#I grew up not watching several classic childhood shows/movies from my gender because they were either ‘of the World’

[crying-over-really-dumb-things]

Me: Did you know I was raised in a cult?

Southern coworker/acquaintance: Oh me too! I went to a really strict Baptist church!

Me, thinking about my church leader claiming to have psychic powers and using that to manipulate the congregation for twenty years: Oh yeah mhm :)

[xoxardnekoxo]

Movie Review: TMNT Mutant Mayhem

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Ah, Ninja Turtles. My childhood superheroes... oh who am I kidding, my eternal superheroes. :D This fabsome foursome debuted in 1987, the same year I was born, so I literally grew up watching the franchise. The series has gotten several reboots over the last three decades, and it's still going strong. The hype now is around the latest installment, Mutant Mayhem, created by Seth Rogen.

So, confession - when I first heard details about this movie and saw promo images, I was NOT on board. The art style is amateur at best, and yet another one of my beloved childhood redheaded characters has been black washed. First Ariel, now April? If we could stop doing that, that would be great... I'm totally okay with her being heavyset and more realistic in terms of body. We could all use THAT type of PC upgrade for beloved classic characters. But at least keep them the same race we've always known them to be.

But enough about that. It wasn't just the art style that made me stick my nose up in disgust at yet another remake of my ultimate childhood series. I'm literally a mega fan - my TMNT collection dates back 30+ years and is still growing, and it features some sort of item from every series thus far (with the exception of Rise... because even I can't get on board with that one). I'm talking figures, plushes, clothes, jewelry, hats, backpacks, bookmarks, magnets, buttons, piggy banks, etc. You name it, I've got it in TMNT form. So I'm very passionate about the show and can be quite critical of changes to it.

Which is why when I was starting to get past the art style, I was appalled to learn that not only would Shredder not be the main antagonist this time around, he wouldn't even be referenced at all.

Uh... yeah, we all know - we've known since 1984, when the comics came out - that Shredder is THE villain of the turtles. That's the one thing that's been consistent with every franchise (except The Next Mutation, but he at least made an appearance in that, albeit for a brief time). Instead, the bad guy is a hideous creature called Superfly. Kind of a double play on words considering he's literally a giant mutant fly with fancy/classy/fast cars and an entire mutant army and crime baddies at his disposal.

And Splinter? OMG, what did they DO to him? His face looks like someone splattered vegetables on the sidewalk. I see a squashed tomato/potato where his nose should be, and his "beard" is like the top of broccoli or a garlic clove. (shudder) And let's not get into the fact that, when the turtles were kids, he had a freaking Afro and a mustache. The turtles are meant to be 15 in this time, which would make the year roughly 2008 when they were kids, so the 70s look was way dated at that time.

Then we get more great news... not only are we now race-swapping characters; we're also gender-swapping them. Leatherhead and Wingnut, while minor characters throughout every iteration, are now girls instead of guys.

Leatherhead has always been an ally to the turtles, except in the original series, and considering the direction this movie took, I have to wonder if the writers thought it would be inappropriate to make them enemies because it would show teen guys beating up a girl. I mean, "beating up" may be a stretch, but you get what I mean. And Wingnut has always been super annoying to me, so I would have been okay had she not been in the movie at all. But I digress.

Okay, so, plot. Since Shredder isn't the main villain, the plot isn't the usual "stop Shredder from conquering Earth" thing. The movie starts with Baxter Stockman raising a giant mutant baby fly - in a crib and all - in a lab surrounded by test tubes of animals. Yeah, I didn't make that up. Animals of all different species and sizes are somehow shrunken down to conveniently fit inside a test tube.

Some heavy-duty suit guys break in and grab Stockman to take all his research at the behest of a mysterious woman named Cynthia Utrom. We know from prior series and lore that the Utroms are the alien race that created the ooze that caused the mutations of, well, all mutants. Utrom looks like a woman here, but she could be wearing a human suit like in the 2003 series. We don't know, and we don't find out.

Anyway, the baby fly escapes and takes out all the suits because, well, he's super strong and inhuman. And he has wings. He manages to grab all Stockman's test tubes and book it out of there, and then we fast forward to 15 years later where we meet our protagonists. Their current mission? To acquire necessities for the lair from a list given to them by Splinter. So they do this and they're like, "Hey, we've only been gone for a little bit. Let's go check out the outdoor movie playing in the park." So then we get to see them watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Yep, a live action movie in a CGI movie with art that's literally meant to resemble sketches like kids would draw.

So then they get back to the lair but Leo guiltily confesses that they all went to watch a movie in close proximity to humans. We're then introduced to the origin story of the turtles and Splinter, and while we're all familiar with it, it's slightly different this time. Splinter was a normal rat before, but he wasn't anyone's pet. He was a typical NYC rat, hated by humans (and raccoons... and dogs...) and one day he finds himself in the sewers and comes upon four baby turtles crawling around in green ooze. This ooze had come from a canister kicked into a sewer grate from Stockman's lab earlier. Splinter was shocked that the turtles took right to him, and they were the first and only things to not instantly hate him or want to kill him. So of course he touches the ooze and mutates, as do the turtles. He raises them as his sons, and honestly, I don't recall ever hearing him being called Splinter. All the turtles called him Dad. I don't think we ever knew his name... so if you didn't know of any other TMNT series before this, you'd have no idea what his name was.

Anyway, the turtles, as kids, wanted to go above ground one day, and Splinter thought he'd give it a try. Bad idea, because, of course, everyone freaked out and chased them away. So Splinter vowed to keep his sons safe and refused to let them leave the lair except to get supplies. We're also treated to a montage of cheesy old footage of actual martial arts movies/shows depicting how Splinter trained the turtles in ninjitsu as a means of self defense. He now loathes humans and wants nothing to do with them, and wants the same for his sons.

So after the confession of watching a movie, the turtles get grounded and are all talking in their room about what they'd do if they could be normal. Meanwhile, a crime spree has broken out with mega villain Superfly (yep, that's his name) stealing all kinds of high-tech scientific items... and if anyone sees his face, he kills them.

We're soon introduced to April, who, this time, is not an adult reporter. She's an aspiring reporter in high school, and she's collecting information on the Superfly case because, due to the crime spree, the school's prom has been cancelled and she thinks she can get it back if she solves the mystery of Superfly.

Well, the guys are throwing ninja starts at watermelons (because why not) on the rooftop one night, and one lands in April's helmet. As she's chewing out the shadows on the roof that she can't see, someone steals her scooter. And Leo decides this would be a great time to play hero and get the scooter back for the "beautiful human girl." Yeah, in the 2012 version, Donnie had a crush on April. This time around, apparently it's Leo.

The guys then partake in their first actual fight with bad guys - I'd love to say that I went YES in the theater when a car radio turns on and "Ninja Rap" from the original second movie is playing - and shortly thereafter, April sees them. But she doesn't freak out even when she realizes they're not wearing costumes. She's more interested in getting a story about them for the school newspaper. But of course, considering they aren't supposed to be seen or known about, that won't do. April then tells the guys that, had they not helped her beforehand by getting her scooter back, she probably would have had a much different and more negative reaction to seeing them. This gives the turtles an idea: Become heroes by finding Superfly and bringing him to justice, allow April to get it all on film to showcase them as heroes, and then she can write and submit her story.

April accepts the terms, and the turtles go to her high school with her and are all "ooohh, ahh, we want to go here." They find April's locker, which has been graffitied with things like "puke girl." We're then treated to the ever delightful scene of our female protagonist spewing what looks like green ooze all over a desk because of nerves while giving the morning announcements. Look, I know this is CGI and not real, but that was completely unnecessary. More on that later.

So to get to Superfly, the guys have to interrupt a transfer of goods, i.e. the final piece of some machine Superfly is building for his nefarious plot (which we don't know what it is yet). The guys are waiting in the truck and he shows up... with Bebop and Rocksteady. You remember them. The mutant warthog and rhino, respectively, from 1987 and 2012? Shredder's mutant allies? The ones Shredder created? Yeah, those two. Well, this time, since there is no Shredder, they were created in Stockman's lab. Remember all the animals in test tubes? Yeah, they're all grown now as well, raised by Superfly since he was the oldest. Stockman's plan was to create a family of mutants because he was never liked or understood by people. Superfly's plan is to pick up where his "father" left off... by turning all animals into mutants and killing all humans.

So of course, eventually the turtles manage to turn the tables and attempt to escape with the last piece of the machine Superfly needs to spread the mutagen. But of course, that falls apart and a bunch of Utrom's suits find and capture them. April races back to the lair to tell Splinter that his sons are in trouble... yeah, that's an awkward first meeting. Splinter shows up and takes out all the suits (Utrom has been taken away to safety), saves his sons, and they all start to head back home to come up with a plan to stop Superfly. It results in them basically appealing to all the other mutants, telling them that they don't have to listen to Superfly and that they have a choice. Surprise, surprise, they all turn against the big bad. Even Rocksteady and Bebop, and they're supposed to be villains... I realize their origin is different here, but come on.

Well, everyone takes out the giant mutagen machine... sort of. It lands in the river below, where there are dozens of species of sea life. Yep, you guessed it. Superfly merges with all the animals in the river. He gets a whale body, crab pinchers, some sort of tail, etc. And, for some reason, random horses on his legs. Wha... Oh, and he's now taller than the Empire State Building. Awesome.

Yeah, as if he wasn't ugly enough before LOL. Well, the suits in Utrom's lab had been working on an anti-mutagen, and April managed to swipe one of these canisters... somehow. It didn't really show how, she just did it. Times Square has a huge news report going on about mutants attacking, so April manages to get inside the Channel 6 (yep, the right station!) building to take over the report and explain that she knows the truth - that the only bad mutant is the giant fly/whale hybrid thing. And then she pukes again. Seriously, STOP THAT.

Splinter is trying to get to his sons, but Superfly manages to knock him back hard enough to break his leg. Humans approach, and he's terrified... but they're reaching for him to help him. So then we have humans and mutants working together to get the anti-mutagen to the turtles, who manage to throw it into Superfly's weak spot - the whale blow hole. Yep, that takes care of it. So then the turtles are revered as heroes, and the other mutants are all now living in the sewers with them... and the turtles wind up going to high school. They're got human clothes on, ditch their masks, etc. And all the kids welcome them and think they're super cool. April's locker has been re-graffitied with things like "cool girl" instead of "puke girl," and then the movie just... ends.

Then we get a post-credits scene, showing how the turtles are getting along in high school. Each one seems to have found his niche, and they're even all at the prom together. However, Utrom is watching them, and she says that capturing them will be difficult. So she asks her assistant to bring her... The Shredder! Then we see an outline of Shredder before the scene cuts away. So yeah, totally open for a sequel, as is the norm with movies these days. In fact, a sequel (and TV series) has actually already been confirmed! I mean, honestly, how could Seth Rogen, a self-admitted TMNT addict, create a TMNT movie without at least planning for Shredder to be in it?

So, all in all, it wasn't a bad movie. I appreciate the throwbacks to the original series, and I'm glad to see my favorite heroes getting so much recognition again.

However, there are definitely some things in this movie that weren't necessary. The top of that list is April's barfing scene. She was nervous doing the morning announcements at school and wound up throwing up as a result. Then later, during her news broadcast telling everyone that the only bad mutant is Superfly, she does it again... honestly, I get that we may need a reason for her to rather be behind the camera instead of in front of it, and she needs an obstacle to jump over to tell the people who tease her to suck it, but did it have to be that??? We're showing puke in kids' movies now? Please, just, don't... I don't care that it's a cartoon and looked like the ooze that mutated our beloved heroes. That doesn't mean I want to see it spewing out of someone's mouth. What is it with Seth Rogen and vomit movies? Is it like some unwritten rule that someone has to upchuck in everything he's in? UGH.

Also, this movie is rated PG, but... were all the nipple references necessary? Splinter is legit concerned that, if his sons are found by humans, they'll be put in a lab and milked...and they're like, "But we don't even have nipples!" Then the turtles say the same thing to April when she talks about writing a story about them, and she asks how that could be done for the same reason. Then later, in Utrom's lab, they are getting milked... but, I mean, how... way too much emphasis on that.

And did Splinter seriously need a love interest? With an unintelligible giant bug? Just... why? That's wrong on so many levels.

It was said from the start that this movie would focus mostly on the "teenager" aspect, and it absolutely did that. The guys weren't all serious about ninja training and mastering new techniques; they were more interested in what it would be like to be a normal kid, go to school, go to the prom, etc. And since it's 2023, and because it's Seth Rogen, we have to have some swearing and such, even in a cartoon. Mostly it's by Superfly (aka Ice Cube), so not surprising. But even the original 1990 live action movie had cursing LOL.

You know, I'm almost positive that the turtles never officially introduced themselves to April upon meeting her. She introduced herself, but I don't think they ever identified themselves. The closest we came was in they were in the school and Michelangelo was signing himself up for a talent show. We all know who they are, but a human meeting them for the first time more than likely wouldn't. Hmmm... I think some details got overlooked. Just like how I swear Splinter's name wasn't mentioned once in the entire hour and 49 minutes of the movie's runtime.

Anyway, as a hard-core TMNT fan, I did enjoy the movie. Definitely some things that I would have changed, and others that should have stayed true to the original, but all in all it wasn't bad. I think I can give it 8/10 and be satisfied. :)

[firewritten]

10 More Questions!

I was tagged by @summerkiska to do another 10 questions. And such awesome questions they are! Thank you for the tag, and I hope it helps with the getting to know each other. :)

My 10 Questions

1. What’s a line in your current WIP that you’re proud of (or just like a lot)?

Oh. I was going to post a whole passage but then I realized that “like a lot” meant liking that one line a lot, not a lot of lines that you’re proud of. ;)

Okay, well, let’s go with this line from a recent Emo Pistols chapter. 

But there is no one around to answer your questions, and the musty old store with the piles of junk under dim lighting and the wizened shopkeeper with the creepy laugh has been replaced by a shiny new coffee house with skinny and damp baristas who set your tall mocha frappuccino on fire as they serve it to you, saying, “This is for your bad taste in glasses!”, and you walk home with a heavy heart, knowing that you have to use the flaming coffee to dispose of your loved ones, who leer at you as you enter the front yard, saliva dripping from their lolling tongues as the smell of your brain reaches their nostrils.

2. What’s a question that you wish people would ask you about your writing? (And what’s the answer??)

Hmmm. Once someone told me "I know you like Sims stories but you have the talent for original fiction", which my reaction was something like, "Oh, my Sims story about a narrator with no gender or name traveling around various universes with its friend the darkness, a conscious bit of the void who can wear anything as a skin, isn't original enough for you?"

So, maybe the question would be "Why do you write Sims stories?"

And my answer would be because they're extremely fun and addictive and I love improvising with the game and I love taking the screenshots and editing them and putting the pictures and the words all together to tell the story. I love seeing what I can come up with based on the game and all its absurdities. It makes me really really happy.

And also over the years people in the Sims community have sometimes come out of the woodwork to tell me what my work means to them, from helping them get through their mother dying from cancer to helping them deal with their own feelings of isolation and anxiety, and that their life is better because my Sims stories exist.

3. What’s your favorite part of the writing process? 

I guess actually writing? There’s not much else to the process really for me. I don’t usually plan or do outlines or anything. I just start typing, and I see what happens.

I’ve noticed that outlines and plans are big around here, and I think that’s cool because I like it when people’s brains work differently from mine and I get to learn about things that I haven’t experienced and read things that my brain would not have come up with. But the most outlining I’ve ever done is a few lines of “hey, this could happen maybe” before starting a new chapter, and I haven’t done that since...2011?

I just kind of....feel the story out? I reread what I’ve already written constantly, and I feel what the story wants. I don’t know how to say it, really. A lot of writing is subconscious for me. I start typing, and I get in the zone, and it’s like everything is green and golden and beautiful and the story is flowing through my fingers and I’m one with the universe and on the good days it can be like seeing the face of God.

4. What song best fits the theme of your WIP main character? (And why?)

Seth has hundreds of songs across dozens of playlists, but two stick out. Old school Seth’s main song was Possum Kingdom, by the Toadies. Emo Pistols Seth is the healthiest and least murderous version of him I’ve written, so Arsonist’s Lullabye by Hozier is more his speed. 

Possum Kingdom fits perfectly with his role in his first story, In the Valley of the Sun, where he was the villain and he was intent on killing the main character and then bringing her back to life with ambrosia and keeping her with him forever. :)

In Emo Pistols he’s the main character, and he’s writing letters to two penpals. He is actually trying to work on his issues and figure things out. He’s had a lot of trauma around fire in his life. You can read about him as a teenager here - Eggshells. His father was blamed for a fire at the factory where he worked. 10 people died in it. His father survived, but he was severely injured and his mental health never recovered. The kids he went to school with did not let him forget that.

In Emo Pistols he’s an adult and married. He became an alchemist, and he was working on experiments in his lab when a fire broke out. He almost died of smoke inhalation, and the trauma reawakened the scars from his childhood. Same backstory as Valley. Just at this point in Valley, he went to the dark and became the villain. In Emo Pistols, he’s trying to, well, keep his demons on a leash. ;)

Okay, I am verbose and this is getting long, so I'll put a cut.

5. What habits or rituals do you have for writing sessions?

I have to take a shower and eat first, because I need clean hair and calories to write, and then I always have a playlist relevant to the story I’m working on going.

6. What’s one piece of advice you wish you were given when you first started your writing journey?

I don’t know what advice six year old me would have understood. But I guess...I grew up with people who loved my writing. My teachers and the other kids at school always praised my work, like to the extent of giving me a standing ovation in 8th grade when I read my essay on beauty out loud. So the first time I got hate online it was a totally new experience, and it knocked me sideways. 

I don’t know that I would have wanted someone to tell me this though. I had to learn it the hard way, but that means that I’ve really learned it and that I’ve taken it to heart and that I’ve struggled to come to terms with it and that I can empathize with other people in that situation. But the advice I would give a young writer who came to me now upset about people hating their work is this:

Our view of reality is curved around our ego. Our experiences and prejudices and problems are the lens through which we see the world. Other people bring their own stuff to your work. You can listen to them and see if what they say has any merit, but remember that they may not be seeing your work at all. They may only be seeing themselves reflected back at them. What they say has no bearing on the value of your work, which is of infinite worth just like everything else in creation. 

Also, after seeing a movie or watching a TV show that you like, go and look at what other people say about it. You’ll see that some people seem to have watched something entirely different than you did. The work is the same, but we all see different things when we look at it. It’s up to you whose view of your work you let in.

7. Who was your first book character crush? (Or if you can’t remember, who’s your favorite book character crush?)

Sherlock Holmes. My sixth grade literature textbook had a play version of The Dying Detective, and I immediately fell in love. We didn’t have the internet then so I didn’t write it and publish it online, thank goodness, but I had self-insert fanfic daydreams of going back in time and chilling with Holmes and Watson all the time.

8. What’s one of your writing pet peeves?

The arguments in the writing community. I don’t know, I guess it’s because I grew up in Appalachia and went to rural working class schools and didn’t get socialized into mainstream American middle class culture or something, but seriously, guys. All the genres can be special. All kinds of books can have worth. You don’t have to insult other styles and writers and books. You don’t have to show off whatever it is you think you’re showing off with “literary” stuff and you don’t have to show off your “common man” cred with yelling about how much you hate classics and literary fiction. Just chill. Let other people read and write what they want. It’s not that important.

9. Who’s your favorite character in fiction that you loved to hate?

This is hard. I don’t like hating. I like liking people and things. But I guess if there is one that gets mentioned around here fairly often in conversations with the spousal person, it’s book five Harry. And even that’s not hate. Dude had a reason to be annoying and emo and whiny, and really all it needed was an editor to slim it down some.

Kylo Ren is annoying, but that’s not hate either. He’s too pathetic for hate.

Going back to Harry Potter, Umbridge, maybe? She’s a good representation of everything I dislike in humans, and a much better villain than Voldemort.

10. What are you currently trying to work on when it comes to growing as a writer? (And how’s it going??)

Hmmm. This is a good question, because actually I don’t know.

I was reading something online and for some reason there was a line break in the word sunlight, so s was the end of one line and unlight was the beginning of the next. I looked at “unlight” for a while, and now I’m all about words that make the spellchecker yell at me. Like in Emo Pistols Seth talks a lot about the sun wanting to eat him, so there’s teethlight and sunbelly. Toomuch and notenough. Me and notme. Starteeth halos. A chapter of Surreal Darkness is titled The Unswallowing Place. I want to stretch the language and make it do tricks. 

I think it’s going okay. I’ve been writing for a long time, and at this point a lot of it is muscle memory. Like I talk about how much I love taking hours to find the right word, but really it doesn’t take that long anymore. I guess now instead of finding the right word, it’s more like “How can I combine words in new ways and make them do new things? How can I take cardboard and caramel and doors and the sun and make them explain what it means to Seth to be human? What can I do with the edges of the Sims 4 worlds and making my characters walk in the flat places with painted-on mountains and trees, and what can I make that say about reality and skins and being and friendship?”

Hmmm. That probably sounds terribly pretentious if you don’t know me yet, lol. I like to think that it’s not, though. I guess you can read it and see how it looks through your experiences. :)

Okay, now I have to do the 10 questions thing. I'll tag @etherayy, @lazyfox411, @fuckenwhatever, and @somethingwriterly. If you don't wanna do it that's perfectly fine.

1. When did you first become interested in writing?

2. How did the idea for your current WiP come to you?

3. What other authors/life events/etc. influences your writing?

4. What are your hopes for your work? 

5. What would you want the book cover for your current WiP to look like? (If it's not a book, then any kind of illustration pertaining to it.)

6. Have you noticed any repeating themes or imagery in your work? If so, what are they?

7. What are your writing strengths?

8. What have you learned about yourself through your work?

9. How would you define art?

10. What's your favorite word?

[rgmonzon-folio]

From Glass Slippers to Lightsabers

At the tender age of three, I have usurped my parents and became Supreme Lord of the Television set. Under my command, the T.V. blared the Disney Channel 24/7. From what I can pluck from my foggy memories, I would sit at the lowest step of our staircase, swivel the big, black box that was our T.V. to face me, and watch as it blared to a fantastical life with a press of a button.

I hummed along to the music my favorite Disney princesses would sing. I clasped my hands to my mouth at jaw-dropping twists and turns reminiscent to Aladdin’s carpet rides. My heart would pound along with the drum beats as Mulan fought China’s foes. I was completely enthralled in worlds within the black box, which kept me from the lure of potential playmates in our neighborhood of back-to-back row houses. The rubbery clop-clop-clop of their slippers as they chased each other on the eskinita pavement and their shrill cries of taya! were drowned by the whimsical tunes I never grew tired of.

Within the confines of our white walls and beyond the fairy tale renditions of Disney, I learned to create worlds of my own. I learned I could fashion my pambahay garb into gowns as magical as Belle’s and Cinderella’s, I learned to will images and drawings from books to come to life and undertake adventures of their own - under my own terms.

I even learned, despite my still developing skill with my native tongue, to speak English. I pieced together the words Mickey Mouse and friends uttered with their animated actions, and built my vocabulary before I even started going to school. Growing up, my parents would remind me that in my pre-preschool age I would only occasionally ask them what certain words meant - and it wasn’t long before I could speak coherent English sentences on my own.

Language weaved itself into the fantastic world of moving images, and storytelling took to a whole new level. I knew what magic and adventure meant, and I loved it.

It wasn’t long before my parents updated my old, vandalized boxed set of Grimms’ fairy tales - which was gifted to me during my first birthday. You could see it in an old photograph, where I was in the living room in blue jumpers, huddled with a pile of dolls and toys, beside me was the boxed set which I now wish I had preserved better. Luckily my parents eventually gave me other storybooks to enjoy, which got me into drawing as soon as I got school notebooks and crayons with blank pages at the back. At five, despite my scratchy handwriting and drawing skills, I wrote my first story, about Hello Kitty who dug too deep into her garden and found relics of an old world.

Of course you’d think all of these would be an immense advantage once I stepped into school, but with my classmates speaking Tagalog, I only became acutely aware of how different I was. And with the fact that I didn’t interact as much with other children compared to my T.V. screen, social interaction made me want to duck my head into my blouse the way turtles hid in their shells.

But somehow my classmates’ parents knew I could speak English, and they found joy in making me translate phrases into the language, to my utmost embarrassment. They found me smart and gifted, despite never having been on top of the class. Apparently, speaking in English made you smart.

Whenever I was singled out, I would squirm and try to hide behind my mother’s legs, who would in turn coax me to entertain the people fascinated in me. But that made me speak less, in fear of making mistakes and seeming less brilliant than people set me out to be - a trait I still have traces of to this very day.

Going into grade one, I decided not to highlight my difference, much to my mother’s dismay. Everybody else spoke Tagalog, so why should I do otherwise? But for some reason I had been branded, and people could not forget.

I revealed myself in writing, even in my earliest essays. Perhaps this marks the start of my love of the craft and my dream to become a writer, my dream to make people feel what I felt when I read or watched a Disney classic.

I learned to watch more action-packed cartoons in grade school, which aired in the usual Disney Channel. I was then introduced to a new world of heroes. While I did not fully trade my princesses with caped superheroes and super spies, I learned to anticipate stories in sagas when I went home from my classes.

I got hooked on stories of boys and girls with magical powers who fought crime and the dark forces of evil. There’s an allure in the charming protagonists, like Jake Long - the American Dragon, who went to school like me, but would switch to their secret lives through a magical transformation sequence.

American Dragon is one of the most beloved cartoons of my childhood, one that made me faithfully await new episodes as they aired. Its story was more complex than my preschool line-up of shows, as Jake came from a lineage that could transform themselves into dragons, with the task of protecting the magical world from evil, whilst maintaining daily lives as mortals. Plus, Jake still had to go to school. He had a sweat deal.

In that show, evil didn’t simply come from ugly monsters and beasts, as is the usual depiction in fairy tales. There was also evil among the dragons that supposedly protected humans and magical creatures alike, and evil among humans and magical creatures who were supposed to be protected.

These just made me love the story more - sprinkle in the classic subplot of Jake falling in love with Rose, who happened to be of a human tribe sworn to rid the world of dragons like himself, and I was hooked. For a cartoon written for the grade school demographic it was strangely complex (the fact that the main character is a Chinese-American in New York, with an African-American and Caucasian best friend also made it culturally diverse!)

This made me want to write my own novel and work for Disney all the more.

At eleven years old, we finally got access to the internet, which utterly changed the game for me. I was used to appreciating my animated media all by myself, my only companion the white walls of our living room, our Japanese-themed portraits behind the T.V., our wooden sofas, and the cold, green tiles with wispy patterns on the floor.

Internet showed me other people’s feedback on my beloved childhood classics - the shows which honed my hopes and dreams to this very day. People actually hated High School Musical, and I found that utterly heartbreaking.  

I’m not the least bit joking - my anger surged like boiling water in a kettle when I read youTube comments from crude teenagers unabashedly declaring the HSM sucked. It was corny and unrealistic.

And I could not have it.

In turn I did some bashing of my own when High School Musical’s biggest rival came out - Camp Rock. I hated the Jonas Brothers with a passion on the sole grounds that they threatened the popularity of the High School Musical cast (which is ironic, because I later on learned to love the brothers’ sitcom Jonas L.A.)

Upon discovering fanfiction, I even learned that my writing ability was heaps and bounds behind other people my age, and becoming a famed author and a Disney employee became bigger and bigger of a stretch.

In a nutshell, the internet ruined my life.

I even made it a point to avoid movie reviews of the films my favorite Disney actors would star in, in fear of the jolting pain and anger I would feel at the critics’ responses. That is until I matured, if only by a fracture of a degree, to try not to let these words hit me personally. In the first place, it was strange, since they were never really addressed to me, but to my favorite films and shows, and yet I would feel like they attacked my family with bolos.

Looking back on my pre-teen self makes me laugh, knowing how truly childish I was. Thankfully as i went into my later teens, I learned to accept criticism for my beloved films, after all, it is a basic requirement for a subject in college called English 103, or Critical Writing.

College had went out of its way to shatter many of my previous beliefs and providing me with lenses with which to view the world. With several workshop classes, I received criticism for my own works, which in turned helped my to hone my future projects. However, the attachment I felt, and still feel, towards my favorite films and shows is natural, as I write this very moment and trudge through the BA Communication Arts program because of them. I guess I just learned to accept their flaws when putting them under a critical lense.

I learned that Disney made better and better films because they learned from their criticisms. Had they not, girls would still be passively waiting in the towers their stepmothers locked them in for their princes to save them. Now we have Rapunzel in Tangled, a girl with agency who chose to climb down her tower to free herself from Mother Gothel’s abuses. Rapunzel became not a subordinate to her male love interest but a partner. We’re also blessed with Moana, a Polynesian heroine that depicts non-Eurocentric beauty, with her thicker limbs, her rounder face and nose, and her curly, windswept hair. She didn’t need a man to complete her.

Now I could say with ease that Cinderella had been sexist with lines like “Leave the sowing to the women!” Ariel in the Little Mermaid had absurd motivations, as she was willing to sacrifice her entire life for a stranger she’d just met, whose only known quality was his good looks. I do admit I still need work accepting that Mulan is sexist due to its adherence to the gender binary, this film is an absolute favorite, but I recognize I still need to be objective, as what the academe didn’t pay me to say.

And yes, I came to realize that High School Musical is unrealistic. Also, my English proficiency didn’t make me a smart student or a better person, as college slapped in my face. And I’m okay with that.

I am thoroughly relieved I moved on from my pre-teen phase. Now I have discovered more groundbreaking shows and films, which defy the standards of a hero (with the emergence of an anti-hero,) the binary opposition between good and bad (with morally ambiguous characters,) the very idea of storytelling (with experimental forms of film and stories,) and so much more.

Eventually I picked up a lightsaber with the Star Wars saga, which is a whole new epic experience, given the classic original trilogy and the mess of a prequel trilogy. It was a new brand of fantasy for me, yet still equipped with the epic adventures and heroes of my childhood. I am less protective of this series however, as I was before my childhood faves. I may have a crush on Anakin Skywalker, if only for his brooding looks, but I could still recognize the acting for him was flat and robotic. And while the prequel storyline had great potential, the execution was poor, specially with the script’s dialogue.

But that only prompted the creators to redeem the saga with an epic seventh episode, with a fantastic heroine in the form of Rey, a complex villain in the form of Kylo Ren, and a possibly gay romantic subplot between Finn and Poe.

In my journey from glass slippers to light sabers, I learned that being told that you suck could help you not to suck in the future. Criticisms for films, books, T.V. shows for that matter, aren’t meant to put them down, likewise workshops in writing classes aren’t meant to have your work’s flaws pointed out so you would quit writing forever. Criticism was meant to make the future body of art better, serving as reminders for creators not to make the same mistakes.

Right now, I’m glad professors and peers have told me what needed fixing in my writing classes throughout college. Otherwise, I wonder if I’d ever make it to my senior year...