#he was taught by Remy for gods sake

[dia-b-harvester]

KH3 Baker/Confectioner!AU

Okay this was just a random thought that came to me and wouldn’t leave me alone.

This would take place after KH3, let’s say Sora’s doesn’t die and vanish cause I refuse to have that in this fluff au. After learning all his cooking and baking skills from the master chef Remy himself, he decides to put those skills to use.

He would make all these little sweet treats and deserts for his friends, maybe even starting to sell some of the stuff he makes or just give them out. Here’s some of the things I imagined him making for friends

•Making a sea salt ice cream cake for Roxas, Xion, Axel, and Isa after the four of them pretty much moved into Twilight Town

•Baking a small batch of macaroons for Namine, and each macaroon has a different design or pattern decorated onto it, going for an artistic feel to it

•Fruit tarts or mixed fruit/nut treats for Terra, maybe even a fruit cake

•Baking an angel cake for Ventus and a devil cake for Vanitas

•Making a flan for Riku and Kairi, decorating it to look like Destiny Islands

•Baking a bunch of cupcakes for all his friends, and each cupcake is specifically decorated for each friend. So like the Wayfinder trio cupcakes would have mini stars on them that look like their wayfinders, their heart emblem, and color coded frosting. Sea salt trio also color coded with mini designs of their weapons.

This is all I have for now, but I would LOVE to hear any ideas for this! I definitely want to expand on this a bit more, so ideas or suggestions are welcomed!

[monkey-network]

Why Klaus IS Christmas Kino

Klaus isn’t flawless, let’s get this out the way. My love for this film won’t deny that it bears a couple nits that can distract the experience. Jesper and Alva’s relationship felt like an eye-rolling inevitability, notable cliches here & there, a notable song felt both fitting and out of place, and while enjoyable, I’m not as big a fan of the climax as I thought. But in spite of it all, I love this film and it is one of the best modern animated Christmas films, period? Follow me here. I could go on about its wonderful animation cuz yeah, it’s unlike any other film. But a philosophy of mine is that the best animation enhances the writing and I can say Klaus is that surprisingly well written and has become an all time Christmas fave

*deep breath in* So let’s do this...

I mention that Klaus has its cliches, but you gotta know that it’s smarter than expected. Believe me when I say if the writers didn’t care, this could’ve actually been so much worse. Jesper could’ve been more manipulative towards everyone for his goals, Klaus would’ve given up entirely after knowing the truth about Jesper, we could’ve had an argument between Jesper and his dad about upholding business, the townsfolk could’ve reverted back to their old ways, plenty writing moments where this could’ve been Emoji Movie levels of insulting to your intellect. BUT, they don’t. The film never really turns back on itself, it keeps moving where, as the notable quote goes, an act of good will sparks another as it starts with Jesper’s father.

Even if nepotism was responsible for Jesper getting the job in the first place, he clearly sees his son be more spoiled than he’s worth so is like, “Ma boi, I will send you to the ends of the earth or leave you to the streets if you don’t do something with yourself.” He never cared about his son representing the postal company, or ruining his top class image, he was only tired of Jesper taking advantage of his fortune while not having any ambition of his own. Can’t help but say Jesper’s dad is a very respectable character because the sole reason the whole plot happened in the first place was because he just wanted his son to do better. It’s that act of genuine consideration that pushes Jesper to his wake up call as he reaches Smeerensburg.

People have compared this movie to Emperor’s New Groove through Jesper’s character and I say yes, but this film takes that next step and put Jesper in the pit of pits way early. Reminds me more of Ratatouille’s beginning where Remy’s lowest point is around the same time as Jesper’s. The harsh atmosphere of the island is treated very blunt in how this is our mailman’s nightmare come true. With his situation, our guy is truly at his lowest. Gives up now, he’ll be cut off his inheritance and probably will have worse. Everyone hates him and each other, his post office itself is in shambles, symbolic of how communication is practically thin outside conflict, and the teacher turned fish seller Alva is that path Jesper could notably be if he didn’t try. Everything is literally grey for this guy, but like Ratatouille, when you’re at your lowest there’s no where else to go but up. That’s where Klaus comes in...

This is genuinely the most clever interpretation of Santa I know, hands down. A well established woodsman, a crafter both of living, for him and the birds that reside in his woods, and recreation with the toys he made himself not just for kids, but specifically the kids he and his wife wanted but couldn’t have. Klaus feels like a real person, not just another take on the mythical man. You’re with him and Jesper as he, after familiar winds provide him a letter, a small spark to do something good, soon opens up and gets reminded of what’s kept him going all these years. It is no wonder he sees his wife in Jesper, it’s thanks to him that he could refurbish his dashed dream into a new one. He didn’t just want to do it for the children of the island, but for himself. That is another thing about this film: communication. I mention before how it’s practically thin at first due to a long going feud that isn’t even aware of why it’s still going. The joy in hate is only for hatred’s sake, and they make it very clear how miserable it all feels. That is where Jesper comes in. They don’t take shortcuts with how he gets the ball rolling, both accidentally and purposefully, he boots up to get things done, pushes himself to go to Klaus to make things happen. This is all in part by the youth, what really ties the plot together...

As I mentioned before (again), life in Smeerensburg is noticeably miserable but thanks to Klaus, by extension Jesper, the kids are enticed to do what it takes to get some genuine joy in their lives through the toys they’re able to get. They’ll make them letters, and if they can’t write, they’ll go to Alva for teachings, and if they act naughty, they’ll try to do good which in turn pushes the adults to do good for the sake of their kids. It really would’ve been one thing to sure enough make the kids spoiled because of the toy giving, focusing more on the extrinsic value of Klaus’s kindness but no. The children are very grateful for these gifts enough to feel compelled to do good, and it makes them feel good as much as it soon makes the adults more convinced to stop fighting. It helps that this all takes place in older times cuz I believe this would’ve been far different, possibly worse, if this took place in modern times. That or just kinda rip off Arthur Christmas, it’s my guess. As such, it gradually becomes an amazing Christmas film because it isn’t just the presents, the Santa Claus myth, the festive style of it all that makes this holiday special to me. It’s the warmth... of togetherness.

My favorite detail about Klaus is how it transitions from cold to warm with its atmosphere. We start out with the emptiest, harshest environment, enough fog to choke your eyes, and then we get to this moment with a brighter, clearer sight of the more united town as the Christmas spirit builds in the film, even when it isn’t even that day yet in-universe, so too does the warmhearted feeling that can come from celebrating it appear more and more. This film fleshes out more of what the Grinch taught me, what A Charlie Brown Christmas taught me, what I’ve come to appreciate about Christmas as I grew up in this materialistic world. I can say everyday can have the Holiday spirit, but Christmas is the time where I feel compelled to be grateful of what I’ve made and got and give back when honestly, I don’t care about getting the most expensive stuff anymore like I used to when I was way younger. This film is so sincere in what it wants to say, and you know this is indeed the same guy that made Minions. Yeah, not kidding and I’ll let you sit with that if you’re reading this as I continue because we have to talk about that moment...

Yeah, I don’t like being the Nostalgia Critic, but I too don’t take kindly to the ‘liar reveal’ trope myself and this could’ve been a point where the film lost me a little. Though you know what? It still works. See, with that trope, what sucks is that it can tend to unravel the plot to where you know as soon as they break apart, they’ll get back together regardless of the deed done. This is why I don’t like A Bug’s Life, don’t @ me. But I’m not saying it can’t done right, like in Over the Hedge. The breakup between Jesper and the others is painful, but it is necessary to give us a couple great character moments. One is with Jesper and his dad, who came back personally to see that Jesper has indeed built something for himself. We get no dialogue between them but it’s clear that even when Jesper’s unintentionally successful thanks to Yzma and Bubba, he can tell his son wasn’t happy leaving everything behind, so he lets him stay since that was what he truly wanted this whole time. Again, give that man some credit for amazing dad. Another moment comes before the big reveal where not only do we see Jesper come to understand his own guilt surrounding his original intentions, but in the end they never hated him for coming back, especially due to him inadvertently stopping the enemy feud all together. Lastly, without that moment, we probably wouldn’t have got this smile. When Margu, purest character ever that I could make a whole segment about but I don’t wanna keep you too long, started to tear up after calling for Jesper thinking he left for good but she then sees our guy never really left and we get this teary smile:

I felt that. Almost more than anything else in this film.

Cliched as it can appear, the execution excels in those more memorable emotions for this film. It’s been a year since I watched this again and I remember so much about these characters. And my god, I haven’t even gotten to the animation which... my god.

Klaus is indeed the most beautiful upon beautiful films I’ve seen, and what makes it better is that it all enhances the story. I mention before of its transitional visual from cold to warm sights, but goddamn, the character designs, the environments, the expressiveness, the textures all amount to style perfect for this alone. I think it would’ve as well received if it had a more flat look, but they seriously went higher for a traditional appealing story that compliments the unique children’s storybook look of it all. This honestly is better than most of modern Disney films that I’ve seen, ironic since it feels like if you took Tangled the Series and made it 3D with more fluid character animation. And if I’m comparing something to the continuous mindblower that’s Tangled the Series, you’ve most certainly got on my best side.

Sergio Pablos and his team really pulled no punches in making this a great movie. A great Christmas movie, one worth seeing if not at least once but every Holiday season for tradition’s sake. Klaus gave me a good time, made me cry, and above all showed me to never stop having a good heart because doing good can indeed go far, thankless as it can be. Heck, my heart felt more rejuvenated than before in making this critique, that’s a testament to how much good this film means to me personally. What else is there to say?

It's The Best

[apenitentialprayer]

Today, May 12th, is the anniversary of the death of Pope Sylvester II. Sylvester, born Gerbert, was the first French pope, a philosopher and mathmetician, and the first person to introduce Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, ... 9) to the Latin world. Gerbert was born in the 10th century, a lowborn son of either a shepherd or a priest (the Latin pastor can refer to either). After a passing monk conversed with a young Gerbert, the monk decided he saw potential in the boy and took him to live in a monastery in Aurillac; it seems this was what Gerbert considered to be his true home, as his letters later in life often speak affectionately of this community, but contain no reference to his family. At this monastery, Gerbert learned to read and write Latin eloquently, and became a master of rhetoric and dialectic. At the age of seventeen, Gerbert travelled to Catalonia and possibly even Muslim Spain in order to continue his studies in math, which would prove to be his greatest intellectual interest. There, he mastered geometry, arithmetic, and music, but he was especially well-regarded for his mastery of astrology (astronomy at this point was not a distinct field from astrology). After going on a trip to Rome, the Pope was so impressed by Gerbert that he was eventually made head schoolteacher at Rheims, and both future French kings and Holy Roman emperors studied under his tutelage. There is no doubt that “Gerbert the Philosopher,” as one monk styled him, was a brilliant man. Richer of Saint-Remy, one of his students, described the future pope thus: “when Divinity wished to illuminate Gaul, then shrouded in darkess, with a great light,” it was He who brought Sylvester back from Spain, for “Gerbert was directed by God Himself” in order to bring higher learning to Europe. Gerbert would introduce Arabic numerals, making more advanced calculations easier to complete; he invented a new type of abacus that could calculate sums up to an octillion - simply to show off the fact that he could, because there was not yet a practical use for calculating sums that high; he taught some of his students how to create celestial spheres, and may have been responsible for introducing the astrolabe (a common tool in the Islamic world) into Latin Europe. If the revolutionary methods of his students later in their lives are any indication, Gerbert was very interested in experimental science, shattering the idea that European intellectual life was limited to appeals to older authority. There was a time where to be a good mathematician was to be known as a gerbercist. Things took a turn for Gerbert when he was briefly made bishop of Bobbio; refusing to resort to bribery and desperately trying to keep the monks under his care clothed and fed, he made a lot of enemies with his poor diplomatic skills. Rumors began to circulate that he had a secret wife and children, and he was eventually chased out of Bobbio in disgrace. In the conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and the kingdom of France, Sylvester gave his loyalty to the former, and played a role in transferring the French throne to the Capetian dynasty. For his troubles, he was branded a traitor and excommunicated, living in hiding and exile after being snubbed for the position of archbishop of Rheims. It was under the reign of Emperor Otto III, whom Gerbert tutored as a child, that his luck began to change; his excommunication was lifted, he became an advisor to the young emperor, and eventually he was installed as pope. He took the name Sylvester, previously held by the pope who worked alongside Emperor Constantine after Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire. This choice of name was telling; Sylvester hoped to reunite the Christian West and East under the rulership of Otto, creating a united Christendom that followed a model of governance similar to that of the Emirate of Cordoba that Sylvester had visited so many years before. His papacy was marked by the conversion of many Slavic peoples to Christianity, real strides towards reconciliation between Latin and Greek Christendom, and reform meant to consolidate the power of the papacy. Unfortunately, Otto III died of a fever at the age of 22. Heartbroken after having watched his dream die with the young emperor, Sylvester died about a year later. In the years after his death, he was known as a man of “incomparable scientific knowledge,” whose “glory blazed over all of Gaul like a buring flame.” The future Pope Sergius IV lamented his death, saying “the world was darkened” with the passing of Otto and his beloved pope. In one monk’s list of scientifically-oriented churchmen, Sylvester was the last entry and crowning glory of the list, “who among those shining, shone exceedingly.”  Later writers were not very kind to Sylvester; shortly after his death, he assumed a reputation for witchcraft and wizardry. One of his former students called him a modern Nectanebo, alluding to a sorcerer common in the romantic tales of Alexander the Great; William of Malmesbury, who comes off in his comments as a petty, vindictive, and anti-intellectual author, claimed that he learned necromancy from Arabs in order to amass wealth. Other rumors included his ownership of a mechanical head that could divine the future with simple “yes” or “no” answers to questions. There is a legend that, when the death of the current pope approaches, the bones of Sylvester II rattle in their grave. The most scandalous rumor about Gerbert was that he received his knowledge and eventually even the Papacy itself through making a deal with a succubus named Meridiana. She eventually told him that he would die shortly after saying Mass in Jerusalem, a prophecy that caused him to vow never to go there. After saying Mass in the Basilica of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem (a church in Rome), however, Sylvester realized he had been tricked, and repented before his death, asking that upon his death that his tongue be cut out and his right hand lopped of. Perhaps there is a kernel of truth to this story, if we see the demon not so much as giving Sylvester his intelligence but rather as his personified tendency to glorify his intellectual achievements for their own sake. When his grave was opened decades later, it was found intact without amputations, and it was recorded that a sweet perfume could be smelled. Pope Sylvester II was a complicated figure: he saw in mathematics the potential to glance into the mind of God, but often allowed these exercises to be ones of self-acheivement rather than devotion; he expressed almost no interest in acquiring religious texts for his library, but his works were peppered with Biblical allusions; he fought hard against administrative corruption, but spoke so harshly and arrogantly that he alienated those whom he criticized; and while he was heavily involved in politics later in life, he probably would have been happier if he could have remained the schoolteacher writing his scientific treatises. His legacy reflects these ambivalences. On Pope Sylvester II, Lord have mercy. Pope Sylvester II, pray for us. (Image Source) Info Source: The Abacus and the Cross: The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages, by Nancy Marie Brown

[r-r-raf]

so uh,,, Remus and Remy getting stuck with and having to look after a child together. What are your thoughts

Remus is honestly. Really excited about it! He likes kids, loves playing with them and hearing them ramble aimlessly about nothing for literal hours and making them laugh and just. He likes being with kids. (Because children are young, and they haven't been taught to look at someone and judge, so he doesn't have to be so. Afraid.) He does, Of course, tone down his usual Remus-ness for their sake though.

And although typically he's bad at keeping track of their actual needs, he would start trying his damn hardest to make sure that the child they're taking care of for god knows how long is happy and healthy and okay. 

But Remy????? Remy Does Not want to do this at all. He doesn't like kids, they're loud and icky and sticky and don't know when to stop, but he's not a monster. He can't leave a kid out there by themselves. So he very hesitantly agrees to it. (And no, his unwillingness to care for a child does not stem from his own family situation which was less than ideal, and no he's not afraid of hurting the child, and no he's not afraid of not being good enough. He's amazing, he's doesn't need to be good enough for some kid. That's what he tells himself anyways.)

And basically they're both a mess at first. It's just. A whole lot of figuring stuff out and getting to know the kid. And Remy. Still acts uncertain towards them, but Remus is always there to assure that it's not their fault. 

And as time goes on they actually start forming a bond with this kid. The connection between the kid and Remus happened a lot faster, because Remus was a lot more open and positive towards them, but like. Remy comes around. And depending on how old said kid is I can imagine them both just. Talking about stuff that happened in the past. And having a Moment of just them. Bonding. And it was nice. 

And oh fuck they accidentally adopted a kid, didn't they??

[suepixels]

12 | Daddy is here [🔗]

San My City Memorial Park, 10:48 am

Lala stands next to her husband when she sees that RJ is about to break down, her face is instantly in tears but she didn’t dare to step closer after he refused her earlier to hug him. At that very moment, RJ couldn’t hold the tears back. Remy stood next to him and grabbed him. Remy: Son, come on, come up, stay strong for her for your kids. RJ: Dad, I beg you to leave me alone, they are gone... they are really gone, right? God, does not exist and if so he’s a bastard. Remy: I’m not gonna leave your side, son! Yes, firstborn they are gone... RJ: Why, them? Why not me? Remy hisses: Remy Junior Holmes, don’t you dare to say that again. I understand that the pain you feel right now is shaking you to the core, but you are still here and we all need you. Understood? RJ desperate: I can’t handle it, Dad - I’m not as strong as I thought I would be - I’m sorry that I’m that weak. Remy whispers softly: You are strong! For fuck’s sake, you are my son and damm me if you aren’t strong but you are. Come on, get up, firstborn I’m here and I will hold you. One day we all will see them again, okay? Maybe his words gave RJ a little comfort at least he stood up. Remy wasn’t sure if RJ listened because he knew that Remy didn’t want to see his son so weak or because Remy didn’t know how would he deal with such a situation if he would have been in his son’s shoes? He would probably go blind and strike out wildly. A big lump is crawling up his throat and he knows that in this case all the “be tough” talk is nonsense and it won’t help at all. Being taught to act tough and rough, not showing any emotions is even hard right now for Remy especially because when he has to see how truly broken his son is, right there in front of his eyes it breaks his heart too, he wishes he could take his pain away.

Maxine stands there a bit lost but she understands that Nicky has to comfort his sister. How painful it must be to lose the ones you love, what a day she thinks. 

The pastor reached the point where he says ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Diosa and the kids have been in the crematorium, all that is left are the ashes of everything he still loves right here in their urns. RJ is full of tears, he doesn’t listen to what the pastor says, all he notices is that the fuckin’ pain is back in his head again and it drives him insane. He looks at the pictures on their tombstones and tears fill up his eyes again. He tries to focus on his inner self, he takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and tries to locate and eliminate this pain he feels.

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