Sci-Phi

A Message over the Close of the Year

I was thinking about a friend over the holidays, and thought of sharing a little story with some people.

Two years ago, from around New Years time, I commissioned to an artist here on this site for a sketch; I thought I was terrible going about it. I gave them an excessivly long description about what it was, how the artwork should be at ‘their’ work, and afterwards the work they spent so much time and effort on ended up being shown to noone, never got posted by either of us. It could have ended there, I paid an artist for their work and business was done, but after that we somehow talked about movies. Movies with plants in them, killer plants. “Triffids” and “The Ruins” and that sort. We talked about other things afterward, but I forgot what they were, and Tumblr memory doesn’t roll that far back.

It was a small conversation, but it was a small start to what I consider today to be a small friendship.

But at that time, I could only see myself as one thing: a worthless failure.

I had left my family to move with my grandparents, wound up living in the dining room. Two months from the day I arrived, without employment and refusing to change old habits for the better, I had to move back home. There was no bedroom for me this time, so the game room had to suffice. The only time I had privacy was when I went to the bathroom. And that’s how it was for over a year.

I was employed the first day I got back, but rather than out of passion or a real care for working, it was a job in retail I did not love and one I was hired for only out of mutual desperation. They needed a body to run and saw someone with no work history and signed me right up. Two years later, that’s still my only means of income.

Noone knows this but before I used to make the cheap little sketches you see at the bottom of my page, I made movies; they were short, shoddy stopmotion films on a digital camcorder, but that’s when my passion for filmmaking was actually being expressed. I haven’t made anything with a camera in almost half a decade. Those little sketches I did afterwards seemed to die down too, with not one being posted since last year. It’s as if my passion, my desire to create had faded since that time, that year of unaccomplishment.

I tell you all this, at the end of the year because: Yes. We fail. And it can be hard. So much so that it can seem like a whole year of mishaps, underachievments, and choices combined with things beyond your control, can all culminate down to the whole year just feeling worthless. That what’s the point of trying next year, or any year, if it’s going to fail just like the last one.

That year was one of the hardest I ever had, but I will never consider it worthless, nor will I ever see it as a failure. And here’s why:

This year I got my first apartment; I share it with a sibling but now I have a proper room to sleep and a place that I can truly call my own.

While my work hasn’t changed, and while I do wish to find one to be more passionate about, my stance in it has grown with the time I’ve been there, and my drive to work has been increased.

And even though I haven’t made movies in years, my passion to watch them, to understand their form and make has grown immensly; I bought over a hundred films with my own money this year alone, with many of them films I would have never expected myself to see half a decade before.

They always say that this is the time of the year to “be thankful for what we have”, and they’re right. This isn’t the time to give up and say “ hope next year won’t be as bad”, because that’s never a guarantee, and that’s not what it’s about.
It’s about finding, out of what may feel like a whole year of failure, worthlessness and just the worst, the best that came from it, no matter how grande, no matter how small. To collect every piece, put them together, and to admire and appreciate the good in it all.

Because what is at this point the worst year of my life started out with me talking with someone online about killer plant movies, and for what it gave me, for that alone, that whole year was worth it.

So maybe, no matter what, this year was worth something to you.

Happy Holidays everybody.

Blade Runner 2049: Thoughts and Critique?

A few weeks ago (11/2/17 if Tumblr doesn’t time-stamp these posts) I saw the film Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to the 1982 ‘flawed masterpiece’ of the same name minus the date.

And much like it’s predecessor it’s a flawed film, however those flaws are much more present that I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece; but it isn’t bad, it’s actually quite good, so much so that it definitely sticks out when compared to many modern films based on pre-existing franchises or iconography.

This film is frustrating, to put it bluntly. Frustrating because it’s a mixture of being both excellent, alright, and at some parts bad.

I haven’t posted jack-squat on this blog in ages, and my ability to express and articulate viewpoints hasn’t had much opportunity to be refined well, so consider this a warning that this kind of opinionated, and I wouldn’t fully call it a critique. Also this will be riddled with spoilers, so if you plan on watching this film to make up your own mind (which I would highly encourage), please don’t read this until doing so.

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A Message over the Close of the Year

Blade Runner 2049: Thoughts and Critique?