#disney disease hole

[artsekey]

Reminder to get your COVID booster when they're available. I kept putting off my next dose because of my schedule, and I've been out with COVID for eight days now.

Posting the symptoms I had to inform others as COVID is constantly evolving:

Day 1 (3 or 4 days after exposure): started as a feeling of "imminent sickness" in the back of my throat. I otherwise felt 100%.

Day 2: Extremely tired. Congestion. Limited all contact.

Day 3: 101 Fever. Congestion. Extremely tired. Couldn't make it through lecturing my class (remotely). Began medicating with Theraflu (acetaminophen). Tested positive for COVID with the fastest and clearest positive test I've ever seen.

Day 4: Fever between 99 and 101.5. Cancelled all activity. Spent all day in bed. Extreme congestion. Extreme aches & chills at night. This day was absolutely miserable. My friend brought me soup. I cried about it. Continued with Theraflu. Considered going to the ER due to severity of symptoms.

Day 5: Intermittent low-grade fever at 99.8. Congestion continued, coughing and sneezing began.

Day 6: Fever cleared. Coughing & sneezing intensified. Tested again as per CDC recommendations: still a strong positive. Began taking Robitussin (cough syrup only, no acetaminophen).

Day 7: Coughing worsened significantly. Lots of liquids, lots of Robitussin.

Day 8: Today! No fever, no cough, some slight congestion remains. Once again tested positive for COVID-- with a weaker positive this time! I expect I'll be back to normal by day 10, but... trust me, if you're going to get your "booster" through a needle or ten days of this, choose the booster! As a reminder, you can order up to 4 free COVID tests at the end of September through HHS.gov!

[mirkwoodshewolf]

No following; Planet of the Apes fanfic Chap. 1

*Author's note*

Okay so we're gonna try something new here tumblr. Ever since I saw the new Planet of the apes film a month ago I got interested in the fandom once again but never thought anyone wrote fics for the fandom. After reading some on FF.net as well as here, it got me wanting to write a series while I'm on a writer's block for my current series. And thus this series was born.

This entire series will encompass the Andy Serkis trilogy and will be a Caesar fic. But it is STRICTLY PLATONIC so if that's not your cup of tea, no hate and just move on. This is my story and I'll write it the way I want to.

Now to those who wish to give this series a chance as you read, leave a comment down below if you wish to be tagged for updates (rn I'll be binge posting cause I've already got 10 chapters ready to go and be read).

WARNINGS: Fluff, angst, swearing, violence. So this won't be for the light of heart (at least until I get to Dawn and then War).

Taglist:

@queen-paladin

@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels

@psychosupernatural

@plethora-of-things

@gay-and-ready-to-cry

@waddles03

______________________________________________________

Some say that the bonds between human and animal are a unique thing.  That there’s an unbreakable trust between the two and that they are fated to always be together.  Others say that like soulmates, there’s always an animal for a person who needs them the most.  For me, I would end up having the most unique of all bonds with an animal that is closest to my own species of animal.

This is the story of such a bond, this is the story of Lin and Caesar.

It was nightfall and pouring down rain as I rode home with my best friend Gabriella and her mother.  Gabi and I had known each other since Pre-K after we both had a love for the Disney movie Lilo and Stitch.  From that moment on we’ve been inseparable.  Currently I was getting a ride home with her mom after our strings class.

She and I after school go over to the rec center every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights and perform with the San Fransisco Strings and Orchestra for minors.  Gabi plays the cello and I play the violin.  We’re both pretty good if I do say so myself, our teacher tells us that we could eventually go far into the world of music if we set our mind to it.  But I think I’m good cause of my genetics, after all my grandpa was a former music professor and conductor.  But he doesn’t really play anymore, or at least he tries to.

We soon stopped at my house and I said grabbing my things and readied my umbrella.

“Thanks for the ride Mrs. Montez.”

“Anytime Lin sweetie. Watch out crossing the dark, wet sidewalk.”

“I will, see you tomorrow in class Gabi.”

“See yah Lin.” I quickly opened the door and opened up my umbrella before quickly racing across the sidewalk and up the stairs to my front door.  I took my key and unlocked the door but not before waving one final time and soon Mrs. Montez drove off down the road.

I entered inside and shook off my umbrella before hanging it to dry.  I also took off my raincoat and hung it up beside it before walking further into the house proclaiming.

“Hello? Grandpa? Uncle Will?” that’s when I heard the sound of cooing, like a baby cooing but it wasn’t human.  I set my violin case down to the banister by the front door and walked into the study room where I found a large box with holes sitting on the table.  As I got closer to it, I heard my uncle say.

“Oh perfect timing, guess that means I can show you both.” I turned and saw both my uncle and grandpa coming around from the kitchen entry.

“Show me what?” uncle Will walked passed me, ruffled my hair and stood over the box.

“Hey grandpa.”

“Hey sweetheart. Get another gold star from Ms. Honey for good behavior?” I smiled solemnly.  Ms. Honey was my kindergarten teacher, my current teacher is Mr. Simmons. 

My grandpa for the past couple of years has been dealing with Alzheimer’s disease.  Uncle Will told me that it’s a disease that slowly eats away at the brain’s cells, affecting memory and sometimes body function.  You see, my parents died in a plane crash when I was just 3 years old and in their will they had the next guardianship be my grandpa.  But two years ago, that’s when the disease started to take its effect on him.

So my uncle Will had to move in with us to help not only take care of me but of grandpa too.  And when he’s at work and I’m at school, a nice nurse comes in and helps take care of grandpa.

“Grandpa, I’m in the 4th grade. My teacher is Mr. Simmons. You know the nice man you and uncle Will met last month at the school picnic.” He looked dazed for a second but then said.

“Oh right, yeah I knew that.”

“Dad, Lin, come check this out.” Uncle Will said trying to redirect the conversation.  We came over and the second we looked inside, there lay a baby monkey.

“Is that a monkey?” I asked with a head tilt.

“He’s actually a chimpanzee, an ape.” Uncle Will corrected me.  Grandpa was in pure awe as he slowly reached in and touched the baby chimp.

“What is that? Is he injured?” he asked as I took notice of a mark right around the right side of his chest.  It was a prominent balding mark in a unique shape, a long oval shape with an additional stripe at the top.  Kinda reminded me of an incomplete cross or an unfinished F.

“No, I think that’s a birthmark.” Uncle Will said as he crossed into the kitchen and started putting some things into the fridge.  All the while grandpa picked up the baby chimp and lifted him high into the air like he was Simba.  The little guy was just small enough to fit between both of grandpa’s hands.

“Listen Lin,” he told me before he began quoting, “‘But as for Caesar, kneel down, kneel down and wonder.’”

“He’s so cute.” I awed as I reached out and touched his little toes.

“Yeah don’t get too attached, either of you.” Uncle Will told us.

“So why bring him here then if we can’t keep him?” I sassed.

“He’s not a dog or a cat, not even a bunny rabbit. He’s a wild animal. My coworker promised he’d try to find an animal sanctuary for him in a couple of days.” I let out a exasperated groan.

“Animal sanctuaries are still prisons.”

“Don’t get smart young lady.” My uncle playfully reprimanded as he pointed at me.

“It’s not polite to point.” I sassed back.

“Polite? Okay, I’ll show you polite.” My uncle said as he shut the fridge and giving me that narrowed but playful look in his eyes.  I took off running as he raced after me.  I got only up four stairs before I felt two arms wrap around me and he swung me away from the staircase and the next thing I felt was a wet finger in my ear.

“GAHH EWW UNCLE WILL!!!”

“Yeah your mom did this to me all the time when we were kids, now it’s payback.” He laughed.

“I’m innocent in this vile act!” I proclaimed dramatically.

“But you must pay for the sins of thy mother young youth!”

“Will, Maria, you two better stop horsing around in there.” At hearing my mom’s name we both settled down and a somber feeling was in the air.

“He’s been calling me that on and off for the past week.”

“Honestly who can blame him. You look so much like her when she was your age.” He said with a soft smile and he ruffled my hair again.

“Really?”

“Yeah. And when have I ever lied about anything in regards to my big sister?”

“Never.”

“Exactly.” He then playfully nudged my side with his before changing the subject.  “Now please tell me you managed to eat dinner cause I’ve had a long day of work and I don’t feel like cooking anything.”

“Lucky for you, the rec center was hosting a pizza party after the past few months prepping for Districts last week. Maestro Fiyero said we earned a little break after working us so hard.”

“Good. Now why don’t you brush your teeth and get ready for bed.”

“Why does my curfew have to be 9 o’clock? I’m 10 years old, not five.”

“Growing girls needs sleep too you know.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell grandpa I said goodnight will yah?”

“Will do kid. Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

“You too.” I grabbed my violin and raced on upstairs and did my nighttime routine before getting into bed and turning off the light.

As the night progressed, I soon heard the sounds of shrieks coming from the hallway.  I opened my eyes and looked at my clock to see that it was 2:30am.  I got up and let out a cough and muttered to myself.

“Need some juice.” Quietly I walked down the hallway towards the stairs but as I came to the bathroom I could hear the shower running as well as the bathroom sink.  Did grandpa accidentally leave the water running again after taking his shower?  No, Uncle Will would’ve turned it off by now.

I knocked softly on the door and I heard my uncle’s voice say.

“It’s just me dad.”

“I’m not grandpa.” I heard footsteps and the door cracked open and when he saw me, he brought me into the bathroom before closing it.  Immediately I was hit with the heat that had been trapped by the hot water that was coming from both the shower and the sink.

“What are you doing up so late Lin?”

“I heard shrieking and then I got thirsty.”

“Ohh sorry, guess this little guy woke you up too huh?” it was then I took notice of the baby chimp swaddled up in my uncle’s arms.  I looked down at him and he looked up at me, moving his grip from my uncle’s finger to mine as he cooed.

“He looks like he has a cold.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, his nose is kinda runny.”

“Well that’s normal for babies sometimes. He’s barely a day old. You definitely had a runny nose when you were born.”

“No I didn’t!”

“Oh yeah you were quite the little snot monster. The original boogeyman, or boogeygirl.” He said taking his free hand that was on top of the baby chimp and playfully gripped my nose.

“Uncle Will!” I whined softly which made him laugh.  Our moment was stopped as the baby chimp let out a few more coos before snuggling up to uncle Will, all the while the grip on my finger got a bit tighter.  I smiled down at him and said as I stroked my thumb over his tiny fingers.  “Are you sure we can’t keep him?”

“I’ll—think about it. Holding him like this….makes me think back to the day you were born. Boy your mom wouldn’t let me near you at first. Feared I was gonna drop you, she always had that fierce mama bear instinct right from the get-go. Even when we were growing up and as she tormented me at times. When I needed it, she was there with her hot-headed attitude.”

“I miss her uncle Will.”

“Me too kid. Me too.” I leaned up against him and he rested his head on top of mine giving it a soft kiss.  “Go on back to bed, I’ll stay up with him.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m used to all-nighters, one day you might get there when you’re composing your first symphony. But for now, head back to bed.”

“Can I still get my juice first? I’m thirsty.”

“Just this once. Just be quiet when passing Charles’ room.” I nodded before leaning down and gave the baby chimp a kiss to which he let out a cute yawn and quiet hoot.

“Goodnight little chimp. Night uncle Will.” I gave him a peck on the cheek and he said goodnight to me as I quietly left the bathroom shutting the door immediately as I got out.  I went downstairs, got my drink and went back to bed.

The next morning I was finishing my breakfast and packing my school books into my backpack as uncle Will was coming down with the baby chimp and set him up in my old high-stool chair that grandpa had kept.

“Where’s my car keys?” grandpa asked as he was patting through his robe and pj pockets.  “My car keys where’d you put them? I need to get Lin to school!” he said urgently.

“Dad.” Uncle Will calmly spoke to him. “You-you don’t drive anymore. And Lin takes the bus.” Grandpa looked at him with a blank stare before turning away and telling him.

“I know that.” It really does make me sad to see grandpa this way.  He always looks so dazed and lost, like he’s here with us but at the same time he’s not.  Sometimes he’ll just sit there and stare off into space, frozen in his spot and not say anything for a really long time.

“Here, why don’t you feed him? Can you do that?” uncle Will suggested holding up a baby bottle filled with milk.

“Of course I can.” Said grandpa coming over.  As uncle Will went to get his coffee (blech!) grandpa came over and grabbed the bottle which made the baby chimp go crazy with hunger as he reached out for it.  As soon as it was in reach, he grabbed the bottle from grandpa’s hand and immediately began drinking it as fast as he could.

I dropped my fork and stared at him in awe.  I was told that babies always needed help being fed for at least several months and yet after just being born yesterday, he was feeding himself.

“Will, look at this.” Grandpa said as uncle Will came back into the kitchen and saw what we saw.  “How old is he? Like a day old, two days old?” Uncle Will sat down as he examined the baby chimp confused.

“Yeah.” Uncle Will said lowly as he kept his eyes on the baby chimp.

“Oh he’s a smart one isn’t he?” said grandpa as he came around and sat on the other side of the baby and gently placed his hand on top of his head.  “What are you gonna name him?”

“I—I don’t know.” Uncle Will said unsure.  That’s when I saw it.  Now I’m no monkey or ape expert but from pictures I’ve seen in books they normally have dark eyes, mostly brown but this little guy.  His eyes were green.

A green eyed baby chimpanzee.  One look into his eyes and I knew that he was something very special.

[lily-alphonse]

Maxley Mom Headcanons

Kind of a spoiler for The King and His Fool but I want to talk about it!!

They're both dead because Disney, let's get that out of the way lol. SO tw for dead parents, fertility issues, disease

Max's mom got pregnant accidentally while her and Goofy were still in college, but they were excited to be parents, Goofy especially. They both dropped out of college to care for their son, with plans for Goofy to go back once they were on their feet, but then his mom died of illness when Max was only two. Goofy never got over her passing and kept her spirit alive for Max with stories and pictures. Max actually wishes Goofy would move on, though it bothered him more as a teenager than it does now.

_______________

Bradley's parents were actually older, and he was considered a miracle/rainbow baby. Bradley's mom wanted more children because she loved them, but his dad wanted more heirs because the mother's family was even wealthier than the Uppercrusts.

So ten years after their miracle baby they were still trying, taking more drastic measures artificially even though his mom's advanced age meant it would be a higher risk. Bradley's mom passed away giving birth to his younger sister, who ended up surviving. Bradley feels like his mom was the only person who ever really loved him, so he resents his father a lot, blaming him for her death.

Surprisingly, (considering how much of an asshole he is) he doesn't resent his sister for her death, and actually feels a bit sorry for her that she only ever got to know their much younger trophy-wife stepmom as any sort of mother figure.

_______________

I know I've put far too much thought into this for just being a smut but what can you do, Im stuck down this rabbit hole and it just keeps getting deeper. Send rope and water pls

[immortalarizona]

Died With a Hammer in His Hand: Unpacking the Myth of John Henry 

“John Henry said to his captain:  ‘You are nothing but a common man,  Before that steam drill shall beat me down,  I’ll die with my hammer in my hand.’”  — “John Henry, the Steel Driving Man,” recounted by W. T. Blankenship 

John Henry is one of America’s most well-known mythic heroes, immortalized in song, statue, postage stamp, and multiple movies (including a 2000 Disney animated short film which I vividly remember watching in elementary school). But if you’re unfamiliar with the legend, here’s a brief summary. 

John Henry was a freed slave who found himself working for a railroad company in the years following the Civil War as a steel driver. His job was to drive a steel spike into rock so that dynamite could be placed in the resulting hole, thus opening up a tunnel through the Appalachians. 

John Henry was the best on his crew, and he took pride in his work—so when a white salesman brought in a steam-powered drill, claiming that it could drill better than any man, he decided to challenge that claim. Henry entered into a contest with the machine to see who could carve out the deepest hole in the mountain in a single day. 

His victory cost him his life. 

Henry’s wife—sometimes named Polly Ann, sometimes named Lucy, sometimes not named at all—went to visit him on his deathbed that evening. In many versions of the ballad, Henry’s last words are a request for a glass of water. In other versions, he asks his wife to be true to him when he’s dead, or to do her best to raise their son. Many accounts say that he’s buried by a railroad, where “Every locomotive come roarin’ by, / Says there lays that steel drivin’ man” (lyrics from Onah L. Spencer). 

Bronze statue of John Henry near Talcott, West Virginia, sculpted by Charles Cooper.

The general consensus among historians now seems to be that the ballad of John Henry is one such legend that has its roots in historical fact, although the particulars are long obscured by the centuries that have since passed. Henry was born into slavery in the 1840s or 50s, either in North Carolina or Virginia (some accounts of the ballad lend credence to the latter claim). As for how John Henry found himself working for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway company, University of Georgia history professor Scott Reynolds Nelson posits in his book Steel Drivin’ Man that the man was sentenced to ten years in a Virginia prison for theft at only nineteen years of age, and that he was among many prisoners leased out by the state for labor. 

Did you know that the 13th Amendment makes an exception for slavery which is used “as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”? (This practice continues to this day, and has become an industry worth tens of billions of dollars. Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola or simply “The Farm,” is a good place to begin if you’re wanting to look into chain gangs further.) John Henry the legend was a free worker who took on the backbreaking, often dangerous work of railroad labor under his own power and could demand any wage for his work, but John Henry the man may have lived and died in neoslavery. 

Speaking of Henry’s death, most retellings of the myth say that he died of sheer exhaustion. Some add in the detail that it was his heart that gave out because he worked himself too hard. However, alternate theories have been proposed for how the man died. Some historians say it was a stroke that killed him, while others posit silicosis. 

It’s this latter hypothesis which I find most intriguing. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the American Lung Association describes silicosis as “a lung disease caused by breathing in tiny bits of silica, a common mineral found in sand, quartz and many other types of rock.” It’s been an occupational hazard for construction workers since, well, the time of John Henry. What I find interesting are the implications for the narrative if the real Henry died of silicosis. In the folk ballad, Henry causes his own death by working himself too hard. On the other hand, the ones at fault if the man died of silicosis would be his employers—the ones responsible for the dangerous conditions he worked in. 

So why would John Henry’s cause of death change during the transition from fact to legend? 

The answer, as with many other fictionalized accounts of historical events, is that it simply makes for a more effective story. But not just that—a more effective message. So what might the ballad be trying to tell those who listen to it? 

First, let’s think about who this song was sung by and for. The ballad of John Henry is a work song, its rhythm meant to help railroad workers stay and strike in sync, in the same way a drumbeat helps soldiers march in step. It’s been sung by railroad workers, miners, construction workers, chain gangs, and country musicians. At its core, then, the ballad is a song of and for the American working class—specifically those people doing the same sort of backbreaking physical labor as John Henry himself. Many of these laborers would have been Black, and likely former slaves—especially when it came to Southern chain gangs. (See my above note about how American slavery was only mostly abolished, and then think about why the U.S. has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. . . but I digress.) 

An oil painting of John Henry by Frederick Brown. 

We’ve established that John Henry is a hero for working-class Americans during the time of the Second Industrial Revolution. But what sort of hero is he? Is he like Achilles, a paragon of his country’s values and an example for the audience to aspire to? Or is he an Icarus, a cautionary tale sung so the audience won’t repeat his mistakes? 

The answer depends on who’s telling the story. 

Onah L. Spencer is the source for one version which emerged from a Black community in Cincinnati, Ohio. When he recounted the lyrics to Guy B. Johnson for the latter’s 1929 book John Henry: Tracking Down a Negro Legend, he also stated that the song was used to motivate workers: “. . . if there was a slacker in a gang of workers it would stimulate him with its heroic masculine appeal.” 

In cases such as Spencer’s crew, then, John Henry’s death is presented as glorious, and Henry is seen as admirable for working so hard that it kills him. Here, he’s a good example. Taken to the extreme, the Achillean Henry encourages fellow workers to follow in his footsteps—to keep pushing themselves harder and harder until they finally keel over. 

This message doesn’t benefit the workers passing it along; it benefits the employers profiting from their labor. This, I think, is where the story blurs the line between myth and propaganda. And while the ballad of John Henry certainly isn’t singlehandedly responsible for the American tendency to overwork ourselves, it does reflect our attitudes about work in a way that’s worth unpacking. To me, this reeks of the Puritan work ethic. The belief was that you had to be working as often as you could; if you didn’t, the devil would be able to influence you. The Puritans were one of America’s foundational cultural influences—of course those values would have influenced the ballad of John Henry. 

Henry is a hero because he worked himself to death. If we see him as a good example, what does this say about the effects that capitalism has had on American attitudes? About the internalized belief that our worth as humans only comes from what we can contribute to the economy? Why do we see death from exhaustion as a fitting end for a former slave? 

Then again, maybe we’re not supposed to. 

A lithograph of John Henry, from the series American Folk Heroes, by William Gropper. 

Remember how I noted earlier that many of the laborers who first sang Henry’s ballad would themselves have been former slaves? It’s important because there’s a long history of American slaves using work songs as a tool of resistance against their oppressors, and these Black laborers—these “freed” slaves—would have carried that tradition with them into the Second Industrial Revolution. 

The ballad of John Henry, then, might have been sung with the intent of helping other workers survive the brutal conditions on the railroads. Here, Henry becomes an Icarus—a warning of what happens if you push yourself too hard. One version of the ballad recorded by Edward Douglas of the Ohio State Penitentiary contains lyrics which suggest that not every Henry was meant to be emulated. 

“John Henry started on the right-hand side,  And the steam drill started on the left.  He said, ‘Before I’d let that steam drill beat me down,  I’d hammer my fool self to death,  Oh, I’d hammer my fool self to death.’” 

Don’t do what John Henry did, this version warns the audience. Be wiser than he was. Don’t push yourself quite so hard. Think of the people you’d be leaving behind if you’re not careful. 

Perhaps even the creation of this mythos was an act of defiance in and of itself. At this point, I think it bears mentioning that I myself am not Black and can only hypothesize based on what I’ve heard from people who are, but I see something radical in the act of raising up one of your own as your hero rather than venerating the people you’ve been told are superior to you. 

Remember, John Henry’s contest was versus a white man’s machine. It costs him everything, but he triumphs over the expectations of that steam drill salesman and proves his worth as a laborer and a person. John Cephas, a blues musician from Virginia who was interviewed by NPR for a report on John Henry back in 2002, had this to say of the myth: 

“It was a story that was close to being true. It’s like the underdog overcoming this powerful force. I mean even into today when you hear it (it) makes you take pride. I know especially for black people, and for people from other ethnic groups, that a lot of people are for the underdog.” 

Americans love underdog stories. Our own national origin myth is one! John Henry’s assertation of power and skill, the ballad’s declaration that Black people have the right to be proud of themselves too. . . no wonder this myth has resonated with so many people. No wonder it’s survived for a century and a half. 

In this light, then, John Henry once again becomes a hero for us, the audience, to emulate. In the fight against oppression, endurance like Henry’s becomes key. Justice is almost never won quickly. The odds stacked against us may seem impossible, but it’s worth trying anyways, even if we have to fight to our dying breaths. 

Artwork of John Henry as a defense worker by James Daugherty. 

John Henry has meant and been many things to a lot of people in the past two centuries. A representative of capitalist exploitation, a cautionary tale for workers, an inspiration to oppressed people in America, even a communist icon—but I’d like to take a moment to talk about what his story means to me. It’s not something I’ve seen discussed in my research, and I think it’s worth exploring. 

John Henry reflects fears of workers during the Second Industrial Revolution who saw how technology was evolving—how machines were being created that could do their jobs not just faster, but cheaper, because you don’t have to pay a machine like you would a person. They feared that they would be replaced, and that they would be left destitute while their former bosses grew richer and richer. And despite the centuries between us, this is a fear that I can understand. 

Often, I feel it myself. 

As an artist existing in online spaces during this new influx of AI-generated “art” and writing, I have witnessed many fears that we will be replaced by AI. Yes, there is a certain human quality to art that a generative learning model cannot replicate, but who’s to say that the much-vaunted free market will care? We can hope that art as a profession will survive, but we just don’t know. 

In John Henry’s struggle, I see my own. In the steam drill salesman, I see tech bros on the platform formerly known as Twitter showing off their latest batch of beautiful, hollow, AI-generated “art.” I see John Henry’s passion, his pride, his triumph. 

And I see hope. 

By his life and death, the mythic John Henry reassures me that human beings aren’t so easy to replace after all. He tells me that machines can be defeated. That one day, my vindication as an artist and writer will come, and the world will see our worth. 

The ballad of John Henry has endured like a mountain for a hundred and fifty years, and I hope it will survive for hundreds more—that John Henry’s hammer will continue to ring true throughout the ages. But in the midst of American mythos, it’s important not to lose sight of the historical facts behind it. Legends are interesting and inspirational and wonderful, but the real stories have something to tell us, too. 

Don’t forget to listen. 

Works Cited 

American Lung Association - Silicosis 

Ballad of America - This Old Hammer: About the Song 

Constitution of the United States - Thirteenth Amendment 

Encyclopedia Britannica - John Henry 

Flypaper by Soundfly - The Lasting Legacy of the Slave Trade on American Music 

Folk Renaissance - John Henry: Hero of American Folklore 

How Stuff Works - Was There a Real John Henry? 

ibiblio.org - John Henry: The Project 

National Park Service - The Superpower of Singing: Music and the Struggle Against Slavery 

NPR - Present at the Creation: John Henry 

NPR - Talk of the Nation: The Untold History of Post-Civil War ‘Neoslavery’ 

PBS - Mercy Street Revealed Blog - Singing in Slavery: Songs of Survival, Songs of Freedom 

Prof. Scott Reynolds Nelson - Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend 

World Population Review - Incarceration Rates by Country 2024 

[justaboot]

Ahh, tagged by @hueberryshortcake (thanks! also this was the thing someone tagged me in and lost weeks ago so bless <3)

how many fics do you have on ao3?

omg 8, what even are they.

what's your total ao3 word count?

174,260 oh my GOd

what fandoms do you write for?

- I've only posted for DT but I've got a 10th Doctor/River fic in my drafts

what are your top five fics by kudos?

And a Sixpence in Your Shoe

In Situ

I've Got Time

Everyone Loves a Reunion (A come from behind win?)

Gentle as it Goes

do you respond to comments? why or why not?

- I try so hard to reply to everybody, but I've got weapons grade anxiety so sometimes I'm worried people will think I'm self-important. I've actually found I'm less likely to respond to tumblr mutuals? More anxiety? Unclear but I'm smashing my face into my hands at every comment.

what's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I can't handle ending on angst. Gentle as it Goes, definitely, but I hate it, I cannot handle splitting the party.

what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Sixpence definitely has the most Disney Fairytale Everything Works Out ending, but writing I've Got Time's button fixed something in me I think.

do you get hate on your fics?

The first comment I ever got ever was DellaHate gbless, thanks AO3 User DellaDuckShouldDie for your insightful comment of "Della Duck should be destroyed."

do you write smut?

I've written it for other things, I'm not shook by it and its a great storytelling tool just like everything else, but not cartoon characters. I...I have one explicitly human DT fic that. I. Well. We'll see. Its a genre test run for something original and they're pointedly human, but I guess I'll cop to that one?

do you write crossovers? what's the craziest one you've ever written?

I hate crossovers stay away from me I cant wrap my head around it

have you ever had a fic stolen?

Nah. Where would you go with it, we're all in the same room.

have you ever had a fic translated?

No but that'd be so cool!

have you ever cowritten a fic before?

girlfriend and I made an absolute banger of a spn fic together on a 12 hour roadtrip. Its not written down but we've got it beat for beat.

what's your all time favorite ship?

The Doctor and River will never fail to make me lay down they're them I dont even know what to say

what's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

-I've got 1/3rd of an OG3 prequel episode fic written, but it has to be part of a series and that's just...not gonna happen.

what are your writing strengths?

oh god i dont know don't look at me dialogue? I get a lot of comments about in-character dialogue/behavior lets go with that.

what are your writing weaknesses?

I have "I'll finish it later, let me start this new one real quick" disease.

thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I haven't done so, I'm fine with French but I'm terrified across the board of The Comment From A Native Speaker.

first fandom you wrote for?

Let me tell you about Tid, my halfling OC based on my Lord of the Rings Online character who played very little of the actual game and just ran laps around the shire. Elementary school core.

favorite fic you've ever written?

I am putting Sixpence on the award shelf for having finished something so big and I've Got Time was me getting a good grade in therapy. Right now I'm actually really proud of Dear Fellow Traveller? They're just lil kids and omg they're swimming in the Little Lake watering hole in the sierras I did that how did the author know

Tagging.... @writebackatya and @shychick-52

[rythmicjea]

Hobbyism is the best way to get through grief. ~Cole Sprouse

NEW FIC BACKSTORY

Okay... so... This is an odd one (and a long one). This is kind of representative of my current "chaos era". It's a bit of a story and I put most of it in the A/N. But this was not a story I was ever intending to write. In fact, I am not part of the fandom (scandalous I know), and better yet, I had no idea that the show even existed until this past November... But apparently it was big! My excuse is that I was not of the demographic for it age wise. I think if it's age appropriate, anyone can watch anything. Rock on, man.

The backstory of this goes, I found out that my baby boy (cat) Jayne, had advanced kidney disease. For a brief and shining moment, I thought that he would beat the odds. Unfortunately, he was gone within two weeks. I held him as he passed. I have a little altar to him on my desk because he will never be forgotten. But, in my grief, I knew I needed to find an outlet. While I can't journal write (I absolutely hate it lol) I can tell stories. And I wanted to write something very dark and nihilistic that basically combined Peaky Blinders with Riverdale (Chaos Era).

So while I was falling down the Jeronica rabbit hole, I was gathering playlists and mashup videos to aid in my inspiration. But, the story refuse to appear. Instead, YouTube kept suggesting clips from a show I had never heard of. And the clips were OLD. Like from over 10 years ago. Though I said I was uninterested the recs kept coming. So I did ONE google search. I read ONE synopsis. I saw a cast list and I saw a timeline of a relationship. I thought that was all I needed. My brain said NOPE!

The timeline of this relationship ended every entry with "and they hugged". I was very confused about why this couple was only hugging. Then when I saw that the last episode was graduation I got a little more incensed. I had two puzzle pieces that didn't connect without a third. So, I asked around. I have friends that were of the age demographic at the time this was on. And every one of them said that 1.) they loved the show and 2.) It was a very Disney show. Now, there were some sporadic kisses here and there but I remember being that age in high school and while I wasn't some "light BDSM scene on the second time I ever had sex" (Looking at you Bughead in Riverdale...) I definitely did more than just hug my high school boyfriend.

Even though I wasn't satisfied with the answer I thought that was the end of it. My brain had other ideas. My brain told me that if I didn't write this story then I would never write again. Well. That's death to a creative type like me. While I never wrote every day or even put out stories consistently, I was still crafting stories in my head. I needed to be able to write. I was in a desperate state. So I thought "fine, I'll write 3000 words, delete it, and then write what I want."

I wrote 10,000 words in one sitting.

I wrote 50,000 words in 18 days.

I didn't watch the show until I was like 80% done with the fic.

It currently stands over 100,000 words.

If you've made it this far you're going "WHAT IS THE STORY?!"

Okay, I'll tell you. It turns out I was being recommended the clips because of an actor. This actor is Cole Sprouse. I knew him mostly as Ben Geller from Friends. I didn't know he had an actual career before Riverdale. I just thought he did something as a kid, and then came back after college. I was so wrong... So so so so so wrong...

If you guessed The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and The Suite Life on Deck you would be correct.

This massive story started as a way to explain why Cody and Bailey "only hugged". Turned into a love story. I made Zack not straight and married to a man with identical twin girls. London is a pediatric surgeon (and I still stand by that decision knowing what I know now). And Cody and Bailey are probably the least likable characters in the entire thing but they are relatable. This is a story of trying to find love after you discover the amount of abuse you went through. Why running from things is not ideal. And maybe, even when you live an outlandish life, there's some normalcy to discover. It's kind of dark, but there's a lot of humor. If you're not familiar with the show, I would just think of it as an original work. (I know, I know... certain death for a fanfic writer lol)

If you enjoy it, please drop a kudos and my comments section is open and I welcome kind and constructive criticism and questions. Like, fuck me up with questions. Please.

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning!  I hope you slept well and feel rested?  Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day. 

Welcome to Too Much Information Tuesday.

Not everyone you lose is a loss.

The dot over the letter “i” is called a tittle.

‘LOL’ used to mean ‘lots of love’ before the Internet.

You aren't rich until you have something that money can't buy.

On average, 12 new-borns will be given to the wrong parents daily.

In the eighth century, fishermen in Japan paid their taxes in seaweed.

Coca-Cola only sold 25 bottles in their first year but kept going.  (Never give up!)

Boredom is the single largest contributor to the use of drugs and alcohol among teens.

A ‘loophole’ originally meant a narrow slit through which a defender could shoot attackers.

British spies stopped using semen as invisible ink because it began to smell if it wasn’t fresh.

80% of people have at one time found themselves subconsciously singing a song they hate.

In the 1930s, there were plans to build an airport on top of Kings Cross station in London.

The number of heart attacks spike in Brazil on days their team is playing in the World Cup.

“The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly.”  (George Carlin)

The Popemobile used by John Paul II on his visit to Ireland can be rented out for stag parties.

The movie ‘Paranormal Activity’ cost less than $15,000 to make but grossed over $193,000,000.

Until 1899, the list of official diseases of the Royal College Of Physicians included ‘nostalgia’.

Coin flips aren’t 50/50, there is a 51% chance you will end up with whatever side you started with.

Only 10% of British teenagers meet the recommended guidelines on sleep, exercise and screen time.

Cameroon is the only country named after a crustacean. It comes from the Portuguese for prawns.

In 1957, Eleanor Roosevelt did a music radio show, taking song requests from children with polio.

Some orchids have spring-loaded traps in their flowers that are activated by male insect’s genitals.

The US Patent Office insisted on proof that the Ouija board worked before granting the patent in 1891.

Some female frogs play dead to avoid mating with male frogs.  (Some women probably wish it were that easy!)

Psychology claims that if two past lovers can remain just friends, it’s either they are still in love, or never were!

The average Bentley driver owns eight cars.  The average Bugatti driver owns 84 cars, three jets and a yacht.

‘Corn sweat’ is the phenomenon whereby the corn fields in the American midwest make the air more humid.

American photographer Danielle Lessnau has created a body of work using a pin-hole camera installed in her vagina.

An unborn baby can taste what their mother is eating and can develop a preference for the foods that she eats.

A new analysis shows that cancers may have more to do with lifestyle, not genetics, in as many as 90% of cases.

Delete your browser cookies before you buy airline tickets.  Ticket prices go up when you visit travel sites multiple times.

During pregnancy if the mother suffers organ damage, the baby in the womb sends stem cells to repair the damaged organ.

According to a study, the two most common feelings that people tend to bring out in others are enthusiasm and boredom.

If we put a giant mirror ten light years away from Earth and looked at it through a telescope, theoretically we'd see 20 years into the past.

‘Frozen’ and other Disney animated films include a credit for Disney’s coffee guy.  He is credited with ‘caffeination’ and has his own IMDb page.

In a 1930s Mickey Mouse comic, Minnie cheated on Mickey with another mouse.  Mickey then tried to kill himself by jumping off a bridge.

Iceland's population is so small that an Icelandic company has created an anti-incest app to prevent Icelanders from dating their relatives.

The hottest temperature measured on Earth (56.7 degrees Celsius) was recorded in a place called Greenland Ranch in California, now known as Furnace Creek.

During the 1945 Hollywood strike, one tactic employed by protesters was to picket movie theatres and give away the ending to people before they could buy tickets to the film.

“Talent is what they say you have after the novel is published and favourably reviewed.  Beforehand, what you have is a tedious delusion, a hobby like knitting.”  (Marge Piercy)

Since odd numbers are harder for our brains to process, some people actually experience feelings of discomfort when the volume of the television, among other things, is set to an odd number.

You can be declared dead in 48 US states but still alive in New Jersey and New York.  These two states allow families to reject the diagnosis of brain death if it conflicts with their religious beliefs.

When asked why he wrote the theme tune from ‘Mission: Impossible’ in 5/4 time, the composer Lalo Schiffrin said: “The people in outer space have five legs and couldn’t dance to our music, so I wrote this for them.”

Okay, that’s enough information for one day.  Have a tremendous and tumultuous Tuesday!  I love you all.

[brookston]

Holidays 2.6

Holidays

Aldus Day

Alzheimer’s Disease Day (Florida)

Bob Marley Day (Jamaica)

International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation (UN)

International Translator Mug Appreciation Day

Lame Duck Day

Massachusetts Statehood Day (#6; 1788)

Monopoly Board Game Day

National Ashley Day

National Laplander’s Day (Sweden)

National Seaweed Day (Japan)

National Tinnitus Day

National Valentine Shopping Reminder Day

National Werewolf Day

Pay-a-Compliment Day

Reclaim Social Day

Reggae Day

Ronald Reagan Day (California)

Saamelaisten Kansallispäivä (Finland, Norway)

Sami National Day (Finland, Norway, Sweden)

Unity Day (Burundi)

Waitangi Day (New Zealand, Niue)

World Concertina Day

World Muaythai Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

International Day of the Bartender

International Frozen Yogurt Day

Maple Syrup Day (Canada)

National Chopsticks Day

1st Monday in February

Constitution Day (Mexico) [1st Monday]

Independence Day observed (Grenada; from UK, 1974) [Monday closest to 2.7]

Just Say No To PowerPoint Week begins [1st Monday]

Love a Mensch Week begins [1st Monday]

National Sickie Day (UK) [1st Monday]

Independence Days

Zenia (Declared; 2020) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Amand (Christian; Saint) [bar staff, bartenders]

Aphrodisia (The Feast of Aphrodite; Ancient Greece)

Barsanuphius of Palestine (Christian; Saint)

Bob Marley Day (Rastafari; Saint)

Dorothea of Caesarea (Christian; Saint) [brewers]

Feast of the 26 Martyrs (Japan)

Gamelia (Celebration of Marriage of Zeus & Hera; Ancient Greece)

Hadaka Matsuri (Naked Festival; Japan)

Hildegund, O.Praem (Christian; Saint)

Jacut (Christian; Saint)

Mateo Correa Magallanes (one of Saints of the Cristero War)

Mél of Ardagh (Christian; Saint)

Oto Matsuri (Fire Festival; Japan)

Paul Miki and Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan (Christian; Martyrs)

Peter Baptist (Christian; Saint)

Relindis (Renule) of Mosaic (Christian; Saint)

Self Stimulation Day (a.k.a. Self-Love Day; Pastafarian)

SKF Robot Smokestack (Muppetism)

Tlaloc Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint) 

Vedastus (Christian; Saint)

Zacchaeus Sunday (Orthodox Christian)

Zeuxis (Positivist; Saint)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Butsumetsu (仏滅 Japan) [Unlucky all day.]

Perilous Day (13th Century England) [8 of 32]

Prime Number Day: 37 [12 of 72]

Premieres

American Dad (Animated TV Series; 2005)

Barenaked Ladies Are Men, by Barenaked Ladies (Album; 2007)

The Big Wash (Disney Cartoon; 1928)

Black Widow (Film; 1987)

Blues Brothers 2000 (Film; 1998)

Bosch (TV Series; 2014)

Coraline (Animated Film; 2009)

Deep Night, by Rudy Valley (Song; 1929)

Get Rich or Die Tryin’, by 50 Cent (Album; 2003)

Infinity On High, by Fall Out Boy (Album; 2007)

Jupiter Ascending (Film; 2015)

The Kid (Silent Film; 1921)

Light of Day (Film; 1987)

Magician Mickey (Disney Cartoon; 1937)

Miracle (Sports Film; 2004)

Mozart in the Jungle (TV Series; 2014)

The Mission (Film; 1987)

Of Mice and Men (Novel; 1937)

The Ol’ Swimming Hole (Disney Cartoon; 1928)

Push (Film; 2009)

The Replacement Killers (Film; 1998)

Saludos Amigos (Animated Disney Film; 1943)

Spike, by Elvis Costello (Album; 1989)

Temple Grandin (Film; 2010)

Today’s Name Days

Doris, Dorothea, Paul (Austria)

Svetla, Svetlana, Svetlomir (Bulgaria)

Dorica, Doroteja, Pavao (Croatia)

Vanda (Czech Republic)

Dorothea (Denmark)

Doora, Doris, Dorotea, Tea, Thea (Estonia)

Tea, Teija, Terhi, Terhikki, Tiia (Finland)

Dorothée, Gaston (France)

Doris, Dorothea, Paul (Germany)

Fotis, Photis (Greece)

Dóra, Dorottya (Hungary)

Amando, Dorotea, Paolo (Italy)

Dace, Dārta, Dora, Dore (Latvia)

Alkis, Darata, Titas, Živilė (Lithuania)

Dorte, Dortea (Norway)

Angel, Angelus, Antoni, Bogdana, Bohdan, Bohdana, Dorota, Ksenia, Szymon, Tytus (Poland)

Fotie, Ioan, Varsanufie, Vucol (Romania)

Ksenia (Russia)

Dorota (Slovakia)

Dorotea, Pablo (Spain)

Doris, Dorotea (Sweden)

Teofil, Teofila (Ukraine)

Amanda, Dolly, Dora, Doreen, Dorothea, Dorothy, Dorthy, Dottie, Manda, Mandi, Mandy, Ron, Rona, Ronald, Ronalda, Ronaldo, Ronnie, Titus (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 37 of 2023; 328 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 1 of week 6 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Luis (Rowan) [Day 16 of 28]

Chinese: Month 1 (Jia-Yin), Day 16 (Yi-Wei)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 15 Shevat 5783

Islamic: 15 Rajab II 1444

J Cal: 7 Xin; Sevenday [7 of 30]

Julian: 24 January 2023

Moon: 99%: Waning Gibbous

Positivist: 9 Homer (2nd Month) [Zeuxis)

Runic Half Month: Elhaz (Elk) [Day 13 of 15]

Season: Winter (Day 48 of 90)

Zodiac: Aquarius (Day 17 of 30)

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 2.6

Holidays

Aldus Day

Alzheimer’s Disease Day (Florida)

Bob Marley Day (Jamaica)

International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation (UN)

International Translator Mug Appreciation Day

Lame Duck Day

Massachusetts Statehood Day (#6; 1788)

Monopoly Board Game Day

National Ashley Day

National Laplander’s Day (Sweden)

National Seaweed Day (Japan)

National Tinnitus Day

National Valentine Shopping Reminder Day

National Werewolf Day

Pay-a-Compliment Day

Reclaim Social Day

Reggae Day

Ronald Reagan Day (California)

Saamelaisten Kansallispäivä (Finland, Norway)

Sami National Day (Finland, Norway, Sweden)

Unity Day (Burundi)

Waitangi Day (New Zealand, Niue)

World Concertina Day

World Muaythai Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

International Day of the Bartender

International Frozen Yogurt Day

Maple Syrup Day (Canada)

National Chopsticks Day

1st Monday in February

Constitution Day (Mexico) [1st Monday]

Independence Day observed (Grenada; from UK, 1974) [Monday closest to 2.7]

Just Say No To PowerPoint Week begins [1st Monday]

Love a Mensch Week begins [1st Monday]

National Sickie Day (UK) [1st Monday]

Independence Days

Zenia (Declared; 2020) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Amand (Christian; Saint) [bar staff, bartenders]

Aphrodisia (The Feast of Aphrodite; Ancient Greece)

Barsanuphius of Palestine (Christian; Saint)

Bob Marley Day (Rastafari; Saint)

Dorothea of Caesarea (Christian; Saint) [brewers]

Feast of the 26 Martyrs (Japan)

Gamelia (Celebration of Marriage of Zeus & Hera; Ancient Greece)

Hadaka Matsuri (Naked Festival; Japan)

Hildegund, O.Praem (Christian; Saint)

Jacut (Christian; Saint)

Mateo Correa Magallanes (one of Saints of the Cristero War)

Mél of Ardagh (Christian; Saint)

Oto Matsuri (Fire Festival; Japan)

Paul Miki and Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan (Christian; Martyrs)

Peter Baptist (Christian; Saint)

Relindis (Renule) of Mosaic (Christian; Saint)

Self Stimulation Day (a.k.a. Self-Love Day; Pastafarian)

SKF Robot Smokestack (Muppetism)

Tlaloc Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint) 

Vedastus (Christian; Saint)

Zacchaeus Sunday (Orthodox Christian)

Zeuxis (Positivist; Saint)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Butsumetsu (仏滅 Japan) [Unlucky all day.]

Perilous Day (13th Century England) [8 of 32]

Prime Number Day: 37 [12 of 72]

Premieres

American Dad (Animated TV Series; 2005)

Barenaked Ladies Are Men, by Barenaked Ladies (Album; 2007)

The Big Wash (Disney Cartoon; 1928)

Black Widow (Film; 1987)

Blues Brothers 2000 (Film; 1998)

Bosch (TV Series; 2014)

Coraline (Animated Film; 2009)

Deep Night, by Rudy Valley (Song; 1929)

Get Rich or Die Tryin’, by 50 Cent (Album; 2003)

Infinity On High, by Fall Out Boy (Album; 2007)

Jupiter Ascending (Film; 2015)

The Kid (Silent Film; 1921)

Light of Day (Film; 1987)

Magician Mickey (Disney Cartoon; 1937)

Miracle (Sports Film; 2004)

Mozart in the Jungle (TV Series; 2014)

The Mission (Film; 1987)

Of Mice and Men (Novel; 1937)

The Ol’ Swimming Hole (Disney Cartoon; 1928)

Push (Film; 2009)

The Replacement Killers (Film; 1998)

Saludos Amigos (Animated Disney Film; 1943)

Spike, by Elvis Costello (Album; 1989)

Temple Grandin (Film; 2010)

Today’s Name Days

Doris, Dorothea, Paul (Austria)

Svetla, Svetlana, Svetlomir (Bulgaria)

Dorica, Doroteja, Pavao (Croatia)

Vanda (Czech Republic)

Dorothea (Denmark)

Doora, Doris, Dorotea, Tea, Thea (Estonia)

Tea, Teija, Terhi, Terhikki, Tiia (Finland)

Dorothée, Gaston (France)

Doris, Dorothea, Paul (Germany)

Fotis, Photis (Greece)

Dóra, Dorottya (Hungary)

Amando, Dorotea, Paolo (Italy)

Dace, Dārta, Dora, Dore (Latvia)

Alkis, Darata, Titas, Živilė (Lithuania)

Dorte, Dortea (Norway)

Angel, Angelus, Antoni, Bogdana, Bohdan, Bohdana, Dorota, Ksenia, Szymon, Tytus (Poland)

Fotie, Ioan, Varsanufie, Vucol (Romania)

Ksenia (Russia)

Dorota (Slovakia)

Dorotea, Pablo (Spain)

Doris, Dorotea (Sweden)

Teofil, Teofila (Ukraine)

Amanda, Dolly, Dora, Doreen, Dorothea, Dorothy, Dorthy, Dottie, Manda, Mandi, Mandy, Ron, Rona, Ronald, Ronalda, Ronaldo, Ronnie, Titus (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 37 of 2023; 328 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 1 of week 6 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Luis (Rowan) [Day 16 of 28]

Chinese: Month 1 (Jia-Yin), Day 16 (Yi-Wei)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 15 Shevat 5783

Islamic: 15 Rajab II 1444

J Cal: 7 Xin; Sevenday [7 of 30]

Julian: 24 January 2023

Moon: 99%: Waning Gibbous

Positivist: 9 Homer (2nd Month) [Zeuxis)

Runic Half Month: Elhaz (Elk) [Day 13 of 15]

Season: Winter (Day 48 of 90)

Zodiac: Aquarius (Day 17 of 30)

[lunapaper]

Album Review: 'HOLY FVCK' - Demi Lovato

Holy fvck really is the perfect way to describe the past few years for Demi Lovato.  

In 2018, the singer suffered a near-fatal overdose, which left her legally blind. She came out as non-binary, preferring to go by she/they pronouns. She became the ambassador for a conspiracy theory website. She revisited past trauma on 2021’s Dancing with the Devil... The Art of Starting Over. She had beef with that frozen yoghurt store, which drew criticism from fans and critics alike. 

Lovato now channels all their fear, longing and fury into big, chugging, metal-inspired riffs and snarling pop punk on her eighth album. But while everyone and their mother seems to be jumping on the bandwagon, trying to score a collab with Travis Barker in the hopes of becoming the next Olivia Rodrigo, Lovato’s love of rock, metal and emo is true. Not too long ago, they recounted the time she crowdsurfed at Norwegian black metal band Dimmur Borgir’s show as a teenager in an attempt to evade the moshpit. 

And Lovato wears her influences proudly on her sleeve. 

First single ‘SKIN OF MY TEETH’ is a formidable tribute to Hole’s ‘Celebrity Skin.’ ‘Demi leaves rehab again/When is this shit gonna end?’ Lovato drawls as she longs to be free of her much-publicised demons (‘but I can’t ‘cos it’s a fuckin’ disease’). ‘SUBSTANCE’ owes a lot to Jimmy Eat World’s ‘The Middle,’ the singer searching for meaning in an increasingly shallow and fragmented world. Though it’s kinda ironic that Lovato would decry a lack of substance in the world while choosing to align herself with a platform that pushes misinformation… 

‘EAT ME’ is vicious and ragged, with Royal and the Serpent’s Ryan Santiago providing the sickly-sweet yin to Lovato’s raspy yang. It wouldn’t have looked too out of place on Poppy’s I Disagree, at the same time maintaining a Muse-like grind. The title track has a slinky groove and dirty, filthy bass akin to The Pretty Reckless, with riffs like flames licking at the walls and Lovato revelling in the leather-clad melodrama. Standout ‘BONES’ has ‘Trouble’s Coming’-era Royal Blood in its blood, an underrated cut of salacious disco punk that has the singer wanting to jump a lover’s bones (natch). 

HOLY FVCK is as preoccupied with the sexual as it is the sacramental, Lovato making her desires known while burning down the toxic purity cult that Disney kept her imprisoned in for so many years. 

‘HEAVEN’ is a dizzy, wailing ode to self-love channelling Marilyn Manson’s ‘Beautiful People,’ with Lovato trying to reconcile the deeply-held Catholic beliefs of their family with masturbation, inspired by Matthew 5:30 (‘If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, because it’s better to lose one part of your body than your entire body to hell’). She plans on christening every square inch of LA in every position possible on SUM 41-style filthfest, ‘CITY OF ANGELS.’   

’29,’ however, is a much, much darker.  

‘Thought it was a teenage dream, just a fantasy/But was it yours or was it mine?’ Lovato spits back, allegedly at their ex, Wilmer Valderrama, a grimy, gasoline rainbow of a rock banger that’s since become an empowering catch-cry for hundreds of women on TikTok who’ve also been preyed on by older men. The singer doesn’t hold back, offering up skin-crawling lines such as ‘Just five years a bleeder, student and a teacher/Far from innocent, what the fuck's consent?’ But it’s definitely among the most cathartic of HOLY FVCK’s tracks, its chorus thrashing like a wild animal that’s burst out of its cage. 

The crux of the album, though, lies with ‘HAPPY ENDING.’  

‘Am I gonna die trying to find my happy ending?’ Lovato wonders, ‘And will I ever know what it's like.’ It paints a brutal portrait of the realities of addiction, never truly free of her demons. It also has a lot in common with her 2018 track, ‘Sober,’ released after suffering a relapse, but this time, Lovato seeks to turn hopelessness into something hopeful. ‘The feeling I hope that people take away from listening to this song is that I hope they don’t feel alone,’ she told fans via her website. ‘In this song, it’s talking about feeling so hopeless but I want my fans to know they’re never alone and someone has felt this way before and made it out of it.’ 

Then we reach the halfway mark, and the album’s tension begins to wane, Lovato soon retreating into the inoffensive Disney pop rock of years past (bar ‘DEAD FRIENDS,’ of course). The scuzzy sleaze rock of ‘HELP ME’ (featuring Emily Armstrong of LA rock trio Dead Sara), however, is a bright spot, taunting and swaggering back at the listener ‘thanks for your useless information’ and shoving their pointless opinions back in their faces. 

If you’re gonna go full rock and metal, complete with the metal-style V in the album title and the bondage and crucifix imagery to match, then commit. Why hold a ‘funeral’ for your pop music if you’re just gonna end up getting cold feet halfway through and end up resurrecting its corpse? 

HOLY FVCK is a long overdue burst of anger from Lovato. Rather than wallow in her pain, she revels in it, entices it and grabs it by the fucking throat – at least for the first half of the record.  

It could also do with a little subtlety: For every stark confession, there’s a cliched platitude or goofy lyric. Lovato’s boasts of being ‘ungodly but heaven-sent' can also come off as trying too hard at times. 

Still, ‘[y]ou can’t have light without dark,’ Lovato recently told the LA Times. ‘The dichotomy was really important to me, and I had to take my anger out of the shadows in order to heal. I am owning my dark side, and it doesn’t have to take me down.’  

And by doing so, she’s never sounded better. Hopefully Lovato keeps fvcking things up like this… 

- Bianca B. 

[sangorous]

cinderella

word count: 1.06k

genre/warnings: fluff? angst/none.

nozel silva x black!fem!reader

a disney princess series part 1: cinderella

it's been five years since your mother has passed away and your father remarried someone new.

the move from your small town to the clover kingdom was something that you weren't expecting at all. you were so used to being in a small own where everyone knew each other, but when you moved to the clover kingdom, you felt like an outsider.

but now, you had a new life with your father, stepmother and two stepsisters.

your stepmother and stepsisters seemed nice when you first met them, but as soon as your father left the house; they became new people.

kicking you out of your own room, and moving you to the attic, where it was dusty and dirty. they turned you into a housemaid, carrying out their duty and doing their chores.

everyday you barley ate and drink, and it was a pattern you were use to. you became a slave in your own home as your father was away for work.

listening to your stepsisters nonsense, listening to your stepmother bicker and nag about situations that weren't a big deal, you couldn't take it anymore.

everyday, you'd go to your room in the attic and pray to the man upstairs that one day, you'd be free from their hell.

↳ ❝ [𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐀] ¡! ❞

you were downstairs sweeping the floor when a knock was heard from the door, "well don't just stand there stupid, open the door," akane scoffed, looking at you.

you sighed and walked to the door and there stood an unfamiliar man, "hello madam, the king and queen are hosting a ball today to help their son, prince nozel, find his bride," the man bowed.

"here is an invitation, we hope to see you there," he handed you an invitation.

"thank you kind sir," you smiled at him as you waved him off.

"what's in your hand ugly?" aiyo spoke as she walked up behind you.

"the king and queen are holding a ball," you softly spoke, handing her the invitation but she snatched it from you.

"you certainly don't need that," your stepmom chuckled, walking into the living room.

"now let's see what we have here?" she spoke, looking at the invitation.

"this is tonight?" she shouted.

"what are we still doing here? we have to find the finest dresses out there for you two," she clapped her hands and grabbed her purse, you sighed as they cheered and grabbed their handbags and followed their mother.

"mother perhaps i may tag along with you guys tonight if i finish my chores early?" you gave her a weak smile.

"of course dear," she gave you a fake smile.

"that's if you can finish them in time,"she whispered, laughing to herself as she closed the door.

you smiled to yourself as you watched them slam the door shut, and began to clean away.

↳ ❝ [𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐀] ¡! ❞

after three hours of cleaning the house, you rushed upstairs and decided to take a nice warm shower in the guest bathroom before your stepfamily came back from their shopping spree.

once you were finished, you walked out of the bathroom and cleaned it the way it was before and walked upstairs to your bedroom.

meanwhile downstairs, akane and aiyo and nancy made their way to their bedroom where they had their new dress in hand.

"so one of us has to get the prince so we can get out of here," aiyo scoffed, looking around the room.

"who are you telling? this house isn't big enough for us," akane gave a pout to the body mirror that stood in front of her.

"and that disease of a 'sister' thinks that mommy is going to let her out," akane snickered fixing her dress.

"i think it's time to go show mommy how beautiful we look don't you think?" aiyo looked at her sister with a big smile.

"let us go,"akane replied, lifting her dress up and walking out of their room and downstairs.

[akane's dress below: ]

[aiyo's dress below:]

"wow look at my stunning daughters," your stepmother spoke in awe as mina and nancy walked downstairs. you stared in awe as you watched your stepsisters make their way downstairs, looking like royalty while you looked down at your dress and saw that it was basic.

[ your dress below:]

"you tried stepsis, but you've got to try harder," aiyo snickered, patting your back as she walked away from you.

you sighed as they gathered by the door, taking pictures and smiling at the camera.

"is everyone ready?" your stepmother spoke and they nodded their heads.

"well let's go," she clapped her hands as they opened the door.

"oh dear," your mother turned around.

"can you get my purse down the hall please?" she gave you fake smile, and you nodded your head.

she saw this as an opportunity to quickly place a small nail on the end of your dress, and when you began to walk towards the hall, you heard a ripping noise. you turned around and your dress was ripped from top to bottom.

"oh no," you cried, dropping down to your knees.

"your dress is ruined," your stepmother gasped.

"which means you can't go to the ball," she gave you a fake pout.

"don't worry, we'll have fun for you, aiyo snickered, walking out of the house and to the carriage.

"don't stay up to late sweetheart," your stepmother shouted, slamming the front door.

you ran upstairs to the attic and dropped yourself on your bed, 'how could she do such a malicious thing?' you thought to yourself as the waterworks came down.

you just wanted a night out of the house. a night to have fun. a night to meet new people. and lastly, a night to find true love, but that was taken away from you.

you looked at your dress and cried once more as you changed back into your pajamas and stared at the hole that ruined your chance at love.

"what's the matter darling?" a soft voice spoke, causing you to slowly turn around.

"who are you?" you asked, observing the petite woman.

"i'm your fairy godmother," she gave you a smile, walking towards you.

"fairy godmother?" you questioned and she nodded her head.

"yes whenever you're having difficulties, i am summoned here to help you. now what troubles you dear?" she spoke, looking at you.

"i wanted to go to the ball, but my stepmother took a small nail and placed it at the end of my dress, causing it to rip," your eyes began to water as you looked at the dress.

"all i wanted was to go to the ball. i'm always locked up in the attic and sent off to do chores and it's not fair!" you shouted, slamming your hand on the bed.

"don't you worry about that sweetheart, we'll make it happen," she smiled, waving her wand around you.

you felt yourself lifting up and saw glitter and sparkles being thrown around you as you twirled around and felt something covering you. once everything was done, you were back on your feet and stood in front of the mirror in awe.

[ your new dress: ]

"well don't just stand here, go to the ball sweetheart," she smiled at you, and you carefully jogged down the stairs and out of the front door.

a beautiful white carriage waited outside for you, and your jaw dropped, "now listen to me. this is only temporary, you have until the clock strikes midnight. once midnight is here, everything will go back to normal. the carriage, your dress, the makeup, and everything else," she gave you a stern look.

"thank you so much, how can i repay you?" you looked at her.

"your hard work already paid off honey," she winked at you as the carriage drove off.

↳ ❝ [𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐀] ¡! ❞

you stood outside the mansion and everyone was either walking inside the ballroom or talking outside.

you slowly walked up the stairs and made your way inside the ballroom. people were dancing with each other, sitting down eating, or making conversation.

as you walked around, you felt your shoulder collide with someone else's.

"oh im so sorry," you softly spoke, looking at him.

"it was my mistake," he chuckled softly.

"i'm prince nozel," he added, sticking his hand out.

"i'm cinderella," you shook his hand with a small smile.

"would you like to dance?" he asked, looking at you and you shook your head.

nozel grabbed your hand, and the two of you headed to the dance floor where the two of you danced. as the two of you were dancing and making conversation, you lost track of time.

you looked around for a clock and when you found one, it was already 11:50.

"oh no," you gasped, letting go from him embrace.

"where are you going?" he asked, following behind you.

"i must return before curfew," you shouted, running down the steps.

"wait will i ever see you again?" he shouted, behind you.

"i hope so," you shouted, turning around.

you stared at him and gave him a one more smile before you turned around and ran to the carriage, hoping you'd make it home in time before the carriage turned back into the pumpkin.

nozel sighed as he shook his head. the one opportunity he had to find his princess, failed. he was really intrigued by cinderella and wanted to see her again. he slowly walked down the steps and when he walked down the last steps, he saw something: a blue glass heel.

"this might be hers, which means i can see her again," he smiled to himself, walking back to the ball.

this was pure shit, but anything for nozel. ~tori 😗

[ladyfawkes]

Eugene Appreciation Week - Day 1 - Childhood | The Trial and Tribulations of Fitzherbert and Schnitz

The Trial and Tribulations of Fitzherbert and Schnitz

Current word count: 3178

Current Rating: T for upcoming chapters

This is my version of that now-infamous RTA lost episode, "The Trial of Fitzherbert and Schnitz". Most of you are aware how I took issue with Disney having used both adoption AND Eugene's having adopted his lifelong persona as Flynn as a 20-minute throwaway plot. I'm gonna try to beef up that premise.

I suppose this is ALSO my way of refuting some of the (very limited) spoilery stuff I've read that's included in the upcoming traditionally published Flynn Rider novel.

My own plot line will be significantly darker than your average Disney plot, though.

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

Chapter 1: Sister Eunice

Several years into the past....

Arnie was skipping down the corridor just past the chapel, minding his own business, when suddenly a loud CRASH!!! sounded from just behind him. He whipped around to see an enormous new hole in a large ornate stained-glass window behind him that was intact just seconds ago.

Thinking one of the rowdier orphans to be at fault, Arnie ran to have a looksee outside. He was shocked to discover nobody except Sister Eunice opposite him next to the stone wall. Surely she couldn’t have been the one to shatter the window??

The young nun noticed him from outside the chapel though and hissed, “Arnie!! Arnie, don’t tell anybody you saw me here! Please. I’m trying to save Eugene!! I’m trying to save you all!! If anybody asks, especially Father Francis, tell them you saw Eugene throw a rock at the window. I can’t explain why, but it’ll help out. A LOT. Can you do that for me, please, Arnie? Would you do this to save your best friend, Eugene?” She was looking at him with frightened eyes, taking surreptitious furtive glances behind her.

Ten-year-old Arnie had stared back, wide-eyed, and had only barely begun to nod when Sis Eunice turned back, ran around the corner of the chapel toward Arnie’s right, and disappeared. Young Arnie was left standing there, mouth agape, wondering why on earth a nun - a nun!!! - would throw a heavy rock through a church-owned stained glass window. And especially a window that the children were told was hundreds of years old!

Not long after that, to his left, Arnie saw someone else outside out of the corner of his eye. The young boy instinctively hid behind the full partition of the wall where the stained glass window ended. It was Fr Francis, the priest for the local parish, walking at a brisk pace. And Arnie could’ve sworn the scary priest might be tracking Sis Eunice. Arnie and Eugene hadn’t ever been particularly fond of Francis. In fact, they went out of their way to avoid the older dour-faced man.

Although Fr. Francis was currently looking at the hole in the window from a ways off, he couldn’t see where Arnie was from his vantage point. Arnie slinked away to go find Eugene.

Turned out he bumped into Eugene almost immediately since Eugene had been in the chapel, waiting to meet up with Lord and Lady Boskin. Arnie stopped in his tracks at the sight of his friend, all freshly bathed, his hair combed, and so unexpectedly dressed in a new blue velvet skeleton suit, white stockings, silk shirt, and leather shoes. It was the latest modern fashion that all the rich boys were wearing in Vardaros. He knew that because Eugene told him every time they were fortunate enough to go to town with one of the sisters. Arnie would have to pry Eugene away from the shop window where Eugene’s face would sometimes get so close to the display that his nose print would remain on the glass. Arnie didn’t understand why Eugene cared about stuff like that. Fashion and velvet and lace. Orphans weren’t supposed to care. Food was more important anyway.

“I heard a terrible crash and came to investigate!” Eugene said breathlessly.

All thought of the broken window had flown from Arnie’s mind at the sight of his transformed best friend and he demanded, “What’re you wearing alla that for??”

Suddenly self-conscious, Eugene crammed his hands in his new pockets, stared at the floor, scuffed the sole of his new shoe against the mosaic tile and mumbled, “Fr Francis took me aside after breakfast to the rectory and said that Lord and Lady Boskin have chosen to adopt…..me.” He said it with the same amount of awe he felt when he first saw the suit in its parcel.

“....and….and you didn’t think to tell me any sooner? You were just gonna leave without saying goodbye?” accused Arnie, his eyes filling with tears. Eugene could see his pouting lips tremble from several yards away. “But...but I didn’t know either…!” protested Eugene, now fighting tears himself, before he was abruptly cut off.

As Arnie stood there simultaneously hating and envying Eugene, a whole crowd of people had arrived from both sides of the corridor, to all of the ensuing hullabaloo of the shattered window. Unfortunately, it was just in time to see these two boys standing by themselves right near the new gaping hole in the priceless stained glass window.

Fr Francis had reappeared inside followed by the Mthr Superior, Sis Eunice, several dozen children, and a few other nuns. Everyone was chattering and buzzing and arguing about which of the two boys had broken the window -- Arnie or Eugene. Perhaps both? Immediately they both protested their innocence and the bored aggressive older boys used the moment as an excuse to break out into a fight…

Two brawny red-headed boys quickly left the mob only to have one boy each bowl right into Eugene and Arnie. All four boys toppled over to the floor.

All of the other children started shouting, “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!” and just before the redheads could land their first actual punches, Fr Francis easily intervened by grabbing both of their pulled-back fists, squeezing them, and ordering the boys to get up off their intended victims and up off the floor. They reluctantly complied. Then Francis ordered Arnie and Eugene off the floor and to follow him to his office.

As Eugene looked down in dismay at the visible dirt on his beautiful new suit, Sis Eunice surreptitiously put a comforting hand on his shoulder and said, in a voice so softly only he could hear, “Don’t worry -- these are play clothes. More than capable of taking a few layers of dirt from rambunctious young boys.” She always had a way to help him feel better….but this time, since he was effectively being frog-marched to the priest’s office over something he didn’t do, the good feeling didn’t last nearly long enough.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~((0))((0))((0))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Two Hours Earlier…..

Eugene had been called to the rectory by Fr. Francis immediately following breakfast. Without any prior notice whatsoever, he informed Eugene that Lord and Lady Boskin had actually chosen to adopt him!!!

Young Eugene couldn’t believe his luck! He wondered why he’d been chosen. What had the wealthy young couple seen in him? Even though he’d only been formally introduced once or twice, and had spoken only a few sentences to them, they chose him. And he supposed they seemed nice enough.

Eugene and most of the orphans had already seen the younger couple several times. He learned from the nuns over the past couple of years that the pair were evidently unable to have children of their own and as such, had been growing their own family a different way. Twice per year for the past two years, they had chosen a new child from amongst the orphans at this orphanage. Prior to their more formal choosing-times for each child, they would come to the orphanage for several trips and take turns meeting and chatting with the children. Yet this time, they had actually chosen Eugene.

Sis. Eunice had entered the rectory right behind Fr Francis and his announcement; the latter then vacated the building. Sis Eunice had taken Eugene by the hand and led him to the home’s water closet. And already waiting for him was a fresh bath -- mid-week, even! He was accustomed to every Saturday at most. For the first time in his life, Eugene was treated to his very own bath where the water was actually extra warm and didn’t contain the sloughed-off post-bathing scoodge from a zillion other children lurking in the bottom.

Eugene had seen the nuns sniffle and get misty-eyed plenty of times when other children had been adopted. But their crying was always rather delicate and they always tried to smile through it. However, as Sis Eunice helped him to properly wash his fingers, toes, and ears during what Eugene thought of as his luxurious bath, Sis Eunice also kept repeatedly bursting into tears. And apologizing for it. She seemed genuinely….worried.

The nuns weren’t supposed to have favorites but Eugene knew Sis Eunice was easily the most fond of him. She had arrived at the orphanage during the height of a disease outbreak which had very nearly claimed little Eugene’s life. And it would have done so too, if it weren’t for Sis Eunice’s dogged persistence. They had originally bonded over their funny-sounding first names. She’d turned her own name into a joke to try and give him a reason to smile….and it worked. Most if not all of the other nuns were quite hands-off but Sis Eunice believed in healing touch. As Eugene’s stricken body fought the virulent infection, the Sister held him, rocked him, and sang to him. After that, she promised to come back to the room that housed the most ill children and read aloud a story once she finished her rounds. She had sat closest to little Eugene as she read aloud “Flynnigan Rider and the Pirates of Penzance” for the very first time. It was the first time Eugene had become familiar with the novels.

And though Eugene hadn’t really noticed before (nun’s habits often made it difficult to tell who was older than whom) right now, after he learned he would soon be leaving the orphanage forever that day, it was almost as if Eugene were seeing Sis Eunice for the first time. And for the first time, he noticed how young she truly was. She had a spray of freckles across her face and a little space between her front teeth. A halo of strawberry blonde curls framed her face and perpetually worked their way out of her wimpole. It’s possible Sis Eunice was even younger than Lady Boskin.

He couldn’t help but notice as she had him put on a clean slick-feeling shirt -- a brand-new one, just for him!! -- yet that was only the beginning. Apparently with each chosen child, the adoptive couple provided a freshly purchased outfit from the shops in town. Even Sis Eunice couldn’t help but smile this time as she presented Eugene’s new clothes to him. She asked him to tug open the string holding the paper parcel together. He stared at the parcel, eyes darting between the string and the Sister’s face. “Another present?” he whispered in awe. “For me?” Inside lay a brand new velvet suit. “It’s my favorite color!” he squeaked in delight. “Cornflower blue!” And Sis. Eunice nodded with the same huge smile on her face as him. “Shall I?” she asked softly, reaching into the parcel so he could see the whole suit. Eugene was utterly thunderstruck now. He stared wide-eyed at this beautiful boughten suit which was already quite familiar to him.

“But this is the same…..” he trailed off as Sis Eunice finished for him, “It’s the same suit you’ve had your eye on all year in that shop window?” Mouth agape, Eugene nodded slowly, clearly still in shock.

Eugene recalled how Sis Eunice had begun reading the Flynnigan Rider story with a splash, quite literally, and encompassed the first three chapters. The very first words of the book started with Flynnigan Rider on the mains’l full on the mast of a tall ship, shouting, “As long as I possess air in my lungs, I shall never surrender!!” And right before an enemy bullet could pierce him, Rider had sprinted and dove off the end of the mains’l to plunge down into the sea below. Sis Eunice had taken a fresh mildly damp cloth and spun it above her head, so everyone could feel the ‘splash’. That’s all it took for her to hook every single one of her charges. Sis Eunice had read aloud in every voice. Acted out each scene. She had as many props as feasible. And at the end of chapter 3 that first night, she closed the book amidst many “awwws”, protests, and left the children clamoring for more and some even wanting to help star in the show. Six-year-old Eugene had finally found the strength to speak for the first time in days and tugged Sis Eunice’s robes. “Tomorrow? Please?” he whispered breathlessly. The Sister knelt down close by his ear and pushed his hair away from his fevered brow. “I’ll tell you what,” she said softly. “If you think you can stick around for me by this time tomorrow morning, I promise to come back and read for you. Deal?”

And she turned to the rest of the room, “Tonight’s life lesson from Flynnigan is to hold air in those lungs -- by breathing deeply -- so that you can keep fighting.” Eager to prove to Sis Eunice that he could be brave like Flynnigan Rider, he concentrated on breathing as deeply as he could. Though it was by far the most difficult and painful thing he’d ever done in his young life, he followed through with it nonetheless. And Sis Eunice had returned each morning and night, as promised, to divulge more of Flynnigan’s adventures and life lessons. By the time he was well enough about a week later, she’d ask for Eugene to actually promise to wait for her the next night and bit by bit, little Eugene had found the strength to come back from the brink. And it was all because of one (or was it two?) very special people -- Sis Eunice and Flynnigan Rider.

“Shall we dress you smartly then? It’s not proper for a young man of your new status to be prancing around, half-dressed, you know,” Sis Eunice teased, bringing Eugene back to the present. Usually he’d act silly in return but right now….as soon as he had the new trousers on….Eugene was overcome and couldn’t help but throw his arms around the Sister’s neck. “Thank you,” he whispered, “so much.” It was the nicest clothing -- the nicest anything -- that anyone had ever given him. And Sis Eunice thought he was misinterpreting who’d provided for him this suit but he wasn’t. “I know it wasn’t your money,” as Eugene was well aware that the nuns scarcely had more than the orphans due in large part to their vows of charity and poverty. And yet he replied, still embracing her, “But I just know that you had something to do with it somehow, Sis Eunice.”

She briefly taught him the tricks with helping Eugene learn how to dress himself up in the fancy new suit. It had a lot of buttons. Big shiny brass ones. She was insistent that none of her charges was going to be reliant on servants to dress them, even after they left the orphanage. Once Eugene was fully dressed in his new comfortably-tailored playsuit, Sis Eunice also presented to him new stockings and new mahogany leather shoes.

Sis Eunice looked adoringly...and then somberly at Eugene as the thunderstruck little boy could not stop studying his own reflection in a full-length mirror.

Though most boys hated baths, he actually liked them (especially when they were warm with fresh water) almost as much as he liked playing in the dirt. He wondered if he’d have his own bed at his new home. He wondered if he’d get to have a mattress, bedclothes, and a pillow every night.

“Well, I suppose it’s time,” said Sis Eunice with a watery smile. The pair of them began to head over to the parish chapel just off the orphanage and across the compound from the rectory. Halfway through the walk, Sis Eunice asked him to continue onto the chapel and said that she’d meet up with him again in a very short few moments. And that was apparently where he was supposed to meet up with Lord and Lady Boskin to sign the final papers and officially become their latest son for real. His heart skipped a beat at the thought.

After his arrival in the chapel, and within 3 minutes, he heard a very loud crash outside in the corridor to the right of his vantage point near the front of the chapel. He thought maybe he should stay put just in case, but his curiosity got the best of him and he went to investigate.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~((0))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile, in the Office of the Clergy….

Arnie had been called into the clergy office with Fr Francis, Mthr Superior, and Sis Eunice. Eugene had been left outside to stew and fret by himself.

“So you witnessed Eugene Fitzherbert throw a rock at the stained glass?” said Fr Francis imperiously. Arnie’s wide frightened eyes kept darting back and forth between Fr Francis’s unpleasant features and Sis Eunice’s equally terrified eyes. She nodded imperceptibly to encourage Arnie to say yes. Arnie didn’t want to lie but he didn’t want to be the one who got in trouble either. Not to mention….it utterly broke his heart that Eugene was getting adopted and that he wasn’t even gonna say goodbye to Arnie. Thus Arnie looked to the floor and nodded downward at it half-heartedly.

Eugene was brought into the office and not even given a chance to defend nor explain himself.

“Naughty misbehaving boys who destroy priceless works of church art don’t deserve to get adopted,” Fr Francis began imperiously. “Remove that clothing at once. It’s no longer yours and you are no longer fit to wear it.” Poor Eugene recoiled in shock and horror and Sis Eunice stepped in to try and intervene. She shared scared looks with Arnie, even more frightened than before. “There’s no need for that, he hasn’t physically harmed anybody,” Sis Eunice reasoned, “there’s no reason to treat him like he’s a criminal. He just had an accident, that's all.”

Eugene kept backing further and further away, “Not adopted??” was all he could manage to say. “That’s precisely it,” Fr Francis replied coldly. “I’ll tell Lord and Lady Boskin not to follow through with the paperwork because misbehaving children are evil children, and they shan’t have evil brought into their perfect home. Now give back that clothing or I shall turn you in for theft of property.” Sis Eunice’s hands flew to her mouth in open dismay. Arnie had correctly deduced that this was definitely not a development she had anticipated. Now the Mthr Superior and other church lackeys outside the door had begun to put their hands on Eugene in effort to take back his new boughten clothes.

Clearly, not knowing what else to do, Sis Eunice pressed her advantage, knelt down by Eugene's ear, and said, “You must run, Eugene!! Stay as far away from here as you can! Make certain they can’t ever catch you. I’ll take care of the rest.” His eyes bugged out and still he hesitated before Sis Eunice hissed, “GO! NOW!”

Eugene spun on the heel of his new shoe, managed to just barely pull away from the sea of grabbing hands, and sprinted out into the great beyond. P.S. Yes, I have every intention of continuing this. And hopefully even seeing it to completion, like a real "episode", even though the timelapse will be more like a full hour as opposed to 22 minutes? In fact, I've already written a bit more beyond it. I just have to write other things for the time being.....

@gleamful-lanterns @kingreywrites @autumn-ravenclaw

[fictionadventurer]

Top 5 unpublished stories (unfinished, in-progress, etc. yours or others' - things posted on tumblr fit, but not indie or traditional publishing)

To be clear, I’m limiting this to:

Works that have at least a partial scene drafted. If it exists only in outline or in idea form, it’s ineligible. There has to be some writing for me to reread and like.  

Stories that are not current WIPs.

So, in no particular order, here are five favorites that I’m fond of.

(Warning: Very Long Post)

1. Airship Sleeping Beauty.

In this world, parents buy fairy gifts for their children at birth. Most people are limited to two or three. Seraphina Crowne (please call her Sara) was gifted with twelve. Her impoverished parents had friends among fairy kind who were able to bend the rules to give this child enough gifts to survive in their harsh environment. Thus, Sara has everything from enhanced beauty and grace to strength and speed and musical skill, which makes her an unstoppable force of (super)nature. She loves a challenge and decides to support her parents by becoming a sailor on a flying sailing ship, where she rockets up through the ranks.

Our POV character is Jack Sanders, who serves under her as second lieutenant. Jack has spent years struggling through the ranks with only one unsuitable fairy gift. The father who chose his gift was an insomniac, and gave his son the gift of helping people fall asleep. Surrounded by people with more useful skills like strength or navigation, Jack languished as a midshipman for years until he served under a captain who realized the greater uses of his gift. Jack hates Seraphina Crowne, assuming that she’s the daughter of a rich man who has enough money to bend all the fairy gifting rules for his precious princess.

As they travel through a tropical land, they run into many adventures, and Jack starts to respect Sara. He learns that she comes from a much less privileged background than he’d assumed, and they slowly become friends. Then one day, they’re taking a day of shore leave on a flying island when they get into a fight with some local ruffians. Sara falls over the edge and is impaled on one of the metal spikes that serve as a barrier between the island and the open sky. But she doesn’t die. She climbs up with a gaping hole through her torso, and the should-be fatal wound heals within hours.

Sara is forced to tell Jack her greatest secret--she actually has a (highly illegal) thirteenth gift. Her mother’s greatest friend among fairy kind was a fairy who was banished from the guild for giving gifts that were too powerful. This fairy wanted to make absolutely certain that her friend couldn’t possibly lose this child at a young age. Her gift to Sara was that she would die by being pricked on the spindle of a spinning wheel--which means that nothing else can kill her. Not disease, injury, old age--she is invulnerable as long as she stays away from spinning wheels, which is easy to do in this industrialized age when your average person has never seen such a thing.  

Jack promises to keep Sara’s secret and they return to the ship. But Jack isn’t the only one who heard her confession. There’s a local airship pirate who supports his business by adopting infants and getting them the illegal fairy gift of being able to transform into birds. One of these bird-children also heard Sara’s story, and they inform their pirate father, who make plans to attack the ship and take out its most powerful asset.

I never finished the story because the climax falls apart. The pirates were going to attack and stab Sara, but Jack is able to stall her death by putting her to sleep--and I could never figure out a way to save Sara without it feeling cheap and predictable and/or detouring into a completely different plotline that takes us away from the story. But I think of the rest of it as one of the best fairy tale retellings I never wrote.

2. Faraway House

This one is my middle-grade portal fantasy for adults. Mara meets Adrian, a mysterious, magical man whose house sits in a space that connects to three different universes--ours, one that has a more medieval fairy tale vibe, and one that’s more steampunky and involves lots of chimeras and people with animal traits. People in need of help tend to fall into this in-between space, and Adrian lets them stay at Faraway House for as long as they need.

There are tons of characters who drop into this story and provide little subplots, but my favorite part was an overarching plotline involving Adrian and Mara. Adrian, who was originally from the fairy tale world, was the evil magician of every childhood nightmare, a powerful man who did all sorts of horrible things to people. He became obsessed with immortality and eventually got it--at a great price to the rest of the world and to himself. He was caught, stripped of a lot of power, and left to live his long life and see the consequences of his actions. He spent a few centuries wandering the three different worlds and undergoing a ton of character development. As a newly humbled man, he was given charge of Faraway House, since his magical talents would be valuable to keep the area and the portals stable. Now, he’s the nicest, sweetest guy you’d ever want to meet. He rarely tells anyone about his past, and most people wouldn’t believe it if you told them.

Anyhow, after Mara’s been staying at Faraway for a long time, she and Adrian go through a portal that links to Adrian’s home universe. They soon realize that it links to his world several centuries in the past, when Evil Adrian was at the height of his power. And he’s very interested in Mara, because her adventures in Faraway have given her some kind of magic that will help him reach the Well of Immortality (or something like that--it’s a very nebulous, fairy tale idea). Unfortunately, taking this magic will kill Mara, so Older Adrian does all he can to save Mara. He succeeds and gets her back home. But his younger self is still on the lookout for her, and he eventually makes his way to Faraway, where he drains the magic and escapes, leaving Mara dying.

And I know this is the most cliche way to end this, but I like my stories predictable and cheesy, and Older Adrian ends up saving Mara by giving up his immortality, which kills him. It’s all very Disney-moving. The story ends with Mara being made the new caretaker of Faraway. And I give away the ending because I’m never going to write this, but I’m still fonder of this story than it deserves.

3. The Island

Anne of Green Gables meets fairy tales.

The Island is a place full of magic. Amphibious mermaids swim along its shores. A fairy forest fills the heart of the Island. Selkie live on the tiny islands off its shore. Pixies cause trouble in the farmyard’s back garden. It’s amazing to the relatively low-magic areas of the rest of the world, but it’s all part of daily life to the farmers and fishermen who live here.

The Fairy’s Daughters, a retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses”, had the most words written in it, but I think I’m fonder of some of the shorter sketches set a generation earlier that highlight little bits and pieces of the world. I started with the tale of Lizbet, an ordinary orphan girl living with her aunt who befriends Gideon, a half-fairy boy who eventually becomes the town’s magical doctor. Their friends include the widow lighthouse keeper who tries to adopt an orphan boy and is surprised to get Amy, who’s a girl--and a mermaid. There’s Captain Avery, a fierce-looking old sailor with a gentle heart and a surprising amount of experience with magical creatures. There’s Auberon, a fairy prince and eventually king who’s racist against humans, spends some of his younger years traveling in human lands to import human-made products, and becomes even more racist because of it.

I think my favorite thing in this universe are the sylphs. I borrowed Andersen’s idea of the “Daughters of the Air”, and made my sylphs into invisible, benevolent creatures who do good deeds for people, and can accomplish magical feats far beyond what any fairy can do. The sketch I reread most often is a scene where Amy, out for a swim in a storm, is rescued by a sylph who has taken a human (though translucent) form, and gets invited in for tea by Amy’s grateful friends.

It’s a fun universe to play in, but not one that I’m very good at finishing stories in, so I think it needs to stay as a pretty aesthetic and a fun sandbox.

4. Clever Anne

A retelling of “Kate Crackernuts” set in a non-magical Regency-esque setting. Anne is the beautiful, intelligent daughter of a duke. Kate is her bold, daring stepsister. They are deeply devoted to each other, but Kate’s mother hates Anne for being so much more beautiful than her daughter. She gets one of the servants to push Anne into the embers of the fire, leaving her face badly burned. Kate throws a veil over Anne’s face and gets her out of the house, insisting they’ll go off to make their fortune.

Anne was childhood friends with a young man who, through a convoluted succession crisis, unexpectedly finds himself on the throne. They stumble upon him in their travels, and find themselves able to help him by investigating the mysterious behavior of his half-brother, who resents that he was passed over for the throne and may be plotting something sinister. I was never able to figure out a good political-intrigue parallel to the “dancing all night with fairies” portion of the plot, so it never got written. The only really good scene I wrote from this story was the moment where Kate finds out about Anne’s injury and insists on leaving the house. But even in that one scene, their relationship is so strong and so vivid in my mind that I love their story even if I never finish it.

5. The Beast’s Mechanic

This is the one on the list that’s closest to being a WIP. I actually edited some of the beginning in March. It’s a sci-fi take on “Beauty and the Beast” set in a world where two planetary empires are at war. The war destroyed Monique’s father’s shipping business, forcing the whole family to move to a desert planet where they run a small spaceport. Monique is a top-notch mechanic, her sister Gemma is a pilot, Gemma’s twin Joanne stays at home to take care of the house and the two youngest siblings, and Leo is a seventeen-year-old rapscallion who is desperate to join the war as soon as possible.

Their world is upended when, for the first time in years, their mother wants to meet with them. A former starship captain, she and her husband disagreed over the war, and she left the family years ago to join the war effort. But now her starship is in for repairs and she wants to take some time to reconnect with her family. There’s some controversy among the family--do they really want to open these wounds again when they’ve finally moved on?--but Monique the peacemaker insists that, even though it’s impossible for the whole family to make the trip, her father should take the chance. He goes to meet his wife, but on the way there, his spaceship breaks down in the middle of nowhere, and he’s rescued by the Beast, an infamous cyborg outlaw. He also breaks important equipment on the Beast’s ship, and is only able to keep from being thrown out of the airlock by insisting that his daughter can fix it.

Monique nearly does, except that the authorities show up just before she’s done with repairs, forcing the Beast to take off with her in the ship. She comes to learn that the Beast is far from an evil criminal and has been helping people wronged by the government, and she helps him get home to his family (in the enemy empire), but her patriotic starship captain of a mother takes all of these events in very much the wrong light.

I’m very fond of this story for the ways that it avoids some of the usual BatB retelling tropes. There’s much more to this story than the romance, and little focus on the mystery of how the Beast became a Beast, and there’s much more focus on family. The Beast hasn’t even shown up yet, but I’m just incredibly fond of Monique’s family and their everyday working-class life on a desert planet. I hope I can make more progress on it someday.

[theprofessionalpromptmaker]

Alice in Wonderland meets The Jungle Book. (either the books or Disney versions.)

(I ended up using both versions for inspiration! Some of these prompts carry vibes of Coraline, Barbie and the Island Princess, and a smidge of Peter Pan if you squint. Plus I used a handful of different tales from The Jungle Book, so some are a little varied premise-wise. For some reasoning the setting that most of these prompts are in is a magical forest because that's immediately where my brain went when it came to this mash-up, but obviously they can apply to a jungle with real world animals or any forest type place with real world animals instead of mythical ones.)

Person A slips through a mirror as an infant and would have gotten eaten by the humanoids who live in the mirror land, but one of the animal-like creatures of the world, who hunts the mirror land humanoids, takes the small human infant in and takes them back to their home in the forests to raise as their own with their pack. Years later, Person B steps through the mirror into the mirror world and is being tricked by the humanoids until Person A saves them when the humanoids turn on them to eat them too. Person B just wants to get home, and offers to take Person A with them, but Person A doesn’t want to leave their animal-like family.

Person A is from a family who lives by a magical forest, but as a child, they get kidnapped by some of the creatures of the forest, wanting Person A to teach them to be human, but all the human things they request Person A teach them, Person A doesn’t know. So the animals deem Person A not a real human and abandon them. But another creature finds Person A, and takes Person A back to their pack to raise them.

Person A got stolen by a witch as a baby and brought to a magical forest, where the witch planned to eat the small child, but one of the creatures of the magical forest (a dragon/unicorn/etc.) killed the witch while the witch was out collecting plants and another magical creature is lured to the baby and the witch’s home from the baby’s cries, adopted it and brought it home to their group. Person B is an explorer, trying to find a herb that they believe will cure a disease of their village, and seeks it in the magical forest, and meets Person A, grown up and raised by a collection of magical creatures from the forest.

Person A was a baby who fell down a hole in a garden and fell into another world, where a creature of the world finds them and takes them back to their group to be raised. Years later, Person B, a child, falls into the hole and travels through the world, but meets Person A early on. Person A has never seen a being like them before and is curious and decides to travel with Person B, helping them try to find a way to get home, and helping Person B navigate the world that makes no sense to Person B but perfect sense to Person A, who grew up there.

A dimension hopping family was exploring a different dimension when they died and left behind their baby/young child, Person A. But Person A didn’t die and was adopted by the creatures of the dimension. Person B is a young dimension hopper who comes when Person A is older and who is surprised to find a human like them in such a ‘wild’ dimension, and is even more surprised to hear that Person A speaks the language of the creatures there and grew up there.

Person A got stolen by a witch as a baby and brought to a magical forest, where the witch planned to eat the small child, but one of the creatures of the magical forest (a dragon/unicorn/etc.) killed the witch and adopted the baby and brought it home to their group. Person B is a new witch, who recently moved to the magical forest to avoid prosecution, and meets Person A, grown up and raised by a collection of magical creatures from the forest.

Person A wants to become a dragon rider, like their parent, but their parent tells them they need to find the land of dragons, a place believed to be myth, before Person A will get their permission to become a dragon rider as well. So Person A sneaks out one night and follows a small dragon deep into the woods and finds the portal into the land of dragons, but then Person A gets stuck there and needs to take a journey through dragon territory, meeting various dragon-creatures and trying many strange plants and foods, all to find their way home, but also getting something from their trip that will prove to their parent the found the portal to the world of dragons.

Person A was raised by the animals of the magical forest, but when a stranger who looks like comes through, Person A decides to leave with them. But a year later, Person A returns to the forest with an infant in their arms, deciding they no longer like the world of mankind, that they supposedly belong too, and would rather return, now with their child, to their forest home and their family of animals who inhabit it.

[The maximum prompt count was reached for this request, all overflow prompts will be posted to Patreon.]

- Mod Poss, the Professional Prompt Maker

Want more prompts? At the $10 Tier on Patreon, patrons receive 10+ prompts for every request!  

[popculturebuffet]

Carl Barks: Back to the Klondike Review: Blinkus of the Thinkus

Welcome one and all! If your a longtime reader of this blog, you know I love a good birthday celebration, having started with my first year reviewing animation last year with Donald’s and deciding to do Mickey and Scrooge’s later that year. But since I misseda  LOT of disney birthdays, and found several Non-disney birthdays and anniversaries I just gotta celebrate, this year i’m making it up and style and have a whole calender set up to tack these big milestones to the wall. So over the year expect tributes to the greats of disney, looney tunes, and mgm both behind and in front of the scenes, as well as to various shows I like. It’s gonna be a good time. 

So to start us off, it’s only fitting my first duck birthday since Scrooge, is for the love of his life and the stealer of his wallet, Glittering Goldie O Gilt! And I felt the best way to celebrate this storied day was to go back to her very FIRST apperance, one of earliest Scrooge headlined comics and a forever fan faviorite, Back to the Klondike!

But before we get into that, a little history on our gal in gold. Goldie was created for this story by comics god, the late great Carl Barks. Barks ended up just using her once, which is a shame but understandable as he probably only thought of her for that one adventure. While some characters like Gyro ended up being used again and again he probably just didn’t have any more stories in mind for her and figured Scrooge would return to her one day or he wouldn’t, but it wasn’t up to him.  Fans however loved the character, her feisty dynamic with scrooge, and the fact she brought out his good side, so naturally other writers would bring her back. In paticular Barks Superfan Don Rosa cemented her as the love of his life and wrote several more stories with her, fleshing out their backstory and saying that at least in his personal canon, Scrooge retired to spend his final years with her. And while his fanboy was clearly showing, and that can end nasitly just ask Dan “Hates Wally West because he’s not barry allen” DiDio, glad he’s gone.. Rosa’s work with goldie is an example of what happens when it’s done right. Less DiDio or Bendis and more Al Ewing. Using the continuity and what’s there to build on a character who deserved better.. to me that’s one of the BEST things you can do in comics and Rosa’s work is proof of that, ironing out the.. questionable elements we’ll get to and leaving the gold in.  So Rosa’s work combined with Ducktales not only adapting this story but bringing Goldie back a few times after that has elevated the character to a storied and permenat part of the duck canon, with her excellent heavily revamped Reboot counterpart currently carrying the torch with the help of the wonderful Allison Janey, perfect casting there. So with a legacy of gold behind her, let’s take a look at where it’s started and see if it still glitters after all these years under the cut. 

We begin our story at the Money Bin. Scrooge has been counting his money.. but has already forgotten, and forgot where he put the slip he wrote the number on and even forgets who Donald is when he shows up until Donald, while having some fun with him as Scrooge is trying to phone him while he’s right there. As for how he got into the most secure place in the bin.. the story actually answers that both worringly and hilariously: Scrooge left the door unlocked.  Naturally he’s not happy about this and Donald states the simple solution: Go see a doctor something’s CLEARLY very wrong, and the fact this could possibly be something like Demntia is VERY bad for someone who runs a zillion dollar company. Scrooge of course scoffs at “wasting his precious money” But Donald not only points out the obvious, that two bucks now saves him from having someone rob EVERYTHING, but Scrooge’s attempt to tie a string around his finger.. instead triggers a trap. And this entire sequence is decent with some good gags.. it’s just hampered a bit by making light of something that’s kinda bad. Not old people forgetting things.. but an old person with a disease as we find out forgetting things. Not helping is I laughed at first at the gags.. till I remembered a kind, old, friend of the family who had it and forgot me entirely by the end. So yeah, not the worst gags and the boxing glove and donald bits aren’t terrible, but it hurts now my brain’s made that connection. 

Our heroes head to the doctor’s office where Scrooge is diagnosed with... 

That.. might be the best name for a fictional illness i’ve ever heard in my life.. just inching out “Brain Cloud” and “Whale Cancer”. Still not the most SENSITIVE gag.. but it was the 50′s and mental issues weren’t given a lot of respect. IT’s why the above sequence and this whole part of the plot dosen’t scuttle things: It’s not the most repsectful.. but it wasn’t a time where these things were givne proper respect, treatment or knowledge, so barks wasn’t being an insentive douche on purpose, he just didn’t know. It dosen’t make it 100% okay btu it dosen’t wreck the story like say his blatant racist caractures in Voodoo Hoodoo. Seriously that’s.. not okay, and given he’s the kind of guy who researched locations he used, unlike with mental illness i expect BETTER of him than most men at the time. Still respect the guy, but it dosen’t mean i’ll overlook the fact he made some pretty bad mistakes. Same way while I love and miss Stan Lee I won’t ignore his blatant sexisim or racisim towards Chinese and Vitamise people. You CAN like a creator even if their work has some questionable and unjustifable elements, times do change and people do mamke mistakes when their young. It just depends on exactly WHAT they did or wrote that makes that distinctoin.  So on that bombshell, Scrooge is given medication after a needle gag. He needs to take his pills every 12 hours. It’s then he starts to remember something, mubling abotu skagway, goldie and dawson and telling Donald to get the boys, their going to Alaska! Once they get on the boat Scrooge explains: he remembered thanks to the medcince he left a stash of gold nuggets there from his prospecting days.. and part of why this story ended up being one of the single most important to Scrooge’s character. While it establishes some character traits, something I dind’t realize till wikipedia pointed it out, it also establishes Scrooge’s days as a prospector. While other things made him what he was and got him to that point as Don Rosa would later flesh out, it was his days in the yukon that, for better or worse defined who he is now and shaped him into the man he is today: Tough, fair, badass as all hell, mean as the devil and richer than god.  This time would be used a lot to set up stories, which made sense as it was the cleast and most agreed upon part of his past by all writers, and him at his abosltuely peak physically and mentally and the gold rush motif of the time perfectly fits someone defined by being rich. It’s also honestly nice that the Yukon is used, as Canada sometimes gets lost in the shuffle wise and hell until reading life and times I gneuinely had no idea what the Yukon was or where Calvin was headed when he and hobbes ran away from home. 

Scrooge also first mentions Goldie and while clearly remembering her fondly.. goes into a rant about her howing him a thousand dollars which has compounded to a billion the second the boys catch on he was sweet on her with Donald assuming he’s just not a good person. But this is really just setting up another vital part of his character and the other thing: his heart. Before he’d been show as a pretty heartless, greedy asshole. While the previous story, Only a Poor Old Man, had softened him up a bit, this is the first to show that beneath the pile of greed and mean lurks a decent human being. Just don’t tell anyone or he’ll throw his money at you.. then tell you to bring it back to him. It’s what makes the character who he is: he’s cruel, onrey and selfish.. but he CAN care when the chips are down and can do the right thing.. as we’ll see later. 

God I love the little poems Bill Watterson would put in the books. I didn’t as much as a kid, but god I do now. Anyways before our heroes can get going Yukon Ho, they stop in Skagway for suplies before heading out, Scrooge softing at taking a plane as “Soft” and him and the nephews hiking a week.. before running into the same flying service again, and finding out Scrooge OWNS it and forgot, because being scrooge he forgot to take his meds. Something I can relate to and i’m not proud of as staying on them is important to my well being. Seriously always take your meds. Unless their not working for you then talk with your doctor to get new ones. 

So we arrive in Dawson, as our heroes will have to walk rest of the day Scrooge takes the boys to the Black Jack Ballroom, which used to be a hot spot and was where he met Goldie for the first time. After another covering for his reminscing with greedy bollocks, he tells the boys the story.. one that was cut from the original printing despite introducing goldie and something the editors dind’t bother to tell carl till they berated him over trying to sneak a blackjack saloon and a kidnapping in there... and to them, or their long dead skeletons probably, I say. 

Yeah not wanting that in a kids story, while bollocks, tha’ts their perogative.. not having him send in replacement pages to keep story flow.. is dickish and underestimates kids intellegence as Don Rosa, while loving the story felt something was off till he saw the missing pages years later thanks to a fellow fan. So yeah kids, and adults, into the work noticed. Nice job. Again I can’t BLAME them for not wanting Scrooge to be a kidnapper as we’ll see and Don Rosa had to massage the hell out of that, but I can blame them for not caring enough to fix the obvious hole int he story. Though it’s now complete and unabriged and has been since the 80′s so there's that. 

So in a nutshell Scrooge came to town for a coffee, and while the bartender ignored him he didn’t once he plunked down his goose egg nugget, what made his fortune and one of Scrooge’s most treasured possessions. It’s here we meet Goldie. 

Yup.. just in case you thought her being a thief and greedy as hell was a new thing, and I kinda forgot how much, she dirves for the nugget, has Coffee with scrooge.. and drugs it, but makes the mistake of NOT clearing town, so Scrooge fights his way through the ballroom to her, gets the nugget back, forces her to sign the money for the iou he spent.. and then uh.. kindaps her to force her to work on his claim for 50 cents to try and teach her how to work honestly. 

Yeahhhh as I said Don Rosa tried his best to fix this , and did so in his final story, which we’ll get to some day, revealing Goldie had a shot gun on her the whole time and was going along entirely to find out where Scrooge’s claim was. That.. actually makes more sense with the character and is far less horrifying and Scrooge finds this out fairly quick, so them forming an attraction out of this becomes 100% more plausable. So yeah good on Don Rosa for fixing the implications here. I may give out on him from time to time.. but he is a genuinely talented writer and did what a good comic book writer in an established continuity should do: update elements so they aren’t so... eugguuhhh after they become horrifingly outdated. And look YES she did do horrible shit to him.. but you still can’t kidnap someone over that. just put her in jail. What was any of that. 

Anyways Scrooge HAS been taking his medicine, and proves it by showing the boys his pills and the next day they head to Scrooge’s old claim.. only someone’s living there and using it, and his old cabin.. and a shot gun. Yeah so they aren’t getting through in the day what about the night.. well they get attacked by Blackjack, who turns out to be owned by the claim jumper.. and is also you know a bear> And Donald left his back in new quackmore so their outmatched. 

So outgunned and outplanned, if not outnumbered or outmanned, our heroes make a camp fire and whiel Donald again suggests the obvious, call the police.. Scrooge can’t. He didn’t pay taxes on the claim so he’s technically jumping his own claim and techincally she has a right to it. So techncially.. Scrooge is the bad guy here as he left the money here, didn’t pay his taxes and didn’t ever come back for it. Still beats trying to terrify your nephews or deny orphans a train because your an asshole buffet. 

So the next morning Scrooge dosen’t want to rush her because “We Daren’t Get Rough with an old woman”. Two things.. 1... think before you put images in my head scrooge.. brrrrrrrrr. I mean Goldie. is not in the best shape in thie story as you’ll see and neither are you. In the reboot sure you two kept up a lot better but here.

And it’s not even an old people thing. Ann Margret was still fine so fine by the time of Grumpy Old Men, not to get creepy jut to prove i’m not being ageist. For a still alive example Keith David is also still a smokeshow at the tender age of 64. So yeah, not an age thing just not these paticular old people. 

But they need a plan so the boy suggest luring the bear into a trap with honey. Donald and Scrooge build the cage while the boys.. find the jar of honey. 

Regardless since the boys won’t do it for what Scrooge pays and neither will donald Scrooge goes to lure the bear with the honey. Once that’s done, and Scrooge is being covered with honey and licked by a bear...

So while he washes that off, the boys come up with another plan: they run around back while Donald makes noise to draw Goldie’s fire, with that being Dewey’s plan to meet her since he’s figured this out already. But Goldie has a backup plan and when she figures out they disabled Blackjack unleashes mosquitos... ugh. Having been stung like hornets about 50 times in animal crossing I feel you boys. So while Scrooge and Donald run off naked... troy if you will. 

Thank you Troy, the boys confront Goldie who reveals her identity... and that she’s broke, her dance hall having failed with the rush and this claim being all she has.. and her suspecting scrooge woudl gladly take it. The boys vow not to tell scrooge.. but he’s on his way so they kinda have to and he primps to go visit and Donald starts to see through his BS about collecting the debt. Sure enough despite being taken aback by her putting on her old dress , he takes her for all she has and is.. genuinely suprised as she thought she’d have more and she’d actually changed since the old days, donating her profits to orphans from mining disasters. Scrooge.. is clearly rattled by this. Whiel it turns out to my shock he was clealry after the money, though givne who we’re dealing with I shoudln’t of been really, he still cares and still realizes he’s being kind of a dick. So he challengers her to a gold digging race, and if she wins the claim is hers and any gold she finds.. and naturally, while he seemingly puts her soemwhere where there isn’t she finds the claim and Scrooge bemoans not taking his pill.. but while the boys boo him for it, Goldie who fondly waves them off and Donald know better: Donald points out he counted the pills this morning.. and recently. SCrooge DID take one today... he’s just has his cane shoved firmly up his ass with pride so he coudln’t ADMIT he was wrong and instead simply staged that whole thing with the full knowledge Goldie would win. It, again, sets up one of his defniing traits; how he keeps people at arms length. How he’s just so proud and full of himself he can’t bear to admit anything resembling weakness.. but WILl find a way to do the right thing without that or forgoe it as a last resort. He may project being a stingy cretionus old man.. because he is.. but he’s got a heart as big as that nugget.. it’s just locked tight in it’s own bin... his body is complicated and weird that way Final Thoughts:

This story is a classic with a decent setup, great backstory for scrooge, and a great guest character and unquestionable impact on the character. However.. it does have it’s problem; As Don Rosa, who as i’ll remind you is both a huge barks fanboy and huge scoldie shipper, himself pointed out he wrote his final story, and had planned to for years ENTIRELY because this one never quite explains how Scrooge and Goldie went from old enmies to lovers.It did lead to one of his best stories and one of the first I read post life and times so, props to that. And of course as I pointed out some things have just.. not aged well, especially the kidnapping so their relationship kinda comes off like stockholm syndrom as a result of both of these. 

That being said.. warts and all.. it’s still a really damn good story and a good one to try if your intrested in barks work or where Goldie came from: it has adventure, some really good jokes and if you can get past the dated bits the plot is solid. And while it goes without saying i’ll say it anyway Barks art is goregous as always ESPECIALLY in the flashback sequence. Overall not the best AGED Scrooge story, though not the worst either see Voodoo Hoodoo, good god, but defintely a classic for a reason.  If you liked this review, follow me for more, and for more duck content as I still have more of the three cablleros to work through, another chapter of life and times coming up this week befor ewe break again for feburary, and some other fun stuff. Until the next rainbow, it’s been a pleasure. 

[saharamae21]

Crazier (Topper Thornton Imagine) - Disney Day Seven

Hey guys! Day Seven of my 30 Day Disney Challenge is here! This challenge is going to be 30 days of imagines inspired by Disney songs. I’m really excited to be doing this and I promise I will try to stay more on top of it than I did with my last challenge.

These are not song fics, but imagines inspired by songs.

Day Seven (November 3rd) - Crazier (Hannah Montana: The Movie) - Topper Imagine

Word Count : 1097 Words

________________________________________________________

Topper was an uptight guy, everyone knew that. He never went with the wind. His whole life had been mapped out for him and he didn’t second guess any of it until he met you. You were the opposite of him down to a tee. You didn’t have responsibilities or expectations to meet. Your older brother was the golden child of your family and so you got away with everything. You just went with a flow, which really annoyed Topper at first.

The first time you two “met”, you were speeding down the fairway in a golf cart. Your best friend was driving while you were yelling back at the staff who was chasing you. This was a regular occurrence. That being said, you should’ve been the one driving, not Sutton. Neither of you knew that Topper and his friends were striding down Hole 5, in the middle of their round. You were too busy taunting the worker to notice the boy in front of you, so when Sutton served out of the way to avoid hitting him, you flew out of the cart.

“Fuck…” you muttered as sat up, grass stains all over your clothes. You could hear Sutton yelling at you as she put the cart in park. Dramatically, you closed your eyes and laid back on the grass, catching your breath. When you flickered your eyes open, Topper’s face was looking down at yours. You could tell he was annoyed and concerned all at the same time. His friends were laughing and talking about how cool that was as Sutton ran over to you, pulling you up and away from them. You glanced back over your shoulder at him as you were pulled back to the cart, wondering who the blonde boy was.

From that moment on, Top knew you were trouble. He promised himself that he would avoid you if he saw you again. It wasn’t that easy though. You had taken a liking to the stern faced golfer and wanted to know more about him, despite Sutton’s plea to not stay away. You wanted to see if you could get him to loosen up at all.

The next time Topper truly noticed you was a couple weeks later. You had been paying close attention to him, but he was trying very hard to avoid you. Even though he had been avoiding you, he always watched as you made life your own. Sometimes he even wondered about what that would be like. A life with no rules and no standards to live up too. He knew that getting involved in your antics would only hurt his reputation, but he still secretly wished for it. Even though it seemed like you didn’t care about others opinions, something still seemed off and Topper really wanted to understand you. You were a kook. You came from a nice family, yet you didn’t care about your image. Why? As he walked by the country club office, he found out.

“All we ask is that you stay out of the way. Why is that so hard for you?” your dad snapped at you. He was doing the soft yell that parents did in public to not draw attention. You rocked back and forth on your heels, biting the inside of your cheek in shame. You just wanted to show him that you were capable too. You were just as smart as your brother and still no one paid attention to you. “Your brother is the capable one in this family. You’re lucky you're still getting some of our inheritance. Shape up and don’t embarrass us.”

You felt a tear slip down your cheek as he walked away from you. This was nothing new, but it still hurt the same every time. What did your brother have that you didn’t? You had always thought that you had everything he did, but now you weren’t so sure. You sighed and wiped your face, composing yourself before you headed back inside to finish brunch. As you were walking away Topper silently cursed for not stopping you. Everything made a little more sense to him now. You acted out for attention. Even bad attention was even to satisfy you. Rafe was the same way before he went off the deep end.

On your way out of the restaurant, Topper snagged your arm. Your mother turned to look at you as you stopped in your tracks. You looked up at him with a confused gaze as he asked you if you had a minute to talk. You waved your parents ahead, telling them that you would walk home. Once they were gone, Topper looked at you and held out his hand.

“I’m Topper,” he said. You made a face at him and told him you knew that. You were also aware that he was trying to keep his distance from you for the past couple of weeks. To most kooks, your recklessness was almost like a contagious disease. If they hung out with someone like you, they would lose face…

“Y/n,” you said as you shook his hand. It was a weirdly formal greeting for someone your guy’s age, but it was the kook way of life. Everything was like a business transaction, even friendships. They were a way to benefit both parties, but you had nothing to offer so what did Topper Thornton want with you.

“Wanna play some golf?” he asked. You looked at him like he was crazy and told him that you didn’t golf. That was a lie. You were a great golfer, but there was no need for you to be anymore. Business deals were sealed during golf rounds and you were never going to be a part of the business side of your family. “C’mon. I’ll let you drive the cart.”

You smiled at his offer. Normally if someone had avoided you for two weeks you would’ve shot them down immediately, but something about him made you say yes.

Soon, Topper made you feel like you were going crazier that you already were. When you were with him, your heart soared. You got lost in his eyes and sometimes it felt like you were floating. He made you realize that you were capable of anything you wanted. He opened your eyes to all the things you could accomplish and was the first person to truly believe in you. Every day you saw him, he made you more grounded and you helped him loosen up. The two of you brought out the best in each other.

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