#I loved that shitty goddamn cartoon even though I only ever saw three out of the four of the episodes

[broken-clover]

I loveeeeee caring about things that don't matter what the fuck do you mean there was an extended version of the opening to the janky veggietales spinoff flash cartoon that literally only got four episodes made in 2002 that was considered unfound lost media for 15+ goddamn years until someone found the downloaded audio file from before the show even released and what do you mean I was absurdly hyped learning every single one of those facts

[thegreymoon]

giuliano de medici?

Obligatory disclaimer here, anon, I’m really not a fan of this show and Giuliano de Medici. I think it’s a terribly written show and he’s a terribly written character, and even though it’s no secret I find Bradley James to be one of the most beautiful people alive, I’m going to go with 

Not My Type | Alright | Cute | Adorable | 🤗Pretty🤗 | Gorgeous | LORD MERCY

Mind you, when I say ‘pretty’, I mean so goddamn beautiful I was willing to wade through THREE seasons of utterly infuriating bullshit just for him! (OK, two, because I still haven’t summoned the willpower to sit through season 3 even though I absolutely still plan on doing it 😭😭) I mean, just look at this man’s eyes: 

He’s so gorgeous, I could weep 😭

Also, I’m not going to pretend even for a second that the fact that the costumes gave off such strong Arthur vibes didn’t have anything to do with me sitting through this nonsense and almost enjoying it. When he said ‘I don’t have time for this,’ in this very scene, I got hit over the head with so much deja vu, because it is Arhur’s line, and it was totally Arthur’s delivery! His battle scenes gave me life, but why were they so short? Why was there not more? Why does everything about this shitty show have to be so goddamn unsatisfying? Did the Medici producers not see Merlin season 5? Did they not see what this man can do? Such a wasted opportunity, oh my fucking God! 

Anyway, rant incoming: 

Mind you, I don’t blame Bradley for the unsatisfactory mess Giuliano turned out to be, he did the best he could with the nothing he was given. Only Lorenzo got some semi-decent writing (and even this was not consistent), but Giuliano got such nonsense story arcs, I was sitting there not believing my eyes and ears! I’ve seen gutter trash soap operas with more believable cliche romance! Hell, I’ve seen twelve-year-old girls write better self-insert fanfiction! Even cartoons have better villains than that caricature of a husband, I was laughing out loud at what they were trying to get us to swallow! I mean that line, “It’s not the mask that attracts me, it’s what lies beneath it,” OMG, YOU’VE SEEN HER TWICE IN YOUR LIFE AND SPOKEN THREE WORDS TO HER, JUST SHUT UP!! 😣😫😭

It never gets better, unfortunately, and they wasted the character on this laughable romance instead of doing just about anything else with Giuliano! More of his relationship with Lorenzo, with Bianca, with Lucrezia, or even with Francesco! Hell, I would have even taken Sandro (even though the guy playing him can’t act to save his life and the character is beyond annoying)! Or, I don’t know, and this is just a radical idea here, they could have made Simonetta less two-dimensional and given us an actually believable romantic sub-plot with properly developed characters!

Oh, Gwen, how I missed you! I was forced to eat my words on each and every criticism I ever made about how poorly Arwen was written on Merlin, because it was perfect, perfect writing in comparison! So good, it could be taught in a literature master class! Oh my God, just how do you take two such beautiful people like Bradley and Matilda, put them together and end up with something so infuriatingly nonsensical, forgettable and bland? Colin Morgan has spoiled me and I confess that there was a moment in all my frustration where I had an ugly thought that Bradley James just has no chemistry with women on screen at all, but that’s not really true, because even at it’s worst, Arwen was never this bad and there was never a time when he and Angel actually made me roll my eyes at some of the worst pieces of dialogue I’ve ever heard. Then, of course, there was his performance with Barbara Hershey in Damien, which was on a whole another level of intense, so I have to conclude that the reason Giuliano and Simonetta and that whole ridiculous subplot were so terrible is because the writers could not write for shit. 

Also, as much as I love Bradley, I feel like he was tragically miscast in this role. I just didn’t buy him as Daniel’s younger brother at all. Not only is Bradley older IRL, he has the older brother vibes as well. It’s in his voice, his posture. Better writing for Giuliano notwithstanding, I feel like this show could have been vastly improved if Bradley and Daniel had switched roles. Again, did none of these people see Merlin? Did they not see how iconic Arthur was and what Bradley can do? Because, damn, that man has presence when you give him the proper material to work with, and they took advantage of none of it! I like Daniel, I really do, but even though he was given the best material on this show, he just didn’t fully deliver and I have yet to see him in anything where I am impressed by his performance and not just sitting there for his pretty face.

And since this has devolved into a looooooooong post that no longer has anything to do with the hotness of Giuliano de Medici, let me just mention him: 

Who is this guy and how do I get more of him, because, OMG!  😍🔥🔥🔥😍

He has the most fascinating face I’ve seen in a while, and the way he moves and carries himself is mesmerising! He deserved better-written villainy than what he was given! This show truly did not deserve its cast! Francesco Pazzi was so terribly written, it’s laughable, and yet, here was this guy, stealing the show left and right, in spite of the shit material he was given to work with! Somebody please cast him in something more worthy (preferably in English, or at the very least with English subtitles so that I can watch)! 😭😭

The thing that infuriates me about this series is that they had some fantastic actors here that totally deserved better, such a fascinating period to work with and some of the most interesting figures in history and they spent all their time and money on making them as cliche, two-dimensional, cartoonish and bland as possible.  

Also, I can’t end this post without mentioning how much I loved Sarah Parish as Lucrezia! The woman is perfect, OMG! 😍 The wives, in general, were too good for their husbands in both the seasons I watched so far. The mistresses can go choke, though, and I hated how much they tried to white-wash adultery all over the place. In addition to the poor writing, this show sent out some really gross messages and did nothing to call out all the misogynistic tripe. 

I must exclude Simonetta from my mistress-hate because she died a horrible death, and frankly, other than that, there was not much there for me to perceive her as a real character anyway. I wanted to like her so much because I saw the gifs on Tumblr before actually watching the show, but the writers gave me absolutely nothing to work with and in the end, all I was left with was that she died all alone and with no help or comfort, sick, cold and thirsty, which is one of my big personal fears. The fact that the writers did this to her for no logical reason but to play up Sandro’s and Giuliano’s selfish man-pain - after I really did not buy either of them actually loving her - was just an additional disgusting layer on this poorly written story arc. She deserved better. 

In conclusion, if it wasn’t for Bradley James being pretty, I would have quit this rubbish halfway through season 1 (if anyone is interested in reading just how much I hated it, you can find all my bile here). Season 2 was just as bad, but Bradley, Daniel and Matteo made intolerable characters bearable, which was something Richard Madden was unable to pull off. Of course, all my pure love goes to Contessina, Lucrezia and Clarice, because they were the only characters that I genuinely enjoyed in this mess and didn’t just put up with because I liked the people playing them.

[corgisocks]

85 questions

tagged by @ribenaflip 💞💕💖💗

rules: answer these 85 questions and tag 20 people

EDIT: as of 2019, this tag is like 20% irrelevant to what i’m like now....did it in 2017 so

— what was your last…

1. drink: water

2. phone call: it was me calling jojo’s phone so they could find it

3. text message: “I am having a major crisis”

4. song you listened to: coffee & tv by blur

5. you cried: that’s tmi but also saying it’s tmi is tmi and all of this is tmi so what am i DOING

— have you ever…

6. dated someone twice: nooo

7. kissed someone and regretted it: yes i kissed a piece of toast and it got crumbs all over my face

8. been cheated on: if i have been that’d be concerning seeing as i’ve never not been single

9. lost someone special: not recently.

10. been depressed: 24 hours 7 days a week m8

11. gotten drunk and thrown up: what is an alcohol? (no)

— fave colours

12. vermilion 13. cerulean 14. very very dark grey

— in the last year have you…

15. made new friends: YEET (shoutout to the gc)

16. fallen out of love: i WISH (lmao it’s been 2 years please end me)

17. laughed until you cried: yea obvs

18. found out someone was talking about you: many times. many many many times.

19. met someone who has positively changed you: YES. my bestest buddy has and not in a bad way. i’m definitely a better and happier person because i met him

20. found out who your friends are: i never think about friendships in that kind of way. and if i did i probs wouldn’t care to be like ‘they were a shitty friend’ instead it’d just be like they were someone in my life and it sucks that they’re not/don’t want to be in a good way anymore but shit happens. and i don’t take it personally

21. kissed someone on your facebook friends list: what is a face book because if it’s like a book of faces i kissed myself in the picture of my group of friends that is in my yearbook

— general

22. how many of your Facebook friends do you know irl: again…what is a face book

23. do you have any pets: YEET

24. do you want to change your name: i mean idk i think i’d be cool with just usin a nickname for now i’ll figure the legal stuff out later

25. what did you do for your last birthday: went to my friend’s birthday party. spent almost all of it looking for one of the people who was invited with two of my bros. then i saw wonder woman, went to a reallyreally good korean bakery, and then went to the empire state building. and last but not least, the next day, my friends came over and we played clue and mariokart. all in all it was a 10/10 birthday tbh! (it was an anomaly though ngl my birthday this year is going to be infinitely more depressing)

26. what time did you wake up today: 5:30 am cos my school starts too fuckin early ;(

27. what were you doing at midnight last night: taking a shower

28. what is something you can’t wait for: plake’s upcoming single (it’s my fav and i’ve been wanting it in my library for m o n t h s so i’m 110% ready for it

30. what are you listening to right now: the sound of people talking

31. have you ever talked to a person named tom: i was at an improv comedy show and of all people i was picked to volunteer and when i was on stage my shoe fell off and one of the comedians who was called tom was like 'your foot has been borne to the audience’

32. something that’s getting on your nerves: my own exhaustion!

33. most visited website: my school’s online gradebook 😬

34. hair colour: really dark brown (some people think it’s black but NO)

35. long or short hair: short...it will never be long again i assure you

36. do you have a crush on someone: yes ;(((

37a. what do you like about yourself: i may be an awful person atm but at least i can understand why i am the way i am and know how to improve

37b. what’s something you don’t like about yourself: too many things. rn though i don’t like how i come off as like a 'show-off’ when i’m trying to help people cos me trying to get them to like actually understand what they’re learning always sets em off even though it’d be worse to just do things my own confusing way and leave em in the dust. i also hate how i get frustrated with them (and myself tbh) when that happens

38. want any piercings: hecc no

39. blood type: i legit have no clue

40. nicknames: lou, coco

41. relationship status: what is a relation ship

42. sign: gemini

43. pronouns: he/they i GUESS

44. fave tv show: peppa pig tbh

45. tattoos: hecc no!

46. right or left handed: BOTH

47: ever had surgery: nope 😬

48. piercings: once again HECC NO

49. sport: used to do tennis and track. now i kind of just do a lil bit of everything for fun and i love biking and running

50. vacation: yes please. i need a vacation from LIFE

51. trainers: i’ve had the same old black nikes for three years and the same flip flops for five ;( (and i also have some black converse high-tops that i never wear unless i need to look 'nice’ whoops)

— more general

52. eating: i prefer raw foods to pretty much everything so poke bowls are my jam. i’m also a vegetarian who doesn’t eat fruit because what is self-care??

53. drinking: water. it’s important to stay hydrated

54. i’m about to watch: my surroundings that aren’t my phone

55. waiting for: this tag to be over. yikes

56. want: to pass english for ONE GODDAMN MARKING PERIOD before i graduate cos i haven’t since mp1 of ninth grade during which i got a 99 (now i have a 15 look how far i’ve come!!)

57. get married: i mean…

58. career: ah yes i’ll probably have one of those

— which is better

59. hugs or kisses: y'all mean in relationships? no pref. generally speaking though i almost always hate both

60. lips or eyes: no pref

61. shorter or taller: no pref…

62. older or younger: i don’t think about any of this shit i am so confused!!

63. nice arms or stomach: what constitutes an arm or stomach being nice?

64. hookup or relationships: labels ew neither is good

65. troublemaker or hesitant: somehow i’m both. like i’m loud as fuck and kind of obnoxious and audacious but i also have 9.9/10 self-control. so like i would be cool with either type of person

— have you ever

66. kissed a stranger: i hope not

67. drank hard liquor: hecc no

68. turned someone down: i thought i was gonna have to but that never happened WHEW

69. sex on first date: what is this “sex” you speak of? what is a “date”?

70: broken someone’s heart: i hope not! except hearts are kinda squishy so like i probably haven’t

71. had your heart broken: no although my heart rate’s so high i fear it will explode one of these days

72. been arrested: so far, no

73. cried when someone died: :((( chris cornell. i was lookin up soundgarden on google to find tour dates near where my uncle lives and then i saw it and i was like 'no. nononono. nonononononononono.’ then i let one tear escape from the ducts in my eyes before going into denial river. (aren’t i so fuckin clever 😤😤😤)

i also cried during a tribute to chester bennington at a muse concert if that counts

74. fallen for a friend: once again ew labels but y'all should know by now that i HAVE and i’m STILL falling ;(

— do you believe in

75. yourself: i have no concept of anything in existence and this tag has made me realise that. whoops

76. miracles: i could ramble about this one but i don’t have the time

77. love at first sight: dunno, but i will say that when i met my best friend i knew i was going to love him from how he acted and what his sense of humour is like. he’s so unique really like you can TELL he’s his own person and he owns it without trying to

78. santa claus: yes but only cos i’m tryin to stay off the naughty list

79. angels: what is an angels

— misc

80. eye colour: this is a subject that has been widely debated so for now i’ll just say they’re either grey or green or both

81. best friend’s name: zeke

82. favourite movie: i have no concept of having a favorite movie unless it’s based on who it’s by so i’ll say my favorite pixar movie is wall-e for the sake of having something down for this question. otherwise it’s probs either memento or the imitation game.

83. favourite actor: myself 🤔

84. favourite cartoon: oh shit that’s too hard. my favs as a young child were tom and jerry and the first season of the pokémon anime and i guess my fav one that’s more 'mature’ is bojack horseman (although i’ve only seen half the first season lol)

85. favourite teacher’s name: my favorite is either nicole, hyungmin, rebecca, eileen, hayley, matt, kevin, or robert, but like…i hate picking cos that’s just unfair. so idrk

can’t tag rn but do this if you want to i guess

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Wall #41: NORM OF THE NORTH

Happy new year, everyone! I sure hope you all had a really great and safe New Year's party, and I for one welcome our new year with open arms! Things can only go up from here, folks. But I'll save all of the formalities for later because there's movies to review! Ahhh yes, it's January and, for me, that only means one thing: IT'S CATCH-UP MONTH (Not "ketchup", you freak, "CATCH UP")! That is correct, for the entirety of January all I'm going to do is catch up on 2016 movies that I missed and talk about them here. Now, I have talked about a few of these before, but not on The Wall, so just for the sake of making it official I'm going to be covering them here, so you can expect to see me re-review Zootopia, Batman v Superman, The Jungle Book, Ratchet & Clank, and The Witch pretty soon, as well as other movies that I saw but never got a chance to talk about. Also, because it's January, AKA the month of supreme shit, let's talk about one of the shittiest movies of 2016: Norm of the North. Yeah, I've already talked about this movie in detail, so I'll try to keep this one short. This is the first actual 2016 movie that I watched and... man, that is not a movie you want to open up the year with, to put it mildly. So why did Hell freeze over to give us this turd? Let's find out.

This movie is a literal piece of excrement. Norm of the North is simply foul.

In this movie a talking polar bear, voiced by Rob Schnider, goes on a big, wild adventure to the foreign land of New York City in order to stop this corrupt environmentally-unfriendly asshat named Mr. Greene (Geddit?!), voiced by Ken Jeong who wants to build condos on the arctic because… I have no freaking idea WHY he wants to do it! He just wants to do it because “hurr dee durr, dis iz a green movie and zave the envairomen”. He also has to rescue his grandfather whom he thought was dead, but was actually kidnapped by Greene. There’s also this “subplot” about this marketing lady voiced by Heather Graham who is trying to get a recommendation from Greene so that her daughter can go to his own alma mater because all other schools are not intellectually challenging. If this description of the movie sounds like a mess it’s because this movie is a fucking mess.

There is so much wrong with this movie, but the worst thing about it is the plot. As I made clear from this description, this movie has a plot that feels like a bunch of stories that were mashed together in the script just to make the movie meet the standard running time to actually be a movie. I mean, the movie starts talking about Norm and his poor hunting skills and how he’ll become a better hunter, but then it switches to this plot about trying to save the Arctic and keep people from living here, which is also one of the stupidest ways to cram in an environmental message because it makes no sense! Even the movie acknowledges that living in the arctic is a stupid idea! This gets even worse when it turns out that Greene’s plan to make condos in the arctic was doomed to fail anyway just because his popularity was down the tubes, but Norm actually HELPS Greene get more popular in a stunt where Greene attempts to SHOOT NORM IN PUBLIC (and keep in mind that everyone in New York thinks- for whatever reason- that Norm is just a dude in a polar bear costume), WHERE EVERYBODY RECORDS WHAT HE DOES, YET BECAUSE NORM SOMEHOW STOPS HIM GREENE BECOMES MORE POPULAR AND PEOPLE WANT TO BUY HOMES FROM HIM?! Why no, this doesn’t make a lick of goddamn sense, thanks for asking!

To say that the people behind this movie didn’t think the plot through would give them the credit to think that there was a shred of thought put into it in the first place. No, this plot was shat out and stitched together Frankenstein-style just to make this movie meet the standard running length of a movie. This wouldn’t piss me off so much if it wasn’t for the fact that ALL THE PLOTS ARE ABSOLUTELY POINTLESS. The plot involving this mom and her kid? You can cut it out and not miss a thing. Norm’s grandfather? It’s not even brought in until halfway through the movie, and even then it doesn’t feel like it adds anything so you may as well just chuck that out the window. Hell, the plot about Norm trying to save the arctic is only complicated by the fact that Norm actually decided to go to New York to become Greene’s marketing tool to sell the arctic to the population of New York.

In other words, this is a movie whose conflict COULD HAVE BEEN RESOLVED EASILY IF NORM LITERALLY DID NOTHING!

As if that’s the only thing wrong with the movie. Sure the plot sounds insane but it’s held together by the power of incredibly tired clichés. They even have the obligatory subplot of giving Norm a half-assed love interest and they don’t even do this RIGHT- Norm’s love interest is in the movie for less than SEVEN MINUTES, most of which are spent at the very beginning of the movie, and then at the very end where, FOR NO REASON, now she’s the mom to Norm’s children. All this for one character who is a complete buffoon, and someone who we know absolutely nothing about save for her name, and that Norm likes her a lot because he, of course, has to act like a tongue-tied idiot. This movie also holds one of all-time least favorite clichés- the one where the kid wants their parent(s)’ attention by quitting their job simply because they work too hard. That cliché can go dive into a volcano and die of a slow, painful, boiling incineration as it carcass erodes into nothingness for being one of the most godawful clichés to EVER exits, AND THIS MOVIE DOES IT BECAUSE IT WAS MADE BY SATAN HIMSELF!

And this movie also features song and dance numbers because why the hell not? One of the songs featured is “Shut Up and Dance” by the band Walk the Moon. A song about ROMANCE featured in a sequence that has nothing but dancing. So the people who worked on this movie couldn’t even be bothered to have listened to a three minute song to understand its context- who am I kidding? No they couldn’t. It’s only in there so they could have a song to sell on the shitty soundtrack that nobody’s buying.

Oh, and this is just a minor nitpick, but the animation sucks hard. All the characters move like they’re made out of rubber and have no weight to them, almost everyone does the same over-the-top wild gestures that were clearly only done because “kids love crazy shit”, and not because it’s an actual performance by a character or anything. The worst offender of this is Greene himself who is always moving in really annoying ways. The man movies like a noodle, and it’s so not fun to watch. This movie just doesn’t have the budget- and for sure not the talent- to do a wild-energy cartoon because its elements don’t allow them to. Comparing this to something like Storks, that has very fluid animation and knew how to keeps its timing varied up to keep the movie’s energy from becoming stale or irritating. Also, it had a far more appealing art style, unlike in Norm where everyone looks like a cheap chew toy you’d buy for your dog.

This movie is filled with so many problems that I didn’t even get to talk about another infuriating aspect about it- the Lemmings. These guys are by far the most blatant example of ripping off that I’ve seen in quite some time as they are an obvious cash-in on the Minions, except with less personality, the Lemmings only have four different designs total, and they can literally do anything regardless of how little sense it makes. At some point Heather Graham’s character remarks that these Lemmings are both “cute and marketable” without a hint of irony. In some ways I’ve got to give some respect to this movie for having the balls to be this openly blatant about its shittiness and borderline plagiarism, but if the movie wasn’t so infuriating to watch I would be saying this as a reason to see it, but it’s soooo not worth it! It really says a lot that the fact that this movie has a twerking polar bear in it is the LEAST of this movie’s problems.

Sadly, the only positive- and this is a big stretch- that I can say about this movie is that at least the voice actors are trying even though they have absolutely no funny material to work with, and it’s pretty clear that they were given absolutely no direction aside from “Ken Jeong just scream all your lines” or “Schnider just be yourself but with a slightly higher inflection in your voice”. This movie was absolutely miserable to sit through. It’s a big slog, the plot is beyond insulting, the message is completely worthless, the movie is just a big eyesore, and the saddest thing of all is that it’s not even a shocking level of bad to be memorable, aside from the fact that those who (unfortunately) DO see it only discover how awful it truly is.

(1,370 words. Music: Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex- Arctic Antics).

I fucking hate this movie. It's easily the second worst animated movie I've seen this decade, one of the worst movies ever, period, and the fact that it was going to be released as a straight-to-DVD but was pushed to go to the big screen just as a glorified advertisement for the DVD really does make my blood boil. But at least nobody in their right mind would ever defend this abomination. It really says something when not even a little kid can get a shred of joy out of watching this.

If not for things like Yoga Hosers and Foodfight!, then this movie would have been an easy 0, but make no mistake, Norm of the North is one of the most wretched animated movies ever made.

Well, that's one movie down... and I've got a bajillion more to go. Joy. I'll see you all next time.

[sending-the-message]

The Unicorn by Ilunibi

There’s little else in this great big world that can make a little girl in the ‘90s more excited than goddamn stickers. Glittery Lisa Frank nonsense by the roll, bought in needlessly pricey gift sets that peppered the caps of the pink aisles, princesses and My Little Ponies; hell, I used to get excited about the stickers that came on the fruit my mom brought home, or the foil stars my kindergarten teacher stuck to my spelling tests. I was a goddamn ferocious sticker collecting machine, and nothing made me or my friends more needlessly excited than badly printed cartoon characters on shitty adhesive paper.

Nothing.

In fact, the pecking order of my childhood group of friends was usually decided by who had the largest, most unique, most vibrant collection on the whole block, in the same way that some of the boys used their trading cards. She who had the newest set of rainbow dalmatians and sparkling pink horses was essentially the alpha female, and the more glitter and holographic film we had to show off, the better. We’d pile together in our living rooms with shoe boxes of treasures and try in vain to compete with the reigning champion in the neighborhood: my cousin, Rebecca.

Rebecca was different than the rest of us. She wasn’t a resident of that impoverished corner of town, but she was a frequent visitor. My aunt and uncle had barreled their way out of the slums through a combination of hard work and luck (which they’d never admit to), so Rebecca had a lot more at her disposal than a bunch of first and second graders who scrounged together their allowance to buy a couple of sheets of stickers from the drug store. No, she was the cool, older kid with literal boxes of untouched sheets and rolls of Disney characters and multicolored unicorns and cute puppies and fuzzy kittens. And, while she wasn’t in any way mean or unkind to us, she was an absolute scrooge with her collection. I suppose I would be too if the situation were reversed.

We could marvel at her recent acquisitions, but we couldn’t actually touch. Trading with her was like talking to a brick wall, because she was more there to gloat than to take part in our mad scramble. Occasionally, if the wind blew in exactly the right way and the sun was aligned properly with the planets, she’d bestow upon us a gift from her hoard, though I could never peg whether it was goodwill or showing off. It doesn’t matter. She gave me a rainbow shark for my birthday and I still have it stuck in my drawer of sentimental junk.

Additionally, she was very particular about her stickers. I can’t think of time when, at the end of our sessions, she didn’t comb the entire room just to make sure that everything was in its place. I’m not sure how an eight-year-old girl manages to memorize exactly how many sheets of identical Casey and Caymus stickers she has, but it never failed that she would always notice if something was missing. Sometimes, things got mixed up and we’d have to sort through our own piles to find the errant stickers, and sometimes we’d spend half an hour looking under furniture until we found where it fluttered to. She was anal about it.

Which is why it shocked me when she left for the day and I discovered she’d forgotten one.

It was a regular day of our swap meeting, sitting beneath the picture window of my mom’s living room, the only anomaly being that Rebecca seemed more than a little under the weather. The other girls who could make it wrapped up early because their moms needed them home from lunch, but Rebecca lingered until well into the evening until her parents finally picked her up. She counted out her sheets, we spent way too long looking for a missing dragon she’d got from a fifty cent machine, and once she was satisfied with her inventory, she packed up everything and left.

Only, as soon as she was out the door, I noticed something sitting where she had just been. It was on white wax paper and was the size of a Skittle, but it was a fluorescent yellow that caught my eye immediately. I dove on it out of curiosity and a weird sense of first-grade desperation. I didn’t care that, technically, it was stealing. I just cared that Rebecca had somehow missed one of her treasured stickers--probably because she was too sick to notice or care--and I could add it to my own collection.

It wasn’t anything impressive: a yellow circle with the tiny, awkward silhouette of a unicorn on it. In any other situation, I’d think it was the dullest thing I could ever cram into my pile, but it was Rebecca’s. That made it special.

As I shuffled it into my shoe box of wonders, I justified it to myself by repeating the mantra that, if it meant that much to her, she would have noticed it was gone regardless of how ill she felt. Maybe it wasn’t even her who dropped it. Maybe it was Cathy or Ashley or a girl from a previous get-together, and I know all of my friends wouldn’t mind if I kept something as insignificant as a teeny, tiny, pinkie-nail sized sticker with a poorly drawn unicorn on it. If they did bring it up, I’d just give them one of my gold stars or weird, bug-eyed smileys from the doctor’s office. In my mind, it’d balance itself out.

Predictably, after half an hour of gloating to my stuffed animals, I did what any kid would: I completely forgot about it. That unicorn sticker was lost in the fog of dressing up a Beanie Baby in doll clothes so he could have a lovely night out at Pride Rock with his girlfriend, bootleg Hello Kitty. By the time my mom forced me to take a bath and ordered me into bed, the unicorn sticker was barely a blip on the radar, at least until Rebecca finally called me out on my theft.

Or, normally that’s how it would go, except for the fact that I barely could sleep that night. I was plagued with nightmare after nightmare, waking up to stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, feeling like something was glaring at me. I’d always doze off again, but the dreams would go on like a sick, twisted clip show: finding Rebecca eating my neighborhood friends alive in the kitchen, watching my dog get slowly crushed by a car, drowning in the river beside my house. And it just went on and on.

And on. And on.

For days.

To say my mother was concerned by my night terrors was an understatement, but less of one than to say I was scared when I realized she would react to smells and glimpses of something dark that seemed to ooze around in our peripheral vision. You see, as the days marched on, the nightmares seemed to persist in small, strange ways once I woke up. I’d catch a whiff of vinegar and sulfur out of nowhere and watch, horrified, as my mother’s nostrils would flare and her brows would furrow in confusion. I’d see strange shadows slink around the wall, always bolting out of sight if I looked to them and, eventually, I’d watch my mom whip her head around to seek out the culprit, too.

It took almost a week for me to put two and two together, my house gradually becoming more and more unwelcoming and my sleep becoming less and less restful. I probably would have never figured it out if I hadn’t knocked over my box of stickers while staggering tiredly across my room. Amidst tears of frustration and kid-friendly curses that wouldn’t get me grounded, I started putting everything back into place and stumbled across that goddamned unicorn.

It was just as boring as I remembered it, lemon yellow with a awkward silhouette like some kind of girly Batman logo. I stared at it, it stared back, and then I got a whiff of something sour that was so strong that my eyes watered. I blinked and looked down, only to see a blank yellow circle staring back from my palm.

I screamed. I was too young to really register how crazy it sounded and too trusting in the idea that my mom would believe me, and she opted to chalk it up to sleep deprivation. She practically manhandled me to force a Benadryl down my throat, telling me it was for my own good, that I needed a nap, that she’d find a way to get me to the doctor within the next couple of days.

I fought valiantly, but was out like a light within a few minutes.

And I awoke in a nightmare, huddled in my bed, the floor stretching for miles and miles and the walls climbing up to the stratosphere. The only source of light was an ethereal ball of what looked like fire but, somehow, less substantial. It ebbed and flowed and glowed and the shadows seemed to dance with its erratic undulations, twisting and squirming like snakes and monsters. Some of them seemed to have faces, but they burned away in the light.

Fire or no, it was cold. I huddled beneath my blanket, breath creating clouds in the air as I stared, transfixed, at this strange ball of energy. Something dark began to grow inside of it, a shadow that wouldn’t melt, and as it expanded, the orange light grew brighter and more golden, almost radiant. I squeaked and tried to run as I saw four spindly legs, a long and crooked neck, and a jagged horn, but my body was paralyzed when it let out a horrifying scream.

Have you ever heard a horse when it’s angry? It’s petrifying. Terrifying enough, actually, that it was the basis for a dinosaur roar in many films. Loud enough that it makes your ears pop and your head throb. I clapped my hands over my ears and felt blood pool in my palms as it grew louder and louder and louder and louder. I screamed back and it drowned me out, one voice becoming two becoming three.

Though there was only one solitary creature standing in front of me, one twisted and deranged unicorn that jittered unnaturally and bent at weird angles, its voice came from everywhere. In its screams, I began to hear whispers, then words.

Threats.

Threats spoken in languages a six-year-old shouldn’t know, yet somehow I understood. Threats of what would become of me and my family, and lists of everything it knew I cared about. It detailed what it would do to everyone from my favorite toy to my family dog to my best friend to my long-dead grandmother who it shrieked, triumphantly, it could reach even though I would never see her again. I saw flashes of white walls and cups of medicine and a woman, with hair and eyes and skin like me, hanging listlessly from a pipe by her bedsheets with a toppled chair beneath her feet.

“This is what happens,” it told me. “This is what will happen. This is what I am. I am your worst nightmare.”

The screaming only stopped when I felt a horrible pain. I awoke on the floor in my room--my real room--with my mother at the bedroom door, pale-faced and hoarse. My face was sticky and warm, my left eye wouldn’t open. As I tried to push myself up, my mom screeched in a way that would have put the unicorn to shame.

She got me to the doctor that day.

The official story was that I’d fallen out of bed, and maybe I had. Cracked my head on the nightstand and nearly gouged my eye out, but caught my brow instead. They gave me a little clamp because it was too swollen for stitches and, as per usual, a sticker to help me feel better. I stared at it on the ride home, knowing what it was that I had to do.

When the weekend rolled around and we had our little trading party, Rebecca came to gloat, as always. The neighborhood girls clamored around her most recent additions, like a whole new set of glow-in-the-dark aliens and a few sheets of Disney heroines. They ooh-ed and aah-ed and thankfully paid no attention to my bruised and battered face as I sat there, fist clenched around that fucking unicorn as I struggled to force a smile. I couldn’t help but notice how much more alive and refreshed and energized Rebecca was as she flittered around, grinning and happy.

Not like she was when she made me scour the living room for that goddamn dragon sticker the day I found the unicorn.

She had done it on purpose, hadn’t she? She’d left that thing in my house trying to get away from it and look what it had done. Anger was my fuel as I waited for her to turn her back, grabbed a box of her stickers, and chucked the unicorn in. I shook it for good measure, so the tiny thing would settle somewhere in the bottom where she would probably miss it.

And she did. Somehow, despite every odd against me, she missed it. When she left for the evening, she only did a quick check for anything that could have fallen, packed her boxes under her arm, and left with a cheerful wave. I couldn’t even feel remorse as I watched her go; in my mind, it was justified. In my mind, I was playing tit-for-tat. If she was willing to throw her little cousin under the bus, then maybe little cousin had every right to dish it right back at her.

I slept very soundly that night, and the night after that, and the night after that. A miracle, my mother called it, though I knew the truth. I still know the truth.

And I think Rebecca does, too.

I visit her sometimes, out at the ward. She’s not very responsive and more than a little prone to falling asleep mid-visit, but sometimes when she looks at me, there’s a glint of hate and fear and disgust that I can catch in her eye, and envy and spite hidden deep in her voice. It’s like she wants to tell me that I should be in her place, that it should have been me whose childhood was robbed from her.

She wants to tell me, but she can’t. She won’t. She’ll never admit what she did, because she wants me to feel like she is the victim in all of this, that she never once tried to sacrifice me to whatever the fuck that unicorn really is. She doesn’t want to admit that I won.

Or maybe, just maybe, she’s guilty. She knows what she did and I’m a constant reminder of it, the only family member who ever visits and the only one who stays to talk. Maybe she hates me because I remind her of what a monster she is, perhaps even worse than the unicorn ever could be.

And maybe? Maybe that’s the worst nightmare of all.