#and there are people like elsa who enable that and the way she does her job is just...EVERYONE SUCKS! THEY ALL SUCK!

[doux-amer]

I watched The Menu and loved it because it featured every single thing I hate about the food world and the arts in general. It’s brilliant because it's multilayered and multi-pronged in its satire and reducing it to just ONE aspect of its criticism (“rich people suck”) is too simplistic; even if you took away their richness, each character from the customers to Slowik and Elsa on the opposite side stands for a certain type of person who interacts with food and I hate every single one of them. :))))))

Also, it's hilarious because 2022 had The Bear and The Menu and people who work in the food industry/service industry or are have some connection to it talked about how they got stressed out by one and felt catharsis through the other. Both of them let them feel seen, but one was feeling seen in a bad way and the other one was in a good way even if you liked both fkasjflksajf.

[phoenixyfriend]

The Naruto/Frozen Crossover

So I was planning on just doing an image ID thing for this post, but apparently the formatting on desktop is such a mess that it’s easier to just make a new post that’s text only. I can also like. Bulletpoint it so that it can be a little neater. All ideas were made with @firebirdeternal​‘s help, because they are the most efficient enabler I have.

Also I added some bits at the end.

Under a cut, because it’s Long As Heck.

I originally had two options: either Mid-teens Elsa and Anna being transported to ninja land sometime pre-canon and running into Haku and Zabuza... or just like. Born as a Daimyou's daughters.

Spoiler alert, we’ve got nukenin and I’m a sucker for an intrusive crossover, so transported to ninja land it is.

Suggestion from Birdie:

Mechanism for crossover: Elsa ices over a Wishing Well by accident after having Wished for someone else who understood her, Anna and her fall in and get Ice Mirror Portaled to Ninjaland, falling out of an iced over pond near a shrine that Haku recently prayed at for similar lonely child reasons?

Which I like! They don’t end up there soon enough to run into Haku, because I want a dramatic chase first, but I like it.

Obviously, Anna is forced to learn about Elsa's powers because it's the only thing keeping them safe

Or at least alive

(Elsa will do ANYTHING to keep Anna safe, and if that means she has to get her hands dirty...)

...neither of them knows Japanese, so, you know. There’s that.

I'm thinking that they end up in/near Kiri at first

And they aren't FAST ENOUGH to get away so Elsa panic-enchants a giant reindeer made of snow to run away across the suddenly-frozen ocean.

She and Anna have to ride and Elsa is probably crying the whole time.

Oh shit this is like. RIGHT after their parents die, I forgot. So that’s a thing! They are in mourning and all that fun��stuff.

Point is, they use the powers for a Self Defense thing and BBY Haku is just !!! "Master can we rescue them for Ice Cousin reasons?" Zabuza: Yes, and only for those practical reasons and not because I collect endangered children like people collect pokemon cards.

I imagine that maybe they track rumors of a Yuki-onna down, or the Giant Snow Reindeer rides by and Haku’s just like Wat

The girls just tag along with Zabuza because. Like.

Do they like him? No. Do they trust him? No. Do they enjoy the fact that he considers them pathetic civilians? No.

However, Haku is Baby.

Zabuza is REALLY annoyed at them being Useless Civilian Royals “but Haku likes them so I guess they can stay.”

Age at meeting, three years pre-canon:

Zabuza - 23

Elsa - 18

Anna - 15

Haku - 12

Elsa is 90% anxiety/depression master combo BUT if Zabzua protects her then she's WILDLY dangerous so like. Whatever

Elsa's bingo book nickname options, uninspired:

Winter Witch

Winter Queen

Ice Queen

Snow Queen

Something about a Yuki-Onna maybe

She's Very Stately and kinda breakable but Winter is her Bitch

I mean like, the fact that, if protected, she can shut down the agriculture of a fucking country? That's an S-rank even if she's not that useful in a fight.

She's like. Jinchuuriki-level destruction. Generally speaking she wouldn’t. But she could.

Elsa: What the fuck is a chakra? Elsa: my snow monsters are self-sustaining. Elsa: I'm gonna build us a house.

Zabuza has NO idea how her powers work and it is INCREDIBLY frustrating but “there’s no chakra cost to keep these things going and we have shelters on demand” is too convenient to question after a while.

Haku: Delicate, deadly, incredibly fast ninja work. Elsa: I can't dodge a kunai but watch me wreck your entire country's ecosystem in under a day.

Elsa is a siege weapon.

Meanwhile, Anna is really, really into the physicality of ninja practice.

She's clumsy and she's not very good at ninja stuff, but she sure is determined!

Anna also gets on Zabuza's nerves because she keeps insisting that Haku get to be a kid.

Anna: Let's make flower crowns! Zabuza: No, he needs to train, not- Anna: FLOWER CROWNS

Consider: Haku saying Elsa-nee-sama and Anna-hime.

Or just calling Elsa “onee-sama.”

Anna is also younger than Elsa and way more Fun so she probably gets adjusted to Anna-chan or Nee-chan.

If Zabuza calls Elsa “Hime-chan” or “Elsa-hime” or, Sage forbid, “Elsa-sama/dono��� then he’s VERY MUCH making fun of her and he’s probably getting his soup frozen that night.

At one point, Elsa... tries to like. Convince herself to have a crush on Zabuza or Kakashi or something until Zabuza just puts a hand on her shoulder and asks "do you even like men?" "...that's an OPTION?"

Zabuza urging her to try and ask out a Cute Kunoichi and Elsa's like.... I can't decide if she's bright red and a useless lesbian or uncomfortable and ace.

I am SO invested in the siege weapon thing.

SHE IS THE SQUISHIEST WIZARD.

It's not her fault that every single other combatant on the continent is Massively Dangerous in melee! She took a very traditional back-line build!

Enemy: Doesn't it GRATE to protect someone so pathetic, Zabuza? Zabuza: She literally froze an entire castle of enemies to death because they harmed her sister, so. No.

Most Ninjas: Sharp Knife. S-Rank Mega Ninjas: Gun. Elsa: High Yield Explosive Rocket Launcher. Literally loses fights to the Knife People, because she can't bring her power to bear on that scale. But if you can give her Time and Prep? No contest.

Long distance AoE

Like  you know how Nagato is literally dying of starvation due to illness and can't walk, but he's also capable of leveling powerful villages more or less on his own?

Elsa is the same Vibe.

It’s like sealing a bijuu in a civilian.

She's honestly both more and less powerful? Like it'd be hard for her to kill everyone in Konoha in the snap of a finger? But also, she could starve out the Country of Fire in a summer.

She WOULDN'T, but she could.

I always read Elsa as gay or ace but my brain keeps trying to ship her with dude ninjas and I have to yank it back on a child leash.

People insinuate that Zabuza is interested in Elsa and he's just "What? Ew she's like five."

"I'm eighteen."

"Five."

BUT

Elsa! Might mistake trust and companionship for a crush!

I can see THAT happening despite gay/ace.

Also like. I don’t think Zabuza is straight.

So mlm/wlw solidarity?

And Haku is probs genderqueer.

So Anna is THE TOKEN STRAIGHT.

Anna is like, the Straight Friend who will go to the mat for her queer friends. Like vicious. In-your-face barking like a mean dog at people who were being bigots.

You know how Elsa in the second movie uses her powers to make toys for kids out of ice?

Okay, so her practicing by making things with Haku.

But yeah, Elsa can't really do "throws ice senbon," but she can do Delicate Geometry Things since she apparently, canonically studies math for fun and loves fractals.

Haku: I can trap you in a prison of ice mirrors, and you are at my mercy. Elsa: LOOK AT THIS CASTLE I MADE???

Haku wants to do Pretty Things like Elsa

OH.

Elsa makes... snow bunnies..

For the ninja distraction reasons but also because it's a Soft Thing that makes her feel better about, uh, everything. And Haku likes bunnies.

Zabuza still takes The Dirty Missions but Elsa gets upset when he does something that hurts innocents and Nobody wants Elsa upset. Even Zabuza doesn't want Elsa upset.

When Elsa gets upset, overnight accommodations are suddenly Very Uncomfortable for everyone except her and Haku.

And then Anna gets upset, which makes Elsa even MORE upset.

And then things just keep getting colder.

Zabuza doesn't want Elsa upset for many reasons, not limited to: "Is actually capable of killing me from outside of Sword Range if she's mad enough, even if it’s not that easy" and "the Small Children would be unbearably sad if she died and honestly so might I."

She's more of a friend than a ward and he's not entirely sure he's okay with that.

Zabuza: "Ew, friendship."

He has absolutely no idea how to have a social interaction with people he isn't Bullying, Raising, or Threatening to Kill.

Elsa and Anna have no trouble convincing people they're related, at least. Different coloration with almost identical bone structure.

A tendency to burst into song when they feel emotions.

Identical weird accent that nobody can place.

FOOD

The girls are royalty, they don't know how to COOK.

But they also want food from HOME.

It's a lot of trial and error.

More error than not, since they have both no knowledge and also a language barrier to overcome. It probably takes YEARS before they can describe things like Unfamiliar Flavors well enough for people to say "OH that sounds like spearmint."

When they run into something they know that’s familiar, it’s life-changing.

Chocolate is more common in the elemental nations than in Arandelle and Anna may or may not cry about it.

Anna is loudly bossy, even at Zabuza.

Zabuza is gruffly commanding, to everyone.

Elsa doesn't actually like being in charge, but when she talks, people LISTEN.

(Haku is just happy to be here.)

Elsa radiates two things: Anxiety, and Natural Command, and she basically just fluctuates between those.

"I don't want to be in charge but also I'm vetoing this."

So, obviously, the main reasons that Zabuza keeps the girls around is that Elsa is a living siege weapon and he thinks she could be convinced to help him run a revolution in Kiri, and also that the Ice Queen schtick is like. Really good for Haku and Zabuza can’t really say no to the kid.

HOWEVER, Anna is clumsy and messy and all that, so Zabuza starts training her in Ninja stuff. Elsa joins in on the “I need to know how to Run Fast to get away from fights I don’t want to have in the first place,” but Anna’s the one that’s like “TEACH ME HOW TO SWORD.”

It’s honestly not that hard to teach her, she’s just really, really, REALLY enthusiastic.

Once or twice someone asks why she’s so bad at this yet running around with an A-rank nukenin and Zabuza’s just like “I’ve only had her for a year and a half, shut up!” because it’s not that he’s a bad teacher, it’s that she was a very pampered civilian until like a week before he met her.

He should get a MEDAL for even getting her to low Chuunin.

Zabuza: I'm taking a job from Gato Elsa, who has Training in economics and politics and bureaucracy: I have a better idea.

This is actually not entirely what I’d do but I wanted to make the joke first ANYWAY here’s an actual plot or something.

Oh, also by this point everyone is Canon Ages so Elsa’s 21 and Anna’s 18 and Zabuza’s 26 and Haku’s 15.

Elsa is getting paid to keep the water from interfering with construction, by way of....

ICE COFFERDAM

Elsa with Haku as her Guard while Zabuza is off running his own mission? Which Anna begged to go on because Cool.

Elsa also kind of keeps her involvement on the ice front semi-secret by claiming she’s there as an engineering consultant.

LISTEN canon made her like geometry, I can ENTIRELY believe she’d be excited about the bridge-building.

Gato has hired someone else on the danger level of Zabuza, who is Threatening to Team 7 + Haku? But then when things look bleak Anna and Zabuza arrive and then Scary Sword Man is on our side and oh dear that's a lot of blood.

Which, you know, fun!

Birdie suggested Raiga which I’m not feeling but I do feel the need to bring up as an option.

It’s also not Kisame BUT

Kisame: [giant lake dome filled with sharks]

Elsa: uhhhhhhhhhhh...

Giant lake dome: [is now a giant ice dome]

Anyway

Gato: I'm hiring an army. Elsa: [giant ice wall around his compound] Gato: ... these guys can walk up walls! Elsa: [adds snowman guards] Elsa: ... Elsa: [adds a ceiling]

Just puts Gato's entire mob in a fucking snow globe.

Zabuza shows up twenty minutes late with (Throwing) Star(buck)s just like "Oh, they dead? No? Want 'em to be? Okay cool I'm gonna go pick up Haku, I'll be back in like an hour."

Anna would... LOVE Naruto

ENERGETIC FRIENDLY GOOFBALL

"I found us a baby brother!" "No, we already have Haku." "BUT LOOK AT HIM."

Anna is only a year or two older than Itachi.

OH RIGHT

I wanted to make a joke about how Naruto also vibes with her because he's less judgmental that she can't really... talk properly.

Sasuke is Judgy and Kakashi is Paranoid and Sakura is Uncomfortable.

Meanwhile Naruto is just like "And I Shall Scream."

Anna, who learned Japanese from Zabuza (rude) and Haku (uber polite): WELL FUCK YOU, GOOD SIR Naruto: YEAH WELL FUCK YOU TOO, LADY Elsa, overly formal: I am... so very sorry.

Anyway, generic missing nin fights and all that.

Elsa gets injured in the process and after a variety of arguments, Naruto manages to convince them to take her to Konoha for medical attention.

Elsa is... usually the one getting injured.

Zabuza and Haku are FAST and Anna is at least learning (even if she’s only been doing it for three years), but Elsa is The Squishy Wizard.

If someone throws a kunai... she can’t... really dodge...

So yeah, gut wound.

Normally they find a nukenin medic to patch them up but Konoha is reasonably close and has some of the more skilled medics on the continent and they DID technically help the Konoha nin so like. Gah.

That’s Zabuza’s final thought. Gah.

Just “Fuck it, let’s save the ice queen.”

Elsa ends up in a half-literal-ice stasis state on the way there and it’s happened before (it is not the first time she’s been stabbed), but it’s always terrifying.

Especially to the Konoha genin who are just like WHAT THE HECK IS THAT.

So they get to Konoha, there’s a whole bunch of stuff about extradition treaties and “you are bringing a literal WMD of a woman into our town” and “we can’t just let MOMOCHI ZABUZA in.”

Anyway, it ends up being that Zabuza has to wait outside the village while Elsa is treated inside, and one of the Teenagers goes in. Obviously, it’s Anna, because Zabuza is INCREDIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE with letting Haku enter a village that’s known for having lots of bloodlines, and anyway, Anna’s the sister.

Bunch of stuff, she’s healing, etc, and then one day Anna comes in and is told “your sister had a bad reaction to the anesthetic, we couldn’t save her, I’m sorry, she’s gone.”

She flips out, gets shown the corpse, flips out MORE, gets escorted out to the village walls where Zabuza and Haku are waiting.

Horrified reactions

Zabuza doesn’t want to admit that it’s EMOTIONS because this is his FRIEND, he is clearly just upset about losing the living siege weapon.

Haku is just super confused and goes “But she’s not dead.”

“What.”

“She’s not dead, I can feel her, I can always feel her, it’s like sensing but just her, because we’re both ice. She’s alive, somewhere over... there?”

And points right in the direction of the Hokage Mountain, which for the purposes of this fic and also Drama is where ROOT headquarters is.

YEP we absolutely have that plot point.

Is Danzo overused as a plot device? Probably. Am I going to diabolus ex machina him anyway? Ye.

They kick up enough of a fuss that the Hokage gets called down.

He wouldn’t, normally, he’d leave it to a couple of skilled jounin and call it a day, except Naruto got involved so like. You can’t. Ignore that.

There’s lots of shouting.

Just like. A lot.

And then part of the mountain explodes!

AS ONE DOES

Elsa comes flying backwards out of the hole, catches herself on a spontaneous ice slide, gets to her feet.

Girl is swaying like MAD.

There are absolutely ANBU (both fake and real) coming after her.

At least one of them gets speared through by an ice spike.

Anna runs up to her, tries to hug her, gets batted away.

Elsa’s staring at her in sheer TERROR and starts muttering something about how Anna died years ago, this isn’t real, etc.

Nobody except Anna understands most of it, but Haku picks up enough to translate when Anna’s freaking out.

Elsa starts doing her Ice Castle thing in the middle of Konoha as a coping mechanism, mostly so she can get Up and Away and Shielded By Ice.

This is not a good look.

Especially because she’s singing, which Zabuza always thinks is a bad omen because it means shit is getting real and one or both of the girls are about to get a powerup or be beaten even harder than otherwise. When they start singing, things get More Dramatic And Extreme).

(Zabuza does not like Disney Musical Rules)

Danzo shows up.

There’s a bunch of arguing.

All the medics insist that nothing she was given at the hospital should have caused amnesia, psychosis, hallucinations, delusions, etc.

It’s. Not hard for Hiruzen to guess what happened.

Namely that Danzo, upon finding out that chakra dampeners didn’t do shit since none of Elsa’s powers come from chakra, decided to keep her drugged up and start using genjutsu to make her more malleable.

Because like. An injured WMD just showed up in your village. What are you supposed to do, not try to kidnap her and turn her to your side? Like, come on. What was he supposed to do?

Not that, Danzo. Literally Not That.

IDK how it gets resolved, probably Anna getting to her with the power of love, because Elsa is ultimately Super Disney.

I also don’t really know where to go from there other than “Maybe Jiraiya can get you home, but also I’m pretty sure Zabuza wants you all to get the hell out of here and take over Kiri” but who knows.

Also

IMAGINE ELSA MEETING GAI.

Imagine Ino getting a puppy crush on Elsa.

IDK that’s it for now.

[gaphic]

@geeeny02 @ivehadanapophany @lastoneout

THANKS FOR ENABLING ME YALL

ok so, this isn't a criticism of the movie Raya so much as an observation of a corner disney have been steadily painted into with their most well-known IP: The Princesses.

It's pretty clear the studio has been struggling with their princesses for a while now- all of their live-action remakes have made painstaking (and painful) attempts to 'update' their female protagonists, and a lot of those changes are taking aim at the same problem: being a princess needs to like,,,, Mean something nowadays

Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Belle, Tiana, and Rapunzel all essentially become princesses as a reward for being Good. Their royalty is completely meaningless, it's just the romantic idea of 'being a princess' that little girls love.

Ariel goes from being a princess to being a princess and it means nothing, Jasmine's beef with her station in life has barely anything to do with being a princess (forced marriage isn't exactly exclusive to royalty!) and Merida just gets the exact same conflict but worse

Pocahontas stands out as the first princess to not really be a princess, but she's also the ONLY princess based on a person we objectively know existed, and thus a huge outlier. Mulan is the real change. She isn't royal at all, and I get the sense she was only included in the princess brand because... what else were they going to do with her? All their other animated leading women were united, one IP under marketing, amen. So it was either market Mulan alone, which would be strange, or sneak her in with the princesses and really push her more feminine outfits. Breathing a sigh of relief, disney went back to their usual fodder with Tiana and Rapunzel

...Then there was Frozen.

I honestly think it was a coincidence, but Frozen introduced the idea of the princess doing actual royal activities. There's a coronation, a state dinner with ambassadors, a hint of power struggle when Elsa leaves! And then the movie was a SMASH fucking hit and revitalized the hell out of disney's image.

By this time the romantic image of The Disney Princess has long lost its shine, so the mouse is RABID to recapture that success.

Moana gets an aesthetic stand-in for a coronation with the shots including her headdress, and the first act of the movie sets up that she's being groomed to take over one day. She makes executive decisions and helps solve problems, but her being a princess still doesn't really matter to the story, and while the movie was a huge hit, Princess Moana didn't quite slot into the brand like her predecessors did

Frozen 2 got weirder. More vague allusions to governing with evacuating Arendelle, then Elsa is hastily de-princessed and Anna becomes queen offscreen with NO buildup

The live-action remakes? Well. They change the characters a lot. But their relationship to royalty stays very much the same. At first. Frozen comes out in 2013, Moana 2016, in 2017 Beauty and the Beast said nothing substantive about monarchy (just like the live action Cinderella + Maleficent) and everyone on earth hated it, and in 2019? We got Girlboss Jasmine. Oh dear.

Girlboss Jasmine is a PRINCESS alright! She wants to be the sultan! She has no formal policy in mind, but she gestures at slogans like 'my people make the city beautiful' and does complex political maneuvering like... reading maps. But nobody really likes that either

Mulan 2020 basically offloads the princess angle entirely and everyone hates that too

ENTER RAYA.

Did you even notice Raya is a princess? Raya is a princess. She's like the combination of both Frozens and Moana, having the vaguest possible allusions to the responsibility of her position (through her father, NOT herself!!!) and then rushing off on an adventure where her royalty is utterly irrelevant (the movie would actually be better if Raya wasn't a princess- if she was a servant in the palace who didn't know exactly what happened and thought she'd been betrayed by her leaders. If her rival was the princess of her country and that betrayal was the source of her distrust, rather than a broken 30-minute friendship with a total stranger) and doesn't even provide any glamour or romance. And then the movie bombed.

I highly doubt disney will stop trying to do princesses because of this, but I do think they're officially out of ideas. The only way to REALLY justify a character being a princess going forward would be to incorporate it into the story (because nobody is interested in that 'princess as a reward' shit anymore) and there's just no way to do that without a lot of bad press. Cause once you acknowledge a character's responsibilities as a royal in the plot, you're kinda forced to portray it either positively or negatively. Negative depictions ain't marketable. Positive depictions would be pro-monarchist propaganda

You might say 'well they could just go the Mulan route, and use 'princess' as a figurative term' and they are sure as fuck trying to do that in some of their marketing initiatives, but it's just not hitting. Not like they want it to. You can really only play that game with literal babies, because any girl over the age of 10 has developed enough cognition to feel condescended to by the insistence that every woman who accomplishes something is a 'princess'

Committing to that direction would constitute an admission that disney doesn't know or care how to market female protagonists without slapping a crown on them and adding them to the monolith. That's bad press disney doesn't need.

im sure some people will be disappointed by this but i hate monarchy so

[americangirlstar]

american girl contemporary dolls’ animal crossing islands

bc apparently covid is now canon to the agverse you know they all got new horizons

lindsey bergman: the first contemporary doll also has THE most chaotic island. she does what she wants and nobody can stop her. she only accepts the villagers with the wildest designs, made everyone’s catchphrase either uwu speak or smth like “gay rights,” only wears the most hideous outfit combinations, and buys everything from redd no matter how fake it is. one room of her house is filled with haunted artwork, another has nothing but snapping turtles. she’s figured out how to make memes into clothing patterns and now every pathway on her island is the pogchamp face. best friends with flick. honestly she’s an icon 

kailey hopkins: spends 90% of her time swimming or fishing. only 90% because she actually takes her role as island rep seriously and she has worked very hard to get it to five-star. she does abuse her power to make a million rivers and turn her island into basically a waterpark, but that just makes it cooler. died of joy when swimming was enabled and now has two of everything you can collect in the ocean decorating her house, every room of which resembles a beach house. also collects seashells and has very pretty shell arches decorating doorways

marisol luna: she went into the game with a list of who she will and will not allow on her island and is ruthless in kicking out villagers in order to get who she wants to move in. absolute QUEEN at catching tarantulas/scorpions, goes hunting for them on islands with the insane amount of nook miles she collects by doing random quests. loves collecting emotions for her character to do and then making funny videos out it. filled out the fossils in her museum FAST and now just digs up fossils to decorate the lawn with. each room of her house is a different dance studio. 

jess mcconnell: QUEEN of fishing and bug-catching but can’t dive for SHIT. she has about three of every fossil because she can’t stand the idea of selling them. is obsessed with gathering every possible DIY recipe even if she doesn’t plan on making anything with them, she just thinks they’re neat. has a shrine on her island for redd and celeste in attempts to get them to come more often. she’s been on her island religiously every day since she got the game, it’s a little scary. thinks murder should be legal on her island 

nicki fleming: cannot chose a mean dialogue option to save her life. she can barely stand to kick out villagers she dislikes either, only does it if they ask to leave and then prays to the nintendo gods that bunnie will come visit the island. the main room of her house is reflective of her actual room, the rest of it is absolutely gorgeously decorated, stuff made to look like meadows or snowy mountains. winter is her favorite, she makes a snowboy every day no matter how many times she crashes the snowballs. LIVES for cj and flick because she always hated the idea of her fish/bugs dying for a competition. saves all her new stuff for the museum for nighttime because she feels bad waking up blathers 

mia st clair: wants to hack the game so that it’s winter all the time. soon as the winter DIYs dropped she redecorated her entire island and house to be as icy as possible. she’s basically queen elsa at this point. she’s horrible at catching items so her museum is mostly fossils, but even then sometimes she sells fossils before identifying them if she’s short on bells. she visits sable every day in hopes of making her feel happy. she has pretty much every possible clothing wand so that she can carry around one to match each outfit. one time her brothers went on to try and fuck with her island and we don’t speak of what happened following that. fear her 

chrissa maxwell: shares an island with gwen and sonali. she’s the one in charge so she’s working very hard to make it a 5-star island so isabelle will stop bugging her about it. also very into DIY and likes to decorate the island with things she’s built. favorite seasonal event was the wedding anniversary one, she can’t get enough of redesigning and taking photos of those funky lil alpacas. plus, she got a lot of neat stuff out of it. goes to the able sisters every day to see what kinds of new outfits they have, and yet somehow cannot make a good fashion decision to save her life. obsessed with swimming and now leaves all other museum donations to her girlfriends so she can spend all her free time looking for crabs 

gwen thompson: somehow absolutely brutal. will send clashing-colored toilets in the mail to villagers she doesn’t like to fuck with their home design and hit them with butterfly nets. she’s tried to hit them with axes as well. shakes trees constantly in an effort to catch wasps and has not gotten stung once because she’s that quick with a net. her favorite character is celeste and chrissa and sonali have barely any star stuff because whenever celeste is on gwen is hogging the switch. changes her characters’ hairstyle, like, every five minutes. when she sends her friends gifts the letters will say something like “fuck u, love u <3″ it’s so wildly different than how she normally acts in public that it’s a little scary 

sonali matthews: even worse than gwen. has tried to murder villagers she dislikes before. sometimes fucks with parts of the island just to see how people react. would sell her soul to redd just to piss off tom nook. the only thing she takes seriously is gardening, she has a fenced-off area where she breeds flowers and woe befall anyone who messes it up. her house is a hoarder’s nightmare and chrissa and gwen have been begging her to let them redesign it but she refuses. screenshots the worst parts of their island and posts them on twitter with the dreamcode so people can see the graveyard she made to intimidate rodney 

lanie holland: still lives in a tent because she thinks it’s cool, refuses to pay up to nook so she doesn’t have to get a house. somehow has the cutest outfits of everyone. her island design is to die for, half the island is full of flowers arranged in rainbow-order and the other half looks like a faerie forest. has filled out her museum’s bug collection and has half the fossils but keeps forgetting to go fishing. her little sister emily joined her island and keeps trying to get lanie to upgrade to a house or expand other stores but lanie refuses, it’ll mess with the aesthetic. emily basically has a huge mansion in the corner of the island while everything else is practically a glorified campsite. leif is lanie’s favorite and she only collects bells in order to buy things from him 

kanani akina: the most beautiful island design you’ve ever seen. she also takes the best screencaps and posts them just so her friends know what she’s up to but becomes internet famous for how gorgeous everything is. the best designs, very diverse plants, all the houses are arranged in an aesthetically pleasing way. kanani’s house is on the beach so she can easily swim, fish and collect shells, but the inside is the best part. five of the six rooms are just as beautiful as you’d expect, with soft pastel aesthetics and quiet music playing. then her basement is referred to as the “special room” which holds nothing but several candles in a summoning circle and a single tarantula figure in the center. there’s a skeleton in the corner. whenever anyone asks about it she pretends she doesn’t know what they’re talking about. it’s the funniest thing 

mckenna brooks: disastrous. horrible at paying nook back and keeps getting angry letters from the happy home academy. her goal is to find any loopholes in the game and exploit them, no matter that the game is super simple and thus “cheats” aren’t very useful. she found out about island star ratings and now is trying in vain to get a five-star but she can’t get above a three. has been stung by wasps about a million times while shaking trees to try and find loose bells. one time she shook a tree and a toilet fell out and it now has a dedicated podium on her island, and whenever anyone asks she simply tells them that the toilet is the god of the island. hasn’t been able to keep a villager for longer than a few weeks, and also somehow got raymond on accident. still having the time of her life

saige copeland: spends far too much time designing customs and far too little removing weeds. wants to have flowers in rainbow order like lanie but keeps accidentally picking them. has absolutely no rush to do anything, lived in a tent for like three months because she forgot she could pay off loans. only accepts peppy or normal villagers so her island is pretty much all-girl and she refers to it as the amazon island; this is, however, because somehow no horses have shown up on her island yet even though she very much wants them to. likes to dream and go to random islands to get inspiration. she has a room in her house full of rainbow eels because she thinks they’re pretty 

isabelle palmer: will not stop buying things from the able sisters. she visits every day, pretty much buys one of everything, and then mixes and matches costumes instead of fixing her island. lives for the days when label visits because she takes her requests very seriously and comes back in outfits that slay™. almost exclusively gives clothing gifts to her villagers so that they have a better fashion sense. has a lot of flowers but can’t figure out how to get them to mix. the bug section of her museum has butterflies and nothing else simply because she only thinks to try and catch butterflies. hits rocks every day to try and find the daily Money Rock™. keeps trying to get raymond but her sister won’t let her pay anyone actual money for him 

grace thomas: when she visits the nook store she will solely speak to tommy. constantly checking the wiki to find out which DIYs sell well, and thus only collects shells in order to make shell arches to turn around and sell back. insanely good with bells and with figuring out how to make her island palatable, got a five-star fast. the main room of her house is decorated like a restaurant, with two different kitchen rooms and the upstairs decorated to look very french. she made everyone’s catchphrases french, too. is the only person in the world upset you can no longer eat the fish. goes swimming every day just so she can find a scallop and talk to pascal, she thinks he’s cool 

lea clark: there are a lot of plants here. just. far too many plants. of every color too! she’s very proud of it. she has a short attention span though so there’s like fifty different unfinished projects. she is best friends with like three villagers and forgets the names of the rest, but one time she accidentally hit a villager with a butterfly net and cried for an hour. only ever dresses in summer clothes and is awful at saving money so she only has like eight bells at a time. seasonal events are her absolute jam though, she can’t get enough of them. would die for leif. almost got blocked by the animal crossing twitter for constantly begging them to give her the froggy chair (thanks @lesbianleaclark!) 

gabriela mcbride: her island is more important than her social life. she is very serious about making it a functioning island, and is obsessed mainly with filling out her museum. every time she catches a sea bass instead of something new she lets out a series of swears not appropriate for a child audience. she is best friends with all of her villagers and cries whenever one of them thinks about leaving. her favorite kk slider song changes by day and she’ll switch the music around everywhere whenever she feels like it. visits other islands in order to gather materials to sell in order to make her house bigger; she’s got a dance room, a poetry corner, a student council room, and the main room looks like the liberty arts center. whenever anyone (who’s not redd) visits her island she cries and tries to figure out how to give them things for free because she loves them so much. whenever redd comes by without genuine art she tries to hack into the game in order to skin him alive

tenney grant: obsessed with getting every kk slider song. every time he shows up to the island she pulls up the list of available songs and picks one she doesn’t have yet to request. she wants to get a different song playing in every area of the island and every room of every house. shares an island with logan, jaya and holliday but she’s in charge, which sucks because holliday is way better at doing island management. she’ll text holliday with what isabelle wants her to do and then go DIY a guitar. she set up a stage area near the beach so they can give concerts for the villagers and honestly it looks gorgeous. she named her island “nashville” but makes no attempt to actually make it look like tennessee. she released her dream code on her twitter and because she’s technically a celebrity people keep coming by and asking her why everything on the island looks good except logan’s house and she’s like “ask logan idk” 

logan everett: speaking of which, yeah, logan’s house is a disaster. he cares naught for decorating his place and fills it with random things he thinks are “cool.” likes to run through flowers until they explode. the best diver on the island, though, and is responsible for that area of the museum, while tenney gets fishing, jaya gets bugs, and holliday gets fossils. they all work together to buy everything from redd whether it’s real or not because they think the art is pretty, they find out whether or not it’s real after taking it to blathers. he will place random toilets in the middle of the island and wait for someone else to find it, they have no idea he’s the one doing it and it’s driving them crazy. it’s also the funniest thing he’s ever done and he’s very proud of it. whenever kk shows up he requests a song tenney doesn’t have yet and leaves it outside her door. she didn’t ask him to do this he’s just like that 

z yang: the god of all things video games. she’s a streamer now and while she mostly streams mario, zelda or sonic games, on holidays she’ll stream her island and take suggestions for what she should do to it. due to this, her island can be a mess at times, but she somehow keeps getting good ratings. every time there’s an update she loads up a report of what’s new so she can be one of the first to try it out. she named her island something like “zworld” and refuses to change it. every room of her house is a different movie set, and she put cameras everywhere on the island “so the villagers don’t get any ideas.” somehow keeps getting rare villagers on the first try and won’t let them leave 

luciana vega: would die for celeste. her island is incredibly space-themed and well cared-for, because this game soothes her anxiety so she’s on it 24/7. her town flag is an incredibly accurate constellation. she fills out her museum specifically cause it’s run by celeste’s brother and she’d do anything for that owl; her parents got her a celeste plush for her birthday and now she won’t let go of it. she schedules her life around animal crossing updates. her favorite thing to do is go swimming at night and just look at the animation on the waves under the stars. also wisp’s best friend. won’t accept a villager unless they look like they could potentially be an alien, which means she has the coolest villager collection of everyone 

blaire wilson: due to her family’s experience running an inn she knows exactly how to run a village. her island’s almost boring in how well it’s designed and run, but she always has something extra to keep interest, like an island in the middle that’s filled with exotic flowers. went to the wedding picture event every day in order to get every piece of furniture she could and now has a “wedding area” of her island that nobody uses but is great for photos. isabelle is her favorite character and she will do anything for her. somehow able to make the funniest animal crossing memes in the world. once caught a coelacanth without expecting it and screamed and dropped her switch 

joss kendrick: the BEST fisher. has never lost a fish once, nobody knows how she does it. best friends with cj and takes his seasports challenges way too seriously. wishes they were able to surf but swimming is good, too, though sometimes she’ll spend upwards of ten minutes chasing a particularly stubborn crab. she is incredibly patient at terraforming and uses this skill for evil, as every time her cheer squad comes to visit her island she has completely changed it around and then has them all play hide-and-seek. nobody knows how to find anything. the only consistent thing is that the beach will be the coolest-looking beach in the whole game. she named her island “lesbos” and accepts villagers that “pass the gay vibe check.” nobody is sure what the gay vibe check is 

kira bailey: is horrible at saving bells or getting a good rating on her island but she doesn’t care because her main focus is DIYing her own decor to make her island look like her aunts’ conservatory. as such, will only accept animals that could potentially live there, such as koalas or kangaroos. she’s bad at figuring out where to put houses and buildings so her island’s a mess to navigate, however she knows the routes like the back of her hand and gets confused when people ask her how the hell she finds anything. for some reason absolutely terrified of wisp and refuses to wander her island at night in case they show up 

[kaibutsushidousha]

What do you think of Karna, Scathach and Arash?

I can tell you really like the strong greater mythological heroes. Anyways here it goes.

Karna is a character I was introduced to through /Apocrypha and E Pluribus Unum, so I initially found him really boring. His whole deal is that he can see through people’s hearts and intents without lies, but this trait leaves him too empathetic to hold any moral standards. He sees absolutely anyone as acceptable. This combined with the traditional warrior values of loyalty enable him to be easily thrown into the role good guy on the villain’s side in every story he appeared, or at least that’s what I thought.

He sees through the villain and goes “I understand your motives. That’s respectable. I’ll help you.”, then he meets the heroes and goes “I understand your motives. That’s respectable, but sorry, I already sworn my loyalty to that other guy first. Can’t change sides just because.” Edison’s Karna and Amakusa’s Karna were really hard to engage with because he was just a mega powerful tool with no relevant opinions.

What made me open my eyes to Karna’s charms was, of course, playing CCC. Karna is a character very carefully designed specifically to show off the best in Jinako’s character, and Jinako is a character very carefully designed specifically to show off the best in Karna’s. That’s what makes them my favorite Master-Servant pair nowadays, but it’s also what made Karna so hard to use without her.

Due to his upbringing, Karna is a helpless believer of the notion that all lives have different values, but due to his ability to empathize with literally everyone, he claims that lacks the talent to appraise people, as he ends up seeing everyone as having the same value even though he “knows” this is “not true”. With Jinako, instead of making him a mindless villain supporter, this trait is used to portray Karna as the person who value and validates a person who never felt valid in her life, but without turning it into an otaku power fantasy because Jinako is a side character and Karna’s brutal honesty means Jinako is still not allowed to ignore her flaws and devolve even further into her NEET persona.

CCC Karna’s takes what made him uninteresting in his other two major stories and twists into a beautiful and powerful message about how everyone has a place in the world no matter how useless they feel, which ties amazingly into Yuga Kshehtra’s themes later on. Yuga Kshehtra is all about Altjuna trying to eliminate everything that’s flawed, until the heroes defeat him by exploiting their own flaws, creating tactics that no unflawed being could accomplish. Karna left in CCC saying that even if Jinako really was nobody, there’s still someone out there waiting for, and those words got the perfect pay-off in Jinako’s role in the Divine Skyrock operation.

I guess I also have to acknowledge that his Christmas was fun, but Karna was always good for comedy. It’s only in his serious scenes that he struggles a bit when he’s not paired with Jinako.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scathach is one character I absolutely loved from the superficial traits on her introduction. Her design is still one of the most gorgeous Fate/ has ever produced (though all Koyama designs generally tend to be), the concept of her having evolved so much that she became immortal and decided to raise her own killer is really metal, and her battle animations with multiple Gae Bolgs gave me chills when I first saw them. I honestly believed for a long time that Scathach would be my favorite FGO character.

However, to this day, Scathach’s only major story appearance was in E Pluribus Unum, where all she really does is making a fool of herself in her fight against Cú Alter. Her entire character concept is so full of promise, and now 5 years later she still hasn’t managed to deliver in any of it. We have yet to see Scathach being any impressive, either as warrior or as a mentor.

A huge aggravating factor to the Scathach problem is Skadi existing. Skadi gets an amazing and fascinating star role as a Lostbelt King, being a seemingly almighty anti-violence presence that serves as much of an obstacle to Ophelia as she is an obstacle to Chaldea, and a sympathetic figure struggling to preserve a doomed world; and outside of her Lostbelt, she still gets to be fun and useful in many other ways. I have absolutely no complaints about Skadi, but her Scathach does feel like the writers completely gave on the original and felt like the only way to salvage Scathach was turning her into a completely different character.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fate/ as whole is very concerned with the question of what is a hero, in its most idealized form, and I personally believe Arash’s character is their most complete and concise answer at the moment. Arash is entirely selfless, but in a lively way that inspires individuality. Helpful and empathetic, but never becoming a crutch to anyone. Friendly, but always lonesome. Willing and ready to sacrifice himself to save people and end conflicts, but strongly unaccepting of other people sacrificing themselves.

Arash is, above all else, someone who understands people and understands sacrifice. Since self-sacrifice is his trump card, he’s always conscious of when sacrifice is meaningful and when it isn’t. It helps a lot that his Clairvoyance is so high ranked that he can see the entire city of Tokyo, and openly read anyone he faces. Arash shines the brightest in his interactions with Elsa, Bedivere, and Mordred, as they’re all hiding a lot of trauma (some a lot more subtly than others), and trying to use the concept of “sacrificing themselves to do good” as an excuse to kill themselves. That doesn’t work because Arash can easily see through them, and can’t stand this attitude. Arash will inevitably scold them on it, and eventually demonstrate what a meaningful sacrifice really is.

[shireness-says]

Ok, but consider this:

Modern AU Captain Book who went on three dates and remain amicable exes

Because every time I see those gifs from season 2 when they’re on the Jolly, or from 3b when they’re holding down the pawnshop together, I’m reminded that there was definitely chemistry. Also, @welllpthisishappening is and enabler.

Killian’s sister-in-law, Elsa, sets them up on a blind date. Elsa knows Belle from book club.

Killian is less than enthusiastic, but Elsa is stubborn and impossible to say no to. So he goes.

And the date is... fine. They actually get along really well, the conversation is nice.

Belle isn’t, like, smitten, but it’s hard to find a man who’s willing to get into debates about Austen, and the kiss goodnight was nice enough, so she’s willing to see how this plays out.

Killian just doesn’t have any reason to back out and does not relish the idea of telling Elsa it didn’t work for no good reason

Anyways. There’s a second date. And a third.

And like... there’s stereotypical expectations of what happens on/after a third date. Which is where the problem comes in.

Because both of them realize that they really do like each other, but like... that’s it. It is very platonic. There is absolutely no desire on either side to see the other one naked. There is less than zero sexual tension. 

So Belle takes the plunge and is like look, I like you, but this isn’t going to work. Friends instead? Cool, see you for coffee next week. 

And they actually do stay friends! Like, they’re both interesting people who enjoy each other’s company. Movie nights and long talks about books over tea ensue.

But, as Killian’s friend, Belle really wants to see him meet someone. Like he doesn’t already have one woman in his life pulling this setup nonsense.

Some of these dates are better than others.

Neither he nor Ariel want to be there, especially when their waiter catches her eye, but she’s nice. It’s not unpleasant.

He actually enjoys his date with Tink, but she’s not nearly as impressed and there’s no second date. Killian honestly isn’t that disappointed.

At one point, Belle tries to set him up with Anna, and Killian has to draw a line.

“Absolutely not. That’s my sister-in-law.”

Actually, the best date might be the fiasco with Mulan.

Who shows up and immediately says “Look, I’m only here because I like Belle. Like, in a really different way than you do.”

“Fair enough. You still want to split an appetizer sampler, though? I’ve got my eye on the potato skins and spinach artichoke dip.”

Not bad, all things considered.

But! One day, this beautiful blonde walks into his bar.

Her name’s Emma. She’s the new deputy. 

Killian is Smitten. 

He’s not subtle about it either. Like, he’s going to meet Belle for lunch one day and runs into Emma on the way and by the time Belle catches up with him he’s blushing and stammering and it’s just so endearingly obvious. 

But he’s not making a move. What if Emma doesn’t feel the same way? He couldn’t possibly bear it. 

So, Belle obviously starts trying to set Killian up with Emma. Without telling him that Emma is the lady she’s setting him up with. 

So Killian is resisting this latest set-up all the way, because why would he want a set-up when he’s already pining for Emma?

(As Laura pointed out: he just really wants to make out with Emma, ok)

But he eventually caves because Belle is Very Persistent and there reaches a point where objecting is useless. 

But then he shows up at the restaurant and... it’s Emma!

He’s delighted. She’s actually happy too - it’s really cute when he gets flustered, after all. 

Date commences. Multiple dates. The aforementioned making out. 

Belle is very smug that she actually got the two of them to pull it together and get together. 

She’s obviously one of the groomsmen (groomswomen?) at the eventual wedding. Mulan is her date. Everyone lives happily ever after. 

Especially Killian and Emma. Finally, a set-up that actually worked!

[leliesblou]

I saw someone's post about being upset about Anna & Elsa's seperation at the end of Frozen 2, and I have some Thoughts so strap in

At the start of the movie, Anna and Elsa were holding each other back. In the beginning, Anna is so preoccupied with Elsa's wellbeing that she misses oppertunities for her own life to move forward. This can be can be seen in the way she doesn't notice Kristoff's proposal attempts, as well as the way that she keeps leaving him behind to go after Elsa. She is averse to change in the dynamics of all her relationships.

Meanwhile, Elsa's yearning for more, like she sings in Into the Unknown, but she is too afraid to pursue it because she doesn't want to cause things to change. I think this concern mainly has to do with Anna. Elsa is finally in the position to make up for all the years they have spent apart, and Anna really wants to take care of her (see Frozen Fever short). Elsa doesn't want to deny her that. But if you think about it, she must have felt pretty trapped (after running away and being completely independent and free of responsibilities in the first movie, she had to take all her responsibilities as queen back).

The moment everything starts happening, Elsa is rearing and ready to go. Alone. Anna insists on trying to protect her, even though Elsa is very capable. Eventually, Elsa does what she needs to do to move forward. And even though she ends up frozen, it doesn't feel as if the narrative is punishing her for pushing Anna away. Instead, it was important for it to happen, or Elsa would never have found the truth which enabled Anna to save the day (read this great post by @vexed-to-nightmare-from-chaos about that). Elsa learns who she really is, which is what she's always wanted.

-

There's an interesting parallel between Kristoff and Anna. Kristoff calls Anna his northern star and says he is lost without her after she abandons him, while Anna sings that she does not know what to do now that Elsa isn't there anymore. But then Anna finds the internal strenght herself. She just does "the next right thing", even though it requires her to destroy every bit of the life she's known. She comes into her own right completely and shows that she is courageous enough to do the right thing in spite of the devastating consequences.

Elsa and Anna are reunited, and it's great. But they are changed. Anna doesn't need to take care of Elsa to have a sense of purpose anymore, and she can finally move forward. She accepts Kristoff's proposal. And Elsa finally knows who she is. She doesn't need to cling to her old life in Arendelle anymore, and the enchanted forrest is obviously where the Fifth Spirit belongs.

It's bittersweet that they live so far apart in the end of the movie (even though they are only the equivalent of a text apart). But they have had a few years of living together like a normal family, and now it was necessary for them to move apart to grow.

This is a lovely message we don't see enough. Siblings and friends grow up and move apart. Sometimes, you need space, even from your loved ones, to be able to grow. Sometimes this changes your relationships forever. But, and this is the beauty of it: For the people who really matter, love is not fragile.

[mccarricks]

( brittany o’grady / demi woman ) WESLEY McCARRICK is 23 years old and is a SENIOR at thales university. SHE is majoring in FILM and is known for being THE MAVERICK as THEY can be HUMOROUS and OPEN-MINDED as well as DITZY and IMPULSIVE. every time i see HER/THEM, THEY remind me of PURPLE SKY IN THE DESERT, SKATING AS FAST AS YOU CAN TO FEEL THE WIND ON YOU, A JOKE TOLD WITH A TOOTHY GRIN.

hero’s back w character no. 2 and yet......

full name: wesley ‘wes’ elaine mccarrick

birthdate: february 2, 1997

age: 23

gender: demi woman

pronouns: she/her/they/them

zodiac: aquarius

nationality: american

ethnicity: black (louisiana creole) and white (irish)

hometown: santa fe, nm

languages: english, intermediate spanish

family:

theodore mccarrick, father

elaine barlow, mother

ruby mccarrick, older brother

delphine mccarrick, older sister

sherri barlow, maternal grandmother

many cousins

orientation: bisexual biromantic, pref. towards women/nb people but will date men

religion: agnostic

height: 5 ft 4 in

distinguishing features: eyebrows, hair, lips

character inspo: ilana wexler (broad city), harley quinn (dc comics), phoebe buffay (friends), prob more

𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃

TRIGGERS: divorce, mentions of crime, drug and alcohol use

the youngest child of ted and elaine mccarrick, wes was a kid who is full of life. she’s the kind of kid who did things to make you smile, and it usually worked. she was warm and inviting, a little naive, but she had a strong support system.

her parents divorce when she’s six, she doesn’t quite understand it but her dad moves out, and her grandma and multiple cousins move in. it’s a lively household, between her mom, who works as a nurse, and her siblings, and her cousins, it was never really quiet and there was never a lot of room.

despite the split, her parents maintain that their children have a relationship with both of them, and truthfully, wes is a daddy’s girl. she and her dad were cut from the same cloth, happy go lucky, fun loving, a bit silly, he’s the one who introduces her to movies. it’s their thing, watching and critiquing them together, and it’s not whatever is in theatres either. they went for all times of filmmaking, new wave, surrealist, and more.

it really stuck with wes, who herself had begun making movies, mostly horror/fantasy/scifi stuff with her friends-- she writes and directs and occasionally, she’ll don a costume and star in them. they’re silly little things, but her family always sat down for her “premieres.”

her formative years are marked with plenty of things, sports, deaths of distant family members, a cousin or two who gets caught in the wrong crowd and ends up in jail, and throughout this, wes remains a rock for her family.

she’s in high school, and she gets into the eclectic crowd, the outcasts, the weirdos, the ones who smoked under the bridge, and partied out in an abandoned trailer near the desert. these freaks were her freaks. they accepted her with open arms, as she them.  

she chooses thales because she always wants to see the east coast, and frankly, as much as she loves her family, she wants to be free of them. and they have a fantastic film program. so!

she meets steven in their first film class together, and they’re fast friends, despite her usual weariness of YET another film bro, steven proves to be a good egg. so she thinks. she finds out through him talking that he might not be the most faithful to his girlfriend, and as much as she doesn’t like meddling, she thinks it’s only right to let clarissa, who she doesn’t really know well, know. however, before there’s a chance, everything happens-- now she’s stuck wondering if she should reveal the truth, or let sleeping dogs lie.

nana is different, nana and her dated her sophomore year, nana’s freshman year. it wasn’t serious. but they were fond of each other. they eventually break up, but they stay friendly, waving to each other in the halls, chatting at parties.

both the disappearance and the murder is weird for wes, who by all accounts, isn’t great at dealing with bad shit. she prefers to laugh about things. laugh about everything. because if she doesn’t laugh, she’ll cry.

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

wes is a mess, a free-spirit, a walking contradiction. she’s very independent minded, the kind of person who does things without thinking so much about the consequences, this leads her into trouble sometimes. like nicking something from a convenience store, or stealing a stop sign as a prank. she’s definitely the kind to goof off and not exactly dedicate her full attention to something. and while she’s in genuinely good spirits on most occasions, she has a staunch ‘no asshole’ policy. the type to defend the underdogs, and go after bullies. she’ll punch you with a smile on her face, and yet it ends up being more unnerving than you realize. she’s a bit of a ditz, as well, never the best at school, but can talk your ear off about the going ons of the world. she’s a lovable dumbass, for sure, and loyal to a tee once you get her as a friend.

𝐓𝐈𝐃𝐁𝐈𝐓𝐒

horror movie fan! her favorites are some of the oldies, like dracula and  the bride of frankenstein! and some new ones! big fan of jordan peele’s work, as well as ari aster’s! but mostly really advocates for women directors and directors of color!

also does roller derby! she picked this up her first year at thales and fell in love with it, i can’t think of a name for her yet, but she’s a blocker, won’t hesitate to elbow some dick at the bar

kinda a tomboy? she’s always been! she’s rough and tumble and not afraid to get down and dirty with someone, i.e. will join those football games on the quad or crawl through the mud for a scene to shoot

doesn’t know if she wants to be a director/writer or a cinematographer honestly.... she loves the technical aspects of film as much as the making the stories

definition of a bruh girl, says it a whole lot, but also just if you tell her you love her, she’ll just roll her eyes and be like you’re an idiot (which means she loves you too) she’ll be affectionate if she’s close to you

kinda a wh*re oops....... texts multiple girls at a time and doesn’t want to hurt any of their feelings she doesn’t know how she keeps ending up in these situations... also a bisexual disaster

a stoner as well..... always has a massive jar of weed

unclear whether she lives on campus or off campus but if she does live off campus she has a pet turtle named elsa lanchester after the bride of frankenstein actress

a drummer! she’s in a band (name tbd) she started drumming at a young age and found it was a good way to manage her aggression

doesn’t really do well with emotions, so she’ll either be like there, there, or try to make jokes.... she really said kids can you lighten up

walking meme... such a walking meme... doesn’t know so many things she’s like a cute puppy with no thoughts head empty but she’s so fun to be around

life of the party.... nana she came fr ur spot and she took it and she’s not sorry but she does miss u a lot

doesn’t rly feel like she’s allowed to be upset anyways bc some people have it...... way worse.... can u say Imposter syndrome

kind of an enabler...... will be that person to push u to try things but not in a peer pressurey way, more like if u are unsure abt sending a text she says do it

wears fun earrings and socks! think lollipops or gummy bears or found objects like she collects that shit it’s her lifeline

boxes! she’s been boxing since she was abt 12, courtesy of her older brother (who is now a doctor thx ruby) and it’s a good way to exercise and release stress

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

best friend -- two of a feather, cut from the same cloth, or complete opposites it doesnt matter to her (the abbi to her ilana)

roller derby friends -- she’s p close to the team, margs on her

makeup artist pal -- i think it would be neat fr someone to try and teach her makeup whether its normal or sfx bc she wants to look like a monster or smthn

she’s gullible, u take advantage of that -- u just tell her lies p much and she’s like yeah ok that sounds right

party friends

classmates

fwbs (f/m/nb) -- tbh she might have one or two of these but they literally are the def of pals who bone sometimes... like v good abt being like you good? u dont want more? cool me too

exes (f/m/nb) -- mostly dated women or nb people but def cld have had a guy

she smokes you out -- p much the only reason u hang out w her is bc she has good weed

someone she’s fought -- like fully decked in the face, prob said something that rubbed her the wrong way and it just devolved from there

people who dislike her -- she could definitely be seen as annoying bc shes loud and dorky and funny so ??

breaks someone out of their shell -- p self explanatory, pushes them to have fun, w everything happening shes rly like lifes too short to not take the opportunities around u

cousins! probably on her dad’s side! i figure she has some east coast fam 

anything? truly?

[frankie-catfish-morales]

Okay. My issues & fave things for Frozen 2 - Masterpost.

Spoilers and negativity beyond the cut. But also positivity! Cause I did like some things.

- The Negatives - 

1. I have serious qualms about the notion that Elsa doesn’t feel like she “belongs” in Arendelle. With her sister. And the family they built. The reason for this is simple. Every single piece of canon that has ever been produced by this franchise has said otherwise. They were separated 10 years (ish). They never wanted to be apart again. As recently as TWO YEARS ago (probably not that long in the movie timeline) Disney produced a short emphasizing their built family, and how home is wherever Anna is. Olaf gets lost in the woods, the wilderness, and they have to go find him because they all belong together. Elsa shows literally no interest in the woods nor being in the wilderness. She then proceeds to sing “When We’re Together” with Anna, and sings this TO Anna:

It frankly feels to me like they forgot what this franchise was all about and the foundations that they have been building it on. Elsa and Anna. Together. The way they have written these characters, to me, is not convincing that they would EVER wish to separate. 

You can argue to me that “Elsa isn’t that far away”. Yes, that is true. She could ice luge down the hill and see Anna and the fam. But you know what else wasn’t that far away? Elsa’s room. Separate is separate. Living with someone with no shut doors and not living with someone but visiting sometimes is not the same. And the characters have stated several times across four releases of visual media and COUNTLESS Disney produced merch that they do not wish to separate. Ever. It’s not just how it has been written.

Now,  I can understand the idea that they were trying to communicate that Elsa was feeling unfulfilled, but it is 100% contradictory with every other piece of literature about this story they have put out, so to me, it made no sense character arc wise. It  was too sudden for it to come up right now, rushed in an opening song for the final movie. Olaf’s Frozen Adventure didn’t come out that long ago, so to me this feels like a complete 180. 

Perhaps what they were trying to say in this movie is that if Elsa didn’t leave, Anna would never allow herself to have a fucking life. You can see this possibly in the scene where Anna leaves with Kristoff without saying anything, and trying to insist on coming with Elsa even if it’s pretty clear she would be in serious danger. You can also see this a bit in the lyrics to “The Next Right Thing”:

“I follow you around I always have But you've gone to a place I cannot find”

“I don't know anymore what is true I can't find my direction, I'm all alone The only star that guided me was you How to rise from the floor When it's not you I'm rising for?” 

Anna does put Elsa before anyone and anything else, even herself. But if THAT is what they are trying to say, they are basically saying Anna and Elsa’s relationship is and has been toxic, or having toxic qualities, and that’s really saying fucked up shit about the whole franchise. Especially because there are so many fans out there who really connected with that aspect of Frozen.

2. I am, quite frankly, really TIRED of the trope that powerful magical women *can’t* be queens. Because they don’t “belong”, because they are “out of touch”, because they need to leave, they need to die (*cough* Daenerys Targaryen), or that they were “mad” or not good for society. That their strength is too much for them to be in society or be a queen. I think it’s quite empowering that Elsa feels free, but I do not like the concept that she couldn’t feel free and be a good queen. That she abdicated and basically rolled out, extremely rushed and in a moment where a lot was already happening. It’s like her being queen in the first place wasn’t even important. And no, she is NOT queen of the Northumbra (I will go into this assertion in my next bulletpoint).  You aren't just automatically queen of something when you aren't coronated or acknowledged by who you are ruling as such in any fashion.  I highly doubt the Native population would make some white girl they just met their queen. Elsa stepped down, and she is now a liaison between the enchanted forest and Arendelle. She’s an ambassador, and Anna is now Queen. Which, if we took the implications out of it, would be fine. I don’t dislike Anna. She’s grown so much, she’d be a wonderful queen. I just think Elsa should still be queen. Elsa can still be a liaison between the realms. Who better to be queen than a woman who is a liaison and has the interests of Arendelle, the Enchanted Forest, and the elements? You can tell me “She didn’t want to be Queen!” as much as you want, but lets get really into the facts here. She suddenly “didn’t want to be queen” because she was written that way. It could have been written differently and would have been in character.

It bothered me so much that Disney Parks thought it was a good idea for the face characters in the parks to come out in the final outfits literally ONE DAY before the movie came out. I had this plot aspect spoiled to me (and I’m not in the spoiler culture but that was a really big plot point to spoil so lets get real here, I’m allowed to be upset) because people posted pictures of Anna in her crown with the tags # Queen Anna, before the movie was even released. I immediately didn’t like it, but I wanted to try and stay positive that it would be convincing, but it honestly just continued to rub me wrong. It feels like they were trying to get cheap “YAS KWEEN” moments for both the Elsa fandom and the Anna fandom, and I felt like it was empty and unnecessary. Anna is a badass regardless. She didn’t need that for a “YAS KWEEN” moment. She has quite a few incredible, powerful, and strong AF moments. I  love her without that.

3. I mentioned in point 2 that “Elsa is not queen of the Northumbra.” The reason I mentioned that is because a friend of mine thought that and was confused. Which brings me to my 3rd point. The mythology and plot that they constructed for this movie was extremely confusing, didn’t explain enough, and had too many plot-holes. That friend and a few of the people she saw the movie with thought Queen Iduna was Queen of the Northumbra. She wasn’t. Another thought she had wind powers. She doesn’t. She was just playing in the wind elemental when Agnarr saw her.

Some more questions:

Did literally none of the Northumbra know their chief was murdered?! Why wasn’t that ever brought up if they did now, and if they didn’t, why didn’t they remember? 

How did the kingdom of Arendelle not realize what sea Queen Iduna and King Agnarr were sailing to? Why would this have never come up before? Oh, Anna and Elsa, your parents were on the way to Rapunzel’s wedding or Tarzan world, but then turned around and set sail on this completely separate, very dangerous sea and we never told you. This, to me, is why the movie was poorly written, no one has any fucking idea what actually happened in some scenes.

4. Speaking of Queen Iduna, if she is Northumbra, and she is used to being around elemental magic ALL THE TIME, why did she react to Elsa’s powers at first the way she did? Why did she interpret the troll’s advice the way she did? WHy did she support and enable Elsa’s father shutting her up and away when she know’s first hand the elementals were good and what those powers could do? 

And like the whole movie was supposed to be why Elsa had magic and I still have no idea. That was not explained well. She's the 5th element? Ice isn't an element. Ice is water. If she’s an element, is she going to die? Or when Anna dies is she going to live forever as an elemental-human hybrid wandering the woods sobbing like Arwen Undomiel was cautioned of? Is it was because her mom saved her dad, linking the two nations? Her good deed gave her power? Like Harry Potter? Okay, but why ice specifically. Anna said that Elsa was “the last piece”. But of what? Of the elements? Again, ice isn’t an element. Ice is water. Water was covered. Was it because she had to right the wrong of the grandfather building the dam and killing the chief of Northumbra? But Anna destroyed the dam with the elementals. Was it so she could find out the truth about what happened? She could have done that without ice powers. Why was it ice? What was the significance of the cave Alhalla (Alhambra?)? Why could she only find out the answers there? Why are we supposed to believe Elsa wants to routinely hang out in a secluded ice cave that is a huge downgrade from her awesome ice castle instead of being with her sister? Is it cause her mother is there? Who is family? So why can’t she lie with Anna, her other family, and visit the cave when she wishes?

The concept of elements and Elsa having some sort of relationship to it, the IDEA is so good, I just was seriously disappointed in how it was executed. I think the only explanation we have here is: “the spirits gave her her powers to unite everyone." And that wasn’t enough for me. WHY ICE THO. 5. I did not, at all, in any way, like when Elsa saw that memory of her singing “Let It Go” and was like, embarrassed of it? Like, “Oh my godddd I did that, how EMBARRASSING....”......That moment means so much to a lot of people, and I felt like that was really OOC and kinda disrespectful. That song is an anthem for people with mental issues and people in the LGBTQ community and it just felt wrong to me. Did NOT like that.

6. I really really wish that Anna x Kristoff AND Anna x Elsa had a longer duet than what was in “Some Things Never Change” and the lullaby reprise. Their voices together are BEAUTIFUL. I think it a missed opportunity, especially when reunited with Elsa and Kristoff. Anna could have had a brief duet with Elsa, and then with Kristoff when he proposes, and then they all sing together for a finale into Anna’s coronation. I am aware there is a duet with Anna and Kristoff in the Delue edition but the version is pretty rough and, it didn’t make it into the film so I’m not counting it.

- The Positives - 

1. The character development. I must confess that I was not a Frozen fan when it first came out. I think I saw it, wasn’t too impressed, then went to Walt Disney World in December 2014, became so over-saturated with Frozen fever literally taking over EVERYTHING, that I became annoyed and resistant. I did re-watch it several times months later to try and get back on board, but I always felt like the plot in the middle was weak, meandered with no purpose, and the whole “Anna wasn’t saved by a man” (which she was. She wouldn’t have gotten to Elsa at all without Kristoff. She would have died in the snow) was less powerful because everyone was acting like Brave didn’t happen. Like it was the first movie to have someone saved by true love through someone other than a love interest. But I’m not re-visiting that shit, I just wanna enjoy Frozen for what it is and gave me positively, which is what I’m gonna do with Frozen 2 when I cathartically post this. The reason I’m going into this is because, I wasn’t expecting strong writing with the plot of Frozen 2, because of the precedent set. But I was SO excited, so HYPE, I literally went day after opening. One thing  I WAS expecting the themes to remain true to the franchise, but we won’t discuss that again. I grew to love Elsa deeply through my own struggle with mental illness (anxiety, depression, adhd). Apparently I have a lot in common with her too. Consuming her in other forms (Frozen on Broadway, Once Upon a Time, meeting her in the Parks) deepened her character and made her more understandable. And Anna. OOF. Was not a fan at all. But I LOVE her now too.  And in this movie. WOW. They were so amazing and rich, and brave, badass, strong, flawed, relatable, and the GROWTH. The way they reacted to things, even if I didn’t like most plot points, was done so well. It really felt like them even though a huge growth jump happened. I could see how they got from A to B. The character writing (other than the things mentioned earlier) was very strong and I’m proud to say I love them so much more after this movie.

2. The music. I have never particularly liked Idina’s voice but she sounds SO amazing, unique, memorable, emotional, vulnerable, and open in both of her songs. 

“Show Me” is personally my favorite, and that whole sequence was just fucking breath-taking, the message so special. Seeing her break down all her walls during that song journey was one of the best parts of the movie. I’ve been dealing with A LOT lately, and this song really just made me feel like things might work out if I continue to be strong and believe in myself, if only for a few minutes.

“Into the Unknown” was such a great tease as being the best Elsa song, and I love that they added that wacky Norwegian singer Aurora in there. I just didn’t particularly like some of the lyrics about Elsa feeling like she didn’t belong. Explained above. 

Olaf’s “This is Fine” song had me smiling so big and is quite literally an eternal mood. *insert Brooklyn 99 “I’m such a Samantha”.gif* “Some Things Never Change” was a great intro song, I love when the 4 get to duet together, though some of Elsa’s lyrics, again, not a fan. 

Anna’s song, despite the things mentioned above, was honestly the most powerful song to me. It’s not something that makes me feel good, or something I will be able to listen to often. But, as someone who struggles with depression and finding the motivation to do anything when something scary or terrible happens, this song was so sososososoosososoososo fucking important to hear. I was crying. I started crying when Olaf poofed and I kept crying through this song.

But by far, the greatest part of this movie, was Kristoff’s 90′s Poison-inspired power ballad. I was fucking CRYING with laughter. SO so good. I have been waiting for a song for Jonathan Groff and this was NOT a disappointment. The backup singers. The imagery! THE BACKUP SINGERS.

3. The beauty. It was just beautiful. Like I don’t know what else to say. The animation was gorgeous. Stunning. I’m in awe.

Other things:

- Olaf giving the recap to the Northumbra

- THAT scene with Anna and Olaf

- Elsa’s hair journey

- ELSAMAREN RIGHTS

- ELSA TAMING THE NOKK

-  When Kristoff finally proposes

- KRISTOFF’S FINAL LOOK. A WHOLE SNACK.

- BRUNI. BRUNI IS BABY.

- The fact that Elsa’s sexuality was left open ended, with the possibility for Elsamaren to be a thing. If they couldn’t outright make her gay, I think this was a good way to keep everyone happy. You could really continue her story anywhere.

Like I said earlier, I’m gonna get over this super fast. It’s Disney, and I’m not trying to get all riled up for months like I did over some TRULY terrible writing. I just wanted to get my annoyances out. I’ve already listened to this soundtrack 6 times in a row, have learned the lyrics to show yourself, and am almost in the mood to see it again. Maybe in a little bit.

Anyways, THAT IS ALL OF IT FOR NOW. I may add more BS later. If  you disagree, that’s fine, but I’m not really going to fight with people about this. I just wanted to get my thoughts out and reach out to other people who were maybe a little disappointed.

[sicut-in-caelo-et-in-terra]

Frozen II is C A T H O L I C

Frozen II spoilers below.

I saw Frozen II a few days ago, and I was very impressed. I understand why some people did not like it; the four elements theme has been done countless times before. The songs, while often musically impressive and a great way to showcase Idina’s voice, were not as poetic or thematically rich as those in the first film. The expository dialogue was also rather weak, certain things like the mothers scarf - “I know you’re stressed out because you’re wearing Mother’s scarf” - were introduced to the plot somewhat uncreatively.

That said, it was an excellent story that stood its own. Frozen II was able to be so good because it explored a separate part of the story and of the characters that was not explored in the first film. It built on the development that Elsa and Anna experienced six years prior without doing too much along the lines of retconning in some unexplored part of each character.

Also, I was very pleased that the film seems to be extremely deliberately Catholic.

Before I move into the heavy hitters, here’s a few Catholic themes I noticed:

During Kristoff’s third attempt to propose to Anna, he gets caught in his own words and keeps repeating “well, we eventually will die, we will die one day!” It was intended to be a funny bit of dialogue as he stumbles around trying to say what he truly wants to say, but I thought it was also a nice nod to the Catholic theme of memento mori, and clued me into the Catholicism throughout.

Speaking of Kristoff, his anguish surrounding his love of Anna was evocative of a lot of Catholic thought. Particularly in his song, he speaks of his fears that the two are growing apart. For me, it really displayed the philosophy of love as a choice and an active decision, rather than as a feeling that comes and goes.

Kristoff also reminds me a lot of St. Joseph. He’s the man in the little family who also happens to be the least central part of the narrative, but he loves Anna with all his heart and he loves Elsa like a sister. He is the one who loads up the cart and puts his family on the road to go a far distance for the story to begin once Elsa receives her call. He displays especially Josephan levels of virtuous trust and obedience at the very end, when Anna is being chased by the earth giants and he saves her, asking “where do you need to go?” When she tells him that they need to destroy the dam, he responds only with “You got it,” and does everything in his power to make it happen, even though he was the one to originally notice that the destruction of the dam means the destruction of Arandelle. Not only this, but he loves and trusts Anna so much that he willingly puts her into mortal danger at her request, because he believes that she knows what the right thing to do is, even if that means the sacrifice of her life for her, and the sacrifice of his beloved for Kristoff.

Olaf is a character that exhibits the childlike innocence and joy exhorted by Jesus in the gospels and illuminated by the writings of St. Therese of Lisieux. Olaf is carefree and does respect and revere adults (even wishing to have some of their wisdom and courage, as he explains in his song), but he has this littleness about him where he can just enjoy his life that he knows he has been blessed with. In both Frozen and Frozen II, despite his apparent immaturity he knows his exact place and purpose, which is to love, and he accepts his own death with such beautiful grace because he knows he has done what he was made for, and he is happy.

During Elsa’s first song, Into the Unknown, she talks consistently about this calling to adventure that she has, but an unwillingness to follow it. She, like the rich young man in the Gospels (Matthew 19:16-28, Mark 10:17-31, Luke 18:18-30), has all that she has ever wanted, and she has had her own great conversion in the past. She lives a good life, and rules her kingdom with justice and righteousness, but there is still something more, something that she was created for. A call from God that she could not reject, and it continued to call her like a voice in the night until she set off to do what she was created to do. This can also be an allegory for discernment of the priesthood.

Original Sin

“The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered, the union of man and woman is subject to tensions ... Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man.” (CCC 400).

Much like the fall of Adam, the betrayal of Elsa’s grandfather left three major ruptures: between man and nature (now Gale, the fire salamander, the water horse, and the earth giants are at odds with the people, wreaking havoc and attacking on sight until each are subdued by Elsa), between man and woman or man and other men (the Arandellians and the northern people are at war with each other; those who are trapped in the forest together remain at war with one another through all thirty-four years, until Elsa comes to unify them), and between man and himself, causing him to die (as Grandfather was killed in the very battle he started to create the disuinity, it can also be seen as manifested by Elsa’s lack of control over her power in the first film).

Each of these ruptures had to be rectified by Elsa, the film’s Christ figure. Elsa was the only one who was able to tame the four elemental spirits. Elsa, who was fully man and fully divine, an incarnation of the fifth elemental spirit.

Elsa and the Fifth Spirit

Elsa, with her dual nature, was destined to heal the sin of her grandfather, and to bridge the gap between humans and nature. She could do so because she was a human, and could therefore represent the humans to see their sins, and she could sufficiently approach the spirit of nature because she was the incarnate form of the spirit. She had to be both, just like Jesus had to be both.

We have already known that Elsa was a Christ figure since the first film, where she ran across the water, but this film solidified it with her death and resurrection. When she went into the chamber of the fifth element (literally jumping into an abyss), she saw all of the sins of man, most principally those of her grandfather. Just as in the garden of Gethsemane Jesus experienced all sin since the sin of Adam and reversed it by giving his life, Elsa was able to enable the reversal of her grandfather’s sin only through her own death. (Her death was a participation in the same death Anna went through in the first movie, a death due to a frozen heart. This is evocative of imagery of stony hearts in Ezekiel 36:26, which God will remove and replace with natural hearts).

It is also significant that Elsa is the descendant of the man whose sin put everyone in this mess; Luke makes sure to let us know that Jesus was a descendant of Adam so that his sin could be truly reversed (Luke 3:23-38). Elsa is also the descendant of her father, the good king, destined, then, to rule Arandelle - just as Jesus was the descendant of David and destined to rule Israel, as emphasized by Matthew (Matthew 1:1-17).

Elsa is ontologically a Creator, as shown when Olaf, her creation, is clearly contingent upon her since he cannot exist in her absence.

The fifth spirit has much of the same imagery as God. It abides in a place inaccessible to man (which people attempt to reach but cannot; they instead die trying as in the Tower of Babel) but, we see during Elsa’s Show Yourself that this abode is a palace much like Elsa’s that she built for herself. This is the residence of a king, but which no human can enter, like the Holy of Holies.

In this place, Elsa’s clothing becomes bright white and she sees (and kind of converses) with her dead mother (who herself was pleasing to the Fifth Spirit after an act of love). It is reminiscent of the Transfiguration, when Jesus’s “clothes became white as the light” (Matthew 17:2) and he spoke with Moses and Elijah.

The Fifth Spirit always appears as a fractal pattern, as the centerpiece surrounded by the four spirits:

which is evocative of apocalyptic imagery of God as seen in Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4, as He is always accompanied by the four Seraphim, the four “living creatures.”

After Elsa experiences her resurrection, she is seen by the entirety of Arandelle saving the entire kingdom from the tidal wave, dispersing the water (which is Biblically a symbol of primordial chaos), and then returning to the north, where it is said that “she belongs,” where she is in communion with the spirits from whence she came. However, she is still present to Arandelle, returning for charades, and is still their queen (although Anna has taken over the office).

So, too, did Jesus ascend into Heaven, although He remains present with us.

Anna is the Pope

The most Catholic thing of the movie after Elsa’s Christ journey is the clear imagery of the Church at the end. For most of the film, Elsa and Anna’s relationship is characterized by a sense of Anna saying “where are you going?” and Elsa saying “Where I am going, you cannot follow me now,” and Anna replying with “why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you” (these are are pretty close to the actual dialogue of the movie but these are exact quotes from John 13:36-38, an exchange between Jesus and Peter).

Additionally, at the end there is a moment where Elsa is seen riding across the water in the distance and Anna spies her and runs to meet her, you’re almost certain Anna is going to jump into the water and try to run out to her like Peter did in Matthew 14:22-33, but it cuts so that Elsa reaches the shore when Anna does.

Anna is also the first person to verbally say that Elsa is one and the same with the Fifth Spirit, just as Peter is the first to vocalize the fact that Jesus is the Son of God.

Elsa and Anna speak of this “bridge” metaphor, where “a bridge has two sides.” Elsa is the mediator between the north and Arandelle (Jesus is the mediator between God and man) but Elsa belongs in nature, and needs a representative to guide Arandelle in her name. She specifically picks Anna for this task, as Jesus specifically picks Peter as the rock upon which he builds His Church. “Pontifex,” a title for the Pope, means “bridge builder.”

Like the Church on Earth, Jesus is still present and guides the Magisterium in shepherding the flock. At the end of Frozen II, we see Anna sending messages in the wind (much like the flow of incense) to her Queen. They maintain a relationship of friendship and sisterhood, as well as deep respect.

[bountyofbeads]

I Felt Safe in America. Until El Paso. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/10/opinion/sunday/el-paso-shooting-immigrants.html

Below are two editorial pieces written by Hispanic AMERICANS and their thoughts on America after the El Paso shooting. We CANNOT LET HATE WIN. WE MUST STAND WITH OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS.

I Felt Safe in America. Until El Paso.

It is because of people like me and my daughter that a gunman did what he did.

By Fernanda Santos, Ms. Santos, a former national correspondent for The Times, teaches journalism at Arizona State University. | Published Aug. 10, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 10, 2019 |

PHOENIX — A good friend who is moving to Chicago had a going-away party at a downtown brewery recently and I stopped by to say goodbye. He is an artist from Iraq who escaped to the United States in 2013 to save his life. In Iraq, Mahdi Army loyalists had chased, beaten and threatened him because he had dared to sketch nude pictures — practice for his entrance exam at Baghdad University’s College of Fine Arts. Here, he is free.

I wasn’t running from anyone when I settled in the United States 21 years ago, but I understand the idea of being free in America: For me, it has meant being free from the senseless violence of everyday life in Rio de Janeiro, from where I came. Since moving to the United States, I’ve married a white man, given birth to our daughter and moved to Arizona, where I’ve written about immigrants and the border and gotten to know both well.

I blend in seamlessly in Arizona, where about one in three residents is Latino. As a naturalized citizen, I felt safe here even when a campaign against illegal immigrants led by the infamous former sheriff, Joe Arpaio, targeted Latinos. One day after Donald Trump’s election, a man approached me while I spoke Spanish on the phone outside a coffee shop and screamed, “Speak English.” The experience rattled me, but still I felt safe. I did, however, start carrying my passport card in my wallet, just in case.

That sense of safety changed when a young white man opened fire in a Walmart in El Paso last Saturday, making targets out of brown-skinned people. I read the suspect’s manifesto  Sunday morning and, for the first time, I did not feel just like an immigrant. I felt like a target. I looked at my 10-year-old daughter eating the chocolate-chip pancakes I’d made and realized that she could be a target too. Citizenship, it turns out, is an illusory shield. In the eyes of that gunman, I am not American but an invader, an instigator. It is because of people like me that he did what he did.

Segregation was codified in this country in the days after Emancipation, when Southern states enacted laws that clamped down on African-Americans’ newly found freedom to vote, own property or attend public schools. But Jim Crow extended beyond the South: It took the Supreme Court to force Arizona to stop requiring voters to take English literacy tests, and that was years after the Voting Rights Act had already banned such tests.

But if legal segregation has largely fallen before court rulings, anti-minority and anti-immigrant attitudes have not. Last month, at a Republican event in Phoenix, State Senator Sylvia Allen, who is white, said, “We’re going to look like South American countries very quickly.” Ms. Allen, who later apologized, blamed it on the fact that white women are not reproducing fast enough and on the immigrants who are “flooding us and flooding us and flooding us and overwhelming us so we don’t have time to teach them the principles of our country.”

Last week, a fund-raising email by the Arizona Republican Party called the arrival of Central Americans at the border to assert their legal right for asylum “an invasion,” echoing language commonly employed by President Trump.

This is the language of white supremacy today: that we must stop immigration because Latinos will distort American culture and replace “real Americans.” But by “American culture” they really mean white culture, a definition that, to them, doesn’t apply to people like me. Or to black people, Muslims, Asian-Americans and many others, including mixed-race Americans like my daughter.

In his manifesto, the El Paso suspect employs this narrow definition to justify the unjustifiable. He says much more in that screed, most of it vile. Some, though, reminded me, in a good way, of the young undocumented immigrants I’ve met in Arizona. “Inaction is not a choice,” he wrote, reminding me that before elections, many young immigrants, including so-called Dreamers, knock on doors and share their stories, hoping to persuade their neighbors to do what they cannot, which is to vote. For those Dreamers, inaction is indeed not a choice.

There are Walmart stores all along the southern border. If you visit one of them on a weekend, you’ll see a parking lot full of cars with Mexican license plates. In Douglas, Ariz., a city whose mayor was born in the Dominican Republic, Mexicans who cross into the United States on foot to buy discounted clothing and housewares leave their Walmart shopping carts at the border crossing.

While I was at a Walmart in Phoenix shopping for school supplies the other day, I could see the kinds of people who make up this state. There were mothers speaking Spanish to children who spoke to one another in English, Muslim refugees from Africa in brightly colored hijabs, black families and white families too.

When school starts later this month in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, one school will be missing its principal, Elsa Mendoza Marquez. She was among the 22 people killed in the El Paso Walmart, just across the Rio Grande from Juarez. A dual Mexican-American citizen, she too was shopping and was gunned down while her husband waited for her outside, in the parking lot.

What the El Paso gunman failed to realize is that the immigrants he so hates are, like him, struggling to make sense of a changing country and claim their rightful place in it. He chose a rifle to claim his place. My Iraqi friend, who is off to pursue a master’s degree in art in Chicago, chose a brush.

The Dreamers I’ve met have chosen the power of civic engagement to fight their fight. And that, to me, makes them better citizens than plenty of the people who call themselves “real Americans” these days.

El Paso Was a Massacre Foretold

Those who are set on killing minorities are aided by the fact that they can easily obtain assault weapons in this country.

By Jorge Ramos, Mr. Ramos is a contributing Opinion writer. | Published Aug. 10, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 10, 2019 |

Leer en español

EL PASO ­— “I don’t know why he took my boy’s life,” Dora Lizarde said. Her grandson Javier, 15, was the youngest victim of last weekend’s massacre, killed by a bullet to the head. “Fifteen years old; he still had so much time to live,” Ms. Lizarde told me in an interview this week. “I don’t know why he took him away, I don’t understand. He is young, too.”

Patrick Crusius is young, too.

Police have charged Mr. Crusius, 21, in the mass shooting that killed 22 people at a crowded Walmart here on Aug. 3. Nineteen of the victims had Spanish surnames, making this the worst attack on Latinos in modern American history. The Mexican government has labeled the killings a terrorist act, given that eight Mexican citizens were among the dead. And, yes, it is a hate crime.

The massacre of Latinos in El Paso is the latest and most brutal reaction by a young, white American against a future that might be dominated by minorities. The fact that this attack happened is unsurprising: What else can we expect when racism and hatred of others is promoted from the top down in a country where there are more guns than people?

Authorities have said that Mr. Crusius posted a 2,300-word manifesto online minutes before the attack. In it, he said the attack was in response to a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” “It makes no sense to keep letting millions of illegal or legal immigrants flood into the United States,” Mr. Crusius supposedly wrote, “and to keep the tens of millions that are already here.” Those words startled me — not only because they were so hateful, but because they could seamlessly fit into speeches given by President Trump, by some members of his cabinet and by many right-wing politicians.

While Mr. Trump insists that he does not have “a racist bone” in his body, his history of making racist remarks says otherwise. After years of suggesting that President Barack Obama had not been born in the United States, Mr. Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015 by likening Mexican immigrants to criminals and rapists. He recently said that four congresswomen of color should “go back” to the countries from which they came. The list goes on. When the most powerful man in the world uses such toxic rhetoric, we should not be surprised when others mimic him.

Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman from El Paso and a Democratic presidential candidate, recently told me that he is convinced Mr. Trump influenced the attack. Mr. O’Rourke — who along with Senator Elizabeth Warren, another Democratic candidate for the presidency, has said in recent days that Mr. Trump is a “white supremacist” — responded to a tweet from the president by writing: “22 people in my hometown are dead after an act of terror inspired by your racism.” Other leaders and politicians, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have also lost their patience with Mr. Trump. “I don’t want to hear the question ‘Is this president racist?’ anymore. He is,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said recently.

The president’s xenophobia, and that of many of his supporters and enablers, is rooted in a dread that the day is soon coming when they will be a minority in their country. While non-Hispanic whites remain a majority of the population in the United States, in less than 30 years that may no longer be the case, according to projections. This sort of demographic revolution is putting Americans’ tolerance to the test. Most of us welcome an increasingly diverse country, but many, like Mr. Trump, resist the country’s multiethnic, multicultural future. Some react by walking into a store and murdering innocent people.

The most racist Americans who are set on killing minorities are aided by the fact that they can easily obtain assault weapons in this country. I’ve lost count of all the massacres I’ve covered as a journalist. After each shooting — Columbine, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Parkland — I thought we might have reached the limit of Americans’ tolerance for such horror. But it wasn’t so. I fear that the killings in El Paso won’t change anything, and that I soon will be back on another flight headed to cover the next massacre. And then another. And another after that.

I have lost hope that the United States will ever pass laws that limit access to firearms. Like many parents around the country, I’ve had difficult conversations with my children in case they find themselves in a situation where someone is shooting at them. “Try to escape, hide or fight,” I tell them. “But don’t stay still. Gunmen have a lot of bullets, but not patience.”

Still, even if we could somehow solve our gun problem in America, our racism problem would be far more difficult to eradicate. Hate-group activity is on the rise, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. And anti-immigrant rhetoric has already appeared in slogans shouted during the 2020 presidential campaign.

I crossed the border from El Paso to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, one morning this week. For many years, Juárez was considered one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico because of the presence of drug cartels. Yet on this visit some people I spoke with told me that they didn’t dare cross into El Paso with their families. When I asked why, some said that they feared being hunted for being Mexican, and all said that racism was a factor.

Nobody should live in fear because they are Mexican nationals in the United States or members of the Latino community. But that’s where we are now in this United States of Trump. The abundance of weapons of war on the streets and Mr. Trump’s unending racist rhetoric are indisputably connected to the massacre in El Paso. What happened in this city was a massacre foretold. Words matter. When they are filled with hate, they cause great damage.

Mr. Ramos is an anchor for the Univision network and the author of “Stranger: The Challenge of a Latino Immigrant in the Trump Era.”

[thesimplyluxuriouslife]

255: 34 Inspiring Daily Rituals to Ignite Your Creativity

We talk quite often about the importance of routine, and how by having a routine, we actually set ourselves free, especially our minds. And it is in that vein that Mason Curry shares his two books Daily Rituals. His second is focused entirely on Women at Work, sharing the routines and preferences of creative women who lived and created over the past four centuries.

I thoroughly enjoyed his second book, even more than the first which I also found great inspiration. It was refreshing to see so many women living their lives in a variety of different ways, but all in which they discovered worked well for them and the craft they most loved.

Not all of the ideas resonated with me, but it was wonderful to get into the minds for a moment of these women and how they approached their days. I highlighted vigorously from beginning to end, and would like to share 34 daily routines to consider to enable your creative ideas to flow freely and without withdrawal.

Some will speak to you, some will not, but each one is inspired by a woman's routine which is shared in the book: Daily Rituals: Woman at Work - 143 artists on how they paint, write, perform, direct, choreograph, design, sclpt, compose, dance, etc.

~Be sure to tune into the audio version of the podcast where much more discussion takes place on each point. 

1.Begin with a hot glass of lemon water

Designer Elsa Schiaparelli woke up at 8 am, sipped lemon-juice-and-water and a cup of tea for breakfast as she read the papers, handled private correspondence, made telephone calls and gave the menus of the day to the cook.

2. Wake up early if that is when your creativity is most fruitful

—Lillian Hellman would wake up at 6am.

—Marie Bashkirtseff would wake up at 6am

—Maggie Hambling wakes up at 5am each morning

"I get up between three or four o'clock in the morning, because that's my best writing time." —Octavia Butler

3. If spending less time with people fuels your creativity, embrace it fully

"I enjoy people best if I can be alone much of the time. I used to worry about it because my family worried about it. And I finally realized: This is the way I am. That's that." —Octavia Butler in 1998

4. If traditional "holidays" don't work for you, create your own, or dive into what you love.

Coco Chanel worked six days a week, and dreaded Sundays and holidays. As she told one confidant, "That word, 'vacation,' makes me sweat."

5. Greet the day in a habitual way that sets the tone for a great day

6. Live your ideas, don't talk about them

"People would sit around and talk about things constantly. I never really went in for that. If you talk something out, you will never do it. You can spend every evening talking with your friends and colleagues about your dreams, but they will remain just that —dreams." —choreographer Martha Graham

7. Keep a small journal next to your bed to capture ideas

"I always have notebook and pencil on the table at my bedside. I may wake up in the middle of the night with something I want to put down." —American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay

8. If you work at home, carve out a part of the day to get out of the house and just absorb inspiration or let go of the day completely 

"In the nocturnal evening, I get the hell out to some movie or damn play and I come back and sleep like a rock." —Frida Kahlo

9. Figure out the ingredients that are needed to let the ideas find you

To develop a new work of choreography, Agnes de Mille needed 'a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea'.

10. Don't feel obligated to keep the same schedule when you are in the middle of creating your art or craft

Margaret Bourke-White required long periods of solitude to write, with as few interruptions as possible." In an interview with a Life photographer Nina Leen, Leen remembers after asking her if she would have lunch with her, "She told me she was writing a book and there was no hope of a lunch for several years.

11. Don't feel bad for loving your work and working on what you love beyond the traditional work hours.

"Everything seems petty and uninteresting, everything except my work . . . ". Russian-born painter and sculptor Marie Bashkirtseff

12. Do something during the day that is relaxing and keeps you present

'I relax before lunch by arranging flowers . . . When these are all beautifully arranged in bowls and vases, it's usually lunch time." —English actress Gertrude Lawrence

13. Have a studio or space of your own to create

"The most important thing is to have a studio and establish and preserve its atmosphere." —Agnes Martin

14. If you love solitude, embrace it 

"But it is, as Yeats said, a 'solitary sedentary trade.' And I did a lot of gardening and cooked my own food, and listened to music, and of course I would read. I was really very happy. I can live a solitary life for month at a time, and it does me good." —poet Katherine Anne Porter

15. Trust your intuition as to what works best for you

"It's not right if it doesn't feel right." —English painter Bridget Riley

16. Find regular time to just read what you love

Rachel Whiteread [English sculptor] would "at some point stop for lunch, and she'd often spend an hour of the day reading sitting in a comfortable chair away from her desk.

17. Establish a flexible routine to work with what you need

Morning routine: "Zittel feeds her chickens, waters plants, and performs other outdoor chores before meditating, taking a shower, making breakfast and getting dressed. In the winter, Zittel's morning schedule reverses: She meditates, showers and eats breakfast first; then, once the sun has raised the outdoor temperature, she heads out on her hike and does chores. 'It's really all about establishing a flexible routine."Andrea Zittel, an American artist, in 2017

18. Don't quit trying to live the life you wish to live

"It never occurred to me that I couldn't live the life I wanted to lead. It never occurred to me that I could be stopped . . . I had this very simple view: that the reason people who start out with ideals or aspirations don't do what they dream of doing when they're young is because they quit. I thought, well, I won't quit." —Susan Sontag

19. Try a crossword puzzle like Joan Mitchell

20. Determine what view in your studio/sanctuary/work space is most productive for inspiration

"Where do I write? In a Morris chair beside the window, where I can see a few trees and a patch of sky, more or less blue." —Kate Chopin, American writer

21. End the day with a signal to your mind to relax

"During the performance I drink water with breadcrumbs, which is most refeshing. After the ballet I have a bath as soon as possible. Then I go out to dinner, as by that time I have an unmerciful hunger. When I get home I drink tea." —Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova

22. Let baths be your creative muse

"Baths also played a part in her creative process - a post-breakfast bath enjoyed regularly by Virginia Woolf.

23. Let lunch be a true mid-day break

At 1:00 p.m., Hambling has lunch, takes her Tibetan terrier, Lux, for a walk, and switches on the television to satisfy her tennis addiction.

24. Write when inspiration hits - even if it is in bed in the morning so as not lose the ideas. 

25. Go outside and breathe in the fresh air

"Fresh air and cold water are my stimulants." —Harriet Martineau - the first female sociologist

26. Enjoy someone's company for tea, lunch or a walk regularly 

Emily Post would regularly welcome a guest or two for tea in the afternoon.

27. It's okay for your personal time to be less than what others feel is acceptable 

"It seems to me you have to have your personal life organized so that it takes as little of your time as possible. Otherwise you can't make your art." –Eleanor Antin

28. Don't expect the routine to come naturally, create one and stick with it as it enables you to flourish

29. Cook and walk

"The only other essential component of her day is a twice-daily walk with her dog, during which she avoids thinking about her writing project. In the evening, she makes herself a simple dinner and goes to bed at 10:00 or 11:00 p.m.." —Isabel Allende

30. Create space for your ideas to be seen 

"Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient." — Hilary Mantel

"I think the way to become inspired is to empty your mind and let things come into your mind."  —Joan Jonas

31. Do you and don't apologize

"I live here as in Paris. I rise every day at 5 o'clock; I drink my two large glasses of hot water; I take my coffee; I write when I am alone, which is rare; I do my hair in company; I dine every day with the king, chez lui, or with him and les seigneurs. I make calls after dinner; I go to the theater; I return to my place at ten o'clock; I drink my hot water , and I go to bed." —Marie-Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin, a major salonniéres of the French Englightenment

32. Turn on music paired with your favorite drink to start the day

"I wake about nine, turn on the symphony and have juice, fruit and a pot of black coffee . . . " —Grace Hartigan, American painter

33. Leave evenings open for your social engagements

"In the evening, she would see a friend for dinner or attend another social engagement. But the real key to this perfect writing day, she said, was to know that the following day would be exactly the same." —Eudora Welty

34. Be patient until you find what works, then cherish it

"Trial and error, and then when you've found your needs, what feeds you, what is your instinctive rhythm and routine, then cherish it." —novelist Doris Lessing

~SIMILAR POSTS/EPISODES YOU MIGHT ENJOY:

~Why Not . . . Be Creative?

~The Benefit of Daily Rituals

~The Importance of a Daily Routine & How to Create One You Love, episode #164

Petit Plaisir:

~Chilled Cucumber and Yogurt Soup with Dill and Fresh Mint, a Patricia Wells recipe, click here for the recipe

~Why Not . . . Grow a(n) Herb Garden?

~Check out TSLL's IG account, see the Highlights and Part 3 of my FR Trip '18 - mid-roll to see the presentation of the dish in Provence.

~Chilled Cucumber and Yogurt Soup with Dill and Fresh Mint, enjoyed in Provence with Patricia Wells and the other cooking class students during the summer of 2018~

~the same dish served this past weekend as the second course during a dinner party at my home. Cool and crisp cucumber and yogurt soup.~

Tune in to the latest episode of The Simple Sophisticate podcast

[apparelvon]

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[sciencespies]

A Professor Used The Movie “Frozen” As A Climate Lesson - It Worked

https://sciencespies.com/news/a-professor-used-the-movie-frozen-as-a-climate-lesson-it-worked/

A Professor Used The Movie “Frozen” As A Climate Lesson - It Worked

As an atmospheric scientist, I find that the public is often confused about concepts that seem very natural to me. Let’s face it, most people are not atmospheric scientists. I certainly cannot recite the key elements of a nuclear reactor because it is not what I do. It is understandable that it may be counterintuitive to some people that

It actually can get cold in deserts,

A snowy day does not refute climate change, and

Ground hogs really have very little seasonal predictive skill.

I often challenge ivory tower colleagues to step beyond lecture boards, powerpoint slides, and other tools of “academic inertia” when educating students and the public about science. I recently learned of an effort by Dr. Paul Miller, assistant professor and coastal meteorologist in the Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University (LSU), that is exemplary of innovative science instruction and outreach. Miller used the popular Disney move Frozen to teach students about the complexities of climate and our environment.

LONDON, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 17: Atmosphere at the “Frozen 2” European premiere at BFI Southbank on … [+] November 17, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by Lia Toby/Getty Images)

Getty Images

The original movie Frozen was released by Walt Disney Pictures as a 3D computer-animated fantasy. With inspiration from the Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Snow Queen,” the movie follows a princess and companions on their journey to find her sister who happens to control things like snow and ice. Ultimately, the goal of their spectacular trip is to break the Snow Queen’s frigid spell on their kingdom. I haven’t see the movie but apparently the Snow Queen is going around turning any and everything to ice (or something like that).

That all sounds pretty interesting and magical. In fact, it may grab your attention more than a class called “Modelling the Marine Atmosphere” taught this semester by Professor Miller. The former doctoral student at the University of Georgia thought that it would be interesting to teach concepts of meteorological modeling using experiments based on the movie. Meteorological models are a staple of what we use to make your day-to-day weather forecasts. Such models are a part of the broader field of numerical weather prediction. These models use very complex mathematical equations to describe the dynamics, thermodynamics, and complexity of the atmosphere, which is a fluid. Observations, computer grids, and various assumptions go into these models. Weather modeling (and other similar types of modeling like hydrological or climate) is quantitatively rigorous so I applaud Professor Miller’s innovative thinking to reach students.

Complex equations can be solved to predict the future state of the atmosphere – a forecast.

NOAA

Miller said “It makes the homework and assignments more engaging….It’s something they can relate to that’s fun to tell their friends and parents about so they retain the information better.” A press release issued by LSU describes the motivation for the lesson:

In the movie, Princess Elsa accidentally starts turning everything to ice at her coronation. When Elsa realizes she can walk across the ocean, turning the seawater to ice beneath her feet, the movie illustrates a clear transition from spring-like to winter-like conditions. It appeared to Miller that Princess Elsa prompted an “ice age” by converting the open seawater to total sea ice. Miller decided to test the meteorological authenticity of this scene with his students by using atmospheric modelling.

LSU Press Release

Miller goes on in the press release to say, “The idea was to investigate whether a change in the ocean surface from water to ice could actually cause the dramatic cooling that occurred in the movie.”

In the experiments, Miller and his students estimated location, the time of year and season based on visual clues in the story. They estimated the story to take place during the 1840s in Norway based on clothing and other signs. Blooming flowers and short sleeves along the way led to an assumption that late Spring, perhaps May, was the seasonal period. The class conducted two modeling experiments along the Norwegian coast. One of the experiments was an “open water” scenario reflecting how things were before Elsa was coronated and started turning everything to ice. The other experiment was “total sea ice” after Elsa did her damage. Miller and his students found that the outcomes were plausible. He said,

Norway is far enough poleward that without the nearby relatively warm ocean temperatures the climate would be much cooler even during late spring. I was kind of surprised that the change was that dramatic in the simulation that I ran. After the change to complete sea ice, the average temperature dropped from 41°F to 32°F; however, in the simulations it took a little bit longer—about 24 hours, to really achieve that level of cooling

Professor Paul Miller, LSU

Processes associated with many climate and weather models like the once used by Professor Miller.

NOAA

These experiments were intended to use pop culture to teach science, but there are broader implications worth noting. Much of the Arctic region is rapidly losing sea ice. According to a recent study, the Arctic could be ice-free for a portion of the year by 2044. Changes in the Arctic have profound implication for maritime activities, global weather patterns, and ocean circulations.

The graphic below shows Arctic sea ice extent as of October 31, 2019 and how it compares to long-term averages. Miller’s doctoral advisor at the University of Georgia penned an editorial about extensive melting observed in Greenland this summer. Writing in The Hill, cryospheric expert Professor Tom Mote said, “Earth’s complexity and changes are scientifically interesting, but also have real implications for our Arctic policy, national security, and our coastal infrastructure.” While Miller and his students were not trying to solve global climate challenges, their simple experiments illustrate the connectivity of different parts of the Earth system.

Recently, I opined in Forbes about the need to make science accessible, fun, and engaging. Professor Miller hit the mark. Lexi Nelson, one of the students in the class, said, “Completing this assignment enabled me to use my modeling skills I have learned throughout the semester and apply them to a fun, well-thought-out experiment.” She also said that she plans to use the experience in her own research.

Frozen 2 comes out this week in theaters. Let’s see if it generates even more scientific experiments.

October Arctic Sea Ice extent compared to long-term averages and recent years.

NSIDC

#News

[starryburglar-archive]

Anna Info

Full name: Anna Berg

Species: Human

Age: 19

Sexuality: Pansexual

FC(s): Elizabeth Lail

Bio: Princess Anna Berg, first of her name, is the youngest daughter of the previous king and queen of Arendelle ( may they rest in peace ), and the younger sister of Elsa, the current queen of the land.

Their relationship had its ups and downs, as well as confusing moments, but thankfully they were able to resolve their problems. It wasn't easy, though. It's a long story involving ice magic, trolls and memory wiping, all culminating in years of isolation and solace, wanting nothing but to spend time with her sister. So, how did Anna learn the truth, if her memories were erased? Well, she never got them back but was the catalyst of an accident, a small burst of anger which made Elsa blow up and display her powers on the day of her coronation.

This made Elsa run away, which prompted Anna to immediately go after her. The guilt and regret over what happened were growing by the second -- she didn't regret feeling how she felt ( a combination of sadness and frustration, above else ) but did not want to ruin things with her only family member left. It took all of her might and bravery to go after her, all while joining forces with some colourful characters: an ice harvester named Kristoff, his reindeer companion Sven, and a talking snowman who was alive thanks to Elsa's magic.

There was chaos at the climax of their tale. Anna was sure she wouldn't survive by the end, not with a frozen heart making her colder and weaker by the second, much less with a two-faced prince playing pretend. In the moment of truth, she sacrificed her life for Elsa's, stopping Hans from killing her while turning into ice in the process. turns out, that was the act of true love the trolls were talking about, and such act was rewarded with her life.

Nowadays, both sisters are on much better terms after years of being kept apart by their parents. There isn't a single moment where they don't take advantage of it to create new memories, revive old ones and rebuild their sisterhood.

Note: Follows canon from the movie, short specials, the book "A Frozen Heart" and bits of KH3

[ MAIN || INBOX || HEADCANONS || VISAGE || MUSINGS ]

                                 -----------------------------------------------

V001: For the First Time in Forever

Default main verse. Post the original film and before Frozen 2. Any KH related interactions will also occur in this verse due to the world in kh3 being very similar to the movie so there is no point in making a separate verse for it.

V002: The Next Right Thing

Standard Frozen 2 verse. Nothing much changes from the events of the sequel so Anna is the new queen and relationships with the Northuldra are going slow but steady.

V003: Modern Naïvete

Modern verse. Anna has recently graduated from high school and is on much better terms with her older sister. As of now, she isn’t quite sure ( yet ) what to go for in college – one thing was for certain, though, Anna definitely wants to practice fencing for reals now.

V004: Strength in Rebellion

Persona 5 verse. Anna Berg always had a close and strong relationship with her family. Her parents and kind but stern, and has one of the cooler older sisters in all earth. even after they moved to Japan, the routine didn’t change much. It was simply… perfect. However, neither Anna nor Elsa expected for life to take such a turn.

The death of their parents took them both by surprise, especially to Elsa who quickly had to take on new responsibilities as the oldest sister and despite not being older than 18, as Anna was 15 at the time. The sisters, who once had been so close and united, started to drift apart. Elsa began to both work and attend university, draining most of her energy and making her stay away from home most of the time; whenever they did cross paths, she would always remind Anna to focus on her studies, to not waste time on other things.

It broke her heart. anna missed her parents, but especially her sister after what happened. It’s like everything they’d gone through together never happened. She felt almost like a stranger to her than her younger sister. The worst part is, anna had nowhere to turn to. With the lack of any real friends outside of classmate acquaintances at Shujin Academy, no one paid much attention to Anna. She was only “The pretty transfer student from across the sea”.

For two years, Anna thought there wouldn’t be any way for things to change. For her and Elsa to talk and start things over. But then, the Phantom Thieves appeared. 

First with the volleyball coach, Kamoshida; then with that famous artist, -Madarame; soon enough, this strange group of misfits had done the impossible. it was around the time of the Okumura incident ( his change of heart and tragic death ) that Anna left a message… or several… at the Phansite, asking for a change of heart. Part of her thought it would be useless, but another side wanted to believe… two days later, she was contacted by a second year, Mishima, who ran the site – he came along one of his classmates, the famous student with a criminal record. They only asked for one thing: who needs the change of heart. Anna didn’t explain the whole story but did clarify that it was for her sister and what she was doing most of the time nowadays.

That kid seemed suspicious to her for some reason. The Mishima kid seemed fine, a regular fan who runs the site, but the other was so calm and collected, he wouldn’t leave her mind. Maybe it was silly from her part but decided to follow him for a couple of days. She was about to give up after the third day until he saw him reuniting with another group of kids; most were from Shujin Academy, which should be normal, but then, as Anna moved closer while trying to be inconspicuous, bits and pieces of their conversation are what almost made her freeze. They were talking about her request, about Elsa, something about code words and having to do this in a limited time frame. What happened afterwards it’s still hazy in her mind: Anna remembers seeing the kid’s phone out, a black cat meowing loudly, words were spoken and then, everything around them ( and herself ) began to shift and spin. When her blue eyes opened, they weren’t at her house ( where the group gathered after meeting at the train station ), but what should be out of a wild and fantastical dream. A large and very tall ice palace; it was beautiful, cold and lonely.

She lost sight of the group due to being in awe at the new location but was determined to find answers of her own. Anna went inside the ice palace against better judgment, without any weapons but her fists and her history book. It didn’t take long, however, for her to be discovered by some strange shadowy creatures and a man who she had seen once or twice: Elsa’s university classmate, Hans Westergard. the man, instead of looking friendly and welcoming, had a look as cold and distant as the palace.

He took her to a large ice chamber, where the kids from before, now wearing ridiculous leather outfits and masks, stood beside a strange-looking woman. A woman with skin as blue and transparent as ice, with hair as white as snow, with a dress made out of the snow and ice around them, and with distant yet very familiar-looking eyes. Elsa. Anna couldn’t believe her eyes, what was her sister doing there? Why did she look like this? Why did she seem colder than usual? It took a lot of yelling to get some sort of explanation, which she didn’t even understand until much later. Her heart was beating fast, Elsa wouldn’t look at her and Hans was pinning her to the ground with a sword. She had to do something, she had to save her sister—

And then… Anna heard a voice, both warm and fierce echoing in her head. It was telling her to woman up, to stand up and fight for her only relative alive, for the person she cares about the most, to not let this sad excuse of a man subdue her. It asked her to forge a contract, which she gladly accepted. Ripping off the mask that had formed out of thin air hurt like a bitch, but was so liberating at the same time. Anna felt like she could fly as if the sky was hers to sore and explore… what was this power? It didn’t matter now. with a confident smile and determined spirit, Anna, soon to be called Valkyrie, raised her sword and stood next to her persona, Freya, and began the attack to Cognition!Hans.

OUTFIT // ARCANA: LOVERS

V005: A New Era

Alternate Frozen 2 verse. The main difference with the other one is that Arendelle, the physical kingdom, was not saved at the last minute by Elsa and instead was destroyed by the river waters after Anna made the rock giants destroy the dam. The Arendellians were lost, confused and in panic, of course, but Anna’s leadership, kindness, courage and determination were enough to bring new hope to everyone. To Anna, Arendelle isn’t a place but its people.

The Arendellians moved to begin the construction of the new kingdom neat the enchanted forest, just close enough to the elemental rocks so they’re near the Northuldra and can work together. This is a new era for Arendelle and she is their queen.

V006: Princesses Unite

Wreck-it Ralph 2 verse. Nuff said.

V007: tba FFXV verse

tba FFXV verse. to be written in detail at a later point but some tips to keep in mind:

arendelle is a small kingdom allied with lucis

elsa is the current queen and has been for a couple of years since the death of their parents

anna does a lot of travelling to speak in her sister’s name, but also because she enjoys it.

                                 -----------------------------------------------

CONNECTIONS

Queen Elsa :: [ Tammy ] [ Queen ] [ Wyz ]

:: Anna ♣ One and only sister ( Elsa ) ::

Ryuji :: [ Josie ]

:: Anna ♥ Adorable enabler [ Ryuji ( galaxyveind ) ] ::

[fitnesshealthyoga-blog]

New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/disney-wonder-alaska-cruise-recap/

Disney Wonder Alaska Cruise recap

Sharing our thoughts on our Disney cruise experience to Alaska! We took the Disney Wonder from Vancouver to Glacier Bay, Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan. I’ll share our full packing list in an upcoming post if you’re planning an Alaskan cruise!

Hi friends! Happy Monday. Hope your week is off to a great start! I’m finally sitting down and taking the time to write out our thoughts on the cruise. I have so much to say! I hope you’re ok with a super long post, but the TLDR version is that we absolutely loved our Disney cruise… and already booked another one. 😉

When we initially booked our cruise, I have to admit that Alaska wasn’t my #1 choice. I’ve never been on a cruise before, and I figured that my first one should be somewhere tropical or European. We booked our trip with my friend Betsy and her family, and she mentioned that so many people say Alaska is breathtaking and we should give it a try. Plus, it would give us the chance to be a little cold since Tucson would likely be scorching hot. So, we went for it!

We traveled to Vancouver and arrived a couple of days early just in case we got stuck on the way. (I highly recommend doing this, so you don’t miss the boat!) We had a blast in Vancouver, and then Monday afternoon, we boarded the ship to spend seven incredible days sightseeing, relaxing, enjoying family activities and eating so many delicious foods. We traveled with Betsy and her family, and had the best time with them! While the boat was sailing away from the dock, they had a party on the top deck with frozen cocktails, live performers and ice cream for the kiddos. 

In pure Disney fashion, everything was over the top: the dining, the performances, the activities, excursions, etc. I know Disney does it right and many people have told us once they did a Disney cruise, they never wanted to cruise with any other cruise lines. After experiencing it ourselves, I can completely see how that happens.

I tried to segment this post into blocks, so it wasn’t just one rambling Disney cruise rave, so here are some of the things that stood out:

Alaskan scenery:

The scenery was absolutely stunning. On either side of the boat, we could see vast forests, glaciers, bald eagles flying (!), whales, and icebergs. Titanic taught me that icebergs are bad, but we sailed through an entire garden of them, so there ya go. We had the opportunity to see landscape and wildlife that we’d otherwise never experience. Now that I’ve been able to experience the true beauty of Alaska, I’d love to visit again some day. 

  One of my favorite stops was the Mendenhall Glacier. It lightly drizzled as we hiked down to a beach, and the girls played with sticks and splashed in puddles while we watched herons fly overhead.

  (P refused to be in this photo because she was very busy gathering rocks) 

The Disney Cruise dining experience:

For Disney cruises, here’s how the dining works: you have reservations (either first seating at 5:45 or second seating, closer to 8) at the main restaurants each night. We sailed on the Wonder, so the main restaurants are Tiana’s, Triton’s, and Animator’s Palace. They have you on a rotation, so you can experience each of the restaurants, and you have the same server the entire time. We really got to know our main server, Pipa (the girls LOVED her) and she always knew what we wanted to drink and got the kiddos’ food served extremely fast. (I could always count on her for dinner recommendations, too, so many times I asked her what I should order and she chose the best stuff for me!)

At each restaurant, they had a different theme each night (a Mardi Gras night, Frozen-inspired menu, lobster night, etc.) and you could choose from various appetizers, salads, soups, entrees, and desserts. I was blown away by the variety they offered! On our specific cruise, they served over 10,000 meals per day, and the quality was outstanding.

  (Smoked salmon in some form in every single meal. YOLO)

You also don’t have to eat at the sit-down restaurants if you don’t want to! You can dine at one of the quick spots (Daisy’s De-lites serves salads, sandwiches, build-your-own bowls, fresh chopped fruit, and soups), Boiler Bites (hot dogs, mac n’ cheese, chicken tenders, fries, etc.), and Pinocchio’s (different types of pizza!), eat at the buffet (Cabana’s is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and they have EVERYTHING) or you can get room service. All of this is included. They also had a “fancy” coffee shop on board for specialty drinks, called Cove Coffee, and a quick coffee shop where you could also get super healthy smoothies. A couple of times, I ordered a smoothie with almond milk, vegan chocolate protein, kale, spinach, cinnamon, and ice. The specialty drinks and coffees are extra (so is alcohol), but I didn’t find it to be super overpriced. My smoothies were $5 when they’d usually be around $9 at Whole Foods. 

(Yes they totally put a Donald Duck on my decaf almond milk latte)

(Living the Mickey bar life)

For most of the days we were there, we did breakfast at Cabana’s – it was so nice to wake up and eat without having to order anything or wait for food to be cooked – lunch at Daisy’s (the girls would usually get sandwiches, or pizza from Pinocchio’s, and a giant fruit platter) and dinner at the sit-down restaurant.

Each of the sit-down restaurants had something magical about them. At Tiana’s, Tiana herself was actually there walking around (and the girl spoke exactly like her! She was wonderful) and live music, complete with a Louis crocodile playing the saxophone. Triton’s felt like the fanciest among the three (but you could still go in leggings and a Disney tee), and Animator’s Palace had Sorcerer Mickey one of the nights. They also gave us special placemats that we could draw people on, and they took the placemats from the entire restaurant and ANIMATED our drawings and had them dancing to a song on one of the many screens in the restaurant. It was so incredibly cool!

Entertainment on board:

They have full Broadway-style shows on board, including musicals, comedians, and musicians. We saw three live Disney shows on the ship, including the Golden Mickeys (my personal fave), Frozen, and Disney Dreams.

  They also have two movie theaters playing different movies (including new releases!) all day. The Pilot and Liv saw Captain Marvel, the Pilot saw a late show of Avengers: Endgame one evening, and we all saw the new Aladdin movie as a family. They also have a movie screen on the top deck, where you can lounge on chairs with blankets and eat soft serve ice cream while you watch a show. The ice cream machine was a HUGE hit with the girls. You can literally walk up and make yourself a cone at any point during the day.

We may or may not have played every single Bingo round on the ship. We didn’t get the 7k prize but did win a Disney cruise picnic blanket in one of the raffles. 😉

We went to the gym pretty much every day! It was such a treat to work out together since that can rarely happen at home. We waited until after breakfast, so it wasn’t crowded, dropped the kiddos off at Kids Club, and got in a workout. 

Kids’ Club:

Kids Club was a game-changing experience. The girls absolutely loved it, and many nights after dinner, Liv was begging to go back! I felt like it was a perfect balance. The Pilot and I had a couple of hours together each day, and we still spent a ton of time together as a family. The girls usually went to Kids Club after breakfast while we worked out, and again in the late afternoon for an hour or so before dinner (usually while we played Bingo haha). 

They have three Kids Clubs on the Wonder: the nursery (for babies and toddlers who aren’t potty trained), and for older kids + potty trained over 3: the Oceaneer Lab, and the Oceaneer Club (which has a play structure inside). They also have a special area for teenagers (I think it’s called Edge). The kids can go from the Lab to the Club via a hallway, and they wear GPS Disney bands the entire trip. When they scanned our card to pick them up (you use one card for everything: to get into your room, to pay, to pick kids up), they can see on their screen exactly where your kids are. “Olivia and Penelope are in the Animator’s room on my left playing with hula hoops.” It was brilliant.

Characters often visited the Kids Club to play games and do activities with the kids. The girls saw Anna, Elsa, Stitch, the GI Joe guy from Toy Story, Captain Hook, and Belle, all in Kids Club. They baked cookies, did a Friendship Rocks show with Minnie and Mickey, had a luau party, and played so many fun games. We didn’t take advantage of this, but they’ll also feed your kids if they’re there during a meal! 

Room:

We went with the Deluxe Oceanview room, but for our next cruise, we’re getting a verandah since the difference is only a couple hundred dollars. This way, we can sit on the patio and drink wine after the girls are asleep.

We thought the couch was a regular pull-out bed for the girls to share, but turns out, it’s a bunk bed! Our Stateroom Host, Anissa, would transform it from couch to bunk beds every single day. 

Extra Disney touches:

There were definitely special Disney touches during the trip. Each night, we’d come back to the room, and during turndown service, Anissa would create towel animals and leave chocolates. One night, she completely changed the girls’ bedding to princess bedding, and they were STOKED.

The app was also fantastic. You can only connect to it when you’re on the ship’s Wifi, and it enables you to see exactly what’s going on all day, receive messages and updates (like your child can asked to be picked up from Kid’s Club and they’ll send you a message), and texting with others on the ship, complete with Disney emojis. It was extremely helpful, especially as first-timers. I always knew what shows and entertainment were available and could scope out dinner menus in advance. They also had full deck layouts and the weather in each of our stops available in the app.

One night, I lost a diamond earring. I was getting dressed and dropped it, and heard it clank around the room. I spent about 20 minutes searching but couldn’t find it. I let guest services know, just so they would make sure no one went in and vacuumed. When we went back to the room after dinner, I saw Anissa in the hallway and she said, “Your earring is on the glass tray by the closet.” She totally went in and found it for me!

One of the guest service team members chose us as their “special family” during the trip. (I’m not quite sure how this works but I think they each randomly select a family to surprise with goodies). Each afternoon, we’d come into the room from the day’s adventures or excursions and treats would be waiting for us. There were muffins, cheese boards, and cupcakes. It was amazing.

I was blown away by how many character greetings and events they had on the ship. The girls got to see maybe 4x the characters we see at the parks, with way shorter lines.

They also had dance parties (like the Pixar Pals party) in the atrium that were a blast.

Gratuities: 

This was something I didn’t know a lot about, so I’m posting it here in case anyone is taking a Disney cruise! While you’re on the ship, you don’t pay many gratuities. (I would just pay an extra couple bucks here and there for specialty drinks.) At the end of your trip, they charge your account around $13.50 per person per day. They split this amount between the different people who take care of you and scale it accordingly. (Like our head server got more of this amount that the assistant server who only got our drinks.) They also leave little envelopes if you want to tip extra. This way, you can be sure to tip an additional amount to the people who went above and beyond (and found earrings for you, etc.).

I’ll do another post with the excursions we chose + my packing list in case anyone is planning a similar cruise!

So, tell me friends: have you been on a cruise? What’s the #1 spot on your travel list?

xoxo

Gina

*This post isn’t sponsored in any way and we paid for all travel and accommodations. We used Costco Travel and highly recommend it! <3

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