#also you take legacy to play in the snow for the first time
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that-foul-legacy-lover · 2 years ago
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WAKES UP IN A COLD SWEAT
Being childhood friends with Ajax after he gains the ability to change into Foul Legacy and he doesn’t have complete control over it yet.
Numerous times did you find yourself sitting in Ajax’s bed room, a much smaller, more scraggly looking Foul Legacy curled in your arms, chirping and trying to speak to you in Abyssal language. You can’t understand him and Foul Legacy doesn’t quite know why he’s so attached to you, his hazy memories still forming, but he does know he enjoys your company!
Foul Legacy being a bit smaller when Ajax was a child, probably around the size of the average adult, being a lot more lanky and fluffier, like a deer 🙁 My wet cat.
The amount of times you’d have to drag Ajax away from a conversation or potential fight (that he was about to initiate) because you noticed the clear signs of Foul Legacy coming out. Dragging him to his home or favorite fishing spot and just, being stuck with Foul Legacy for the next few hours. Not that you mind! He’s so curious about everything around him, and so curious about you! Will try to curl up in your lap as you comb his fur, happily telling you a story in Abyss, you simply nod and pretend you understand.
My baby 🙁🙁 i miss him
[📺]
ue ue ueeee (sound of me crying over this /lh)
being a kid from Snezhnaya, you're not really scared when you first meet Foul Legacy- honestly, you're mostly confused and worried about where Ajax was, thinking that this scruffy Abyss monster ate him. but Foul Legacy quickly trills, an odd, disjointed sound, and snuggles up to you, curiously poking you and tugging at your sleeve. Ajax feels safe around you, so Legacy does too- you're a bright light shining in the cold darkness of Snezhnaya, of the Abyss, and he much prefers the warmth of your embrace to the frigid winds outside. you can't understand his chitters and chirps, but the fluffy creature is just as talkative as Ajax, with his same bright ginger hair...
oh. your eyes widen with realization, and Foul Legacy lets out a happy peep and curls closer to you
the most telltale sign of Ajax transforming into Legacy is his eye color- what's normally a vivid, lightless blue deepens to a twilight purple- and you know to grab his hand and drag him somewhere quiet, for in your presence and your presence alone, the Abyssal hunger for blood falls away, leaving a sweet and affectionate Foul Legacy. he likes your hands and face most of all, gently squishing your cheeks and nibbling your fingers, giving your forehead adoring licks. for now he's still small enough to snuggle in your lap as you sit on Ajax's bed, although you know he'll grow, so you spend entire afternoons by his side, listening to him sing in some strange language that you can't quite grasp or reading one of your books together, watching the snow fall silently through the window
and he was your special secret- just you, Ajax, and his monstrous, adorable other half
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toruforuu · 10 days ago
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ch.1 dusk of intrigues
slytherin!gojo who comes from one of the most eligible families of the wizard world. not for a flattering reason, their respect is earned by their old fashioned and brutal ways (and their never ending fortune). each member of his family inheriting the striking features which make up a Gojo. piercing blue eyes and pale white hair, the same shade as crestfallen snow
slytherin!gojo who was raised to take up after his family’s views and mostly their noble legacy, forcing him to take up after their morals which include a disgust towards the mixing of wizards and non wizards together. unacceptable
slytherin!gojo who recognised you during the ride to Hogwarts in your first year. you two never spoke before, however, he recalled seeing you and your mother in the newspapers a couple of times since she worked for the ministry. what also didn’t escape his clever mind was the fact your mother married a muggleborn. which makes you a mere half-blood, yet he was still intrigued by your alluring presence
slytherin!gojo who watched the sorting head yell out “ravenclaw” nearly instantly after it was placed on your head from the slytherin table. a twitch of something, perhaps disappointment, running through him
slytherin!gojo who was surprised at your lack of respect towards him and the other pure-bloods sharing his house, when you two interacted for the first time. you had the courage to call him out for bullying another first year who happened to be muggleborn
slytherin!gojo who took it as his utter goal in life to make yours a living hell for defying him. since no one else before you did. he got everything served on a silver platter, so why were you being such a brat?
slytherin!gojo who made sure to make fun of you with his friends every chance he got. throwing curled up papers at you in class, earning you detention at least once a week. by the end of the first year, nearly the whole house of slytherin knew to join on his remarks thrown in your way
slytherin!gojo who noticed throughout the second year the best way to get under your skin was through academics. he guessed you would be clever, given your house. so he spent extra hours studying potions just so he could end up with the highest score in the whole year. he took pleasure in seeing how worked up you got over earning a second place
slytherin!gojo who picked up quidditch during the first half of your third year. immediately earning himself a place in the team as the fastest chaser. living up the legacy of his father
slytherin!gojo who once passed your grade in history of magic (your favourite subject), smirking so smugly at you in the hallway. in the great hall during lunch. perhaps if he had known how much it hurt you, he would’ve stopped
slytherin!gojo who enjoyed playing quidditch even more when you were accepted into the ravenclaw team as a seeker. your positions were never really made up to interact, yet he always managed to annoy you. even in the air
slytherin!gojo who went to each game the ravenclaw team played, regardless if he was on the field or in the audience. simply to observe your team’s tactics. of course so he could rub it in your face when his team won over yours
slytherin!gojo who was very popular amongst the houses, especially with the girls. it was no doubt he was gorgeous. porcelain skin. daring celestial eyes. white locks. if only his attitude had been better, maybe then you would bring yourself to admit you found him charming too
slytherin!gojo who became a captain of the slytherin team not even a year after being accepted into the team, earning himself even higher popularity rank. as if he already wasn’t at the top
slytherin!gojo who noticed his eyes lingering on you and unbeknownst to him, he was thinking of you more than he wasn’t. and he did become aware, he left it unlabelled. burying any suspicious accusations
slytherin!gojo who once saw you in the muggle world. he didn’t stop by the muggle world often, only when necessary so it took him a by surprise to see you walking down the street with your dad whom he never seen. looking so casual, wearing the muggle clothes and all sorts of their dumb accessories. you were a part of their world too after all, he had to remind himself
slytherin!gojo who ended up kissing different girls at each party in slytherin’s common room, washing out the thoughts of you
slytherin!gojo who stopped trying to beat you in getting better grades over the time when he realised how much of a tool it took on you. depriving his high rank a little for you
slytherin!gojo whose heart stopped in its tracks when he layed his eyes on you as you were walking into the great hall with a gryffindor guy, his arm interlocked with yours
slytherin!gojo who started flirting with your friend just to get a rise out of you, to get back at you for dating that bloody gryffindor
slytherin!gojo who loathed every single second of yule ball. watching you dance the night away with the same pretentious gryffindor quidditch beater. his gaze so firm on you, on your stupid dress and all the muggle trinkets you wore along. his date got all fussy and left
slytherin!gojo who stumbled upon you sobbing your heart out in the astronomy tower. he debated whether to console you or leave you alone. he didn’t interfere and later that day he found out your gryffindor guy broke your heart
slytherin!gojo who sits in the great hall, his eyes focused on the gryffindor jerk who broke your heart with a smirk tugging at his lips. the guy’s face bruised badly from yesterday’s quidditch game. gryffindor lost to slytherin without a doubt, it wasn’t pretty
slytherin!gojo who almost loses his cool when you get knocked off your broom during one of the games against hufflepuff. you get yourself injured
slytherin!gojo who entered the pub in hogsmeade with his friends, seeing you sipping butterbeer with your peers in the corner. it was right before christmas break, the december air was all chilly and there was something almost magical about the atmosphere. he decided to leave you and your friends alone that day
slytherin!gojo who manages to get a sniff of your perfume by accident when you brush past him. he immediately picks up on the mix of plum and jasmin. never before and never since sensing something like that before. he thinks it must be from the muggle world
slytherin!gojo who once overhears you panicking over a book which is nowhere to be found in the library. a book you so desperately need to finish your transfiguration paper, a book which happens to be collecting dust under his bed. he slips it into your bag during quidditch practice later that day
slytherin!gojo who realised he was in love with you during the summer before your seventh year, the last one. and he can’t believe the time has passed so quickly. he spends the whole summer break thinking about you, reminiscing. never taking confessing his feelings into question or as something worth trying. solely due to his family
slytherin!gojo who is struck by your image when he has no other choice than to sit next to you on the train. you don’t speak on your way to hogwarts. he notices the subtle change in your features though, how your hair hangs a bit shorter now. the way you grew into someone who is able to take his breath away (you always managed to do that). hell he even takes notice of those absurd pins with some muggle lyrics sprawled across them on your bag. and suddenly confessing his feelings doesn’t seem so utterly impossible. at least for a moment
slytherin!gojo who notices you on the edge of the forbidden forest. he watches you out of curiosity. nothing happens for a long time. just when he is about to turn on his heal and walk away, a magical creature appears. allowing you to feed it. your gentle nature almost making him wince
slytherin!gojo who is torn between seeking you out and following the morals set by his family. your presence makes him ache to the point where he ignores you for a few weeks
slytherin!gojo who is back to his old self when your teams clash on the field, brutal as ever. and for the first time you don’t mind it
slytherin!gojo who begins dating the purebloods in his year, hoping his feelings towards you will pass as the end of the first half of the school year is coming closer
slytherin!gojo who notices your group of friends sitting by the great lake on his way to practice. he isn’t blind to how your orbs shine in the golden hour of late autumn, how you throw your head back a little as you laugh at something your friend said
slytherin!gojo whose parents once meet you at the ministry, by the side of your mother, of course. and they immediately recognise you from theirs son’s stories about his time at school. his mother uncomfortably flickering her eyes between you and your mother, sending you disapproving looks. she noticed her son’s sympathies for you long before he did
slytherin!gojo who leaves a neatly wrapped up gift by your room before you leave for christmas break. he went out of his way, buying few more of those pins in the muggle world. learning about the muggle singers for you. but it’s nothing, right?
slytherin!gojo who becomes very unlike himself as the school year nears the very end. he was never the one to be nostalgic, yet now as the end is near, he felt the urge to cherish each passing moment. he despised himself for wasting so much time pestering you without actually taking time to get to know you
slytherin!gojo who regrets never making you his, who regrets following his family morals which were drilled into his head
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book--brackets · 5 months ago
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Summaries under the cut
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.
By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.
But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.
The Giver by Lois Lowry
At the age of twelve, Jonas, a young boy from a seemingly utopian, futuristic world, is singled out to receive special training from The Giver, who alone holds the memories of the true joys and pain of life.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.
Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
Some Pig. Humble. Radiant. These are the words in Charlotte's Web, high up in Zuckerman's barn. Charlotte's spiderweb tells of her feelings for a little pig named Wilbur, who simply wants a friend. They also express the love of a girl named Fern, who saved Wilbur's life when he was born the runt of his litter.
The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini
When Eragon finds a polished blue stone in the forest, he thinks it is the lucky discovery of a poor farm boy; perhaps it will buy his family meat for the winter. But when the stone brings a dragon hatchling, Eragon soon realizes he has stumbled upon a legacy nearly as old as the Empire itself.
Overnight his simple life is shattered, and he is thrust into a perilous new world of destiny, magic, and power. With only an ancient sword and the advice of an old storyteller for guidance, Eragon and the fledgling dragon must navigate the dangerous terrain and dark enemies of an Empire ruled by a king whose evil knows no bounds.
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Lyra is rushing to the cold, far North, where witch clans and armored bears rule. North, where the Gobblers take the children they steal--including her friend Roger. North, where her fearsome uncle Asriel is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world.
Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, and as fierce and true a champion as Roger or Asriel could want--but what Lyra doesn't know is that to help one of them will be to betray the other.
The Maze Runner by James Dashner
If you ain’t scared, you ain’t human.
When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone.
Nice to meet ya, shank. Welcome to the Glade.
Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out—and no one’s ever made it through alive.
Everything is going to change.
Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying.
Remember. Survive. Run.
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
You'll meet a boy who turns into a TV set, and a girl who eats a whale. The Unicorn and the Bloath live there, and so does Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who will not take the garbage out. It is a place where you wash your shadow and plant diamond gardens, a place where shoes fly, sisters are auctioned off, and crocodiles go to the dentist.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow-impossible though it seems-they may still be alive.
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Mary Lennox, a spoiled, ill-tempered, and unhealthy child, comes to live with her reclusive uncle in Misselthwaite Manor on England’s Yorkshire moors after the death of her parents. There she meets a hearty housekeeper and her spirited brother, a dour gardener, a cheerful robin, and her wilful, hysterical, and sickly cousin, Master Colin, whose wails she hears echoing through the house at night.
With the help of the robin, Mary finds the door to a secret garden, neglected and hidden for years. When she decides to restore the garden in secret, the story becomes a charming journey into the places of the heart, where faith restores health, flowers refresh the spirit, and the magic of the garden, coming to life anew, brings health to Colin and happiness to Mary.
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starry-eyer · 5 months ago
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Lyanna was not condemned, Rhaegar was the one who condemned her to death and left her son an orphan. I am not a fan of Sansa, in fact I hate her, but just as Joffrey is the villain of Sansa's story, Rhaegar is Lyanna's villain. Deep down, I feel that the only parallel is that both were left at the mercy of the people who killed their family. If that is so, it is very sad because both were victims of their horrible injustices.
hey anon,
i know what post you came from, but first i want to make something clear: that post of mine wasn’t some deep dive, i was simply pointing out some of the ways sansa foils lyanna. i made that post out of annoyance because i saw a few posts that called lyanna and sansa parallel characters.
secondly, i said lyanna was doomed, not condemned. those two words have vastly different connotations. also, i meant doomed in the sense that nothing could’ve saved her as the situation went out of her control and because she likely died from birthing complications.
now that i’ve said all that, i’ll get right into things.
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robert baratheon is quite literally using sansa and joffrey as stand ins for his past unfilled betrothal. in my previous post, i briefly touched upon the reality that the lyanna foil, sansa, does not see under joffrey’s pretty guise like lyanna did with her own betrothed, which caused her much grief later on in her story. but honestly, this isn’t a 1:1 situation and i’ll try to explain why that is.
to start off, i will say that the lannisters do act as targaryen stand ins during the Wot5K, which has so many of the same plot beats as robert’s rebellion. and this is made pretty clear when we’re introduced to tywin and we learn he is attempting to literally replace the targaryen legacy/become the new targaryens, and it is also made clear by the lannister twins incest. however, just because grrm uses similar beats to flesh out both POV characters, background characters, and long dead characters, doesn’t mean sansa and lyanna’s situations are the same just because they were both involved with royal princes, and we know this because:
joffrey plays many more roles besides the crown prince, but when he did act as the crown prince he foiled rhaegar! one of joffrey’s first appearances is when he fights robb and later mocks robb for not using real steel. this is quite literally the opposite of rhaegar, who preferred books and singing and didn’t enjoy the song of swords. and later on when arya, who is paralleled to lyanna multiple times, defends herself against joffrey’s cruelty, joffrey decides to take her to his mother, an aerys stand in, to punish her along with the butchers boy, and is able to force things enough that lady is put to the sword. this contrasts against a long believed theory in this fandom (a theory that is well supported by the text), which is that rhaegar discovered lyanna was the knight of the laughing tree, hid her identity and didn’t turn her over to aerys. so, what little info we have of rhaegar paints him as someone who wasn’t violent by nature and protected women. joffrey is violent by nature and even sansa, when she was still making excuses for joffrey, could see that:
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i fear i’ve digressed a bit away from what you actually brought up, but your ask itself is a bit difficult to answer because you’re simply stating your interpretations as fact.
so to get back to the core of your ask, i’ll restate your own words (your tone seems very matter of fact): ‘rhaegar was the one who condemned her to death and left her son an orphan.’
the reality is that this is very much not matter of fact and there is absolutely no way for you to be sure of any of this! do you have rhaegar’s POV? are you in his head? did you read his thoughts? how are you so sure in your unsupported beliefs that you’d so matter of factly state them to someone else?
also, claiming rhaegar left lyanna’s son, which we both clearly agree is jon snow, an orphan, so clearly ignores the reality, which is that rhaegar died! why would rhaegar, who we know had plans, want to die and leave his family behind?
though i believe you’re actually insinuating that rhaegar didn’t provide lyanna with enough medical staff, but this is something you simply cannot know. the tower of joy dream sequence we get is not what really happened! it was simply a dream ned had and the author himself has stated that the dream is more metaphorical in nature. to logically refute the idea that rhaegar left lyanna to die, i’d like to mention that ned holds absolutely zero animosity for rhaegar and doesn’t speak badly about him. if rhaegar left lyanna to die then why would ned have positive/neutral thoughts about rhaegar?
moving on, i stated before that joffrey plays many roles, so i want to get back to that in order to counter your belief that ‘the only parallel is that both were left at the mercy of the people that killed their family’:
joffrey, a prince rhaegar foil, also acts as an aerys parallel and as a robert baratheon foil/parallel. his aerys parallels are that 1) he executes the head of house stark, 2) under his rule wildfire is put to use, 3) he faces a rebellion from robb, who was surely named for robert and who acts as both a robert and ned stand in. 4) joffrey never actually leaves kings landing like aerys and was king, 5) he faces off against renly, a storm lord who looks strikingly similar to a young robert 6) he faces stannis, who’s robert’s legal heir (though stannis also has some aerys connections as well as he burns people alive). 7) the tyrell’s eventually join the lannisters side as well, which reinforces the idea that the lannisters, with joffrey at the helm, are targaryen stand ins in a metaphorical sense. and the shift from having more aerys parallels to robert parallels/foils is when the tyrell’s switch sides and join the lannisters to save kings landing from stannis. here wildfire is being used to protect the city/waste time until reinforcements ride in the save the day, which is the opposite of what happened in the sacking during the rebellion. and then tywin and the tyrell’s ride in to save the day, yada yada, support joffrey’s right as king, and after this margaery acts as a cersei stand in/foil, loras as a jaime parallel/foil, etc etc etc etc etc… i could literally go on and on and on! there’s just so much there!
but my main point with my previous paragraph is that this isn’t 1:1. a person can’t make blanket statements like you did and then not backup your statements with specific events from canon. because honestly…
how is sansa being held hostage the same as lyanna being kept safely away from aerys in dorne? unless you believe lyanna was held captive in the tower of joy, which makes absolutely no sense at all and is not supported by the text whatsoever. to be clear: lyanna and sansa were in contrasting situations. lyanna not being in kings landing, where brandon thought she was being held, is a very important supporting indicator that rhaegar and lyanna’s relationship was romantic and loving in nature and further contrasts sansa’s situation, which is that she was being held hostage and kept under the eye of a young mad king.
and tbh, i called sansa a character that often foiled lyanna, but she also shares a lot of very important parallels/contrasting moments with other female characters such as catelyn, lysa, cersei, and even elia (the unkiss with sandor is definitely a direct foiling of elias death). to repeat myself, the events of robert’s rebellion are not 1:1 to the events of tWot5K.
but you, with full certainty, state that rhaegar is lyanna’s villain like joffrey is sansa’s. sansa’s faced injustice when she was being held hostage after ned was imprisoned and executed. lyanna faced injustice when her family refused to break her betrothal to robert, a man she so clearly did not wish to marry, which likely led to her taking things into her own hands. one of the most prominent and well supported theories is that rhaegar was helping lyanna escape/disappear and that they eventually fell in love, which is supported by bael’s song, the song of the winter rose, jon snow learns. sansa, when she thought ned was unfairly breaking her betrothal, also took things into her own hands and actually ran to the enemies to stop ned. she’s eventually saved and taken from kings landing by baelish, another bael figure. however, i know lyanna and sansa’s situations contrast so i can be sure that sansa will not get pregnant and will likely not die.
i’m gonna end things here because i do not care to go over ever little detail and explain every little thing to you, especially since there is simply too much to go over.
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7grandmel · 6 months ago
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Rips of the week: 09/09/2024
Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) and Aqua Star (Kirby Super Star Arrangement)
Season 3 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips Volume A
Ripped by alan
youtube
Season 8 Featured on: The Joke-Explainer 7000™'s Highest Quality Rips: Sunrise
Ripped by alan
youtube
Requested by Fezaki! (Request Form)
There are few things I love more on the SiIvaGunner channel than the phenomena I like to call "call & response" rips. These are, put simply, rips connected to one another through a sort of dialogue - an obvious example of this is with He4rt4che and 4SGOR3, two intertwined projects by the same ripper released right alongside one another. Yet these projects have also be used to, in effect, pay tribute to the works of other rippers on the channel: Shiny Smily TALE, for instance, saw Ellie53 pay respects to a rip made four whole years prior by Sarvéproductions. There's also one of my all-time personal favorites for silly sentimental reasons, Violet Snow Memories, which remakes and expands upon a relatively obscure rip made *SEVEN* years prior by a ripper who's no longer actively part of the team. Without having any knowledge of the behind-the-scenes behind their production, these rips end up feeling like true expressions of love between rippers, being creatively fulfilling projects in their own right whilst directing attention toward rips and rippers that they cherish.
Yet with the two rips featured today, Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) and Aqua Star (Kirby Super Star Arrangement), we run into a somewhat unique scenario, that I haven't personally seen all too often on the channel: a sort of combination of two of the example scenarios described. These two rips were both made by the same ripper, Alan, who's both a friend of the blog and has been contributing on and off for the channel since late into Season 1, still being active today eight years later in Season 8. And therein is what makes this pair of rips so interesting: Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) released all the way back in Season 3, while Aqua Star (Kirby Super Star Arrangement) came out just shy of three months ago back in June of Season 8 - yet are both playing off of the same core idea. Even six years after its release, the core idea of Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) seems to have stuck with the guy, and all this time later he finally decided to expand on the concept further, out of no other reason than his own personal investment in the concept. Six years of waiting, six years of experience gained - let's see where this all takes us.
The soundscape of Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards is one I've made no secret of my affection for, most notably with Aquadial just outright being an all-time favorite rip of mine, but even with more out-there bizarre projects like Kirby Joins the Circus!, they all manage to have an indescribable appeal that comes just from how beautiful Kirby 64 as a whole sounds. The channel and internet as a whole is filled with tributes paid to the game's soundtrack, yet Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) takes a direction similar to the previously covered Mt. Dedede (extended) - choosing to inject Kirby music, into other Kirby music. The Kirby franchise is itself already filled with homages paid to its legacy music, endlessly rearranging its past work, and so Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) fits in with the rest of the series' soundtracks like a glove. Float Islands in particular is a pretty crucial piece of music for the franchise, originating from the very first game in the series, being remixed in countless games, and most notably laying the groundwork for the franchise's beloved Rest Area theme, later arranged and reused for the Super Smash Bros. series and itself featured in beloved rips like Me and the rest area of the melee here, singing, "Where'd you go​?​". It's Jun Ishikawa's knack for catchy, soothing and high-tempo composition distilled into just one track - the kind of song that just SOUNDS like Kirby ought to sound, no matter what form it takes.
It should come as no surprise that Alan knocks the arrangement out of the park with Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) - Aqua Star, the track being used as the basis, already takes cues from Float Islands in certain snippets of its arrangement, and Alan is able to leverage that connection into a sound experience that sounds damn near effortlessly like an authentic Ishikawa arrangement. The lead instruments chosen follow along with Aqua Star very nicely, the brass sounds as authentically "Kirby 64" as always, the percussion is as lovely as Float Islands' arrangements always are - it's an incredibly solid rip, that even back in 2018 turned some heads with commenters denoting how surprising it was to see just outright wholesale remixes put onto SiIvaGunner. Of course, this was not something new - we've had rips like Turn On Your SEGA Genesis and Just Enjoy Yourself as far back as Season 1 - yet to see a ripper like Alan play along with Kirby series' tradition of celebrating past music so authentically was no doubt part of what made this rip stick out so much - many didn't even recognize that Float Islands wasn't originally in Kirby 64 and just thought the rip was an unedited reupload of music from the game!
Of course, this was nevertheless a rip from Season 3, six years ago - the channel was still somewhat undergoing growing pains, shedding the anything-goes wild west of Season 1 and gradually turning into something with a higher bar of quality. Despite my love for it, there are still some slight oddities present in Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement), indications of its status as, ultimately, a hobby project for a shitpost channel. And that's why I find Aqua Star (Kirby Super Star Arrangement) to be such a cool release - it saw Alan return to this old rip idea, now within the context of SiIvaGunner in 2024, part of this team that's learned so much about ripping for so many different games, that continues to find new ways to impress with every passing month with everything from Last Freight-train Night to Thwâmpröck Desert. In my eyes, Aqua Star (Kirby Super Star Arrangement) is right at home here - instead of rearranging one of Kirby's oldest legacy songs into the soundscape almost impossible to make sound bad, the rip feels like a far more daunting task in doing the opposite, taking a song built upon that distinct soundscape and attempting to recreate it within the confines of a far older game, in Kirby Super Star for the Super Nintendo.
Yet Alan pulls this endeavor off with flying colors! The thing I immediately noticed, compared to Kirby Super Star's take on Float Islands, is the percussion: in Aqua Star (Kirby Super Star Arrangement), it sounds ever so slightly...dreamier, less heavy - perhaps that's my ears playing tricks on me, but I get the sense whilst listening that Alan put in a hell of a lot of effort to recapture the magically sparkly feel that Kirby 64's music so often holds. You hear this in the lead melody instruments used as well - the primary lead is the same beautiful one used as the lead in Super Star's Float Islands, yet it's occasionally swapped out for a less-used instrument from that same track, there only used for accenting the end of certain segments, but is used here for a wonderful back-and-fourth sound throughout the rip's runtime. On the whole, it's just a wonderfully tasteful, well-rounded arrangement without twists or surprises - a perfect response to the call placed back in 2018.
As I led this post off with, it's that back-and-fourth dynamic between rips that I found so utterly endearing about rips like these two. Yet the additional wrinkle that both works here were made by the SAME ripper gives it a distinctly different flavor, it goes from viewing two rippers pay each other loving respect to seeing one ripper grow in proficiency and ability over many years of honing their craft. As a result, while I find Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) to be an absolutely wonderful piece in its own right, it was Alan's work on Aqua Star (Kirby Super Star Arrangement) that enamored me - to see that progression of a ripper in such a direct, yet at once indirect, way, was an incredibly fascinating listening experience. Alan shows no sign in slowing down in his contributions to the channel, and with rips of this caliber, I can't wait to see what the future holds for the guy.
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id-element0 · 6 months ago
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Random Legacy All-in-one Update #2
Speedy updates continues until the boys reach adulthood. So it'll be lengthy posts for some time. We start the post with cuteness. Satori decides to adopt one of Nutmeg's kittens. Both pets being elderly, we need new blood. It's a male kitten called Short Tail Cat. 😄 I should rename him. Regardless, Nutmeg enjoys being a father.
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Satori showcases an exemplary motherhood. She's particularly mean to Bismarck, patronising and all. In her defence the only parent she knew was Danzig and that's how he raised her, with tough love. So that's the only parenting she knows. "You ought to toughen up the kids."
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The next day is Spooky day so the boys go trick-or-treating. Bismarck isn't very into it but he still plays along.
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Everybody wants to throw a Feast Party so that's what we do. Satori's stuffed turkey craving is met thanks to one of the guests. It's also Midori's birthday. And we receive our first evil gnome in the mail.
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It's 20 degrees Celsius and for some reason it snows which shouldn't happen in this tropical island. The snow disappears the next day leaving the residents with unfulfilled frosty desires.
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Bodhi and Deedee continue to take care of their toddlers in their separate homes. Although, Bodhi visits his girlfriend and daughter frequently. Luckily, they don't have to wait too much to get together permanently.
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First successful robbery ever! This idiot, after like 3 or 4 tries, finally realises that there are no alarms outside and decides to steal Bodhi's midlife crisis car. That's fine. We're so rich and we still have Great Grandpa Fendi's Harley and Great Grandma Macy's Hot Rod. The burglar drives away in her own car. 😂
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spideyhexx · 1 year ago
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i love this terrible character, he's so well written and im glad that someone finally for once didn't give a villain a good reason for being villainous — coryo's messed up and there's not really a reason (or a good reason) for him being the way he is, villains like this arent very common — not everyone needs a reason for being terrible, not everything's sunshine and rainbows, not everyone needs an excuse
Tbh I disagree a little, I think there are a lot of reasons to why he’s villainous in a sense but I also think it’s not that black and white with him. He’s not just a simple villain. Nor are any of the reasons an excuse, but it’s just a set of events/choices due to his own nature and the people around him’s actions that lead him to become President Snow. That’s what makes him such an interesting character because you can understand him despite him not even being mentally well from the first time we see him. Even though he’s a lot more likable at first, he’s still got certain ways of thinking and certain actions that tell us something is wrong with him/he’s not “morally” good. But there are a lot of shifts with him in tbosas so that’s telling us there is plausible reasonings for why he becomes who he becomes even if he starts out not that good already.
He’s a very complex character and I think his trauma/growing up is technically the “reason” for how he turns out but his circumstances in tbosas obviously plays a hand in who he becomes, even if that person is a more “villainous,” person. I think it’s also the fact a lot of his “reasons,” are things he doesn’t even see the truth in, but we the audience see the truth, which aids to your point about him being a villain for no real reason. To us it might be to no real reason cause he’s not even seeing the truth in a situation (like dealing with stuff with Sej’s death).
I don’t think these things are excuses though, I think they’re just the points we can look at to see how they shaped him into who he becomes. I think the point is also that who he becomes can be anyone. That coriolanus had the chance to make the right decisions, it was laid out on a platter for him to steer into a better direction but at every turn he makes the other choices and that’s what’s so compelling. It’s so human and so realistic, that’s why I don’t see him as just a simple villain or completely “villainous,” in a way cause he’s got so much more complexity than that. Obviously he’s much worse by the time the og hunger games trilogy takes place but I think im making sense lol.
It’s a lot of nature/nurture arguments as well as the idea of legacy haunting him. Those themes surround his arc imo.
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greyias · 8 months ago
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A few years ago, @confettininjabean bought me a copy of Sunless Seas as a Christmas present, but I'm a weenie when it comes to roughlikes and my OCs dying, so it took me until last week to start playing it. I figured I'd give it fifteen minutes and maybe my first captain death before I moved on to another game... and I'm on my fourth captain now
Since Sunless Seas is a Fallen London spinoff, I was somewhat familiar with the world already, but it had been long enough since I'd last played there was a lot of surprises/relearning, mostly just me getting jumpscared by the Lovecraftian atmosphere (a lot of which is the casual amount of cannibalism present). Sometime during the second captain's run I was like "fuck this, this is too stressful" and installed a mod that mitigated the frankly ridiculous micromanaging of food and fuel.
And none of this will make much sense to anyone who hasn't played this game, but still, let me present to you, my legacy of Steampunky captains, who have been furiously passing charts to each other right before their deaths mostly so I don't have to reopen the gd map every single time, as they have captured my attention this past week or so:
Captain #1 - Renley:
I think I subconsciously named him after "Renfield" in Dracula. In retrospect, this was probably a mistake. Renley was an excommunicated priest who's daddy was a zeecaptain who mysteriously died on the dark waters, and he went to zee to try and find his papa's bones. He started an affair with his surgeon at the first opportunity, and I never did find out why he got kicked out of the priesthood as he descended to cannibalism and ran out of food a few miles from shore. He died as forgotten as his daddy's bones, except for his apparent pen pal...
Captain #2 - Farris:
Bisexual disaster with a heart of gold. Grew up a street urchin, but apparently got too tall and was cast out from her crew, so she bought a ship with what she got from her last big score, determined to make enough as a zeecaptain to retire rich and comfortable. She insists everyone call her "my lady", not because she's actual nobility but more because one day she's sure she will be.
I fully expected her to go the Renley route and die very quickly, but she surprised me by like... making good decisions?? She somehow just barely survived to the end of my first night of playing, making several successful runs into the zee without me cheating. She accepted a deal for more food and fuel from a very shady individual before I logged off for the evening, but it wouldn't be enough for us to continue on. As I had grown a little fond of her scrappy ways, I installed the first mod so we didn't have to worry about her going full Renley. SHE THRIVED.
She opened up so much of the map, also struck up an affair with the surgeon on her ship (look, it gets lonely and scary on the zee), but then... actually fell in love with a sweetheart back in London on one of her return trips. A dapper, fancy fellow who gave her a locket, and just so happened to keep meeting her at the docks whenever she arrived back home. Slowly she started to accumulate enough funds that she was able to purchase a townhome--
--and then she accidentally sailed off the north side of the map, nearly died of terror at the North Pole, which somehow summoned evil Santa Clause to her residence who made her go zip all around the unterzee delivering, uh, something evil Santa Clause considered to be presents (I guess), which culminated in her using her blood to create a little child made of snow, which apparently evil Santa Clause immediately abandoned so Farris decides this is her kid now, because growing up a little street urchin she knows the feeling of abandonment, names him Boreas, and takes him back to London. But uh. He's made of snow. So he starts to melt.
And this damn game is so unforgiving, it gives you conflicting pieces of information, so by the time I realized I needed to sail south to a relatively close port to London (instead of all the way across the gd map like it led me to believe), this poor kid was melting in earnest, and Farris goes to talk to a devil, who's like "you can stop this child from melting and dying if you have xyz items". And I had xy items, but I had unknowingly sold off "z" component to free up room in my cargo hold. And "z" component is not a readily abundant resource, so I look this up on Google at some point, as the kid is like "LOOK MA, I'm getting shorter! :D" and leaving puddles across the deck. And there's supposed to be an island around here somewhere where I can just go get the two quantities of this resource I need to stop my icy boy from melting. Except the map is randomized, and nowhere I go can I find this gd island. Farris basically spends like 3-4 months of time in-game just sailing the open zees, her terror rising as she desperately tries to find some way to save this kid. And there's some point where I know there's not enough time to make it, and yet she can't give up...
...and eventually, somewhere in the south zee, while she's still trying to find this stupid island, she gets summoned to Boreas's side to hold his hand as he finishes melting away. And at this point, Farris is pretty done, and just sort of numbly goes about her business, ferrying around the zees. I think she returns to port one last time and seriously looks around her townhouse, considers retiring, but writes a will just in case, sees her dapper chap again, before setting off one last run. And she's sailing down the southern portion of the map, looking around one last time for that goddamn island because it's personal now, when the ship is set upon by what amounts to a swarm of super bats that have 400 health to her ship's 30 health. She desperately tries getting away, but in the end, the bat's sink her ship, and poor Farris, who paused her quest for wealth on a doomed mission to save a dying child, sinks to the bottom of the zee. And never sees her dapper chap again.
Captain #3 - Vestry:
A certifiable dumbass. No, seriously.
I'm a little numb at this point, and still mourning Farris, who I got way too attached to. Vestry is a natural philosopher who came to the the Neath, because she was just too edgy for the surface world. Her ambition was to become the London's greatest explorer, and so sailed literally everywhere without any consideration for anything. At this point I broke down and was like "fuck it", installed a second mod so I could have money and not scrape by constantly. Caused a few international incidents, created a few spy networks. She was constantly pushing her engines, which meant they kept exploding at the worst opportunity, and at one point had to limp across the entire map with a single crew member at a snail's pace. Somehow this did not scare off anyone she paid to fill back out the ranks of her crew. She did manage to open up a large portion of the map, and then saw the absolute most southern point of the world with foreboding menacing statues trying to warn her away and was like "ALL POWER TO THE ENGINES" and sailed off the map. Everything exploded and she died as she lived -- a dumbass to the end.
Captain #4 - Valeria:
Started off like Vestry with the same past and ambition, but quickly decided "you know what? Nah, I've got this map almost opened up, I'm going to settle a colony in this tiny patch of sunlight instead". She is still slowly growing her army, ferrying sailors across the sea by the dozens. I am terrified she's going to get her ship sunk by monsters and make me start over again, but she's managed to hold her own so far. If the game actually ends after she achieves her ambition and retires, she might be my last captain, because I don't think I have it in me again to open up this map after how long it's taken to get it this complete. Also, Valeria finally found that stupid goddamn island that tripped Farris up, so if evil Santa Clause rears his head again, we'll be able to save her baby boy this time around.
Anyway, all of this to say, Farris is somehow still living in my head rent-free, despite dying nearly a week ago. Since there are no actual character portraits in Sunless Sea, I decided to honor her by creating an approximation of what she could have looked like in a 3D program I'm trying to learn, posed and rendered her out, and then with a little photoshoppery and paintover in CSP have immortalized her in pixels:
RIP Farris - bestest urchin baby
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You really, really tried, and almost made a good decision, but your greed for "one last run" got you in the end. One day, someone will kill those fucking bats for you.
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thekat-alystreview · 6 days ago
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Movie Review - Top Gun: Maverick
I watched Top Gun: Maverick when it came out in theaters, but at the time, I wasn’t committed to reviewing things the way I am now. Some of you might be wondering why I’m bothering to review a movie that was essentially required viewing back in 2022. The real answer? I don’t owe the Hollywood hype machine my punctuality. Also, I just didn’t get around to it. But hey, if this movie can take 36 years to get a sequel, I can take my sweet time forming an opinion.
And honestly? It was… fine. Not bad, not amazing—just fine. I get why people loved it, but I also don’t quite get why they loved it this much. It’s a well-made action flick with solid performances, but for a movie that was hailed as saving cinema, I was expecting something a little more than “pretty good.” Maybe it was the weight of all that hype, or maybe it’s just not my thing, but Maverick didn’t exactly blow me away.
That said, I can admit when a movie does something well, and Maverick absolutely nails its aerial sequences. The action is top-tier, the practical effects are refreshing, and there’s a clear love for old-school blockbuster filmmaking here. The story, though? A little predictable. The emotional beats? A little forced. The characters? Hit or miss. It’s fun, it’s slick, it’s entertaining—but it’s also exactly what you’d expect from a Top Gun sequel made 36 years later. Nothing more, nothing less.
This time, Captain “Maverick” Mitchell, who by all logic should be teaching aviation history instead of flying million-dollar jets, returns to train a new batch of cocky hotshots for a top-secret mission so classified even the audience never gets a clear answer on who the enemy is. The film plays it safe but plays it well, setting up its plot threads with military precision and knocking them down just as predictably.
One of the things that really disappoints me is that the film introduces a promising new cast, only to shove them aside in favor of Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, who gets more screentime than everyone else combined. And look, I get it—Tom Cruise is the star. His name is above the title, his face is on the posters, and he’s the one sprinting full-speed toward the box office every time a blockbuster needs saving. But Maverick dangles an ensemble cast in front of us, only to use them as set dressing for The Tom Cruise Show.
We get glimpses of their personalities—Miles Teller’s Rooster is burdened by legacy, Glen Powell’s Hangman oozes arrogant charm, Monica Barbaro’s Phoenix has serious potential as the franchise’s first major female pilot—but the film never truly gives them space to breathe. They’re here to either idolize Maverick, challenge Maverick, or learn from Maverick. Their arcs are truncated, their conflicts secondary, and by the time the final mission rolls around, it’s clear that their primary function is to serve as a backdrop for Cruise’s daredevil heroics. Even Jennifer Connelly, playing Maverick’s love interest, gets little more to do than look concerned and remind us that Maverick has a love interest.
Hilariously, the enemy is left to your imagination. Is it China? Is it Russia? Is it Iran? That one secret part of Florida with snow and mountains? Nobody knows. Not even the government, apparently. Whoever they are, I really hope no one tells them we have our top-secret debriefings in big spacious aircraft hangars with the doors open, or keep planes in easily stealable places so rogue pilots can prove points to steely officials.
A rare moment of genuine emotional weight comes with Val Kilmer’s return as Iceman, subtly and respectfully incorporating his real-life battle with throat cancer into the film. It’s one of the few times the movie slows down and lets something real seep in.
Top Gun: Maverick doesn’t break new ground—it just polishes the old and slaps a jet engine on it. It’s a quintessential summer blockbuster, engineered for maximum nostalgia and minimal thought. But hey, sometimes that’s all you need. And maybe, just maybe, I should start reviewing movies when they’re still in theaters.
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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 9 months ago
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Estimated $100m second weekend for INSIDE OUT 2... Really out here breaking some records, eh? Rare for a movie, and the first time for an animated movie, should the estimates be on the low end. Very possible the actual is like $98-99m, which is still very impressive, and only an approx. 35% drop.
If it gets over $100m over the three-day, it'll sit with all-timers THE FORCE AWAKENS, ENDGAME, INFINITY WAR, BLACK PANTHER, JURASSIC WORLD, and THE AVENGERS...
Really shows that the original INSIDE OUT is beloved after its blockbuster run in 2015, and it shows that audiences quite like this movie and are back for more. Might even make a play for INCREDIBLES 2's $608m domestic total, unadjusted of course. (The actual total in today's ticket prices is around $720m, per The-Numbers.) That would make it the highest-earning animated movie domestically, but right now, Pixar's Supers hold that title. Adjusted, it will always belong to SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS.
But if anybody was gonna beat Pixar, it was gonna be Pixar. I don't see another studio getting a shot at this, maybe except cousin studio Disney Animation and their MOANA 2... Or DreamWorks if SHREK 5 really lands like a meteor in a few years from now.
Worldwide, INSIDE OUT 2 sits at $724m. Again, within two weeks of release. Already circling the original's $857m take. (Before anyone says it, the film saw a small re-release in July 2020 that pushed the take to... $858m. Know that I refer to original release grosses, lol.)
And with this movie doing so well, I see all the Chicken Little-ing... Over the wrong problem.
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"We're NEVER getting an original movie from this studio again"
Okay... Let me try to debunk this.
I don't think an animation studio of this size can feasibly ONLY make sequels, because eventually... Wells run dry. Also, the people who yell this often online... Are they aware that ELIO exists and will be released next summer? Are they aware that Domee Shi, director of TURNING RED, has a new movie in the works at Pixar? (It's not ELIO, she is likely just doing story/script on that one.) Are they aware that Pixar has a movie slotted for release in late winter 2026 between ELIO and TOY STORY 5?
I'll tell you something funny... There was a fellow who insisted to me in December 2015 that Pixar was going to be done with original movies after THE GOOD DINOSAUR became the studio's first money-loser. That they'd put COCO on hold, and that would be it... LOL. This person also claimed to be a shareholder... That speaks volumes.
But no, really... You need to keep making untested or original movies in order to have things to make sequels to in the first place. And one of Pixar's recent losses was... A spin-off of TOY STORY featuring a version of one of their most recognizable, practically synonymous-with-their-name characters. Yeah, that epic movie about Lenny the binoculars!
So, please... Never making originals again? That's just a bad business plan and completely not feasible.
When originals/non-sequels don't meet the corporations' expectations (because I refuse to call SOUL, LUCA, TURNING RED and ELEMENTAL "flops" in any way, shape, or form... *Especially* the first three), the studios don't stop making them... They stop making them in a specific way.
Hence, Pete Docter - likely with Bob Iger pointing a gun at his head - saying Pixar won't make "autobiographical" movies anymore. Basically no more TURNING REDs, and more... Well, whatever the early 2026 movie is going to be. (Which is not this "Ducks" thing people keep insisting it is, as far as I know.)
The other studios do that, too. Off the top of my head... DreamWorks had a bunch of these fantasy movie in the works circa 2011. Stuff like THE GRIMM LEGACY, RUMBLEWICK, ALMA, fantastical stories with something of a darker bent to them. They were also considering adapting GIL'S ALL FRIGHT DINER... They had all these really cool movies in the works that would've redefined what a DreamWorks movie could be, post-SHREK. And then after a movie called RISE OF THE GUARDIANS lost money (even though it had good legs and became a cult hit thereafter), all of it never happened. ME AND MY SHADOW, which was in some form of production and was HOTLY anticipated by the animation community, got canceled. They proceeded to finish TURBO and MR. PEABODY & SHERMAN.
Both of which also "flopped"... I remember Jeffrey Katzenberg, when he was still running that place, saying something to the tune of: "Well those failed because we tried to aim at preteens and teenagers." Really? TURBO and PEABODY, which were overpriced to begin with, were aiming for that age group? The plan going forward was "We're going to make movies for kids and their parents." Whatever the hell that meant. Eventually, Comcast bought DreamWorks, a little over a year later. And the flightplan constantly changed after that.
Studios don't give up on movies that aren't sequels, they just re-route them. They find "reasons" for previous movie failures, and usually it's the fault of the filmmakers and the stories they chose to tell. It's never any outside circumstances, which are actually often the case with money-losing movies. The very movies that go on to be big on home video and streaming, and attain cult followings. With today's line of thinking, Walt Disney wouldn't have even gotten past PINOCCHIO's disastrous original release results.
So instead of yelling "we'll never get original movies again", I direct my energy elsewhere... And I say "Well, hopefully the future movies - both original and sequel - don't fall flat because of needless executive interference that attempts to *correct* a perceived problem." That to me is the issue, not the fantasy of Pixar completely stopping making original movies altogether.
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that-foul-legacy-lover · 1 year ago
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I have MORE WINTER STUFF IDEAS
Your blog gives me life, forgive 🙏👍
Building a snowman!!!!!!!
Like, going through the whole process. Unsure what memories can be shared between both Legacy and normal Ajax so you teach him how to make one anyway.
Rolling the snow to make a decently big snowball, and building it up from there. You also let him unleash that creativity and decorate the snowman. It comes out looking... strange, as in it's oddly creative in ways unfamiliar to humans, because cmon he's an abyss monster, he has different mental images for inspiration. But it's horribly endearing at the same time. (You totally snap a photo with a Kamera. Or a few. Or multiple. Turns out making a winter album/diary isn't that bad of an idea.)
Also I leave you with the delightful image of Legacy making a terrifyingly huge snow angel on his back and chittering happily. Adorable lil mothman. :D
YESSSSS WINTER FLUFF IS MY BREAD AND BUTTER I LOVE WINTERTIME
listen, Foul Legacy ADORES snow. he loves playing in it, catching snowflakes on his tongue, watching snow fall from indoors, everything about it. so it's no surprise when he happily darts outside during the first snow of winter, romping and spinning around until he falls in a dizzy heap, letting out delighted clicks and chitters. you're almost as overjoyed as he is- Liyue doesn't get a lot of snow- and before long you're teaching Legacy how to build a snowman, you with gloved hands and he with his claws. the end result is not like any snowman you've ever seen, but you like the flowing shapes and edges better, in all honesty, steadying your hand to take a photo as Legacy excitedly nuzzles against you and purrs
he also adores burying himself in snow, just completely vanishing under a blanket of white. you're not sure how, maybe it's a side effect of being in the Abyss for so long, but he can also SLEEP like that, snoozing away under the snow while you're wondering where he went. it's only when you nudge the suspiciously Foul Legacy-sized mound that he shifts, rumbling sleepily and stretching his arms as he shakes snow from his wings. and of course the snow made him a bit chilly, so he gently nudges you inside until you're sitting beside the fireplace, Legacy curling around you and snuggling his head against your lap with a drowsy trill until you fall asleep with him <33
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tarisilmarwen · 2 years ago
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Rebels Rewatch: "Legacy of Mandalore"
A Mandalorian family reunion!
Live reaction version from 2017.
I do find it hilarious that the kids are in the front seats, driving and co-piloting, while the adults are hanging out in the back.
Ezra's little, "Wait a minute." moment lol.
Nice to hear this bit of spoken Mando'a.
Chopper banging on the outside of the Phantom II with his manipulators lol.
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Remember what I said last rewatch about how the two of them develop into co-protagonists? Part of that seems to be that they start spending more time in the cockpit together. :)
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~Under cloud, beneath the stars... over snoooooooow one winter's morn.~
*ahem* Pardon me there, visiting Krownest always puts those lyrics in my head.
Subtle animation appreciation moment: The snow clumps being shaken off the tops of the trees as they're passing.
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"Don't worry, I'll play nice."
Ah yes, one of the parts of the episode that almost seems like it's playing Ezra off as Sabine's "problem boyfriend" that she's bringing home to meet mom and dad. <3
So it was definitely the Supercommando armor that set Ezra off.
I do not know what it is but Disney has been pulling some really weird shit regarding age order of siblings lately, Tristan does not look like he's the younger sibling at all.
Also Isabella and Luisa should be totally switched around, c'mon.
Subtle animation appreciation moment: How their feet actually sink into the snow with realistic weight and powder compression.
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Love the design of the Wren stronghold. Very Modern Architecture.
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I love him. <3
Takes Sabine promising that the lightsabers will be safe before Ezra decides to give his up. (And yet later in the climax he doesn't even hesitate to throw it to her, aaaaaah!)
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Don't mind me, just appreciating the design of this place.
Ursa sounds an awful lot like Fenn "I made a deal with the Empire to survive" Rau here. I doubt the parallels aren't deliberate.
So I guess the takeaway lesson is don't make deals with the evil empire because it will always screw you over.
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*whispers* If no supposed to ship why have Ezra being adorkable towards Sabine's brother just like Kanan was adorkable at Hera's father?
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Really can't get over the scenery in this episode it's so soft and pretty.
Ursa was so ready to be impressed that her babygirl kicked Maul's ass and so disappointed when that wasn't the case lol.
Does seem like Sabine had a difficult childhood even before the whole Dutchess fiasco. Maybe that was why she decided to go to the Imperial Academy in the first place? Who knows.
My genre-savvy called a lot of the beats this episode, which made it just a smidge predictable for me the first time around.
Not gonna lie, Rau sneaking through the complex is actually kind of hilarious.
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I'll bet Alrich painted that for her. :)
Ngl, the dialogue in this scene is just a bit weirdly written, I dunno what it is but it bugs me.
Ezra's so proud that Sabine kicked Gar Saxon's ass lol.
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Underappreciated Papa Wolf Kanan moment: Shielding Ezra from the guardsman's blasters.
You know I don't wonder why Sabine latched onto the Ghost crew as her new family, high-ranking Mandalorian clans seem overly obsessed with prestige.
Tristan is a blabbermouth lol, still can't get over that.
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Oh man this expression. She must feel like she's relieving her family's disowning all over again.
*chanting* Don't make deals with the devil, don't make deals with the devil.
Saxon is a master at finding loopholes isn't he?
I don't think this brief fakeout from Tristan was necessary, I think he should have just immediately turned guns on Saxon from the beginning.
Nice to hear Sabine's theme in the score tho.
LOLOL IT STILL CRACKS ME UP HOW FENN RAU JUST BURSTS THROUGH THE GLASS WINDOW ALL, "SURPRISE, BITCHES!"
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<333333
This moment made the episode for me.
Zero hesitation, complete trust and faith. He loves her so much omg.
Oooooh a nice rendition of the Force Theme here!
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(Told y'all it became a running gag.)
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Problem boyfriend so worried. <3
Sabine's theme is in french horns now, it sounds like. This iteration of the theme is less mournful and more action-oriented, with flute trills and timpani percussion.
The cracking ice is mostly symbolic I think. I did worry at the time of airing if someone was going to wind up falling in.
Sabine using basic lightsaber positions like Kanan and Ezra taught her. <3
...Was it implied that Sabine hacked off Saxon's arm there or...? Camera angle makes it difficult to discern.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Saxon winds up in a position like Dooku's or the Grand Inquisitor's in the Season One finale, lightsaber blades held crossed at their throats.
But Sabine, having been heavily influenced by the Jedi in her life, chooses mercy over revenge. The moment is even punctuated by a snippet of the Force Theme. Aaaaaaaah I love it, I love that Sabine has let Kanan's influence soak into her so much, has become so much more Jedi than Mandalorian and been made better for it.
Oh, his arm's intact, okay then.
I have... Thoughts™ about the entire Mandalorian mindset of needing chaos to become strong and refusing outside help to fight its battles and how the whole Proud Warrior Race thing so often works against them rather than for them but I'll leave them unsaid for now.
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<33333
This status quo change was honestly completely unexpected, and frankly, the episode is eons better for it.
Sabine's theme is in a triumphant key now, as she watches the Phantom II leave.
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:((((
So! This episode is not nearly as good as the previous one, and it's bit predictable, as I said. It's not bad, though, and it's obviously a necessary one for Sabine's growth and character arc, and the overall Mandalorian arc. I was weirdly a little bored this time? Aside from the cute Sabezra bits and the fact that they were bold enough to change up the status quo by having Sabine stay on Krownest, I really feel like this could have been so much stronger as an episode.
Maybe if we axed one of the fillers and made this a two-parter? Idk.
The episode is still decently entertaining enough and has lots of lovely quality Sabine content for those in fandom whose primary investment is her. She gets to really shine here, and show off how far she's come as a character. Which is great.
I think at the time there was a genuine worry that Sabine was being written out of the show. I know I needed a little bit of time to process the thought of her being absent the next couple episodes. But again, they made a narrative choice and stuck with it and I admire that. So I really can't hate this episode. :)
Of course next time we're at my favorite episode of the season and the whole inspiration for an accidentally giant-ass AU that I wrote. See y'all then!
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trulybetty · 1 year ago
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dec' x 24 - secrets
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Prompt: secrets Pairing: jack x reader Word Count: 712 Warnings: angsty feels, but it'll be resolved soon enough - I promise! Also a very loose use of today's prompt, which is my MO. Summary: the sale of the ranch is fast approaching and you're leaving to go spend the holidays with your family. Reality of the situation comes to a head between you and Jack. AO3: Linked
You might be interested in reading these first, if you're not familiar with the story that's been playing out this month... scarf, candles, ornaments & miracle
x. masterlist
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It was the waning days of December, Christmas Eve, the snow crunched under your boots as you walked around the ranch to the porch. Stamping your feet to rid them of excess snow you felt a heaviness in your heart. This was your last loop of the ranch before you were leaving for Texas. It was where your parents lived and where you, your brother and his family were flying in to celebrate the holidays. 
The vast expanse of the fields belonging to the ranch stretched out in every direction you looked. Dusted with snow and in the late afternoon setting sun, it looked like something that belonged on a christmas card. You thought of Opal, your grandmother, and wondered how many evenings she’d spent on this porch taking in the vastness of it all, how this place would have looked in its heyday.  
But at the same time, it was a reminder of the inheritance that was both a blessing and a burden. The ranch your grandmother's legacy, was about to be sold. It wasn’t just a thought anymore, but a looming reality. You couldn’t run it, it was too much work and you were far from qualified. You had a real job to get back to, you reminded yourself, no more playing with whatever this was, a life that didn’t involve hay bales or horse stables. These were the facts you clung to, a mantra to keep the swell of emotions at bay.
As you stood there, lost in thought, Jack approached, his footsteps muffled by the snow. His face was a mix of emotions—hope, desperation, and something else that you couldn’t quite make out. But you could also tell that the conversation that had started in the stables was long done from being finished.
“Jack,” you breathed, meeting his gaze. “You knew this was coming. It wasn't a secret.” his silhouette was a stark contrast against the fading light. “This shouldn’t be a surprise.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous habit you’d come to find endearing. “I know, but hear me out. What if you stayed and we figured something out?”
You couldn’t help but laugh, though it was more out of sadness than humour. “Jack, I’m not made to run a ranch. I have no clue about any of this.”
The two of you stood on the porch, while only a few steps apart it felt like a gulf between you. If you could stay in this bubble with him, wrapped up in the simplicity and beauty of the Kentucky countryside, you would. But the reality was more complex than that, you cursed Hallmark for making it seem too easy to drop the job in the city for the handsome cowboy.
He was silent at first, his eyes searching yours for an answer, a solution, anything that would have you stay. Then, shaking his head with a bitter chuckle, he murmured, “Goddamit, this wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“What?” you had asked, your heart pounding, although you felt like you already knew the answer.
“Us,” he had replied softly. “Me falling for you.” His words had hung in the air, a confession laid bare.
The revelation struck you hard, catching your breath. You weren’t blind and even though you’d been trying to ignore it there was a connection, but to hear him voice it out loud made it all too real. 
You were going to your parents in Austin for Christmas, leaving behind the ranch, leaving him. There wasn’t time to unpack this, especially since you had a flight to catch in less than three hours and you still had to get the place locked up for Magdelana and pack up the last of your stuff.
“Jack–” your words fell short, how were you supposed to answer him? “I’ll be back in the new year to finalize the sale,” you said, trying to keep your voice steady. “I can come by?”
Jack’s jaw clenched, his eyes holding yours for a moment that felt like an eternity. “Don’t bother coming to see me,” he finally said, his voice devoid of its usual warmth.
All you could do was watch him climb into his truck and peel out of the driveway without a glance back in your direction.
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imagitory · 2 years ago
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So I realize I'm late to talking about this, but...
Although I personally find Snow White (2024) to be just as pointless as all of the other recent Disney live action remakes -- even the ones I think have some value like The Little Mermaid (2023) -- I haven't hated everything I've heard about it. I really like Greta Gerwig's work overall -- I mean, heck, she worked on that recent Barbie movie that everyone's gone gaga for, and I also loved her take on Little Women. Gal Gadot is a striking choice for the Evil Queen. Even Rachel Ziegler herself I had no problem with, considering she previously was in the remake of West Side Story playing Maria, which means she has the vocal range to perform the role of Snow, unlike some of the other actors chosen to play the leads in these remakes. *side-eyes the hell out of Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, and Mena Massaud*
That being said...I hope Snow White (2024) does finally spark a real conversation about how to truly embrace a film's legacy. Because here's the thing -- there are issues one can point out with the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that could be addressed in a new adaptation. The Prince is woefully underdeveloped as a character, to the point that the Dwarfs honestly are the real heroes of the story. You could give the Dwarfs more depth and backstory, so as to give the actors playing them more to work with. (As much as Peter Dinklage’s comments about the original Seven Dwarfs were controversial and arguably resulted in other actors with dwarfism being shut out of the parts, I would like to write roles that can really showcase these actors’ abilities outside of comedy, so they like Dinklage can score more roles besides just as fairy tale Dwarfs.) And Snow is a bit young to be thinking about a committed romantic relationship if she's truly 14, let alone a romance with a full-grown man.
Even with these critiques, though, the idea that this film is somehow antiquated and unrelatable to modern audiences because it came out in 1937 is just flat-out not true. This film has been re-released to theaters seven times since its initial release, oftentimes when Disney was in financial trouble. 1944? Used to raise revenue during WWII when Disney was only able to release pro-American propaganda projects. 1952? Three years before Walt's expensive Disneyland project was opened. 1958? One year before one of Walt's most expensive films, Sleeping Beauty, was released. 1967? One year after Walt's death and arguably the beginning of Disney's "Dark Age." 1983? In the midst of Disney's "Dark Age" -- it wouldn't release another animated film until two years later, and that film was The Black Cauldron. 1987? Once again in the midst of Disney's Dark Age -- Disney's hand-drawn animation studio was on its last legs, with its heroic release of The Little Mermaid still two years away. Even Snow White's final release in 1993 made it the very first film to be entirely scanned to digital, restored, and then re-recorded to film. And every single time it came back to theaters, this film made bank. It was profitable every single time, even after over fifty years. And this doesn't even touch the home video/DVD/Blu-Ray or streaming markets.
On a personal note, I recently unearthed an old home movie of myself at age three, on Christmas. I was so excited about one particular present I'd received that I wouldn't let go of it for a good chunk of the home movie. You want to know what that gift was? A VHS copy of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which had only just been put out on home video two months prior. My mum presumes that I'd known Snow White only as one of our storybooks and/or as a CD, and I was so, so excited to finally get to watch the full movie. The following year at a dance recital, I was asked to talk about myself, and when asked about my favorite movie, I boldly said Snow White, and when I was asked who my favorite dwarf was, without skipping a beat I said, "Grumpy!" This is all -- for the record -- coming from a child who was never as much into romance as magic, music, and adventure and would eventually come out as asexual (though still romantic) as an adult. I certainly never saw the original Snow White as just being about waiting for a Prince or True Love's Kiss. I saw it as being about a girl who has to go through some really scary stuff, but gets through it by being kind and befriending creatures and people who help her, and the wicked woman who takes her jealousy out on her and ultimately pays the price for choosing cruelty over kindness. And I don't think I was the only one who saw the story that way.
I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with taking a new angle on a classic story, let alone offering good-faith criticism to an older, classic film. But I think the best way to honor Snow White's legacy is not to just take the original film and rip it apart in order to prop up a "new and improved" version. I look at how Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio doesn't take pot-shots at Disney's Pinocchio, or how the multiple TV movie productions of Rodgers' and Hammerstein's Cinderella or the film Ever After don't take cheap shots at Disney's animated film. Sure, I think one would be foolish to act like those filmmakers weren't at least somewhat inspired by Disney's work in places -- the 1997 version of R&H's Cinderella was even produced by Disney -- but they still did their own thing, often taking a completely different direction than Disney's film in places, even despite any possible inspiration. They didn't try to copy Disney's work. They didn't try to "fix" these already beloved films. They just tried to stand on their own merits. They told the original story the way they wanted to tell it, with their own characters, plots, music, themes, and distinctive tone, rather than take someone else’s adaptation of the material and pick and choose what they wanted to copy from it so as to leech off that adaptation’s fanbase. And I truly wish more Disney "remakes" would do that, as opposed to taking these pre-established films and then either ripping them apart and putting them back together Frankenstein-style or adding a whole bunch of insubstantial, fluffy whipped cream to an already perfect sundae. Then maybe we could have two special, unique films to enjoy as two separate entities -- the way we can enjoy films like Disney's Peter Pan and Peter Pan (2003), or Tangled and Barbie as Rapunzel, or (most relevantly of all) Disney's Cinderella and Rodgers' and Hammerstein's Cinderella simultaneously -- rather than having to act like we're "fixing" or even "replacing" old classics that a lot of people still really love and Disney clearly doesn't want to stop marketing.
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7grandmel · 2 months ago
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Rip of the week: 06/01/2025
Light Plane (Krabby Mix)
Season 1 No Album Release (Read More) Light Plane (Vocal Mix) - Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
Ripped by Philiponbread
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Wow, man, can you believe it? This week, we've officially hit nine whole years since the beginning of SiIvaGunner. I've spent so much time and so many words abstracting this channel's history into categorizable seasons – like the festivities of Season 4 Episode 2 found in rips like snow halation but it shreds, or the sense of momentum and tension of the ongoing storyline felt throughout several Season 2 rips like ULTRA S+G – but it's a different thing entirely to acknowledge that those seasons have all been taking place over what's soon to be an entire decade's worth of time. That legacy is something the team is quite fond of celebrating, with tons of Season 1 rips in particular like Stickerbrush Queen or Live and Ooooooooooooooh going on to basically become running jokes on the channel in their own right; yet on the opposite end of that coin, there are so many Season 1 rips that I somehow forget about despite how foundational they were to my experience with the channel as a whole at that time - which is where Light Plane (Krabby Mix) comes into play.
What most defines that first year of the channel's life as I've repeated many times before on posts like Battle Theme - Zeno Blade Chronicle X, is its feeling of complete, barely-controlled chaos; without a clear bar for quality set, and with the channel's novelty still fresh in everyone's mind, it was a time when anyone was able to contribute anything that sounded moderately funny. Today, there's a frequently-updated Wiki, a Discord server for fans and rippers to interact with one another, a steady list of contributors that have been around for years and truly mastered their own niches on the channel, but back in 2016 it was a wild west in every sense of the term. A neat consequence of this novelty the channel has since lost by virtue of the passage of time is that Season 1 in particular saw a lot of surprisingly notable people contribute only one or three rips to the channel as a way to throw their hat into the ring whilst the ring was still open.
There the notable ones of course; Triple-Q left an unmistakable impression on the channel not just through solid rips like RNR (Rip No Riffs) but through his championing of Snow Halation, only to mostly leave the channel behind after the end of Season 1; meanwhile, other quite notable people in the mashup/soundclown scene would also make their own contributions just for the hell of it like BotanicSage with rips like Thwomp Ruins - Mario Kart 8. But among these figures sits Philiponbread; a somewhat-notable figure in the Team Fortress 2 scene. One of many SFM-animators using the game's characters, he's perhaps best known for SEPTEMBER FIRST and the earlier-made OKTOBER FIRST, equally leveraging SFM animation and YTPMVs of the characters' voice clips – far from the first or most notable instance of the game's YTPMVers gaining attention, like I covered back on D-VA DISCO, yet still indisputably feels like a duo of videos core to the TF2 fanon.
That unexpected significance to Philiponbread only makes this contribution to SiIvaGunner all the more novel; emphasized, of course, by just how iconic it still feels in my mind. Light Plane (Krabby Mix), uploaded toward the back half of the channel's first-season life, still sits in my mind as a go-to Season 1 rip right alongside rips like the great seaweed; as such a perfect demonstration of how much fun SiIvaGunner as a concept is. SpongeBob as a franchise is iconic in more ways than can be counted, yet is simultaneously as inseperable from YTPMV as the infamous CDi games; for it to be leveraged for the channel all about celebrating weird internet arranges and remixes feels like a complete inevitability, and yet in my mind it wasn't until Light Plane (Krabby Mix) that my brain truly made the connection of how perfect of a match it would be; three years before Mr. Krabs entered the King For A Day Tournament in Season 4 Episode 1, and eight years before Season 8's dedicated SpongeBob event would finally come to pass, Philiponbread was showing me and countless others just how much potential the show's endless quotability had.
Because really, it is that sense of quotability that tends to inspire the greatest YTPMVs out there; it was Medic's "OKTOBERFEST!" taunt that led Philiponbread toward creating his biggest videos to begin with. It's just the same as how the undeniable memorability of of "CRAWLING IN MY SKIN" as a lyric drove no more nuzzles in my skin toward completion, the same way that one sole hhgregg ad campaign imprinted a voice into the brains of the masses that led to rips like Everything Circus becoming so funny; that collective consciousness that's spread to make memorable lines so funny to twist and contort into something new. That, indeed, is what we hear with Light Plane (Krabby Mix); as soon as the announcement is made during the percussion-driven buildup to the chorus, that it is "TIME FOR THE MOMENT WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR", thousands of listeners collectively clocked exactly what the joke would be, and yet the joke lands just as well even with the punchline effectively spoiled. As in the episode the soundbyte originates from, the narrator performs an amusing all-vocal fanfare of "dum dah dum dum dahs"'s for the Krabby Patty; here in the rip instead substituting the similarly performed vocals of the titular "vocal mix". Since the original remix of Light Plane never featured legible lyrics, with the pitch-shifting Philiponbread employs it's made to appear as if the original female-led vocal performance was merely substituted with the iconic SpongeBob voice.
I believe it's the way in which the joke just makes perfect sense conceptually, despite using a joke not otherwise featured much on the channel, is exactly what makes the rip feel so iconic; it's the kind of thing you, if you're the kind of brainrotted internet user to have found and followed SiIvaGunner as early as this, would have absolutely imagined in your head, which makes its excellent realization on the channel all the more satisfying to play out. It's that toonlink magic found in rips like Dr. Soulja throughout Season 1, and it's genuinely so fascinating to see it appear with such a strong effect by a contributor otherwise completely content in not engaging further with the SiIvaGunner channel; back when internet users of all kinds of notability were all drawn to the channel by virtue of its novelty alone. Light Plane (Krabby Mix) hasn't been referenced or honored quite as much as some other Season 1 classics, and its view count of 400K views still feels surprisingly modest to me given just how closely I associate it with the channel's original run. And yet having left such a strong impression on me tells me that it was a rip that did something right; a rip that understood the channel's assignment and pulled it all off pretty damn well. It's easy to forget how far we've come; yet easier to forget that, even with all that the SiIvaGunner team has learned, even with rippers growing yet more and more confident in their craft with every year, it can be damn difficult to top good ass rips from their fundamental appeal alone.
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charlenasaxen · 2 years ago
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Favorite Quotes - The Hawthorne Legacy
“As sure as anyone holding a sledgehammer has ever been.”
my dearest, darling older brother here can’t say a single word until I finish.”
“At which point, if I choose, I can invoke the sacred rite of Taeb Nwod.”
Grayson dusted an imaginary speck off the cuff of his suit. “I believe those rules expired when I was ten.”
“I recall no such expiration!” Xander volunteered.
I glared at Eli, who apparently had a very big mouth.
I followed Grayson. Eli followed me. To Grayson’s credit, he gave up trying to lose me pretty quickly.
Jameson crossed to stand in front of his brother, lowering his forehead until it touched Grayson’s. “I know, Gray,
Xander stopped. So did I—and four feet away, so did Eli.
“And you’re on my team? Not Jamie’s?” Xander gave me a look. “Not Gray’s?”
Xander raised his lone eyebrow
“Other than the fact that my stick-in-the-mud brother utterly refuses to play Drink or Dare while we wait?”
“Grayson has business cards—and yes, I mocked him mercilessly for that
Max said immediately. “Loss reverberates through all the players in her tragedy to this day? Yes, I remember Emily.”
“Jameson what?”
“Jameson when, Jameson where, Jameson who?” That was Jameson, in the background
“We have to go,” Grayson said with a great deal of dignity
either the conversation moved closer to the phone, or the phone moved closer to the conversation,
“I am not.” I could see Grayson in my mind’s eye, every muscle in his body taut
She punctuated the names with air quotes, like she suspected they were aliases, even though I had definitely mentioned both of them to her
beaned Xander with a croissant. “Holding out on us?” she demanded.
“I see our budding friendship has reached its croissant phase,” Xander told her. “I am pleased.”
“You’re also hiding things,”
a new SUV pulled up outside. Jameson stepped out first, then Grayson. Both of them were wearing sunglasses.
Oren had called him the team’s arctic specialist. Because every Texas billionaire needed an arctic specialist on their security team.
The man blamed our family for his nephew’s death. He slept with her out of spite. God knows why Skye did it, but I was the result.”
“Was Toby really the straw that broke the camel’s back—or was I?”
See? I don’t need you to hold me up. I turned back toward my friend Grayson
a clump of snow fell down from the roof, right at our feet.
I looked up just in time to see Jameson dropping. He landed beside me on skis, no poles in sight.
“Nice entrance,” Grayson told him dryly.
I found Max on Xander’s shoulders, inspecting the blades of a fan.
“He’s very tall,” Max told me approvingly. “And he’s only dropped me once!”
In the wake of that bombshell, Xander went to find Jameson and Grayson. Hours later, all three brothers returned from the slopes, looking scraped up
“Don’t bleed on that,” Grayson ordered.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,”
“What are your thoughts on vomiting in that vase?”
“You’re an idiot,” Grayson replied.
Xander said grandly, hobbling over to sit on the fireplace, “I won the Drop.”
Max told me. She smiled wickedly. “Very fine.” She nudged me again. “Jameson Hawthorne is in the hot tub.”
“If I weren’t so confident in our brotherly affection for each other,” Jameson replied languidly, “I would find that comment a bit pointed.”
“Pointed?” Xander repeated in faux horror. “Gray? Never.”
“Am I getting ready to see the crown jewels?” I was only partially joking.
“Of what country?” Oren replied—and he wasn’t joking at all.
“After all, the proper way of starting a conversation often involves lurking in your conversation partner’s closet.”
“Can we see it?” That was Xander, who had poked his head out of the bathroom
I placed her father’s wedding ring on an end table. I’d committed the date to memory. I’d gotten what I needed.
There was no reason for me to take this from her, too.
It was gentle and slow and terrifying and perfect. And for once in my life, I didn’t feel alone.
He plucked the marker from Jameson’s hand and stood. “That was a friendly tackle,” he assured me. “Mostly.”
When I knocked a single pin down, a breath left my chest. Grayson went next and lost his suit jacket.
“Thea was right. Rebecca’s mom is having a rough day. There was vodka involved.
my eyes were starting to sting. “And I think he’s my father.”
because the next thing I knew, Mrs. Laughlin was hugging me, holding on to me for dear life.
it might have actually been worse for her. “Don’t expect me to start calling you Aunt Rebecca.”
That was the exact instant that I realized that if Rebecca was my aunt, then Emily had been, too.
A muscle in Grayson’s jaw tightened slightly. It was a good enough look for him that it took me a second to realize that he was trying very hard not to laugh.
And, Grayson, you’re perfection.” Like he needed anyone else telling him that.
“I don’t want to hit anything,” I said in a tone that did absolutely nothing to sell that statement.
Grayson tilted his head to the side, and his eyes settled directly on mine. “How would you feel about swinging a sword?”
Grayson had a way of smiling: lips closed, slightly uneven
This was what it meant to be a Hawthorne. This should probably be in a museum, but my brothers and I like to hit things with it instead.
the movement so perfectly controlled that I was overcome with the sense that he could cut a hair in half if he wanted to
you were just too busy being an asshole to notice.”
Grayson gave me his most austere look. “Let’s try to avoid using the word asshole, shall we?”
And still he came closer, forcing my blade vertical, until there was nothing but inches
“What are we doing?” I whispered.
His eyes closed. His body shuddered.
Last I heard, I was supposedly dating a princess, and my brother Jameson had some very questionable tattoos.”Monica’s eyes lit up. “Does he?”
Grayson leaned back in his seat. “A Hawthorne never tells.”
“If you’re going to come at our siblings,” he told her, his smile sharp
well aware that he could come out on top in any battle. He didn’t make threats, because he didn’t have to.
My grandfather didn’t raise us to be normal, and this is what he wanted. This is his legacy.”
Grayson gave her a wolfish smile. “None.”
Grayson leaned his head down and crushed his lips to mine
standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The wind is whipping in your hair. The sun is setting. You long, body and soul, for one thing. One person. You hear footsteps behind you. You turn.” Max opened her eyes. “Who’s there?”
Anyone. When I pictured myself on that cliffside, I pictured myself alone.
smile, but the one that felt truest to me was devastating. Jameson Winchester Hawthorne had a devastating smile.
She was holding a gun.
“Put it down.” Oren trained his gun on Zara.
Her own weapon held steady, Zara gave Oren her most unimpressed look
“Talk,” Zara told me. “You owe me that much, at least.”
All things considered, I probably did
All three of us turned to face Jameson. Grayson and Xander stood to his sides.
it occurred to me that she loved them.
“Please,” Zara said quietly. “Boys. Just tell me about Toby.”
“Go on,” she told the boys. “Out with the rest of it. In this family, there’s always a rest of it.”
But then you were a little boy. A wonderful little boy, and the newness of it all had worn off for Skye, and you were so lonely because she was never there.”
“But you were,”
before Toby died, you used to take care of me.”
At some point, tears overflowed
Finally, she let the letter go. It dropped from her hand, floating gently toward the ground.
The boys were all frozen in place
Not one of you will see my fortune. There are things I have done that I am not proud of, legacies that you should not have to bear.
I’d never questioned where my mother had gotten them.
Or from whom.
“You Hawthornes,” I whispered hoarsely, “and your invisible ink.”
She taught you to sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ My mom didn’t even call, but Sarah tucked me in every night, into her bed
“My point is that you know who your mom was, Avery. We both do. And she was wonderful.”
My lips should never have touched yours
and wholly rotten and you loved me despite myself
I’m sorry for letting you love me even a fraction as much as I will, to the day I die, love you. I’m sorry for what I did. For the fire.
And I will never stop being sorry about your sister.
Jameson and Xander slipped out of the car after me, and each of them took one of my sides. At least this time, it was me and the Hawthornes against the world.
I almost choked on the word, though I couldn’t have explained why. “Toby loathed himself almost as much as he loved my mom.”
“Heiress?” There was a question in Jameson’s deep green eyes
“I just happened to have my ear pressed to this door. I might have overheard some things, and I have a suggestion!”
Jameson looked like he might actually throttle his brother. I glanced at Oren, who was still pointedly ignoring
“Like I said, I inadvertently overheard some things while my ear was casually pressed to this steel door.
the next thing I saw was his face. Gray eyes, sharp cheekbones, sharper jawline. In the sunlight, his light blond hair looked platinum.
Grayson turned the phone back around and those gray eyes locked on mine. “Avery, have I ever given you reason to believe that I’m particularly averse to danger?” Grayson Hawthorne was arrogant enough to consider himself bulletproof—and honorable enough to see a promise through
Jameson was sticking his head over my shoulder, yelling to his brother
Grayson smiled, and that smile cut into me, every bit as much as his kiss. “Got it.”
Jameson squeezed in beside me to talk to his brother
I turned for just a moment to watch him go.
“That the way it is?”
You might be the only person on this planet who knows thereal me. Hate me, if you can, for all the reasons I deserve it.
I knew you wouldn’t let me go, and I cannot bear to say good-bye.
Harry
Something gave inside me. I closed my eyes and let my head fall, just for a moment
“She’s dead?” Jackson Currie stared at me. “Little Hannah?”
I nodded. “Natural causes.” Given the context, that seemed important to clarify.
But if she’s gone—only seems right to give them to you.”
I looked down at the thing he’d just handed me. I was holding another bundle of postcards.
a different kind of love story. From that point on, every single postcard was about me.
On and on it went, up until the postcards stopped. Up until she died.
My hand shook, holding the last postcard
Grayson’s hand made its way to mine
“Don’t look at me, young lady,” Tobias Hawthorne replied. “This is your subconscious.
The least you could have done was wake up while I was here, tragically backlit, unspeakably handsome, and waiting.”
Heads, I kiss you.” His voice broke slightly. “Tails, you kiss me.
or couldn’t face me. I’d watched him swimming laps every night
“The bomb should have worked.” Sheffield began cuffing the sleeves on his dress shirt, a furious motion—and a familiar one.
Sheffield Grayson’s achingly familiar eyes settled on mine
“Horrible girl.” Toby’s voice was tender.
Trying not to look at the body on the ground—at Grayson’s father
fury gave way to devastation.
“Horrible girl,” he whispered. “Don’t you know by now? No one lets a Hawthorne do anything.”
That was the truth.
I knew, with a strange kind of prescience, that this moment would never leave me. “You’re not staying, are you?”
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Horrible girl,” he whispered, his voice tender.
You have a daughter, I’d told him.
I have two.
“Am I ever going to see you again?” I asked, my throat closing in on the words.
pressed a kiss to my forehead, and stepped back. “It would be a very risky gamble.”
I would have to learn to think like the old man.
Twelve birds, one stone.
Maybe I was both. Maybe I was a dozen different things, chosen for a dozen different reasons
“Something to tell me? Is it possible you have me confused with one of my brothers?”
“Jameson has laser focus. Grayson always finishes what he starts.
from everything I’d inherited along with Tobias Hawthorne’s billions.Poison tree and all.
When Thea and I hung up the phone, I went to see Grayson.
The entire time, his face was like stone
I waited for him to look at me, with silver eyes and the weight of the world on his shoulders.
I’d been given the world. It was time to stop living scared, time to take the reins.
It was time to take risks.
This was a risk—one the old Avery never would have been capable of taking.
the last secret built into the walls—there will always be one more.”
“But sometimes you have to improvise.” My heart was racing. I was vibrating with the same energy
Or maybe I was one stone meant for twelve birds, most of them still undiscovered.
Like Jameson had said, this was Hawthorne House. There would always be another mystery
This wasn’t nothing.
This was the beginning—and I was ready to be bold.
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