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localvoidcat · 2 years

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all of tmcblr dave’s story (mostly) written by a madman (me)

hi this is for @scrimblocatalogue but you can read if you like tmcblr. otherwise this is not a place of honor no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here etc etc.

silliness under the cut

- okay so there was some silly stuff. gay accusations for the nephew, the whole floppa thing, chewing on wires that made the tech store burn down, all that fun stuff. mostly just a silly goofy guy

- friend dies. he attempts to go help her ghost and, in the process, separates his soul from his body and becomes a sort of medium. and he falls into the hands of a system. so he’s essentially remotely piloting his own body and waking up in this void place, known as Nothing, whenever she sleeps

- said dead friend ends up trying to attack him, killing someone else in the process. racked with guilt he decides to hide out for a bit but ends up being followed by the alternate tormenting his other friend (johnson)

- this causes him to be trapped for three days, before, in an attempt to escape, being physically torn apart and buried. while he’s dead, an alternate of him is created, and torments another friend of his

- the aforementioned system tries to repair him, merging him with some of the ghosts and his own technology in order to bring him back to life. this, of course, is extremely unstable, and shortly after killing the alternate of himself, he starts merging with it as well. this turns him into a partial alt and he ends up attacking lamb

- the system resets him after this fight, trapping him in a new form. not too long after this, he’s once again tricked by johnson, who manipulates him into agreeing to go forward with one of the system’s commands in order to be human

- this. uh. doesn’t work he gets the alternate ripped out of his body and he dies there. in his friends arms. lmao

- another mod brings him back as a ghost, leaving him completely drained and unable to communicate much with anyone. after a while spent like this, he goes to the gods to bargain for his life back. they agree but end up giving him a bunch of curses

- when he comes back he realizes. that they literally just put him back in his torn-up corpse. he stumbles back to his friend and collapses there

- there’s some messing around for a while and then the system is like well wait a second. this isn’t how the story is supposed to go. i need to fix this myself so it tries to erase the memory of it from dave

- this partly works, because while the memory IS erased he breaks the system while doing it. so now the system is just really pissed at this guy that doesn’t even remember it exists. also it’s starting to self destruct and it knows it needs to be present to salvage the story

- so it does the most logical thing, which is to. slowly possess them. and it works and now there’s this weird supercomputer thing possessing thatcher’s friend. and the longer it spends in his body the more fucked up she gets

- this of course leads to possessed dave and thatcher fighting, and thatcher manages to win by (checks notes) ripping wires out of his best friend’s back! it does work in the end even if it is a gory mess

- system shuts down and Nothing crumbles down on itself, and we don’t hear from system for a while after that. it’s presumed dead

- so yay! he’s in control again there isn’t anything controlling him against his will. downside is that she’s now frighteningly aware of their place in the narrative but this is never touched on. staying silly

- a lot of the stuff after this is mostly fun filler stuff. baking project gone wrong that dave ends up treating as his son (this cookie thing has been locked in a closet until the end of time), hanging out with the dead god friend (average activity), constant threats on his life, british adam murray accidentally calls him a slur (one of my favorites), dave gets turned into an alternate again for a couple days and speaks in homestuck (one of his cats and johnson does this to him), etc

- everything after this is just nonstop insane btw so buckle up

- uhhh after a while it becomes apparent that oh shit! the corpse thing was actually kind of a big deal. he’s slowly rotting now. whoops

- this gets REALLY BAD and eventually he kind of. sort of. gets to the point where he’s nearly dead but the divine intervention bullshit manages to get him back to semi-normal. also johnson tries to stab out her other eye while he’s unconscious during the repair thing but he fucks off. so now dave’s fine. kind of. surely this will not be a permanent cycle of decay and repair that he goes through for the rest of his life

- shortly afterwards he gets told to come to the church! the one place he has tried to avoid for years due to past experiences! this will certainly not traumatize him further

- it does. meets gabriel for the first time (and gabriel lore is different in this, even if he did still create alternates), calls him a coward, gets another part of his face torn off. you know how it is

- archive is a little broken right now but there’s just some hurt/comfort stuff for a bit. it’s pretty nice actually thatcher and dave interactions make me so ill i sob and cry and die forever. also they watch sharknado together and now he thinks it’s a real documentary

- uhhh mark gets. sort of kidnapped? it’s hard to explain - by an alternate and dave decides to go help him. this ends up with him facing off another alternate but somehow. he manages to mess with the alternate instead. now i found this kind of funny but something something picking up the habits of the person you hate and using them against other people. or something cause angst only works on tumblr user bonkcreat

- something silly happens after this. but when doesn’t it. anyways remember when i said system was probably dead. i was lying. it’s now stuck in Something (opposite of Nothing. Nothing was this void realm Something is like sensory overload the place) and is trying to reach out again

- it works. and dave goes into it and oh boy! what did you expect it’s the goddamn system again. it tries to get him to hand over control again but something happens with the realm registering him and it practically. spits her back out LMAO

- of course the whole. distortion realm thing messes her up a bit and now he’s some weird radiation spiral angel thing. for a bit. not too long. this happens every day. that wears off pretty fast but during that time he touched the weird missing texture thing that scrambled two of his friends and gets kind of birded. what am i even saying

- uhhhh fun stuff! thatcher dave and ruth interactions, he makes the best of the whole. bird situation which ended today (sort of. you saw the comic), and things are mostly fine.

- also there’s stuff going on with. johnson right now but dave hasn’t been tied into that lore yet so that’s for another time

anyways. that’s only one half of the bullshit i’ve been doing for several months. love this gay ass roleplay and i hate it with a passion. i’m so ill okay goodbye

#tmcblr #what fucking trigger warnings would i even put in this. technically there’s a lot but i don’t think they’re needed #tmcblr dave uses he/she/they and neos 👍 just so this doesn’t sound confusing

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audiovisualrecall · 6 months

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I miss the days of writing out rps and stories with friends, even if I've always been bad at sticking with something and would get bored or stressed out or too busy at times. I miss that fandom culture thing, forum boards for big role play story games. I miss the active primeval fandom (family). I miss when even stevetony fandom was more active than it is. I haven't been able to participate in any events due to lack of spoons and time, but I miss when there were like 20 stories in the bb/rbb events and tons of bingo fill posts. I miss when I had the spoons and time and motivation to participate, too. It just seems so exhausting to try, now. Or uncomfortable.

Maybe I cringe more than I should at the thought of doing things that I used to like, even tho I'd never put down anyone else for it. Idk. It's like how I can't really play pretend at all anymore I used to make up these epic story games with friends and with my younger cousins when we were young. At some point they didn't want to play anymore, and I felt self conscious about being x age and playing pretend crawling around as a cat and chasing bad guys and saving the day and whatever else we did, I stopped because no one else wanted to play, and I beat back the urge to play pretend and tried to make the boring adult talking thing interesting to me. And then my sister had a kiddo and as he got big enough to play, I realized I couldn't do it anymore. I'd lost the magic. I felt self conscious, uncomfortable, even though you're supposed to play with kids, I cringed, I tried anyway and it was like there was a semi-opaque wall between me and the story games he made and I tried to participate in. We played hide and seek a lot when I wasn't good at playing at star wars. That was fun, until people would comment on me being his playmate and paying attention to us and I became self conscious and uncomfortable. I didn't want to sit around talking about boring things when me nephew wanted to play, though! So we played anyway, but the magic of playing pretend is lost to me. And then my cousins had little ones, a whole gaggle, and after initial awkwardness for them meeting new people, I was instantly their playmate, and I didn't mind or care what others thought, it was fun, and with so many of them running around, everyone else was playing on and off, too. But I still couldn't play pretend, much. I was happy to be the jungle gym and had 4 or 5 of my cousins' kiddos climbing and jumping on me and to tickle them and chase them and be silly, and race toy cars around with them. But the stories where you grow up and you can't touch the magic anymore? Yeah, I Haye the stories because for me they're true, and it's not because it's inherent but because social pressure made it happen.

Somehow the way I can't imagine participating in fandom, in ways that would longterm make me happy, because I get self conscious or exhausted, it comes from or is the same thing that cost me the ability to play pretend. I used to write stories all the time,too. We're they any good, who cares, but I enjoyed it, and I wrote a lot for them. Original and fanfic. Now 'I'm not a writer'. I can barely make myself make art sometimes but at least I still feel I'm an artist, it's who I am, that's not changing at least. I don't write much, though.

I guess it's a potent mix of depression and social anxiety, intersecting with adhd and autism, and being a busy adult who has to work, that just leaves me... nothing. I do a lot of nothing, sometimes. Sometimes I do something, a bunch of somethings, I make some art, work on a project, I read a book or a fanfic or a few, I interact with one or two friends online in some capacity. I'm bad at my job that doesn't help anything, and rsd brain hates that. I have lots of hobbies, and projects half started, I buy things and enjoy things.

But I don't do certain things that I know used to bring me joy. Some because tbe internet has changed, and the old things don't work or exist anymore. Some because I can't get myself to. I'm tired of being tired, I'm tired of not having any real friends, I'm tired of not reaching out or talking to friends I know I have if only I did just that. I can't, though, I'm exhausted, talking sounds so exhausting, uncomfortable. I overthink everything I type in a message to a friend. I overthink everything in general. I can't get myself to reply. And then I forget. And time passes and it becomes Hardee and then impossible to. For me.

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tossawary · 4 years

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Chapter 25: “Home Sweet Home” of “pride is not the word I’m looking for” quotes and commentary. Not a full list of favorite quotes or full commentary.

Anyway, Shang Qinghua makes himself so fucking sincerely annoying that the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators can’t figure out how to politely tell him to fuck off fast enough. Shang Qinghua makes outlandish assumptions about how many thieves there are (at least a dozen, he’s sure, probably twice that) and what methods they might be using (special invisibility talismans, he suspects); Shang Qinghua repeatedly apologizes for being too busy with important things for Cultivator O.B.B. at the last Immortal Alliance Conference, then tries to commiserate with the man about having to get important things done without getting any respect for it; Shang Qinghua also anxiously wonders if they should all go to Zhao Hua Temple Sect to report what happened here, since there’s a troublesome demon and also some sneaky rogue cultivator thieves on the loose out here! He gets turned down immediately, but assures everyone that he’ll at least let Yue Qingyuan know everything that happened here right away!

Liu Qingge pretty much just stands there scowling silently the entire time - he’s no Shen Qingqiu for sheer menacing "I can and I will ruin your entire life" glares, but he’s still pretty intimidating. He does a great job! No notes!

Shang Qinghua nearly pats himself on the back as he and Liu Qingge leave less than an hour after he arrives. “Holy shit, I’m good,” he thinks, a little giddy with the successful extraction. “That’s a skill that good ol’ Liu-Shidi will never have!”

AN: Of course this has a high chance of backfiring. Is Shang Qinghua going to weave webs of lies anyway? Of course.

Love the fact that Shang Qinghua can shamelessly act like a total pushover, while actually manipulating someone so that he gets the results he wanted. Some snobby sect leader walks into a negotiation room, prepared to use SQH as a doormat, and Shang Qinghua is probably internally like, “Bro, me and my jelly spine welcome you to hell.”

He gives them the rundown on what happened, but, to his complete lack of surprise, that doesn’t seem to satisfy interrogators like his little sister-in-law and his fellow transmigrator. They have so many questions! And Shang Qinghua doesn’t have enough answers for them!

No, he doesn’t know what Huan Hua Palace Sect knows or thinks they know. No, he doesn’t know how they knew about that place. No, he doesn’t know whether the monster was just a local opportunist preying on distracted cultivators or something more sinister. No, he’s not experimenting with the creepy special item or discussing it at length here. No, Luo Fanli and Peerless Cucumber are not allowed to poke at the creepy special item!

Why the fuck would he ever let them do that?!

All Shang Qinghua knows is that Luo Fanli and Peerless Cucumber should eat their vegetables and then go to bed! Because they all have a long journey back to the sect in the morning! And also that words cannot describe how painfully old he feels as soon as he says this.

AN: I’ve been thinking about a Demon Trio fanfic in which Mobei-Jun finds himself in a similar position with Luo Binghe and Sha Hualing.

Mobei-Jun and Shang Qinghua are, like, bare minimum twice the age of Luo Binghe and Shen Yuan. Like, yes, neither Mobei-Jun nor Shang Qinghua are old old by the standard of the PIDW world. Yes, MBJ and SQH are stunted as all get out. But the fact that they have bare minimum 2x the life experience as Bingqiu is, in my opinion, funny as hell and severely underused in fanfiction.

Like, imagine Mobei-Jun unintentionally dadding new demon LBH in SVSSS. Mobei-Jun being like, “Don’t eat the meat from this monster. It makes you hallucinate.” Or being like, “These people aren’t politically important enough to be shown this kind of respect. Look down on them properly and go sleep, or no one will ever respect you again in demon politics.”

MBJ looking at SVSSS LBH and SHL like, “Damn, who raised you?”

Because, like, I love to joke about Mobei-Jun being an oblivious fool, but that’s in regards to human culture. Mobei-Jun operating on demonic culture + his level of arrogance in regards to how he’s handling SQH suggests that MBJ can be politically savvy among demons when he wants to be. Also, the mental picture of MBJ being like, “Eat your weird demon vegetables, there’s nothing wrong with them, you picky half-breed brat,” is extremely funny.

I’ll probably turn this into a separate post.

Shang Qinghua does not miss the man’s unconcealed “oh, great, some of my favorite problem people are back, probably with bad news” expression when they arrive. The man is not at all impressed to hear about the drugged-up Shadow Cave Wolf Spiders or the evil, murderous, madness-inducing plant they fought on their mission, but the Qian Cao Peak Lord is reluctantly, partially placated by the jar of three-eyed skeleton tears Shang Qinghua super thoughtfully brought back for his inspection. Mu Qingfang really likes his research projects!

Shang Qinghua lets himself feel kind of good about this gift - he’s the man who gets things and gets things done - and ignores the Weeper’s Eye whispering in his head, “He has resigned himself to the untimely deaths of everyone he knows.”

(Wow. Oh, Shang Qinghua knows that feeling!)

AN: Mu Qingfang doesn’t think that everyone around him is inevitably going to die, he’s just extremely aware of how dangerous the world is and how reckless cultivators can be. Also, for many years, he was fairly certain that Liu Qingge and Shen Qingqiu were headed for bad ends.

This felt like a good place to insert some optimism back into the sect in general. Luo Fanli has been cured and is willingly going to visit her sister, Liu Qingge has got a hold on his self-destructive tendencies, Mu Qingfang thinks things are getting better, Shen Qingqiu’s health problems have been essentially fixed, Qijiu might actually work their shit out, Shen Yuan shares his real name with Shang Qinghua, and so on and so forth.

It felt like a good contrast with and buildup towards Luo Binghe’s Skinner mistake (not everything is rosy yet, there are still growing problems), the secret basement, and the encounter with Bing-Ge.

Only to flip that around and then bring some surprise Moshang into things!

“I have now been informed that, after learning that you had returned and, at the very least, completing the duties that were intended to have him reflect on his actions, he has disappeared yet again,” Shen Qingqiu continues. “This second disappearance has set some of the other junior disciples into a renewed panic, which has concerned some of the senior disciples, which was, apparently, cause to alert me.”

“Ah,” Shang Qinghua says.

AN: Shen Jiu should not be in charge of a bunch of children, but it is funny to imagine him going through the same “be a less shit person” adoption process as Shang Qinghua. Like, oh, it would be so easy for him to be cruel about this situation, but fuck you if he’s going to be outdone in the recovery and redemption process by Shang Qinghua of all people.

Shang Qinghua: *grows into a kind of decent person*

Shen Jiu: “Fuck you. That’s not allowed.”

Shen Jiu: “...”

Shen Jiu: “Well, if THAT FUCKER of all people can do it...”

Shang Qinghua doesn’t have to look long or far to find his nephew. He finds the young protagonist sitting despondently on the doorstep of his own Leisure House, sniffling into his sleeve. Peerless Cucumber of all people is sitting beside him and keeping him company.

“Focusing on other people’s lives is easier than looking at his own.”

“-think a drowning man first has to save himself… or else he’s only going to bring down the people he’s trying to save,” Peerless Cucumber is saying.

Binghe nods.

AN: Going by, like, the everything of SVSSS, Shen Yuan really is the asshole going, “I’ll die before I look inwards to recognize and deal with my own emotions.” Also, going, “Yes, I’m a hypocrite who won’t take my own advice. And what about it?” What a repressed nerd.

Shang Qinghua clears his throat to get their attention. Both kids (well, teenager and young adult, but still... kids) look up and then stand up quickly. Luo Binghe takes a forgetful step forward, before he wobbles into an appropriate respectful bow instead.

“Shang-Shishu!”

“How dearly this boy is loved!” the Weeper’s Eye declares, in its soft way inside Shang Qinghua’s head. “More than life itself! More than death itself!”

“Ah, never mind all that,” Shang Qinghua says, and steps forward to wrap his nephew in a quick hug instead, keeping the creepy talking eye oriented away from his nephew. “You’re a little too late to talk to me about your mission before your shizun did.”

Binghe, who was just relaxing into the unexpected hug, freezes.

Shang Qinghua knowingly pats the poor young protagonist on the back.

“Oh, shit” is right!

AN: Uncle Shang really is adorable. Still kind of knocks me for a loop writing it, though, given that the SVSSS SQH and LBH relationship is... nothing like this whatsoever. Look upon the field of SQH and LBH content and see that it is relatively barren except for the stubborn motherfuckers with excellent taste in character exploration.

“Ahhh, well, I’ll be there too for this potential family reunion, bro,” Shang Qinghua assures him. “Maybe we can finally get to the bottom of where this ‘Shen Yuan’ name came from.”

Peerless Cucumber makes a strange expression.

“What?”

“...It’s my name.”

“What?” Shang Qinghua repeats.

“It’s my name,” Peerless Cucumber says again, quietly. “It’s my real name.”

“Oh.”

“Huh,” Shang Qinghua thinks, having been operating on the assumption that the System made the name up for its mysterious backstory. Well, that gives new dimensions to Peerless Cucumber’s criticism of the scum villain!

“You can use it,” Peerless Cucumber says, with an air of determined nonchalance. “Everyone else is doing it.”

“Ah, alright. Thanks.”

AN: This is probably the part where I would have made Shang Qinghua reveal his original name in turn... IF HE HAD ONE. It drives me... kind of wild that we get the Airplane Extras and we STILL don’t get 1) Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky’s original name, and 2) MOBEI-JUN’s name.

Which actually makes things a little more interesting here, in my opinion, even though not having those names gets a little frustrating in terms of fanfiction writing. With Mobei-Jun, you get to explore the fucked up possibilities of him not having a name outside of his identity as the future Northern King. With Shang Qinghua, you get to explore him being a squirrelly little fuck who refuses to let anyone into his life.

So, because we don’t have Airplane’s name, we actually get this mildly interesting dynamic in which Shang Qinghua doesn’t even really think to reveal it to Shen Yuan. We don’t see this part, but Shen Yuan is actually a little miffed by this degree of secrecy, which is going to come up later. (Shen Yuan doesn’t like the fact that Shang Qinghua has as much power over him as he does.)

I personally do not hold the headcanon that Airplane’s name was “Shang Qinghua”. It’s a little too on the nose for me. At that point, the only reaction to transmigrating into SQH kind of has to be, “Ah, well, I was asking for that!” Maybe Airplane projected his worst qualities onto Shang Qinghua, but I don’t think he went so far as to give the character his own name.

Airplane’s main identity when he died appears to have been Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky, and we know that he wasn’t particularly close to his divorced parents and any step- or half-siblings. So, the only names that are really relevant post-transmigration are “Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky” and “Shang Qinghua”. By the time that SY gets here, he’s firmly entrenched in those identities, and his original name is completely irrelevant. I could honestly believe that Airplane just doesn’t think it matters anymore.

Shang Qinghua’s nephew, in the way of a true young protagonist or fucking cannon fodder, got the bright fucking idea to slip away to speak with the concubine called Butterfly privately.

“I thought: what if she didn’t want to speak in front of that lecherous old man? What if she wanted to get away from him?” Binghe confesses.

“She was the demon,” Shang Qinghua guesses.

Binghe nods, voice breaking. “It was… I was really, really stupid, Uncle.”

“Well, at least you know that,” Shang Qinghua sighs, and pats his sniffly nephew on the back again.

Oh, he can see why Shen Qingqiu was pissed the fuck off now. Shang Qinghua kind of wants to start yelling! Or maybe just screaming, coherently or otherwise!

Except yelling isn’t going to help much right now.

Shang Qinghua listens as Luo Binghe recounts being captured by the demon and then waking up bound by Immortal Binding Cables - of being so terrified that he could barely breathe with it. His only hope was Ning Yingying and Ming Fan tattling on his disappearance and a senior disciple tracking him down on time. The skinner demon apparently nearly killed Binghe, crooning over his young and beautiful skin, except a flash of warm light intervened and dropped an unstable part of the ceiling in on them before they could hurt the captured protagonist.

“Fu-Shijie and Shizun arrived after that and k-killed it,” Binghe says. “Uncle, it was all stupid luck! Shizun said I should have been dead and that, between my efforts and the demon’s, he had no idea how I wasn't! And he was right! It was so close! If the ceiling hadn’t fallen in like that-! Fu-Shijie suggested the ropes might be faulty and it could have been an unconscious use of spiritual energy, but I didn’t do anything! It wasn’t me!”

It sounds like the System to Shang Qinghua, intervening again at a crucial moment to prevent the premature death of the protagonist. Just thinking about how close his nephew came to dying without him knowing is nearly enough to inspire a cold sweat! Shang Qinghua can’t speak about the System, so all he can really do is keep hugging! Keep holding on for dear life and saying soothing nothings to his crying nephew!

AN: I wanted to include the Skinner mission, but I didn’t want to redo it onscreen because that’s been done in many fanfictions before and I felt that there was really no good reason for Shang Qinghua to be a part of it. The reason I wanted to include it is to show how the plot is off the track of the SVSSS (and PIDW) stories, with the changed LBH and the changed Original SQQ.

LBH wants to be a hero, but he’s not there yet.

“...Don’t put yourself above him… or below him. Tell him what you want and listen to what he wants, and don’t be surprised if things don’t change all at once,” Shang Qinghua advises and, at Yue Qingyuan’s look, quickly raises his hands. “Ahhh, not my business, I know! Not my business! I just… I hope it works out! I hope you two get something better out of this mess! Aha, make the sect meetings a little less awkward and… things.”

“He has never known what better looks like. He will always be Yue Qi, the slave boy. No matter what he does.”

“...Thank you,” Yue Qingyuan says finally, thoughtfully. “I appreciate your… restraint in this matter… in recent months.”

Aha, yikes.

AN: I know that some people wanted more stomping on Yue Qingyuan, but... like... this man is as or nearly as traumatized as Shen Qingqiu. His childhood fucking sucked. He broke his own soul trying to save Shen Jiu and failed. He made some shit decisions where Shen Qingqiu was concerned, but the logic and trauma he’s operating on are pretty obvious. He was trying.

Part of the theme around the Qijiu and Moshang arcs has also been “an eye for an eye”. Like, are you guys really going to keep on not communicating with each other and then fucking up and then taking chunks out of each other? How many misunderstandings and upset over misunderstandings are you going to throw at each other? Where do you put your foot down and say, “I don’t want to live like this forever. We can be better than this. I want better than this.”

Like, it can’t just be hurting each other back and forth (this applies to Qijiu more than Moshang, in which MBJ definitely carries the weight of this fuck-up). It can’t just be privately nursing hurt feelings forever. The options here are “fix it” or “live like this forever”. Fixing it won’t happen immediately, but the other option fucking sucks, so every little step helps.

So Shang Qinghua here is just like, “Bro, I’m tired. My anger has cooled a lot. I just want all our lives to suck less. I hope things work out for you.”

#tossawary svsss #tossawary commentary #pride is not the word

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maddrmatt · 3 years

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A Beautiful Future: A Premonition or a Punishment? (SoKai Week 2021)

New to this fanfic? Click here to properly begin!

Greetings, readers and fellow SoKai fans!

Let’s continue on with the show as our favorite MIA Keyblade wielder reflects on what was seen in the last chapter! Enjoy!

________________________________________________________________

Chapter 2: Ponderings of the Lost Hero

Quadratum

After opening his eyes, Sora suddenly leapt to his feet. He summoned his Keyblade and surveyed his surroundings.

Fortunately for him, he wasn’t currently in any danger. But much to his dismay, he was not in a chapel in Radiant Garden about to kiss the love of his life. Instead, he was standing next to a large dumpster in an alleyway between two tall buildings.

‘I must’ve been so tired from running that I fell asleep when I stopped to rest,’ he thought as he dismissed his Keyblade.

Sora’s current location was hardly an ideal place to take a nap. But the Gigas and the various adversaries that inhabited this world had kept him on the run since his arrival. Also, even though he had yet to encounter him again, he feared that Yozora would find him and try to ‘save’ him again. So, he couldn’t be picky about where or when he could sleep.

It still mystified him that he was now in a world that he had originally thought only existed in a video game. When that girl in the Final World had mentioned she was waiting for a Yozora to find her, he had assumed that she had been talking about someone with the same name. But his encounter with Yozora and the very real existence of this world had certainly raised a few questions.

‘I may have been here for a long time now, but I still can’t believe it. How can this world be real and also be a video game in a world back in my Realm? And why is ending up here the penalty for misusing the Power of Waking?’

But the biggest question was the one that had bothered him the most. ‘And will I ever be able to leave?’

Sora’s thoughts now turned what he just had witnessed in his sleep. ‘That was some dream. The first dream I’ve been able to have since I got here. But I wonder if it wasn’t just a dream. What if it was a premonition? A vision of the future? Dreams can do that, right?’

Sora began to pace around the alley. ‘It certainly looked and felt like one. I mean, we all did look a little older. Not to mention I saw that Pinocchio wasn’t a puppet and the Beast wasn’t, well, the Beast anymore. And there were so many guests at the wedding that I didn’t know.’

He thought back to the part of the dream where he walked down the aisle toward the altar. Now that he was awake, he realized that there were indeed quite a lot of unrecognized faces among those he knew.

‘Let’s see. When I saw the group from Atlantica in the crowd, Ariel was human again even though the last time I saw her, she was a mermaid. Also, it seems that some magic was needed for Flounder and King Triton to attend since they were hovering in the air as if they were still underwater. And then there was that girl who resembled Ariel but with black hair. Did Ariel and Prince Eric get married and have a daughter?’

‘It also looked like there had been some big changes in Arendelle too. Anna had been wearing an outfit similar to what Elsa had been wearing when Donald, Goofy and I had first met her. And speaking of Elsa, she was not only wearing a different snow gown and had let her hair go, but she also looked more at peace with herself then I last remembered. Plus, she also had a small blue lizard on her shoulder. I wonder if she’s taken on Rapunzel’s taste in animal sidekicks.’

‘Woody, Buzz and the rest of the toys we met were there and they had all been enlarged to human size. And there were some other toys with them, probably their friends they’d been separated from when the Organization split their world. Like that redhaired cowgirl and that woman with the pink bow in her blonde hair and dressed in blue. Strangely, she looked like she was made of porcelain which is an unusual material for a toy. They both seemed to be pretty close to Buzz and Woody respectively. Also, there was that unusual toy that looked more like a child’s art project.’

‘Little Chef was definitely in some unfamiliar company. He was with that redheaded man with that woman with brown hair as well as that older man with glasses. And there were also two other rats: one with gray fur and that pudgier one with brown fur. Maybe they were Little Chef’s relatives.’

‘I’m glad that Cloud finally made it home because he was among Leon, Yuffie and the rest of the committee and it seemed that he and Tifa had hooked up. And they weren’t the only ones. Leon had his arm around a woman with black hair and Aerith was with a man who looked a little like Cloud only with black hair. Even Cid apparently had a date: that woman with auburn hair and glasses. And then there were the new faces: that big, muscular guy whose hand appeared to be made of metal and the little girl in pink on his shoulder as well as that strange catlike creature with red fur.

‘It also looks like I ended up in meeting them in Shibuya after all since I also saw Neku and his friends there as well. But there were some missing from that group. Rhyme and that boy she called Beat was there. But Joshua wasn’t. And neither was Shiki. Instead, there was only that girl with brown hair and glasses. I hope nothing bad happened to them.’

‘There were even some unfamiliar faces among Queen Minnie, Daisy, and the rest I remember from Disney Castle. There was that unusual pair who looked like a rabbit and a cat with a whole bunch of little rabbits with them. And then there was that female duck who looked like she could be Donald’s twin sitting near his nephews. There was also someone who looked like a younger version of Goofy accompanied by a female dog with red hair and apparently, some who looked like a younger version of Pete.’

Then Sora realized it was not just the unfamiliar guests that stood out in the dream. His own thoughts during the dream contained information that he had not known before.

‘How could I have known why Xion looks the way she does? And though Master Yen Sid mentioned that Aqua saved Kairi long ago, my thoughts implied that she played a big role in our meeting. I’m sure I would’ve learned it all if I hadn’t disappeared. But is it possible for your dream self to know something that you don’t?’

Sora leaned against the wall of the building and gazed out into the empty street. There was still no sign of incoming trouble. He was glad that nothing had shown up during his pondering on account that he still had more to do.

‘All in all, it certainly was quite a show. But still, I can’t help but wonder why a dream like that would come to me now? And if it really was a vision of the future, does it mean that I’m going to make it back home? And Kairi and I really are destined to live happily ever after?’ Sora thought as a feeling of hope came to him.

Unfortunately, the hope faded as a troubling thought took over. ‘Or maybe it’s a future that isn’t going to happen. Maybe it’s nothing more than extra punishment for breaking rules I never knew existed.’

Sora thought back to when he returned to the Final World after Xehanort’s defeat. He recalled how Chirithy had told him about what he was risking using the Power of Waking to restore Kairi. As he remembered that conversation, a feeling of anger at the unfairness of it all came to him.

“I never meant to break any nature taboos. I didn’t even know they existed. I thought I was just rescuing my friends from that Lich Heartless. I didn’t know it would end up rewriting time and giving us another chance to fight. And I especially didn’t know that it was the wrong thing to do,” he said out loud not caring if anybody heard him.

That’s when Sora realized something. “If I’m being punished for doing that, does that mean that we were supposed to lose no matter what we did? Well, to whoever or whatever decided that, I’m sorry but if following your rules meant letting Xehanort win after everything he did, then I was happy to break them.”

His thoughts then turned to Kairi. “And I definitely was not going to leave the girl I love more than anything in the worlds as she was: shattered, split and scattered. If there was any chance to save her, I would have taken it no matter what the consequences. Because a world without Kairi is one I never want to live in.”

That’s when Sora realized the sad irony. ‘And yet, a world without her or any of my friends is exactly where I ended up anyway. I guess the punishment really did fit the crime in the end. And as if that wasn’t enough, it seems I’m now being tormented with visions of a future that may never be.’

Then a feeling of determination came over Sora. ‘No. I can’t think like that. I won’t ever think like that. If whatever forces sent me here sent that dream to punish me further, then I’m not going to give them the satisfaction.’

Sora gazed up at the dark sky and cried out, “It’s not going to work! You hear me? It won’t work! Instead, I’m going to use what I saw in that dream to further fuel my desire to get back to my home! Back to my friends! Back to her so we can have a future like that in the dream!”

The young hero then reached into the pocket of his jacket nearest his heart. He pulled out a folded piece of paper which he then unfolded revealing the lucky charm that Kairi had given to him before he and Riku left for the Mark of Mastery Exam.

Taking the charm into his hand, he clutched it to his heart. ‘We may be worlds apart, Kairi. But our hearts are still connected. I realized that when I was suddenly able to fight for you. Even though I didn’t know exactly what was going on, especially how somehow Xehanort was still around, I knew you needed me. And I know that connection will bring us back together someday.’

“They can take your world. They can take your heart. Cut you loose from all you know. But if it’s your fate, then every step forward will always be a step closer to home. And it will be my fate. And whatever that dream’s true purpose was, I will do all that I can to make it our fate, Kairi. That’s a promise and I always keep my promises to you. It’s my oath to return,” Sora said out loud.

After gazing once more around for any sign of trouble and seeing that there was none in spite of his earlier outbursts, he figured that he had time to do one more thing before moving on to a new location in the city. Leaning against the wall with the lucky charm in one hand, he then looked at the paper that it had been wrapped in.

He began to read the words written on the paper. Words that no matter how many times he read had always managed to touch his heart because they came from the one who his heart belonged to.

“Thinking of you, wherever you are.”

________________________________________________________________

On the edge of one of Quadratum’s tall buildings, a man in a black coat gazed downward into the alley. He watched the spiky-haired brunette boy read from his letter. Under his hood, he smirked and let out an amused chuckle.

“You might wish to keep it down, Sora. You never know who or what may be listening here in Quadratum. But it sounds like that was a pretty good dream you had with the way you were going on about making it a reality. Your determination to get back to your home and your devotion to your girl are pretty admirable. They will serve you well when the time comes for you to play your role,” said the Master of Masters.

The very first Keyblade master gazed up to the sky. As he had done before, he brought his hands together into a heart shape and held them up so he could view the full moon through them.

“Soon, all the pieces will fall into place, Sora. My apprentices. The Union leaders and Dandelions who still exist. The Darknesses. Yozora. Your friend Riku and the rest of your Guardians of Light over on the other side including your little girlfriend. All of them have their roles to play in my grand plan and once they are fulfilled, we will finally see the absolute end of the true Keyblade War,” he declared.

Then his voice took on an ominous tone. “But after all is said and done, will all your devotion pay off? Will the dreams of a ‘happily ever after’ with your beloved Kairi come true? Or will the fates conspire to pull you apart once again? And if that should happen, will it be the ultimate separation, one that is impossible to undo?”

The Master then parted his hands and shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows? I may be the author of a very large compendium of future events. But the Book of Prophecies never accounted for everything. So, in the end, who can really say?”

The Master then returned his gaze back to the young Keyblade wielder in the alley. Sora had finished reading his letter and was now staring to leave. The Master’s gaze followed the boy as he headed out into the city.

“Things may have taken a… slight turn from my original plans. But the more I think about it, it actually makes things more interesting. After ages of watching events unfold the way I had foreseen; I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to actually be surprised. And I have a feeling, Sora, that you are going to be full of surprises.”

________________________________________________________________

Notes from the Mad Doctor:

Went rather heavy on the internal monologuing in this chapter, huh?

Sharp Disney and Square Enix fans will likely know the unfamiliar guests Sora was talking about. Feel free to let me know if you did recognize all of them or some of them.

I think we can understand the anger Sora’s expressing here. After everything he did to protect the worlds from Xehanort, this is his ultimate reward? I know he doesn’t regret doing what he did to save everyone especially Kairi. But I wouldn’t blame him for being upset.

Although I have mentioned him in my other stories, this is the first time the Master of Masters has actually shown up. I really hope I wrote his mysterious yet eccentric demeanor well. And I have a feeling, given the Master’s presence in Quadratum, that Sora’s arrival in this world was no coincidence. Then again, is anything a coincidence in Kingdom Hearts?

I give my thanks to whoever reads this chapter.

I also give my special thanks to @fandomchanger, @dreaming-in-seams, and @sakuranekogirl for their likes on the previous chapter as well as @sokaiweek, @phoenix-downer, and @the-secret-place for reblogging the previous chapter.

The next chapter still needs work so it should be posted on Thursday if all goes well.

Comments, likes and reblogs are much appreciated! Stay tuned for we’ll be dropping in on the other half of our favorite couple next chapter!

________________________________________________________________

Onto the next chapter!

#kingdom hearts #kh fanfiction #sokai #sokaiweek #sokaiweek2021 #sora #master of masters #maddrmatt

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dr-gearloose · 4 years

Text

DuckTales Theory

So, I’m pretty sure you all know about the 1987 (Original) DuckTales, 1990 (Reboot) The Quack Pack and the 2017 (Reboot) DuckTales.

Well, I have a theory that connects all 3 together. Originally, this started with a theory about Gyro Gearloose, so here’s how all 3 connect.

ACT I: The Original

1987: Donald Duck joins the Navy thus leaving Huey, Dewey and Louie in the hands of Scrooge McDuck.

Scrooge decides to hire some people to... Help around the house (Mrs. Beakley) Be a pilot (Launchpad McQuack) Count money (Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera) and be the Bin’s Security Guard (Gizmo Duck)

(The reason why Gyro and Duckworth aren’t listed is because I’m pretty sure they were already hired. Okay, back to the regularly scheduled theory.)

Mrs. Beakley brought her granddaughter; Webbigail to the mansion. Webby always went unnoticed. She only made friends with animals because no one else pays attention.

ACT II: The Quack Pack!

1990: The boys were teenagers now, Donald left the Navy and Huey, Dewey, and Louie have moved in with their Uncle, who now has a girlfriend. Daisy Duck.

Instead of Gyro, they have Dr. Ludwig Von Strangeduck. (Episode 1) With his newest invention they could become ‘T-Squad’ (just realized how much that sounds like T-Series) Also, their voices were probably higher cause of puberty.

[There’s nothing else to really go off of in Huey, Dewey and Louie’s lives other than their outfits. (We’ll come back to this.)]

As for Webby, I’m going to assume that sometime around the first or second episode maybe? is when she started her spy training and Beakley was hired as an agent.

Gyro is currently on a well deserved vacation. Or did he just travel 26 years into the future? (We’ll come back to this.)

ACT III: The Reboot

2017: Now, there’s A LOT to go off of in the new series! So here we go.

Webby’s grown up. She’s now somewhere around 13, she’s basically a professional spy.

Huey, Dewey and Louie’s outfits have changed. I’m gonna say that Huey is 16, Dewey is 15 and Louie is 14, he’s still in that angsty teen era.

They’ve also forgotten about Scrooge because of all the adventures. Plus, teenagers wouldn’t really care about a rich uncle too much, would they? They just want a girlfriend...or three.

Duckworth is unfortunately dead, which is pretty clever. Donald and Daisy have unfortunately broken up and forgot about each other. Daisy was busy with her job and Donald is just living his best life. Or at least trying to... (We’ll get back to this.)

Scrooge has grown to like his nephews over time. --

[VILLAIN BREAK!] Ma Beagle: No longer wears her hair in a bun, wears makeup and changed her fashion up a bit.

The Beagle Boys: There’s more of them! [The Déjà Vu’s, The 5th Avenue Friendlies, The 5th Avenue Meanies, Black Arts Beagle, The Ugly Failures, etc.] Their home has downgraded to a Junkyard, they changed their shirts. Bouncer Beagle never skipped a day in the Beagle Gym. Burger Beagle has S T I C K S for limbs.

The Aliens: They like rockets.

Magica De Spell: She has a niece now! [VILLAIN BREAK: TO BE CONTINUED...]

ACT IV: Spies and Broken Hearts

Since Webby’s been in a mansion basically her whole life, she’s a sucker for adventures and magic! (We’ll get back to this.)

As for Della Duck - When she stole The Spear Of Selene in 1987, it was now her mission to get home. She made friends with an alien named Penumbra.

She finally got home, on Earth in maybe 2017 or 2018. Now we continue the love story of Donald and Daisy: In Season 3, Episode 5 - Louie’s Eleven, we see Daisy’s comeback. Donald doesn’t recognize her, Daisy doesn’t recognize him. (I still ship it tho)

Daisy was fired from her previous job - a news reporter - so now, who knows where she is in her life now.

ACT V: Project B.O.Y.D.

Gyro hasn’t traveled 26 years into the future, he’s been on a well deserved vacation, he came back and made a new robot. 2-BO, or B.O.Y.D. A definitely real boy. Akita, however, did not like the idea of 2-BO being a ‘real boy’ so he overrode his programming.

A few years later, Mark Beaks found ‘2-BO’ left in the trunk of Gyro’s car. While Gyro was in the store, looking for things to fix up B.O.Y.D, Beaks thought that he could take B.O.Y.D and pretend he had a child so he could go to Doofus Drake’s birthday party. While B.O.Y.D was living with Doofus, Gyro decided to get a makeover.

[VILLAIN BREAK! PART 2]

Magica De Spell: She dyed her feathers!

Mark Beaks: That one kid who’s WAY ahead of his time and confuses everyone.

Flintheart Glomgold: Still wants to be richer! But he’s chubbier.

Goldie O’Gilt (Technically): She doesn’t have gray hair!

(just realized i did magica twice. oops.) [VILLAIN BREAK: TO BE CONTINUED...]

New Glasses / His old glasses were broken by B.O.Y.D due to a malfunction in the programming. New Shirt / The previous shirt he owned was not only uncomfortable, but was torn while testing B.O.Y.D for the first time. There was a malfunction, causing B.O.Y.D to attack Gyro. New Hat / The straps were uncomfortable. New Haircut / There’s no real reason for this other than he just wanted to change his style a bit.

ACT VI: Gizmoduck Fenton had been working on Gizmoduck, improving the suit’s self defense system and stuff. Soon enough, Gizmoduck was everywhere! TV, the News, saving people!

Also, Fenton’s skin/feathers changed because he probably got a sun-tan.

[VILLAIN BREAK! PART 3]

Waddleduck (Technically): Gizmoduck but he’s Mark Beaks.

Negaduck: He’s back and also has a double personality!

Magica’s Shadow: ...gone?

Tulpas: THEY ENVY THE POPULARITY THAT THE OTHERS HA-

[VILLAIN BREAK: THE END]

ACT VII: Lena De Spell

Lena was created by Magica De Spell, you all know this. But how did she learn to do this? Well, in the 1987 series there was an episode in Season 1 named ‘Magica’s Shadow War’ it wasn’t a 2 part episode or anything special. But it was the first appearance the Magica’s ability to create shadows and make a shadow army.

With this new knowledge, she took it upon herself to first, improve her old outfit and get a more modern look. Less trickery and bribery. She was gonna get that dime...but she needed a puppet. She couldn’t do it herself.

Before she knew it, she was in Scrooge’s dime. The thing she wanted most, she was now shown on... But before this, she performed the same spell from all those years ago... And brought her shadow to life, she swore that if she found a puppet, that shadow would be connected to them for as long as she’s in that dime.

What if I told you... Lena’s not a shadow. She was bribed into being Magica’s puppet. Even though she said ‘No more trickery or bribery’ she had to so she could convince Lena to be her new puppet.

Whenever she wanted, she could come out and yell at Lena to get the dime so she’d be free.

When she finally had the dime, I bet you’re wondering how she could be banished to the SHADOW realm if Lena’s not a shadow. Well, that’s just it... She wasn’t in the shadow realm. She was in Limbo.

The realm between life and death.

Lena was able to help every so often... Thanks to Violet Sabrewing and Webby, she was freed.

ACT IX: The Quack Pack! (2017)

Season 3, Episode 2: The Quack Pack! This is a short one, but remember when I told you to remember their outfits from 1990?

No?

Good! ‘Cause I never did. :) I just said ‘...other than their outfits. (We’ll come back to this)’

So, the 1990s Quack Pack was slightly different. I mean the outfits. 1. Donald had a Hawaiian type shirt. 2. Louie’s shirt was different and had a hat. 3. Daisy existed.

But anyways, they brought the outfits back!

ACT X: The End.

TL;DR: ACT 1: Scrooge hires a bunch of people and only cares about money. ACT 2: The nephews and Donald forgot Scrooge and Donald is dating Daisy. ACT 3: Huey is 16, Dewey is 15, and Louie is 14. Duckworth died ACT 4: Webby loves magic and adventure now, Della was stuck on the moon for 20 decades, Donald and Daisy broke up, Daisy was fired from her old job. ACT 5: Gyro invented BOYD and then BOYD was stolen by Mark Beaks. Also, Gyro got a makeover. ACT 6: Fenton improved his Gizmoduck suit. ACT 7: Lena isn’t a shadow, Magica learned how to bring her shadow to life and cursed Lena until she got the dime and then Lena was stuck in Limbo for a while. ACT 8: The Quack Pack made a comeback in Season 3. ACT 9: You’re reading ACT 9, why did I add this one?

Everything here is a theory. Not facts. And I can’t believe this all started with a little theory about Gyro’s change of style!

Just gonna say this now: I totally ship Fenton x Gyro. Don’t @ me.

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nymsonlinecottage · 4 years

Text

I listened to my playlist on shuffle and tried to figure out which songs related to which LR/MM/EF characters/ships the most.

(A.K.A. it's 1:21 a.m. and I'm bored.)

Song 1: "6 feet apart" by, Alec Benjamin.

Leo. I'm not really sure why, I just feel like the vibe is a lot like him? Also, the song is obviously about social distancing from loved ones, but I can also see it as a metaphor about living in two separate worlds which is something I feel like Leo would struggle with because he had a normal upbringing and was suddenly forced into a life of bionics, and villains, and stuff.

Song 2: "cup of coffee" by, bearbare

This one reminds me of Tasha and Donald because, y'all, they were such a happy couple and were so in love in the first seasons (we were ROBBED in season 4) and I just,,, of course they would tell each other things like the lyrics in this song because they support one another and push through the hard times and I will NEVER STOP BEING MAD ABOUT HOW THE WRITERS THREW THAT AWAY FOR "COMEDY PURPOSES"

Song 3: "comfort crowd" by, Conan Gray

(IVE THOUGHT ABOUT THIS ONE BEFORE) Choliver. Chase and Oliver. Together. They just- they both got hurt in loving and I feel like, once they each find their own self-worth, if they got together they could be each others "comfort crowd," if you will. I... I may or may not have a animatic that runs through my head of Chase and Oliver every time this song plays...

Song 4: "waves" by, Dean Lewis

All of them?? They've all been through so much shit, you cannot tell me any of them are mentally stable enough to not relate to this song.

Song 5: "everything I wanted" by, Billy Eilish

Ok, hear me out, this song relates to the father-son/uncle-nephew relationship Douglas and Chase have and, yes, it's because I have a very specific animatic that plays through my mind whenever I hear this song.

Song 6: "like real people do" by, Hozier

Kazimieras. The song just has the same carefree, go with the flow, leap before you look vibe that Kaz always radiates.

Song 7: "did you ever hurt for me?" by, Jess Benko

CHASE AND SEBASTIAN. DO I EVEN NEED TO EXPLAIN?? Please don't listen to this song after reading multiple angst fics, it will make you cry. Trust me.

Song 8: "boys in the streets" cover by, Greg Holden

Kaz, but I'm self-projecting.

Song 9: "deeper conversation" by, Yuna

Ok, ok, ok, Adam. Because he isn't the smartest in the bunch, but he can actually be pretty philosophical in his own, weird little way. Plus, he seems like the kind of person who would ask a bunch of random questions and listen the whoever he's talking to give their answer, even if they took an hour explaining everything.

Song 10: "she" by, Dodie Clark

Skylar. I have this headcanon that when she first started going to school and she developed her first lesbian crush, she went to Kaz and was like, "is this normal?" and they had a Gay-Lesbian Bonding Moment, and this song pretty much sums up what she would tell him/what she would be thinking.

Song 11: "Heather" by, Conan Gray

Hi. So. This song... ok, it relates to every character in EF in a way (at least at the beginning of the season). Because all I can see when I rewatch the first few episodes is Oliver liking Skylar, Skylar liking Chase, Chase liking Oliver, Kaz liking Chase, and Bree liking Skylar, and this emotional trainwreck of a song can work for so many love triangles I swear-

And now it's 2:15 a.m. and I should get some sleep, because if I do all 47 songs on that one particular playlist, I'd be here until 8:00.

#Nym thoughts #Lab Rats #Mighty Med #Lab Rats Elite Force #Chase Davenport #Bree Davenport #Adam Davenport #Leo Dooley #Kaz #Kazimieras #Oliver #Skylar Storm #Douglas Davenport #Donald Davenport #Tasha Davenport #Sorry if my music taste is trash #Idk what this is #Its late/early and I'm bored

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yastaghr · 5 years

Text

Projects (Fresh’s DDFL Oneshot)

Pairing: Kedgeup

Characters: Underfell Papyrus, Undertale Sans

Warnings: None (this is fluff)

Summary: Classic is working on a project in a snowstorm. Edge takes care of him. For @freshouttaparsnips

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23029627

A skeleton walked through the blowing, cold wind of the mountain winter. His boots were tall and red. His pants were tight and black, riding low on his pelvis. His uncharacteristic sweater was thick and warm, a cashmere wool number in a light orange borrowed from a friend. His teeth were sharp and three lines bisected his left eye socket.

Edge stepped into the basement. He closed the door and knocked the snow off his caked boots, then tramped down the stairs as loudly as he could so he wouldn’t startle his datemate. When he got to the bottom of the stairs he sighed. Classic was still hunched over his project. Edge had no idea what it was. At the moment it looked a bit like a steampunk teapot, but earlier today it had looked like a projector box, so that didn’t mean much. Edge didn’t really care what it was. All he knew was that his datemate was absorbed in fiddling with it to the point of being totally unaware of such paltry details as what time it was and whether he should eat. So Edge had decided to fill that role himself.

The tall skeleton slipped a plate of food into the space between Classic and his project. It held a hummus and tomato sandwich with baba ganoush and tzatziki sauce on it, just the way Classic liked it. There was also a piece of baklava off to one side.

Classic made a startled noise when the food inserted itself into his world. He turned to see who had brought it. Edge took the opportunity to steal a kiss from his datemate.

“IT’S TIME TO EAT, MY LOVE. YOU’VE BEEN WORKING AT THIS FOR FOUR HOURS NOW. YOU NEED TO TAKE A BREAK AND FUEL YOUR BODY AND MIND BEFORE THEY GIVE OUT ON YOU. PLEASE, TAKE THIS.”

Classic reluctantly grabbed a triangle of the sandwich and peered at it. “hummus and tomato?”

“ALONG WITH YOUR SECOND AND THIRD FAVORITE CONDIMENTS. A NICE, HEALTHY MEAL,” Edge confirmed quietly.

Classic let out a startled moan when he bit into the sandwich. He stared at it with wide eye lights before turning his brilliant smile on Edge. “thanks, edge. i really appreciate it,” he added with a genuine twinkle in his eye, “especially the baklava. you know a good piece of that sweet honey goodness makes me go absolutely nuts.”

Edge put on his best disapproving face to hide the startled laughter in his soul. He secretly loved his datemate’s puns, but he knew Classic absolutely loved it when he played the straight man to his comedian.

“I DON’T SEE YOU BOUNCING OFF THE WALLS JUST YET. PLEASE REFRAIN FROM DOING SO. I’M NOT SURE THE CORKBOARD COULD HANDLE IT.”

Classic chuckled. “sure thing, babe. but seriously, thanks for the food. i must be starving if i’ve been working that long. it has to be…” He pulled out his phone and checked the time, “...5 o’clock? sheesh, that’s late. how was your shift?”

Edge smiled mysteriously. “OH, YOU KNOW. A BIT OF THIS AND THAT. THE ELEPHANT CERTAINLY WAS ENTERTAINING.”

Classic narrowed his eye sockets. “what elephant? i thought you worked in an antique shop.”

Edge’s smile widened into a grin. “YOU WOULD BE CORRECT. AN OLD HUMAN LADY WITH PINK HAIR BROUGHT IN A NOVELTY LAMP THAT HER NEPHEW HAD BOUGHT HER. IT WAS ONE OF THOSE VINTAGE ART DECO DEALS. YOU WOULD HAVE LIKED IT.”

“i bet,” Classic said around a mouthful of food. Edge knew he only did it to get his goat, but it worked. Edge glared into the smiling face of the monster he loved.

He sighed. “JUST EAT YOUR SANDWICH. I’LL COME BACK FOR THE PLATE LATER.”

Classic waved to him as he left the basement. “bye! don’t stomp too hard on the stairs. you might break through!”

Edge’s only response was to slam the door on the way out.

=====

An hour later Edge returned to the basement to fetch the plate. Classic had set it off to his left and had cleared it. Edge smiled. He was always happy when Classic loved his food. He might not be a professional chef, but he still took pride in his cooking. It was eclectic and simple. Classic seemed to love it.

Speaking of Classic, he was bent over his project with a pair of tweezers and a bunch of wires. The project now looked like one of those rides you see at fairs that have a bunch of chairs suspended by wires that spin around and out at an angle. Edge had no idea what it was.

“HELLO, LOVE. HOW IS YOUR PROJECT GOING?” Edge asked quietly, not wanting to startle Classic and mess something up.

Classic set down the tweezers and swiveled in his chair to face Edge. He had a smile on his face, and his eyes were twinkling. “well, wire you asking? tweeze projects of mine don’t usually interest you this much.”

Edge scoffed, secretly impressed that Classic had managed to come up with two puns that fast. It never ceased to amaze him how gifted his datemate was in the pun department. Edge could appreciate a good pun when he heard one, but he was absolute garbage at coming up with them himself. His coworkers at the antique shop seemed to send them flying back and forth all day long, but Edge’s best attempts always fell flat. He’d given up on coming up with any, leaving that to those who had the skill, like Classic. His puns were better than their puns, anyway. Edge wasn’t biased. Not at all.

“JUST CURIOUS. IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE YOU’VE BEEN THIS DEDICATED TO A PROJECT. NORMALLY YOU’RE BETTER AT REMEMBERING TO EAT AND TAKE BREAKS. I KNOW IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE YOU ACTED LIKE THIS.”

Classic grinned. “aw, edgelord, that’s sweet. too bad i can’t tell you. it’s going to be a surprise~!”

Edge narrowed his eye sockets at his datemate. That was such a typical Sans move. Well, two could play at that game. “WELL, THAT’S GOOD. I HAPPEN TO HAVE A SURPRISE OF MY OWN WAITING FOR YOU UPSTAIRS, SO DON’T STAY DOWN HERE TOO LONG.”

With that, Edge grabbed the plate and sashayed his way up the stairs and back out into the deepening snow.

=====

It was late at night when Classic trudged up the stairs and through the snowstorm to the main house. He still wasn’t entirely convinced that he should be stopping. The interdimensional phone didn’t have nearly the clarity of tone that he wanted, but he really couldn’t fiddle with it any longer. When he was younger, maybe, but now his eyes gave out much sooner than they used to. It was better to take a break and sleep off the shivers than to push himself.

He felt absolutely caked in snow by the time he opened the front door. He couldn’t even see through the snow plastered to his face. Knowing that his brother was likely staying over with his datemate, Classic immediately started stripping off his ice-cold layers before he got chilled to the bone and soaked through.

It wasn’t until Classic was down to his t-shirt and shorts, after he had used a clear patch of his hoodie to wipe off his face, that he could see the room in front of him. It was… not what he had been expecting. If he’d been expecting anything, it was that the room would look as it usually did; the new couch that they had gotten when they reached the Surface, the old tv that worked better than it used to thanks to a little tinkering on Classic’s part, the joke/quantum physics book on the table in the corner, and the pet rock on the dining table. Most of those things were probably still there. Probably. It was hard to see them around the giant blanket nest that took up the majority of the room. Edge must have put in every blanket, pillow, and cushion in the house!

Classic grinned and crawled over the mounds of fuzzy fleece and warm wool that grew into a giant mountain of comfort. Sitting on top of (and slightly within) the pile was Edge. He had a self-satisfied expression on his face, like a dog with a big stick or a cat with a “dead” string. He had a large bowl of popcorn in one hand and the tv’s remote controller in the other.

“SO. DO YOU LIKE MY SURPRISE?” Edge asked his datemate.

Classic chuckled. “it certainly is surp-rising. how long did it take you to build this thing? i can see you used the pool noodles to maintain the pile’s structural integrity without sacrificing softness.”

Edge preened under the compliment to his engineering even as he glared at the pun. Classic knew he would. Edge loved it when his datemate praised him, and he was especially proud of his skills as a puzzle engineer. This might not be a puzzle, but the same principles applied.

“IT IS A RATHER INGENIOUS IDEA, ONE TRULY WORTHY OF THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE EDGE,” his datemate said as he set down the remote, freeing up one hand to help Classic over the last few feet of pillows and into the little divot in the covers that Edge was sitting in. “I HAD THOUGHT OF USING THE THROW PILLOWS, BUT THEY DID NOT HAVE THE LENGTH I NEEDED FOR THIS WORK. THE POOL NOODLES SEEMED AN OBVIOUS NEXT CHOICE.”

Classic smiled. “you don’t give yourself enough credit. i know i never would have thought to use them. i probably would have given up on the mountain-like design and just made a pillow fort.”

“OH,” Edge blinked, stunned. “THAT WOULD CERTAINLY HAVE BEEN EASIER THAN STICKING WITH MY ORIGINAL DESIGN. THE IDEA OF A PILLOW FORT NEVER OCCURRED TO ME.”

Classic chuckled as he settled into the curve of his datemate’s arms. He loved how nicely he seemed to fit in the other’s grasp, like both of them were designed perfectly to fit one another. His legs could curl up right next to Edge’s while his skull rested on the other’s ribs, and when he did so Edge could rest his skull comfortably on top of Classic’s. His brother had called it perfectly, sickeningly sweet, like eating a whole bag of pure sugar. He’d meant it in a good way, though.

“that’s okay, edge. if we all thought the same way then the world would be a really boring place, no bones about it. now, what did your insightful brain come up with for us to watch?”

Edge’s face went from a small frown at the pun that didn’t reach his eye lights to a brilliant smile. “WELL, I WAS THINKING OF STARTING UP…”

=====

Edge had no idea what time it was when the credits started rolling. It was dark outside still, but with the way the snow was falling it could be high noon and still be dark out. He didn’t have his watch available to check. That wasn’t because he didn’t have it on. No, he couldn’t check the time because Classic had fallen asleep while wrapped around that arm like a little koala bear. It was absolutely adorable.

Edge set aside the empty popcorn bowl and grabbed the remote controller with his free hand. He switched off the tv and relaxed into the mound of pillows, content to lay here with his datemate forever.

The sound of the snow hitting the windows and the lullaby of Classic’s snores quickly lulled Edge into a doze. His eyelids drooped. He fought the sleep, wanting to stay awake, but it was a futile effort. He gently drifted into sleep while curled happily around his datemate in a mound of blankets while a snowstorm raged outside.

#kedgeup #Underfell Papyrus #undertale sans #fluff #oneshot #yastaghr

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danwhobrowses · 5 years

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Why Star Wars: The Last Jedi Deserves More Respect

So after a handful of posts I think it’s time to bring back this one, the conflict was that I was considering reviews for Pokémon Sword and Shield as well as a review for Rise of Skywalker, but the latter made me think that this is an opportune moment to talk about the previous entry. Like The Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker has had divisive opinions, frankly I liked the film but I think TLJ was the best of the sequel trilogy, and I am going to explain why

Fair Warning, within this there’s gonna be spoilers for Rise of Skywalker, possibly Mandalorian, maybe Solo and definitely The Last Jedi...this will also be very long

So I know straight away that this is gonna get heat, there has been constant times where me saying that I liked TLJ has been considered trolling or ‘bait’, honestly I find myself baffled that people can hate it so vehemently, believing that the story is and I quote ‘the worst sequel ever’. While it is clear that Johnson had a different vision to Abrams, that was not a bad thing, a lot of the criticism the film gets are quite hypocritical in contrast to the Original Trilogy which is held to so much esteem, so to start I’m going to break that down. Small Disclaimer before I do: People are allowed to dislike things, not saying that if you do dislike it you are doing something wrong, just pointing out that it’s not wrong to like the film either. Disowning before Watching The first thing I think turned people off of TLJ was the interview Mark Hamill had before the film came out, people misconceiving his comments that it’s not the journey he expected seeing of Luke to mean that this is not a film he would approve of. The same almost happened with RoS with Abrams comment which was abridged to imply that Abrams disowned TLJ as well - he did not - but in a society where we want to home in on flaws and criticize before even seeing that was too wide a door left open. So without fault, TLJ already had a group of people set on disliking the film because it would be different to how they and Hamill wanted it to be and because it’s not exactly like the decanonized ‘Legends’ continuity - despite people being fine that Jacen Solo and Ben Skywalker had been merged to make Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens. It’s easy to point out that if you go into something adamant to dislike you’re going to get your wish, so the first point of order is to give something a chance to impress you, you can’t criticize something because an actor didn’t think it’d go that creative direction, Hamill did not hate this movie and people disliking their content does not automatically make it bad, Stannis from GoT hated the show, Alan Moore hates everything but that doesn’t mean Watchmen was bad, the actors for C3PO and R2-D2 hated each other but that doesn’t mean that when they acted their bond wasn’t great.

The ‘Luke is not Luke’ Criticism Hamill’s comments ease nicely into one of the main critiques that fans felt that Luke was not the same character he was in Return of the Jedi. People criticized his disconnection from the force which included tossing his lightsaber away in the opening scene, the Rashomon sequence where Luke considered striking down his own nephew - a move that ultimately turned Ben to the Dark, drinking green milk and that his last stand was a projection rather than a solid encounter. You know what I say to those criticisms?

They are bollocks, absolute nonsensical criticisms made to try and dismantle the best character of the movie. Hamill delivers his best for Luke in TLJ and his character arc is brilliant. I watched Blind Wave (a great youtube reactor channel) react to TLJ and the members noted how it was great that Luke had a character arc, something I wholly agree with. Luke was around 23 in Return of the Jedi (since the galaxy uses the standardized dating of Coruscant which has the most earth-like cycle), if you expect a 23 year old to have no room left to grow in the next 30 years of his life then I don’t think anything’s gonna get through to you, Luke is meant to be different, because since Jedi a lot of shit has happened. Luke’s discarding of the lightsaber shows his disconnect with the Force, something that had allowed the First Order to paint him as a myth and rendered everyone near-unable to find him, only tracked by the galactic map to Ahch-To from his past days of discovering remnants of Jedi past. Next let’s bring down the Rashomon sequence, the 3 tales of Ben’s turning. Initially, Luke painted a picture that he sensed that the darkness was too late, Ben woke and attacked him. Later Ben paints that Luke is lying, and that when Ben awoke Luke was there with his Lightsaber drawn with intent to kill him. The third story admits that both are correct, Luke drew his lightsaber in sensing the darkness, and Ben awoke to see it and retaliated.

This story peeves people mainly because they say that in Jedi ‘Luke was willing to fight for a single hope of light in his Father but was willing to kill his nephew for a bad dream’. A ridiculous comment that waters down and ignores the bigger picture though. For one, while Luke wanted to save his father and sensed good in him, he still ended up cutting his dad’s hand off, the indication that much like his father Luke - as he had always been in the Original Trilogy - was still susceptible to his emotions, including the negative ones. The other reason this statement is foolhardy is because they don’t listen to Luke’s narration, where he explains that it was a fleeting moment of panic and arrogance, his ego as ‘Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master’ took over when he sensed that Ben was already turned by Snoke, and it was only for a split second which he immediately regrets. It’s this moment that snowballs into why Luke disconnects himself from the force, his ego as a saviour to Jedi led to the downfall of his nephew - which led to his best friend and sister separating, the rise of the First Order being like a second Empire and the massacre of most of his other jedi students, he realised that this was the same ego that led to the previous Jedi’s downfall to Vader and Sidious and thus came to the conclusion that maybe the Jedi way is not the right way. Not only is this a brilliantly done tragedy for the character but it’s a progression that identifies with public opinion of jedi ways and the pompousness that led to Anakin’s turn to the dark side as depicted in the prequels. The use of Rashomon also connects to the Jedi/Sith connections to Samurai which was a great touch by Johnson. The green milk scene was a weird one I’ve seen being criticized, like people are fine with Calamarian fishmen but a Tatooine/Naboo humanoid can’t drink green milk? I think I need to remind you that Luke drinks blue milk on Tatooine, he is a moisture farmer as well, the ‘green milk’ scene was a depiction of how Luke survived on Ahch-To as Rey followed him, his lifestyle disconnected from the force as he lived as basically a farm boy. I don’t know why people got so mad about the colour of milk but you can’t expect those nuns to have fed him roast porgs every day The final criticism is his last stand, something I will touch on a bit later as well. In terms of Luke, people were disappointed that it wasn’t Luke actually there and while yes it would’ve been great to watch Luke tear down AT-ATs luke the EU, but he literally says that he won’t do that

it’s not a matter of can’t, it’s a matter of him strutting up to the army of the First Order will not end the war, most people don’t even know if he exists. Showing up will have inspired the resistance yes but if Luke was shown killed or captured that hope would then be instantly diminished, and Snoke and Ren would definitely be going for Luke’s head to make that so. This is why Luke goes via projection, instead of his ragged hermit self where he’d likely die similarly to how Kenobi did, he demonstrates a highly advanced force power to display himself as a clean-cut warrior who shrugs off the full might of the First Order’s arsenal and humiliates its brand new Supreme Leader, while disappearing. That stand does the Resistance far better than him showing up in person, because now the legend of Luke Skywalker lives longer than he does, he inspires a new wave of Jedi who understand his sacrifice and rebels who have just seen how one man can expose the weakness of the First Order. Luke’s last living gesture is one that inspires hope, before he becomes one with the Force at peace. If anything that is as beautiful as it is tragic of an end for Luke, but by no means is that bad. The Rose Tico ‘Issue’ Luke wasn’t the only character to get on the wrong side of criticism, undoubtedly Kelly Marie Tran got it the worst. Despicable people flocked to harass her over her character, throwing about racism just for that added content of being a horrid human being. Her character, Rose Tico, was a newly introduced character from the Resistance who joins Finn and Poe’s arcs, her main non-racist criticism is her act of saving Finn from the Laser Battering Ram ‘She has this stupid speech about saving people with love while a laser battering ram breaks down the door to kill a bunch of people’ A common theme seems to be that people are taking things the absolute wrong way. Rose’s journey with Finn is an interesting arc where she seeks to make sure her sister’s sacrifice - caused by Poe’s rash personality - is not in vain while accompanying a ‘hero of the resistance’, what she is unaware of is how her assistance relates to Finn’s journey as he tries to live up to the esteem she sees him in, he had always considered himself a defector rather than a rebel. Rose (and DJ) open his eyes to a reality that not everything is black and white, he left the First Order in TFA because he believed that they were ‘wrong’ and so by default the resistance had to be ‘right’ but TLJ challenged Finn to see both sides and make a choice for himself, a choice that is made thanks to Rose. However, his embrace of being a rebel is why he is adamant to try and sacrifice himself for the laser battering ram. I have to point out that until Rose stepped in I thought Finn was gonna die, I thought it really ballsy and a little disappointing that they were gonna kill him off, I also knew that the ship would not stop the battering ram so it was actually a relief that Rose did save him.

I think people dislike it for that reason though, they felt that Finn dying would’ve been a more shocking narrative turn and because Rose saved him she is to ‘blame’, I also believe that people didn’t like the relationship because Finn was clearly still on Rey and not everyone was on the Reylo boat or it got in the way of FinnPoe being more than just a bromance (side note, at the start of RoS I thought they were sailing on the ReyPoe for a moment, though I’m not mad about how they went), but again, that shouldn’t be the fault of Rose’s character. Rose clearly was inspired by Finn’s reputation and grew fond of his personality the more time she spent with him, likewise Finn found himself wanting to earn her esteem and taking care of her, it’s actually a shame that Rose’s role gets heavily reduced in RoS, because I do feel like Rose could’ve filled Jannah’s role (nothing against Jannah or Naomi Ackie of course) with the Canto Bight horse-things instead of the Kef Bir horse-things. So to conclude this section, Rose was good in this film, she served a purpose to grow Finn as a character and most constructive criticisms against her revolve around things either out of her control as a character or without would diminish her character role completely. The Communication Issue between Holdo and Poe Alright, let’s throw some hands up before I rub them together. I agree that Holdo should’ve told people the plan, I do dislike it when a movie creates conflict made by a lack of communication. But, he will say rubbing his hands together, this does not ruin the film. It’s worth reminding that Poe is recently demoted for reckless behaviour, the Resistance’s entire offensive fleet was destroyed due to Poe wanting to destroy one Dreadnought Ship. A reasonable punishment for Poe on his arc to realise that being a leader is more than just winning a battle, but more on that later. So Holdo comes in, new squadron she barely knows because she’s taking over for Leia, she has a plan that she and Leia know but are the only living members who know now. So why doesn’t she tell Poe? It’s quite simple, not only does the novel imply that she’s figuring out if there’s a mole - which is understandable because the First Order must’ve watched Star Trek: Into Darkness and thought ‘hey we could track ships in hyperspeed too!’ - but she’s also trying to enforce Leia’s punishment to Poe. Poe is in this shit because he refused to listen to orders, so Holdo is basically telling Poe to listen to orders, something he refuses to do and starts a mutiny. It is frustrating yes and we side with Poe because he’s the more familiar character, but had Poe just proved himself a trustworthy person who is learning from Leia’s last decree before she went into a coma she would’ve told him. This also transitions nicely into the next criticism people have Canto Bight and the Cryptographer Goose-Chase Poe’s plans of mutiny starts with sending Rose and Finn to Canto Bight, at the behest of the massively underused Maz Kanata, to find a Cryptographer so that they could disable the hyperspace tracker. People hate this scene mainly because it segue’s from the plot, it’s high on CGI and reminds them of the Prequel Trilogy

Now I can’t really contest the CGI but it was nothing bad, CGI still gets used well and the visit to the Casino aided in time for Rose and Finn to establish a relationship, have some lightheated BB-8 moments, introduce DJ the speech impediment ‘wrong hacker’ and continue to drive the shades of grey theme Finn is about to learn about. People never seem to criticize that they put their faith in the wrong guy because it leads to a more interesting conflict, so it’s strange that they hate this transition so much. The Brevity of Snoke and Phasma Two characters introduced that promised to be big deals were killed off in The Last Jedi, the nature of them both was a brave scene that many felt dropped the ball on these characters. And while I am inclined to agree on Phasma at least, Snoke’s death was actually a great turn. Before RoS we were none the wiser on who Snoke was, now we’ve seen it we know that he was basically a mass-produced puppet by the emperor...not the best of closures I’d admit but the anger towards Snoke being killed off is actually hypocritical ‘All Snoke does is sit in his chair and die’ You know who else sat in his chair and ‘died’, ol’ Sheev Palpatine. People are quick to criticize that Snoke was hyped up but barely got to show anything when Palpatine only really demonstrated the force twice in the Original trilogy before being thrown into a pit of apparent death, we allowed the Emperor a pass because we learned more about him through novels and future movies, and that’s something we eventually find out from Snoke as well.

Captain Phasma on the other hand was a sad disappointment, after one brush with death already she returned to basically be killed off again as a symbol of Finn shedding his ties as an ex-stormtrooper and embracing the role of a rebel. This is not really the fault of Johnson though, everyone seems to be more content with the alternate scene where Finn exposes Phasma’s actions for TFA, but that was a choice from the cutting room. While we can be disappointed that Phasma didn’t leave enough of a mark on the trilogy, we can always hope for prequel stuff as we had with Boba Fett, an equally wasted character in his main trilogy who could theoretically be in The Mandalorian (only a theory, nothing is concrete), but if we are willing to love the Original Trilogy despite similar issues we hate on TLJ for then aren’t we being hypocrites? tHaT’s nOt HoW tHe FoRcE wOrKs If you try to pick on Rian Johnson for ‘not getting Star Wars’ directly you would be in for a world of punishment. Two major force powers that get used in The Last Jedi is the ‘Force Skype’ and Force Projection, however both are basically using the same techniques, one is connecting minds while the other is connecting one mind to an individual place. It’s immediately told to us that this is an advanced technique but this is not something Johnson has made up. In the EU this ability is called Simifuturus or just Doppelganger, practiced by Luke, Dooku and Yarael Poof. Rey and Ben’s Force Skype is also used in the EU called Force Bond, Chain or Jedi Kinship, the ability had been fine in beloved Star Wars games Knights of the Old Republic I & II, the Clone Wars and Rebels series and aplenty of novels. For the legitimacy of these abilities cannot be contested. The fact that the ability kills Luke shouldn’t be criticized either, Luke is projecting himself light years away on Crait, with a copy of Han’s dice in a much more polished form, he physically interacts with Leia and takes on a barrage of AT-M6 blasters - turbolasers that can destroy speeders and ships with one hit - and two lightsaber slices, remember Ben felt the impact from Rey’s blaster on their first Force Skype, so Luke carried the feeling of all that damage and strain on his body and maintained his projection. So not only did Luke’s dying moments lead to an incredible display of using the Force but also one that forced him to sustain an immeasurable amount of damage and still manage to bide the resistance time to escape. Leia Poppins Ah yes, the Mary Poppins moment. I dunno how I can explain this one so easily but how about this. Leia is force sensitive, we have known this since Jedi, so to see Leia use the force was a massive moment, but she’s floating in the vacuum of space so there is no ‘up’ she is basically pulling a heavier object than herself in a vacuum, using it as an anchor so she can get to a blast door. As to why she survives in space, you can survive up to 2 minutes in space without a helmet, it is horribly painful though, it’s also worth reminding that Leia is not a human like you or me and if the Force can heal (as shown in The Mandalorian and RoS) then why can’t it keep Leia alive a bit longer in Space? She ends up in a coma anyway so I don’t see why complaints are rife here, she survives barely and it’s not like they knew Carrie was going to die sometime after the film was completed, they obviously had more plans for her so it would’ve been wrong to kill her off there when we were already killing Luke off. Did Disney Ruin Star Wars? This is a statement I’ve heard a lot in regards to TLJ, Solo and RoS, which is weird though, people were fine with Disney doing TFA, Rogue One and The Mandalorian, Mando’s journey with Baby Yoda proving that the utility of fanservice - something the trio get loathed for - can be enjoyable and it bodes well that the director of some episodes is doing an Obi Wan film. The phrase ‘Star Wars Fatigue’ also came about from post-Solo reviews, which I have expressed is dumb because MCU do 3 marvel movies minimum a year. But the reason Solo got low box office figures wasn’t because it was bad, it’s because it was released around the same time as Deadpool 2, it was left to the sharks without a chance to succeed. So no, Disney have not ruined Star Wars, if anything fan perception has damaged the franchise with people hating it because it’s not the Original Trilogy or it’s too much like the Original Trilogy, the same can be said for the EU. RoS is quite similar to Dark Empire but because Disney retconned most of the EU it’s the enemy, but let’s be honest, does anyone want the continuity to be that Chewie gets blown up? I doubt that. So WHY does The Last Jedi deserve more respect I think the mixed reviews of Rise of Skywalker has proved that maybe TLJ got a harsh end of a stick, even with Abrams’ vision back at the helm the film proved to be divisive and personally quite safe. This is probably why I liked TLJ the most, Johnson went to challenge things and build off of the previous movies as a whole, nothing really was safe, it took narrative risks that opened the door to a lot more things.

We explored Rey’s connection to the force and her desires for answers being unable to be sated by it because she’s expecting more from her level of learning, we also have Snoke’s gambit to bond Ben and Rey together to strengthen both, Ben strengthens into a more mature state but continues to conflict in a less whiny way, even relenting from trying to kill his mother. We also got some ‘reverse Jedi’ stuff with both Ben and Rey adamant that the other will turn but instead of turning one another, Ben’s hatred however proves too great for Rey to accompany him which leads to Ben getting a villain promotion to Supreme Leader. We have a solid arc for Finn, Luke and Poe as he finally learns to take care of others, because as Rose was saying, sacrificing yourself is not going to beat the First Order, heroes are great but dead heroes win nothing, protecting others is the essence of the Resistance and that’s what a leader is meant to do. Hell, we even get a little Hux stuff, the way he slowly considers shooting Kylo Ren while he’s down and his constant abuse culminating in the rather obvious RoS reveal that he’s the spy. Unlike RoS, TLJ thrived on giving every major character worthwhile arcs like these which all ended up entwining in the climactic showdown, while tertiary characters did end up getting underused there were still windows for them to do more in the next episode which was taken out of Johnson’s hands, but he laid a lot of groundwork for the story to be taken multiple directions, which is actually quite difficult when you’re midway through a trilogy and on the 8th outing of a saga. In addition, the film provided Hamill’s best performance as Luke Skywalker, giving him a fitting end to his journey which explored almost every dimension of a Jedi’s character; training, temptation, losing faith and redemption.

I also loved how Johnson described the Force in TLJ, it wasn’t about Dark or Light, the Force was the Force, an energy that flows through all that is harnessed by the force sensitive, even Force Ghosts. And using the Puppet Yoda was a great and fun addition, and it makes sense that he can fire lightning, because Force Ghosts are one with the Force, they flow with the flow of nature. We got lore and demonstration of great powers that made the ‘holy shit’ moment of Kylo Ren stopping a blaster shot mid-flow look like novice work. And while we’re talking about ‘holy shit’ moments

You cannot deny that TLJ had some absolutely breathtaking visuals, moments in this film are some of the best moments in Star Wars, a combination of intensity and hype from Luke’s standoff with the First Order to Holdo’s hyperspace ram, Ahch-To’s real-life setting was also beautiful as were the design of Crait from its Icicle foxes to its salt speeders leaving a red path of smoke

This film looks beautiful and the story is multilayered with character development, worldbuilding, good action and gutsy plot twists, you know everything people (rightfully) praise The Mandalorian for. It’s definitely not a film where you’d find yourself bored and when you set aside your fan theories and the illusion that the Original Trilogy was Flawless save for the Death Star plot hole you will find this movie a lot more enjoyable. Now I don’t want people saying it’s a ‘Don’t Question, Consume’ sorta thing, it’s a matter of accepting that there are flaws but not allowing it to ruin the experience, because The Last Jedi embodies a lot of the essence of Star Wars old and new, it is probably the best that the New Trilogy has provided and it is certainly worthy of respect.

#star wars #star wars spoilers #star wars the last jedi #the last jedi #luke skywalker #princess leia #rey #kylo ren #ben solo #snoke #supreme leader snoke #poe #poe dameron #rose tico #rian johnson

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upontheshelfreviews · 5 years

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Last year I talked about Fantasia, which is not just one of my favorite Disney movies, but one of my favorite movies in general. And if I may be self-indulgent for a moment, it’s also one of the reviews that I’m the proudest of. Fantasia is a visual, emotional masterpiece that marries music and art in a manner few cinematic ventures have come close to replicating. One question that remains is what my thoughts on the long-gestated sequel is –

…you might wanna get yourselves some snacks first.

As anyone who read my review on the previous film knows, Fantasia was a project ahead of its time. Critics and audiences turned their noses up at it for conflicting reasons, and the film didn’t even make it’s budget back until twenty-something years later when they began marketing it to a very different crowd.

“I don’t wanna alarm you dude, but I took in some Fantasia and these mushrooms started dancing, and then there were dinosaurs everywhere and then they all died, but then these demons were flying around my head and I was like WOOOOOAAAHHH!!”

“Yeah, Fantasia is one crazy movie, man.”

“Movie?”

Fantasia’s unfortunate box office failure put the kibosh on Walt Disney’s plans to make it a recurring series with new animated shorts made to play alongside handpicked favorites. The closest he came to following through on his vision was Make Mine Music and Melody Time, package features of shorts that drew from modern music more than classical pieces.

Fast-forward nearly fifty years later to the golden age known as the Disney Renaissance: Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney surveys the new crop of animators, storytellers, and artists who are creating hit after hit and have brought the studio back to his uncle’s glory days, and thinks to himself, “Maybe now we can make Uncle Walt’s dream come true.” He made a good case for it, but not everyone was on board. Jeffrey Katzenberg loathed the idea, partly because he felt the original Fantasia was a tough act to follow (not an entirely unreasonable doubt) but most likely due to the fact that the last time Disney made a sequel, The Rescuers Down Under, it drastically underperformed (even though the reasons for that are entirely Katzenberg’s fault. Seriously, watch Waking Sleeping Beauty and tell me you don’t want to punch him in the nose when Mike Gabriel recalls his opening weekend phone call).

Once Katzenberg was out of the picture, though, Fantasia 2000, then saddled with the less dated but duller moniker Fantasia Continued, got the go-ahead. Many of the sequences were made simultaneously as the animated features my generation most fondly remembers, others were created to be standalone shorts before they were brought into the fold. Since it was ready in time for the new millennium, it not only got a name change but a massive marketing campaign around the fact that it would be played on IMAX screens for a limited run, the very first Disney feature to do so. As a young Fantasia fan who had never been to one of those enormous theaters before, I begged and pleaded my parents to take me. Late that January, we traveled over to the IMAX theater at Lincoln Center, the only one nearest to us since they weren’t so widespread as they are now, and what an experience it was. I can still recall the feeling of awe at the climax of Pines of Rome, whispering eagerly with my mom at how the beginning of Rhapsody in Blue looked like a giant Etch-A-Sketch, and jumping twenty feet in the air when the Firebird’s massive eyes popped open. But did later viewings recapture that magic, or did that first time merely color my perception?

We open on snippets from the original Fantasia…IN SPAAAAAAAAACE!

It reminds me a little of the opening to Simply Mad About The Mouse, where bits of classic Disney nostalgia fly about to evoke the mood of this upcoming musical venture. In a clever conceit, snippets of Deems Taylor’s original opening narration explaining Fantasia’s intent and music types plays over the orchestra and animators materializing and gearing up for the first sequence, which jumps right into –

DUN DUN DUN DUUUUUUN – I mean, Symphony #5 – Ludwig Van Beethoven

Here, a bunch of butterflies flee and then fight off swarms of bats with the power of light – I can’t be the only one who saw these things and thought it was butterflies vs. bats, right?

It does look cool with its waterfalls and splashes of light and color bursting through the clouds, but this brings me to a bit of contention I have with the movie.

When I planned this review I was going to do a new version of “Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing”, except there were only four major complaints I could think of that. On further introspection, I admit they are legitimate grievances worth addressing. I’m going to get them out of the way all at once in order to keep things rolling.

#1 – This Seems Familiar…

Certain sequences are noticeably derivative from the first movie. It’s as if they were afraid of trying too many new things that would alienate audiences so they borrowed from their predecessor in an effort to say “Hey, we can do this too!” Symphony #5 is clearly trying to be Tocatta and Fugue with its abstract geometric shapes swooping all over to kick things off. Though I love how much character the animators managed to give two pairs of triangles, Tocatta’s soaring subconscious flights of fancy leaves me more enthralled. Carnival of the Animals literally began as a sequel to Dance of the Hours until the ostriches became flamingoes. And Roy E. Disney openly stated he wanted the last sequence, The Firebird Suite to have the same death and rebirth theme as Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria, which they got, right down to a terrifying symbol of destruction emerging from a mountain to wreak chaos.

‘Sup, witches?

#2 – Too Short

Speaking of repeating the past, the original idea for Fantasia 2000 was to follow Walt’s vision in that three favorite segments would make a return amongst the newer ones – the Nutcracker Suite, which was eventually cut for time, Dance of the Hours, which I’ve already stated morphed into Carnival of the Animals, and finally, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the obvious choice to keep since that’s the most popular piece out of any of them. Cutting things for time doesn’t make that much sense, however, when you realize that Fantasia 2000’s runtime is only 75 minutes. A very short animated film by today’s standards that lasts barely half as long as its previous installment. I don’t see why they couldn’t keep at least one other sequence from the first Fantasia to make things last a little longer and keep in the original idea’s spirit.

#3 – All Story, No Experimentation

Unlike the first Fantasia, all of the sequences have a linear narrative structure that’s easy to follow. Not a bad thing and kudos to you if you’re among that group who prefers Fantasia 2000 for because of that, but again, I admire how the original film didn’t stick to a coherent story the whole time; how it was unafraid to let the music, atmosphere, and visuals speak for itself without sticking to a three-act plot and designated protagonist for every piece.

#4 – The One You’ve Been Waiting For, The Host Segments

One of the things that turned Fantasia off for its detractors was Deems Taylor’s seemingly dry narration. But maybe Fantasia 2000 can fix that with some folks who are hip and with it, perhaps a wild and crazy guy or two…

Eh, he’ll do.

Now, the idea of varying segment hosts isn’t an altogether bad idea. Most of them work well: Angela Lansbury gives the lead-in to the Firebird Suite plenty of gravitas befitting the finale, as do Ithzak Perlman, Quincy Jones, and James Earl Jones, who build plenty of intrigue for Pines of Rome, Rhapsody in Blue and Carnival of the Animals respectively; this seriousness makes James’ reaction to what the Carnival segment is really about a successful comic subversion. Even Penn and Teller for all their obnoxiousness kind of works with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice due to the linking magic theme.

I suppose what turns people off is the self-congratulatory tone and seemingly forced attempts at comedy you get from Martin, Penn, Teller, and Bette Midler. But you know what? They still make me laugh after all these years (well, you have to laugh at Bette Midler’s antics or she’ll come after you when the Black Flame Candle is lit). In fact, I have to hand it to Midler’s intro in particular. Fantasia 2000 came out right around the time I began taking a keen interest in what animation really was and how it was made. For me, her preceding The Steadfast Tin Soldier piece with tidbits about Fantasia segments that didn’t make it past the drawing board was like the first free hit that turned me into an animation junkie (plus this was before you could look up anything on the topic in extraneous detail on the internet, so it had that going for it). If I have to nitpick, though, The Divine Miss M referring to Salvador Dalí as “the melting watches guy” is a bit reductive. That’d be like calling Babe Ruth “the baseball guy” or Walt Disney “the mouse and castle guy”. Plus, Dalí and Disney were close compadres with a layered history. They planned on many collaborations, though the fruit of their labors, Destino, would not be completed in either of their lifetimes. Couldn’t show just a modicum of respect there, Bette?

Ahhh! I take it back! Don’t steal my soul!

So, I wouldn’t say I hate or even completely dislike the host segments. Sorry to disappoint everyone who was hoping for me to rip into them. They’re not awful, just uneven. And if you think they ruin the movie for me, you’ve got another think coming.

Pines of Rome – Ottorino Respighi

The idea for Pines of Rome’s visuals came about due to an unusual detail in some concept art. Someone noticed that a particular cloud in a painting of the night sky heavily resembled a flying whale. So why make a short about flying whales? The better question would be why NOT make a short about flying whales? A supernova in the night sky miraculously gives some whales the ability to swim through the air over the icy seas. Again, seeing this in IMAX was incredible. There’s just one minor issue I have with. This and another segment were developed well before Pixar made its silver screen debut, and unfortunately, it shows twenty years later; the worst cases are the close-ups.

Okay, who put googly eyes on the moldy beanbag?

There are ways of blending CGI and hand-drawn animation well, and this isn’t one of them. I understand the necessity of having expressive eyes but simply dropping one on top of a CGI creature gives it a bit of an uncanny valley feel. They should have either stuck with traditional all the way or made the whales entirely CG. The CG animation of the whales themselves isn’t too shabby, so they could have pulled it off.

Because simply giving whales flight apparently isn’t enough to hold an audience’s interest, we have an adorable baby whale earning his wings, so to speak. Once he gets his bearings above the surface, he swoops ahead of his family and bothers a flock of seagulls. They chase him into a collapsing iceberg, leaving him trapped, alone and unable to fly. The quiet dip in the music combined with the image of this lost little calf adds some genuine emotional weight to this piece. The baby navigates the iceberg’s claustrophobic caverns until he finds a crevice that elevates him back to his worried parents. From there a whole pod of whales rises out of the ocean to join them as they fly upwards to the supernova’s source.

“So long, and thanks for all the krill!”

As the music reaches its brilliant crescendo, the whales plow through storm clouds until they reach the top of the world and breach through the stars like water. It’s an awe-inspiring climax of a short that, flaws and all, reminds you of what Fantasia is all about.

Majestic.

Rhapsody in Blue – George Gershwin

The music of jazz composer George Gershwin? Timeless. The art of renowned caricaturist Al Hirschfeld? Perfection. All this brought to life with the best animation Disney has to offer? It’s a match made in heaven. Eric Goldberg, who animated the Genie among other comedic characters, idolized Hirschfeld and drew plenty of inspiration from drawings, so getting to work alongside him while making this was nothing short of a dream come true. That attention to detail in rendering Hirschfeld’s trademark curvy two-dimensional style goes beyond mere homage. It is a love letter to a great artist that encapsulates everything about him and his craft, and to a great city that we both had the honor of calling home. The story goes that Goldberg screened the final product for Hirschfeld shortly before his 96th birthday and his wife told him after that it was the best gift he could have ever received.

All this to say I am quite fond of this particular short, thank you very much.

The piece follows four characters navigating 1930’s Manhattan and crossing paths over the course of a single day:

Duke, a construction worker torn between his steady, monotonous job and following his dream of drumming in a jazz band,

Joe, a victim of the Great Depression desperately looking for work,

Rachel, a little girl who wants to spend time with her parents but is forced to attend lesson after lesson by her strict governess,

and “Flying” John, a henpecked husband longing to be free from his overbearing wife –

And her little dog too!

By the way, John is modeled in name and in looks after Disney animation historian John Culhane, who also was the inspiration for The Rescuers’ Mr. Snoops, hence why the two look so similar. He’s not the only name who appears in this sequence: Gershwin himself makes a surprise cameo as he takes over Rachel’s piano solo halfway through the story.

Speaking of, my family used to compare me to Rachel because at that point in my young life I was doing or already did the same mandatory activities as she – swimming, ballet, music, sports, all with the same amount of speed and varying degrees of success.

No one can argue that art is where we both excelled, however.

The physical timing of Rhapsody in Blue’s animation is hilarious, though it doesn’t rely wholly on slapstick for its humor. The sight gags and clever character dynamics all weaved into the music milk plenty of laughs, and envelop you in this living, breathing island that is Manhattan.

I speak from experience, this is the most accurate depiction of commuting on the 1 train that there ever was.

Even with such a premise and two masters of combining comedy and art, there is still enough pathos to keep the story rooted. Take when all four characters are at their lowest point. They look down on some skaters in Rockefeller Center and picture themselves in their place fulfilling their deepest desires. Seeing their dreams so close in their minds and yet so far away while paired with the most stirring part of the score is heartwrenching.

In the end, things pick up as the characters unwittingly solve each other’s problems. Duke quits the construction site, leaving an opening for Joe to fill. Joe accidentally snags John’s wife on a hook and hauls her screaming into the air, allowing him one night of uninhibited fun at the club where Duke performs.

“Anyone hear something? Nah, it’s probably just me.”

Rachel loses her ball while fighting with her nanny, which Duke bounces off the window of her parents’ office, which in turn gets them to notice their daughter about to run into traffic and they save her. Everyone gets their happy ending and it ends on a spectacularly glamorous shot of Time Square lit up in all its frenetic neon glory.

And not a single knockoff costumed character hitting up tourists for photos. Those were the days, my friend.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I adore Rhapsody in Blue. It’s easily my favorite part of the movie; a blissful ménage-a-trois of art style, music and storytelling, and it’s so New York that the only New York things I could think of that are missing are Central Park and amazing bagels. This sequence is gut-busting, energized, emotional, and mesmerizing in its form. I don’t often say I love a piece of animation so much that I’d marry it, but when I do, it’s often directed at Rhapsody in Blue.

Piano Concerto #2 – Dmitri Shostakovich (aka The One With The Steadfast Tin Soldier)

This piece has an interesting history attached to it. Disney wanted to do an animated film surrounding Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales – including The Little Mermaid and The Steadfast Tin Soldier – as far back as the 30’s, but the project fell by the wayside. During Fantasia 2000’s production, Roy E. Disney asked if they could do something with Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto #2 since he and his daughter were attached to that piece. He looked over sketches and storyboards made for the unrealized Tin Soldier sequence and discovered the music matched in perfect time with the story.

This is the second sequence that features CGI at the forefront. Unlike Pines of Rome, though, it works because the main characters are toys, and you can get away with your early CGI looking shiny and metallic and plastic-like when you’re animating toys.

Hell, it worked for Pixar.

The story centers on a tin soldier cast with only one leg who is shunned by his comrades for routinely throwing off their groove. He falls in love with a porcelain ballerina when he mistakes her standing en pointe as her also missing a limb. Despite his embarrassment when he learns the truth, the ballerina is enamored with him as well. This rouses the jealousy of an evil jack-in-the-box who I swear is a caricature of Jeffrey Katzenberg minus the glasses but with a goatee and Lord Farquaad wig.

“MUST. CHOP. EVERYTHING!!!”

The jack-in-the-box and the soldier duke it out for a bit before the former sends the latter flying out the window in a little wooden boat. The boat floats the soldier into the sewers and attracts a horde of angry rats who attack him, because animated rodents seem to have a natural hatred towards toy soldiers.

Case in point.

The soldier hurtles into the sea where he’s eaten by a fish – which is caught the following morning, packed up to be sold at market, bought by the cook who works at the very house he came from, and he falls out of the fish’s mouth on the floor where his owner finds him and places him back with the rest of the toys. Now the story this is based on hints that the jack-in-the-box is really a goblin who orchestrates the soldier’s misfortunes with his malicious magic. But based the extremely coincidental circumstances of his return home, I’d say the soldier’s the one who’s got some reality-warping tricks up his sleeve.

The soldier and jack-in-the-box duel again that evening, but this time the harlequin harasser falls into the fireplace and burns up. Our hero gets the girl and lives happily ever after. A nice conclusion, though a far cry from what happened in the original tale: the ballerina is knocked into the fire, the soldier jumps in after her, and all that remains of them by morning is some melted tin in the shape of a heart. I gotta say, for all my love of classic fairytales, Disney made the right call. Andersen’s life was far from magical and it reflected in his stories, making many of them depressing for no good reason. The triumphant note the music ends on also would have clashed horribly if they stuck with the original. Even the Queen of Denmark agreed with Disney’s decision to soften their adaptations of Andersen’s work. I don’t know if I’d call The Steadfast Tin Soldier one of my very favorite parts of Fantasia 2000, but in the end, s’all right.

Carnival of the Animals: Finale – Camille Sant-Saëns

This shortest of shorts (clocking in at less than two minutes) kicks off with James Earl Jones asking with as much seriousness as he can muster from the situation, what would happen if you gave a yo-yo to a flock of flamingos?

The answer –

Good answer!

Fie on those who dismiss this part as a silly one-off that doesn’t belong here. Fie, I say! It’s a pure delight full of fun expressions and fluid fast-paced action. Once again we have my man Eric Goldberg to thank for this, though this time he animated it entirely by himself. I’d call it a one-man show except for the fact that his wife Susan handpainted the entire thing with watercolor, making it look like it sprung to life straight from a paintbrush. It’s a simple diversion about a flamingo who wants to play with his yo-yo while the other snooty members of his flock try to force him to conform. As you can see from the still, they fail quite epically. Nothing beats the power of nonconformity and yo-yos (also every yo-yo move featured here is authentic; I love when animators go that extra mile).

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice plays next, but since I already touched on that in the first Fantasia review, I’m skipping over it. The segment ends with Mickey congratulating Leopold Stokowski (again), then crossing the barriers of time and space to inform the conductor, James Levine, that he needs to track down the star of the next segment, Donald Duck. Levine stalls by explaining a bit about what’s to come while Mickey frantically searches for his errant costar. The surround sound sells the notion of him moving around the back of the theater accidentally causing mischief all the while. Thankfully, Donald is found and the sequence commences.

Pomp and Circumstance – Edward Elgar

This famous piece of music was included at the insistence of Michael Eisner after he attended his son’s graduation ceremony. He wanted to feature a song that everyone was already familiar with. Of course, since this was after Frank Well’s untimely passing and no one was bold enough to temper Eisner’s worst instincts with common sense, his original pitch had every animated couple Disney created up to that point marching on to Noah’s Ark – and then marching out with their babies.

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Okay, A: Unless you’re doing a groin hit joke or are Ralph Bakshi or R. Crum, cartoon characters don’t have junk as a rule. And B, one of the unwritten rules of Disney animation is that barring kids that already exist like the titular 101 Dalmatians or Duchess’ kittens, the established canon couples do not in any official capacity have children.

To which Eisner laughed maniacally and vowed that they would.

But in order to placate Eisner’s desire to turn every branch of the Disney corporation into a commercial for itself, the animators compromised and agreed to do Pomp and Circumstance with the Noah’s Ark theme, BUT with only one couple – Donald and Daisy Duck. In this retelling of the biblical tale, Donald acts as Noah’s beleaguered assistant (I guess Shem, Ham, and Japheth were too busy rounding up the endangered species). Daisy provides emotional support while preparing to move on to the ark as well. It’s refreshing to see these two not losing their temper at each other for a change. I wish we got to see this side of their relationship more often. Donald returns Daisy’s easily lost plot device locket to her and as the rain rain rain comes down down down, he starts directing the animals on board; the lions, the tigers, the bears, the…ducks?

Anyway, all the animals and Donald get on board – well, most of them do.

The world’s first climate change deniers.

Donald realizes Daisy hasn’t arrived yet and runs out to look for her, unaware that she’s already boarded. Daisy sees Donald leaving but is too late to stop him before the first floodwaters hit their home. Donald made it back to the ark in time, however, though both of them believe that the other is forever lost to them. I find it astounding that they never run into each other not even once during the forty days and forty nights they’re cooped up on that boat. It’s the American Tail cliche all over again, and well, at least it’s happening in a short and not the entire movie.

Soon the ark lands atop Mount Ararat and the animals depart in greater numbers than when they embarked on their singles cruise. Daisy realizes halfway down the mountain that she’s lost her locket again, which Donald finds at that very moment while sweeping up, and the two are joyously reunited.

“I thought you were dead!” “I thought YOU were dead!”

I kid around, but I truly enjoy this short a lot. There’s so much warmth to Donald and Daisy’s relationship that makes their reunion at the end all the sweeter, and there’s plenty of great slapstick to offset the drama in the meantime. I will admit it’s nice to hear there’s more to Pomp And Circumstance than just the famous march, and the entire suite matches flawlessly with the visuals, though the main theme itself is so ingrained into the public consciousness that it’s difficult to extricate it from that what we’ve seen accompany it countless times.

Come on, you all know what I’m talking about.

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“What? Don’t tell me YOU don’t think of heads exploding like fireworks when you hear Pomp and Circumstance! Name one other life-changing moment could you possibly associate it with…you weirdo.”

The Firebird Suite – Igor Stravinsky

Fantasia 2000 comes to a close with a piece that has some emotional resonance if you know your history. You might remember from my first Fantasia review that Igor Stravinsky was disappointed with how Rite of Spring turned out, especially since he was a big admirer of Walt Disney and really wanted to do more projects with him beforehand. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they picked his premiere ballet to end the movie on decades later. After all these years, Disney worked hard to do right by Stravinsky – with a few twists, though. Instead of a balletic retelling of Russian folktales involving kidnapped princesses and immortal sorcerers, we have a fantastical allegory for the circle of life.

No, not that circle of life.

A lone elk who I’m fairly convinced is the Great Prince of the Forest walks through the forest in the dead of winter. With his breath, he awakens the spirit of the woods and one of the most beautiful characters Disney has ever created, the Spring Sprite.

I. Love. This character. Her design is gorgeous, shifting from a shimmery opalescent blue as she steps out of the water into an eternally flowing fount of live greenery spreading from her hair in her wake. Wherever she moves, grass, flowers, and trees blossom, fulfilling the idea of a springtime goddess more than Disney’s own Goddess of Spring ever did. The Sprite was a massive influence in developing my art style, particularly in her face and expressive eyes, and I used to draw her a lot. Visit any relative of mine and chances are you’ll find a picture of her by me hanging up on a wall somewhere in their house. Yet there’s far more to her character than just a pretty representation of nature; there’s plenty of curiosity, spunk, determination, and a drive for creativity. I love her frustrated expression when she’s dissatisfied with the tiny flower she sculpts out of the ground and how her face lights up when she morphs it into a buttercup as tall as she is.

The Sprite paints the forest with all the colors of the wind (mostly green) until she reaches a mountain that isn’t affected by her magic. Perplexed, she climbs it until she finds a large hunched over rock figure – or is it an egg? – standing inside. She reaches out to touch it and…

The Sprite has awakened her counterpart, the wrathful and deadly Firebird. Think giant evil phoenix made of smoke, flame and lava. And it goes without saying that seeing this on the biggest screen left quite the terrifying impact. One of the biggest inspirations for this sequence was the eruption of Mount St. Helens (though the shot of the Sprite surveying the breadth of the Firebird’s destruction reminds me far too much of the Australian bushfires going on) and the sheer horror of nature’s irrepressible chaos is fully captured here. But the Firebird refuses to settle for merely destroying the Sprite’s handiwork, oh no. It won’t rest until creation itself is consumed, and the Sprite is reduced to a powerless mite as she scrabbles to escape the Firebird’s relentless pursuit of her. Try as she might, however, the towering monster corners and devours her in one fell swoop.

The forest is reduced to gray ashes in the wake of the Firebird’s rampage, but the Great Prince has survived. Once again he brings the Sprite to life with his breath, only this time she is tiny and weak (the animation of her slowly developing from the ash into her huddled ragged form is breathtaking). Now, I didn’t think I’d get emotional revisiting a small part of a single movie I’ve rewatched countless times before but viewing this through a mature eye combined with the beauty of the Firebird Suite’s climax and its timely message has caused me to see it in a new light:

The Sprite is utterly broken by what she’s been through and the destruction she carelessly caused. She’s lost all faith in herself and in the idea of returning the forest to what it once was. Even so, the Prince gently insists on carrying her on his antlers to the remains of their favorite cherry blossom tree. Where her tears fall, grass shoots begin to sprout. This fills the Sprite with hope, and she soars into the air becoming one with the sky and rains life down on the forest. New trees burst from the earth. The air is filled with leaves and pollen and new life flowing from her essence. The Sprite’s joy and power grow so strong that she even encircles the Firebird’s mountain in all her verdant glory. Life and creation overcome death and destruction. It’s not Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria, but it’s close.

And unfortunately, that’s the biggest problem Fantasia 2000 has.

While working on the original Fantasia, a storyman made the mistake of referring to the work they were doing in “the cartoon medium” in Walt’s presence. Walt turned on him and snapped “This is NOT ‘the cartoon medium’. It should not be limited to cartoons. We have worlds to conquer.”

And conquer they did…just not the way Walt intended.

The point I’m trying to make is Walt was breaking new ground and experimenting with things nobody ever tried when it came to Fantasia. While those risks were initially deemed a failure, it eventually gained the recognition it deserved from the animation and filmmaking community. Any attempt to recreate the magic of Fantasia is no small feat. But rather than taking new risks that not even the first film dared, the studio opted to adhere to Fantasia’s formula with pieces that recall if not flat out copy from the original segments. I hesitate to call it a pale imitation or cash grab however because this was done for the art much more than the money (though Eisner was probably hoping it would bring in some bank). There’s even a little bit of depth to it: while the first Fantasia had themes of differing natures in conflict – light vs. dark, fire vs. water, etc. – Fantasia 2000’s theme is accidental but brilliantly meta: CGI vs. traditional animation, a conflict Disney would become very familiar with in the decade following the film’s release. In some ways, it reminds me of Epcot’s genesis. The driving force behind it was long gone, but the attempt to bring it to life as close to the original vision as possible is still much appreciated.

For all my gripes, I really do enjoy Fantasia 2000. Perhaps not on the same level as its predecessor, but it has its moments, oh yes. And believe me, as far as Disney sequels go, you could do far, far, far worse than this one. Fantasia 2000 is Fantasia’s kid sister mimicking its beloved older sibling in an attempt to show it can be cool like the big kids too. But hey, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this review, please consider supporting this misfit on Patreon. Patreon supporters receive great perks such as extra votes for movie reviews, movie requests, early sneak-peeks and more! If I can hit my goal of $100 a month, I can go back to weekly tv series reviews. As of now, I’m only $20 away! Special thanks to Amelia Jones, Gordhan Rajani and Sam Minden for their contributions! I’ll see you in a few weeks when I and review the 1959 Disney animated classic, Sleeping Beauty!

Artwork by Charles Moss.

Screencaps from animationscreencaps.com

Yes, I know The Lion King and Lady and the Tramp ended with the titular characters having babies, but was there anyone out there apart from Eisner who demanded there be sequels to those films that focused on their offspring?

January Review: Fantasia 2000 Last year I talked about Fantasia, which is not just one of my favorite Disney movies, but one of my favorite movies in general.

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fly-pow-bye · 6 years

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DuckTales 2017 - “The Ballad of Duke Baloney!”

Story by: Francisco Angones, Madison Bateman, Colleen Evanson, Christian Magalhaes, Bob Snow

Written by: Colleen Evanson

Storyboarded by: Jean-Sebastien Duclos, Mike Morris, Sam King

Directed by: Jason Zurek

Not full of balogna.

Here’s an interesting way to start this "ballad": begin with a scene from the season finale that didn't really have a conclusion. I just saw as a good way to include a beloved villain in a montage filled with cameos from previous episodes. There was clearly more to this story, but it wasn't important compared to the whole "sorceress just took over the entire town" plot.

In particular, Glomgold’s shadow ends up throwing him into the ocean. As he shouts “curse you, me”, he ends up nearly drowning, only to be saved by some fishers.

Specifically, he wakes up to find himself caught in a net. Glomgold reacts as well as one would expect, telling these fishermen to get their hands off of him. Turns out, that's not the right word to say.

Lady: Whoa, fisherperson?

The "gag" with her is that she wants everything to be more socially conscious, though I'm not sure if this is supposed to be one. Their names, from left to right, are Fisher and Mann, something Fisher point out almost immediately to defend this stranger's wrong word. Glomgold isn't having it, and asks them if they knows who he is. They don't, as they're simple fisherpeople. He tries to exclaim in a dramatic way, until he realizes...

...even he doesn’t know. Yes, this episode starts with that cliche where someone loses all of his memories after a bump in the head, or a bunch of water going through it in this case. However, they use this as an excuse.

After the theme song, we cut to a report showing what exactly happened between Glomgold’s disappearance and now. A new CEO just barged into Glomgold’s absence, as she literally pushes away his silhouette to reveal herself. Her name is Zan Owlson. I swear, I misheard it as Van Owlsing, and that still made sense. Glomgold is practically a vampire compared to her.

Even the newsreporter decides to tell the viewers that this new CEO is not insane. We get a small bio of her past: she was the top of her class, and she ran a charity called Change for Chicks! No, Johnny Bravo, she means literal chicks. Unlike her predecessor, she cuts a lot of funding dedicated to revenge and sharks. Even moreso unlike her predecessor, she is completely open to make deals with long-time rival company McDuck Enterprises, as we see her shake hands with its CEO.

In other words, she’s exactly the opposite of Glomgold in every way, as enhanced by the news cutting to a Simpsons-esque file photo gag of him eating shrimp in an unflattering manner at a charity auction. Maybe the one from The Golden Lagoon from Agony Plains?

It’s also shown by the old Glomgold logo being replaced by a treasure chest filled with a bunch of people. She doesn’t even include herself in this, definitely not something Glomgold would do.

Zan Owlson: At Glomgold Industries, our community is the greatest treasure of all.

She even makes an outright reference to the Glomgold motto that Glomgold just made up to get those henchmen he hired to like him in Woo-oo. What happened to those guys?

We cut from the newsreport, which we barely get back to, to a fisherperson's wharf, where Louie and Webby are planning on going fishing. While it’s a day in the limelight episode for Glomgold, that doesn’t mean we don’t get to see the nephews and honorary niece.

Webby is all about hunting fish in a more barbaric way with a stick, while Louie just wants to fish with a fishing rod. Louie is more of the straight man here, though they seem to swap back and forth between scenes depending on one's viewpoint. They do realize that they forgot one thing that would help them immensely, and there happens to be someone with a South African accent.

While his beard was dyed by several unfortunate squid ink-related accidents and his accent has changed, it’s clearly the duck that attempted to kill them and their uncle several times over. They react very similarly to Bart and Lisa Simpson reacting to Sideshow Bob, but this bearded guy has no idea who this Glomgold guy is.

He rechristened himself “Duke Baloney”, just like the humble sandwich meat, in his words. This does not go well with Louie, who already makes the obvious quip about his name. Webby has to take him aside to talk about this.

Webby and Louie get into their conflict, though for Webby, it's a little less defined and more just "she doesn't agree with Louie's idea". Louie thinks this is all just an act, and he even says he should know because it takes a con artist to know one. Webby, on the other hand, thinks that he really is suffering from this and needs to go back to his old self. Either that, or maybe this is Glomgold turning into a good person like a reverse werewolf, her reasoning changes throughout the episode.

They do humor the idea that maybe this guy is just a different person altogether, but then he gets caught in his own rope trap.

Duke Baloney: Curse you, rope!

Louie & Webby: It’s him.

This is a slight hint that this will probably not be permanent. That would be an odd way to write off a huge arch-nemesis!

Glomgold invites them over to what I now realize is the closest TV-Y7-FV equivalent to a bar, offering them a bucket of fish heads, to Louie's disapproval. I’m sure real ducks eat a lot worse than that.

Webby tries to show off a Missing poster with Glomgold on it that also seems to function as a wanted poster due to tax evasion! Oh, how unrealistic, everyone knows rich people always get away with that. Unfortunately, all this gets is scorn from Baloney’s fellow crewmates for even suggesting he’s related to that tyrant. This is a "bully-free zone" according to that one fisherperson, after all. That's pretty much it for the socially conscious aspect of her character.

Even Louie joins in on this chants along with everyone else. Sure, he was totally against the guy, but the boy just wants his free Pep! However, Webby notices the money happens to have a very fancy money clip. They decide to stay back to investigate this from afar.

A general theme that pops up in this episode is that Duke Baloney may have amnesia, but his inner Glomgold continues to show more and more. This especially comes in once we see a McDuck Enterprise company get involved. While this doesn't entirely revive his memory, he does get a sudden dislike for "that boat."

This is especially shown with disagreements with his fellow crewmembers. The crewmembers are okay with being #2, However, considering #1 is owned the richest duck in the world, I wouldn't blame them for not wanting to fight a battle they can't win. Duke Baloney, on the other hand, doesn't see that as impossible.

One clever bit is that he does the cliche “look at me, I’m a pretty lady and not a trap” gag, and realizes he could get more fish if he did something for the ladies, too. He never does realize that, if this plan did work, he would get some really messy fish guts. All in all, aside from the dynamite, he just seems like this misunderstood guy who’s down on his luck.

At least, that's what Webby thinks. Louie accuses her of being naive about this, as that’s what she assumed when she was a humble deliveryman and a humble pastry chef. Yeah, Louie, you invited him to a party, if I remember correctly.

While looking at Baloney trying to convince his fellow co-fisherpeople to do a plan that is oddly similar to that Scottish guy. Webby & Louie, continuing to spy on this kind fellow to confirm their different suspicions. Louie says that he's going to be thrown in a pit full of sharks with bombs strapped on to them. Webby says that's ridiculous...

...and we immediately cut to Duke Baloney's plan to get fish, which just happened to get to the part involving sharks with bombs strapped onto them. They don't have womp womp music, they're not that blatant most of the time.

This whole scene is funny, though; it's just like that scene from The Infernal Internship of Mark Beaks where Glomgold details his plan with similar drawing. Speaking of plots that weren't resolved in the episode that could use a continuation...that one. Louie and Webby still can't see what any of this could prove, so Webby has an idea that Louie is not a big fan of: record investigation!

Granted, Louie getting hit in the face probably didn't help in any way. I like how the next scene shows Louie walking into Webby’s investigation room. See, anything can have a consequence, even slight gags like that one.

She gets out her board, with a drawing of the moneyclip, a picture of Glomgold, and a picture of Duke Baloney, and...nothing else. She couldn't find anything. Not only is there no record of Duke Baloney, there’s no record of Flintheart Glomgold before he came to America.

In order to find more information and possibly either reveal Glomgold's evil plan or bring Glomgold back to normal, they decide to do a plan involving a certain rich duck. If one can ask why would they want to bring Glomgold back to his former self to terrorize the McDucks, just wait.

Meanwhile, in Duke Baloney’s dreams, we see a bizarre sequence full of odd imagery. Some of it is obviously referencing what will happen in the future, some of which possibly not even in this episode. One of the big ones that isn’t addressed again is that shot on the bottom left. Everyone knows Glomgold is evil, but…is there a more spiritual reason we don’t know about?

That’s not the only unanswered question, either. The shortest description I could say is that he constantly gets a message from what looks like his younger self that the boiler room is out, who slowly turns into Zan Owlson. No connection is made to how Glomgold would be familiar enough with the new CEO to have her appear in his dreams, since all of this happened after he got amnesia.

While most of this dream sequence's symbolism is subtle, there is one line that just whacks you right in the head.

Duke Baloney: This GOLD! It’s GLOOMING onto me!

Yeah, that’s pretty forced. It's at the end of the dream sequence, they may have felt that they needed something blatant at the end to make him wake up.

He wakes up, and his final reaction to all of this? To essentially tell himself to "never mind all that." Hey, it’s not like those dreams mean anything, anyway!

While Duke Baloney is getting welcomed into the family of fisherpeople and telling himself that nothing can possibly ruin this day, in comes Scrooge McDuck. He was invited by Webby and Louie the to talk it out to see what's really going on.

We don't get to hear their conversations, and neither do Louie and Webby, so Webby tries to read their lips. Of course, she does it in a way that makes it seem like she was right all along, even making them say "oh, that Webby was correct all along, huh? I wish I was his housekeeper's granddaughter!" However, while she may be able to read lips, the next move shocks both her and Louie. They look like they're going to fight...

...and then they hug it out. After all the time of Webby seemingly succeeding at everything she does throughout Season 1, it’s a little refreshing to see her actually be wrong for a change. Nobody’s perfect...I learned that with the last episode. Scrooge tells them he's far happier this way, and they should just let him be Duke Baloney.

Webby and Louie accept this, and decide to go back to their initial plan of fishing. However, a storm is brewing.

Duke Baloney, who somehow has that missing/wanted poster, decides that even if he was this Glomgold fellow, he wants his life at the sea. He throws the paper, but it hits him right in the face, symbolically proving that any kind of face turn with him is ultimately futile.

The storm starts happening, and Baloney sees Webby and Louie in trouble. Being the hero that he is now, he tries to. However, he gets hit by, and ends up nearly drowning in the same way he did in the beginning of the episode.

We get another scene from Baloney’s subconscious, but this time we get an outright memory rather than symbolism. In particular: this one is right from one of Baloney’s repressed memories. I decided that outright spoiling it wouldn’t add anything to the review, but the best hint I could give is that I really do mean Baloney’s repressed memories. That shot from the dream I had on the top right is a pretty good hint of foreshadowing this, too.

I will say this: the first thing I did after watching this episode was look up whether or not any of this had any basis in the original comics. The simple answer is not really. While Scrooge first meets Glomgold in South Africa, Glomgold was already grown-up and clearly evil from day one. This flashback adds another dimension to that entirely.

There is one important-to-the-plot takeaway from this, a literal one, I might add, but I’ll talk about it later.

Everyone’s cheering him on to save the kids, and it appears that maybe, just maybe...no, of course not. What did you think was going to happen? No, he made his decision. He says it in such an epic way, that I decided to make this a GIF. A really small GIF to fit Tumblr's restrictions, but I had to keep that animation as smooth as it was.

Duke, er, Flintheart Glomgold: (in his usual Scottish accent) Because I'm Flintheart Glomgold...and I always will be! Ha ha ha ha ha!

I know I implied that I didn't want to spoil, but this scene is just so amazing. It's a lot smoother, they needed to animate it on the ones. It's an impressive sight seeing him laugh with all that lightning behind him.

I did give him a little bit of a That seems to work in his favor, as he happened to have his a spare grey beard in this pocket this whole time. It makes more sense when you watch the episode, trust me.

We somehow fade to him being surrounded by his crewmembers and their friends under very calm weather. This is the one scene transition that doesn't really add up to me. Was the storm in his head the whole time? These former crewmembers only accuse Glomgold of stealing from children rather than attempted murder, which seems to go with that theory.

One thing's for sure: Duke Baloney has left the building, and now it’s Glomgold’s time forever. He starts a Glomgold chant that even he expects no one will join in, as he dives into the water.

This chant continues with him going into his formerly owned organization, where Scrooge was talking with Zan Owlson about how using nickels would save more money than dimes.

Scrooge and Glomgold making a big deal, mostly due to Glomgold still having an all-important money clip, referenced. Yeah, Scrooge treats it like it’s this big deal, suggesting there’s something more to it than just gold. Honestly, considering the Number One Dime twist in The Shadow war, it could be anything at this point.

Also, I am so glad they apparently didn’t decide to push the reset button to prevent any potential plots with Van Owlson, since she barely did anything in this episode other than show her apparent benevolence. Quite a few plot points to this new story arc...at least, I hope it’s a new story arc. I have no reason to believe it’s not.

Oh yeah, and no Dewey in the episode for the first time ever. Not even a mention. How weird!

How does it stack up?

Despite only having an A plot, it is indeed an A plot this time. I can’t wait to see what happens next with this future plot this time. There's some very interesting twists to the classic Glomgold character, and I’d say it could pay off in the future. No bologna here, that’s for sure.

Next, America may not be getting their cartoon, but they will be getting their DuckTales 2017 appearance!

← The Depths of Cousin Fethry! 🦆 The Town Where Everyone Was Nice! →

#fpb dt 2017 #ducktales 2017 #fpb reviews #ducktales #disney

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sherrybaby14 · 7 years

Text

The Distraction

This is for @aquivercactus who requested a Dark!Steve Rogers where the reader is innocent.

A/N: This can be read more like a prologue since making a good guy a bad guy without going totally OOC usually requires one for me. Instead of writing one long story I’m splitting it in two.

Warnings: None/dark thoughts (Non-con Smut in the next chapter).

Pairing: Steve X Reader

Tags: @thecynicalnerd @marauderice @mac5323 @idonthavehusbandsihavelovers @negan--is--god @kellyn1604 @roschelesworld @taintedgenre @screeching-pterodactyl-fangirl @purplemuse89 @blondesouthsquad @buckyscrystalqueen @kawaiirepublic @captainemwinchester @xbergiex @bellaballanda @theariel85

Don’t move to New York. It’s dirty. When you arrived you bleached your tiny apartment from floor to ceiling and kept hand sanitizer on you at all times.

Don’t move to New York. The people are mean. You weren’t outgoing anyway, it was easy to keep to yourself. Who cares that you made no friends over the past year? You didn’t even keep in contact with the ones you had from back home. Your monthly phone calls to your parents turned into monthly e-mails after your latest nephew was born those dwindled too. They were busy with their newest grandson. You were never their favorite child.

Don’t move to New York. It’s dangerous. You tried a self-defense class, but it wasn’t for you. The thought of hurting anyone, whether they deserved it or not, was almost foreign to you. Besides, you would never react in time. Instead, you never left your apartment after dark, avoided eye contact with strangers and kept to yourself.

Don’t move to New York. It’s expensive. There was no denying that fact. Outside of your main career, you worked side jobs on the weekend. It was the easiest way to keep up with the rent and still have some money in savings.

For all the reasons not to live in the giant city, there were a few good ones. First of all, your main job was a great starting point, but soon after your arrival, you realized you were not stand out material. You didn’t think your bosses knew your name, every time you finished a project someone else took credit for your work. You had a feeling your bosses knew since they never fired you, but it also meant the odds of moving up were slim.

The second reason was the sense of freedom. You were the sixth of seven children in a strict household. Growing up you followed all the rules, but your parents seemed to pay more attention to all of your siblings. When you announced your decision to move outside of the four complaints above they just shrugged and waved you off. Now the only rules you followed were the ones you imposed on yourself, but you were starting to feel like they were stricter than the ones your parents enforced. Maybe the freedom was an illusion and you would have been better off moving back to the middle of nowhere. Nobody missed you or wanted you back though. You sighed and shook your head.

“Good morning Miss.” The man pulled a bouquet of flowers out of one of the black buckets in front of you. “How much for this one?”

“Thirty dollars.” You looked at the array of flowers, knowing the same bunch would cost five dollars top back in your hometown.

“Sheesh. Back where I’m from this would have cost a nickel.” The man laughed.

You looked up at him, sure the cheap paper the flowers were wrapped in would cost more than that. Your eyes locked with him for a split second and your heart felt like it was going to burst out of your chest. You dropped your gaze, hoping he would not interpret your stare as rude. It was Steve Rogers, Captain America himself. You didn’t know how to respond. The last few months you manned the flower stand inside the lobby of Stark Towers on the weekend. Never once had you seen anyone famous, not that you paid attention to the people walking by, that would be rude.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.” He reached out and put a hand on your shoulder. “Are you alright?”

His hand felt like a burning weight. You lurched backward and nodded your head.

“I’m fine.” You kept your eyes on the ground. “I am sorry Sir, but I don’t set the prices.”

“That’s alright. I was only teasing.” Steve reached into his back pocket he set two twenties on the counter in front of you. “Thank you, and keep the change.”

You gave a small nod and grabbed the cash. Without lifting your head, you went to the register and dropped both bills inside. You thought you heard him let out a sigh as he turned away. You pinched your eyes shut, certain you’d just embarrassed yourself beyond reproach with America’s favorite son.

~~~

Steve cracked his jaw as he rode the elevator up. He didn’t like the way she flinched when he touched her, but outside of that, he enjoyed everything about their interaction. The way she kept her eyes down, how she was almost scared of him, and he particularly liked her use of the word Sir. He licked his lips at the memory and felt his cock grow in his pants. He shut his eyes and shook the memory away, having to save it for later.

The doors opened with a ding and Steve was not surprised to see Nat waiting for him on the other side.

“You’re late.” She unfolded her arms and started walking. “What’s with the flowers? One of your fans corner you?”

“No.” That was the reaction Steve normally got, which is what made Y/N’s response so intriguing. “You want em?”

“Come on, there has to be a special girl waiting at home for the Captain America to drop them off?” Nat glanced over her shoulder.

Steve plopped the flowers in a trash can as they continued walking down the hall, knowing the action would be enough of a response for Nat.

“Alright.” She looked forward. “I’ll stop asking.”

They arrived at the conference room and she pushed the doors open to show the rest of the team sitting around the table.

“Nice of you to join us.” Tony pointed towards the tech. “There’s only a terrorist at loose in the city we have to stop.”

“Why wasn’t I informed of this first?” Steve glared at Director Fury.

“You’re the one who wanted more privacy.” Tony twisted the chair. “You move out of the Tower, you don’t get information as fast. Now let’s stop swinging our dicks and listen to the details so we can form a plan.”

Steve scowled. Tony was right, but as Captain and the leader of the Avengers Steve should have been the first informed and already presenting his plan of attack. Once they had the situation under control he and Fury would be having a little chat.

~~~

“I TOLD YOU TO CUT LEFT!” Steve slammed his fist on the table. “Then like a showboat you have to move right. You almost got people killed!”

“But I didn’t.” Clint stood up from the table. “We stopped the bad guy with zero casualties.”

“No.” Steve shook his head. “We got lucky, running in there like a bunch of lone rangers! There was no teamwork, nobody paid any attention to the plan. All of you went after the man like you were there by yourself. That is NOT how a team works.”

Steve stood up straight and ran his hand over his head. Tony, Nat, Clint, and Fury all staring at him.

“Have you all lost your minds?” He looked around the room at the shocked faces. “Tony, you just ran into the man with your suit, what if he didn’t drop the detonator? The entire building would’ve blown!”

“But it didn’t.” Tony shook his head. “This is a win for us Captain.”

“Director Fury.” Steve went around the table. “You saw the footage. Admit that I am right, we are not working as a team.”

“It was a little rusty, I will give you that.” Fury held up his hands. “But this isn’t wartime. It’s peacetime. Your first mission of this level in months, I’m putting it in the win category.”

“It’s always wartime.” Steve didn’t understand how nobody else could see that. “If we let our guard down if we’re not prepared another one will pop up.”

“And what do you think we’re doing?’ Tony laughed. “Was today not being prepared? Stopping that from happening?”

Steve started to respond, but it was as if his voice caught in his throat. He stood agasp, unsure how to respond.

“I need some air.” Steve went straight to the balcony.

He leaned over the edge and tried to hide his disappointment at the team. Not only did they perform poorly, but then they couldn’t take criticism. What happened when a real threat hit? One even more severe than today? They would be crushed like ants.

“Hey.” Tony walked outside and leaned next to Steve.

“If you’re going to tell me I’m wrong you can save it.” The anger was out of Steve’s voice. “I won’t change my mind.”

“I know you won’t.” Tony spun around so his back was against the railing. “I don’t expect you to. But can I give you some advice?”

“I’m sure I’ve heard it before.” Steve turned around with Tony. The sun was starting to set, and he wanted to avoid the glare.

“See those people in there?” Tony pointed through the glass to Clint, Nat, and Fury. “They are as much type A personalities as the two people out here. If Banner and Thor were here today, that would make two more type As. Well, maybe not Thor, I’m not even sure what sort of personalities Asgard has.”

“So?” Steve was well aware he was competitive, controlling, task-oriented, maybe even hostile from time to time. Almost a textbook definition.

“So all of them have found ways to curb their less than pleasant personality traits.” Tony pushed up his sunglasses. “Clint focuses on his family, coaches every little league sport possible and those kids play like machines. Nat has a very active private life where she takes out her aggression on people who want to have it taken out. Fury spends every waking second worrying about and building SHIELD like it’s a precious baby. Banner focuses his energy on either finding a cure or helping starving children. I can’t keep it straight anymore.

“And I build shit in my spare time, which is every second I am not doing this.” Tony pushed off the railing. “What do you do Cap? The Avenger’s cannot be your only outlet or you will blow us up from the inside. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“You’re saying I need a hobby?” Steve raised an eyebrow.

“Not a hobby.” Tony started towards the door. “An obsession. One that will let you work out some of those control issues, so you don’t keep busting in here ready to take over a split heads open whenever things don’t go your way.”

Steve glanced around the room and noticed the three inside were saying goodbye. They all had other places to be and things to do. All Steve had on schedule for the evening was getting in a workout and reviewing the tapes from today’s mission, studying them for errors. He hated to admit it, but maybe Tony had a point.

“Do you have any suggestions?” Steve kicked off the balcony and followed Tony.

“I’m not sure.” Tony shook his head. “But I don’t think a guitar is going to cut it. You need something where you are in complete control, that requires a time commitment.”

Steve wasn’t sure if the idea had always been there, buried in the back of his mind, and Tony’s words just brought it to the forefront or if it was a branch new concept. He’d hoped for the later but was certain it was former. Maybe it was time to embrace that part of himself, the piece he denied existed for so long.

Hearing the words complete control made his pants twinge and one face come to mind. The girl who worked the flower stand.

#steve rodgers x reader #steve rogers smut #slow burn #fanfic #avengers smut #steve x reader #dark!steve

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toynbeees · 6 years

Text

Time for some OCs!

I have so many, pls send help. Feel free to ask me abt any of them!!

Under a cut so I don’t kill u all lmao

Bioshock! (aka my absolute oldest OCs at uh. 5+ years) Loretta. She’s the only one I talk about but it’s only because I love her. Saved from being a Sister as a kid, she ended up splicing and running riot in Arcadia. Jo. He was Loretta’s favourite Big Daddy, but since he’s so old now he’s mostly broken and just drifts around Arcadia making sad whale noises :( Lauren is an ex-Sister circa Bioshock 2, who instead of going to the surface with Eleanor stays behind and is adopted by Loretta. Anna. Lauren’s closest friend since before they were Sisters, and stuck together once they were turned, too. Also “adopted” by Loretta.

Borderlands Quinn. Ex-raider, ass kicker, and all around asshole. She has the hots for Mordecai but won’t admit it. She also has a pet skag and stalker. Leo. Also an asshole but on a much more acceptable scale. He kind of unofficially joined the Crimson Raiders but can’t remember how. Sydney. They’re the most terrifying 12 year old anyone will ever meet. They were adopted by Leo after he found them stowing away on a bandit ship.

DA Inquisition Nadira. She’s basically a prophet that was given the gift of visions after she died and a compassion spirit felt bad for her. Don’t ask how because I don’t know :P Liv. Nadira’s best friend, and the one who sort of accidentally started a local legend about her. She’s also the blushiest baby of a Qunari ever. Myrae. Liv’s twin and the more serious of the two. She’s painfully anti-social but forces herself for the sake of the Inquisition.

Dark Angel (does anyone else know this exists?) Ambrosia. An over stressed medic who tries her best. She has a daughter named Sunshine but doesn’t know who the dad is. Angelica. She used to be a mercenary hired to kill shitty people like abusers and rapists. Now she’s a medic under Ambrosia’s wing. Gabriella. She’s a mechanic and supply smuggler on the side, and has been caught too many times. Has the hots for everyone and will make it known. Tamara. The daughter of a rich business man, Tammy ditched her family to help those in need. Using money stolen from her father’s company.

Fallout Hartley. Another one I mention sometimes! She’s a hardcore Commonwealth lady who will kill for caps. She lives in Croup Manor with a bunch of others. Atlas. Hartley’s sort-of boyfriend and also a super mutant. He signed up to the Institute’s FEV experiments not knowing what that meant. Idiot. Nixon. The resident ghoul genius, this kid can make anything from the most basic scraps. He even made his own synth with stolen tech. Tequila. The synth in question. Technically only four, she has the intelligence of a twenty year old. She’s agender but uses all pronouns. Carrion. Travels with their pet/bodyguard deathclaw named Lazarus. They were part of a vault experiment to infuse deathclaw DNA into a human.

Fullmetal Alchemist Andrea. She’s a young State Alchemist using the moniker ‘Lightning Alchemist’ for the way she uses alchemic tattoos to create weather-like effects. Rosie. A self taught automail and car mechanic. Rosie is extremely anti-social and often communicates through her brother. Evan. Rosie’s twin, although they look nothing alike. Although he works front desk at Central Command, State Alchemists terrify him.

Mad Max (my BOYS!) Spider. He used to help the Organic Mechanic, but blood bags don’t cut it anymore and he’s close to death. Post-movie he has a raging crush on Capable. Crimson. The shittiest, most infuriating man on earth. He’s an excellent driver, with many battle scars to prove it. Cable. He’s Crimson’s lancer. Given his name by the way he wears cables as jewellery, and the fact he was burned by an electrical fire. Hammer. He was born to Joe and a Milk Mother, though thrown to the Wastes. Now he’s a brutal lancer that uses his bulk to his advantage. Lagarto. He’s Hammer’s driver, although at only 4′11 he has to prove himself constantly. Crimson’s boyfriend, though the relationship doesn’t last. Cepheus. Cepheus was named after a constellation he found in a book. Entirely deaf since birth, but one of the Imperators’ most trusted Warboys.

Mass Effect Camilla. A Commander of a ship, a true leader, Cammy is a force to be reckoned with. Especially since she looks after four krogan kids, a human, and a salarian. Garst. Cammy’s ‘husband’ and an excellent soldier class. He used to live on Omega before Cammy picked him up. Hayley. Cammy and Garst’s adopted kid, Hayley is a bit of a wild child. She has a pet varren named Pickles, though no one knows how she tamed him. Chanyi. Hayley’s girlfriend, and an angel of a quarian. Her mother died on Omega and Garst took her in.

My Hero Academia Akari. Akari’s Quirk gives her incredibly strong empathy and the ability to influence emotions. She feels bad using her Quirk, though. Riko. Riko can rapidly grow bones from her limbs, snapping them off and fashioning them into weapons. She loves grossing people out. Takara. The daughter of a Pro Hero and a scientist, Takara is overpowered as fuck. She’s also horrendously arrogant about it.

Trollhunters Roisin. A teacher at Arcadia Oaks High, she accidentally got involved in Jim’s troll nonsense. She has a crush on Blinky, the madwoman. Una. Roisin’s kid sister, Una is actually a Krubera changeling that ditched the order because she loved her human family too much.

XMen Alina. Nicknamed ‘Songbird’ for the way her voice can put people to sleep - or cause brain haemorrhage. Her choice. Bethany. Definitely wants to bang Hank McCoy and is overly defensive about it. She teaches English at the mansion - and her nephew goes there too. Daisy. She literally got into a fist fight with anti-mutant protesters, which ended in her nearly dying. She still thinks it was well worth it. Lydia. She’s a nurse in training and ends up helping the mansion after an attack. She can induce hallucinations but prefers to use it to soothe people. Hayley. Literally Rapunzel, with meters of prehensile hair as strong as steel. She’s barely five foot and has never hurt a soul, but she can threaten. Cassandra. A lingerie model with a killer body, Alina uses it to take the attention away from the enormous eagle wings attached to her back.

I’ve Been Dreaming! (My first original project!) Delinna. Although not literally a demon, the red skin and horns have earned her species that nickname. Poly dating Red and Keavyn, who she loves a lot. Red. Extremely round and extremely shy. His name is actually Allistair but he goes by Red due to his bright auburn hair. Carisey. Delinna’s little sister, and a right troublemaker. She’s at college mechanical engineering, and is scarily good at it. Keavyn. He has his own Youtube channel where he posts gaming and ghost hunting videos. Once tricked Red into a ghost hunt and regretted it. Claire. She’s blind, and her eyes literally look like space; complete with tiny planets. She doesn’t know how, but sometimes her dreams are prophecies. Josh. A boy with too many eyes and not enough patience. Amusingly he’s dating Claire, and he’s all too aware of the irony.

Gator Land Khadija. Her father is basically a mad scientist that created loads of sentient “monster people”. Khadija is now best friends with all of them. Sebastian. Is he alligator or human? Both. Although he’s painfully shy it doesn’t stop him from wanting to live as a human. Or from crushing on Khadija. Coco. She has no mouth and a geode for a stomach. It’s unknown if she’s more living creature or more gemstone. Cloud. A fluffy skull-headed boy who’s fur changes colour with the seasons. He kind of looks like a humanoid cubone. Sonnet. A shy fish boy who loves poetry and fantasy novels. He will cry if you say anything mean to him.

#ocs

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narrowtriangle33-blog · 3 years

Text

Points to call out white people who are mad at Black people who call them out.

"Whites always talk about the race card but Black people didn’t stack the deck. WHITES DID!"

“I’ve been reading your archives for a couple hours now, and I think you’re one of the most racist bloggers I’ve ever encountered.”

"There are way, way worse than me:

http://stormfront.org/ http://chimpout.com/ http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/ http://isteve.blogspot.com/ http://www.amren.com/

"I am sure some commenters, like La Reyna, can come up with a way better list than that.

And then there are the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan whose casual racism gives a bad name to the Republican Party to any thihking person in America who is not white (and even to many who are white)."

Oh really? Further on you state that he is giving his opinions without evidence to back it up. Why don’t you go to a site like Stormfront where they provide evidence based on eugenics and outdated and discredited studies? There is a pattern here. Whenever naysayers such as yourself comment here, it is done to negate and denigrate the writer of this blog. You employ a patronizing and belittling tone when criticizing the blog author. In effect, you are proving some of the things he writes about. Believe me, in regards to racism the list is not exhaustive, this but a sampling. There is a pattern here with you and your ilk trying to dismiss what this blogger is trying to convey. You obviously have no inkling as to what you are talking about but feel it is your right to make these spurious claims. Whilst everyone is entitled to their opinion you and your ilk are clearly out of bounds in your assertion that this blog author, and with you in particular, one of the ‘most’ racist you’ve ever read. I find this hard to believe. If you want to see what a real racist blog or website is, go to chimp.com. I think he has struck a chord with many of his posts, hence this reaction. Your reaction is another attempt to debase this writer with unfounded accusations of racism and your miscomprehension of the post in general. When all he is doing is describing common experiences that black and other racialized people face. You are the racist!

I am sick and tired of those like yourself who seek to criticize black men as I have brothers, nephews uncles, male relatives and acquaintances in general who are subjected to this type of “you are the racist” and other insidious claims and diatribes on a constant basis. This is much to their detriment in employment, effects on their health, heck everyday life. I defend this writer as I am also defending the black men in my life. And no, they are not a bunch of ne’er do wells sitting around blaming whites for their lack of progress in life. They are students(university), professionals, trades people and so forth. The bone of contention derives from the fact that in many cases, they have had to fight over and above what is normal to achieve their potential and they may not have done so in some instances because of racism. I know that Abagond has a moderating policy but I am going to write this anyway, he can choose to publish it or not. But on behalf of my black male relatives and by extension blacks everywhere, F**K OFF! I am resorting to profanity as that is all you deserve! I am sick and tired of you and your ilk’s racist projections of your own self hate, which is cloaked in an appearance of patronizing superiority." https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/do-i-hate-white-people/?like_comment=27842

So fuck these types of white folks who would criticize Abagond but not racists on Stormfront.

#humanity #pls reblog #share #fuck white people #dear white people #white ppl #white priveledge #white people are crazy #white people white peopling #white person #spread awareness #spread the message #spread this #spread the word #raiseawareness #raise awareness

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yourdailykitsch · 7 years

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Taylor Kitsch Gets in Touch With His Inner David Koresh in ‘Waco’

Taylor Kitsch loves being Taylor Kitsch, and one of the charms of the 36-year-old actor is that if you meet him, you’ll love that Taylor Kitsch loves being Taylor Kitsch too. It was a crisp afternoon in late October, and Kitsch was sitting at a picnic table on the patio of the Mean-Eyed Cat, a Johnny Cash–themed bar on West Fifth Street in Austin. Kitsch was enjoying the sunshine. (“The weather’s been insane. It’s why you live in Texas, you know?”) Kitsch was enjoying his barbecued pork ribs. (“Eating a plate of meat is rare for me, but it’s fun right now.”) Kitsch was enjoying his sleek and very expensive-looking BMW GS Rallye motorcycle, which he’d parked in front of the bar’s entrance. (“That bike’s spanking new. It’s like my child. I love it.”)

Over the past few months, Kitsch had gone on a two-thousand-mile motorcycle trip through the mountain west, riding up Glacier National Park’s Going-to-the-Sun Road, winding along Idaho’s Salmon River. He’d visited Africa, “because I didn’t know what the **** was going on with all the poaching, and I wanted to know.” He’d traveled to San Diego to skydive with a bunch of Navy SEALs and his friend and mentor, the macho-man director Peter Berg. He’d gone to the “Harvey Can’t Mess With Texas” benefit show at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin—“a really great concert, like top five for me”—and afterward “tipped, like, 48 beers” with his friend country music star Ryan Bingham. Now Kitsch was preparing to leave the South Austin apartment where he has lived for the past decade and move into his dream house, a 6,500-square-foot bachelor pad on Lake Austin. His whole family—mom, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews—was coming down from British Columbia for Christmas, and Kitsch couldn’t wait to show off his new place. “My mom’s going to lose her mind,” Kitsch said. “We grew up in a single-wide mobile home, then moved to a double-wide—she’ll lose it.” Kitsch was going “full Griswold” on yuletide decorations. He’d already purchased a ten-foot-tall blow-up polar bear to put on his front porch, and he and his oldest brother, Daman, were planning to install an elaborate light display before the rest of the family arrived. “It’ll hurt your eyes,” Kitsch said. “Literally, I hope we get fined by the HOA. That’s our goal, so we’ll do it.” Kitsch became famous for playing the Dillon Panthers’ bad-boy fullback Tim Riggins on the TV show Friday Night Lights, and over the course of five seasons, he made the character irresistible to watch—a teenage jumble of empathy, anger, machismo, and freewheeling fun. When the show ended, Kitsch appeared to be on a rocket path to superstardom, but he still hasn’t quite gotten there. Instead, his career since Friday Night Lights has been defined by soaring expectations, big-budget disappointments, and consistently good acting. When Kitsch and I met in Austin, he had just finished back-to-back press tours for two fall movies in which he plays supporting roles—the espionage thriller American Assassin and the wilderness-firefighter drama Only the Brave. But we were there to talk about Kitsch’s latest part—“the best work of my career, for sure”—which forced the actor to command the screen as never before and might just turn him into a bona fide Hollywood leading man. On January 24, the first episode of this project, Waco, a six-part miniseries about the 1993 standoff at the Branch Davidian compound in Central Texas, will premiere on the newly renamed Paramount Network (formerly Spike). The show stars Michael Shannon, John Leguizamo, Rory Culkin, and Melissa Benoist, but Kitsch has the plum role. Kitsch is playing David Koresh. The Waco siege has been the subject of a dozen or so documentaries that range from serious-minded to crackpot, but the new series is improbably the first dramatic re-creation of the entire event: 51 days of stalled negotiations and rising tensions that ended in an inferno that killed Koresh and 75 of his followers. The project’s genesis is unexpected: it was written, directed, and produced by brothers John and Drew Dowdle, whose handful of career credits includes low-budget horror films like Devil and Quarantine and the poorly reviewed Owen Wilson–Pierce Brosnan thriller No Escape. (Harvey Weinstein was an executive producer on the series, but his name has been removed from the credits.) The Dowdles may not have had much experience, but they had a plan: though the Waco siege has been a political and cultural lightning rod for the past 25 years, the brothers decided that their film wouldn’t dwell on the controversies. They wanted to tell the tragic, human, “no-bad-guys version of the story.” To do that, they knew that their single most important decision would be casting someone who could bring tragic humanity to Koresh. “We thought Koresh as a character is a deeply flawed individual, but there’s something a bit everyman about him, there’s something about him that people liked,” Drew Dowdle said. “The Taylor Kitsch version of David Koresh is inherently someone you would enjoy being around.” When Kitsch first heard about the part, he had only a hazy memory of news coverage of the Waco siege. But the more he read, the more fascinated he became. After meeting with the Dowdles, he reached out to his agent and said, “If they want me to do it, I’ll swing. I just need prep time.” Shooting was set to start in Santa Fe in April 2017, and as 2016 was coming to a close, Kitsch steeled himself for the next half year of preparation and production. “I went to Telluride for New Year’s and just blew it out—like, pizza, anything you could drink, ski, just go all out, don’t even worry about anything,” Kitsch said. On January 2, he arrived back in Austin, ready to begin his transformation. When Kitsch first came to Austin, in 2006, to film the pilot for Friday Night Lights, he was 24 years old, “green and raw” and mostly in the dark about acting and the entertainment business. “I genuinely didn’t know what a critic was,” he told me. Kitsch had grown up four hours west of Vancouver in the city of Kelowna, British Columbia, with his mother and two older brothers—his dad was mostly absent—and until he was 20, he dreamed about playing professional ice hockey. When back-to-back knee injuries ended his career, he moved to New York to try to make it as an actor, beginning a scrappy period in which he took classes, modeled, and, for a several-week stretch, spent his nights sleeping on the subway. Kitsch had almost missed his screen test for Friday Night Lights due to visa issues, and when he arrived, Berg, the series’ creator, first made him improvise in character for thirty minutes. Berg was suitably impressed. “What you did in there, make sure you do in this screen test with all the execs, and I think we’ll be just fine,” he told Kitsch. Friday Night Lights never had a big audience, but to the people who watched it week after week, it might as well have been War and Peace, except about high school football, and way more fun. Kitsch was the heartthrob, and even while the show was in the middle of its run, he was getting movie work, playing Gambit in an X-Men movie and the war photographer Kevin Carter in The Bang Bang Club. After Friday Night Lights ended, in 2011, Kitsch was primed to really make it big. Going into 2012, he had starring roles in two massively hyped movies with enormous budgets, John Carter and Battleship, both of which seemed like good bets to turn into franchises. “I had two ten-year contracts,” Kitsch said. “I would have been going Carter, Battleship, Carter, Battleship, and maybe an indie somewhere in there if I could.” But both films fizzled at the box office, and Kitsch’s career was forced to become more interesting. “I still have my journal from when I was in acting class in New York where it’s like, ‘All I want to do is indies and these characters and Sean Penn, Sean Penn, Sean Penn,’ ” Kitsch told me. He got his wish. He’s spent the past four years bringing a coiled-up intensity to men as varied as Navy SEAL Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy in Lone Survivor, Gay Men’s Health Crisis president Bruce Niles in HBO’s The Normal Heart, and patrolman Paul Woodrugh in the much-maligned second season of True Detective. Instead of conquering the world as an above-the-title star, Kitsch became our most finely featured character actor. When Kitsch arrived back in Austin after his Telluride bacchanal, he got down to studying. He read the memoirs of Branch Davidian survivor David Thibodeau, watched home videos of Koresh preaching, and made a stab at grasping the Branch Davidians’ end-times theology. “I literally had a beginner’s-Bible-study version of the Book of Revelation,” Kitsch said. Koresh was an enthusiastic rock guitarist and singer (followers wore “David Koresh: God Rocks” T-shirts), so Kitsch took guitar and voice lessons to pull off the on-screen performances. To physically transform into Koresh—who did not have movie-star muscles—Kitsch dropped thirty pounds, limiting himself to eight hundred calories a day and running around Lady Bird Lake while listening to Koresh’s sermons. As Kitsch dug into his research, he saw a clear path to playing the public persona of the Branch Davidian leader. “Before the siege, it’s his birthday every day,” Kitsch said. “It’s all about him. He’s got a go-cart track and a shooting range, and he’s a rock star—obviously the lead singer, obviously the lead guitarist.” In Waco, Koresh, as played by Kitsch, oozes charm and bravado and knows just how to manipulate the people around him. That’s not a stretch. The 33-year-old self-proclaimed “Lamb of God” was in the habit of waking up his followers in the middle of the night so that they could listen to him show off his savant-like recall of the Bible. He had about two dozen “spiritual wives,” including some who were already married to other Branch Davidians. After a claimed revelation from God, he commanded all men in the compound to be celibate, with the singular exception of David Koresh. (“I’ve assumed the burden of sex for us all, but not for my own kicks,” Kitsch as Koresh says in the show’s first episode.) He was good at a drawling, tough-guy act too: he drove a ’68 Camaro, loved his firearms, and famously sent a message to the FBI saying, “You come pointing guns in the direction of my wife and my kids, dammit, I’ll meet you at the door any time.” But Kitsch also had to reckon with Koresh’s darkness. Among Koresh’s wives were women whom he had married when they were as young as twelve years old, and even if you think the federal government acted disastrously at Waco, it’s hard to see Koresh as blameless in the deaths of the 86 people who perished in the initial raid and the final fire. “Taylor and I had long talks: ‘How do you play this guy in a human way?’ ” John Dowdle said. “That was a big part of the preparation, just trying to get through the ugly stuff so he’s not a monster from the get-go.” Kitsch seized on Koresh’s childhood to understand him, trying to find that part of the Branch Davidian leader that was still Vernon Wayne Howell, Koresh’s given name. During his research, Kitsch read about a phone call that Koresh placed to his mother during the ATF raid on the compound. Koresh had been shot twice, was bleeding profusely, and thought that he was minutes from the end. His mother didn’t pick up, but he left a message, telling her he was dying, asking her to “tell Grandma hello for me,” and saying, “I’ll see y’all in the skies.” “I broke reading it,” Kitsch said. “I was crushed. And after that, I was like, ‘I’m dialed in now and I’m ready to go.’ ” The call hadn’t been in the script, but Kitsch emailed the Dowdles and urged them to add it: “I’m like, ‘This will take fifteen, twenty minutes to shoot, guys, we’ve got to have this in there. This is not Koresh—this is Vernon calling his mom.’ ” The Dowdles agreed. When Kitsch arrived on set, cast and crew who were wondering what he’d bring to the role didn’t have to wait long. On the first day, the Dowdles had scheduled a scene in which Kitsch delivered a nine-page sermon on divine joy to his congregants. “It was pretty remarkable to see him get up and do that,” Paul Sparks, who plays Koresh’s deputy, Steve Schneider, told me. “I had heard some of Koresh on the internet, but to be in the room and listen to this person talk about these complex, different ways of looking at Scripture—it was like, ‘Right, that’s what it was like.’ ” Regardless of whether Waco is a hit, Kitsch has his next project lined up. He’s planning to go to a friend’s San Saba ranch in February to shoot a movie currently titled Pieces. It will be his debut as a screenwriter and feature-film director. Pieces tells the story of “three best friends who take an opportunity to change their lives.” In this case, that opportunity is to intercept a drug drop on the Texas-Mexico border, after which, as you might assume, “all hell breaks loose.” Kitsch wrote the script over the course of several motorcycle road trips, and he used the journeys not only to clear his mind for writing but as an opportunity to conduct research. “I remember being in Idaho and there’s this truck-stop hooker, basically, and I had a coffee with her,” Kitsch told me. “Don’t read into that, it was—literally, it was a coffee—and I just bombed questions at her, and she was just super cool. I put a character based on her in the movie.” Kitsch seems to have exactly the kind of fame that he wants. He can build a dream house and get a dream role, but he can drop by a truck stop in Idaho and bomb questions at people who don’t recognize him. He has famous friends and wild adventures, but every interaction he has doesn’t have to be about his celebrity. As we were sitting at Mean-Eyed Cat, Kitsch told me about turning down a role recently. It was a “little rom-com for five days’ work,” he said, and it was “stupid money.” He would have made more on that movie than he did on Waco, Only the Brave, and three Normal Hearts combined—“for five days’ work,” he said again. I asked him why he’d said no. He did the voice-over work for Ram Trucks commercials, after all. First he answered like an actor. “It’s just not where I want to be, it’s not the story I want to tell,” he said. Then he added a caveat that was pure Taylor Kitsch. “I mean, I’m for sale,” he said, a big smile breaking out over his face. “If you want to give me $20 million for something and my mom never has to work again and my family’s good for the rest of their life, yes, I’m going to do it—don’t care who you are. I come from nothing, so to give my mom that call would just be awesome. I mean, I wouldn’t do porn, but, you know?”

#taylor kitsch #waco #austin texas #interview

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