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ateolfIn the evening after work, Mary Beth and I did a quick run to CVS. Then at night we finished up Stranger Things. The final season kept up its momentum of each season being a little less good than the previous one. I'll try to sum up some things without getting into spoilers. The only real "spoiler" I had going in (and it's not a real spoiler) was that Linda Hamilton's character was completely wasted and pretty pointless...this was accurate! I'd say it was like the most stretched-out cameo in the history of moving pictures. I felt all the characters had really lost much of their character, especially in the first half, I thought it got better in the second half (with some unevenness, pasting in speeches instead of real character development/delivery). And it's always less good the bigger and more epic and bombastic it gets. The big and ridiculous gun battles and the giant epic cgi monster battles lose me (big reason each season decreased in value as more of that was added each time). The Henry/Vecna thing was a big reason season four lost something for me, one of my least favorite plot points. I thought maybe the way that played out in this season was better than I thought it'd be. Anyway, there was some good in the season, overall it was a bit messy. While the Coming Up With A Plan sequences could be fun in the earlier seasons, it was a little ridiculous during the first half of this season when they had one like every five minutes. Okay, and this one is hard to talk about without spoilers but I'll try: Eleven. Another reason I felt that each season got a little less good was diminished focus on her character. Maybe that's because of where it was all heading? So where her story goes, I think overall I disliked it. At first though, I was appreciating the ambiguity around it. But the more I thought about it, the more it really feels not really ambiguous but a having-cake-and-eating-it-too thing, where they can have the definite ending they want but also an out for fans who want this different definite ending. And a big thing about it is that it's not a case of there being two plausible possibilities, but two options that are both available because both are implausible (though one is much less plausible than the other). Anyway, the season was okay. Mixed bag but happy it's over. Now I'm off to work which is sure to be frustrating. We got stuck with this project where we have to recreate this integration for this sub-company we've never heard of before because the thing currently being used is going away and we have the insanely ridiculous need to do it in like two weeks. Just started working on it recently and I'm very likely going to be working over this weekend (to be comped later, but still not looking forward to it).
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Date: 2026-01-16 04:40 pm (UTC)the flows and concentrations of power that are now constraining just about anything going on collectively visibily are, well. watching the results of such organizing principles is both depressing and affirming, proves the point once again.
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Date: 2026-01-16 09:20 pm (UTC)And the whole "you messed with the wrong family" thing was there from the beginning (it feels like it was probably an exact quote in multiple seasons...other examples of that too, but that one jumps out) and always pretty cringey.
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Date: 2026-01-16 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-16 05:04 pm (UTC)and connected to that, Joyce's "you fucked with the wrong family" reminded me, and i'd thought it repeatedly watching this season anyway, some of the unexamined universals in the show, one of them is about the particularization of, when it's MY friend or MY family it matters now and i can and should be expected to do anything to protect them. that kept happening over and over, and each time i realized, one of the things that sets me apart and makes me a freak people are uncomfortable with on some level is, i don't have that, i could never have that given how things went for me early on repeatedly. you don't have to have me get to know you or like you for me to assume it's in everyone's best interest everyone's doing ok. it's not personal to me compared to most folks i think, there's a near universal assuming it is more so than it is for me; i operate from, it should be universal and knowing you doesn't matter, there. which i think is why people think i'm cold maybe, or i'm not good at signaling "let's be friends" because sometimes things you do for people are to indicate some level of that show-me-our-mutual-and-sometimes-exclusionary-allegiance stuff...and what people don't understand is, it's not necessarily a bad thing in all ways, being this way instead. there are moments, like watching that stuff, where i'm reminded i actually think it can be a good thing, a better for the future even, thing. not ashamed, beginning to sense a bit of pride perhaps actually. because as others have begun to notice and talk about, this whole "as long as my household's ok", "fuck you got mine" super duper Is Not Working. for anyone, included people who say and do that. (nancy kress, among others, all over again...)
(i think this is important because there's a lot of inversions going on this season i was grossed out by, and one of them's about that. you get the feeling what makes henry creepy and unnatural in the logics and aesthetic-expressions of the show is not so much that he has anger and a desire for power from trauma but that he's A Single Solitary Guy of means, independent from the prescribed communal order (got some vibes of that specter-for-squares for sure--it's the weird well dressed timid looking pansyish guy (with his pansyish house!) skulking around the schoolyard, not laura palmer's stoic macho dominant star businessman dad pillar of the community or the general vise grip of conformity, and also the whole tired cloaked queerphobic, if a guy seems sensitive/therapeutic it can't possibly be so, the whole, "guys shouldn't REALLY be allowed to be kidnergarten teachers, c'mon!" thing--and all that, the whole bundle of weasely unsaid but pretty clear baggage of all that actually had me thinking a little bit of queerer takes like keepers of the flame, the "not much of a joiner" driver etc.) as opposed to this facebook-ified wonderful round table community. it's like, it's more about him visually and whatnot being that, not a proper suburbanite, weird alone guy and not minding (you can be a loner on the show so long as you Repent and come to the side of Community and whatnot--maybe getting rather handwavily killed/besmirched in the process btw--including literally one that kills together which somehow makes it alright and noble). and one gets the feeling it's more about the unease of, he's not plugged in with us (speaking of inversions), his early life wasn't textbook normal like us, so what could he be thinking?? we're not sure, and that's terrifying, unacceptable, and needs to be destroyed. time to project every terrible thing lurking in us onto that, yes, so we can feel ok destroying it. which does happen in real life to harmful effect...Will's gayness doesn't upset any of this conformist order of things, and honestly, Henry is coded waaaaaaayyyy more old school phobia-ed queer because some of these seeming universals of good the show never shuts up about, being one in a group and not having any secrets or independent free parts from it, the bundle of things that make up what makes Henry creepy visually and affect-wise and whatever else, are affronts/challenges to, potential free-spaces-from that, and that's the real offense/presented grotesquerie (on the show and irl these days), not actually Henry's violence or horrors because going by that the group (and the show)'s not different from that.
and in an also-margins way, similarly Kali's (earned! absolutely valid and not hard to understand at all if you don't get to live with kid gloves on) perspective, pain, and straight up death!, and her (chosen!) family/friend's deaths!, aren't important or as valid (only/except in service to mainstream others) because, what? because her sphere lacks a hopper type, or d and d playing nerd dudes, mainstream relatable something or other...and they mistrust and are uneasy thinking about her too, because she's shadow, edged on a periphery they won't admit is shadow in the first place because that subsidizes that gia's-mom-thing of denial of full reality include others unlike yourself.)
...
i was just reading earlier this week the part in Joycelyn Elders' memoir about her brother being murdered, and she talked about the family never wanting to have to see or think about unprompted the guy who did it again, right, but they also didn't want him to receive the death penalty (which he might've). and she talks about why. and something Maya Angelou said in the documentary from yeah, circa 2016 or whenver it was imff, how she'd had enough violence. the way she said it, all the sediment of what had happened underneath. what we talked about a few nights ago looking at the stars, the oracle in her kitchen and the turtle they eyeroll at in movies, that figure being Bored Of The Patriarchy because she knows how it ends (or rather never does). yes.
...a night before, and then it comes back to me watching all this mess that never changes or learns: "thought i was over the bridge now/circles and circles and circles again, got to stop spinning..." (which, you heard that live version with me come to think of it!) and, always, "and the man with the golden gun thinks he knows so much, thinks he knows so much". watching the tiers of it, the nesting, how one version of that looks on another and says it's the wrong one but this time he is the right one (gah that whole, but it's okay when hopper's doing it thing--"no really, i'm the 'Right' kind of Papa!"--or yeah what you smartly saw through all along, the but it's ok to do it this way because OUR tech and weapons and fighting skills will be the best ones!). no.
...still looking for some raisin girls to hang out with though.
...did happen to read more eve babitz essays this week that so happened to be good timing for me too, where she's still raving to all who'll listen about dancing, men with dancing skills and making that something that matters (instead), and swayze and dirty dancing (his break she was sort of on the edges of with the skate punk movie was it? ha!)
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Date: 2026-01-16 07:54 pm (UTC)it's a lot like the whole, not giving the least shit about actual education here just ever more absurdist levels of "performing" the look of something like it after the fact, its past remnants, faintly and obsessively, how that's completely obstructed the actual thing (and now seems full on enantridromia-y yes its opposite, and darkly on purpose apparently ugh). you'll have no reason to wonder why later nothing's there, nothing good's grown from it when you're going to need it. you wouldn't let it happen because you cared more about front-loaded preconceived notions and what you thought things ought to look like preplanned (dead/static, as in not living) instead of actually being through living development, and that blindered and controlling way of strangling actual life shuts it all out, including dynamic-transcendent (as in: changing) good/needed responsiveness.
and also, reminds me of (and i'm in tricky territory here so will probably just actually talk in person later, you know me well enough it'll be safer to fumble through these thoughts with someone who's not trying to read ill will on my part), a certain thing where women post-(supposed) lib put on all the trappings of previously male-only-coded "success" with focus on control/dominance and stoicism and presentability and business focus and all that, their entire lives are about prioritizing that way of being, and then once all that's taken care of each day whatever little dribble of leftover time/energy (hint: there isn't any) they suddenly want to magically snap their fingers and be someone who's spent their life/time/energy/focus differently, prioritizing different things that sharpen/hone different skills and perceptions, and they wonder why it doesn't happen instantly (honestly, here i'm talking sexually-emotionally: suited professionals of either the go-get-'em-tiger or good-diligent-worker-bee perfectionist sort who are upset about "female orgasm" and romance and even talk about it in terms of "performance" and being "broken" like a machine that needs a tune up, and you get the feeling they're upset about it more because of what it seems to signal or "say", like it's this nagging one section of a report card they didn't get a gold star on, than even actually knowing what they're missing, the defiant development of unconditional love and respectful acknowledgment of their inner core regardless of anything else in the "outer world" or its judgment--ironically not achievable, at least not in my experience, so long as you still have that gold star perfectionist wrestle-achievement-to-the-mat direct goal-setting attitude). ...phew, i said i wouldn't go into this tricky territory and i prob did, too much here, and will be misread. but we'll talk, maybe you already understand what i'm getting at (instead of, what it probably looks like to anybody else, mere condescending criticism of said women).
and like how, early on, say 2010s about, people kept trying to drum up tech solutions to out-tech the invasive nefarious unethical and whatever else tech. and i felt then, and still do, you have a foundational problem and if you don't deal with it this tech arms race doesn't matter, you've got to address the (non-tech) realm of, there are enough people who have no qualms about all this in the first place, regardless of the details of how they go about making it happen the fact they want it to, and many working "beneath" them to make it happen don't mind doing so, is a foundational problem nobody mainstream visible ever seems to want to seriously collectively look at or (with love) call out, address on those (non-tech) terms.
(which is like the late stage capitalism issue too, that no one ever seems to convincingly point out to people--that we're now at a place where, doing what works/seems to help you individually is usually/majority of the time now actively harming the world you live in which means is actually harming yourself. so what looks like a way forward for yourself is actually the opposite. in the sense of, most jobs with sustainable non-insane demands/conditions that pay adequately for a comfortable life, if they aren't in insanely competitive there-can-be-only-one-type fields such as arts and academia (bc those are underfunded, stuff like that's either underfunded by not paying nearly anyone who does them enough--see humanities, talk therapy--or bloodbath competitive which is just another way of being underfunded in a sense, you have to be kinda-lottery-level freak of talent/luck/drive as an exception to the rule it's not meant to be funded broadly) then they're usually (not always but very typically/often!) a situation where in effect it's like, i am paying you off in both money and respectability/social acceptability to make the future worse (and/or at best ever more and more exclusionarily suited to him and not anyone else, see: programming) (my thing about, so so many people now are pretty much in the position of being michael palin in brazil). ...which reminds too, again of, that national parks contractor tour guide, how he while looking model-slick-richy-smooth alluded to doing it in his free time as a way to wrest back some of his soul bc his day job, in his own words, was evil unethical ad shit.)
...people always assume, they seem to think being different from, doing one's best within one's own ability to say no to, rescind all this repetitive tiresome violent mess, is cushy, easy, a non-space, not doing, a lack. when in truth it's the work of a lifetime (given how pervasive that force is, countering it takes much!) while never being seen, acknowledged as such. it involves prioritizing other things in place of. which requires focus, and dedication, and courage/bravery (to be judged, to go against the grain, to be ok with being alone in it often and misperceived or rendered invisible, erased, outwardly dismissed and invalidated), yes, the time and energy and cost of one's life. he, people, they, almost all think You're Not Doing Anything, because as best you can manage you're Not Doing What He Does (or Says You Must Do). but you're Doing Something. Doing Something Else. and hence Discovering Something Else.
it's Paula at the end of earthbound--you just know tons of game dudes likely thought/think that sort of role character is pointless, but ultimately without her and what she can do weave-connective-socially-cosmic-spiritually in the end, you can't go forward, you're stuck (whether you realize it or not). letting her be there all along being her is the only way to deal with gigyas and his trauma and dehumanizing violent nightmares, if you ever want to actually stop fighting endlessly without making any headway (the comedy in the game of how you do it and you do it to no avail at the end!!). leguin's "with a little help from my friends" and whatever else (which funny enough this show apes and tediously tell-not-show goes on and on about, but not in a actually-put-there, bothered-to-put-the-time-in way, now it's just like a stock photo prop, the tacked-on as afterthought [insert "we bonded" here] thing). and that moment or two of unfulfilled promise where Holly if she figuratively squints can see the lost humanity in henry, and the show teeters on the edge of a different and more radically new answer/solution, but then goes the usual way with it (because, the writers say/decide, it's simple and he's just Bad, end of story no further discussion). makes me think of the more nuanced (and better) version with Steven and the chirpootle (? i can't remember what it's called! the Peanut-y "monster" he tries to heal/befriend).
(for some reason, i weave together how we called jeff henry in earthbound, and you connect to his memories of that cold/snowy/distant dad-sent/approved school, and the take on the same sort of situation in the leonora carrington i just read--complete with queer connective humanizing intervention as part antidote--and yes, always that miraculous/transcendent moment in the anna kavan story with the sheet of paper and complicated formulae/structures of the world at an unfeeling institution and then cutting clear through suddenly with the straightforward "all i wanted really was to be friends...but this world doesn't care about such things" observation.)
there's certain immense and vital knowledge/wisdom that can only discovered, felt, experienced by opting to go down certain paths instead of others--cannot be achieved through violence or force or domination or strategy/manipulation or exclusion/hierarchy and in fact violence and force and domination and strategy/manipulation and exclusion/hierarchy definitionally preclude them, are going the other way, in the other direction (bell hooks and audre lorde again, also the "minutes standing still in a waterfall's the only way you get to grow so you can keep going forward" in earthbound). realizing that in the heart of some storm this past decade, and carrying it within me over and over all this time after, has been key. love--which is to say in part commitment to connection/connective seeing and the freedoms that foster it, and acknowledging the equally valid and protected humanity/personhood of a different Other--as a way of being and doing, growing, and the only way to do that is to do that (instead of passively or not-so-passively accepting and continuing to prop up its counter, those obstructions). and when i watch/witness things that indicate most making these things out there don't know that yet at all (and for all we know, aren't really allowed to know--maybe they're only allowed a seat at the mainstream visibility table if they keep only recycling this limited viewpoint, maintaining the status quo)--because they don't let the Other in, let (yin-y, heretofore binned-to-the-shadows) difference profoundly move and affect them, and seemingly never will--and keep going round and round stacking ever more and more complicated yet pointless iterations of the master's tools and stifling distortive cliches then being surprised "evil" keeps rearing its head, well...nothing ever changes in your world, because you haven't changed, haven't at all changed what you can fathom's possible (which happens when you let more in in the first place so you see directly that more IS and always has been happening, elsewhere, where you aren't and haven't been) (jane ward's whole thing again! about, the bizarreness watching on the sidelines as straight people try to fix their straight dilemma of being miserable...with "updated" same-but-pretending-it's-different takes of what caused/causes the misery in the first place, narrative foundations built on inequity and domination).
so yeah. of course you're gonna get a lot of bs techy cgi and macho explosions instead of one emotionally true and humble moment between characters. because that's how you chose to prioritize (and see) things. both on the show and in the real world right now.
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Date: 2026-01-17 05:31 am (UTC)