Country roads, take me home

[latersgators]

Who: Steven Grant and open - start your own subthreads and stuff
What: Studio Ghibli movie night
Where: Cabin 135
When: early December
Warnings: none so far

After subjecting Marc and Maeve to Ghibli nights, Steven has widened his circle of suffering to include a few other people. What was going to be 'come over and watch My Neighbour Totoro?' became a proper whole evening at Steven and Marc's cabin. They spent the afternoon tidying up the room, returning a bunch of library books and keeping the rest of his stash in a corner on the other side of the bed. Clean laundry put away, a small load of dirty clothes taken down to the wash. The ankle cuff and bungee cord is stashed away in the cupboard alongside their small emergency hoard of water, snacks and food in case they have to lock themselves in their cabin one day for weeks on end. Bathroom tidied up as well, with extra toilet paper stacked on top of the cistern in anticipation of several guests.

The cabin is still small in spite of their cleanup efforts, and Steven insists on having some snacks available, so for savoury options there's baby carrots and celery sticks with hummus dip, potato skins, kumara fries and cassava chips, and mango sticky rice and pan fried cinnamon bananas for something sweet. It's not exactly going to be the healthiest night in terms of food, but half a dozen people sitting knee to knee in a claustrophobic little cabin crying at children's anime is surely going to make up for that and be healthy for all of them.

The programme for the night is Steven's Studio Ghibli box set, although he only has one DVD player and one television so they need to pick their movies wisely since they'll only be able to watch two or three. They're always welcome to come back next time to watch more. Steven's recommending more Kiki's Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke, and less Grave of the Fireflies and When Marnie Was There. They don't really want to be crying into their bowl of vegan snacks every 15 minutes...

Comments

[justneedsomehelp]

That gets a short chuckle out of him. "I think-- they're from Japan or something. I don't think it counts as Saturday morning cartoons."

He pauses. "Man, you've never seen like... Looney Tunes before or whatever?"

That's probably more Saturday morning cartoon-like, right?

"Anyway-- Steven loves the stuff."

[prefers_magneto]

"I grew up in the Thirties, under occupation. I didn't come to America until 1949. I was eighteen by then, pretending I was twenty-one. When I raised my own child we lived in hiding in rural Poland. We didn't have a television," he explains conversationally, like anything he said wasn't kind of horrible and sad. He watches the screen for a moment. "What's the plot?"

[justneedsomehelp]

"You had a hell of a life, huh?" That's all horrible and sad. Kind of horrific. He doesn't know if he wants to know what happened to this guy's child or not. He can't imagine anything good...

"Uh--" Right, the plot. "Steven could probably explain it better. But that prince-- he got attacked by an animal, right? And I guess it was cursed and now he's looking for some kind of cure. Then there's this... forest princess? Who's with this wolf god."

[prefers_magneto]

"So it's a love story," Erik surmises.

[justneedsomehelp]

"Maybe a little." He shrugs his shoulders. "I think it's a lot about humans fucking up the environment too, hurting the-- spirits and gods there."

[prefers_magneto]

“Do the spirits and gods do something about it?” Erik asks curiously.

[justneedsomehelp]

"I think so, yeah. Uh, I don't know how much good it does in the end?" He shrugs his shoulders.

"Now that I think about it, not sure this is really the kinda movies kids'd want to watch on Saturday mornings anyway..."