Love/Hate with Rick and Morty/Dan Harmon

I can't type much, after having downtime from keyboard based work my arms have felt so much better and right now one's cramping up a lot.

I'm just fleshing out some thoughts after hearing Justin Roiland of Rick and Morty fame has been accused of DV and other fairly serious offenses. It's a shitty thing to hear, but they don't seem as baseless as when everyone assumed his co-creator Dan Harmon was a pedophile for simulating sex with a toy baby. He nuked his entire Twitter account because of the James Gunn incident and it didn't quite save him. Harmon's also been very apologetic and open about an incident involving a previous female coworker who was upset he'd assumed he was likely blameless when the MeToo movement gained traction. He was entirely contrite, honest and humbled, the air was cleared, we moved on. As it should be. To me, it's the best case scenario when accusations do arise, some victims don't even want money they just want some fucking acknowledgement of the crime and a sincere apology.

Justin's denying everything and plead not guilty to all charges. Assumptions are flying around. And sadly, with how simultaneously sick of and in love with I am with Rick and Morty, if this put a bullet in the remainder of the 70 episodes slated, I wouldn't be upset. I'm already worried this is just too much for Dan to pull off successfully given he shoulders much of the writing, especially when any writer's block he has suffered has been fodder for an entire episode. It's always been evident Justin is someone who needs reining in with his ridiculous improv. Him being the actual voice of the show keeps him safe, but Dan is the heart and the real voice of so much of this, I see so little of Justin in this as a creation. It was like his idea, but Dan fleshed it out. Justin's fans hate Dan, Dan's fans are far too kind to Justin, for the most part. But they won't let him off any hooks either.

I'm inclined to believe Justin has done something unacceptable that's been framed as DV. He's a horrible drunk and he has many personal issues that clearly need addressing. That he does his work drunk is remarkable. Meanwhile, he's sold NFTs and an actual painting. He has a certain talent but I feel like R&M wouldn't be what it is without Dan. Being a Harmontown fan means you have a bigger backstage pass to the show, if you're puzzled by jokes about urban disses and mannequin legs, then you don't know Dan and you've never heard an episode of Harmontown. Justin brought up an incident from his past involving his cousin that was left-field, I don't doubt the guy has unresolved trauma and has addictions to cope with it. Dan's had to kind of curtail his immature comments, it's become a kind of father/son dynamic even with the small age gap. I lost tolerance for watching Justin's VR games because the Morty voice is insufferable for long periods, plus I genuinely don't find his aimless improv that funny, I think it's easier to hand off the Interdimensional Cable episodes to him so he can annoy the animators with off the wall concepts.

Harmon did really discredit his depression, however. I'm going over that episode and Harmon's goading him a lot, honestly I don't think Dan today would agree with this, they were both going through unhealthy phases and probably fed into each other's BS as toxic friendships and booze can do. He owns up to being the too afraid to be dead but wants to die club of which I am also a member. He admits to not seeking therapy and jokes about blowing his brains out. There's so much self-deprecating which covers so many comic's depressive episodes. Justin was very vulnerable. Dan possibly being autistic in his queries as to whether therapy helps you better with social interactions. Justin's actually pretty stoned too, and that's about the time he owns up to the cousin incident. Given everyone's aware of the heavy reliance on incest jokes in Rick and Morty, that's clearly another means of coping with this. Bearing in mind, Dan also has owned up to his affection for incest porn. Justin's admission is so blithely given, the audience laps it up, it seems so hilarious in the delivery, I don't even know if anyone was affected by it personally, considering sibling abuse is so often looked over. Harmon accuses Justin of being boring in his delivery, Justin's trying to tie it into the guest's history. I don't know if it was brave given he excused so much of it by his cousin being good looking. So, do you give him leeway now he's  being arrested for DV? You can't really. The guest says Justin turned out "okay" and it's very clear he didn't. Dan adds a disclaimer to anyone contemplating suicide to get help, as he always did. This was 2015. We still hadn't learnt to mentally process this like adults, I suppose. Because, newsflash, none of us are healthy adults.

I do like Rick and Morty, I like to think of it existing outside of the fan base + the abundance of mainstream attention + the references in other media + ubiquitous merchandise. I think some of the jokes land differently when they pertain to Harmon's peccadilloes for lack of a better word, which really does lend to my bafflement that this show has so many fans who aren't remotely aware of Harmontown. At least with Community, it was clearer by the Harmontown audience response who was close to both, I can't see the millions of R&M fans being Harmontown fans too. Heck, I don't even expect Cassie Steele (Manny from Degrassi) to be 100% aware of Harmontown either, or if she'd ever have been a guest on the show the way Spencer Grammar was. (I'd have loved it if she was). I don't expect its current Gen Z fanbase to be even remotely interested in the inner-workings of the Gen Xer who helped make the show. I can see across generations for being the child of boomers while having Gen X friends/family and a spouse, I get all the complaints but Gen Z would not be cool with Harmon, they've never been okay with people like that. They definitely won't be okay with Justin if any of this is true.

I just wanted to add here I kind of got in a near-argument over Chevy Chase being involved in Community, and I tried to make a neutral comment that the pacing just died when Pierce was in the scene. The OP decided I was attacking Chase's integrity as an actor who wouldn't slow down production the way Dan did. I had to clarify my comment was about the scenes on the TV that we saw, not the onset behavior. The episode would be travelling along at breakneck speed, then Pierce comes in and it's all falling flat unless he's not the main person in the scene. Pay attention to how often he's not given lines. They let the guy lie on the floor and it took a hot minute to get to the gag. I think he's in a wheelchair or lying in bed for most of some episode. The funniest episode he's in is the one he's not in and his lawyer is delivering his lines via letters to the others after he dies.

Dan could've handled Chase's BS better, but Chase sees no reason, to this day, to fix his problems. Meanwhile, Dan has for the most part. I just watched a Community crack video (wasn't as fun as my Degrassi Cracks but it was fun), and nothing Chase did raised much of a giggle from me. Maybe one or two things. Meanwhile, Troy's predominantly featured, and everything he does is hilarious. He was objectively fucking funnier than Pierce, yet people in the subreddit for Community seem to defend some of Chase's crap more than Dan's. I said they had a clash of egos that went badly. It doesn't detract from Chase behaving like a narcissistic menace entirely on his own. What else could Dan do against that specifically other than fire the guy? I thought Chase was funny in the 90s, he could work with that pacing but not as an old, crotchety piece of shit, he lost that tenacity (and the coke). I'm pretty much over us defending old white guy behaviour on the basis of them being old and not a piece of shit. People were just laughing to be polite. Apparently he got roasted to shit and lost the plot, he has no respect in the industry yet you're supposed to bow to him like some living god because he demands it? No. Donald Glover was funnier than him. Case closed. Go to bed.

Someone said Harmontown ruined Rick and Morty because Dan's all over the writing. Yeah, fucker. That was entirely my point about the Szechuan sauce/pickle Rick fans being such idiots, I could swear they never sat down and listened to a single episode of the podcast where you got the inside gags. How can you possibly be that in love when you're missing out on the level of fan interaction Harmon had during the show that seeped into Rick and Morty. I don't remember there being the same crossover with Community, since it seemed to be less "his" if that makes sense. When a rejected joke for another script wound up in Rick and Morty, I got the joke the network didn't and it fit better within Rick and Morty. There was nothing wrong with it, it made fucking sense. I felt like the network people saying "we didn't get it" was a fault on their part, not Dan's. He explained it well enough. It pissed me off since it's a clear indication of networks deciding what audiences will and will not understand, if they don't, nobody will. Bullshit. He was kind to them but it was like the Friends writers checking in with their live audience if they got a really fucking obvious joke. That completely broke my attitude towards the show being clever and funny, it's aged so poorly in terms of characters and jokes, I can't stand watching it. South Park was right if you end up a writer for the show friends, you've lost your sense of humour. And do you want Justin's voice in there now? It's embarrassing he still has showrunner status despite being fired, and he didn't give it a voice anyway, unless that was just to riff stupid shit that wasn't that funny.

Interview Breaks Bad??

So, I watched the trailer for the AMC series of Interview with the Vampire, and... I have words. Lots of words. All of them... varied.

Where I thought maybe Christopher, Anne's son, was responsible for raising the homosexual subtext to the level of actual text, I don't think he's included in this at all. The numerous rights wars and bidding skirmishes put it in the hands of AMC with Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul alum behind the entire production. Which is cool and all, as it's a totally different tone than these shows, but they've decided to do away with the negative aspects of the plantation period to slightly modernise it into the earlier 1900s. Which means: Louis is now a black man looking for some status and wealth, Lestat's very much his seducer and the one with all the money (and still white AF and very lionesque, perhaps even angelic), and Claudia's also black, however I don't know what her status is, I don't think she's entirely impoverished either. The three of them seem to be a pack of hunters rather than a strange (and ironically progressive) same-sex parent family.


Oh, and Daniel (the Interviewer) is now an older journalist familiar of Louis's who seems to be treating the interview with more incredulity and an air of interrogation rather than naive wonderment. Okay. Sure. He's still Daniel Molloy however, and has a younger version of himself.


I'm not detracting from Louis and Lestat's unique intimacy, and the romantic affection showed by all the vampires in the series. Marius and Armand were probably more graphically sexual, Louis and Armand had a certain attraction that was intimate and intellectual. Lestat and Gabrielle, his mother, have their own interactions that hint at a vague incestuousness marred by Gabrielle's want to explore the world alone.
But Louis and Lestat were complicated as fuck. And the thing is, vampires are basically impotent because Enkil is canonically without a dick, which renders his ancestors of sorts incapable. The sumptuousness of their relationship is really something to examine outside the penile-centric nature of sex. Absolutely, by all means have them make out and Eiffel Tower some women. Make them true companions in every sense of the word. They toned it down in the early 90s and yeah, that's absolutely annoying I get that, but they weren't completely shying away from the homoeroticism either. In a pre-Brokeback world, it was still there on screen, it was still capable of affecting audiences. I dug it. You can't accuse them of not giving us anything.


What this show does though, is effectively make this a kind of fan fiction the fans really wanted. You couldn't get Tom Cruise to make out with Brad Pitt, let's just make Jacob Anderson make out with Sam Reid, who does suit the appearance more of what we expect of Lestat. If it satiates that itch for the fans, go for it. I'm just not that interested in this story and I don't want the annoyance of nitpicking aspects because I'm a purist. All the remakes of my favourite books aren't good, while Rings of Power and the Whatever Dragon Show are satisfying the fans, that's fine, I'm not interested any more than I expect them to care about this. The Vampire Chronicles also has a rabid fanbase who deserve better. They understand that people won't sympathise with a white slave owner, even if Louis was benevolent, he was a slave owner. It explains his innumerable wealth that the somewhat broke Lestat is after, however it's not really part of Louis's character, either, it's a burden to him. I'll accept removing it invites a wider audience, though. Whether or not he needs to be white now, that's one thing, but he won't technically be Louis either, he seems less dour for one. The cast list has a brother and a sister and a mother, which is correct, they've not gone with the throwaway wife and child in the movie. From this, it seems more like he's bored with his life and drawn to the allure of wealth and sexuality he can't explore with anyone else. Lestat still seems like Lestat, only less overtly abusive and more cunning and manipulative. And even that isn't subtext, it's in the dialogue Louis was in an abusive entanglement with his maker and lover. What this appears to be is a more mutual arrangement where Louis is allowed to explore his forbidden wants and Lestat gains a companion for protection through the centuries. Plus the question of the elusive vampire population is still raised, and so likely to be Louis's quest in later episodes. There's a bunch of characters that are completely new, which seems so odd considering the Chronicles were being sold with a huge variety of characters AMC seem to not give a flying fuck about but hadn't been given proper, or any, onscreen interpretations. (Bert Newton's son as a pretty blonde Armand is no compensation for the blatant miscasting of Antonio Banderas in the 1994 adaptation).


Claudia still seems like hell in a pair of satin slippers, which is fine, however I highly doubt Louis relationship with her will be peppered with pedophilic undertones. That's another "woman's brain in a girl's body so it's all okay" scenario the internet has deemed morally reprehensible, so yeah, she'll be a bone of contention for other reasons. She was very much pulled between Lestat and Louis, I think it would be more interesting for her to maybe play them against each other more rather than become overtly violent and acting betrayed. She claws for her own agency but still needs a protector, so is Lestat bringing her into the fold to keep Louis from leaving, or is it another reason she's there? Her antics are what drive Louis and Lestat to endless arguments on how to raise her as a child vampire.

And now Anne's gone, I have no idea if she'd have approved. I thought she was working with Christopher and this was his brain child but I was completely wrong. Now it seems like an almost pointless adaptation, even if it's been critically accepted and praised. Shakespeare's been reimagined in multiple contexts and periods, so you can apply the same logic to Interview, with the author no longer metaphysically dead and now actually deceased, neither she or her estate can do anything. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, (which is gatekeeping their actual reviews), is lower but not significantly bad. But I don't see why you couldn't keep the same story and change Louis profession while still bringing it into a more enlightened age. I can't get away with complaining about that without sounding racist, I can accept a new version of Louis but what was entirely wrong with the original? Does this mean Lestat can't bemoan Louis's interminable whining through the centuries? The fact it got old made Lestat the hero of the Chronicles, I totally admit if we'd have had nothing but Louis for books on end, yes, it would've gotten fucking old. But it's not like he's the absolute worst either. I said I wouldn't mind a remake of the movie, this isn't what I had in mind.

There's absolutely no reason to completely change the Mayfair Witches because we haven't had any adaptations of that, and that's a lot to get through, The Witching Hour is an slog as it's a history lesson on the family. Their ties to the Vampire Chronicles was interesting except for the fact Rowan Mayfair seemed to be completely erased from the newer books. I wasn't even entirely happy with that being the conclusion of both series. I liked they were linked by the Talamasca without there being heavy overlap, and Mona Mayfair's kind of irritating so it sucks she gets to be a vampire. Lestat imposing on the family through an entirely new Mayfair descendant seems a tad ridiculous too, but it was a clear killing of two birds with one stone in Blood Canticle. All authors are allowed to say they're done with a series and return to it ten years later, it happens. It doesn't mean what we get is good, though.

I want to see a Mayfair Witch series and I like we haven't got anything to compare it to now. The incest is probably the one thing making it too difficult to adapt acceptably, even though people eat up adaptations of British royal family stories that were full of that nonsense in real life. Oh, and Game of Thrones made it "fine", right. It'll be like that.


So, the Mayfair Witches trailer dropped and it looks... fine. Trailer was cool, but using a cool song I like doesn't help as it amps me up for something that still might be crap. It looks kind of watered down but there are interesting aspects. Again I assumed a regular character was cast as a black guy but there's no indication it's actually Aaron Lightener just because they bring up the Talamasca, I'm okay with that but yeah Aaron's another old white dude. Whether they'll link this up with the Interview series at some point down the road, that I have to pay for access to AMC via Amazon I'll probably wind up giving Interview a try anyway. Of course the dance mom from Donnie Darko Beth Grant's playing a religious fanatic like she did in the Mist, she's Carlotta, obviously. It's all by the Breaking Bad peeps too. I don't know how their style will translate in this case.

What pissed me off is Witching Hour isn't available on Kindle and I really wanted to start re-reading it as I'm kinda bored with Firestarter. My copy is missing the cover and finding another copy is difficult, so unless the series generates enough interest in the book and they decide to actually release it is another matter. It would seem pretty stupid not to. It's fucking ridiculous the terrible porn she wrote got released and this and Lestat didn't. Supposedly she distanced herself from the vampire stuff but that obviously didn't last forever whether she left the church or felt compelled to bring Lestat back with a bunch of nonsense, it doesn't make sense to have two random books from the two biggest series completely unavailable on Kindle. Fuck, I'll take a bad optical scan like I did with Imagica over having nothing at all. I get I own this shit but I don't want to lug the book around and I like having stuff on my kindle, so my plan to read the Vampire Chronicles was shot to pieces when Lestat wasn't available. I don't know whether it's a rights issue I thought it all went back to the estate. The nutso thing is Lestat's an audiobook and not a Kindle. I'm sorry, I don't like audiobooks, I know people love them because reading sucks but I actually get horribly bored listening to them, particularly if the character voices the reader uses don't really fit my idea of what the character would sound like. And they're fucking expensive, and I don't want an audible subscription. It's where I delineate from everyone who just wants audiobooks thinking they're the easiest thing in the world to produce and sell and since it means they can feel less shitty about not having the patience to read. Isn't that kind of childish though? Wanting another adult to read you a bedtime story? Do you want them reading you my shit? No fucking thanks. It's the other reason I keep it a secret more from everyone, I honestly don't want these people associating me with this shit, I wish I'd been a ghost writer with a full NDA preventing me from even admitting it was me. It's the perfect crime. To me, I get something out into the world that isn't a total hot mess to look at, I don't have to commit to promotion or major editing and nobody has to know and bug me about reading it. The collaboration process might be annoying but honestly I'd just try to meet their expectations regardless. It'd be fitting everything around a deadline that would prove trickier.

Oh, fuck you Amazon you release Spanish versions of all the Chronicles but you can't fucking release an English version.

Update: I managed to see a reaction video of the second episode of Interview and there was a lot of muttering, muted and violent gesticulating and clapbacks involved from my end. Rather than have Louis persistently wrestle with losing his humanity, he picks and chooses when to be a monster and criticises Lestat for being messy and inhumane about killing, not for killing as a deed. Random tit shots. Malloy is a journalist, the acting from him is wooden and stoic, it's over dinner in a pretentiously designed room, (I'm assuming each episode is a night in this room). Louis openly drinks blood from a human in front of Daniel and lets the human walk off and collapse in the hallway like it's the funniest thing ever. Daniel acts like this is nothing, so there's no childlike wonderment. Despite them saying it's meant to avoid racist overtones, Louis calls Lestat out for inferring he's a slave. Apparently there's social commentary on priests being kiddy fiddlers and perfectly decent fodder for vampires, I won't deny people knew this about priests but I doubt they spoke of it openly, it would've been more taboo to mention it than to do the act itself What, is Lestat now going to take in abused orphans from a church? The dialogue is awful and isn't used appropriately. The acting is dreadful. Louis douses himself in milk from being caught in the sun after he's specifically told by Lestat not to run home. Instead of Louis's quiet astonishment from seeing through vampire eyes, there's a goofy scene where Louis's just tripping balls. Lestat just goes from deadpan to angry, he has no real charisma from what I could see, then he just makes gay comments. The subtext and text are there at the same time. I don't think the actual fans are happy with this overall. It looks frustratingly dreadful and silly, people are already comparing it to fan fiction and spoof movies. I won't touch it. But this doesn't bode well for the Mayfair Witch series in terms of acting at least. This is so bad.

I watched someone else’s (a gay man’s) take on how the series did well with framing abusive relationships and the matter of “choice” involved when becoming a vampire. I still got angry. Louis wants Claudia turned after she’s found in a fire, which negates his desperate need to avoid human blood, Lestat is madly in love and infused with jealousy when Louis struts about with another man. And Armand is the one making him an asshole and manipulating his memories so Daniel’s being misinformed, and I guess that accounts for Louis not being “Louis”. I don’t get it, none of that makes sense, there was no reason to change the story this much and I’m still astounded how much people love it. Claudia’s infantilised by the theatre not by Lestat, I think I mentioned the stupid trial that drags on forever to justify them killing Madeline and Claudia, this YouTuber praising that Madeline is able to “consent” to vampirism while Louis doesn’t. I can’t bring myself to watch it to make it clear, I just can’t watch it if it’s that mangled.

Girls on film... Why I can't even with Lena Dunham

I had a copy of the pilot of Girls I got for free with another DVD set (I think it was whatever HBO show I bought at the time, I can't even remember). I had it on good authority it was great and worth the bother, and this was before streaming really took off so I could use the promo disc as it was intended. Maybe twenty minutes in, I gave up.

Opening on a scene where a white girl who's taken her parents' generosity for granted finds out they're cutting her off made me too uncomfortable and probably tapped into my own sense of teenage narcissism that spilled over into my early 20s. I don't really like cringe black comedy, it's why I don't think I could sit through Nathan for You or a lot of Curb. Reading over the pilot episode, I can kinda see how you're supposed to sympathise with Dunham's Hanna, things are shitty for her, but at that age, I couldn't even get an unpaid internship my parents thought would turn into a real job. I was happy to have the government give me money so I could feign financial independence from my parents (they still covered my insurance even after I had my own policy and a wage, I only removed their details when I worked for the actual company to get my now removed subsidy. Sadly, they didn't realise they'd under-insured me when I finally had another breakdown at 28 and I had to explain why when I was well again). 

 But my point is, even when I was down to my last 80c which covered the train ride into town to hand in my Centrelink form and get paid, I didn't call my parents for more money. I might've asked for more if I was desperate in uni but I kept it to a minimum, and usually felt bad if I spent it on anything other than rent, food or bills. During my first episode, I spent money on a dress and I remember my mother making a comment about it being "my money" in that way you know they really disapprove. I don't think she did like how I spent my money back then, but she wouldn't say, and I know she wasn't thrilled with covering my rent when I wanted to move out permanently and live in the city. Up until then, I came home from uni every year so I wasn't staying in residence over the summer, and we usually had to reapply, out of towners getting priority, so it meant I was approved for each year I attended. I have no idea what I'd have done had I not, I know my parents really wanted me to move back after my first hospitalisation and I'm sure they were looking into me finishing my studies at the sister campus in town, where my mother actually worked. I know she pulled strings to get me through my first year, I doubt they'd have let me take my exams down there had I asked myself. I know she really came through, however I also couldn't drop out at that point and take a year off despite desperately wanting to (looking back, this was my first instance of absolute burnout and not realising this made it harder to get over and avoid repeating). I appreciated she later said she didn't know how I got through it despite everything. I had to. I had a choice to really screw up and I chose to keep going instead, whether I hated it or not.

So, I don't really see how I'm supposed to find Hanna's character endearing, when the pilot ends with her, in a haze from opium tea, demanding her parents pay her 1100 a month and that they read her memoir she'll never publish. I know this was based on her personal experiences and you're meant to cringe with her but, no thanks. I understand there was supposed to be self-deprecation in this character portrayal but to me Dunham wasn't selling it in real life. She was becoming an industry darling who later had to apologise for assuming she knew what a black man was thinking. (Her getting together with Amy Schummer really became a bad marriage of egos at that point, and both of them were being exposed for their abundant flaws despite their previous popularity). 

I don't hold up these projects when they're female-centric as they tend to get bogged down in their own need for validation from critics as being important feminist pieces that seem to suggest they're exempt from objective criticism. I hated Wonder Woman and the 2016 Ghostbusters were just overshadowed by this so when it came time to really give opinions on the films themselves, any negative critique was labelled sexist. Brie Larson failed to be another champion for the cause when she said something valid in a very invalidating way, I heard a lot of condescension where others didn't. Sorry, honey, but you do sound like you hate white dudes. You sound passive aggressive and silly, that's what people were mad at. Somehow, you made Disney money off the back of "charity" so underprivileged girls could watch your movie. (I know it wasn't her but it was terrible when you really thought about what it meant in terms of valid "charity"). There's a myriad of better ways you can say we need more women reviewing movies. Most of the white dudes I watch on YouTube have actual time for female reviewers. They've been very respectful of them. If you want to say Red Letter Media are right wing commenters, you're a fucking idiot. Whether they were working with women previously or not, they're not the most problematic white guys online. I'm pretty confident I know which white dudes to throw under the bus by now, and it's not Rich Evans.

I veered off topic, my point was I didn't have a lot of time for watching Dunham beat herself up in the way I've consciously been doing my whole life. I've absolutely taken sole responsibility of dishing out any damage anyone had primed for me. If people did miss the point of Girls, maybe it wasn't as obvious, I don't know. Like I said, Dunham making herself so thoroughly unlikable, even to this very day where she's tweeting egotistical "LGBT ally saviour complex" nonsense for attention, how am I supposed to believe she's still not stuck in a sense of narcissism, as if she's  being sarcastic, I'm not seeing it, and I'm not that bad at reading sarcasm for someone who may or may not be on the spectrum. 

I'm going over a video essay that's from one of those verified content farms like WatchMojo that are usually a little too fair to certain shows. I also came across Dunham's article on Marilyn Monroe suggesting she's not unlike her, her mention of "childless" women annoying coming from a supposed feminist given women who have chosen not to have kids, like me, are childfree, childless denoting you're somehow a failure for failing to procreate. I understand she's gone through a lot of shit and tragedy but I can't see why she needs to keep popping up online saying contentious shit all the time. I also saw she was looking to make a Girls movie by 40, as of 2015, and she's now 37, so I'm questioning what interest there would be in a Girls movie, coming from someone who didn't think we'd ever be a Community movie, the fans wanted that and got it. Are there fans of Girls who want a movie? Well, the lack of a hashtag campaign would suggest otherwise. Rabid fanbases make shit happen, for good or bad. I haven't seen a groundswell for other movie adaptations of cult millennial shows.

I will admit my aversion to Girls was Dunham holding up a mirror to my own self-loathing, mid-twenties self. I still carry a lot of regret for how self-indulgent my episodes feel in retrospect, which is why I've distanced myself from involving people in this. I hate people in her age bracket are suffering from economic problems they didn't themselves create, what distances Dunham from that is her personal privilege and connections that gave her an in-road others perhaps didn't have. And her relative success now removes her from that economic burden. Which is fine, she's worked hard enough, I won't refute that, it's only made her less relatable. Maybe the idea of her having a memoir she felt worthy of publication rubs me up the wrong way when I didn't see myself as a self-indulgent writer, just an ignored one. Having said that, what she did publish in real life received a lot of backlash that wasn't worth the PR acrobatics she had to do back then to apologise. But yeah, joking you were a sexual predator towards a sibling would be considered triggering to anyone who did suffer sibling sexual abuse, whether your experience wasn't viewed the same way. (How many times do you want to apologise for what you've said in one lifetime? How are you not constantly exhausted and embarrassed?). I don't see why she continues to say what she says despite her success, unless it's a form of compulsive self-sabotage she hasn't addressed through therapy. I do know it is a nightmare navigating your 20s and 30s with a diagnosis nobody can agree on while being given far too much medication to cope with said illness when you're inside a medical model that dehumanises women for having mental illnesses in the first place. I wouldn't take that away from her.

Maybe it's because I didn't treat my 40s as being a terrifying phase and have been so desperate to get out of my 20s and 30s with the erroneous notion people would take me seriously by now. They don't. But I didn't have drug and alcohol addiction, endometriosis and the weight of expectation from the industry to be something I'm not. I sympathise with all that until Dunham reminds me she's sometimes incapable of checking herself before wrecking herself. Dreading your 40s seems to be the millennial curse left over from Gen X/Y fearing their 30s, where you're called a boomer at age 45 until someone reminds you how old the oldest millennials are now. I just fail at relating to them by simply being stuck between Gen X/Y and millennials and I was always writing to get away from myself and my surroundings. I wasn't bold enough for her honesty, which is admirable when it's not being completely and pointlessly offensive and glib.

As an addendum, she landed in similar BS as Ellen did over a shelter dog, and outed her sibling who's trans. It's still up for debate if the molestation allegations were true since she was protected by a society that probably comes to the defense of the wrong people, and the sibling didn't press charges. I don't know if I'd have been that forthcoming about any of it in the first place. Again, how much reward should one person get for being that blatantly and brutally honest? I'm waiting for her to say she's on the spectrum as that's a big known trait, saying things you find benign and it being taken as absolutely offensive. (Yes, when you're learning about a thing the thing paints your judgement of other things. I'm sorry).

Amazon has its own low bar for movies

If you've heard recently Amazon's become a viable distributor of bad independently made films, it's basically true. Having seen people react to some of these films, it's been killing me they've lowered the bar much like they did for books so they could flood Amazon Prime with absolutely shit content. Granted, Contrapoints failed to get her YouTube series approved, which is professionally made but sadly too full of gay content, it still suggests there is some gatekeeping. But if you have a shitty movie with mild Christian undertones, you may be in luck with Amazon. Provided you've uploaded a movie of reasonable quality in terms of visual/audio presentation, even if it has a terrible plot and appalling acting, it'll likely be approved for distribution. Sure, Amazon withholds the right to remove this (I'd say from poor views but it could be anything) at their discretion, but you can put your godawful God movie on there. Amazon's willingness to make money with publishing anyway possible couldn't stop at books. The only major difference is, most people's shitty books are never taken down unless there's a valid copyright strike, and given I barely had to prove my retention of rights, I'd say most of remained.

On top of that, I've been watching a show they salvaged from good old SyFy called The Magicians. It's been a pretty good show but they actually "stole" some of my ideas.

1. Girl throws positive pregnancy test in a rage over discovering unwanted child who will be destined to fulfill some prophecy.
2. Race of not so nice elementals (theirs were evil fairies and mine were indifferent sylphs but their demeanor was similar) conspire to take first born of human couple for own purposes without regard to human couple/child
3. Malevolent dryad character spurned by humans retaliates and laments being abused.
   

It's always bizarre to see someone else give a visual representation of an idea you wrote independent of the show. I don't plan on publishing the above, but it's always in my head if I did, I'd be the one accused of thievery. If I were more open, I'd say I'd written these and comment on the strange coincidence, all the while reminded of the collective unconsciousness of humanity and the fact there are no new idea.

Shut up before you make me cry... The Fisher King

I can't say why my 12 year old mind gravitated towards odd movies, I don't even remember the first time I saw the Fisher King, I think it was a thing that it didn't matter how old you were, if Robin Williams was in a movie, you got to watch it because we all knew he was a funny bastard. It was one of my parrot movies (I've recently learnt that I'm probably autistic and have a form of echolalia where you repeat heard phrases, only I'm rather good at accent mimicry). I don't think I cried at it at all until I was older. I sort of got the humor but didn't, I liked Amanda Plummer's character and probably identified with her. My mind was capable of comprehending cleverness  but I needed to grow up to really appreciate these movies. 

Something about the ending tears me up the way a good happy ending should. Gilliam's talent for putting us in the head of someone frenetic and appreciating the madness for what it is. He's quite underrated for how stylised and smart his films are, and he injected a whimsy into the tale that only someone like Williams could pull off, mainly for the fact it was easy to get him to do outlandish shit like jump around Central Park naked. I like Bridges' as Jack, how he adopts the madness and they balance each other out in the end, nobody needed curing, not in that sense. We're stuck in claustrophobic places off-kilter with Dutch angles. I think the hospital scene was a good precursor to 12 Monkeys. The dance in Grand Central Station is pure magic, I was very in love with mature yet fanciful romances at that age, Untamed Heart being my other go-to, that's also full of flaws a younger millennial wouldn't abide. (Do you romanticise someone sneaking into your house, or the fact they're a tad too childlike). I would put a trigger warning on this in terms of depiction of mental illness/degradation etc. It affected me more later, you can't rely on a 90's movie to give you the best representations of any affected group or minority, I'm sorry. This one isn't entirely offensive. (I realised the scene Anne is all over Jack despite him not being in the mood might bug people too).

The other William's movie I loved too much was Dead Poet's Society, another one that really kicks you in the gut in the end. I studied that at school, my English teacher actually berating the entire class for their shitty essays on it when we'd been studying it. (I think he ate his words when he realised he'd forgotten to assign a year long project we were supposed to do very close to the end of the year), I wish I'd kept my essay as apparently it was the only good one, a nearby student complaining that he'd just said they'd all fucked up so why did I get a good grade. He said because I deserved it. Duh. 

Everyone in the Fisher King is wonderful, it's fucking criminal Mercedes Rueh's career didn't take off after she won the Oscar. She's the perfect cheese to Plummer's chalk the way they bond over drinks and horror stories of their mothers. She's written so well and uniquely, she's really screwed over by Jack for all her patience and compassion she gives him only to have him basically abandon her once he's fine. Anne's prince falls into a coma like Parry. It's poetic for something that was advertised as more of a romantic comedy. It's a journey of one man finding his humanity, he has to finish Parry's quest or lose his own redemption.

I don't think Bridges and Williams could ever be replaced, in these roles or any others they've played. Younger kids won't get to experience how it was growing up with an actor like Robin Williams being such a respected household name despite him being a prolific coke addict, he was still the most human actor when we lost him, something special disappeared from the world, it also gave us in the mental illness community a swift reminder how close we skirt that edge without appreciating we could lose anyone at any moment. Williams having such a heartfelt sincerity in this film, you couldn't replicate it.

But movies kind of created my love language (or rather my only fucking language) it seemed to be the only way I could cope with running out of shit to say. So, if I ever quote the Simpsons around you, it's because I like you and I want to be your friend.

The safety of all things old...

I haven't let modern culture affect how I view older media, I'm stuck in that in between where I see problematic language for what it is but am too familiar with it to have a completely negative reaction. But what I find in watching any show that existed prior to 2001 is, it won't contain any mention of any piece of media I've grown to despise since that year.

Pretty much all media after 2001 has been either influenced or is a basis for reference for various intellectual properties I've just been so desperate to avoid hearing about. Even shows I really want to watch I have to put up with some throwaway line at the least, or parody at the worst. And the people I watched on YouTube were either reviewing the shit, or loving the shit, or loving the bad fanfiction related to the shit, or the fandoms of the stupid shit. I really wanted to enjoy this one girl's deepdives on toxic fandoms but she got grating, and she's another of a handful of people I watch who got stuck on the phrase "surffisive to say". I don't like to harp on about words that are not words, but if you're turning a misheard phrase such as "suffice it to say" into that, it's still not a real word. I know these kids type out their scripts so I don't know how their spell checkers never picked it up. I don't want to be a hater or a corrector, because it really crushes people to be corrected, I know dumb 40 year olds make those kinds of mistakes too, I'm the last person to judge. I still get annoyed. I also end up getting annoyed at these kids being into Wattpad fan fiction that's made me so sour about being an author that I can't get attention for any original work, even if the stories are getting dunked on and criticised either in its original form or in some adaptation, it's still getting attention and that only bolsters the people who write this shit to do more. All the people my university lecturers would have had thrown out for plagiarism and juvenile crap were the ones getting publishing deals, I stuck by my integrity and got stomped. I can't sit and have fun in that space with these YouTubers, I got to commiserate with one while we were both being screwed, but her platform rewarded her with the leg-up I could never get, so I had to leave her too.

My old DVDs and shows are the safest place for me, even if they're full of un-PC language, they're okay for me, and yes I recognise this 1000% as privilege. Even with politics, this is all before Trump and Hillary, hell it predates W. Bush robbing Gore, it predates 9/11. I can't praise this period since it makes me look nostalgic for a much shittier time, where people's feelings weren't protected at all, and I don't want to go back there, it just sucks that's the place I don't have to hear about current day stuff. I'm kinda into younger kids watching Degrassi, they're really good with humorous references and commentary, I get to watch their bug-eyed responses to language that isn't appropriate if they do go back to the older series. But, and I OOOP, the person I've never seen before who was doing a reaction video MENTIONS A THING I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT.

No YouTube channel is safe for me anymore. I've actually unsubbed from so many channels I have less to watch, so when we don't have an internet connection, I throw on a DVD series, and suddenly I'm not so interested in going back on YouTube. I think if I did this for maybe six months, if I limited all my media down to pre-2000s content basically for the rest of my life, I'll be fine. Fuck, if Billie Eilish can reboot 90s fashion, if the Gen Z crowd wants to resurrect pencil-thin brows and baggy shorts, fuck it, I'm here for it. I want a full length pencil skirt but I'm too hippy for those now. Harry Styles seems to have reached his Thom Yorke existentialist phase while hiding it behind 80s synth-pop parodies and I'm here for it, I listened to it repeatedly online months ago after it blew up on TikTok but didn't bother buying it until the other day. We've left too much of the past lying around for present-day kids to ignore it. My parents' music filtered into the songwriters I grew up with and since I didn't listen to pop princesses, I knew Leonard Cohen's shit via covers. Which is fine, I didn't expect teenagers to discover the Smashing Pumpkins and resonate with it too. They're better people than I am, I want them to have their things and love them, but I'm opting to run from it and go back to all the shit I loved before I left home.

The only major issue I have with 80s references in current day shows is, I'm starting to feel like the reference is the starting off point, and the whole scene/episode is written around it. It's not reached organically as you're fleshing out the story, you've gone "Wouldn't it be cool to have this reference at some point? However we get there is less important." It's why I find that shit so cringey and not cool and something worthy of genuine enjoyment. Stranger Things kinda wrecked the NeverEnding Story theme in that regard, now I guess Kate Bush is wrecked for some people. (True story, I still prefer the Placebo version, I like the original but I was never a Kate Bush fan, were I to say this elsewhere I'd be strung up). At what point to we stop using these references as a crutch and start making anything genuinely new? It's something that bothered me before the 2000s, reboots were so en-vogue even then, something stupid as Dr Doolittle with Eddie Murphy had me asking, okay so when do we get new movies? Star Wars was being re-released in cinemas, the everything old is new stuff was already a problem by the end of the 80s, I'm sounding like a giant hypocrite now. I wasn't that into it, I've never liked Star Wars. I've never really liked anything. One day we might get the Last Unicorn live-action remake, it's likely now but I won't hold my breath for that or the HBO Degrassi reboot, which might be dead due to that merger. Pretty soon, nothing will not be under Disney. I'm still waiting for my company to be absorbed by Amazon.

News Radio > Friends.

For all the un-PC shit Friends trotted out, its contemporary News Radio wasn't all that bad. Joe Rogan aside, (I like his character on News Radio so I limit my appreciation to purely that while I pretend he's not a meathead antivaxxer), I haven't really seen much that would be indefensible.

Lisa and Dave flying straight into a secret relationship instead of boring us with an interminable "will they/won't they" is more fun while we wait for the secret to be exposed, and Beth's inclusion on it is more fun. The "Spanish Fly" incident is a funny twist on workplace harassment probably wouldn't work in this current environment but I wouldn't say it's egregious. Dave looking better in Lisa's dress is a reference to Foley being considered relatively hot as a woman according to his Kids in the Hall cast, and it's true. I'm still laughing at the same shit that made me laugh 20 years ago. It's more a fine wine than a mouldy cheese that claims it's delicious when it's not. Friends had its moments but I can't see myself laughing at every scene in ever episode, aside from the early Chandler and Monica stuff, and some of Phoebe's antics, it would annoy me more to sit through the shrillness and whining. Joe and Matthew might've been relatively immature but they're not annoying, this was a clever as fuck show, and it wasn't entirely dependent on Phil Hartman carrying it, he was absolute gold, and yeah it can be reasonably argued his absence affected the rest of the show in a negative way, but the entire cast was solid and fun, Stephen Root is irreplaceable as Jimmy James, I can't mentally find a better actor for any of the roles, especially Beth. They were lovable, (yes, even Joe. Again, I choose to remember him as we knew him and not how we know him now). I don't know how else you could've pulled this entire thing off with anyone else. It's a smarter show than Friends or Suddenly Susan, or even Seinfeld. It's an unappreciated gem that deserves more credit and still holds up. Yeah, there's chauvinist bollocks in it on a 90s level, it's not stupendously sexist, at least there was equality in terms of who'd dish it out and none of the men are above justifiable criticism, the bullshit war between the sexes that was prevalent back then was at least a level playing field on this show.