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prettyboypucey · 3 years ago

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Weird ~ G.W.

Summary: George is gorgeous. Charlie is a meddler. The snow is cold. (this summary sucks...just read it)

Pairing: George Weasley x Y/N

Word Count: 2,404 (who do I think I am?)

Warnings: mentions of bullying. mentions of food/eating. george is unknowingly triggering? reader cries. idk? let me know if i missed something.

A/N: part 2? maybe? translations are for romanian via google translate. do not come for me if they are hella wrong.

Translations: draga - darling; dragoste - love; tampit - stupid

I had never been normal. From the time I was a toddler I had stars in my eyes and dirt on my knees. While the other kids in my grade were playing with dolls and dressing respectably, I was riding imaginary dragons and wearing mismatched socks with dungarees and a butterfly headband. Normalcy evaded me even further when at 11 years old, I got a letter declaring me a witch.

When I first came to Hogwarts I spent the majority of my time alone. It appeared that even children who could wave a stick around and makes things fly wanted nothing to do with the colorful little girl. Meeting Luna Lovegood in my second year was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Here was a girl who allowed me to be exactly who I was with no judgments. And then she introduced me to Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley, and suddenly that little girl who thought her only friends would always be the rocks she painted faces on, had found her people.

Of course, being friends with Ginny Weasley meant knowing her many brothers. So after graduation when I went off to Romania to work with dragons it made me feel slightly better knowing Charlie Weasley would be there. He quickly took me under his wing and became the older brother figure I had never had. After working together for three years, and electing to stay at the sanctuary for the last two over the holidays, he had finally convinced me to come home with him. I was reluctant to leave the sanctuary - the one place I truly feel safe (despite the massive fire breathing creatures).

Charlie had warned me that being with one or two of the Weasleys was very different from being with the entire Weasley clan. Obviously I knew Charlie and Ginny, Ron had always been nice to me, and I had met Molly a handful of times in passing. However, Bill was known to be quite intimidating, Percy was supposedly very no-nonsense, and the twins (albeit never cruel) had a reputation of being hell-raisers.

Apparating to the edge of a marsh with Charlie by my side I could see the rising structure haphazardly balanced slightly ahead.

Pausing, I glanced at the back of the familiar red covered head, “I don’t know Charles, maybe I should just go back. I really don’t want to be a burden.”

Charlie very quickly rounded behind me to continue guiding me towards his home, “No, no, no, no, no. No. You’re not a burden to anyone draga. Keep your head up and if any of them give you grief - remind them of the giant, winged beasts you can feed them to.”

Quickly placing a kiss to the side of my head Charlie bounded ahead again to open the door and announce your arrival. Before I could toe off the first boot to leave next to the dozen other pairs in the entryway, a pair of arms had flung around my neck.

“Y/N! I missed you so much!”, Ginny pulled back, keeping her grip on my shoulders, to inspect for any major injuries.

I held onto her elbows, keeping her close, “Hi Gin, I missed you too. A lot. I’m loving this new look by the way.”

She reached up to brush the now short locks behind her ears. A grin on her face as the two of us looked the other over for the first time in months. Ginny was wrapped in a pretty baby pink sweater with shades of red and white running through it. The material was soft against my palm as I hooked it around her crooked elbow to follow her into the living area.

“You know”, she started, “I was starting to think maybe Charlie had let you get eaten or burnt to a crisp in the land of dragons. It’s been so long since you’ve come to see me or left the sanctuary.”

“I’m sorry Ginny. It’s just that after everything, I had to keep myself busy.”

Ginny’s smile softened into one of understanding. The war had taken a part of all of us. Although Fred had recovered after many months, that fear of almost losing such a vital part of their family had rocked the entire Weasley family to its core.

“I get it, I do, but I worry about you. I just want you to know you’re not alone Y/N.”

I pulled the girl into another tight hug, “I know.”

Ginny pulled away first, clearing her throat, “Okay! Now that’s out of the way - it’s time to introduce the one and only Y/N L/N to the Weasley’s.”

I hummed, “Hmmm and which of us should be more scared?”

“Oh definitely the Weasleys.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

Meeting the Weasley family had gone much better than expected.

Molly had opened her arms and home to me as if I was one of her own children. By the time the night was over she had me stuffed full of warm food and drink and donning my very own coveted Weasley sweater, the lavender initial in the middle marking it as my own. Arthur had been very interested in my muggle parents and upbringing, questioning me about the functions of a rubber duck. Bill and his wife Fleur were the most stunning couple I have ever seen, and not nearly as intimidating as people portrayed them. Fleur was pleased when she found out I spoke a bit of conversational French and promised to have me over to Shell Cottage (apparently they have an amazing collection of wind chimes that I am dying to see). Percy was a bit more refined. Completely polite and friendly but he seemed reserved. Ginny had explained in one of her letters how much guilt Percy carried after the Battle of Hogwarts over how he had behaved in the years leading up to that day.

The twins were much different than I remembered them being from the few times we were around each other in school. The physical differences were clear - George’s missing ear and Fred’s dragging limp were both signs of the prices they paid in the war. More than that however, they had matured greatly. They were still happy and made sure to pull at least two pranks over the night, poor Molly nearly lost her voice after they blew up the turkey. However, there was something in their eyes that had been dimmed. Especially in George.

His twin almost died that night, and it reflected in George’s eyes each time he looked at his older brother. It was clear that he was still afraid because whenever Fred left a room George followed, never letting his brother out of his sight, and if he happened to lose track of him a panic began to swirl in his brown orbs.

I was in the middle of watching as George yet again made his way to Fred’s side, clapping a large hand on his twins shoulder and throwing his head back in laughter.

“So which one are you staring at dragoste?”, Charlie whispered as he appeared out of nowhere.

I ignored the burning in my cheeks as I looked away from the scene in front of me.

“I am not staring at either of them tampit.”

“Mhmm, sure, absolutely, I believe you.”, after a quick pause he said, “It’s George isn’t it?”

I turned and scoffed at him, “No!… How did you know?”

Charlie let out a chuckle, “Because I know you my little dragon. I also know my brother, and just between us, he definitely likes you as well.”

At this I let out an incredulous laugh and glanced back to where George was now telling a story, his hands moving animatedly. There was no way that George Weasley had even a remote attraction to me. He was kind, strong, clever, and so bloody gorgeous it truly was a privilege to look at him. And I am…me. Nothing special. Just a girl who had more dragon friends than human ones and whose hands were covered in scars and callouses and whose socks never matched and had never even kissed a man before. So no, there was no way that George Weasley would ever like me.

“Hey. I know that look Y/N. Stop those thoughts right this bloody second.”

“Charles it really is annoying when you read me like that.”

Throwing his arm over my shoulder he began to lead me towards the twins, “Yes I know and I am sorry in advance but this needs to be done. Fred!”

Charlie’s voice had gone from a rushed whisper to a jovial shout when we reached George, Fred, and Ron by the fireplace. George’s smile as he turned to look at us sent a million butterflies off in my tummy.

“So Freddy, I was hoping you could help me out with a top secret project tomorrow for mum and maybe show me around the joke shop. I heard you added some new displays that I want to check out.”

“Sure Charlie”, Fred glanced at George as he spoke, “I’m sure we can make some time for our favorite brother.”

Ignoring Rons protest, Charlie gripped my shoulders and pushed me in front of him, “Actually George I was thinking you could stay here and show Y/N around the area. She mentioned wanting to talk a walk tomorrow and I would hate to disappoint her on her first Christmas out of the sanctuary.”

“Um-”

I interrupted the rejection coming from George, “No please, I would hate to be a bother and make you be stuck with me all day. I’m sure Ginny can take me.”

George smiled and shook his head, “No it’s completely fine Y/N. I would be happy to show you around.”

“Okay great! It’s settled then!”, Charlie looked rather too pleased with himself and obviously missed the look exchanged by his identical younger brothers.

~~~~~~~~~~

The next morning the Burrow was a flurry of movement as everyone began their day. Apparently Charlie and Fred weren’t the only ones on their way out. The others still had some last minute gift shopping to do and Ron was spending the day with Hermione’s muggle family. After breakfast, a quick wink from Charlie, and a slam of the front door - George and I were alone in the house.

The two of us stood facing one another in the living room for a few awkward moments before George spoke, “Well, um, did you want to head out as well?”

“Oh sure! Yes, let me just grab my boots really quickly.”

George led me out the door and onto the snow covered path towards the small, iced over river. Nothing was said for a while, the only sound was the crunch of snow under our boots and the occasional sniffle from one of our red noses. I was mentally imagining all the ways I was going to kick Charlie’s ass when he got back for suggesting a walk in the middle of winter when we came to the top of a hill and stopped.

Everything as far as the eye could see was blanketed in sheets of white. Stomping my boots down into the fresh snow, I couldn’t help the giggle that escaped as the snow gave way underfoot. Feeling a pair of eyes on me I remembered that I wasn’t alone and turned to see George watching me with an unidentifiable look on his face.

“Sorry, sorry. That was - I don’t know why I did that. I liked the feeling of the crunch of the snow I guess. Sorry.”

George grinned, “You don’t have to apologize. It was cute.”

I could feel my face flush at his words. His smile grew even wider at the sight of my heated face. My gaze dropped from his pretty face down to my boots. I could feel the thick socks I had on beginning to grow cold and wet from how long we’d been outside. Looking back up I could see George’s deep eyes glaze over. Assuming it was because he had been apart from Fred so long I glanced out at the view one last time before turning back the way we came.

“We should probably get back. We’ve been gone a while and my toes are getting wet. I feel bad enough that Charlie forced you to do this anyways without you getting frostbite or something. I’ve had frostbite, it’s not fun. And now I’m rambling. I’m sorry. Sorry”

George was shaking his head at me and said, “You are so weird.”

Ouch. My chest tightened and the small smile I had been wearing dropped from my face. If I had been able to see past the tears forming in my eyes that were making my sight blurry, I would have seen George’s face do the same. Unfortunately, all I could focus on was that word. Weird. Strange. Abnormal. Freak.

Weird weird weird.

The walk back was silent. A thick tension surrounded you both as thick snow flurries began to swirl down in the midmorning air. Just as thick was the lump forming in my throat as I fought back tears. I know I shouldn’t let his words affect me. He’s just some guy. But deep down I also know that he’s not just some guy. This is George fricking Weasley. With his stupid perfect face and gorgeous eyes and his loyalty to his family. I couldn’t help but be enamored with him from the moment I walked in the Weasley’s front door. So it hurt to hear the man I liked call me that nasty word that has haunted me my entire life.

When we finally reached the Burrow, George tried to reach for my arm but I pulled away and ran into the house. I could hear that some of the others had returned and really wanted to avoid a confrontation. Once again, luck wasn’t on my side. Charlie came walking out of the kitchen and saw me in the entryway. His face immediately became concerned at the sight of me and he lowered the sandwich he had from his mouth.

“Draga?”, Charlie’s voice followed me as I finally reached the stairs and launched upstairs.

As I reached the first landing I heard him speak again, his voice rough and hard.

“What did you do?”

#george weasley #george weasley imagine #george weasley x reader #george weasley angst #george weasley fluff #harry potter fanfic #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter writing #harry potter imagine #hp imagine #charlie weasley #charlie weasley x platonic!reader #charlie weasley imagine #hp #harry potter

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starbornvalkyrie · 4 years ago

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ACOSF USA BOOK TOUR NOTES

Hey y’all! I just attended the LiveTalks Los Angeles event with Sarah J Maas and Eva Chen!! I took lots of notes so I wanted to share them with you all! They’re a little incoherent on the page, so it might seem a crazy, they jumped topics a lot. Feel free to chat with me about what she talked about! But first.

MY RULES:

NO SHIP OR CHARACTER SLANDERING. I know that we all may have different opinions. I will not offer my opinions here, this is purely informational for those of you who did not have the opportunity to attend this event.

PLEASE NO ARGUING IN MY COMMENTS OR ASK BOX WITH ME OR ANYONE ELSE WHO COMMENTS

Acknowledge that I am not perfect and may not have written down everything perfectly. I did my best while still trying to enjoy the event.

I AM NOT SARAH J MAAS AND CANNOT INTERPRET WHAT SHE MEANS

I’m tagging this with #acosf spoilers and #acosfspoilers just in case.

If you understand and can abide by these rules, keep reading below the cut, and enjoy!

SJM said it was weird doing this event from her living room where you might be able to hear her dog in the background or her son trying to get into the room.

ACOSF started as a passion project while she was writing ACOWAR! It was never anything she thought she was going to publish. (more on this later)

About reading and writing growing up

in middle school, she read a lot of fantasy

in high school, she didn’t read as much, but wrote A LOT. it became her fixation, almost an obsession.

in college, she only really wrote on vacations (she had a very healthy social life hehehe) but her junior year is when she found her balance between schoolwork, writing, and socializing.

there was no plan B for her!! it was always to be an author. if it didn’t happen right away, she was going to find a job that would get her by until plan A could come to be.

her favorite author growing up was Garth Nix. She longed for books about badass women. She got to meet him and write a blurb to be on one of his books! She cries when she meets her favorite authors.

Talk about character names!

her character names come from everywhere and nowhere

sometimes she’ll just hear a name in her head and think “that’s it!” (Rhys, for example)

she needs to know the name to write the character

if the name doesn’t immediately come to her, she spends a lot of her time on baby name websites and makes lists until it clicks

sometimes the names just... connect. sometimes she doesn’t mean for them to.

it will always be uncommon. never “Frank” lol

Writing about Nesta!

on a “surface level” she loves writing when Nesta comes out to fight. for example, her favorite scene in this aspect to write was the bog scene. As soon as she got to it, it flowed out of her. The final product was almost identical to the first draft. She wrote it in one session, from the terror & tread to the “who am i?” to when she emerged--she went YES. MAJOR Mic Drop moment for her.

going deeper: definitely her overall journey was one of the favorites she’s ever written. From the dark place she’s in at the beginning to the very end.

Writing about Nesta meant so much to her because of her own mental health. She channeled a lot of her own feelings and went on the journey with Nesta.

it was a lot of “how do you face mental health in a fantasy world without therapy and medication”

it was easy to get into Nesta’s mind but emotionally intense.

ACOSF’S BIG MESSAGE: LEARNING TO LOVE YOURSELF AND OTHERS. YOU ARE WORTH OF LOVE.

YES there is a book planned for Elain!

As soon as Nesta and Elain came onto the page again in ACOMAF, she knew they’d get their own journey.

Nesta grabbed her by the throat in book 1

She was originally contracted for only the first three books but realized there was more she wanted to explore. Essentially the “what comes next” after ACOWAR in this new world with out the wall.

FUN FACT: while editing ACOMAF/writing ACOWAR, she drunkenly told her editor at the time, “hey guess what happens next?”, and it turned into a two hour conversation about everything she wants to happen for Nesta, Elain, Mor, Azriel, etc. TWO WEEKS LATER, she gets a call saying they want to buy the stories!! Obviously, she said yes.

This allowed her to start planting the Easter eggs for these stories in ACOWAR. She knew she did not want Nesta to be sympathetic at the beginning of the book! But she did not want people to hate her.

She always has one eye on the horizon for future books.

If she could visit one court for a day, which and why?

She LOVES the season Autumn, it’s her favorite. “BUT EVERYONE IN THE AUTUMN COURT IS AN ASSHOLE”. She would want to visit the Autumn Court when no one is there so she can enjoy the beauty of Autumn.

But also she would want to go to the Summer Court because she has a thing for Tarquin but only if it’s not gross and humid.

She would ALSO want to go to the Day Court for Helion and all his libraries.

ESSENTIALLY she would want to go everywhere but Spring because Tamlin sucks and is an asshole lmao.

BEAST FORMS

SJM’s beast form would be something totally not cool or majestic like a sea otter.

Nesta’s beast form would be something terrifying and beautiful like a snow leopard/dragon hybrid, a griffin, or a sphinx. **WANTS SOMEONE TO DRAW THIS**

FUN QUESTIONS

Nesta’s favorite smutty book would be JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series. She reads these books for the distraction, of course, but also for the comfort they gave her that everything turns out okay for the characters.

Nesta’s Starbucks order: cappuccino- something simple, nothing with too much sugar or whipped cream. Elain’s would be a Frappe- something delicious and sweet. SJM’s is a flat white, iced or not, but never after 2PM.

SJM usually listens to classical music and movie scores while she writes, but she’s gotten used to write in silence so that she can listen for her son’s shenanigans with Josh.

“Stay Together for the Kids” by Blink 182 semi-inspired the scene when Nesta and Cassian go back to her family’s cottage. She can hardly explain why.

WRITING ADVICE

Write what you love, not what you think you should be writing.

Give yourself permission to suck. Her first drafts are shit and are usually accompanied with an email that says “I know I need to fix this, this and that” lol.

WRITE THE DAMN THING. Vomit on the page!

YOU CAN’T FIX A BLANK PAGE.

Her least favorite part about the publishing process is the first pass of copy edits, those last minute checks and balances. But once it’s off to the printer, it’s not her problem anymore.

She’s every publisher’s worst nightmare because she sends it off to the printer at the LAST possible minute.

For reference: Throne of Glass was finished almost... a year and a half? ...before it hit shelves, but ACOSF was finished this past fall.

MAIN CHARACTER TALK

All of her heroines have a piece of her.

SJM’s personality is a hybrid of Bryce and Nesta.

Feyre and Nesta got most of her in terms of learning to be empowered.

She has to have a connection to them in order to write them. It’s an out of body, method acting experience.

MISCELLANEOUS

She said “CC2 is a year from now.”

She started writing ACOTAR in 2008 before she published TOG.

She loves the story and dynamic of Elizabeth and Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. Cassian is Elizabeth. Nesta is Darcy.

And that’s all I have, folks! Thank you for reading, I hope you got something out of this!

#acosf spoilers #acosfspoilers #nessian #nesta archeron #cassian #sarah j maas #live talks

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Goof Week: Goof Troop: Forever Goof Review (Everything’s Coming Up Goofy, Good Neighbor Goof, Gotta Be Gettin Goofy) (Commission for WeirdKev27)

Yahhahhooooeeeey all you happy people! WELCOME TO GOOF WEEK! Now normally when a character who got their start in theatrical shorts has a birthday, I do a marathon of them. I have since last year with Donald and it’s one of my favorite things: it allows me to explore Disney’s rich history of them I was largely unaware of till Disney+, and allows me to revisit the shorts I grew up with in the case of The Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry while discovering new favorites. SO naturally with Goofy’s birthday in two days I intended to do the same for him, especially since I’d covered Donald and Mickey the same way.

But fate had other ideas. Not thinking about this tradition, Kev, my patreon, friend and the guy who commissions a LOT of reviews from me ($5 an episode if your curious and I WILL make room on the schedule so your commission gets done as soon as possible), suggested reviewing the Goof Troop pilot movie Forever Goofy, later split into the episode Everything’s Coming Up Goofy and Good Neighbor. I loved the idea since I genuinely loved Goof Troop, and decided to do both that week.

It’s then I got a great idea.. why limit myself to JUST doing two things? I hit my 15 dollar patreon stretch goal, so a review of the Goofy Movie was on the Horizon anyway, and for it’s anniversary year Kev has been commissioning House of Mouse Episodes, so it wouldn’t be THAT much of an ask (and it wasn’t) to simply randomly select from a pool of Goofy-Centric episodes instead of all the episodes.

Thus GOOF WEEK was born, and Kev once again proved vital to all this by suggesting the special Sports Goof from the 80′s. I’d like to give him special thanks as outside of the Shorts Special, which as a patreon he still got to pick one and if you’d like to pick one for Donald’s special, sign on up even one dollar patreons get the honor. , this week is either entirely paid for by him or in the case of A Goofy Movie, is partly thanks to him. I wouldn’t be able to do NEARLY as many reviews nor make money off this without you bud, so thank you.

So naturally given the idea to do this two parter gave me the idea for this week and that Goofy Movie makes a logical finale for said week, it only made sense to start the week with Goof Troop. Bop-dop-da-da-do-bop, YEAH.

Goof Troop is the first Disney Afternoon show I ever watched and the only one I watched when I was younger, as Disney Channel used to play it ocasinally when I was younger and Toon Disney would do the same and I even got to Marthoon it when Disney XD did a weekend marathon. Given it starred my faviorite Disney Character, Donald hadn’t worked his way up to tying with him quite yet, I loved what I could grab of it. And as an adult.. it still holds up. It has problems i’ll get into, but it is a real good time so I was exastic to get an excuse to watch some of it and much like with Darkwing wish I had sooner.

Before I can h-h-h-hit it though, I have to talk about the series history. I ALMOST didn’t find anything: much like the other Disney Afternoon shows there really wasn’t much on the Disney wiki nor wikipedia, google turned up nothing... it wasn’t till I went to the Tv Tropes Trivia Page for the series, where i’d remembered reading about some early versions of the show, that I hit gold: A two part behind the scenes blog post by series co-creator Michael Peraza. You can find part one HERE and part two HERE. It’s a short but fascinating read.

Speaking of fascenating Peraza himself is someone i’d never heard of till reading this article but damn if he isn’t a legend. Seriously the guy’s career is as an unsung hero, starting work under the Legendary Nine Old Men, and working on some of disney’s greatest films: The Great Mouse Detective, Aladdin, The LIttle Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast, along with live action cult classics Tron and Return to Oz via concept art. And concept art is where he’d hit his stride: he did conceptual work for all the big Disney Afternoon shows apart from Gargoyles, being one of the key guys in the early days of Disney Television animation. He didn’t stop at just designing things either as he worked as Art Director for Ducktales, The Proud Family and of course given how vital he was to it’s creation, Goof Troop, and to this days gives lectures with his wife to aspiring animators. He even did some guest work for the 2017 Ducktales Episode “Treasure of the Found Lamp!”. So yeah dude’s awesome

So how did he come to be a key part of this show’s creation? Well he’d just finished up some concept work on some other Disney Afternoon shows, and being a company man was glad to report to the Goof Troop..ers to help as the show was having trouble getting off the ground. The reason for this was the creative exec, who Peraza didn’t name out of kindness as the guy wasn’t a BAD person.. just a clueless one, this being his first job in film and tv. As such rather than work hard to develop around goofy or focus on his strengths the kid threw out one concept after another: The series got it’s name from a pitch that had Goofy as a scoutmaster, something I was glad to finally know. To quote Peraza

“ Although while I was doodling versions of the show that were destined to never see the light of the TV screen, the pitch date remained etched in stone and kept creeping closer. Various versions would find their way to the surface only to sink again into the wasteland known as the roundfile (trashcan). One moment Goofy was the Captain of the Fire Department, the next day a detective out of the Maltese Falcon mold, or a swash buckling hero fighting The Flying Dutchman.

The supporting cast he came up with really wasn't very supportive when you consider they sometimes included alien dragon babies with wings along with a large gorilla. Somebody at Walt Disney Television Animation must have really had a thing for giant gorillas around this time as they were plugged into almost every concept we assembled.”

It was clear that while Goofy COULD fit into just about anything, this exec was just throwing everything at the wall, nothing was sticking, and rather than try to refine his supporting cast, they kept having to throw them out and start over. And dont’ get me wrong, cartoons go through a lot of development and changes as they go.. but it’s usually born from a concept and usually by this point, they at least have what the show will be ABOUT in stone. While i’ve had the same creative changes and what not when coming up with projects that ultimately never saw the light of day, and currentlly some I hope to but might not, I’m not being paid by a studio to do this nor had a hard deadline. I was just spitballing trying to get something anything off the ground before reviewing gave me a steady outlet for my creativity and thus ballanced me to take my time with stuff. Peraza WAS turning out amazing art, like this concept art for the fireman pitch that honeslty makes me want to see it as a series. Who DOSEN’T want to see 9-11 with Goofy as the main character? Throw in Donald and grown up versions of Max, PJ and PIstol (And even not THAT much for the former two, as they did go off to college and all), don’t forget Roxanne this time out and you have a worthy goofy movie sequel.

So yeah this wasn’t working and the latest pitch was not great: Putting Goofy in ToonTown as a cabbie driving the Cab from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. As Peraza TRIED to point out to the exec, putting Goofy in a naturally goofy setting didn’t really play to the characters strength, his whole shtick being a goofus in a normal world. Enough of an every man to root for but also a slapstick joly weirdo.

The executive’s INCREDIBLY douchey response, especially since Peraza was a Disney Vetran at this point and had spent quite a lot of time on Ducktales, so he knew what he was talking about was “Do it anyway and leave the “Visionary” part to me”

As you can tell by MR. OOC there, this might be one of the most punchable sentences i’ve ever read.

So Peraza wasn’t in a great place and was naturally terrified when he got a call from Gary Krisel, president of Disney TVA, asking about the show and to see him about it.

Turns out though Krisel was a nice guy who already had a great working relatinship with Peraza, and genuinely wanted to know what was going on there and wanted his honest opinion. It’s why i’m not AGAINST executives in animation as sometimes they can come in when somethings clearly not working or allow a smooth transition of power if a propelmatic creator has to be booted off their own show so the show and i’ts crew don’t suffer as a result. It’s just more often than not they cause headaches or cancel shows for entirley stupid or self motivated reasons. But I will give credit where it’s do and point out times where there NOT stupid or homophobic or what have you and this is indeed one of those times.

Peraza was indeed straight with him: pointing out all the concepts they’d gone through, and like with the other guy honestly gave his opinon the ToonTown Pitch wasn’t working.. and he not only agreed but asked Peraza himself, actually respecting his experince instead of yelling at him that he has a vision that wouldn’t last the end of the day probably.

Peraza was HOPING this was where this was going and gladly gave him a far less high concept pitch and one truer to the character, quoted in full bellow:

“ My spiel went as follows, "Goofy is a recognized star of Disney animation, so why re-invent the wheel? His son is an average kid dealing with many of the usual issues they face: peer pressure, young love, grades, school bullies, and so on. On top of all that, he has the zaniest, wackiest GOOFIEST dad to live down. No matter how insane the situations get though, they will always love each other. They're a family." Gary asked how I would pitch it and I replied, "It's ONE day in the life of Goofy and son. From getting up in the morning to fixing breakfast, we see their difference side by side as his son tries to distance himself. No matter what though he knows deep inside that his father will always be there for him, whether he likes it or not."

If your wondering if Peraza noticed that that original pitch line is basically the peremise and emotioinal core of The Goofy Movie down pat.. your extremley correct and he notes that the film was based on said pitch even if he had no involvment with it that I could tell. The series would still use this but the whole embarasment aspect was toned down, and honestly fit a teenager better than an 11 year old..

So the exec loved it and Peraza shaped the core of the series: the idea of having Pete as his nemisis, pete having a nuclear family including a gorgeous wife, and the show being more slice of life and what not. He made some great sketches, got roaring approval and then pitched it to rousing success and the rest is history. Goof Troop was a moderate success and The Goofy Movie after it is a classic beloved by all. We have this wonderful man to thank for all that and I also thank him , on the offchance he ever sees this, for bringing Goofy into modern times in a way that did the man-dog justice. It’s thank to you we got this fun series, two great movies, and a goofy the way he is today: the best of everything about him rolled into one. Thanks man, free review.. not htat you NEED It since you’ve worked on things i’ve covered and what not, but I feel like I should offer. Outside of Peraza, I found one last bit of making of stuff before I get to the premiere proper. These two early concept shots:

The first has Max who both looks older and has red hair like he did in the shorts. Honestly I see a lot of his Goofy Movie self in thiis design, the only diffrence obviously being the red hair which was wisely changed to make the boy look more like goofy, something kept for the movie.

The more intresting one is this shot of the Pete’s. Starting with Pete he’s more athletic and has a perfectly tacky outfit. While changing him to be a bit more slovenly honestly fit this version of the character better, I do wish they’d kept hte outfit as the tacky gold and green jacket, the gold chain, the open ollar.. it all fits this version of pete so well, as well as his illusion of being a big shot when he is in fact a medium one. Peg is both slightly younger looking and far more doting and is so different I swear this picture looks like Pete remarried after the divorce and got some lipo. Pistol has about the same design but with a vastly different, more Isabella-ish outfit. Finally we have PJ who looks the same, but has a diffrent outfit and a far more sour demeanor, probably meant to be a bully. My best guess is sthis stuff comes from the pitch, and was likely made to simply get the basic premise across before fine tuning the characters for series

So with all of that out of the way i’m calling eveyrone to join in the fun under the cut and report to the Goof Troop.

Everything’s Coming Up Goofy:

Our first episode opens in a small but cozy trailer, where Goofy’s cooking up lunch as only goofy could: by making osme meatballs then serving them to his son over a game of table tennis, with Max doing the same. It’s really freaking adorable, and a dynamic i’m not used to since i’m more familiar with Teen Max. Seeing Max genuinely get into his dad’s hyjinks and enjoy them.. it just warms the heart and adds weight to The Goofy Movie by knowing there was a time the two really were thick is thieves before the stygian hole that is high school drained all that out of him.

So the two are like buddies and pals until the Mailman arrives, not even phased at this point. Turns out it’s a Diploma, and with this Goofy can get a job he’s been up for in Spoonerville and plans to move immediately. Max is devisated he’ll loose his friends and runs away to use a magical mystery box to keep them together only to end up in a land full of frogs with an old man who sounds like his dad minus the drawl and two other tinier frogs and ... I may have the wrong show. In fairness you try dislodging a finale where Keith David runs a 13 year old through with laser sword and then talk to me.

Goofy is sympathetic though: While he seems a tad oblivous to Max’s worries, it’s very clear he’s jumping on this job and this move so far to give his son a better life. Sure he runs through all the cartoon moving away talking points that don’t work in real life or most other cartoons such as there being a nice lake and that max can make new friends, and Max accepts it weirdly fast because this episode is only 22 minutes and they don’t have time for that subplot... but it’s clear the idea of a better paying job, a secure home not in an alleyway, and some stablility for his son is the real reason Goofy’s doing this, and he probably wants to simply give the boy the childhood he had growing up.

Meanwhile in Spoonerville, we meet Pete. To my shock this is where Jim Cummings took over the roll he was born for and has played since and with good reasons as Cummings is just amazing with Pete no matter the incarnation and excels here his penchant for playing jerks, hams and gravely voiced guys all coalesicing. Pete is planning on building what modern toxicly masculine weirdos such as himself would call a Man Cave on his lawn, because Pete is a very SPECIAL kind of douchebag. He also plans to stretch it into the neighboring property, tear down the house there and set it up.

This is news to his wife Peg, played by fellow voice acting Legend whose stillg ot it, April Winchell in her star making role. Peg is Pete’s strong willed wife who dosen’t put up with her husbands crap.. you know that trope that infected sitcoms for kids and adults of the doofy husband whose either a manchild , a skeevy self serving quipy asshole or some horrible combination of the two. The kind that has still been so prevealant the wife from one of said sitcoms helped produce a show about the wife finally doing the logical thing and plotting to kill the bastard. No really.. that’s an actual thing that’s happening. It’s even got a Little Bit of Alexis as Anne Murphy plays the poor, poor wife.

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And why yes the series is called Kevin Can Fuck Himself. And why yes said former sitcom wife was the same one on a sitcom called Kevin Can Wait who was fired because they wanted to retool the show with the wife from Kevin James other sitcom. That also is very really a thing that happened. Payback is a bitch aint it? Fun too.

But yeah from minute one Pete is a terrible husband: Peg is a realtor and thus is trying to sell the house because it’s her fucking job instead of letting her husband throw their family deep in debt to very likely illegally demolish a house so he has a giant yard to play in. I mean even if this is all played for jokes i’ts just not funny enough to not make him an utter bastard. The fact his response to her VERY valid criticism and subtextual worry he doesn’t’t take her career seriously is to fake a panic attack, from a very REAL tendency he turns out to have giant breakdowns under stress, to try and guilt her into letting him have his giant public man cave just backs this up.. as does the fact she simply glares at the camera as he’s clearly DONE this before.

Since I have to put up with this version of him for the rest of this episode, the next, AND a portion of the movie, i’m proudly introducing the Pete Sucks Counter. This will carry over to any other appearances of the guy from here on out. So that’s one for his insane plan, one for disrespecting his wife’s career and one for faking a panic attack to try and win an argument Pete Sucks Counter: 3

So because this episode ran short Peg caves and compromises: He can have the property if it isn’t sold by 9. So Pete does what ANY husband would do: uses his spy camera and booby traps he’s set up in the other house to try and scare away prospective buyers.

Yeah.. while the show TRIES to have Pete not as his old-timey villian self.. they traded in for him being fucking MODOK. I mean he is a grotesque monstrosity who has a nuclear family and spends all his time in a chair thing and can barely function as a Husband or Father. Though at least I can belivie MODOK LOVES his family which not so much with Pete.

To prove this Pete tries using a fake spider to scare some buyers then CALLS THEM TELLING THEM PEG IS A CON ARITST. I.e. something that if they mention to her bosses could get her FIRED. He respects his wife’s autonomy, what she wants and what she’s asked him for, which is a fair shot to sell the place before he tries to wreck the place, as well as likely what his neighbors want. I mean I can accept breaks from reality for comedy, snakebird is my boy.

So I can accept pete has this stuff.. I just can’t find it funny when these shenanignas very transparently show that while he surface level loves his wife he dosen’t respect her or actually listen to her except when she gets angry. He IS the villian so he’s still a slight step among monst sitcom dads but i’ts not great. I can find it funny that his den also functions as a super villian lair though. That shit will never not be great. Also Pete Sucks Counter: 6 For the record: one for the spider itself, one for having traps set up in a property hat both isn’t his and his wife is trying to sell and another for threatening her job and her self esteem as she is baffled at what she possibly did wrong.

So Goofy and Max get on the road, leaving moving the rest of their stuff to an old coot whose a friend of theres. So it’s goodbye Duckburg, Hello Spoonerville! And yes I headcanon this as Duckburg. Goof Troop is one of two shows that very clearly happened in SOME form, the other being Tailspin, the only difference being the time period (Goof Troop taking place in the 90′s and Tailspin in the 30′s or 40′s) and any adjustments for clashes with the 2017 verse. So going off that, we also know Donald and the boys KNOW goofy and didn’t remotely question his presence, as did the rest of the cast.

So figuring out the timeline, Goofy likely met Donald in college, even if he never finished college as per an Extremley Goofy Movie, which may not happen the same exact way given Goofy still has his old job and may not loose it in this timeline, though i’d like to think he still meets Sylvia. But point is he drops out, possibly to marry Max’s mom, they end up moving to Duckburg for her work, she sadly dies, and Goofy is left raising Max alone. Donald and Goofy likely bonded as single parents struggling in low paying 9-5 jobs. Goofy left here, likely said goodbye to Donald and the 5 or so year old boys offscreen , and left. As for how anyone else knows him that’s simple: he probably visits whenever he can. He’s a good friend, genuinely loves Donald like a brother in all continuities, and of course would show up with a progressively more then less grumpy Max every time. As for what I think the rest of the cast would think of him: Scrooge would hate him for his disaster area ways, but at least respect him as a hard worker, he just wouldn’t personally hire him which is.. it’s fair. Beakley would be aggravated by him. Webby would of course like him because she’s essentially him but competent and gay, and Launchpad and him .. god that’d be a joy to see. And drive up Scrooge’s insurance. Della would also like him obviously. I”m really disappointed we didn’t get a season 4 if for nothing else the fact we probably would’ve got another Goofy episode. It also feels weird he’s not in the finale in any way shape or form you know? Why have such a big guest spot for him and then just not bring him or Max back? GIVE ME MORE MAX DISNEY DAMN YOUUUUU So they move right along with Goofy excited to get back to where he once belonged, and to call Pete with the good news on his 90′s cell phone. Pete is utterly TERRIFIED finding out Goofy Comin and tries to send him off course to prevent it. Naturally despite nearly running into a truck, Goofy makes it to Spoonerville by evening anyway and we get a delightful bit that shows off BilL Farmer’s comedy skills as he rapidly lists off all the things in town while driving Max through town. It’s so damn smooth. This also is notable since before this farmer had just played the character in some DTV music videos, which stands for Disney not Denton but god I now want Shock Treatment with the Disney Crew. I mean who wouldn’t want Donald as Brad, Daisy as Janet, and Gladstone as Farley Flavors I ask you. Not sure who every one else would be i’m sorting that out. And if you don’t know what Shock Treatment is, here have this trailer with a nightmarish opening.

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Dammit now I want to watch Shock Treatment again... so I am. Found it in full on YouTube, and I feel no shame in sharing that as it’s not on VOD, nor any streaming service, the DVD, which I own, is out of print, and the Blu Ray is a UK exclusive. This film both needs to be seen more and needs another proper US release damn it!

So naturally Goofy somehow finds Pete’s house.. I dunno maybe Peg’s been sending him letters. Can’t blame her for having a wondering eye long as she dosen’t act on it. She’s married to a walking lump of ego, selfishness and cholesterol and likely only held on as long as she did for the kids. Which for the record Peg as a child of divorce whose parents got divorced rather than keep up a sham marriage or anything.. it’s not worth it. I was MUCH happier that way in the long term.

Anyways Peg and Goofy happily reunited while they awkardly try to get the kids to meet, with Goofy and PJ not warming up to each other at first, likely because Max just lost all his friends, and PJ clearly had none going into the series from context we’ll get later in the pilot. We also get a hilarious bit where Peg alternates between warmly greeting the goof’s and hilaroiusly shouting at Pistol to not play with worms.. in what honestly sounds like a protype for Miss Finster’s voice.

Meanwhile the kids try to hide a small crack in Pete’s boat.. which he notices as he’s just about to steamroll the house despite NOT having asked Peg if she sold it yet and just assuming, possibly opening himself and her to a lawsuit

Pete Sucks Counter: 7

Discovering his boat is trashed, he has a comical panic attack, which I can forgive since this was 1992 and they weren’t as well known as a serious problem. Seriously while pete is a bastard man.. the animation on him is GORGEOUS as it is HILARIOUS, while Jim Cummings brings the hell out of it. He’s kept the roll for three decades as of next year for a reason. Goofy ends up accidently destroying his boat in the process of trying to help him as you’d expect.

So Pete reluctantly lets the goofs sup with them.... and by reluctantly I mean he don’t wanna but Peg’s forcing him, which is pretty much the other half of their relationship in a nutshell: When pete isn’t lying and betraying her, Peg is forcing him to do stuff. As you can probably guess by how harsh i’ve been this aspect has aged INCREDIBLY poorly for me. This is your standard sitcom setup: asshole or dumbass or both dad, put upon wife who has to keep him in line.. but it’s just not how a GOOD marriage works and got so damn draining over time. Again and again we got things saying marriage is awful, comitting sucks unless your young, again and again. It’s why i’m REALLY happy we’ve been getting far better sitcom dad’s and marraiges lately. Bob’s Burgers is naturally the example, with the wife being the less sane one but both having their quriks and neither being so entirely dysfunctional you ever question the marriage. The Louds are another good example: Lynn Sr. And Rita NEVER right with each other that i’ve seen, have a perfectly happy relationship despite 11 kids, and wholly support each other, with Rita happily giving her husband the go ahead to quit his soul draining desk job so he could pursue his deream as a chef, and later letting him take a massive fincial gamble and open up a restraunt, purely because she belivied in him. Finally we have the Williams from Craig of the Creek who are easily one of the best married couples i’ve seen in western animation and one of them’s played by Terry Crews so that shoudln’t be a shock. I could prabobly find more but my points made: this trope REALLY ages the show poorly, more than any of hte 90′s specific tech or swinging theme song I just realized I forgot to talk about. Eh i’ll save it for the next episode.

I have NEVER liked this trope anyway: only simpsons has really made it work for me and Family Guy did until they just stretched it too far, and with Simpsons at least they freqeuently have episodes pointing out how unehalthy it is. It dosen’t help this trope somehow STILL isn’t dead, as evidenced by the fact Rick and Morty has it in spades and for SOME damn reason got them back together.. I mean they don’t fight anymore but it dose’nt fix the problem. So yeah while I’m not holding against the show TERRRIBLY as this trope wasn’t as widespread at the time, it still dosen’t make it GOOD even at it’s core.

Things get worse for Pete though as while Goofy praises him (And the Pete Kids rightfly wonder if Goofy is from space given the logic of ANYONE being that fond of pete. ) Pete finds out GOOFY bought the house he was going to demolish and will be staying with them till they move in. I have only one response to his misery....

Max also futzes with the tv which you THINK would lead to Peg finding out her husband is the antagonist of a Blumhouse movie but instead just does nothing.

So then we have Dinner where we find out SUPRISINGLY, Pete actually has a somewhat valid reason for resenting Goofy: Goofy cost him the big game in high school as Goofy and Peg were on the cheerleading squad together and Goofy accidently kicked pete in the face at a crucial moment, which Pete got the blame for. Granted I did say SOMEWHAT: Goofy is genuinely apologetic and says Pete shouldn’t of been blamed and Pete’s apparently been hiding the truth from his kids this whole time. I do call bullshit on that as while admittedly i don’t get into local football or any sportsball, Pete works at a dealership. At least one asshole would bring it up to either rile him up or out of genuine rage at something that happened at the very least a decade and a half ago. Pete hasn’t let go of this footbullshit DESPITE owning a successful dealership, having two wonderful children, an even more wonderful wife, and a friggin nice boat. But really.. it speaks to Pete’s character in any version: His ultimate undoing is his greed, his tendency to keep going and never settle. It’s something he oddly shares with Donald but Pete lacks Donald’s’s heart or redeeming moments. Pete just wants and wants and wants no matter who gets hurt because he’s inehently selfish and will simply TAKE It if he can’t get it. But it’s why he’s miserable, and ultimately ends up divorced: He can’t be satisfised so he often looses what he has.

So with Pete on the rampage Peg sends the boys upstairs. It’s here we get PJ’s first Woobie Moment: He has a room FULL of cool toys, comics and what not but his dad is such a greedy asshole he refuses to let the kid actually use them. He even knows this isn’t normal but is just resigned to it. Rob Paulsen is phenomenal as PJ, being funny and energetic, snarky and off to the side or depressed and fearful all with grace and ease and all making this all feel like the same sweet kid.

I mention this because Paulsen’s action is so good it highlights an issue with PJ: the writers lean way too hard into how much a hardass Pete is, to the point the series, likely intentionally, HEAVILY implies he physically abuses pete and the stuff on screen isn’t over the top enough, at least for tehse episodes, to get away with how he emotionally abuses him either. He talks down to him, doesn’t let him play toys and as seen by various episode synopsis and the next episode, uses mind games to keep him in line. THIS is why I can’t stand this version of Pete. He’s an abusive monster to this poor boy and I won’t stands for it, nor it being played off as a joke, especially since they try to ping pong between using it for comedy and using it seriously which just.. doesn’t work.

So Max earns his future best pals’ friendship by trying to help him.. and succeeding by pointing out that while he said not to use the Tank anywhere on the ground.. he didn’t mention the celling or walls and has the tank going up the walls. And clearly by the fact PJ is seen sleeping with it later, despite Petes’ss anger at this, Peg presumably ripped him a new one once she found out about the toys thing.

So that night Pete can’t sleep with Goofy tromping around the house and tries to whack him with a Golf Club. I’d give him another sucks count..

But given my brother lives in the basement and I sometimes accidently wake him by tromping overhead without meaning too, I DO get getting a bit fed up with someone clomping around and waking you up, and it is a slapstick cartoon so trying to physically assault someone is less of a crime here and more a setup for a punchline.

So get an UTTERLY hilarious scene as teh combination fo tripping on golf balls and Goofy singing his family lullabye, camptown races with lyrics

So Pete proceeds to have another freak out this time RUNNING ALL THE WAY TO DUCKBURG, THROWING THE OLD MAN OUT OF THE CAR AND THEN BRINGING IN THE GOOF’S BEDS AND BOXES BEFORE TOSSING THEM IN THE HOUSE. It is truly an amazing combination of Jim’s utter talent as he babbles hialriously and the animators as they just make it sing. It’s a great climax to part one. So with that the goofs are home and Pete semeingly gets to go to sleep.. until they start working on unpacking.

Final Thoughts On Good Neighbor Goof:

This is an excellent start to the series. The jokes are really well paced, the characters well introduced and the humor top notch> I had my complaints obviously.. but i’ts more systemic issues with the series, and stuff that honestly it dosen’t hamper my viewing experience for the most part. The PJ stuff does, but it’s not as big a deal this episode as he barely interacts with his Dad, but otherwise it’s stuff that just hasn’t aged well and they can’t be faulted for not seeing a deluge of terrible sitcoms a comin. The cast is top notch: I didn’t get to them in the proper review so Dana HIll deserves praise as Max, giving just the right amount of 90′s TV Kid mixed with real honest emotion and i’ts a tragedy she’s gone. She would’ve been right up there with the rest of this amazing cast in history. Though at least she got a worthy succesor.. but that’s not for now. For now we’re taking an interlude to look at the wonderfully 90′s music video that was aired along with this special:

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Gotta Be Gettin Goofy:

This was my raw reaction to this video. Now is it bad? No the song has great flow it somehow manages to scratch Bill Farmer’s goofy vocals with the beat, the rapper makes the cheesy lyrics work, and the chorus of “gotta be getting goofy” backs a great bit. It’s not a bad SONG.. but the video is a hilariously insane mess. We have two of the poor dancers forced to wear just.. HORRIFYING looking Goofy costumes that look like the Dog based sequel to cats that thankfully only exists in my nightmares

I pityt hose poor dancers. Meanwhile the rest of the dancers are wearing Goofy Baseball uniforms and letterman jackets for some reason. is it beause Goofy likes sportsball. I thoguth they just had them lying around but now I see the g’s on the uniform. They CHOOSE to do this. Max also does a shredding guitar solo, not the max up there the animated max. Combine that with LOTS OF random clips from the show and you get this thing.. and i’ts worth a watch> it’s just hilarously what the shit.. not the most hilariously what the shit thing i’ve seen.. not even this week... that would be this thing from the Eurovision Song contest...

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Your welcome. So moving on because this is already badly behind.

Good Neighbor Goof:

So our second episode opens with the Goof’s trying to move in and pete being upset their being loud. Now being upset your neighbors are being loud is one thing: Mine set off fireworks all week around fourth of July. Granted Pete would probably be the one doing such nonsense but still, I get it.. but it’s fair to have a lot of noise when your moving in and in Goofy’s case also trying to patch up a massive hole in the place.

So he does what any reasonable man would do and activates the earthquake machine he hid in the basement.

I wasn’t kidding about the MODOK comparisons. Granted the thing uses a belt to somehow do this.. but it’s designed to SIMULATE AN EARTHQUAKE AN DDOES SO WELL. The only reason Goofy’s not dead is that pete uses a low setting that instead ends up unpacking everything. IT’s a neat gag but again... PETE HAS AN EARTHQUAKE MACHINE.

Which Goofy accidently destroys his boat with. Meanwhile the boys try to talk over tin can phones only for Pete to notice and try to stop it because he’s a dick and doesn’t want his son to be happy because he hates Goofy. So Pete’s idea of a punishment is for PJ to wear the family shoes to go crush cans while wearing a helmet and given Pete mutters to himself about this keeping PJ away from Max i’ts likely something that he made up to torture his son soooo..

Pete Sucks Counter: 8 Max being a good pal agrees to help his friend crush the cans down to recycle for money and comes up with a zany scheme to do so

Meanwhile we get a few scenes of Pete trying to eff with Goofy’s day: Peg is making food for Goofy like a good neighbor/someone planning for their eventual divorce, so Pete makes him some too with tons of hot sauce. By the laws of classic cartoons, naturally Goofy loves it and wonders if Pete has hot sauce, while Pete trying it explodes his head Scanner’s style.

He then tries giving Goofy a chainsaw loaded with some kind of explosive or something... so yes he’s esclated to MURDER over.. Goofy annoying him a bunch as he’s apparently given up on the whole taking over that lot thing.

Pete Sucks Counter: 9 But it is hilariously petty and naturally backfires again by cartoon law as Pete ends up starting it for Goofy who can’t get it going.

Meanwhile PJ and Max inact the plan which is to drop a bolder with a rope on the cans, but end up having to ride the cans down when PJ lets it go too early and it ends up sweeping both boys on top of the box. They have fun though, with PJ actually getting to enjoy life for once and loving having a new friend.

So as his lot in life Pete has to ruin it by yelling at PJ for getting diryt, then for hanging out with max as he can SMELL the goof on him.. which means he’s either exaggerating or he knows what goofy smells like.

So he forbids PJ to see him insluting max.. while Max is hanging out the window and ends up crying. Oh and Peg never gets involved in any of this across both parts, likely because she dosen’t know.. which makes it even MORE horrifying as it gives off the implication Pete gets away with his abuse of his son because he hides it, like a real world abuser. But even then some things like trying to break up his and Max’s friendship or the toys thing you’d THINK she’d notice.

So we get more untetionally telling stuff as PJ says he’ll treasure this day and the only time he was happy.

Pete Sucks Count: 14 2 for the last scene, 3 for ALLL this one implies. But Max won’t give up the ghost no he won’t give it up. They haven’t the strength to hold on for long but if they both hold on together they can make each other strong. So he has a plan: have Goofy throw a Luau and invite the petes.

Peg naturally forces him to attend and Pete is a dick about it at first, but eventually enjoys himself when they do a conga line. The pets, Waffles and Chainsaw get into some antics. I do love Waffles because I love a kitty. Chainsaw is okay even though I love me a good doggo. Especially this one.

You are a Good Boy, Good Boy. But eventually while playing a party game about passing coconuts, Pete considers the coconut and considers the trees but dosen’t consider Goofy kicking him in the face AGAIN

So Pete is naturally a dick about this despite it being you know, an accident. But he takes it a step further by insulting Max Pete Sucks Count: 15 So Goofy gets mad. But here’s where a rather sizeable flaw shows up in the episode as Goofy.. acts exactly like Pete does about the insuing feud. He forbids Max to see PJ makes up rules and is generally petty and vindictive. And look Goofy could be in the shorts. He’s endlessly adaptable.. but here nothing about his character has shown he’d sink to this and it feels forced to bring abotu the climax.

Thankfully said finale salvages thing: That night Max pulls PJ into his room via the cans, and comes up with a plan.. weirdly asking PJ to hit him with a muffin to save their friendship... but it’s not random it turns out. His plan.. is brilliant. While I really don’t like these types of feud between neighbors make our kids suffer by making them not be able to be friends because we’re being petty children plots, this one has a REALLY clever solution to that: Max and PJ FAKE an oversclated fued similar to their parents, starting with insutls and throwing mulch and escalting to taking down each others fences and then throwing food at each other, before injuring their dads with planks and stuff, nothing serious just slapstick stuff, all to get both to settle down and try and get the boys to stop fighting.. it works like a charm, it’s full of great bits like Peg offering the boys pie only for Max to use it as amuination and i’ts just a great way to end one of these episodes. Not that I WANT more of these episodes but if your going to do this stock plot you might as well be creative with it.

So we end on the Petes and Goofs having a BBQ, all friends again, with Pete having his marina and Goofy nearly burning Pete’s house down and us getting a photo to end the episode.

Final Thoughts:

This one was a step down. Pete’s abuse is REALLY highlighted here and the plot is very paint by numbers and forces Goofy to be out of character for the last act for it to work at all. He just strikes me as too genuine and noble to hold onto a grudge this easily. Peg is also reduced from her usual feisty self to being oddly useless, not stepping in at ANY point to stop any of this depsite it being grossly otu of character. There’s a few great gags and a great climax, but the whole product is just okay

Later Today: Goof Week and Goofy’s birthday continue as I complete the trilogy of Shortstaculars with one about my boy! Featuring Goofy’s first apperance, his first short and the first apperance of what would eventually become Max!

If you liked this review, follow me for more and consider joining my Patreon which you can find RIGHT HERE. Even a buck a month helps me keep doing these and more gets me to my stretch goals, the next one up being the two remaining ducktales mini series, a darkwing duck episode a month and a reivew of the danny phantom film the ultimate enemy. And even a buck a month gets you access to exclusvie reviews, my patreon exclusive discord and to pick a short any time I do one of my shortstaculars. My next one is for Donald’s birthday next montha nd there’s only 6 days left to get on that pay cycle so if that sounds good to you get on in NOW while you still can and i’ll see you at the next rainbow.

#goofy goof #goofy #goof troop #max goof #P.J. Pete #PJ Pete #Pete Pete #Peg Pete #Pistol Pete #Sponerville #Gotta Be Getting Goofy #disney channel #the disney afternoon #disney afternoon #disney xd #disney plus

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steve0discusses · 4 years ago

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Yugioh Ep 34 S4: The Boys (and Mai) are Back in Town

OK, back to the writing table! It’s been a while! So I made the mistake of like...scrolling down on the playlist when I realized...

This duel is like 6 episodes long (7 even? It’s a lot) and like...yo I have no idea if we’ll finish this season in 2020! Damn you 2020. Damn you.

But wtv, what I like about this side project of mine is that I don’t have to rush things, and I can really spend the time with each episode and just...enjoy the moment. So often I watch a whole series in like half a week and then it’s like...I don’t get to enjoy it. This series I’ve enjoyed for years now. That’s kinda neat. So...we’re gonna be slow...but lets just enjoy this weird ass anime moment together. 2020 deadlines are all fake anyway. I’m not even sure if 2020 was a real thing that happened or like...an alternate universe opening a door and letting through just so many terrible ghosts. We might never know.

Last we left off, everyone has decided to hallucinate Dartz’ terrible backstory.

Unfortunately we have NO darts in the past. Was really hoping to see at least one darts reference in this entire season, just one darts board on his wall. But alas, we will not have a Season Zero death darts match with Dartz. (Man I need to get back to Season Zero. And FMA. And a lot of things)

I feel like if I watched the original version there would have been some things different. First off...what ocean? Second off...well, we’ll get to that. There’s some things I think were changed for English TV.

Including censoring the nude people like it’s James Cameron’s Avatar.

Fun fact did you know that James Cameron’s Avatar was supposed to be ass naked and that they were supposed to have like 8 cat nipples? Yeah.

Man, that movie was a mistake. I’m so glad we all decided to collectively forget James Cameron’s Avatar.

(read more under the cut)

The actual locations of anything in Atlantis does not match up with it when it’s zoomed out. We have giant cities, we have sprawling wheat fields, and we have...THIS situation. This active volcano next to...pine trees?

I feel like they wanted it to feel vaguely Pompeii, since I know people like to put Atlantis in the Mediterranean. Maybe? Maybe that’s what they were going for here?

One of my top ten favorite Yugioh plot twists ever was finding out this episode that this snake who has no limbs somehow created these...rocks...that all of our main characters have been wearing and obsessing over this entire time.

And so this is my theory, this is the thesis of my Yugioh college paper. These rocks are turds. There’s no way these rocks aren’t turds. There’s no way this snake didn’t poop out a bunch of glowy magic stones and then stuff them into a volcano.

THE ROCKS WERE TURDS THE WHOLE TIME.

God bless, Yugioh.

Seto spends this entire episode groveling that he isn’t playing cards that will absolutely kill him. Like Mokuba, Seto isn’t happy until he’s cheating death.

(I really wish we got more super past future tech. I love that type of concept art. Instead, we just got a lot of flying boats--the same boat that I think the team flew on in S1 when they went to Seto’s video game universe.

So those boats are 10,000 years old? They existed in the 10,000 year old Pangea, huh?

Neat.)

Anyway, lets take a gander at Princess Zelda circa Ocarina of Time.

SUPER princess Zelda, and I know it’s not 1:1 but damn it feels so much like a late 90′s Princess Zelda outfit to me. Check out that PURPLE. That low poly circlet. The random ass sword. The thick ass belt.

Also check out this super dead family.

Yo so this is a 00′s thing, a period of time where we liked to tell stories like LOST, with just a bunch of random ass plot twists in flashbacks instead of just...telling a story from start to finish. And can be a great and fun way to do it--but at the sacrifice of actually making me care about these characters while they were still alive.

Like I would have maybe cared about Chris and Ironheart dying if I had known that Dartz was killing his whole family? With...lightning strikes? But alas, these dumbasses decided NOT to tell us they were royal. It’s so strange both from a logical perspective and a storytelling perspective.

Man...missed opportunity, IMO, but I can see why they did it. The wanted the ‘Gotcha!’ I feel ambivalent about it, honestly.

And who am I kidding, people are still doing unpredictable plot twists this. It’s a way to tell a story. Is it the most impactful way? No. It’s...it’s a gotcha!

It’s at this point in the story that things start ramping up, but it’s not clear if it takes place over years or just a couple hours. People just start going a little cray and turning into Monsters.

Straight up, though--did they turn into monsters that already existed and are modern Duel Monster cards, or are the monsters from modern Duel Monsters cards actually descendants of Atlantis who were once human?

They don’t say, actually. Maybe...maybe every card was a human once. That would be a freakin weird Yugioh twist if Kuriboh was like a 45 year old dude.

PS Dartz was married...soak that in.

ROMANCE ON YUGIOH ALERT.

Love it every time. She was there for like...half a second, and Dartz was like throwing so much shade about how “only the people with evil in their hearts were turned” and it’s like...

...dude that’s your wife? OK then. I can see you guys got along real well.

Anyway, so long to the ship of IonaxDartz, you were here for even less than the amount of time that Seto dated Blue Eyes White Dragon in a hallucination, which kind of sets a new record for us.

This might be the shortest-lived ship in all of Yugioh and they have a 12 year old daughter and what I assume was a 12 year marriage for that entire time.

that is if they...HAD the concept of marriage 10,000 years ago on Atlantis Pangea island. Maybe?

I mean they might have not had the concept of dating and marriage yet because he gets over this like immediately. The show will never hover back to that time Dartz watched his own wife turn into a creature. We have no idea if he was like “OK honey lets uh...let just get you a haircut and maybe no one will notice?” We have no idea how long he was desperately trying to remain married to the beast that was no longer human and was also trying to eat everyone else in his court. We just don’t know.

Dartz just had a lot of other things to think about. He’s been King for like...a year...he’s only 21...he’s just doing a bad job at everything.

(Biden opens Pres Trumps bedroom in the White House come January and it’s juts full of glowing green evil golf balls) (OK that was my last 2020 joke I swear to you)

Anyway, Dad is here, but it’s a little too late to really do anything with the situation. Everyone is worshiping little snake turds. What can you really do about that?

One eye golden, the other eye, the color of a glistening Leviathan turd.

After the rest of the surviving royal family was chased out of the castle, Dartz decides to just wave his hands around a lot.

I’m not entirely sure what Kings do...never really had one...but I think they’re supposed to do more than wave their hands at a crowd like the Pope. Like...everyone’s dead right? Like everyone?

Who’s he talking to?

Meanwhile, Chris and Ironheart decide to revive some monster tablets to get some real actual duel monsters to do their bidding.

So apparently some monsters are in the tablets, and other’s have just always been here...and...

They didn’t know violence but they did have the cards?

There’s a lot of vague stuff they didn’t feel like ever writing, because it would have probably been boring to write about. I guess we’ll just let our imagination fill in the rest and ignore all the inconsistencies. It’s a kid’s anime. well........kind of a kid’s anime. A lot of people have died this episode and I don’t even know how to add it to the death count.

How many people live in Atlantis? I dunno.

Are the inhabitants of Atlantis even dead, or are they just turned into Monster cards? I dunno. Clearly the Great Leviathan wasn’t awoken this first battle so...did all those souls get returned? I dunno.

Either way I’m not gonna bother the death count about it because I just do not know if they died, and since it was neither an implied death or an on screen death...I dunno.

Just feels like a bit of a translation snafu--where maybe they couldn’t kill that many people on English TV, so they were like “AND IT’S A DRAW!” but also...it could be canon to both versions. The leviathan didn’t work the first time, maybe no one died? I dunno.

In this shot, PS, Raphael just gently backs up out of this flying plane, and it looked really funny to me. I probs won’t cap it because it’s split between two other cuts, but just...they just kind of moved that sprite to the right really slowly, no animation, it was great.

Dartz decides to end the backstory hallucination, and we get introduced to a new twist--a better twist than that last one, that’s right, all our boys are cards!

Including this asshole!

Been a while since our boys have been cards! Man, I miss Bakura!

Yes, I looked back to earlier episodes this season to see what was going on with Pegasus’ new look. I think what happened is that it’s always been this shade of gray purple--but when you put purple next to it’s opposing color (which is yellow colors) it looks even MORE purple. It’s just how color works. Love color theory. mm. Good stuff. Good purple hair.

I can’t wait until Yami kills Yugi for the 3rd time in one season.

Anyway, that’s all for now, and like always, here’s a link to read these in chrono order.

#ygo #yugioh #yu-gi-oh #recap #photo recap #episode recap #yami yugi #seto kaiba #Dartz #I don't know if he has a last name or if they were invented yet #Dartz' hot wife #Yugi muto #Joey Wheeler #Mai Valentine #maxamillion pegasus #Raphael #s4 #ep 34

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mhdiaries · 5 years ago

Photo

Classroom Cleo de Nile & Ghoulia Yelps Mad Science Class Journal

Today was the dreaded “Choosing of Partners for Group Projects” although it could just be me that dreads it. I guess it is because there always seems to be a fight to see who gets to be my partner. I suppose that is an arrogant thing to write but it is true. In some ways it is flattering in other ways, not so much. Even Manny Taur goes out of his way to be nice to me. He is not exactly good at it, but he does try. Mr. Hackington decided this year to try and mitigate the chaos by putting all our names into a skull and drawing them out two at a time. There was some complaining about this new development until he finally said, “You get what you gets and you don’t pitch a fit!” My parents used to tell me that when I was a little ghoul, well probably not the way Mr. Hackington said it but he got his point across. Regardless, at least it keeps me from having to say “yes” to one classmate and “no” to the rest.

Cleo complained the loudest about the new system until our names got pulled as partners... sigh... I love Cleo and she is my beast friend ever but I was really hoping for... well it does not matter. He got paired up with Frankie and I am sure they will do just fine. Normally having Cleo as a partner means... it means the extra credit work I usually do when I am working on a project by myself seems to be enough for both of us to an “A”. Cleo’s main functions include reminding me to do things I have already done and calling Deuce to bring us lunch or lattes. Not that I complain too much about that, and Deuce does have a way of keeping Cleo focused. She also insists on giving the final presentation, which usually goes well since she does command attention. This time though our assignment is to research the Science of Perfume, and then our final project will be to create our very own fragrance. I must say that I was completely surprised by Cleo’s enthusiasm for the project. I am not sure whether to be excited or frightened by this development.

Finally a project worthy of my royal attention! I must say on past projects I have allowed Ghoulia to do the dragon’s share of the work but this is something I can really get my bandages wrapped around. When we still lived in Egypt, before “the difficulties”, one of my jobs was to oversee the royal perfumers. Nefera used to tell me that it was a job reserved for “a princess who would never become queen” but I didn’t care. While Nefera was in some dreadfully boring meeting about how much grain would be harvested for the year or where to build the next royal monument, I would go down and meet the trade caravans. They would be loaded with spices, oils and exotic flowers from the South and East, and the air was always filled with their fragrance. The royal perfumers and I would choose the best of everything to be had, then they would take the ingredients back to their perfumery and work their magic. I always wanted to join them as they cooked, ground and mixed the different ingredients to make perfume and scented oils, but this was looked upon as a task beneath a princess, so I could only watch. Now that I have a chance to get my hands dirty, so to speak, I can’t wait to get started.

I have been pleasantly surprised by Cleo’s contributions to our project. She has really taken the dragon by the horns and unlike past projects together, I have had to “run” to keep up with her. Her enthusiasm and deadication to the project are quite refreshing and she has filled my in box with recipes and suggestions. So for the first time in, well, ever, I am feeling like the “weak link” in an academic setting. I find myself not entirely liking it, which makes me feel just a tiny bit selfish and unneeded. Yes, I know that this is completely illogical, but what if it becomes a habit? Will I lose my place in the group if my brainpower is no longer needed?... #DepressingThought

Ghoulia seems to be off her game lately. Usually she’s the zombie equivalent to a ball of energy when it comes to these projects, but lately she’s gone completely passive on me. It’s starting to scare me, and not in a good way. I admit to being more than a bit self-absorbed, but I can always tell when something is really wrong with one of my friends. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she was fine. I know better than to press her on it, or she’ll just retreat into her brain’s fortress of solitude and not come out for days. I suppose I’ll just wait until she’s ready to talk, but I really want her input. She’s my beast friend, and I want us to have fun together on this project.

I told my mom I did not feel well today and stayed home from school. It was not a lie, but it was not because of a physical ailment, either. Cleo called me several times, but I chose not to answer my iCoffin. I mostly stayed in bed and then I thought maybe I really was getting sick since I did not feel like eating and could not generate enough excitement to read the newest issue of Dead Fast. Apparently my absence was noted, and the cavalry descended on my house after school. I heard the doorbell ring and then I heard the front door open. The voices of Cleo, Frankie, Lagoona, Draculaura and Clawdeen all called out to my mother, “We’re here!” I could smell the aroma of baking cookies drifting out of the kitchen - I thought she gave in to my request to stay home a little too easily. They all headed to the kitchen except for Cleo. I heard her heading down the hall toward my room - I knew it was Cleo because she has a very distinctive gait. She got to my door, knocked once and walked in. “All right, ghoul friend, what, in the name of Bast’s cats is going on with you?” I said nothing was wrong with me but Cleo was in one of her “royal moods”, and I could tell by the tone in her voice that she was going to pester me until I gave her an answer, so I did. I told her how I felt about my role on the project and how I was afraid that my intellectual abilities were the only reason that she and the rest of the ghouls wanted me around. Cleo just stood there staring at me with the strangest look in her eyes.

For a moment I could not decide if she was on the verge of being angry or sad. Then she simply spun on a heel, stepped to my door and yelled down the hall, “Ghoulia’s room - NOW!” The ghouls got to my room in a blink albeit with mouths full of freshly baked cookies. Cleo pointed at Frankie whose mouth seemed to be less full of cookie than the others, “Quickly, when you think of Ghoulia what’s the first thing that comes to mind?” Frankie sparked and said, “She’s kind and helpful!” Then Lagoona said I was “trustworthy and sincere”, Draculaura said I was “funny and sweet” and Clawdeen said I was “brave and determined.” Finally Cleo looked at me and said, “Notice anything in those descriptions that was missing?” I hung my head, a little embarrassed and a lot encouraged. “Now we are going back to the kitchen to eat more cookies, you could join us if you’re feeling up to it... oh and you better be in class tomorrow. We have a lot of work to do.” It turns out that my mother’s cookies are a miracle cure. Who knew?

Now that Ghoulia is out of her funk, we’ve been able to make some progress. I found several trunks at home filled with jars of oils, extracts and spices. Nearly all of them are still labeled. Probably should be careful with the ones that are not... I seem to remember some were rather volatile when mixed with certain other ingredients. Unfortunately, I could not find any of my old recipes, so this will truly require real experimentation.

Experiment Notes

Batch #1

Top notes of leather - old gym shoe leather - with a sweaty angst-like finish. It is a smell reminiscent of the odor that emanates from the boys’ locker room after summer football practices. FAIL

Batch #2

Complex floral notes of troll cabbage and broccoli with none too subtle undertones on burnt microwave popcorn. It was quite... breathtaking and also Mr. Hackington’s favorite. FAIL

Batch #3

It smelled like cheese at first then spoiled milk. Disgusting. FAIL

Batch #4

A frightfully woodsy scent, mysterious yet approachable and our favorite by far. It also hardened in the beaker like cement. We may have discovered a way to create scented construction material but as a perfume - FAIL

Batch #5

Eau de Pit of Goblin Arm. FAIL

Batch #6

Two words - wet werewolf. FAIL

Batch #8

We used an unmarked bottle from Cleo’s collection. It was an odorless black elixir but when we mixed it with vanilla, juniper berry and patchouli oil it opened a portal to another dimension that sucked in half of our experiments before we could put a stopper in the beaker. Cleo blamed the patchouli. FAIL

BATCH #13

Lovely top, middle and base notes - check.

Accentuates rather than overopowers - check, check

Would we wear it ourselves? - check, check, check

Perfection!

Final Grade - A+

Best. Lab project. Ever.

#monster high #monster high diary #Ghoulia Yelps #Cleo de Nile #mad science #monster high journal

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vespiiqueen · 4 years ago

Note

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the ask box of the last 10 people who reblogged something from you (if you want !! 💛💖)

Wow I rambled a lot with this but i can't add cuts bc I'm on mobile rn DHSISHSJ sorry :"))))

1. Ik Ik "haha how cringe are you" of me to say, but honestly? Homestuck. Homestuck helped me in a time of need and when i so desperately wanted something to latch onto. Finally, I caved into my friends telling me to read it-- and it's been a blast!! The epilogues / hs^2 make me feel kinda sad though, because so much of what I loved about the original was yeeted through the nine circles of hell and into the trash. I love Y/ffany's (I call her Yippi tho) design, the art is really pretty at times, Harry is a major dork, I LIVE for seeing Vrissy bc honestly?? Her design is 10/10, very early 2000s emo style and I also live for that. Tavros is cute and a nerd and I think that's swell!

But in terms of story and how any of this happens, it makes me sad to see it happen. If Vriska could return as Vrissy, why not OTHER beta trolls? Where's my Eridan fish man, writers?? Give me the boy or perish by my fury.

2. Also super "haha how cringe are you" but,,, murder cats (Warriors), esp the early 2005-2015 amvs and stuff. I remember watching Flightfootwarrior's "I Will Not Bow" Scourge amv for HOurs and having no clue what was happening, but all these edgy kitties were KITTIES! It's introduced me to a lot of music I still listen to to this very day (Imagine Dragons, Young/the entirety of Hollywood Undead, Breaking Benjamin). And yknow what?? This new arc is absolute chaos, but in the good way.

I'm an "OG Fan". I prefer the first arc, The Prophecies Begin, to almost any of the other arcs. I just could never get into the other arcs-- not to say I haven't read them, I HAVE and the Fire Scene was probably one of my favorite moments beside grumpy Jaypaw, god complex Lionblaze, and fear the gods Hollypaw. I thought the build-up for it was SUPER satisfying. Gray Wing is my baby and I fully embellish in the Gray Wing is Silverpelt theory.

This new arc is definitely something new for the universe. While I didn't read aVoS (but I may do that if i can find the files for it), and so I don't know the major events of it other than what I've seen M.A.P.'s (Multi-Animator Projects, for clarification,,, bc unfortunately that term is also something disgusting). There's fucking cat possession and all the Clans questioning their belief system, yo. Shit be on fire.

Also the Imposter is 100% Ashfur, that's canon now, yeah??? Also im sorry but fuck Root x Bristle that's the dumbest shit I have ever seen. Give me Root x Shadow or face the wrath of my dragon plushies.

RiverClan is my Clan and my gov assigned warrior name is Fireshell 🌟🌟

3. As much as I hate the author,,,,, Harry Potter. It's been a major part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can never really remember why, but I've always just loved it- the movies, the books, the extra little merch that would pop up in my local Walmart. Of course my favorite character is Draco Malfoy. I could go on and on and ON about how I think his character arc was SHIT and JKR didn't have the balls to make him a confident gay man that was always implied through the text (at least, my lesbian ass thought it was implied but i may just be projecting, idk). I could ramble about Draco for HOURS and what I think his character SHOULD have been and how his parents are horrible (more specifically, Lucius bc Narcissa [?] Actually showed a few good moments), and a child should never have to pay for their parents sins.

Oh noo, Draco's a villain because he's a victim of major abuse and peer pressure? He's a villain because a literal child can be horrible and they'll always always always stay as a horrible little fiend?? Fuck that. He's a child.

Unlike manchild grease pan Snape, who was a racist piece of shit and shouldn't have became a fucking school teacher but it's okay because he was ~~~in love~~~. No, fuck you, he was a creep. James Potter n Co may have been a little posh bitch to you, Snape, but that's no fucking excuse to continue to bluntly be a little cunt all the way into adulthood. You're an adult who flatly changed your PATRONUS to imitate Lily's. You have no excuse. And Harry went and named his child after you LIKE JESUS CHRIST, DID RON'S SISTER NOT HAVE A SAY IN THE NAMES TOO?????

I also fully adore the idea that Muggles can run into Hogwarts and their patronus can 100% be a made up, fantasy creature. Imagine you learn the patronus spell and suddenly fucking ARCEUS comes from your wand. Imagine learning the spell and CHTULU (i did not spell that right but im so tired) comes from your wand-- an entire ass fucking Lovecraftian, Eldrith horror is just the embodiment of you. What if it was a fucking Homestuck character like Vriska? How fucking METAL would that be?? Hskajssowjjsjs get on it fandom.

4. Hee hee very evident by my url but Pokemon is another major thing of mine. While vespiquen isn't my favorite (that title goes to Hydreigon), it is definitely up there!

I've ALWAYS enjoyed the idea of Pokemon. You run around, training up these fight monsters and collecting them. I remember playing my sister's Ruby version on her flip-up Gameboy. I couldn't even read but I ran around catching god only knows how many of the same pokemon wherever she was. Apparently, I had fought for hours in the same area and leveled her Blaziken up to lvl 50 something and left her lvl 30s in the dust LMAO.

I got my first game when it was Pearl/Diamond. It was Pearl, and it still holds a very fond place in my heart. I could barely read, I could barely write-- I had named my Turtwig something along the lines of "MmorpHy" and my player boy "ZbsibJ". Yes I remember the names slightly. I really didn't get far-- I barely got to the first gym but I was just so happy to play it.

I eventually lost the game, as a 5 year old would do, but I can still vividly remember what was happening when the game arrived. I had just came back from the dentist and was quite tired from fighting the dentist bc I was super scared. Mom suddenly handed me a box and said it was mine-- my overseas (at that time) dad had bought me Pearl and my sister Diamond, because I lost my shit about it when he visited one time.

Well, tdlr, I played it for about five minutes while struggling to stay awake against the loopy gas they made me take. I fell asleep listening to Twinleaf Town's soundtrack. Every time I play a rom of Pearl and I get to where the player's house fades in and I hear that first tune of the song, I get a huge smile on my face and cry-- as.. Weird as it sounds.

A few years later, I had gotten Pokemon Black bc I liked Reshiram on the cover. Now, this one I could actually READ when playing, but I don't remember a lot of things about it. I probably lost this one too, as a 8/9 year old would do. I DO remember, I chose Snivy and my sister chose Tepig (hrmm there's a theme here of grass/fire goin on......) and vibing to the music. I was so amazed by the sprites moving, I just kept getting into encounters to see the sprites move (oh boy, no one tell younger 7-9 y/o me about Zelda......oh wait....)

Playing Pokemon NOW, as a 17 year old """gifted""" chick, I stil have very fond memories. I recently beat Pokemon Black again and GOD the OTS SLAPS. I fucking adore the soundtrack-- the track that plays when you battle a trainer, the low health dings being turned into a legit song that also slaps, the battle! gym leader themes-- and oh my gOd, the legendary theme is amazing? It really tells you just how glorious these pokemon are supposed to be. It's not intimidating like Groudon/Kyroge/Rayquaza's themes. It's not action packed like Palkia/Dialga's is, it's not filled with tension like Giratina/Arceus's is-- but it radiates the GLORY that the beasts portray. And I live for that. (Also, Kyurem's version is my favorite because it glitches in the beginning and that's rly cool)

P/D/P and BW/BW2's stories, imo, are some of the greatest ones. Yeahhh, US/USUM's is cool and I haven't played XY nor SwSh-- but the ones I can find memorable are PDP and BW/BW2. I love N. I love Barry. They're my sons. Ghetsis is fucking terrifying, Cyrus needs a hug. Giratina scared the piss out of me when I was younger, which was NOT helped by Giratina and The Sky Warrior.

I think my favorite movies are the gen 4 ones. The Rise of Darkrai having a tear-jerking theme for such a mysterious pokemon (i still tear up when i hear Ocarion), Giratina being spiteful is a mood and Shaymin was cute, Arceus being angry is also a mood. Yeah, Pokemon 4Ever made me cry my eyes out over Celebi, Mewtwo Returns made me again cry because Mewtwo accepting who he is, I remember how vastly different the BW movies are-

I just. I have a lot of memories with the series, even if Gamefreak and Nintendo kinda do the series dirty a lot (your top-grossing thing and you made That monstrosity for the Switch? How dare you.). It's comforting to be stressed and pull up my roms for the games and to play them. Mystery Dungeon is incredibly fun to play, Pokemon Ranger is really fun with the concept (Shadows of Almia continues to kick my ass to this very day and FUCK the Jungle Relic, I hate the Water Challenge fucking gyarados bullshit). I remember the pokemon I got for MD (I got Time, my sis got Darkness) was Mudkip, if that is any help.

I love my little fictional pixel monsters.

5. Yup, someone told tiny 7-9 y/o me about console games. The legend of Zelda. My first Zelda game was Twilight Princess on the Wii and BOY did I play the fucking SHIT out of that game.

Honestly, looking back and looking at playthroughs now-- I still love TP. Twilight Princess is still one of my top favorite Zelda games-- yes, even after playing OoT, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, Skyward Sword, the anniversary four swords edition for the DS where you could play by yourself (Nintendo pls bring that back, I don't have friends to play it with ;-;), Phantom Hourglass- ect.

Something about Twilight Princess grabbed me by the head and yeeted me into the world. I can remember playing it for hours with little to no breaks. I, a tiny 9 y/o, had gotten the hang of the controllers and managed to get past the tutorial quite easily. And then, I was launched into the game and I wasn't stopping for NOTHING. Mom and Dad would have to force me to save and get off to go and eat dinner. THAT sucked.

I had done everything on my own up until the first temple, the forest temple. Not where/when you saved the dumb kid, but when you were saving the spirit's light. Theeeeeeennn I got stuck on the fucking Forest Temple for deadass six months straight. I'd play for hours, running around in circles, unable to figure out where to go, and because I didn't grasp the temple's purpose of being that way- I'd get angry and get off. It wasn't until dad looked up a walkthrough and talked me through what I was supposed to do that I learned how to get through temples.

I had gotten to the last little fight with Ganondorf before the Wii broke and i could no longer play. Despite the Wii being broke and we got rid of it, I was ADAMANT on keeping the game, and I kept that game for YEARS. It was an original copy out of a sealed box, and I eventually lost it when I left it accidentally at my now ex-friend's house.

She had a Wii and I went "hey I have a Wii game!" And I brought my Zelda over. Worst fucking choice of my goddamn life. Mom called me to come home and said I couldn't sleep over like the original plan was, and that was it. My ex-friend stashed my Zelda and I never saw it again. And, even if I wanted to-- I couldn't get it back, which makes me upset. We had a BAD falling out. She likely doesn't even remember it's there, or sold it to the local game junkie kid who buys ALL games.

But I still love the game. Midna was amazing, and I loved how snarky she was and she has a very cute design! The game's OST is fucking phenomenal. Midna's Desperate Hour makes me cry bc goddamn it really sells how serious that situation is. I love Hyrule Field's theme in this game. I love the Twilight Realm's song. Zant was fucking hilariously scary. Ganondorf's design in this game scared the piss out of me when I was younger.

Midna and this game's Link and Zelda are def my favorites. Yeah yeah, Sheik is cool and all I Guess but dhsushwishs Midna holds the special place in my heart. She was totally my gay awakening BUT

For other game antagonists, I adore Ghirahim-- let's go you funky little queer-coded villain. Skull Kid was great, I love the entire dynamic of him. Prankster lost soul stumbles upon Majora's Mask and the mask makes him act out due to powers-- which, I actually took very heavy inspiration from for one of my OCs. The moon falling to Hyrule was a fucking terrifying looming threat.

But the game series holds a place, and I've yet to be able to play BoTW-- although, I'm fairly certain I'll like it. The playthroughs I've watched of it are all fairly decent! I just. Gotta save up enough money to buy it haha.

Dang guess I gotta go watch a Twilight Princess playthrough again.

Honorable Mentions:

Avatar: the Last Airbender, specifically Book 3

my OCs definitely make me happy, they're my children and I'd ramble A LOT longer if given the chance WHEEZE

My friends, but I didn't add them here bc it's more fictional stuff, I presume

Baking. I love to bake cupcakes.

Painting is fun. I'm an artist and goddammit im going to use painting as an excuse to make a mess.

Fire. I rly like fire, down to a pyromaniac level. However, i hate the fires that happened to my home town, the Great Smokey Fires of 2016-- THAT pissed me off. How dare you burn mountain landscapes to the ground. Perish.

History. I'm a history nerd.

I'm also a science nerd.

But fuck math, I cannot comprehend math to save my life.

For some reason, I rly like learning how the human body works??? like did you know, organs are actually sticky when touched by a bare hand?? Did you?? How fucking cool is that.

Bakugan. I love Bakugan, esp the DS game. I love my Darkus Leonidas. Give me back the online world, you peasants-- I want my Darkus Dragonoid. (Also fuck all my friends from when I was in kindergarten- my theory that Alice was Masquerade was somewhat correct.)

#admin ace #admin ace speaks #communistvriska #inbox tag #homestuck #warrior cats #harry potter #pokemon #legend of zelda

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brokenmusicboxwolfe · 5 years ago

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Day 6 without sculpting...

In a way it’s weird I miss sculpting so much. This near daily sculpting is actually a relatively recent thing for me.

Actually, for about the first 20 years of my life I can count every time I sculpted on my fingers.

My father inspired my first sculpting. Before I was born he’d dug some clay out of the river bank and sculpted a little baseball sized head with marbles for eyes. It facinated me, so at about four I dug some clay out of a ditch and tried to sculpt two full figures. I let them dry on a plank in the summer sun....and they crumbled. Amazingly, one of the heads survives to this day.

In kindergarten we had a cool teacher with his own kiln. Technically he had us making little pots. I used the scrap and made a little alien head with big almost Mickey Mouse ears that he glazed for me and a little alien with loops for arms that I colored with crayons. He left at the end of the year, takng his kiln with him.

In second grade the new teacher had us make dough art angels. This was an “everyone copy the teacher” deal, so no real self expression. Let me tell you, dough art does not last in this climate. That angel no longer existed within a year.

My parents gave me some plasticine type clay for my 10th birthday. Unfortunately that sort of clay never can be made hard, and I really wanted something that would “stay”. I barely used it.

When I was in 9th grade the art class had a paper mache project. Or at least they called it that. Really it was a structure out of wire, newspaper and masking tape covered with plaster bandages. I made a dragon, Lockheed from the X-Men in fact, but that was that. No way could I get the plaster bandages myself, and I didn’t care for the rough surfaces.

And that was that for growing up.

The weird thing is, I actually was always drawn to sculpting, but it never occured to me I should sculpt. I loved physical objects that depicted living things and always noticed when stories included sculpting. Heck, I even started writing a fantasy story involving a sculptor and magical sculptures. But actual sculpting wasn’t even a daydream.

And then one day my hands got bored. It was an unusual day, a day off while Pop was away. Free time meant I could do what I wanted. In this case it was to watch a movie (The Brothers Karamazov), read a book (don’t remember what), read a magazine (dunno) and listen to music (forget what)....all at the same time...

Yeah, I’m like that. Always wanting to do several things at once.

There I was, sitting on the floor, all these things around me, and I noticed my hands were bored. Because hands do get bored. Mine do anyway. Just ask them! Pop had some boxes of clay he’d bought for a project but ended up with some left over. On a whim I decided to try sculpting with this “proper” clay.

I made a little bust, a woman with a flower in her hair and a beastie lying round her shoulders. If you look up pics of it (all my sculpting that exists is on my blog) you will see how crude it is, but at the time I was pleased. I’d expected sculpting to be hard, but this was easy!

But we didn’t have a kiln. Well, Pop had one somewhere out in the shop, but he didn’t know where, didn’t have time to look, and wasn’t keen on me pawing around when it was probably behind some unmovable things.

So that was that all over again, the old problem of wanting to sculpt something that would stay.

And then I discovered sculpey!

Now you would think this would kick off constant sculpting, but it was more fitful at first. The trouble was, I did not want to be watched sculpting. I just wanted to goof around with it, stress free. So what I did was sculpt every time I was guaranteed a solid hour to myself. I’d usually go stand on the ramp outside, sculpey in one hand and an old dull pairing knife in the other and sculpt.

This is probably why I sculpt so quickly even now. Back then I just wanted to do it unseen, baking as soon as there was anything at all I liked about it. Now fast sculpting is just secnd nature.

After a bit I branched out, making ornaments and getting roped into making a dollhouse doll for a cousin. I also made several dolls that scale for fun and gifts for my family. I also pleased the four year old me by making a Sleestak from memory. I experimented with gluing a face on one of the boxes I’d painted. (Painting boxes was a thing for me for years) I started running out if space for the busts so I started making magnets and lining all the metal bookcases in my bedroom with faces.

But during all that I could go weeks, even months, without sculpting. I’d paint boxes. I’d write. But all these things shared a little space of free time.

We were busy. The fiberglassing business took a heck of a lot of work. There were all sorts of organizations, causes, meetings I tagged along to, obligations to my family. Making takes time, even if it’s just an hour, and back then I never had insomnia so working after everyone went to bed wasn’t an option.

Still, I made things right along until the weirdness happened. For a several years I had a creative block.

Totally.

Completely.

I didn’t sculpt. Didn’t paint boxes. Didn’t write stories. I didn’t even dream at night.

It was hellish.

I can’t tell you why it happened. I can’t even tell you why it ended. All I can tell you is was if my imagination started to reawaken in 2012, a year that at that time I thought was one of the worst in my life. It started with a painted box here and there. Slowly.

Then 2013 happened, the terrible year of Pop’s illness that made the bad things of 2012 seem pale in comparison. Suddenly I was dreaming, dreaming in overdrive in fact. The dreams I was churning out boxes as fast as I could paint them to “exorcise” those dreams. The dreams occupied my mind constantly. At night they were like serialized stories night after night, during the day I was like an obsessed fangirl disecting and rerunning her favorite show that just happened to be created by my subconscious.

This frantic box painting lasted until the last stages of Pop’s illness, when it stopped. I haven’t painted a box since.

In mid to late 2014, the year Pop died, the cousin I made the Beast doll for sent me a letter. Actually, now that I think about it, it was the last time I heard from her. She said she’s shown the doll to someone she knew that had a dollhouse collector store and they said I had talent, that in fact it was as good as many professional dolls. The cousin suggested, now that our fiberglassing business was gone I should take up doll making.

It sounded reasonable, though I completely doubted that “talent” part. But there were problems with this plan. I hadn’t sculpted in several years and didn’t know if I still could. I wanted to make fully jointed dolls, but making them by hand out of sculpey would be tricky to master. Everything I made (and make) is one of a kind and feels like a part of me, so parting with them would be painful. I needed to figure out how make it easier on myself.

I mean, there is a reason I jokingly call my sculpting “making friends”.

And so I got to work. I decided to use my werewolf box as inspiration, figuring that with these wolf people I could make them enough alike it would be easier to part with them, but enough different I wouldn’t get bored. I could learn to make mold from them, and then selling wouldn’t hurt.

This is when I think my sculpting addiction really began. Instead of sculpting occasionally I was sculpting most nights, and would stay up late when making the bodies.

This period of experimentation lasted for a few months, long enough for me to suffer the disapointment of being an outsider exhibiting at an art show with my odd fantasy dolls. I actually WAS making progress. I liked a few of the dolls snd thought in a few more months I’d be ready to go to the next stage, I even bought molding and casting materials to learn to use...

And the floor collapse happened. This started an ever increasing cascade of disasters that continues to this day.

At first I thought the interuption was temporary. By the end of 2015 I’d be back at learning to make dolls...

Obviously this didn’t happen. For months I kept making heads for future doll experiments, complete with metal loops for stringing them on. I even built a storage box to keep them all in. Eventually the room with the box started to go, so I “temporarily” moved it to the other house. It’s there still.

By then I had a sculpting habit. I needed to sculpt. My fingers would twitch around sculpey. Mom would laugh at how on nights where I didn’t sculpt my eyes would dart to the sculpey every few seconds. She would tease me about it calling to me, but it’s sort of right. In 2015 sculpting had become something that I constantly felt I should be doing.

To be honest, the addiction aspect has only gotten worse with time.

When Mom was here there were more nights I didn’t sculpt, and if I started sculpting as she went to bed she’d remind me not to stay up late. Since her stroke and her going to stay with my brother I’ve been alone. Alone to watch movies and sculpt, with no socializing to distract me and no one to tell me to stop.

Now the nights I don’t sculpt are rare (see last November when I sculpted more faces than there even were days in that month because I sculpted more than one a couple nights). The faces stick with me less though, to the point that when I post pics a month later I have actually forgotten many of them already.

I don’t do anything with these faces. I sculpt them quickly, photograph them, wrap them in tissues and throw them into one of the storage boxes I have for them. Those boxes have literally hundreds of faces by this point.

I shouldn’t NEED to sculpt.

I have spent more days of my life not sculpting than sculpting. I have sculpted more faces in the last year than most people do in a life time. Ignoring the fluke of the one face I sold, I don’t profit by it in any way.

The sculpting is a compulsion, an impulse I can’t resist. I feel a weird guilt and unease when I don’t sculpt. It hasn’t even been a full week without sculpting and it’s driving me nuts. Believe me, I know it’s ridiculous!

#sculpting #artists on tumblr #art

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mimzy-writing-online · 5 years ago

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10/10/10 Tag Game

Thank you to @emdop for tagging me in this. This is their tag game here

How it works, answer ten questions your tagger gave you, make ten new questions and tag ten new people to answer.

1. For any of your OCs: What’s their favorite drink?

Ulric: black coffee or cappuccino for a treat

Anna: Earl Grey tea

Felix: English Breakfast tea

2. What very specific thing do you like to write the most?

The scene when two characters sit down and talk, opening up to each other

3. Favorite Tropes?

Friends to lovers, slow burn friendship, slow burn romance, found family,

4. Least Favorite Tropes?

Enemies to Lovers with no friend stage,

5. What is something you’ve always wanted to write?

A Witch’s Memory is something I’ve wanted to write for the longest time, but other projects I think about a lot:

A whimsical magic in a completely different world. A Witch’s Memory is only a different version of our modern world, one where magic is normalized like science and technology. I want to write something in a fantasy world that completely turns everything we know upside down, with climates and natural environments only from our wildest dreams and an era that is only partially recognizable in its fashion and technology, pulling from every era into a wonderful cluster of confusion and fascination.

Soft-fantasy novel set in the 1990′s with 90′s era technology, libraries and librarian aesthetic, dragons, witches,

Most recently I’ve also been playing with the idea of a steampunk royalty story with a romance plot.

6. Do you make playlists for your WIP ideas?

Yes, and they usually either a “if this book was a movie this would be its soundtrack with this song for this specific scene” or it’s a “this would be this character’s personal playlist of favorite songs”. Anna, Ulric, and Felix have their own playlists.

7. When you’re having trouble writing, how do you inspire yourself?

I also make a pinterest folder for my WIP ideas, and A Witch’s Memory has its own board for its world building as well as a board for Anna, Ulric, and Felix. I look at that when I’m stuck and don’t know how to start or continue a scene.

If I’m drafting, I look back at my outline and work through what I have planned. Sometimes I have to deviate from the outline a little and figure out a way to reconnect back, or alter it altogether.

If I’m very stuck I go back to other works of fiction that have inspired me in the past, specific for that story. That includes rewatching them, rereading them, listening to soundtracks or looking at fan art.

I get out of the house and spend some time with a friend. My friend (A) and I usually work through a story problem by talking it out. (K) usually distracts me and takes me to random places. Sometimes I call or message (C) because she lives far away and we talk. They all help.

8. Where do your WIP ideas typically come from?

“I really like this story, but I kind of wish it went differently, involved these tropes, had this world building, had these characters, etc.”

Nothing is really original, no matter how far back in fiction you go. Everything is inspired from something else, so for me what I do is find the aspects of fiction I love most and see what I would do with them personally.

Example: witches are cool, but if it takes place in the modern world then it has to be a secret and humans can never know, but if it takes place in a hard-fantasy historical world then everyone knows about magic and has access to it somehow. - - - > And it becomes the whole premise for this world I built

Example: why do werewolves hate being werewolves? And why must they blackout during a full moon and go total beast? And they’re either always alone or there’s this whole alpha pack thing which isn’t technically true of real wolves - - - > and it becomes a thing that werewolves are proud of being werewolves, they easily form bonds and friendships with other people, even non-werewolves, and when the full moon comes around werewolves run in a group as a fun activity, something they enjoy

Example: Amnesia makes for an interesting story, but it’s not very realistic when you know actual medical stuff, and it’s always one-sided so people are always trying to make their loved one remember or trying to “reconnect” in the exact same way they did before - - - > Which lead me to amnesia through magic curse and mutual loss of memory, forgetting the entire friendship, so now they genuinely start from scratch

Example: Long distant pen-pals is a popular trope, especially since the invention of the internet, but every time I see it, it involves people who have met in real life even if it was only for a moment and they never knew it / didn’t give each other enough information to figure it out. - - - > It turns into, they couldn’t possibly have known each other before, they live in different parts of the world, but they want to meet one day, and then by a twist of fate (or meddling) they do meet

9. If your OC was a breakfast food, what would they be?

Felix: unsweetend English Breakfast tea and jam toast: When I say jam toast, I mean his humor is a little dry like toast, but he’s still enjoyable company, sweet if he wants to be. He can also be a little bitter sometimes, the kind of person you need to know a little bit before you develop a taste for it

Anna: Earl Grey tea and honey on an English Muffin: she’s calming company but complex like the flavor of earl grey tea. As for the English Muffin, it’s a joke that she’s English-adjacent, not actually British. She spent her first eight years in America and then lived in the U.K. with Felix’s family for the next eight until their family moved to America. Her accent is slightly changed and she uses some U.K. English vocab instead of American English, so most people think she’s British. English muffins aren’t actually English. They’re an American breakfast food based on crumpets.

Ulric: A cinnamon roll and cold butter. This is a weird one. I think if you met Ulric and got to know him, he’d be someone you’d want to protect. He’s polite, kind, and shy. Life keeps throwing him lemons (literally throwing, between his emotionally abusive father and suddenly being blind, dealing with new anxiety/depression after going blind, etc) but Ulric’s just trying to do his best. Absolute cinnamon roll. But that’s not a something he’d let you see. Most people don’t know about that part of his life, so he’s like cold butter. He’s friendly but it takes a while for him to warm up and soften those walls to let you in.

Mason (Ulric’s best friend, who I must add): sweetened coffee - very energetic and hyper, a sweetheart of a friend. There’s no coffee-bitterness, by this I mean that it’s easy to enjoy his friendship, you don’t need to develop a taste for it like you do with black coffee. (Mason is also a precious cinnamon roll if you ask me)

10. Explain one of your WIP ideas in the most ridiculous way possible?

I’m going to do this AO3 tagging system style

A Witch’s Memory

Multi, T, Graphic Depictions of Violence

Anna St. Claire & Ulric Matthews, Anna St. Claire & Felix Robbins, Felix Robbins & Ulric Matthews, Felix Robbins/Hayden Watson

Anna St. Claire, Ulric Matthews, Felix Robbins, Mason Shepherd, Elmsley St. Claire, Veronica St. Claire, Hayden Watson, Katarina Matthews, Tobias Matthews,

Memory Curse, Amnesia, Pen-Pals, Found Family, Adoptive Family, Slow Burn Friendship, Enemies to Friends, Platonic Soulmates, M/M Slow Burn Romance

Disability, Blind Character, Bisexual Character, Three Bi Disasters, Trans Character, Elmsley is trans, Elmsley is a Good Uncle, Tobias Matthew’s Terrible Parenting, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Emotional Abuse

Magic, Witches, Werewolves, Werewolf Ulric, Witch Anna, Witch Felix,

Graphic Violence is only in two scenes, two different characters get punched, and there’s some blood

Tagging: @snowblossim @thephantomofwriting @novel-scribe @the-moving-finger-writes @sapphoopages @owlsofstarlight @mayvinwrites @belles-library @maggie-wolff-writes @thewritingpirate

Your Ten Questions:

1. What’s your favorite trope to read but not to write? Or vice versa, to write but not read?

2. Some of your favorite aesthetics?

3. Ideal writing environment? (Time, place, sound, drink/snacks)

4. What’s your favorite side character in your WIP?

5. How would your OCs interact with your favorite characters from other works?

6. An embarrassing fact about your OC that they would never tell anyone?

7. What book do you think should be made into a movie?

8. What’s the last mean thing you did to your OCs?

9. Write an Incorrect Quotes post between your OCs

10. I’m stealing from emdop too! Explain one of your WIPs in the most ridiculous way possible?

#writeblr #writing community #WIP #tag game #writing #A Witch's Memory #my wip

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lichlairs · 5 years ago

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Checkout our new post over at https://lichlair.com/daily-monster-56-demogorgon

Daily Monster #56: Demogorgon

Today we’re talking about one of the most iconic monsters in Dungeons and Dragons. Not only that, but with the recent interest in this particular creature after Stranger things, I think it’s safe to say that at least a few newbies have found the hobby through it. Without further ado, let us discuss…

The Demogorgon

The basics

Alright, here we go, this one might just take a little longer than usual so let’s just get right into it.

Like our Tiamat article from a couple of months back, Demogorgon is definitely not the kind of monster you want to just throw at your party willy-nilly. Even just looking at the numbers for the stat block triggers my fight or flight instinct. We’re looking a solid +2 DEX for this monster’s lowest stat, granted, considering Demogorgon is a size Huge I would still think this is pretty great. Demogorgon’s WIS and INT are both more than acceptable at +3 and +5 respectively, but chances are that if you end up fighting this thing, you’ll want to watch out for its +7 CHA, +8, and +9 STR. That’s right, this thing has a 29 in strength.

Not only is this thing incredibly tough with an AC of 22 and a giant hit point pool of 28d12+224, but it also has some crazy saves and resistances! I’m talking about +10 DEX, +11 WIS, +15 CHA, and +16 CON to saving throws. Actual bananas… but even if you do manage to hit this thing, you still have to worry about overcoming Demogorgon’s resistance to Cold, Fire, and Lightning as well as its immunity to Poison and non-magical weapon attacks. And of you’re hopping to put this bad boy under some negative condition like charmed or frightened, you might want to think again because this chaotic demon has a handful of condition immunities as well. At this point sneaking your wait out might sound like the best choice but even that is unlikely considering Demogorgon’s Perception of +19, Truesight of up to 120ft range, and passive perception of 29.

Although communicating with this demon should be an easy task thanks to its telepathy of up to 120ft rage and its ability to speak all (and I do mean all) languages, I don’t recommend lying to the Prince of Demons; +11 to Insight might not sound like much after some of the other numbers we’ve discussed, but it’s still plenty.

Demogorgon gets an Innate Spellcasting ability that uses his CHA and has a crazy save DC 23. Using this feature he gains access to the following spells:

At will: detect magic, major image. 3/day each: dispel magic, fear, telekinesis. 1/day each: feeblemind, project image.

If you thought we were done listing all the ways in which today’s monster is a tough one to chew then you’re wrong; not only does he have a Magic Resistance that gives him advantage on saves, but thanks to its Two Heads, he also just gains advantage to save from pretty much every other condition that wasn’t in his list of resistances already.

Now that we’re done listing its features and attributes, it’s finally time to discuss some of the weapons at Demogorgon’s disposal. As a creature of legendary proportions Demogorgon has a multiattack and both Legendary resistances (3/day) and Legendary actions to compliment its array of attacks.

While under normal circumstances a Tentacle attack might not sound all that scary, getting hit by Demogorgon’s tentacles means having to make a save against hit point reductions. This basically means that it won’t matter how many clerics you have in your party because no healing can recover damage taken from these attacks.

Next we have Demogorgon’s infamous Gaze attack; any creature can choose to succeed on the save imposed at the cost of not being able to look at our demon until its next turn. Those who choose to hold his gaze must make a DC 23 CON save or suffer one of the following three effects:

Beguiling Gaze: on a failed save the target is stunned until the start of Demogorgon’s next turn or until the demon breaks eye contact.

Hypnotic Gaze: on a failed save the target is charmed until Demogorgon’s next turn, making it so that our demon can dictate their very action and move. Note that this cannot be use in conjunction with the Maddening Gaze legendary action.

Insanity Gaze: on a failed save the target suffers the effects of the Confusion spell, minus getting to make a saving throw, of course.

Today’s monster can take two legendary actions each round of combat. The first of our two options is a pretty simple Tail attack that does some pretty good damage but nothing else to boot. The second one, however, allows us to use Demogorgon’s Gaze an extra time per round as long as we only choose between Beguiling and Insanity.

All in all, this huge fiend definitely packs a punch. It’ no wonder he’s nicknamed the Prince of Demons. For those of you following along, today’s monster is considered a CR 26 creature of chaotic evil alignment.

The lore

Historically speaking, although there is some debate about it, the word “Demogorgon” is mostly accepted to have been the product of miscopying ancient documents. While this initial misunderstanding of Greek equaled our Demon Lord to a primal god, Christian writers slowly turned the word to represent a demon in hell.

In terms of our favorite pastime, Demogorgon first appeared in the world of Dungeons and Dragons back in 1976 when it was introduced along with Orcus as part of the Eldritch Wizardry supplement. This is one of those monsters that have been a staple of the game for as long as there has been a game.

Today’s monster goes by many nicknames: Prince of Demons, Sibilant Beast, Master of the Spiraling Depths. Demogorgon reigns over the Gawping Maw deep within the Abyss (88th layer to be specific) where it has built itself a massive castle, Abysm, with two spiraling towers shaped like snakes, one for each head.

Speaking of heads, one of the most important features about the Demogorgon’s appearance is its two very large simian like heads, each of which has a name and a distinct personality. The first head, Aameul, is the more charismatic and deceptive of them, always making plans and trying to find ways to separate itself from its tin head, Hethradiah, who represents primal savagery and destruction rather than cunning. The rest of Demogorgon’s body can be described as a combination of scales and fur, with broad shoulders and two tentacles instead of hands.

Even though the word “scientist” might not be the first thing you think about when you see depictions of this creature, Demogorgon does in fact have a bit of a hobby in creating twisted creatures. As if being an 18ft tall mutated simian with two heads wasn’t enough, he can count on the creatures he has created such as retrievers, ettins, and death knights= as well as a steady supply of hezrou and other nefarious beings that he keeps under his command.

Although his cult isn’t as numerous or common as that of other demons and evil entities, the Sibilant Beast can count on the support beings like the kuo-toa, troglodytes, and even human beings. In fact, it’s not entirely uncommon for warlocks to seek pacts with Demogorgon.

There is a lot more I could cover for today’s monster, but for the sake of not having article end up being longer than the Wikipedia page, I believe I’ll leave it at that.

The execution

Oh boy, this is a big one. I definitely wouldn’t recommend throwing this at your players until they’re near max level or have some sort of godly support to back them up. This is the sort of BBEG you leave for the end of the campaign, that’s for sure.

So, okay, let’s get a couple of things situated before we being. The first of these is the fact that, unlike other evil entities, Demogorgon is unable to planeshift, which means that, if you really really want your party of adventurers to fight him you’ll have to make them go to him and, as fun as raiding Abysm sounds, I think I’d pass, personally.

The second thing we need to know is that while he cannot be summoned into the material plane, extremely powerful individuals who worship him might have the ability to summon an aspect of him, which is actually where we get our statblock from.

The way I see it those are our two real options on how to push for an encounter with this monster. I think a way to even the battle field a bit more and give your party a little more of a chance to survive this encounter would be to have Demogorgon be focused on a different goal while the party assaults him. Perhaps now that an aspect of him has been released into the Material Plane he’s on his way to destroy Waterdeep or something. This would leave your party with a couple of rounds to unleash their worst on our Demon Lord before it finally turns to deal with the annoying flies buzzing around it.

An interesting idea for this combat would be to have the first half of it focus on minimizing Demogorgon’s damage, and surviving the effects of his presence in the Material Plane before decides that getting rid of our pesky adventurers is the best call. On top of having stuff like flying giant boulders that are being tossed about by our Demon and the expected chaos of it barging into a city, you could also decide to spice things up by having a few of its faithful servants show up.

One of the things that I enjoy the most about combat both as a player and as a DM is to have choices. Would the players decide to deal with the chaos around the city and save innocent lives? Or would they focus on trying to dispatch our Demon Lord back into the Abyss?

Aaaand that’s it for today. If you enjoyed this article and want to see other similar content, don’t forget to visit our social media so we can let you know when we post new articles. We put up new content every day of the week!

#Behind the Screen #Daily Monster #dnd #dnd5e #dndbeyond #dungeons and dragons

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cuilective · 5 years ago

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Announcement: New Muse(s?) Incoming

Actually, possibly two, though I’d like a bit of input first if at all possible.

The one that I for sure have in the works is an OC I had back when I first joined the pokemon roleplaying community back during the ORAS hype: my Team Aqua grunt Alphonse. He’s a tall gangly softboy whose signature pokemon is a sassy Girafarig he named Banana. He’s a pro at names, guys. Always dooting a kazoo or trying to cheer people up with puns, he’s the sweetest ‘villain’ around. Joined Team Aqua more for the roof over his head and steady income but couldn’t really care less about the team’s ultimate goals, but the team in general has become so much like a family to him that he’ll do whatever he can for them.

Now, there was one other muse I wanted to add... but I can’t really pick between the two OCs. I’d like to see which one, if either, y’all might be interested in interacting with? Or maybe both??? I’ll ramble a bit about them each beyond the cut cus it’s kinda long oops... there’s tl;drs under each character if it’s too much to read at once gjbdfgh

One of the two would be a trainer unaffiliated with any team or organization, Cooper Evans. His signature pokemon is an Espurr named Marnie, who is an intense busybody and a walking callout post of a cat and likes to abuse her telepathy to pester people... when Coop isn’t around, anyway. She’ll only behave around him. As you can see through the link he doesn’t have a very human appearance, so trying to figure out a pokeverse for him has been a bit tricky.

I’m still figuring it out, but first option is he might be a human/ultra beast fusion made secretly in Aether’s underground labs out of an unofficial ultra beast called UB Infinity or Neuroboros, a serpentine psychic/poison purple dragon captured by Aether and kept under lock and key to be studied while it slumbered away biting its own tail. The fusion was with a comatose and deathly ill young Cooper in a desperate attempt by an Aether scientist to bring him back from the brink of death.

Or I’ll remove the Aether aspect entirely and he’s fused with various mundane pokemon in an attempt to give him a stronger body. Pokemon like Nidoking, Espurr, and Feraligatr, and possibly others were used. Either way he takes on a very inhuman appearance and has to find a way to fit in without, yknow, scaring the living daylights out of people. He typically does this by dressing like the Poke Maniac trainer class. Big stuffed nidoking suit to hide his tail and ears in with slots to put his horns through, and a simple cloth mask to hide his jagged teeth. He’s got an excuse for any odd trait of his when asked. But ye, he’s at least 19 and an absolute meme. An obnoxious little meme. He hasn’t given up on dabbing yet, but when it comes to memes his favorite has to be the classic rick roll.

I have yet to find a fitting faceclaim of him due to his unique face, so chances are I’ll have to commission some simple icons. But until then I’m thinking Shigeo Kageyama would do well enough, since it’s close enough to his previously human appearance. gamefreak tried to be slick with allistair the purble masked spooky boy but coop was first!!!!

TL;DR: Psychic Purple Little Man Tries To Blend In With Normal Humans, Has The Power of Anxiety And Anime On His Side. And A Cat.

My other option... Aleksey Volkov (< each name is a link! warning for shirtless old sketch in the second half???), the ‘Beast of Rocket’. (Not to be confused with pokespe’s ‘three beasts of rocket’) Though likely without the fluffy ears/tail... maybe. I dunno. I’m kind of attached to them. He’s at least around 30 years old. He studied the differences and commonalities between humans and pokemon--particularly humans with ESP and pokemon that are said to have originally been human. His goal was to unlock the 'innate power' he believed each human to have, which was comparable to a pokemon and its moves/abilities. His theory was that ancient humans had powers akin to pokemon and his goal was to activate those ancient genes in modern humans.

His experiments were getting some interesting results, but he got the attention of Team Rocket before long. They abducted him and his wife and daughter, using his family as leverage to get him to work for them. Their goal was to use him to find a way to harness the energy of pokemon to give humans superhuman abilities, much in the same line as what he was doing already. This was in a particularly cold part of the world, so traits were chosen from ursaring, piloswine, and mightyena to create a superhuman who was perfectly suited to fighting in subzero temperatures.

When it came time to test what he currently had, he refused to test on anyone else but himself. It worked, in a way, turning him into an actual manbearpig... but also scrambling up his head to the point where he was difficult to control and no longer seemed to remember anything in regards to the project, or... much of anything else, actually. The project deemed a failure and not even remembering his own family, what he became was instead used as muscle for Team Rocket whenever they need to dish out knuckle sandwiches for whatever reason. Typically loaned out to the different executives and admins, either as a bodyguard, enforcer, or something of an assassin, as any evidence left behind would point to some wild pokemon attack, not a human, right?

His faceclaim would be Klaus Von Reinherz. I mean, look at him!!! the lil tusks... the sideburns... it him.

TL;DR: Doctor Prettyboy is forced by Team Rocket to make a super soldier potion. He tests it on himself and becomes Manbearpig. He is now huge and angry and strong but can’t remember anything else. Team Rocket is keeping him as a sexy, sexy weapon. Quite possibly over eight feet tall even while slightly hunched over.

I genuinely can’t pick one or the other because I love them both and think they’d both have a lot of potential for neat interactions. Can you see your characters interacting with either of these? Do you have any interest or questions? Please feel free to reply, send an ask, IM me, whatever. Be as honest or nosy as you want, I’ll even take anonymous input if that’s what folk are more comfortable with. I just want to be selective with which characters I add to this multimuse because I don’t want to end up with 50 characters and only end up using like 3 of them, yknow?

#long post #psa #?#trying to decide who to add pls helb me

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silvereddaye · 7 years ago

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WIP - Sith Vampires

Digging through my files tonight. Found a WIP of a Vampire AU set in a medieval-esque setting. Basically the Sith are vampires but with the Force. It does kind of end abruptly since it is a WIP. But I don’t know when or if I’ll ever write more on it. I’m trying to finish up current projects for now.

Luke’s favorite spot in the castle was the observatory. It was located at the top of one of the many towers. A large telescope was pointed at the sky. However, since the sky was always dark and overcast, Luke had never been able to see the stars through it. But the room was still beautiful. The floor was made of a swirling blue marble with silver lines that created a star map. The teenager loved to sit and trace the lines of the constellations.

Luke, a deep voice called inside Luke’s mind.

Luke huffed, ignoring his father’s call. He uncurled himself from the floor. The room had no windows or closed walls. Just open archways to the sky. Luke approached the railing and looked across Star Destroyer Castle. It was massive complex built on top of a low craggy mountain. It got its name from the many sharp point spires and towers. As if the castle would destroy the stars.

Loud screeches filled the air as a flock of TIE dragons whipped through the spires. Luke turned his attention past the wall of the castle into the sharp rocky mountains. Eventually he spotted the huge lumbering form of an AT-AT, a massive shelled monster with two pinchers set on either side of its face. The creatures were huge but slow, yet what made them fearsome was the acid they could shoot.

Everywhere around the castle were the creatures of the dark side. Twisted and monstrous. The lands around the castle had been burned and twisted by the dark magics. The stones of the castle had turned black long ago. There were still places, like the observatory, that gave a hint of what the castle had been like before. Before the rise of the Dark Empire.

Luke. This time the voice was harder. Sterner.

With a sigh Luke pushed off the railing and made for the spiraling stairway. He could only ignore his father for so long. He made his way through the castle silently. He knew this part of the castle very well. Luke saw nothing else moving through the empty, quiet, and dark halls.

He found his father in a large sitting room with large floor-to-ceiling windows that were draped in heavy purple curtains. The curtains were pulled aside. Gray light filtered in from the overcast skies. Lord Vader stood in front of the window. He was massive and tall. He was still in his armor and mask. His breathing was loud and harsh. Luke silently walked into the room and kneeled on one knee next to his father.

Silence stretched between them. Luke felt the cold icy tendrils of the Force reach out from his father and wrap around Luke. When he had first come here seven years ago, Luke had no clue what his father was doing. The icy invisible tendrils had scared him and caused him to tremble. Now Luke knew his father was simply checking on him. Making sure the boy was fine.

There was a nudge in the Force, and Luke rose from his feet. His father had turned to look at his son. He held out his arm, and Luke slowly walked forward. He knew what was expected of him. Defying Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, was not a wise course of action. Luke knew from a multitude of experience. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be a Sith. When he was brought here as a seven year old boy, he had fought as much as he could. He had tried to escape. Defied and disobeyed Vader over and over again. But each time Vader would win. He would get what he wanted out of Luke one way or another.

Luke walked up to Vader’s outstretched arm and grabbed the black magic-enhanced metal of the armor. His fingers knew the way to the hidden straps that would loosen the braces. Slowly Luke helped his father out from his famous black armor. Luke gently placed each piece on a nearby table. He folded up his father’s thick black cloak. Lastly Luke waited as his father took off the black helmet and the black skull mask. Luke placed both on the table and then returned to his father side.

Vader reattached his sword to his belt, but then he looked over at his fourteen year old son with burning yellow eyes of a Sith. Very few people laid eyes on Darth Vader without his infamous armor on. He wore all black clothing including black leather gloves and boots. His long wavy dark blonde hair was brushed back into a loose ponytail. A scar ran on the right side of his face which cut close to his eye. Another scar ran across his left cheek.

“When was the last time you ate?” Vader asked. His voice was always deep, dark, and demanding.

“Two days ago,” Luke replied softly. There would be no point in lying. Vader would be able to tell. Luke could feel his father’s annoyance and dissatisfaction in the Force.

“Come,” was all Vader said as he turned and stalked out of the room. Luke followed directly behind him. Luke had to keep a brisk pace to keep up with the long legs of his father. Vader didn’t like if Luke fell behind. Luke either kept pace with Vader, or Vader would drag Luke.

They entered a large hall. Five stormtroopers waited at the far end. Three humans stood in front of the troopers. They were pushed to their knees as Lord Vader entered. The troopers saluted as Vader neared. The stormtroopers were dressed in their fearsome bone amour and white skull masks. The bones came from the dreaded dark side beasts like the AT-AT and the TIE dragons.

“Dismissed,” Vader said and the five troopers promptly left leaving the three kneeling humans.

Vader wasted no time. He marched over to the human on the right. It was a middle aged man with long brown hair. Vader grabbed the hair and sharply pulled the man’s head. The human’s neck was fully displayed. Vader looked up at Luke.

“Eat,” Vader ordered.

Luke closed his eyes as he took a deep steadying breath. He hated this. He hated this. He hated this. But it was too late for Luke. He had lost his humanity seven years ago when his father had found him. He opened his yellow eyes and slowly walked forward. He could feel his fangs growing longer. He became acutely aware of the blood flowing through the human. He could hear the human’s heartbeat. Smell the human’s blood.

He stepped up to the man and placed one hand on the man’s chin and the other on the shoulder. He leaned in and stabbed his fangs into the man’s neck. Instantly sweet blood rushed into Luke’s mouth. He drank and drank and drank. Force, he was hungry. He hated to admit it, because he hated having to drink blood to live.

When Vader wasn’t there to supervise Luke’s meals, Luke was a lot better at self control. He would only drink enough to sate his hunger. The human would still be alive in the end. But it meant Luke quickly got hungry again. When Vader was watching, he would not allow Luke to eat so little, so Luke didn’t hold back. He drank the human dry.

Luke stepped back. The human’s skin had turned pale and white and now looked sunken in. Vader let go of the man’s hair. The man crashed to the floor dead. Luke could sense his father’s satisfaction in him. Vader moved to the second human. A female with curly hair. Again Vader grabbed the woman’s hair to display her throat.

“Eat,” Vader ordered again. Luke opened his mouth to argue. He was going to say he was full, but he knew it was lie. Vader knew that as well. There was no point in lying. No point in arguing. This woman’s fate was already decided. Luke would drink her blood, willingly or not. Vader would see to it personally.

So again Luke drank the blood. He didn’t drink her dry. He became full and stepped away. He could sense his father’s icy tendrils of the dark side examining Luke. Satisfied, they withdrew. Vader open his mouth, his fangs long and sharp. He pulled the woman off the floor by her hair. Vader viciously bit into the woman. Luke resisted flinching at the crunching sound of Vader snapping some of the neck bones.

Vader quickly finished the woman and threw her to the ground. He took two large steps to the last human and pulled the man up. He bit into the man’s neck without hesitation. Vader finished his meal quickly and again threw the human to the ground without a care. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve as he walked over to his son.

“Luke,” he said. “You must let go of whatever shreds of your humanity you still think you have. Fully open yourself up to the Dark Side. It will get better. Easier. It doesn’t have to always be a fight.”

“I don’t want to be a Sith,” Luke said softly. He was staring down at the ground. He heard his father sighing. They were words Luke had said to his father the moment the two had first met. A gloved hand came under Luke’s chin and gently brought his head up. Luke’s yellow eyes met his father’s yellow eyes.

“Foolish child,” Vader said softly. “You already are a Sith. You were born a Sith.” Luke said nothing. What Vader said was true. “Walk with me,” Vader said as he clasped his hands behind his back. Luke came in step beside his father. Vader walked a slower pace that allowed Luke to comfortably walk beside his father.

“There are guests here at the castle,” Vader said. Luke snapped his head up at his father.

“Guests?” Luke asked.

He wasn’t sure what his father meant by guests. His father didn’t have guests. People didn’t come to this castle as guests. At least not to this part of it. The west portion of the castle was completely dedicated to his father’s job as Supreme Commander of the Dark Empire’s Military. Guests came to that part of the castle. Generals, admirals, soldiers.

But Luke was not allowed in the west part of the castle and no one was allowed in the east part. It was just Luke, Vader, the few servants, and the guards in the east part. The guards didn’t just keep unwanted visitors out, but also kept Luke in. Vader granted the guards to use whatever force was necessary to keep Luke from leaving.

“Yes, guests. They will be quartered in the Lakeview Wing,” Vader explained.

It was a self-contained wing. It had its own set of rooms and a small kitchen. It was the most south-eastern portion of the castle. It sat right at the edge of a small lake. Luke assumed it must have looked nice before the taint of the dark side turned the waters inky and black.

“You are not to go near that wing. You are not to interact with these guests,” Vader paused and he turned to face his son. “Am I clear?”

“Yes father,” Luke replied.

#star wars fanfiction #star wars fanfiction au #silverdaye #sith au #luke skywalker #darth vader #vampires

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