Do we ever really change?

I recently met up with an ex of mine. This has, to this date, been the only person outside of my family I have ever truly loved. There were many reasons why we broke up. I’m not going into detail about that but what I do want to talk about is how when I met up with her, she claimed on 3 separate occasions when we met up, how she had changed. From what she said and how she acted, I agree she has changed. She has become a lot more extroverted. A lot more outspoken, and even though it was a bad break up I was proud that she can express herself this way. Though she would go into some details about what she had been up to since we were dating and then say how much she had changed. From what I could tell the new outspokenness was the only change. She was still the same overly critical women. Finding an issue with someone then turning that singular issue into a black hole. I was wary about meeting up with her to be honest. The whole, is there still feelings etc thing was hanging over my head. Thankfully no there wasn’t. There was nothing like that at all. It was just a meet up, with a girl I used to date. Nothing more. She showed me in how she acted and what she said, that I made the right decision when I did.

Now don’t get me wrong, I loved her for all her good parts. But what was bad was terrible between us. I would like to think I’ve learned from the experience, I don’t make a claim that since we dated, I’ve changed. All I can do is learn from each new experience and hope I take on what I need to keep moving forward in this messed up world. With her, I clearly did. With everything going on in my life just now, I think I just needed to touch the past a bit, and for a time, she made me happier than I ever thought possible. But I’m glad we met up, and I see how she hadn’t changed. How she was still that same person. This isn’t an attack on her at all, this is more of an exploration of do we really change. She claimed to do so, and I met another girl some time ago who always claimed to be “so self-aware” of herself and her friends. But this was a lie, she barely knew what she wanted form life, she constantly walked into stupid life positions, and couldn’t understand her friends at all.

All this makes me wonder, why do people need to claim they have changed, or they know who they are? No one really does. It’s a fucked up mad world, we are all tumbling down the rabbit hole hoping for something to make sense eventually. I embrace the madness, I want to be in this chaotic world more than anything. I don’t want a certain future, I don’t want control. Because both are lies, we can change, but when you think you have changed, all this proves is you haven’t even walked far enough for your old self to be considered a shell. We change and grow and learn about ourselves through trial and error, the good and the bad. What is the point in over analysing the past, accept it happened and move on. Learn from it, don’t hide away from it, if you experienced pain, then use it as a tool. If you experienced joy, then, use it to keep you going through dark times.

We can change but we can’t just claim we have, we must struggle and suffer and fight to change who we are. The good the bad and the mad. I do hope my ex and the other girl I mentioned learn from their mistakes, my ex especially. I hope she doesn’t keep claiming how much she changes, holding onto the change as a crutch, but grows as a person.

With all the madness going on in my life right now, I don’t think I will be pursuing a friendship with my ex. Nothing good can come from it. But something good did come from meeting with her. I now know I made the right choice. That it wasn’t a mistake. In meeting up with her I realised just how messed up I could have become if we had stayed together. I can see all the pain I would have went through, well both of us. It feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders for this. Like a breath of fresh air that was desperately needed.

Premium Netflix

So I’ve been a subscriber for Netflix for a few years now, I get my money’s worth as I have both my parents and a couple of friends using my details to watch it when they want. Also having a 4k subscription means I get the sharpest picture. Now recently I read that there was talks about a premium service that could go into effect within the next couple of years, and what this extra service would be is simple. Subscribers would be able to stream the latest movies out in the cinema in their country as soon as it was released in the cinema. Now I used to have a Cineworld card, when I was dating my ex, we went to the movies very often, I also used to go a lot with my brother and friends. But as time when on, and the price increased, then ultimately Cineworld started adding in the like of the super screen and 4dx and charging a premium for these services. It just seemed like I was paying more and more for this card. When I realise that if I went at least twice a month I was saving money. The past year or so, I’ve been going to the cinema less and less. Mainly due to saving money. I cancelled the Cineworld card a good while back due to lack of use. Truthfully, I don’t regret it at all. I feel if Netflix done this premium service I would be upping the price for access to these movies if the pricing was on par to that of a Cineworld card. As I could stream these movies at any time I wanted, watch it as many times as I wanted, all from the comfort of my own home. Granted im inclined to do this mainly due to having a 65” 4k tv to enjoy a miniature cinema experience. Though I remember growing up going to the cinema very infrequently and it made it a special time being treated to it via my older brother, or my parents. And I still have great memories of it, I still go, but now I save it for a movie I know I would regret seeing on the big screen, like the recent Avengers infinity wars. But when I can also catch older movies such as the thing, on a small independent local cinema, I would choose the latter as it is a movie id be dying to see on the big screen since I was a kid. To date I have managed to see Akira twice on the big screen, once with my older brother and once with a pal of mine. Both times I was glued to the screen. Massive child like smile stuck across my face. To me those experiences are defiantly money well spent. But when you get a card that you pay for every month, you start to feel the need to justify going every month. And it becomes more of a chore than anything. I mean I really made my money’s worth at times like when batman vs superman was out in the cinema, seen that 4 times on the big screen, no fucks where given (just by the time I seen it a second time I knew what bits I could sleep through so as not to miss anything amazing). If Netflix done this new service, it would be a massive leap forward for the home entertainment industry. I do have a fear that it might kill the cinema though. Which would break my heart as a movie fan. But it might also encourage more independent cinemas to start popping up and show older movies. There is a lot of pro’s and cons. But ultimately, if I can stream the latest movies in 4k at home on a 65” tv, I really don’t give a fuck!

Media entertainment

I want to talk about the amazing world of entertainment we can access currently. As a kid my dad and older brother got me watching some amazing classic movies like ghostbusters and back to the future, and many more. I am always thankful for that, but also the encouragement for other forms of media entertainments. From video games, board games, games played with toys and figures, cartoons. I remember one of my first introductions to something similar but vastly different to what I had experienced up to this point. That was anime, dragon ball z to be specific. It looked cool and interesting, growing up, of course I wanted to be a Saiyan. I fell in love with the art and animation, before that the greatest animated series I had seen was the batman animated series, which was dark and gritty (which I still love with all my heart to this day) now here was DBZ being all dark and gritty and action packed, I don’t remember the long drawn out episodes where literally all that happened was the characters screaming at each other while charging their attacks. I just remember the nonstop action and story.

Then, I was introduced to the next level. My main intro to the world of anime and everything outside of western entertainment. My brother had rented Akira on VHS, this shows how long ago this was, he told me how great it was, he simply got it and handed it to me and told me to watch it. At this point me and my brother still shared a bedroom, he told me to wait till I was alone to watch it, I at first thought it was because it was scary somehow, as I was shown a lot of horror movies by this point, so I was excited. I wasn’t told anything about the plot, just that I had to watch it. And when I did, it blew my prepubescent little mind. The art style, the plot, the story, and that gorgeous bike of Kaneda’s. everything about that movie was just perfect to me, as such it became my favourite movie for a long ass time. Then slowly my brother introduced me to more and more anime movies and shows, some we rented some he found a copy to download. I soaked up each bit. When there was a new anime being shown on cartoon networks Toonami I was there, every day it was on, reruns and all. I watched everything from DBZ to sailor moon to Tenchi Muyo. For me no anime was off limits, nothing too cheesy for me to watch. This thankfully introduced me to one of my favourite shows called Outlaw Star, and to this day is still one of my all-time favourites. Though this appeared more in my teenage years, I would stay up late as it was shown at 4am every Saturday, so I would wait for my dad to pass out from drinking, sneak through to the living room and sit and watch the episodes with fascination. Now in my mid teenage years my brother again introduced me to something new, and that was Asian movies. He started off with one of my favourites. Old boy, this story was just mind blowing. Twisted doesn’t do this movies justice. Then there were the likes of battle royal, the good the bad and the weird. And all sorts of other movies. Some action some horror, all amazing. This just opened another whole world for me. Growing up I started to get into everything I could. Manga, anime, subtitled movies. Not limited to just the Asian market but all over. In school we were forced to watch a movie called the choir, I was never a massive fan of learning French, that was just my preference, but after watching this movie, it really did make me realise I shouldn’t knock back a language/culture that can make a movie like the choir. All this growing up just made me realise how little my world was before in terms of entertainment. As I’ve grew up I seek out all sorts, thrillers, horrors and even romance stories, if it’s well written and acted I know I’ll enjoy it. An amazing example of this is an anime called Clannad. This anime is based off a virtual novel game. The anime though is just fantastic. The art is great, but the story is just mind blowing. As its based off a virtual novel, its essentially a dating same story, the main character learns about the girls back stories and ultimately chooses one of them. But the “ending” to it just broke me, the art, the voice acting, the music. All of it just collected into a giant ball of feelings that was just amazing.

Now with all that lovely background out of the way, the main reason I am writing this blog is because I feel people choose to purposefully ignore parts of it due to complete ignorance. A good example is my dad, he loves movies, but he refuses to watch a subtitled movie, me and my brother have told him time and time again about the movies we have watched, we tell him the stories and he seems genuinely excited but as soon as we mention its subtitled he just ignores it. I feel this is a shame as people miss out in some amazing stories. Same goes with video games, I feel like these are some of the best outlets to tell amazing stories such as the persona series or the mass effect series of games. There is a massive list of truly great games to list. The same can be said for everything, movies, books, comics. Hell, even music, the second you say you hate a certain type of music is when I think people are just being ignorant. Without exploring and listening to all sorts of music you can’t say you truly experience that to its fullest. My main interest in music is classical and rock. But I don’t limit myself to it at all, I love tons of music from the 80’s and everything from pop to power ballads. Hell, I’ve seen nickel back live 3 times now and loved it each time, I’ve even been to video games live where they play music pieces from video games with an orchestra. I am so thankful for those people in my life who encourage me to do more of these things as all it does is inspire me with more creative ideas of my own, see how things have went well and poorly for some media. Where as a book can tell a massive story, it will never reach as many people as a movie will these days. Thankfully as well, most modern tv shows are starting to realise the past mistake as well, the likes of say Game of Thrones, there’s very few filler episodes as its all based of a previously done story and worked on for the purposes of tv. This is something I’ve been noticing more and more of and I am so glad for it, as it just gets straight to the point and keeps within the story to the most part.

In closing I just hope that people are more open minded when it comes to different forms of media as the world is a bigger thanks to the connection of the internet, we can find all sorts of amazing forms of media out there. You just need to be open minded enough to experience it for what it is. Enjoy the stories, enjoy the tales. Maybe share a tale or two of your own.