Archive of Our Own

Notes:

I matched with lizardjay on both Ponyo and Totoro, but I didn't actually have any ideas for Totoro. I had a couple of other songs for Ponyo in mind: Starfish and Coffee by Prince, which would have leaned more into Ponyo as simultaneously a weird little fish and a very typical young child, and Dudar Ai by Dake, a Kazakh artist. Dudar Ai has this very sweet, chill sound though the lyrics are a bit dark -- I've never seen a full translation, but what I have seen has a star-crossed lovers vibe, which I can see working for Ponyo/Sosuke. Anyway, I settled on Les Fleurs because I liked how the rich yet delicate sound of the verses contrasted with the big crescendos in the chorus, especially since lizardjay specifically mentioned liking the water physics animation in Ponyo. I made the first half of it, up to the shot of the moon, in one evening, then finished the second half like a month later, because I was a bit stuck on how to finish it. It's definitely not a vid that follows any particular plot or character arc and instead focuses on vibes and visuals, which now that I think about it describes most vids I've made in the last couple of years. So I wrapped up the vid with the underwater imagery that I love in the slower parts, and various energetic motion in the second chorus, with a focus on arcs/circles. I liked combining clips of Ponyo running around the house with clips of Lisa's ill-advised driving, which I later slightly regretted because I repeated it in Tea for the Tillerman but actually had character-based reasons to do so.

For some reason I ended this vid on a sea full of jellyfish, even though I find those images in Ponyo horrifying because (a) jellyfish are scary! They just float around and sting you! (b) in my previous career as an atmospheric scientist, I saw a talk about how ocean life would be affected by ocean acidification if carbon dioxide emmissions continue unabated into the coming decades, and it was one of the most upsetting climate change talks I've ever seen. One of the take homes was that jellyfish would be fine but very little else would be. So I put that clip in as a placeholder and then got used to it and even grew to like it even though all those fucking jellyfish images remind me of that talk.