i dont think american filmmakers realise how huge london is, because sure you have the london eye and houses of parliament but when you say ‘london has fallen’ what??? so the nandos in catford is in flames? the tesco in peckham has descended into chaos? wtf??
And even if Peckham Tesco goes down you’ve still got the Lewisham one open 24 hours, yeah you’re in trouble on a Sunday evening but even in a survival situation you can probably hold out till Monday because all the local takeaways would still deliver, no one can stop those guys and no one should try
yeah and making it a little serious for a second, the city has such a historical/cultural expectation of being (or at least appearing) resilient in response to destruction that these portrayals are not realistic at all.
If you talk to people who were in London on 7/7 I feel that they use very different language about their experience, vs. people who were in New York City for 9/11. The brush with destruction is not portrayed as a life-changing experience, if that makes sense. The expectation is that the city has to keep moving. That obnoxious “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster (now a meme) was actually designed and printed in readiness to be posted everywhere if London actually fell to Nazi occupation. the expectation was that “descent into chaos” would let everyone down.
Like, in the London Blitz people made “not giving a shit as the city is gutted around you” into an art form.
this lady would make a great reaction image for drinking truth tea in the wake of drama:
like look at these guys here
“oh ffs that was my BUS”
I mean this guy is just delivering the milk like
TREVOR I DON’T THINK YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE GONNA CARE IF YOU’RE A LITTLE LATE
or this extremely safe community policing
“remember girls you need TWO policemen to go past the unexploded bomb”
or this
“hey Bridezilla your window fell off” “fuck off Helen this is my SPECIAL DAY”
or
“guys you’re supposed to be – guys pay attention”
or “Hey what should we do we are literally being bombed right now” “idk go hide in the tube??” “but it’s the kids’ bedtime” “yeah, but like… bombs”
“wait I’ve got a plan, we go to the tube and then…”
“ok so … so we’ve literally just tied the children to the train tracks” “shh…. they’re sleeping…. they’re safe now”
Anyway it’s not like Londoners are super brave or anything, it’s just that on the one hand there might be giant alien sea dragon robot tsunamis smashing the recognizable landmarks, but on the other hand they gotta make rent
You have instructions written down. You don’t need them, but you check them anyway. Somehow they’re different from what you remember. Have they changed since you tucked the paper in your pocket?
You realize that you’ve lost your train of thought. You can’t remember what you were thinking before. There is only your present thought, now a loop of panic at your lost memory.
You stop in the middle of a room. Why are you here? Which room did you come from? You leave the room and remember what you were going to do. You walk back into the room. Why are you here?
You bring up an inside joke with a friend. They look at you blankly. They do not remember this joke. But you were there when I made it, you argue. They were not. They are not the friend you are thinking of. You realize it was your other friend, from work instead of high school, with blond hair instead of brown, tall instead of short. You do not know how these two friends are so similar in your mind.
You refer to every experience as happening “the other day.” Was it three years ago or yesterday? You try to remember context clues. Time is not real.
Someone asks you for an important piece of information. You have not thought about it since you saved it on your computer, labelled very clearly. You search through your files. It is not there. You find it days later by accident, labelled with a cryptic set of codes. You don’t know why you would label it this way. No one else uses this computer but you.
You are running late. You are always running late.
You have lost something. You check everywhere. You check everywhere again. Someone tells you to think of when you last had it. You don’t tell them that is the problem.
You reach the end of the page. You can’t remember what you just read.
Fishsticks final word count:106,236
I’M DONE WITH THE FIRST DRAFT
edit: I pulled up my logged time for it… 108 hrs and 35 mins since last July! Holy crap.
Brother: and then, one day, you’ll go to the theater… and in the previews, there will be one that says: “From the visionary director that brought you The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comes… Fishsticks.”
omg
….wait no, it turns out he was talking about the Michael Bay film, not the original. Now I’m sad. 🙁
Anthony!
In an ipad review, a guy recommend getting a matte screen protector to make the surface more fun to draw on. He was totally right.
The epilogue has been finished (save for the ending paragraph/final line), the ending battle has been outlined. I probably have 2.5k left to write.
