come along, pond

"Yuna," he says, shifting his elbows on the table to point at it. "What is this on his hand? Was broken?"

Shane's head snaps up from across the table, where he's pretending that Photo Album Time is very boring to him and not worth paying attention to. He hasn't scrolled on the article he's pretending to read for over five minutes.

"I never broke a bone as a kid," he says, brows furrowed. "Not until U13, when that fucking kid from Guelph--"

Yuna and Shane both inhale quickly through their noses in what Ilya has learned to recognize as a moderative measure, lest they start yelling about something that everyone else on Earth has forgotten about.

"No," Yuna says, once her face looks a little less intense. "No, it wasn't broken. It was this...contraption that the dentist gave us to correct his thumb-sucking. He was so mad about it, we only put it on him a few times."

"Oh, Jesus," Shane mutters, eyes going back to his phone.

"Aw," Ilya says. "Poor baby Shane." He taps his finger against one little red cheek and laughs. "You really do look so mad, sweetheart. How did you make him stop?"

"Hmm...you know, I don't remember," Yuna sighs, tilting her head. "I guess he just stopped by himself eventually. Do you remember, Shane?"

"No," Shane says, shortly.

"Of course, that didn't get rid of the oral fixation," Yuna sighs, adjusting her reading glasses as she flips the page. "The things you used to chew on, Shane. Pens and straws and--"

"Mom," Shane snaps, while Ilya vibrates beside him. "Can we not?"

"I was afraid to give him popsicles because I thought he would gnaw on the sticks until he got a splinter in his stomach."

"Mom!"

"Well, honey, it's true! And you did outgrow it eventually, so it's not as if you have to be embarrassed."

"Oh, you did?" Ilya says, shoulders shaking. "You outgrew the, uh, oral fixation?"

"Stop," Shane hisses.

"Mm. Excuse me." Ilya stands from the table and sweeps out onto the back porch, though the sliding door does nothing to prevent the sound of his guffaws from floating back into the kitchen.

"You know," Yuna says, "I'm just going to assume that this is some kind of language barrier thing--"

!!! 

me, falling in love with every woman I see whose purpose is to eat and be pretty:

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Lin is the only other major character who looks human throughout the movie - I’m not certain she started out human, but I suspect she may have, and may have fully traded away her humanity. I do think it’s significant that she, unlike Chihiro and Haku, doesn’t reclaim her name at the end of the story.

She’s the first bathhouse worker who is kind to Chihiro, helping her get her clothes and navigate her first work assignment and sneak food. One of the core themes of Spirited Away is finding your footing in a new and terrifying place, and Lin and Haku are key allies in Chihiro’s struggle to gain the skills and self-assurance she needs in order to thrive.

Lin’s human appearance helps us and Chihiro feel more sympathetic towards her . Her familiarity with the system of favors and bribes makes her appealing as a role model who can demystify Chihiro’s new environment for her. Unlike the more inhuman occupants of the bathhouse, Lin looks like someone Chihiro could become in the future, and that’s a good thing! She’s living proof that the bathhouse is not such a monstrous and scary place. Because Lin treats the bathhouse like home, Chihiro begins to see it as a home, too.

And once Chihiro starts to think of the bathhouse as her territory, she realizes that she has agency in this place as well. She uses its rules to her own advantage to free Haku and herself.

And that is the point of Chihiro’s journey in Spirited Away: it’s a metaphor for starting over in a new place and overcoming fear of the unfamiliar. After all, the frame story is Chihiro’s family moving to a new city. At the beginning of the movie, Chihiro is despondent, unhappy to be leaving her old friends behind. By the end, after making it through the spirit world, she’s taking a much more active role in helping her parents settle into their new home.

Because Chihiro has a mentor and friend, she learns how to survive and even do well in the Bathhouse. It’s because of Lin that Chihiro is able to not accept her place within this system and instead fight back, and in the end to make things a little better for everyone.

There’s something there about community, and easing the path for those who come after you. Lin doesn’t regret her choices because they were the best choices she could make, and that’s okay. It’s not a tragedy. She got as far as she could get, and because she did, she’s there to help Chihiro get farther.