#it was over a disney character

[goldensunset]

people who go through the main tags of big and tumultuous fandoms looking for new fresh good posts to reblog are essential to any circle. they’re like true hunter gatherers leaving the safety of settlement and braving the unknown wilderness to find food for the flock. they risk their lives every day and will come back with a few scratches at best and severe psychological damage at worst

[kabumisun]

plug a little weird but they chill

[twisted-up-in-wonderland]

I’ve already seen one person having a lil tantrum, going off about how they were Big MadTM about the tweels having scales on them in their mer forms because

“eElS dOnT hAvE sCaLeS¡!i! 😡😡😡”

And I was like. Dude. Calm down.

Eels don’t have people attached to them either.

They are MERS. This is FANTASY. And you’re upset that they have SCALES because in REALITY eels don’t actually have them???

Lol. Lmao even.

[qwakque]

falalalala la la la la

[raziiyah]

me thinking randall despised johnny for manipulating him and kicking out of ror; in which he harbored his hate for years like he did with sulley and wanted to vengefully show everyone including johnny how wrong they were for underestimating him in college

what randall and johnny's relationship ended up being:

[artist-issues]

Tell me every reason you enjoy Zootopia enough to give it all the rewatches you do.

Every? Oh boy.

Good Story

Perfect Characters

Visual Appeal

Earnestness

Let me break it down.

1. Good Story

Zootopia’s main point is: “Try to make the world a better place by realizing we’re fundamentally the same.”

That’s a really good main point.

It has the benefit of being true. Right now our culture is super into “self-identification,” and this crazy contrast between, “I want to be able to identify as something special” and “Now that I know what categories I fit in, I can choose who’s ‘one of us’ and who’s ’not one of us.’” Okay well that sounds pretty and I’m sure it fulfills some emotional need at some point, but it’s actually super divisive, and self-serving, and it’s the seeds for all prejudices. Including racism.

Do we have differences in origins and experiences? Yes. Of course. Do we also have some fundamental things in common? Yes. Of course. Which truth are you going to give the highest priority to? If it’s “no, I’m a prey animal, I know exactly where I belong, that’s who I am, that’s how I dress, that’s my compass for how I interact with others” then you’re getting all your security from your “sense of self,” and being able to understand what that is…which is just a fancy way of saying “I’m all about me. My own perspective informs everything I do.”

Anyway. Zootopia’s message was super true.

And the coolest thing about it is that if only Judy were in the wrong, and the other half of the dynamic duo, Nick, was this open-minded, un-prejudiced guy…and she just hurts him and has to apologize…the movie’s message wouldn’t be as well-communicated.

They have their prejudices and their hurt-from-being-prejudiced-against in common!

They’re the same…because they’ve both felt what it’s like to be treated like they’re not “the same.”

Nick isn’t the only character being mistreated and written off because of his species. The whole first half of the movie is about Judy being mistreated and written off. They think she can’t be a cop because she’s little and cute and a prey-animal. They think Nick can’t be trustworthy because he’s sneaky and small and a predator.

So literally…if Judy represented one race, and Nick represented a completely different race…the movie would be saying that both those races are discriminated against. They even have discrimination in common. AND, if Nick represented men who people make assumptions about because he’s a man, and Judy represented women who people make assumptions about because she’s a woman—the movie would be saying that both those genders are falsely judged.

I mean. Wow. Right now, your movie is either pro-woman or pro-man. Right now, your movie is either BLM or white-supremacy. Everybody’s lining up on one side of the line or the other. Zootopia says, “it doesn’t matter what character you’re looking at, from the elephant that can’t remember anything to the two main characters—every single one of them has fundamental things in common, and one of those things is that they all live like they’re in their own special category. When actually, they’re all fundamentally the same.”

I don’t want to keep beating the dead horse. But I have a post somewhere that lists every background character and points out that each animal is the exact opposite of what you would assume they are based on their animal-stereotype. The otters are never shown being playful or snuggly, only traumatized and ferocious. The cheetah is fat and slow, not quick or even quick on the uptake. Etc.

Even if you look outside of characters—look at the sets. Look at the environments. The whole city is designed “for animals, by animals.” But it’s in neat little segments. The animals organize themselves by habitat. Of course, in one sense that’s practical—the polar bears can’t live in Sahara Square, etc. but the point is, by making Judy and Nick, the main characters, small animals, in a city where everything is built to accommodate by species—UGH this is so good—they have to figure out how to problem-solve in situations that weren’t made to accommodate them.

Little Rodentia? Judy has to avoid stepping on all the mice or knocking over their buildings. Parking tickets? She has to figure out how to jump to reach bigger animals’ windshields—or she inconveniences smaller animals because the tickets are all printed at the exact same size. Stuck in a cell? The guards didn’t think about the fact that small animals can fit down the pipes made to accommodate big animals.

Zootopia is a city advertised to be where all the animals can come together. But the way they do that is by trying to accommodate every species’ preferences. So then actually while they try to come together, everything from their cars to their districts remind them of their differences. The whole idea is that they prioritize the wrong truths. Yeah, mice can’t drive giraffe cars—but they still have “driving” in common. See?

And oh my word. Initially it was supposed to be a spy story. But they changed it to a buddy cop story. Why? Well because justice doesn’t discriminate. Or at least, it’s not supposed to. So then there’s another lens to look at the story’s main theme through.

It’s just that every layer, every perspective you look at the movie from, is just hammering that truth into you: “Try to make the world a better place by realizing we’re fundamentally the same.”

2. Perfect Characters

Every character is so well-thought-through in this movie, even the side characters. You get the feeling you could watch a whole movie based on the side characters, because that’s the amount of love and nuance built into them.

Look at the main ones, though. Bellwhether is supposed to be soft and a follower. She’s a sheep. Instead, she’s hard and bitter—and she’s a leader. A villainous leader, but a leader, nonetheless. Even as she tries to keep animals divided based on fear of their stereotypes, she’s not fitting her own stereotype. Her voice actress has this strained, half-hoarse, but sweet voice. Like you can tell that this character has spent a lot of time under pressure and trying to manage appearances. Appearing like she’s fine, and she can handle it—until you realize that the appearance she’s really managing is “the cultural fear-based identify of the city.” They dress her in plaid and flowers and she’s a farm animal, because that’s the kind of character Judy would be most likely to trust. But she still has green eyes, and jagged teeth, so that when she does start making evil expressions there are some caricature-pieces in there that come out and accentuate that.

Nick Wilde—everybody’s favorite—is supposed to be sly and smooth and shifty. And he is. He’s a fox. But he’s also brave, helpful, and trustworthy. The first time you see him is when he’s dodging out of the way of a bigger animal ignoring him and about to run him over. Well, that’s important.

Because Judy knows what it’s like to have to get out of the way of larger animals, because they overlook her.

So right off the bat, this character she has to get along with and work with, this character who furthers her development and nails the main point, is introduced in a way that has something in common with her. But he’s also introduced in a way that gives her an opportunity to focus on a different truth—that he is different from her. Because the sheep is yelling that he’s a “fox.” Right away, we’re back to species-as-identification.

And that’s what the movie does, all the way through. It presents new animal characters, and with those new animals characters, more than one thing is true at a time. And Judy has to try to focus on which truth is more important. “Try to make the world a better place by realizing we’re all the same.” Yes, Nick is a criminal. But Nick is also brave, helpful, and eventually, becomes trustworthy.

Judy, too. Judy is an incredibly well-done character. Because she believes, in her head, that anyone can be anything—which is not what the movie ends on. In fact, she goes from saying, “anyone can be anything,” to saying, “we all have limitations.” It’s not true that a fox can be an elephant. But it is true that a fox can be trustworthy. Figure out what’s true, and try to make decisions for the better, based on that.

I could talk about character design and acting. Ginnifer Goodwin gives just the right amount of smugness and self-confidence to Judy without making her unlikeable—you don’t realize she’s smug and her self-confidence is misplaced until she does, when she fails to make the world a better place for Nick.

Judy wears tight, actionable, well-fitting uniforms for the whole movie. In her civilian clothes when she comes to Zootopia, she’s wearing athletic t-shirts and shorts. Ready for action, that’s Judy, even in her civvies. Meanwhile, Nick? Nick wears loose-fitting clothes. Loud, patterned clothes that don’t match. Like he didn’t even what, ladies and gentlemen? Like he didn’t even TRY. “Try to make the world a better place…”

Because when you meet Nick Wilde, he’s long since given up on trying, in life. So his character design reflects that. He rarely even stands up straight, or opens his eyes all the way—his default is drooping. And guess what?

When Judy “gives up?” Quits her job? Goes back home? Stops trying? Her civvies aren’t ready-for-action, trying clothes. They’re loose flannels. And her “ears are droopy.”

SERIOUSLY, you can find things like this in every corner of the movie. For every character. Not one character is a throwaway, not in voice acting, not in design, not in animation, and not in narrative.

3. Visual Appeal

Which leads me into this point—no other animated anthropomorphic animal movie is as visually appealing as Zootopia.

What Zootopia does is it matches the best of the best anthropomorphic animal designs from past Disney movies:

And they marry it with this incredible intentionality with modern CGI.

Did you know Disney invents its own software for things like fur textures?

The sheep’s wool, the velvet pig skin, the fox fur, the bunny fluff—it’s all completely different textures. There’s no one “fur” covering all the hairy mammals.

Nick isn’t just orange. He’s orange with deep red and dark tufts. Judy has black tips to her ears, too—which helps the two of them look like, in some sense, they belong “together” in every shot.

It’s so important to the movie that the animals feel like animals that they worked this hard to do this. And then that extends to the textures of the snow, the ice, the sand, the wet leaves, the grass, the fire.

Every character moves like their animal, and like themselves. Nick and Gideon are both foxes, but they don’t move similarly at all. Gideon is aggressive and glowering and physical. Nick, again, is slouchy, leans on everything, completely non-confrontational.

Other anthropomorphic animal movies like Sing or Puss in Boots—they’re not doing both as well. Zootopia is appealing, without sacrificing realism completely, and without cutting character acting.

The lighting. Nope. This post is too long, I can’t talk any more.

4. Earnestness

There is no disingenuous moment in this movie.

The animators are never lazy. They always go for the challenge. They don’t cut corners. Have you ever seen “Over the Hedge?” I like Over the Hedge. But I watched it recently and it’s crazy how many shots are strategically placed so that the animators don’t have to solve a certain effects problem.

For example, when RJ sprays Hammy with cool whip to make it look like he has rabies? He doesn’t. You never see the cool whip leave the can. It just cuts away, then cuts back when RJ is pulling the can away from his face. The shots are also cut so that you never have to see gas actually come out of Stella—and you never see Vern’s full body as he gets back into his shell, just the upper part of the shell as he wiggles it around, going through the motions of putting it back on.

That’s because that stuff would be painstaking to animate. Any time one character has to interact with props or substances (especially liquids) that are not part of their model, it’s harder on the animator.

Zootopia? We’re getting full-on views of characters getting wet, fur and all, characters touching various objects and elements, foam coming out of the mouth, new clothes, new set pieces, multiple models, huge crowd shots of different animals in different outfits, all with their own movement patterns and acting.

And all that hard work and effort, aimed so totally at the main theme of the movie? Making sure it looks as good as it can? Not just that, but the way it’s written, the acting, is so genuine. They don’t hold anything back. They don’t shy away from real emotion.

Judy Hopps’ apology scene is brutal. She’s crying, having a hard time finishing a sentence, her voice is all tight. It’s not pretty, it’s not romantic, it’s like…ugly crying. And her character is wrong in a super embarrassing way. They're not afraid to go there. The writers, the actors, the animators—they’re not afraid of being too vulnerable with these character flaws.

So many movies, especially kids’ movies today—they just pull up and shy away from being real through their characters. They think a quick sad facial expression will get the point across. And it does. The audience gets that the character feels sad about whatever the circumstance of the scene is. But not as powerfully. Because you didn’t put as much work and heart into it.

Zootopia is all heart, from work ethic to vulnerability to the filmmakers enjoying what they’re doing, enough to make it as good as it can possibly be. I can’t explain it better, other than to say, you feel like they would’ve been happy making this movie much much longer than it was. You feel like they’re cramming every bit of joy and passsion into every little joke, every side character, every hair on a CGI bear.

There you go. Long post, you did ask for it

[swedenis-h]

Cowboy Lehnsherr ‼️

[jacarandaaaas]

Mirabel Madrigal & Creativity:

So something I’ve realized after watching the movie a couple of times now is how mirabels story can easily correlate with the experience of someone creative when you’re only considered of use if you’re academically smart.

Not only do they refer to the magic as “gifts” and “gifted” very common terms associated with people who are considered academically smart but also the fact mirabel is shown as an artist. Our first introduction to her you see her room is plastered in artwork as a 5 year old and even after the prologue you still see she’s kept her artistic side. the thing is mirabel is incredibly talented she draws, she sews, she embroiders, paints, plays the accordion too! These are all incredible talents to possess and yet do we ever see her getting praised for them in the movie? not really. because mirabel doesn’t have a “gift” a literal magic gift yes but also could be interpreted for a creative as academic smarts. Creative thinking is something mirabel possesses and its quite literally the answer in the end but because she’s not smart in the expected way i.e academics she feels she’s not worth as much as others in her family.

I like to think making her an artist was an intentional choice as I know a lot of fellow artists have had people tell us it’s not a “useful” skill to have in the real world. It’s not worth taking the time doing when you could be pursuing medicine or law or something that uses your brain. Even in the ending of the movie mirabel tells them they’re “more than just your gift” which I feel can relate a lot to people who heavily rely on their academic achievements they can forget it’s ok to not do 100% every time and these ridiculous standards are just wearing you down.

So in conclusion I believe mirabels story resonates a lot with the experience of being a creative person but your skills not being seen as valuable. I just love that they made mirabel an artist to show how talented she actually is! she shows that creatives are valued and appreciated and needed and deserve to be encouraged not shot down! so thank you mirabel valentina rojas madrigal for being my favorite artist <3

[natfoe]

"No, pirates are NOT friends you haven't made yet!"

[a-little-ray-of-fantasy]

Wait-

Oh NO!

NO WAY!!!

NO WAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!!

[werchezdeeno]

i just remembered the last episode of percy jackson is tomorrow. now what am i going to tuesdays? fucking homework? thats funny.

[dollartreemonkey]

Peepers stimboard 👁️

[hanafubukki]

The Lullaby Representing True Love

The lullaby we heard in book 7 has such a deep meaning and it gets me emotional.

It’s used in various ways to repeatedly show love between the characters.

We hear Malleus hum this song that Lilia and Meleanor sang to him when he was in his egg. This song Malleus hums as he puts everyone into a comforting sleep where they can have their happiest dreams.

This song we heard Meleanor sing to eggleus right before she gives her egg away, a final lullaby of love and comfort. Her farewell to Malleus.

The lullaby we hear Lilia sing to Silver in the flashback, something to calm him. Showing him love through a song that means much to him and showing his love for Silver.

Malleus then hums this very song to Silver as well. He doesn’t know where he heard it but he remembers it fondly. He knows it brings comfort so he hums it to baby Silver and we see how Malleus continues to go on and love that baby.

Then we hear this same melody when Silver accepts the love Lilia has for him. It’s in the background. Silver literally states that his father loves him. You can hear it start from the fight with sebek and then the melody increase as Silver accepts that truth of how much he is loved. We see the Knight of Dawn happy to see his son happy again.

We hear Lilia sing it to eggleus. He’s looking for a way to hatch Malleus. Makes him all these promises. Constantly compliments and teases him. And then Lilia, general lilia, sings it to him. Showing him that love and care that he has for him. Malleus flickers in response. Then we get Malleus hatching in the next scene.

And the last scene we hear the Rhythm is with Silver and Lilia. When we see Silver tell Lilia that he wants to talk with him and Lilia agrees. We hear it loud and clear the love and comfort between the two.

The lullaby is literally true love in a song. The way they constantly show true love these characters have for each other gives me awe.

I hope we get this song in a twsttunes. I can’t wait to see how this song will be used again. The way they incorporate the lyrics or the rhythm into the story to show true love just has me feral.

[themoodydoodles]

Oopsie forgot to post these

Uhhh I made these designs for a Inside Out Roommates/Human au, maybe I’ll post more about it

[dizzydizney]

The "this is Descendants, not Game of Thrones" part of this fandom is so funny to me. Have you read any Descendants fic on ao3 with a rating higher than G?

You can't throw a rock at a page of Descendants fics without hitting a story with fucked up subject matter in it.

[thetimelordbatgirl]

According to Rise of Red, defintion of girl power is uh, shaming a girl, aka Chloe Charming, for uh...being a princess??? For being kind??? For being a rule obeyer??? For not liking getting dirty when there's literally nothing wrong with characters who don't like getting dirty- Seriously, this movie's odd love for shaming a female character can kinda go up there with D1's whole Mal shames Audrey scene to cheer up Evie....and maybe overtake it as worst time Descendants did this because at least that was one scene, this was a whole ass sub plot in Rise of Red for some reason.