Oz!

I rewatched "Return to Oz" last night. I was four when this movie came out, probably a little older when I saw it. The movie flopped, in large part because critics felt it was inappropriate for children ( On the unpredictably of children )

( Why Fairuza Balk kicks Judy Garland's ass )

It was fun to rewatch this film, which I don't think I've seen in fifteen years. I remembered almost all of it, including the strangest things, like the lay-out of the hen house or the way a key bounced when dropped in the hay. I also noticed a number of things that had gone straight over my head in previous viewings.

It's nice when something from childhood actually holds up when watched as an adult, isn't it? So many of my favorites (*hem*She-Ra*hem*) have been quite painful to see again.

Langoliers and Sartre

I just had a totally random epiphany I have to share. So, Stephen King's "The Langoliers"--I've never read it, but I know the premise and watched about ten minutes of it with my King fanatic brother. But I will bet you any amount of money that King got the idea from Sartre's Nausea.

In Nausea, there's a moment when the main character has an existential epiphany. He's looking at a tree and suddenly understands the nature of that tree: as it is now, in this exact moment, divorced from as it has been and as it will be. I wish I could find the exact passage, but he understands existence as a seperate thing from the words we use to describe and the functions we use to understand it. Part of this incredibly convuluted philosophical passage is a description of understanding the past as erased by the present--the past as a seperate object--and the future also as a seperate object.

Obscure, I know, and I'm dredging this up from a high school course on existentialism, but--sound familiar? That's the kernel of the idea of "The Langoliers." Being displaced into the past. But not in a time travel way, not the past as experienced when it was the present. The past as simply a space occupied by the objects that are now in the present. Which is damn Sartrian.

Add to that that the main character of Nausea has an obsession with shredding paper, as does a character in "The Langoliers."

Some Stephen King fan out there please tell me that he's said in some interview that Sartre was an influence.

Fic: Balance of Days (Supernatural)

Title: Balance of Days
Author: Ivy (ivy03)
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: none
Rating: R
Word count: 7,000
Warning: OMG THEY'RE DEAD! THEY'RE ALL DEAD!!!!11!! Only not really. Fake character death.
Minor spoilers for "Born Under a Bad Sign"
A/N: So I started this thing back in February. And it had some structural problems, so I set it aside for a bit. And then AHBL happened and I went…no point in this little story, then, right? It's a very odd thing to have Kripke suck my story out of my head and then do it better. Well, I've finally dusted it off and fixed it up. Enjoy.
Beta thanks to bunches of people: trinityvixen, feiran, dotfic, ecmyers, trakkie…did I forget anyone?

Summary: His brother had been right next to him, but he couldn't see him now. He called out again and got only silence. He stepped over a beam—one of the ceiling supports had fallen—and then he saw him.

His brother was dead. Undeniably, unarguably dead.


( Balance of Days )

Read on AO3.