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violetwolfraven · 4 years ago

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Ray Molina: Best Dad Ever

For the March 11th explosion of content thing. Just Violet being a fantom and doing my part for this!

Tw: mentioned death, mentioned abusive parents, mentioned panic attack.

So the boys can be seen and heard when directly touching Julie after the whole post-Orpheum glowy hug thing but Ray doesn’t know that just yet.

What he does know is that Julie’s mental health took a rapid turn for the better for seemingly no reason and then a couple weeks later he found out she joined a band without telling him.

He’s not stupid. He knows that’s probably because of the band, though he is a bit confused as to how she even met them.

He kinda figures it’s a kids and your internet tricks thing but there’s some flaws to this theory.

1) He asks Flynn what she knows about the boys only... it seems like she doesn’t know much of anything. That’s weird because he knows Julie tells her practically everything.

2) The boys have American accents despite Julie claiming they’re from Sweden.

3) Carlos is a terrible liar and on the rare occasion Julie actually talks about the boys he gets this weirdly conspiratorial look.

So anyway Ray doesn’t really believe it’s as simple as ‘I met these 3 Swedish boys on the internet’ but he trusts his daughter’s judgement and he leaves it alone.

Anyway he has other things to focus on.

Such as how Ray has literally never been able to keep track of his keys/phone/hats/camera parts/stuff and now it seems to just pop up whenever he’s looking for it.

Also he keeps feeling like there’s someone with him around the house more and more.

Like not a malicious presence like Victoria fears, and definitely not like Rose is around watching him, but like someone is there.

Sometimes it feels like there’s more than one presence around. None of them familiar but all of them friendly.

Oddly enough, whatever or whoever it is feels almost like Julie or Carlos. Young and excitable and like a verse of a happy song. He’s not sure why they’re around, but they definitely don’t feel dangerous, so Ray doesn’t feel threatened.

But some days a better comparison might be to Trevor back when Rose first introduced him. Raw and fragile and very, very sad.

Ray tries to put on happy music or a Disney cartoon or something on those days and he doesn’t quite know why or how but the energy usually gets more positive when he does that.

Anyway after a while of this (after the Orpheum performance) he starts noticing weird things that Carlos and Julie do now.

Carlos will just carry around a small whiteboard and a couple pens and he erases it whenever Ray comes into the room but before he does it almost looks like there’s two, three, or even four sets of handwriting on there.

And he walks in on Julie talking to herself like. All the time.

Carlos doesn’t ask for help on his math homework anymore. Julie makes this insanely good chicken recipe for dinner once and then clearly panics and lies when asked where she got it. Flynn makes a set of rainbow friendship bracelets one day while she’s hanging out at the Molina house but he doesn’t see Julie wearing the match to the one she keeps.

Plus Carrie starts hanging out at their house again?? Out of the blue?? And none of the girls have a good explanation for how they made up??

Then later Nick Danforth-Evans (who Julie used to talk about having a crush on but hasn’t in a while) starts hanging around too and the kid seems... well, Ray doesn’t want to throw the word ‘traumatized’ around, but he’s jumpy and guarded in a way that can only be described as a little bit traumatized.

So all 5 kids are clearly keeping some secret and Ray’s getting suspicious and worried.

He sits them down and asks what’s going on. Like is one of them having problems at home, or..?

The kids, simultaneously:

Julie: no, we’re just all in a play together!

Carlos: we’re fine we’re just ghost hunting!

Flynn: we’re exhibiting bisexual-pansexual-lesbian solidarity!

Carrie: Julie and the Phantoms and Dirty Candi are doing a collaboration album!

Nick: we all joined jazz band??

Ray’s calling bullshit at this point.

Then Julie and Nick both look up directly at the same spot, somewhere a couple feet above the arm of the couch, which is seemingly just empty air.

Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem like the other kids can see it but they all seem to be waiting for something and Ray is wondering if they’re sharing a hallucination??? Are they all on drugs??? Should he be worried???

Then Julie says to meet them in the studio in 30 minutes. Flynn, Carrie, and Nick go home to give the Molina family some alone time.

*cue music performance where Ray is introduced to the boys*

So anyway Julie and Carlos (with the help of the ghosts whenever one of them has something to say and grabs Julie’s hand) give him a clearly-sugarcoated version of the last few months.

Ghosts of Trevor’s dead bandmates help Julie reconnect with music, they form a band, they meet another ghost, other ghost accidentally gets them involved with evil magician ghost, Nick got possessed, Carrie figured it out and helped plot to get him un-possessed, evil magician ghost is still out there and they’re sticking together so he can’t get any of them in the future.

Despite how they say it like it’s no big deal, Ray now understands why the kids have been acting so weird because all these things sound scary and painful.

Also the more he thinks about it, the more he worries about the fact that he has three 17-year-old boys sleeping in his garage who died terribly of food poisoning.

They are children and they died incredibly painfully and then almost got enslaved and/or erased from existence.

Then one day Ray’s feeling one of those presences around the house again and he realizes it’s probably one of Julie’s ghost boys.

Ray: who’s there?

Whoever it is freaks out and leaves, and Ray takes notes for next time.

The next time he feels someone in the room, he has a notepad ready and he writes down “Luke, Alex, or Reggie?” from what he remembers from Julie’s introductions.

Immediately, there’s a spike of anxiety in the room.

Ray: it’s okay. You can stay and we don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I’d like to know who it is I’m not talking to though.

There’s a few seconds of hesitation, and then the pen picks itself up and the name “Reggie” gets circled.

Ray: the bassist with the flannels, right?

Yeah, written in a teenage boy’s messy scrawl.

Ray: okay, do you want to watch a movie?

More hesitation, and Ray’s not sure what that’s about but he’s starting to suspect with the amount of fear still in the room, and there’s a good 20 seconds where Reggie doesn’t respond before I don’t know.

Ray: Moana or Tangled? Moana.

After that, he takes a page out of Carlos’s book and gets a small whiteboard with 3 pens that stick to it magnetically. Red for Reggie, blue for Luke, and pink for Alex.

Reggie has written conversations with him most, but Luke does sometimes too and Alex does least often but he’ll still request a movie occasionally.

All of them are wary around him and Ray doesn’t quite know what to do to earn their trust. But he asks questions about their preferences on things. He says they did good on their latest show. He remembers which movies are their favorites and introduces them to music he thinks are their styles.

Luke is a big fan of Fall Out Boy and Reggie fucking loves Taylor Swift.

Alex is less consistent but occasionally Ray will play a song and he’ll write something like This is a cool song.

He starts to be able to tell which energy is which even before they write who it is right around the time the boys start to be visible for longer and longer after playing.

They play a really good show and stay visible for like 2 full days and that’s the first (but not the last) time Ray really gets to get to know them.

He starts noticing after really good shows like that one how even more now that they can be seen, they’re all a little... off from how Nick and Carrie and Flynn act around him.

With Luke it’s mostly because he’s trying so hard to impress because *gasp* he and Julie are a thing but there’s still a little bit of tension that seems like it comes from something deeper than just being nervous around his girlfriend’s dad.

With Reggie it’s subtle caution. Like he’s happy to be hanging out with Ray but he’s constantly ready for something to go wrong. There’s a catch in his smile, a hesitation before he states an opinion, a practiced carefulness where he changes the subject at any sign of even mild frustration.

But with Alex... it’s mostly just avoidance. Like if he poofs in while visible and it just so happens that no one else is there, he’ll find an excuse to leave.

And Ray lets him, of course. He doesn’t want the kid to feel trapped. But all of the boys’ behavior bothers him.

On the rare occasion they spend more than 2 seconds together Alex is really quiet. He won’t admit if Ray guessed wrong about a song and he doesn’t like it even though his body language makes it clear he’s not vibing with it. Actually, his body language pretty much just spells I am very uncomfortable in every situation where Julie or Carlos went to the bathroom or someone went to grab a snack and they’re alone even for 5 minutes while he’s visible.

Ray’s not stupid. He knows three 17-year-olds don’t end up getting their instruments left to their only living bandmate’s new best friend’s family by having good relationships with their own families.

He doesn’t exactly want to bring it up, but he kind of knows.

Then one day he’s sitting with all 3 boys watching a movie while he fixes something on his camera and Julie and Carlos are at school and he messes up a little part that means he has to start over (don’t @ me I know nothing about cameras) and swears out of frustration louder than he meant to.

He reaches for the screwdriver on the coffee table and

And Reggie and Alex both flinch.

Ray hadn’t even noticed they were tracking his movements, but while Luke seems to just have moved his focus from the TV to his friends in concern, Alex and Reggie both look too tense to play it off.

He figures its as good a time as any to have a chat cause these boys aren’t his sons but they don’t have anyone else acting as a parent figure to them and he feels the need to take care of them. He pauses the movie.

Ray: Can we have a talk? About you boy’s families?

Naturally Luke jumps in to try to distract him immediately, telling a story about his dad taking him fishing once, but he stops when Ray asks him to stop.

Ray: That’s not what I’m talking about and I think you all know it.

The boys are all still silent. Luke looks 500% ready to deflect again. Reggie and Alex look more like they’re expecting to get yelled at or worse.

Ray: I just want to help. I’ll drop it if you want me to but I want you to know that I would never do something to hurt any of you intentionally. You can talk to me about anything if you need to.

He means to make it an option of ‘you can talk but you don’t have to if you don’t want to,’ but the boys clearly don’t take it as such with how Luke starts talking immediately.

Luke: I ran away when I was 17. My mom and dad didn’t want me to stay in Sunset Curve, I think they thought it was going to get me into drugs or something.

They have a short talk about parents having good intentions not equalling them being right to push Luke so hard they pushed him away and it’s okay to feel hurt by that and then press play on the movie again and Ray thinks he sees all 3 boys relax somewhat during that.

A couple weeks later Reggie comes in visible and hesitantly asks about watching this series he saw when Carlos was scrolling through Netflix once.

Mid-episode he blurts out

Reggie: I don’t want to look for my parents and I feel weird about that.

He rambles for a while about knowing he was lucky that his family had money and his mom and dad told him they loved him and stuff but also he remembers so many fights between them where he felt caught in the middle and it never ended well if he chose a side but there was no way to win because they’d both turn on him if he didn’t so it was just this constant balancing act to try to prevent fights in the first place.

Reggie: I felt like I was walking on a tightrope. Like, all the time. I tried so hard to keep them from getting mad at each other or at me. Only it never worked and it was always a question of when they were going to snap next and it was confusing cause one day we’d go to the zoo and everything would be fine and the next they’d yell at me and send me to bed without food.

He feels guilty for not wanting to put in the effort to find them because he’s pretty sure on some level they did love him but he doesn’t want to see them again.

And he doesn’t want to know if they even miss him at all because when he got older and the fighting got too intense he would sneak off to Luke’s or Bobby’s and no matter if he stayed away for an hour or a couple days they never seemed to notice he was gone.

Ray listens and a lot of things about Reggie start to make sense. How he’s so careful not to catch him in a bad mood. How he shuts down whenever anyone raises their voice. How he helps out so much in an effort to stay on Ray’s good side.

It’s a day and a half after the latest show so they can’t really hug but Ray does what he can to provide comfort and validate his feelings anyway because damn Reggie is a good kid and he didn’t deserve that.

Reggie and Luke get more comfortable with coming to him for meaningful chats, or even just to vent about whatever’s going on lately.

Eventually they seem to feel almost as comfortable with him as Julie and Carlos do so it kinda becomes a routine.

Like Julie will ask for cuddles when she’s sad about missing Rose or she’ll walk in and vent about Carrie and Flynn being so obvious about liking each other but somehow not realizing it’s mutual and she and Nick are 3rd wheeling and going insane.

Carlos will excitedly ramble about his latest baseball practice shenanigans for an hour but also sometimes ask for someone to watch old home movies or listen to old CDs from Rose and the Petal Pushers with him.

And that’s normal. That’s been Ray’s life since his kids started talking. But the thing is that it’s just as normal when

When Luke tells how he’s still angry about his music getting stolen because it feels like a part of him was taken away and he worked hard on those songs. Also one day he very shyly admits

Luke: I like Julie a lot.

Ray: I know, kiddo.

Luke: You’re not mad?

Ray: As long as you two make each other happy, no. I’m happy for you.

And it’s just as normal when Reggie talks about missing his little cousin Kelsi and wondering where she ended up only for them to look her up and find out she’s a major Broadway writer/director now oh my god— and also

Reggie: I think I like boys. Like boys are cute. But I know I’m not gay because girls are cute too and ugh it’s confusing it’s probably nothing I guess everybody goes through this.

Ray: Have you ever thought you might be bisexual?

Reggie: Bi-what-now?

Ray, already digging out his old flannels that he would have passed down to Julie except they’re too big for her: It’s okay to like both, kiddo.

All this is great of course. It’s great how Reggie and Luke aren’t afraid anymore and they feel validated and seen and listened to.

But months have passed and Ray notices how Alex remains separate. He still avoids Ray when he can and stays quiet and cautious when he can’t.

Like Ray still senses Alex around him sometimes but never right after a show when he’s visible. He doesn’t come to him with problems. He’ll stay and listen when Ray plays a song he thinks he’d like, but he still seems so cautious and Ray doesn’t know how to help.

He asks Luke one day while he’s introducing him to a Wicked bootleg if he’s done something specific to scare Alex away.

Luke gets this really dark look on his face and he just

Luke: Let’s just say that my parents didn’t do everything perfectly, but they’re saints compared to Alex’s.

Ray decides to drop it, but Luke wants to reassure him.

Luke: You haven’t done anything wrong. He’s just not very comfortable around most adults in general. It’s one thing when we’re invisible, but...

Ray: I just wish I could help.

Luke: You do help. But it took a while for Alex to trust me.

The conversation ends there because Luke starts getting really into Defying Gravity.

But then that night Julie comes in with a kind of out of character movie request so Ray thinks Luke talked to her.

Because Julie does not like most romcoms that aren’t musicals. She gets bored. But she requests Love, Simon anyway.

Ray kind of sees what she’s trying to do there because now that he’s thinking about it the boys haven’t really seen many things with queer rep. Especially not queer main characters.

And nobody’s really told him that Alex is gay but cmon he’s an elder bi. He has accurate gaydar so he can support his queer ducklings.

Despite how the boys all know being gay is more socially acceptable now (they found out about Nick’s dads and the girls gave them the ‘gay marriage is legal now’ talk) they still seem kind of baffled by how there’s an entire romcom centered around a gay boy and it did well.

From there Ray tries to find more movies and tv shows with canon queer representation.

And he keeps giving Alex space but also trying his best to show him that he’s not like his parents.

For a long time nothing changes beyond Luke and Reggie getting increasingly comfortable with him.

Well that’s not completely true actually cause Reggie starts tagging along to photo shoots and becomes Ray’s unofficial mostly invisible assistant.

Then the band plays an amazing show and the boys stay visible for a full week.

Around the middle of that week, Ray goes out to the garage to find Reggie and see if he wants to come on a photo shoot.

Reggie isn’t out there but Alex is.

And he’s crying. Hard.

He looks like he’s going to poof out when he sees Ray there but Ray’s already 100% ready to do exactly what he always does when he walks in on Julie or Carlos crying.

Ray: Alex. Hey, buddy, it’s okay. I’m here. It’s going to be okay.

Alex freezes and it breaks Ray’s heart how that kind of concern is clearly not what he’s expecting.

Ray: Are you okay with being touched?

Alex looks kind of like he’s in shock but he nods.

He clearly doesn’t really know what to do with it but he kind of melts into it when Ray hugs him and he just sobs on his shoulder.

When he’s stopped crying enough he starts rambling about how he’s been looking everywhere but he can’t find Willie.

At that point he’s basically having a panic attack so finding out what’s wrong takes a backseat compared to calming him down and Ray knows how to do that because he and Rose used to do that for Trevor all the time.

Ray: Alex, breathe. In for 4 counts, hold for 7, out for 8. Breathe with me.

It takes a couple minutes until Alex has calmed down enough, but once he does, Ray asks what’s wrong and what’s happening with Willie.

He only vaguely knows who Willie is from what he’s been told by the other kids but he knows he’s important to Alex.

So Alex takes a deep breath and explains that Caleb confronted him and basically said the boys had to join his house band or he would make sure he’d never see Willie again. And he doesn’t want to ask his family to sacrifice themselves for him but he doesn’t want to lose the boy he loves either.

Ray wants to throw hands but from what the kids have told him about Caleb, he has a better idea.

Ray: Here’s what we’re gonna do, buddy. Reggie said Caleb has this super catchy number, The Other Side of Hollywood?

Alex: Yeah?

Ray: How quickly do you think Luke and Julie could come up with an arrangement for you four to cover that and how desperate do you think Covington would be to make sure a video of that never gets published without crediting him?

Alex: :o

Spoiler alert: Julie and Luke, in collaboration with Carrie, can come up with an arrangement very quickly.

They do a private performance of it and film it and basically blackmail Caleb into letting Willie go.

Willie has an empty house that used to be his parents’ that he still considers his so he mostly crashes there if he needs to. Also he loves skating around so much that he never stays in one place for very long.

Julie can see him but she can’t make him visible so it’s a little odd but Ray gets an orange pen for him for the whiteboard and he finds skateboarding videos and stuff for when he visits.

They eventually figure out that he can be part of the magic by adding him to the band so they give him a tambourine and yay now Willie can be seen but that’s later.

The biggest immediate change to come out of all this is Alex.

He’s not afraid of Ray anymore for the most part (healing isn’t linear and he can’t help a few bad days) and he starts actually talking to him. Not about serious stuff but he’s talking. Mostly just rambling about how Willie makes him feel or how Luke and Reggie have been being annoying lately.

Then one day he comes in really nervous and says something about Reggie saying he talked to Ray about his parents.

And Ray confirms it and asks if there’s anything Alex needs to tell him.

Alex sits down and clearly he’s been holding this in for a long time and he just unloads how he came out to his parents because his youngest sister found his diary and he was scared she’d tell them. They didn’t react well and when he cried out of fear and frustration his father... gave him something to cry about.

His father did that a few more times, trying to ‘make him man up,’ and Alex never told his bandmates but he always knew they could see the bruises and that was why Bobby made it so clear his garage was open and his house was a safe place to run.

But Alex didn’t no matter how bad things got because he guessed some small part of him thought he deserved it but mostly it was about how his oldest sister dropped out of college and ghosted the family and Alex was the next-oldest so he felt responsible for protecting his younger sisters even if they both had learned behaviors from their parents and hated him.

Then that summer he found out his parents were planning on sending him away to some Christian camp where they’d ‘fix’ him.

Alex made it clear that he wouldn’t go and if they tried to make him he’d run away, but their ultimatum was that he couldn’t live under their roof if he was gay.

So he didn’t. And it was a situation somewhere between getting kicked out and running away, but he packed a bag and never went back.

He ran to Bobby’s house, he wrote a whole bunch of angry songs, and he tried not to think too much about how he understood why his older sister left and how he was doing the exact same thing to his younger sisters.

By the time he’s done explaining everything Ray’s trying not to cry but Alex is definitely already crying mostly out of anger.

Alex: I hated them all. I hated Molly for leaving me and I hated my mom for turning my little sisters against me and I hated my dad for hurting me and I even hated Anna and Josie for not standing by me and I just hated them all so much. I still do. And it is so stupid that I feel guilty for that because they were terrible to me and I was 16 and I didn’t deserve that but I do feel guilty for it because they’re my family and I hate them.

Ray doesn’t have much to say because damn this is heavy stuff but he assures him that after what he went through he has a right to hate his blood family.

Alex tells him awkwardly when he’s calmed down a bit that Luke is the only other person he’s ever told about all this, because after he ran away they dated for a few months before figuring out that they were better as friends.

Reggie and Bobby guessed parts of it and Julie probably has too but none of them have asked and Alex thinks he might tell Reggie and Julie someday if it ever comes up but he never did end up telling Bobby.

Ray assures him that he won’t tell anyone and also that he would never do that. He would never do anything to hurt Alex or the others on purpose.

He makes a silent promise that no one will ever hurt one of his kids like that again and if Caleb or anyone else ever tries, they will regret it.

But anyway on to happier matters.

Willie visits a lot and he’s a little skittish around Ray but he loosens up after he jokingly mentions one time that Willie and Alex are like the beginning of the Sk8ter Boy song.

Alex and Ray might be Denim Jacket Buddies but once Ray digs his old leather jacket out of the closet he becomes Leather Jacket Buddies with Reggie.

You’d think he has to tell Carlos and Reggie off the most for breaking things but he doesn’t. It’s Carlos and Luke.

Also Ray doesn’t consider himself an overprotective dad but Julie and Luke are not allowed to be alone in a room with the door closed.

Neither are Alex and Willie technically but it’s harder to enforce it when they’re both ghosts.

Lmao all the kids follow the rules anyway because they love Ray and he’s not being unreasonable.

He helps Julie in her plot to get Carrie and Flynn together and also he helps Nick plan how to make a move on that cute boy on his lacrosse team.

Because Nick loves his dads but they’re disaster gays. Neither of those men can properly flirt. They fell in love because of a baseball rivalry and Nick doesn’t trust their advice.

Pride month rolls around and Julie makes sure to book a big gig the day before the parade so the boys will be visible and tangible.

Trevor’s on tour and can’t get away and Flynn’s parents are working and Nick’s are busy too so Ray finds himself escorting this whole little gaggle of various queer ducklings to pride.

Carlos isn’t quite sure what he is yet so he’s just got a rainbow flag painted on his cheek and a shirt that says I love my bi sister on it.

Julie’s all decked out in the bi colors, complete with ribbons braided into her hair and a flag to use as a cape. She made the tutu herself and it took her hours but it turned out really good.

Luke’s got a tank top with the pan colors and a trans flag as a cape and also yknow face paint of course.

Reggie browsed thrift shops everywhere until he found a flannel in the bi colors and he’s got that along with pink purple and blue laces in his combat boots and what Ray is really hoping is temporary dye and not spray paint in his hair.

Alex has a rainbow shirt that matches Willie’s and matching bracelets with Flynn. Also he painted rainbow hearts on his cheeks and put a lot of effort into them and they look really symmetrical.

Willie’s of course matching shirts with Alex and also he has sparkly rainbow socks and a flag to use as a cape.

Carrie’s got a whole ensemble in the lesbian colors complete with a pride wig and also matching necklaces with Flynn.

Flynn’s matching colors with Carrie but more in her style with of course matching jewelry with the people closest to her. She’s got friendship bracelets corresponding to Alex and Julie.

Nick’s got a pan tshirt and a fedora with a ribbon in pink yellow and blue plus face paint cause all of them have face paint. Nothing too crazy.

Meanwhile Ray’s got a bi bandanna and one of those shirts that’s like Free Dad Hugs.

Plus everyone did each other’s nails with varying degrees of success the night before and Julie did Ray’s so they turned out good.

Nick’s lacrosse buddies and the rest of Dirty Candi are around somewhere but they didn’t ride in the same car so they’re not that relevant.

They party. Celebrate being alive. Idk I’ve never gotten to go to pride.

And afterwards they all go back to the Molina house and the couch isn’t really big enough for all of them but it’s okay it’s not like they know how to sit correctly anyway.

They all kind of pile together and cuddle and watch movies until Flynn and Nick’s parents can come pick them up.

And Ray just looks around and realizes that

Sure only 2 of them are his biologically

And 3 of the others have good parent(s) who are actively a part of their lives

The remaining 4 are technically dead

But he has 9 children and he’s totally fine with that.

Cause he’s Ray Molina: best dad ever.

Victoria’s head is going to explode when she finds out that not only is the Molina house really haunted, but he’s adopted the ghosts.

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k1ttyadventurer · 4 years ago

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AvA Thoughts and Ideas

Yes, this is my first blog post. I can’t believe it was Animator vs Animation that made me want to interact with people on this site.

@sammy8d257 (I’m the anon that wanted to add to your theories) and @inksandpensblog, I’m tagging you guys because I really like your AvA theory crafting and I want to share my thoughts with you. Hope you don’t mind getting tagged. (Also, I’m so down to discuss this stuff in DMs or on Discord if you want? I’m craving AvA discussion.)

Edit: Rephrased a few things to flow better or be better understood. Also added a new point I just thought of. Edit 2: Fixing things that didn't get fixed the first time.

Okay, so, AvA.

(Also, I will be calling Orange/Second ‘Orange’ because that’s what Alan calls him, unless I’m referring to “avatar-state” Orange, then I may refer to him as ‘Second’.)

((Also, also, my thoughts jump around quite a bit, sorry about that! Hope you can follow my thought process.))

(((Also, also, also, my opinions and headcanons expressed here are not set in stone. They could definitely change, which has already happened over the course of writing this.)))

1) Chosen’s relationship with Dark. - I definitely think that Chosen liked Dark (no offense to shippers, but I’m talking purely friendship here), however, I would guess that Dark considered the two of them much closer than Chosen did. - Chosen initially followed Dark’s lead when destroying things. It was all he had known, and Dark wanted to do it. But Chosen started noticing it was actually hurting others, and didn’t really achieve anything. - When they came to odds, Chosen struck first, while Dark just tried to stubbornly continue with his plan. It makes Chosen look like he immediately jumped to attacking, but I’d like to point out, in the flashback, he actively wanted Dark to stop attacking others when they were on the Newgrounds page. I think this means that this tension had been building up for some time. It wasn’t a sudden thing of Chosen deciding to attack Dark. It was likely sudden for Dark, because Chosen didn’t communicate with him (probably), but for Chosen, I think the creation of the virus was simply the last thing that convinced him that his former friend was actually an evil person. - (I would love to see a reformed Dark and Chosen being friends! But, I think trying to say he wasn’t all bad in the first place is severely glossing over the fact that he did--and was going to do--some awful, awful things.) - Chosen had no hesitance when he returned from defeating the first spider virus. He was going to beat Dark. - (I also find it interesting that Chosen knew where this second location was. From what I can gather from the AvG reaction, it was meant to be a more secret location for Dark? Did Chosen watch him from afar and discover it? Just thinking.) - TLDR: Chosen had already started expecting Dark might become an enemy before Dark revealed the virus.

2) Chosen’s opinion of Alan. - Plain and simple, I don’t think Chosen hates Alan. I don’t think he even holds a grudge anymore. - Yeah, he definitely hated Alan when he was chained up. He held a grudge for a long while after he escaped. But. I think as he watched Dark’s actions and the impact his destruction had on others, he started to see what Alan saw when Chosen was destroying Alan’s PC. - When he entered Alan’s computer, and started trying to defend Alan’s PC, he was now in Alan’s shoes. He was the cursor, the anti-virus, who didn’t want or choose to have this destruction happen. - After the fight, he sees other sticks on the computer and is forced to consider it may have been his own fault he got 'tamed', since the proof of Alan getting along with, or at least tolerating, stick figures was in front of him. - It doesn’t mean what Alan did was right, but Chosen now sees why Alan chained him. After all, isn’t Chosen himself now on his way to destroy Dark? He and Alan aren’t so different. He nods to Alan, acknowledging him, even forgiving him. Alan nods back. There’s a level of acceptance that has been established between them. Alan respects stick figures significantly more, and Chosen sees Alan isn’t a heartless monster. - So, when Alan’s cursor joins the fight against Dark, they were already on the same page. Preventing needless violence with violence. Not to mention, have you seen how many hits Alan purposely took for Chosen? As soon as the black blades came out, Alan got between them and Chosen as often as he could. Alan came to help Chosen, not just to defeat Dark. - If Chosen could ally so quickly with Dark, and then turn on him when he realized Dark’s morals were wrong, why can’t the reverse be true with Chosen realizing Alan had changed for the better?

3) Chosen’s opinion of Orange. - I believe it was Inks who said that Chosen feels something along the lines of submissive towards Orange at the end. While I do agree that Chosen’s bow doesn’t seem worshipful, I don’t think it’s Chosen ‘giving up’. I think it’s simply showing respect and gratitude in a very similar sense to how the five bowed to him after dealing with the virus. He’s just... far less emotive. It’s a nice parallel.

4) The effects of the virus spiders and blades on Chosen. - Personally, I think the reason it looks like the virus has so little effect on Chosen is because of his coloring. Orange is, well, orange, so the black wounds are obviously going to show. - You can see Chosen showing weakness in both his fight with the spider virus and his fight with Dark. The weakness shows itself in hesitation, slower response, straight up laying in a crater or the water for an extended period of time. - I think at the end, when the Dark sends the virus to infect the internet, Chosen is laying there unmoving because he literally can’t move. His body language reads of someone looking up weakly, unable to do anything but wanting to. The viruses temporarily disabled him (but, notably, it took all of them to do so). Dark can’t actually kill Chosen or delete him, but he’s been successfully incapacitated, so Dark can move forward with his plan, unhindered. - I just don’t think Chosen would ever, ever give up. If he can fight back, he will. He has never backed down once, even when there seems to be no way he can win. He almost lost to a spider virus--there’s even subtle hints later that he’s afraid of fighting them--but he still attacks the whole swarm until he literally can’t anymore.

5) Dark fighting Orange. - With stabbing Orange, it becomes clear that he’s not being as quickly affected by the blade as his friends. That’s why the Dark lord raises him off the ground; he grew impatient. (Also, Chosen reacts to Orange being stabbed? Is it because he knows Orange is one of Alan’s creations as opposed to the other four sticks? Or does he literally feel something?) - Dark becomes absolutely furious at Orange’s attempts to attack him and frustrated that Orange won’t simply die. Too reminiscent of Chosen. Also, I would like to note that, before he even stabbed Orange, Dark hits him the hardest out of the four still standing.

6) Orange’s powers. - Before I say anything about Orange’s avatar-state, I want to point out that his talents seem a whole lot more like Victim’s than Chosen's? I don’t know, if it weren’t for the fact that he has some label saying “The Chosen One’s Return,” I’d say he’s actually the ‘second coming’ of Victim. - Okay, now to his powers. Almost all of them are souped up versions of Chosen’s, with two exceptions. The whole reviving/restoring code ability, and the ability to fly/float without flames. The latter of these two abilities is something we see Dark do after he puts on his black band. The former could also very well be associated with Dark, considering Second had to go to Dark’s console to revive his friends. Food for thought. - There’s a trade off here in the power scaling. Second is so much stronger than Chosen, but obviously can’t tap into his powers whenever he wants. Not to mention, he seemingly can’t use them indefinitely. If Dark somehow managed to avoid getting blasted into the beyond, Orange would be in major trouble if his super-state has a time limit. - Then there’s the whole sleeping thing in videos that likely take place later chronologically? On the build competition video where Orange literally can’t stay awake for fifteen seconds despite punching himself in the face, there was something Alan did that always struck me as odd. He hearted a comment saying something like ‘should we be concerned about Orange’s narcolepsy?’ almost implying that we should be concerned? Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I haven’t seen him just heart “funny-haha” comments before. (I would also like to point out it is very possible for this to be planned out. These AvM video scripts were likely written after AvA’s scripts even if the videos were finished first.)

7) What next for Chosen doing things with the color squad? - I think, despite the many, many issues that will come up if Chosen ‘play-fights’ with the others (as I stated as an Anon to Sammy), it would be incredibly healthy for him once he can do it safely and have fun. He was born wanting to fight. It’s his calling. And he’s really good at it. Finding a way to do it without hurting others? That’s the best thing he could ever have. - Okay, and, what if, Chosen doesn’t quite understand why Orange doesn’t remember going super, but he decides that he’s going to get to the bottom of Orange’s powers and, in the process, starts training Orange. (It probably starts with Chosen being all, ‘come here’ and flies up, while Orange is just, ‘what? I can’t do that.’ ‘Yes you can. Do it.’ Of course, that blunt method of teaching is not going to work, so Chosen has to learn to communicate better.) Training may or may not actually be successful, but imagine him and Orange bonding. - Both the color squad and Chosen adopting each other. They both parent the other in their own ways, and just. Be cute together. Chosen learns how to people and relax, and gets, like, super attached to these weak little sticks? So, the color squad now has an overprotective higher being watching over them, and the awe they have of his power is quickly cut short when they learn he’s never played cards before? - The sticks also show off their skills to Chosen and he’s just. Confused. Why would you tap blocks just to make a sound? Make something to harvest wheat when you can do it by hand? Why are you eating that. Animals? Okay, actually, holding this cat is nice.

(I deleted my old conclusion on accident, and I don't remember what it said. I don't think it was important, though. Thanks for reading! Please share any thoughts if you have any!)

#K1ttyTalks #K1ttyTalksAvA #Alan Becker #Animator vs Animation #AvA Shorts #AvA #AvATheory #AvAHeadcanon #AvAAnalysis

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some-creep · 5 years ago

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CREEP RANKS EVERY SONG IN NIER... AUTOMATA (mostly) BY TITLE

Because, like, no one played Gestalt. Also this game has more songs.

Significance Like. I guess. It’s a title you can use. What is significant? We don’t know. The characters don’t know. They are struggling to find out. We all are. What is meaning? What really matters? I don’t know but we’re all crying. 8/10

City Ruins – Rays of Light / Shade Plays in the ruins of the city. Exactly as advertised. Sounds sad like you might imagine. 9/10

Peaceful Sleep This is the Resistance camp right? Peaceful things don’t tend to happen there honestly. At least not as we keep going. Sounds like a sleepy JRPG town though. Ok title for the mood it gives. I like this song a lot so I’m cheating and giving it more points than I know it deserves as just, like, a title. 8/10

Memories of Dust Sand is dusty. What memories? We’re making them. Cool title. Sounds like a YA novel though. 9/10

Birth of a Wish Genuinely often get confused with the Silent Hill 2 bonus story Born from a Wish whenever I try to remember what this song is called. This Cannot Continue / 10

The Color of Depression This is like… a really cool title. Thanks. That Scanner boy is not gonna live the happy family life you all for some reason keep suggesting he is. Bad things are gonna happen to him. He dies anyway. 11/10

Amusement Park Yeah. I guess. We certainly are in the amusement park level. Creep why does this one rank so much lower than City Ruins which was also just “name of location”. Amusement park is not a cool title. City Ruins is a cool title. 7/10

A Beautiful Song Would you say Simone has girlpower? Would you say Simone successfully used her girlpower to kill and consume countless androids and also turn them into near lifeless weapons and body jewelry? 9/10

Voice of No Return Sad title. Sad song. Exactly as advertised once again. I feel sad listening to the Automata OST most of the time. Is this quest complete in the camp? I think so. Anyway it’s really sad. I love to cry. 11/10

Grandma – Destruction Um so this is like. Genuinely a horrible title. It reminds me of the title of a darkweb video which I will say no more on. This song is REALLY good its a shame this title is so… uh. Bad. It’s just bad. 1/10

Faltering Prayer – Dawn Breeze / Starry Sky This is another really cool title. This game is about like… life after god. I’m not here to get thematic. I say in a list entirely about if the song fits the theme. Anyway this is a cool title. The song again… sounds sad. One of them is a music box which I love. Cheating again. 10/10

Emil’s Shop EVERY DAY’S A SALE. EVERY SALE’S A WIN. 12/10!!

Treasured Times The fact this plays after Emil’s shop on the OST is the biggest tonal whiplash in the world. This song makes me feel an emotion I cannot describe. It’s something like sadness but not quite. This isn’t a review of the songs, just the title. But reading the title makes me feel that emotion too but stronger when I think about it. I don’t know. 9/10

Vague Hope – Cold Rain / Spring Rain Good title… Thematically very appropriate. Not COOL like some of the others but it feels right feels canon. I like it. It’s just the city ruins quest complete song but it also plays in one of the fucking… DLC fights. That makes me extra sad. 10/10

End of the Unknown Which unknown was ended. Genuinely think when this plays I had more unknowns than knowns. This song sounds like every song from the Gestalt DLC. 6/10.

Pascal At least Automata has far fewer “named after a character” songs. They just have named after a place songs. I love Pascal so if I give this a low score he might be upset. 8/10

Forest Kingdom It really… the forest huh. Random but one of the songs in Code Vein does a vocal thing that always reminds me of this song for some reason. That has nothing to do with this game or this songs title at all I just wanted to tell you. Long Live The Forest King / 10

Dark Colossus – Kaiju This song is also in Gestalt. It’s cooler here. More stakes. Song title suggests less stakes though? That’s kinda weird. Because of this it loses points. I’m sorry. 7/10

Copied City Dude I left this one off the list when I first typed it out lol. Someone not to @ anyone told me this was based on Nier’s village. Lie to me again. I don’t know what City is being Copied. One of them. It reminds me more of the Cathedral City from DoD3. Which is a bad horrible game that I completed 100%. 8/10

Wretched Weaponry Not to be confused with Wretched Automatons. Is this like, a remix? My ears don’t work so I don’t know. Don’t inform me because I love being stupid. Anyway, in the narrative it makes sense. It’s a good, cool title. Song is softer than the title would suggest. 9/10

Possessed by Disease COOL SONG TITLE. Thank you. This plays… somewhere. Uh. Hm. I’ve 100% completed this game like three times. 9/10

Broken Heart You think you’re gonna hear a sad song? SURPRISE. Sinister as hellllll. Subverted expectations baby. MCU take notes. I’ve never seen a movie in the MCU. Loving the dark tones in this. Broken heart but the emotion isn’t just sad. GOOD STUFF. 10/10

Mourning Again. You think it’s gonna be sad? But BOOM. It isn’t. I mean it still is, but in a dark way. These aren’t song reviews. These are title reviews. But if a title suggests one thing and delivers another that’s still a valid point right? I don’t know. Hey wait isn’t this just Shadowlord’s Castle? Yonah / 10

Dependent Weakling Well, it’s no Song of the Ancients – Fate, but it’ll do. In all seriousness, this is like, a great song title for Eve’s boss battle. Y’know, because he relied so heavily on Adam and all’a that. Maybe a little on the nose. Maybe a little rude. Eve sucks / 10

Rebirth & Hope Sounds hopeful. Plays during ending A where we see a Rebirth cos 9S super doesn’t die. This song is literally 30 seconds long why am I even bothering. Oh, right, because it’s on the OST at all. 30 second songs / 10

War & War Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room. It… sounds like a war room song. A preparing for a big battle song. Once again, exactly as advertised. Plays before a big battle. It really thematic naming! Peace was never an option. 8/10

Crumbling Lies Words cannot express how much I adore this song. First of all, title is on point. It’s the song that plays when you get to Route C. Literally the moment I fell in love with the game. The Bunker is destroyed, which, again… maybe it’s a bit on the nose. I don’t care. This is the perfect song title to the perfect song. I will die on this hill. 12/10

Widespread Illness Red Eye except it’s robots now. Very thematically appropriate. Everyone is dying. There’s nothing you can do to cure it except kill them. They’re incredibly infectious. Zombie Virus but with Robots. Can you tell I don’t remember what it’s called? I’m writing this at 1am and I’ve decided it’s funnier if I don’t look anything up. Sounds very somber… I like it. 9/10

Fortress of Lies Not to be dramatic but when I read this English title I was like MMMMMMMNNN because like. I get it. It plays in the Bunker. Which… is built on lies. Again. Incredibly on the nose but when I learned what the song was called I just fucking DIED the first time. I’m stupid. I don’t care. 11/10

Song of the Ancients – Atonement Another song I died when I learned the title of. Devola and Popola in that game have nothing to atone for. They are atoning for sing they did not commit. Punished for the crimes of another set of Androids, possibly thousands of miles away. It’s not fair. They have nothing to atone for. They’ve done nothing wrong. 12/10 crying creeps.

Blissful Death FUCK. This one plays in the Devola and Popola like. Text Adventure part. Which is just. I love it so much. No one dies in that though. Well… maybe someone does. It’s not impossible that Popola hurt someone. It’s suggested that, maaaaybe she did. No one stops. No one Stops.

Emil – Despair Emil’s life has quite literally only been despair. Please don’t bully him with your song titles like this… 9/10

Alien Manifestation Vintage meme of that guy from the history channel with the impact font that just says Aliens. This game has aliens, I will give you that. They’re all dead though. I guess the machines are aliens but. Eh. Wait doesn’t this play in the castle? There aren’t even aliens there what the fuck. 5/10

The Tower There’s a tower. This plays there. Thank you. Also the name of a tarot card I think? That could be cool if I knew a single goddamn thing about tarot cards. I don’t. 6/10

Bipolar Nightmare Cool flying section. Has anyone found Grun skip yet? Because the bounty for that was like. A lot of money. Vaguely a cool song title. I kinda like it. Although for some reason it reminds me of The Evil Within’s Japanese title, Psychobreak. So I think I like it less because of that. Not the worst title, but maybe the lowest of the COOL EDGY song titles. Fucking love the piano part in this one though. 7/10

The Sound of the End Really super cool and sexy song title. 2B is going to die but she can’t let anyone else get hurt because of it. She’s already done so much damage. This song is really dramatic sounding. The title is dramatic. Love this one a lot. The actual playable segment is kind of a struggle. But I think that’s the point… 10/10

Weight of the World / End of YoRHa I once got into an internet fight because I said this song is about every character except 9S because of the line “I’m only one girl”. I was corrected that the Japanese version is basically EXCLUSIVELY about 9S. None of this is relevant at all I just wanted to remember it. I still do not like 9S. Thematically a brilliant title. Everyone feels like they must do so much… but you cannot bear the weight of the world alone. Ending E legitimately makes me cry. Whenever I think about the messages from other players supporting me? It’s a lot. What the fuck. 12/10

#nier #nier automata #long post #creep ranks

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upontheshelfreviews · 5 years ago

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Whenever I discuss Sleeping Beauty with someone who doesn’t share my enthusiasm for Disney, they have an irksome tendency to get it muddled with Snow White; their excuse being “it has the same plot”. I’ll admit, there are some surface similarities that even the most casual viewer can pick up on: a fairytale where a princess is forced into unconsciousness and wakes up with some necking, the comic relief and villain being the most beloved characters, a little frolic in the forest with animals, the antagonist plunging off a cliff, you get the idea. In fact, Sleeping Beauty even reuses some discarded story beats from Snow White, mainly our couple dancing on a cloud and the villain capturing the prince to prevent him from waking his princess. Yet despite that, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are two wholly different movies shaped by the era and talents of the time.

I’ve discussed how Walt Disney was never one to stick to a repeated formula, no matter how successful it was. He must have noticed the parallels between his first movie and this one, but decided to make one crucial change for Sleeping Beauty that would forever differentiate the two: the look. We all know the traditional Disney house style: round, soft shapes, big eyes; charming as it was and still is, Walt was sick of it after several decades. Meanwhile, artists like Mary Blair and Eyvind Earle were producing gorgeous concept art that rarely made a perfect translation into the Disney house style.

Walt wanted to make a feature that took the pop artistry of their designs and made the animation work for it instead of the other way around – which brings us to another animation studio that was doing well at the time, United Pictures Animation, or UPA.

UPA didn’t have the kind of budget Disney normally had for their animated projects, but what they lacked in fluidity they made up for in style. Watch The Tell-Tale Heart, Gerald McBoing-Boing and Rooty-Toot-Toot to see what I mean. UPA were pioneers of limited animation, taking their scant resources and creating some striking visuals with bold geometric designs. Through this, they defined the look of 50’s animation. Though perhaps unintentional, Sleeping Beauty comes across as Disney’s response to UPA, or what would happen if UPA had the funds they deserved. The characters’ contours are angular but effortlessly graceful, defining their inherent dignity and royalty. And the colors, ohhh the colors…

Because of the immense amount of work required to animate in this difficult new style (and in the Cinemascope ratio, no less) as well as story troubles and Walt barely supervising the animation studio now that he had his hands full with live-action films, television, and a theme park, Sleeping Beauty had a turbulent production that lasted the entirety of the 1950s. For a time, Chuck Jones of Looney Tunes fame was set to direct. Director Wilfred Jackson suffered a heart attack partway through production and Eric Larson, one of the Nine Old Men, took the mantle from there before Walt Disney replaced him Clyde Geronimi. And even after that, Wolfgang Reitherman teamed up with Geronimi as co-director to get the film finished after no less than three delays. Also, Don Bluth got his foot in the door as an assistant animator for this feature, beginning his short-lived but impactful tenure at Disney. Did all this hamper the movie, or did they succeed in what they set out to accomplish?

Well, one of the reasons why this review took so long was because I had a hard time not repeating “MOVIE PRETTY” and “MALEFICENT AWESOME” over and over. Make what you will of that.

The story begins as most fairy tales do with your typical king, Stefan, and his queen suddenly blessed with a baby girl after years of wishing for a child. They christen their daughter Aurora (middle name Borealis, localized entirely within their castle) and throw a huge celebration in her honor. People come from all over the kingdom to pay homage to the princess and OSMKFKSBFHFGILWBHBFC…

Movie pretty…

MOVIE PRETTIEEEEEE…

John Hench, Academy Award-winning special effects man and art director, turned Walt on to the idea of basing the look of Sleeping Beauty on classic medieval artwork. Thanks to him and Eyvind Earle’s insanely detailed designs and backgrounds, this is one of Disney’s most visually distinct and beautiful films. A single still from this feature wouldn’t feel out of place up in The Cloisters.

Among the party guests is King Stefan’s old friend King Hubert (Bill Thompson) bringing his young son Prince Philip. Stefan and Hubert wish to unite their two kingdoms and formally announce Philip’s betrothal to the infant Aurora.

“We were going to do it during the second trimester, but we decided to wait until she was more mature.”

By the way, your eyes are not deceiving you. That is Aurora’s mother, Queen Leah, alive and well and named. And frabjous day calloo callay, she even gets some lines! The most common joke about Disney princesses is that they don’t have moms (even Ralph Breaks The Internet went out of its way to highlight that), so as a hardcore Disney fan who often has to put up with this generalization, Leah’s existence leaves me feeling vindicated.

Once that happy revelation is out of the way, we’re introduced to our main protagonists.

Oh, you thought I was referring to Philip and Aurora? Nonononono, my friends. THESE are the true heroes of Sleeping Beauty, the Three Good Fairies.

The fairies started off as one-note side characters sharing the same personality. Think pre-Ducktales-reboot Huey, Dewey, and Louie in dresses. But the studio had a difficult time giving Aurora more depth and was having a lot more fun developing the fairies. Naturally, they became so fascinating and appealing that more screentime was given over to them. Now the story’s carried by three wonderfully fleshed out ladies who are distinct in both looks and personality: Flora’s the pragmatic tradition-adhering leader, Fauna’s the sweet scatterbrain who mediates, and Merryweather’s the feisty young upstart.

With the plot now focused on characters who held a traditionally minor role, it’s easy to read this as a perspective-flipped version of the fairytale, but there’s more to it than that. Remember in my Clash of the Titans review how I mentioned the gods literally play chess using the heroes as pieces? I tend to view the main conflict of Sleeping Beauty in the same way. The Three Fairies and Maleficent are in a constant game of good vs. evil, moving Aurora, Philip, and the rest of the royals as pawns in their plans. There’s plenty of plotting and intrigue, with both sides constantly guessing and second-guessing the other’s next maneuver, and even if you’re already familiar with the story’s trajectory you’re still left on the edge of your seat as it inches towards the fiery climax.

And dare I say it but…the fairies and their power dynamic make this Disney’s most feminist film. Yes, really. You could argue that some of the other animated movies from the Renaissance and Revival period have more notable, stronger female protagonists, and many of the live-action remakes try to be woke without really grasping the concept, but consider this: The cast of Sleeping Beauty is mostly female, the leads aren’t objectified in any manner (that is if you count Aurora as a supporting character), nor does their gender factor into their competency, each one differs in age and body type, and most of them are working together towards a common goal as opposed to against each other. Name a movie in the past decade that does the same and still manages to be entertaining (no, really, I’d love to see it). There’s even one scene that unintentionally provides great commentary on the divides in the feminist movement, but more on that later.

Flora and Fauna bless the baby with beauty and song respectively which are accompanied by a short chorus and some sumptuous graphics. I don’t think I need to reiterate that when this movie goes extra with the visuals, it GOES EXTRA with the visuals. Next comes Merryweather with her gift. To this day, no one knows what Merryweather intended to give Aurora. Flora’s the most traditionally feminine of the three so her giving Aurora beauty comes as no surprise. By comparison, Merryweather is the most forward (or unconventional, depending on your point of view). I wouldn’t put it past her to favor Aurora with intelligence, or humor, or passion, or creativity or humility or confidence or decisiveness or physical fitness or great swordsmanship or telekinesis or ice powers or one million YouTube subscribers or comfort in her female sexuality.

Me personally, I think I’ve got the best gift of all:

“O Princess, my gift shall be…getting all reviews posted on time for once!”

Alas, before Merryweather can bestow such a wondrous quality upon the child, she’s interrupted by a horny party crasher.

Maleficent. The Mistress of All Evil. Chernabog’s right-hand witch. The Disney villain all Disney villains strive to be. She has it all – the looks, the poise, the power, the laugh, the cunning, the ruthlessness! She doesn’t even need to sing a song because she’s already awesome enough without one. Marc Davis’ gothic design cuts a fine figure and Eleanor Audley’s subtle icy voicework is trés magnifique. As much as I enjoy Audley as Cinderella’s evil stepmother, Lady Tremaine was but an appetizer in comparison to the four-course banquet of pure villainy that is Maleficent.

This leads to a small point of contention some viewers have with Maleficent in spite of hitting top marks elsewhere: her motivation. Putting a hit out on a child for not getting invited to a measly party? Not exactly compelling, is it? And yes, it isn’t a deep motive…is what I would say if I wasn’t well-versed in folkloric tradition. In the original fairy tale and the movie (though it isn’t outright stated in the latter), the party for Aurora isn’t just your average royal kegger, it’s a christening. Back in ye olden days, christenings were very big deals. To not receive an invitation to one was a grave insult, so not extending an invite to your semi-omnipotent magical neighbor is just asking for trouble. In the fairy tale’s defense, no one had seen the evil fairy for years and assumed she was dead, though I can’t imagine how nobody thought Maleficent wouldn’t find about it eventually.

“You dare to deny me, foolish mortals? Very well, then! I shall have my own christening! With blackjack! And strumpets!”

Maleficent is proof that sometimes you don’t have to have an elaborate backstory, a god complex, a tragic past or the unfortunate luck to be on the wrong side of a conflict. Sometimes all you need is some magic, brains, class, and a whole lot of flair to be a perfect, intimidating, and unquestionably iconic villain.

Basically what I’m saying is these movies never happened. Got it?

Maleficent is disarmingly polite over being snubbed, even after Merryweather bluntly tells her nobody wanted her to come. She even brought her own gift for the baby – sixteen years of life cut short by the prick of a spinning wheel spindle, because why change into a dragon and destroy everyone all at once when you can draw the torture out over an agonizingly long time and deliver the coup de grace in the prime of a young woman’s life? That’s how Maleficent rolls, baby. She could dole out capital punishment when she has to without batting an eyelid, but causing human suffering is her bread and butter.

Stefan begs the fairies to undo Maleficent’s curse, but it’s too strong for them. Flora and Fauna insist, however, that Merryweather can use her gift to lessen the spell’s potency. Now instead of dying from that fatal prick, Aurora will sleep until she receives True Love’s Kiss™. Stefan’s not one to throw caution to the wind though, so he orders all of the kingdom’s spinning wheels to be burned in the meantime.

I just pray his kingdom’s economy wasn’t based on textiles otherwise they’re screwed.

As the peasantry celebrates Guy Fawkes Day several centuries early, the fairies ponder their next move. They’ve been around long enough to know that removing spinning wheels from the equation won’t put a damper on Maleficent’s scheme. This scene is incredibly effective in establishing two things:

Maleficent’s near-omniscient presence in the film

How well the fairies’ differing personalities play off each other

Maleficent rarely miscalculates her opponents, and that guile puts her one step ahead of the heroes, making her one of the few Disney villains to nearly reach their goal. The only mistake she makes in the entire movie is trusting her henchmen to do their jobs when she isn’t directly supervising them, though that’s more on them than her. The different methods the fairies propose to deal with Maleficent fantastically illustrate what kind of people they are. Fauna believes she’s just a miserable soul who could be reasoned with if they talk things over. Merryweather would rather take the fight to Maleficent and turn her into a toad. Flora, however, is wise enough to know Maleficent’s too wicked to plead to, too clever to bargain with and too strong to face head-on, so their best course of action is to focus on protecting Aurora through any means necessary. Her initial idea is to enchant the princess into a flower (her namesake is her specialty, after all), but Merryweather reminds her that Maleficent enjoys creating bitter frosts just to kill her flowers.

“Well we could try that but stick her in a castle with a beast for a while…nah, that’ll never work.”

Yet never one to give up, Flora alters the plan so they’ll raise Aurora as a peasant girl out in the woods. This means disguising themselves as humans and giving up magic for sixteen years so as to not attract Maleficent, but that amount of time is like twenty minutes to the fair folk. Stefan and Leah reluctantly agree to the plan, and the fairies spirit little Aurora away from the castle that very night.

Sixteen years later, Maleficent is infuriated that her minions have failed to locate Aurora, even more so when one reveals that they’ve spent the whole time looking for a baby instead of a maturing woman. In an interview with the Rotoscopers podcast, Don Bluth called Maleficent a very flat antagonist because she surrounds lackeys dumber than her so she could be the smart one among them and, again, her supposed lack of motivation. But come on, let’s not entirely condemn the bad guys for having too much faith in their underlings. It’s difficult to find minions smart enough to carry out orders but dumb enough to stay unquestioningly loyal. Usually you have to register as Republican in order to get some.

Maleficent gets her anger out in the most therapeutic way – throwing lightning bolts at her orcs, awesome – then leaves the job of finding Aurora up to her trusty raven Diablo. We then finally see the grown-up Aurora herself, whom the fairies renamed Briar Rose as a nod to the Brothers Grimm version of this tale.

I know I’ve made the occasional case for the princesses from Walt’s era compared to the present day, and yet I have a hard time defending how…I don’t want to say bland. Bland would mean there’s nothing interesting about Aurora, and that’s a lie. She’s gorgeously designed and drawn, and even in her peasant dress she has an air of elegance and sophistication. She carries herself like a queen; her innate royalty reveals itself in her graceful movements. Mary Costa also gifts her with an excellent set of pipes. Hearing her song echoing through the forest is nothing short of magical. She’s a flower child who can talk to animals. She has dreams of escaping her adopted aunts’ loving but stifling care and being allowed to grow up, see the world, actually talk to people, and even find a life partner. She has some strong potential. It’s not that Aurora’s boring, she’s just not quite as developed as we’ve come to expect our animated female protagonists to be. I’m grateful for what we’ve got, but I only wish we could have more. What was her childhood like? How did she learn to communicate with animals? When did the fairies trust her enough to let her spend time out on her own? Did the fairies ever subtly teach her lessons in royalty through lessons and games? Heck, nobody bothers to keep her informed about Maleficent or her curse, and they act surprised when she’s shocked to learn she was a princess the whole time. I want to see what Aurora could have been like if she had known the truth already and what kind of steps she would take to defend herself. Blame the source material for this; it’s difficult to write a compelling main character when she’s supposed to sleep through most of her story.

The fairies send Aurora on a fetch quest so they can plan a surprise birthday party for her. Merryweather wants to bring their magic wands back out for the job, but Flora insists on taking no chances now that they’re in the home stretch. Fauna gets to live her dream of baking an elaborate cake (it’s thanks to her referring to a teaspoon as a “tsp” that I do it too), and Flora insists on making Aurora a gown fit for a princess using Merryweather as a dummy. And we also get one of the best burns in the Disney canon:

Merryweather: It looks awful! Flora: That’s because it’s on you, dear.

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The fairies fall into reminiscing over raising Aurora and get teary over having to let her go soon. I see where they’re coming from, they’re the ones who raised her for sixteen years. They must have so many fond memories, not to mention they put all that work into learning to properly raise a child let alone live like normal human beings seeing how two of them still can’t sew or cook without magic. I wonder what that was like –

No, NO, you CGI abominations DO NOT exist! Go back to the fires from whence you came!!

“Ugh, I’m gonna need something strong to expunge that from my eyes.”

There we go.

Aurora wanders through the forest, drawing out the usual bevy of cute woodland critters with her singing. She also catches the attention of a grown-up Prince Philip (Billy Shirley) who’s more dashing and considerably less blonde than he was sixteen years ago.

By this point, the Disney animators were far more confident in their ability to draw realistic but expressive leading men, hence Philip’s expanded role from the story. He’s also the first Disney prince to have a personality; not a terribly deep or defined one, but it’s a step up from his nameless plot-device predecessors. There are some signs of him being a hopeless romantic, he gets a few funny lines here and there, has a sturdy friendship with his horse Samson, and is fiercely determined when it’s time to kick some ass. He does have the same problem as Aurora in he randomly decides to stop talking for the rest of the movie once he reaches the midway mark (at least Aurora has the excuse that she’s sleeping for that remainder), but I suppose you could chalk this up as to him wanting to spite Maleficent with his silence.

The animals steal some of Philip’s clothes so they can pretend to be Aurora’s dream prince. Aurora plays along as she sings the movie’s standout song, “Once Upon a Dream”. Philip and Samson watch until he smooths his way into the dance. Once Aurora discovers the switch, Philip gets a little too up in her personal space for my liking, constantly grabbing her hand so she doesn’t run off and pulling her closer to him. Not as horrible as what the prince does to the sleeping princess in the original story (a questionably consensual kiss is a trifle compared to how the scumbag of a prince treats her there), but still a bit iffy.

“It’s a good thing my aunts taught me to never go anywhere without a loaded pistol taped to my back.”

But once Philip backs off a little and joins in her song, they both dance together and OEHSGBJSGBLL…

I think I’m going to need surgery to get my jaw off the floor back into its proper place thanks to this movie.

As per Disney tradition, Aurora and Philip’s waltz means the two are head over heels in love with each other. But when it comes time to finally exchange names, Aurora panics and runs away, though she sticks around long enough to tell Philip to meet her family at the cottage that evening.

Back at home, the party preparations aren’t proceeding as planned. Flora’s dress looks as good as my attempts at dressmaking, and Fauna’s dessert wouldn’t feel out of place on Cake Wrecks.

A fed-up Merryweather reads Flora and Fauna the riot act and convinces them to finally take up their wands again. This produces more desirable results, though Merryweather still gets stuck with cleanup duty.

Enchanting a broom to come to life and do your dirty work? I don’t see this going wrong in any possible way.

Things start to go south when Flora and Merryweather argue over the dress color and it escalates into a full-blown wizard’s duel. This gag was supposedly based on the animators’ arguments over what was Aurora’s proper dress color. I think they should have compromised and combined both colors to make purple, which would go lovely with Aurora’s violet eyes, but what do I know. I’m just the illustration major writing a blog. Unfortunately, while the fairies remembered to cover every door, window, and crack that could expose their magic, they overlooked the fireplace. The sparkly residue of Flora and Merryweather’s fight fly up the chimney, alerting Diablo to their hideaway.

Going back to what I said earlier about this movie providing some commentary on feminism, consider this: Flora is obsessed with pink, a traditionally female color, and she gives Aurora an attribute that is oft preferred in a woman but not the most important quality, beauty. Merryweather, on the other hand, is all about blue, a color usually geared towards boys, and she has much more common sense and practicality about her. Though Merryweather and Flora are able to put aside their differences in personalities and approaches for a common goal, it’s when they refuse to compromise and begin prioritizing which color – ie. which ideology and extension of themselves – that they want Aurora to step into that they lose sight of what’s important, and allow everything they worked for to collapse on itself. It’s played for laughs very well, sure, but if not’s symbolic of the dichotomy between traditional femininity and modern sensibility that tears apart the feminist movement then I don’t know what is.

The fairies manage to fix their messes in time for Aurora’s return. She’s thrilled with their gifts but shocks them all when she announces her new boyfriend is coming over for dinner. They come clean about her heritage and betrothal to Prince Philip, and Aurora runs up to her room in tears over the fact that she’ll never see her one true love again. That and her entire life has been a lie and she’s being carted off to meet parents she knows nothing about to marry a man she’s never met and rule an entire kingdom with no prior experience or knowledge. But mostly the true love thing.

Meanwhile, Stefan and Hubert are making wedding plans over wine with “Skumps”, the preferred toast between me and my friends. Also adding to the humor is a minstrel who keeps stealing sips until he literally drinks himself under the table.

This was also his way of getting through the Black Plague, co-opted by the rest of the world six hundred years later.

Philip returns and Hubert goes to greet him. He thinks his son is thrilled at the prospect of marrying Aurora but is disappointed to learn that he’s fallen for an anonymous peasant.

“At least tell me if she’s royalty in disguise so you don’t elope to Sicily!”

Philip rides back into the woods for his big date, leaving Hubert with the unenviable task of breaking the bad news to Stefan. As for Aurora, the fairies smuggle her into the castle and prep her for her homecoming. She’s still blue over having to ghost her forest hubby though, so the fairies give her some time to herself.

Biiiiiiiiig mistake.

So imagine you’re me, growing up watching this movie on tape on a television set with a very standard but not spectacular sound system. Then years later you download the remastered soundtrack and give it a listen while you’re falling asleep. You’ve got the whole score memorized, the volume is nice and low, it’s all good.

And then, just as you’re drifting off, you hear a ghostly voice singing in your ear “Auroraaa…Auroraaaaa…”

That reminds me, I haven’t had a chance to talk about the music yet, haven’t I? Forgive me for waiting so long to do so but my reaction to it is equivalent to the visuals. The score is taken straight from the Sleeping Beauty ballet by Tchaikovsky, the same composer as The Nutcracker, and it is lush, sweeping, sumptuous, just…

While George Bruns was mostly faithful with how the score was represented within the context of the ballet, at certain points he took the same approach as The Nutcracker Prince and rearranged the music order to underscore totally different scenes to staggering effect. The beautifully ominous music where Maleficent appears as a ball of green flame and leads the hypnotized Aurora to her doom? It’s from one of the ballet’s divertissements where Puss in Boots dances with his girlfriend. But tell me which is more fitting for a musical composition such as this – two cats pirouetting around each other in a crowded ballroom, or eerie pitch-black spiral staircases illuminated by green fire as a cursed princess inches closer to her dark destiny against her will?

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The fairies realize their error and frantically search the maze of secret passages for Aurora. Though the princess resists Maleficent’s commands for only a moment, they are still too late to save her from fulfilling the curse. Maleficent gloats and leaves the fairies to wallow in their failure. It’s made even worse as the merrymaking from the oblivious revelers below ring out while they put Aurora to bed in a tower and mourn over her. It’s heartbreaking: they raised and loved her as if she were their own daughter, and they still couldn’t protect her. Everyone talks about “Baby Mine” and Bambi’s mom as huge tearjerkers, but why is this scene constantly forgotten?

Stupid onions, stupid stupid onions…

Fauna and Merryweather can’t even begin to imagine how heartbroken Stefan and Leah will be, but Flora has a solution: put the kingdom to sleep along with Aurora until she is woken up. I understand her wanting to spare Aurora’s family some pain, but conking out an entire principality for god knows how long to cover up their failure? AND at a time when Europe was all about invading and conquering itself? Are we sure this isn’t just part of Maleficent’s overarching plan for revenge? This sounds more like something she would come up with instead of the leader of the good guys.

“So what happens if one of the neighboring kingdoms decides to attack while everyone’s sleeping?”

“Then we’ll put them and their armies to sleep, too.”

“And once Aurora is saved, both kingdoms will immediately wake up to find themselves thrust into a war they’re barely prepared for, is that correct?”

“Oh, you’re right, that’s a terrible idea.”

“Finally, thank you.”

“I’ll just turn them all into flowers.”

“THAT’S NOT AN OPTION!!!”

The fairies flitter about the castle grounds spreading their spell over the unwitting royal court, even putting the candles and sconces out. We have another reprise of the “Gifts of Beauty and Song” chorus now altered to sound like a lullaby, providing an interesting bit of symmetry between it and its earlier use in the film. Whereas it first underscored their blessings upon Aurora, now it plays as the fairies are giving the “gift” of sleep to the entire castle.

While Flora knocks out the throne room, she overhears Hubert muttering about Philip eloping with a peasant girl and she makes the connection. The fairies speed to the cottage just as Philip arrives there. But once again Maleficent beats them to the punch. Her goons ambush Philip and she watches them wrestle and bond him with fiendish glee.

You magnificent, kinky bitch.

Maleficent was only out to capture the one man who could break Aurora’s curse; the fact that he’s really the son of her nemesis’ allies is just icing on the cake. Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather resolve to rescue him from Maleficent’s fortress in the Forbidden Mountain.

Some movies reach the brink of greatness only to falter when it comes to the final act. Sleeping Beauty is not one of them. Everything that happens from the moment we slowly zoom in through the purple mist on to the Forbidden Mountain itself up until the storybook closes is perfection. The perfectly paced action, the animation, the music, Maleficent’s hideaway in all its decaying glory (I swear it’s like Jean Cocteau meets Frank Frazetta meets Giotto) all make for the climax of climaxes.

The fairies shrink to insect size and silently sneak through Maleficent’s creepy domain, narrowly running into guards and gargoyles at every turn. They traverse the stronghold until they find her overseeing a hellish bacchanalia in honor of her supposed victory.

“My old gaffer would have a thing or two to say if he could see us now.”

Soon Maleficent gets bored and goes to “cheer up” her captive. Then we have it: The Moment.

I’ve talked about this before, that one small, devious step further the villain takes to make themselves more heinous in our eyes. It’s the Wicked Witch taunting Dorothy with visions of Aunt Em. It’s the Beldam hanging Other Wybie’s remains. It’s virtually everything Heath Ledger’s Joker does. And it is this simple scene where Maleficent details what she plans to do with Philip. She spins “a charming fairy tale come true” of Aurora sleeping without aging, waiting for her prince to come to wake her. And Philip will escape the dungeon, ride to her rescue and prove true love conquers all – in one hundred years, when he’s a broken old husk of a man on the brink of death. DAMN. If you want to know why Maleficent is considered the best of all the Disney villains, it’s not just all her previously praised qualities, it’s her sheer sadism and the pleasure she takes in it.

The fairies enter and free Philip once Maleficent departs. The course of true love never runs smoothly though, so they arm him with the Shield of Virtue (licensed by Carefree Maxi-Pads), and the Sword of Truth to aid in his escape.

“So, why’s it called the Sword of Truth?”

“Anyone who’s subjected to it speaks only the truth…as they bleed out and die, of course.”

“Cool, cool. On an unrelated note, I think I’m gonna go to DC for my honeymoon.”

Diablo sounds the alarm and the Battle With the Forces of Evil kicks off with Philip slashing his Sword of Truth through Maleficent’s goons.

“I steal lunches from the break room fridge!” “I broke wind last Tuesday and blamed it on the dog!” “I cried like a little girl during The Good Place finale!” “I only wash my hands for NINETEEN seconds at a time!”

Philip makes his getaway on Samson and the music reaches truly operatic levels as Maleficent does everything in her power to end him. Yet Philip soldiers through it like a boss. Crumbling mountainsides, Maleficent hurling lightning from the sky and summoning a forest of thorns to block the way? Fuck that shit, he’s gotta go save his girl.

Then, as Philip cuts his way through the briars, Maleficent looks at her watch, realizes it’s No More Fucking Around O’Clock, zooms over to the castle, throws down the most intimidating challenge ever –

“Now you shall deal with me, O Prince, and all the powers of HELL!!”

– and with that, she takes her final form: a massive fire-breathing dragon.

Every Disney villain who’s gone kaiju in the final act owes everything to this gorgeous terrifying beast. The dragon is an awe-inspiring unholy fusion of style, power and darkness. There’s a reason why she’s the final boss in Fantasmic; the chance to watch a live dragon battle is too cool to pass up.

Speaking of battles, Maleficent’s dragon form was animated by Woolie Reitherman, who previously brought us such gargantuan monster clashes as the T-rex brawl in Fantasia and the escape from Monstro The Whale in Pinocchio. And when you have a dragon confronting a fairytale prince, well, you know what’s coming.

Maleficent backs Philip on to a cliff surrounded by flames, leaving him only one desperate shot. With a little extra magic from the fairies, he throws his Sword of Truth at Maleficent and it plunges right into her heart.

“I liked…Frozen 2…more than the first one…”

Maleficent’s spells die with her, clearing the way for Philip. He gives Aurora that wake-up smooch and everyone in the castle slowly rouses, owing their inexplicable simultaneous twenty-minute blackout to the unusually strong wine.

He can attest to that fact.

The royal families are happily reunited, and the film ends on Flora and Merryweather fighting over Aurora’s dress color yet again as she and Philip waltz together on the clouds using animation Beauty and the Beast would borrow thirty-two years later.

Sleeping Beauty is a movie I can never have on in the background because the moment I look up from my work I am spellbound by it. Do I need to elaborate on how this is one of the most beautiful looking and sounding movies Disney’s ever produced? Sleeping Beauty is the swan song of Disney’s first golden age of animation. For better or for worse, their animation process would switch to the rough, cost-cutting Xerox process starting with their next feature, 101 Dalmatians, and few films would reach Sleeping Beauty’s level of gorgeousness ever since.

Though a massive financial and critical hit on release, it wasn’t enough to make up for the monstrous production costs, not unlike Fantasia. Thankfully, home video sales revived interest and made it Sleeping Beauty of the top-selling VHS tapes of the decade, cementing it as a bonafide classic. It’s one of my favorites from Disney for its stunning visuals, gorgeous music, phenomenal villain and overlooked but great cast characters. Revisit it if you haven’t already.

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! Special thanks to Amelia Jones, Gordhan Rajani and Sam Minden for their contributions!

Artwork by Charles Moss.

Screencaps from animationscreencaps.com

March Review: Sleeping Beauty (1959) Whenever I discuss Sleeping Beauty with someone who doesn't share my enthusiasm for Disney, they have an irksome tendency to get it muddled with Snow White; their excuse being "it has the same plot".

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szopenhauer · 5 years ago

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What may I call you? I won’t give you my number jk you may call be by my name - Zuzanna - or any version of it besides Zuśka you might also use one of my nicknames if you know me better or create a new one if it’s not offensive :)

Over or under 18? 10 years over

Ever believed your house was/is haunted? If yes, why; what happens? besides that one time I saw a ghost standing in my door - my brother or an angel? I believe I brought a ghost from camp (that was writing our names on the walls - someone really died there - when I said I don’t believe in it they threw a pen on me through a ventilating grate/grill or however it’s called (the exact pen that went lost when we noticed the names) it was turning stuff on/off or closing/opening things, I saw an orb once too in my hall, I also had a moment after my gf’s mom’s death when there was light coming from my night lamp basically in the middle of the day after we were talking about her with my partner and so I was scared to go to sleep after that

The building you live inside; how long ago was it built? less than 30 years

If you could go anywhere RIGHT NOW, where would it be? And why? I don’t want to go anywhere rn?

What makes you envy someone? health, no worries/problems, easy life, having money especially when they don’t try, when they do everything against and yet they’re lucky somehow

For you, is jealousy something that makes you more sad or angry-feeling? sadness and anger are very close to each other in my dictionary of emotions/feelings (alexithymia) so I can’t recognize them most of the time it’s like they’re mixed together usually

When’s the last time you smacked someone’s butt or been smacked? recently

Do you enjoy making art? If so, what’s your style like? I draw a little and been making a lot of collages/scrapbooks in the past, I write if that counts (poems, stories, books)

Were you a shy child? my mother say so but it’s not true

Ever wanna run away with the circus? not really

Reach behind you- do you feel anything? What is it? my hoodie

Is English your second language? it is

Have you ever designed and constructed your own clothing? designed and mom remade (some even made) few of them for me

Is your house an odd or even number? odd

Do you wear skin-colored clothes? I hate those, it looks like you’re naked, yuk

Do you have conversations with any animals? why not

Can you sleep on your back? (I can’t, I feel too vulnerable!) I can’t, not because of vulnerability but my health issues

What’s the last special thing you did for someone? sigh...

Do you own striped socks? yep

Do you know how to read palms or tarot or anything else like that? not really

Do you own any bones or other preserved organic things? only dried plants, chestnuts, stones, shells, acorns etc. no dead things but I wouldn’t mind vintage taxidermy of some sort

*I own smth like this tho (not my pic, just example)

What do you think about internet piracy? I don’t mind, I don’t support rich celebs, they want too much, also it’s not like we have a choice when it comes to old movies for example as they’re nowhere to be found

Do you tip street performers? (YOU SHOULD.) I might but you SHOULD shut up

Does being an addict make someone a bad person, in your opinion? kinda

Tie up, or be tied up? hmm...

Do you have a boot fetish? I don’t think so?

Have you ever done home-repair stuff? mhm

Reason you last used a knife? not sure what was the last exact reason but it was def food related

If you could ask someone ONE thing & get 100% honesty, what would you ask? can I ask God though?

How do you feel about magicians? fine

Who was the last person to really make you feel special? @jonasz-cat and my father

What’s the most beautiful thing you’ve seen in the last week? I saw lots

What is beauty, in your opinion? what you enjoy looking at?

Of all the bands you hate, which do you hate the least? dunno, weird question :o

Does man have free will? it’s complicated Would you rather do evil or have evil done to you? I guess evil done to me unless it’s smth really minor Who’s better, Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera? Britney

Do you crave adventure? nah What’s the purpose of your life? no idea yet if there ever will be any Have you heard the term "Luddite?" I’ve heard it Have you ever been elected a class officer? byłam klasowym bibliotekarzem czy jak się to nazywało Tell me something interesting.

Does mental illness exist? excuse me?... Ever fallen in love online? I thought I did How many songs are on your playlist? over 500 Do you approve of math jokes? several are fun

How about "your mom” jokes? not my vibe Are you addicted to online surveys? it seems Do you consider yourself a loser? I’m a loser baby so why won’t you kill me Why do you believe children like stuffed animals? who doesn’t like them?! Would you rather die or have ten random strangers die? I’d rather die unless it’s a post apo and we fight to survive then it’s possible that I would kill to save myself/others or get killed - even by saving someone Do you believe nuclear weapons should be eliminated? absolutely Education? eliminated? XD changed Slavery? it’s ridiculous that still exists Do you deliberately cause physical harm to yourself? ... Ever had a blood transfusion? I haven’t What’s your earliest memory? how dad’s office looked like, I was 2 years old but I have a good memory when it comes to interiors, I don’t remember anything else until I was like 6-7 O.o Are you a good writer? I try Would you rather lose an arm or a leg? leg Is it worse to be considered unfeeling or irrational? irrational is worse to me personally

How much will you accept without proof? depends Ever dumped someone? oh well...

Ever beaten someone up? noooo Do you approve of democracy? two wolves and one sheep decide what’s for dinner...

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espressotw · 5 years ago

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The Truth is... (thoughts)

Humans are an interesting existence. A living, breathing creature yet simultaneously a story taking up space in this universe. A complicated story partially self-created and partially dictated. Perhaps mostly dictated. But the stories are so fundamental to the reality of our existence that they become invisible to our own eyes, like the reality of blood cells taking in and distributing life-giving oxygen. Really, the vast majority of what keeps us alive is entirely invisible to our own eyes.

Remember when you were a kid, laying alone in your bed, unable to sleep. What sort of stories did you tell yourself in those moments when your brain refused to sleep? For me, it was stories of ghostly creatures sneaking around the house. I was safe, as long as the door was closed. The door was somehow impervious to the brainspawn ghosts. So real were these stories that one of my earliest and most vivid childhood memories was a time in which I sobbed tears of such intense, genuine fear that I was unable to move. That story, based on some misunderstanding of physics, told me that the door swinging open and slamming shut, seemingly of its own accord, could only be the result of some dark or evil force trying to threaten me. My confused mother, holding me tight, tried and failed to explain the forces of air pressure that acted on the door in my dark bedroom that night.

Perhaps you didn’t think of this as a story, but I think it's important to call it what it is. As a child of six or seven, there was simply no way I could have understood the existence of air as real matter with mass and volume that could act with significant force on the more visible, solid things in my reality. So my brain did what it’s best at, perhaps, if I may be so bold, even what it is meant to do: it told a story. In this case, my associations of apparently self-animating inorganic objects caused a physiological reaction of fear, leading my brain to unfold a scary story of some six-year-old version of demonic forces beyond my perception.

I’ve become so good at telling stories over the years, as many of us have, that it is not only unintentional, but almost unrecognizable. More recently, I told myself a story of redemption. It was a narrative in which I, the morally-matured-and-on-my-way-to self-actualization young adult, felt I had come upon the way I would finally bring myself back to the table with my estranged mother. I finally saw how I could give her the tools to see me on equal terms and simultaneously learn the way of mindfully maintaining my own higher ground rather than sinking myself into the “reality” that was her story. Yes, I’d done it. I’d finally found the way. After more than half a decade of waiting, avoidance, reflection, and growth, I’d finally found the path.

I was going to teach her about stories and storytelling and about how our interactions were subject to the stories that she was telling herself- and to be fair, the stories I was telling myself- and then approach a reconciliation with a bulwark sensitivity and mindfulness. It all seemed to make sense. It all flowed along the storyline, in narrative pattern. A hook, a time of work and growth, building tension through confrontation until a great climax where she would inevitably- since my methods were correct this time- come around and accept me followed by the happy comedown that follows the reconciliation of long lost loved ones.

That was the story I told myself. I was so sure of it. I’d matured. I’d grown. I’d been thinking about it for years. How could I be so wrong after so much time and work?

But I was. I was so wrong I’m ashamed to even admit any part of this story. What was I asking her to accept, really? Me? Well, yes, in a sense. But more than that, I was asking her to accept my story. My story that so fundamentally contradicted every aspect of her reality. My story of a genderless, sexually queer, psychadelic, impermanent, internet driven, and most importantly, godless existence.

My mother, you see, is more or less what we might consider an American Christian Evangelical. A special breed, being of the Mormon tradition, which is in some ways easier and some ways more difficult for me to embrace. Her story is built around ideas like permanence, specifically of the individual and of familial structure. By extension, patriarchal structure and hierarchical structure of god and subject, priesthood holder and disciple. Really, a story with more rigid structure in a sentence than in my entire chapter.

I’m starting to get a little too big picture here, so I’ll try to reign it back in for the sake of mutual understanding. One example that is perhaps relatable to a vast majority of us by this point. A cough. What does it mean? I had a little bit of a cough today, even a slight headache. This is it, I thought. I have the virus. Everyone in my school will get it. Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I just manifested symptoms faster. Either way, I have it and our school will shut down. We'll have hundreds of cases in the next couple weeks because I work in a school. I’ll be out of work, so will my colleagues, my friends, the parents of my children. I’m going into the grocery store to buy a few more food items to prepare for quarantine. I walk up to the clerk scanning temperatures as people enter, fully expecting to be just a little over the limit. I make it through.

But that doesn’t fit my story, so I have to justify it. How? I can change my story by remembering that my family has a quirk where we develop a cough when we’re physically exhausted. That would make sense, I haven’t been sleeping well for a few days. I’ve been working hard. I’ve been stressed. Sure. But I’m a pretty healthy individual and I know my body pretty well, and I just couldn’t convince myself. A cold? No, not like this. There was no other good story. And so my brain found every reason to validate that story. I forgot to wash my hands when I got to school that one day. I opened the door to my apartment building with my bare hands yesterday, maybe I touched my face. I’ve been eating at a local restaurant fairly often. I don’t know their food cleanliness standards, maybe it was there.

It’s a story we’ve probably all struggled with in the recent past, if not currently. And how much energy have we put into proving or disproving that story? A colleague of mine recently stayed in home quarantine for travel reasons, only to end up fighting this story by himself half the time in what he described as a nightmare of a week (he’s fine). Those of us who have wrestled with this story know how draining it can be.

But really, it’s no different than any other day. Some stories I live with sound like, ‘I’m the youngest and least experienced at my school, so my ideas are unworthy of sharing.’ Or sometimes, ‘I notice I spend more time prepping than my colleagues, so I must be less capable since I need more time to do the same work.’ These stories are the reason I show up to work at least an hour early every day. They’re the reason I deal with Sunday night anxiety for the first time in my life. They’re the reason I don’t ask for help when part of me knows I should. They’re the reason I finish assignments late.

The hardest part is that sometimes I’m right! Sometimes I look at a lesson plan or a script written by my colleague and it is objectively of higher quality than my own. And so my brain will confirm its theory. But if I have an idea for a lesson and my colleague says, “Hey, I like that, can I have your template?” No, that’s just a fluke. It’s because I’ve done something similar before at another school. Discard the evidence; it doesn’t fit my story. Thing is, I might not remember the discarded evidence later, even when I should. Even worse, sometimes I get comfortable with a story. Sometimes I want the story to continue, not because it’s good or I like it; no, because it’s familiar. It’s consistent. I already know that story. I know how to cope with it. Anyway, I’m getting a little too big picture again.

So what stories are you telling yourself?

#thoughts #freewrite #prose #consciousness

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ahmeddocuments-blog · 5 years ago

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Day 3, (Paris: Disneyland Paris/Midnight in Downtown Paris), 27-9-2019

Written by Ahmed Hassan, edited and corrected by Aya Ashraf.

The alarm went earlier today, it was set to wake me up at 6:00 AM. I gotta say, a busy day I'm having today. I've been alive for 28 years and I spent most of these years fantasizing about visiting Disneyland. It was all linked with my childhood, and how this place always looked like a sanctuary of my childhood fears, also a way to look up to a future built on fulfilling dreams.

I started to get ready, left the house around 7:00 AM. I was heading back to Charles de Gaulle Airport as Mohamed, a friend of mine, will join my tour for the upcoming two weeks. It took me like 20 minutes to get there, started looking for his flight and turned out I'll have to wait for like 45 minutes. I was extremely hungry actually but decided I'm going to wait for him till he arrives to make him have the full experience from day 1. It was his first time in France and Europe so he was pretty excited, in a way that made him buy us the two Disneyland tickets! I've known Mohamed since we were together in university, so we're talking about 11 years at least here, and Mohamed has always been a lovely caring and generous person.

After hearing the call for Mohamed’s flight, and it was a matter of minutes till he shows up. He finally appeared and it was an emotional scene full of mutual excitement about what we're going to witness later. Mohamed needed to have a french SIM card to use internet, so we made sure we got that at the airport. It was almost 8:15 AM and we're having two tasks before going to Disneyland: 1- to check-in in Mohamed’s hostel in Downtown Paris. 2- Start the journey to Disneyland!

We moved by RER and metro to Montmartre. At the hostel, he left his luggage and changed his clothes quickly to more Disneyland-appropriate outfit. But no matter what he did, nothing would have ever topped my planned outfit for the day! It was just a few days before travelling when I was surprised by Ahmed Hamdy, one of my best friends, giving me this t-shirt as a souvenir from his south-east Asia trip, and I instantly decided that this is gonna be my Disneyland day t-shirt!

So that’s it, we’re ready to go. Before going, we had a sneak peak at Sacré-Cœur of Montmartre, and it really felt nice seeing that one year later. I really like the idea of an important building appearing in the middle or a regular city scene, like it’s just blended there making everything look beautiful.

We had the longest RER trip ever, around 70 minutes to reach Marne-la-Vallée–Chessy station, which is commonly known as the Disneyland station. For those who don’t know me well, a very important pleasure of mine is to introduce something I really like to someone and see their reactions to it. And that’s exactly how I felt guiding Mohamed around the RER system and how everything is operating, I felt good about myself knowing more about Paris and actually started guiding people there, or at least discover it together all over. I also felt good seeing him really excited and his eyes sparkling as the RER starts moving, as people go inside the train and leave. I’ve felt the same back in 2018 and I’m still feeling it to date!

We’re going up to the park entrance, and we were instantly overwhelmed by how long the queue looked like.

We had the one day, two parks tickets; which allows us to have best of both words: Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park. The queue we saw at the main security gate took only a few minutes to pass, and we decided we’re starting our day with the Studios park first as it closes a few hours earlier than the main park. Nothing feels like seeing the Disney sign at the entrance, as if you’ve voluntarily chosen to teleport two decades back to your childhood and enjoy what you've been missing.

We stepped our feet inside Disney studios, and suddenly we’re in a scene of Animaniacs. Everything looks so colorful like it was painted a few hours ago, and the Weather was just PERFECT!

I also loved the level of details, which is what Disney is all about. I mean, I’m literally inside the first building and I’m already fascinated!

The first thing we saw after passing through the main entrance was the Park’s main feature: The Hollywood Boulevard. It was basically a statue of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse greeting incoming visitors. I’m still shocked with how pretty that looked. Sometimes you just can’t help but recall moments like this just to feel you’ve done something right to yourself.

Both statues were followed by a replica of a typical Hollywood street, with multiple shops and stores that represent different styles. The street ended by what looked like a Hollywood sign in the horizon, which looked brilliantly real from far.

Using the Disneyland mobile application, we started to check the games with the least queues. The park was really busy that day, we had to go for the Hollywood Tower Hotel, which is one of the few rides I knew from before. I’ve always watched videos of how cool some of the rides were, and I couldn’t believe that I was actually waiting in line for it. (Later I couldn’t believe I’ve actually waited for 45 minutes, that turned out to be the least time spent in a queue for a ride that day)

The dominating style of the game, and most of the studios, is Art Deco. Which is one of my classical fantasies. It was a horror game in an elevator going speedy over multiple floors with very exciting free falls in the elevator shaft. It felt absolutely crazy being inside this game!

We later went for the longest queue of the day on Crush Coaster. It’s a one-car roller coaster that had Finding Nemo Theme. We thought it’s not gonna be an exciting game, but it turns out to be a great experience! We waited for 90 minutes, but it was worth it.

We stopped for a drink later and took a walk to freshen up. I’ve had the opportunity to take a picture that made my day, I’ve finally found my real match!

The Last ride we had at the first park was Studio Tram Tour: Behind the Magic. It was a 15 minute tour of studio effects, shooting stunts and special effects simulation in movies. I enjoyed every part of it, to the extent that I recorded the whole 15 minute ride, but I’m sharing below the most interesting part of it.

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And like it couldn’t go more Art Deco, there was this restaurant that played live jazz music to attract customers and I absolutely loved it!

Now as much as we were sad leaving the first park , we were pretty excited about visiting the other park. We were going through the entrance of the main park and It’s passing through Castle Club hotel building.

Now nothing felt as great as walking down the main street and seeing the “Sleeping Beauty” castle up in the horizon, like yes, I instantly went back to when I was young, caring less about anything but beautiful colors and details.

As we started getting closer, surrounded by music and happy kids, the castle started getting bigger and bigger, revealing of course everything I've imagined when I was younger; pure happiness. It looked real not just an illusion, it actually existed and people are visiting it!

I had the opportunity to go around the castle, and even go inside. I never thought I’d find anything interesting inside, but it turned out to be even more beautiful. The interior looked like a huge hall with stairs and a very beautiful ceiling.. The second level of the hall was surrounded by beautiful glass windows, that let the light do the work.

We decided to end our fairy tale for a while since we still have a full park to discover. Most of the things we wanted to visit were really busy and required queuing for at least two hours. We found a ride called Phantom Manor, which was, as described, a haunted house ride. We’ve decided to give it a shot since it had a 30 minute waiting time only. The building looked as creepy as it should, making us feel excited cause we literally don’t know what’s going to happen next.

We went inside and discovered it was mainly inspired by The Phantom of the Opera, making it more creepy. It was mainly an underground carriages ride, telling a story of a marriage between the evil and the good. Everything felt completely real; the mansion interior, the theme, the music, the forced-marriage.

It was 5:30 PM already, and we wanted to get ready and save ourselves a spot near the daily fireworks show at 8:00 PM. So we moved to my most awaited ride of the night; Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain.

Not only for being a star wars fan, but for the sake of how I wanted to have that space mountain ride experience, I’ve watched multiple versions of the game and nothing made me feel lucky more than having the opportunity to have it in a Star Wars theme.

The queue lasted for approximately two hours, it even rained while we stood there. We knew it was worth it so we decided to wait. Later when we were finally in, we had the time of our lives! It was a really fun ride with so much adrenaline for being in one of the Star Wars’ galaxies with a very high speed! We were screaming like we have never done that day, we wanted to have another but that would’ve been a waste of time indeed. We saw one of our on-ride photos which described our excitement in a funny way!

That was followed by a quick ride that’s right in front of it, Star Tours, another Star Wars themed ride! Man, I was on fire today! The ride was a cinema simulation of a ride in the world of Star Wars. The queuing didn’t last 15 minutes, and it felt like nothing because it was all themed with everything I loved about this world!

I mean, Come on! I saw a talking R2-D2 and C-3PO!

The ride was just brilliant, I absolutely loved it and loved how real it felt. The ride has a separate Star Wars gift shop that felt like heaven!

It was 7:30 PM, we ran our way to the castle again to find a good spot, and we were very lucky finding a good place to witness the fairy show!

And now It was starting to get darker...

We waited for a couple of minutes before the beauty started. It was a recap of Disney’s well known movies and tales, made in a very beautiful way. The light system on the castle and the surrounding was just on point. It was accompanied by a very beautiful soundtrack, and most importantly: The greatest fireworks show I had ever witnessed to date! Here’s a small sample of my full 20 minutes video of the whole event!

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After the show ended, everybody applauded and screamed like I had never heard before. That was the end of the day for what I assume to be everyone’s best day of their lives.

Everybody was leaving the park extremely happy, and as we welcomed the park by the same shot, we were saying goodbye the same way. It had all started only a few hours earlier, which felt like days ago!

Everything looked beautiful as it was the best way the park is saying good bye to us!

It was 9:00 PM , we were facing a nightmare trying to leave, as thousands of people were leaving the park at the same time. The RER station was packed with people. We could find a train of course but it was super crowded. I suggested that since we’re both starving, we might step out at the next station to have a meal at Val d’Europe. I had visited that mall back in 2018 because it wasn’t far from where I was staying, and I knew the whole mall would’ve been closed by now except for restaurants. We had to walk all the way around the mall till we found the food court and had MacDonald’s. The time we had our meals gave us the opportunity to wait for people to leave from Disney, and have a much emptier train for our long ride home.

I was extremely tired on my way back. I texted Islem to make sure he’s home and awake, and instead, he told me not to go home and meet him at Gare du Nord. Mohamed was heading to his hostel and I went up to meet Islem at 11:40 PM, just a couple of minutes away from midnight. I said, Okay that’s a good time to go home and rest, but no. Turns out He was with his Algerian friends, who I knew one of them from the year earlier. They had a car and they waited for me to do like a Midnight tour of Paris! That was an experience of a lifetime! We went through Rue de Rivoli, Place de la Concorde then passing to the other bank along the Seine. Then we parked right in the middle of Champ de Mars right behind Eiffel tower. The tower looked more beautiful at night, allowing me to see other side of Paris I haven’t seen before.

Somehow, such a scene brought me back to the movie Midnight in Paris. It was about all the fun starting when nobody is around. It was all about yourself and your thoughts, and how reality can be better than imagination. The tower was, as usual, well-lit. We parked the car and took a walk around it, had a very nice orange juice and then decided to leave.

I can’t remember pretty much what happened after I got in the car, because I was extremely tired. But as my google maps timeline shows, we went outside Paris to drop off one of Islem’s friends to his dorm. We then headed to our home which was a really long drive.

We arrived home at 2:40, I was dead tired in a way that I instantly wanted to just sleep and have no thoughts about what happened during the day. but as someone who’s writing that a few months after this day, I gotta say it felt priceless. Deciding to go through such details made me remember this all over like it was literally a few hours ago.

I’m grateful for everything that turned out to be well-planned, and I’m grateful for any pop ups or events that spiced it up and made it look the same way I’m documenting it.

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blapisblogs · 5 years ago

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After that song ends and Corey Taylor gets a glimpse of something we’ll come back to later, we then cut to “young Corey Taylor” getting smacked and sassed by... Rob Scallon as the teacher? Yeah, Doug not only got Corey Taylor and his son Griff for this, he also brought in another musician. At least he got to contribute more to the music in this “review” than Corey Taylor did. Apparently he’s dating Tamara Chambers and that’s how he got involved with this (which makes the fact that Tamara’s here as one of his “students”... awkward at best), but judging by how desperately he’s tried to erase any mention of his involvement with this after the severe backlash it got, I’m guessing that he now regrets this. Anyway, hello, other Doug Walker regular Malcolm Ray. I have no clue who the other two “students” are, but I can only guess that they’re other regulars for Doug’s stuff. (Edit from the future: I think the other guy’s name is Walter? I know nothing about him except he works for Doug and I guess he likes Power Rangers.) All of them have high-pitched dubbed-in voices (I guess to make them sound younger in a “funny” way), and it’s really grating. Like... If you’ve read through my liveblogs about Sonic X, then you remember how I hated it whenever Bokkun said literally anything, right? Well it’s not quite as bad as him as far as the pitch goes, but it is just as annoying, if not even more so because there’s multiple people with high-pitched voices and the lyrics they get to sing in this part aren’t just annoying, they’re insulting.

Oh yeah, did I mention they sing for this next parody song?

If you know the album or the movie, you're probably already dreading this, and it's just as bad as you fear, maybe even worse. Yes, we’re at what’s probably the most popular song from The Wall: the BAFTA award-winning “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”. If you don’t know, that song is preceded by “The Happiest Days of Our Lives”, which is so connected with it that most of the time it’s considered part of “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” itself, as I’ve always heard it credited as part of that song on the radio. Doug does seem to know the difference though, as he notably does not parody the lyrics from “The Happiest Days of Our Lives”, which to me is a problem: that part is integral to knowing the story behind the song that follows it because it’s the part that talks about how the children in the school were abused by their teachers. Again, since Roger Waters based a lot of this off his own life and he grew up in a time where the teachers were legally allowed to physically and emotionally abuse their students, it’s pretty obvious that’s what the song’s about. Even without including “The Happiest Days of Our Lives”, Doug still parodied the scene where the teacher was humiliating young Pink in front of the entire class, reading his poems aloud and calling them “absolute rubbish” (though for this “review” it’s the teacher insulting Taylor’s musical taste in Pink Floyd, which is still shitty and psychologically damaging, and really upsets me as an autistic person who’s had their interests mocked multiple times). Despite all this, Doug claims Waters is just being a crybaby and exaggerating how bad his school life was when the abuse he suffered and the damage it caused him was real and very serious. You can say what you want about Waters’s ego, Doug, but making fun of someone for being abused, especially as a child, is a line that you should never cross.

It seems like Doug’s not satisfied enough with mocking what Roger Waters was talking about regarding his school life, though, because he goes as far as to mock all people who complain about school, dismissing detailed dissections of what’s wrong with today’s education system as “long-winded rants”. I’m convinced he didn’t actually read these “rants” he’s mocking, because there are serious problems with our education system. I could go into all the shitty things that I personally had to go through as an autistic kid, but you can find plenty of better, more detailed posts and articles talking about how fucked up America’s education system is today, to say nothing of what England’s school system was like in the 50′s (you know, the time period and experience Waters was clearly talking about with this), and this post is already long enough before I can even properly rip into this dreadful parody.

As the turd on top of this shit sundae, Doug Walker does a Dracula impression for part of the song because he’s saying that Roger Waters is calling all teachers “monsters” (yes, that’s literally the only reason). More specifically, it’s the Dracula played by Adam Sandler in the Hotel Transylvania franchise, where Sandler was already doing a weak impression of Bela Lugosi. Basically Doug’s doing an annoying, shitty impression of an already annoying, shitty impression.

Kill me.

[Lyrics (and snark) below the cut]

NC: We need more victimization (There are no good teachers! Not one! Not even by accident!) We need more stuff to rebel

[I know some people will complain about literally anything, but did you actually pay attention to what the album and film were saying? That teachers who abuse their students and try to quash their creativity and individuality is bad, something that Waters himself has clarified in interviews regarding the very song you’re parodying here? Do you not agree with that?]

(We don’t want to help you! We just want to eat your blood and suck your brains!) Though our education system’s broke (Wait, maybe it’s the other way around. I don’t know, I got a high school education! Muahahahaha!) This is pandering like hell

[You reviewed Norm of the North, Boss Baby, and the Emoji Movie despite none of those having ties to anything nostalgic (you even admitted as much in your review of the former), which was the entire point of the Nostalgia Critic. If that's not you pandering to your fanbase who just likes hearing you yell about bad movies, then I don’t know what is.]

(Remember that one teacher who seemed cool? He wasn’t! He was all part of the plan!) Hey! Who cares? All this bitching sells!

[Clearly it does considering your whole internet career is founded on that.]

(Remember that one teacher who seemed really kind and gave you candy?) Well oh well, we’ve got another hit in The Wall (That candy was really sugar-coated children's’ souls!) L-O-L, so school sucks. Grow a damn pair of balls.

[Okay, Boomer. You first. (Before anyone goes “well actually he’s not a Boomer”: I don’t care. This is such a Boomer message that a Boomer may as well be saying it.)]

(Children’s souls! We’re so evil! Muahahahaha!)

[I’m sorry for including all the evil laughing in this transcription, but it’s just as annoying to hear it, trust me.]

Bokkun “Child” chorus: Real cool visualizations (It’s all part of the plan so that you’re more likely to get a job when you’re older!) Milking your gloom and pity (Muahahahahaha! How terrible is that? Muahahahahaha! Muahahahaha!)

[Considering how schools in the way they operate now make students lose sleep, stresses them out over numbers that are assigned to tasks that have been forced upon them, and has been outdated for years since that’s not how most jobs work anymore... Yeah, it actually is terrible. You even said earlier that there are problems with our current education system, yet now you’re making fun of people who criticize it? Make up your mind.]

You hated school, who the hell didn’t? (It’s like those ‘90s commercials where the adults look like bad guys!) What’s next, hating DMVs? (Except they weren’t 90s commercials, they were really mini-documentaries! It’s all true! Muahahahaha!) Hey! Waters! Leave it on F-B!

[We get it already, Doug, you really hate Waters’s ego and the things he talks about in these songs. You’ve already talked about that in your previous parody, can you move onto something else about the movie that isn’t that? So far you’re making it sound like that’s the only thing worth talking about regarding this film.]

(We really don’t see what makes Cinnamon Toast Crunch so great!) All and all, complaining doesn’t mean much at all

[Well, at least you’re able to admit that your career means nothing.]

(Because we’re old! Muahahahaha!) But who cares, it’s still a damn cool song in The Wall (Bleh bleh bleh bleh, I’m a teacher, bleh bleh bleh bleh!)

[In case anyone was wondering why I said it was Adam Sandler’s shitty Bela Lugosi impression he was doing and not just a shitty Bela Lugosi impression, there you go. (For those who don’t get it: the “bleh bleh bleh” thing is a recurring “joke” in at least the first Hotel Transylvania. Yes, it’s as lame as it sounds.)]

We still need more persecutions (Muahahahahahaha! Ahehahahahahehe suck your blood, bleh!) (??) need to hear you (???) (Stabula!)

[I’m giving this my best shot, I really am, but... all I hear for that last set of question marks there is a really inappropriate c-word.]

What are you big boys to say school’s lame? Based on a long-winded rant?

[Hmm, posts and articles made by people who know what they’re talking about explaining how the American school system (since that’s what you’re basing this on rather than the one Waters wrote about) needs some serious retooling in order to cause less burnout, stress and trauma with literal children that can and will affect them in the short and long term when they grow up, or some internet jackass who gets paid for yelling at things and hasn’t been to a high school since at least the 90′s. Gee, I wonder whose opinion on that subject matters more in this situation. (That was sarcasm, by the way, for those who couldn’t tell.)]

Hey! Twitter! (???) bloody (???)!

[I’ve tried my best to figure out what they’re saying here, but this is one of the few times that I cannot actually tell no matter how hard I try, I’m sorry.

So anyway, the TL;DR version of what I think of what this parody song has to say about the original can be summed up in one Kermit gif:

...Why aren’t I watching The Great Muppet Caper instead?]

#Blapis tears down NC's The Wall #abuse mention //#child abuse mention //#long post #bold text warning #very long post #gif warning

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zrbillings · 5 years ago

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Pokemon Sword & Shield - Review

So it’s been a long time since I’ve reviewed anything (years in fact) and since video reviews take such an exorbitant amount of time and COPPA has made Youtube this very scary place right now; I figured why not do what I know and write a review.

So with that out of the way, let's talk about Pokemon Sword & Shield. These games appear to be super devicieve you’re either in #gamefreaklied #bringbackthenationaldex camp or you’re a ‘defender’. I find that I have a bit of a unique perspective on the game so I wanted to share my thoughts. I’ve just completed Pokemon Sword, and just so you out there in internet land know my qualifications because to Pokemon fans that seems they only real way to justify having a different opinion.

I was born in ‘91

Pokemon Blue was my literal first GB game.

If point 2 wasn’t enough I collected everything Pokemon and grew up watching the show, often playing the games while I did.

I’ve completed the National Dex

I’ve completed the Kanto Dex like 3x over.

And I’ve played various other spin-off games i.e. Colosseum, Stadium, Gale of Darkness, Trozie? Trozae?

And if you couldn’t put it together I’ve played through nearly every mainline game the only exceptions being. Alpha Sapphire, Diamond, Fire Red, Let’s Go Pikachu, Sun, Ultra Moon. Basically at some point if I owned one version that’s all I needed.

Okay! So with all that out of the way, let’s talk about these games. Plain and simple if you just want to know if it is actually bad, no it’s not, it’s good, one could argue great, I wouldn’t, but you could. If you like Pokemon, get over the National Dex and “It ShOuLD LoOk BEtTeR” and play it, it’s fun it’s Pokemon with some new gimmicks. 3 out of 5 I guess if you want to be critical. Okay so for the rest of you, the ones who are more critical and want to know what SUCKS, and what ROCKS. Keep in mind going forward I’m not addressing the whole stupid delemma of cut Pokemon or graphics, at least not in depth, you want to talk that crap just @ me I’ve got the time. So graphically it is undoubtedly the best looking in the series you literally cannot argue that, should it look better? Well, I don’t know, I think to expect it to makes you look stupid no matter what reasoning you want to bring to the table. Pokemon has literally NEVER shown interest in pushing graphics, they’ve almost never made massive leaps forward, the amount of times they have can be counted on one had, so to have expected more that’s on you, not them. I find them to be gorgeous, yeah there’s things here and there that could be better, but if you go looking for a problem in anything you’ll find it, you could find ugly stuff in Skyrim too, or even Final Fantasy 15. Characters are definitely more expressive than they’ve ever been, the towns are stunning and I feel unlike some of the more recent games definitely come off as more memorable even if you can’t name them, you can instantly picture them. Animations, while I totally agree should be better, shouldn’t have been expected to be more than they are, again this is Gamefreak they literally improve at a snail’s pace justified or not. That being said, while Pokemon aren’t particularly animated in battle, the game overall is the most animated in the series, and here’s why. Again characters are far more expressive, and are constantly moving even in battles when a Pokemon attacks the trainer makes an action, you have overworld Pokemon, you have each and every Pokemon able to do a handful of different animations in Pokemon Camp. You have the world itself that is filled with movement i.e. NPCs, scenery here and there, a good example being the town Ballonlea the Fairy-Type gym location in case the name doesn’t sound familiar. So yes while the animations aren’t particularly impressive, I would say they’re still the best in the series AS A WHOLE (can’t believe I need to specify that). The big draw of this game is the open are called The Wild, this is sort of what people who hate these games wanted an entire game to be like, but better. And I think while they could be bigger, they feel the right size in correlation to the size of the rest of the map, there’s plenty to explore and it is genuinely fun to roam around in especially online. That being said, the game definitely (at least for me) chugs a bit while online, but I wouldn’t say it ruined the experience at all for me. It was so cool to see other players setting up camps and running around, I will say however that while these things are cool, they could have been developed further. You can’t interact with these players if you engage with one they just give you a stock response and then hand you some sort of cooking item, which okay getting cooking items this way fantastic! But why not let trainers customize their greetings? A little especially while in camps? There’s just more they could have done here, I can understand not wanting to create a system where interacting with someone dead stops them in place in order to trade or whatever, that could get really annoying. But I find, there’s not enough here that really push this feeling of a shared space, like why not have brought back Secret Bases again? And had your friend’s bases show up that way if you did want to hang out and chat (through the terrible Nintendo App, or whatever superior option) you could! Like can you imagine? Instead of just having to camp outside and hang out with friends having like your own space to hang out, battle, trade. You could have made this space like an area where if you interact with a trainer a menu for those sort of things could be triggered. The Wilds overall are fun and they’re cool to explore for new Pokemon, I just feel they could have been experimented a little more with. I won’t prattle on any further, but just saying I’d love to see Gamefreak take this and push it harder next game. As an ending note I do fine the placement of The Wilds fine, at first it looks odd, but once you start playing given it’s function it makes sense, I think if the whole game were The Wilds like some people desperately want, you’d run into a lot more problems, with things like trainer placement, and how to limit progression, not saying it can’t be done, just that we’re a ways off from anything like that happening yet. I will say this though (sorry last thing I swear) I DO NOT like how the progression system of The Wilds works, the moment you enter it you can explore 90% of it, which fine, EXCEPT! The problem becomes that while you can explore nearly every nook and cranny of it you can only catch Pokemon in designated areas because if a Pokemon is over a certain level and you don’t have enough badges you just straight up can’t catch it. Which okay I can understand, but then I SHOULDN’T EVEN BE ALLOWED THERE! For example (and why I’m bringing this up) there is an area where you must cross a bridge to get into the next section of the lands, cool I think this is great it visually queues us, “hey this is a different section so logically the Pokemon will be stronger here.” The problem! Is while we in theory can piece this together literally nothing stops us from crossing, the reason this bothers me is because on the literal otherside of the bridge is I SHIT YOU NOT a MF Snorlax! Just chillin, doesn’t wander just stands there, while okay this is a great reference to other games. WHY WOULD YOU NOT! Just put him sleeping on the bridge like in every other game in this scenario, it bars the pass and players don’t waste their time exploring an area before they can get the most out of it. Plus! This game rewards you special Acorn Balls at each Gym, if you don’t know what these are they were in Gold and Silver they’re special Pokeballs that in this game are one of a kind that have awesome effects, the one I want to reference specifically here is the Heavy Ball which works better the heavier a Pokemon is i.e. “this ball was invented for catching Snorlax.” So it baffles me how Gamefreak didn’t do something like the last Gym before you’re able to wake up Snorlax and pass the bridge allows you to get a Heavy Ball thusly not only letting you finally progress into this new area, but also gives you an item as a sort of reward. Wow, sorry moving on. I find where this game really misses the mark is the story and the characters, outside Hop (who is insufferable early on) are really bland and sort of lackluster. I feel like this is a bigger thing to be upset about than animations and Pokemon count. Hop is one of the only rivals to truly go through a character arch which is amazing! He goes from this arrogant, insufferable, condescending, ass, to someone who just wants to be the best, but doesn’t act like he already is, he knows where he’s at and strives to be more. This huge development really, really shows how poor the rest of the cast is, the professor this time is boring, not even a professor really at least not like were used to. The champion is fine, but lacks any real charisma like the game wants you to believe he has. The other rival Bede is...under utilized? Like he comes around and it’s like, “finally! Gary Oak 2.0!” and he just sort of disappears about half way through the game and then pops up at the end. I’m not going to go through the whole cast, but everyone is more or less this same sort of doesn’t bring much to the table. As dumb as Team Yell are I actually like that they’re not the evil baddies of the game, they’re not even Team Skull level, they’re just kind of a bit of inconsiderate fanboys, they work well as a level progression block? System? Their use for impeding your progress until you’ve done the right thing works well is what I’m saying. The big thing with this game is it really lacks an evil team, it’s like The Aether Foundation all over again, except infinitely worse, while The Aether Foundation sort of slowly unravels at some point, the ‘evil team’ or in this case just two baddies, kind of feels like it comes completely out of left field and only happens because Gamefreak wanted a cool way to introduce the legendaries. It just felt super random and unsatisfying and that the motivations really didn’t make sense and happens right in the middle of the Pokemon League so it kills all momentum, and any tension the league did have. Which is another thing the league is shit, it’s bad, the idea is really good, it’s inspired by the show it feels like a proper tournament, but since you can heal and swap out Pokemon between each match there is 0 tension, and since the story just decides to interrupt it, it just doesn’t feel satisfying. Beating the champion doesn’t feel like an accomplishment because you’ve already beaten the big baddie just before him, and all the other trainers before him in two different sessions, it doesn’t feel like you went through this gauntlet of really tough trainers to reach him and prove yourself, it feels like no matter what you were always going to beat him, the game did literally everything it could to make sure you beat him! I felt fucking bad beating him, because it was so easy, I literally gave him a handicap, I used 0 healing items and beat him with two Pokemon to spare and that was also because I gave him another handicap where I didn’t switch out once I threw out a Pokemon! Gyms are back, but they kind of feel like they belong in Sun and Moon because you have to do ‘missions’ before each one before you face the leader which is fine, but I personally could have done without them, for the most part they're just glorified obstacle courses. I guess they feel like the same old stuff, but I think it’s the nature in which they’re handled that actually bother me and less of having to do them myself. I think in a way given how this Pokemon League is set up it would have made more sense to just completely do away with them, maybe put something else there in its place. The gym leaders are all really colorful and actually really well designed, they all have their own very defined personalities which is cool, It would have been cool to have actually seen more of them somehow. The last thing I’ll talk about as this review is already overly long is Dynamaxing. It’s fine, I will say that if it were up to me I would have changed how it’s handled, I think the raid battles are great, they’re really fun they make grinding for levels a fucking joke and I love it, it helps you find really cool Pokemon and strong Pokemon for your team it makes Online feel like there are actually other trainers out there in the world taking on this gym challenge besides just you, it’s cool, but I feel outside of the raids there really pointless. Each Gym Leader uses it always with their last Pokemon, and it never feels like it matters so long as you Dynamax yours at the same time and have type advantage it’ll feel like KO-ing any other old Pokemon except it’s big af.If it were me I would have changed it to Mega Evolutions, because they actually feel like they matter and then they could have introduced new megas and I’ll do you one even better! What about when after you beat the Gym leader they gave you the same kind of mega stone that they used! Maybe in place of TMs, or in conjunction with them rather than them giving you Gym uniforms you’re never going to wear. That’s more short and sweet two cents on the Dynamax system, it’s great for raids pointless for everything else. Kind of like the clothing in this game, and that’s all I’ll say about the clothing that and I think the uniform thing was dumb and should have only been used for the Pokemon League rather than every single Gym battle. And that’s it! That’s my very thorough review of Pokemon Sword & Shield. Like I said at the beginning, these games are fun no doubt, but they definitely aren’t even in the top 5. I think there’s a lot of wasted potential or cooler directions they could have taken these. There are definitely cool things like the different gyms for the two versions, The Wilds are fun to hang out in and run around, the new Pokemon are actually really cool, I love that they added more regional variants and not just for Kanto Pokemon, the towns are very visually memorable. But outside that, I’m kind of hard-pressed to think of much else, I can’t speak on the post-game either, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any if at all. This game simultaneously feels like the largest Pokemon game to date as well as one of the smallest.

#pokemon #bring back the national dex #gamefreaklied #pokemon sword and shield #review

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heythererosetyler-blog · 6 years ago

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10th Doctor Novels Review from ‘oh give me a break’ to ‘more of that please!’ There are DW novels and then there are DW NOVELS and today, fellow Whovians, I will be giving you MY list of the top 5ish best and worst novels from the 10th Doctors’ run. I think all the books in the best category could be switched around depending on what you are looking for from #10. For instance, I like him best when he is alone so you don’t get the classic, ‘must save companion’ story and I also like the one’s where he is a hairs-breath away from being killed. It bears repeating that, except for the book at the #1 spot which no one who has read it would ever argue that it doesn’t deserve that honor, this is simply how ‘I’ would rank them. YMMV. Also, and this is a big one if you keep going YOU WILL SEE SPOILERS, so proceed with caution if you plan on reading any of the books on the list. So, go on and read/listen to it…. we will wait. (Taps foot and drums fingers while whistling the DW theme. Badly.) Welllll…I said we will wait but, welllll…. I really meant that I would wait but welllll…. nah, you had your chance so just tread lightly. Or read with your eyes closed because, and let me repeat this…. THERE ARE SOME MAJOR, MAJOR SPOILERS!! )))))*((((( Imho and without going into too much detail, the following can be passed by without missing out on anything. In fact, if you read any of these first you may just be turned off of DW books completely. The Last Dodo by Jacqueline Rayner Ummm, if you are interested in trying to figure out where the Dodo went, this might appeal to you. The only interesting feature is that where it ended up is where the Doctor might end up unless he and Martha can free the missing creatures from all across the universe from this evil zoo. Trust me, not as exciting as it sounds but it might have been if it been written better. And in that same vein we have…… The Doctor Trap by Simon Messingham I don’t know what it is about trying to catch the Doctor because he is the last of his kind that just cannot be written right, but here is another. I had high hopes for this one because it starts out pretty good but after the first chapter or so you just want to scream ‘CATCH HIM ALREADY AND MAKE THE PAIN OF READING THIS STOP!!’ The Wooden Heart by Martin Day Has nothing to do with a heart that is wooden. I am still unsure as to why it is called what it’s called. On the ‘Goodreads’ website the description of the book states: A trip through space becomes a nightmare walk in the woods for the Doctor and Martha. Period. End of description. I think the reason it ends there is because there is nothing much more to say. I have read much better fanfic than this. Others that I consider a touch better, with maybe a little less snore factor are…. The Slitheen Excursion by Simon Guerrier The Many Hands by Dale Smith )))))*((((( Whew, let’s all take a deep breath and get into the tasty 10 tales, shall we? The Stone Rose by Jacqueline Rayner How do you take a story about ancient Rome, a 2000 year old statue of Rose aka the goddess Fortuna found at the British Museum, a genie, fake astrologer, evil sculptor and a crazed Doctor who is panic stricken while trying to save her but gets thrown into the REAL lion’s den and forced to fight in the Colosseum, and make it all work? Write a book like this! If you like your books a bit timey-wimey you will eat this one up. AND this is the only published story where I think you will ever read the lines…. “(His) arms flexed and grabbed Rose into a hug. Soft lips pressed hers with a kiss of gratitude and joy and unspeakable pleasure at being alive.” A gazillion Ten/Rose shippers just punched the air. They also would agree with Rose when, a line or two later she says…. “I think you must be real…my imagination’s not that good.” Neither is ours Rose, neither is ours. A fast and :: cough:: satisfying read! In the Blood by Jenny Colgan Ok, I know that a lot of people have a problem with the fact that whoever did the proof-reading was obviously sleeping on the job, but I still think it is a great book. And strangely enough, I really wasn’t thrilled by the premise of the story; an infection is let loose over the internet turning normally calm, everyday people into violent pressure cookers who die when their anger gets too much for their hearts to handle. What I DO love is how much the author just ‘gets’ the Doctor and Donna and the predicaments she puts them in. I mean she just nails them and by doing so it elevates the story into something special. On top of that Colgan introduces a near perfect pseudo-villain named Fief. He is a big brute of a guy from the planet Cadmia who is unpredictable and whose loyalties are to his people and to retrieving the source of the infection no matter what he has to do to get it. He is unfeeling, totally logical and robotic (picture the Terminator and he comes pretty close) and wears an earpiece that connects him to his world who are all raised on and made of sound. When the Doctor entrusts him to care for Donna as he believes he is going to his death, Fief obeys and holds Donna back from following him. He seems to connect to Donna which is fascinating to read. Meanwhile back on the train, the Doctor disconnects the engine so that the cars slow and stop but he has to get the train to jump the tracks before it barrels into the town. The big problem is that the train is suspended over a huge viaduct located in the Brazilian rainforest and it is one hell of a long way down. And since the engine is heavier than he is it will burst into a huge ball of flame which our hero will land in as well. Colgan comes up with some of the most beautiful writing here as the Doctor falls…. “And, as he cut through the air, all the things that fall pulsed through his head: a glorious downed pheasant on the wing; and a windfall apple in Lincolnshire; and a golden ball in Pisa; and a hammer and a feather on the moon; and a wall in the bitter east; and every passing snowflake and lonely airman and oh so many tumbling stars…. And he felt a part of all of these things.” There are other heart stopping moments in this book that make me wish it was available on audio. Another winner! FUN MENTION/Target Novelization of…. “The Day of the Doctor” by Moffat Since we are talking Ten, I am adding this for one reason and one reason only: The Tenth Doctor kicks the Eleventh Doctors ass. After releasing the initial script for the ‘movie,’ the Moff rewrote it to help clarify some things and give each Doctor a bit more back story. It explains how Ten had been put in that very same cell during his Zygon investigation that all three of them got thrown in together. Elizabeth tosses him in there because she believes him to be a spy and yet visits him often because he makes her laugh…. even during his torture on ‘the rack.’ Pre-picnic shows how he came within seconds of being beheaded (he wonders if both his head and body would regenerate if separated) and how he wanted his final thoughts to matter…. “Realizing he was now, beyond all doubt about to die, the Doctor rose up inside himself, steadied his hearts and chose his final thought with care. The children. The children of Gallifrey.” This I think, more than any other reason explains why he was so angry when 11 didn’t remember how many children died. In the book version he becomes so angry that he gets in his face, screams at him about not remembering then grabs his shirt and throws him across the room into the opposite wall, knocking him out. 11 wakes up to seeing 10 pacing and mumbling about how he doesn’t hit people but then says, “But 2.47 billion children!” before launching himself once more at 11 but this time gets him in a headlock shouting “How could you forget?! HOW COULD YOU FORGET?!” I would have paid good money to have seen this instead of merely reading it. It is for everyone who sobbed their eyes out when 10 regenerated and still to this day have a hard time revisiting it. This is all of us saying to 11, ‘Yeah, take THAT bowtie boy!’ even though we ended up liking him eventually. 3 - Peacemaker by James Swallow Quote: “A weapon is only a tool. I’ve heard a lot of people say that over the years. But so is a hammer, and if that’s the only tool you have, pretty soon everything starts to look like a nail.” Oh, I love that! Peacemaker is a scifi western. No, really it is and guess what…Swallow pulls it off! The official summary is: “The peace and quiet of a remote homestead in the 1880s American West is shattered by the arrival of two shadowy outriders searching for 'the healer'. When the farmer refuses to help them, they burn the house and the owners to the ground, using guns that shoot bolts of energy instead of bullets... In the town of Redwater, the Doctor and Martha learn of a snake-oil salesman whose patent medicines actually cure his patient. But when the Doctor and Martha investigate, they discover the truth is stranger, and far more dangerous. Caught between the law of the gun and the deadly plans of intergalactic mercenaries, the Doctor and Martha are about to discover just how wild the West can become...” Whew, a lot to take in I know but very worth it. The badie is a good one called the Clade which exist for one thing: war, death and destruction. They are on earth to get back a gun that belongs to them and they will stop at NOTHING to retrieve it. Problem is one man found it and the gun did what it is meant to do which is attach itself to its host and take it over completely. It has the ability to heal but that is not its main purpose. The Clade are simply machines that were made on a planet which was at war and let the Clade do the battles for them. But then there was peace and the Clade had no purpose anymore so they waited and waited and finally decided to destroy the civilization that made them and then go out into the universe to fight battles wherever they could. I can picture the Doctor donning a cowboy hat and riding a horse. One of the many scenes I really like is when 3 gunslingers come out of a bar and challenge the Doctor to a duel. It goes like this…. “The Lyle Brothers were quick on the draw, and they put a fan of bullets into the air before them; but they could only be as fast as human beings. The Doctor was a Time Lord, and he moved between the ticks of the clock. His hand blurred towards the holster on his hip, grabbing the slender wand there and thumbing the activation switch. The sonic screwdriver droned loudly, and the air between the gunslingers and the Doctor shimmered like heat-haze off the desert. Three speeding dots of lead stopped dead and flattened against an invisible wall of sound, before falling harmlessly to the dirt.” The end of the book was shocking when the Doctor makes the ultimate sacrifice by allowing the gun to take him over so that he can use it to save Martha’s life. After that it was an internal battle between the Clade gun that was trying to possess him, and the Doctors own inner struggle which was a fascinating fight. 2 – The Eyeless by Lance Parkin Quote: “Do you know what? In the end their sacrifice made no difference. Because THEY survived. Thousands of them, millions. Just one. It doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing. And…do you know what?... life is always better than death. Always. Yet I want all of THEM dead. Every single last one of them. When did I become someone who wanted to exterminate? When was that? When did they win?’ Take one brilliant hero, put him in a position where he must find and remove such a incredibly lethal weapon that it can destroy whole planets, then put it at the heart of a HUGE pyramid shaped fortress whose defense systems both inside and out are pin-point accurate to protect the weapon and you would have an good story. THEN throw in an alien species called the Eyeless who are made of a glass like material and who also want the weapon and will kill the Doctor to keep him from getting it and you are probably reading a great story! THEN add in thousands of ‘ghosts’ that also inhabit the fortress and whose touch turns their victims into a ghost as well. Even though they mean no harm, they do not understand their effect on those they touch which makes them yet another barrier for him to get by. This up’s the entertainment factor, making it a fantastic story! Finally throw into the mix one bully teenager who HATES the Doctor and also wants him dead, make the Doctor companionless, lonely and very introspective, have it all put together by an exceptional writer…. mix well and you have something that you lose sleep over and will reread multiple times. The Doctor is up against an almost insurmountable goal that very nearly breaks him. It is a breathless page-turner that is not for the faint of heart. Parkin wrote this for a Doctor who is quick on his feet, a blazingly fast thinker who can stay one step ahead of multiple traps and enemies, one who is physically strong and extremely cunning. In other words, Ten. I can’t see any of the others having all those qualities in one dynamic package that Parkin could have placed center stage except him. For instance... “The Doctor had broken free of the Eyeless, but it still had a six-fingered handful of his coat and jacket lapel. The Doctor was closed in, his arm under the Eyeless’ so that he had it in what he rather hoped was a wrestling hold…. The glass man shoved the Doctor against the back wall. It wasn’t any stronger than a human being, although that was strong enough to push the air out of his lungs. He recovered, twisted, managed to trip the Eyeless over and now he had it pinned, his knee in its back, although it was hard to keep hold….” And this was just one Eyeless. At one point during the above scene Parkin describes it as almost like a waltz as the two vie for dominance over the other. There is a lot of physical jousting and plain old hand to (glass) hand combat that I don’t think any of the others could have pulled off as well as Ten. Where the ghosts are concerned there’s a part where he is surrounded by them as they advance. He is trying to get through to them that if they touch him, he will not become a ghost, he will just disappear. But there is a part of him that is just so tired and feels so alone that he actually wonders if that would be a bad thing. As they come closer you can tell that he is almost yelling at himself when he loses it, saying to them… “I’m the last one,” the Doctor said. ‘I’m it. My people died. All of them. And Time Lords don’t die just the once, you know. You have to kill us a lot more than once to make it stick.’ Still the ghosts pressed at him, some holding out their hands like beggars after a scrap of food, some shouldering towards him like they were after a fight, some apparently just wanting him to see them cry. They kept coming, like waves to a beach. ‘Do you know what? In the end their sacrifice made no difference. Because THEY survived. Thousands of them, millions. Just one. It doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing. And…do you know what?... life is always better than death. Always. Yet I want all of THEM dead. Every single last one of them. When did I become someone who wanted to exterminate? When was that? When did they win?’ The ghosts weren’t listening.” At times it feels like you are eavesdropping on a therapy session because we get to hear the inner workings of his mind. It is a fascinating way to understand this Doctor’s motivations and feel his loneliness. This story is like one big ‘Escape Room’ where you either solve it or die trying. As the Doctor would say, ‘no second chances.’ It’s that kind of story. 1 – Prisoner of the Daleks by Trevor Baxendale Scene: “The execution squad was already moving back towards Jennifer and Kuli, taking up extermination positions again. The Doctor ran over and placed himself between the Daleks, the little girl and her mother. “If you really want to kill them then you’ll have to go through me first.” “You can be disabled" warned Dalek X "Try It” The Dalek guns twitched impatiently in their sockets. All eyes were on the Doctor, but he met the pitiless blue stares unflinchingly. “Harm them in any way and I will not cooperate. You can disable me and torture me again or even kill me, but you will NEVER get the TARDIS!” ― Trevor Baxendale, Prisoner of the Daleks Fellow Whovians please bow down and give thanks to the man who wrote possibly the greatest DW novel of all time, certainly of the reboot…. Trevor Baxendale. Ok, ok so I haven’t read EVERY DW book so the ‘all time’ comment can be almost ignored. I say almost because I have read reviews by those who have been fans from Hartnell to now who have also said that this is the absolute best ever written. Don’t believe me? Check out YouTube where there have been a couple of attempts at recreating scenes, or the video reading of the first chapter with intro and backdrop, whole pages filled with fan art of this very book on DeviantArt etc. etc. Hell, just look at the ratings on Amazon for it. Even Barnes and Noble along with the BBC thought it worthy of putting it, along with “Remembrance of the Daleks” from the Classic era into their ‘bonded-leather binding, with distinctive gilt edging and an attractive silk-ribbon bookmark’. One thing I do take issue with is where it says that on Amazon that it offers…. “…hours of pleasure to readers young and old…” Ahhh, no. “Prisoner…” is most definitely NOT for the young reader. It is one of the most, if not THE most adult DW book I have ever read and I have read 95% of the reboots novels. At times it is downright brutal. There is no other book where a scene like this is featured…. (He is dragged into a room and forced to stand against a metal wall where he is bound to it via tight clamps around his ankles and wrists. Then something is clamped to his head with hundreds of fine needles pricked his scalp.) “I AM DALEK X’ ‘Can’t say I’m pleased to meet you, sorry’ ‘YOU ARE ATTACHED TO A DALEK MIND PROBE. IT HAS BEEN CALIBRATED TO YOUR SPECIFIC BRAINWAVE FREQUENCY.’ ‘You won’t get anything out of me’ the Doctor blurted. ‘THAT IS NOT THE INTENTION’ replied Dalek X. ‘YET.’ ‘I INTEND TO MEASURE YOUR CAPACITY FOR PHYSICAL PAIN’ said Dalek X ‘Oh. Why?’ ‘BECAUSE I WISH TO.’ Suffice it to say that what they do to him is written pretty graphically and is even hard to re-type. There is one part, however, I do like which comes after the second time (in a row, btw) they torture him that I think sums up 10 pretty well, “His brain felt like it was about to burst, but when the torment ended the Doctor found himself laughing. “That’s it, isn’t it?” he panted, his breath ragged and thin. “Your losing!” It’s the laughter that makes the scene so surprising and makes it uniquely Ten. There they are, my least favorite and my best. What do you think? Which are yours?

#doctor who novels tenth doctor stories DW novels

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see-arcane · 6 years ago

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En route to December 17th, the Scarlet Lettering, I feel like saying something.

I’m not going to touch the hellsite for a whole 24 hours on the 17th. I’ve got stuff planned outside the home, I’m going to switch the Wi-Fi off, keep distracted. Even so, I doubt I’ll abandon this site outright unless my favorite people abandon ship entirely. I’m only here for a handful.

That said, I think I really will make an honest effort to use the site less. I know, I know, I’m playing into the ‘millennials are always plugged into everything hurr durr technology evil’ stereotype, but only by half. Because really? This place is eating up all my very, very rare free minutes of time between work, school, and sleep. I could blame the cool people I follow, for being so cool and showing me cool things on a daily basis. (And I do. You cool, cool bastards.)

But mostly, I’ve got to blame my addiction to the Tumblr version of the Validation Machine (TM) that all the other social media platforms have in some form or another. If you follow me, you know I like to type up bullshit. Entertaining bullshit about favorite comic book characters and mythologies and the like. Now and then I’ll forget that Photoshop and I aren’t friends and I’ll slap up a drawing. Why? The same reason any content creator pins their stuff to the Internet.

I Need to be Known and Liked*

*Reblogged

Which isn’t a bad thing. People like being liked. People like making friends and they like having the things they say and create visibly enjoyed. We’re all guilty of snooping in others’ tags now and then, hoping for admiration. But it’s gone past that for me.

I get so wrapped up in scrounging for that feel-good recognition high that I burn what little free time I have on it, never making progress on the creations that sit and wait for weeks at a time, growing by a page or less, buried under academic crap, work hours, sleep, and more tucking Fumblr. It needs to stop. I need to stop.

Again, I’m not giving up the account entirely. But I’m going to try and start whittling down my time with it. Keep it on a schedule. Twice a day, two hours max. Then once a day. Every other day. See what works. Hopefully I’ll still be seeing you guys after December 17th. Maybe Tumblr will even manage to unfuck its new setup. Doubtful, but we can hope.

tl;dr

Jumping off of Tumblr for the 17th. Will hang around after. Not as much. Do not let the blue machine consume the last free inch of your life. Viva la Titties.

#silver lining to this whole mess I guess #I timed my Tumblr use the other day and it was almost as scary as it was embarassing #I really didn't think it was that many hours but #yeah #I've got to trim this down #anyway #hope you like rambling #tumblr #december 17th 2018

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neozachary · 2 years ago

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BOOKS I READ IN TWENTY-TWENTY: 2 (2022)

The Princess Bride – William Goldman

Do I need to summarise this one? “As you wish”, “Inconceivable”, “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya,” and so forth. It’s the Princess Bride!

The main difference between the book and the movie is the framing device: in the movie it’s a kid being read the book while he’s sick in bed.

In the book, there’s a whole establishing story about a kid (a fictionalised version of William Goldman) being read The Princess Bride by his dad when he’s sick in bed, and then years later he finds a copy for his son, who tries to read it and hates it, and then when Goldman actually reads it himself he discovers his dad skipped all the boring parts – so now he’s releasing his Abridged Version.

It’s fun, it’s the Princess Bride but with asides saying “okay I cut 50 pages of learning courtly decorum here, we’re cutting ahead to:”. I’ve grown to loathe books about writers (blame Misery – which, fun fact, Goldman wrote the screenplay for) but books about reading a book? Top notch.

Also at the end (in this, 25th anniversary edition) there’s a bit where he discusses and “abridges the first chapter of the sequel” (Buttercup’s Baby), which in passing implies that Westley had gay pirate sex while he was at sea, so.

Lava Red Feather Blue – Molly Ringle

In 1799 the prince of a magical island somewhere in the Pacific was put into an enchanted sleep as part of a peace treaty with the fae – so long as he remained asleep, so would the evil fairy who’s been terrorising the human population.

In 2020 a guy accidentally awakens the prince, and so of course, uh-oh, the evil fairy is terrorising the human population again.

That’s right, it’s sleeping beauty, but gay.

It’s alright.

My main sticking point is: the evil fairy has a point. She’s explicitly noted by the narrative as a kind of manifestation of the fairies’ anger at the humans colonising their land – the humans are European colonisers and the fairies are native Pacific Islanders, it is not subtle – and towards the end I thought “oh, are they actually going to talk to her?” but no, she’s just capital-e Evil and nothing meaningfully changes, they just seal her away again.

The setting feels at odds with itself. It’s a fairy island magically hidden from the rest of the world, but it’s also modern day with all the appropriate technology. Internet, smartphones, iPads, etc. Where do you get them? I don’t think it being magically hidden from the rest of the world is narratively necessary, aside from “explaining” why fairies are around in the modern day? To make the Native Pacific Islander thing less awkward because it’s a fictional island? It feels weird.

The guys are cute enough, the Prince struggling to handle being viewed as a Historical Figure is nice (but could have gotten into it more… he never really talks to the current royal family, or even his fairy brother-in-law), and the fairies working on etiquette, equal exchange, rules is nice.

Yeah, it’s okay.

Piranesi – Susanna Clarke

The world is a series of vast stone hallways and atriums filled with statues. The tides wash through the lower floors. Piranesi lives here, journaling about his life, cataloguing the statues, occasionally meeting with the one other (living) person who exists.

Trying to think of something to say about this book beyond “it’s good”.

The style of writing is very nice – simple, poetic – and I really enjoy the dramatic irony as it becomes apparent to the reader that all is not as it seems, before it becomes apparent to Piranesi.

It is very good, strong recommend.

Heaven’s Vault: I. The Loop – Jon Ingold

Hey did you play the videogame Heaven’s Vault? About sailing around space rivers and translating an ancient language?

It’s books now.

It is much less about translating things and much more about The Story – naturally! There's a lot more about Aliya (the protagonist)'s past. Flashbacks to her childhood/adolescence and more stuff about her previous robots.

It's good! It's a compelling world and story, in my opinion, but playing the game I was much more focussed on the Translating and definitely missed a lot of storyline.

It's a very different experience, but a good one.

One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquéz

Ah, this took me a while. In my defence I got a job and so I was sleepier than usual.

Also I didn't make many notes so I'm relying on my memory here, and I've forgotten a lot, uh-oh.

It's a long meandering story about a family who keep naming their children the same thing over generations so it's a touch, confusing sometimes, but it's nice. I just kind of let it wash over me.

Any Way The Wind Blows – Rainbow Rowell

It’s the third book in the Simon Snow trilogy (I guess that’s what we’re calling it – I’ve talked about Carry On a bunch, Wayward Son was fine)

It's better than the second book, it's not as good as the first.

The Simon and Baz stuff is great – learning to navigate their relationship now that they aren't in life and death situations all the time, investigating a guy claiming to be the new magical chosen one, love all that. Penelope and Agatha are, also there? Their storylines are fine, but they also don't really feel connected at all – Agatha literally like, happens to bump into Simon in passing one time, and that's about as much as their plotlines intersect.

There's some good jokes about how tiny magic society is, and I'm going to be thinking about the spell These Go To Eleven for a while (it makes the music louder!)

I enjoyed it but I wouldn't really say you need to read the rest of the trilogy after Carry On, frankly.

Heaven’s Vault: II. The Vault – Jon Ingold

It's two books.

This one has a significant amount of plot that I had to look up was actually in the game – we missed a lot of stuff it turns out! Whoops!

But then also, while playing the game, I was happy with a lot of stuff being implied vague background stuff, which is more explicit here? Because it's a book, not a puzzle game.

See above, more of the same. It's pretty good in my opinion. Probably don't need to have played the game to enjoy the books.

Peter Darling – Austin Chant

Captain Hook / trans Peter Pan enemies to lovers.

Peter returned to London, because he missed his brothers – he spent years trying to live as Wendy, but ultimately couldn't do it – Tinkerbell brings him back to Neverland so he can be himself.

The prologue is Hook, bored out of his mind, finally feeling alive again once Pan returns and almost kills him. A very strong opening, in my opinion.

Neverland is essentially an imagination space – none of the other people there (the lost boys, the pirates) are actually real, having been created by or for Pan and Hook to support their stories – but it's also kind of a trap, Neverland doesn't want you to leave.

The fairies are Weird, but never explicitly described (eg it'll mention Tinkerbell pinching Peter with 'a pair of her hind legs', but never actually say how many legs she has), which I kind of love.

There are multiple flashbacks to Peter's time in London, which are largely quite unpleasant. But like, they're supposed to be.

I really liked it. Big fan of Peter's relationships with the lost boys, and Tinkerbell, and his brothers, and, yes, Hook.

(Tiger Lily and the Native Americans are not in this book – probably a wise decision.)

American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis

Okay so I didn't actually finish this. I reached the first on-page murder and it was too gnarly for me, but before that, I was quite enjoying it!

There's a lot of listing things. Everything everyone wears is listed and labelled. His skincare routine, his electronics, he's constantly droning on and on about all these things. It's fantastic, to me.

The way it's like, casually gradually revealed that he's a murderer works well – he has some violent thoughts and you think, maybe he's going to snap and kill someone for the first time halfway through this book, and then he's arguing with his dry cleaner about blood stains on his sheets and you think. Ah.

But, yeah, I read to relax before bed, and like I say, I reached the first on-page murder and it really quite actually unsettled me and I put the book down and did not pick it back up.

Cemetery Boys – Aiden Thomas

Trans boy sets out to prove his masculinity by undergoing a ritual to get the goddess of death's blessing to become a brujo – that is, a sorcerer whose job is helping ghosts move on to the afterlife.

He literally immediately succeeds, and ends up agreeing to help the ghost of his classmate with some stuff before Moving Him On.

It's fine. I don't know. The boys are cute enough (ghost boy is your classic jerk with a heart of gold type), and the Not Quite being able to touch thing is fun.

The climax of the book is like, 'literally summoning a monster from hell' , and any like... mysticism? Is kind of lost. The goddess of death literally physically appears (to grant our protagonist her blessing? Which she already did at the start? It's a bit weird, narratively.) Also I figured out the villain and their plan literally halfway through, and I'm not sure I was supposed to.

[Spoilers] I thought it was going to have a sad ending – ah you're falling in love with a ghost who is going to have to Move On at the end of the book, and that sucks! But you've learned about yourself and given him a nice last few days and – nope, turns out he's actually just Near Death (for days?) so he gets to be fine and they get to kiss and be happy the end. Which felt like a cop-out to me. Sorry I'm problematic I love tragic gays.

It's fine. Pretty standard YA fare tbh.

If We Were Villains – M. L. Rio

Oliver is released after ten years in prison and is met by the detective who arrested him, who is now retired and just wants to know what Actually Happened back then – ten years ago Oliver was a fourth year Shakespeare acting student whose fellow student died during their Julius Caesar cast party.

I picked this up basically on a whim and ended up devouring the entire thing in a few days. I loved it.

I adore, in a story, when we the reader know Something Terrible is going to happen, and the tension builds and builds until finally someone is dead in the lake with a hole gouged out of the side of his face. And the foregone conclusion that Oliver goes to prison for a crime we now know he didn't commit really worked for me during the ongoing fallout afterwards. (“you know sleeping with the dead guy's girlfriend looks really bad right” “oh it'll be fine” no it won't, buddy).

Also, and you may have been able to guess this part based on my saying I loved it, and the kinds of books I tend to love – there's some really powerful homoerotic tension that builds throughout the entire book.

It did somewhat stretch my knowledge of Shakespeare. They do a lot of Shakespeare, multiple performances as well as just quoting Shakespeare in regular conversation. Julius Caesar is the breaking point and I mostly followed that – they do Macbeth before that and Romeo and Juliet after that, I know both of those – the climax of the book is the climax of King Lear... the epilogue is, Pericles? Oh I am struggling here.

A real strong recommend from me.

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within – Becky Chambers

The fourth in what I guess we're calling the Wayfarers series now – this one is about 5 aliens who get temporarily stuck together in a small spaceport rest-stop.

There is no human point of view (the previous book before this was all human), and only one of the aliens is even really humanoid, and her species communicates via colour instead of speech (the others are a a bug guy, two are lanky furry quadrapeds, and the last is a small tree-dweller who has to use a mech-suit to get around). Thus, there is no “neutral” perspective – every chapter is from an alien angle. The woman who communicates naturally via colour and has had speech and hearing artificially implanted in order to get along in a society that does communicate via sounds does not experience the world the same way the other characters do.

There is not much of a “plot”, but that's not surprising, I've read three of these before this one. It's just the characters existing around each other. Having different experiences and outlooks, maybe learning a bit about each other. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love character and hate plot, so this is the good shit, in my opinion.

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superchartisland · 6 years ago

Text

Impossible Mission (Epyx/US Gold, Spectrum, 1985)

Summary of Gallup Spectrum chart #1s, Your Sinclair Issue 3, March 1986

Impossible Mission is a stylish, not to mention intellectual-property-skirting, game in which you play a James Bond type inside an evil genius’s headquarters. Your spy somersaults around past robot security guards, searching to collect pieces of a code. It was a favourite game of mine as a child, as was its similar sequel. I actually played Impossible Mission II right to its ending for the first time when doing gifs for AAA in 2015, demonstrating both the lasting enjoyability of playing it and the advantage of being able to look up on the internet how its code-breaking works. I played the games on a Commodore 64 though, so again the Spectrum version is new to me now.

It’s an interesting experience playing this different version of Impossible Mission. It doesn’t have a lot of the things that I remember well. The flawless smooth animations for the waistcoated main character, the amazing quality of the sound of echoing footsteps, whirring elevators and buzzing vapourisation, the cries of “aaaAAAaaaaaaAHgh” on falling through the floor: all gone. So too is some of the sense of scale and of unpredictability, that any challenge could be waiting through the next passageway, and so are lifts which move when you want even if you aren’t standing dead in the centre of them. The first set of losses are factual ones as a result of the conversion from Commodore 64 to Spectrum. The second set could be related to that too, or just the impossibility of living up to nostalgia, or both of those things intermingled. There is more than one way in which I am playing a game which is almost but not quite the one that exists in my memory.

The experience nonetheless mostly stands up. Impossible Mission is a game which runs on more complicated rules than any 2D platformer we’ve seen so far, but they come with generous concessions towards the idea of being fun rather than a repetitive ordeal. Its layout is a set of rooms, connected by elevators and corridors, which you can visit in almost any order, the only limit being that you have to go through rooms to move right or left from one elevator column to another. If you don’t like the look of a room and the objects you need to search in it, you can just run right through it and make your way to an easier one first.

And rather than giving you a certain number of lives to lose, Impossible Mission gives you a time counter with time to spare to complete the whole game, but penalises you chunks of time each time you get zapped by a robot. That means that even at the stage of not being very good at the game, rather than bashing yourself against the same failure points, you can try out different things for a bit and get a sense of progress even as you have no chance of overall success. As you get better, the game gives you competing incentives to take risks to do things faster, or to slow down and avoid time penalties. It’s such a great system that it’s a waste that it didn’t catch on more widely than it did, Prince of Persia years later being the next prominent example I am aware of. One more tweak is the fact that although there are a finite set of possible rooms, the layout of which room goes where in the map is randomly generated with each new game, keeping repetition further at bay and opening up more possibilities.

Impossible Mission’s complexities and sense of strategy run right through the finer details of what you have to do. The majority of its rooms have computer terminals and a set of objects you need to search, spread across fixed platforms interspersed with lift platforms you can move up and down on, all overseen by those security robots. The robots all look the same (a sort of BB8/Dalek hybrid) but act in different ways. Some are fixed, some patrol backwards and forwards, some chase after you at high speed. Some fire their vaporisation rays at fixed points, some only when they see you. There are a lot of different combinations, which means working out a lot of different approaches to get past them and search the rooms.

Sometimes you have to dart in and out and search an object in stages. Sometimes you need to do some complex maneuvering with lifts to reach the top of a room. Sometimes your mission is, in fact, impossible unassisted, at which point the computer terminals come in. You can use them to put the robots to sleep for a short period, using up password tokens you collect during your searches, and then race to finish off what you need to do before the robots wake up and zap you again. It’s the kind of game which requires both calculated planning and action skills for the execution of that plan. As we’ll see over the course of this project, that combination in games is one I love. Even better when, as in Impossible Mission, the balance is such that both sides are challenging but manageable.

Finally, the careful balancing of possibilities goes deeper still in the action of searching objects. You stand there and a bar counts down the time until you’re done, and after that chance for anticipation the resultant reward is randomised, an early example of the “variable ratio reinforcement schedule” principle that powers lucrative “loot boxes” in games today. You could get a puzzle piece, a useful password, or nothing at all. The heavily guarded object you have to carefully work your way towards might contain nothing. The one you can just saunter up to might have the final piece you need. You just don’t know, which makes finishing each search all the more enticing a prospect.

Throughout this post I’ve just referred to searching “objects”, but it’s worth talking about what it is that you’re looking for answers in. Throughout the game you need to make your way to a bizarre assortment of household and office objects, from lamps to fireplaces to big screens to vending machines. Together with the lack of any sign of humans present and the industrial aesthetic of everything else -- the lifts decked out in fetching red and yellow hazard stripes -- the effect is as much post-apocalyptic trip to Ikea as Bond villain hideout. And that is part of a sense of semi-reality that works alongside all of the carefully calibrated gameplay to make Impossible Mission such an enjoyable experience.

Plenty of other games we’ve seen have had systems of multiple lives and had the player character lose each one with a blip out of existence and reappearance. It’s always a little disconnect between the story and the means by which it’s being told. But that connecting thread was pretty loose in all of them anyway. When you’re battling flying scissors, you’ve got enough surreality to spare to smooth over the gaps. Games will later get much, much more realistic, for loaded values of that term, than Impossible Mission, but it’s already realistic enough to provoke a more thoughtful pause at each restart. When you run into a robot, your spy doesn’t just blip out, they get fuzzed into static before disappearing. Then they carry on going, less ten minutes of their time counter. In other games there is a possible rationalisation that the failure is a presentation of what might have happened, and the retry a new chance to write what really did happen in the story with the happy ending. But if that’s the case, what happened in that unseen ten minutes?

I have a theory, which to be clear I’ve only consciously thought of now, but I think was always somewhere there in my mind when playing. I think that the ultimate goal of collecting puzzle pieces to break a computer code is more closely matched in the surrounding game than is immediately apparent. The whole game is a simulation of a process of hacking into a system. The spy isn’t really in this place at all, but sitting at the same computer the game gives you for its menu screens. The ten minutes is the time it takes to re-establish a position in the system after being detected and pushed out by defences. There is a more real place where those vending machines and fireplaces make more sense, but you only get to see the virtual world where their defences are (the Internet of Things?). This theory makes the abstract incomprehensibility of the puzzle pieces make a lot more sense, too! Admittedly, “this computer programme in the form of a game is a simulation of... a computer programme!” is kind of an all-purpose way out of any game having to make sense, but in this case it fits brilliantly. It’s yet one more level to a game that’s so well-structured in offering so many different possibilities, possibilities inside possibilities, a mission of the possible.

#Impossible Mission #ZX Spectrum #gif #computer games #video games #retrogaming #every number one

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