#gad I just love cross-grade interactions

[bluberimufim]

💚 Most of my current WIPS are recycled from ideas I had in 8th-9th grade, however unrecognizable they may be (*cough cough* Devourer of Souls), but there is one that I dropped and never worked on again.

Back in ye olden 2019, I started a story named "Catarina". I wrote it when I was grappling with my indentity and the world in general, and it turned out as a really interesting deconstruction of the concept of gender by highlighting how meaningless it all is and how it serves as an excuse for opression.

The base-concept was that the idea of "gender" was linked to some physical characteristic other than biological sex. The story followed a young girl named Catarina who was sent off to marry into the harem of a nobleman 3 times her age. She has to navigate this new life she despises, interacting with the nobleman's other spouses, finding her place in the house and also deal with her romantic feelings for her husband's daughter, Ana (who is only a year older than her).

She's kinda delusional about this and thinks that this is some star-crossed romance she loves to read about in novels. Meanwhile, Ana is on some Oedipus shit and wants her father's new wife all to herself. Catarina soon finds out that her feelings were simply a fickle crush, especially after a big argument they had, but Ana is still obsessed with her and proposes that they run away. Catarina agrees and plans to ditch her after they leave town, but her husband catches them that same night and drags them back home. She then tries to escape by herself because she hates Ana's guts now, and succeeds! Happy ending yeeey!

The story also follows the POV of Catarina's father, Ricardo, who is an incredibly bitter man with self-destructive tendencies (he's the "female-equivalent" gender just like his daughter), and Pedro, who is Catarina's co-husband (?? they're both part of the harem???) and has been locked in the estate for decades because Ana's father is just as weird and obsessive as her.

I love these characters. I love the aesthetic of the WIP, which is kinda regency-adjacent. I love the premise.

So why am I not dropping everything to write this? Good question.

Well, in the year of our lord 2020, the pandemic happened. And that's when I first started reading fanfiction, something I gad never done ever before in my life. And by being in contact with AO3 in general, I discovered that, for this WIP, I had (completely independantly) re-imagined the concept of Omegaverse. And I simply cannot force myself to write it anymore because I just don't have the face to admit that I'm writing A/B/O. I just can't do it.

Maybe some personal development will come my way in the future and I'll finally be able to put more words on that document, but that day is not today.

Sorry for the rant.

Magic Advent Calendar

Day 10 and 11 - The Sweet and Memory Chocolates

Sorry for the delay, finals week is kicking my ass

Today's chocolates are the SWEET CHOCOLATE, filled with a sparkling blue cream, and the MEMORY CHOCOLATE, with a minty green filling.

As the calendary revealed

💖 Pink filling = something fun will happen to your OC's

💚 Green filling = this chocolate is for the writer. It will give them a nice boost to complete a little challenge

💙 Blue filling = this chocolate wants you to have fun with a mutual! Something nice is in store for you

Today's challenge/question/game is as usual under the cut

The first chocolate is a nice occasion for you to connect with a friend. You share the treat and talk about sweets: what is your favorite kind of treat? And what is that of your mutual(s)? Go rely an ask and discover it.

The second one instead is for you only. You eat it, and immediately are catapulted back in time, on the train of memories. What is an old project of yours that got abandoned? Would you like to work on it again sometime?

Taglist: @dyrewrites @unclear-contributions @sm-writes-chaos @frostedlemonwriter @fyoliars @bluberimufim @cheeto-flavoured-pasta @aalinaaaaaa @thegodsaredead @excessive-vampires ask to be +/-

[athyrabunlord]

Something I love about your works is the occasional platonic kanamaru that appears, I just love their interactions.

Thanks Anon! While I can ship kanamaru romantically as well, I mostly see them as papa&daughter having this closeness that’s between best friends and siblings?

So yes, unless specified otherwise, always presume there’s platonic Kanamaru in any of my fanarts/fanfics/AUs/anything, even if not shown, just presume it’s there in the background XDDD

[alluringoneirataxia]

Long Winding Road Stay Strapped My Dude

By: Astoria Cathryn Andromeda

Alrighty, this is a long one boys. So I touched briefly on this in my Welcome to Literally Everything post. No worries I'll recap you, so you don't have to switch back and forth. I just diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, and then ADHD when I was 18 years old, and even then I had to fight for it after countless hours of research. See, there seems to be a wee bit of misogyny in the neurodiverse diagnoses. When I say a wee bit, I mean that scientists used to think that only boy could be autistic or ADHD. They only studied autism in males. Fortunately, nowadays we know that girls can be autistic and/or ADHD, but we present the traits differently than boys, and a lot of our traits are played off due to gender roles in society. For example, being overly talkative in girls is called chatty, whereas boys who can't sit still are sent off for testing immediately. This also causes problems for the boys, because little Johnny gets put on Adderall at the ripe age of 6 years old, just because he can't sit still for 8 hours straight, which by the way should not be expected of any elementary school kid, By the time, he's 25 he's 1) completely dependent on amphetamines 2) his body will stop producing dopamine due to being on the medication for so long. Nicht Gut. Generally, boys who are on the spectrum get picked out earlier due to late speaking, or lack of social skills. This is the one thing that girls happen to do better than boys. Girls are good at masking, which is basically taking social traits, phrases, personalities, demeanor, and copying them. In public, they put on a mask and at home, they have a meltdown. Girls are still not picked up as being on the spectrum, because shyness is called being 'ladylike' and 'dainty', and having a meltdown is just because :( girls are oh-so emotional, boohoo. Anyways tons of women do not get diagnosed with autism until they are well into their adulthood, I actually can be considered lucky to have technically still been a teenager when we finally got all the pieces together.

Alright, let's start with I don't know me as a baby. I did not speak until I was 2 years old, and then it was immediately full sentences from then on. I didn't do the babbling thing, which I don't know how impactful that really is to the topic. I was a very shy little girl. I was teeny tiny, we didn't know I if I was going to make it to 5 feet tall until I had a big growth spurt in 7th grade. I am 5'2 now and definitely done growing in case you were wondering, so not that short anymore. I did not like talking to adults, especially strangers, especially men. I did not look anyone in the face, and I will always hide behind my parent's legs when they would try to introduce me to people. I am an only child, and I spent a lot of time entertaining myself. I always had seasonal affective disorder, where my grades would dip in the winter. My parents knew I had a timer, they had 45 minutes from the moment they stepped into a restaurant before I would start breaking down. If I got off schedule as a toddler in any form, it was a catastrophe. Or this is what my parents and family tell me. I didn't really notice. I did not like being out in public a lot, I was a very picky eater, and I was extremely hyper. I was a very eccentric child, I only had 1-2 close friends and they were always a very well-liked outgoing girl who I just followed around. Looking back, I don't know how we missed it. I was shy because I didn't understand how social interactions worked, I was anxious about it because I didn't understand, I had sensory overloads, routines, and a very bland diet with a safe food which was ketchup. I put that shit on literally everything, eas, apples, mac and cheese, pizza, all meat, anything something forced me to eat that I did not like. But because I could sit still in class, and because I could zone out and daydream all day through school and still make A's nobody ever flagged me for anything and how I was supposed to know that not everybody just copied other people, scripted things before they talked, and could never pay attention. My mom always required me to be in a sport, and I was a gymnast and a swimmer for a long time, two very high-intensity sports, to help lower my energy levels, and because my mom has mild depression and she knows that exercise does help. Skip to middle school, my mom tells me I'm being bullied at church. It's not that I wasn't observing my surroundings I knew I was being excluded, but I didn't understand vindictive behavior, I thought it was my fault. I had zero friends in 8th grade until I sat down next to a random acqutaince I had gone to school with since I was 4 and the same gymnastics place. Then we were immediately attached at the hip after that. She is my best friend due this day and definitely got me through high school. Led me through so many social situations without either of us knowing. I had a very close friendgroup in highschool, all of them were on the drumline which I met through my best friend, and my first boyfriend was my best friend's neighbor. I ended up playing bass guitar for my high school's indoor drumline, and it was the best experience ever. I love my friends, but I had really bad depression when I was 15-now:) jk It's better. I didn't really realize I was depressed, I just didn't want to go to school, or swim practice, or do anything so of course, my mom noticed, and then once it was pointed out to me it got worse. My severe anxiety spiraled with my depression. Senior year of high school, my boyfriend and I were like toxic star crossed lovers, hurting each other over and over again without meaning to. My friends and I were self harming, all my close friends gad some demon going on. I finally decided to try therapy again after the disaster of being forced to go when I was 15 and the lady told me I wasn't depressed because I had a boyfriend and good grades. It helped a bit, I was able to get my panic attacks under control. Then I went away to college and stayed dating my senior high school boyfriend, we were just up and down as always, but with slightly better communication. My freshman year of college I joined a fraternity, a research lab, and my first hs boyfriend/ex/best friend and I went to a Christian campus place. By second semester, I had a lot of people who knew me and talked to me, but I didn't have any close friends, and even less close friends who were girls. All my close friends who were girls were at another college. My parents were worried about me, so they made me rush a sorority, which I knew was never my scene, but my parents made me join and I found a few girls I liked. Soon I was going to 6 classes, fraternity chapter, research lab meetings, christain crash group meetings, soriorty pledge meetings all on every Tuesday. I was different person at each of these events and wore a different mask. I was having what I know now were autistic burnout meltdowns every single day on the phone in my crusty dorm's stairwell. It was not cute. His mental health had always been bad too. Finally I decide I need to try a psychatrist and go back to therapy, and then he broke up with me. Then I made my first close friend, a guy who was in 3 of classes, and I took him to my fraternity's formal, and then coronavirus happened.  Rona kinda saved my grades, and mental health by sending us home event though it did suck. I got on anti-anxiety meds and things went up, but I was still having what I thought were panic attacks, they were austistic meltdowns. My psychiatrist, he's kinda an asshole, he diagnosed me with Obessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. I'll insert definition here: (OCPD) is a personality disorder that's characterized by extreme perfectionism, order, and neatness. People with OCPD will also feel a severe need to impose their own standards on their outside environment.> Basically hr told me I had rules for everything like how everyone drives on the right side of the road, but nobodythinks about it andwhen I broke one of my rules I got depressed, and when wasn't perfect I got depressed, and when I made an A I was relieved not proud. The diagnosis seemed to fit really well, and my therapist and I started working finding my rules, and getting rid of the bad ones, and making the others less harsh. I had thought every once and in a while in my life when I was really upset, what if I'm on the spectrum, because I just felt so hopeless for social interactions and I didn't understand. I always felt like I was a very specific person, but after the ocpd I started thinking more and more, and I saw a tik tok of a girl with lae diagnosed autism basically describing me and ranting about the misogyny. I did more research and I decide, yea I'mm gonna bring it up to mypsychatrist well he's a dick, so he was like um you don't act like sheldon cooper from the Big Bang theory,and I was like wellI just I have always thought I might have adhd like be neureodiverse, and he was like your grade point average in hs was a 97.8%, you're not adhd. I immediately cried, because I can't handle when anyone says anything in a even a slightest stringent tone. I'm baby, I know lmao. It made me angry though because I felt like he just brushed away all of my struggles I had in my whole life. I spent hours researching and typed up a 47 page document on evidence for why I was on the spectrum, and had my parents help will some of checklists to make sure I was getting outside perspectives. I rally my parents to be my back up and next psychiatrist appointment we actually talk about it and he asked my parents questions about when I was young and such and finally he was okay you're on the spectrum. I felt so validated and like I could start being myself. I slowly got more and more confident, changed my style of clothing, and researched more about adhd pushed to be tested, and oh look at that I also have ADHD. So basically discourse: "I feel like as a child I coded a machine to do life for me so I didn’t get bothered except I didn’t know about the machine I thought i was the machine and now I’ve become self aware and I have to learn how to read the code and rewrite the code because it’s dysfunctional because I’m not functioning well as a human being. I was really shy as a child. I would turn beat red when people talked to me or looked at me so I think I started cookie cutting situations and using them over and over again because they worked until I accidentally hard wired these expansion rules and expectations for myself. I didn’t may attention is class ever I just day dreamed and if I got good grades i wouldn’t be bothered i could just stay in my head and if I did my sport well my parents didn’t bother me. I was never asked if I did my homework I just did it so I wouldn’t be asked and have to deal with that situation. I would cookie cutter situations in class that would draw the least attention to myself.

I feel like i don’t have friends I just fulfill the expectation like a side quest on video games" I wrote this down pre autism confirmation when i just thought I had ocpd. Now I don't directly identify with ocpd, but I definitely think I developed that personality disorder a bit from living with undiagnosed autism. I am linking below the very informative Tik Toks by the lovely Paige on autism in girls. The imposter syndrome one really hit home. I had had so many panic attacks about thinking I tricked people into being my friend, or thinking I was smart.

I highly suggest watching these short tik toks, you'll definitely learn something

https://vm.tiktok.com/wVvcYA/

https://vm.tiktok.com/wqRRUf/

https://vm.tiktok.com/wnqhvX/

https://vm.tiktok.com/wqeyYg/

https://vm.tiktok.com/wnoE7u/

https://vm.tiktok.com/Kas6gB/

https://vm.tiktok.com/owM9hs/

Imposter syndrome

I am also linking an article about Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory and Autism that explains why my psychiatrist was wrong, and also I am a girl and the spectrum is called a spectrum because it's a fucking spectrum no two autistic people are exactly the same it's like a color wheel.

http://www.autismsupportnetwork.com/news/problem-sheldon-cooper-and-cute-autism-387783

Here is a fun comic about the spectrum and how to view it.

https://the-art-of-autism.com/understanding-the-spectrum-a-comic-strip-explanation/

I am still learning about myself, and how to be me, and how to be myself but without breaking bad social rules. It's quite humorous though because I'll learn something is related to autism and I'm like oh shit again, like still, like, we're still discovering things.

"Tu ne me manques pas"

Bis später,

Astoria.

[dweemeister]

Frozen II (2019)

Six years ago, Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee directed Frozen, a film that became a pop culture phenomenon destined to induce musical madness for anyone who needed to babysit a child. I contended in 2013, as I do now, that Frozen had the best-looking CGI for a Walt Disney Animation Studios film at that point in Disney history and its musical score by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez a great asset. Let me get a few other unpopular opinions (at least, on tumblr) out of the way now. As the 2010s close, Frozen still has the best musical score and original song (“Let it Go”) of any Walt Disney Animation Studios film released in the twenty-first century (the century is still young). Due to overexposure and criticisms borne out of bad faith, social media turned on Frozen quickly. But I think one thing yours truly and Frozen’s harshest critics can agree upon is how little did we know that Frozen would be as successful as it has become, how it crossed cultural and linguistic barriers that other films in the recent Disney animated canon could not.

When its sequel was announced by now-disgraced John Lasseter (Lasseter served as producer but is uncredited on Frozen II), the weight of expectations hoisted upon Buck and Lee (who wrote the screenplay) must have been tremendous. As Lasseter often said in the mid-2010s when announcing a Disney or Pixar sequel, he claimed that a Disney or Pixar sequel only comes to fruition when, “the filmmakers who created the original have created an idea that is so good that it’s worthy of [the] characters.” Frozen II is a gorgeously-animated film that misfires on its characterizations and plotting, but deserves partial credit for attempting to communicate a worthy message to those children – some who are just now navigating the confusing years of teenagehood – who fell in love with and have repeatedly watched the 2013 original.

Time has passed since we last saw our heroes, Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel) of Arendelle. Little has changed in Arendelle in those years, with Kristoff and his reindeer Sven (Jonathan Groff as both) presumably still harvesting ice and Olaf (Josh Gad) basking in the fact he has a magical coat of permafrost. One evening, Elsa (and only Elsa) hears a siren in the distance, emanating from the north’s Enchanted Forest – which is surrounded by an impassable mist. A substantial but manageable disaster disrupts life in Arendelle shortly after the mysterious call, forcing the protagonists towards the Enchanted Forest. There, they meet a lost Arendellian military unit that has been in constant warfare with the Northuldra tribe since around the time Elsa and Anna’s parents have been missing. Elsa and Anna help the factions agree to an armistice. Amid this peace, Elsa travels even further north to confront her family’s past to understand her unsettling present.

Frozen II’s greatest failing is, surprisingly, not Jennifer Lee’s tiresome insistence on impossibly frequent humor and dialogue that sounds as if the characters have been airlifted from contemporary America – though there is plenty of both in this film. Instead, it is an elementary building block to any art that attempts a narrative: understandable, meaningful motivations. With Elsa, she journeys northward on little else but a hunch and bedtime stories imparted to her during her childhood – flimsy reasoning at best. For Anna, she apparently has become paralyzed in the fear of disrupting how she and her sister have been interacting with each other and their lives in Arendelle. Lee needs to imbue Anna with depth here, as it is unclear exactly what Anna fears losing most. Kristoff accompanies Anna and Elsa because he wants to offer marriage to the former, doing so with the competency of a Sous-chef asked to perform a coronary artery bypass. My apologies to any Sous-chefs with medical experience. And, oh yes, Olaf goes along because Disney needs to make that sweet green.

Lee also cannot help but pack her screenplays with exposition. If this is any indication of how intelligent she thinks moviegoers are, the results are not flattering to anybody. There are worthy ideas in this screenplay, yet they are obscured by plot contrivances needed to position characters in certain spots that reeks of narrative convenience or thematic cold feet. An idea that seems to have been inspired by Avatar: The Last Airbender does not inspire additional confidence, but perhaps a few guffaws and rolled eyes. The Northuldra tribe are inspired by the Sámi people, an indigenous people native to northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland as well as far northwestern Russia. Frozen II dances around the idea of having something to say about imperialism – in terms of cultural/racial supremacy, coercive diplomacy by gun barrel or bayonet, environmental exploitation – but declines to do so.

Elsewhere, Olaf’s characterization is still that of the buck-toothed, boisterous goofball that he is. But unlike the first Frozen where Olaf exuded childish silliness, he is spouting philosophical claptrap that will pass over the heads of children. Frozen II is preening here: “Hey, parents showing your children Frozen II! You’re smarter than your grade schooler; isn’t that hilarious!?”

This contempt extends to a late scene where Lee’s screenplay has Elsa scoff at a reference to “Let It Go”. The moment, brief as it is, is as perplexing as it is infuriating. Assuming that it is supposed to be played for laughs, why would Chris Buck and Lee think that those who despise 2013′s Frozen care to watch this sequel? Why would they think that, for the children who adored Frozen upon its original release and since then (while probably encountering few people bashing on the film), that moment would be the slightest bit humorous? Considering the number of people – even if it is only one person in the world (I’d wager everything including the kitchen sink that the actual number is higher) – who found inspiration in “Let It Go” and its use in narrative and character development context, how could they be so disrespectful to those individuals as well as Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez? Perhaps this is rabblerousing over something insignificant, but it seems to exemplify a level of contempt the filmmakers have for elements from the previous film and, potentially, the audience willing to watch the sequel.

Every Walt Disney Animation Studios film released since Winnie the Pooh (2011) has treated tropes introduced in the older Disney animated canon in similar fashion. Disney history, even for a film made six years ago, is a punchline, not to be celebrated or engaged with critically. The Walt Disney Company of 2019 is one preferring to bury its past (this also includes the companies it has acquired). If there, like in the early 2000s, is a war for the animation studio’s soul, it is playing out in how these films are being made.

Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez’s sufficient musical score is worse, title-by-title, when compared against the 2013 original. “All Is Found” feels out of place in this film because of its orchestration – this is the only song in either Frozen film using Nordic instruments and inspired by Nordic folk music. As interesting as this song is lyrically (and for how those lyrics play into what eventually occurs in this film), it suffers from the same problem plaguing “Frozen Heart” from the first film in that they are just too musically detached from the showtune style that the Lopezes bring to Frozen II. “Some Things Never Change” lays out the subtext and the film’s dramatic irony too obviously, and Groff’s silly vocals to imitate what Sven would sound like is a juvenile decision. Shortly after, “Into the Unknown” – which features the voice of AURORA as the mysterious Dies Irae-like voice that only Elsa can hear – is sung by Elsa with bombast. As talented as Menzel is, “Into the Unknown” is overproduced, contains an excessive amount of vocalizations, and has no business being the third song sung within the opening twenty or twenty-five minutes of a film. The early placement of “Into the Unknown” creates pacing issues in the film’s first half from which it almost does not recover.

In the film’s second half, we find Kristoff a frustrated figure, unable to find a moment to pop Anna the question. In the film’s acid trip of a musical number, Jonathan Groff, as Kristoff, is given a 1980s power ballad named “Lost in the Woods” for curious reasons. “Lost in the Woods”, for reindeer-related reasons, is the most entertaining number in Frozen II, but, like “All Is Found”, makes no musical sense – it is framed as a homage to multiple 1980s power ballad music videos that one could have found on MTV in that decade. Maybe the part of me that is irritated by the swathe of 1980s nostalgia sweeping American popular culture right now is being hypercritical, but I will acknowledge that – when listened to divorced of narrative context – “Lost in the Woods” is a fantastic musical homage. Frozen II’s thematic parallel to “Let It Go” is actually “Show Yourself”, not “Into the Unknown”. It is yet another song demanding much from Menzel and has been subordinated by, presumably, Disney marketers and executives.

Before mentioning the film’s final song, the Lopezes should be praised for steering the plot away from stormy waters, lending a needed course correction to an otherwise hapless screenplay. “All Is Found”, “Some Things Never Change”, and “Show Yourself” provide a necessary musical boost that might otherwise have contained even more tedious exposition. To Frozen II’s credit, the story’s second half is unexpectedly, but never unjustifiably, melancholic. The best song on this soundtrack just so happens to provide the greatest narrative boost to Frozen II in the film’s darkest moments. “The Next Right Thing”, echoing a line repeated a few times from different characters, is a musical and thematic triumph. The song, eschewing lyrical/poetic meter (this is a radical decision; very few songwriters in the history of Broadway musicals and Hollywood would dare to even compose one song with no identifiable lyrical meter), literalizes how one carries on in the midst of depression and loss. Bell cries rather than sings some of the song’s lines, but, given the lyrics, it is deserved.

Through "The Next Right Thing” and what transpires to the film’s conclusion, Anna and Elsa – in their distinct ways – learn how to answer the most baffling questions children and adults will ever face. How does one regain their bearings when one’s peers and loved ones all seem to be changing into something unrecognizable? How can the tragic decisions of the past be resolved depending on who made those decisions? I’m not saying Frozen II is an articulately-crafted drama examining the human condition, rising to the heights reached by cinema’s most celebrated auteurs. but it is at least attempting to pose difficult questions to its audience – and yes, to the children and teenagers that have and will grow up with Anna and Elsa and company – that numerous other animation films from other major American studios would dare not attempt. The bar may not be high, but the filmmakers – and yes, the Lopezes – provide a small, yet necessary, lift.

For the Walt Disney Animation Studios, what has been deemed the “Disney Revival” in some quarters has been predicated on the company’s financial strength over the 2010s, ignoring how distractingly metatextual and behaviorally contemporary these recent films have been. If one is looking for 2010s animated films reflecting and extolling humanity’s goodness and/or affirming cultural and ideological empathy, do not look to the major American animation studios for these qualities. In some future year, may those audiences looking back on the films that they cherished as children take inspiration in Anna and Elsa’s courage when facing life’s uncertainties. May they teach a few grizzled movie fans to see something that only they could because of their youth.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.