#goddd i love their old dynamic its so funny

[bestanimatedmovie]

Choose your favorite!

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What fans say:

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron:

I was a Horse Girl TM, so I watched this movie a million times as a kid. It's honestly the best horse animation I've ever seen, all the backgrounds are gorgeous, and the soundtrack is incredible. Also the plot is anti-colonial/anti "taming of the west". Genuinely cannot pick a favorite scene, but I love the scene where Spirit commits many acts of violence against the US military <3

horsie :) I love how they use actual horse body language instead of just turning them into a dog. Also enjoy how the protags are easily understandable with just body language and neighs. Also the 2d and 3d animation blend seamless.

I cannot begin to tell you what makes this movie so good. It's a corner stone of animated media. The societal commentary. The incredible emotion of not only the story but the animation. The songs. Sound the Bugle makes me cry every time.

This movie was a key part of my childhood and “Sound the Bugle” still makes me tear up.

This is like the greatest horse movie of all time and I will not change my mind. I watched this movie so many times as a kid that both the VHS and first cd I had for it got ruined and we had to replace it with another cd LOL. I once convinced my teacher to let us watch it in class because it had a few scenes with Native Americans and we were learning about them at the time(It's about the old west and the expansion of the United States westward so it has some Native American characters but def not enough to make it a Native American film, but it does have positive representation I think?) The main character is the horse Spirit, a lead stallion for a herd of mustangs. His thoughts are narrated but he doesn't actively talk and the horse behaviors are pretty realistic, also the ART of it all, James Baxter was one of the lead animators for this film and his work is incredible, and hand done. Some of the behind the scenes stuff in the extras makes the animation look 3d its so good, and the camera work is also insane. As a horse obsessed child this movie was a staple for me, and I prefer it even over live action movies with actual horses. ALSO THE SOUNDTRACK OH MY GODDD how can I almost forget, the soundtrack for this movie goes so hard, I used to use some of the songs as hype music not even lying.

The Mitchells vs. the Machines:

It’s in its core about family, how we can drift and argue. Not because of one true fault, but because we are different. It shows how being weird and different don’t make you less of a family while not demonizing people who do have more stereotypical ‘perfect’ families. I think it portrays our humanity and the way we bond and what we do for those we love, what we sacrifice, so well. It’s so funny and so sweet.

It's funny and the family is neurodivergent and it's just really nice v good time it looks like anti technology at first but its clearly more of a criticism on capitalism I just really like that movie its pretty to look at.

It's funky!!! hang on, bullet point list time: - has such a unique and expressive animation style - has a lot of pop culture references that don't really feel overbearing - has honestly one of the best family dynamics in a movie I've seen???? - realistic characters!!! with realistic and interesting character arcs!!! - absolutely hilarious. makes me laugh every time i watch it :) - comedic villain! gotta love me one of those. also she's badass for a smartphone so - tHERE ARE FURBIES - basically it's very chaotic but also heartwarming, and it's honestly my favourite movie :D

Heartwarming story about family! Also kickass animation

Very good stylized animation. Well written and designed characters. Super funny and sooo heart warming. Fucking rad action scenes (again the animation is fantastic). The story comes together well, it's just quite well written. + Protective dad character who's not annoying as hell (that's rare!). I love every part of when they're at the dinosaur museum thing.

[oflgtfol]

this shit literally makes me hysterical

[ccsthemovie2]

trick or treat 2021 letter

DEAR MY KIND AND HARDWORKING GIFTER,

hi there my ao3 is zagspect and thanks in advance for making me a piece of fic or art in this fun little exchange! heres some food for thought to munch on.

i loooove slice of life, character moments, outsider povs that make things we’re used to in canon seem absurd or funny or weird or scary, humor, horror-in-fluff’s-clothing, sweetness-found-in-horror, and also just plain sweetness. feel free to get weird or experimental with your writing if you think the moment calls for it :3 im not really requesting anything sexy-nsfw in this exchange so pls keep things down to a nice pg13 (high-rated gore for higurashi work is an exception, lol, like, it’s when they cry. that’s just part of the deal.)

🌸✨

cardcaptor sakura (trick or treat!)

clear card manga spoilers are fine with me! manga and anime canon are both fine, and mashing them up is cool too. no aus past that though, please!

clow reed

the big man himself! scare me with his his manipulative tendencies, his eternal pushpull fear of both being eternally relied on and being no longer needed, the way he treats other people, especially people who love him. (yue! the madoushi! i am into both of these being unrequited romantically on his end, but he’s not gonna just gonna tell them that, you think he’s straightforward like that?) what’s daily life like in the clowse? creating a new card, what’s that like? does everybody get along with the normal, non magic neighbors? 

yelan li

what’s up with her??? what’s her relationship with her children like, what are the responsibilities of a magician family’s head, how weird is it that clow is kind of back all of a sudden, what’s her thoughts on sakura? fleshing out a minor character is always fun :]

eriol & li

okay, so, we get to the end of the original series. syaoran returns to hong kong. ????????. syaoran is in cahoots with eriol to (vaguely alluding to cc spoilers in case you haven’t caught up in the manga), do some pretty serious magic behind sakura’s back.

so, like... what went down in the ?????

kero & sakura & yue 

they’re FAMBILYYYYY. magic found family i love them so much. show me the depths of their care for her, and hers for them, the way there’s absolutely some ice to break with yue but when he gets loyal he will DIE for you, the way sakura can mend the rift between kero and yue, the way the two of them are balancing this wonderful openness and equality with oh yeah, she’s eleven, we kind of said some seriously dark stuff in the haze of sleepover talk didn’t we? 

ruby & spinel & eriol 

pre-canon or mid-canon or post-canon! what’s the dynamic between them, a quiet night in, a day out telling people that you’re connected by whatever lie you find funniest. going to tomoeda and having to pretend youre a kid, a teen, and a cat, but goddd you could all go for an elegant and adult glass of wine right now (especially the cat). what horrors are lurking in that house from the clow era that no one cares to address? like emotionally and also because it’s a magic wizard house with magic stuff in it. 

touya/yukito/yue 

i am here for any and all angles of this ship- all together, your touyukis, your yuetouyas, your yuekitos if you wanna get in on a rarely seen angle! (but pls have touya and/or yukito be 18+ at a time where yue shows interest in them). i wanna see the way they interact! how they deal with, you know, the everything! pre-relationship pining, going on a date, touya and yukito in college wondering if they’ll end up having different majors, different paths for the first time. yukito seeing yue on video for the first time (OH NO HES HOT), yukito and yue figuring out internal boundaries, etc etc etc.  

naoko and touya 

the girl who loves ghosts and the guy who sees (or, used to see), ghosts! does she follow him to one of his haunts (pun intended)? does he have to go to her for ghost sensing advice now that he’s a regular old human? does he have to save her from a ghost that means her harm? how excited is she to tell sakura about the COOL GHOST I MET WITH YOUR BROTHER OMG U DIDNT TELL ME HE LIKES GHOSTS??? and how much does sakura wanna sink into the ground lololol

🌹⚔️

revolutionary girl utena (trick or treat!)

ohh, what a place of scary happenings! tell me a fairytale, even if it’s not such a good idea. pre, mid, postcanon, im fine with it all. feel free to weave a web with easter egg references to any other media you feel is right for the moment- utena is all about Genre and Stories!

shadow girls 

i love them i love their whole everything. i wanna see a play, i wanna see them interact with other characters! what if they do a play AS the other characters, ooooh.

anthy/utena 

THE GIRLS WHO INVENTED LOVE THEMSELVES. ive read a thousand stories of them finding each other and it never gets old. id love to read about their life post-ohtori, especially the not-so-happily-ever-after parts- the old wounds reopening, the fights, and how they work through it, wont lose each other ever again. 

saionji/touga

what’s spookier than toxic masculinity? both of them miserably stuck, saionji obsessed with touga, touga believing anyone who believes in friendship is a fool. bro we are taking shirtless pictures among 500 potted cacti....why does my heart hurt..... oh shit its the cactus i rolled onto it ow ow

nanami

nanami being nanami! she’s got no clue how to act ever, she’s desperate, she’s trying SO HARD. i’d love to see a nanami finally getting out of there, too. leaving home with nothing but the clothes on her back, diamonds in her necklace, and a wheeled suitcase of raw eggs.... (crunch crunch crunch)

🎲🗓

higurashi when they cry (trick or treat!)

i’m a gou/sotsu enjoyer and gonna prompt about that a lot but original flavor is, of course, great too. pls dont go too heavy on info outside the main 8+saikoroshi+gou/sotsu? i haven’t read those. ive read umineko+ciconia though so references there are fine :3

rena/mion/keiichi

college days! getting together, crushing on each other, poly relationship figuringouts? dates that are just club meetings with kissing and all the ridiculousness of that.

satoko/rika

gou/sotsu era TOXIC LESBIAN EPIC MOMENTS!!!!!! obsession and desperation and satoko putting all her emotional eggs in rika’s basket no matter how angry she is with her, rika’s love for satoko across 100 years and how that all crumbles (to satoko) in the face of rika’s Cool School. rika wanting satoko to go to school with her so so so bad. deep pain and misunderstandings and acting badly (like, murder badly), and then, we hope, atonement and something new beginning? i love character moments where someones so obsessively in love it feels like its eating them up inside.

rena & satoko

look, rena’s smart and really pays attention to how people feel and i think, before or after satoko becomes a looper but especially after, she would make an attempt to have a heart to heart with satoko. and satoko, as a looper, will politely brush her off, will go you dont know me you can’t affect me. youre just a chess piece. when i get to the miracle world where rika loves me, ill listen to you. this you is here to die, or to kill. 

eua

oh eua is just using satoko up like a bar of soap and it takes satoko way, way too long to realize. evil girltalk/crush advice from the witchmom perhaps?

shion

meakashi made me LOVE her. internal shion moments, perhaps? shion being an empath (decides what ppl are thinking and instantly believes it)? shion in gou-era wanting to talk to satoko about st. lucia’s, but she never shows up to dinner?

okay i think that’s all for now!!! thanks and i hope you have fun!!!

[fyeahanneboleyn]

Well, I finally finished it! Thoughts under the cut, and beware spoilers, such as they are:

First off, I have to say that this was the most thorough fictional portrayal of Anne I’ve yet read - as it should be, clocking in at almost 550 pages. As with most of Alison Weir’s novels it was an entertaining read that kept me engaged. And as with most of Alison Weir’s novels it also had things that annoyed the hell out of me. Disclaimer: I do have an advanced reader’s copy, so there’s a chance that some of these things will be fixed in the general publication. But i doubt it.

The Good:

1. Weir definitely did her research with this one and it shows. The novel is chock-full of anecdotes, quotes and incidents Anne fans will recognize from her life, which really adds a sense of flavor and realism to the world. (Among my personal favorites: Anne’s meeting with Leonardo da Vinci and Henry informing Anne of Purkoy’s death.)

2. The Anne portrayal, while I keep going back and forth on it, felt pretty good. It was complex and layered and I do think it was ultimately meant to be sympathetic. Young Anne is surrounded by female role models, and therefore grows up with ambitions to be a respected female ruler herself - a force for religious reform in particular, which I liked. She is hot-tempered and sometimes vindictive but fundamentally kind, becoming increasingly volatile and high-strung as her marriage unravels. I especially liked the scenes of her imprisonment, trial and eventual execution; I thought her vacillating emotional state, as well as her ultimate strength and dignity, came across very well.

3. The beginnings of her relationship with Henry are portrayed as sexual harassment. Anne is horrified at Henry’s attention, as she has no feelings for him and is actually rather fond of Catherine. It’s an interesting case of ‘Anne as uncomfortable victim’ that eventually segues into ‘Anne as ambitious re: making the best of a bad situation to advance her reformist causes’, and I didn’t dislike it.

4. Weir does include authorial notes at the end of the book, explaining (some of) what was pulled from history versus made up and naming (some of) her sources. I do still have a few issues with the content - she notes that Chapuys loathed Anne but still considers him “well-informed” because he “cites his sources” - but as I’ve said before, I respect including these notes on principle.

The Groanworthy:

1. A caveat to the generally fair portrayal of Anne as outlined above: Anne is portrayed as being unable to bond with or love Elizabeth who, as a girl, is an irrevocable disappointment. Incredibly, Weir doesn’t ignore the evidence of the real Anne’s affection for her daughter; rather she justifies it in the novel as Anne’s way of trying to soothe her own conscience. What. Just what.

2. A disappointing number of the old cliches continue to rear their heads, such as: Anne having a sixth fingernail, Anne and Mary being rivals, Anne being an utterly loathed queen, and Jane Parker as an embittered and unpleasant woman trapped in a hated marriage. It’s 2017. Come on now.

3. The writing has some issues. The dialogue can feel uneven, sometimes veering into anachronistic territory and then veering the other way whenever historical quotes are used. There are places where repetitive word choice and phrasing become painfully apparent (”Darling” oh my goddd), especially during the long rigmarole of Henry’s attempt to get an annulment. By the time he and Anne have about the sixteenth variant of the exact same conversation it feels like the book is just spinning its wheels. Speaking of whom…

4. Henry. Holy shit, was this characterization annoying. I couldn’t stand him, I couldn’t stand his dialogue, and not even for the usual reasons. There is nothing to appreciate here; he’s not charming or charismatic, he’s not proactive, he’s not especially intelligent or politically savvy. What he is is obnoxious, whiny, ineffective, dominated first by Catherine and then Anne, easily manipulated by everyone around him, and overall just a pathetic figure. He is pitifully attached to Anne, so terrified of her leaving him that he does whatever she wants. His famous temper doesn’t even make an appearance to liven things up; his only redeeming feature is his enduring “fatherly love”. /vomit

Aside from the fact that this portrayal ignores nearly everything we know about the real Henry, it also makes his “partnership” with Anne unbearably one-sided and dull. There’s no dynamic and very little exchange of ideas - it’s just Anne and her family blatantly manipulating the king on one side, and figures like Wolsey and Cromwell doing the same on the other. As a result there’s no indication that Henry knows the charges against Anne are false; the whole coup is framed as Cromwell’s doing, and given that Henry has been shown to be a malleable idiot up to this point, there’s no reason to think he questions any of it. A thought: Stop trying to make women like COA and Anne look “strong” by making the men around them laughably weak. It doesn’t help anyone’s cause.

The Perplexing:

1. I’ve praised Weir’s research in putting together this book, but it occasionally fell victim to some bizarre Critical Research Failure. Why did Anne have two extra brothers, when a basic Google search could tell you Elizabeth Howard only had three children who lived to adulthood? Why do these characters exist when they add nothing to the story, don’t affect events and are killed off fairly quickly? There’s no reason for them to be there, and it’s distracting when most of the book seems well thought-out.

2. The treatment of Mary and George Boleyn was just…strange. There’s nothing really new about Mary’s characterization, but Weir puts forth the idea that she was violently raped by both Francis and Henry. Why is this here? At best it’s meant as an early reason for Anne to distrust men, but there were plenty of other (more tasteful) ways to do that. Anne even lampshades the fact that it “beggared belief” that Mary could be raped by both kings - you don’t say!

As for George…I really don’t know what Weir’s beef with him is, or how it served the story, but George Boleyn here is effectively Satan. He sexually humiliates his wife, sleeps with everyone (and is possibly bi, the shock, the horror!), admits to raping women of all ages, and - most bizarrely - is “revealed” as having poisoned Catherine of Aragon (and implied to be the source of Fisher’s assassination attempt as well). Again: why is any of this here? All it does is make Anne look terrible by association, as she learns these things about her brother and never changes her opinion of him for more than five minutes.

3. Anne and Henry Norris are in love. That’s…interesting, I suppose, though backed up by basically nothing. Even in the novel it’s utterly underdeveloped; Anne falls in love with Norris at first sight - from afar - and for the rest of the book we’re meant to accept that they have this great unspoken passion for each other. I don’t necessarily object to the idea of Anne having feelings for someone else during her marriage to Henry, as long as the author doesn’t toe the line of “she really was an adulteress” too closely. But this felt so random and gratuitous that their “emotional” scenes together read as unintentionally funny.

4. Speaking of gratuitous! The choice to keep Anne conscious in the moments after her beheading was really weird, and frankly it pissed me off a little. Weir doesn’t totally pull this out of nowhere, granted, but once more: it didn’t need to be there. At this point the reader has spent over 500 pages watching Anne grow up, sympathizing with her and relating to her and liking her. The entire last section of the book is devoted to Anne’s mental anguish and terror over her circumstances, which is difficult enough to read. Ending the novel with a gory description of her experience post-decapitation, ending her story with nothing but more fear and physical agony, was unnecessary. It was cruel.

It was also, I might add, a marked contrast to the ending of the previous book in this series, Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen. That novel ends with Catherine dying peacefully in her bed and being welcomed into heaven. Compare that to Anne’s horrific final moments before “merciful darkness descended” and tell me it doesn’t feel like authorial bias. Which is strange because, again, I think we’re supposed to root for Anne in this novel.

So, yes, this was an interesting and entertaining read. It did shed light on episodes of Anne’s life and facets of her personality that don’t get much in the way of popular attention. There are frustrating moments and confusing narrative choices, but I’d still recommend giving it a look.