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

[broshaw]

Hey look, at some point Steven got Dedue inside, and now there's someone who (distantly, hazily) recognizes him! Said someone is Sharky, who's got like, sticky rice on a tiny little plate that may or may not be pilfered from Sand Dollars.

"Heeyyyy," name, name, come on man, remember a naaaame, "Dedue??? Right???" He better be right for how proud he feels. "Liking the movie?"

[glassaxolotl]

“That is correct,” he nods. If Sharky is expecting more small talk, he isn’t gonna get too much of it unfortunately.

“This is a movie?” he points to the screen. “The paintings are well-done. I can recognize many of the plants.”

[broshaw]

Sharky does more than enough small talk for two people, so that really works in his favor.

"Hell yeah, man. Miyazaki's stuff is always hella detailed. I think you could probably find most of the places in these movies in Japan."

[glassaxolotl]

He blinks in confusion. None of that sentence really made sense to him. Is Miyazaki the painter? He remembers hearing the word ‘Japan’ before... Oh, he remembers now.

“Japan is where Nobunaga is from?” He points questioningly to the screen, as if to ask, ‘Is this the place he was talking about?’ The peaceful scenery does not match at all the war-torn description Nobunaga had given him earlier. Though, maybe this is before all that? (That’s a sad thought). Maybe it is after.

[broshaw]

"Oh, yeah, uhhh..." Not-Earth people always throw him for a loop. Okay, context time: "Nobunaga's from, like, old-timey Japan. Waaaaay before this movie ever got made. There are movies about the time he's from, but like, not this one. This one's set like, hundreds of years later."

He has no idea about dates, he just knows things are "old-timey" or "contemporary."

"You don't have movies, right? Not even live-action ones with real people in them?"

[glassaxolotl]

He nods with understanding, a bit relieved to hear that the movie came after Nobunaga’s time.

“We do not have them. We have paintings and operas. This seems somewhere in between the two.”

[broshaw]

"Yeah, kinda." Like, he's assuming operas really are just musicals in Italian sooo. "A bunch of artists draw the backgrounds and like, all the characters, and they do it over and over again so when they line the art up afterward, it looks like the people are moving through the forest and shit."

That's as good a description of animation as he can give... Steven's probably better suited to it.

"Live-action ones are just... people in a real scene. And you point a camera at them, so you can record what they do."

[glassaxolotl]

“Interesting.”
He doesn’t really have much more to say on the topic, so he just focuses on the movie for a bit.

Every time there’s a nature shot with a lot of flowers, he identifies them under his breath.

He snorts during the scene with Mae on top of the big sleeping Totoro. He thinks that’s really cute.