Г(¬w- )Г✨

cómo que estar pendejo no es un deporte :”v

[picturejasper20]

Happy Feet is such a crazy film looking back because it is penguins singing and dancing but the actual story is about what is like to be born with some form of disability in a religious cult and how dehumanizing that can be with leaders putting the blame on you when something goes wrong only because you happen to different and it destroys you while you grow up in there

[sirenemale]

PLEASE share your Happy Feet (2006) thoughts.

You don't even know the floodgate ur opening for me rn thank you (also Hi I've been following u for a little while now, I loveeeee ur work)

I don't even know where to start with it, I have a big fat document where I was transcribing the whole film for a bigger essay, but I only got half way through (turns 1 hour of film into over 3 hours of notetaking) I'll just pick between my notes of that and various other pieces of this films transcript. Intro I guess is everyone should watch Happy feet especially if you saw it as a kid, this is all spurred on by a rewatch last year that rocked my fucking world. It is so unflinching abt how it presents Mumbles autism / other developmental conditions / movement disorder speech disorder how ever u want to label it right. It's also a deeply queer film, about a deeply entrenched church who targets a disabled child and views the way he sits outside of their societal norms, aka not being able to sing not having a 'heart song' that he can use to fall in love with another penguin, and takes his birth as reason for the shortage of fish (This is also an environmental film). I can't speak fully to the full extent of racism in this film, idw be a main touch stone for the discussion, but I do find it rreally outstandingly interesting, best captured by this piece by Tanine Alisson on the films contribution to digital black face. (here), where basically all of Mumble's mocap was performed by a black tap dancer named Savion Glover who was uncredited for his work. Just adds so many layers to it that I'd really really kill to read more personally informed thought pieces on.

There is all this, but also I do think there is an effective link between Mumble's ostracization and then the solidarity he forms w the group of mexican penguins in the film, who are also positioned as outsiders to this giant like mega church community the emperor penguins encompass.

stopped highlighting at this point. This is really interesting to me for the reasons in the notes, but also like giant caveat that these guys are certainly racist ideas of bombastic misogynistic mexican men.

this is right after boogie wonderland where gloria starts singing to mumble tapping his feet which is ostensibly a queer presentation of love in this setting, that she is hesitant to go along with bc her social status is so secure. (using screenshots from the Happy Feet wiki transcript page now lmao) Also want to note that the lead elder Noah refers to the penguins dancing with Mumble as an uprising, because they're all tap dancing instead of singing. Queer self expression is a direct threat to this authority.

Very blatant abt the foreign friends line. so many parts of this feel like an aids crisis analogue to me as well. help. The movie also pivots to being about aliens. and alien abduction.

I'm jumping around massively, just take my hand through it okay. This is mumble's father who absolutely dropped him as an egg and has now publically admitted that's the case. But the way he talks is fucking crazy, how intense the rhetoric is. Again including his mexican friends as something that he needs to seperate from bc they're seen as equally threatening / other / antithetical to the church.

gay. this is gay. i do keep mentally linking this to ballroom culture during the aids crisis. doubled down on where he is then exiled and gloria follows him. cue this conversation

This is so ggay it makes me feel crazy too. And also obviously related to his visible disability, Gloria has a positionality he does not have. I really like how the film both emphasizes this isn't a choice of his, he doesnt just choose to dance instead of singing, he physically cannot sing and his tap dancing is implied to be something he cant always control, especially as a kid, more akin to tremors or tics. The egg line is so stark. Will you really be happy committing to being othered with me down the line or are you going to come to resent it.

I do need to skip back and also establish how his autism and disability is framed too. First of all, they really sit in the implication that Mumble won't hatch at all very early on.

all that grief and guilt only to immediately feel shame and insecurity around mumble not being 'right'

When I say he stops the kid in his tracks bc he's so afraid of his wife Noticing that he is 'odd' I really really mean it. The shot design of it too is really dire. Something I really note abt this movie which ties into the kind of wildly inserted environmental message is how bare and isolating so many of these shots are, they are so willing to make the penguins small in frame in a way that feels genuienly disconcerting to me.

Truly beyond help. Other points, mumble is left unsupervised and isolated from other penguins to the point he's almost eaten by skuas

he is withheld from graduating into an adult, his autism and all of this is also noted visually by him retaining his grey down feathers even as an adult. he's even further isolated and noteably put in contrast to his peers like Gloria who have grown into acceptable successful members of society, and promising ones, who are viable partners to people. They celebrate graduation by having gloria performing for all the graduates and Mumble who rocked up anyway

Someone telling him to kill himself Really Really took me out on rewatch. I think I've covered my main points there so I'm gonna go back to the shot composition and the general vibe of this film now.

shot of mumble outswimming a leopard seal, u can barely see where they are in the frame they've been made so tiny.

The maximalism of these shots is so stunning, like I said before, the way the penguins are contrasted with machinery is really frightening, they feel very small and vulnerable which is such an interesting thing to do in a film that's also very interpersonal. It's really that half this movie is about relationships and disability and then half way through it becomes environmental horror.

hard to get good shots of this bc it's blurry but this is a tap dancing penguin who is being choked for trying to stop commercial fishing.

And not to be like Wow how could they put this in a kids movie, that's not necessarily my point here. more than I think this is a fucking crazy movie tonally with a lot of ideas, that feel so bizarre to sit next to eachother, it kind of doesn't work but I am fixated on the choice to do it this way itself. I do think most of this is Swiftly contextualized by George Miller of Mad Max fame being the director, learning that made so much sense of the shot language especially. I have certainly written enough now but the movie just kinda plunges on w Mumble being captured by humans, kept in a zoo where he stops eating and it is genuienly so fucking crazy. I did Not remember that the humans in this film are Real people are not cgi that took me out so bad on rewatch. This movie wraps w mumble tap dancing and going viral on the news so they send him back home and they stop overfishing like they wrap this shit so fast it's ridiculous but it just makes me more interested in it. Like the speed at which they resolve the story based on a viral moment of an animal proving it has some entertainment value to people, and then they start caring. The shortness of the resolution for an issue that is also Not that easily resolved, almost feels like the point, but also more likely a product of Putting So Much into this movie and realizing they need to wrap it up in a happy way haha. Anyway what is uuup with this.

Also watch this, because I think this scene just rocks, and is really cute. I really like Gloria's little laugh in her voice as she realizes this can absolutely work between her and mumble, it's really sweet and genuine. I loveee loveee the character acting in this scene, hte hesitancy and then joy. I love the escalation of it. This brings me to tears I'm so dead serious about happy feet 2006. The jukebox musical aspect of it really funny at times but I do think boogiewonderland is so versatile for this scene where it can both feel like the lyrics can refute mumble but also that then feels like a refutation of other peoples ideas of their relationship, it just rocks, reflects both of them really well, it feels like she's discovering how much his rebelliousness excites her, it is inspired. I don't know if it'd capture me if it wasnt also so layered and strange. Something's wrong with it, it's incredibly engaging to me, it is one of my favourite movies. I do intend to construct this as a full essay at some point.

Last points, this movie has a hysterical sexual overtone to it esp between his parents, for something that is so unanthropromophic with its penguins. I Love the Penguin Cleavage Contour the women have.

I like this this fat opera teacher penguin big style

[hollowhero13]

Found a "Gooseworx gave Jax her color palette" comment and this image appeared in my head

[lemoncakedoodles]

This came to me in a vision

Edit: when a silly little meme I thought of in 5 seconds gets more notes than any of my art 😭 Not complaining though. The masses love transfem Jax.

[the-last-hipopotamovolador]

Claim your star here ⤵️

[peopleinabox]

Now we have nothing

[jayrockin]

Sensitive hearing can be quite a curse at times.

PATREON | Runaway to the Stars

[jayrockin]

Tod uses this story to scare the internal mechanics team interns into traveling in pairs and logging where they're planning to go in the plant at the beginning of the work day.

PATREON | Runaway to the Stars

[ruderogatii]

[jayrockin]

This week on Runaway to the Stars: Idrisah passes the lame excuses baton to Talita, and Talita works off some stress by running at highway speeds. Catch up with pages on runawaytothestars.com! Read ahead on Patreon!

[jayrockin]

Uunraashi City is the same place Sirawit was born, btw.

Avians are typically considered adults at 10 years old. That's in Terran years. The Dominion of Tiiliit does not have mandatory or government sponsored educational programs, and childhood education is considered the responsibility of the dunparent and their "house," a social housing block funded by a bright "alimony" tax. As adults, Tiilitian citizens are often narrowly educated in the field of employment they enter unless they pay for a wider education at a university. Brights will often sponsor the education of children they believe to be good candidates for employees or financial successors, with first pick going to the children of their dunsiblings. A bright sponsoring their direct children is a Tiiliitian taboo, except for the highest echelon of royalty. The taboo is fueled by bright anxieties about the duns they mate with discarding their eggs, mating again, and then lying about the child's parentage to secure their sponsorship. Your siblings' kids are considered a better guarantee of kinship.

Avians are way too big to be on the menu for omnivorous simiformes from their homeplanet like Eswii, but those animals use hunting strategies similar to this to capture smaller flying prey. Since humans are massive, it's an easy place for an avian mind to wander... helped by the fact that videos of humans restraining avians in a similar way frequently circulate through avian social media. Sometimes the context is positive (rude avian starting fights gets OWNED by giant security guard!!!) and sometimes it's negative (human ruthlessly attacks innocent avian!!!!) but either way, most avians find humans physically intimidating. It's similar to fearful human attitudes about centaurs, and can have negative consequences for humans working with avians.

PATREON | Runaway to the Stars

[jayrockin]

This week on Runaway to the Stars: A living history, written on the corpus of the people it documents, that has died along with them. Catch up with pages on runawaytothestars.com! Read ahead on Patreon!

[jayrockin]

Man-made horrors beyond comprehension, and an extremely deep lore callback. Readers of this comic often ask the characters about their favorite animals, likely because they are Creature Enthusiasts, but Idrisah is the only one of the main cast who is a fellow Creature Enthusiast.

PATREON | Runaway to the Stars

[jayrockin]

Fish and their fishers.

PATREON | Runaway to the Stars

[jayrockin]

This week on Runaway to the Stars: Oh golly, so that’s what Mel’s surprise was! Catch up with pages on runawaytothestars.com! Read ahead on Patreon!

[jayrockin]

This week on Runaway to the Stars: Talita snaps. Catch up with pages on runawaytothestars.com! Read ahead on Patreon! Click here to be notified when the book Kickstarter drops!

[jayrockin]

This week on Runaway to the Stars: A rocky conversation, and two friendly smiles. Catch up with pages on runawaytothestars.com! Read ahead on Patreon! Click here to be notified when the book Kickstarter drops!