On Tumblr Confession Blogs

I'm very picky about Tumblr confession blogs. They have to have specific requirements. The subject can't be too broad (like, say, Disney). It can't be confined to one setting and has to mean something personally. This is why I have only contributed to confession blogs on two subjects: Lupin III and Red Dwarf. 

Lupin III is a long-running anime franchise with many different TV series and interpretations of the characters. It is an adventure series that has numerous settings, has inspired moments of my life, and has consistently good art direction, great characters and is inspired in some episodes by the real world. I have had many different ideas about which opinions to give.

Red Dwarf ran for 32 years, has a good cast of characters, has a good theme song, makes fun of celebrity and politics, and has inspired some strong opinions from me.

But the thing is, I'm not the exact sort of person who would submit opinions to a confession blog on Tumblr. I'm 31 years old, half-British and jobless. This sort of blog is usually run by American twenty-somethings in college, usually female-presenting or assigned female at birth, who have a lot of time on their hands, and forget about these blogs they run as soon as they graduate and get jobs, which means you have to think quickly but carefully about what you want to say and dive in there as soon as possible.

Part of the enjoyment was that I didn't provide pictures for them. The people running the blogs had to find appropriate ones themselves.

How I Made 'We Don't Talk About Rohan'

 The idea started as just a personal animatic for myself. When Russia invaded Ukraine, I saw a post from a good friend saying "Anything you want to do, do it now." So at that moment I published the animatic to Vimeo. Then someone following my Vimeo account liked the video, so I decided to animate it.

The process took most of the year, and I finally finished it in September 2022, a day after Episode 97 of 'Lupin III Part 2' started streaming on HiDive. It was an exhaustic process, mainly because of the detail in the characters' clothes. By the end I felt like Jefferson Smith after the filibuster. It was a lot of work for a film that was just over a minute long.

The film was inspired by Episode 89 of Lupin III Part 2, and also on a personal experience I had with listening to music, in particular the final aria of 'The Valkyrie'.

Julian Assange is not your martyr, and the leftwing press knows it

 The liberal press is right to not see Julian Assange as a martyr for press freedom, as explained in this Vox article.

https://www.vox.com/2016/9/15/12929262/wikileaks-hillary-clinton-julian-assange-hate

Guardian writer Duncan Campbell has even called his acquittal a "cruel folly".

You're Wrong About Maurice Chevalier

 The other day I heard a rumor that during WWII, 1930s crooner Maurice Chevalier was a Vichy collaborator. This sounded dubious to me. Maybe he was a reluctant Nazi like Willy Fritsch. I have read many stories of artists who were popular with the Nazis but refused to disclose their politics. I found the truth about Chevalier here. His wife was Jewish, and he was blackmailed into performing for the sake of her and her family.

https://holocaustmusic.ort.org/resistance-and-exile/french-resistance/maurice-chevalier/

This is not to say that all people are good, but often the truth gets lost in gossip and rumor.

"So it's nine years."

 On this day nine years ago, I watched the film 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' for the first time, and it has inspired me in so many ways. Although the film is violent and at sometimes disturbing, it's also funny, visually striking and can be beautiful and even poignant.

Since I watched the film I have traveled on my own, got on the news twice, climbed three mountains in one day for charity, took part in a panel discussion at the University of Kent and appreciated Pirates of the Caribbean, of all things, in a way I never had before. This is what it means to be a fangirl. 

Thecanary.co are drama queens

 The most liberal news source in the world is a collective of drama queens. It's hard to trust a news source that uses all caps in its headlines.

Not only that, but they are hypocrites. For every moment they call a journalist out on hypocrisy, they do the same thing. They criticise Guardian columnist John Harris for insulting Jeremy Corbyn while he's Labour leader, but what have they done that's so innocent? Accuse Joe Biden of "anti-fascist cosplay" and call him an authoritarian. Is Joe Glenton still on the team? He must have been responsible for the latter headline. At least we know some people won't be stressed after this November's electiom.

'Frozen 2' is a cinematic guilty pleasure. Here's why.

 

When I saw 'Frozen 2' in the cinema, it was kind of a letdown. It was funny and entertaining, but other than that I wasn't that impressed. Nothing of real consequence happened, it didn't take many risks, some scenes just padded the film out and the potential from the new characters was wasted.

However, it is one of my big cinematic guilty pleasures. Almost five years on I can't stop thinking about how visually inspired it could be. It looked the the first 'Frozen' but also looked different.

The soundtrack won't please everyone but I am addicted to it. The use of kulning in Elsa's songs is used to great effect. Some of the lyrics are powerful as well. Maybe those songs are like 'Let it Go', but something about them feels different in a way I can't explain.

The theme of finding yourself and where you come from resonated with me. There's a lot about my ancestry I don't know about. Where exactly did my earliest homosapien ancestors live? Would I find myself if I knew?

The theme of the sins of the father isn't handled well, but I had ancestors who were slave owners, I can't afford to pay reparations to their descendants because I haven't inherited anything from the descendants of John Johnson or Peter and Simeon Fiske, and there are no easy answers to avenging the enslaved people anyway. But I do know the towns where those ancestors lived.

This is relevant to 'Frozen 2' because in the third act the sisters learn that their grandfather was a murderous colonialist and try to amend the sins of the past. It resonates with me, even though it's clumsily done.

My ancestors came from numerous places. I have ancestors from Scandanavia, Poland, western Germany, the Netherlands, France, Czechia, Austria and God knows where else in Europe. It's hard to know the exact lineage of my maternal great grandmother, for instance, or my paternal great grandmother.  How do I follow these ancestors into the unknown?

If I learn where my earliest ancestors lived, my story could be more interesting than what Disney had come up with.

My uncle by marriage believes I'm descended from Duke Rollo, but I don't know how he knows that. Last year I visited Willian the Conqueror's tomb in Rouen and didn't get any answers. Nothing spiritual or magical happened. Nothing obvious, anyway. It was a thrilling experience. It's possible I'm not descended from him. I can't get any answers from my uncle right now.

I thought honestly that something in my life would be like the 'Show Yourself' scene. That scene is one I am addicted to. The visuals, the music and the sense of anticipation just work for me. I love the facial expressions on Elsa in the scene. The part where she's trying to access Ahtohallen by the sea is one I really like as well, due to the editing.

Something about certain scenes remind me of 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', or, of all things, 'The Neverending Story', like the scenes of Elsa approaching Ahtohallan.

Have you ever been to some place where your life felt complete? One of those places, as tacky as it seems to people, was the Clos de Lupin in Étretat. It has a great atmosphere, it makes you feel like you're part of something bigger and it's a place I recommend other autistic women visit. I like to describe it as being like an autistic woman's Ahtohallan. 

Traveling around Britain, where I live, feels like going into the unknown. Even though I have lived in Britain (Airstrip One?) most of my life, it feels mysterious to me.

All this probably doesn't make sense, but my mind does make connections that aren't immediately obvious to people.

I have only seen 'Frozen 2' once, and if I saw it again, I would still be unimpressed. But it is inspiring me to want to take my own journeys into the unknown.