memes, probably

My hyperfocus and poor sense of time made me a hard worker, my compulsion to sort and organize random crap kept the property clean, and my special interest in native flora and fauna meant I could go out into the woods thanksgiving morning and come home with all the pricy mushrooms and herbs we couldn’t normally afford otherwise.

Who cared that I was awkward? There was nobody around except the occasional customer or temp worker, and those kinds of interactions could be entirely scripted.

Who cared that I dressed funny, had frizzy, dry hair, talked flat, and ate raw onions? Who gave two shits that I built forts out of scrap metal and twine? How did it matter that I passed time running in circles over old truck chassis’?

There were no bright lights, no packed-in crowds, no huge collections of shouty, screamy, smelly people. Nobody stared at me for more than a few seconds. Nobody critiqued my body language.

I was a bit odd, yeah, but all I knew was that I was smart and creative and better than other people at fixing problems.

I went damn near fifteen years out there not even suspecting I might be autistic. Nobody even thought to bring it up.

Now I’m in the city, and I have a hard time going into the middle of a store. I hate the mall. My eyes hurt. Ambulances and fire trucks and cars with bad brakes go by and I cover my ears and nobody else does. I’ve been told I come off as “quirky”.

My question is, though, if an atypical person is in an environment that suits them, can anyone tell?

Okay, the thing is, every Farscape fan’s pitch on Why You, Yes You, Should Watch Farscape ends up sounding very similar, and that’s because Farscape is a black hole that sucks you in and does things to your brain, and after you’ve watched it you are never, ever the same, which incidentally is basically the plot of Farscape.

I would summarize the basic plot for you, but that’s work, and luckily, the show’s credits sequence includes a handy summary that I will provide instead of doing that work: “My name is John Crichton, an astronaut. A radiation wave hit, and I got shot through a wormhole. Now I’m lost in some distant part of the universe on a ship, a living ship, full of strange alien life forms. Help me. Listen, please. Is there anybody out there who can hear me? I’m being hunted by an insane military commander. Doing everything I can. I’m just looking for a way home.“

So let me break down that monologue into its component reasons you should watch Farscape.

1) Some of the strange alien life forms are Muppets.

Farscape a co-production with the Jim Henson Company, and while there are many aliens played by humans in make-up, there are also a considerable number (including two of the regular crew) who are Muppets. By which I do not mean Kermit. I mean really gorgeous, elaborate works of art.

Also, even a lot of the humans-in-makeup aliens just look cool, and incredibly weird. Here’s an alien who appears in a single episode of season 1:

Not that there aren’t, you know, occasional Star Trek-style “these guys are just humans with weird hair,” or whatever, but in general, the aliens on Farscape look really alien. And that’s more than an aesthetic choice; it’s Farscape’s driving narrative principle. The aliens look alien, they act alien, they have alien values.

You know how a lot of sci-fi shows will have a stand-in for “fuck,” like Battlestar Galactica has “frak”? Well, Farscape has “frell.” And also “dren.” And yotz, hezmana, mivonks, loomas, tralk, snurch, eema, drannit, dench, biznak, arn, drad, fahrbot, narl. Some of those are swear words, but some of them are just words, never explicitly translated, that the alien characters will pepper into their speech, because, well, why should translator microbes be able to completely translate all the nuances of an alien culture? You’ll pick it up from context. One time, in passing, a character mentions that he’s familiar with the concept of suicide, but there’s no word for it in his language. I cannot emphasize to you enough how fleeting this moment is; the episode is not about suicide, we’re not having a great exchange of cultural ideas—at the time, the characters are running down a corridor in a crisis, as they are about 70 percent of the time—it’s just that the subject got brought up, and this character needed to talk around the fact that he literally didn’t have a word, in that moment. Things like that happen all the time, on Farscape.

Because more than anything else, Farscape is a show about culture shock. John Crichton is this straight, white Southern guy, at the top of his game—he’s an astronaut! he’s incredibly high status!—and then he ends up on the other side of the galaxy, where none of his cultural markers of privilege hold any meaning, where he doesn’t know the rules, where he literally can’t even open the doors. And he has to unlearn the idea that humanity is central, that he is the norm.

2) John Crichton, an astronaut, is pretty great.

A show that’s about a straight white guy with high status having to learn that he’s not the center of the universe could easily be centered around a really insufferable person, but one of the subtle things that makes Farscape so wonderful is that Crichton is, for the most part, pretty excellent. He has a lot of presumptions to unlearn because almost anyone in his cultural position would, but he’s also just a stand-up guy: compassionate, intelligent, open-minded, decent, forgiving, brave, hopeful.

And the galaxy tries to kick a whole lot of that out of him. It doesn’t succeed, mostly, but if Farscape is about anything other than culture shock, it’s about the lasting effects of trauma. How you can go through a wormhole one person, and experience things that turn you into someone you don’t recognize.

That’s kind of grim-sounding, but ultimately, what I’m trying to say is that Farscape is almost fanatically devoted to character work. Crichton is not the only character who sounds like he should be one thing and ends up being another. All of the characters—all of them, all of them, even the annoying ones—are complicated wonders. And you don’t have to wonder whether the events of the episode you’re watching are going to matter. They will. Everything that happens to the characters leaves a mark. Everything leaves them forever changed. Whether it’s mentioned explicitly or not—and often enough, it’s not explicit—the characters remember what has happened to them.

3) The living ship houses a lot of excellent women, among them the ship itself.

Ah, the women of Farscape, thou art the loves of my fucking life.

There’s Aeryn Sun, former Peacekeeper (that’s the military that the “insane military commander” hails from) now fugitive, currently learning the meaning of the word “compassion” (literally). She will break your fingers and also your heart. John/Aeryn is the main canon romantic ship.

There’s Pa’u Zhoto Zhaan, a priestess of the ninth level, current pacifist, former anarchist. Sorry, leading anarchist. She orgasms in bright light! (Oh my god, Farscape.)

There’s Chiana, my fucking bestie, a teenage(ish? ages in Farscape are weird) fugitive on the run from a repressive authoritarian state. Chiana is like a seductress con artist grifter thief who mostly just wants to survive so that she can have fun, damn it. Characters on Farscape do not really discuss sexualities (sex, yes, sexualities, no) and it would be fair to say that several of them do not fall along human sexuality lines generally, but I’m gonna go ahead and say that Chiana is canonically not straight.

Then there’s Moya, the ship herself, and it’s hard to get a straight read on Moya’s personality, since she mostly can’t speak. But she definitely has opinions, and things and people she cares about. And she moves the plot, though that gets into spoiler territory.

Past first season, further excellent women show up: Jool (controversial, but I like her), Sikozu (I once saw a Tumblr meme where someone had marked down that Sikozu would lose her shit when someone pronounced “gif” wrong, and that’s absolutely correct, and it’s why I love her), and Noranti (who is incredibly weird, and incredibly hard to summarize, but man, you gotta love her willingness to just show up and do her thing). Plus, there’s a recurring female villain, Grayza, who I could write probably multiple essays about. (I don’t know how you will feel about Grayza, as not everyone loves her, but I think she’s fucking fascinating, especially because she’s not actually the only recurring female villain. We also get Ahkna!)

(Side note: I should mention, here, that the cast of Farscape is really, really white. There is one cast member of color, Lani Tupu, but he pretty much represents the entirety of even, like, incidental diversity in casting for the series.)

Anyway, Farscape is full of awesome women, and also awesome and unexpected men, and it really enjoys playing with audience expectations of gender roles, generally. Literal entire books have been written about the way that Farscape fucks around with sex, sexuality, and gender. It’s a little weird because it was the late 90s/early 2000s, and sometimes that does come through, but Farscape’s guiding principle was always to try not to present American culture of the time as the norm, so like. It is not.

(An aside on Farscape and sex: Literally every character on Farscape has sexual tension with every other character. If you are a shipper, this is a Good Show, because no matter who you ship, there will not only be subtext, you will get a Moment of some kind. Multiple characters kiss the Muppet. Farscape is dedicated to getting into the nitty-gritty of the galaxy—I like to think of it as showing the guts of the universe—so a lot of the show is kind of squishy. They live on a biomechanoid ship, instead of androids there are “bioloids,” there’s a lot of focus on strange alien biologies, and lots of weird glowing fluids and things. I think the sex thing is kind of part and parcel of the larger biology focus: Farscape is really fascinated with how we all eat and evolve and live and die and, well, fuck. Which is in turn, kind of part of its focus on making everything really alien.)

4) Other stuff you should know.

Farscape as a whole is excellent, but it was kind of the product of creative anarchy—an Australian/American coproduction (oh yeah, everyone except Crichton speaks with an Australian accent) that was also partnered with the Henson company, whose showrunners were based in America but whose actual production all took place in Australia, and who was just constantly trying new things. So individual episodes can vary wildly in quality. It really takes off in the back half of season one, but no season is without a few off episodes.

It is extraordinarily funny, and I really think I haven’t stressed that enough. It’s one of the shows I want to quote the most in my daily life, but almost all of its humor is really context-dependent, and if you just wander around going, “Hey Stark? What’s black and white, and black and white, and black and white?” people look at you really funny.

It’s very conversant with pop culture generally (although obviously sci-fi  specifically, and Star Trek most specifically of all) and really enjoys deconstructing tropes, often to the effect of, “Well, Crichton really does not know what to do here, does he?” but sometimes just to be interesting.

There are also a lot of themes about science, and its uses and misuses.

The whole thing is fucking epic, and if you get invested at all, will take you on an emotional ride.

This show is weird. I know that that’s probably come across by now, but I think it’s worth reiterating as its own point: Farscape is so weird. Like, proudly, unabashedly, trying its hardest, weird. An amazing kind of weird.

If you’re into fantasy, you should know that there’s a recurring villain who’s just a wizard. Like, they don’t bother to explain it any more than that, he’s just a fucking wizard.

In summary: You should watch Farscape because it is a weird, wild, emotional, epic romance/drama/action/allegory full of Muppets and leather and one-liners and emotional gut punches and love, and if you let it, it will worm its way into you and never let go, which, now that I think of it, is another Farscape plot.

If we lose the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, we lose native birds. And we’re running out of time to protect it. Under the new, weakened MBTA, companies would be able to get away with ‘incidental takes’ such as birds lost in oil spills, water pollution, or other mishaps they should be held accountable for.

Comment to the US Fish and Wildlife Service

Comment on the Federal Register

Send letters through Audubon

Sign Western Cuyahoga Audubon’s Petition

Sign the American Bird Conservancy’s Petition

Learn more by visiting these links above and getting involved!

Fight climate change and bird species extinction!

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act was passed in 1818 and makes it illegal for people in the US to “take,” which means killing, injuring, or possessing, migratory birds in most circumstances. That includes accidental take, such as in oil spills, bioaccumuliation of poisons, or building on bird habitat. 

I’ve worked for the the Division of Natural Resources. I’ve worked for the State Parks department, and I’ve worked as a bird rehabber.

Owls get hit by cars all the time. 9/10 of our raptors we treated at any time were car victims. No one is pressing charges.

And no one cares if you have a Blue Jay feather in your dresser with some cool rocks you found in a hike. We Don’t Care.

This proposal isn’t to protect you for these things.

Do you know who wants to be exempt from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act?

Oil & Gas, who see hundreds of millions of birds die horrible deaths in their sludge pits every year in the U.S.

If industries like Oil and Gas become exempt from MBTA laws and aren’t taken to task for accidental take, they Will not take responsibility for this impact in the environment. In fact, they’ll only get worse.

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act is one of the ONLY wildlife laws in the world that ACTUALLY has some teeth, as we say in Wildlife. Meaning, if you violate it, there may actually be consequences you can’t buy your way out of with wealth.

In 2015, oil companies fought against having to cover their waste pits with nets. A multi-billion dollar industry that couldn’t be bothered to spend the money. To take the responsibility.

They will not do good deeds on their own. The MBTA exists in the first place because of the greed that decimated our birds before, the greed that drove entire species such as the Passenger pigeon extinct.

Without it, greed will prevail again.

Even going back at the end of Spyfall part 1, when he tells her: “Everything you think you know is a lie“ he has tears in his eyes when says so:

The Master knows if the Doctor died here, it won’t be the Doctor’s true death and she’d probably regenerate.

The next time the Doctor and Master see each other again, and the Doctor demands, what do you want?

There’s a few second’s hestiation as if he, himself doesn’t know what he wants. He’s searching for what he wants.

And then he says, more softly than I remembered on rewatch: “Kneel.” 

His voice only grows more confident on the second try, and the way he demands, no asks of the Doctor, “Call me by my name.”

Now makes me wonder because it doesn’t seem like the old game, because the moment The Doctor repeats his name a third time but a hell of a lot more quieter than he demanded he looks like he’s about to sob: 

This isn’t a happy face, this is like… this is like getting confirmation from the Doctor that he is who he says he is. And this is interesting because the Master’s never had an identity crisis before, whatever the regeneration they know who they are.

It’s not like the Doctor who sometimes has identity confusion, and then unexpectedly he sinks to his knees to be on her level.

This is the point, when they’re both on their knees, on level to each other that he broaches the subject of ‘home’.

Fast forward to when the Master admits he destroyed Gallifrey he looks hollowed out and tired.

In fact he looks kind of like Nine post-Time War

He even crouches down to once again be almost on the level of the Doctor, the Doctor who looks lost and trying to find an explanation from her oldest friend.

He is even gentle almost, with her here. Until the moment he stands up and lashes back again. Because why should things be easier for the Doctorthan it was for him?

Whatever the secret is the Time Lord founders kept, or the Timeless Child is/.. it seems to have broken the foundations of the Master’s identity, so much so that he needed to hear the Doctor confirm his own identity to him. There’s even an air of desperation to his killing now, he claims that killing feels like it gave him purpose when in fact it seemed to be doing the opposite for him.

It’s like… it reminded me of Missy in The Magician’s Apprentice when Clara dared to suggest she was good now, and in retaliation Missy killed several UNIT agents. “No, I’ve not turned good,” Missy sneered.

Thus says the Twelfth Doctor, moments before he regenerates. He’s leaving a legacy, a set of instructions, for the next Doctor. These are the things he finds most important. The things he wants, above all else, for his next incarnation to take to heart. (Hearts?) Kindness, laughter, love. These are the things the Doctor should have. This is what the Doctor should aspire to be. Never be cruel, never be cowardly.

And then the Thirteenth Doctor comes along and ignores it.

I think Series 11 was a great setup for this, if I’m going to be honest. I didn’t like Series 11 that much, because I thought it was boring, especially for character work. The Doctor is too bland, too cheerful, too boringly nice. There was nothing all that special about her character, nor her companions.

But now that we have Spyfall, and a great start to Series 12, I’m finding this setup of boring, nice, cheerful, optimistic, naive Doctor to be almost necessary. Perhaps we didn’t need a full season of it, but it makes great potential for character dynamics, especially now that Chibnall is clearly focusing on that a bit more.

Thirteen is ignoring her last incarnation, or, at the very least, only paying attention to a few parts. She’s always trying to be nice, for example. And no one can accuse her of being cowardly. But what about the kindness? What about never being cruel?

From the start, Thirteen has kept an odd distance between herself and her companions. As Yaz says at the end of Spyfall, “You know everything about us, and we know nothing about you.” She’s trying to take what her previous self has said to heart (hearts?) and is doing that by trying to completely start over. She takes them to places where no one has ever heard of the Doctor, where there are no monsters from her past or skeletons in her closet. She doesn’t tell them where she’s from, and rarely makes any reference to things in her past. Forget, “What is the Doctor’s name,” this is more, “The Doctor hasn’t even told us the name of the planet she’s from,” which is something her past selves have all been very open about.

I think Thirteen’s thought process here is that she has too much baggage. She’s done so many bad things, been responsible for some of the worst crimes in all of time and space. She’ll scare her companions off if she’s open about her past. It’ll clue them into the fact that she can make mistakes, big ones. That they can get hurt. She doesn’t fully trust her companions, but she expects them to trust her. When the Dalek shows up in Resolution, she uses manipulation tactics to get them to approve of her murdering the Dalek in cold blood, and almost murdering Ryan’s dad in the process.

This is all a great setup for the return of the Master. The Master will not hesitate to expose the Doctor’s dirty past to her companions, and he almost succeeds in doing so in part one, with Graham. He and the Doctor are more similar than the Doctor would ever admit, with both doing horrible things, manipulating people, committing genocide. The difference between the two is that the Master revels in this. He loves it. The Doctor hides behind excuses and makes every effort to be good.

The big thing here, though, is that Thirteen has a lot of hidden darkness. She’s been turning to manipulation and secrecy in order to keep up a facade of being the nice, good Doctor. All of her big confrontation scenes have been her and the villain, alone. In those scenes, she has goaded, taunted, and threatened. She isn’t kind.

That’s why I’m okay with the Paris confrontation in part two, despite the very very sketchy racial things in that scene. The Doctor is confronting her oldest nemesis. She’s cornered. She’s desperate. She doesn’t have anyone to impress. And she’s going to ignore the never be cruel. She’s going to ignore the never fail to be kind. She isn’t any better than the Master, and you could make the argument that she’s worse, because the Master at least is open about the fact that he does terrible things. The Doctor is cruel. She’s ignoring those aspirations, those promises. This is who Thirteen is, even if she’ll never let the fam see it.

The Doctor is losing her sense of self. She’s already been cruel, incredibly so. She’s stolen the Master’s TARDIS, forcing him to somehow escape the Nazis (and she’s also clued them in to the fact that he’s a poc, which was totally unnecessary. This isn’t just thwarting the Master, this is personal. This is revenge. This is cruel.) She’s wiped the memories of the two women who helped her, against their will. There is nothing kind about any of this.

We have so much to discuss in two S12 episodes because of S11. Jodie’s first season gave us this precious cinnamon roll Doctor who was fighting to be happy and have her fam and do amazing things for them. She was silly and smart and loving, but as an audience we all knew otherwise. For a few seconds she’d bare her teeth and show that darkness.

Now in s12, the persona she crafted through s11 is as damaged and crumbling as Gallifrey. She curls in on herself at times and at others she’s nearly undone. The Master has her by the throat and she’s grinning. She shouts and throws the message cube in anger. When the fam ask about her, she gives name, rank, and birthplace and grits her teeth.

It’s a shock for us because we spent a whole season with this woman like we were her companions and saw the silly, socially awkward, precious Doctor we wanted to protect. Now we wonder if we might need protecting from her.

one

eats like Gaston 

Mini wheats like Gaston

An elderly British man with an accent - you can picture exactly what he looks like and what he is wearing, somehow, and you know that he will explain the important concept of Yorkshire to you at length if you make eye contact - is saying “And w’ four snickets t’ wicket, Umbleby dives under the covers and romps home for a sticky bicket.”

There is a deep and satisfied silence. Weather happens over the radio. This lasts for three minutes.

A gentle young gentleman with an Indian accent, whose perfect and beautiful clear voice makes him sound like a poet sipping from a cup of honeyed drink always, says mildly “Of course we cannot forget that when Pakistan last had the biscuit under the covers, they were thrown out of bed. In 1957, I believe.”

You mouth “what the fucking fuck.”

A morally ambiguous villain from a superhero movie says off-microphone, “Crumbs everywhere.”

Apparently continuing a previous conversation, the villain asks, “Do seagulls eat tacos?”

“I’m sure someone will tell us eventually,” the poet says. His voice is so beautiful that it should be familiar; he should be the only announcer on the radio, the only reader of audiobooks.

The villain says with sudden interest, “Oh, a leg over straight and under the covers, Peterson and Singh are rumping along with a straight fine leg and good pumping action. Thanks to his powerful thighs, Peterson is an excellent legspinner, apart from being rude on Twitter.”

The man from Yorkshire roars potently, like a bull seeing another bull. There might be words in his roar, but otherwise it is primal and sizzling.

“That isn’t straight,” the poet says. “It’s silly.”

“What the fucking fuck,” you say out loud at this point.

“Shh,” says the person who likes cricket. They listen, tensely. Something in the distance makes a very small “thwack,” like a baby dropping an egg.

“Was that a doosra or a googly?” the villain asks.

“IT’S A WRONG ‘UN,” roars the Yorkshireman in his wrath. A powerful insult has been offered. They begin to scuffle.

“With that double doozy, Crumpet is baffled for three turns, Agarwal is deep in the biscuit tin and Padgett has gone to the shops undercover,” the poet says quickly, to cover the action while his companions are busy. The villain is being throttled, in a friendly companionable way.

An intern apparently brings a message scrawled on a scrap of paper like a courier sprinting across a battlefield. “Reddy has rolled a nat 20,” the poet says with barely contained excitement. “Australia is both a continent and an island. But we’re running out of time!”

“Is that true?” You ask suddenly.

“Shh!” Says the person who likes cricket. “It’s a test match.”

“About Australia.”

“We won’t know THAT until the third DAY.”

A distant “pock” noise. The sound of thirty people saying “tsk,” sorrowfully.

“And the baby’s dropped the egg. Four legs over or we’re done for, as long as it doesn’t rain.”

The villain might be dead? You begin to find yourself emotionally invested.

There are mild distant cheers. “Oh, and with twelve sticky wickets t’ over and t’ seagull’s exploded,” the man from the North says as if all of his dreams have come true. “What a beautiful day.” Your person who likes cricket relaxes. It is tea break.

The villain, apparently alive, describes the best hat in the audience as “like a funnel made of dove-colored net, but backwards, with flies trapped in it.”

This is every bit as good as that time in Australia in 1975, they all agree, drinking their tea and eating home-made cakes sent in by the fans. The poet comments favorably on the icing and sugar-preserved violets. The Yorkshire man discourses on the nature of sponge. The villain clatters his cup too hard on his saucer. To cover his embarrassment, the poet begins scrolling through Twitter on his phone, reading aloud the best memes in his enchanting milky voice. Then, with joy, he reads an @ from an ornithologist at the University of Reading: seagulls do eat tacos! A reference is cited; the poet reads it aloud. Everyone cheers.

You are honestly - against your will - kind of into it! but also: weirdly enraged.

“Was that … it?” you ask, deeming it safe to interrupt.

“No,” says the person who likes cricket, “This is second tea break on the first day. We won’t know where we really are until lunch tomorrow.”

I am a model and an asexuality activist, and I am an aromantic asexual.

There was never really a time where I didn’t think I was asexual. I noticed when I was about eight and I was in primary school like everyone’s hormones seemed to kick in and all of a sudden the boys and girls didn’t want to just play with each other; they were going out with each other and they fancied each other and I was like, “Alright, what’s this?”

The default is straight so when people would ask me I’d be like “Well I guess I’m straight but I don’t like boys.” And they were like: “Well then you’re probably not straight.” They said: “Well do you like girls?” and I was like “No, I don’t really like anybody.” And they were like: “Well maybe you’re asexual or something?” And I was like “Alright, that sounds good.” So I Googled that and I was like “Yeah, sounds about right.” So when I was about 14, I just started using that word.

I find that most of the time, in my personal life, people just kind of re-interpret it their own way. So I’ll say: “Hey, I’m asexual” and they’ll be like: “Oh ok, so you’re well behaved.” They’ll just switch it. I’ll be like “I’m asexual” and they’ll be like: “Oh, you’ll find the right person, don’t worry” and I’ll be like “That’s not what I said.”

It has nothing to do with being a prude, it has nothing to do with being insecure, and antisocial, and introverted. It has nothing to do with how you look—that’s something I get a lot—people are like: “Oh but you’re good looking, you don’t need to be asexual,” which usually tells me that A) people think that there is an asexual look and that it isn’t a good one, and 2) that asexuality is a choice that people take when they can’t get dates or that they can’t get laid, which is really strange.

One of the benefits of being asexual is definitely that you don’t have to worry about–if you’re aromantic—you really don’t worry about relationship stuff. I know some asexual people do worry about that but I don’t have that problem.

I think that representation is definitely very important because I think the LGBTQIA+ community in general is pretty whitewashed in its representation. That is not only ironic for the community that’s supposed to be so inclusive and diverse if it doesn’t look like that, it’s also counterproductive for minorities that are part of it because it’s kind of seen as being a white thing, which definitely doesn’t help when you are trying to come out and people don’t take it seriously in your community because it’s seen as being this white kid thing.

“We have a word for that in Japanese,” he said. “It’s called ma. Emptiness. It’s there intentionally.”

Is that like the “pillow words” that separate phrases in Japanese poetry?

“I don’t think it’s like the pillow word.” He clapped his hands three or four times. “The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.”

Which helps explain why Miyazaki’s films are more absorbing and involving than the frantic cheerful action in a lot of American animation. I asked him to explain that a little more.

“The people who make the movies are scared of silence, so they want to paper and plaster it over,” he said. “They’re worried that the audience will get bored. They might go up and get some popcorn.

But just because it’s 80 percent intense all the time doesn’t mean the kids are going to bless you with their concentration. What really matters is the underlying emotions–that you never let go of those.

— Roger Ebert in conversation with Hiyao Miyazaki