Manyang is my home

[kseniyagreen]

Two monsters in Jang Jun-hwan's films

"To stop seeing a monster, you need to become one"

The first (Save the Green Planet) and the second (Hwayi: A Monster Boy) feature films by the famous Korean director came out 10 years apart.

But although these works are very different in style and plot, there is a deep semantic connection between them. Both films deal with the theme of monsters.

Both films reflect the ruthless, ugly side of the world, where money can buy or sell human life, and even the police are on the payroll of gangsters. And those few police officers who can be called honest are too limited and are not able to see a living person behind the dossier. So the hero, who finds himself in an inhuman situation, can only rely on himself.

(This review contains spoilers) 

In both films, the central image is the hero, who, due to age, character, or social position, looks like a "little harmless man".

But being driven to despair, he turns into a cruel and furious monster slayer.

However, not all the monsters he sees are external. Some of them live in his own soul.

Save the green planet - a film-cabbage, a film - snag. At first, you think you understand what's going on. Crazy from grief and drugs, a man invented aliens and hunts them. By the end of the story, you start to wonder - what if he's not crazy? What if aliens are real? But the final shots make you wonder - what was actually happening on the screen in general? Or did everything really happen only in the imagination of the poor Byeong-gu? 

Aliens, bloody revenge, a strange image of either a girl or a circus woman - as if Lee Byeong-gu took the image of a girl from some old memories and tried to "grow" it to himself.

But then what is the movie about? Perhaps about the struggle for their inner humanity. But moral choice comes from the state of freedom. And freedom has two sides. To truly be human, you need to be aware of the inhuman in yourself.

Byeong-gu and Hwayi have very different personalities and destinies. But there is a bright unifying feature - they both see what others do not see. Hwayi calls it a monster. Byeong-gu - aliens. And in both cases, these images carry a dual meaning. That is, they cause fear and disgust of the characters, but at the same time, somewhere in the depths of the soul, they attract.

Declaring those whom he hates "aliens", Lee Byeong-gu , as it were, takes them out of a multitude of people, thus solving his moral contradiction. You can hate "non-humans", while continuing to feel your connection with the world of humans. As if taking out of the brackets of the human world what is unbearable, what Byeong-gu cannot accept and agree with.

But at the same time, the alien is Lee Byeong-gu himself. That part of him that feels superfluous in this world. And at some point it comes to the question: is this world worth saving? Or rather, is it worth to save his connection with this world?

The image of the monster in "Hwayi" is also ambivalent. On the one hand, the monster appears when Hwayi meets evil. The boy, stolen from his parents as a child and adopted by bandits, is used to taking his fathers and their "work" for granted. But the underlying feeling that something is very wrong here haunts Hwayi all these years, incarnating in the form of a monster at especially critical moments.

The conclusion suggests itself that the monster is an image of evil inside. But Hwayi's monster has the sparkling, mirror-like scales of a toy whale from his childhood. A single spark of memories of family and home.

Why did a child's toy turn into an image of a monster? Because it reminds him about something that does not allow Hwayi to integrate into the system. Fully adapt to the world of his "fathers", become the same as them - and no longer be afraid.

Byeong-gu had a victim's fate. Hwayi had a fate of a criminal, a predator. But the inability to fit into the system and just live life according to an already prepared scenario is what unites these two heroes. Natural sensitivity does not allow them to come to terms with life as it is. But the inhuman cruelty of the surrounding world seeps in, drop by drop, giving rise to a grave contradiction. And at the moment when the hero surrenders to the monster, he feels relieved for a moment.

In the life of both main characters there is also the image of a "monster mentor". In Byeong-gu's case, it's more of a part of himself. "Alien prince" (even a title straight from the fantasy of a child from a poor family), who became disillusioned with people and life in principle. And he wants to end this whole world that hurts him.

In Byeong-gu's internal struggle, after the death of his mother, this part of him wins.

In Hwayi's case, this monster is a very real external figure. The main of his "fathers", the most terrible and at the same time with him the strongest emotional connection.

It is interesting that if other "fathers" live like animals - doing evil, but not feeling it as evil, just living by their instincts. He always felt "dirty".

And judging by how eager he is to get Hwayi completely on his side, he still feels like that. Other bandits are not even puzzled by excuses. He brings an entire ideological base under his villainy - that becoming a monster is the only way out for people like him.

As if the thirst for warmth is combined in him with the desire to destroy it.

Young Hwayi turns out to be stronger than all his fathers - even the one who tried to hide from reality behind prayers. Because he can be a monster and a human at the same time.

 Byeong-gu loses his battle with the aliens, either completely losing touch with reality, or dying from drugs. Hwayi survives - accepting his inner monster enough to cold-bloodedly shoot the man who ordered his father's murder. But the final shots of Byeong-gu's memories and Hwayi's drawings give the feeling that the dream of lost harmony is alive.

The monster can be creepy, ugly. But his mirror skin is visible because it reflects the inner light

[thebirdandhersong]

Absolutely horrid that a 10hr sleep does not cure you of all that ails you

[alex51324]

it doesn't even cure me of being tired

[zaprowsdower27]

It should work like in RPGs. I want to be able to go to bed exhausted, poisoned, and missing half of my blood and wake up at 100% fully recovered

[theadhdgoblin]

[fightingballerina]

Just me and you and you and me …

… and your friend Steve.

Me and you and you and me …

… and your friend Steve.

Me and you and you and me …

… and your friend Steve.

Seriously why is he always at the scene of the crime ?

l Squid Game l Beyond Evil l Psychopath Diary l Heo Sung Tae

[kseniyagreen]

Well, I can add:

The Watcher

[kseniyagreen]

Firefly and the Post-Heroic story

We all know what a heroic story is. Classic heroic stories, where a chosen one tests their mettle, fights evil , saves the world, and either dies in the process or returns home a changed person, remain the most popular principle of storytelling. This seems like a time-tested recipe for creating a compelling story with vibrant characters. But this plot has one problem. No matter how vibrant, unique, and alive your heroes are, the global goal of "saving the world" inevitably obscures their value and the value of their relationships. It's difficult to preserve a sense of self next to the enormity of the "common good." It's difficult to maintain the value of your private world when you're burdened with "responsibility to civilization." A successful hero has very little opportunity to remain simply human. And so it seems to me that in today's world, where fascists wave the flag of the "common good" and megacorporations feed AI the individual creativity of countless people to produce an average, conveniently skimmed result, we desperately need different narratives.

I call them "post-heroic." And Firefly seems to me a convenient example to illustrate what kind of narrative this is and what its core principles are.

Firefly is a post-heroic story, quite literally. Its protagonist, Mal Reynolds, was a classic hero, "fighting an evil empire for freedom for all."

But he lost. He found himself abandoned to his fate by those he sided with. According to the laws of the heroic narrative, he should have died along with his cause, but he didn't. He survived, having learned one lesson from his heroic past: you should never leave your people behind and only for the sake of your people you should risk your life.

And then a contrast runs through the entire series. The “Great Unification” of the Alliance, which completely ignores the individual lives of people, bringing alien planets to a normative terraformed form at any cost. And Malcolm Reynolds's ability to gather different people around him without killing their freedom and individuality.

Everyone on his team is people with whom he disagrees in some way. And yet, for each of them, he is ready to risk his life and respects the right of everyone to be themselves - as long as this right is not used for betrayal. Tellingly, there is no one specific “main villain” in Firefly. There is a system so impersonal that its agents resemble robots. There is a metaphorical shadow of the totalitarian system - the absolute inhuman chaos of "reavers". There are individual bandits, all of whom love pretentious speeches and references to traditional values or a code of honor.

The Firefly team is not confronting the “great evil,” but various forms of dehumanization, indifference to who you are as a person.

And it is characteristic that they do not have some kind of global heroic goal along this path. Because the struggle for the common good, in the end, also dehumanizes somewhere - it deprives a person of the right to their private good. It is no coincidence that totalitarian systems of all stripes are so fond of this heroic narrative. “Push yourself, give your best, sacrifice yourself for the people.” Which will live somewhere in the future. Which will also be told that they must “push up”. This song never ends. Firefly ironically touches on the theme of the “folk hero” in the story with Jane.

And on the topic of extreme experiences, as something that supposedly “shows the real you.” In this story, such a narrative is used by maniacal bandits and butchers of the system who conduct experiments on people.

And also a reflection of this theme are the reavers. Because “what doesn’t kill you” makes you under-killed, and sometimes no longer you at all. The fanatical strive for “higher, further, stronger” gives rise to either robots or monsters. "Reavers never give up."

In this context, it's especially important that the strength of the Firefly team's bonds is tested not by extreme sacrifices, but by a willingness to return when one has the right to leave. Throughout the series, the characters maintain a dynamic of separation and return. It's the living pulse of genuine, unforced relationships. A true connection is felt when it's stretched but not broken.

The absence of a mega-villain and mega-good changes another thing: it shifts the main intrigue from the hero-villain relationship and the question of "who will win" to the intrigue of the characters' personalities within the team. Who is who, and how relationships change as they get to know each other, is no longer a side story to the main plot—it is the main plot .

And this is the kind of plot I really want to see in stories about queer characters. Because this is the format that, in my personal opinion, is particularly well-suited to telling the stories of people who are suppressed, oppressed, or rendered invisible by society. One that doesn't push them into some separate queer niche, but also doesn't make them responsible for saving the world. Just because your life is part of a community doesn't mean it's the community's property.

The final test, the ultimate challenge for the Firefly team, is their ability to accept River.

River is a classic outcast, an "other," capable of reading people's minds. Except she's not a "damsel in distress," not an abandoned puppy for whom one can show pity and feel noble. She's a killing machine, a living bomb that can go off at an unpredictable moment, a true "bug in an anthill."

In the Strugatsky brothers' novel "Bug in an Anthill," in a prosperous future world, a secret service agent decides to kill the "other" because of the very potential danger to humanity. What is one life compared to the life of an entire civilization? But the threat to civilization is vague and hypothetical, while human life is quite concrete. The ideology of the "global good" is always capable of finding arguments why the "others" should suffer now so that "the whole of civilization" won't suffer someday. Perhaps... But we don't want to risk civilization, do we?

What Firefly captures well is that real humanism, real moral choices, sometimes truly difficult ones, are always very concrete. That some specific lives are inevitably more valuable to us than other specific lives. And even this "law of the jungle" is, in any case, more honest than the cover of the common good and moral arithmetic.

Because it leaves even the most inconvenient "live bomb" the right to be someone's "one of our own"—someone who will never be left behind. The right to a family.

[ordinarytalk]

Recovering from autistic burnout as a high-masking adult:

To recover, you literally need to manually learn skills that most people learn as a toddler

You need to learn what makes your body uncomfortable, and what to do to fix it

If you are high-masking, that usually means that you have learned to ignore every distress signal your body sends unless it is a distress signal that a neurotypical person would recognize. People have likely been unintentionally gaslighting you about your lived experience your entire life

If you feel bad or panicked for no reason, stop and try to pay attention to your body. Are you tense? You are likely feeling physical pain somewhere. If you've been gaslit about your pain your entire life, you might not be able to identify it.

Go through a sensory checklist.

SIGHT: Try closing and covering your eyes. If this gives you relief, the lights are probably too bright. You may also need differently-colored lights

SOUND: Cover your ears. Does this give you relief? If so, you may need earplugs or noise canceling headphones. You may also benefit from a neutral or pleasant background noise, like soft music or brown noise.

TOUCH: Are your clothes uncomfortable? Your chair? Your body? Do you feel greasy, like you need a shower? Do you need softer, sensory-friendly clothing?

TASTE: Do you need to brush your teeth or tongue? Would chewing on something help?

SMELL: Is there a strong or unpleasant smell in the room? Do you need to clean or empty a trash can? Would an air purifier help? Would a pleasant smell like a candle help?

INTEROCEPTION: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? How is your posture? Are any of your muscles tight or sore? Scan your body slowly from head to feet, tensing and loosening each group of muscles. Going for a walk or doing a series of quick stretches may help a lot.

Learning how to do this stuff is not intuitive, if you've had an entire lifetime of gaslighting telling you that everything hurting you isn't a big deal and you're being dramatic over nothing.

This takes time, it takes work, it's not intuitive, and it's hard. Most people forget how hard it is, because they learned this as toddlers.

If you want to recover, you need to relearn your whole body. And get over your idea of "normal" and just wear the damn sunglasses and put on the headphones. If people stare, fuck em. You're disabled and they can deal with that.

[kseniyagreen]

Why generative AI does NOT "learn like human". And never will.

I recently watched a video about one of the fundamental problems of AI—that the algorithm can't reliably estimate when it's time to stop a process. Even if it's simply heating food in the microwave, the question "when enough" contains an indefinite number of parameters. The human mind makes such an assessment using intuition, but AI lacks intuition, and therefore can occasionally give a completely inadequate answer out of the blue. And this is an irreparable flaw, because AI is incapable of perceiving a situation as a whole. It assembles it piecemeal, but these pieces are always limited, while reality works quite differently.

And in the context of the difference between human learning and AI "learning," I have some thoughts. It's no coincidence that all ancient people had an animistic perception of the world. Ascribing one's own soul to rivers, trees, and the wind isn't just a way to cope with existential anxiety. But this is, in fact, the essence of how the human mind perceives the world. Not simply by collecting information. But by identifying individual "souls" in the surrounding reality and communicating with these souls.

The approach of "I must speak to the soul of the wind to learn to predict the weather" or "I must talk with the soul of the ocean to learn how to be a sailor" is, in fact, simply the most natural way for the mind to gain and assimilate experience.

The technical basis behind this is that ancient humans created in their minds a holistic image of a phenomenon, much more complex than they could comprehend, and then all their accumulated experience was absorbed into this image. Ultimately, this experience wasn't just a collection of data—different aspects of the experience were combined into a nonlinear sense of the phenomenon, a much more complex intuitive sensation than a person could express in words.

In other words, real intuition isn't simply the "perception of patterns," as we are sometimes led to believe. It is the creation within one's own mind of a living, holistic reflection of an external phenomenon. This reflection is alive, capable of acquiring new experiences and transforming itself while preserving its original essence.

And this is something that generative AI is not capable of, and likely never will be capable of. Why? Because in order to perceive another's integrity, one must first have one's own—unconditional, self-generated, and not artificially imposed.

[dreamingsnowflake2013]

I believe I have seen hell. It's AI, it's all AI😱🤮(iQiyi🤬)

This is not what I mean when I say dramas are supposed to be an escape from reality. I want REAL actors, with real human-written scripts.

Maybe, just maybe, you should film longer and not ruin their health and private lives with working schedule and conditions which break labour laws and basic human rights.

What he doesn't say is that it would save the platform money which they would normally have to pay not only the actors, but the crew, which is really something that gets lost in the fan outrage fearing their favourite actors will be negatively impacted. The crew members will lose as much if not more, with all the work reduced, maybe even their jobs.

[kseniyagreen]

I believe the only appropriate response from any true fan of Chinese dramas and actors, after such statements, is to cancel their subscription to this site, delete the app, and never return.

Maybe if they go bankrupt, it will enlighten them a little about why people actually watch dramas and how to respect others people work.

[nocassandra]

The mass of wooden bodies at the bottom of the pool in Episode 6 of Veil of Shadows reminded me of the skulls at the bottom of the sea in Heaven Sent of Doctor Who.

It's creepy and tragic.

In Heaven Sent, it is a horrifying answer while in Veil of Shadows, its still a mystery.

Edit: Damn, the mystery is solved 😶‍🌫️

[kseniyagreen]

Yes, I even think this is a deliberate parallel. This special level of horror is when it's a conveyor belt of horror repeating itself in a circle countless times.

[catchymemes]

[64mpg]

how is everyone feeling today

[64mpg]

alrighty. lets get this bread

[valtsv]

my last two brain cells

[lasfloresrotasblogdepoesia]

Unknown Artist, "Porte Veine", 1913.

[kseniyagreen]

I understand the point of this moment: Sometimes a crazy life situation forces you to act against your values, but in this case, you can at least defend the position of these values within yourself.

Otherwise, this entire cultural structure will be destroyed, layer by layer, by these very circumstances. And ultimately, nothing will remain of you except a raw, animalistic desire to survive.

But I want to add one more point to this. There is another danger – replacing living empathy with a moral structure, and the values of human life with the observance of rituals. And this, too, is an extreme that can happen to a person in such horrific circumstances. When a person hides from a painful reality so well behind their morality that they don't even notice how they lose a living connection with real people.

Morality can be the support of humanity, but as soon as form becomes more important than substance, as soon as the question of moral rightness becomes more important than human life – you lose your humanity, just like those driven mad by hunger. Just in a different style.

Experiencing the value of human life isn't all about pretty words and rituals. Sometimes it's pain, sometimes it's fear, sometimes it's a blinding veil of rage.

Sometimes you discover, with the clarity of animal instinct, that one specific life is truly more important to you than others. And that, too, is the experience of being human.

[kseniyagreen]

I like this conversation. Because the question remains relevant, perhaps even especially relevant now.

How thin is the layer of civilization, and how easy is it to scrape it off?

People from more prosperous places tend to think that cruelty and barbarity are "something that happens to others." But can this layer of civilization survive the collapse of the system?

[kseniyagreen]

Bai Yu seems to have a particular fondness for character arcs like: "This funny, life-loving boy with the attitude of a mischievous cat and a pure heart... who's going to go through hell."

[boykavalier]

MURDERBOT 1.10 "The Perimeter"