True Left

Thank you! I might have to read the rest of that. That chapter made a pretty good first impression. As for what spurred me to type out that long message, I have to come clean and admit that it was from rewatching that one live action Casper movie from 1995 last night:



It doesn’t really have an important message to tell, but I remember watching this movie a long time ago when I was a kid, and being smitten by the ending. I also remember being frustrated at the forced trade-off of using the Lazarus to revive her dad instead of to give Casper a second chance at life, even when I was little. For some reason, I find bitter-sweet endings more depressing than purely sad ones. And the nostalgia combined with that feeling, put me in a weird headspace for the rest of that night and most of today, hence why I started looking back at stuff from my own childhood and from the 90s, and typed out that long message

And then, on the other hand, you have “romance” movies like Her, where the main premise is that some adulterated man falls in love with an AI. That movie kind of grosses me out, because the man who’s supposed to be the protagonist can only seem to connect with women, including the AI, through sex. I.E., the protagonist isn’t romantic at all. He’s not even likable. He suffers from the same thing that a lot of male protagonists in romance movies do: He’s nothing more than a bland stand-in that’s “relatable” (generic and adulterated) enough that most other men can self-insert themselves into the story. And it doesn’t help that the world is basically a dystopia, so you can’t even really enjoy the movie because it hits too close to home with how the near future is portrayed

I’d definitely be willing to take some suggestions. What do you consider mandatory watching and reading material, if I were to retrace your steps with the stuff that has gripped you from your youth and never really left?