things since AMC's release of Interview With the Vampire about the gay sex subtext and people arguing over the potential of vampires to have sex. I was going out of my brain trying to find evidence of Enkil being castrated and had to find an academic paper that reminded me Akasha and Enkil became Isis and Osiris, who was cut into pieces and the phallus wasn't found, and so was later fashioned by Isis so he could be resurrected in full, so therefore vampires are impotent. Now evidence of them getting raging permanent hardons is also in the texts but again, fucking doesn't happen. They can't procreate, I think that's where the confusion is coming in, but this text (which I'm very tempted to read in its entirety) mentions the ability of vampires to penetrate and "procreate" through the bite and with teeth makes the female vampire more sexually potent and masculine. It also suggests male vampires are performing a feminine function of nurturing another vampire with their blood. The sexual and gender ambiguity was what made her vampires more sexy, it wasn't about sex it was all the sensuality of the act of feeding and biting. When Lestat is in a human body, he has penetrative sex for the first time in centuries, and initially it goes horribly wrong, (it's a r*pe scene). Later, it's an act of consent with a nun, and this feels more romantic until the nun finds out what he actually is and goes mad. 

The distinct lack of sexual congress in the books up until this point should've made this evident but I'm convinced so many people who are familiar with the first book didn't read to this point, were obsessed with the movie and demanded Lestat and Louis finally make out on screen. It was fucking infuriating to me and anyone who had any sense of what their relationship was. Allegedly all vampires are "bi" after changing, if they weren't bi formally (from memory, I have to say Marius was probably the most bi-coded outside of Lestat). I'd rather say pan, but regardless, they're sexual, sensual beings that don't have actual sex. They love to make out and do a lot of physical stuff, my developing teenage brain was obviously looking for more of an intellectual depiction of sex. But Body Thief is one of my favourite books because it was such a diversion from the other three. The whole point of it was Lestat yearning to be human again and the folly of making a deal with a body snatcher who wants his vampiric power just for the sake of being human. Given immortality can make a vampire mad, and Lestat can no longer die, he seeks out being human, and this is a big mistake. I was fascinated by the humanity that had to be addressed, and also, I had to rely on other people's parents who happened to own the books to realise there were MORE than three. Otherwise I'd probably have gone a while before seeing more books that I'd not read and I was excited for more. As it stood, Memnoch was published in 1995, (Body Thief came out in 1992 so I wasn't that far behind) so I think I got it not long after it came out, I started reading the series that year and distinctly remember wanting it. This is all pre-internet era so finding out when books were coming out was impossible. So I caught up pretty quickly so I could read it, (to be fair I think I wasn't entirely in a rush) and it's a fucking slog of a book but I loved it. I must've been a much more voracious reader since I had definitely finished all four of those books, plus Memnoch, and had read The Witching Hour, Lasher and Taltos by the end of high school. I think I read Blood and Gold before Merrick despite them coming out the other way around, I had access to the internet but didn't look up much about it. And I must've read Armand before the end of high school, I'm sure I did. I know I read the last two before Prince Lestat when they came out.

I just wish I could remember the reading parts I've ejected all of it from my memory aside from the content itself. I was excited to get them all on my Kindle and read from the start, until Lestat (and Witching Hour) weren't available. I want to reread Memnoch eventually. I did recommend Interview to a fan of the series I hate but warned it might be boring. I'm thinking about actually bothering to read Vittorio since I was like too big a fan girl to bother with any of the stand alone books that didn't have the OG vampires. I'm kinda sad I hated Prince Lestat too much to keep reading and the Atlantis slant put me off. I should just read them for funsies at this point but I also don't want to hate read her stuff. I was only so infuriated by Blood Canticle's ending and so relieved it was "over" with both chronicles. As such, I feel like they fact I did fucking read them at least makes me more of an authority over people who fucking didn't.

The books were good but seemed to suffer from diminishing returns or lack of editing. Armand and Blood and Gold were good, Merrick wasn't, I remember being frustrated by it. It was really up and down and seemed more a case of being done under duress. If I get a voucher for Christmas I'll at least get Vittorio and read it. I don't know why I didn't since it just seems to be like a vampire romance with characters closer to my age. There's been some debate over the appropriateness of Armand and Marius's relationship but I can only defend it on the grounds of historical accuracy, not from a moral standpoint. I'm just realising I used to read a lot and now I don't. I was accused of not being that big a reader by university and in truth, I couldn't read or write for pleasure back then, so no fucking wonder I got so fucking depressed. Once I was unemployed I did read more books and having a job made me buy more books to read on my lunch break. I just don't remember reading books except when I wasn't supposed to (in class or during assemblies) or generally had to. I mean, I read Catcher in the Rye for pleasure, I actually wasn't assigned many novels to read in high school, I think Lord of the Flies was one, I assume our English teachers were smart enough to know forcing kids to read entire books was pointless unless you dedicated class time, whereby I would braid my hair while I read and be accused of not reading, because my autistic ass could actually multitask a passive activity with an active one. But I feel like reading a bunch of crap nobody's telling me to. Some books I just gave up on, I have a bunch of books I got as presents I haven't read at all. I'm glad I read Imajica even if it infuriated me. I swear I've read a lot of books.

 

You can make money making a list of thoughts about a movie - Empire Records

I hit a Buzzfeed article about someone rewatching Empire Records (which I did the other day) and I thought I'd get a decent review/think piece on the movie. No. Turns out this girl just gets to watch the movie, make a numbered list of chronological thoughts and preface it with a copypasta paragraph as to what the article was about.

I agreed with her points but felt ripped of. I would've sat there just typing shit out then weeded out anything that was extraneous or stupid. She also agreed about some of my points on the Craft and wished they'd basically have ended it the way they did in the second movie with "girl power" moves. I hate the ableism at the end but at the time it was still an iconic ending, and yeah, it inspired me to try and do spells and give up vampires and just be into witchcraft for the rest of high school. I think I liked the aesthetic but me idolising my friend's mother, who was a total delusional crackpot who didn't even seem to have a job, was really naive of me. And my friend wasn't very smart either, I can say everyone else was a gullible idiot but I was too.

I was more pissed to find out I could have a job at Buzzfeed doing this but my pay would still be dependent on clicks. And maybe she suggested the pitch in a meeting and wanted to do full reviews, and her boss was like no, we only do numbered lists at Buzzfeed. When we're not cosplaying as serious journos.

I had to come here and write that out, I was annoyed but still roped in anyway, and it was nice to see my thoughts were the same. Empire Records is a fucking mess of a movie, Pump up the Volume at least had a story line, this basically doesn't and it's a day in the life movie, there's no plot, which I think made it stand out because it was so bizarre and idealistic of teenage life in a record store. As an adult, you're just Joe at this point questioning these kids and rolling your eyes whenever they lose their shit. (Seriously, watch Joe's face when Corey goes off, he's just "Kill me, please.") But he was convincing in his sincerity these kids matter to him. Anthony LaPaglia was a weird one to export to the US in the 90s but he's great in this. Everyone is entertaining, I even had a brief argument with someone at school over Robin Tunney wearing a wig in the Craft because she did actually shave her head. It suited her, her whole character is genuinely the best, she's weirdly aspirational compared to Corey or Gina, you want to be hot and pretty like Corey with Deb's attitude. Meanwhile, Renee Zellweger in this is actually kind of awful, when she's toned down she's okay, and her throwing pills at Corey is iconic too, but some points she's really overdoing it with the trying to be a snarky teen, some of her lines are cringe, even Sinead O' Rebellion is just ugh now, it was the biggest line in the movie. Oh, and "Joe's Money" is good. Ugh, I'm torn over her. (I still wander around the house saying this whenever I hear about a greedy corporation doing questionable shit for profit. Having to work for a non-profit who gave money to profit based companies while people were just delusional as to why they were getting greedy, this was my only way of making humour out of it.) AJ, Lucas and Warren playing off each other makes for good comedy but again without a story the movie's like a bunch of vignettes trying to get the character development done. It doesn't make the movie unwatchable just messy. Marc's still pretty great, but when you met that guy in real life, he was such a pain in the ass, as well as Eddy. Bronco's just there. And I found out later people were creeped out by how old he was vs the rest of the cast, and he was Liv Tyler's stepdad too apparently. What, do you want Steven Tyler in his place? Actually, no hate to Steven, he's actually a nice guy who sang lullabies to Tori's kid. Also, chemistry-wise, Deb and AJ smolder in that one scene they're dancing together, like that is pure hotness, and his chemistry with Corey is kinda mid. You also don't see them on screen enough, I think there's a whole thing with them on a pier that got cut out, so you just see AJ pining over an oblivious Corey without any real reason as to why other than he just has a big crush and they look like they'd make a cute couple. And they were always in love anyway. They needed more time developing that, again I think it was cutting room floor material. Maybe we didn't need to see Marc wasted watching GWAR but that scene is also iconic.

It also just occurred to me Deb and Lucas are the smartest characters in the movie, even Lucas losing all the money it's still based on insight and concern that comes off as foolishness, he thinks it's noble to try and save the store. Deb passes out buttons that basically predict the future by being insightful, especially Corey's button, since she's completely dishonest. Deb's the only one who can logically help Corey with her meltdown, I like their scene in the bathroom, it's almost like Claire and Alison's moment in the Breakfast Club, they find some mutual understanding but it doesn't turn into a cheesy hallmark moment, like Deb says; she's not a hugger, you're not going to get emotions from her but Corey's "funeral" at least allows her to finally accept sympathy and love and allows her to be vulnerable. I love how she's still holding it all in when she talks about the lady Bic incident, it's absurd but it's not funny. She's clearly embarrassed but nobody really mocks her. It's a weird way of everyone dealing with the aftermath of the tension but it's not a terrible scene. Yeah, the Buzzfeed girl found it questionable to mimic a funeral for a suicidal person, I don't think it's that bad, the whole point is to make her feel seen. It's a good play on how 13 Reasons glorified people committing suicide for revenge, maybe if they'd held a fake funeral for Hannah Baker things would've been okay. It seems to be self aware that it's a confessional more than a funeral and Deb just lies there impatiently until all the honesty from people make her give up her own hypocrisy and admit she needs someone to care about her. We've all been Deb, it's why people love her character, (well, I did) Robin Tunney was such an underrated 90s actor, I think she just wasn't conventionally pretty but her acting was amazing. I remember seeing her in something with Arnold and it was a pretty trash movie but I loved the story at least. Ugh, I also forgot she was in Encino Man too. Anyway, Lucas is apparently acting "weird" all day and basically the group's substitute Yoda, I don't really understand he wasn't like that yesterday either, was he just less Yoda? He's still a fun character to follow, him being chill with Joe is fun, he's got a lot to work with and he's not really the bad guy, he's also seeing things the other's are delusional to, Corey's not fine obviously, it's actually pretty sad AJ can't see it, again his crush is entirely based on her positive attributes, you feel like him discovering her drug addiction would've elicited more concern, the Buzzfeed lady also pointed out nobody even bothers to address this at all. We're left to concede she's not Little Miss Perfect and that's the end of that, yeah again, really irresponsible but also 90's movie. Hell, not to reference Breakfast Club, we still get some catharsis after Brian admits to being suicidal, laughing at the situation isn't that insensitive it's more they're acknowledging the absurdity of a flare gun being used in a suicide, it's like trying to shoot yourself with a firecracker, it's dangerous though but of course Brian's too much of a geek to find access to a real gun (if you remade the movie, it wouldn't be a stretch that Brian's parents are conservative enough to own a gun he could easily access), it's absurd as Deb trying to cut herself up with a shitty plastic razor and failing. There's a shot of a messed up locker at the start, each locker belongs to a character, maybe you're supposed to assume it's Bender's but his is obvious. (Someone on Reddit complained Brian's mother paid no attention to the fact he was suicidal. Sometimes you have to explain to younger kids mental health basically didn't exist in the 80s. John Hughes tried to draw attention to how badly kids were treated for being kids). I could sit here all day doing intertextual comparisons to different movies, I'm pretty good at it. I lost the thread of Lucas being a smarter character than the others in the store, we don't know anything about him until the fake funeral and his motivations weren't selfish, he's found a weird way to pay Joe back for taking him in, it's sweet but I can see it making no sense logically when Joe should've called the cops from the start. That he doesn't is part of the vague as fuck story we get, at least Warren is the voice of reason telling Joe Lucas is the bigger thief. He's cast really well, he looks more age appropriate than the others. But every time I keep trying to consider Lucas it's only in the context of how he relates to the others. Maybe he's the narrative glue holding the group together the way music holds the world together, he clearly considers them a family however we have to acknowledge this is their senior year job and everyone's about to split to go on to other shit eventually. The store's the main character. It's fine. This movie is fine.

I can see why my brother hated it and I loved it, it fell into this weird pocket of 90s films that were affected by where you were developmentally, plus I had no film critique ability (well, I had some but it was minor), so I was going off the vibe. It's a cult classic for my age group, really.