They were on board, and thus began my TIFF Experience overall: one where I woke up excessively early on a supposed vacation, the fact that I was sick be damned, and queued on the TIFF website to try and get tickets.

I tried every day of the presale, to no avail, and that was when we made our decision to get Rush passes.

With no guarantee of getting in, we lined up for Wake Up Dead Man's World Premiere screening. We weren't anywhere near the front of the line, and our chances were low, so we spent most of the waiting period looking for last-minute tickets as our only shot.

(In the end, we got lucky: someone in the line outside had upgraded their seats, and was willing to sell us their original tickets. The exchange was made, and we got in just before the last minute.)

With the story of why I'm watching this before the others out of the way, let's get into the film itself:

The opening moments of Rian Johnson's latest film, and my introduction to his work, remind me distinctly of the sports anime we often watched in my high school's anime club. The opening scene even takes place in a basketball court (one which may be familiar to anyone who's ever seen a certain Rick Astley music video).

Our protagonist and point of view character, Jud, is an instant underdog with the same sort of spirit, heart, and drive I associate with those shows. An actual former boxer who has the attitude of a kid begging the coach to put him on the field, except that in this story the field in question is the Catholic church.

(Religion and spirituality are a core focus of the narrative and the themes of the story, though not in a way that I, someone who has never been Catholic and was only theoretically raised to be religious, ever struggled to follow or understand. Still, if those are themes you struggle with for any reason, that's something to be aware of beforehand.)

The movie takes its time setting up the eventual locked-room murder mystery (a classic concept, and one I'm personally immediately invested in). Early on, it's instead focused on establishing the eventual victim and each of the suspects as characters in their own right, with history and desires of their own.

As I said, I haven't seen the other Knives Out movies, so I can't comment on those. But at least in this one, detective Benoit Blanc doesn't appear until some time into the film (when the murder finally takes place), which means that the aforementioned suspects and victim are instead introduced to us and characterized through their interactions with Jud; who, rather than being a detective or any other inherently combative/antagonistic force, is simply an unwelcome newcomer to their small town community, and specifically to their church.

The story takes several twists and turns, sure to entertain anyone looking for a good time, and yet it also never feels unfair to those who enjoy trying to solve the mystery before the pieces come together; which is, in my opinion, a difficult thing for a mystery to manage.

I don't know if I think it's a good movie. I don't know if I think it's a bad movie.

Despite the fact that I have now seen exactly two of his films, I have a decidedly complicated relationship with the work of Mamoru Hosoda. 

The celebrated Wolf Children and the underwhelming Scarlet seem to highlight the best and worst of his work, his weaknesses and his strengths—even if I am, admittedly, not the best person to be judging either.

It also suffers, somewhat, from the cost-cutting and production measures often utilized in anime and anime films specifically (in particular long stretches of no or limited movement). 

Granted, this aspect would probably have felt a lot less jarring if I was watching it on a streaming service rather than in a particularly fancy theatre at a film festival, so I hesitate to judge it too harshly based on that.

It isn't as if there's nothing else to say about it, after all.

In a word, Scarlet feels confused. It's a film at war with itself: its direction is unclear, as if it doesn’t know what it wants to say.

(It's technically a loose retelling of Hamlet, with Scarlet in his place, but this fact is rarely relevant beyond the fact that Scarlet's main motivation is wanting revenge on her uncle Claudius for killing her father.)

The character of Hijiri, clearly intended as a counterpoint to the title character of Scarlet, is underutilized to the point of feeling pointless; as are many of the concepts the film puts forward in general. To an extent, so is Scarlet herself.

The recurring theme of music as a form of connection goes nowhere after a single scene that feels strange and out of place in the story it seems to be trying to tell.

The Otherworld's repeated emphasis on being a place of convergence is never truly relevant, though it feels like it should be; instead, it mostly seems to be a plot device for the modern-day Hijiri's presence in the story. What worldbuilding we do get for the Otherworld in this vein is intriguing, and I would have personally liked for it to have more presence in the story.

This film feels as if it wants to be too many things at once. Many of the things I initially assumed were setup or plot threads that would return never see any payoff.

The actual payoff, the narrative conclusion, is likewise unsatisfying. The events of it appear at odds with its perceived message, though what that message is remains overall unclear.

In the end, Scarlet is a film that paints a picture it fails to live up to. With that said, the themes and ideas portrayed here are still clearly worth exploring, and I feel that a different story (or even a different approach to this one) might have done them justice.

For me it was this slow, quiet, all-consuming sense of despair. A sadness that I couldn't shake, even on the best and happiest days of my life.

Knowing that it wouldn’t matter. That it wouldn’t last.

I knew in my heart, in my soul, that I wouldn't live to see the future. It was a vague, nebulous concept: something that only existed in theory, for other people. 

Over the years, I learned to carry the weight of it better. Eventually, I found a strength not everyone does, and I forged that despair into anger. Rage against a world that had failed me time and again.

One day, after years and years of this, the metaphorical clouds parted. At last, I could see the sun without straining for it.

It was a slow realization, a cool autumn breeze passing by, and somehow—over a stretch of time that suddenly seemed limitless and infinite—I realized that I wanted to live.

And at the same time, I realized that I didn't know how.

Suddenly, the world was unfamiliar. Beautiful and new and terrifying. It had moved on without me and left me behind, and all I could do was try and fail to catch up.

I came to understand, eventually, that it still wasn't made for someone like me.

I say all of this to explain, in a way that I hope is easily understandable, why Guillermo del Toro's take on Frankenstein resonates so strongly with me.

If pressed, I might describe it as a meditation on life, death, and what it means to be a person.

As told here, del Toro's vision is a story in three parts: the origin of Victor Frankenstein and that of the Creature, each from their own perspectives, and the story that unfolds between them at last.

The framing device sees Victor Frankenstein rescued from near-death by a ship's captain as the crew fends off a monster, telling the story of how he came to be in this frozen wasteland in the first place.

Victor Frankenstein, as portrayed by Oscar Isaac (and Christian Convery for his childhood counterpart), is an outcast who feels close to his mother due to their shared disposition (before her tragic death) and estranged from his father, who is interested in him less as a son and more as a project; something to be molded into his father's vision for him.

The loss of his mother sparks a lifelong obsession with the concept of conquering death, which leads to the creation of the Creature—who remains technically nameless for the duration of the film.

(The prevailing wisdom, as far as I can understand discussions of the novel, is that his name should likely be Adam. For me, the conclusion of this film seems to indicate something else.)

From his early innocence and curiosity to the way the world twists him into something wicked and dangerous, molding him into a monster by refusing to consider that he may be anything else, the Creature is perfectly portrayed by Jacob Elordi.

Given his tendency to sympathize with perceived monsters, Frankenstein is perhaps the single most perfect fit for del Toro's style of storytelling.

In the end, his approach takes a sympathetic view of man and monster. There are shades of both to be found in each, and he emphasizes this fact at every opportunity.

Victor is single-minded to the point of obsession, seeming not to care for the people around him or the life he creates, oblivious or uncaring of the discomfort and fear that precedes him—yet he was once a child himself, and he has remained painfully human throughout his life.

Meanwhile, the Creature kills indiscriminately in the course of his hunt for Victor, allowing himself to become a monster after failing to be considered as anything else. Despite that, it would seem apparent that the most important thing he has been is a friend; bonding first with Victor's future sister in law, Elizabeth, and later with an elderly farmer. 

The moment that will, I think, haunt me for the rest of my life comes as the film approaches its end: not a confrontation between man and monster, but reconciliation between father and son.

The Creature has seemingly achieved true immortality, overcoming death as Victor intended, and as such he has been cursed with the inability to ever truly find peace. He may never be laid to rest.

What, then, is someone who can never really die meant to do?

"While you are alive, what recourse do you have but to live?"

I still feel out of step with the world, like it somehow passed me by while I was sleeping. I still don't know what it will take before I can truly feel like myself.

In the end, I am alive.

What recourse do I have but to live?

DashCon 2 is the smallest convention I've ever attended. 

(Well, that's not technically true; I've been to a couple of super-small free events that were really just a handful of vendor booths in a very small venue. But as far as actual paid-entry events go, DashCon 2 is the smallest convention I've ever attended.)

That might be in part because I mostly attend one convention a year (it's expensive!), and that one has usually been Anime North; which, while it isn't the largest local convention, still gets tens of thousands of people to attend every year.

I have, historically, considered it to be a comfortable size of convention. It's busy, sometimes crowded, but I've been going long enough that I know how to avoid the worst of it and have a broad-strokes plan of can't-miss events so I know where to be at what time.

That said, I've found myself feeling a bit more alienated as time goes on. I'm not sure how much of that is my mind making up reasons to stress, but it does feel harder to talk to people, and it also just doesn't feel as welcoming as it used to. It's not like the atmosphere is hostile, it's just harder for me to fit into it.

There's been a lot of talk over the last few years about the mainstreaming of fandom. I'm not going to get into my thoughts on that now, but these experiences often remind me of that conversation.

In a word, I am (and have always been) weird. When I say that there aren't many spaces left for weird freaks, I mostly mean myself, and anyone who feels like me.

I think it's important to acknowledge that being visibly neurodivergent for your entire life is often an inherently alienating experience. Physical disability, invisible or otherwise, can be too. Even if you're not, if you don't look a certain way, you often don't fit in.

(Sometimes even just when your interests happen to veer away from the mainstream. Cringe is dead, except when it isn't.)

There comes a point where you have to decide if you want to embrace that or not. For me, I don't know that it was even a choice: it's just how I've always been.

That said, it feels like I've seen less people like me at events in recent years. Maybe that's true, or maybe it's just that I haven't been looking in the right places. I really don't know.

It sometimes feels like being unapologetically weird and owning it has become an outlier, even and especially in the spaces that exist for the outliers. (Historically, people who get excited about anime, and anime conventions especially, have not been considered cool, at least in a traditional sense.)

What I do know is that DashCon 2 was one of the exceptions to all of that.

It gave me something that I hadn't even realized I was missing: the feeling of community, of feeling seen and understood. Whether by the people who actually attended the panel I ran (even though it was so early in the day!), everyone who enthused over my silly ball pit keychains at the Crow Exchange, or just finally getting to see friends in person (either for the first time, or the first time in a while).

Never in my life have I seen so many people so unapologetically passionate about the things they love. That, to me, is the spirit of what DashCon should have always been: it was just slightly before my time, but it's one of the greatest honors I can imagine to have been a part of its redemption.