It is Little Shop of Horrors Day! For people who observe on the day in the play script, it will be in two days for people who observe on the day in the movie. So Lee and I watched said movie and then watched the original ending
It's such a good movie. Truly a miracle of cinema, I love it extremely much. And I'm going to go listen to the soundtrack so I can hear the songs that got cut from the film.
I have Opinions about the ending(s) ((who doesn't))
I don't like Seymour getting a happy ending he didn't earn, the released movie ending is cheap and feels rushed, and makes us miss one of the best songs in the show. Seymour killed at least two people and sold his soul to the devil, and the movie leaves us with the message that that's cool and sexy and you should definitely Feed The Plants
It's also such a bummer that they made and filmed a huge climactic scene and didn't get to use any of it and I can't imagine how it felt to have to just, cut it.
So, problem: There's no curtain call in movies, so the deaths of the main characters felt too final and dark for test audiences.
Solution: Bloopers during the credits!!
Problem: Audrey and the World shouldn't have to pay for Seymour's mistakes
Solution: Make Seymour sacrifice himself to defeat Audrey II! Seymour pays for his faustean bargain, including paying the ultimate price to allow the person he loves to find success!
Problem with the solution: Neither Audrey nor The World are blameless! Do they deserve to die for their faults? Mmmmmmnot quite. Maybe. Certainly Audrey dying for her crime of never taking initiative, for allowing herself to be pulled along by whomever is not a just punishment, so much as a thematically appropriate one. But losing Seymour, being forced into having to stand on her own feet and take care of herself -- both her Devil and Angel being taken away from her -- that would work, too. Twist Somewhere That's Green to be referring to Seymour getting eaten (or, uh, crushed, maybe) and that's a winner.
The world, though. See, the thing is that Seymour didn't do any of this on his own. The invasion of Mean Green Mothers is a result of humanity's -- collectively -- greed. The World pushed Seymour into a cycle of more and more and bigger and bigger -- The World bought Audrey II's en masse -- The World fed those Audrey II's. Of the issues in the ending, this is an easy one to miss -- but the invasion isn't a result of one Mean Green Mother. It's the result of hundreds or thousands of people all making the same bargain that Seymour did. Don't Feed The Plants is a judgement not of Seymour, a punishment not of Seymour's mistakes, it's a judgement of humanity as a whole.
Anyway. Love the movie, so so much, and since the original ending is available I don't super mind the released ending being the one attached to the film. I can go pull it up on youtube or whatever and watch the ending I like and the people for whom that's too dark can get their happy ending. Everyone gets what they want
Granted that Seymour's Bargain is more... There's more focus on it and his moral decline in the stage show. That said, just because there's not as much focus on it doesn't mean it doesn't exist in the same way
Like in the stage show just before the climax we have a very explicit reinforcement of the Bargain, of Seymour agreeing to keep on this path for the sake of Audrey. In the movie he rejects the bargain at that point, attempting to flee the consequences of his actions. This muddies the waters a little, and makes Seymour come across as more traditionally heroic -- but this is also in large part a change brought about by the change of ending
Been trying to force Language Brain and it's not, really, working. Frustrating
Just read up on how gastric bypass surgery works, like the effects it has on the body to cause weight loss, and this is some genuinely horrifying shit, like straight up body horror
I've been watching Dorohedoro and I'm so annoyed because it doesn't! Fucking end! We have one season and a bonus slice-of-life-anthology episode and No resolution for any of the plotlines raised. I'm also under the impression that the manga doesn't end, either, the artist just decided to stop making it after 167 chapters, so who knows if there's any resolution for the plotlines there, either
I'd love to recommend this and make Lee watch it with me because it has amazing worldbuilding that's revealed to the audience super well, but it's so unsatisfying the way it just stops at the end of the season. It's been two years and there's no current plans to make a second season, so.
Shows should have to warn you about this before you start watching them.
I'm going to watch some Children of the Whales now and if that doesn't end either, by god,
Today I woke up at 7:30 and couldn't fall back asleep, though I'm now going to give it another try.
A few weeks ago I needed to use the notebook, that I'd been using for my Japanese lessons, for something else so I wasn't able to use it to write down what I was learning, and my retention levels Fucking Tanked. So I stopped doing any more learning than the bare minimum to keep my duolingo streak going (and used up a few streak freezes in the process).
I also lost motivation from knowing that the duo update is going to hit me at some point, even though it hasn't yet, because I know people have been having issues with the app dumping them into some random lesson, and not wanting to put in effort to proceed only to be shoved back to lesson #whatever because I haven't done any of the stories, or whatever.
But I've picked it back up again. My current tools are duolingo, ankideck, and I've borrowed the Pimsleur Japanese audio from the library, so we'll see how all of this works for me. The duo and anki studies right now are very very focused on learning hiragana and katakana; I am mostly solid on the hiragana but I'm struggling a lot with the katakana. Thankfully I don't think duo is going to force me to learn kanji.