#it’s also just like… i feel like if Taylor had had even a modicum of the support in private and even public she needed

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The whole discourse about the privacy/secrecy/support thing has been sitting with me for a few days (I mean other than it always does to a certain degree) thanks to all the excellent discussion happening and I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a million times before, but I think what we're seeing and what we're going to learn (e.g. from TTPD) is that it wasn't just the support issue, but how it was shown/handled.

We've all gone out of our way to show that introversion =/= lack of support. Someone can be shy, reserved, etc. and still show up for their partner, whether in public or at home. To chalk any of the differences up to the clash between introversion and extroversion is unfair to folks who count themselves among either tbh.

@thisisctrying said something the other day that hit the nail on the head about how if that support had been offered in private, there very well may not have been a Joever to begin with, or at least not at this point in time. (Sorry for loosely paraphrasing, and for namedropping you! Long time listener, first time poster.)

If this were a case where the "shy" partner said, "I am really uncomfortable with the spotlight personally and do not want to court it, but I will support you in your ambitions and offer you whatever you need to make them happen and make the glare bearable," I suspect that would have gone a long way to making Taylor feel seen and comfortable in pursuing her goals in the way that she now has. Again, that might have been more akin to the balance that seemed to have been struck around 2019 from what we can see, but even speaking in a general sense, there are lots of couples out there, celebrity or not, that have similar approaches where there are highly driven people and busy careers involved.

(A famous example being Dolly Parton's marriage. Tbh I know next to nothing about her and Carl, but she's always heralded as an example in this regard, because her husband is famously uncomfortable with the spotlight and hasn't accompanied her to public events in decades, but she's said that she never minded that because that was always work to her, and what was important was that he supported her in pursuing all her career goals and basically ensured she had a place to call home to return to at the end of the day.)

We're kind of in a brave new world with her current relationship because it felt like, at least at the start, we were maybe watching her figure out her boundaries in real time as to what she was comfortable with or not and adjust accordingly. Like so many have said, I fully believe the extreme privacy thing was initially driven by herself and her experiences in 2016, and she needed that quiet time to recover from all of the things and figure out how to exist in the world again.

Stating the obvious, it seemed like eventually privacy was equated with secrecy, turning the relationship and the celebrity into the elephant in the room and something to never be spoken of to the outside world. People are free to choose whatever works best for themselves and their relationships, and for some the separate public lives might work, but the “kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath” theme is all over her work and it’s clear that it’s a sore spot for her, because she’s been made to feel shame just for the life she leads so many times in the past.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s pretty obvious something Not Great was happening behind the scenes, which didn’t just amount to “she wanted to be a public celebrity and he wanted to be a private hermit.” (Also, in case anyone forgot, this is a person who also chose a public-facing career who also has to engage in press for it, but I digress.) As her career reached new heights post-folklore, if she had the support at home to do all the things without judgment and with encouragement, and in turn offer the same support to her partner, she may have very well lived just fine with that, not unlike Dolly Parton’s case.

By reading between the lines in all the press since, as well as comments on tour and general ~vibes~ with TTPD teasers, it seems like one of the issues was that that was likely not the case. There was all the stuff that we saw — the reticence to acknowledge each other in the media (particularly on one side), the lack of public support even at events at which they were both in attendance for their respective jobs, the great lengths they went to not to be photographed together at events they attended yet no problem taking pictures with other friends and coworkers, the jobs that separated them, the withdrawing from the public even for work accomplishments, etc. Which could all be manageable if a couple chooses to do so together and are not inherently a sign of trouble in themselves.

But what we’re seeing now I think is a reflection of the things we weren’t seeing then, and it seems to indicate some very deep hurt. (I know, call me Captain Obvious.) And like so many have been saying, it feels likely that that part of that hurt is rooted in that very lack of private support where a person would expect it from their partner. Obviously as a Taylor fan blog I’m going to be more inclined to understand her side of a story, but tbh, it’s also because… this is sooooooo common, and something I’ve experienced in my friend group. (@taylortruther is right when she says most breakups are the same one way or another lol.)

One partner is resentful of the other’s success, or resentful that the other’s priorities begin to evolve as new experiences unlock new goals, or feels the other’s ambitions are not worthy of pursuit, and coupled with perhaps their own struggles in the same domain, it’s easy to see where that can chip away at the other partner’s morale and faith in the relationship. I know I’m just speculating here, but I also don’t think it’s totally unfounded. (Again, because a) I’m picking up what she’s putting down and b) it happens to sooooooo many women even among us dull normals.)

With all the pointed mentions about how much Taylor feels supported in her current relationship and how she in turn loves to offer the same show of support to not only her partner but other loved ones, how she’s stepped out more in the last year to a whole host of events, how she’s mentioned feeling like she locked herself away for years and she’s just proud of her partner and happy she can show up for him even if the chaos around it is unsettling, it paints a picture of what perhaps was happening before last year.

To feel like you’re all alone in carrying the weight of the relationship (or burden of it), of twisting yourself into knots to accommodate the other person’s boundaries (or insecurities) but not feeling reciprocity for your own has to be so painful. (The idea that it may have been even darker and to have a partner not only be unreceptive to your own needs but even perhaps resentful/dismissive/belittling of them is even more painful to think of. I guess we’ll find out when TTPD comes out if that was the case, too.)

At a certain point, that lack of acknowledgement will force your hand to be able to reclaim yourself. And it feels like the further removed Taylor in particular is from it, the more she moves from being sad about the life she felt she gave up by leaving, to angry at the life she felt she was giving up by staying. Especially being in a relationship now where it seems like everything comes much easier, where she can be open about the person she’s with and show up for them, all the stuff that seemed as challenging as climbing Mount Everest in her past is nothing more than a molehill at best in her current life.

TL;DR: I don’t think it’s privacy that inherently spells doom for a celebrity relationship like this; it’s the mutual support and respect that does. If Taylor had felt that in the later years of her previous relationship, I think we could be seeing a different, though not necessarily unfulfilled, person right now in 2024, who’d be happy on tour but whose personal life would look a little different. But it seems like by losing that support she lost parts of herself, and we’ve seen her reclaim that in spades in the last year, and perhaps to degrees she didn’t even realize she could from before all the Bad Stuff started happening in her young adulthood.

I know this was extremely long-winded and unnecessary, especially about total strangers we only know through scraps fed through the media, but I just always bristle at this idea that issues like these boil down to “personality differences,” as though one person wants to live in a city and the other on a remote island, or some shit like that. The whole support (and gender tbh) issue is one that’s just very close to my heart because again, I have seen it play out with so many of my friends in long term relationships and marriages and I just think people in relationships (and women in particular in some circles) deserve better than to feel like they’re being, well, tolerated.

#thisisctrying and taylortruther sorry for tagging you two! #can remove if needed! #but you guys made me think a lot #this was inspired by a conversation i had with a friend the other day #where she relayed an argument she had with her partner #who basically felt slighted that he wasn’t getting acknowledgement for all the housework he does — which is. just. the dishes #and she was like ‘wow congrats you’ve done the dishes — i do every other fucking thing to keep this household afloat in ways you see #and don’t see and i never ask for praise because it’s just stuff that needs to get done because that’s how you support your family’ #and it just reminded me that some partners (and a certain kind of man in particular) just… think their struggles take precedence #when their partners drown in them everyday but keep things afloat out of necessity and are never recognized or supported for it #(my friends have shitty husbands/boyfriends can you tell lol) #long post #again the way i just feel like i know the vibes of ttpd in my bones are 😵‍💫 #i feel like i have a lot more thoughts but I’m trying to be more gracious and less parasocial so #also just want to again defend the introverts of the world by reiterating that being introverted does not mean unsupportive #being a shitty partner does though! #writing letters addressed to the fire #it’s also just like… i feel like if Taylor had had even a modicum of the support in private and even public she needed #she’d probably still be with you know who and wouldn’t have considered leaving let alone doing it #because it would have felt like enough and like it was what was needed for both of them #whereas we’re seeing a completely new side of her open up now because this is the first time she’s ever had that support from a partner #in her adult life at least #and it’s like it’s opening up things she didn’t know she needed or wanted

[procrastinatingfeminist]

Still going through 911, season 2, still not liking Chim very much.

- ep. 2x04: fucking hell, Chimney, why is it always "me, me, me" with you? "(Tatiana) got the life-changing, all I got is trauma", really? Yes, the traffic accident was very traumatic, yes, the rebar to the head is an extraordinary event and it is a miracle you survived, but Tatiana's life very obviously doesn't revolve around you and didn't before, are you seriously making her pregnancy and marriage all about you own feelings of inadequacy? Thank all that is holy that he at least had enough decency left to apologize and wish her well.

- ep. 2x06: Buck is really going to end up banging that woman? Miss "I would have put the deepest trauma of a good man on air just to entertain the masses and get my name out there"? What the hell? I am really curious about what character makeover Taylor will get to make that a good decision. Lord knows, Buck has not exactly extablished himself as a good decision maker when it comes to his love life. But I would have expected at least a modicum of self-preservation. Taylor, honey, I don't know how to tell you, but what you are doing is not journalism - it is muckraking. Of the worst, most disgusting kind.

- I really don't like how horny about social media and lax privacy this show has been, so far, though it is much more typical of the newer US shows. I am just so, so glad that I live in Europe, where we have adequate privacy laws and what people who are not public servants or otherwise famous can reasonably expect the media to publish or not. They are not foolproof, but they seem to be much more robust than in the US. Very strange to see such a pro media stance from people who usually are hounded the worst by it.

- Maddie though seems okay so far, but from my understanding the worst characterisation comes whenever she has to interact with Buck, and I am only caught up to ep. 6. (I am already dreading the bombing arc and Daniel arc and finding out whether fanfic lied to me about her being emotional blackmailer.)

- In other news - Christopher is a delight and every bit the little charmer that fanfic makes him out to be; his and Eddie's domestic interactions are everything I want to see in tv about good portrayals of father-son relationships.

- I thought for sure Eddie was going to propose on the spot when Buck introduced him to Carla. (I need a Carla in my life, too).

- also, I know that I always get the waterworks when I see a good LGBT portrayal, and Bobby's inclusion in the May's prom makes me tear up. The Grant-Nash family is such good writing; Michael certainly regained some footing, despite having started in the negative as a cheater, and Athena having lost some sympathy points for misusing her job. But on the whole, that is something to be really proud of.

- ep. 2x07: Oh, Buck, no, that was the worst decision ever. Also, Chim once again, rises to an absolutely unique asshole form. He won't even be a wingman to Buck without having some self-serving interests in play, namely wooing Maddie. Go throw yourself into Mount Doom already. Also, Buck, you seriously have nobody else to couch surf at? Anyone is gotta be better than Chim, even a motel. Eddie and Chris as Snake Plissken and Wolverine are so adorable, I am feeling every one of my cavities cry in sympathetic pain. But on whole, that whole episode is a tearjerker.

- why is everyone so intent to remind Buck how long exactly he had been single? There is absolutely no reason that you have to be friends with your coworkers, or found family as a lot of shows like to make out, but if there is a coworker who doesn't get the difference, maybe get into his face and spell it out that you only want him to maintain professional distance. There is absolutely no need for this passive-aggressive hazing.

- oh, good, now there are two people who get to be belligerent and condescending to Buck at the same time, instead of only one. Seriously, I would prefer to bunk on the street than with Chim.

- I was wondering, why fandom insists on portraying Buck as a sort of secret genius. He is an absolute dumbass. Not only that, he is absolutely unsocialised. Boy wouldn't know how to read social cues if they bit him in his delectable biceps. Buckley seniors A+ parenting!

- I also don't get why fandom insists on Eddie being a suave charmer. He is just as much of a dumbass when it comes to relationship stuff. He really needed Buck to talk him through whether or not he wants to allow the mother of his child to see him? Really? I take everything back I said about Buck and Eddie being adorable - clearly Chris is the only one of these three men who has more than one braincell. This is the remake of Dumb and dumber, only with firefighters and they fall in love with each other. Somehow, there are still women involved in their exclusive love fest.

- Hen and Chim's background episodes deserve an award. Chim finally has some other character traits than being a vindictive dick, that are actually likable. His backstory actually makes a lot of sense in regards to his character in the present, and I do empathise with him. Still, I have little sympathy for people who insist on dishing out all the bullying that they got before. Abusing people because you were abused yourself is not an excuse and doesn't absolve you from curbing your temper. When Buck is being a sulky, surly teenager, he gets a pass bc he isn't completely aware of what he is doing and he stops as soon as he gets how much of a dumbass he has been. Chim doesn't get the pass because he instead leans into it. Yeah, former 118 seems to have had an assortment of racists. But not everyone of those white men was the same kind of unrepentant racist as the captain. Eli gave him a chance and brought some of the others around. Buck is not those people. Just because he reminds you of them you don't get to treat him like shit whithout apology or explanation.

- damn, the series is good. I def need to see season three. I need to at least get through the tsunami.

#911 fox #season two #watching 911 #spoilers

[waxwing-saint]

[music]Mione - “So it Goes”

Black smoke, noir (like a skintight, floor-length dress that's slit to mid-thigh), thick, tacky in your mouth. Pairs especially well with a Grey!Mione.

“So it Goes” by Taylor Swift Bellamione

Half essay, half synesthete’s playground. If that sounds like your thing, get your hands dirty under the cut.

The song opens with that black smoke reverb I was talking about. Visually it’s some sort of party--Death Eaters, or high society. Whatever it is there is a threat to it, a blade. I keep seeing that long table in Malfoy Manor, pewter goblets full of rich, dark wine.

See you in the dark All eyes on you, my magician All eyes on us You make everyone disappear, and

I wish I knew more about music so I could describe this well, but that slow winding electronic sound, present and undeniable, like Charybdis. The dark pull of Bellatrix entering a room. All eyes on the two of them, but Hermione can’t look anywhere else.

Cut me into pieces Gold cage, hostage to my feelings Back against the wall Trippin', trip-trippin' when you're gone

Cut me -intopieces-. That brief uptick in pace--like Hermione’s breath catching in her throat when Bellatrix’s hand lands on her lower back, guiding, leading her around this unsafe space. She’s a prize and Bellatrix acts like it, shows her off like the spoils of war. Her pet. The party isn’t even for her, but she’s still made it her triumphus.

'Cause we break down a little But when you get me alone, it's so simple 'Cause baby, I know what you know We can feel it

And it builds, Hermione’s excitement, on the razor’s edge between adrenaline and desire. Is fight or flight sexy, lads? Most would say no, but I suspect the Bellamione crowd disagrees.

And all the pieces fall right into place Getting caught up in a moment Lipstick on your face So it goes… I'm yours to keep And I'm yours to lose You know I'm not a bad girl, but I Do bad things with you So it goes…

Then smashcut to a hallway. Forest green wallpaper with a silver foil fleur-de-lis pattern (it’s catching the old-amber light just right). Hermione with her back up against it, Bella’s hands at the small of her waist, holding her there. Hermione’s dark purple-red lipstick smeared, arching, head back and Bella’s mouth at her throat. Hermione slowly drawing one knee up the outside of Bellatrix’s leg.

Met you in a bar All eyes on me, your illusionist All eyes on us

By the next fancy party things have started to shift, Hermione is finding her footing, finding her agency. While Bellatrix always had some modicum of respect for her, they’re now on equal ground, and Bella isn’t afraid to show reverence in public, and that kind of change in demeanor is bound to turn some heads. When Hermione says all eyes on us it’s less fearful, more voyeuristic. This time everyone is looking at the two of them together, not at Bellatrix as captor and her as trophy. She has power. Bellatrix is a magician (a word that is dark red and black, swirling wild and windy), where Hermione fashions herself an illusionist, a much fainter word, foggy grey and starlit.

I make all your gray days clear And wear you like a necklace I'm so chill, but you make me jealous But I got your heart Skippin', skip-skippin' when I'm gone 'Cause we break down a little But when I get you alone, it's so simple 'Cause baby, I know what you know We can feel it

Once Hermione has a grasp on this, the stability only grows. High heels, slinky walk, legs crossing over each other with each step, the slow camera pan up her calves. You know that heavy, bloody smell of red wine? Here they are equals, but she commands Bellatrix in a way the onlookers can’t see. There’s a tight-wrapped possessiveness. Strands of hair wound around your knuckles and paling your fingers.

And all the pieces fall right into place Getting caught up in a moment Lipstick on your face So it goes… I'm yours to keep And I'm yours to lose You know I'm not a bad girl, but I Do bad things with you So it goes…

Back to the chorus, but this time things are different. Now they rule together. All these people, the people that used to make Hermione’s stomach churn nervously, they mean nothing. Their gaze, their attention. It all means nothing. She’s not a bad girl, but...

Come here, dressed in black now So, so, so it goes Scratches down your back now So, so, so it goes

‘So it goes’ implies an inevitability. Flippant. However we got here, we’re here now. Also, if you want to get all literary (which, you know, why not), in Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut would cap deaths with the phrase “so it goes”. In a way, ‘Mione’s old life (whatever that may be, in your own personal experience of this song) is gone. Does she mourn for it? Maybe, but the very physical action of scratching nails down Bellatrix’s back is a sort of burial, it grounds her here and now and not in memories of the past.

You did a number on me But, honestly, baby, who's counting? I did a number on you But, honestly, baby, who's counting? You did a number on me But, honestly, baby, who's counting? Who's counting? (One, two, three)

The whole pacing of the song changes here, a slowing, and a deliberate cadence. A tutting of a tongue. There’s a curling, tensing, edgy playfulness. This game is laced with the dangerous energy of Hermione’s very clear and intentional phrasing. And then it immediately lightens for the actual counting One Two Three like she’s shoving, smiling, and they build up and tip over into that next crashing chorus.

And all the pieces fall right into place Getting caught up in a moment Lipstick on your face So it goes… I'm yours to keep And I'm yours to lose You know I'm not a bad girl, but I I do bad things with you So it goes… Come here, dressed in black now So, so, so it goes Scratches down your back now So, so, so it goes Come here, dressed in black now So, so, so it goes Scratches down your back now So, so, so it goes

#[music]Mione #bellamione #waxwing_Sinner #synesthesia

[prcttylittlethings-a]

6, 9, 22, 35, 36, 42,

which muses can speak languages other than English?

stella garcia is trilingual - she speaks english, but also spanish & portuguese fluently. her accent is an absolute abominational mix between cuban & bostonian, since she was born in worcester, mass but spent a lot of her formative years bouncing between the area and visiting her family in cuba. rachel berry & lila dorsey can speak a modicum of hebrew - enough to get by, at least. spencer hastings can speak like 8 languages because she downloads language apps on her phone and plows through them until she masters them. she's not necessarily fluent in all of them, but can definitely hold a decent conversation and understand a lot of what is said around her if they're speaking another language. luci martinez, camilla baker, and abi tomas are all fluent in spanish and english, though camilla and abi rarely actually use it. luci speaks spanish around her family, as her grandmother prefers it to english. zelda monroe and parker wyatt are fluent in french as well as english. aylin kaplan's first language is turkish, making english her second language even if it's the one she uses more in person.

which of your muses is most likely to get thrown in jail for disorderly conduct?

i didn't even have to think about it, it's 100% devan park. probably drunk or high on cocaine, admittedly, and PROBABLY after her marlins lost a game. she will deck a guy for insulting her team.

which muse is the most dramatic?

i'd like to ask which muse isn't dramatic. i think it's a three way tie between zelda monroe, merrick wood and stella garica, though all for different reasons. zelda because she likes the attention, merrick because she feels too much all the time, and stella because...she's just like that man.

which muses have pets? tell us their species and names.

in merrick wood's original verse, she adopted a dog named ethan with her ( not yet at the time ) boyfriend ethan, so she had ethan the dog and ethan the person. ethan the dog was a baby rottie, though they originally went looking for a wolf-esque breed to scare a friend into thinking werewolves were overrunning their town. rachel berry usually has a kitten named 'roxie' after a character in chicago, but i rarely write her anymore anyways. stella garcia has a little white matlese named bear in most of her verses.

do you have an old/retired muse you don’t use anymore but love? tell us about them.

i have a lot of muses that i'm considering 'retiring' but my main two former that i never write anymore are devan park ( anna kendrick ) and sarah fox ( brittany snow ). devan was a spitfire of a disaster, usually very low ambition and working dead end jobs like bartending or waitressing, and absolutely obsessed with baseball and her hometeam, the florida marlins. hailing from florida, she was the only girl with three brothers, spent most of her time hanging around the guys, and had a severe coke addiction that usually caught up to her when things got bad. also a borderline alcoholic, she had a Lot Going On, but mostly she was just a lot of fun and chaos ( kind of like if merrick wood allowed herself to follow in her fathers footsteps of addiction, tbh. ) sarah fox was originally essentially a next-gen o.c. character; we created her and her counterpark max fiori as the children of seth & summer and ryan & taylor. sarah was very much a hippie esque go with the flow love child, intent on having fun and loving the world as much as she could. she had a bunny named waffles and helped bring max ( a very serious law student ) into a world of fun. i also rarely get to write any of my canons anymore, specifically rachel berry who was ALL i wrote for the first like five years of my rp experience. but i could write essays and sonnets about rachel barbra berry ☆ so that's for another ask.

which muse has the most money?

it honestly depends on the verse. on average, usually zelda monroe - either as an actress or a socialite, she's usually top tier. stella garcia, if i play her as the socialite daughter/hotel heiress. eleanor hawthorne and iris lexington, each different kinds of variations of my blair waldorf esque characters. autumn abbott and dylan delaney both come from monied parents, and aylin kaplan is the daughter of a crime boss, so they all have $$$ too.

multi muse questions

#question #mctionsick #i am not gonna tag all the charas hc in here theres too many

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What if Aldrea's ghost really did work with Rachel or Toby Hamee instead of Cassie in #34?

First of all, I think #34 does a reasonably good job of showing why Aldrea ends up with Cassie — people keep describing Aldrea as “tough-minded” and “independent” and I’ve argued before that those are some of Cassie’s core qualities.  I also like that Aldrea’s gender is a core part of her identity, given that she talks a lot in Hork-Bajir Chronicles about being frustrated with the way female andalites are treated and even having internalized some of the dominant attitudes about being “weak” because her tail is smaller than her brother’s.  It feels like a cool triumph that she wants and needs a female host.  Anyway.

Toby would probably be a friggin disaster if Aldrea took her as a host, because it’d be a perfect storm to combine Toby’s deference for her ancestors with Aldrea’s dismissal of her host’s mind.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the respect and love and awe that Toby feels for Aldrea — this is Toby’s only to her own culture, which has been annihilated by genocide.  However, Toby also considers abandoning her family and the only home she’s ever known in order to go die fighting yeerks at Aldrea’s say-so, and she later only abandons that plan because of a push from Aldrea.  Toby trusts Aldrea so much that she angrily dismisses Ax’s question about how to ensure the host’s safety, even though Ax later proves to be exactly right about the danger of there being no kill switch on the Ixcila.

If you combine that with Aldrea’s utter lack of respect for the person hosting her?  I shudder to think.  Toby wouldn’t fight and argue and force the issue of a personal connection in order to get control back the way Cassie does.  Toby would probably give in completely and let Aldrea have her body.  Aldrea would probably mean well toward Toby, but she’d probably also demonstrate exactly the same entitled imperialistic attitude toward Toby that we see her have toward other hork-bajir and non-andalites.  So I’m not saying Aldrea would get Toby killed, and she wouldn’t knowingly go against Toby’s wishes... but she also wouldn’t take Toby’s wishes into account either.  That scenario would probably end with Toby going off to try and die liberating the hork-bajir homeworld, an outcome that everyone from Cassie to Toby to eventually Aldrea herself agrees is not what’s best for the free hork-bajir.

Rachel on the other hand might not figure out how to work with Aldrea at all.  There’s this interesting motif starting as early as #2 that Rachel fears neither death nor pain — she fears a cage (X).  Specifically, she is afraid of being trapped in her own mind because someone else is controlling her body or because she is physically unable to fight back against the threat.  It informs her horror at being buried alive in earth (#17) or water (#27), her attitude that she’d kill Saddler or David if she thought it would help (#22), her nightmares (#2, #7, #22) and her ridiculous bravery because death doesn’t seem so bad by comparison (#37, #54).  Rachel would dig in and not give up any modicum of control over her body, and the harder Aldrea pushed to try and get in, the harder Rachel would push back.  There would be no give-and-take with Cassie offering Aldrea the use of her mouth and Aldrea letting Cassie do the hard morphing and the two of them offering each other privacy once Cassie figures out how to demand it.

Instead, I imagine that those first few minutes where Aldrea’s inside Cassie but completely disoriented would involve a lot of Rachel mentally shouting at Aldrea “This is MY BODY, you are a GUEST, if you do not wipe your feet and GTFO when you’re done, then we are going to have PROBLEMS, lady.”  Cassie realizes that Aldrea’s on the verge of just shutting down completely when it becomes clear that Dak and Seerow and the whole damn planet are dead, and — it being Cassie — finds a way to support her and draw her out anyway.  I think if it was Rachel hosting Aldrea at the time, then Aldrea really would just shut down.  Of course, then that leaves a whole other problem of how they’d get Aldrea out of Rachel if none of them can communicate with Aldrea and she’s in Heroic BSoD mode.  A really creepy thought: since it takes Cassie a long time to figure out how to communicate with Aldrea enough to figure out she’s there, maybe Rachel wouldn’t even realize that the ritual had worked.  So Aldrea would be this, like, sleeper cell inside Rachel’s mind, also lacking some important context on how she came to be within a human body on a foreign planet... That could end really really badly.

If I can venture a dark-horse candidate that no one in canon even considers... How about Tobias?

Tobias also has a lot in common with Aldrea personality-wise.  He’s an idealist who doesn’t always fully consider the consequences of his idealism.  He learns and embraces hork-bajir culture in spite of not having been born hork-bajir.  He’s a nothlit.  Ax also says of Aldrea “You are highly intelligent, emotionally self-controlled, capable of lying and manipulation... also fundamentally peaceful, moral, courageous, and capable ofself-sacrifice,” a description that always struck me as applying to Tobias maybe even more so than Cassie, even though of course Ax is describing andalites in general.  (Wow, it’s almost like Tobias is part andalite or something!)  Anyway, part of what’s striking is that Ax and even Cassie fundamentally don’t get why Aldrea would ever become a nothlit voluntarily, much less a nothlit in a body with a shorter lifespan than the one she was born with.  Tobias obviously does get it.

If Tobias and Aldrea were sharing a body, Aldrea would probably consider the three-pound thing with feathers she got stuffed inside to be less than ideal, but they also might have a lot of potential for harmonious coexistence.  Tobias has more experience with multiple minds in a single body, including the balance of hawk-human-etcetera that he has to perform when listening to multiple sets of instincts at once and figuring out which one to use.  Tobias is more thoughtful and self-reflective than Cassie, and I think he’d be far more aware as a result of exactly how much power and control Aldrea would have at any given time.  Although Cassie and Aldrea learn to work together, Tobias would probably set a mutually beneficial division of powers between himself and Aldrea and remain in control of the situation the whole time, only changing the relative degree of power over his body if Aldrea comes to him with some damn good reasons why he should do so.  It’s also notable that this is ONE DAMN BOOK after the events of #33 with Taylor and the Anti-Morphing Ray.  So it might be good to have Tobias do what he’s good at and get a win for the whole team at a time when he’s feeling like he lost himself.  It might even help him heal if he chooses voluntarily to connect with another mind compassionate toward his own, and to continue to get in touch with his andalite heritage through mind-melding with Aldrea.

#animorphs #animorphs meta #34 #the prophecy #cassie animorphs #rachel berenson #toby hamee #tobias fangor #aldrea #aldrea iskillion falan #xena: warrior princess #mama nature #emohawk #long post #anonymous #asks

[upontheshelfreviews]

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

…you might wanna get yourselves some snacks first.

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

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

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

“Movie?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#1 – This Seems Familiar…

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

‘Sup, witches?

#2 – Too Short

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

#3 – All Story, No Experimentation

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

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

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

Eh, he’ll do.

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

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

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

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

Pines of Rome – Ottorino Respighi

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

Okay, who put googly eyes on the moldy beanbag?

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

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

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

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

Majestic.

Rhapsody in Blue – George Gershwin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And her little dog too!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hell, it worked for Pixar.

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

“MUST. CHOP. EVERYTHING!!!”

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

Case in point.

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

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

  Carnival of the Animals: Finale – Camille Sant-Saëns

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

The answer –

Good answer!

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

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

Pomp and Circumstance – Edward Elgar

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

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

To which Eisner laughed maniacally and vowed that they would.

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

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

The world’s first climate change deniers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Firebird Suite – Igor Stravinsky

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

No, not that circle of life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Artwork by Charles Moss.

Screencaps from animationscreencaps.com

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

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

#2000 #2000&039;s #2D animation #action #al hirschfeld #angela lansbury #animated #animated feature #animated movie #animated movie review #animated musical #animated short #animated shorts #animation #animator #animators #anthropomorphic animals #art #ballerina #Beethoven #bette midler #brave tin soldier #Camille Saint-Saëns #Carnival of Animals #Carnival of the Animals #carnival of the animals finale #cgi animation #computer animation #continuation #continued

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Friendly Nieghborhood Spider-Man vol 2 #1 Thoughts

I LOVED this!

SPOILERS below

 I like Peter David and I’m less harsh on his Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man run than many others. First and foremost I view it as a book hampered by crossovers that rarely allowed it’s talented creative team(s) to fully flex their muscles.

 This being said, Tim Taylor in one issue might’ve just earned the title’s name in a way PAD didn’t in his entire FN run; pun intended.

 It sounds so simple and so basic and yet it works.

 Spider-Man is often referred to (often mockingly by himself) as ‘your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man’. Why not have a ongoing series using that title...and why not have it actually be about Spider-Man’s nieghborhood!...and being friendly  whilst he’s at it!

 I must admit the solicits for the first issue worried me because they labelled Spidey as the worst neighbour ever so I was concerned we were going to see yet more 2010s ‘lol Spidey is a trash loser’ take upon the character.

 Within a few pages though Taylor dispelled this.

 Demonstrating a strong grasp of how the Parker Luck ACTUALLY works he presents Spider-Man with son wins and some losses in the form of minor inconveniences, wrapped up with one big problem tapping into his superhero life and another big problem very particular to his human life.

 Mostly this is a down to Earth story. It’s Spider-Man in essence between the more colourful and interesting adventures featuring larger than life super villains.

 Spider-Man barely interacts with any normal crime even, mostly he’s just helping people from natural/man-made disasters or really just being a normal guy on the street.

 In both senses he is just a friendly neighbour.

 Taylor’s grasp of Spider-Man’s core decency is reminiscent (albeit obviously lower key) of the Kid Who Collected Spider-Man.

 My heart melted a little both when the little girl tried to squish the spider on his chest and when he refused money from her father (in spite of his own financial situation) and instead asked him to donate it to some other people down on their luck. People whom we discover Peter regularly offers some modicum of charity whenever he can because he’s just that nice.

 Similarly we see the responsible side to Peter when he makes an appointment purely to help carry an old woman’s groceries.

 This doesn’t make for the most exciting of drama admittedly but damn it I just like seeing Spider-Man in or out of the suit be a normal guy, and a fundamentally decent one at that.

 Then we get to that back up. Holy Hannah!

 It’s wonderful to see the Peter/MJ romance isn’t going to be purely an ASM thing, with this being one of the more romantic scenes between the pair since their reconciliation, reminiscent in fact of Sensational Annual 2007, which Spencer homaged in the opening pages of his debut issue.

 But then you get to the Aunt May thing.

 On the one hand mixed feelings.

 Aunt May is sick. AGAIN!!!!!...Yawn.

 We’ve been here too many times for anyone to give a shit now, especially when one of those times had her actually die!

 On the other hand is this is played as an ongoing illness for May to battle it could be a more substantial, grounded and realistic depiction of an illness and how families cope with it, which seems to be in line with the book’s tone.

 However perhaps of more interest to long term fans is the hints that this might have something to do with OMD.

 Not only do we have hints in the ASM book, hints predating Spencer’s run but we also have in this story an Aunt May who is potentially dying (of some form of cancer), a very direct sign posting of Peter and MJ’s renewed relationship and Aunt May confronting the Kingpin, the man who put her on her deathbed in set up for Peter and MJ selling their marriage to Mephisto.

 So...who knows. I’ll be following this closely nevertheless.

 As for the art, it was I am afraid much weake in the back up than in the main story. Cabal’s art though is beautiful.

 It sits somewhere comfortably between Frank Cho and the Dodson’s for me and that is high praise. His Spidey in particular looks wonderful and his two page spread homaging Spider-Man’s history is begging to be a poster...in spite of the Superior reference.

 Speaking of which, the only bad thing about the story was the reference to Peter being a national disgrace following the plagerism scandal in issue #1.

 This is more a problem with Slott and Spencer cleaning up the mess than Spencer himself but it’s still so broken that Peter be that famous.

 Other than that though, brilliant issue.

 I think we’ve finally hit the jackpot by having a strong ASM and a strong satellite book with two different but vital tones and directions!

 As Peter will probably be saying in issues to come, pick this baby up!

#Spider-Man #Peter Parker #Aunt May #May Parker #Kingpin #Wilson Fisk #mjwatsonedit #mj watson #Mary Jane Watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker

[pllandcompany]

Fire Meet Gasoline (Part Two)

Summary: Hospital!AU. Family dinners are hard. Therapy sessions are worse. Fortunately, both eventually come to an end.

Warnings: mention of past drug use/addiction, description of past child abuse, some yelling, crying, description of anxiety, food mention, drinking/drunk character

Tagged:  @ziallwarrior @thefallendog @apologieslogan @trueunreal @flyingfreeyt @thecatchat @crofters-jam @jakesmolbean @band-be-boss-blog @ab-artist @asylia-5911 @backatthebein @oonagh-una

Pairings: Romantic Logince and QPP Moxiety

Notes: Part Two is here! I tried something a little different with the writing style, it’s a little more dialogue heavy than I usually do and the scenes with Logan and Roman are not taking place at the same time as Patton and Virgil. I basically kind of mashed up two standalone fics in one; hopefully it isn’t too confusing. Also, I’m sorry if I suck at writing Picani. Cartoons are not my forte (thank you, deprived childhood). As always, feedback is appreciated and enjoy!

 The waiting room was quiet, almost eerily so. A clock tick, tick, ticked steadily behind the heads of the two gentlemen seated in the desolate vestibule. A deep sigh echoed against the walls followed by the impatient drumming of fingertips on a plastic chair. Gentle hands clasped the anxious fingers, drawing a surprised glance from the drummer. The hands drew back to their original place and silence reigned supreme in the space once again. Tentative peace was broken once again by the drawn-out gurgling of a nervous stomach accompanied by flushed cheeks and a chuckle from both men. The unexpected moment briefly released a modicum of tension from the atmosphere and the first words were spoken.

“Sorry. Didn’t eat much before I came here. Nerves.”

“I can tell. Maybe we can go have lunch afterwards?”

A pause. “We’ll see about that.”

“Roman Courtland? Logan Taylor?” A bright voice pierced the air, earning the surgeons’ attention. “Well, what are you two peering at me with your Brown-Eyed Peas for? Come on in; let’s get it started in here!” The therapist sung the last few words of his sentence, posing valiantly as if it was the most brilliant joke known to man. The pervasive silence definitely indicated otherwise.

“I apologize, Dr. Picani, I don’t know that one.”

Dr. Picani hunched his shoulders but maintained his giddy smile. “Not a problem, Logan. It wasn’t my best work anyway. Seriously though, let’s get started.” He began frantically ushering the pair into his office. Roman lagged slightly, already unimpressed.

“Wonderful. It’s like Patton on speed.”

****

“Honey, you gotta slow down. You’re gonna burn yourself or break something!”

Patton closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was only about the millionth time Dot had panicked over his speed in the kitchen.

“Mom, I’m fine. I always work this fast and stay safe. You taught me how to, remember?” He gave her a gentle but pointed look. “You’re hovering. Don’t worry so much. I’ve got this.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, honey. I just can’t help it! It’s what moms do, you know.”

“I know, Mom, it’s…it’s fine. Maybe you and Dad can help set the table? That is if he’s not still traumatized from surgery this afternoon.” Patton chuckled to himself at the thundering footsteps rushing down the hallway. Larry skidded to a halt in the kitchen doorway, pointing at Patton vigorously.

“No! You do not get to mock me! You took a needle the length of my arm and stuck it in a pregnant woman’s stomach! And you made me watch it!”

“Yes, honey, but he did it to fix her baby’s heart defect. He saved a life before it was even born.” Dot was practically beaming. Larry shuddered, still trying to erase the image from his brain.

“I get that, son, and we’re so proud but…I don’t know how you ever got used to that. You’re braver than me, that’s for sure.” Patton had to let himself grin on that one.

“It’s just my job, Dad, but…thanks. Can you and Mom set the table? Dinner’s almost ready.”

Dot checked her watch, suddenly furrowing her brow. “Sweetie, didn’t you tell Virgil to be here at 6:00? It’s almost 6:30.”

Patton looked up sharply. “Really? Wow, I didn’t realize it was that…late…”

“You are sure he wanted to do this, right, son?”

“Larry, don’t do that! Something could have come up; he is a surgeon too. Maybe there’s an emergency.”

“But wouldn’t they have also paged Patton? Wouldn’t he have let him know he had to go to the hospital? I’m just saying- “

“Mom, Dad, calm down. Virgil probably got held up with something at work. He is chief of trauma now; that comes with a lot of responsibility that he has to fulfill before he can leave.” He turned back to the pot in front of him, stirring the sauce absently. “He’ll show. Don’t worry; he’ll show up.”

****

It took Roman a second to process what he was seeing. Posters of cartoons and Disney movies littered the walls and there were plush animals and toys piled in a corner. He couldn’t even readily identify the plaque that held this man’s doctorate under the multiple stickers that covered the frame.

“Are you a children’s therapist?” God, I hope so, Roman thought.

“No! Everyone always says that, I haven’t the foggiest idea why…” Roman shot a dark look to Logan who widened his eyes and nodded to the red leather couch for him to sit. Roman pursed his lips and sat down on the opposite end from Logan.

He was not convinced about this at all.

“Okeydokey, welcome to couples’ therapy! I am Dr. Picani and while I’m no stranger to Logan over here, I don’t know you as well, Mr. Roman Empire so why don’t you tell me about yourself?” Roman raised an eyebrow at the rapid-fire introduction. This guy literally chirps when he talks. He let out a deep sigh and folded his arms across his chest, barely concealing his irritation.

“Okay…well, my name is Dr. Roman Courtland and I’m a neurosurgeon.”

“Oh, fascinating! So, you study the brain too! Well then, this should be a piece of cake for you!” Roman simply huffed in response, earning a look from Logan. Dr. Picani would not be deterred though. “Okay, well, obviously you two are here to work out some issues in your relationship, right? So, what’s going on in the world of Rolo?”

“Rolo?” Roman spat out incredulously.

“Yes, it’s your ship name! Just a little something I like to do with my couples.”

“Well, I don’t like chocolate.”

“Roman! That’s enough!” Logan’s shout startled both the counselor and the neurosurgeon. “Why are you being so rude? I admitted to you previously that his methods were unconventional. I also told you that they have helped me tremendously. Can you please just give it a chance?” Roman leaned back against the arm rest on his side of the couch, folding his arms yet again.

“Fine…what’s up, Doc?”

Dr. Picani smirked at the defensive doctor. “Very clever! You’re a quick one! Okay, back to the world of Rolo.”

Silence pervaded the space. “I-I’ll start.”

“All right, Logan, way to be the Brave Little Toaster and heat up this discussion! What’s on your mind?”

“Well, I believe that I am…no…I feel…afraid.”

“Good job. It’s okay to admit your feelings.”

“Afraid of what?” Roman’s voice was harsh and unyielding, the coldness rattling Logan slightly.

“I…well, I’m afraid that you want to leave me. I fear that my deception has pushed you away.”

Roman scoffed. “I think I’ve proven that I won’t do that.”

“Maybe not but you still resent me. I can tell; I’m not-”

“Stupid? No, definitely not. It takes incredible mental skill to manipulate those closest to you into believing nothing’s wrong without them ever catching on.”

Logan recoiled. “You’re angry.” Roman turned away and looked at the wall. “And rightfully so. You of all people didn’t deserve to be lied to. I am deeply sorry for that.”

Roman didn’t answer.

****

“Sweetie? Honey, the food’s getting cold, maybe we should eat- “

“Just heat it up then, Mom!” Patton was visibly tense.

“Hey! Don’t talk to your mother like that! She’s trying to help you!”

“I know, I know but I don’t need help because he’s coming! He just got held up at the hospital. He’s on his way.”

Dot hesitated, fearing the consequences of her next words. “But sweetheart…we haven’t heard from him- “

“He’s coming, Mom!” Patton looked down the hallway, listening for the door. “He’s coming.”

****

“Logan, why don’t you go ahead and tell Roman what we talked about sharing with him last session?”

Logan looked up, his face impassive except for the mild fear glazing over his eyes. “Now? Oh, ah…all right.” He took a beat to calm his nerves. “Roman. Firstly, I want you to know that I lo- “

“Can I ask a question?” Roman was looking straight at Dr. Picani who looked back at him, slightly surprised. “Well, I believe Logan had something he wanted say- “

“No, it’s fine. You may ask your question, Roman.” The neurosurgeon shifted forward, finally facing Logan with a steely gaze.

“I want to know…what made you start using? The first time, not this time.”

Logan’s face remained blank, the pounding of his heart secretly betraying him. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“Really? You don’t see how it’s relevant?” Sarcasm dripped from each word.

“Let’s stay calm here, Roman. This is a safe space.” Logan held up a hand to cut off Picani.

“No, Roman, I do not see how the genesis of my addiction is relevant to our current circumstances. Please elaborate.” Logan could be sarcastic too.

“You’re telling me that you don’t see how the origin of the sole issue that is ripping the very fabric of our relationship apart is relevant to our current conversation? You really can’t see that?” Roman’s voice was starting to rise.

“That is not fair!” Logan began to shout back.  “Our issues are not all on me! It takes two people to make or break something!”

“Exactly! And while I have given you everything, you have given me nothing!”

“I couldn’t, Roman! I was sick and overwhelmed; I couldn’t give anyone anything!”

“No, of course not, because addiction isn’t your fault! Because you have a disease! Because you were traumatized!”

“Don’t you dare mock me. You can resent me all you want but I won’t tolerate being mocked.”

“I’m not mocking you! I am just stating facts. Because of the nature of your condition, you can’t ever be blamed for anything! This leaves me to shoulder the burden of our entire relationship!”

Logan froze, his eyes filling with tears. “You think of me…as a burden?”

Roman panted, his eyes blown wide. “No…no, that’s not what I meant.”

“Well, then what did you mean?!” He was outwardly panicking now. Dr. Picani had to step in.

“Logan? I think Roman is trying to say that he feels alone in this relationship. Am I close, Doctor?” Picani bore a slight smirk on his face at Roman’s stunned expression.

“Um, yeah, yes. I do…feel alone.” He turned back to Logan. “And I don’t want to be. But…I don’t know you, Logan. Not truly. And it makes it not trust you. I have to know you to trust you, so I need you to give me something. Tell me something honest. Tell me how this all started so I can better understand how to help you fight it. Because I want to, Logan. I want you. All of you, even the broken parts.”

Logan stared down at the ground hard, fighting the urge to break down. The room held their breath as they waited for him to come back to them. After an agonizing eternity, Logan finally looked up, a stony expression draped over his face like an iron curtain.

“Okay. I’ll tell you.”

****

“I’m gonna go ahead and start cleaning up, dear.” Patton didn’t move a muscle, barely noticing his mother shift next to him and start gathering plates. He was drowning in disappointment. How could Virgil do this? They had come so far, how could desert him now? Larry reached out and grabbed his son’s hand, squeezing it reassuringly. “I’m so sorry, son. I know how much this meant to you- “

The sound of a frantic doorbell pierced the air. Patton shot up from his chair like a rocket, practically sprinting to the door. He wrenched it open to discover a disheveled Virgil, dressed in an all-black suit and holding a wilted bouquet of roses.

“Virgil! What happened to you?! You’re two hours late!”

“PATTY!” Virgil bellowed, opening his arms wide and swaying slightly.

“And you’re drunk…” Patton couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“Only a little but ‘ts fine, Patty…” He was slurring badly.

“You never drink.”

“First time for -hic- everything!”

“Virgil, what the hell is this? Why would you sabotage this evening?!”

“Psssh, I dunno, it’s crazy, right? Maybe I’m crazy, Pat!” He wildly gestured to his head, bugging his eyes out almost comically. Patton continued to rant, ignoring the erratic behavior.

“Virgil Davidson, this is not a joke! You were supposed to be there for me tonight! Do you know how scared my parents were for me when I came out? How much they worried that no one would understand and what that would do me? And now I’ve finally found someone who does understand but when I need them, they don’t show up! You know how important this was to me! You know how much it means to my family that they know the person that loves me!”

“Yes, I know, I know, it’s important to you, it’s important to them, my job is important, it’s all so freakin’ important and it’s too much! I can’t handle it! I am not good enough to do any of this!” His voice suddenly cleared up as he started to shout. Patton watched sorrowfully as his partner broke down in front of him. “I’m not good enough for you or your family, Pat. My dad was a drunk. My mom was a junkie. Hell, maybe I’m a drunk too. It’s in my blood! It’s who I am! I am made…from bad blood. So…you’re better off, your family is better off…”

Patton swallowed thickly, gathering up the courage to battle Virgil’s negative thoughts. “You think I’m better off.”

“Yeah!” Virgil flailed his arms dangerously.

“Without you.”

“Yeah, Pat, that’s what I said!”

“I’m sorry but…that! Is a damn lie!”

A sudden gasp sucked up all the air between them. “You-you never curse, Patty…” Virgil stumbled again as Patton took the hand free of roses in both of his.

“Virgil…you are good enough. You are so good. To me, to your patients. Your past will always be your past, sure, but it doesn’t define everything about you. In fact, it’s part of what’s made you so good and kind and loving: because you’ve suffered unimaginable pain and you want to protect others from ever feeling that way. I just wanted you to share that kindness with my family, that’s all.”

Virgil stared into middle space, eyes shining. “I’m good?”

Patton chuckled lightly. “Yeah, Virge. Of course you are. You know that.”

“Yeah…yeah, you’re right. I am good…I’m good. I’m good!” Virgil suddenly took off past Patton, through the open door…and right into the kitchen where Patton’s parents were still cleaning. Patton was hot on his heels but not fast enough to stop him.

“Hey! You guys! Patton’s family!” Larry and Dot whirled around at the same time, both wearing expressions of equal parts anger and confusion.

“Oh, geez,” Patton mumbled.

“Oh, now you show up. You listen to me,” his father growled, launching forward. Dot just barely held him back in time.

“Larry, no! You just calm down!” Dot turned to Virgil, brow furrowed in disappointment. “What are you doing here? Why bother coming now?”

“Look, I know you’re probably thinking all sorts of terrible shit about me right now! I showed up wicked late. I’m drunk. And I’m wearing all black so you probably think I’m some child of darkness and the truth is…I am. I don’t get family, like, at all. My family was super messed up, my childhood was insanity. I don’t know what it’s like to have parents like you. ​But I do know what it’s like to be loved. And even though sometimes I’m really shitty at showing it, I also know what it is to love someone and that is because…of your son. I love your son. A lot. A whole heck of a lot and because I love him…I wanna get to know you. Maybe then I’ll finally get what family is, you know? If…if you don’t hate me, that is.”

Nobody dared to move and break the palpable tension in the room. Every muscle in Patton’s legs twitched but he forced himself to stay still. Virgil had to face this on his own. The two parents exchanged a brief look, one that implied a seemingly secret communication. As if taking a cue from a director, Larry began to slowly walk forward towards the shuddering trauma surgeon.

“Oh God, are you gonna punch me out?” Virgil was terrified.

“What? No! I was gonna offer you a seat and some water. You look like you need to sit down, son.”

Virgil eyes shone for the second time that night. “Son?” His voice was barely above a whisper.

“Have you eaten, dear? We still have some pasta left. You should have some food and water and then you should get some sleep. We can talk more in the morning. Ooh, we should go for a pancake breakfast! That would be nice!”

“Or we could just make pancakes here, Dottie dearest!”

“Oh, don’t be so cheap, Larry, this is a special occasion! We’re expanding our family!”

Patton walked over from the hallway and collapsed at the table across from Virgil, both doctors too stunned to mind the gentle bickering of Larry and Dot over breakfast plans.

“I cannot believe that worked,” Virgil mumbled. Patton gently laid his hand over the shocked surgeon’s, a loving smile lighting up his face.

“I can.”

****

“It was the third year of my residency. I was the resident on call that night and after already having been at the hospital for a coronary revascularization that took hours, I was paged. I hadn’t even left yet but a massive apartment fire broke out and they needed hands. People came flooding in, the unit was packed; it was typical trauma madness. I was working on a 40-year-old man. He had what looked like minor injuries, a couple broken ribs, a head laceration, minor burns. I checked his airway, did an examination, stitched his head wound and moved on to the next patient. Three hours later, my attending was telling me that he was dead. He had a brain bleed and by the time we finally caught it, it was too late.” Logan stopped himself briefly, clearing his throat and letting out a choked sob.

Roman didn’t dare interrupt.

“My attending told me that he was a single father and the injuries he sustained were from pulling his two daughters out of the fire. He then said…that this man absolutely would have had a chance if I had bothered to order a head CT when I first saw him but because I was careless and failed to follow protocol, he was dead. He asked why I didn’t order the scan and I had to tell him the truth. I simply…forgot. It was shameful, I know but I was exhausted and rushed and I just…forgot. God, he was furious.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me this?” The neurosurgeon’s voice was soft and tentative.

“I didn’t want you to think I was weak. I didn’t want you to see…how failure follows me everywhere I go.”

“That’s not true.” Logan went on as if he didn’t even hear him speak.

“My attending then forced me to deliver the news to his two young children. He called it a learning experience. He said it would make me stronger, more careful.” Logan chuckled bitterly. “I guess he was wrong. After I informed the family, I left the hospital with my prescription pad and drove straight to a 24-hour pharmacy. It’s funny. I picked up the drugs because I wanted to erase that night from my memory but…I’ve never forgotten it. And it happens every time. I fall into the trap of thinking the drugs will mask the pain but it’s still there.”

“Logan…you were a resident. You were young and inexperienced, you’re bound to make mistakes. God knows I did.”

“But I am not supposed to!” Dr. Picani leaned in.

“Why, Logan? Why can’t you make mistakes?”

“Because the mistakes we make cost people their lives.”

“What else?” Roman prodded.

“What?”

“No, we all have that responsibility as doctors. And we all fall short at times, but it doesn’t break us like it broke you. So what else is there?”

Logan struggled to find his words. “My…mother was not…understanding when it came to failure. She had…high standards.”

“About?” “Everything. From my performance in school to how I should dress to how I should behave, about everything. And if I did not meet those standards, she was…unkind.”

Roman closed his eyes. “Did she hit you?”

“Never. But she did…other things. Denied me food. Locked me in closets and screamed at me to study. So many nights I fell asleep in the linen closet on a textbook with a dead flashlight in my hand. One time, I failed a test and the teacher called her about it. Before I got home…she had the locks changed. I slept at a friend’s home for the rest of that week until she finally gave me a new set of keys.” Logan rattled off his list of horrors in a detached manner, as if he was reciting a grocery list instead of recounting the most painful memories of his life. Roman didn’t dare to move or speak. He simply held Logan’s hand until he suddenly made eye contact with him, terror and pain clouding his eyes.

“Don’t you see now, Roman? How it was so easy for me to believe David Bacall’s words? I’ve heard them my whole life.” Roman had to clear his throat before he could talk again.

“Well, then…everything you’ve heard your entire life is wrong.” Without warning, the cardiac surgeon crumpled into Roman’s chest, clinging to him for dear life as he cried. “You are not a failure. No matter what mistakes you’ve made, you are still a good person. You are worthy of love. Give yourself room to be human, darling. I’m here, I can help you through it. It’s okay, Logan. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

****

“Virge. Virge, wake up.”

“Mmm, noooo. It hurts to wake up.”

“Hmm, I bet, that’s what happens when you drink yourself silly. How much did you have anyway?”

“You know that bottle of rum we split when we dressed up as pirates for Halloween?”

“Yeah…oh, Virgil, no.”

“Yep, it’s gone. Along with my dignity.”

“Nonsense. My father actually appreciated your blunt honesty. And my mother found you quite charming. They are concerned though that you’re doing…okay.”

Virgil thought for a moment. “Maybe I’m not as great as I thought I was. But I still have you so I’m pretty good.”

Patton smiled, running his fingers through Virgil’s hair. “Still, I think we should check in with Nate. Just to make sure we’re on a healthy track.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“And no more drinking alone.”

“No more drinking period, this is awful.”

“Aww. You know the best cure for a hangover? Pancakes and friendly conversation! Come on, Sailor Jerry, let’s get up.”

“Ugh, no alcohol references, please.”

“Aye, aye, Captain!...Morgan…”

“You hate me.”

“I love you.”

****

“Roman? Whatcha thinkin’ there, slugger?” Dr. Picani’s brow was knitted tight with concern.

“I just…don’t know how we move forward together now, Logan.”

“Wh-what?”

“I still want to, of course! It’s just…if failure is a trigger for you then how can I ever feel safe expressing how I feel when I’ve been hurt? Or when I’ve hurt you? Because it’s going to happen. We’re human, we’re going to fail each other. But I can’t have you going and hurting yourself because things fell apart. I won’t be in a relationship like that, I love you too much to put you through that.”

“Well, now, hold on here, Roman,” Dr. Picani chimed in, “keep in mind that Logan’s recovery is ultimately Logan’s responsibility. You can support him, sure thing, but managing his feelings and his reactions to those feelings? That’s on him. You know that, right, Logan?”

“Absolutely. That’s what being here has done for me. I have plenty of coping skills at my disposal to navigate difficult emotions. Other than using drugs, of course.”

“That being said, Roman brings up a good point: how does Rolo move forward? I think the best way to ensure that your relation-ship stays afloat is with open and honest communication! Logan, you need to make sure that you’re talking to Roman honestly about your feelings which means first talking honestly to yourself about them. Own your emotions and don’t be scared to let them out! Look at all the things you opened up about today. Is Roman rejecting you? No. He’s right here, willing to stay with you through this.” Logan looked at his partner, realization dawning.

“And Roman, you need to create a safe space for Logan to heal by letting him go at his own pace. You can’t push him to be vulnerable. Healing can’t be forced, otherwise it’s not real healing. Don’t underestimate his strength. It takes a lot to push him towards wanting to use. And one other thing…you need to forgive him. He knows he hasn’t been fair to you but he’s willing to make the commitment to showing you that things will be different now. Forgive him and trust that he’ll come to you.”

“That’s actually what I was going to say earlier. I thought that admitting that I recognize how I’ve hurt you and apologizing would be what you needed to hear. I didn’t anticipate you needing to know why it happened.”

“You don’t need to apologize anymore, Logan. You’ve felt guilty for enough, far more than you ever should have. And my anger earlier was misplaced. I’m not angry with you, I’m angry at the situation. I’m angry that someone would ever think to willfully hurt someone as wonderful as you.  And I was hurt that you didn’t tell me why you were hurting so much, especially after what we went through together. I haven’t always been fair to you either and I’ve tried so hard to make up for it. Being shut out…it made me think that you didn’t trust me, and that thought was…so painful. So, I lashed out. And I’m sorry. You don’t deserve that. You’re trying.”

Logan gently took Roman’s hands into his own. “As are you.”

Dr. Picani smiled fondly at the new development between the two surgeons. “Hey guys…you’re sitting next to each other now.” Both men looked down simultaneously to their now touching thighs, exchanging hesitant but sweet smiles at each other when they looked up. “You know, I’m gonna go ahead and prescribe one more thing for you two.”

“What would that would be, Dr. Picani?”

“Simple: Go on a date. Once Logan comes home and you two feel ready, go out! Have fun with each other! Laugh, talk about anything other than therapy or work. Remember what it was like to fall in love with each other. You two have been through so much and you’ve come out on the other side together. Go celebrate that! Celebrate your lives.”

“That sounds…most reasonable. We…we can do that.” Roman nodded in agreement.

“Splendid! Welp, that’s all folks! Gotta run to the next session! And I mean literally run, it’s all the way on the other side of campus.”

“Porky Pig!” Roman blurted out.

“Nice catch of the reference, Dr. Roman Empire. Very clever. Now, Logan, I’ll see you in a few days and you two cool cats back here next week! Okay, shoo, I wasn’t kidding about needing to run.”

“Oh, well, we’ll be going then.” Logan rushed out of the door, leaving Roman to pause and turn to the cheerful therapist. “Doctor?”

“Yes, Roman?”

“I, uh, I’m…thank you.” Dr. Picani simply nodded, a gentle smile playing on his lips. Roman nodded back before joining his partner in the hallway.

“Well then! Now that we’re done with that, shall we grab that lunch we discussed earlier?”

Logan grinned earnestly. “Sure. I think I know a place.”

#sanders sides #logince #romantic logince #moxiety #logan sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #patton sanders #queerplatonic moxiety #sanders sides surgeon au #my writing

[easyhairstylesbest]

I'm Buying My Husband a Bulletproof Vest for Valentine's Day

In the eight years since our first date, I’ve always bought my husband flowers and chocolate for Valentine’s Day. (Matt displays the flowers and I eat the chocolate.) But if the seditious attack on the nation’s Capitol taught me anything, it’s that I need to up my game in the Valentine gift-giving department. This year, he’s getting a bullet-proof vest.

Now that Donald Trump—who used his power, privilege, and social media following to encourage the storming of the Capitol building—is (mercifully) out of office, it may seem like the threat of insurrection is a thing of the past. But these crazed QAnon elements are not going anywhere anytime soon. Some of the cult’s most vile adherents, like freshman congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, have somehow found an elected seat from which to spew their dangerous rhetoric. It’s clear that, as Trump licks his wounds at Mar-a-Lago, we still face a reality where people radicalized by the far-right-wing internet feel empowered to take to our streets and openly threaten violence against elected officials.

Even still, my husband thinks investing in expensive combat gear is ridiculous. But I see such precautionary measures as an act of love—and a life insurance policy.

If the seditious attack on the nation’s Capitol taught me anything, it’s that I need to up my game in the Valentine gift-giving department. This year, he’s getting a bullet-proof vest.

Matt and I are newlyweds; it took me 39 years and countless lapses in judgement before I found the love of my life. He works as a legal administrator in a government building in Michigan’s Capitol. Credible threats of domestic terrorism leave me terrified that our swing state’s increasingly virulent QAnon population could one day make me a widow. So I’ve found myself scouring tactical gear websites and Amazon reviews for the kinds of goods that could possibly save his life someday—pieces that can be concealed under his suit or discreetly stored in his office.

The choices feel endless. Some vests are designed to stop bullets while others are only able to protect against knives. Who knew? There’s also the option of “stab” and “spike” protection. Apparently, sharp edges and spikes are totally different things in the world of protective gear. And then there’s the issue of hard material versus soft—this selection depends on external conditions like the weather, and also personal preferences for comfort. And finally, there’s the question of multi-threat armor, forcing me to guess the myriad ways that armed, horn-and-fur-wearing radicals could threaten Matt and his colleagues when it’s time to return to the office.

Gas masks, pepper spray, goggles, and other accessories necessary to defending oneself against insurrection present even more dizzying options. It’s easy to spend an hour or more sorting through bullet-proof vests alone; I have my work cut out for me if I’m going to make an informed purchase in time for Valentine’s Day.

My husband and I have always exchanged flowers and chocolate for Valentine’s Day. But this year, I’m trying to keep him safe.

Stephen CherninGetty Images

We are not survivalists, and I like to think that I’m not paranoid as a rule. The closest thing Matt and I have to self-defense is a dull set of steak knives. I can’t stomach the idea of owning a gun, and I don’t know anyone who could field my questions about riot and tactical gear. But I now find myself in a new world, wondering how Matt should be prepared for workplace violence fueled by hyper-nationalists with an axe to grind. What’s the best work uniform for someone who might find themselves targeted by a dangerous cult simply for showing up to work?

The Michigan Capitol Commission’s recent ban on open carry guns inside the state Capitol is also not what I would describe as soothing. I don’t think those most likely to storm government property really care about the law, do you? After all, my armed neighbors are the same people who plotted to kidnap Michigan’s governor and forcibly overthrow the government. Why did it take a Capitol takeover to bring about a modicum of common sense?

As a writer, mandates to work from home suited me just fine. It’s where I do my best work, clad in pajamas, the refrigerator and pantry mere feet away. Since orders to work from home became necessary, nothing much about my life has changed. But Matt hasn’t had the same experience, and after nearly one year of reporting to an office barely five feet from our bedroom, he’s eager to return to his professional stomping grounds. He misses face-to-face interactions with his colleagues, lunch at the local Thai joint, and—oddly enough—his collection of suits, ties, and leather shoes, now dusty from lack of use. The office gives him a sense of pride, productivity, and identity that he prefers to keep separate from his home life, to say nothing of the boost reporting to the office gives his mental health. I understand, and I want him to be happy. But his workplace address now fills me with a sense of dread I’d never known before. Thinking of Matt returning to government property to do a job he loves—a job he’s worked hard for and is damned good at—is enough to induce a panic attack.

What’s the best work uniform for someone who might find themselves targeted by a dangerous cult simply for showing up to work?

Although it will likely be months before he’s allowed to return to his building, it’s clear that Trump-loving extremists are in this fight for the long haul, and I’ve asked Matt to follow in the footsteps of both Michigan Sen. Dayna Polehanki and freshman Republican Rep. Peter Meijer, both of whom purchased combat gear to keep on hand at work.

“I’m not wearing a bullet-proof vest to work,” Matt scoffed in bed the other night. I showed him the articles about Polehanki and Meijer.

“You don’t have to wear it to work,” I clarified. “Just keep it in your office. See? They’re just preparing.”

“Well, just don’t buy it on Amazon,” he said. “There are better websites.”

I looked at him, speechless. He offered a mysterious smile. Perhaps I’ll be unwrapping my own tactical gear on Valentine’s Day. How so very romantic. How so very sad.

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I'm Buying My Husband a Bulletproof Vest for Valentine's Day

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Hypocrisy Files: Gabriella Montez

I know, I know. I should stay away from HSM II, given how it hikes my blood pressure. But after this post yesterday, I just NEED to back up my defence of Troy Bolton with a comparative look at Gabriella’s staggering hypocrisy during her confrontation with Sharpay. WHY people cannot see this is beyond me. In my Questions for HSM II Continued, I said that Gabriella’s actions here were “somewhat commendable”. I hereby retract that comment; after further analysis, I now conclude that Gabriella did not have one scrap of moral authority to lecture Sharpay at all. If anyone should have shouted at Sharpay here, it should have been Kelsi. 

I will now conduct a line-by-line analysis for why Gabriella’s actions here are disgraceful, hypocritical and far worthier of censure than ANYTHING Troy does in the ENTIRE film series. 

Hold your horses.

Hypocrisy Files: Gabriella Montez

Agent Deborah: At 08:25am this morning, I watched exclusive clips of Suspect Montez engaged in acts of heinous hypocrisy. Report as follows. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, we discover that Sharpay has banned employee participation in her beloved Talent Show, too envious of Ryan’s creative genius and the potential he has to outshine her (finally) during the event. She wants to hog the stage with a completely unwilling Troy. At this, Gabriella storms out of the kitchen, determined to give Sharpay what for, as this is only the latest in a series of gimmicks that Sharpay has played to assert her dominance. Gabriella calls Sharpay away from her group of laughing sycophants to begin what is ostensibly a moral stand, but actually a complete farce. 

[G] “Sharpay! Forget about the rest of us! How about the fact that your brother has worked extremely hard on the show?”

Well, I’ll give her credit here, since Sharpay is clearly in the wrong for flushing all Ryan’s hard work down the toilet just because of her insatiable desire to be Top Dog, even though she is less talented than he. Thankfully, Ryan will receive his opportunity to demonstrate his grit and talent in the upcoming movie, but not before we’ve heard yet more of Gabriella’s atrocious moralizing. 

[S] “Oh, boo-hoo! He’ll be in the show! He’ll do his... celebrity impersonations.”

I think this comment speaks for itself, which is what makes it so rewarding when Ryan stands up to her later on. 

[S] “And don’t lecture me about Ryan! Given the way you’ve been interfering in Troy’s future.”

[G] “What?”

[S] “You’ve got him written up by Fulton for sneaking on the golf course. Swimming after hours! I had to step in just to save Troy’s job!”

Now, much earlier when I watched this, it appeared to me that Sharpay was merely trying to guilt-trip Gabriella by making what appeared to be false accusations against her conduct. After all, Troy was the one who suggested the picnic on the golf course, assuring Gabriella that it was fine for them to be there, when in fact he was breaking Club rules. He also suggested sneaking a swim (by shouting it aloud to the world in the middle of said club), which was also against the rules. Furthermore, Sharpay is quite clearly posturing with her fake philanthropism, solely based on acquiring Troy as a trophy under the guise of her Talent Show. 

But now, I realize that Sharpay IS right! Not for the reasons she thinks, though. Gabriella HAS been interfering with Troy’s future. Her reaction to his promotions and privileges was, one of disdain, condescension and cruel mockery. She falsely accused him of having become a “new Troy” on the basis of 1)- his inability to make dates on time, 2)- his new Italian golf shoes, 3)- his clothes, meaning his promotions and privileges. 

As a result of this, Troy was crestfallen and no doubt filled with guilt that later manifest himself as he flushed his future down the toilet to reunite with Gabriella and get in good with his friends. If that’s not interference, then I don’t know what is. Any supportive girlfriend would have been delighted, pleased and proud when Troy said “I can’t believe how things are working out here!”. They would not have cut him down to pea size, mocked him for wearing new clothes and made him feel like an arrogant imposter, rather than a hard-working and talented student. It might not be physical interference, but you can see how Troy’s pleasure and good mood is completely eviscerated by the end of this scene. At the beginning, he did a twirl, was shooting hoops and smiling. By the end, he looked thoroughly downtrodden, confused and hurt. Gabriella has a habit of destroying Troy’s mood within seconds, as I will explain shortly. 

[G] “I’m not interested in what YOU think you’re doing for Troy! That’s between you and him!”

When I first watched this, I was cheering Gabriella on. Yes! She’s not interested in Sharpay’s meddling, she’s standing up for what is right! 

Oh, what a fool I was. Read Gabriella’s comments carefully, folks. Now let’s rewind a little back to the Free Cheeseburgers Travesty. What did Gabriella say, after finding out that Troy had asked Sharpay’s opinion* on his new Italian golf shoes?

“He didn’t ask me.”

That might sound innocuous, but then if you fast-forward a little, Gabriella brings up the SAME topic when she derides Troy for allegedly having changed. 

“So I see. ITALIAN GOLF SHOES, new clothes, golf carts... It’s crazy stuff. Hard to keep track of, I bet.”**

So in other words, she’s lying. Of course she is interested-- interested enough to repeat information she couldn’t possibly have known without taking an interest in what Troy was doing. After all, Troy did not ask her about his new shoes. She is jealous of the entirely fictional possibility that Troy was cheating on her with Sharpay. 

Take Gabriella’s comment with a pinch of salt. 

[G] “But you’re messing with MY friends, MY summer, and that’s not okay with me!”

Again, I was cheering Gabriella on during my first watch so long ago. Could I possibly have been more wrong?

First of all, this comment makes it appear that the crux of Gabriella’s complaint is self-centred. All of this is inconveniencing HER. But what about her defence of Ryan, I hear you say? Well, I have no choice but to assume that she was merely using Ryan as a way of squeezing some remorse from Sharpay. I know I have said differently beforehand, but upon closer inspection, I think I was wrong. She says “MY summer”-- I’m sorry, lady. You were never here to have YOUR summer. This is the lady who had been struggling to find work, and told Troy, “I hope some of those activities include a job.” But more importantly, were she so concerned about Ryan’s hard work, why didn’t she say something like this? “You’re messing with Ryan’s friends, RYAN’s summer and that’s not okay with me!” Would that not be more consistent with her alleged concern for Ryan’s hard work? FURTHERMORE, not long after her supposed defence of Ryan’s work, SHE QUITS LAVA SPRINGS without even waiting to see whether Sharpay, who looks ashamed of herself, will change her mind. Later on, Taylor has to DRAG her back to Lava Springs to complete the show/reunion that Ryan and Kelsi helped to plan. Surely someone deeply concerned about Ryan’s hard work would need NO persuasion to return? That is not to mention the fact that, during HSM III, she once again has to be persuaded by Troy to return to Albuquerque so that Ryan and Kelsi’s hard work isn’t wasted. Hypocrisy or what?

On top of THAT, note her claim of “MY friends”. If you view this in conjunction with her earlier comment, that she wasn’t interested in what Sharpay was doing for Troy, it is implied that Gabriella isn’t counting Troy as one of her friends. Why do I make this assumption? Because Gabriella NEVER criticizes Sharpay for harassing Troy throughout this exchange. She makes the implicit assumption that Sharpay and Troy have some kind of agreement (which they clearly do not), and leaves them out of the equation. “MY friends”, according to Gabriella, includes the Wildcats only. They have been inconvenienced. Troy, according to her, is living the high life. (This is after she derided him for daring to succeed without her. This is after she flirted with Ryan to his face to punish him). Think about this, folks. Gabriella has SEEN Troy being pushed left, right and centre by Sharpay. For example, during the “sneak a swim” exchange, Sharpay pulls up and you can see Troy’s confusion and exasperation when he gets onto the golf cart. So can Gabriella. Apparently, this escapes her mind. Also escaping her mind is the obvious fact that Troy would NEVER have connived with Fulton to do what Sharpay did-- 1)- he’s a downright decent guy and 2)- he is an EMPLOYEE and does not have the clout. And yet Gabriella has a go at Troy as well, as though this were part of his grand plan. 

On top of THAT, let’s talk about “messing with MY friends”. Troy is supposed to be her friend and yet she had no scruples and precious little remorse for pretending to flirt with Ryan to his face. I repeat this fact again and again folks, because it is the single most reprehensible act in the movie. It decimates any argument against Troy’s supposed “jerk” behaviour. SHE messed with Ryan, exploiting his desire for recognition and validation, leading to Ryan unjustly bearing the brunt of Troy’s humiliation and irritation. So this renders her alleged defence of him utterly irrelevant. It’s apparently not okay with her that Sharpay messes with The Wildcats, but there is nothing wrong with her using a good-natured, kind and generous boy who just wants a bit of credit as a tool in her petty revenge scheme against Troy based on FALSE EVIDENCE and LUDICROUS SUSPICIONS. Please, if you have any modicum of objectivity, weigh the two actions and tell me which is worse. 

[S] “You don’t like the fact that I... won...”

Yet more proof of why Troypay is a thoroughly false and ridiculous ship.

[G] “What’s the prize? Troy? The Star Dazzle Award? You have to go through all this just to get either one? No thanks, Sharpay. You’re very good at a game that I don’t wanna play. So... I’m done here. But you better step away from the mirror long enough to check the damage that will always be right behind you!”

Hypocrisy of hypocrisies. She treated Ryan as a prize not long earlier, with her fake flirting when he lost the Staff Baseball game. “You’re so awesome!”, she said, whilst ignoring Troy’s call. She was willing to compromise and even destroy a potential friendship between Troy and Ryan by giving the impression that she and the latter had something going on. That’s playing games, and she expected Ryan to play along with her, and humiliate Troy. Ryan didn’t do this, instead choosing to pass on a compliment from his father to Troy, showing that he had nothing but good intentions towards the both of them, and was being hoodwinked by the conniving hypocrite standing next to him. I have already discussed the stupidity of Gabriella quitting the job when no one else did. As for the damage that will always be right behind Sharpay? The irony of this scene is that the damage is standing RIGHT BEHIND GABRIELLA when she is giving this risible speech: Troy. The boy she has mocked, belittled, manipulated, humiliated, bullied and shunned for NO reason other than her own jealousy and controlling tendencies. Sharpay is not the only one who should step away from the mirror. Gabriella, filled with thoroughly false notions of her own moral superiority, is swimming in a sea of staggering hypocrisy. 

I know I should stop. This movie is not good for my well-being. 

*sigh* 

I’m headed back to Trelsi next.

(*FOOTNOTE-- And by the way, there is NO CRIME in asking a girl about new Italian shoes. The Italians make damn good shoes. Remember, Troy is not rich. I wouldn’t even say he was comfortably middle-class. He is like a kid in a candy store when he arrives at Lava Springs for the first time, and is stunned when Mr. Fulton promotes him on a salary of $500 a WEEK ($2000 a month) PLUS tips: “Per week? That’s off the hook! I ca... I think that’s very manageable.” Later, thoroughly bewildered, he asks Mr. Fulton: “How did this happen?” Are these the words of an arrogant show-off? So of course, he would be chuffed to be wearing expensive shoes, given that most of the time, he wears sneakers. 

Troy reacted to a compliment that Sharpay paid him-- yes, a compliment he thought was genuine, but was actually emotional manipulation-- and thus asked her opinion. Taylor edited this part of the conversation to relay back to Gabriella. Folks, please watch the scene where Taylor is shown appearing in the background whilst Troy and Sharpay are talking. You will discover that Taylor clearly heard MORE than this, most notably, Troy saying the following: “Your parents have been really nice. But singing with you isn’t a part of my job.” Taylor is within earshot and yet doesn’t give Gabriella this information. If Taylor’s spiteful and misleading behaviour isn’t sufficient, you then have Gabriella’s mournful “He didn’t ask me.” Well, maybe there is a reason for that. As BoltonEvans has pointed out, Gabriella makes fun of Troy earlier about his shoes! “Your shoes don’t match though! Kidding!” Was that the kind of comment she was also hoping to make on his Italian golf shoes?!)

(**FOOTNOTE--  “So I see. ITALIAN GOLF SHOES, new clothes, golf carts... It’s crazy stuff. Hard to keep track of, I bet.”

People, if you have a significant other who speaks to you like this, you will need to re-evaluate your relationship. Do the people who bow and make sacrifices at the altar of Troyella ever watch this scene? Do they block it out? The rudeness, sneering condescension and hostility are jumping out of the screen here. And may I point out that Gabriella is, in effect, blaming Troy for wearing things THAT WERE GIVEN TO HIM. 

Mr. Fulton promoted him earlier on. Of course, we don’t see any scene in which Gabriella congratulates him upon having received a promotion on the job. Mr. Fulton promoted him because “It would seem that the Evans family think you have untapped potential.” Despite Sharpay’s harassment and manipulation, and Ryan being increasingly sidelined whilst Troy got the limelight (his sarcastic faces during the dinner scene are priceless!), it is Mr. Evans who was clearly impressed with Troy’s skill and willing to offer him opportunities. Troy didn’t go looking for any of this. So for Gabriella, who already has the very decent job of being a lifeguard ENTIRELY THANKS TO TROY (needless to say, she NEVER thanks him getting her a job, and quits later on), to act as though he is nothing but an opportunist peacock is an indictment upon her and her alone. 

One wonders why, in the next film, Troy asks Gabriella to pick out a suit for him. It’s cringeworthy and embarassing. But could it be because of this scene? Gabriella mocks his clothing choices throughout-- let me reiterate: “Your shoes don’t match though! Kidding!”/”Look at you! Go team!”/”Italian golf shoes, new clothes...” Could it be that because of Gabriella’s continued mockery, Troy loses confidence in his ability to dress himself and so consults her for what suit he should choose in the next movie? If so, this is yet more proof of how Troy’s self-esteem, confidence and self-image have plummeted as a result of his “relationship” with Gabriella). 

#HSM2 #GabriellaMontez #LiterallySaveTroyBoltonFromGabriellaMontez #TroyellaSucks #TroypaySucks #InDefenceofTroyBolton #Fuming #StillMad #Deb'sAnalysis #EastHighWildCats #WildCatHypocrisy #GabriellaIsAMassiveHypocrite #IDon'tUnderstandTroyellaFans #HowCanTheyIGNOREthis? #LetMeKnow

[thesinglesjukebox]

SARAH JEFFERY - QUEEN OF MEAN

[3.36]

Who died and made you queen of mean?

Kayla Beardslee: I don't like your kingdom keys / They once belonged to me / You asked me for a place to sleep / Locked me out and threw a feast (what!?) / The world moves on, another day, another drama, drama / But not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma / And then the world moves on, but one thing's for sure / Maybe I got mine, but you'll all get yours! [3]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: The devil on Taylor Swift's shoulder -- the one who tells her to be petty and make cringe-y music -- brought to life with horrifying, cartoonish realness. [2]

Isabel Cole: Listening to this with no preparation, I thought, first, is this a villain song from a Disney Channel movie?, and then, but seriously, which: yeah. Which had me wondering if I should soften on it, since its purpose is not the purpose of actual music, but with the caveat that I'm two decades out of the target demo, I feel like it fails at its intended project, too. Jeffery has a pretty enough voice, and a few seconds in the chorus suggest that given decent material she'd be at least adequate to the task, so why lock her into a wildly unconvincing speak-singing (are we supposed to read this as rapping? Is this a Hamilton thing?) cadence in which she sounds neither angry enough to justify a heel turn nor, like, awesome enough to be fun? Most songs of this nature are not up to the goofy thrills of "Poor Unfortunate Souls," but this isn't even up to the rather moderate bar set by "Let It Go," despite the benefit of a singer who hasn't spent the past fifteen years blowing out her cords. [3]

Alex Clifton: So the context of this is that in a Disney Channel Original Movie Sleeping Beauty's daughter saw Belle & the Beast's son get engaged to the Evil Queen's daughter despite the fact that they're all 22 and babies and really should focus on growing up and learning who they are instead of trying to get married to end a successful musical franchise, and so she... raps about it... with her best Lin-Manuel Miranda impression. It's not as horrible as it sounds, but then again, it's not great. [4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Talk-rapping for Hamilton fans. Stock music production with trap flourishes, all of which sounds embarrassed of its rap influence. Instrumentation that's mixed incredibly low to draw attention to weak vocals--Jeffery really can't sell a modicum of emotion, huh? There's better music made by amateur YouTube Kids content creators. [0]

Alfred Soto: This song offends me several ways. First, talk-singing this much didn't work for Lou Reed. Second, the chintzy approach to arranging and singing reduces the song's range to the bellyaching of a MAGA-ite. Finally, Jeffery's short range intermediate missile of a voice is deadly when listeners are in range. [1]

Kylo Nocom: Is there a better example of camp? Sarah Jeffery's melodramatic half-rapping half-fairy-tale-narration is comedy gold, and that bridge of rock-riffage-as-evil-turn makes me lose my damn mind. Too bad that the production here is the worst of fake trap; the Disney Channel folks got away with basic presets in High School Musical, but here the instrumental errs too close to something expected of Sofia Carson or Ashley Tisdale doing YouTube covers. Sarah Jeffery's choruses here are swooning basicity surrounded by moments of hilarity, which nearly ruins the effect - this is better off the less it sounds like an actual pop song. Luckily, those seconds of Jeffery just yelling near the end makes this whole thing work out, a punchline to one extended bizarre joke. My 3-year-old niece would probably think this is badass, but she's already somehow in love with Billie Eilish, so I don't expect her to make much out of this; Disney Channel evil is never really evil, so why take that when there's so much weirder shit? I can't take "Queen of Mean" seriously and I don't know how to, really. Guess that's the point, but it's kind of a boring one. [5]

Katherine St Asaph: A Disney-villain version of "Love the Way You Lie," though not a great idea, isn't any worse an idea than "Be Prepared" being a Disney-villain version of a fascist march song. But one wonders whether the source material -- evil-evil, not campy-evil -- imposed some hesitation on the performance, is part of why Jeffery's vocal only goes about 50% of the way there. (Maybe I've got the wrong source material. Maybe what they had in mind was Hamilton, or Jojo's "Leave (Get Out).") There's another problem: All the energy in "Love the Way You Lie" is in Rihanna's belting and Eminem's roaring, not the instrumental, so adding a key change to that instrumental is pretty queen-of-meaningless. [4]

Ian Mathers: I'm glad that musicals exist for people who like them (genuinely!) and certainly if I had kids and they were into this it'd be less objectionable than some other stuff they might be playing constantly within earshot, but mostly it just makes me feel like Tommy Lee Jones trying to film a frickin' Batman movie: I cannot sanction this buffoonery. (And that's also fine! It's not for me, etc.) [4]

Katie Gill: If you try to judge a Descendants song like you would judge an actual song that you'd hear on the radio or would get a "Song of the Year" Grammy nom, then you're missing the point of a Descendants song. You've got to judge this song on the same metric as you would "We're All in This Together" or "How Far I'll Go" this song is made for children, ages 6-12ish with the express purpose of entertaining said children and while also being simple enough that the small children can sing along to it with a hairbrush microphone in their bedroom. And when you view "Queen of Mean" in the lens of that category, it succeeds! Granted, it's not one of the stand-out songs of the franchise and that rap is downright silly. But Sarah Jeffery does an amazing job on the chorus, there are some solid lyrics, those final few measure are top notch, and the entire Descendants franchise could be subtitled "goofyass rap numbers" so honestly, I can't fault it too much. [7]

Will Adams: Despite not knowing anything about Disney's villain alternate universe fanfic The Descendants, this is an adequate heel turn. It's "Let It Go" by way of "Look What You Made Me Do," perhaps. But the genre constrains it; I understand in a musical theater setting, it's important to push the vocals to the front of the mix to catch all the plot happenings, but it sacrifices dynamics in the process. For a queen of mean, the song never grows to anything justifying its title. [4]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#Sarah Jeffery #pop #Descendants #Disney #music #music review #writing #musical

[talhaghafoor2019-blog]

Drake, Ariana Grande, Cardi B and the other songs to create the best Summer music playlist

On Spotify last weekend, it seemed as if the streaming service had given itself over entirely to presenting the music of a single artist.

That would be Drake, whose double album Scorpion was released on June 30.

Everywhere you looked, there was his handsome mug, the cover image of every single playlist on the world’s most popular streaming service.

That went for even the ones his songs weren’t featured on, such as “Best of British,” or \”Happy Pop Hits.” The promotion was a silly goof that online rageaholics are comparing to U2’s Songs of Innocence being inserted into all the world’s iTunes music folders in 2014 because, well, because people love to complain.

But the all-Drake all-the-time stunt underscores a truism: Scorpion is the unavoidable event release of the summer. The Toronto rapper’s album is uneven but still packed with hits. Scorpion has smashed streaming records left and right, garnering more that 435 million plays on Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services in its first three days of release. That is more than the previous record holder, Post-Malone’s Beerbongs & Bentleys, accumulated in a week.

Drake is included on the 24-song summer playlist assembled here, which you can play on Spotify by scrolling down to the bottom of the page.

But there’s more than Drizzy happening this summer: The tunes assembled include big pop hits in contention in that winner-take-all Song of the Summer competition that media outlets obsess over, but also breezy and brooding songs with a multiplicity of moods, because while hot and sticky seasonal pop songs are often joyful, they’re not always enough to chase away the summertime blues.

“I Like It,” Cardi B feat. Bad Bunny and J Balvin. If a single song of the summer had to be named, I’d go with this one, the second Billboard chart topper for the Bronx born rapper who dominated 2017 with “Bodak Yellow.” This collaboration with two reggaeton emcees effortlessly blends trap music beats with salsa. It’s further evidence of the indomitable spirit of the rapper born Belcalis Almanzar.

“Make Me Feel,” Janelle Monáe. The current single from the Atlanta R&B-pop-funk synthesist’s terrific new Dirty Computer is “I Like That.” “Make Me Feel,” however, is the superior summertime jam, a celebration of sexuality that takes pointers from Prince’s “Kiss.” She will play the Made in America festival on the Ben Franklin Parkway on Labor Day Weekend.

>> READ MORE: ‘I’m not America’s nightmare, I’m the American dream’: Janelle Monáe’s new kind of protest song

“Apes-,” The Carters. Beyoncé says the bad word on multiple occasions in this hard-banging celebration of high-powered entertainment couple bliss on Everything Is Love, which features art history lessons aplenty in its video filmed at Paris’ Louvre museum. Jay and Bey will be at Lincoln Financial Field on July 30.

>> READ MORE: Beyoncé and Jay-Z are a happy couple on ‘Everything Is Love.’ Is that good for their music?

“Short Court Style,” Natalie Prass. A delectable slice of bubble gum flavored throwback 1970s pop-funk  is Richmond, Va., indie singer Prass’ impressive second album, The Future and the Past. Prass plays the Xponential festival in Camden on July 28.

“Boo’d Up,” Ella Mai. Summertime is the love song time. British singer Ella Mai first put out this celebration of going steady early last year, but it’s a success story that gathered stream and pop radio exposure into 2018.

“Slow Burn,” Kacey Musgraves. While still IDing herself as country singer, Kacey Musgraves has redirected her music in a ‘70s soft-rock direction, a smart strategy since country radio is too conservative to play her anyway. This superbly crafted tune stays on permanent simmer.

“Babe,” Sugarland feat. Taylor Swift. Wyomissing, Pa.’s own megastar Swift now rules a pure pop universe. She plays back-to-back nights at Lincoln Financial Field starting Friday. but she’s smartly kept her finger in the country pie by continuing to write hit songs for country pop acts such as reunited duo Sugarland.

“Let’s Take a Vacation,” Joshua Hedley. The Nashville crooner  puts a warm-weather spin on Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Though December,” on this cut from Mr. Jukebox, as he tries to convince his significant other that a summer time getaway will put some zip back in their failing relationship.

“Pretty Horses,” Dwight Yoakam. This is the best of two new lonesome and blue songs that the uncommonly dependable veteran songwriter recently debuted on his excellent new Sirius XM channel Dwight Yoakam & the Bakersfield Beat.

“Pet Cemetery,” Tierra Whack. A love song to her lost dog, this is one of the standout cuts on the North Philly rapper’s wondrous 15-songs-in-15-minutes album Whack World.

>> READ MORE: Welcome to Tierra Whack’s ‘Whack World’: The North Philly rapper only needs 15 minutes of your time

“Summer Games,” Drake. “Summer just started and we’re already done,” the Canadian rhymer, in sad and sensitive mode, raps on the 1980s synth driven summer bummer, sounding disappointed. It’s one of many Scorpion cuts, along with “After Dark” and “Nice For What” that would have made worthy addition to this list.

“No Tears Left to Cry,” Ariana Grande. The octave leaping singer has a new album called Sweetener due next month, and a frisky new single called “Bed” with Nicki Minaj. This, though, is the sad song with a sweet melody whose mournful tone feels like a response to the terror attack that killed 22 at a Grande show in England last year.

“Lucid Dreams,” Juice Wrld. Drake isn’t the only rapper who’s pouring his feelings out this summer. Juice  Wrld is the suburban Chicago teen born Jared Higgins who specializes in feeling sorry for himself in song, thankfully with a modicum of self-awareness. “I take prescriptions to make me feel a-OK,” he rap-sings. “I know it’s all in my head.”

“Heat Wave,” Snail Mail. Baltimore teenager Lindsey Jordan explores her feelings with scalpel-sharp acuity and songwriting smarts on her debut, Lush, and this will mentally cool you down if you watch its ice hockey video. Jordan plays Union Transfer on Saturday.

“Nameless, Faceless,” Courtney Barnett. The Australian rock songwriter who is so good at precisely — and drolly — detailing thoughts of alienation and detachment on her new Tell Me How You Really Feel. Put down of the summer: “I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and spit out better words than you.”

“If You Know You Know,” Pusha-T. There’s no self-pity on this hard-hitting highlight from Daytona, the Kanye West-produced return to form by the rapper who made his name with the street-wise Virginia hip-hop duo Clipse.

“Stay Woke,” Meek Mill feat Miguel. The appropriately serious-in-tone first song by the Philadelphia rapper since his release from prison in April. He spits with authority, and takes Grandmaster Flash’s classic “The Message” as a starting point. Look for Miguel to join him when they both play Made in America on Labor Day weekend.

“This Is America,” Childish Gambino. The song of the summer that speaks the most intensely to a bitterly divided nation in 2018 from Renaissance man Donald Glover.

“The Middle,” Zedd, Maren Morris, Grey. A collaboration between Russian-German deejay-producer, a Nashville country pop singer, and an L.A. EDM act is just the sort of Frankensteinian creation that contemporary pop mega-hits are made of. And this one is hard to resist.

“One Kiss,” Calvin Harris feat. Dua Lipa. This summer’s soaring firework celebration-ready dance track from Scottish deejay and Taylor Swift-ex Harris. This time with English songwriter and vocalist handling the vocal duties in a testimony about how a single peck on the lips can spell transcendence.

“A Song for Those You Miss All the Time,” Thin Lips. Speaking of Lips, this song by the Philly band fronted by Chrissy Tashjianis is by no means a happy one, but its gnarly guitar riff and catchy hook does deliver plenty of catharsis. Chosen Family is out July 27.

“Hey! Little Child,” Low Cut Connie. A ribald stomp from the raucous throwback Philly rocker’s Dirty Pictures (part 2), covering Big Star star Alex Chilton, who included it on his 1979 solo album Like Flies On Sherbert.

“I’m Your Man,” Spritualized. One man band Jason Pierce — a.k.a. J. Spaceman — is returning with And Nothing Hurt, his first album of new music since 2012 on Sept. 7. This and a second song, “A Perfect Miracle,” are marked by swelling orchestration and divine summertime sadness sentiment.

“Summer’s End,” John Prine. Before you know it, it’ll be gone. This highlight from the 71-year-old Prine’s superb better-than-it-has-any-right-to-be The Tree of Forgiveness is as beautiful and bittersweet as a late August sunset.

July 5, 2018 — 6:54 PM EDT

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[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What if the animorphs kept the telepathy ability that was in the first book

[Since there are a couple abilities that kinda come up in the first book but not again—continuity is a tricky beast—I went with the ability that Elfangor demonstrates to send everything from emotions to images to huge downloads of information using thought-speak.  Hopefully this is what you were asking about, dear anon.]

• All five of them are still staring up at the sky, watching the yeerk ship come in to land, when the andalite suddenly whips his tail around.  Tobias flinches back, but Elfangor just gently presses the flat of his tail blade against Tobias’s forehead.  Visser Three’s Blade ship is descending, Jake is calling for them all to get out of there, Elfangor is bleeding out on the cracked concrete, but the two of them stay frozen there for a long several seconds anyway.  Finally Tobias rocks back, taking a huge gasp of air as if just waking up.  Rachel yanks him away from Elfangor, out of sight behind a broken wall, before he has time to ask any of the billion questions on the tip of his tongue.

This time, when Elfangor sends them all a warm burst of courage and hope, Tobias closes his eyes—and sends it back.

• Jake practically has to drag Tobias to safety even as Rachel distracts the hork-bajir-controllers.  Tobias is silent, strangely blank-faced despite the tears that continue to run down his cheeks, eyes flickering to follow events that have no relation at all to the present world.

When he finally does come to, Tobias finds himself in Jake’s bed in the middle of the night.  Jake is camped out on the floor, sitting up in his sleeping bag in a way that suggests he hasn’t even tried to lie down and sleep yet.

Unable to stand the fear and concern in Jake’s eyes, Tobias leans down and presses a hand against his shoulder.  “It’s okay,” he whispers, and lets the threads of his own excitement and wonder and fascination flow through that touch, keeping his grief and terror locked away.  “I’ll explain in the morning, but I promise we’re going to be okay.”

Sleepy as a child, Jake looks up at him and nods trustingly.  Together they slip into strange, cosmic dreams.

• It takes Tobias several days to sort through the enormous set of memories that Elfangor forced into his mind.  When Cassie asks, he says it’s almost like a huge computer file that’s been compressed into a tiny amount of disk space, all there but time-consuming for his brain to read through.  Still, the more Tobias figures out the more he can teach the others: he makes Rachel laugh just by concentrating hard enough at the place where Marco’s hair is stuck to a hay bale behind him with static electricity, he shows Jake how to pull out of a dive during flight without ever saying a word, he coaches Cassie through spreading empathy to the rest of the team.

Marco remains the most reluctant to get involved, not even morphing after each of them have all tried it at least once.  No matter how many times the others reassure him that it’s cool, that being an animal is the wildest thing and sharing it with everyone else is even crazier, he keeps saying that they all need to stay the fuck out of his head if they know what’s good for them.  Because, he insists, he is not fighting this war.

“It’s okay,” Tobias says gently.  “In your situation I’d be that concerned about my dad as well.  In fact—”

Marco punches Tobias so hard that he actually knocks him over.  Tobias, dizzy and with a newly blackened eye, misses the next several seconds where Jake has to tackle Rachel to keep her from strangling Marco and Cassie ends up forcing everyone to calm down.

• After all that, it’s Marco who galvanizes them into the first battle.  Just one, he insists, one and done, but… He glances at Jake while Jake’s back is turned, and doesn’t finish that sentence.  But this battle can’t go unfought, Tobias supplies mentally.

• It’s Jake’s idea to gather them all into a huddle before that first battle.  Tobias is reluctant to demorph, but he does it anyway when he understands what Jake is doing.  The five of them link arms, forming a circle with their bodies as they all face each other across the dense space.  Marco mutters a comment about Satanic rituals that sets them all off giggling, but even he quiets down when Tobias becomes the first one to send them all emotion.

All of them take deep breaths, filled to the brim with Rachel’s fierce courage and thirst for vengeance.  With Jake’s casual, collected self-confidence.  Cassie’s sweet compassion and indomitable will.  Marco’s racing brilliance and bleak amusement.  Tobias’s determined, hopeful, iron-hard idealism.

Thus, armed to the teeth with one another’s strength and skill, they go into battle together.

• After, of course, everything changes.  And yet in some ways nothing does.

Jake knows what happened—or at least some part of it—the moment he sits up in bed before Tobias has even had time to land on his windowsill.  With a shaking hand he presses resilience and hope into Tobias’s feathers.

Rachel comes by often, and together the two of them construct elaborate daydreams which range from the inane (What if unicorns were real?) to the exquisitely sad (What would they do together, if they could go on a normal date?) as they sit side by side in Tobias’s meadow.

Cassie and Jake and even Marco come by to visit on a rotating schedule, Marco transmitting ridiculous little mental cartoons of their Algebra teacher and speculating about what that yeerk in Chapman’s brain does all day, while Jake and Cassie mostly just send love and support.

“What’s wrong?” Rachel says, and Tobias sends her the sensation of hot wet meat and bone sliding down her throat even as the dying scream of a field mouse echoes in her ears.  She swallows hard, looking faintly sick, but all she says out loud is, “At least it’s more nutritious than hamburgers, right?”

• When the dreams come, it takes Cassie and Tobias all of thirty seconds—and a fair amount of intense concentration—to convince the others that this is a real problem and that there’s an andalite who definitely needs their help.  Tobias only hears secondhand about when the others all discovered that whales can also use this strange form of nonverbal communication they all thought was unique to andalites.  However, he gets to meet Ax in person before long, so it’s largely a moot point.

«You have paid a high price for the gift of my brother Elfangor,» Ax says, in his strangely formal andalite way.

«Prince Elfangor was your brother?» Tobias demands.  «Wow.  Then I guess that’d make you my uncle.»

“Wait, WHAT?” three or four people say at the same time.

• It’s the sort of thing that Tobias found too raw, too personal, to share with anyone else.  Almost every other detail from the huge set of memories he received has been parceled out to his friends, picked over and analyzed to death… Except this one, which Tobias has kept close.

That is, until he met someone who had known Elfangor far better than he ever would.  He and Ax spend most of the next several days talking—and doing that strange andalite thing which goes beyond mere speech—about everything Ax remembers of his brother.  About Elfangor’s legacy, and their struggle to live up to the gifts he left.

Tobias gives Ax the secondhand memories he received, and the story they tell: of a disgraced prince and two eager young arisths, of a pair of human children stranded far from their own world, of how yeerks came to take their only andalite host and thousands of humans after.  Neither of them quite knows what to make of it, but together they start to put together the disparate pieces of a life that ended too soon.

• Before every battle they follow the same ritual, sharing—amplifying—their courage and determination while crushing their fear and exhaustion to death beneath the weight of their common affirmation that they’re all still here to fight another day.  Ax teaches them all on a level without words what it means to give oneself so fully to one’s team and one’s cause that one ascends a mere petty life to become part of a legend.  Jake thinks of the humbling realization of his friends’ love as Cassie and Marco charged to rescue his family on the shores of a night-dark lake.  Marco pulls up the fierce pride of causing his mother to laugh until she snorted unflatteringly, and marries it with the gorilla’s slow-burning anger at the yeerks who took her away.  Rachel gives them all the heady feeling of a perfectly executed cartwheel and the even headier rush of invincibility that comes every time they survive another battle.  Cassie thinks of the awe and beauty and near-terror she felt the first time a humpback whale gave her a tiny glimpse of the sheer scale of the ocean, and the awareness that this is what they are fighting for.  Tobias gives them the soaring freedom of coasting on silky wings through a perfect sky and the hork-bajir’s own fierce cry of defiant independence from yeerk tyranny.

After, they are quieter, more subdued.  The exhaustion that bleeds from every cell of their broken-repaired-mutilated-remade bodies cannot help but slide through their connection, but other things get through as well.  The knowledge that they’re all still here, if only for now.  The hope that maybe this time they made a difference.  Even just the warmth of the worry that Jake is going home to a controller-infested house and Marco is going home to an empty one, while Ax and Tobias aren’t quite going home at all, can be enough to keep them feeling safe for a time.

They don’t know it, but they are healthier than they would otherwise be.  More secure.  Better prepared for the horrors to come.

• And come they do.

• Tobias becomes a sieve rather than a vessel, letting every modicum of pain and fear flow through his body—and straight into Taylor.  She crumples to the ground, screaming, and he feels a vicious joy.  Two hours later when the Animorphs manage a rescue, Taylor is screaming “How are you doing that?” as Tobias watches her with calm defiance, barely a feather out of place.

• Rachel jolts her reduced team with heady insouciance like a million shots of caffeine when she leads the team while Jake’s out of town.  High on her courage and elation, trapped in a feedback loop of their own cockiness, no one realizes that eight civilians have already died until it’s too late.

• “There’s something I have to tell you,” Tobias says to Loren.  He presses a soft hand to her arm, concentrating carefully—and watches her entire expression transform in surprise.

• It’s Ax who finds Jake in the hork-bajir valley after they fail to evacuate his family.  Ax who presses the flat of his tail blade against Jake’s forehead.  Ax who sends a message with associations and images and emotions and everything that there are not words to describe.  Ax who gives Jake his entire life in some ways, and in others gives only one concept: I understand.  Ax who clumsily catches Jake when he collapses afterward, nearly sending them both to the ground, and holds him for the next hour as he cries.

• «Where’s Rachel?» Marco says during their final battle for the Pool ship, and Jake cannot contain the emotion that comes spilling out of him in response.

Tobias shouts at him.  Cassie sends a wave of silent recrimination that nearly knocks him off his feet.  Ax stares at him with an expression, nearly pitying, that is worse than Cassie’s anger.  It’s Marco who finally takes a shaky breath and says, «In that case, we’d better get to the bridge and help her out, don’t you think?»

What happens in the interim—the cold calculation between Marco and Ax as Jake watches the yeerk pool flushed into space, the disgust as Cassie tells Erek he’s a robot who doesn’t even feel and wouldn’t understand, the desperation bleeding out of Tobias like a toxic cloud—doesn’t matter.  What matters is this: when they get to the bridge, Rachel’s fight hasn’t begun yet.  What matters as well: the Blade ship and the Pool ship are parked end-to-end, so close that it is possible to shout thought-speak, to send emotions, across the divide.

«Surrender.  Now,» Jake tells Visser One.  Espin senses the cold confidence in that voice to the depths of his being, and doesn’t bother to argue.

• The ensuing fight on the bridge of the Blade ship is the stuff of legends.  One grizzly bear goes up against an entire menagerie, over twenty different predators and killers from this planet and half a dozen others.  One grizzly bear, and yet not fighting alone.  Every single one of the Animorphs is right there with her in spirit and in sense, looking through her eyes and feeling through her claws as the six of them together battle for her life.

Rachel has only weak near-sighted bear vision, and yet she swings around to monitor her flanks with an andalite warrior’s grace and ease, incorporating both her own view and that from the screen as if she has four eyes instead of two.  With discernment keener than her own she registers the second that the cape buffalo in front of her drops its shoulder to charge, ignoring the lioness to her left even as it turns from battle to run.  Two of the hyenas converge on her, and—picturing the ship’s layout as if from above—she ducks behind a control module just in time to send one crashing into the other with bone-breaking force.

Exhaustion has her swaying on her feet, but she digs deep inside herself finds the willpower to shove pain and fatigue aside even as her body fights on, more under her friends’ control than her own.  With cold calculation she slams a rhinoceros into the far windscreen hard enough to shatter a hole clear through the window of the Blade ship, watching as if from a distance as the entire craft tilts out of orbit and half a dozen controllers are sucked into the unforgiving vacuum of space.  It is with far more compassion that she steps over injured bodies without finishing them off, goes for disabling blows rather than killing ones—including with the king cobra she leaves coiled unconscious on the floor.

At the end of it she stands over the carnage, the only one left reasonably intact despite the bleeding cuts that coat her fur and the gory absence of her right eye.  Staggering, she presses her unbroken front paw against the computer’s control-system panel, blindly obeying the mental commands that Ax sends to her in order to bring the ship down.

It is only when Rachel is confirmed as safe that the other five Animorphs realize that this entire time their bodies have been lying almost unattended on the deck of the Pool ship, and that Alloran has been fighting with the strength and skill of twenty warriors to keep them all safe from the remaining controllers in their mental absence.

• «We are not so different from you,» Jake tells the andalite high command.  Through their long-distance comm he sends his weariness of war and his hope for the future.  The sick sadness of his grief and the flickering flame of his defiance.  The love he holds for his planet in general and his friends—his family—in particular.  He sends all this, and he can see immediately that the andalite prince understands.

• Meanwhile, a Blade ship is landing on the Washington Mall.  When the ramp descends Rachel staggers off it into the jarringly manicured lawn, dragging the unconscious body of her cousin, and only pauses long enough to flip off the shouting circle of reporters that surrounds her before she goes to find her friends.

#asks #answers #animorphs #au #animorphs au #gore #tobias fangor #rachel berenson #alloran is my trash baby #a softer world #see? I do know how to write happy endings #(kind of) #aka the animorphs make a megazord