#imagining them meeting on a talk show or something several decades before the main story and before either of them make it big. douglas cann

[yukimomodivorce]

I need to make some douglas rootbank/mr shimooka propaganda because this started as mostly a joke but I've become so so serious about it

[yan-twst]

Hello ! Can I have a scenario with Lilia. The reader is a Fae warrior who fought alongside Lilia a long time ago. There's always been something between them but nothing happened because a relationship between warrior was forbidden. After several years they meet again at NRC when the reader brings something to Malleus. It's been in my mind for a while, so I'm trying! Thanks !

Centuries

pairing: lilia x gn!reader

word count:  2910

warnings: mentions of war, like one mention of blood

------

There really wasn’t time for love during war. There wasn’t even a chance to get comfortable, really- the fae warriors were supposed to be quick, efficient, ruthless: things like romance between warriors weren’t allowed, it was too risky, it could turn them reckless. Lilia, of course, knew this; he’d been well-warned a long time ago, and he’d seen the horrors of war upclose. It always hurt to lose a friend, but it’d hurt more if it was a lover. He didn’t care, really, he was there to fight in the name of the Witch of Thorns and not to build relationships.

Or at least that’s what he’d say when his fellow warriors would ask him if he had his eye on anyone. He was one of the more seasoned fighters, with lifetimes of experience under his belt and strength that betrayed his appearance, along with his powerful magic. It wasn’t unusual for the younger fighters to gather around him for chats or to hear stories, it was one of the few ways to lift the spirits in the barracks in the sparse times of quietness. Dating, or romance in general, was forbidden, sure, but it didn’t stop the younger soldiers from prodding and asking if he wasn’t getting a bit too close to a certain someone.

“You are all certainly nosy, aren’t you?” laughed Lilia as he put down his canteen. His squad had arrived at a small base in the Valley of Thorns’ border a few days ago as prevention, having received intel that some of the enemy army would probably try to get in while the greater part of the Witch of Thorn’s army was fighting off in the main battleground. Of course, the more elite warriors had been sent to safeguard said point in the border; amongst them two of the army’s best, those being Lilia and...

“Aw, c’mon, you can’t say you don’t like them at least a little! You’re always sticking by their side, sir!” one of the youngest fae spoke up, crossing his arms.

Them. Lilia and [name], two of the most skilled warriors in the Witch of Thorn’s army, and also the source of countless rumors. Lilia let out a sigh- it was always the young kids trying to tease him. Did they really think he’d just go and admit he was breaking rules and romancing a fellow warrior just because some rumors said so? Not only was it not allowed, they shouldn’t be concentrating on silly relationship rumors. There was a war going on.

“Now, now, you know very well that’s not allowed, young man.” Lilia gently tapped the boy’s helmet, shaking his head. “If you keep worrying over every rumour you hear in the barracks, you’re not going to be able to keep your head on your body out in the field.”

“But yesterday I saw you two talking, and you almost put your hand on their hip-”

“You’re polishing everyone’s armour today.” Lilia quickly cut off the young warrior, assigning him a task as a punishment. The young fae groaned, knowing full well that if he kept pushing he’d get assigned even more work, as the rest of the fae laughed. The door to the room opened, making Lilia look up; speak of the devil, there they were. Out of armor, they still looked fearsome, their sharp eyes scanning the room.

“You all, what are you doing here?” they asked, tilting their head. “You were supposed to go check our weapons and make sure nothing is damaged from transportation. None of you have done that, have you?”

The warriors quickly scrambled out of the room, not wanting to get assigned any punishment. Lilia chuckled; he liked this squad, sure, but he’d never quite seen so many airheaded fighters. Oh, they had proved themselves on the battlefield before, surely- but in regular tasks, they certainly weren’t the best. His fellow warrior chuckled from the door, then looked straight at Lilia.

“You weren’t distracting the young ones, were you?” they said. There were many things that made Lilia be particularly more friendly to them than to others; shared interests, experience, but perhaps something more was the fact they were one of the few fae warriors nearly as old as him. They shared the wisdom and experience that came with years and years and years of living, something not many could say they shared with Lilia. “I think the enemy will be here in about three days.”

“Three days? Oh my, that’s quicker than expected.” said Lilia, humming. He wasn’t worried- really, if it was just him and them, he knew it’d be enough to hold back the enemy’s whole platoon if necessary.

“Mhm, our informants sent the intel just now.” they replied, taking a seat next to Lilia. “The way things are going, this war might be over soon.”

“Wouldn’t that just be lovely?” said Lilia. ‘Soon’ probably meant a couple of years, of course; and the consequences of the war itself would permeate for longer, but a handful of years really wasn’t much to him or them. He didn’t love wartime, sure, but there was some melancholy in thinking of it ending: after all, the warriors would be once again spread through the kingdom once they weren’t needed in battle. He’d be stationed somewhere, with new people, and... Well, he shouldn’t dwell over it. It’d be good for everyone.

“Well, it’s not like that means much.” the other warrior stretched, and Lilia couldn’t help but stare. They weren’t in armor, not when just hanging out at the base, but they still had an air of strength to them. The glow of the fireplace in the room cast an amber glow on their skin and hair, their sharp fae ears sticking out of their slightly messy hair. If he weren’t also so ancient, he’d have a hard time believing they’d lived for so long: in moments like these, they felt so young, so beautiful. “After this war ends, who knows how much time we’ll have until the next one? Peace just never seems to stick around.”

“Tragically, you’re right.” sighed Lilia. “It seems like conflict just increases every passing decade, doesn’t it? I still remember when these wars were small enough they’d only send one of us to deal with trouble.” said Lilia with a sigh. “Now every kingdom has an army and a motive to attack, it seems.”

“I know it’s impossible, but... Can you imagine if peace really did stick around?” they didn’t say anything else, but Lilia understood what they meant as their hand softly rested upon his. Extended peace- time for them. Away from the army, away from their duties as fae warriors, away from rules that forbade romance. Neither of them ever discussed the topic, always skirting around it, but it was clear they were both waiting. “Hm, as if. There’s always going to be conflict, isn’t there?”

“It sure seems so.” replied Lilia, softly gazing at their face. “It’d be a miracle if the world could ever truly be at peace for just once.”

-------

But then there was peace.

The war ended messily, with more losses to each side than either kingdom had expected. Nothing was truly won, other than some territory and the usual honour of winning battles- the usual spoils of war, mostly worthless to the warriors themselves. Of course, Lilia couldn’t be upset: he knew exactly what being a warrior entailed, and he’d sworn to serve the Witch of Thorns with his life. Perhaps that was why he was appointed to take care of Her grandchild, once he was born- it was a shock, to be suddenly playing the role of a caretaker when he’d spent so long as a fighter, but he was proud to say he’d adapted to it quickly. He heard [name] had been sent to continue working as a warrior under the Queen’s name, guarding the newly captured territory, but he was in no place to inquire. He had a new job, after all- and he knew very well fae warriors weren’t allowed romance.

Memories of the war quickly became something he kept merely in the back of his mind, vague images that would sometimes show up in dreams but never quite bother him. After all, taking care of Malleus was simply much more important. It wasn’t just out of a sense of duty, at least not anymore; he’d grown to genuinely care for the child. He’d never have imagined himself as a father, and yet, as time went on, he played perfectly into the role- going as far as to raise a human child as his own, once Malleus was grown. And then there he was: attending school once again, as if he was a teenager, along with Malleus and Silver- from a warrior, to a father, to a student.

“Lilia, the messenger from home will be arriving today. They should bring the herb with them.” Malleus distracted Lilia from his videogame, causing his character to fall and the game to display the ‘you have died’ screen. The elder fae didn’t seem fazed, instead just nodding.

“Great, that’s wonderful! I’ll be sure to make the paste as soon as they hand the herb over.” said Lilia, putting down his console and walking up to Malleus. The shorter fae patted the prince’s head, making the prince turn his head to the side to hide his embarrassment. “Now, now, there’s no need to get embarrassed, I used to do this all the time when you were a wee little baby!”

Neither Lilia or Malleus were quite sure why, but lately, Malleus’ horns had started to ache. It wasn’t an illness or a curse, but rather something Malleus was familiar with: it was the same dull ache he’d felt in his childhood as his horns grew. They’d long since stopped their growth, but from time to time, the ache would return for seemingly no reason, and the only way to get it to stop was a paste made from an herb native to the Valley of Thorns. Lilia had written to the palace a while ago requesting some of the herbs to be sent over, and it seemed they’d sent a messenger today.

When he was notified to go meet the messenger in the hall of mirrors, Lilia insisted Malleus tag along. It wasn’t often he could get Malleus to interact with others in a casual setting, with most people being so scared of him, but surely, staff from the palace would at least properly greet and hold a conversation with the prince, right? Perhaps it was still his fatherly instincts telling him to help his child grow out of his shell, but Lilia ended up dragging Malleus along to the hall of mirrors.

“Good evening, we’re here for the package-” Lilia froze once he saw who stood by the mirror.

The last time he’d seen them, they’d been in full armor, holding their weapon, covered in the enemy’s blood. That’d been the last battle in the war- so long ago, yet he could remember it perfectly- the last time he’d seen them. He’d been sure that would be the last time he saw them, or that it’d take for another war to brew for him to be reunited with them under the strict rules of the army. And yet there they were, dressed in traditional Valley of Thorns clothes, holding a parcel under their arm, looking as young and beautiful as ever.

“... Lilia?!” they seemed surprised to see him there. Sure, they had probably heard the prince was attending NRC and accompanied by some guards and a caretaker, but they’d probably expected some old soot from the palace, not Lilia, not an ex-warrior. They almost dropped the package, quickly regaining their balance.

“This is-” even Lilia was at a loss for words. Time truly hadn’t done much to damper his feelings; even after centuries of not seeing them, he could feel his heart speed up, much like it had back then when he sat next to them, basking in their presence. They looked at him, then at Malleus, then back at him, and it seemed they quickly realized they were in presence of the prince, because they suddenly kneeled.

“My lord, here is the package of herbs you requested.” they said, addressing Malleus. Despite not being very social, Malleus had enough experience dealing with formalities to not be flustered over this- however, he looked quite confused at Lilia’s reaction. He took the package, then turned to his caretaker. After a few seconds, he set his eyes on the messenger.

“Thank you.” he said, quickly adding, “Are you familiar with Lilia?”

“We fought in the war together.” they replied quickly, but it looked as if though they were picking their words carefully. It made sense- it was weird to explain their relationship with Lilia. It had absolutely been more than just fellow soldiers, something past a regular friendship, and yet it hadn’t quite been a romance, neither daring break the rules and take the first step. There wasn’t a comfortable way to explain such a thing, no way to say we were in love but neither of us dared do anything about it because we weren’t allowed to.

“Oh, seeing you brings back memories I thought I’d forgotten.” Lilia chuckled, although he seemed to be acting off. Nervous, almost? Luckily, the subtle changes in his attitude went right over Malleus’ head, and he just nodded. “Malleus, would you mind returning to the dorm with the herbs? The fresher they are when we begin the better- ask Silver to boil some water so I can start preparing them soon.”

“Are you staying behind, then?” replied Malleus, and Lilia chuckled, then nodded.

“Oh, you must understand it’s not often I get to chat with an old friend like this.” said Lilia. Malleus didn’t seem like he quite understood, but nodded nonetheless, and bid goodbye to the two ancient fae before disappearing, leaving only small wisps of green fire that slowly faded away in the air.

“... The prince is as powerful as they say, isn’t he?” they said, staring at the fading green lights. 

“He certainly is. Oh, but he’s also a sweetheart, don’t believe those who say he’s coldhearted or meanspirited.” said Lilia with a smile. “He’s a little cold right now, but that’s just how teenagers are, you know.”

“... You’ve certainly been busy since last time I saw you. I knew they’d appointed someone to take care of the Queen’s grandson, but I never would have imagined it’d be you.” they said, looking off to the side. “I’ve been working around the palace- you know, I really can’t believe I was wrong, but it seems peace is here to stay for a long time. Not much use for a warrior nowadays.”

There were a few moments of silence as both fae stared at each other. It’d been so long- by now, anyone else would have moved on, gotten to someone else, built new relationships. And yet neither of them had to say it for the other one to know; neither had truly moved on. They weren’t warriors anymore: right now, they were just two adults, two people in love, despite never having said it. And before he could really think about it, Lilia’s arms were around them, his mouth pressed into theirs.

Oh, intimacy. How long had it been since he’d been this close to someone? He’d had his share of throwaway flings in the years after the war, but his full attention had been on raising Malleus. Besides, nothing could quite compare to this: he’d been imagining how it’d feel to hold them close, to have his lips on them, to kiss them deeply, ever since the war. How had he gone so long without this? Truly, he couldn’t understand how he’d had enough self-restraint to never act upon his feelings back then, how both him and them had been obedient enough to not act on their love just because the rules said so. 

“... I missed you.” they murmured once they separated their lips from his. They were staring right into his eyes, their face slightly red and eyes full of love. “Back then, in the war- every time I was alone with you, I... I thought about how badly I wanted to be with you. I thought about how much I loved you, and god, it hurt, it really hurt to have to keep it all locked inside.”

“You’re taking my words right out of my mouth, my love.” said Lilia, pressing his forehead against theirs. His arms wrapped around them, he could feel their heartbeat in their chest- their heart was going fast, but once again, so was his. “I can’t believe I waited so long to do this.”

Wordlessly, they kissed him again. Lilia vaguely thought it’d be rather embarrassing if Crowley were to walk in to lock the hall of mirrors now, but he couldn’t be bothered; he’d been waiting centuries for this moment. It wasn’t often Lilia felt young (truly, he was ancient), but right in that moment, he felt like he was being kissed for the first time. Two fae ancient enough to be recorded in history textbooks holding each other, letting the emotions they’d held onto for hundreds of years finally blossom- it was an odd image, but a charming one.

“I love you.” he murmured, burying his head into their neck. “You don’t know how happy I am I finally get to tell you that.”

[melanielocke]

Lost in the Shadows - Chapter 17

AO3

Taglist: @nott-the-best @foxglove-airmid @alastair-esfandiyar-carstairs1 @justanormaldemon @styxdrawings @ipromiseiwillwrite @a-dream-dirty-and-bruised

Previous Chapter: Chapter 16

Next Chapter: Chapter 18

Lucie spent the rest of the afternoon in the garden trying to figure out how to do magic. It didn’t help that she had no idea what she was doing or how magic worked and instead she was just trying some methods she remembered from her favorite books. So far, nothing happened. After some time, Jessamine came outside to watch.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘Trying to do magic,’ Lucie answered, a little frustrated with her lack of progress. ‘You don’t happen to have any clue how that works?’

Jessamine looked shocked. ‘About magic? Of course not, why would you think such a thing. I’m a good Christian.’

Lucie guessed she should have suspected such a thing. ‘Jess, in all the time that you’ve been here, was I the only one who could see you?’

Jessamine thought for a while.

‘Actually, no,’ she said. ‘There was someone else, years ago. The sister of Mr. Gray. She travelled to the manor shortly after my death, to express her condolences to my family, and she could see me and spoke to me.’

Mr. Gray’s sister… Her mother couldn’t see ghosts, but perhaps she was somehow distantly related to his woman and to Jessamine’s old suitor through her mother. Perhaps that power did travel in families.

‘And was there anything else she could do?’ Lucie asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Jessamine said. ‘Mr. Gray always thought his sister was odd, occupied with things not suitable for a young lady. She rarely came to balls, even if she was old enough to be out and looking for suitors. But he thought discussing what his sister was up to would be inappropriate for the proper ladies present, such as myself.’

‘She must have been a witch too then,’ Lucie speculated.

Jessamine looked horrified. ‘Witches don’t really exist, do they? Mr. Gray’s sister was certainly odd, everyone knew that, but I never thought she could be a witch.’

‘Jess, you’re literally a ghost. And I can see you and speak with you, just like Mr. Gray’s sister did. When I’m near you can pick up hair brushes, which you normally can’t.’

‘All this time, you’ve been bewitching me?’ Jessamine asked, her voice small.

‘No, not like that,’ Lucie said. ‘That wasn’t something I did intentionally, and I never forced you into anything. Although I’m thinking maybe I could. Jess, my friend is in danger and I need to save him. Are you willing to help me?’

Jessamine looked reluctant. ‘What will you do to me?’

‘Just test a few things, figure out what I can do,’ Lucie said. ‘I’ve always made you stronger, I have no idea what you could do with my help.’

She looked down, resigned. ‘Alright, Lucie. I will see what I can do. What is it that you ask of me?’

Lucie looked around, and noticed a stick lying on the ground.

‘Can you pick that up?’ she asked, pointing.

Jessamine looked confused, but bent down and picked up the stick, holding it in her hands. Usually, ghosts could pick up things they cared for around her. In Jessamine’s case, hairbrushes and dolls. Lucie didn’t think Jessamine cared much for sticks.

‘That looks odd,’ Thomas, who was sitting in a garden chair next to Alastair, commented. ‘Like you just made the stick float.’

‘Yes,’ Lucie said. ‘But that’s not exactly helpful, is it? Jessamine, can you touch Thomas? Usually you’d pass through him.’

Jessamine dropped the stick and rubbed her hand even if there was no dirt remaining on her ghostly form. She walked over to Thomas, who'd stood up out of his chair, and shook his hand, curtsying politely. Thomas yelped, which indicated that he could feel her. Interesting.

‘Do gentlemen not kiss a lady’s hand anymore?’ Jessamine asked.

Thomas turned red, and lifted his hand up, taking Jessamine’s hand with him, and kissed her. To Lucie, this looked relatively normal, but Thomas couldn’t see Jessamine. This had to be awkward. Jessamine let go of Thomas’ hand.

‘It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir,’ Jessamine said.

Lucie repeated Jessamine’s words to Thomas.

‘Ah, it is a pleasure to meet you too, miss,’ Thomas said, looking over her head instead of at her.

Lucie sometimes wondered if Thomas got neck cramps from having to look down whenever he was talking to other people.

Jessamine let go of Thomas’ hand. ‘In my day, the gentlemen certainly had better manners,’ she snorted.

Lucie started laughing. ‘Jessamine is not impressed by your manners, Tom,’ she said.

Thomas turned an even deeper red. ‘I am terribly sorry, miss, that my manners are not up to your standard. Wait, is she still there?’

Jessamine scoffed. ‘I’ll never understand the gentlemen of this century. If you can call them that. People are so contradictory. I always felt like public displays of affection are frowned upon nowadays, especially between gentlemen, even if they are very close friends. But your two gentlemen seem to be very affectionate and improper with each other.’

Lucie started laughing. She suspected Jessamine had seen Alastair and Thomas kiss each other the other day, she’d seemed very shocked by it, but Lucie didn’t realize she’d interpreted them as having a very intimate friendship. Some decades before Jessamine lived, such a thing had been more normalized though, known as the romantic friendship. Although Lucie suspected at least some of those “romantic friendships” were really concealed gay relationships. ‘Oh no, that is not considered normal in this day, but Alastair and Thomas are not simply close friends.’

Jessamine looked absolutely horrified and Lucie decided to change the subject. She did not feel like discussing sexuality with a ghost from the Victorian era, she didn’t think that conversation would end without anyone getting hurt or offended.

‘What did she say?’ Thomas asked.

‘Jess is very confused about the gentlemen of this day. Usually they are not so affectionate towards each other as you are with Alastair,’ Lucie summarized.

‘I,’ Alastair announced, ‘am very glad to live in this day and age and not whatever century this lady must have been from.’

Lucie could imagine, the modern day might still be a mess but she would certainly prefer it over being a 19thcentury lady. She imagined she would have married young, a gentleman she’d thought she was fond of, but didn’t really feel romantic attraction to, and then she’d be trapped. That wouldn’t happen to her main character Eloise though. Eloise and Mabel would find a way, although of course writing a story about a sapphic couple in the 19th century had its limitations in their happy ending.

‘So Jess can touch objects and people who don’t see her,’ Lucie continued. ‘Anyone has any other ideas?’

‘Could you make her visible to us?’ Alastair asked.

‘Jess, show yourself,’ Lucie said.

Jessamine frowned. ‘I don’t know how to do that.’

Nothing happened, at least not that Lucie could tell.

‘She looks a lot like I pictured her,’ Thomas said.

‘I thought her hair would be darker,’ Alastair commented. ‘I don’t think bleach for hair existed back then, and I’m pretty sure no one has hair that’s naturally this light.’

‘I think it depends on where you’re from,’ Thomas said. ‘Light blonde hair is more common in Northern Europe.’

Cordelia snorted. ‘Just because you used to bleach your hair, does not mean everyone who is blonde does the same.’

Thomas frowned. ‘You bleached your hair?’

‘I dyed it back to black, and it’s mostly grown out now,’ Alastair said. ‘It was too much effort to maintain, I had to touch up the roots every four weeks. It looked good though.’

‘It did not look good,’ Cordelia commented. ‘He looked like a turnip.’

Lucie’s eyes went wide. It worked. They were seeing Jessamine. Lucie was feeling a little faint, but did not let it distract her.

‘Come on, pay attention. You’re looking at a ghost for the first time in your life, isn’t that more interesting than Alastair’s hair?’ Lucie shouted.

‘Almost,’ Thomas said. ‘Have you seen Alastair’s hair?’

Alastair rolled his eyes. ‘Let’s pay attention to the ghost. Alright, blonde people are real. And her dress is very nice, I always liked the bustle style.’

‘You can see me?’ Jessamine’s smile lit up. ‘Oh this wonderful. It is such a long time since a gentleman has been able to see me. And it is a lovely dress, I had it made when I visited Paris with my mama.’

She pronounced Paris the way the French did. Lucie knew Jessamine loved to talk about her gowns, although she wasn’t fond of modern clothes. She wore a green day dress with a bustle, something Lucie imagined was a bit unpractical. So many layers. Not to mention the corset.

Alastair looked up thoughtfully. ‘How long do you imagine she’ll stay visible, Lucie?’ he asked. ‘What about if you step away from here? Go inside?’

Lucie took several steps away from Jessamine, taking hold of the door to open it.

‘She’s gone,’ Thomas said.

Lucie turned around and walked to Jessamine. ‘What about now?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ Cordelia said. ‘I think once she disappears, you need to ask her to become visible again.’

‘Show yourself,’ Lucie repeated.

‘There she is,’ Alastair said. ‘She looks surprisingly human. I always thought ghosts would be more transparent like in movies.’

‘If they were, do you think I would have mistaken ghosts for living people?’ Lucie asked. ‘If you look carefully, ghosts have a bit of a shimmer but beyond that they look just like people.’

‘Living people, that is,’ Jessamine said. ‘I consider myself a person still, thank you very much.’

‘Of course you are a person,’ Thomas confirmed, indicating that he could hear as well as see her. ‘It is odd to think you’ve been here for such a long time, and always invisible.’

‘It has been very difficult,’ Jessamine said. ‘For a long time, no one could see me until Lucie came here. And modern times are so confusing. Why do ladies wear clothes that reveal their ankles at all times? Worse, the knees? In my day, the occasional ankle slip was to be expected, of course, but visibility of the calves and knees was unheard of. Have people lost all sense of propriety?’

‘Because it’s more practical to not wear floor length dresses all the time,’ Lucie said. ‘Also, no one cares about ankles nowadays. Or knees.’

Lucie did like wearing dresses and skirts, but didn’t like them too long. She was short and therefore the hem always dragged over the ground, which meant she either tripped over the skirt or got it dirty when she wore it outside.

‘But it’s so improper,’ Jessamine insisted, horrified. ‘How could people just stop caring about such things? If this continues, it will not be long until humans go out with no clothes at all and society will fall into chaos.’

‘Now that is generally frowned upon,’ Alastair said. ‘I do not expect that to happen anytime soon.’

‘It would be uncomfortable,’ Cordelia added. ‘And also very cold. The point of clothes is to stay warm.’

‘Does anyone have an idea on how to open a gateway to the land in between?’ Lucie asked. ‘Because that is different from what I can ask of ghosts.’

Cordelia frowned. ‘Maybe you could ask Jessamine.’

‘Jess, can you open a gateway to the land in between for me?’ Lucie asked.

Jessamine frowned. ‘I’m sorry, I do not understand what you ask of me.’

That wasn’t it, then. Lucie guessed opening the gateway was something she’d have to do herself. Making Jessamine visible, that was also something she did, she commanded it and Jessamine could not do it without her. Then perhaps it was about commanding.

‘Or you could ask for a gateway,’ Thomas suggested.

‘Like, open sesame?’ Lucie asked.

‘Be specific,’ Alastair added. ‘What is it that you want to happen? Perhaps Thomas is right, perhaps all you have to do is ask.’

Lucie tried to remember what Grace said, that her magic was dark magic. Perhaps she needed to ask the darkness, or shadows, or something like it? Grace had hinted at this too. Careful what you wish, you just might get it.

‘Darkness, open a gateway to the land in between that is only open to myself, Thomas Lightwood, and Alastair and Cordelia Carstairs,’ Lucie said, remembering to be detailed. Perhaps that was what Grace had warned her about, that what she asked for would happen but not the way she’d intended. ‘A gateway that will not close until all four of us made it back safely to our world.’

It didn’t look like a gateway exactly. There was just a hint of shadow, and when it touched Lucie her friends disappeared. There were no ruins here, the change was subtle beyond her friends being gone. The air was just a touch darker, the breeze a little colder. Some of the color had faded, the grass was a bit duller. There was a fog hovering above the ground. The house was still there, but from here she should be able to see her father’s car and that was gone.

Cordelia, Thomas and Alastair appeared beside her, Cordelia with cortana in hand.

‘I don’t see any ruins,’ Thomas commented.

‘I think the land in between is layered over our land,’ Lucie said. ‘So perhaps to find those ruins, I need to open a portal around where the ruins are. Or I guess we could walk there, but then we’d leave a portal open here and we’d have to walk all the way back once we find it in this world.’

‘I imagine you could open another portal,’ Alastair said. ‘But finding the place the ruins should be in our world and then opening a portal is likely safer. Come, we should get back. This place doesn’t feel right.’

Alastair had a point. Lucie looked around to the way back. In their own world, the gateway looked like a shadow. Here it was a ray of light in an otherwise dark and gloomy environment. She watched her friends step into the light and disappear and then Lucie followed.

The four of them were back in the normal world, her parents both in the garden, concerned. The gate of darkness disappeared behind her. Lucie had asked it not to close until all of them were back, she guessed on its own it didn’t stay open for long and would close if she didn’t stop it. She made a mental note of that, she didn’t want to have to open another portal while they were being attacked by something. The portal closing behind her while all four of them were back was a good way to make sure nothing else came through.

She was feeling a bit more faint than before, light headed. She should have expected using magic would come at a price, but perhaps it was like exercise and she could improve her magic stamina.

‘Where did you just come from?’ Tessa asked.

Lucie looked around for help, but figured since this was her power she was to explain it. She started with Grace visiting again, with her telling her that she had more power than she knew and that she could open a gate.

‘I figured out how to do it,’ Lucie concluded. ‘So we can go into the woods and find Grace’ skin.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want us to come along?’ Will asked.

Lucie considered it, but it was a long time since her father had fought anything and her mother had barely any experience. It wouldn’t be safer with them there. Cordelia had a sword, Lucie was the only one who could open the gateway, and Grace seemed under the impression that it was also necessary for Alastair to come, that his memory would be essential. At least one person with the sight would also be useful.

‘I think it’s better if you didn’t,’ Lucie said. ‘But there’s something else you could do in the meantime. According to Cordelia and Alastair, their father has lots of notebooks from their ancestors, and one must have described a witch similar to me. Perhaps you could call Elias, or uncle Jem, and ask for them.’

Will frowned. ‘Do you think Elias would help us now? He was so opposed to Cordelia coming here with us before.’

Cordelia hadn’t been allowed to come at first, but then her mother had moved out and taken her children with her and her father couldn’t stop her anymore. Sona had decided it would be good for both her children to have some time away and had encouraged them to go. Lucie agreed it was unlikely Elias would be any help on his own accord. She couldn’t say she understood him or his relationship with his children well, all she knew was the damage it had done to Alastair and Cordelia.

‘Father does listen to Jem at times,’ Alastair said stiffly. ‘I think perhaps he could reason with him.’

‘I’ve been meaning to call Jem anyway,’ Will said. ‘If you do not return before dinner, we will come looking for you.’

‘I could leave the gate open for you,’ Lucie said. ‘But we cannot be sure about the time. It doesn’t run the same way, we could spend only a couple of hours there and we’d be missing for a whole day. We cannot keep track of time in there.’

‘Dinnertime,’ Will repeated. ‘I won’t blame you if you’re not back, but we will come looking.’

‘Perhaps we should go tomorrow,’ Alastair suggested and Lucie wondered if maybe after this morning, he did not feel up for it and needed rest. ‘I think it is unlikely we will finish before that time, and if we go tomorrow early in the morning, it is far more likely we can finish before dinnertime.’

Lucie had to admit his line of reasoning had merit, even if she was impatient to get out there. Besides, that gave her time to practice. Cordelia returned to her practice with cortana, whereas Lucie tried asking the darkness for other favors. She practiced opening and closing gate. The gateways all worked and did what she asked of them, but it was tiring though. After four more gates Lucie collapsed onto a garden chair and took to watching Cordelia practice, too tired to get up. Perhaps Alastair had a point in postponing going for the skin, and she imagined even if he was feeling better now that he was exhausted after this morning. She’d had a break down on a rare occasion, autism and stubbornness didn’t always go well together, but never as bad as Alastair had. She knew how exhausting it could be.

Cordelia’s stamina had to be a lot better than Lucie’s, because she kept going for a long time and didn’t seem to get tired. She certainly had a weak spot for girls with swords, and Lucie made a note to use that in one of her novels. Cordelia had tied back her dark red hair in a high ponytail, and was wearing a wide shirt tucked into a pair of jean shorts, something a bit more practical than Lucie’s yellow jumpsuit. Well, it was comfortable to walk around in, but a struggle to go to the bathroom. Cordelia had begun to break a sweat, a few drips on her forehead, but that didn’t stop her. Perhaps later she’d want to go swimming to cool down. Thinking of water, Lucie realized she hadn’t drunk anything in a while. And considering Cordelia had been training for some time, she had to be dehydrated.

‘Do you want something to drink?’ Lucie asked.

‘I could use a glass of water,’ Cordelia said. ‘I always forget to drink when I’m training.’

Fortunately, Lucie was there to make sure Cordelia drank enough water. She tended to forget herself too, especially when she was busy writing. Sometimes she’d complain of a headache, only to realize she hadn’t drunk anything since breakfast.

She went inside to find Alastair and Thomas were about to leave, both carrying a bag.

‘Where are you going?’ Lucie asked.

‘Just to the lake,’ Thomas said. ‘We won’t go too far into the lake, but it’s getting too warm pretty much everywhere. Maybe you and Cordelia can join us later when you’re done training.’

‘I’ll ask Cordelia,’ Lucie promised. ‘Have fun, in the meantime.’

She returned outside with two glasses of water, putting one on the table.

‘The boys have gone swimming,’ Lucie said. ‘Thomas said we were welcome to join once we’re done.’

‘Sure,’ Cordelia said. ‘Just let me finish.’

Cordelia went through a few more repeats of her training, and then transformed cortana back into its necklace form.

‘I get tired a lot sooner than you,’ Lucie admitted.

‘I can’t do magic,’ Cordelia said. ‘I have no idea how exhausting opening or closing a gateway is. I imagine it is a lot more work than simply swinging a sword.’

Lucie guessed perhaps that was true, magic ought to have some limitations. If not, then how could Cordelia’s ancestor have defeated the witch from Grace’ story? ‘I’m curious what else I can do. Grace said something about controlling the dead and making them fight, but that seems a bit unethical. Jessamine isn’t a fighter, and I’d never make her fight something on my behalf.’

‘It depends on the situation, I guess,’ Cordelia said. ‘We don’t know what it takes to stop Tatiana and save Thomas.’

‘No, but I do need to draw moral lines for myself,’ Lucie said. ‘I feel bad for that witch from the story, and I don’t want to end up like her. I don’t want us to become enemies.’

Cordelia took her hand. ‘I’ll never become your enemy, Lu.’

‘Then I guess I’ll have to stay on the safe side of that ethical line. I know how easy it can be, to have the end justify the means, but that’s something I’d rather save for my stories.’

[popculturebuffet]

The Three Caballeros Ride Again Review!: And Ladies (Ride of the Three Caballeros)

Saludos Amigos! I’m back with yet another comics review! And we’re back on The Ride of the Three Cablleros! Thanks again to WeirdKev27 for commissioning this retrospective. It’s going to get pricey and I greatly appreciate it.  PREVIOUSLY ON RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS 

In short.. a bunch of short segments of varying quality, a very thirsty Donald hitting on ladies, the first appearance of Panchito and some very good music. A fun time was had by all. Along with a LOT OF drugs by the Disney Animators. The film wasn’t a huge success, but out of the 6 package films, it was a fan faviorite alongside the Mr. Toad and Ichabod movie, and thus was rereleased quite a bit, as well as being one of the first of this era to end up on VHS due to it’s cult popularity.  As for Panchito and Jose they’d get plenty of success overseas, with both getting solo series in their respective home countries, Jose himself having just resumed having comics again this year, and being rightfully massive characters. But despite being a hit with fans across the world.. in the US... they were pretty much shoved in the Disney Vault for a few decades. Jose would show up on the Wonderful World of Disney, in it’s various forms, three times after the Three Caballeros while Panchito just vanished aside from reuses of the Three Caballeros footage. Their careers in the US just sorta vanished for a few decades. But as suddenly as they vanished, our boys returned triumphantly. Naturally being the most used out of the duo, Jose would show up for the first time in decades during Mickey Mouseworks, a show full of new late 90′s produced Mickey Mouse shorts, all but two of which would end up being recycled for the much more popular and well loved House of Mouse, which would feature the triumphant return of the Cabs to animation after so long away. We’ll get to that next time, as just a year before the Cabs had already reunited in the pages of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories in one of Don Rosa’s best loved tales. The Ride of The Three Caballeros was something Don Rosa had wanted to do since he got the job writing Duck Comics in the first place. As he explained in the back of the complete library edition named after this tale, Uncle Keno isn’t the biggest fan of the Donald Theatrical shorts. Having experienced the Carl Barks comics first, and having built his career around them later, he just wasn’t a fan of the goofier, angrier, less nuanced theatrical short Donald, often feeling like he was an entirely different character from the one he loved. And.. honestly he’s not wrong. Both were built for entirely different kinds of comedy: While both did slapstick, Slapstick, along with standard comedy shenanigans, was the main weapon in Shorts Donald’s comedic arsenal. Barksian Donald, while not immune to slapstick, was more like a well built sitcom character: Multi layered, sympathetic when he needs to be, but still having tons of faults to be exploited for laughs and to play off other characters. As a result while I like Donald in the shorts I do prefer Barks version of him, and the shorts Barks did are usually the best of both worlds, combining Donald’s everyman schtick with his slapstick schtick. Of course later cartoons would pick one or the other or combine both, but I do get his point and at the time he wrote this story the only cartoon show starring Donald was.. Quack Pack.. which I can only imagine his reaction to seeing that train wreck. 

But as you can probably guess there was one exception and it was The Three Caballeros. Don genuinely enjoys the beautiful music and the wonderful chemistry the three have. So after a trip to Mexico gave him the perfect setting and the fire in his belly to finally do it, he finally wrote the story. And since they weren’t Barksian characters and hadn’t had any other apperances in decade, Don also took a dive into their comics. Since Jose was more of a fancifial freeloader in his comics, Don decided to ignore this characterization and go with his own based on the film: A latin playboy and lounge singer. And i’m okay with him doing that, as unlike say with Marvel and DC when they destroy a character, Disney characters are both more fluid continuity wise and his is still rooted in a version of the character, and he’s fully accepting and apologetic that some fans hate him for this. Also for some damn reason they redesigned Jose at some point in his Brazil to look like this:

This is far from the dumbest comic book costume change i’ve seen, but it’s certainly one of the most lame, as his original outfit is dapper, stylish and fits the Brazilian version of him well. And it’s not like you CAN’T update the classic Disney characters with modern appearances. Quack Pack, which has somehow come up twice in this review, did so great with Donald and Daisy, giving them new clothes and a haircut in Daisy’s case but both still look great. Same with Goofy for Goof Troop who just wore a dad sweater and bow tie, which puts him in the small but significant club of “Bow Tie Wearing Characters who have defined my life” with Opus the Penguin and the 11th Doctor. You can update a classic character’s’s appearance without coming off like...

Which given Jose’s outfit there is horrifyingly similar, says something. Anyways, Rosa had more use for Panchito’s stories, which had him as a cowboy protecting small towns with the help of his trusty steed Senor Martinez. Rosa loved both aspects and thus used them here, with Martinez getting a makeover to fit Rosa’s style better. Rosa is also the one to popularize Panchito’s last name, having found it on a scrap of research, not realizing the character’s last name was not at all widespread and thus giving him a canon one that has stuck to this day, and sighing in relief when he finally got conformation from another fan this name was indeed something Disney had used after loosing his research scrap.  So with the two boys characters set, a plot set up and a whole sequence planned we’ll talk about on the way “The Three Caballeros Ride Again!” was born. How good is it? Well join me under the cut and i’ll tell you. 

We open in Mexico, specifically near the Barranca Del Cobre, aka The “Copper Canyon” of the Sierra Madre, a natural land formation simlar to the Grand Canyon that Don Rosa saw during his trip and thought would make a great setting. While larger than the Grand Canyon, Rosa figures in his notes it simply isn’t as popular because it’s more isolated than the Grand Canyon and that, combined with it having trees inside distracting from it’s rugged beauty, makes it much harder to build a tourist industry around. The four are headed to El Divisadero, because this comic is determined to kill me with it’s difficult to spell names apparently, where Huey, Dewey or Louie spouts off for no particular reason about the currently being built Chihuahua El Pacifico Railway. Seriously the boys might as well be the security guard from Wayne’s World in this comic, their role for most of their brief page time is just to set up stuff for later. I mean i’m fine with setting up your setting but there are better ways than just spouting off tons of exposition apropos of nothing. 

Donald has driven the boys here for a Woodchuck Jamboree. I did actually look into Jamborees, as before this it only had ever come up in one of my favorite movies of all time, Moonrise Kingdom, and mentioned occasionally in the Ducktales Reboot. Jamboree was first used for a worldwide scouting Jamboree but has gone on to mean a huge gathering of scouts, with the Boy Scouts of America having one every four years, so odds are it’s just a big yearly or quarter yearly thing for the woodchucks. Still it would be nice to see a big gathering like this in the series, especially since several of our cast are involved in them, including the possible power trio of Huey, Violet and Boyd, and Della and Launchpad could easily be slotted into the plot as seen in this season’s premiere.. as could Dewey and Louie if they really want to since according to Frank their members.. they just aren’t nearly as invested as their brother, and thus  don’t do Woodchuck stuff unless he drags them into it, as seen with “Day of the Only Child” in the series itself. It does make sense: Dewey doesn’t have the survival instinct or patience for camping, and Louie hates effort, the out doors, and doing things for anything but profit. Scouting is all of that.  So the boys have driven all this way for the Mexican Jamboree, as they’ve been carefully raising their tarantula Tara, and the Tarantula Breeding Badge is only given out in Mexico, which is plausible: Different branches of a worldwide organization would have different awards and what not in different countries. And Tarantula’s are also native to mexico so that makes sense.. and I want you to apricate that I’m afraid of spiders, not cartoony ones, for instance, this is adorable. 

Galvantula4Life. But real life ones or realistic looking ones? Yeah no fuck that. So I had to go to the Wikipedia entry and see several horrifying looking sizeable spiders for this one tiny fact. Your welcome. Tara ends up on Donald’s face with the boys assuming Donald is sad to see her go instead of you know FUCKING TERRIFIED A GIANT SPIDER IS ON HIS FACE. This gag does not work.. but probably because as I said i’m afraid of spiders and this is my nightmare, you little sociopaths. 

The boys however worry about what Donald will do for the weekend as they prepare to board the bus to the Jamboree... why it’s meeting in an out of the way town like this I have no idea, but i’d guess plot convince. They realize he has no friends, which Donald shrugs off, and they REALLY shouldn’t say to his face, but ruminate on it once he leaves to do whatever after vaguely talking about friends he had in the past. 

I like this scene even though it annoys me a bit: Ilike it because it does set up how Donald really DOSEN’T have any friends in the comics. It’s part of WHY Rosa was drawn to the Cabs: Their one of the few equal relationships donald’s ever had, people who treat him as a partner, in both sense probably, a friend, a true amigo. As the boys point out Scrooge is a monster to him in the comics, paying him 30 cents an hour which I actually put into an inflation calculator to get an accurate read on how little that was by 2020 standards.. and it’s 3 dollars an hour. Hence why I call him a monster, why that bit hasn’t aged well, and why Rosa REALLY, REALLY should’ve retired it. It dosen’t help reading that knowing Disney largely treated Rosa the same way is cringe inducing at best, if not for any fault of his own. It being cringe inducing for an employer horribly mistreating and underpaying his employees though is his fault, he’s a grown ass man, even in the 90′s this had to be a problem, be better. 

And yes i’m being hard on Don Rosa but just like with the comics thing, I simply expect better from the man given just how much respect I have for the guy. His art is gorgeous, his research is immaculate, his knowledge of old films is wonderful and his love for them so infectious i’m tempted to seek the ones he’s mentioned in notes out. He’s a truly wonderful guy and one of my faviorite comic writers.. but I have to treat him fairly like I do ANY of my idols. Just to prove that, I love Grant Morrison, especially his run on New X-Men, but a lot of it hasn’t aged well including some of the language and the entire subplot with Emma manipulating Scott into having an affair when he wasn’t in the best mental place and she knew that and was acting as his therapist, and treating that as a regular affair REALLY doesn’t play well nor should it have. I love Al Ewing, with all my heart and soul, but his run on Ultimates, while having some great worldbuilding and a spectacular cast, ultimately wasn’t very good after the first arc. Not terrible but not good. John Aliison, of Scary Go Round and Giant Days fame, while impressive has had plenty of stories I just didn’t like for various reasons and will probably get into some day and some parts of his stories haven’t aged well. It’s the hard but necessary part of being a critic: You have to be objective and see all the parts of a creator’s creation, not just the ones you like and call them out when they screw up. To me being a fan isn’t about just blindly loving something, it’s about knowing WHY you love it and being willing to call out faults while still thoroughly enjoying the work. There’s a fine line between being blindly loyal to someone, which has created Zach Snyder's awful cult of personality that I hate so much, and being an overly critical shithead and I hope I’m straddling that line. 

Back on the scene after that filibuster they point out Gladstone, who himself is a monster to me for how he doesn’t lift a finger to help his nephews or cousin, and constnatly flaunts his luck to Donald, and is a bit more than teasing especially since he tried to, you know, steal your house once boys. That’s canon.. that’s a barks story so it’s canon here. You.. You remember that right? He tried to steal your house. And we will be getting to that one next month, just you wait.  Finally the Daisy part that annoys me slightly. The boys being sexist.. was sadly the style at the time this story is set, the 1950′s, and thus plays better for me than it does in Ducktales, as their just little boys and don’t know better. Them assuming Girlfriends aren’t like having friends, while accurate though does bother me a bit, but only because the way this story treats Donald’s relationship is PRETTTTTYYYY bad and this sets that up. But we’ll get to that.  Thankfully this foreshadowing of terrors to come is quickly forgotten as we get a GENUINELY great two panels of Donald lamenting his lack of friends. It just works really well, selling his loneliness and how isolated he truly feels without any, which while I have friends I can relate to as I only really hang out with on regularly. 

This is what I was talking about. While I will point out Rosa’s flaws.. their truly outweighed but his artistic mastery. In just three panels he really has a truly emotional and heartrending scene, and just that one close up among them is all we need to get the true depths of Donald’s loneliness. I can be hard on the guy, but it’s because he’s one of the best there is, best there was, and best there ever will be and thus I hold him to a high standard.  But with that we transition to...

Or rather first his boss at the hotel, whose pissed his headliner has skipped out on him again to woo a lady, and while he plans to fire the guy, only isn’t throttling him because he figures one of his “Senorita’s” boyfriends will do that for him. And while I do like Jose as a playboy i’m not really fond of him trying to have sex with someone in a relationship, as it puts both him and the person he’s having an affair with in a really bad light. It does fit the character, I just don’t have to like it. As for this particular Senorita, it turns out her boyfriend is a notorious Bandito and is thankfully out of town. So yes, Jose is essentially acting out Come A Little Bit Closer by Jay and the Americans. 

Naturally just like the song, said Bad Man returns, Alfonso “Gold Hat” Bedoya, a machete wielding baddie who while understandably pissed about another man making time with his girlfriend, is less understandably about to murder Jose. Though unlike the song, Alfonso’s Lady, rather than help Jose, encourages her boyfriend to murder him and clearly has a fetish for cheating on her boyfriend with various men and watching as he kills him which.. Jesus. This is why while I don’t LIKE the idea of Jose hitting on women in a relationship it does work here, as he’s still not nearly as bad as either of these two, so it evens out. Jose escapes with his umbrella but crashes.. right into the back of Donald’s car. Rosa, Alfonso’s lady, encourages him to murder both of them for funsies, and being a brutal thug, Alfonso obliges and shoots at the car. And since, to quote the duck himself, Donald doesn’t like being killed “Even a little”, he books it out of there. 

Alfonso doesn’t peruse them though. He’s on the trail of a treasure hunter who has a map to the lost town of Tayopa, which contains untold silver, but before he can do that he has important buisness to get to. 

I fucking love that gag and that Rosa snuck more adult gags in there knowing plenty of Duck Fans, such as myself, are grown men, women and others who can handle this sort of thing, while still slippnig it past the kids. 

Donald, once the fear’s worn off a bit, starts to wonder WHY he’s running when he’s not the one who pissed off the guy, and ignores Jose’s good point about the fact Alfonso really dosen’t seem like a guy who sees nuance.. until Donald sees a wanted poster for Alphonoso and keeps driving. He eventually gets far enough away to feel safe.. and confront the guy who got him into this mess. 

Now kiss. While sadly, they do not, we do get a lovely warm reunion between old pals. Rosa keeps their past vauge as, correctly, he pointed out in his authors notes that the Cabs movie really had no plot, accurate, so instead just vaguely alluded to Donald having known the two in his pre-daisy and boys past and likely had similar adventures to the movie, but adapted more for Rosa’s barksian universe. Jose explains he often finds himself cash poor and thus hits the road to drum up some money, and Mexico is a great place for that as it has plenty of tourist money. 

Though as Jose talks about their past we get the most uncomfortable running gag of the story. 

While Donald’s paranoia here is played for laughs.. it just.. isn’t all that funny that Donald’s relationship with Daisy in the Rosa canon is apparently sooooo deeply unhealthy that just HEARING about him having a romantic past before him, as Rosa confirmed this was pre-daisy in his notes, causes Donald to panic and worry she actually somehow heard this. It just isn’t funny.. it speaks of MASSIVE relationship issues and some form of domestic abuse on Rosa!Daisy’s part. It’s stuff like this why there’s only a handful of Donsy relationships I like: Her treating him like shit is reduced to a punchline, instead of being used for character growth. It’s also why I’m deeply dreading covering “Legend of the Three Cablleros” at the end of this retrospective. I just don’t like when Disney media treats Daisy expecting too much of Donald or being hyper jealous of him as hilarious and while I take this more as the story not ageing well rather than barks fault, as since then Domestic Abuse against Males has become a more widely known and talked about issue, it still doesn’t’t make it plesant. It just makes this not entirely his fault. Just like it’s not Stan Lee’s fault this panel is both deeply hilarious and uses a now kinda racist term. 

I named an entire youtube channel after that.. we all have our regrets. I also bring it up since currently Harry’s become terrifying villain Kindred... and thus the current big bad of an entire Spider-Man run and the being hopefully bringing one more day into the light and hopefully leading to it’s undoing.. once had a goofy mustache he genuinely referred to a “Fu Manchu Face Fuzz” that for all we know he regrew under the mask. 

Donald fondly remembers the old days of being a badass adventuring team and decides, screw it, let’s go show that Gold Hatted Paloka whose boss.. but being Donald ends up driving them into The Copper Canyon instead. Our heroes end up lost in the canyon and , fitting for Donald get shot at. I can only imagine his thoughts right now. 

Their mysterious attacker threatens them.. before revealing himself to be Panchito, whose glad to see his friends having mistook them for Alfonso. Turns out HE’S the mysterious treasure hunter Alfonoso was after, to no one’s surprise. We get another deeply unfunny “Daisy’s only a thousand miles away gag” as the boys reminisce and get introduced to Panchito’s horse, Senior Martniez. He also tells the boy about his map.. but how he’s hit a snag as the lost town where the silver, from a silver mine.. is now buried under pounds of volcanic rock, a volcano having erupted. This is artistic license as Don Rosa admits there aren’t any known volcano’s in Mexico, but that they also still haven’t found that missing town, so this was his explanation.  All is not lost as Donald’s globetrotting with Scrooge meant he knows his history.. and thus spots an old mission which, at the time, were used by preists as cover for secret mines. Donald naturally bungles his way in and we get the much better running gag of the Cabs thinking Donald did something amazing when he really just wondered into slapstick. They end up down the shaft, with Jose deciding Donald can’t do all the work, and finding a secret entrance under a sanctum sanctorum.. a religious thing I have no idea what it ii s but is clearly where Dr. Strange got the name. Regardless they find some old kegs filled with pure silver. As Panchito puts it: 

And he did ideed. In a nice moment that shows off his character, Panchito has no hesitation for sharing the wealth: He wouldn’t of got this far without his friends, and he wont get the Silver cashed in without their help. He also fires off his guns in celebration.. forgetting their in a cave, a gag I genuinely like. 

After some off screen loading and hoisting, the boys are slowly on their way out of the canyon, with Donald’s Car and Senor Martinez pulling the cart with the silver together. With some downtime the three talk about what they’ll spend the money on. 

About what you’d expect. A big beautiful music venue

For Jose, and a nice ranch to retire at for Panchito. Both despite being wondering souls would love a simple place to call home, in their own personal styles. While they are BIG goals, their also likeable and understandable ones: Jose just wants to stop having to do all these tours and carouse and party and perform at home. Be his own boss, and live his own dreams instead of working for whoever will put up for him. Panchito just wants to retire from being a wondering hero to a peaceful life of farming, an honest reward he well earned. And Donald? 

This is easily one of my faviorite moment’s of Rosa’s, one that really cuts to comic donald’s character: Sure he can be lazy, a trickster, hot tempered, and overconfident.. it’s why we love him.. but at the end of the day he genuinely loves those boys and their his first prority and I can see why the reboot took that trait and made it his defining one. They may annoy and frustrate them and he may pull a switch on them, 50′s after all.. but he loves his boys and knows they’ll do great one day and despite his spendthrift ways when given big money.. their all he can think about. Sure Donald probably has his own personal dreams, but instead of going big and retiring he’d probably just take only a small sliver of that money to open a humble hot dog stand or something, so he could have something of his own to provide them, while still giving most of the money to their college. Scrooge is who we all want to be.. Donald is who we are at our core: Flawed people who just want to do our best. It’s why I love the guy so much.  The boys rest in the small town of El Divisadero, which like the town we started in is a real place, though both are much smaller, even as of 2000 when Rosa made his visit, so he had to embelish slightly. THey stop at a local watering hole only to find Alphonso. While Jose is naturally worried, Gold Hat has moved on to Panchito and wants to know why he’s here. However Donald thinking quickly says he’s part of their nightclub act, and we get a rousing version of the three cablleros, which when reading this I synched up to the song. I won’t put it here, as it’s too big for tumblr and it really works more as a whole, but needless to say, it’s the highlight of the comic. While Rosa did have doubts about putting a musical number in a comic, and it’s often trickey, he makes it work with the energy, vibrance and number of gags, that compensate for the music not being there. There’s tons of great gags, from Donald getting thrown out  window, to the stone faced crowd who only cheers when Alphonso ends the number by whacking the three with one of their own guitars.  Alphonso quickly realizes what’s goin on, finds the silver, and then hyjacks the train. The boys take off after him in the car, as Donald triumphantly states “The Three Cablleros Ride Again!”. The three head after Alphonzo, who finds them when trying to release the other cars to increase speed, and then shoots at them. It seems hopeless... until donald gets launched into the air, into a cactus then back into Alphonzo knocking his guns out in a great bit of slapstick. The Conductor, likely not knowing about the others or not carring, detaches the cars though, so our heroes and villian are now sent rocketing through the world’s most dangerous railway. Which, as you’d probably already figured out, is very real and what inspirited rosa to use this setting and thus indeed wind through dangerous mountainsides and over thin cliffs like a real life Donkey Kong Country level.  Eduardo still has his machete though and easily beats Jose’s umbrella, but some more Donald slapstick and him apologizing to daisy about the senioritis as he wishes her goodbye seriously GET SOME COUPLE’S COUNSELING IF THAT EXISTS IN THE 50′S. It puls his sombrero down over his head, and with jose’s umbrella top landing on it, carries him off where he ends up in a lazy asshole sheirff’s jail for a gag. The boys however continue going back.. and the railway is unfinished at this time in history and while they save the silver, their fucked. But Donald has a plan, running to the back of the cars to get his car, and while it has trouble starting, Panchito throws some chilie’s in the tank to get it moving again.  The boys find the silver.. but when one barrel spills they find out it’s not actual liquid silver.. but quicksilver, which was used for silver refinment. So while i’ts shiny, and toxic so of course Jose sticks his hand in before knowing what it is, it’s worthless. Probably. The boys.. all have a nice laugh over it. I love this moment. Sure the boys lost their dreams.. but like Scrooge, the three belivie theirs always another rainbow. What matters is the journey they had and the reunion that restored their friendship. Donald also muses the boys are smart enough to get their own scholarships anyway, so it’s no big loss.. but he does have to get back to Disvadero as the jamboree ends tonight and Jose agrees as he now needs a job again. The owner balks, understandably since Jose missed a performance to get laid and then disappeared overnight.. but the Hotel Owner is visiting so as long as he can provide a big act he’s good, and while Jose is worried as he already gave them his best, the boys naturally pitch in to be the cablleros once more. After all

So we close on Huey, Dewey and Louie returning, still worrying about donald, when they find him on stage. We then end on a truly heartwarming and great last few panels. 

Final Thoughts: What else can I say? This story is beautifully drawn, as usual for Rosa, well paced, fun and really fleshes the Cabs out from the movie. It has a warm, fun adventurous tone and it’s nice to see Donald in the lead since Rosa usually did Scrooge stories and thus Donald was the justifiably surly sidekick instead of the main man> here he’s in the spotlight and gets to show just what he’s made of, while still being the hilarious mess we all know and love. The story honors the original film well, while forging it’s own path and is beautifully built into history. My only real complaints are the nephews being annoying, Alphonso’s somewhat overwrought accent, and of course the daisy gags.. but it’s all HEAVILY outweighed by one of Rosa’s finest hours and easy enough to ignore. Check this out if you can. It’s a classic for a reason. 

If you liked this review, you can commission your own by messaging me on here or at my discord technicolormuk#655 for five dollars a comic story or animation episode. Whenever the ride resumes next, we’ll coming on down to the house of mouse to see the boys return to the screen. In the meantime keep an eye on this space for regular Ducktales reviews every Monday, including once this run ends as I intend to start playing catchup, loud house reviews whenever, my tom retrospective that’s returning soon, and my retrospective on the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, with chapter 2 of that also coming soon. Until then, there’s always another rainbow. 

[d-criss-news]

Darren Criss acts as playwright when he writes songs. He’s far more confident, and certainly more vulnerable, when he allows himself to play the part. In such a way, songwriting opens up a whole new world that pulses with untapped potential. So much of what he has accomplished in 15 years resides in his willingness to expose himself to what his imagination and intuition have in store. He steps into a playwright’s shoes with considerable ease (just look at his resume), and always one to put on plenty of bravado, especially during our Zoom face-to-face, it’s the natural order of things.

“As I get older and write more and more songs, I really recognize that I’ve always preferred to write for another context other than my own,” Criss tells American Songwriter. He speaks with a cool intensity, gesturing emphatically to accentuate a sentence, and when you let him go, he’s like the Energizer Bunny 一 “I can tell by just how quiet you already are that you’re fucked,” he jokes at the start of our video chat. But he remains just as engaged and focused when listening.

He soaks in the world, taking astute notes about behavior and emotional traits he can later use in song. His storytelling, though, arrives already in character, fully formed portraits he can then relay to the world. It’s not that he can’t be vulnerable, like such greats as Randy Newman, Tom Waits, and Rufus Wainwright, who have all embroidered their work with deeply personal observations, it just doesn’t feel as comfortable. “I’ve always really admired the great songwriters of the world who are extremely introspective and can put their heart and soul on the chopping block,” he muses. “That’s a vulnerability that I think is so majestic. I’ve never had access to it. I’m not mad about it. It’s just good to know what your deal is.”

Criss’ strengths lie in his ability to braid his own experiences, as charmed as they might be, into wild, goofy fantasies. In the case of his new series “Royalties,” now streaming on Quibi, he walks a fine line between pointed commentary on the music industry, from menial songwriting sessions to constantly chasing down the next smash, and oddball comedy that is unequivocally fun. Plotted with long-standing friends and collaborators Matt and Nick Lang, co-founders of Team StarKid, created during their University of Michigan days (circa 2009), the show’s conceptual nucleus dates back more than a decade.

If “Royalties” (starring Criss and Kether Donohue) feels familiar, that’s because it is. The 10-episode show ─ boasting a smorgasbord of delightful guest stars, including Mark Hammill, Georgia King, Julianna Hough, Sabrina Carpenter, and Lil Rel Howery ─ captures the very essence of a little known web series called “Little White Lie.” Mid-summer 2009, Team StarKid uploaded the shoddy, low budget production onto YouTube, and its scrappy tale of amateur musicians seeking fame and fortune quickly found its audience, coming on the heels of “A Very Potter Musical,” co-written with and starring Criss. Little did the trio know, those initial endeavors laid the groundwork for a lifetime of creative genius.

“It’s a full circle moment,” says Criss, 33, zooming from his Los Angeles home, which he shares with his wife Mia. He’s fresh-faced and zestful in talking about the new project. 11 years separate the two series, but their connective thematic tissues remain striking. “Royalties” is far more polished, the obvious natural progression in so much time, and where “Little White Lie” soaked in soapy melodrama, the former analyzes the ins and outs of the music world through more thoughtful writing, better defined (and performed) characters, and hookier original tunes.

“Royalties” follows Sara (Donohue) and Pierce (Criss), two struggling songwriters in Los Angeles, through various career exploits and pursuits. The pilot, titled “Just That Good,” features an outlandish performance from Rufus Wainwright as a major player in dance-pop music, kickstarting the absurdity of Criss’ perfectly-heightened reality. As our two main characters stumble their way between songwriting sessions, finally uncovering hit single potential while eating a hot dog, Criss offers a glimpse into the oft-unappreciated art of songwriting.

In his own songwriting career ─ from 2010’s self-released Human EP and a deal with Columbia Records (with whom a project never materialized) to 2017’s Homework EP and Computer Games’ debut, Lost Boys Life, (a collaboration with his brother Chuck) ─ he’s learned a thing or two about the process. Something about sitting in a room with someone you’ve never met before always rang a little funny to him.

“You meet a stranger, and you have to be creative, vulnerable, and open. It’s speed-dating, essentially. It’s a different episode every time you pull it off or not. All the big songwriters will tell you all these crazy war stories. Everyone has a wacky story from songwriting,” he says. “I slowly realized I may ─ I can’t flatter myself, there are tons of creative people who are songwriters ─ have prerequisites to just put the two together [TV and music]. I’ve worked enough in television as an actor and creator. I can connect the dots. I had dual citizenship where I felt like it was really time for me to go forth with this show.”

But a packed professional life pushed the idea to the backburner.

Between six seasons of “Glee” (playing Blaine Anderson, a Warbler and lover to Chris Colfer’s Kurt Hummel), starring in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” on Broadway, and creating Elsie Fest, a one-day outdoor festival celebrating songs of the stage and screen, he never had the time. “I was lucky enough to be busy,” he says. “As Team StarKid’s star was continuing to rise with me being separate from it, I was trying to think of a way to get involved again with songwriting.”

At one point, “Glee” had officially wrapped and his Broadway run was finished. It appeared “Royalties” may finally get its day in the sun. “I went to Chicago for a work pilgrimage with the Langs. We had a few days, and we put all our ideas on the map: every musical, feature film, show, graphic novel, and animated series we’ve ever thought of,” he says. “A lot of them were from the Langs; they were just things I was interested in as a producer or actor. We looked at all of them and made a top three.”

“Royalties” obviously made the cut.

Fast forward several years, Gail Berman’s SideCar, a production company under FOX Entertainment, was looking to produce a music show. Those early conversations, beginning at an otherwise random LA party, showed great promise in airlifting the concept from novel idea to discernible reality. Things quickly stalled, however, as they often do in Hollywood, but Criss had at least spoken his dreams into the universe.

“I finally had an outlet to put it into gear. It wasn’t until two to three years after that that things really locked in. We eventually made shorts and made a pilot presentation. We showed it to people, and it wasn’t until Quibi started making their presence known that making something seemed really appealing,” he says. “As a creator, they’re very creator-centric. They’re not a studio. They’re a platform. They are licensing IP much like when a label licenses an indie band’s album after the fact.”

Quibi has drawn severe ire over the last few months, perhaps because there is a “Wild Westness” to it, Criss says. “I think that makes some people nervous. Being my first foray into something of this kind, Quibi felt like a natural partner for us. If this had been a network or cable show, we would’ve molded it to be whatever it was.”

Format-wise, “Royalties” works best as bite-sized vignettes, charming hijinks through the boardroom and beyond, and serves as a direct response to a sea of music shows, from “Nashville” and “Empire” to “Smash.” “Those shows were bigger, more melodramatic looks at the inside base of our world. I’ve always been a goofball, and I just wanted to take the piss out of it,” he says. “This show isn’t about songwriting. It’s about songwriters… but a very wacky look at them.”

“30 Rock,” a scripted comedy loosely based around “Saturday Night Live,” in which the focus predominantly resides around the characters, rather than the business itself, was also on his mind. “It’s about the interconnectivity of the people and characters. As much of the insider knowledge that I wanted to put into our show, at the end of the day, you just want to make a fun, funny show that’s relatable to people who know nothing about songwriting and who shouldn’t have to know anything.”

Throughout 10 episodes, Criss culls the “musicality, fun, and humor” of Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger and Max Martin, two of his biggest songwriting heroes, and covers as many genres as possible, from K-Pop to rap-caviar and classic country. While zip-lining between formats, the songs fully rely on a sturdy storytelling foundation ─ only then can Criss drape the music around the characters and their respective trajectories. “I wanted to do something where I could use all the muscles I like to flex at once, instead of compartmentalizing them,” he says. “I really love writing songs for a narrative, not necessarily for myself. I thrive a little more when I have parameters, characters, and a story to tell.”

Bonnie McKee, one of today’s greatest pop architects, takes centerstage, too, with an episode called “Kick Your Shoes Off,” in which she plays a bizarro version of herself. “She has her own story, and I’ve always been fascinated by it,” says Criss, who took her out to lunch one day to tell her about it. Initially, the singer-songwriter, known for penning hits for Katy Perry, Taio Cruz, and Britney Spears, would anchor the entire show, but it soon became apparent she would simply star in her own gloriously zany episode.

In one of the show’s standout scenes, Pierce and Sara sit in on a label meeting with McKee’s character and are tasked with writing a future hit. But they quickly learn how many cooks are in the kitchen at any given moment. Everyone from senior level executives to publicists and contracted consultants have an opinion about the artist’s music. One individual urges her to experiment, while another begs not to alienate her loyal fanbase, and then a third advises her to chronicle the entire history of music itself ─ all within three minutes or so. It’s absurd, and that’s the point. “Everyone’s been in that meeting, whether you’re in marketing or any creative discussion that has to be made on a corporate level by committee. It’s the inevitable, comedic contradictions and dissociations from not only rationality but feasibility.”

Criss also draws upon his own major label days, having signed with Sony/Columbia right off the set of “Glee,” as well as second-hand accounts from close friends. “There are so many artists, particularly young artists, who famously get chewed up and spat out by the label system,” he says. “There’s a lot of sour tastes in a lot of people’s mouths from being ‘mistreated’ by a label. I have a lot of friends who’ve had very unfortunate experiences.”

“I was really lucky. I didn’t have that. I have nothing but wonderful things to say,” he quickly adds.“It wasn’t a full-on drop or anything. I was acting, and I was spreading myself really thin. It’s a record label’s job to make product, and I was doing it piecemeal here and there. I would shoot a season [of ‘Glee’] and then do a play. I was doing too many things. I didn’t have it in me at the time to do music. I had written a few songs I thought were… fine.”

Both Criss and the label came to the same conclusion: perhaps this professional relationship just wasn’t a good fit. They parted ways, and he harbors no ill-will. In fact, he remains close friends with many folks from that time. So, it seems, a show like “Royalties” satisfies his deep hunger to make music and write songs ─ and do it totally on his own terms.

“I still say I want to put out music, and fans have been very vocal about that. I feel very fortunate they’re still interested at all,” he says. “That passion for making music really does come out in stuff like [this show].”

“Royalties” is Darren Criss at his most playful, daring, and offbeat. It’s the culmination of everything he has tirelessly worked toward over the last decade and a half. Under pressure with a limited filming schedule, he hits on all cylinders with a soundtrack, released on Republic Records, that sticks in the brain like all good pop music should do. And it would not have been the same had he, alongside Matt and Nick Lang, not formed Team StarKid 11 years ago.

Truth be told, it all began with a “Little White Lie.”

[lotsobooks]

Skin and Other Stories, Roald Dahl

Skin:

An old, impoverished man wanders the streets of Paris in the early to mid 1900′s. As he’s walking he sees a painting in a gallery window which he recognizes, having been acquainted with the artists some time in the past. One time, he and his wife were hanging out with the artist and got super drunk, and the guy convinced the artist to do a portrait of the wife on his back. The artist is convinced, and he paints the tattoo portrait on the guy’s back then goes over it in ink. The artist and the guy fall out of touch, then wife dies, the artist becomes incredibly famous. Back in the present, the guy enters the gallery where they are doing an exhibition of the artist’s work. The guy almost gets thrown out but shows the collectors the tattoo on his back, which they recognize as legit. Several of them offer to buy it but wonder how they’d display it, since it is on the guy’s back. One of the collectors invites the guy to dinner to discuss the piece, and he goes with him. A few weeks later the portrait, framed, is put up for sale and the guy’s fate is left ambiguous but he’s probably dead.

Lamb to the Slaughter:

Mary Maloney, six months pregnant, waits for her husband to come home from his job as a police lieutenant in the town they live in. He shows up and she makes him a drink. She’s very happy with her marriage and her situation in general, but he;s acting very odd and seems to have something important to say. Concerned, she starts making dinner, but he tells her to stop, that he has something he needs to tell her. He says what it is, though the audience doesn’t not know what he tells her. He finishes by saying of course he will continue taking care of her, but it is implied that he has done something irreparable. Shocked and horrified, Mary goes to make dinner in a kind of trance. She gets a leg of lamb from the freezer and clubs him over the head with it, killing him. She considers the consequences of her actions and decides that she wouldn’t mind the death penalty, then remembers she is pregnant and worries for her child. She goes to the grocers, then comes back and calls the police. They arrive and ruler her out as a suspect. She convinces them to eat the leg of lamb, which she cooked, while they discuss how they will inevitably find the murder weapon.

The Sound Machine:

A scientist fiddles with a machine he built in his garage. His friend, a doctor, stops by and asks him about it. He explains that the machine converts sounds that are too high or low for humans to hear into things they can hear. He says he plans to test it that day and the doctor leaves. The scientist takes the machine outside, where his neighbor is cutting roses, and turns it on. He hears a scream that he identifies as the roses his neighbor is cutting, and concludes that the flowers feel pain. To further test this theory he goes to a nearby park with the machine and hits a tree with an axe, and again and again hears a scream. Horrified that he has hurt the tree, he goes home and considered that he now can’t eat vegetables because of his new knowledge. The next day he calls his doctor friend and tells him to come over immediately, which he does. The scientist takes the doctor to the park, has him put on the machines headphones, turns it on and his the tree some more. Before he can ask if the doctor if he heard anything, a thick branch falls from the tree and almost kills him, implying that the tree is fighting back. The doctor is too unsettled to admit that he heard anything and the scientist makes him coat the chips in the tree with iodine. He makes the doctor promise to continue treating the tree and then they leave.

An African Story:

A guy who files planes in Africa as training for WWII is forced to land on top of a meas adue to a fule problem. He meets and stays with an old African man who lives on top of the mesa and tells him stories. The guy likes one of the stories enough to write it down. The manuscript is found amongst his things a few months later, after he has died in training, and the friend who found it is now sharing it. In the story, the old ma,e enters his shack to find that the guy who lives with him and does chores and broken the old man’s dog’s back. The old man kills the dog out of mercy and turns on the guy who hurt the dog. The guy says he didn’t like the sound it was making as it licked it’s paws. The old man also has a cow which gives milk twice a day, but every day when they go to milk it, all of it’s milk is gone. The old man determines it’s not being stolen by the guy who works for him, and decides it’s probably a kid from a nearby village who comes in the night. He stays up all night watching for the intruder and finds out it’s a mamba, an incredibly poisonous snake, who comes and drinks the cow’s milk every night. He find this amusing, and observes it for several nights. One day he gets the guy who lives with him to tell about all the dog’s he’s killed, because apparently this guy is a psychopath who likes killing dogs. He then tells the guy that they’re going to catch the milk thief that night. They dig a trench by the cow, the guy lays in it and gets covered by straw. The plan is that when the old man sees the intruder he’ll shout, and the guy will jump out an grab the thief. They wait all night, then the man sees the snake approaching and shouts. The guy jumps up and gets bitten and dies. The old man watches the snake drink the cow’s milk and says it can have the dead guy’s share.

Galloping Foxley

An older guy- sixties I think- describes his morning commute into the city. He has ridden the same train with the same people and walked the same path to the same place for a few decades, and loves it. He finds the continuity and familiarity soothing. He even writes a little bit about how content his commute makes him, but on the day he plans to show it to other people a strange newcomer shows up and the train station and takes the train with the main character. This upsets the main character greatly, since it interrupts the pattern he has become so comfortable with .After a few days of this newcomer taking the train, the main character recognizes him as a schoolmate from his teenage years, an older boy who tortured him physically and psychologically. The main character reminisces about the torture and decides to make the guy uncomfortable by reminding him of how shitty he was when they were kids. Since the other guy doesn’t recognize him, the main character introduces himself. The other guy also introduces himself, and it turns out he isn’t the guy who tortured the main character in grade school.

The Wish

A little kid plays “the floor is lava” on a carpet, but instead of imagining the black spots on the rug are lava, he pretends they are snakes, which he is afraid of. He almost gets across the whole rug but then falls onto a black spot. It’s implied that he actually got eaten/killed by the snakes but maybe he didn’t.

The Surgeon

This surgeon works at a clinic where he refuses to take money from any of his patients. One day he saves the life of a Saudi Arabian prince who tries to pay him, but he refuses. Insisting he repay the surgeon somehow, the prince gives him a big diamond, then goes back home. The surgeon goes to the local jewelry store to get the diamond appraised. He learns that the diamond is worth over half a million dollars and then goes home. He tells his wife about the diamond and she gets super excited, but they can’t put the diamond in the bank because it’s the weekend. They talk about how to hide it and eventually put it in the ice box of their fridge, frozen solid as an extra layer of security. They come home the next day or something and find that their house has been totally ransacked. They call the police and tell them about the diamond, then go stay in a hotel. No one can find the diamond, so they assume the burglars found and took it, but the surgeon and his wife aren’t too broken up about it. Back at the clinic a different surgeon finds a diamond in a guy’s intestine because he swallowed it for some reason. The second surgeon takes it to be examined by the same guy who examined it the first time. The jeweler find out it’s the same diamond that belong to the first surgeon and calls the police. The police arrest the second surgeon, but then he tells them where he found it and they let him go. They conclude that the guy who swallowed it probably did so when he ransacked the house and poured himself a drink with ice.

Dip in the Pool

This guy on a boat enters a betting pool. The people in the pool are betting on how far the boat will be able to go within a certain period of time. At the time the people are choosing how far they think it will go, the boat is caught in a storm that has been going on for awhile, so the guy spends all his savings buying a low number. he wakes up the next morning and the storm has broken and the boat is flying, going super fast. He blew all of his and his wife’s savings buying the low number, and imagines how disappointed and disgusted she is going to be with him. He devises a plan to make the boat turn around and loose time and distance. The plan is he’s going to jump overboard and force the boat to turn around to get him. He dresses light and goes up on the deck, where there is a single woman looking out at the sea. After making sure she isn’t blind or deaf, he jumps off the boat, yelling loudly as he goes down. Startled, she watches him disappear. A bit later another woman, looking for the first woman, shows up. The first woman tells her how a man jumped overboard, but apparently she is an invalid of some kind because the second woman does note believe her. They leave, and presumably the man drowns.

The Champion of the World

This guy works at a pumping station with his friend, whose favorite pastime is poaching pheasants from a nearby forest/property. One day his friend offers to take him poaching, and teaches him the three techniques his father developed for poaching, all of which involve raisins. The first guy (the non poacher) suggests a new way to poach- putting sleeping pills in raisins and gathering the drugged pheasants when they fall. The poaching friend is super into this idea, so that night the two of them sneak into the forest with the drugged raisins and distribute them amongst the pheasants. The first, new poacher guy says they shouldn’t take all hundred and twenty pheasants, but the friend is determined to fuck with the rich guy who owns the property the pheasants live on and by extension the pheasants. By stealing all the pheasants, they’ll ruin the rich guy’s intro-to-hunting-season party, humiliating him. The poacher friend insists they take all the pheasants, so they do. They escape in a taxi and store the pheasants with the vicar’s wife, who has assisted the poacher friend in the past. The next day a truck with the pheasants comes to the pumping station. It turns out they forgot to kill the pheasants, so they all escape and perch on the pumping station. Literally everyone in town sees the pheasants chilling out at the pumping station, and the two friends recognize that they are truly and absolutely fucked.

Beware of the Dog

A fighter pilot in one of the world wars (I think the first) is cruising along, thinking about what’s going to happen when he lands. It’s revealed that he has somehow lost one of his legs, and the cockpit is totally drenched in blood. The pilot is in shock and is not registering the pain and considers how this friends will react to his lack of leg. As the pain begins to set in he realizes he’s cruising at an altitude of twenty one thousand feet. The effects of his injuries begin setting in and he almost passes out, but recognizes that if he passes out he will certainly die, that he has to eject from the plane and release his parachute before he loses consciousness. He manages to get out of the plane and relases his parachute, then passes out in the clouds. He wakes up in a bed and is tended to by a nurse who tells him her names is Brighton. He is still missing his leg. One day while he’s laying in bed, the pilot recognizes the sound of a German plane and remarks that no German pilot would dare fly that close to the ground. The nurse evades his questions. Eventually the pilot manages to look out the window, which has been covered the whole time, and realizes he is in occupied Germany. So I was wrong, this is probably WWII. The nurse informs him that a government official is coming to talk about the crash. The pilot recalls being told that if he is ever caught by the Germans to only give his name, rank and number, nothing else. When the official shows up, the Pilot gives him his name, rank and number.

My Lady Love, My Dove

This guy’s wife complains about the dinner guests they’re having for no apparent reason. He tries to object a little buyt she blows him over. She the convinces him to set up a microphone in the guest room where they will be staying, which he does after token resistance. It is revealed that he has done things like read people’s mail before. So he mics the guest room and the guests arrive, and the freaks out a little but doesn’t get caught. He goes and meets them, and the two couples talk for a while. The main guy starts to feel a little bad about rigging the guest room because he actually likes the guests. They play bridge, which the other couple is really good at, and lose. They all retire to go to sleep, and the first couple listens to to the guy berate his wife for bridge mistakes. Turns out they were cheating the whole time. The original couple decides this sounds like a great idea and starts practicing cheating at bridge.

[xlady-saya]

i’ve had a love of my own [ch 3]

Relationships: andrew/neil

Summary: Despite everything Neil could’ve imagined for his life, he never thought he’d be here, finally giving the world the interview they’ve always wanted.

It’s been decades, but even with his numerous accolades and sports wins, he finds that they’re the least important thing about his life.

Neil can’t help but laugh. Andrew would be so annoyed if he were here.

Of course, Neil only wants to talk about him, and the life they spent together.

Tags: interviews, post canon, major character death but not how u think I swear lol, neil is an old man retelling his memories about andrew, cheesy romance, post retirement, see more tags on ao3

Read on ao3!

He expects pain, he always expects pain.

His head hits the floor and his vision floods with red, the headache spreading like a fog through his skull. For a moment, he's back on a cold basement floor, and his legs won't work, they won't move.

The vision wobbles though, the voices of the past aren't as clear. It's been so long since he's been taken back to that place, to the body of a nineteen year old with nothing to save him. Even now, it's not as strong. The memory fades in and out until the roar of the crowd shatters it completely.

Neil's not on the basement floor, his father is dead. Yes, at the age of thirty-five he's come to accept that, to smile at the thought.

He knows something is wrong, because he does smile in his delirious state, and someone above him makes a choked, sobbing noise. His frown returns. He thinks it sounds like their team captain, and she's calling, yelling for someone...

There's a referee whistle and an uproar that follows. It's probably a few seconds, at most, but his awareness moves at a slug pace. He tastes copper and tries to grip his racquet, but he must've dropped it.

Must've...

Neil tries to move, but when he does his body jolts. Like being next to a speaker blasting sound, his spine vibrates and his cells scream. He thinks they might be breaking apart. Is that possible? He'll have to ask Aaron.

His eardrums ring from the cries of panic around him, but they're not his own. The gasps and screams of fear are not his, though they probably should be. Any other time, he'd be in an anxious stir, wondering if the puppet strings holding him up would finally snap.

He freezes, his body refusing to let him move.

But it's not pain.

If it were pain, he could power through it, he could move with a strain and a groan. If it were pain, he could cry and freak out and wonder what happened.

That's how he knows it's bad. This isn't a normal accident, a typical injury. This is something serious.

All at once it comes crashing down onto him, and he forces his eyes open.

The lights of the stadium are mind-numbingly bright and there's people trying to get his attention, but he doesn't care. Neil pushes the fingers someone is holding up aside, trying to sit up and hating himself when he can't. A few seconds. At most.

He tilts his head towards the goal, because even in his state he knows the Exy court by heart. That's how he's measuring time. It's only been seconds, because there's no way Andrew would take any longer to get to him.

He watches the blond sprint the remaining few feet, brutally shoving anyone out of the way. There's a snarl, and commands being barked.

"Back the fuck off."

"Don't touch him."

"Neil, can you hear me?"

Neil's throat is too dry to respond, but he squints his eyes up at Andrew, scanning his face in that infuriating way he does when he's trying to get a rise out of his boyfriend. Yes I can.

The hands around him grip him harder, probably enough to bruise, but Neil can't feel it at all. Ah, not good. Not good at all.

He expects Andrew's face to morph back into annoyance, or the begrudging amusement he always directs at Neil when he's being a little shit like that. Then he would know it's alright, it's not as bad as everyone is making it out to be.

It does not.

Andrew's expression remains stripped of his calm, of his restraint. All the things Andrew cultivates, the neutral indifference he shows the world...it's all gone.

Once again, because of Neil.

And Neil hates it, he wants to reach up and cradle Andrew's face in his hands and will him back into a sense of peace, into contentment.

Instead, all he sees is panic, a desperation he's familiar with but hoped to never see again. Like if Andrew could, he'd shelter Neil from the entire world, hide him away in his chest until he was all healed.

Neil tries to move again, one fruitless attempt to show Andrew he's alright.

All he gets is a sickening crack.

--

He doesn’t realize how silent the meeting room has become until he stops speaking.

Neil cuts himself off there, squinting down at the floor as the static buzzes around him and tries to cling to words that are no longer forming.

No, no.

Neil bites his lip.

"Sorry, that's not right," he says, slicing through his recount of Andrew's expression. He recalls the way Andrew’s hands tightened around Neil's trembling form as if he could put him back together all by himself. Neil still feels the light pressure on his skin, and reaches up to graze the back of his neck. He swears there's the slightest dip, another part of his body Andrew left a permanent mark on.

It's not a memory he's afraid of, or one he's sensitive about. It's just—

Neil looks up.

At this point, Blake and Rayah have gotten comfortable. They're sitting, shoes toed off and legs up on the comfy meeting room chairs. Rayah's manicured nails are eating through the thread of her stockings, body tight with nervous energy. They both blink, as if shaken out of some dream. Neil's never prided himself on being a good storyteller, but he guesses with a life as random and convoluted as his sometimes was, it's hard not to be a little interested.

Blake has the most apparent reaction, squinting at Neil before looking at Rayah for confirmation that Neil did indeed stop there. "...what?"

Rayah, forgoing all professionalism at this point, puts her hands in front of her as if to ask: and?

Normally, Neil might smile, but something begins to unfurl in his gut.

Yes, he knows what the problem is, but weighing the risk is a lot harder than he thought.

Can he entrust that kind of knowledge to these people? Is that reckless?

Is it really his life story if it's not at least a little dangerous?

He knows if Aaron were here, he would scoff, though more fondly. 'You always have to get those around you in trouble.'

Perhaps, but he'll be careful. If he relays this right...if he leaves blurry spots...

He can still get the important stuff across.

"I don't want to start there," Neil says, sighing. "Everyone knows what happened, it was all over the news."

Why waste time repeating details that can be viewed online in a video?

Before it was confirmed the injury was condemning Neil to an early retirement, most of the coverage had been about Andrew's severe reaction. His unwillingness to leave Neil's side, the way he shoved people away like they weighed nothing...

It annoyed Neil to no end how people's main reaction had been to finally say 'oh, so he does care.' For so long, that's all Neil wanted; he wanted people to accept Andrew's devotion, to acknowledge other sides of him that disproved the heartless whispers. Though, once that day happened, Neil realized people didn't deserve to see the evidence. Even when provided it, they twisted it and used it as even more of a reason to doubt them. After all, if Andrew cared so much, why didn't he show it more often?

Even now, decades later, Neil has to bite his tongue from going off into a rage fueled rant. He glares down at the floor, like he could burn the world to pieces.

Andrew put himself in such a vulnerable position just for Neil on that day, showing so much. Like Baltimore, his restraint was gone, focus turned entirely on Neil for the full span of his recovery. Andrew never viewed Neil as a weakness, far from it, but that intimacy was not something he readily liked to share.

For good reason, too. It belonged to them only, at least while they both lived. But on that day, it had been on full display for people to pick at, while internally Andrew's entire being probably screamed and twisted itself inside out.

Worried.

If Neil could've gone back in time, he would've been more careful, he would've made sure people didn't get to see Andrew like that and make their foul assumptions. In their years together, they'd made a silent, but unrealistic promise to try and spare each other pain. It was hypocritical of them, two people so familiar with how unforgiving the world could be. Would be. They never fooled themselves into believing things would always work out right away, or at all. Yet...they worked so hard to make sure neither of them had to experience fear.

And that day, Andrew had been terrified.

Neil knew it wasn't his fault, but old habits die hard. He'd been hung up on it for a while, always hellbent on protecting this person of his.

He and Andrew were insufferably the same in that way.

Months and months later, Andrew had flicked him in the forehead and told him to knock it off, that the past couldn't be changed. They could only move forward, and resume their fragile promise. No more martyr cards.

They both were all too familiar with how life could be disrupted, but Neil had still felt petty about it, about how people overlooked this commitment to one another based on a five minute clip. The urge to clear up Andrew's reputation had probably begun there, waiting to be ignited in his old age.

He wanted people to understand Andrew's actions that day weren't out of character in the slightest. They had no right to look on and judge.

Especially not with what happened later, the way they both had to mourn the life they'd built together, for fear it would be snatched away.

Yes, Neil kept those nights close to his heart, locked in his mind for no one else. Too raw, too exposed. Deadly.

But now, well, it's the most important part of this whole question, unavoidable. Andrew's immediate reaction to Neil's injury had been explosive, powerful, but not nearly as telling as what followed.

Rayah stutters, catching up with Neil's meaning. She leans forward, but her pleas fall on deaf ears. "Yes but...Andrew's reaction was so strong--"

"And again, everyone saw," Neil reiterates. He closes his eyes, trying to find patience he no longer has. If he ever did. He sags further into his wheelchair, contemplating it all. How to best go about it. "I just...this was supposed to be about the sides of Andrew people didn't see."

And maybe about sides of him too. Weird, how he tricked himself into that one.

"But it would help people understand your relationship more if you went more into detail about his protective side," Blake tries.

He's right, but that's exactly why Neil can't start there. It barely scratches the surface. He sighs, knowing this is already a stupid idea. Yet, if he's trying to share the true sides of how hard Andrew would've worked to keep him safe, he has no choice.

Neil nods, smile sad. Those hours spent in Andrew's arms, waiting for death, feel so far away now. Back then, his world had been crumbling, and now it's but a piece in the timeline.

He never let himself feel grateful for that, he realizes.

"Yes, but that was just a glimpse of it, albeit a violent one. It makes for something more engaging, climactic, I'll give you that." Neil huffs.

That's what's good for interviews, but Neil's made it clear he doesn't give a damn about that.

"But what I can give you is better, more important," he promises, because it's true. He swallows around the lump in his throat; even now, his mind is not so willing to give away the last of his private moments. But if not now, then when? "Andrew's protectiveness took a lot of forms, and I'm not saying the circumstances surrounding my retirement didn't affect him in the ways seen in the video..."

He knows they did. The panicked expression flashes in his mind once more.

"But I think what happened after that would make more sense," Neil says, and already the potential consequences make him shiver. Force of habit; his blood runs cold whenever he thinks of a black car, a loud cane hitting hardwood. "It would help people understand."

Blake and Rayah exchange a look, feet hitting the floor slowly. Neil assumes at this point they can sense his strain, the foreboding mingling with the air. "You mean...your recovery?"

"No," Neil whispers, and holds off, because Sydney comes in right on cue. Her entrance makes the two journalists jump right out of their seats, but her presence is so standard for Neil. He could hear her footsteps in the dark and immediately know it's her.

"Alright, I'm sure you all must be hun--uh," she stops, jumping a little herself at their reactions, about the air in the room around her. She blinks once, takeout menu in hand. Brown's. The usual, and Neil's favorite. It was Andrew's favorite place to take him on dates when he was retired, according to Andrew 'only old people eat here.'

It never failed to make Neil laugh.

Sydney's smile is cheery at first, especially when her eyes rest on him, but it falls soon after. As Neil grew older, he learned letting people in was actually a good thing most of the time. However, he's still painfully aware of the downsides.

Sydney tenses up from whatever look is on Neil's face. Years of caring for him have made her attuned to his mood, the subtle mannerisms which make up any one of his given reactions.

And she can sense dread like a smell, potent and coppery.

It must be something else that comes with the territory, of years spent at Andrew and Neil's side.

She's there next to him in an instant, checking his pulse and looking around at the table to see if anything's wrong. It makes Neil chuckle when she goes as far as to check his water, like it can be accidentally poisoned right in front of him.

She looks between Neil and his guests, takeout menu clutched in her hand to an almost distorting degree, but Neil reassures her no protection is needed. He touches her wrist as tight as he can, given his lack of grip, and presses down until she lets up on the menu.

She blinks down at where they touch, then back up again, brown eyes squinting in confusion.

As safe as Neil plans to be about this, he doesn't want her anywhere near them.

"Sydney. Brown's is fine. Get our usual okay?" Neil says, and hopes his stare is as piercing as he means it to be. He's never asked her like this; she always knows. They've shared the same lunch together for years, and she probably still knows Andrew's order too. It's deliberate, and while he hates ordering her around in such a way, it's necessary here. He'll make it up to her somehow.

But he needs her to leave.

"Yes, of course, but...is something the matter?" She asks slowly, staring him down.

Ah Sydney, she always knows too much for her own good. Neil can't help but smile at her. Her perceptiveness matches his own at times, and maybe that's why she was so comfortable attending to him. She seems to understand in an instant, so he doesn't baby her with trying to hide the gist of what he's about to get into.

"Go put in the order, close the meeting room door and whatever you do, don't let anyone else come in," Neil instructs, letting go of her with one last imploring squeeze. "Knock when you come back, I shouldn't be long."

He watches her swallow and nod, glancing back at the two reporters. They're sitting up straight again, but not due to any expected politeness. They're more than aware of how in the dark they are, but Neil is guessing they've read up on him well enough too.

They should know they're about to step in a little deeper.

"Okay," Sydney says, veneer of calm back in place. She takes Blake and Rayah's orders and then leaves, not bothering to linger. "Excuse me."

Neil waits until her steps completely fade from the outside hallway before he turns back to his guests, expression grave.

Old threats echo in his mind, reminding him of the old can of worms. He's not even sure if they even apply anymore, but he took them seriously enough when the Moriyamas gave them to him, he still shudders to think about defying them. He's probably been forgotten in that world at this point, but he can never be too safe.

"I'm going to make something clear about this part of the story," He begins, and shakes his head when Rayah grabs her recorder. Nothing recorded for this, only notes. If that's even smart… “For your own safety, you are not to ask too many questions about this particular incident. No names, no affiliations, not even questions about how they looked. You're going to wait until I'm dead and gone before you release it, and edit it so it's as vague as possible. Not the Andrew parts, but the rest. Don't let it fall into anyone else's hands."

He trusts himself to be careful enough where no connections can be made, no assumptions tied back to any one family past or present. But...insurance is paramount.

From the way the reporters look at each other, Neil almost wants to laugh at the assumptions they're making. The mob is in many ways a business; it's built upon negotiations, psychology, and ties. It's not entirely the bloody, underground image the movies portray.

But...it can be.

"Okay...what is this about?" Blake asks,

Neil smiles ruefully. "I'm sure you know all about my father's line of work." He grimaces, and amends: "The Butcher, I mean."

They nod instantly, probably unsure if it was okay to bring it up. In most cases, no, and he won't be doing it again. His father is good for context, nothing else.

"We...we know you gave up a lot to the FBI, that you got out of that life," Rayah says, like she's reading text right off his wiki article.

He guesses that's fair. No one knows much; his father's gang got caught, died, and Neil testified against the rest. Signed, sealed, done.

"That's what the news reports said, easy to spin," he responds, clicking his tongue. "Poor Neil Josten, a victim of one evil man and his gang. But it was never that simple, and I was never free, not for a long time."

He'd viewed it as freedom though. It was the best outcome he could've asked for, given all he'd been prepared for. He'd been given the unlikely chance to cultivate and build his life, but it always felt suspended, and they knew it. One wrong move for any of them, be it himself, Jean, or Kevin, and those chances would be revoked.

It hadn't really occurred to him how suffocating that reality was until his time ran out.

"You were still in the mob?"

Neil shrugs.

"I had some debts that needed to be paid, to people much much more powerful than my father. You would not even begin to understand how deep these organizations run or how influential they are. I was tied up in it for a lot of my career, and it all came to a head when I got hurt."

After the sickening crack, Neil doesn't remember much. But part of him had to know he'd never play again, and for him, that was a death sentence. He'd been prepared to make his case to the Moriyamas when he reached normal retirement age in his forties. He'd studied up on as much as he could, ready to show them how much of an asset he could be. He could still make them money, still be an important public figure. If nothing else, he could do menial tasks so they'd be benefited.

It didn't have to end with Exy, and he'd been hopeful Ichirou would see things his way.

The injury derailed his confidence in those plans, and as much as he'd prepared for that eventual confrontation, he could not ignore the very real threat:

What if Ichirou didn't care? What if he'd decided Neil's purpose had run its course?

It was something Andrew had not been willing to consider, but Neil had.

Neil sighs; he's not afraid of them anymore, whether or not that's a good thing is yet to be seen. Rayah and Blake stare back, not truly comprehending the seriousness. Why should they? They've never been so entrenched in those systems. They haven't seen what Neil has.

That's alright, he'll just have to do what he can and trust they'll take him seriously.

"I need your agreement that you get it, that you'll listen to me," he says, and for dramatic flair, he adds: "This is not a game."

He plays on their fears of movie mafias, and hopes it works. If he's being honest with himself, it's for selfish reasons. Neil would never want this to fall back on Kevin or the remaining Foxes.

"We understand Neil," Rayah states, hand over her heart. As if that means anything to him. "We'll be careful."

And whether or not they actually are, it no longer matters. After all, this is his story. He'll choose what goes into it.

So finally, when the question comes, he's ready.

"What happened?"

--

The x-rays stare back at him.

Neil's honestly not sure why he's being shown them; he knows what they mean, but he didn't need to see the actual fractures to know the end result.

Neil doesn't move as the doctor finishes reviewing them, stepping back to let Neil process. He wonders if this is where the reaction is supposed to go. If this is where most patients would cry or scream or begin asking their delusional questions.

Maybe that's why the doctor looks so shocked when Neil does nothing. Neil leans back in the hospital bed, aching and unable to move his legs, carefully wrapped in casts. He's a little surprised himself. This is where he should be asking when he'll be able to play Exy again, right?

This is where he begins to panic, where he needs the press of a hand on his neck.

Well, he'd still gladly take that, but more so because he wants it, not because he needs it.

Andrew is a comforting, but imposing presence at his side. He hasn't slept or eaten anything since Neil was admitted, refusing to leave Neil alone for even a moment. His calm facade is back for everyone else, but Neil's been tracing the poorly locked away fear in those eyes for hours.

And now, here is confirmation of what they both already realize. Neil can't bear to look over at Andrew in the moment, but he can sense the tension, the tight coils of reality crashing down on the blond's shoulders.

The doctor looks between the both of them, before dropping what Neil supposes is the final bomb into the quiet air. But he knows.

"I know this is not easy to process," the doctor says, slow and unsure, but Neil only blinks at him. "In time, with the right amount of physical therapy, you'll be up and moving again, but it will be an adjustment. Competitive sports simply...won't be an option."

He stops listening after 'time' comes out of his mouth. Time. How funny.

There will potentially be no time for anything.

Neil wonders if he's being rational or pessimistic. He's always known what this moment could mean, and he's dreaded it. He would spend years with nightmares, flinching at black cars or preparing for how he could persuade. Lie. Anything.

Whatever he could do to keep this, to spare both himself and Andrew the pain.

Now, the life he's developed and the life he loves is being threatened, but the dread has decided to spare him. Maybe that's more of a sign of his final moments than anything else.

He doesn't want to run, or wallow, or waste what little time he might have left.

He only wants...

Neil finally looks over to Andrew, tilting his head just so. It hurts him far more to see the look on Andrew's face. It's expectant, waiting to follow Neil's plan of action. Whether it be to skip town or scream or gear up to fight...

Andrew's looking for something, ready for anything, and Neil can't give it to him.

I just want to be with you.

Andrew's eye twitches at the sigh which leaves Neil's lips, fond and gentle. Neil knows better than to touch him right then, but he wants to. He wants to tell Andrew to let go of all that strain, to just whisk him away and they can go on a date, they can rest or rewatch that one movie that freaks Neil out.

But Andrew only looks like he's fighting back a snarl at Neil's passiveness, and Neil won't waste time explaining. It's not hopelessness he feels, but the weird mixture in its place is no more warm or sweet. It's a different kind of pain, mixed with resignation.

It's so opposite of everything Neil has ever been, but he's not willing to let Andrew help him this time. It's not selfish, it's not the martyr card Andrew will accuse him of.

He's simply at the end of the line, and he's going to spend it how he wants.

Neil turns back to the doctor, just one question on his mind. "Can I go home? We can afford in-home care."

The doctor's jaw drops before he collects himself, not really in the mood to argue with star athletes whose careers just came to a halt. That, or he must know all about Neil Josten, and how he's not prone to listening to anyone's advice.

The doctor is silent for a minute too long, outside the limitations of Andrew's patience, and he flinches at the way the blond's hands tighten on the bed rails. Neil's heart skips a beat at the sound of Andrew's knuckles popping, at the redness of his hands.

The doctor takes the hint. "I'll get the paperwork set and get a wheelchair," he says. "A nurse can escort you--"

"No," Andrew says, the first word he's spoken in hours, and it leaves no room for argument. Neil smiles down at his hands, wrapped in white hospital bands and connected to wires. Yes, that's where he'll be selfish. He'll let Andrew watch out for him, for a little while longer.

Though, Neil is old enough now to know Andrew never minded.

The doctor waits for more, but gets nothing. He takes the x-rays with him when he goes, pity sweeping over them for reasons Neil no longer cares about. "Very well."

The door clicks shut, leaving only the sound of Andrew's harsh breathing mixed with the steady beep of vital monitors. Neil really does hate hospitals, but even more so today.

When they're alone, the roles reverse, and it's Andrew who won't look at him. The blond starts to pace the floor of Neil's private room, wearing the linoleum thin and only stopping to glare out the window. Whenever his phone rings, he silences it, before eventually just turning it off altogether.

And through it all, Neil can't help but smile at him. He doesn't think it's the pain meds; he's aware, clear headed.

There's guilt there too, but he knows Andrew won't have it. Neil once again wishes he could spare Andrew this anxiety, this helplessness. But well, at least Neil is here this time, for however long that is.

Andrew walks forward a little too fast after another sharp turn, and nearly trips. Then, he really does growl, fists shaking with the need to lash out at something. It's been awhile since he's seemed so rage filled, but Neil doesn't bother poking him about it. He's happy it's abnormal now, that he's so used to a calm, content Andrew.

Neil's heart squeezes in sadness unrelated to his career. He watches Andrew stop, the anger shaking him but rendering him unable to do much else but tremble. He stays put in the middle of the room, looking everywhere but at Neil

Neil supposes he expected that.

"Andrew," he tries, a beckoning tone that Andrew is so weak to on most days. He means for it to be playful, but it comes out a small whisper, pleading. It gives too much away, and that's when Neil starts to feel the beginning edges of his own stress.

All he knows is he wants Andrew next to him, he wants to feel Andrew's pulse, his warmth. Right now, he thinks, come here. It's childish and unrealistic, he only just found out about the x-rays. Word wouldn't travel that fast, but to think that any moment could be his last and Andrew wouldn't be touching him.

Andrew tenses instantly, and while he doesn't meet Neil's gaze, he's at his side again just as fast, grip tight and unforgiving on Neil's hand. Never babying, but reminding Neil he's real too. They're together, and nothing will change that until they know Neil’s fate for sure.

Still, they need to address it. They've grown past the days of trying to read each other's minds. Neil can imagine how Andrew is feeling, but he'd rather not. He wants to hear it, he wants to hold all of it like he holds Andrew.

However, he's not surprised when Andrew cuts him off when he tries to open his mouth again. The grip on his hand is bruising now, but not commanding. It's desperate, and it cuts Neil even deeper.

Andrew exhales shakily, holding up their hands as if to speak, before placing them down on the stiff sheets once more. Neil's familiar with all sides of Andrew, even the unsure side, the hesitant one. It doesn't make it easier to process.

He wants to tell Andrew it's okay, they can both look out for one another, even when Neil's the one physically broken, but Andrew shakes his head.

Not yet.

"I don't want to talk about it," Andrew finally admits, voice rough and scratchy, and all Neil can do is nod. He's not trying to fight, not here, so he doesn't dare point out that eventually, they'll have to.

He just sighs, and brings Andrew's hand close to his chest so he can feel it beat, full and proud.

"Let's go home."

--

Over the next few days, he gets settled in, their bed modified and moved to better accommodate the nursing supplies Neil needs. Andrew still keeps it at the best vantage point, angled so he can watch the door. Andrew tried to make the case for getting a separate cot to allow Neil as much room as possible, but Neil refused.

He's going to have things remain as normal as possible, soaking up Andrew's presence as much as he can. While he can.

For the first time in years, Andrew's perch changes. Instead of having his back pressed to the wall, with Neil protecting him from the open room, he tucks Neil in instead, becoming his shield in yet another way.

It's a small barrier, it would buy Neil maybe...oh, a second of time, if he even could get away. It makes Neil pout; he likes it when he's the one keeping Andrew safe, but he knows he's in no position to physically do so.

Now, his attentiveness has to come in the form of hard conversations and requests, ones Andrew hasn't even let him bring up yet.

Neil tries more than a few times to comment on it, to lead them down the road of conversation Andrew is avoiding, but Andrew just bundles Neil up. More often than not, Andrew moves Neil's arm too, so it's wrapped around the blond's waist.

It's a deadly arrangement, because it's unbearably cozy. As much as he hates it, the medicine makes Neil sleep a lot, and he's always worried he's going to wake up to more than Andrew's attentive face and steady breathing.

Neil doesn't think Andrew has slept more than a few hours, but Neil can't judge. The dread he'd been relieved of at the hospital now sits like a veil, much worse now that he's home. There's more to cherish here, more to miss.

He doesn't want to be anywhere else, but at the same time he doesn't want it taken away.

The cats take to sleeping on his chest or curled into his side, little protectors themselves. Neil wonders if they have a sixth sense, if they can tell something is wrong. If they can, they're a lot more subtle about it than humans are.

The main example of that is Neil's Foxes. They all call, first in a frenzy and then on a strict face time schedule organized by Andrew. It lets Neil sleep, as much as he wishes he could talk to them forever.

Still, he can only take so much of the tension in the air when they do. His Foxes aren't sheltered, nor are they stupid. They're all too aware of Neil's contract and how it's about to run out. If Neil's being honest, he's shocked he's lasted this long with no word from Ichirou, but none of the Foxes dare to bring it up.

When Kevin calls, his face is haggard and eyes wide, but he barely gets a word out before Andrew threatens to hang up. The panic in Kevin's face dissolves into something sad, pitying, and Neil has to grab Andrew's hand to force it away from the button. His hand shakes in warning, but lets Neil guide him.

“Neil…” Kevin says, swallowing down what Neil guesses to be bile, because Kevin has always reacted so strongly to any indication of things going wrong. Neil nearly feels bad. Things haven’t gone wrong for Kevin in a long time, and he’s glad. As if sensing Neil’s guilt-ridden smile, Kevin blinks at him through the screen, fishing for answers he no longer needs. “What am I supposed to…”

Do?

And they say Neil asks stupid questions. He shakes his head fondly. “Nothing. You won’t have to do anything. You’re Kevin Day.”

You’re strong.

It’s something Neil’s known forever, though it took a while for Kevin to start acting like it. With all his progress, Neil can’t imagine this being a setback.

Kevin’s hanging jaw clamps shut.

It's then Neil really looks at Kevin, sees how he's aged. There's some silver that's starting to show in his hair on the side, a fact they all like to poke fun at, but his features are just as young as they ever were. Deep brown eyes locking away a cautious fire, a constant burn. He knows he and Kevin have never been the type to get all emotional with one another, but when he smiles at Kevin's worry, at the fire wanting to be let loose...

Well, he hopes Kevin can tell how much Neil appreciates him, how they don't have to hash out more painful things. Also, he hopes Kevin picks up on the subtle threat in Neil's eyes, a burn all his own. Kevin Day isn't supposed to be controlled by fear anymore, and that's going to be a rule regardless of if Neil is around to enforce it.

He lets them sit in silence like that until Kevin nods, and utters an impossibly small: “I promise.”

And naturally, Neil understands.

They talk about Kevin's game, about Thea, about some docu series Kevin is in love with. All the while, Neil nestles himself into Andrew's warmth, and forgets anything is wrong.

The rest of his team learns fast. Allison takes to scolding him in the way she always does, but meticulously avoids any mention of the future. Instead, she reminisces on the vacations she made him take with her; Rome, Spain, that one random town in Montana.

She gives him a mix of good and bad memories, the places they went, that one rude waiter she almost fought in the parking lot.

It makes him laugh, and he's glad to be able to exchange jabs with her. It's only at the end where her mask cracks and she lingers a bit too long, telling him goodnight one too many times.

The calls blend together, each with their awkward goodbyes.

In another hour, he’s listening to Katelyn’s excessive cheer, overcompensating for the gloom carrying through the phone lines. She’s holding a picture of the four of them, when they went to Alaska. “Remember when we made Andrew get in that plane to fly above the glacier? He was terrified!”

At least Katelyn knows how to get his mind off things: bring up Andrew.

She talks too much, like she always does, but Neil appreciates her stories about bitchy patients and scandalous coworkers when her vacation tales run out.

“What about Sandra? Is she still being an asshole?” He asks, an invitation to talk about anything other than his injury. It’s not that he’s in the mindset to really care, and he suspects Katelyn doesn’t either. She’s on autopilot, in need of direction. Despite every attempt to veer them away, she’s biting her lip raw during her pauses, scanning Neil up and down.

Concerned. Too much so for his liking, and he throws another topic at her.

“O-oh yeah, you won’t believe what she did yesterday Neil! She—”

And Katelyn latches onto whatever prompt he gives her, so unwilling to upset him. No matter how much it’s eating at her to behave so selfishly, she’ll do it for him without question.

It's also a welcome distraction to the way Aaron keeps glancing over at Andrew on their call, gaze strained and worried. Neil is glad he's not the only one thinking of Andrew's feelings, but not even Aaron's prodding gets Andrew to talk to Neil about the elephant in the room.

“Andrew, have you been eating?” Aaron asks, and gets nothing. That’s not exactly common anymore, and Aaron glares at the silent treatment. “Neil’s not a baby, you can leave him for a few—”

“Sweetie,” Katelyn whispers, placing a hand over Aaron’s. Her eyes echo an acceptance that hasn’t processed for Aaron yet. He looks at her in disbelief, and then back at his brother, almost pleading with him.

The call ends quietly, even with Katelyn doing her best to fill the void.

Neil can’t blame Aaron for his denial. Aaron wants to pretend it’s all normal, that Neil will be here day after day, forever. Funny, how he’s just like his brother in that moment, unwilling to swallow reality.

Neil stares at him before they hang up, willing him to see the logic. Neil wants nothing more than for Andrew to take care of himself.

But things are not normal. As long as Aaron frames things from that lens, Andrew will never listen.

Neil tries though, on his end. He tries and tries, and feels his patience running thin. He doesn't want them to be left with anything unsaid. He wants to hear Andrew's voice, even if it trembles.

"If you don't rest, you won't get any better," Andrew says during one call break, trailing off. Neil can only sigh at the tone, throat too closed up to snark. He wants to ask Andrew if he's talking to himself, because obviously he's being the delusional one this time.

Neil wonders if he should consider this a good thing, that Andrew has let himself have hope.

Neil hides his expression in his pillow, unwilling to let Andrew see an ounce of the realization that he can't fulfill it.

The calls pile up, and Andrew's grip on Neil's waist tightens with each passing comment.

Dan and Matt try to fill Neil in on as much of their lives as they can in order to offer him a distraction. They're horrible at avoiding the topic of Exy, fumbling every time they do, but it makes Neil smile each time. He hasn't let it sink in that he'll never play again, but it doesn't hurt as much as he thought. It's more of a dull ache, a yearning to run free and win, but one he can manage. Exy stopped being his entire world some time ago.

Nicky, the one Neil considers responsible for that realization, is all about Neil's recovery. It's almost daunting, since Neil hadn't exactly let himself think about anything past the end of this week.

But Nicky doesn't let Neil or Andrew escape the conversation, and Neil has to fight back his smile.

“Andrew! Don’t ignore me, I want to know that you’re taking care of our boy,” he nags, scrolling through his laptop too fast for him to be able to actually read anything. Neil imagines the cursor bouncing off the sides of the screen. “I’ve been reading some articles…what treatment plan do they have Neil on? Is the hospital even reputable? I’m getting Aaron in on this or so help me—”

Nicky has come to read Andrew well, in his own way; he asks Andrew a plethora of questions because he knows it gives Andrew something to focus on. A task, a purpose. He asks about every mundane detail, from Neil's medication to his sleep schedule, to physical therapy and onward.

“I say you create a color-coded schedule, so you don’t miss appointments. And buy a real calendar for fuck’s sake! We can start planning things to do when you’re better Neil!”

Andrew tenses at that one, but it doesn’t deter Nicky in the slightest.

He doesn't shy away from the idealistic future, because he must sense it's what Andrew needs. Nicky probably needs it too.

"And Neil, no getting into any fights," Nicky scolds, pointing his finger into his phone's camera thirty minutes later. Neil has barely said a word. "We can't have you backsliding."

Neil huffs, nodding along with him. Andrew has relaxed a little bit where Neil is lying on top of him, but not nearly enough for Neil to be satisfied. That's how Neil knows his boyfriend is more than aware of their situation; Andrew's not delusional, only stubborn.

The world will have to pry Neil out of his cold, dead hands, and that's exactly what Neil's afraid of.

"What if I don't start the fight?" Neil asks, against his better judgement. It's supposed to be lighthearted, but it comes out more serious than he'd planned. Shit.

For the first time in hours, Andrew's gaze slides to him and stays there, peeling him back until there's nothing but rawness. Nicky's laughter dissolves slowly, hanging in the air with Neil's words. Neil tries his best to send Nicky an apologetic look for breaking his efforts, for reminding them all of the other possible option. The probable one.

But, Nicky has a reputation as the strong one.

He huffs, throwing Neil a sad smile, like Neil is so stupid and he loves him for it. Nicky's not there, but Neil tenses, like he's being crushed in one of his hugs anyways.

"It's okay," Nicky says, glancing between the two of them. "Andrew will—Andrew will keep you safe."

Nicky swallows, breathing choppy, but nothing compared to Neil's. Neil's might stop altogether, but Nicky doesn't back down until Neil gives him that same, tired smile.

Neil hears his words from years prior, echo in his head.

Andrew will protect you.

Neil's smile quivers at the edges, and for someone who seldom cries, Neil feels like he's been skirting the edge all day. His face hurts like he's been sobbing, muscles pulled taut and eyes red from how much he's had to rub them. His throat is raw from how many times he's choked on every emotion, good and bad, but no tears come to expel the chemicals of rage and despair. It's like he's bottling those up too, savoring them for as long as possible.

"I always do," Andrew eventually comments, the usual deadpan, and Neil's heart nearly bursts in his chest. He can't stand Andrew sometimes, is what he wants to say, but that's not true at all. Instead, Neil burrows into Andrew's chest, uncaring that Nicky can see, and can't bring himself to say anything else.

Nicky signs off cheerily, saying he'll talk to Neil soon, and Neil's body hiccups in response.

He can't anymore.

He just can't avoid it, he won't.

Neil listens to the sound of Andrew placing his phone on the nightstand to charge, and then hears him shake one of the pill bottles, weighing when it'll be best to give Neil the next dose. The sound pisses him off.

He doesn't want medicine, he doesn't want to sleep.

Even as he thinks it, just resting against the pillow makes his limbs feel heavy, dragged underwater by rocks. It's so easy to give into the lull, to the noise around him blending together into blurbs and nonsense. Funny enough, it's Andrew's touch that snaps him out of it.

It's typically the last push Neil needs before falling back under, but this time when Andrew's thumb lingers over Neil's face, tracing the shell of his ear, Neil can't put it off any longer.

Maybe it's how much he loves that touch, how much it means to him. He's not sure. He just knows he has to get a reaction, he wants Andrew to see him.

Neil moves to shift, and the inevitable happens. Andrew's hand darts out to stop him, already beginning the gentle process of rolling Neil over himself. That's when Neil tenses, staring up at Andrew with defiance in his eyes.

The blond is wearing a tank top, muscles on full display, so Neil catches the exact moment Andrew freezes up, shoulders coiled in preparation for a fight. Neil would smirk in any other situation; he'd never hurt Andrew, but his being never ceases to scream: threat.

In Andrew's case, Neil has the power to bare down on his throat, spilling all his emotions onto the clean sheets.

Andrew's eyes, so tired and dark, spark to life. Yes, Neil thinks. That's what I want, come back to me.

But Andrew's expression is one of warning, one that says 'I don't want to talk about it.'

Neil can't hold off anymore.

Without breaking eye contact, Neil moves again, and winces at the pain that shoots up his body. Andrew clamps down on his waist, stopping him, and then pushes down again for extra reinforcement. The gesture yells at Neil to stop, to not do this, but that just makes Neil squirm more.

"Neil," Andrew warns, breaking their eye contact. Neil can't help but glare; he feels like he's been doing almost nothing but staring at Andrew, taking in the contours of his face and the faded freckles leftover from summer. Any little detail, Neil has latched on. His memory is nothing like Andrew's, but he's sure he'd be able to recount every mole and curve if asked. It might mean nothing if he's six feet under. There will be no one in the afterlife for him to tell, to remind, but he's Neil Josten. He's stubborn as all hell, and won't let himself forget even something as minor as the crooked line of Andrew's nose.

Yet, Andrew won't look at him, won't address the hurt bubbling in his chest, just as strong as Neil's. That's not what they do anymore; they've always shared, and this will not be the exception.

Neil pushes Andrew's hands away and moves, but okay...he's not the smartest. That time hurts, and Neil's wince turns into a full-on groan.

But it's fine, he thinks, not laughing at the joke. It's fine, because it's the last straw.

Andrew rips the excess blankets off the bed, kneeling onto the mattress until he's boxing Neil in, but it's less an intimidation tactic than a request. Stay, stay right there. When he speaks, it's a horrible mix of anger and desperation, a calmness cracked clean in half. "Stop trying to move, and stop fucking staring at me," Andrew says, and Neil shakes his head.

"There's no point--" Neil tries, willing Andrew to understand what he's talking about. But oh, from the way the blond flinches, Neil knows he does. "I'm going to try to fight however I can, but—"

A hand claps over his mouth, and Andrew's capacity for gentleness is fraying. Neil knows it's his fault, but he doesn't mind. He wants Andrew to show him whatever he's feeling, even if they both hate it. Andrew looks down at him, and Neil catches the slip up. The way Andrew's gaze traces over the top of Neil's nose, the shape of his brows. Taking everything in, just to make sure his perfect memory got nothing wrong.

Realizing this, Andrew scowls, and buries his face in Neil's neck to stop the urge.

Andrew is careful in his panic regardless, maneuvering so he's not pressing down on Neil too hard. His legs are angled away but unwilling to release Neil completely for fear of him hurting himself more. Neil sighs, relaxing his muscles in a show of surrender.

Okay. He won't move anymore.

"Hey..." Neil whispers into the quiet Andrew leaves in the wake of his smothered rage, raising his hand slowly to card through the blond's hair. It's textured and unkempt, but Neil missed the feel of it. He's no stranger to comforting Andrew, but the blond hasn't let him do as much in the last few days.

Neil presses down on Andrew's neck when his panting starts to dissipate, and counts the cars that pass outside on the street below.

"I can't stand that look on your face," Andrew states eventually, and he turns his head to the side so his voice is clear. Nothing unheard. "Like you're giving up. Like you're trying to take me in for the last time."

Like it's thank you, goodbye.

Andrew would know that look well, Neil supposes.

Neil cannot accept it. The hurt burns through his vocal cords at the vulnerability, apparent even through Andrew's neutral tone; he never wants Andrew to feel like that, but he also wants Andrew to be alive. Prosperous. "You're the one always championing rationality. You know things aren't fair, but now what?" Neil whispers, and his fingers halt in their ministrations, cramping up from the weight of it all. He finally chokes on a sob. "Just because it's me? You can't accept it?"

Andrew surges up, unable to avoid it any longer. His hands come up around Neil's face, digging into old scars. Those problems feel so old now.

"Nothing is going to happen to you," Andrew spits out, and Neil's skull vibrates from the force of the grip.

"You can't promise that anymore," Neil says, but he can't shake his head when Andrew is holding him so tight. Andrew scowls down at him, and a loud noise from outside makes them both jump. Neil's panic filters in, rushed like he's on a countdown all over again. "They're going to come. They're going to take me away."

He bites back adding: 'and you're going to let them.'

He knows that's unrealistic to ask and stupid to assume, but Andrew must hear the insinuation anyways.

There's a long pause, broken up only by Andrew's humorless laugh. It sends shivers down Neil's spine. Dark, lifeless. Neil doesn't miss that sound. He knows what Andrew's real laugh is like.

"Are they?" Andrew asks, tone razor sharp. Despite this, his grip lessens, thumb gently swiping over the nearest burn mark. "Neil, you must not know me as well as I thought."

It's selfish, Neil knows that much. It's selfish to ask Andrew to let him be the sacrificial lamb again. It's not how they do things, it's not what Neil promised. But he doesn't want a world without Andrew, even if he's no longer in it with him.

"Andrew..." He tries, but it's fruitless. Andrew rolls over and adjusts Neil carefully, pulling him up so as to not cause anymore of the mind-numbing pain from earlier. Neil fits so easily against him, and he doesn't fight it this time.

He's so tired of fighting, if it can be called that. In the end it's just the two of them doing what they always do: stubbornly holding onto one another. It's mutual, wanted, and Neil was shortsighted to think Andrew ever saw this gesture as detrimental.

At a certain point...he guesses it's just love.

And that makes him hold on even tighter.

"You're not going anywhere," Andrew reminds, and pries Neil's fingers off his shirt one by one until he can lace their hands together. Neil hadn't realized he'd been physically echoing his wants, stretching out the fabric til it's warped. "Stop it."

Neil laughs at the familiarity of it. It's breathy, and it soon gets swallowed up by the sounds of the covers as he burrows in closer.

This is just how it'll be.

Neil won't convince Andrew to accept it, but that's alright. He'll just have to do what he can when his fate arrives at their door. If he had it his way though, he'd sit like this forever, with Andrew so close and real.

A few more calls pass after Neil naps, and it's Renee who finally stands up to Andrew in her own way. He should've seen that coming. No one else would be quite as acquainted with darkness, with the cruelty of the world.

She's finishing up telling Neil about the book she's been reading, and her goodbye trails off. "Just..." She whispers, smiling in the same old way. Yet, her next words are nothing like the pragmatic Renee he's come to appreciate. He guesses everyone has their limits. "Don't go, Neil."

Neil's face falls, and he says nothing. There's nothing to say, and she nods. Neil doesn't have time to think of anything else though, because Andrew doesn't allow the call to continue.

Stiffly, he leans forward to disconnect the phone. "Goodbye Renee."

The dismissal is firm, but Renee's smile remains until the very last moment.

Neil is grateful, knowing someone will be around who gets it.

Andrew says nothing, busying himself with Neil's blankets, and Neil prods at him until he stops. "You have to forgive her."

"I don't have to do anything," Andrew reminds, fluffing Neil's pillow. Or...more like punching it. Neil sincerely hopes they don't spar anytime in the near future. "She shouldn't have said that."

"She said it because she knew she'd be the only one who could," Neil says, and Andrew's silence is telling.

Because you'll need her.

Renee is too important for Andrew to cut off long term, even if he hates that she can see what he refuses to. She'll be there for him, no matter what.

Thinking he'll get no reply for all his trouble, Neil leans back onto the newly fluffed pillow and startles when Andrew speaks again.

The blond's hand slides over his waist, fitting Neil against him snugly before rolling onto his back again. He's never not watching the door.

"Tell me something," Andrew starts.

"Always."

Andrew rolls his eyes at the sentiment, but meets Neil's gaze. Neil wrinkles his nose in the way that usually makes Andrew kiss him, but no such luck. Ah, so it won't be a fun question.

Andrew searches for a long time, the way he does to make sure Neil won't lie.

Right now, Neil wouldn't dream of it.

"Why now?" Andrew asks, and holds up his finger at Neil's confusion. "My scared little rabbit, always afraid of being caught by the wolf. Death is staring you down, but when you saw those x-rays, there was no panic."

Neil slumps a little more, turning just enough to avoid being scolded; he doesn't need the reminder, he feels the emotions fly back into him. In the moment, he'd simply felt resignation. He recalled his plans of course, as clipped and disorganized as they were given what happened. Ways he can appeal to Ichirou, ways he can prove his worth that don't involve his game.

There was no immediate panic sure, because there's only so many ways this can go.

But there was fear.

He doesn't question why for very long, since the answer is lying right next to him, breath held and waiting.

Slowly, Neil rests his hand over Andrew's heart, and feels the pace pick up almost instantly. Alive, pumping, never stopping. Andrew has been a constant for so many years, and he's a survivor, just like Neil. He has so much to offer, so much Neil appreciates and admires about him. He thinks of every touch and kiss, all the flicks of Andrew's fingers and deliberate presses into his skin.

Neil's hand curls into a fist, and he's fixated even now, right where his skin meets Andrew's. "I'm not scared of dying anymore, about someone chopping me up and ending all my potential."

He'd reached his potential. He'd helped score the winning goal at the Olympics, he was in the hall of fame. He's won countless championships.

"Andrew, I'm just terrified of leaving you here," Neil says with a great amount of strain, face contorting at the thought. An ugly, overprotective snarl, but not nearly as threatening as usual. It dissolves soon into something far more pitiful and packed with yearning. "Of not being with you."

"Stop," Andrew says again, more urgent this time. Neil can't even point out how predictable he's becoming, how his threats mean nothing these days. Andrew is aware, he just can't help it. It's the only way he can fight those thoughts of Neil's, and it's still not enough. Andrew's arms tremble as they wrap around Neil, a fortress. He's in a cocoon, safe from anything the world can throw at him. Andrew's rage is palpable, and once again, there's nothing to take out his helplessness on. So he repeats and repeats: "Just stop."

And there's that unspoken promise Neil can't refute, no matter how many things are trying to prove it otherwise.

"Nothing could ever take you away from me."

And with that ringing in his head, Neil falls under.

[liskantope]

Some brief (and sometimes not-so-brief) reactions to major Disney films 1937-1967

Around a month ago I made a temporary switch from Netflix to Disney+ with the goal of watching all major Disney movies in order, roughly paced so that one year of Disney film-making equals one day of real life. I should clarify here that by “major Disney movies” I mean mostly just all the animated ones plus a few hybrid live-action/animated ones, and a few of the most popular live-action ones (at least the ones I remember having a song considered good enough to feature on one of the Disney Sing-Along videos, a staple of my video-watching as a kid growing up in the 90′s). I would have been interested to see Song of the South, which I’ve never seen in its entirety, but it’s not included on Disney+ for fairly obvious reasons. As I get further into modern Disney, I’ll probably skip over most of the sequels and other features I strongly expect not to like (with the exception of Belle’s Magical World, which is said to be so legendarily bad that I just have to see what the fuss is about).

This time range of three decades happens to include more or less exactly those Disney productions that Walt Disney himself took a major role in (he died shortly before the final version of Jungle Book was finished). I’d like to do this again in another month, when I will have gotten up through the late 90′s, but honestly this post wound up way longer than I was imagining and took several more hours than I expected (or could really afford), so I’m not promising myself or anyone else that.

Looking at Wikipedia’s list of Disney productions, I’m a little taken aback at what a low percentage of these are animated features, which to me form the backbone of that company’s legacy; visually scanning the list makes the line of animated films look shorter than I had always imagined, but really what this is showing is that Disney produced far more live-action movies than I ever knew about, including (and perhaps especially!) in its early days. Right now I’m continuing on through the 70′s films, but this set of mini-reviews represents the first month of watching and three decades of Disney magic.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937

This is the full-length feature that began them all and which had the burden of defying contemporary skepticism that a full-length animated feature could be taken seriously at all. We are already far beyond the earliest days of animation and have progressed lightyears beyond the quality of “Steamboat Willie”; throughout the film I marveled at the sophistication of the animation with a newfound appreciation of how groundbreaking a lot of the sequences must have been.

I know I watched this at least a couple of times in childhood and I think once when I was a bit older, but even that was long ago.

Snow White is based on one of the simpler classic fairy tales, and the writers had to come up with ways to flesh out this very short story enough to occupy well over an hour. This was done not by exploring the character of Snow White or the Queen or even filling in extra plot details (the fate of the hunter is never addressed) but by spending a lot of time on the dwarfs. The detail spent on individuating them took a lot of work from the animators, but I think their efforts paid off. I can’t say the same about the attention paid to Snow White or the Queen (pretty much the only remaining characters). Snow White has an almost entirely flat personality, with no sense of curiosity or concern whatsoever about the Queen’s designs to have her killed, just having literally only one goal in mind: to marry this Prince who she’d only seen for about two minutes and run away from out of shyness. (This is of course a trend we’ll see with Disney princesses for a long time.) The Queen similarly only has the goal of being “the fairest in the land”. Something about the particular harshness of her voice strikes me as The Quintessential 1930′s Female Villain Voice (“I’ll crush their bones!”), whatever that means -- maybe I got my idea of what this should be from the movie Snow White in the first place.

I still think “Heigh Ho” (which I’ve known well since early childhood) is an excellent song in its utter simplicity, especially when complimented with the “Dig Dig Dig” song (which I did not remember at all until a few years ago when a Tumblr mutual posted the excerpt containing it!). I’m not enormously fond of “One Day My Prince Will Come”, although I did enjoy playing it on the violin at a couple of gigs with one of my musician friends back during grad school -- I was convinced then, and up until watching Snow White just now, that it belonged to Cinderella.

Pinocchio, 1940

This was a favorite movie of mine in earlier childhood; we owned the VHS and I watched it a lot. As a child, I had no sense of one Disney movie coming from a much earlier time than another one; it was only much more recently in life that I understood that Pinocchio really comes from all the way back eight decades ago. Pinocchio taught me the meaning of “conscience” (both in the dictionary sense and in a deeper sense), and it shaped my notion of what fairies may look like -- for instance, my mental picture of the Tooth Fairy, back when I believed in her, was inspired by the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio.

It’s amazing just how much the quality of Disney animated features improved from the first one to this one, the second. It helps that both the story and the characters are far more complex than those of Snow White. The plot from the original book (which I’ve read in Italian and English) was more complex still, of course. There is one gaping hole where it’s never explained how Gepetto somehow found himself in the belly of a whale (I don’t remember whether or how this is explained in the book), but I’ll forgive that.

It’s interesting to see the 1940′s caricature of “bad (early teenage?) boy” shown in the animation and voice of Lampwick. Phantom Strider talks about the turning-into-donkeys scene as a notoriously dark scene for adults who didn’t find it as terrifying when they were children -- count me in as one of those adults! It’s especially terrifying to see the whole mass of boys-turned-donkeys being treated as slaves in the hellhole known as Pleasure Island and realizing that this is never going to be resolved in the movie -- it’s rather unusual in Disney stories for some great evil to be left unresolved with no recompense even for the chief villain. In fact, Pinocchio is pretty much the only Disney story I can think of where the worst villain doesn’t meet some kind of dire fate. Really, the range of Pinocchio’s view is much narrower: it’s just the coming-of-age story of one puppet in his quest for Real Boyhood. (And yes, I still giggle at how intricutely Jordan Peterson analyzes particular scenes from the movie to support his beliefs about neo-Marxism or whatever.)

Disney+ heads many of the descriptions of the older movies with “This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.” I’m a little surprised they don’t do this with Pinocchio, given what appears to me a rather derogatory depiction of Gypsies.

“When You Wish Upon a Star” has become a timeless hit, for good reason. And I still find “Hi Diddle Dee Dee” extremely catchy.

Fantasia, 1940

I saw this one multiple times growing up (for earlier viewings, I was not allowed to see the final number “Night on Bald Mountain”). My mom, for her part, saw this in theaters at the age of around 4 (even though it originally came out long before she was born) and thought for years afterwards that there was no such film in real life and her memory of seeing it had been just a pleasant dream.

I have nothing much more to say about this one except that, representing a very different approach from most animated films, Disney or otherwise, 1940′s or otherwise, it succeeded exquisitely. The “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” number was particularly perfection; it was as though the composer originally had every motion of the story in mind when writing the music. At the same time, having the main character appear in the form of Mickey Mouse in some way seems to cheapen the effect.

The Reluctant Dragon, 1941

I watched this for the first time, not having known it existed. There isn’t really much to say. All that stuck in my mind was one of the shorts, “Baby Weem” (amusing in a disturbing way), and the longer segment which gives the movie its title (also amusing, in a different kind of disturbing way). It was especially interesting to see a 1940′s cartoon portrayal of a very effeminate man, or should I say, male dragon.

Dumbo, 1941

I saw this maybe two or three times growing up, and not in very early childhood. It was never one of my favorites. Later on, I learned that it was done very low-budget to make up for major financial losses in the Disney franchise. This definitely shows in the animation. However, if there’s one thing I can say in praise of Dumbo, it’s that it’s incredibly daring in its simplicity, not only to have such elegantly simple animation but in having a mute title character (instead the main “talker” in the film is the title character’s best friend, who had much more of a New York accent than I’d remembered).

In some ways I find this film incredibly cold and dark by Disney standards, for reasons I can’t entirely explain, and I remember feeling this way even on earlier watchings when I was much younger. The stark cruelty of the humans running the circus, as well as the elephants other than Dumbo and his mother, just really gets to me. (I vividly mis-remembered one of the lines I found most memorable in childhood as “From now on, Dumbo is no longer one of us.” The actual line is, “From now on, [Dumbo] is no longer an elephant”, which in a way, is even more chilling.) In this regard, there was no need to make a modern, woker remake of Dumbo containing an explicit anti-animal-exploitation message -- the 1941 version conveys this message loud and clear. Now that I’m writing this, I suppose it could be argued that this is another instance of what I described under “Pinocchio” of leaving a major evil unresolved in a Disney film. And apart from that, while the ending for Dumbo is meant to be a very happy one, as an adult I find it incredibly naive: Dumbo is now super internationally famous for his extraordinary gift and is entering the life of a child celebrity, and it’s just going to be smooth sailing from now on? I hate to say it, Dumbo, but your troubles are only just beginning. (I was glad to see Dumbo reunited with his mother in the last scene, however, which I hadn’t remembered happening at all.)

“Look Out For Mr. Stork” is a skillfully-written song I’d completely forgotten about for two decades or so but remember knowing well when I was young. I still think “When I See an Elephant Fly” is a fantastic song, especially with all its reprises at the end -- I’d had some bits of it confused in my memory but had kept the main chorus with me over all the years. Now it’s widely decried as racist, or at least the characters who sing it are decried as racist caricatures. For whatever my opinion is worth, I’m inclined to disagree with this, in particular on the grounds that the crows seem to be the most intelligent, witty, and self-possessed characters in the movie. I’m also pretty sure I heard critical things about it over the years which are false. For one thing, not all of the crows are played by white actors -- only the lead crow is, while the rest of the voices are members of a black musical group called the Hall Johnson Choir. Also, I’m not clear that the lead crow was actually named Jim Crow by the time the movie came out (no name is given in the movie itself). Now an earlier, much more forgettable song featuring black men singing about how they like to work all day and they throw their pay away... yeah that seems awfully racist.

Bambi, 1942

I have surprisingly little to say about this one -- it’s just very distinct from other Disney films of the time, in its story’s lack of magical elements, its characters all being animals and animated in to realistically model animals’ movements, its lack of musical numbers, and its plot reaching the same level of simplicity as that of Snow White. Not to mention actually having a benevolent character die, which I don’t think had been done up to that point. I remember watching this a couple of times as a kid; I was never terribly eager to watch it again and I feel the same way now, despite having majestic beauty that I can really appreciate.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, 1949

This is the first of Disney’s animated features that I never had seen before. What a strange movie, or should I say, two smaller, unrelated movies rolled into one. I liked Mr. Toad’s half better than Ichabod’s half, or at least I found it more entertaining. I was brought up with the book The Wind in the Willows and recall seeing a non-Disney animated rendition of it (which was better and somewhat more thorough than this half-movie-length rendition). I was kind of excited when the “The Merrily Song” started because it unlocked a song from my early-childhood memory that I’d forgotten about for more than twenty years but knew from one of the Disney Sing-Along videos. I still think it’s a not half bad song, especially with the harmony.

The Ichabod story was not at all what I expected, not being familiar with the original book version (I had always assumed that Ichabod must be the name of a villain). I found it completely boring until the final horror sequence. As a child I would have found the courtship part even more boring (at least now I can muse on how man-woman courtship dynamics were shown in the late 40′s), and I would have found the horror part at the end very scary (in fact, maybe this is the reason my parents never showed the movie to me). It is a little shocking in being the only Disney story I’ve seen so far with a decidedly unhappy ending.

Cinderella, 1950

This one I only ever saw once or twice as a child. This is not counting a very vivid memory I have from around age 6 or 7 when I was watching a part of it over at another family’s house and their child, who was almost my age and nonverbal autistic, rewound and repeated the same 2-minute sequence involving the mice for probably about an hour (I was impressed because I at the time didn’t know how to work the controls of a video player).

I suppose this could be considered the second in the main trifecta of the most conservative fairy tale princess stories that Disney did in the earlier part of its history. I think one can argue that Cinderella has the strongest and most fleshed-out character out of those three princesses. I like the spirited internal strength she reveals in her very first scene. That said, like the other earlier princesses, she seems to have one singular goal in life, and that is to find her true love, not, say, to escape her abusive stepmother and stepsisters.

My reaction to this movie is overall positive. The mice were fun (I also like how their voices seemed a lot more like how mice “should” talk than in most other Disney cartoons); the dynamic between Cinderella and her evil relatives, and the dynamic between the stepmother and stepsisters themselves, was shown in a rounded way; and the fairy godmother is a great character despite having only one scene. The character of the king is pretty odd (very selfish yet his main dream is of getting to play with his future grandchildren) while not especially memorable or well fleshed out. There are certainly some great classic songs in this one -- not the most stellar that Disney has ever produced, but solid.

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

I was curious about what I would think of this one, since we owned the video of this at my home growing up and I watched it many times during childhood but as I got older I fell in love with the original Lewis Carroll books which, together, I often consider my favorite work of written fiction ever. I had not seen the Disney film Alice in Wonderland for around two decades, although I made the mistake of catching parts of more modern, live-action adaptations of the story more recently. I wondered what I would make of the old animated Disney adaptation after getting to know the books so well.

There is simply no way that any movie can recreate the true flavor of the books, but Disney’s Alice in Wonderland does a fine job of creating the general nonsensical, sometimes bewildering dream atmosphere, and, perhaps more importantly, capturing the essence of Alice’s personality. I give a lot of credit to Katherine Beaumont for this -- she has the major girl’s role in the next movie on this list as well, but she especially shines as Alice. Two other very distinctive voices, Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter and Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat, also add a lot to the cast of characters.

While mixing around some of the scenes of the original book Alice in Wonderland, with some scenes of Alice Through the Looking Glass inserted, the progression of the plot is a long, dreamlike sequence of strange situations with only a few common threads, true to the original first book (Looking Glass had a little, but only a little, more structure). In the movie, everything breaks down at the end with many of the previous scenes and characters swirling together and Alice frantically trying to wake herself up. One could object that this is not how the dream ends in the book Alice in Wonderland, but there is a similar sort of breakdown at the end of the dream in Looking Glass and it feels very real somehow, as in my experience this is sometimes how vivid dreams disintegrate.

Oh, and did you know that Alice in Wonderland has a greater number of songs in it than any other Disney film? There are nearly 25 that made it into the film, even if lasting just for seconds, with a around 10 more written for the film that didn’t make it.

So, does the Disney film do a good job of conveying one of my favorite books of all time, within the confines of being a children’s animated film? I would say yes. For reasons I described above, and from the fact that it manages to avoid working in a moral lesson for Alice, or depicting Alice as a young adult, or manufacturing an affair between Alice and the Hatter (ugh), like some film adaptations, I would say that this classic Disney version is the best Alice in Wonderland adaptation that I know of.

Peter Pan, 1953

Although I never knew this one super well, this movie has a special place in my heart from the way the flying sequence enchanted me in early childhood. I have to differ with the YouTuber Phantom Strider when he dismisses the 40′s/50′s-style song “You Can Fly” as just not doing it for him, because that song along with the animation of the characters’ journey to Neverland had a major hand in shaping my early-childhood sense of magic and wonder and yearning. I distinctly remembering a time, around age 6, when I just didn’t see much point in watching other Disney movies, or movies at all, which didn’t have flying in them, because what could possibly top the sheer joy and freedom of feeling able to swim through the air? I’ve had hardly any exposure to Superman, and so the kind of bodily flight I imagined in fantasy or performed in dreams was almost entirely shaped by Peter Pan. (At the same time, the crocodile in Peter Pan influenced my nightmares at the same age.)

I only ever saw this one a few times, but I distinctly remember the most recent of them being when I was a teenager, perhaps even an older teenager, and I remember thinking at the time that it was a pretty darn solid Disney movie. I still think the same now, while granting that some aspects of the movie seem a little antiquated and certain sequences with the Native Americans are quite cringe-worthy from the point of view of modern sensibilities. Only a couple years ago, when visiting my parents’ house, I finally took down the book Peter Pan from the shelf and decided to give it a read and found it a beautiful although slightly strange and offbeat story. In particular, I was shocked at how nasty and vengeful Tinker Bell was (particularly in trying to get Wendy killed), when I had remembered her as sweet and naive in the movie. It turns out I was wrong about the movie -- Tinker Bell tries to get Wendy killed there also! -- but somehow the tone is moderated well enough that in this version I never really feel horrified at her behavior, nor do I feel disturbed at the situation of the Lost Boys in the way the book made me view them. The song of the lone pirate who sings about how a pirate’s life is short, right before Captain Hook fires his gun and we hear a dropping sound followed by a splash, is one of the more masterful executions of dark humor that I’ve seen in Disney animation for children.

While most of the songs in Peter Pan, considered as songs on their own, are pretty good, I think the best one is the one whose lyrics didn’t make it into the film: “Never Smile at a Crocodile”.

Lady and the Tramp, 1955

Despite being more obscure than most of the old Disney animated classics, I used to know this one quite well since we had it in our home. I’ve always considered The Great Mouse Detective as the most underrated Disney film of all time, but I think it has serious competition here. Lady and the Tramp is an absolute gem. While not quite as Disney-fantasy-ish with its lack of magic and other fairy tale elements, in my opinion Lady and the Tramp is, in most ways, superior to everything else on this list save Mary Poppins. Beautiful animation which shows Lady and most of the other animals moving realistically in a way we haven’t seen since Bambi*. Everything visually and conceptually framed from the dogs’ points of view. Great voice acting. Consistently solid dialog without a single line too much or missing. A story evoking the dynamic between humans and pets, class inequality, and deep questions about the place of each of us in society and choices between a stable existence among loved ones and striking out to seize life by the horns. Our first female lead who stands on her own two four feet and whose sole goal isn’t to get kissed by her true love (one could argue that Alice was the earlier exception, but she is a little girl whereas Lady is actually a romantic female lead). When Lady is approached by her two best (male) friends in a very awkward (perhaps especially from a modern sensibility) but sweet scene where they offer to be her partner, Lady makes it clear that she doesn’t want or need a husband just for the sake of having a husband to make babies with -- her standing up for her own wants in this way doesn’t in the least turn into a Moral Stand that dominates the movie. Excellent music all the way through.

Oh, and this movie was my very first introduction, in early childhood, to the Italian language (”Bella Notte”), which some 25 years later sort became my second language of sorts.

Criticisms? Well, the baby was animated rather stiffly and unnaturally, but that was like half a minute of the movie at most. And there’s the whole segment with the Siamese cats, which produced a great song purely music-wise (fun fact: Peggy Lee provided the voices of the cats) but nowadays comes across as rather racist. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it, but I will say that I’m sure in the minds of the creators this was no different than having animals of all other nationalities (Scottish, Russian, Mexican) appearing in the film with voices reflecting the respective accents.

*There may be a few exceptions, like Peggy, who seems to be modeled after the musician Peggy Lee and moves like a sexy human woman. The way that human sex appeal is conveyed through the animals’ movements in this movie is quite impressive: my mom confesses to having somewhat of a crush on Tramp growing up and not quite understanding how that could be possible when, well, he’s a dog.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954, and Old Yeller, 1957

I don’t want to say about these movies, as they don’t really fall under the category of animated classics. I just want to say that, while I saw each of them once growing up, on seeing them again I recognize each as a great movie in its own adult point of view way that is not necessarily very Disney-ish.

Sleeping Beauty, 1959

I think this was the movie I was watching at the time I decided it would be fun to write a bunch of mini-reviews for Tumblr, as my reactions were changing a lot as I was watching. I went into the movie very curious, because while I only remembered enough of the fairy tale story to know that it was another of the very simple ones, and I remembered the one song as a waltz by Tchaikovsky, and I knew I had seen the movie once (and probably only once) as a kid, I couldn’t remember anywhere near enough to possibly fill a full movie time. What was actually going to happen in this hour-and-a-quarter long film?

I wasn’t watching long before I came up with the description “spectacularly forgettable”, in part to justify why I’d managed to forget practically all of my one previous viewing. The story doesn’t have much substance and feels sillier than even the other fairy tale Disney plots, like even minor twinges of critical thought, even granting the magical rules of the universe, are liable to make the plot topple. There is some filler to flesh out the movie, but (unlike with Snow White’s dwarfs) none of it is as amusing as the creators seemed to think it was. The only characters with actual personality are rather boring -- the capers between the members of royalty and the jester are a bit on the annoying side in my opinion. Maleficent seems to have no motive whatsoever. She actually calls herself something like “the mistress of evil” later in the movie. This is pretty black-and-white even by Disney standards, where the bad guys usually at least want to think that they’re on the right side of things or justified in their aggressive behavior. Aurora (the title character) has the least personality of all the Disney princesses. Literally all I can say to describe her is that she has the Disney Princess Trifecta of characteristics: she has a good singing voice; she is friends with all the “nice” animals; and her only goal in life is to be reunited with her True Love who she met once for all of a few minutes. The reason why I couldn’t remember any songs other than the Tchaikovsky one is that there aren’t any.

The one thing I consciously really enjoyed while watching was the fact that the score throughout was Tchaikovsky; the idea of having one work of classical music as the entire score seems like a bold one for a Disney film. As I was digesting the movie afterwards (and watching the short documentaries supplied on Disney+ helped here!), I came to realize that this classical music backdrop was complimented in quite an interesting way by a fairly unique animation style. I had been disappointed by the animation early in my watching, disliking how a lot of the figures in the beginning castle scene (for instance, various people’s faces), looked very “flat” somehow. But I’ve come to see this as part of a style where everything looks almost like a series of cut-outs superimposed on each other, to incredibly beautiful effect in a lot of the outdoor scenes.

My conclusion? If you watch this the same way you watch most Disney animated movies -- focusing on plot, characterization, action, and meaning of the main story -- it will just be kind of forgettable at best. But if you watch it as more of a purely visual and musical piece of art without trying to make much “sense” out of it (so, more like I would watch a ballet), you may find it uniquely beautiful among Disney classics.

One Hundred and One Dalmations, 1961

Whew -- what a complete and utter contrast from its predecessor! I can hardly imagine a film that’s still distinctively Disney while being more different from Sleeping Beauty in every aspect.

I remember seeing One Hundred and One Dalmatians a handful of times in childhood (when I was around 5 and it had just come out on home video, my mom almost bought it for me but decided to go with Beauty and the Beast instead explaining that it had better music -- I grew up knowing the preview for Dalmatians that showed at the beginning of our Beauty and the Beast VHS than the dalmatians film itself). I remembered a number of scenes very distinctly, including a lot of the Horace and Jasper bickering and Cruella smashing one of their bottles of beer into the fire and knew Lucky’s line after getting stuck behind in the snow almost word for word, while I had entirely forgotten all of the country/farm characters and entire sequences involving them. I had forgotten, but soon remembered, the television scenes including the Kanine Krunchies jingle. (Some years later, I think as an older teenager, I read the original book with some interest.)

Although I wasn’t around in 1961, everything about this movie’s style strikes me as very contemporary -- the animation in particular seems like the current style for 60′s cartoons. Something about the dialog and humor feels that way as well, as though it closely represents a sort of 60′s young-people-in-London culture that I’ve never seen myself (I was struck for instance by Cruella being asked how she’s doing and cheerfully answering, “Miserable dahling as usual, perfectly wretched!”). It was a little strange and offputting to see television so prominently featured in Disney animation from so long ago, and to see such a decrepit bachelor pad (with the accompanying lifestyle and attitudes) as Horace and Jasper’s in a children’s movie. The crazy driving in snow at the end startled my adult sensibilities (as I now have some memorable experiences driving in snow) in a way that didn’t affect me as a child -- scenes like that just didn’t feel like Disney after having just watched all the previous films. All in all, these novel features made the whole movie a wild ride.

I’m bemused by the fact that, despite taking place in London (which I hadn’t remembered -- I thought it took place in America), the only accents which are fully British are those of the villains Cruella de Vil, Horace, and Jasper.

Main criticisms: I found all the stuff with Rolly being characterized by his body shape and only ever thinking about food to be in poor taste (although not surprising for the times). And while “Cruella de Vil” is a great jazz number, the movie has no other music to speak of -- my mom was quite right to choose Beauty and the Beast over it.

(I realized when finishing this review that this is the only one of all the movies in the list that I’d actually enjoy seeing again sometime soon. Not sure what to make of that. Something about it is more interesting than most of the others? Especially the human-centric parts?)

The Sword in the Stone, 1963

I never saw this movie until later childhood or maybe even early teenagerhood, when I quite liked it. On watching it again, I was overall pretty disappointed. This movie has some decent songs and some fun aspects to the story, but a lot of it is kind of weak and forgettable and it’s all just sloppily done.

The story has a clear moral message which is generally pro-education and about reaching one’s full potential, but in my eyes it comes out kind of muddled because the story shows Wart ending up as a legendary king only out of the arbitrary happenstance that that happens to be his divine destiny. Merlin’s motives seem kind of inconsistent as well, with him sometimes seeming to support Wart in his desire to become a squire, then flying off in a rage when Wart chooses squirehood over fulfilling a “greater” destiny, then joyfully returning after Wart pulls the sword from the stone and is now set on the fixed path to being king, even though this involved exactly zero change of attitude on Wart’s part. The message that actually comes across looks more like, “We have to just follow whatever fate has in store for us” than “We must strive to be the best we can be”. And, it arguably even comes across as subtly disrespectful to more mundane lifestyles and career paths.

The animation is not great by the high standard of full-length Disney features (I noted how I especially disliked how tears were shown). Wart’s voice seems to change a lot, sometimes broken and sometimes not yet broken. I found out after watching that this is because the character was played by three different actors, sometimes with more than one of those actors in the same scene! This was purportedly because the voice of the first actor cast for the role started to change, but then why does Wart sometimes sound like his voice has already changed anyway? Sloppiness all around.

Still, some parts of The Sword in the Stone are fun even if none of it is stellar, and it entertained me more when I was younger, so worth watching once, especially if you’re a kid, I guess?

Mary Poppins, 1964

I came into this one far more familiar with it than with most of the other Disney movies, including the ones I watched many times when I was young, so it feels a little strange to try to summarize a similar-length review of it. Mary Poppins is in my book without a doubt one of the top three Disney movies of all time, in some respects the very best, and certainly the masterpiece of Walt Disney himself, the culmination of literally decades of determination on his part to turn Pamela Travers’ children’s works into a movie. (I would feel sorrier for Travers about how strongly Disney twisted her arm to turn her books into a movie whose style was entirely antithetical to hers, if it weren’t for the fact that the Disney version of the story is just way better than her rather weak set of stories. I give Travers ample credit for having created an amazing character in the person of Mary Poppins, but for coming up with good stories, not so much.)

I didn’t see the full movie Mary Poppins until later childhood (although I knew many of the songs) and it quickly became a favorite of mine. I went a gap of a number of years without seeing it before I copied the soundtrack from someone when I was in college, which spurred me to go out and rent it (back when Blockbuster was a thing) and so I managed to reconnect with it at the age of 20. More recently I’ve become somewhat of a Mary Poppins enthusiast -- feeling pretty alone among my generation in this regard, with the possible exception of the theater subculture -- having seen probably most or all of the documentaries there are on its production and learned a ridiculous amount of trivia about it, not to mention knowing the whole soundtrack pretty much in my head.

Mary Poppins seems to be Disney’s longest children’s classic, at 2 hours and 19 minutes. All it lacks, really, is an animal-themed or classic fairy tale atmosphere and a proper villain. But what can you get out this movie? Stellar child acting (especially for that period) and excellent performances all around, apart from some awkward but endearing aspects of Dick Van Dyke’s acting (while his singing and physicality is superb). A complex and multi-layered story combining magic, comedy and a little tragedy, appreciable in equal measure from a child’s level and from an adult’s level. Revolutionary special effects which include the first extended hybrid live-action and animation sequence. Timeless words and phrases which have permanently entered the lexicon. One of my favorite extended musical sequence of all time in any movie (”Step In Time” takes up 8 minutes and change, and I’m glad they didn’t go with the “common sense” measure of cutting this “unnecessarily long” number). The Sherman brothers at their very best, in a musical soundtrack that easily scores in my top two out of all Disney movies (the other one being The Lion King). A beautiful message (among several big messages) about the little things being important (or at least, that’s a very crude summary), exquisitely encapsulated in the most beautiful song of the movie, “Feed the Birds” (this apparently became Walt Disney’s favorite song ever, and I’m pretty close to feeling the same way -- I’m determined that one day when I finally have a piano I’m going to learn to sing it along with the piano). I could go on and on here.

If I try really hard I can come up with the sole nitpick of feeling that maybe the parrot head on the umbrella’s handle shouldn’t only reveal itself as a talking parrot head in only one scene right at the very end -- this should have been shown at least once earlier. Even granting that, this film is still practically perfect in every way.

The Jungle Book, 1967

(Let’s get the Colonel Hath in the room out of the way first: “The Jungle Book” is a terrible title for a movie. You know, when you base a movie on a book you don’t have to give it the same title as the book...)

I saw The Jungle Book several times as a kid and, despite not considering it nearly as good as Mary Poppins, similarly reconnected with it in adulthood (particularly the soundtrack). Only several years ago I found myself thinking of getting hold of a double album of classic Disney songs that I thought I’d heard about but couldn’t seem to find online. It soon occurred to me that mostly what I really wanted was some of the songs of The Jungle Book, so I got that movie’s soundtrack instead. I soon learned for the first time that The Jungle Book’s songs were written by the Sherman Brothers*, precipitating an “Ah, that explains why I remember them as so good!” moment. (“I Wanna Be Like You” seems like the clear winner among the songs.) Of course hearing the soundtrack made me curious about the movie, which I did eventually get hold of several years ago; thus I had seen this film exactly once already since childhood.

It says a lot about the music and the overall technique behind this film that I still look back on it as one of the great classics, considering how weak the story is. In particular, I consider a story arc to be pretty flawed when characters that seem significant and/or memorable come in without really living up to their expected big role: the wolves who raised Mowgli play a crucial role in the beginning before more or less disappearing (and it doesn’t entirely make sense to me why Bagheera, rather than they, is guiding him to the man village), and King Louie (who is a well-formed character that I particularly enjoy watching) really ought to come back into the story later somehow (an alternate, and much more complex, ending had him make a reappearance). The villain Shere Khan is not especially well developed in terms of his character and motives, but I do enjoy his menacingly bass voice. Still, the voice acting, the action, the animation, and the overall setting are all very solid here.

I’ll end with some random observations about the song “That’s What Friends Are For”. I think the likeness of the vultures to the Beatles was mostly lost on me as a kid (along with the recognition that this movie came out in the Beatles’ heyday). More interestingly, even when I was old enough to understand how vultures eat, the fact that every single line of the song is a clever macabre double-entendre went completely over my head. I do think it was a very obvious mistake, by the Obvious Standards of Cinematography, to give Shere Khan the last line of the song and begin that line with the “camera” on him, rather than have his voice come in “off-camera” and Mowgli and the vultures looking thunderstruck before panning to him, but maybe I shouldn’t be pushing for overdone techniques here.

* An exception is “Bare Necessities”, which was written by Terry Gilkyson, the original songwriter Disney received submissions from, who wrote two hauntingly beautiful other numbers which were deemed not Disney-ish enough to be put in the film.

Some general stray observations:

These older Disney films love gags involving alcoholism and drunkenness, a bit of a questionable emphasis given that the audience is children. This trend continues into the 80′s at least, but I don’t think one sees it much in modern Disney movies.

Watching these animated films I often find myself flinching as characters’ heads smash into things or gigantic objects smash over their heads, feeling almost surprised when they come out of it pretty much fine. I guess this a staple element of cartoon action throughout the decades, but I can’t recall a more recent Disney animated film where we see this (guess I’ll soon find out!)

There is a certain style of vocal music, with unified rhythm and lyrics but complex harmony and a capella, which seems to have been immensely popular in the 40′s and 50′s and distinctively appears in practically every single one of the 40′s and 50′s films above (“You Can Fly” is a typical example). I recognize it also from some non-Disney-related old records my parents have that were passed down to them. I’m curious about whether this style has a name.

For years I thought the Sherman Brothers did only the soundtrack for Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, only discovering they did The Jungle Book songs rather recently as I explained above. It turns out they were involved in most of the major Disney films around that period, including The Sword in the Stone and The Aristocats (although not its best-known number “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat”).

There is a particularly sad instrumental passage, played by the string section starting with a minor-key violin melody going downward and joined by lower string instruments, which I knew well from my Jungle Book soundtrack (partway through “Poor Bear”) but was surprised to hear in desperately sad moments of several of the other movies around that time (including One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Robin Hood, or at least a close variant of this passage with slightly different endings). I have no idea who wrote this or how it came to be reused so many times.

I knew the name Bruce Reitherman as the voice of Mowgli in The Jungle Book, but in watching all of these other features back to back I’ve noticed that there are some other Reithermans in the front credits of quite a few of them.

[nebulawritings]

A MISTAKE AND A CHOICE PART 4

 Part four. Final part? I guess? Anymore think it would be a full blown fic. I need to stop my head running amok and write some fluff instead. Angsty ending ahead, you have been warned. Enjoy

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Four (and a bit)

Book: Open Heart, Book 2 [Choices Stories You Play]

Pairing: M!DrValentinexEthan M!DrValentinexBryce

Reading Time: ~ 5 minutes

Warning: None. Angst? So angsty.  ____________________________________________________

The first week was hard, but manageable. Ethan threw himself into work, taking extra shifts when he could get them and staying at the office to work on the diagnostic teams cases. The other staff members put this down to him trying to make up for the length of time he had been away, but the real reason was much closer to home. Because, when he ran out of things to do, his mind wandered to Casey and his last words. “What I really want”. The senior Doctor had repeated that phrase over and over, almost as if it were a mantra. He realised, not too soon after saying goodbye to Dr Valentine, that the time he had spent in in the Amazon had not been remotely helpful in guiding him to what he really, truly, wanted. He’d spent far too much time trying to hide from his feelings, not entertain the thought of embracing them.

Often, when he allowed himself a walk to the local coffee shop, he would attempt to imagine his life with, and without, Casey Valentine. The ironic thing was, that every time he went to the coffee shop, he would be reminded of the other Doctor, their times together and conversations. His walks started to take him a different route, and he began to frequent standing in front of a small, inconspicuous jewellery shop. They had very pretty rings and necklaces, and elegant headpieces and bracelets. He would stare at them, not really taking in the sight, as he thought about what it would be like to live with Casey as his partner. Embrace his feelings. To show him off, take him to fancy dinners and introduce him to his father, formally, all the things a good partner would do. He made his mind up quickly, within 48 hours, so he was relatively calm as the week rolled to an end, although he subconsciously checked his phone one too many times. But the following Monday morning came, and no contact from Casey followed. One weeks silence rolled into two, and two soon turned into four. He, of course, questioned Naveen almost endlessly about where Casey was, but he would be told that Mass Kenmore still needed him, and to be patient, and they hadn’t agreed an end date. So Ethan waited. Every day that ticked by, he would walk by the jewellery shop. Week three he went inside. Week five, and he left with a box. It was inconspicuous enough, but he hid it in his pocket none the less, until he was back at his office. He opened it, slowly, and regarded the simple platinum watch inside. It was handsome yet refined, and Ethan had chosen it specifically for the practicality. After all, he couldn’t have a flashy watch around the hospital. He then pulled up his sleeve, and looked upon the watch already sitting on his wrist. In fact, it had been there since he’d received it at his graduation; a gift from his father. The watch had belonged to his father, and his father before him and before him, who was gifted it by some sort of British royal family member for bravery or some such as Ethan understood it. It wasn’t shiny and new, although it was beautiful and intricate. You wouldn’t know looking at it, but the single item was more valuable to Ethan than anything else could be, from a sentimental point of view. For a man who was not overly enamoured with the idea of sentimentality and material items, it really was priceless. It represented courage, and reminded him of how proud he was when he graduated. How happy he was to see his father smile. It represented history casting back decades, his family, and it was timeless. Unending. He supposed it could be referred to as an heirloom. The watched slipped from his wrist, and he placed it in the box, now labelled with a simple red card. ‘To Casey’ it read, ‘My Choice’. He’d told the other Doctor once of how much the watch meant to him and the history of it, after the young diagnostician had enquired as he enquired of all things that piqued his interest. Ethan hoped that, by giving over the item most valuable to him, that his feelings would be understood not just through words, but by actions. How Ethan intended to commit to Casey, and him only. Of course, he still hadn’t heard Casey’s answer…He could only pray. As if on cue, after five and a half weeks, his phone suddenly lit up with a notification. Ethan practically leapt for his phone when he saw the name. Sorry it’s taken so long. He smiled at the simplicity. I have been unbelievably crazy at Mass Kenmore, and I promised myself I wouldn’t rush my decision but… I hate to admit how difficult it’s been not being able to vent to you. Ethan relaxed in his chair, reading the words as if they were gospel. Oh, and…please don’t respond to these messages. Ethan deleted the small amount of text he’d already written. But, I’ve made my choice. I suppose it’s good, in a way, it’s taken so long. It’s given you plenty of time to decide. I hope? “You have no idea” Ethan replied softly, wishing he could tell Casey everything there and then. Anyway, I’ll give you my answer at the following address. I’ve checked your diary online and can see you’re free, so don’t even try and chicken out okay? If you’re there at 7pm, this Friday, you’ll find out my answer. If you’re not there…I’ll know yours. See you? He waited, but no more text came. It was Wednesday, so he had two days. “I’ll be there, Casey” he said, firmly, clutching the box with his watch in. “Christ, nothing could stop me”.

Thursday and Friday seemed to drag on longer than the previous five weeks. Every minute was agonisingly slow, and at night sleep didn’t come to him easily at all. It was 6pm on Friday, at last, and he was finished for the day. Ethan made a straight beeline for his office, and quickly changed out of his work clothes into something, he hoped, would be pleasing to the eye. He was never one for fashion, but he had sought the guidance of a helpful shop clerk, and bought a new dark blue shirt that was slim-fitted, and a pair of black jeans which, in his opinion, were far too tight. The clerk said he looked ‘hot as hell’, so Ethan had purchased them. He was questioning it a little as he fastened a pair of cufflinks on to match the new watch he’d purchased himself and laced his shoes. 18:22. The motel address Casey had given him was 31 minutes away, on the outskirts of town. Traffic would be quiet going out of town on a Friday night, so if he took the back roads and picked up the main road at junction 7…His train of thought was cut off by a sharp rapping on his door. He cursed under his breath. Ethan had been very thorough and straight that, tonight, he was not to be disturbed. That he had an important meeting, and he was unavailable to anyone from 6pm. So, whomever was at his door now was about to get ‘unavailable’ seriously explained to them. Grumbling, and one arm in his coat, he opened the door; already poised to unleash. “Dr Emery!” he exclaimed, quickly stepping back from the woman outside his office.

“Dr…Ramsey…”.

Her voice was strained and her eyes red, as if she’d been crying heavily. “How, um, sorry”. He composed himself and opened the door a little wider. “How can I help?”. He still had time…Just.

She looked awkward, like being with him was the last thing she wanted. “I need to talk to you. Urgently”.

“Sorry, Harper, but-“

“I know, I know, you’ve got some top secret meeting to attend. Don’t think I came here lightly, I know how many extra hours you’ve given recently but this can’t wait, Ethan”.

Her tone was so severe that he automatically stepped aside. She let herself into his office, and he closed the door behind them.

“So, how can I help?”. His eyes darted to the clock on the far wall. 18:27.

Harper turned towards him, fresh tears brimming in her eyes. “You have to believe that I didn’t think…I mean I didn’t know-I didn’t mean for it, Ethan!”. Her tone was almost desperate.

The senior doctor furrowed his eyebrows, concern evident. This was entirely unlike the stoic Harper he knew, so it must be something serious. “What’s happened, Harper?”.

The other doctor didn’t say anything, just reached one shaky hand into her purse and pulled out a small item.

Ethan’s eyes widened and his words caught in his throat, sickness rushing to his stomach. There was no need to be a Doctor to recognise what was in her hand. Hell, as long as you could read instructions you’d know. “You can’t be serious” he whispered, a torrent of emotions swamping him at the sight of the two small, red lines.

“You think I’d joke about this!?” she snapped, tears streaming freely. “Please, Ethan, I need…We need to talk about this”.

Anything that he had felt, or known, or decided up until that moment suddenly seemed pointless. Like there was never going to be an option, or a point, to everything he’d prepared up for this day. For Casey. His arm dropped, coat slipping off of his arm to the floor with a clatter, the sound of the box meant for Casey hitting the floor. On auto-piolet, he gestured to the couch in his office and Harper moved towards it, as Ethan slowly closed the door to the room, shutting out the world…And his world. He knew that if Casey had chosen him, that his mind was made up. One thing the older doctor admired about the younger was his tenacity, and his unwillingness to shift on any decision he’d made. But if Ethan didn’t show…What would that do to Casey? But if Harper really was...If he was going to be...He couldn’t leave her. He couldn’t abandon her. It took two of them to tango after all and there was no was he would turn into his mother. Click. The door locked, and Ethan stepped towards Dr Emery.

Casey had been at the motel for a few hours, anxious. He’d made sure to leave plenty of time to get ready, to leave Mass Kenmore and sort out the few patients he’d picked up responsibility for. It had been a rough, long few weeks but the day was finally here and he wasn’t going to let anything, or anyone, spoil it. 7pm rolled around, and his eyes were fixated on the motel door. He sat at the end of the bed, in plain sight of the clock on the wall by the door. Candles were dotted around the whole place, and he’d made an effort to look as good as he could. Showered, freshly laundered clothes, new cologne. He was wearing an oversized jumper that he knew Ethan liked and jeans. Simple, but Casey was hoping they wouldn’t be too focused on clothes…If he turned up. “He’ll be here” the doctor repeated for the hundredth time. 7:15 came and went, and Casey looked out the window. Again. “It’s fine…The traffics bad. That’s all”. He checked his phone just in case. 8pm. He checked his phones history. Checked the address he’d sent earlier in the week. 9pm. The candles started to snuff out, one by one. 11pm. Casey was laying on the motel bed, feeling…He could only describe it as numb. His eyes hurt, and had long since run out of tears. Casey Valentine has chosen Ethan Ramsey, and Ethan Ramsey had chosen someone else. A thousand scenarios had run through his head to try and explain why Ethan didn’t show but none of them made sense. Not this late. Not with no text, no call. His hands were shaking as he lay in the now dark room, the few candles still burning not enough to light the room. Without thinking, he grabbed his phone and dialled a number that had become foreign in the last few weeks.

“Casey! Man it’s been a long time! How’s Mass Kenmore treating you!”.

“…”.

“…Case? You there, dude?”.

“Bryce…”.

The others tone changed entirely as he heard Casey’s voice. “Hey, I’m here…What’s going on? You sound like you’ve been screaming for hours”.

“I…I need you. Sorry, no I don’t I just…What’s that noise?”

“Oh, I’m out with some college buddies. Doesn’t matter. Where are you, Casey?”.

“Oh, no, Bryce go and enjoy yourself. I’m sorry I called”.

“Hey! Don’t you dare go, Casey”.

“Why?”

“Because I want to know where you are”.

“Why? It doesn’t matter, you’re busy”.

“Tough. It does matter”.

“Why?”.

“Because you matter, Casey. You sound like hell”.

The diagnostician laughed, fresh tears welling in his eyes. “I feel like hell”.

“Where are you?”.

Casey told Bryce the address, and after a quick ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can’ they hung up. The sound of someone else’s voice managed to pull Casey out of his stupor, and he started wrapping things up at the motel. He gathered the candles, and left an envelope on the side with cash along with the key. He called the reception, told them his plans had changed and the room would be empty for the night. He picked up his other bits, pushed them all into a bag just as he heard a car pulling up outside. This late, it was pretty safe to assume it was Bryce…If it wasn’t Ethan. “It’s not him you idiot” the young doctor muttered bitterly. As he  gathered his things and left the room, looking around at the cold, empty space, he realised that as soon as that door closed he would be shutting it forever. As in, Ethan Ramsey…Forever. “Goodbye, Doctor” he whispered, before the door clicked shut, and he met Bryce halfway to the car. The surgeon was out of breath and panicked. “Take me home” Casey practically begged , as he felt warm arms wrap around him, soothing and safe.He buried his his into Bryce’s chest, squeezed his eyes shut.

“Whatever you need” came a gentle reply. No questions, no explanation required as to why the hell Casey was crying in a motel in the early hours of the morning. Just comfort. “I’m here, Case. I’ll always be here for you”.

[yeonchi]

Kisekae Insights #13: Sea Princesses Part 3 (Moushouden Series History)

(Art by Minake, DiscordingChaos, Ryu-yaoista, Necrolyzer92 and sagiturn)

Over the course of reviewing the Sea Princesses series, some mysteries have come up – would the Drylander boy ever meet the Salacians again, was that Drylander girl actually a descendant of the Barracuda Royal Family, could Marcela actually be Marcello’s sister, what’s the deal with Duante and what would become of the princes and princesses 10-15 years after the events of the series? The last mystery is obvious given the topic of this instalment, but I’ll be answering those mysteries by telling you about the Sea Princesses’ involvement in the Moushouden Series.

I was hoping that those mysteries would be answered during my reviews of the Princesas do Mar books, but to be honest, I’m kind of glad that they weren’t, otherwise my headcanons would have been ruined.

A funny thing about the cover image for this instalment – I wanted to use fanarts that showed the Sea Princesses as adults to signify their age in the Moushouden Series (approx. 20-22 in 2018), but since I couldn’t find a decent fanart for Tubarina (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, good Sea Princesses fanart is hard to find), I decided to use a fairly decent one with Marli instead. Anyway, let’s jump right into it.

The storylines covered in this instalment include several episodes of Kamen Rider Decade in 2018, along with a few episodes of Soulbound Series 3 and 4, broadcast in 2019 and 2021. However, some context is required in order to understand those storylines.

(Art by Rainbow’s Network)

The Marcello/Marcela discrepancy

If you’ve watched Sea Princesses (the cartoon series, that is), you will know that there is a character named Marcello, who is the Hammerhead Shark Prince and Tubarina’s cousin. Not many people know about this, but in the books, there is a character named Marcela, who is the Hammerhead Shark Princess and Tubarina’s cousin.

Getting the picture here? Marcello is an exclusive character to the cartoon series (and one literacy series book) while Marcela is an exclusive character to the main series books. The only difference is that while Marcello is a regular character who has appeared in nearly half the series, Marcela is the equivalent of a background character who was only shown on one page of the first book. I was disappointed with the latter as I was hoping to see Marcela have a prominent role in the books.

Marcello is a bit of a wild boy who likes to tease girls and cause trouble, while Marcela is an intelligent girl who is calm and religious. Is it possible for those two to exist together? Hell yes. You can imagine the kind of sass that happens between those two (kind of like Morty and Morticia, but I digress).

Now, as Rainbow has kindly highlighted in her post, Marcello and Marcela are not twins because their ages and zodiac signs are different; Marcello is 8 years old and a Cancer, while Marcela is 7 years old and a Virgo. Here are their birthday time windows:

Marcello: 22 June – 22 July 1996

Marcela: 23 August – 21 September 1997

Assuming a typical pregnancy period of 40 weeks, I can conclude that it would be possible for both Marcello and Marcela to exist, even though the time period between pregnancies would be a bit quicker than six months, the minimum recommended time quoted by some studies (other studies have recommended 18 months, which is really saying something).

Marcela didn’t make her debut in the project until 2018, so what happened to her before then? In 2000, during the second Battle of Kawanakajima, Marcela was accidentally sent to a parallel universe when the Master attempted to open a portal between Salacia and Dryland. In the parallel universe, she was found by an Oni Rider named Hibiki (played by Yuki Kubota), who raised and trained her as his apprentice so that she could take on her master’s name and become an Oni like himself.

When the Beta Uprising threatened their world in 2018, Hibiki passed down his equipment to Marcela and give her instructions to protect a boy, Yuki Yamaki, from the Chads. Sure enough, Marcela managed to save the boy, but Marcela was kidnapped by the Stacies and brainwashed to fight Yuki, who the Chads had other plans for before he managed to escape them. Hiroki became involved as Decade and after he destroyed that universe, Yuki and Marcela were dragged into Hiroki’s universe.

Hiroki and Narutaki (they were allies by that point in the story) left Yuki and Marcela about five months back in time. They had no memories of what happened in the Beta Uprising (due to their future selves being present), but the only thing they remembered was that they were enemies; Yuki blamed Marcela for killing his lover and destroying his world, while Marcela blamed Yuki for killing her family. Every time they met, they would fight until one of them was defeated or told the truth.

Later, the past Narutaki found Marcela and used her as a pawn to fight the past Hiroki. Hiroki managed to convince Yuki not to kill the only person who might know the truth about what happened and so, they defeated Marcela and broke her brainwashing, leaving her with no recollection of what happened.

The two decided to work together to find out the mysteries of their past, eventually becoming a couple in the process. In the following episode, Marcello reunited with (or rather, met) his long-lost sister, initially meeting as enemies before reconciling as siblings.

Answering the Barracuda Kingdom saga

One thing that really pissed me off in the animated series was how they didn’t provide a solution to the Barracuda Kingdom saga. The Lost Kingdom provides a good setup as the girls manage to get the barracuda to rebuild their fallen palace. The New Princess adds to that setup with the possibility of a Drylander girl being a descendant of the Barracuda Royal Family, but it only gives more questions than answers which are never picked up after that episode.

So, you want my answer to the question raised in The New Princess? Yes, the girl and her mother are in fact descendants of the Barracuda Royal Family. This would somehow explain how they were able to read Polvina’s book on the kingdom and leave a message for the girls upon leaving, assuming that the book was written in the Salacian language.

And by the way, what is the girl’s name? Her name is Windy Adams. The name Windy is an homage to the Drylander girl who is the namesake character of the book The Windy Letters.

Duante, the wandering asshole

If you’ve watched The Healer, you will probably recognise this asshole, who goes around helping animals, but doesn’t want to make friends with anyone, let alone tell anyone his name. I blame this guy for possibly taking what could have been Dinho’s only appearance in the series, even though Dinho isn’t even in the series as a background character.

Given his ability to talk to and understand every fish and animal in Salacia, we can presume that Duante was appointed by the goddess Salacia to be a secret guardian, even more secret than the blowfish in The Guardians.

Naturally, someone like him is honestly waiting for an opportunity to be used in one of my stories. Read on to the end and you’ll find out my plans for him.

In regards to the Drylander boy

Despite the Salacians’ fear, dread and hatred for the Drylanders, there have been examples of Drylanders who mean no harm to Salacia. In the books, there is A Shadow in the Water, but in the animated series, there is the Drylander boy saga.

In The Boy, the girls and Leia were helping a young beached whale when they see the boy coming onto the beach. As the boy tries to help the whale, the girls disguise themselves with seaweed in an attempt to conceal themselves from him. The boy is initially scared off, but when the girls see that he hasn’t left, they try to get him to help them with the whale. Later on, the boy has success stopping three other whales from coming onto the beach, something that Leia failed to do. Together, they get the young whale off the beach and back into the sea. The girls thank the boy and they part ways.

Off-screen, the boy tells his friends about his encounter, but they didn’t believe him, so he set out to try and get photos of them, which brings us to his appearance in The Secret Admirer. He puts some shells on some rocks in an attempt to lure out one of the princesses (presumably, he recognised them because they didn’t fully disguise themselves in their last encounter). Eventually, he manages to take a photo of Polvina, which leads her to seek out his camera. They get Tentie to distract the boy so the girls can take his camera, but he manages to take a photo of them. The flash of the camera attracts the attention of a mother shark as it was scaring her baby. She manages to rip the camera off the boy and destroy it. With the boy a long way away from shore, the girls cover him with seaweed as they help him there. They leave the boy a shell for him before they head back.

So what is the boy’s name in my project? His name is Daniel Camielez. He made a cameo during the Salacian Rebellion storyline in Three Kingdoms Series 3, where he laments the senseless violence and prays for a chance to see Polvina (and the girls) again.

Daniel’s friends still didn’t believe that he met the princesses because he had no evidence to prove that he did. When the Salacians began to rebel against the Drylanders in 2010, Daniel’s friends realised that he was right and they began helping him find them. However, the years passed and they lost interest, though Daniel never gave up hope. In 2015, the father of one of Daniel’s friends, Kelvin Galvarro, was dragged into Mirror World and devoured by the Mirror Monsters, which were created by the Shark King, alongside the Salacian Kamen Riders, to kill Drylanders that had committed crimes against their world. This reignited Kelvin’s interest to seek out the Salacians and avenge his father’s death and so, he joined Daniel in his search once again. At some point, Narutaki gave Daniel and Kelvin the Ryuki and Knight Advent Decks, allowing them to become Kamen Riders.

Now that the background context is out of the way, let’s get right into the stories.

Decade Episode 3+4: The Awakening Instinct

Zhuge Shu’s instinct was awakened when he and his family encountered an Unidentified Lifeform (Gurongi), marking the start of his metamorphosis into Agito. Normally, the Agito power would be passed down the Mermaid Royal Family bloodline, but because Zhuge Shu was half-Drylander, his power was tainted and thus, could only become Kamen Rider (Exceed) Gills, an incomplete version of Agito. Eventually, his instincts went out of control as he found himself being targeted by the Unknown (Lords), which led him to become afraid of them.

His son, Zhuge Sōta, began feeling similar effects to his father as his instinct was being awakened as well. It is revealed that if there is an imperfect Agito, then the power continues to be passed down until a perfect Agito can be found. This meant that Sōta would become Agito as he was less Drylander than his father.

At this point in the story, Narutaki had allied with Nozama Pharmaceuticals, led by a man named Kino, and the Amazon Riders. Kino can transform into Kamen Rider Another Agito and his true identity is the Paradoxa Undead. Juli and Jessi, under the surname Aquami, acted as Nozama’s directors. In the first part of the story, Narutaki confronts Hiroki as Decade while Kino, Juli and Jessi fight the Gurongi and the Ant Lords when they come in. At the end of that episode, Kino fights Decade, Kuuga, Agito and Gills following their fight with Taurus Ballista.

Following this, Zhuge Shu continued to suffer from his instincts until Narutaki gave him the Chalice Rouzer, which placed him under her control as he became the Joker Undead. In the second part of the story, Sōta used his instincts to find his father and with the help of Decade, Blade and a mysterious woman, they managed to seal the Joker’s power into a Rouse Card, allowing Zhuge Shu to regain control of himself and suppress the effects of the flawed Agito metamorphosis by making him part-Undead. From then on, Zhuge Shu would fight as Kamen Rider Chalice.

The mysterious woman was revealed to be Serena, the Mermaid Princess and Zhuge Shu’s mother. It turned out that she fell into a coma after being “killed” by the Shark King and was rescued by a local family, who took care of her for a few years. Eventually, the search for her son led her to BOARD, who agreed to assist her.

Decade Episode 7: Displaced Spirits

Hiroki, Kayley and Firerose are in Cardiff Bay when Narutaki summons hordes of witches, Makamou and Insect Army troops in the city centre. Yuki Yamaki sees this and is about to head to the scene, but Marcela confronts him and they fight. Hiroki, Kayley and Firerose transform and attempt to break the fight up, only for the two Riders to escape.

As Decade chases after Magica and Hibiki, Marli and Maurico’s Oni Rider factions emerge from the River Taff. While they confront and fight Kabuto and Gatack, Narutaki transforms into Duke and confronts Decade just as he defeats Hibiki and Magica. Duke finishes off Magica with the Sonic Arrow and kills Decade by using Hibiki’s Final Form Ride, but not before Narutaki reveals the details of Marcela’s past to Hiroki in an “omae wa mou shindeiru” moment. However, once Duke and Hibiki retreat, Yuki discovers that the power of his Soul Gem can resurrect Hiroki – this is because Hiroki used to have the same magical boy powers Yuki did until he lost them following his final regeneration.

Later, once Hiroki, Yuki, Kayley and Firerose hear that Narutaki and the Oni Riders are fighting the police and military in Pontcanna, they head there to fight them. Decade uses the Magica Final Form Ride card to unlock Magica’s final form before they work together to defeat Narutaki’s army. Narutaki and her comrades retreat while Marcela loses her memories of what happened.

Decade Episode 8: The Searching Boy

Obviously, this episode was named after the Sea Princesses episode The Boy.

In Santos, Kayley meets Kelvin Galvarro, who tells her about the Salacian Riders and the Mirror Monsters. He and Daniel hear mirror noises (yeah, we’re calling it that) and they enter Mirror World to fight, with Kayley transforming into Diend and following them in as well.

Meanwhile, in another part of Santos, Firerose is pulled into a mirror by a Dispider and Hiroki transforms to save him. After Decade and Kuuga defeat the Dispider, they are surrounded by the Shark King’s Riders, Mirror Monsters and Salacian Army troops. Ryuki, Knight and Diend arrive to save them and take them back to Kelvin’s apartment. Hiroki calls in a favour from the Octonauts so he and the others can investigate what is going on in Salacia. They are also joined by Yuki and Marcela.

At the end of the Next Gen Series, the Kōmeikyō disbanded and everyone reaffirmed their loyalty to the goddess Salacia. As Narutaki and Lorah are overseeing the training of the other Salacian Riders, the Octopod approaches Lorah’s castle and Narutaki challenges Hiroki to battle. While Hiroki transforms into Decade, Narutaki uses her EFTPOS Gunmorpher (an original transformation item made for this project’s version of Decade) to transform into Kamen Rider Gold Drive. Since Gold Drive can use Rider Cards like Decade and Diend, she is able to withstand Decade’s attacks. After more Riders join the fight, Gold Drive has Agostinha and Squid Girl turn down the signal’s strength, causing Decade and Kuuga to begin drowning. Decade manages to escape back to the Octopod using the Kuuga Gouram.

It is then that Narutaki and Lorah decide to begin their invasion. On top of a building on Dryland, the goddess Salacia transforms into Kamen Rider Saga and causes a time slowdown. Hiroki, Kayley and Firerose are immune from its effects due to the Shift Cars and Signal Bike they possess (thanks to Krim Steinbelt). As the Salacian Riders pass the Octopod, Daniel locks eyes with Polvina while Marcela locks eyes with Marcello.

When the Octopod crashes onto the beach, Hiroki gives his Signal Bike to Daniel as he and Kayley attempt to stop the slowdown. Ryuki finds Saga on top of a building and uses Dragreder to knock her down, causing the slowdown to stop. A battle ensues as seven Riders (Decade, Diend, Kuuga, Ryuki, Knight, Magica and Hibiki) face off against the entire Salacian Army, which includes Gold Drive and 33 Salacian Riders. Odin attempts to entice Decade with the Time Vent card so he can change the past however he wishes, but Decade refuses, saying that there are many people he wouldn’t have met had his life not gone down the way it had. After the Riders eliminate the Mirror Monsters and Salacian Army troops, Decade uses Ryuki’s Final Form Ride to transform Dragreder into Dragranzer without Ryuki using Survive Form. Dragranzer defeats all the Contract Monsters before Decade uses Ryuki’s Final Attack Ride to perform an attack similar to the Dragon Fire Storm alongside Ryuki.

It is then that Narutaki reveals Lorah, Tata, Hugo, Salacia and Firerose’s friend (who was featured in episodes 3+4 but not in this episode until this point) as Roidmudes along with her plan for the Global Freeze before retreating. The Shark King finally accepts the prospect of working with the Drylanders to protect the ocean. Daniel gives Polvina a flower and she gives him a shell, while Marcello offers to reunite Marcela with her family.

In the rest of Decade

The 13 Ryuki Riders make an appearance in episode 9, where they help fight the Roidmudes as Decade, Drive and their comrades deal with Gold Drive and stop the Global Freeze.

In the Gokaiger vs. Decade crossover special, the Salacian Riders are shown fighting various Ranger teams before they work together to fight the villain of the special (who is also the villain of the Decade TV movie).

Ryuki, Magica and Hibiki are featured in the series finale two-parter. Yuki and Marcela (along with Zhuge Qiao) attempt to convince Narutaki to leave this world as they believed that travels are causing the black hole paradox to worsen (she is actually taking Decade’s place in the episode as Hiroki went off to explore somewhere before he became the Destroyer of Worlds). Later on, Ryuki and Blade are shown fighting Decade Violent Emotion (just like in Movie War 2010).

In Age of Riders Ultimax, the Salacian Riders join Decade, Diend, Kuuga and Gold Drive as they are sent to a world ravaged by the Beta Uprising. There, they learn the circumstances of Yuki and Marcela’s past before returning to their world, where Hiroki and Narutaki take their past selves back in time. At the end of the movie, the Salacians sign a peace treaty with the Drylanders. By this point, Yuki and Marcela have become a couple.

Soulbound Series 3: Dark Sea Princess

The Sea Princesses had a tribute two-parter in Arc 11, shared with the tributes for Madoka Magica and some other series. Before that, however, the Shark, Starfish and Octopus Kings appeared in a tribute episode in Arc 4 way back in Series 1. It was shared with the tribute for Angelina Ballerina and it showed the fifth Battle of Kawanakajima in 2009. They didn’t do much though; the three kings led their troops to attack the Takeda camp, then they retreated when the Yellow Monkey of the Freaky Monkey Five intruded in the battle as they refused to work with the Drylanders.

In the two-parter, Yuki and Marcela are shown living in seclusion from humanity as the rejected beings of their universe (in reference to their backstories). In addition to fighting Horrors, witches, wraiths and rumours, they are also the temporary hosts of Ultraman Gaia and Agul. Also, as stated in Part 1, six new Riders make their debut in this series, including Miss Marla (Amazon New Alpha) and Zhuge Shu’s mother, Serena (Banki).

When the Salacian Riders attack Drylanders on the beach, Torchwood Pleiades (made up of magical girls) arrives to fight them. The main characters of Soulbound, namely the Barrier Base and SEPTAN crews, arrive to fight the Salacian Riders, but Takumi Kamijō and Homura Akemi intrude in the battle, challenging each other to see who can defeat the most warriors (the two had been fighting other magical girls throughout the episode).

In the second part of the two-parter, there is a very big battle where Takumi and Homura fight the Salacian Riders, the Soulbound characters and the Magia Record characters (up to the end of October 2019). The magical boy and girl are so strong that not even the Riders in their final forms can make a scratch on them. The battle causes negative emotions and minus energy to collect in the sky; Kyubey uses it to provide energy for the universe while the byproducts form into a giant monster named Kanaderos. Yuki, Marcela and Hikaru Tomokaze transform into their respective Ultramen and defeat the monster.

The Salacian Riders are also featured in the final episodes of the series (Arc 12), where they play minor roles in the battles.

Soulbound Series 4: The Aqua Conspiracy and the Poseidon Myth

In Soulbound Series 3, I wrote that while Windy Adams, the Drylander girl from The New Princess, and her marine archaeologist mother, were the descendants of the Barracuda Royal Family, their whole family was killed by Dai-Shocker around the end of Decade. At the time, I couldn’t think of anything to write for her and I didn’t want to bother; I could have disregarded them or said that the girl wasn’t a descendant, but I honestly wanted to give an answer to that mystery.

However, plans changed while I was writing Soulbound Series 4. I decided to give Windy her name and write a story for both her and Duante. At the time of writing this instalment, I have barely gotten halfway into the first episode of a two-parter detailing the story; I had decided to take a break at the end of August to focus on some side projects. Since I decided to delay the premiere of this series as well due to the coronavirus lockdown, I’ll share some details of what I have planned just as a sneak peek. Revealing stories before their release isn’t something that writers normally do, but since this is just my project, what the hell.

While her family was killed by Dai-Shocker, Windy had managed to survive when she was possessed by a Greeed named Poseidon, who was formed in the new Core Medals that the Kougami Foundation were developing when they reacted to a black hole paradox.

From that point on, Windy would become Kamen Rider Poseidon. Her attacks across the land would attract the attention of Duante, who was fighting as Kamen Rider Aqua. The goddess Salacia met Hiroki at Itsukushima Shrine (dressed as a shrine maiden) and asks him for help finding her two lost children, namely Windy and Duante.

That is really all I have for now, though I will share one tidbit which is unrelated to Sea Princesses, but related to the two-parter. Kamen Rider OOO will also be featured in the two-parter along with the Kougami Foundation Riders. Aside from using the new Combos of the CSM OOO Driver, he will also use an original Combo made from existing medals. This original combo is the Yadopangaru Combo, made by using the Yadokari (Hermit Crab), Panda and Kangaroo Core Medals. OOO can retract his head to dodge attacks, use the panda claws to attack and do pogo-like hops with the kangaroo legs. Its Scanning Charge finisher, Telescopic Crush, allows OOO to retract himself as small as possible before leaping very high into the air and performing a fast and heavy Rider Kick.

This marks the end of six months of Sea Princesses content on my Tumblr. It’s pretty amazing how much I put into and got out of a series that received little reception over the years. I’m probably the only fan of the series who has been able to achieve that much.

I’ve said before that I have plans to adapt Kamen Rider Zi-O next year and I will tell you now that the Sea Princesses will be featured in a few episodes. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, but for now, this has been the involvement of Sea Princesses in my personal project.

[prettywordsyouleft]

Existence - Part 1

Summary: After his death, Sungjin had no idea why he was bound to the manor house but meeting Pearl gave him a reason to exist.

Pairing: Park Sungjin x OC, featuring reader & Day6

World: Spiritual Connection

Genre: ghost au / slow burn / romance / angst

Warnings: death

A/N: Welcome to Existence, a spinoff from Spiritual Connection. When I wrote the Brian/Day6 series, Sungjin’s moment with Y/N was actually unplanned from the original outline but it’s one of my favourite parts in the story. A lot of you also agreed and wanted to explore more of what got him to that point. So did I, and so here we are!

Since Pearl was established as a character in the series, I’ve chosen to write her instead of making her a reader insert. This story is also covering from the late 1800s to present time, so there was a lot to fit in, hence why it’s broken into two parts.

Word count: 3886

Index: 1 | 2 | Spiritual Connection

He never thought existing would be so difficult. After all, Sungjin had lived in this world for twenty-five years before he had died.

And in those twenty-five years, he had learned a lot about survival. The Industrial Revolution had made advances to those living after its time, and most noblemen were now focused on living a life of pleasure, parties and prestige.

Not that he had been destined to such a lifestyle.

He was by no means stricken by poverty, working the vast fields and gardens around a large estate was no easy task. Getting recognised for the sculpting he could do of the land meant he had no worries of where his next meal came from. And the Duke who owned the land he groomed meticulously had even gone as far as to build him and his team their own home. It held a grand neo-gothic facade on the outside, showing wealth and power to all those who saw it. On the inside, well, it was merely functional.

And that had been all Sungjin had ever wished for.

As he stared around the house he now sat within, he wondered why he had cherished this place like no either. Its walls enclosed on him and his misery a little bit more by the day. It made no sense to him, to any of them. The four others who had died along with him in the great fire of the main house were all that remained. Where was everyone else? He had woken to find chaos, smoke and ruin all around. His master was gone and left a widow and three children behind. The majority of the fire he had been attempting to put out was now smouldering ash on the ground.

All that was left was the godforsaken tower home, and no power, prestige or pleasure would come from being stuck in it. 

It took what seemed like decades before someone searched for more than cobwebs in their home. In reality, it had only been two years and the land that once was owned by the Duke of the county now had been sold, gifted and divided between many. The portion that was on the hillside closest to the sea had been sold to a small family, so Brian had heard when he was outside working in the gardens out of habit. Sungjin couldn’t face the outside world since passing into the afterlife; not that being indoors did much for him either. But he was fascinated by the changes that started to occur to his little home. The family had big ideas to build on several extensions that would make his functional little tower home into a grand manor by the sea.

And through this process, the walls extended out around him.

“Look, they’re adding on another wing!” Wonpil enthused, the sound of construction pounding from dawn to dusk.

It was rather impressive when they were done, the two bedroom turret tower now a vast, seven bedroom home with multiple day rooms, a study, large kitchen, dining and amenities that would ease the lives of those who would inhabit it. Even his friends were thrilled with the extension of their home, spreading throughout the building and no longer stuck in the same spot. Sungjin had chosen a ground level bedroom to spend his days within. It held a great view of the sea and sky from facing the cliffside and brought him some peace in this confusing overstay on Earth.

The puzzle of why he and his friends remained stuck on this land, as protectors of their home, still eluded him. Acceptance had arrived, as did the new residents.

They were loud people.

From parties to arguments, all this family could do was shrill from the top of their lungs. It had felt promising to have his home grander than ever. Now, he hoped for the simplicity to come back.

It was incredibly frustrating to simply exist in a place that was no longer his.

Still, nothing he or his friends came up with worked.

“I once read we should see a light come forth.”

“Candlelight?” Dowoon asked, pointing to what was illuminating the drawing room they were in. Jae smacked his friend around the head and groaned.

“No, an actual light. Maybe a tunnel and we get to walk through it.”

“Where does it lead to?” Wonpil wondered and Brian shrugged.

“Perhaps it’s towards paradise.”

“Jae, the book you were reading was the Bible and the light would lead us to salvation,” Sungjin announced, sighing heavily.

“Are we the damned then?”

“We only did our best to help our master until the explosion,” Wonpil mentioned with a pout and everyone fell silent.

And then Jae stood up, shaking his head before fetching his guitar from the corner of the room. His tune was troubled, much like their hearts were.

This sombre mood travelled into the new century where the manor house saw several owners come and go. The loud family came into money and moved to bigger prospects. The next fell into ruin and the house went into possession of the bank.

Sungjin watched grandeur enter and leave in an endless cycle until new money arrived in the late 1930s. A family with three children, though only giggles filled the home this time. He was enamoured by the way the light seemed to shine brighter in the manor house. It transformed, carrying a spirit from the past and meshing with the new with every pass of Ring around the Rosie played in the grand entrance.

It was a year later when everything changed.

“Won’t you play with me?” the youngest asked, doors opening and closing as she searched for her siblings.

“Jacob, Ruby, where are you?!” she called out desperately, opening the door to the downstairs bedroom that was now a guest room. She stepped inside, climbing up onto the large bed with a huff, cursing under her breath about being left behind yet again.

Sungjin lifted his focus from the book he was reading and chuckled at her disposition, deciding the youngest child of the family was definitely the most spirited.

“Who are you?” she suddenly wondered aloud and Sungjin looked up again to see who she was talking to. Staring right at him, he blinked, closing the book slowly and then pointed to himself. “Yes, you. I have never seen you before.”

“You can see me?” he tentatively questioned and with all innocence, she bounced her head up and down. Sungjin was amazed. “Really, you can see me?”

“Can you not see yourself?” she replied with a giggle, pointing to the mirror across from him. He smiled sadly and shrugged. Hesitance now gone, the little girl approached Sungjin and sat down across from him. “Do you have a name? Mine is Pearl. I’m the youngest lady of this house.”

Sungjin grinned. “The youngest lady?”

“Of course, don’t you see how much I’m growing? Why, I will be eight this summer!”

“Eight is a mighty fine age to be,” he told her and she grinned, giggling once again. “And my name is Sungjin.”

“Sungjin,” Pearl repeated, smiling as she liked how it rolled off her tongue. “Sungjin, do you know of a game to play?”

“A game?”

Pearl nodded again, leaning forward in earnest. What games did children enjoy these days? He was so out of touch with the world by now. Only one came to mind. “Hide and seek.”

“Will you play it with me? My brother says I’m too annoying to mind and my sister is learning a new skill. They say it will give her marrying prospects. Yuck! Imagine marrying because you can sew well.”

Sungjin chuckled at her open disdain. “Sewing will be a handy skill to have.”

“Can you sew?”

“Some.”

“Then I need not worry about it all. Shall we play now? Oh please, I wish to have fun again now that everyone else is boring and growing up.”

She reached out for his hand then, startling Sungjin at her ability to touch him as if he were among the living.

It was then that he found a purpose for his existence. Although he didn’t need to, he took in a deep breath, renewed by Pearl’s discovery.

And his own.

For years, Pearl enjoyed running around the house calling out to her friends. She would beg Brian for one more game and Sungjin to help her hide. She would always give herself away by giggling, perhaps too excited to have the turn to find her friends instead.

It worried the adults within the home.

“Pearl, you need to go out today.”

“But why mama, Sungjin and I-”

“My dear, I have no idea who your friend is that you talk of but it’s time for you to meet others to play with. Bring home friends from school, won’t you?”

“None of them want to play hide and seek though. They say at age twelve we shouldn’t run amuck as I do.”

“Perhaps they’re right,” her mother agreed, straightening out the collar to Pearl’s coat she had fastened her into.

The young girl glanced up at the five men watching on, Wonpil gesturing with his hands to go out and play. It took a little more convincing, but eventually, Pearl left with her mother to run errands.

“Well, it’s a good thing, right? I mean, how many places can we hide in now? She knows of them all,” Jae surmised, scratching the back of his head.

“I like when she giggles, it’s so easy to find her.”

“Or when she catches us as if it’s the greatest achievement of her life,” Brian added on to Dowoon’s statement, and Sungjin smiled fondly, eyes travelling to the front door.

“She needs to discover the world out there though, playing with us every day won’t be something Pearl can continue doing for much longer.”

He had been right. Pearl managed to make new friends, though it perplexed her whenever they came over to the house. “She said I was fibbing! Me, a liar?! I would never do such a thing!”

“Well, it’s not as if you can show your friend evidence, Pearl.”

“Sungjin, my reputation is on the line here. If Harriet goes back to school and proclaims I see spirits to everyone, will anyone sit with me at lunchtime? What will I do if I get picked last in class for teamed events? This is rubbish!”

“You sound awfully a lot like Jae these days,” he mused, turning back to his book.

“And you remind me of a bear. Are you hibernating? Where is your energy? I thought we would play today!”

“Don’t you have sewing to learn for the next hour?”

“I sew well enough, thank you.”

“Piano then.”

“Surely we can go a day without hearing me fumble through classical music that my short fingers have no part in playing.”

Sungjin grinned at her stubbornness. “Cooking?”

“We have Mary for that, and she’s as fit as a fiddle. Any more excuses? How about poetry? I had a session yesterday with Brian. Gardening? You showed me how to prune a rose bush last week. What else would a young lady of my status need? Ah yes, exercise. Now come!”

“Fussy little thing!”

“I will hold you accountable if you continue to sour my mood, Sungjin!”

They played all afternoon long and heard the scolding Pearl received for acting like a child over dinner. Throwing herself through the guest bedroom door, she came in and dashed right over to where he sat on the floor, diving into his arms.

“I don’t want to grow up. I don’t wish to let go of all of this. They tell me I am going mad, that I made you all up. Maybe I am mad! But to me you’re real.”

“We once were,” he reminded softly, stroking Pearl’s hair. “But now, maybe they are right. I don’t want you to miss out on any opportunities for a good life, Pearl.”

“And I won’t if I remain your friend, will I?”

“You might.”

“I won’t,” she concluded, though an air of uncertainty followed. “Hopefully, I won’t.”

The next morning, Pearl had a new resolve. She ignored Wonpil’s morning greeting. She side-stepped around Dowoon who came to hug her. As she dressed and readied herself for school, Pearl was cold, as if something had come into her body overnight and removed her remaining childlike spirit.

Pearl was the very image of a young lady ascending into puberty over the next three months.

No longer did she learn poetry with Brian at all, and focused on improving her piano skills. Her cross stitch was excellent and cooking ability grew greatly. With all the years of playing, she had somewhat neglected the normal growth around her. And so in those three months, she worked herself day in and out to prove something of herself that Sungjin couldn’t quite figure out.

It made her burn out completely.

Jumping when the door opened in the middle of the night, Sungjin looked up from the bed he laid upon, seeing what appeared to be a ghost in the doorway. Blinking, he realised it was Pearl, her eyes searching slowly around the room. When they connected with his, she started to move, running the distance from the door to the bed, diving into his embrace.

“I can’t do it!” she wailed, echoing around the room. “I don’t want to forget you! How can I? When you are all that brings me joy!”

“It’s okay,” he soothed, running his hand over her back gently. “Calm down, you can be who you want to be.”

“You mean that?” she asked as she pulled back and Sungjin nodded, wiping away the tear-stains on her cheeks. She grinned then, diving back into hug him again tightly. “Promise me you won’t ever leave me.”

“I’m bound to this house, where would I go?”

“You know what I mean, promise me. I can’t live another day without you, Sungjin. Without you all. Please, please don’t let me go.”

Staring at her as she shifted back in his arms again, Sungjin searched her face. If only Pearl knew just how much she has changed everything. Because of her, he no longer just existed. He would do anything she asked of him in a heartbeat. Nodding firmly, he watched as her anxiety eased. “Of course, I won’t leave you. I promise.”

The next morning, there was a lot more bustle on the ground floor bedroom of the estate.

Sungjin rubbed the back of his head as he watched his sanctuary transform. From guest room to feminine touches, Pearl dictated all that happened in here. The only thing that remained was the large bed that he had laid upon every night since Pearl’s family had moved in.

And now, he had a roommate.

“Care to tell me why my space is now yours?” he asked as Pearl returned after dinner, smiling happily before diving onto the bed. His simple blankets were gone and replaced by Pearl’s lush covers. He had to admit they would feel comfortable had he been truly able to feel them.

Since dying, some of his senses had faded over time. Others had intensified. Whilst taste and touch had dulled, his experience of his emotions overwhelmed him.

And right now he was feeling a lot of contempt.

Pearl waved him off excitedly. “This is our space.”

“Ours? Pearl, you’re thirteen. I’m a grown man. I will not share this room with you. It’s unacceptable.”

“You promised!” she whined and stopped his rash movement towards the exit. Watching out of the corner of his eye as she scrambled towards the edge of the bed, Sungjin sighed at her desperation. Turning to face her, Pearl clasped her hands to her chest. “You said you wouldn’t leave me.”

“And you decided last night that meant you would suffocate me?”

“How is this suffocating? We never have any problems spending all day together. When I’m not in school, we often spend from when I rise to when I close my eyes doing just that. How is this any different?”

He wanted to say many things. It wasn’t that she was wrong; he had no problem with spending his time with Pearl, or any of his friends. His years of forced solitude were long over. However, there was no denying that Pearl was growing up. She would need her space to deal with tasks that were far from his comprehension. He had once had an older sister, and whilst they had been close, he had not been privy to her personal experiences through the changes of adolescence. Sure, Pearl had a lot of growing up to do, and right now she wasn’t actively in the throes of it. But this had been his space for as long as the room had existed. He was disgruntled that he would have to give it up for her privacy when the time came.

Pearl’s face contorted and soon she was giggling loudly, rolling about the bed. “Are you… are you shy of a woman’s body?!”

“I wouldn’t be going around calling yourself a woman just yet, Pearl,” he muttered, spinning away from her again. Before he could leave, she had dashed across the room and hugged him from behind. His insides surged and he felt confused as to why he was so delighted by the embrace. “You should be more practical.”

“Sungjin, I’m not going to change my mind even when I’m old and grey.”

“About?”

Swinging around his waist so she was now in front of him, Pearl smiled up at him. “Ever since I met you, I’ve always thought you were the man of my dreams.”

“I am nothing of the sort, for one, I’m dead. And you met me when you were seven. How would a child be sure of anything that young?”

“I’m certain I’ll never meet someone as wonderful as you are in my time,” she stated and Sungjin began to feel faint from all the concern whizzing around inside of him. Shaking his head, he pushed her off.

“I am like a brother; see me no further than that.”

“Wait until I change into a fine woman, then you’ll have problems maintaining that stance,” Pearl told him with a huff, stomping back to her bed.

His bed.

Sungjin groaned, rubbing at his face before retreating to the new armchair in the corner.

“Are you not coming to bed?”

“It’s either this chair or I leave the room,” he announced darkly and Pearl nodded from within her bedding.

“Very well then, I’ll endeavour to make your space more comfortable for you over the next week.”

And that she had. Pearl spent the winter break sewing a quilted blanket that now rest on the chair for him to use at night. She ensured a small table was placed beside it for him to put his glasses and book upon each night, and had even placed a photo frame of herself there.

Over the next four years, she changed out the photo regularly. Because, as she had once stated, Pearl did grow into a fine woman.

Swirling around in her navy polka dot dress, Pearl laughed with delight. “Your face right now.”

“I said nothing.”

“You didn’t have to,” she mused, walking to his side. Glancing up at him with eyes alive, Pearl’s smile grew. “You think I look divine, don’t you?”

“It suits you,” he commented dryly, darting his eyes away unsuccessfully. At age seventeen, Pearl was dynamic. And incredibly aware that he often had to swallow back sinful thoughts that had grown over time. He disliked that he had fallen trap to her charms, and yet, looking back over the past ten years, he wondered if there was ever a point where he hadn’t been captivated by her.

“Merely suits me?” she wondered with another laugh, reaching out for one of his hands and tugging on it. He didn’t budge and she grumbled. “Surely, you have more to say than that.”

“It will turn heads at the dance tonight. There, is that satisfactory?” he offered and Pearl pursed her plump crimson lips together, offended he still hadn’t spoken the words that she could see within his warm eyes.

That she was beautiful. The most attractive woman he had ever seen in all of his years, dead or alive.

Her hand was still holding his and she stepped closer, looking up at him, now recovered from her annoyance. “I wish you could be my escort.”

“Don’t be foolish.”

“I know you would dance with me,” she continued and Sungjin chuckled.

“As will many others.”

“Won’t you dance with me?” she murmured, slipping a hand to his waist. He shook his head and pulled away, her touch now burning him down to the soul.

“Go dance with the eligible men and tell me about it in the morning. Goodnight, Pearl.”

He ignored her until she left with an outlandish whine, and whilst he waited at the window for her return all night long, by the time she had made it up the front of the house stairs and into her room, he had feigned slumber within his chair.

“Sungjin, I know you to be awake. You told me yourself, ghosts do not need to sleep, eat or drink.”

He shifted in his chair, angling himself away from her.

Hearing enclosing footsteps, he soon felt her weight across his lap, hands reaching for his face. Sungjin looked at her within the moonlight, enamoured by the young woman before him. Pearl had let down her hair, loose waves framing her face. With the guidance of the natural lighting, he was able to take in everything upon her face.

She was staring at him with a look within her eyes that spoke a thousand words.

He couldn’t avoid her now, even if he wanted to.

“Won’t you dance with me?”

“Aren’t you tired from doing so?” he murmured back and she shook her head, waves of blonde crashing against her face as she did so. He reached out for her cheek and Pearl instantly nuzzled his hand.

There was no return now.

“One dance,” he agreed, helping her stand before joining her at the space by the large window. With the moon guiding their steps, they danced for what felt like forever. Bodies soon drifting together, flush with one another’s clothing.

“I love you, Sungjin,” she whispered as she gazed at him and smiled. Before he could respond, she stretched up and placed those crimson kissable lips he had marvelled over earlier in the evening upon his.

Taste and touch returned, and colour truly morphed around him. As he kissed her back, slow and exploring, Sungjin believed his heart jolted. Somehow the dormant way it laid within his chest now jerked, attempting to beat once more. It was the closest he would get to feeling alive again.

“I love you too,” he told her when his lips separated from her, adoring the dishevelment he had caused. Pearl grinned, pulling him back towards her bed.

“I just want to sleep in your arms tonight, can you grant me that?”

Sungjin nodded, his surprise over her brazen move now easing. “I’ll do anything you ask of me.”

_________________

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I am not sure if you have been asked already if you have you can link to your answer if not what would you say you are most excited for in season 2? and then what would you say you are least excited for?

Hi nonnie!

I talked about some of it  in this post, but now that we’re closer to the S2 premiere (62 days), I tried to write down a little more (esp. about other characters than Alex *ahem*). THIS GOT LONG

Liz

Liz will have A LOT on her plate this season. She’s lost Max and got Rosa back in return. That’s some grade A emotional whiplash! It’ll be interesting to see how the new dynamic  between the sisters will be (Liz is the younger sister, but she’s the  older one now, that should be interesting!). We know from several BTS pics/vids this year (thanks, Trevino!), that Liz will work at the  Crashdown quite a bit (I wonder what that means in regards to a job in the field of biomedical engineering?). I also expect her to figure out a way to bring Max back (does she have/get a lab, will there be another underground bunker, will she work at Michael’s bunker???).

In the trailer Liz was seen with Jenna (😍) who showed her how to use a weapon. WHY IS LIZ LEARNING HOW TO SHOOT??? 😱 How is her relationship with her dad, will she tell him about Rosa (not just that she’s back, but also the bit about where Jim Valenti is Rosa’s biological dad? Or does Arturo already know???).  And what role does Liz’s mom play when she comes to visit? Oh, and how/when does she figure out how to bring back Max? So many questions, and I can’t wait to find out.

Rosa

Rosa’s return is one of very, VERY few things I liked about 1x13. I’m so excited she’s back and can’t wait to get to know her properly in S2. She’ll have a lot to deal with (”I’m a ghost.” is what she says in the trailer, that implies that she has to stay hidden, at least early on!). She’s still a recovering alcoholic and addict, and then there’s this whole thing of being alive again after a decade of… well, a decade of what? Noah put her in his pod, the same pod he said didn’t keep him in stasis properly. What does that mean for Rosa? Noah’s in a scene with Rosa in the trailer, is that a flashback? Was she ‘alive’ in the pod, or was she actually dead and didn’t feel a thing? How will her dad react? How’s her relationship with Liz going to develop? How ‘delighted’ will she be to interact with Kyle, her half-brother? I can’t wait to find out about all of that!

Isobel

My girl Isobel! She’s gonna have a lot to deal with in S2. First and foremost there’s Max’s death, which - given that they are sharing a very special psychic bond - I would imagine will be super hard for her to handle. In 1x13 we also saw her ‘unlock’ a new (new to her) power. Is that something she’ll try to develop further in the hopes of bringing Max back? Will she work with Liz? Will she unlock other powers? How will she approach dealing with the severe trauma of Noah betraying and (ab)using her? Will she go to therapy? Pretend like  everything is okay and try to figure it out on her own? Go to Kyle and talk to him? Go to Alex (PLEASE, LET HER GO TO ALEX)? Is she the one who’ll identify as ‘not straight’ at the end of S2? I’m absolutely STOKED for Isobel’s journey, especially bc Lily’s the coolest who also gives Carina ideas and talks to her about Isobel a lot. This is going to be so good!!!

Maria

Maria’s the character that had the least development in S1. She didn’t have  much of a storyline of her own, and mostly served as a catalyst for other character’s stories. I hope that will fundamentally change in S2. Carina’s said that they’ll dive into Maria’s family history this season, meaning that we’ll hopefully find out more about the necklace she’s wearing, its powers, and what part her family played after the UFO crash in 1947. What’s the DeLuca family legacy, and what do they know about aliens? When will Maria find out about aliens, and how will she react - not just about the fact that aliens exist, but that everyone close to her kept it from her for so long? Will be interesting to see what they’re doing with Maria this season. 

Max

Will probably stay dead for at least some of S2, he’ll probably be brought back halfway through S2? The when and how of bringing him back is one thing, interesting will also be, how Max is. Is he the same as before? Or did the use of that much power to bring Rosa back cost him. A part of his soul? His memories? Something else? Some people mentioned dark!Max could be an option, that could be really cool.

Kyle

My boo Kyle!!! I want nothing but good things to happen to Dr. McSexy. I hope his friendship with Alex continues to blossom and grow, I can’t wait for more brilliant and hilarious one-liners and quips (Kyle had the best lines in S1, and Trevino delivered every single one to perfection!), there’s at least one Kyliz kiss in his future, and while I know they’ll never be endgame (😢), I’ll enjoy it while it lasts (here’s me shallowly hoping for some good recreational s e x for the good doctor, though I do hope he doesn’t get his heart broken.

Michael

It’ll be SO hard to see Michael spiral. :( He’s got so many things to deal with, and I’m worried how long his ‘free fall’ will last before he’s able to stabilize? Caulfield and Max’s death will be super hard on him, Iz will be busy getting her own life in order, and while I hope Liz and Michael will work together to bring Max back, it remains to be seen if Michael’s even up for it. I’m just glad to know that Alex is around, solid as a rock, not going anywhere, and I hope Michael will allow him to be there for him. ‘Only’ as a friend for now, but that’s what S2′s supposed to be about, Alex and Michael becoming friends. They still love each other (SO MUCH 🥺), they still have this cosmic bond, and I hope that despite them not being together (as ‘in a relationship), they’ll steadily move towards getting back together.

Special wish: should the ‘Alex gets kidnapped’ story line happen, I can’t WAIT for tornado!Michael to do everything in his power(s) to bring him back. And should there be a reason for Michael to put a handprint on Alex, I WANT IT!!!

Alex

Unsurprisingly, I’m most looking forward to all things Alex next season. And I really mean ALL things. Just seeing him will spark joy. I’m also prepared to worry about him. A LOT. First of all, he’ll re-enlist again. Staying in the Air Force enables him to get access to important information, which hopefully helps to keep Michael, Iz and Max safe, but what a price to pay… :/

I’m looking forward to the developing friendship between Alex and Michael, for the friendship between Alex and Kyle to grow, and I want a friendship between Alex and Isobel like almost nothing else in S2! I’m looking forward to BAMF!Alex who left nice in the Middle East and is ready to take on the fight with his father. I’m looking forward to interactions between Alex and his brothers (soooo curious about all things Manes Brothers!). I’m anxious to see how he’ll react to M/M (I really hope they won’t make him pretend it’s no big deal, or ‘forgive’ like it’s nothing that Maria went behind his back…), I hope to see Alex’s disability be more ‘visible’ again than during the latter half of S1. I wish his PTSD and what it means for him would be more visible and addressed but that might not happen. And then there’s of course BUFFYYYY! I’m prepared to sob my way through their first encounter. I’m so, so happy he gets to have her! ❤️

Buffy

I CANNOT WAIT TO MEET THIS VERY GOOD GIRL!!!!! 😍

What I hope for

A season that expands the RNM universe without losing focus of our main characters. Reveals of important alien history. Friendships developing. I hope that the influence of the large number of queer, POC, and female people working in the writers room and behind the camera will have a really positive influence on how S2 comes together.

I also hope for S2 to end on a positive/hopeful note for Malex. I hope they won’t be in relationships with other people going into S3, and I hope there’ll be a real chance for them to get back together in S3.

Despite them not being together in S2, I still hope for a kiss (OR SEVERAL, DON’T HOLD BACK ON MY ACCOUNT). I can’t go an entire season without them kissing 🥺🥺🥺

More characters  + some DNWs below the cut

Jenna

My girl Jenna! Gosh, I love her, and I can’t wait to see her again. I’m also hoping she’ll be in more than one episode. I want to know more about Charlie, I want to see more of my favorite sleuthing trio Jenna/Alex/Kyle. Just… give me aaaaaall the Jenna content!

Mimi

I hope we’ll learn more about her, her history with Jesse, and her potential history with aliens. What does Mimi know, did an alien ‘give’ her dementia? Is there a cure?

Steph

Steph (played by Justina Adorno) is a new character we haven’t met yet. According to Justina, “Steph is sassy. She is the Head of Surgery’s daughter. She’s a smart educated girl with a little sass“. So we don’t have much to work with yet, but ‘Head of Surgery’s daughter’ implies, that she might meet Kyle first (at the hospital)? Will she be in on the alien secret, or play a different role? Either way, I’m always excited for more female characters!

Grace Powell

I couldn’t be more excited about Jamie Clayton in Roswell, she’s brilliant and I want her around for more than just 2-3 episode. Hope she’s one of the good guys!

Mara & Louise

Mara (Michael’s mom) and Louise (likely Isobel’s and Max’s mom) are two characters we’ll meet in flashbacks to 1947. I’m excited to find out more about the aliens who crashed, where they are from, I hope the flashbacks will fill out some blanks. I’m also very curious to find out how they’ll incoroprate the flashbacks in general. Are these memories Isobel and Michael manage to unlock? Are there videos in the Caulfield files? Do they find old diaries in 2018 and they play out on screen?

Jesse

May he get what he deserves in S2 (AND I WANT ALEX TO BE THE LAST THING HE EVER SEES, PREFERABLY ALEX KISSING MICHAEL)

Arturo

No one, and I mean really absolutely NO ONE is allowed to mess with Papi Ortecho. (ง︡’-‘︠)ง  (ง︡’-‘︠)-o  (ง︡’-‘︠)ง Liz needs him, Rosa needs him,I need him. He better be healthy and well by the end of S2!

Jason Behr’s character

No idea who he’s going to play, probably someone from the 1947 timeline? Or someone who could be dangerous for the Pod Squad in 2018?

Wyatt Long

He’ll be in at least one episode, maybe more? What is he going to do if he ever finds out Rosa’s back???

For[r]est

Hopefully a good guy, and good for Alex. Still not eager to see this unfold on screen tho…

Manes Brothers

Ahhhhh, I’m actually super excited for Gregory Manes, and also for more Flint! I hope we’ll find out more about them, about their dynamics, who’s older/younger, how it was when they were little, and even though we won’t meet their mom this season, I hope we’ll hear sth about her (and why she left). I also hope that at least one of them will be in Alex’s corner, I’d also be in favor of a redemption arc for Flint, just putting that out there.

DNW

Any and all M/M & A/F “love” triangle stuff. I don’t want it and I wish it wasn’t part of S2. Alas, it will be and I just hope M/M will end quickly, and A/F is nothing but a fling. Ugh, I don’t want any of this 😩 My absolute nightmare would be for both ‘relationships’ to last into S3.

Extensive flashbacks to 1947 that take away precious screen time I’d rather see dedicated to characters in 2018.

Episodes that had to be edited extensively to fit 42 minutes (still mourning every little scene they had to cut from S1 episodes, even though we’ll never know what and how much got cut from each ep, it just was A LOT for some episodes)

Too much focus on the overall ‘murder mystery’ plot (or whatever we’ll get this year) . I’d much rather see the characters grow and interact with each other (more group scenes would be nice).

Another trash fire of a final episode like 1x13. Of course there will be a cliffhanger, and this time we know that we’ll definitely get another season, but still. Another season finale leaving the characters - and therefore us - in such a bad place would be the absolute worst. We’ve barely made it through this hiatus, I don’t think this fandom could handle another one with so much uncertainty, heartbreak, and dread of what’s to come in S3.

In case you’ve made it until the very end of this post, thank you, and thanks for your ask!!! Hope you’re having a great day, nonnie!  ✨💚👽

[canaryrecords]

"Love - the absolute circle of trustfulness - that's the secret of it all. I love the birds, the snakes, the society person, the academic, and the baby - all creatures of the universe are alike, and they will never harm you unless you fear them." -Charles Kellogg, 1915 Charles Dennison Kellogg was unlike any performer in the history of the American stage. He developed a few key obsessions - the forest, love, vibration, fire - into an irresistibly charismatic package and then sold that package in the form of himself through an uncanny use of the press, a vigorous appetite for travel, and a need to be the center of attention through a serpentine five-decade career as a pontificator and showman. In the early decades of the twentieth century, he amused and astounded heiresses and industrialists, yogis and artists, scientists and, most of all, the plain folk of most states in the union with demonstrations of his vision of a wholesome and interconnected world of all living things. His memory has largely faded, but he left behind a memoir, riddled with gaps and touched with hokum, many photographs, hundreds of press notices and reviews in newspapers, over an hour of sound recordings, at least one fragment of film, and a legacy of naturalism and invention that has entered into the lore of his native California. Kellogg was born October 2, 1868, the fourth of five children to Henry Kellogg (b. 1822 in New London, Connecticut) and Mary E. Carlisle (b. 1845 in Jefferson, New York) in the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern California’s Plumas County in a settlement called Spanish Ranch “nearly a hundred miles from the nearest railroad,” according to Kellogg. His father’s involvement in a nearby goldmine in the 1850s paid off, and he used his share of the profits to establish a provisions store for the area prospectors. Kellogg wrote that his mother was the only white woman in the area, and that he “lost her in infancy.” In fact, she left the family when he was about 3 years old, and his autobiography gives us an indication of the wound her abandonment left through the pains with which he purposefully wrote her out of his life’s story. (She died in Long Beach, California in 1917.) In his auto-mythology, Kellogg was as a child close to a Chinese servant named Moon and an unnamed Indian woman, who, he wrote, “taught me to fear no creature [and] taught me, too, the habit of minding my own business, letting the other fellow alone - bird, bear, snake, Indian and other humans. […] My earliest recollection is sitting with the Indians about their campfires or watching the Chinamen boil their rice between stones.” The impressions of the sounds and feelings of the wilderness in early childhood embedded themselves deeply in young Charles. He recalled it as a period of immense freedom, a world with “no doctors, missionaries, telephone, telegraph, schools, saloons, poorhouse, jail or gamblers; no police for there was no disorder. There were birds, grizzly bears, deer, wolves, foxes, skunks, badgers, mountain lions, wild cats, snakes, and all the smaller wood folk.” It was also here that before the age of six, he witnessed a wedding for the first time and learned about death and funeral rites among the Chinese. In this powerful paradise of vivid experiences, he was “lonely, but not unhappy,” spending his days “always preoccupied with birds and insects, listening to them and talking to them in their own languages.” It was between the ages of four and six that he began to experiment with his ability to imitate birds, forcing air through this nose with his mouth closed. He claimed throughout his adult life that this remarkable ability came down to an anatomical formation in his larynx similar to that of a songbird. This claim, repeated thousands of times, often backed up with the validation of unnamed doctors, was, of course, utter nonsense, but it is not clear whether he believed it, on some level, himself. It was many years after Kellogg had been sent off to live with his mother’s relatives in Syracuse, New York at the age of six or seven that Charles realized that he was in possession of a remarkable skill. In Syracuse, he learned to work with tools, to build furniture and fireplaces - skills he valued and worked into his persona as a woodsman. He attended Syracuse University and sang in the choir, aware that a relative of his father’s (by marriage) Clara Louise Kellogg, had become a famous soprano. But apart from mentions of his education in the manly, manual crafts, the period from the ages of seven to twenty-two when Kellogg became a civilized, college-educated Yankee were never mentioned in Kellogg’s stories. They didn’t serve what he was selling about himself. Almost immediately after graduation, we have the first press notice of Charles Kellogg as a performer, August 1891 at Chautauqua, New York, a hotbed of aspirational “edutainment,” where he debuted his unique bird-imitation talent. Realizing that he was on to something, he gave at least a half-dozen concerts of music with bird imitation at YMCAs, churches, and meetings around Pennsylvania and New York at the beginning and end of the year and another half-dozen in California a few months later. There were more shows in California in 1893-94, then back to Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in 1896-97. All of February and March of 1898 was spent touring Pennsylvania and Ohio. January through April of 1900 was spent on the road through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, D.C., and Virginia, by which time he was claiming to have anywhere from a 9 1/2 to 12 1/2 octave vocal range. After getting married for the first time, he spent November 1900 to April 1901 touring the same states again plus Connecticut and published an article in Success magazine called “The Wickedness and Folly of Killing Birds.” In early 1902, through Horace Traubel, friend and executor of Walt Whitman, Kellogg met the naturalist John Burroughs, thirty years’ Kellogg’s senior, with whom he traveled to Jamaica during January and February. Kellogg held Burroughs (as wells as naturalist John Muir, with whom he also spent several days with at one point) in esteem and treasured the memory of their trip. Burroughs was certainly an influence on and model for Kellogg. Whether Kellogg was aware of Burrough’s fierce denunciation in a 1903 article for the Atlantic denouncing contemporary nature-writers tendencies to anthropomorphize the natural world is unclear, but it was major news among naturalists for years, ultimately drawing comment from President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1904, Kellogg and his brother bought a 45 acre plot in North Newry, Maine, where they built the Kellogg Nature Camp, a Summer vacation resort for city folk wanting to spend time in with the woods. They built cabins connected by boardwalks, a common-house with a large fireplace (a specialty of Charles’s) and powered it with a waterwheel. It is now part of a nature reserve with many of the structures they built still standing. And each year during each late Fall, Winter, and early Spring, in an ever expanding radius, Kellogg began to cover the country with shows of his knowledge of and ability to replicate bird song - Tennessee and Kentucky by 1903, Nebraska and Kansas by 1907. By that time, shows regularly lasted two hours and received glowing reviews everywhere he went. His break came at the age of 43 in 1910, by which time he had left his first wife Emily and relocated to San Francisco and had ingratiated himself within a world wealthy socialites, where he was a favorite at parties. On December 4 The Call newspaper ran a, glowing illustrated full-page article on him titled The Man Who Sings With Birds in Their Own Language, which crystalized in print the stage-show that Kellogg had been assiduously developing, year after year, for nearly two decades. "He has the uttermost faith in the power of love and kindness,” the article asserted. “’It is all love," he says. 'Anybody who goes into the woods with the spirit of love in his heart without the faintest desire for destruction or possession can make friends with the birds if he is merely tactful and patient. Birds can read the heart better than men. They know their friends and are ready to love them.' In Kellogg's mind, there is no place for fear or hatred [...] Fear creates fear. Hatred breeds hatred. Love engenders love. These are the cardinal tenants of Kellogg's creed." His count of 3,000 performances in 24 years was, like almost everything else he said, likely an exaggeration but not so far from the truth that you could discount the claim out of hand. Twenty years of stories, stage patter, and tricks caught the public imagination. Less than a month after the article appeared in San Francisco, Kellogg went to Camden, New Jersey to cut his first trial disc for Victor Records on January 24, 1911 and then another four performances on the 28th. Victor didn’t release any of them. When Kellogg went back on the road on the east coast from October to December 1911, he had a new repertoire of claims for his abilities. This is when his press notices begin to claim that his throat is abnormally formed like that of a bird’s. And that: -He’d been to Paris and Berlin and received high praise. (His sister-in-law did invite him to perform at a private salon in Paris, where he met August Rodin, but not until 1912.) -His throat had been examined at Harvard. (He had been claiming that he’d “baffled scientists” there for years, and that they’d measured his vocal range from 64 cycles a second to 49,560 cycles.) -He speaks 15 animal languages and can communicate with bears, rattlesnakes, worms (who, he said, can sing), lizards, squirrels, etc. -That a man could (theoretically) be pinned motionless to a tree with the use of sound. -And, most crucially for his career from this point forward, that he could extinguish fire with sound. In February 1912 an article making many of these claims along with his belief that “vibration will ultimately take the place of electricity as a motive force” ran in syndication across the country in advance of his having signed with the Orpheum chain of vaudeville theaters for whom he performed three shows a day (a matinee and two at night) for months across the west coast - Winnipeg, Spokane, Los Angeles, etc - from April 1912 until April of the following year and then, without his standard Summer break, for the rest of 1913 across the east coast plus Indiana, Illinois, North Carolina, and Kansas. In New York City, he gave a demonstration of divination for water for another syndicated news article. He spent 1914 touring the west coast and midwest before returning to the Philadelphia area where he remarried to Sarah “Sad’i” Fuller Burchard on January 14, 1915 in Wilmington, Delaware. One month later, he went again to Camden, New Jersey in February 1915, where over two days he recorded the first four performances that were issued on discs. He was almost 47 years old and had spent the past 25 years on the road developing his act in halls, theaters, auditoriums, clubhouses, churches, tents, homes, and high schools. Kellogg’s assessment of vaudeville does not have the ring of disreputable behavior that has often been handed down through the years: “Back stage is not such a fry cry from the forest, for on these vaudeville stages I find conditions that are congenial to my own habits of the woods - conditions I do not find elsewhere in the world. In hotels, railroads, and even private homes, tobacco and other noxious odors, and not infrequently even uncleanliness such as cuspidors, are not unusual. System, punctuality and order are seldom the rule. In the forest, in all nature, punctuality, order, and system are the very breath of life. The stars, the tides, the migration of birds, the appearance of herbs, the trees, the flowers are all on time, giving that sense of harmony felt, and rejoiced in by all. Back stage, I find pure air in perfect ventilation, no tobacco, no bad odors, scrupulous cleanliness, system, order, punctuality - in a word, the perfection of organization, bringing quiet and a reposeful atmosphere in which to work.” Kellogg’s first vaudeville tour was a 1912-13 run at the west coast Orpheum chain, run by Percy Williams who was known as the first vaudeville impresario to pay high fees to the acts he wanted. The west coast Orpheum houses were run locally and, according to Joe Lurie Jr’s Vaudeville: From the Honky-Tonks to the Palace (1953), unlike many of the rowdier and down-market vaudeville theaters, “they were all fine, clean, well-appointed theaters, running clean shows, and were a credit to their towns.” Kellogg performed at shows with as many as eight other acts on the bill. The shows in Washington opened just after Bert Williams’ run and included a spoof of the domestic morality play Everywoman titled Everywife, the blackface comedy duo McIntyre and Heath, the Fearless Ce Dora (“one continuous thrill through the seven minutes which she spends revolving at railroad speed inside [a] golden globe”), and Thomas Edison’s early, abortive attempts at talking pictures. Through 1915 and 1916 Kellogg was headlining in the eastern U.S. for both Orpheum and B.F. Keith’s circuits of vaudeville houses in the eastern U.S. and Quebec as well as Majestic Theaters in the midwest and Texas, where others on the bills included dog acts, monkey acts, the Dennis Brothers’ rotating ladder act, and various acrobats, singers, and comedians. At the end of each show was Kellogg, standing in front of a painted woodland backdrop. Second on the bill for at least one of those shows was the Three Keatons, including 20 year old Buster, who was on the verge of leaving for Hollywood. Kellogg himself appeared second on the bill in late 1916 only under Nora Bayes, arguably the most popular singer in the U.S. His proclamations to the press at the time ranged from the flatly false (that he did not believe “that wild animals die unless molested by man or that they struggle with each other, because I have never seen them do either,” that he did not know his own age, that hat he spent 9 months of the year in the wilderness and came “into civilized society only when the call of a friend proves too strong to resist”) to the simply peculiar and the nearly-true (that he had “never read a book through - print disturbs me - although I believe in the teaching of the Bible as I have heard of them from others, because I have seen the proved true in my own life,” and “I have never tasted fish, flesh, or fowl, although I am not a vegetarian,” that dogs will die from long durations of discordant sounds) to the charming, bordering on visionary (“Fear - that’s what causes all sin. Fear of money, fear of getting caught, fear of wounded vanity, fear of public opinion, all all the rest,” and “I can take the recorded songs of a thousand birds and they will be harmonious. That’s because they are in tune with nature, while man and his instruments need to be attuned.”) Kellogg was an avid photographer, claiming never to take a gun (or a compass, claiming an inborn sense of direction) into the woods, but producing photographs prolifically from 1902 onward. We know that he had performed in Rochester, New York, home of the Eastman-Kodak company, by December, 1900, around the time of the introduction of the “brownie” camera - the first cheap, popular device for making photos. It is unclear whether he might at that point met Gertrude Achilles Strong (b. May 4, 1860; d. May, 1955), a recent divorcee and the daughter of Henry A. Strong, co-founder and first president of the Kodak company, or whether they met much later in the late 1910s in Hawai’i. Regardless, their meeting and relationship was pivotal for Kellogg. His first disc for Victor certainly sold very well, likely in the tens of thousands, and he claimed that he could earn $4,000 a week (a staggering $100,000 in today’s money - and more than half of the $7,000 a week that the Orpheum paid Sarah Bernhardt, their highest-paid entertainer) performing in the 1910s, and his family was relatively wealthy. But they weren’t Gertrude Achilles Strong wealthy. Almost no one was. When she died in 1955, she left behind a fortune of over nine million dollars, making her the single richest person in the history of the state of California at the time, well into the top half of the richest 1% nationally. In 1913, Kellogg bought over 88 acres in Morgan Hill, south of San Francisco, an area he dubbed “Ever Ever Land,” where he built an inventive and “environmentally responsive” open plan cabin that he called “The Mushroom.” Around 1920, Gertrude Achilles Strong bought his land and more than 500 additional surrounding acres. She built a mansion for herself there at a cost of $276,000 (four million today) as well as a house for Kellogg and his wife and put him on her permanent payroll as property manager. He built water systems for her property and built and patented a riding fruit and nut picker for the property, while he lived comfortably with his wife Sad’i and two young live-in maids for the rest of his life. Each winter from 1915 through 1919, Kellogg toured from coast to coast, stopping in Camden, New Jersey to record a few performances for Victor Records, where he cut a total of 26 performances, six of which the company the company destroyed without having issued them. On February 15 and 16, 1916, he recorded four light classical pieces, imitating birds and following along the well-known melodies, as if a bird were singing the tunes in its down language. On the 15th, Alma Gluck, a star of the Metropolitan Opera and one of the most popular sopranos in the U.S. also recorded three of her best-selling performances. Although she did not record on the 16th, and Kellogg possibly traveled more than 100 miles north to Dalton, Pennsylvania near Scranton to visit friends on the 17th when Gluck recorded “The Bird of the Wilderness,” with words by Rabindranath Tagore, he joined her again in Victor’s studio on the 18th for two bird-themed performances on which Kellogg provided bird imitations. When the single-sided 12” disc of “Listen to the Mockingbird” was released in the Spring along with a significant marketing push by Victor, its sales exceeded expectations. When “Nightingale Song” from a mid-19th century operetta called Der Vogelhandler (The Bird Seller) by the Austrian composer Carl Zeller, was released a month or two later as a less-expensive 10,” it became one of the best-selling records of the decade. Apart from the two sides recorded with Gluck, Kellogg’s recordings are evenly divided between the bird-imitation novelties with musical accompaniment (an unenduring genre that grew in popularity both on stage and on records in the early decades of the 20th century) and segments of his stage act in which he would lecture on his relationship with the wilderness with demonstrations of bird-calls interspersed. Seven of those sides remain a fascinating glimpse of Kellogg’s performing persona. The last of them, titled “Bird Chorus,” recorded without commentary on January 14, 1919 is an extraordinary and unheralded moment in the history of sound recording. Starting in January 1915 and through all of 1916, Kellogg added a section of his stage act in which he turned on “an orchestra” of six Victrolas borrowed from local dealers in each town, and played discs of his bird-imitation and then proceeded to perform with them, simulating, as one reviewer put it, “a voice from the deep forest.” For the “Bird Chorus” disc Kellogg simplified the process to a single disc of his own performing along with a live performance, ingeniously weaving two continuous sequences of songs together to give the impression of multitudes of birds singing together. It is the first instance of overdubbing. Notably lacking from Kellogg’s discography are examples of his most spectacular and longest-lasting piece from his stage act - the “Blade of Flame.” By the beginning of 1912, Kellogg introduced a gas burner on stage which produced a four-foot blue flame inside a glass tube. Kellogg told his audience that because all of nature is connected through vibration and because of the gift he possessed of a vocal range many times that of highly trained singers and larger than that of a grand piano, he could cause the “blade of flame” to dance and ultimately to extinguish it using only his voice. It was, next to his bird-imitating, his best-known and best-loved routine. He augmented it with a demonstration of the technique of building fire by wood friction (a skill he imparted to the then-nascent Boy Scouts). Naturally, his fire performances in enclosed theaters were of some concern to local fire departments, and he made it a regular public relations stop to visit fire houses in each town during the afternoons to demonstrate the act, reassuring them of his control of fire and wowing them along with the local press. The only footage apparently extant of Kellogg is one silent minute of a newsreel outtake Kellogg giving this demonstration for a group of Boston firemen on November 5, 1926. (The film, including ten precious seconds at the end of Kellogg demonstrating his bird-imitation technique facing the camera is available online at the University of South Carolina’s Moving Image Research Collections site.) He continued to elaborate the routine, using bowed tuning forks. In the mid-20s he arranged a series of radio broadcasts intended to demonstrate his hypothesis that vibrations broadcast at sufficient amplitude could extinguish house fires. His proposal was that in the future each house could be scientifically tuned such that fire departments would need only to broadcast the appropriate frequencies to put out the fires. The seed for the idea seems to have originated with Kellogg’s exposure to Herman Helmholtz’s book On the Sensation of Tone which had already been published in two editions in America before Kellogg began making theatrical use of its central concept, that the air around us is a medium through which vibration is transmitted in waves. Kellogg was so enamored with the idea that in May and June of 1913, Kellogg added a bit to his stage act in which he explained to the audience that mental vibrations are crucial in love and marriage and that “tuning” of a silent “mental wireless” to a compatible frequency with one’s mate was central to harmonious love. Newsprint reviews of his attempts to demonstrate this with his wife were decidedly snarky. The audience didn’t get it, and it was quickly dropped from the act. Kellogg’s greatest and most enduring “hit” as a showman was neither a stage-act nor a recording. It was a vehicle made from two large pieces. The first was a Nash Quad, a four-wheel drive truck capable of hauling four tons. The second was a 22-foot section of a fallen redwood log eleven feet in diameter. He obtained the former in early Summer 1917 from the Nash Motor Company in Kenosha, Wisconsin while they were being produced for use in the First World War. Kellogg convinced the company’s namesake president of a vision of the beauty of California’s enormous redwood forests (and, very likely, the publicity benefits of Kellogg’s scheme) and took the Quad to Bull Creek Flat in Humbolt County, where with the help of several axemen from the Pacific Lumber Company they spent months sawing off a section of a fallen tree, stripping its bark, and carving out its interior into a living quarters with beds, cabinets, kitchenette, and bathroom. Mounting it on the chassis of the Quad, he polished and varnished the whole thing a copper color and installed electric lights. By November of that year, he drove the wooden cabin-on-wheels that he dubbed the Travel-Log cross-country, stopping in Kenosha for work on the radiator and “finishing touches” (including their brand name, it seems). Using his celebrity and press-savvy, he toured the machine, giving talks on the beauty of the great redwoods and the dire need for their preservation, taking a piece of the forest to the people. In the process, he introduced America to the idea of a mobile home. It now resides in the Humbolt State Park’s visitor center, reportedly only yards from where the tree from which it was hewn grew for centuries. Kellogg recorded 11 more performances for Victor during the period 1924-26. Seven of them were discarded by the company without having been released. The remaining four were re-recordings of his first two records using the new invention of microphones. While he continued to perform, his schedule gradually slowed as he shifted his first to attention to Gertrude Achilles Strong’s property and then to a fascination with Fiji, where he first traveled in the Spring of 1925 from Hawai’i. Fixated on the idea of wooden lali slit-drums and their use in communication over distances, Kellogg arrived alone and presented himself as a naturalist to the Chief of the Native Department on the island of Suva, who showed him a the instrument and for him to visit to the island of Baqa to witness fire-walking (after Kellogg had given a demonstration of the “blade of flame” routine, having thoughtfully packed the gear needed for it, and gave a performance of “Narcissus” as a bird-imitator) in the company of a British medical doctor. Kellogg was suitably impressed and incorporated discussion of both lali drumming and fire-walking as further evidence of his central theme of the need for vibratory attunement in his subsequent performances through the 1920s and 30s. In 1929, Kellogg survived a near-fatal car crash immediately before he self-published The Nature Singer: His Book, a profusely photo-illustrated collection of impressions drawn from his life and career and a document of his own self-invention, which went through at least two printings (all of them signed; the first 1000 are numbered), wrapped in the attractive but exceedingly brittle birch parchment that he used as stationary and for press notices. That year, he also patented an automobile ignition that started with whistling. He continued to criss-cross the country, giving talks based on his experiences in nature combined with pleas for conservation. There was talk of a movie that never manifested. In 1940, he and Sad’i adopted a 9 year old girl named Shannon who had been born in Honolulu. (She subsequently married a Charles Newton, nine years her senior, in 1961, divorcing him in 1967, and died in 2007.) When in 1946 Paramahansa Yogananda published his Autobiography of a Yogi, describing his encounters with spiritual teachers and his travel in India and U.S., he briefly recounted in a footnote having seen Charles Kellogg do the “blade of flame” bit in Boston in the ‘20s. And that’s who Kellogg has been for the past century - a remarkable and unlikely figure at the intersection of science and art and showmanship and the spiritual. Charles Kellogg’s health declined through the 1940s before died of a heart attack on September 3, 1949 at the age of 80.

[bongalways]

Tintinizing India - A story of life

If you are a Bengali who thrived when a misguided economic well-being did not threaten your mother tongue to its core, there is absolutely no chance that you have not been a part of the love that we always showed for detectives. We had our own Byomkesh, Feluda, Kiriti Roy, we had Sherlock and his overtly British demeanour. All of them possessed certain traits that were either something we had or something we desired. But among them, was an intrepid reporter from Brussels, who, without being something resembling our desires, burst into fame and remained famous ever since. The impact was so huge that it startled the creator of the character itself. He, always proclaiming that Tintin was his soul and that the character will cease to exist after him, was shocked by the love Tintin received from this tiny part of the world.

"I receive a lot of mail from India. Here, in my office, are two letters from Calcutta. Now, what can there be in common between a boy in Calcutta and myself?"

Why or how this tryst with Tintin started, is still a mystery to me.

In fact, the whole of India has always been a big admirer of Tintin. So much so, it has been such a crowd puller that Sony decided to release Spielberg’s Adventures of Tintin (2011) in India six weeks before it’s official release in USA. The movie still stands to be the highest grossing animated film in the country and also the animated feature film to receive the biggest opening ever. The comic books, adapted in Hindi around 2010, became and instant success and still remains to be one of the most sold comic series of all time.

However, that has not been the first time when Tintin spoke an Indian Language. Thirty years before it’s Hindi translation, Tintin was translated in a Bengali magazine, called Anandamela, for the first time. Aveek Sarkar, the same person who recently became famous through the comments made by our honourable CM, was the person who travelled the distance to meet Herge and ask for the rights to translate Tintin in Bengali. Till today, all the 23 translated versions released by Ananda Publishers remains to be an essential part of a Bengali childhood. Coincidentally, the first time I came to know about Tintin was not from one his stories or any news article. It was through one of my childhood heroes, the detective I have mentioned previously, Satyajit Ray’s Feluda. Ray, one of the biggest representatives of Bengali mindset, was a huge admirer of Tintin himself. His wonderfully woven brainchild Feluda, not only speaks about Tintin in several occasions, but somehow loosely resembles him in a lot of ways.

But why has Tintin always been so impactful? To answer that, we must know who Herge was, in what period was Tintin created and what were the stories trying to tell. Being born on 1907 in Belgium, George Remi a.k.a Herge was always destined to be living in midst of everything the three unimaginable decades presented the world with. Yes, Herge was there all through the world wars and was allegedly arrested for being a Nazi collaborator. Tintin was first published in 1929, but his story starts before that, when Herge started creating illustrations for the first time. Sources state Herge started creating illustrations during his school days as a protest against the German troops who occupied Belgium back then, during the First World War. However, the first notable published illustrations of Herge was about a boy-scout named Totor, who was inspired from his teen days as a boy scout. We can, therefore, safely assume that Totor, was the stepping stone that eventually lead to creation of Tintin. But that is not the same version of Tintin we all love and admire. The first three books (Tintin in the Land of Soviets (1930), Tintin in Congo (1931) and Tintin in America (1932)) were created with the initial beliefs that Herge possessed. Land of Soviets was about the ills of communism whereas Tintin in Congo, a brilliant portrayal of the diamond mining in Africa, was in itself way too racist than what is acceptable today. Tintin in America was a masterpiece though, and it was the one that perhaps cemented Tintin’s position in the world on Comics. The books portrayal of Native Americans, the Al Capone resemblances along with the attention to details makes it the most selling telling book till date.

Then, in 1934, came Cigars of Pharaoh. For the world, it introduced Rastapopoulos, Tintin’s nemesis and who’s similarity with stereotypical anti-Semitic portrayals will be talked about for a few decades. For us, it introduced India through Tintin’s eyes when the reporter’s plane crashed in a deep forest and he had to find his way out by becoming the official doctor of an elephant herd. The caricatures were what you can expect from a European of that time. The main villain is half-naked Fakir who throws darts mixed in a poison called Rajaija and makes the victim mad. The king of Gaipajama opposes opium trade and almost dies, Snowy is almost killed for abusing a holy cow. Not the ideal eh? So, anyone with the slightest idea of the rift between India and China can understand what comes next when the poppies are mentioned. But that was never the case. Why? Because in order to study the Orient, Herge was introduced to a Chinese named Zhang, the man who later became his best mate and can be credited for helping Tintin find his way.

The Blue Lotus (1936) starts where Cigars of Pharaoh ended and talks about the real China that was never talked about. Starting with the opium trade, Herge slowly shifts away to talk about Japans invasion of Manchuria and eventually, the second world war. The portrayal in so overwhelmingly wonderful, specially from an outsider, that it can be categorised as masterpiece similar to Spielberg-Christian Bale’s magnificent storytelling of Empires of the Sun.

Before WWII started and Belgium surrendered to German invasion, Herge wrote two more books (The Broken Ear and The Black Island) where the narrative primarily focused on adventure rather than politics. In 1939, just when the world prepared for WWII, Tintin saves Syldavia from a fascist leader in King Ottokar’s Sceptre. But the war meant Herge would eventually work under Nazi supervision and that was the case. Tintin goes up against a rich American Jewish man in The Shooting Star (1942). However, the books that followed this, namely The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure (1943-44), are considered to be his best works. Soon, WWII ended and Herge became a free man of the free world. Only, he was barred from creating Tintin because of his status as a Nazi collaborator.

Have you heard of a parody called Tintin in the Land of Nazis?

Fortunately, though, the world was lenient on Herge. After few years, he was allowed to write. Then came the Seven Crystal Balls (1948) and Prisoners of the Sun (1949), where Tintin meets the Incas. Land of the Black Gold (1951) talked about oil crisis way before it’s time, Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon (1953-54) made Tintin walk on moon way before Armstrong, Calculus Affair(1956) showed us cold war and Tintin in Tibet (1960) was all about finding a lost friend Chang (or, should we say Zhang from China?). Herge was so magnificent with his imagination as well as realisation of the world, the none of these stories fall out of place when compared with real history. Here, in Tintin in Tibet, we see a picturization of a New Delhi bazaar, so accurate and mesmerising, that you can almost forget the pent-up anger from what you read about India previously.  

So, after all this, why do we Indians still love Tintin when we are so bored to talk about the World Wars? 

Maybe it is because of how we have lived over the years. 

We, the modern Indians, are descendants of countless wars that waged within our boundaries for centuries and still, our recent history is all about the 200 years of colonialism and small battles for the sake of independence. In that time, towards the end of the British rule, the world wars waged from America to Turkey to Japan. We were the biggest army of WWII and yet none of the folklore reeks of India. So, like Eve’s never-ending quench for the forbidden fruit, we have always been attracted to the politics around the world that never affected our daily lives. Be it the world wars, the oil crisis or the cold war. Heck Armstrong is perhaps more popular than Rakesh Sharma today. That is what precisely Herge did to us. He talked about the biggest crisis in simplest of way. It was a mixture of satire, truth, fantasy and romanticism. We drank it all.

Or maybe it is because of what Tintin resembled. 

He was not a superhero. He was a decent looking reporter from somewhere beyond kaalapani, who has no ill vices, does the right thing, dresses neatly and most importantly wander in the land of unknown without any fear. He has a job for which he earns enough money to sponsor his trips, without a father asking him about his goals in life and a mother asking him to tie the knot. Plus, he does not talk about romance, neither mentally nor physically. Isn’t he the perfect gateway to the dreams we have always dreamt for ourselves? In Bengal, he came early with the taste of wanderlust, mystery and subtle remarks about politics. The three things that catches our imagination within a second. Moreover, being an ideal representation of a Bengali mother’s perfect child helped him fly into a little child’s bookshelf. From where he never disappeared, just got passed down from one generation to the other.

Moving out of the literature, let us talk about the technicalities. With his brilliant brush and realisation of perspective, Herge talks about the society at large, it’s functions, barriers and all those hard terms an economist use in a such a simple words and pictures that makes you feel at ease while brushing through them. You don’t realise, but your subconscious does and stores it, and redirects you to that same picture over and over again. Remember the brilliant picturization of Moon, the detailed underwater see through the shark-shaped submarine, or, my favourite, the wonderfully detailed picturization of a make-believe Inca King’s Diwan-e-Aam when Tintin and co. accidentally barges in. The side characters did their part as well. Haddock was as funny as he was serious. He was honest, comical, painfully drunkard, yet something about him made you follow his footsteps. Or else, billions of blistering barnacles will head your way. Calculus was genius lost in his own life. Bianca was ever-reliable, Thompson twins were the ever-humorous.

Tintin was a mixture of everything. 

He taught us politics, he taught us history, he taught us science, astronomy as well as companionship. Personally, he taught me what quarantine stands for, where llamas are found, why an elephant trumpets, why glasses break when Bianca Sings. He was also my primer to calculus.

For nation that has always aspired more than it could grasp, a small Polynesian boy became the ray of hope and continues to do so, with flying colours. For the young kids who either loved or hated to read, Tintin gave their imaginations the fuel it required.

So, as an ode to the millions who tread this path before me, and to the billions to follow after, I hereby raise my toast to celebrate yet another product of the war-stricken days. The one which made us believe.

Credits :

1. India's undying love affair with Tintin - Soutik Biswas, BBC(2011)

https://www.bbc.com/news/15680397

 2. India first for Spielberg - Robin Bansal, Hindustan Times(2011)

https://www.hindustantimes.com/hollywood/india-first-for-spielberg/story-IrjJzfKtVzn53XCfC5URAL.html

 3. [VoxSpace Selects] The Boy In Blue – 90 Years Of Hergé’s Tintin - Puja Sinha(2019)

https://www.voxspace.in/2019/01/30/tintin/

4. Tintin in India: The epic that wasn't - Atul Sethi, TOI(2007)

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Tintin-in-India-The-epic-that-wasnt/articleshow/2094744.cms

 5. All Wiki Links.

Rastapopoulos : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastapopoulos

List of Tintin media : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tintin_media

The Adventures of Tintin : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tintin

Tintin(character) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_(character)

 6. Basic Information Help : http://en.tintin.com/

 7. A Tintin timeline: https://nationalpost.com/afterword/a-tintin-timeline

 8. Dark Secrets Behind the Creator of Tintin : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUvxC8Qf3Bw

[justgotham]

Mod Note: This article was originally written in French and has been translated by a web-translation tool.

After five long years, the Gotham series will soon reach its conclusion. Filming is already over, actors Robin Lord Taylor and Cory Michael Smith , respective interpreters of the Penguin and Riddler TV version, have ventured into our capital on the occasion of the 27th Paris Manga Sci-Fi Show . An opportunity for us to meet them and discuss their work, as well as their feelings on the conclusion of this adventure, which will have shown all the colors to the characters - at the moment of diffusion, we are have not seen everything yet. Good reading !

Hello to both of you. Gotham ends this year with the fifth season. Did your way of working change anything knowing that it was the end?

Robin Lord Taylor (RLT): It has not changed much. The most important thing was this feeling of intensity, as we were getting each of the scripts, we had this desire to finish the arches of these characters that had been built for several years. Each script arrived and it became more and more intense. We also realized the time we spent, with all the people on the sets, writers, production ...

Cory Michael Smith (CMS): The most important thing was really trying to do the best possible way to complete the transformation of these characters.

Your two characters have evolved a lot in the meantime: friends, enemies, potential lovers? How has your relationship evolved?

CMS  : you can imagine that after five years it brought us closer together (laughs)! I owe a lot to Robin who helped me and who taught me a lot about the game, how to be on the set, and over the seasons I think we can say that it became one of my closest friends.

RLT  : your working relationship is changing along the way!

Gotham started in a down-to-earth way, and moved farther and farther from these flowerbeds. How did you feel in your work?

CMS  : the tone has changed a lot over the seasons. At the beginning, it was a series that talked about taking power, and as the city became more and more damaged, the turns became more and more violent, dark, it turned into a story of survival.

There are sometimes so many things that happen in one episode, you never had trouble following? You watched the series at the same time?

CMS  : it's true that it has become difficult. And even more, moving forward in the seasons, remembering everything. In my head it became a real mush. I would have a lot more facilities to make you the debrief of what happened to my character during the first three seasons than in the last two, honestly.

RLT  : There's something pretty fantastic about it, when you're moving around conventions, like here, and meeting your fans, talking to you about this or that moment of the show - even if it's sometimes hard remember everything! As for watching the series, I did it at the beginning, I had to follow the first two seasons. Then I had less time, I was busy and I had to stop.

But one thing that I'm really happy about, and that I think contributed to the quality of the series, is that before turning every episode, the whole team would get together to read the script around 'a table. And each actor who was available made a point of honor to come to these meetings, because that's where you are what happens to Bruce, to Selina, to those characters with whom you do not play scenes. It helped me a lot.

Did you read Batman comics before taking on the roles of Riddler and Penguin?

CMS: I was not a connoisseur of comics before the casting. I had watched a few before the audition. But once the role had, I read more, and I started to pinball realizing that I had a responsibility to contribute to a whole mythology and what had not been before. Reading the comics, I saw how the character had changed over the decades, and I found it reassuring.

It had to distill the main features of the character, which are consistent with age, and I could then make my version of the character, as long as it is respectful of his DNA. There are winks to history, and to spectacular moments that have happened in the course of history. I had a lot of discussion with the showrunners and story writers I had loved, asking if they could be included in the series.

RLT  : Like Cory, I was not a connoisseur, I had read some comics being younger. When I had the role, as DC was involved in the production, I met Geoff Johns, who was DC's head at the time, and he selected some of the Penguin stories that he had sent to me. it helped me a lot. This is where many elements of the character's past come from.

And these are things that, unless you're a big Batman player, you can not know because they have not been shown in movies, or previous iterations of the Penguin. Things we do not talk about. I found them in the comics, and I was able to bring them back in Gotham, which made the character much more three-dimensional.

Yet Gotham does not hesitate to take big liberties with the comics. There is no limit to what an adaptation can do vis-à-vis the original material?

CMS: All decisions that have been made for the series have been approved by DC Comics . All sorts of freedom that Gotham was able to take with cannon are a reflection of DC's willingness to explore stories and sub-intrigues, but also to reinvent them, to reimagine. It was a kind of modeling clay that we had, and that's how it has survived for decades, and people continue to be excited about it all. It's a bit of a call, in some ways, to the creative spirit that writers and producers brought to the show. To challenge old tropes and as a way of saying "this is our version". DC Comics gave us our support, and told us to do what we wanted.

You had nothing to complain about in writing your characters or your scenes?

CMS  : it was a collaborative process. There were a few moments when I manifested myself on the story, when I wanted to be heard. I thought something would be a stronger choice, or that other directions would be more conducive. But I only spoke when I really wanted to. The rest of the time I was excited to see what they would make me do, I was glad they surprised me and see where they were going to take me.

RLT  : when we started the series, Bruno Heller , the showrunner and executive producer, told all the actors "you are the guardians of these characters, you will know them much more deeply than any screenwriter, so collaborate with them. He opened the door. This is a real gift for an actor, especially with these characters who have been there for 80 years, to protect them, to work with the writers room , and see the changes. On the course, new writers arrived, and it was necessary to see with them for modifications that had been made before their arrival.

If you could go back in time and change only one thing, what would you choose?

CMS  : Give. Me. A. Cane! (laughs) I wanted so much a cane, to hit people with it, to make it spin. In the end we only see it for two seconds. That's all I wanted. A cane !

RLT  : For my part, I think other umbrella gadgets would have been welcome. But OK !

What's aesthetic then?

(In chorus): Yes!

Thank you so much !

[inkdragonworks]

Poppin & Jupa: 2nd Anniversary Post

Today marks the 2nd anniversary of when I began Poppin & Jupa: Pocket Adventure! To sorta celebrate, I was going to talk about and show some of the history of it.

ORIGINS OF POPPIN AND JUPA

Before I began Pocket Adventure, I had the concept for a Poppin and Jupa game over a decade ago. I no longer have the character sheet anymore, but I spent an afternoon drawing up different character designs and trying to think of a story to connect all of them together.

Poppin and Jupa's initial designs originated from this sheet, and were meant to be a callback to a traditional platformer duo. Jupa would have been a fairy that was trapped in a cage, and Poppin would have been unable to rescue her due to a broken leg, requiring your help. I envisioned him using his wings  as a "coat" only to switch to an actual coat later on. These images are best guesses at remembering them.

At the time I liked to brainstorm game concepts using random game pieces and legos. One of them was a game die, and I imagined Poppin would have some kind of die that he would throw and it would do one of 6 functions. For example, the 5 pip side would be a propeller and the 1 pip side would shoot a punching glove out.

There was a different character meant for that game, a swordsman named Oliver, but I ended up thinking more about Poppin and Jupa's relationship and their history, and it led to thinking up different game ideas for them.

MAIN CONCEPT

The main concept with Poppin and Jupa revolved around their initial meeting, and the first adventure they go on together around the entire country of Synnia. This would be divided into 9 large areas with a lot of individual roads leading between them, and those large areas would be divided into multiple subsections, and "tiers" of stories that would occur as you progress throughout the whole game. During this, Poppin and Jupa's friendship would develop, and would end up confronting aspects of their pasts together. They'd also meet hundreds of characters along the way, good and bad, and unlock more secrets to the Gadget Box Poppin owns.

This was a huge concept, and one I didn't intend to tackle until I was more experienced and had better resources. Many concepts have been made with the intention of building towards it (Broom Witch, for example, was a character in one forest of Synnia who would gather spells of multiple utilities, much like the Gadget Box).

When I was learning Game Maker more between Digipen and SCAD in 2011, I did do an early, early test with some squares following each other. The concept of having two characters travel together and be on equal terms (rather than one performing just supportive actions, like Kazooie or Clank in their respective games), so as to convey their equal importance and capabilities as characters.

Along with that I did make some mock ups, and come up with several other ideas that were smaller in scope, such as two of them traveling inside a pyramid.

LEADING TOWARDS POCKET ADVENTURE

Pocket Adventure is another one of these concepts, only it's directly designed to be a microcosm of the main adventure. Like a single episode of what they would do, and not worrying about the larger overarching plot or balancing 9 major locations.

It took a while to settle on Pocket Adventure. When I completed submitting Carrie to itch.io originally, I first tried making a game based around drawing, that gave me trouble and found I wasn't too inspired. I did continue developing something called the VNgine. Working on an arcade game didn't give me much opportunity to practice writing characters, and I wanted something like the VNgine to try and make that easier and more engaging for me, and potentially being a game unto itself.

Another thing I started experimenting with was with a more minimal sprite style. This was originally just for fun, something I could do one of a day for a short while, and inspired by a friend's work. This also gave me an opportunity to work on a real color palette, which I didn't use for previous projects.

This led to working on Poppy's Burger Birthday Blast around Spring 2016 over 2 weeks, my first attempt at using this sprite style for a game. I did develop Poppin and Jupa sprites before deciding to make a game for them, so I originally didn't intend to animate them.

As for the VNgine, school got in the way of development, and many issues arose in the coding. I did end up taking many of the text-based features and built off of it into Katavera's Haunted House Tour, a concept I didn't get too far in either. I might return to it someday, but it gave me more practice in working with text and thinking about how I would handle unique events for cut scenes.

This was in October 2016, and by December I was still trying to pick at it while messing around with an idea for an rpg story based around monsters. An issue I quickly noticed is that I have a lot of trouble not investing a lot of thought into concepts, and the time it takes to develop all of them is very consuming.

I was spending a bit of time making some personal art of Poppin and Jupa when I realized how much time I was spending on it instead, and realizing that I'd be best off working with characters that I really cared about. Making games always take longer than expected, to the point where their initial concept isn't as appealing, so I realized I wanted to switch to these two. Even if their game took a while to make and no one cared about it, I love these characters enough that seeing them come to life means a lot to me.

INITIAL POCKET ADVENTURE WORK (December 2016 - December 2017)

I was out traveling around this time, so I spent the plane ride sketching out early stuff. Five of seven chapters were figured out around then alongwith the main gadgets they'd use and the general idea of the story.

The first gif I made was of animating basic movement for Poppin, followed by Jupa, and starting work on the Gadget Box's glove. For the next year I spent a lot of time writing out more of the story, adding in 2 more chapters, and figuring out where I wanted to go with it. 

Development-wise, I worked on the main mechanics and systems. The rest of the gadgets, money, particles, health and death, room transitions, game overs, save system with an early file select, chests, fruits, and the entire pause menu with glossaries, controls, settings, and a gadget menu.

POCKET ADVENTURE PROGRESS (December 2017 - Today)

A year ago, I was finishing up the format for how cutscenes would be handled, as well as applying them towards a shop menu. This was exciting since I was applying a lot of the tools and code I developed from VNgine and Katavera to here, as well as started to give some more life to characters.

Over the past year, I've been working on more specifics with mechanics, adding in different status effects and alternate glove attacks with their own peculiarities. I completely redid the title screen and menu, making it fit the theme more and tying into the whole "journal" aspect. I like to think that Jupa is writing down their adventures as they go along.

Another major stride was in the AI. Previously the partner's movement was based around setting up jump-land points the player made, but I really wanted to figure out a tool for pathing that could be implement for the partner, enemy, and npcs. I know a lot of games would just have a stack of previous positions and a delay on when the character follows, but this pathing system allows them to figure out how to get around levels by themselves. There's still kinks to iron out, but it's definitely one of the most involved things I've done coding wise.

And of course, I've finally made progress on content outside mechanics and system. Enemies, obstacles, and some initial level design work. I do feel bad it's taken me two years to get to this point, and I'll always be tweaking some of the previous stuff, but it's helped a lot with figuring out where I want to go with everything and given me a better ability to just focus on content over time.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

I don't think I'll be able to complete Chapter 1 any time soon; I need to code in extra events, create all the art assets and tiles, make a boss battle, cutscenes and their assets, and finally all the sound effects and music needed for that. Pathing also needs more tweaking to be in a place where nothing awkward is really happening. Part of what makes things take so long is that I'm just one person working on this, and it's not my sole focus: I've had to complete my master's at school, go to my sister's wedding, take on job training, and most recently, being my first real job.

I'm okay with this though, as game development feels better as a hobby for me than a full-time commitment, and Poppin and Jupa are characters that are personal to me, so I couldn't imagine working with a large team on them. I hope you'll all continue to be patient as I continue to work towards a release of a Chapter 1 demo. Once I reach a point where I'm polishing, and maybe starting work on Chapter 2, I'll announce a release date.

If you want to support me, commenting, liking, and sharing what I do helps, so I know that people are sticking around. But if you want to do more than that, I do have a patreon, and in January, I'll be restructuring it a little so that there's more incentive for people beyond what I do right now. I'm not a great artist or programmer, and I'm not particularly fast, but I am fully committed to this, and want to bring my vision to life. Thank you a lot continuing to watch the progress of Poppin and Jupa: Pocket Adventure!