#about to bring her to the zootopia get together

[calpalsworld]

Marketable character concept. No name for her yet. Feedback welcome ^_^

#my art #ocs #about to bring her to the zootopia get together #coloring style not final

[daisymintt]

Been noodling around with an angsty Trolls Fic idea I might write…

Post World Tour Branch gets stuck as a Rock Zombie, Poppy goes to his bunker in hopes of finding something that will break the spell. She finds a bunch of invitations and cards that she had given him over the years (she thought he had thrown most of them away) and behind all of them was a single beat up field journal. At the beginning the entries are very straightforward and factual with the occasional picture of some other trolls. After further investigation she realizes that the other trolls are Branches brothers who made up the band “Brozone”. After the events of the first movie the entries start to get more open emotionally. The most recent entry, dated the day they got the invite from Barb, said that Branch was going to tell Poppy that he loves her and wants to be more then friends. Poppy tears up at this and fades to a desaturated pink and her hair wilts. She hugs his journal to her chest takes a deep breath, her pink color returning as her determination to help Branch fills her. She sticks the journal in her hair and starts gathering supplies for her new adventure. She sets out on a mission to find and bring them all to Pop Village to help bring back Branch starting with John Dory and the Neverglades. Beginning of her journey parallels the first movie, she overcomes any challenges that come her way thanks to Branches survivalist training. After finding John Dory the rest of the story follows the same beats as Band Together from there. During the journey she is much more solemn than usual because she’s worried about Branch.

Back at Pop Village Tiny Diamond and her other friends are in charge of taking care of Branch who’s zombie condition is causing him to be more aggressive (think the animals affected by the night howlers in Zootopia)

#branch trolls #trolls band together #trolls branch #trolls 3 #trolls #trolls world tour #angsty #angst #trolls angst #branch angst #queen poppy #branch x poppy #trolls poppy #poppy trolls #poppy angst #rock branch #rock zombie branch #john dory #brozone #trolls clay #trolls floyd #trolls bruce #trolls fic #trolls fanfic

[jihyocentric]

suggestion! can you write jihyo is upset with nayeon because she do the zootopia video with jeongyeon...nahyo is dating but the others does not know including jeongyeon... so jihyo become all sulky and sensitive and the others was confused of why she's like that...

nayeon should’ve kept her word and called jihyo instead of jeongyeon to record the video that got her girlfriend grumpy all day long, but something about jihyo being passive-aggressive, trying not to show she’s jealous but failing at it, is too precious.

jihyo doesn’t know how obvious she’s being. the girls notice how jumpy she gets whenever nayeon is on her side, and they figure they had fought. it wasn’t unusual for them to get into small conflicts from time to time, but what surprises them is how touchy nayeon gets with jihyo.

it starts with small kisses on their leader’s cheeks during breaks and the way she keeps a protective hand around jihyo’s waist. soft hugs from behind were a must, and when someone messed up and had to redo the choreography by themselves, nayeon would keep hugging jihyo.

jihyo doesn’t say a word. not even when nayeon becomes talkative, asking if jihyo wants some water, if she’s tired, if the hugs feels nice — she gets not answers whatsoever. nayeon has always looked out for jihyo, but the attention she gives to their leader that day felt off.

“what's on with these two?” tzuyu asks curiously, jeongyeon on her side, sitting on the couch during a break.

“no idea,” jeongyeon replies, eyes on jihyo and nayeon as she drinks water, using her fifteen minute break to rest.

on the other side of the room, jihyo sat quietly on the ground, back against the wall, focused on her phone. she’d be joining the others to have a small chat if she wasn’t upset, a permanent pout visible for whoever looked at her face, and nayeon doesn’t hesitate to kiss it once she sneaks close to jihyo and sits next to her.

tzuyu’s eyes widen immediately. “was that a kiss…”

“ew,” jeongyeon winces.

jihyo and nayeon were too busy in their own world to notice they were being watched. nayeon pats her cheek softly, making jihyo look at her grumpily, knees up to her chest.

“i’m sorry.” nayeon touches her face tenderly, fixing jihyo’s messy hair, the smile on her face somewhat annoying. jihyo knew nayeon loved to be the center of her attention, amused whenever she got jealous. “you know you’re unnie’s special baby, mhm?”

jihyo blushes, hands instantly covering nayeon’s mouth. “don’t say that!”

nayeon takes jihyo’s hands, pulling them away from her face, laughing. the pink hue on her cheeks were priceless, filling nayeon’s chest with warmth, proud of herself for being the only one capable of breaking jihyo with mere words.

“then stop sulking,” nayeon negotiates, scooting closer to jihyo. “i just called jeongyeon to do it because the fans asked for it, you know that.”

jihyo’s pout grows bigger, unaware that not only jeongyeon and tzuyu’s eyes were on them, but the other five were staring at them.

“but you promised you’d do it with me.” jihyo argues, rightfully upset.

nayeon had specifically told her they’d record a video together on a certain day, and then delayed it. when jihyo saw that nayeon had actually recorded the video, and without her, she felt betrayed.

“i know,” nayeon mutters. she didn’t think jihyo would mind it, truly. “i’ll find something for us to post, baby.”

“you better do,” jihyo huffs. “i won’t forgive you if you don’t.”

nayeon considers repeating her mistake, finding jihyo adorable when she was mad. something about her lips curving, brows furrowing, and how whiny she gets when she’s upset is entirely appealing, but nayeon liked the happy jihyo better.

“anything for my baby,” nayeon coos, taking jihyo into a hug, all but bringing her to her lap. “unnie’s baby.”

“enough!” jeongyeon interrupts them, grossed out. “what the hell is going on?”

jihyo freezes and nayeon looks up at the girls standing in front of them. while jihyo doesn’t know what to say, nayeon is actually laughing, finding their surprised faces thoroughly amusing.

“didn’t you know?” nayeon asks, keeping jihyo where she was with her firm hands. she looks up questioningly. they should already know. “we’re dating. we have been dating.”

“nayeon!” jihyo breaks free from her hold, her face red. “we can explain…”

“ooh, unnie’s baby looks mad.” momo jokes, receiving a sharp look from jihyo. at any other time, momo would’ve been terrified, but now that she knows nayeon calls her that, she finds it rather endearing.

the break is over before they can hear the explanation jihyo wanted to give. for now, they’d had to rehearse knowing that nayeon and their leader were in a relationship, and that said leader perhaps would never again manage to look scary in front of them.

#anon #nayeon #jihyo #nahyo #sfw #fill #only 2 more rqs to go hehe

[disneysooner]

Owl House/Huntlow Zootopia au

(Lots to read, but I’m honestly happy with how this au came out. It just came to me, and I had to write it down before I lost it. I’ll add more as I think about it. Let me know your thoughts!)

In this au, we have Willow as a Flemish Giant Rabbit. This is due to their knowledge of plants (from Zootopia) and their larger size. Similar to Judy Hopps, all her life, she has wanted to be a professional herbalist and athlete, specifically in rugby. She’s had friends and bullies growing up that have told her she’d never accomplish those dreams. For example, her childhood friend Amity (who is a tiger due to her fierceness), just doesn’t see how a bunny like her could make it as a rugby player, and tries to talk her out of it. The only people that believe in her are her parents and her friends Gus and Luz (Gus is a dog due to his childlike curiosity, and Luz is an otter due to her onesie from the show).

Hunter would be a wolf in this au due to his love for them in the series. Plus wolves, like foxes, can be seen as villains at times, but it given a chance can be so much more. I see him being head role of a gang that’s run by his “Uncle Belos” who is a major politician within the city. Hunter, known by his nickname “The Golden Guard” ends up doing a lot of “dirty deeds” for his uncle to help him rise in political ranks. On one such mission, Hunter is asked to go undercover at the Zootopia High School to get some information about a competitor through their child; that competitor being Eda Clawthorne (an owl due to being the Owl Lady), and the child being Luz whom Hunter has had interactions with already. Camila is out of the country for veterinary business, so Luz stays with Eda while she’s gone. King is also a child living in the Clawthorne household, but he attends the local elementary school.

So Hunter goes undercover, and before he can get to Luz, he runs into Willow and Gus who are trying to start their own rugby club team. With having found out that they are friends with Luz, he decides to join their team.

Overtime, he starts to get close with the gang and starts to forget why he’s undercover there in the first place; the only one still hesitant to trust him completely is Amity. He especially starts getting close to Willow constantly having study nights together, private rugby lessons, and just hanging out. They share dreams and passions with one another finding similarities between each other. He encourages her to keep at her dreams, even going as far as finding good books about plants and rugby to help encourage her not to give up. In return, she’s constantly encouraging him to not be such a stickler of rules, and shows him how to have fun. While this is happening, Belos starts to get cross and says Hunter needs to capture Luz and bring her in quickly to get things rolling. With the election coming up, Belos is needing the necessary leverage to get Eda to drop so he can win.

Well, obviously, Hunter doesn’t feel right betraying his friends by capturing Luz, but he doesn’t want to disappoint his uncle and not complete his mission. He decides that the right thing to do would be to tell the gang about what’s going on at the high school prom coming up in which Willow asked him to go as her date. As the slow dance starts, crush confessions come out, but lights go out and Luz ends up missing. Amity blames Hunter due to having found out his connections to Belos and his gang and reveals it to the whole school. Gus and Willow are shocked and don’t know what to think of it all, so they end up following Amity to see if they can track Luz down, leaving Hunter behind.

As it turns out, Belos sent other gang members to do the work knowing Hunter was failing his mission. Those gang members captured both Luz and King to bribe Eda into dropping the political race. Eda, Amity, Willow, and Gus all go in search of Luz and King, and soon find the secret hideout where they’re being held. Belos is there questioning Luz and King on information concerning Eda. Before they can jump in to rescue, Hunter shows up to fight Belos and his fellow gang members to save Luz and King. Seeing him fight shows the gang that he truly is on their side, and they jump in to help him fight. Before Belos can deliver a final blow, the cops show up, thanks to Hunter having notified them prior, and arrest Belos, his gang, and Hunter since he confessed to being part of the gang. Eda decided to pay Hunter’s bail due to his bravery of saving Luz and King.

In the end, Hunter ends up living with Luz and Camila when she returns from her conference having heard about the kidnapping. When she heard Hunter’s story, she immediately wanted to take him in and give him some good old TLC. He goes to school like a normal student, and all his friends have forgiven him of his past. He and Willow start going out. Eda is elected the new mayor of Zootopia, and her assistant is Raine Whispers the cat. Hunter does side business as Eda’s bodyguard. Willow’s rugby team is successful and becomes well-known as regional champions.

#my post #zootopia au #disney #the owl house #zootopia #willow park #hunter wittebane #the golden guard #huntlow #gus porter #luz noceda #amity blight #emperor belos #eda clawthorne #raine whispers

[brainrot28]

Electric Feel [Chapter 1]

chapter 1 of my pipabeth fic on ao3 :)

July 4th

POV: Piper

The sun set on Camp Halfblood, painting the lake in an array of pinks, oranges, and yellows. Younger campers ran about, squirming with anticipation of the s'mores soon to come. If tonight's bonfire was anything like last week's, Will was sure to have his hands full in the infirmary. Young demigods [including the 17 year old Percy Jackson], tended to ignore their sugar capacity, and held competitions to see who could eat the most marshmallows. 

Piper dodged the eager children, and made her way across the grass toward the Athena Cabin. She and Annabeth agreed to meet at Cabin 6 and walk to the bonfire together.

Piper began to shiver. It was an unusually chilly night for July; and, her hair still damp from the shower, only added to her growing discomfort. She climbed the worn, wooden steps of the Athena Cabin and knocked on the pale blue door. Annabeth's younger sister came tumbling out the door and into Piper's legs. The small child refused to let go and began bombarding Piper with questions.

"Piper, Piper, Piper! Are you here for Annabeth? She's been talking about meeting you alllllll day" the small camper squealed. Piper was 73% sure that this was 6 year old Andy. The chatty girl arrived with an annoyed satyr at the start of the summer. 

Andy did her best to imitate Annabeth's voice, and she was surprisingly good at it, too. " 'I'm going with Piper to the bonfire tonight', 'What should I wear?', 'None of you better bother me tonight', 'If any of you come to me with stomach aches, so help me gods....'. I'm planning on winning tonight's marshmallow eating competition!"

Piper was quite amused and replied with a smile, "Oh really? How many are you planning on eating?"

"37", Andy replied. "Piper, have you ever watched Zootopia?"

Andy's ability to talk so fast was pretty impressive. "No, what's it about?"

Andy began to rock on her heels, unable to contain her excitement. "This bunny named Judy Hopps becomes a cop even though her family doesn't think she can do it but she does it anyway and then she goes and gets a job as a police officer in Zootopia but they put her on meeter maid duty but she knows she can do more and she ends up trying to solve a mystery with a fox named Nick Wild." By the time she was finished, Andy was out of breath.

Piper was genuinely interested in this movie. She loved animated animal films. "Wow that sounds like a really cool movie! I'll have to watch it with you some time."  

Finally, Annabeth walked out onto the porch. "Oh no. Andy, were you telling Piper about Zootopia?"

"YES! I LOVE ZOOTOPIA!" Andy screeched.

"I am very well aware," Annabeth said with a smile. "Why don't you tell Piper how many times you've watched it in the past week?"

"12. I've watched it 12 times!"

"WOW. That is some true dedication right there," Piper replied.

"Yeah we're all hearing the Zootopia soundtrack in our sleep," Annabeth said with an eye roll. "Andy, why don't you go back inside and put on a sweatshirt for the bonfire. It's pretty cold out here, and last time, you complained the whole time you were cold."

"Only if I can bring your fire blanket. Can I bring your fire blanket?"

"One, I told you to stop calling it the 'fire blanket'. People are going to think I'm a pyromaniac," Annabeth sighed. "And two, only if you say 'please'."

"Ughhh. But 'fire blanket' sounds so menacing. Can I please bring your 'not a fire blanket' to the bonfire?"

"Of course you can. It's on the my bunk." 

Andy scurried back in the cabin, leaving Piper and Annabeth on the porch of the Athena Cabin. 

Annabeth looked at Piper. "What are you smiling about?", the blonde asked.

"mmmm... I'm just excited for tonight. Also, Andy's really cute," Piper replied.

"Yeah, she is. But seriously, I cannot get the Zootopia soundtrack out of my head. I think I know every line from the movie by now," Annabeth said with a chuckle. "Hey, are you going to be warm enough? It's getting pretty cold, and you don't have a jacket or anything. 

"OH MY GODS, Annabeth are you slut shaming me, telling me to cover up? How could you do this to me? I though you were a feminist?"

The look on Annabeth's face was priceless. "WHAT NO NO, that's not how I meant it, I swear. I just meant you might get cold, and you're wearing shorts and a tank top and your hair's wet.. and ... I don't want you to get sick or something. Gods know Will already has enough on his hands."

Annabeth's rare lack of eloquence is always quite the sigh to see. "Geez, take a breath Chase, I was just joking with you. I know you would never object to seeing me in minimal clothing."

Annabeth rolled her eyes and let out a huff. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Do you want to borrow a sweatshirt or not? I should just let you freeze now."

"NOOO please, accept my deepest apologies. May I pretty please borrow a sweatshirt?"

"Fine," Annabeth replied with feigned annoyance. "I'll be right back."

Annabeth returned about 47 seconds later [not that Piper was counting or anything], bearing a dark blue sweatshirt with an embroidered sun on the chest. This was Piper's favorite sweatshirt that belonged to Annabeth. It was well worn, soft, and comfortable. And-bonus points- it smelled like Annabeth, and Annabeth always made her feel safe. 

"Oh, Annabeth, you are my lord and savior. I worship the ground you walk on." 

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Now, let's go, I want to beat the rush of people."

#annabeth chase #piper mclean #pjo #percy jackon and the olympians #heros of olympus #percy jackson #jason grace #will solace #nico di angelo #a03 fanfic

[adamwatchesmovies]

Elemental (2023)

The worst thing you can say about Elemental is that it isn’t as wildly original as some of Pixar’s other outings. Although the plot is set in a city of fire, water, earth and air "people", it’s not REALLY about this world of anthropomorphic elements and the story told is not all that dissimilar from Zootopia, among others. This doesn’t make Elemental any less gorgeous or unexpectedly romantic.

In Element City, the fiery Bernie (Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi) own a convenience store they hope to pass to their daughter, Ember (Leah Lewis), after they retire. When a pipe in their basement bursts, a water element health inspector named Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie) files a report. Now, Ember has less than a week to figure out why the pipes in Firetown still contain water or the Fireplace will be shut down.

I hadn’t seen many trailers for Elemental and expected what we usually see from Pixar: comedies with some action and drama. Elemental is a romantic drama with a few elements of comedy sprinkled in. As I watched the film and saw Ember and Wade grow closer (the ultimate “opposites attract”), I wondered if the children in the audience would grow bored. None of them did. The screenplay by John Hoberg, KaLiktkel and Brenda Hsueh (director Peter Sohn also contributed to the story) strikes the perfect balance. There’s a little bit of danger to make the stakes feel real, visual gags that come from the characters designs, many emotional developments (there's a chance you'll cry) and a strong romance tying it all together. You know your lovey-lovey movie is doing something right when the audience is on the edge of their seat, waiting for that first kiss.

Elemental is also a story of immigrants making their place in a society full of people who are different from them. You can see why I compared it to Zootopia earlier. Like the 2016 film, this one makes its point/make you think without beating you over the head thanks to its fantasy elements. You can see why Ember and her family might be turned away from a botanical garden. They’re made of flames... but why wasn’t the building designed with their special needs in mind? Why are so many things in Element City inconvenient or even potentially deadly for them? If that doesn’t resonate with you - which would be hard; the film does an excellent job getting you to understand Ember - her story about living up to her parent’s expectations and wondering if their dreams are the same thing as hers will.

Pixar has always pushed the art of computer-generated animation forward. What’s particularly noteworthy about Elemental is that the fire people we see aren't simply emulating what real-life flames look like. The animators made the decision to give the film more personality by choosing to do their own thing when bringing Ember and her kin to life. Then there’s her match, Wade. He's a completely translucent character, which can't have been easy, but you'd never guess it. Elemental offers a lot in terms of the character designs and also in the various products sold in the shop, the posters and advertisements in the background, and the many, many puns found on billboards and signs. You can see a bunch of them during the end credits, along with a rather touching tribute at the very end, so I’d encourage you to stick around for that.

I recognize that Elemental is not as original as it could’ve been and doesn’t quite use the natural abilities of its characters as much as it could have to make them as different from regular people as you’d think anthropomorphic water would be from you and me. Despite this, I got swept away by the romance. I get the feeling this is the sort of movie you might not know you’ve been waiting for until you’ve sat down and watched it. (Theatrical version on the big screen, June 14, 2023)

#Elemental #movies #films #movie reviews #film reviews #Peter Sohn #John Hoberg #Kat Likkel #Brenda Hsueh #Leah Lewis #Mamoudou Athie #Ronnie del Carmen #Shila Ommi #Wendi McLendon-Covey #Catherine O'Hara #2023 movies #2023 films #pixar #disney

[leastrife]

Elemental and Zootopia are the same movie

Why Zootopia and Elemental are not the same movie

Setting:

The setting in the movie Zootopia is obviously, Zootopia. In Zootopia all the animals are meant to live in peace. Zootopia also seems to have technology more like what we have in modern day, cell phones, tv, radio, cars, parking meters, etc.

However, in the trailer we hear Ember’s grandmother state that elements don’t mix, and we can see that holding definitely true for the fire people who, aside from Ember, we don’t see anywhere else except in the place for the fire people. We do see all of the other three elements mixing however but for now we can’t explain why as the movie isn’t out yet. In Elemental the setting also seems more fantastical. While there is technology, it’s more futuristic, and we don’t see anything like cell phones or tv’s and such.

Already it’s clear the two settings hold the idea of a city for everyone, but Zootopia is built for all the animals to live and work together while in Elemental it seems it holds more to an idea of segregation among the elements. So similar but there’s plenty more that’s different.

NOT THE SAME

Characters:

Judy Hopps wants to make the world a better place no matter what anyone tells her, and she isn’t going to try and be what everyone expects her to

On the other hand, Ember as we see in the trailer is trying to be what her father wants her to be even though it’s not necessarily what she wants, but she’s expected to take over her father’s business so that’s what she’s going to do

I’m going off the assumption of American gender stereotypes that when people say it’s the same movie they’re going to be comparing the two female characters to each other and the two male characters, but even I paired Ember with Nick, and Judy with Wade, news flash, still not the same characters.

NOT THE SAME

Wade from what little we know about his character from the trailer, he appears to be a sweet character who seemingly helps Ember see more of the world throughout the film. He seems gentle and sometimes nervous.

On the entirely opposite side of the spectrum we have Nick, the sly fox who doesn’t let anyone see that they get to him. He’s quick on his feet, clever and charismatic, traits that Wade most definitely does not exhibit in the trailer

NOT THE SAME

Storyline:

Zootopia is a buddy cop movie. Underdog cop trying to prove herself teams up with a shifty low level criminal to solve a police case.

Elemental is not a buddy cop movie. I can’t determine the exact genre yet since so far it is still only a trailer, but it seems to be more about bringing the elements together or rather bring the other elements and the fire elements together since from at least my own little theory I’ve pieced together from the trailer I believe that it was true that elements do not mix for a long time, but since we see wind, earth, and water all living together it looks like those three elements broke down that rule, but they left the fire elements out of it because they feared they’d be destructive. The plot is so different from Zootopia, and the character development will be very different because as I said before the characters are not the same.

In conclusion it is not the same movie.

I’m not actually upset or anything about people saying it’s the same movie and I wrote this mostly for fun, but also it might hype a couple people up for Elemental which I’m actually excited for since it honestly looks way better than some of Pixar’s recent original films. And honestly I can see why people are saying it’s the same movie, but honestly if you watch the trailers you’ll see the two stories are very different.

[deprivedmusicaljunkie]

cast tlc characters as animals

i’m not doing this literally, more like if the adaptation was drawn in the style of zootopia or furry art. anyway.

cinder

in chinese folklore, there are hares that make medicine who live in the moon with chang’e, so i thought that would be an interesting nod towards cinder’s lunar and chinese heritage. i think she would be gray (like cinders get it), but the ears would be black and tied into a “ponytail”.

kai

antelope!! they kinda remind me of kai, especially with how graceful and swift they are. something about him is very hoofed to me. plus, look at that coat! aren’t they gorgeous?

scarlet

i was originally going to choose tiger for kai, but decided that it would fit scarlet better. the ferocity, the power, they both have orange hair!! there could be so many cool patterns with her stripes and when she’s mad, she’s mad.

wolf

um, surprise!! i’m not choosing a wolf. that is so boring, and i also wanted to translate the idea of an inhumane animal mutation, so here’s ze’ev as a liger, combination lion and tiger that scientists brought into existence. breeding two different species together sounds dystopian, and it’s honestly disgusting that some people would think of putting these animals through that kind of torture. but adding in the tiger aspect brings ze’ev closer to scarlet, and he’d be deadlier than any natural beast.

cress

a RODENT CHILD. cress is a rodent sorry. hamster to be specific. i’m sorry cress doesn’t give off any animal vibes other than zebra, but she’s supposed to be relatively tiny. hamsters have fingers(?) so it would make sense that she’s a lunar hacker.

thorne

oh yeah baby oh yeah

winter

LOOK AT THIS FINE LADY!!! she’s so graceful and dangerous!!!! winter is almost definitely a cat she gives off huge lion vibes and idk i’m just really feline it. the way that they animate her eyes and movements could be really beautiful.

jacin

LYNX!!! cunning, dangerous, looks pissed all the time, cuddly—just like jacin! lynxes are like 80% fluffier than the regular predator. couldn’t you imagine winter going “hnng fur” while everyone’s just hoping they wouldn’t be on the wrong end of his paws….

i couldn’t really think of anything for iko or levana, so you’re welcome to add on!

#tlc #the lunar chronicles #linh cinder #emperor kaito #scarlet benoit #wolf kesley #cress darnel #carswell thorne #winter hayle blackburn #jacin clay #iko #queen levana #tlc fancast

[animationforce]

21 Animated Projects We’re Anticipating in 2021

1) Arlo the Alligator Boy (Netflix/Titmouse)

This 2D musical feature film for the streaming service will set up a series (”I Heart Arlo”) about an alligator looking for family in a “Regular Show”-type world. The music blew us away during the preview at 2020′s CTN Expo.

2) Bob’s Burgers: The Movie (Disney/20th Century/Bento Box)

While the Fox show is loved for its humor and heart and not really for its animation, this feature film from the show creator Loren Bouchard will have a glossier look, as Bento Box animates on a feature budget and timeline. Expected in theaters on April 9, 2021.

3) The Boss Baby 2: Family Business (DreamWorks/Universal)

This March, DreamWorks Animation brings the brothers back together — to deal with the new cutthroat boss (baby) in the family.

4) Connected (Sony Animation) 

Producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Spider-Verse, The Lego Movie) support Gravity Falls alum Mike Rianda in his feature directorial debut. Rianda’s brand of wacky humor sets this humans vs. robots film up for a great time, if the company can set a release date.

5) Encanto (Disney) 

Zootopia’s Byron Howard leads director team Jared Bush and Charise Castro Smith in this musical super power story set in Colombia, coming this fall.

6) Earwig and the Witch (Studio Ghibli/GKIDS)

Goro Miyazaki, son of legendary Hayao Miyazaki and director in his own right, brings Ghibli magic to theaters for the first time in six years. This film differs from its predecessors with stylized cg animation, but the story — an orphaned girl learns she’s the daughter of a witch — promises much of the wonder that one expects of any Ghibli film. 

7) Luca (Pixar) 

Director Enrico Casarosa debuts with Pixar’s Italian Riviera-set story of friendship between a boy and a boy-shaped sea monster, which arrives this June.

8) Minions 2: Rise of Gru (Illumination/Universal)

We’ve seen Gru’s future and his yellow minions’ past, but finally Illumination highlights the in-between in a villain origin story we hope will be as fun as the first three Despicable Me films.

9) My Father’s Dragon (Cartoon Saloon/Netflix)

It’s a great year for dragon-lovers, with Cartoon Saloon supplying the first of three feature films about these awesome creatures. Director Nora Twomey brings to life a Newberry-winning book, with help from “Inside Out” scribe Meg LeFauve and writer John Morgan. A boy who runs away to Wild Island finds much more than the captive dragon he sought.

10) Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Netflix/Jim Henson)

Another ambition animated feature from Netflix, Pinocchio sets itself apart from other versions of the folk tale in its look — stop-motion by Jim Henson’s studio — and feel, with Guillermo del Toro’s signature dark brilliance under veteran director Robert Zemeckis’ helm. This will not be very family friendly.

11) Raya and the Last Dragon (Disney) 

A warrior seeks the legendary last dragon hundreds of years after those mythical creatures saved her world from the same evil threat they now face. Coming to theaters and Disney+ (for a fee) in March.

12) Robin Robin (Netflix/Aardman)

This animated musical holiday special comes from the minds behind Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep. It may be a long way from December now, but we’re ready for some stop-motion Christmas fun, especially when the story follows a bird raised by mice. 

13) Ron’s Gone Wrong (Disney/20th Century/Locksmith)

Female-led production company Locksmith brings its first animated feature to life under Disney-owned 20th Century (Fox), “Ron’s Gone Wrong.” Set in a world where every child has its own robot assistant, a boy tries to fix his faulty robot this April.

14) Rumble (Paramount/ReelFX)

Based on a graphic novel by Rob Harrell, this film explores the challenges of a world where humans coach monsters in pro wrestling. Yes, really. We’ll see where it goes in May.

15) Sing 2 (Illumination/Universal)

Buster and his band of musical animals return with visions of stardom, or at least attempts to persuade a certain rockstar to join them in this sequel to the Animals’ve Got Talent film, expected in December.

16) Space Jam: A New Legacy (Warner Bros/WAG)

LeBron James joins the Looney Tunes in this not-quite-sequel to the 1990s classic live-action hybrid film. We’re especially looking forward to prolific voice actor Eric Bauza’s performance as Bugs Bunny, among other Looney favorites! 

17) The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run (Nickelodeon/Paramount)

After teasing us with seemingly infinite ads for this film, we’ve been waiting some time for the newest SpongeBob feature film in the United States, which arrives on CBS All-Access and video-on-demand services in February. The story of SpongeBob and Patrick’s journey to save the snail-napped Gary has already premiered in Canadian theaters and in other countries on Netflix.

18) Tom and Jerry (Warner Bros/WAG)

The live-action/CG hybrid film bring Tom and Jerry to the big screen and HBO Max this February. When Jerry accidentally crashes “the wedding of the century,” Tom is hired to get rid of the mouse, reigniting the famous rivalry and uncovering a secret plot in the process.

19) Vivo (Sony Animation)

Lin-Manuel Miranda delivers Sony’s first animated musical, about a capuchin monkey with big dreams, this June.

20) Wendell and Wild (Netflix)

“Nightmare Before Christmas’” own Henry Selick returns to stop-motion to direct Netflix’s adventure story of two demon brothers (Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele) who escape the Underworld.

21) Wish Dragon (Sony Animation)

An old teapot transforms college student Din’s meager life into something fantastic when he discovers Long, a Wish Dragon, inside. 

- Courtney

#animation #new year #2021 #feature films #cartoons

[mariolucario493]

Disney’s Encanto Review/Analysis Time!

Warning: Here be spoilers

Long story short: it’s really good.

Here are the elements that stood out to me:

1. The songs. This is some of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s best work since Hamilton. Moana’s songs were good, but only one or two of them really felt like LMM’s signature style. In Encanto, every single time a character starts singing, you can immediately tell who wrote these songs. 

2. The themes of self-fulfilling prophecies. Most modern Disney movies has some underlying message that relates to societal and psychological pressures. For Raya and the Last Dragon, it was about trust. For Big Hero 6, it was about coping with grief. For Zootopia, it was about prejudice and the debate of nature vs. nurture. For Moana, it was about how much we allow the past to define us. And for Encanto, it seems to be self-fulfilling prophecies. We have a character who is an outcast because of his ability to see the future, but it’s implied that those futures are shaped by the family’s reactions to his visions. For example, he predicts that it’s going to rain at his sister’s wedding. Well, said sister has the ability to control the weather based on her mood. When she gets stressed, it rains. But the self-fulfilling prophecy theme is actually present throughout the whole movie. The idea of each family member having a magical gift that defines them ends up causing them stress because they are expected to live up to what the family and the town expects from a person with such a gift.

3. The climax, which is not very action-based. It’s mostly just characters talking (and singing) about how they feel. There is a scene of the house falling apart and people running for their lives, but after that, it’s mostly just quiet dialogue. This is something I was not too pleased with about Frozen 2 - that they threw in a big action-packed climax for no reason when most of that conflict could have been solved with words. I mean, if the whole point was that the dam had to come down to atone for the sins of the past, why do they need to destroy it so quickly and suddenly? Couldn’t they just take it apart piece by piece? We don’t remove statues of Robert E. Lee by nuking them from orbit! But I digress. The point is that it’s a really refreshing to see a conflict that isn’t resolved with big explosions or exciting feats of courage.

And that brings me to the best part of the whole movie:

4. The grandmother. This is probably the most sympathetic “stern traditional parental figure” character that I’ve ever seen from Disney. She’s not a straight-up villain, but she is the source of most of the film’s conflict. We’ve seen countless Disney movies about a parent or grandparent who doesn’t understand their free-spirited or oddball child. To name a few, we’ve got The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tarzan, Chicken Little, Brave, Frozen, Zootopia, Moana, and Coco. And let’s talk about Coco specifically, because that’s the one I want to focus on.

And no, I’m not singling Coco out because it just happens to be another Disney animated movie about Latin American culture. It’s because Coco’s grandmother character was always the weakest element of that otherwise flawless movie IMO. I felt that her redemption, while a very heartwarming moment, was still a little rushed. She just shed some tears of joy, and then everyone is happy again. They never bring up how she essentially abused Miguel but somehow gets forgiven instantaneously. In Encanto, the grandmother actually has quite a few scenes where she expresses how concerned she is about keeping her family together. And we see her promise to do better in the future, even though it will be difficult. I don’t think we’ve seen such a realistic redemption in a Disney movie like this before. Every other Disney parent just turns on a dime (or dies), but this is probably the first one to contemplate how hard change can be since maybe Inside Out. It’s a really great subversion of what is quickly becoming a tired Disney trope. Often times, too much focus on the main character causes side characters to be rushed. But in Encanto, every member of the Madrigal family gets time to shine. It’s not just Mirabel’s story, it’s about all of them.

So there you go. Encanto is probably not going to be in my top 10 Disney movies list, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

#encanto #disney #review

[ladyartemesia]

Fic recs for taehyung? I love your stuff btw I’ve read them all uwu

As a beacon of extra-ness in an already extra world, I am entirely incapable of just recommending fics like a normal blog. No. I’ve got to wax on like a bloomin connoisseur. I have compiled some (but not all) of my favorite works in several different categories and sorted them accordingly. This crazy list is so long I had to add a “keep reading”... but I simply couldn’t bear to leave any of these off the list. They are all so good!

Fics have been divided into 8 categories. Some are under the cut. 

 ▨ FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS and FRIENDS TO LOVERS ▨  ▨ ARRANGED MARRIAGE ▨ ▨ FANTASY ▨ ▨ ANGST WITH A HAPPY ENDING ▨ ▨ HYBRID and ABO (alpha/omega) ▨ ▨ MULTIPLE PARTNERS ▨ ▨ NEIGHBORS AND ROOMMATES ▨ ▨ TABOO THEMES and DARK FIC (Sex Work/Power Imbalance/Very Unsafe Sex) ▨ ▨

▨ FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS and FRIENDS TO LOVERS ▨

Insomnia by @hobiwonder

This is one of those fics I read and literally could not stop thinking about. It is wildly hot and honestly hilarious. Poor reader cannot sleep and the beautiful bro she’s tutoring offers a rather unconventional solution.

(Ego) Hoe Chronicles: KTH by @suga-kookiemonster

Listen. If you find a niche fan blog devoted entirely to Ego Tae... I’m not gonna say it’s mine. But it’s probably mine. I once told suga-kookiemonster that I would literally read a story about Ego Tae going grocery shopping on a Wednesday night and I stand by that. In this lurid romp, the reader falls into the clutches of everyone’s favorite bohemian sex lord and he rails her into another dimension.

Falling, Falling, Gone by @johobi

Pining (mutual or otherwise) is not really my thing, but I would straight up read Jo’s laundry list if she posted it. As usual I was blown away by how everything she does seems somehow better than any other version of it. This reader is really unique as well, and her relationship with the wildly popular soccer star Tae comes to a sexy and hilarious head at a sort of bachelor auction. With sharp dialogue, delightful subtext, and fantastic side characters, you really shouldn’t miss it. It’s pretty much perfect.

A Friendly Favor by @baeseoul

This is the classic “teach me some sex for another woman” trope and it is done so well. Sweet best friend Tae is looking to benefit from your experience, but his is not the only world about to be thouroughly rocked.

Officer Kim and the Criminal Crush by @ddaengyoonmin

This is one of the best twists on childhood friends to lovers I have ever seen. Tae grows up to become a cop and reader grows up to be a societal menace. I won’t spoil it, but it’s the perfect blend of nostalgia, tenderness, and smut. This fic technically doesn’t have a name so I had to give it one to link it. It’s part of an AMAZING series Zoe did that I also highly recommend.

Out of the Blue by @jimlingss

This is one of those stories that blooms throughout the narrative until you are left with this gorgeous flower at the end. I loved the journey of these two characters. It was real and it perfectly captures the experience of finding your soulmate in the person you least expect.

Sin Pijama by @brilliantlybasicb

This fic is a switch culture fic. It is wild wicked hot and this Tae is unreal. I love the way he lets the reader think she is in control just long enough. It is a wild romp with an adorable sequel and honestly you should read it.

Girls Like You by @jjiminah

I was in jjiminah’s asks IMMEDIATELY about this fic because I had FEELINGS. The reader begins wordlessly teasing and tempting Tae on their morning bus ride every day until he is literally losing his mind. Everything that follows is fire. Jjiminah has hinted she will wrote more for these two and I NEED IT.

Sighs and Sonnets by @btsaudge

This fic is beautiful. Like it’s basically art. This is a bad boy who is bad for you. But he has the soul of a poet and the stroke game of a renaissance master. Bittersweet and seductive, this fic is a full experience.

The Text by @taetaesbaebaepsae

Tae is your friend with benefits but it looks like feeling may have been caught by one or more parties. When you attempt to soothe your aching heart with another pretty boy, Tae decides to stake his claim. This was very sexy. The whole fic was sexy.

▨ ARRANGED MARRIAGE ▨

Monster by @neonlights92

Monster and all of its companion series about each of the boys is one of those fics that I reread constantly and also just think about constantly. This is one of the best mafia AUs out there and it’s characters are vivid and unforgettable. Tae’s stubborn resistance to his lovely new wife in contrast with her quiet, clever strength really brings this story to life. A word of warning. The masterlist links are a bit messed up. To read part two you must click on part three. And to read part three must click on part four. The link to part four is at the bottom of part three (or you can just search it on her site. It is definitely all there though).

Dichotomy by @kpopfanfictrash

There is a reason the incomparable Shanna is on this list three times. She is truly incomparable. This is childhood friends-to enemies-to spouses and it is wonderful. I adore this Tae. He is sharp and vulnerable and occasionally heavy handed, but truly a gem. This fic also features one of the best angry sex scenes I’ve ever run my eyeballs across.

▨ FANTASY ▨

Chism by @kpopfanfictrash

The world-building in this story is genuinely awe inspiring. You could write series upon series within this vivid universe. The god of Winter is missing and Summer’s heat burns unchecked for many years. The reader is a warrior with a unique ability tasked with guarding a very interesting prisoner. This story is so good. I mean it is really bloomin incredible. It’s hard to say what I liked best about it, because it was stellar across the board.

Obsidian by @kpopfanfictrash

In the pantheon of delicious Tae incarnations, Obsidian Taehyung is essentially unrivaled as a grey witch who moonlights as a sexy rock star. His extremely erotic clash with a white witch detective plays out as the two of them track down a sinister killer (with the help of some truly memorable side characters).

Out of this World by @ddaengyoonmin

This one is really unique. Tae is a merman scientist on the water planet of Neptune and when the reader and her misguided crew crash into his sea, he takes it upon himself to improve inter-species relations. This fic features excellent world building alongside several twists and surprises. Clever scientist Tae is downright irresistible.

▨ ANGST WITH A HAPPY ENDING ▨

Picking Flowers by @jamaisjoons

So this story is a journey - truly a beautiful one and it’s a gorgeous addition to the hanahaki genre. There is real pain and I cried real tears, but gosh it was so sexy and so worth it. I was surprised by how truly immersed I ended up in this piece. I lost track of everything else. The end is insanely satisfying, but the journey is really what makes this fic unmissable.

Until Yesterday by @jimlingss

This fic destroyed me slowly then slowly put me together again piece by piece. When I say I went through it - I WENT THROUGH IT. The story is loosely based on the movie “The Vow” and it is just fantastic. Beautiful and tender till the last word.

The Foolish Muse by @bibbykins

This is the story of someone who is deeply in love, but knows they deserve better. It is a sexy and evocative work with allusions to mythology that fit seamlessly into the narrative. I think my favorite part is Tae discovering how much the reader meant to him and what choices ultimately lead them to a really delicious conclusion.

Back to You by @ladyartemesia

The last time I did a fic rec list, it got like 700 notes. Ya girl is not makin the same mistake again. I spent hours on this list. My work is comin along for the ride. Kim Taehyung is the love of your life, until one day he disappears without a trace.

Vacancy by @ppersonna

This one is the only idol AU on the list and I normally don’t read those, but Lindy’s work is too good to miss in any setting. I am thrilled I took a look because what I found was a glimpse into a beautiful relationship that weathers and eventually overcomes the challenges of loving in the limelight. There is a LOT of emotional depth and symbolism which really elevates everything about this lovely story. The reader’s internal struggles in the face of her lover’s fame are extremely well done.

▨ HYBRID and ABO ▨ (alpha/omega)

Eye of the Tiger by @opaljm

I am beyond hype about this story which is (very) loosely inspired by Zootopia and features a cocky tiger Taehyung and a fiesty prey hybrid he needs to fake date in order to keep panther Jimin from murdering him. (Tiger Tae got a tad too frisky around Jimin’s mate and now things are dangerously awkward.) This story is already so freakin good. I cannot wait for the rest.

Silver and Blue by @taetaewonderland

What happens when you get on the wrong side of the right werewolf? Very sexy - very crazy times. Chronologically this is the first of the Silver and Blue series which follows barely civilized were-Tae through his courtship and eventually his relationship with the spunky reader. Holla to all my impreg kink homies. This is the fic for you.

Heat Run by @ladyartemesia

As I said before, the last time I did a fic rec list, it got like 700 notes. Ya girl is not makin the same mistake twice. I spent hours on this list. My work is comin along for the ride. Alpha lawyer V is a man of many secrets, but his well ordered reality spirals wildly out of control when he crosses paths with a fiery omega set on saving the world from his wicked ways.

Beautiful Stranger by @interludemoonchild

This was a wild ride from start to finish. Taehyung is a tiger hybrid shifter who escapes from the circus to be close to a veterinary student he bonded with. There is a lot of interesting twists and surprises in this one. I was definitely screaming at the end.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by @jingabitch

A very young wolf hybrid Taehyung adopts you as his pet human when you are just a kid. After Tae leaves to serve in the military he returns to an adult version of his sweet little princess and chaos ensues. Mind the tags for this one folks. It’s excellent, but there are very triggering themes throughout.

▨ MULTIPLE PARTNERS ▨

Level of Restraint by @lemonjoonah

This is not strictly a Tae fic in that he is only one of three major players in this twisted masterpiece. Lemon is the undisputed queen of the surprise twist and this one is truly brilliant. People dropped this fic in the discord calling it the best fan fiction they had ever read and I am not here to argue with them at all. Fair warning, every word - every inch of this fic is sexy and it’s delicious brand of titillation is wrapped around your psyche good and tight by the end.

Four by @luxekook

The quadruplets next door are fueling your very lurid fantasies. It turns out they have some fantasies of their own... You will need water if you read this fic. This is the original patented Kim Taehyung Horny Hive Mind 4D Experience™

▨ NEIGHBORS AND ROOMMATES ▨

The Heat Wave Series by @curly-bangtan

The original story (chapter 1) in this series is definitely famous, but I don’t know how many people have read all 9 chapters and if you haven’t, you are really missing the incredible journey of two very horny idiots stumbling recklessly towards real and amazing love. Everything is set off when the air conditioner breaks and a pair of wild roommates shed their inhibitions along with their clothes.

Flicker by @chimoona

So this fic started out with adorable neighbor dynamics and ended with erotic rope tying. Baby I was ABOUT IT. This was so bloomin hot and also like sweet and tender. Really a sexy and sentimental treasure.

Not Your Typical Flower Shop Story by @jungtaeyoongles

This story goes from “aww” to “WHAT THE-” real quick. Fast paced plot and twist after twist turn the whole flower shop au upside down and then inside out. I can’t say more because spoilers but like - WOW.

▨ TABOO THEMES and DARK FIC ▨ (Sex Work/Power Imbalance/Very Unsafe Sex)

Extracurricular by @ppersonna

One of my favorite professor-student AUs. The reader writes her gorgeous professor a borderline erotic analysis of several major works of art and he feels compelled to discuss it with her privately. Lindy really outdid herself on this one. It is scorchin. Professor Tae is actually really sweet and somehow that just makes the whole thing hotter.

Akrasia by @nitaescence

This is insanely hot. Emphasis on the insane because it’s basically a super erotic romp where you have sex with a man you don’t know (Taehyung) on a crowded public bus. I literally felt my blood pressure going up the longer I read. Whew.

The Client by @jungkookiebus

This one hit me right in the feels. Taehyung is a sweet and lonely man who has a standing Wednesday appointment with an upscale sex worker. As the story progresses, feelings become involved on both sides. When I say I am checking her page thrice daily for part three... This is so engrossing. And this Tae. I just want to hold him.

Daffodil Dreams by @sombreboy

Tread carefully ladies and gents. This story is excellent, but it is easily the darkest fic on the list and, if you choose to read it, please read the trigger warnings carefully. The reader is a psychologist called in to analyze a very dangerous criminal. As their sessions progress, however, several boundaries are crossed.

Obey by @jjkfire

Taehyung is the most feared and ruthless member of the local mafia and you are the world’s most inept escort. You needed a job, but had no real interest in sex work and you’ve managed to fly under the radar as a glorified waitress until Kim Taehyung himself walks into your agency and decides that you’re the only girl he wants. Oh my gosh I loved this story so much. It was downright amazing and there is a surprise at the end that makes everything even sweeter.

#kim taehyung #bts #kim taehyung smut #kim taehyung x reader #kim taehung fanfiction #viola recommends #fic recs #I CANNOT BELIEVE TUMBLR FORMATTED MY POST SO MY BANNER IS HIDDEN I WANT TO LITERALLY CRY #TUMBLR we are FIGHTING oh my gosh

[thevictorianghost]

If you could rewrite legend of korra and make it your own(or just in general better) how would you do it? The villains would stay the same and korra and crew are the same(personalities you can definitely tweak a bit. I would definitely not have any love triangles and make korra and asami happen in the beginning) how would you do it with your ships being canon as well?

Okay so I’ve never actually watched LOK. I’ve heard A LOT about it through watching countless video essays on Youtube and reading Tumblr posts about it. I know the who, the what and the how, I just haven’t wanted to watch it because, even though it looks cinematically gorgeous, the story was written by Bry/ke and there’s a LOT of it, worldbuilding and storywise, that I just can’t bare to watch.

So here goes. This got long. Enjoy!

1) Remove the Decopunk world. 

A Decopunk world is a world where technology is 1920s-ish, but very advanced. We have cars, tanks, radio, bobs and faux bobs, cloche hats, short skirts, nice suits, etc. I adore Decopunk. The 1920s are one of my favourite eras. An optimistic way of looking at the world, partying, illegal alcohol, the remnants of the Great War... I love it. I really do. But it doesn’t work in the pre-established world of Avatar. It brings elements that are far too imperialistic and colonial in nature (which prompted the comics to be imperialistic and colonial in nature, with the Northern and Southern Water Tribe, you can find many posts about that), which came along hand in hand with the Industrial Revolution, as this article puts it so well. Please read it, it’s awesome.

Why did they feel they had to denature Avatar’s world? They already had everything they could possibly want. 

The Fire Nation could be more Steampunk, which is a little less advanced than Decopunk (First Industrial Revolution vs Second Industrial Revolution) because there were elements of Steampunk in the Fire Nation Army (such as the tanks, the navy and the dirigibles). But it could be for them only. It could show us how Zuko transformed the Fire Nation from a war industry to a steam-powered country. This could be the new way to channel firebending (and please, no more “anyone can do lightning bending”, you don’t need lightning bending to get electricity and it makes  Zuko, Iroh, Ozai and Azula weak in the show!). 

We’ve seen waterbending used in clever ways in the Northern Water Tribe. How could Katara’s waterbending and Sokka’s engineering influence the Southern Water Tribe to make them use waterbending more? Canals, waterfalls, waterways, etc.? In new and different ways? Could the Southern Water Tribe use hydroelectricity, but in a clean, sustainable way? Why does the Southern Water Tribe port look so... mundane? 

The Earth Kingdom already had a working train system in Ba Sing Se. And the postal system in Omashu. Toph could have taught earthbenders how to follow the Badgermoles way and dug tunnels throughout a nation in peace. Then boom. Subways. But instead of machines pushing the people along, you can have benders do it. Instead of messenger hawks, the postal system could run through the entire kingdom instead of just Omashu and be much more efficient. The Earth Kingdom could be praised for its fast postal system that could, maybe, work as telegrams.

I’ll come back to the Air Nomads.

Those are just examples from the top of my head. I don’t mean “never allow technology to “””progress””” (I use that word veeeeery loosely because it has huge imperialistic undertones). I mean instead of trashing the fun parts of bending to make way for Decopunk technology that doesn’t need bending, work with it! Get creative! This worldbuilding feels... too easy. When Avatar: The Last Airbender was praised for its worldbuilding.

I adore Decopunk. I enjoy it far more than Dieselpunk and it’s much less known that Steampunk. But it has no place in the Avatar world.

2) That doesn’t mean “remove Republic City”.

First of all, it should honestly have a better name. It’s kind of like naming a city “Democracy City”. Which is way too on the nose. Harmony City sounds better, and that’s the first thing that came to mind. Anyway.

I really like the idea of a city being built in the spirit of Iroh and the White Lotus. To allow the Four Nations to live together in harmony in one city. But why is Republic City literally New York City with an “““Asian””” flair? What is up with that? I know New York is the MOST Decopunk city ever (you can’t encounter anything Decopunk without seeing New York, with its Art Deco buildings, the Harlem Renaissance, the Prohibition, etc.). But they do NOTHING with it! They just take New York, change some names, add some Asian flair, and call it a day. 

I don’t want 1920s New York for Republic City. I want Zootopia.

What happens in a city where all the Four Nations are represented? How does Water, Earth, Fire and Air work together? Big cities tend to be quartered in neighborhoods, so each neighborhood could be a smaller version of their nation. We could have a Northern Water Tribe next to an Earth Kingdom next to... you know what I mean? Each neighborhood could be a small-scale introduction to the nation for Korra first, then you can send her to that nation afterwards!

Which leads us to this.

3) Have Korra follow a traditional Avatar’s journey. 

I really don’t know why they decided that Korra would learn three elements before the age of sixteen (when that’s the age Avatars usually START their journeys) and then only have her learn Airbending during the entire show. Wasn’t the structure of each Book being about Aang learning one element at a time a good structure? Why go out of their way to NOT do that? Why was it the White Lotus’ prerogative to train the Avatar in the first place, too?  

So let’s have Korra know waterbending first (and show Katara teaching her, please!), then she can learn Earth, Fire and Air. By going to the Earth Kingdom, to the Fire Nation, and to the Air Temples. This could help develop each nation and show us how they have grown through the years. And it could lead Korra and the audience to figure out that there’s not only Aang who has had children to represent the Air Nomads, but there were other Air Nomads who survived the genocide and we can actually see the Air Nomads as a thriving culture.

So about Republic City. As I said, we could keep it. But now that Korra is going on a traditional Avatar journey, you could have, say, one episode at the beginning and one episode at the end of each season taking place in Republic City. To show us how each Nation’s neighborhood works and as an introduction to Korra before she actually takes the plunge to travel to that nation. 

Please! Build upon the Avatar world at large more! Come on!

4) Stop it with the love triangles. 

Many have talked about the Mako, Korra, Bolin and Asami love triangles. I’ve read once that they don’t exactly feel like friends, they’re only colleagues who share the fact they all dated Korra at one point. Which is sad. Knowing that the Gaang is so beloved because they’re such GOOD FRIENDS first!

So work to build strong, healthy friendships first, THEN start thinking about romance if you have to. And please, if you want a ship to be endgame, don’t have it so you have to confirm it on Twitter. 

Don’t.

Oh! And also. Bolin and Eska’s relationship was unhealthy as all hell and treated as “funny” and “comic relief” because a woman was being emotionally abusive to a man. That’s terrible. Please don’t do that.

5) Don’t let Katara fall to the side like she did. 

Many, MANY before me have talked about how Katara got the short end of the stick in LOK. Where’s her statue? Where’s her recognition as the Greatest Waterbender in the World? Why is she day in and day out in the healing hut, when she said “I don’t want to heal, I want to FIGHT”? Does she even have a waterbending school? Or is that completely fanon? Why does she allow Aang to take one of their children on life-changing field trips while leaving their other kids behind? Aren’t they also Air Nomads by birth??

It’s okay to worship the old Gaang because, well, we all love them! I do love Aang, even if I give him a hard time a lot, but I love the character. I just don’t like the way Book 3 Aang was written. But some characters shouldn’t have everything while others have nothing. Aang is LITERALLY THE STATUE OF LIBERTY. But where was Katara’s statue? And also, what happened to Suki?? What happened to Mai or Ty Lee, too?? Or even Sokka?? He died some time ago and... that’s it??

Which brings us to this.

6) Zutara, Taang, Sukka and Mailee.

I’ve seen that picture of Toph, Aang, Sokka and Katara being edited with Zuko and Katara next to each other, Toph and Aang next to each other, and a (suddenly alive!) Suki next to Sokka. I think that’s so good! It feels so healthy!

Not all relationships that started when people were kids work out. Sokka and Suki seem the strongest relationship at the end of the show and they’re probably the only ones I could see working out in the end. Sokka could become the Southern Water Tribe Chief and Suki could become his Queen when she’s retired from the Kyoshi Warriors.

Katara and Aang would be lifelong friends, of course they would be, but I don’t really see them lasting. Aang was twelve when they started dating. They’d date a few years, then they’d decide they want other things. That’s a good thing to show kids!

I’ve written many metas about Zutara, but Ambassador then Fire Lady Katara would show a changing world, where the Fire Nation, now no longer a war industry but a Steampunk country, is moving forward, with Zuko literally marrying a woman the Fire Nation tried to wipe out. They would be equals and leave an equal mark upon the world. Together.

Toph and Aang would be amazing together. They’d be a great team, working in the Earth Kindom, helping rebuild the old Temples when the Air Nomads came out of hiding, and bringing peace around the world. I don’t think they’d be a conventional relationship. They’d do their own thing for a while, find each other for a while, work together on some projects, then continue doing their own thing. Aang being the Avatar who travels the world and Toph teaching metalbenders and working with the King in Ba Sing Se and Bumi in Omashu and wherever she’s needed. I think Toph would be much more fulfilled than what we’ve seen of elderly Katara. She doesn’t have Katara’s abandonment issues (I’ve talked about them here) and she’s more independent, I believe.

I know I haven’t talked about them much yet, but I want Mai and Ty Lee together in the end. Badass ladies challenging their respective stereotypes and create a new world for themselves. Mai could find herself away from the Fire Nation court (I don’t know what she’d do, but circuses love people who throw knives, don’t they? She could be a circus performer for a while), and I think Ty Lee, in this version, could work at the circus and with Aang to rebuild the Air Nomads. I love the idea of Ty Lee being a descendant of the Air Nomads.

All of them should be shown creating Zootopia-like Republic City. Because of course they should be! They’re the Gaang!

So yeah, that’s how I would see the world of Avatar grow beyond the borders of the original show! :)

#atla #avatar the last airbender #anti-lok #anti-bryke #zutara #sukka #taang #mailee #darkcrowprincess

[colorful-horses]

ive been thinking a lot about the new mlp movie and how excited i am for it, so here's all of my gen 5 movie hopes/predictions, ranging from "incredibly likely" to "i know it probably won't happen but it just feels right to me"

sunny and hitch are siblings

smartphones/modern technology

hitch is the one whos most disapproving of sunnys friendship with izzy, but tags along for the journey anyway

the "jewel heist" will be something that they have to do in order to gain the trust of the pegasi (they go to the pegasi for help or smth, but the pegasi are like "maaan, if only we had back that culturally important jewel that the unicorns stole from us and now have in a museum😩")

alternatively, theyre visiting the pegasi for help or whatever, and the pegasi refuse to help, so they just steal the jewel that they were there for. lol

there will be a scene where hitch and izzy talk out their issues with eachother, and the scene ends with izzy walking away and hitch giving her a "im falling in love" kind of smile while her back is turned (i dont want this but I have a terrible hunch that SOMEONE is going to be a love interest to izzy)

at least 2 brony meme references

there will be a core 5

every character will have a pet sidekick, some of which will be flocked in the pricier toys

the mane 6 will either not be mentioned at all, or there will be a scene/multiple scenes where sunny is fangirling over them and constantly using them as examples for "why can't we all just get along!" (i feel like the latter is more likely, but it depends on how connected to gen 4 they want this new generation to be)

the songs will all bop, but only one will bop hard enough to make it to tiktok

villain song (this probably won't happen because there probably won't be any big bads, but I can dream)

when the movie premieres, there will be countless conspiracy theories talking about discord for no reason other than he is immortal ("Discord Is Hitch And Heres Why")

the toys will barely (if at all) branch away from the main cast

there will be a scene near the end where the group gets into a crazy bad argument, and sunny is the one who has to bring them all together (or, sunny continues on the journey alone, but her impulsiveness lands her in hot water, and her friends all have to come together to save her)

cutiemarks are gone! unicorns can't use magic! its all GONE because no one is FRIENDS with eachother and friendship is MAGIC

Sunny has to deal with her own personal racial biases, but pretends like she's not biased at all (like the bunny from zootopia)

at the end of the movie, the core cast earns their cutiemarks because friendship. other ponies see this, and theyre like "wtf i want a cutiemark", which will lead to misguided ponies down the line trying to manhandle friendship to get their magic/cutiemarks back. the cutiemarks are a motivation to make friends, but theyre the WRONG motivation to make friends. the dramatics

ok thats all I have. thanks to anyone who read this far! I know its extremely unlikely for most of these to happen, but a lot of them are just little crumbs of ideas my brain threw out :,) no matter what tho, I'm excited for gen 5!

#mlp #my little pony spoilers #my little pony #mlp gen 5 #gen 5 #talkies #im not very good at predictions so these r all......probably not gonna happen LOL #but it was fun to write

[honeywithblueberries]

The Perks- With and Without You

I was not expecting to have this finished this soon. A big thank you to Cimar for proofreading. Hopefully you like it. THIS CHAPTER IS RATED E FOR EXPLICIT. THERE’S SOME SMUT.

………..

“One extra large brownie explosion ice cream bowl, extra sprinkles and whipped cream, three cherries on top!”

Nick shoved his paws in his pocket and grinned smugly at the otter clerk who was rapidly writing his order down. His green eyes pointed refused to make contact with Judy’s as she scowled at him. Dave chuckled, having given the clerk his own complex order, as Gideon stepped forward with a confused look at them.

“Uh, just a chocolate cone for me, please,” he requested politely. Dave put his arm around the other todd and grinned down.

“Gideon, my friend, live a little! Try something new! Crazy! You’re in Zootopia and here,” Dave grinned over at the females who were pulling out their money and passing it to the clerk, “anyone can do anything!”

“Including spending all of their friends' tips on ice cream,” Judy grumbled. Gideon gave her a worried look which had her rolling her eyes with a smile. “Come on, Gid. My treat! Anything you want.” She looked up at the menu and grinned. 

“They have a pecan praline,” she added in a singsong voice. Nick, Dave, and Brook laughed at the other fox’s excited expression. Judy nodded at the clerk. “One Pecan Praline Surprise please. And the Carrot Cake Sundae for me.”

The group stood off to the side to await their orders when a cheerful ringtone came from Gideon's pocket. His phone was dug out quickly, Judy smirking at him and the flush. But he still couldn’t help but smile at the name on the screen.

“It’s Sharla, gotta take this!” He dashed away to answer. Brook and Dave had paired up, leaving Nick and Judy grinning at each other for a moment before falling into a pleasant, not quite so awkward silence.

“So…” Judy began moving closer to Nick and looking up at him, grin still intact.

“Sooo.” Nick’s expression mirrored hers.

“We’re going to have to schedule a re-match on the obstacle course at Precinct One this Saturday.” Her eyes caught the otter who took their order, setting it on the pick up counter. “I think I have a shot at whooping your tail next time.”

“Oh, is that so!” Passing hers and holding onto the other two, they made their way to the table Gideon had claimed, Brook and Dave right behind them. “I don’t know, Carrots. You were pretty confident in your chances the last time. And we all remember how that went.” He smirked at her, but she simply smiled and wagged her eyebrows at him.

“Well, if you’re scared of a rematch, I understand.” His mouth dropped open but his eyes held humor. “After all…” She scooped a bite from her bowl and cheersed him with it. “I’m just a cute, little bunny.” It vanished into her mouth, a smug smile flashed at him before she turned away to take her seat.

Nick studied her for a moment. He didn’t bother to fight his smile and leaned down to her.

“You’re so on, bunny,” he whispered in her ear. Judy looked back up at him and winked. 

“Bring it fox.” Nick grinned and passed Gideon his before taking a seat next to her. 

“But you know,” she gave him a curious smile around her bite as he spoke, “it would be a shame if that’s all we did on Saturday.” He took a bite of his ice cream with a shrug. “It’s supposed to be perfect beach weather. And we really shouldn’t waste our youth being cooped up indoors.”

“The beach sounds fun!”

The bunny and fox both jumped. They had completely forgotten about their friends taking a seat with their ice cream. Brook grinned and dug in while Dave gave Nick his full attention. 

“What time were you guys thinking? Right after camp? Gideon, you in?”

Gideon gave them a thumbs up before turning the phone around to show off the pretty black ewe on the screen.

“Hi, Sharla!” Judy greeted with a wave. Her friend’s mouth moved but no sound came out.

“Sorry,” Gid began, gesturing to the ear bud in place. “She says hi and she misses you, Judy. And are you coming back for the Carrots Day Festival?”

“Oh, I forgot all about that.” She looked over at Nick who watched her with a curious expression on his face. “Maybe. I completely forgot about that.”

Gideon turned the phone back to himself and relayed the information. 

“There’s a whole festival devoted to carrots?” His voice held a lot of pent up laughter. Enough to have the doe rolling her eyes. “A whoooooolllllllleeeee festival…. Devoted to carrots……”

“Just laugh, Nick, we both know you’re going to anyway.”

“I’m not gonna laugh.” The corners of his mouth twitched and a small chuckle escaped him when she flicked a walnut piece at his nose. “What? I wasn’t! I promise.” Everyone at the table gave him a look and the red todd shrugged with a grin. “I was just surprised! I mean…” he looked at Judy again, this time failing to keep his laughter in. “It’s a whole festival devoted to carrots.” 

Judy tried to glare at him when he broke on that last word. But she too joined in after a moment.

“I know!” she laughed. “The town of Bunnyburrow devoting a whole weekend to carrots. Can we be any more of a cliche?”

Brook and Dave shook their heads with smiles before turning their conversation back to their upcoming beach trip. Gideon had since said goodbye to Sharla and was now watching with polite interest as he enjoyed his ice cream. The table fell into companionable silence as everyone enjoyed the food and pre-parade festivities.

“So, when I win our rematch,” Nick looked over at Judy as she spoke with a smug look on her face, “what do I win?”

“Well, when I win, you’re going to have to take me to this Carrots Day festival. Spare no experience.” Nick scooped up another bite and savored it, outlandishly rolling his eyes and sighing with extreme pleasure. “MMM-hum! Victory is sweet.”

Judy gave him a light punch in the arm.  “I’ll take that bet.”

Then she and Gideon exchanged looks and dissolved into laughter. Brook and Dave looked from one to the other, as did Nick who was beginning to look worried.

“What did I just agree to?” he asked them.

The other todd got his laughter under control a bit. “Oh, just a rootin’, tootin’ good time! Nothin' to worry about… much."

Nick looked at Judy, who nodded and took another bite of her ice cream. “And if I win, we still go to the Carrots Day festival. So there's no backing out. She stuck her paw out and he reluctantly shook it. “I promise it’ll be fun!”

Brook suddenly checked her watch and jumped up suddenly. “It’s about to start!” 

Dave followed her, Gideon right behind him. Nick and Judy lingered a moment, smiling shyly at each other as they got up to join their friends. 

“Soooo….” He took a bite and lightly brushed up against her. “What does go on at the festival?”

Their group cut through the thickening crowd for spots, the red todd staying close to the doe. The paws not holding their ice cream dropped to their sides and brushed against one another, before clasping together.  With it, shy glances were exchanged, smiles softer for each other and equally excited. Nick’s tail slightly shielded Judy from the crowd they were pushing through, both keeping their eye on Brook, whose height made a perfect guide towards the edge of the canals. 

“Nothing as crazy as you’re imagining,” she assured with a smile up at him. “We just have some traditions newcomers might find… colorful.”

“Oh when you put it like that, it's farrrrr less daunting.” 

That earned him a wide grin from her, but a response was cut off by a sudden shift in the crowd. Nick was barely able to steady himself. Judy, however, was ripped from his paw after stumbling over someone’s tail. They lost sight of each other when the crowd shifted again.

“Carrots!” “Nick!”

She stumbled again, but was caught by two familiar paws. 

“Careful, there, Hopps!” Judy looked up into the familiar eyes of Kody. He grinned at her while she straightened up. “Wouldn’t want to get crushed, now, would we.”

He was given a polite smile that turned wistful when she noticed her ice cream on the ground.

“Thanks, Kody.” The paper bowl was picked up and tossed in the trash before she turned to leave with a wave. “I guess I better go find Nick and the others.”

“Unless you wanna stick with me?” Kody took her paw before she could bring it down and gave her a charming smile while stepping closer. “I have a great spot and it’s right next to the bathroom.”

Judy ducked her head bashfully.

“Kody,” she sighed and looked at him with a patient smile. He returned it sadly while releasing her paw. “I think you’re great and everything, but I’m just not interested. I actually think I’m being pretty obvious about how much I like Nick.”

The todd blinked before laughing in a defeated manner. 

“Yeah,” he agreed, “you’re being clear about that. I’m not sure why, but if he’s who you want…” He shrugged. “I can accept defeat. Nick’s a lucky guy.”

Judy smiled brightly. “I think I lucked out a bit, too. Well, I gotta go find Nick and our friends. Thanks for catching me, Kody.” 

She bounced away with a final smile. Kody waved back before sighing wistfully and turning away. Natasha rushed towards him looking annoyed. 

"Kody!" He was given a punch on the shoulder. "You were supposed to kiss her-"

"Oh, give it a rest, you psycho stalker!" Kody rolled his eyes. "They're freaking taken with each other."

The vixen looked at him in shock before looking back towards the bunny being greeted by Nick. He scooped her up in his arms and twirled her around, laughing with glee as he did. The bunny joined in before she was set back down. Exchanging fond looks, they turned towards the canals, paw in paw. 

Natasha gave an annoyed roll of her eyes before stomping off after her cousin. 

Hours later, the kits found themselves in Dave's living room, going over the parade and the pictures taken. Judy lay draped over Brook's shoulders, pointing out her favorites while the guys played video games. Once Dave’s mother let Brook know her mom was outside, the females gave the males hugs before leaving. Judy wrapped her arms around Nick’s neck, feeling the slight rumble of his satisfied purr before she pulled away.

“You better bring your A game tomorrow, Carrots. I’m going another round on your obstacle course before we hit the ZPD one.”

She smiled and surprised him by pressing a kiss to his cheek. Her lips lingered a moment, just long enough for him to inhale her scent as he had done at the party. It was still everything he had wanted it to be. Moving away from him, he was given one final smile before she turned on her heel to follow the tigress out of the door.

“I’m not that worried.” The words were said over her shoulder, knowing full well she had his attention, all the way until the front door closed. 

The sound of Gideon making a whipping noise broke Nick from his stupor. He glared at him while Dave snorted with laughter.

“Like that ewe doesn’t have you wrapped around her hoof,” he muttered as he settled back down. “And like you don’t follow Brook around like a duckling.”

“She sets my heart on fire,” Gideon sighed.

“Brook smells like a flower patch,” Dave added wistfully.

Nick gave a small roll of his eyes but still kept his smile. “Judy….” The other two males looked over at him while their video game reset. “She’s better than I ever thought she could be.”

Dave leaned into Gideon. “He’s been obsessed with her for, like, six months. This has been a dream come true for him.”

Gideon released a guffaw and focused back on the game. Nick’s brain was still paused on Judy and the kiss she had given him.

She likes me, he thought to himself with a slow grin. She walked away from that stupid Kody, right to you, held your paw, and kissed you.

You’re the luckiest todd in the world!

…………………..

It was the second morning that Jack woke up to the slide of a leg across his hip. Only this time, the sun just barely peeked over the horizon and he wasn’t wearing pants; the sensation of fur on fur was waking up every part of his body. He smiled when he felt lips and gentle, yet sharp, teeth nibbling his ear. Her scent surrounded him, the delicious smell of arousal mingling with his own. 

I could get used to this, he thought, his eyes opening just in time for his vision to blur as she pressed against him. 

Skye moved to straddle his hips again. Her movements shifted the sheets cocooned around them, their activities the night before having knocked them onto the floor of his bedroom. Blue eyes met blue eyes just as her hips shifted to take him once more. Jack’s paws went to her hips and his teeth ground together, his climax embarrassingly close. But Skye, noticing his struggle, only smirked and rocked her hips again.

A breathless laugh escaped her when he fell back against the floor and tried to last.

“Skye,” he gasped, gripping her thighs as she kept up her pace. “I- I can’t-”

“Don’t hold back, Jack,” she breathed, moving faster. She bit her lip as pleasure hit her like a bolt of lightning. “I want this.” His eyes closed and jaw fell slack, submitting to her. “I want you. Gods... I want you….” Everything went white as she lost herself in their lovemaking. Jack came with a strangled gasp, pulling her onto him as deep as he could go and grinding his hips upwards, toes curled against the floor. One of her paws gripped the fur of his belly, while the other massaged the sensitive nub between her thighs. “Gods,” she murmured again, slumping over his body once her climax burned out.

They panted together, aftershocks of pleasure leaving them sated and feeling alive. Jack was still smiling when he opened his eyes, his vision obscured by white fur. 

“That was one hell of a wake up,” he chuckled, wrapping his arms around her. She pushed her head up and grinned down at him. “And I thought the other morning set the bar high.”

She laughed and rocked her hips one final time. “Think you can handle it, Agent Savage?”

That had him sitting up and crushing his lips to hers, taking control of their position and rolling them till he was on top. He pulled back while his paw traveled down one of her long legs, hooking his elbow under her knee and thrusting hard. Skye gasped as he thrusted again.

“You bet your ass I can,” he growled.

An hour later, they had migrated back onto his bed. Early morning light filtered into the room and warmed the couple whispering and giggling together. Nuzzling under his chin, Skye breathed in his scent before pushing herself up to look at the time. Seven am. Flopping back down, she sighed and snuggled closer .

“I need to get up and get Nick in a bit.” Her voice was muffled against Jack’s fur, but he still caught every word. 

“Noooooooo,” he protested, tightening his arms and moving his paws to convince her to stay longer. “Stay here, with me. I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Jack,” she protested weakly, “I can’t.” His lips and teeth found her sweet spot on her collarbone and she became jelly. “I have to go.” She shuddered with desire but stamped it down, refusing to get sucked into another round with him. No matter how tempting it was. “I have my little brother I need to look after.” Her paws went to his face, his lust filled eyes meeting her own but still giving her his full attention. “And you have a little sister you need to think of.” A kiss was pressed to his lips before leaving his bed with great effort.

He groaned with displeasure but watched with interest as her nude form moved around the room in search of her clothing.

“You’re teasing me right now,” came his dry comment. 

Skye looked over to the bed where he sat, naked still, looking mouthwateringly sexy with his fur tossled and eyes half lidded when they met hers. His eyebrows lifted at her suggestively, his arms resting in his knees, trying to entice her clothes off and back into his bed. Skye's jeans were pulled on but left undone, fastening and adjusting her bra. Moving back onto the bed, she walked on her knees towards him. There was no way any sane mammal would let him get away with not being kissed senseless. Looking the way he did in that moment, she really wanted to make him moan like he did last night. But duty called. And Nick would be waiting for her.

“Don’t act like you’re not enjoying it, Agent Savage.” He whimpered as she moved away from him. Fixing her pants, she turned to face him again before she strode over to his closet. Jack’s ears and head cocked in curiosity when the doors were pulled open and a shirt of his removed. His ears went ram rod straight when it was slipped over her head onto her body. With a smug look in her eyes at his reaction, she snuggled into it and inhaled deeply. “I want your scent on me all day long.”

Jack’s arousal reared its head. It took everything he had to not tackle and drag her back into bed. But she was right. The blankets were flipped back and he dragged himself out. He was keenly aware of her intrusive gaze on his own naked form and VERY aware of the sweet scent of her desire. 

“Careful, Agent Skye,” he began with a smirk of his own, pulling on a pair of pajama bottoms, “a bunny could get ideas with a reaction like yours.”

They shared a laugh, Jack reluctantly following her to the front door, paws on her hips the entire time. But it was quickly shut when the sounds of the morning rush from downstairs hit their ears. Both exchanged nervous looks.

“Ready for all the looks and taunts?” he asked her. Skye looked towards the door then back to him. She shook her head earnestly. “Fire escape.”

“Good idea.”

Together they went to one of the living room windows that faced the alley. It was slid open and Skye carefully crawled out with Jack right behind her. Jack breathed a sigh of relief when the metal ladder was lowered to the ground without a sound. Once fully extended, she smiled at him, meeting him halfway for a kiss.

“I’ll see you in a few hours?” he asked when they separated, his paws framing her face. His thumb brushed over her bottom lip, the vixen nuzzling into his paw when he did.

“See you in a few hours,” she confirmed. He was given another quick kiss before she hurried down the ladder. With a final wave, she was gone, leaving the buck with a sense of loss in her absence. 

After a moment, he crawled back through the window and set about straightening up his home. Picking up his pants from the day before, laying next to the door of his bedroom, his cell phone fell to the ground with a clack. He scooped it up and pressed the unlock button. A sigh was repressed when it didn’t light up.

“Damn…” It was plugged in and turned on, almost immediately lighting up with notifications. His brows furrowed in confusion. “What the hell? Eighteen missed calls and…” he clicked on his text messages. “Three hundred texts!”

His thumb scrolled through all of his messages.

Jason: Is it true?!!?!?!?!?!?

Kelly: OMG I CANT BELIEVE YOU RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Frances: you freaking badass! I’ve been chasing one for years and you ACTUALLY scored with one! You my hero, bro! how was it? was it amazing? was she freaky? DID SHE BITE? please say yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Natalie Carrets: I can’t believe I ever had a crush on you! So gross!!

Jack kept reading, dread and confusion filling him, only to be interrupted by a video chat request. Part of him wanted to screen the call. But he knew how relentless Bonnie Hopps could be. His stomach dropped and nerves went haywire when he answered. 

"Hey, Mom!" He greeted with a bright smile, trying not to let her cold glare throw him. "What's up? What are you and dad up to-"

"I'm only going to ask this once," she began. The normal twinkle of love in her purple eyes was missing, replaced with a cold glint of fury. Her normally chipper tone was hard and sent cold chills down her son's spine. 

Jack's ears fell. His heart pounded in his chest and his eyes watered, knowing all too well what was about to happen. 

"Are you -or are you not- SCREWING a fox that you just hired and bringing her around your sister?"

"M-m-mom," he stuttered, trying to keep his smile intact while a tear slipped out and down his cheek,, "it's… it's so much more than that. It's-" 

"Answer the question, Jack Edmund Hopps."

The buck's slightly desperate smile fell. Maintaining eye contact for a brief moment before his gaze fell to his lap, he gave a sharp nod and looked back up. 

"Yeah," he confirmed, nodding again. He cleared his throat of emotion and took a deep breath. Jack straightened his back and looked his mother in the eye. "It's true."

If possible, the thin line of her mouth became thinner. 

"And I thought I raised my children better than that." The statement sparked annoyance in Jack. 

"Better than being able to see a wonderful mammal who makes me happy and treats my family well regardless of species?" Jack scoffed at his mother's shocked expression. "Yeah, now I'm starting to question where I got it from."

She considered him with a look of patient anger before she matched her son’s pose.

"You're breaking up with her. Before or after firing her. I don't have a preference. Just get her out of your life and do it TODAY!"

"You have ZERO right to ask me to do that," came his indignant response. "I get she's not who you pictured me with, but she's perfect. And you're out of your godsdamn mind if you think you're going to intimidate me into leaving her-"

"Honey, I'm going to make this very simple. You're going to get this vixen out of your life. Today. If not, I will drive up there myself and take my daughter home." Jack's jaw dropped but Bonnie wasn't finished. "And going forward, you will not be welcomed in Bunnyburrow. EVER."

"You-" he felt his brain crash. "You can't do that. You can't just banish me from town. You can't keep Judy from me. Bunnyburrow is my home and we're family. I have the right to visit whenever I want and Judy is old enough to decide if she wants to see me."

"Try me." Her icy gaze bore into him. "You know how big our family is and your Uncle Terry was just re-elected mayor. Our burrow is the biggest and most widespread and, what’s more, Judy is a minor. Her father and I will decide who can be around her and who can't. So far, her brother who jumps into bed with random predator whores and parades his conquests around her is not making the list." Her expression suddenly softened, but Jack was feeling far too shaken to respond or notice. "And it would break my heart to never see you again.” She sighed and made her face stern again. “You have until closing time tonight and I have ways of knowing if you didn't or if you try to lie about it."

Jack was silent for a moment.

"Mom," he began with a slight choke in his voice, "I love her."

"Sweetheart, you have no idea what love is." Bonnie didn't wait for a response before she hung up. 

For a moment, Jack sat in silence, staring at the now dark screen of his phone. A picture of him and Judy displayed on the entertainment center caught his eye. Judy's thirteenth birthday. Hanging off her brother's back, pausing midway through their outing to snap a photo in front of the turtle tank at the aquarium. She would forgive him, wouldn't she? Skye's scent was still soaked into the apartment, making it difficult to argue against the decision. 

Unlocking his phone again, he called Jon and lifted the phone to his ear as he answered. 

"Hidy-ho, boss! What can I do you for?"

"You haven’t seen Judy yet, have you?”

“No, not yet. Why? What’s going on?”

Jack’s eyes found the picture again as he thought of a response. “Just curious. If you see her before I do, send her to me, Okay? I’m going to be doing some work up here for a bit but call me if you need anything.”

“Sure thing, boss! Just don’t wear our GM out too badly! We’re going to need her.” Jack forced a laugh before the pair disconnected and he flopped back onto the couch. All he felt was misery, something he hadn’t imagined just twenty minutes ago. It felt like everything was starting to fall into place... and now… 

With a sigh, he pulled himself up to get ready for the day. Fetching his clothing from his room, he paused to breathe in the lingering scent of Skye. It filled him, calmed his anxiety, and lifted him high. It was just as well.

No matter how he chose, he was going to crash before the day was over.

…………

Judy came into the cafe with a grin. It had been a great night and a great morning and it was going to be a great day. Bouncing through the front door of the cafe, she called out a greeting to everyone before carrying on to the stairs to drop off her overnight bag. A hello died on her lips when she found the apartment empty. Judy called out for Jack, having not seen or heard him downstairs, and realized that he was completely out of the building.

The stairs were taken two at a time before continuing to the kitchen. Once again, she paused, blinking in confusion. Never in all her visits had Jack been completely absent. His presence in the cafe was a constant and now the place seemed barren without him. Jon’s voice cut through her reverie.

“He wandered out of the building about two hours ago,” he explained, passing a bus bucket to her along with an apron. “Said he wasn’t going far. But no sign of Skye.”

Her purple eyes narrowed in confusion, accepting both. “Huh.” She shrugged and turned to work just as Jon turned back to his bake list. “I hope he’s okay. That’s not like him.”

Bobby gave her a look of agreement before clearing his throat as Jack appeared in the door’s window. The buck paused with his paw over the handle, hesitating before pushing it open. In the brief moment it took for him to enter, his blue eyes zeroed in on her and filled with something she couldn’t place. He gave her a strained smile.

“Hey, Jude.” 

“Hey, Jack,” her brows furrowed in concern and she dropped the bus bucket to go to him. “Are you okay?”

He gave her a smile and nod, though neither seemed very reassuring. “Yeah. I was just wondering if we could talk really quick.” He stepped forward and gestured towards the stairs.

“Umm, sure.”Stomach dropping, Judy gave him a look as she stepped past the bar and towards the apartment. His footsteps were light as they followed her, but she couldn’t help but notice the weight behind each one. “This is beginning to feel like the time Mom explained what goldfish heaven was when I was six.”

A strained laugh had her ears falling as they entered. While Judy moved further into the room, he closed the door. Turning to face her, he leaned against it and took a deep breath. 

His mouth opened….

12 YEARS AGO

“Come one! Come on!”

“Come to me, Quintin! Come to your big brother, Charlie!”

“Let’s go, Brook, sweetheart! Do it for your uncle Barry!”

“Nope, Silene has everyone beat!”

“Come on, Judy! Stop playing with the police car and at least try to walk!” The fifteen year old silver bunny doe sighed and looked over at her thirteen year old brother reading on the couch not far away. “I blame you, Jack. You just had to get her that stupid police car toy!”

Jack rolled his eyes and kept them on his book. “Technically, I bought that for Tom’s pet bird. He forgot it in the living room and she’s been playing with it ever since. So if you wanna blame someone, blame him.”

She narrowed her eyes and looked back at her baby sister. The tiny bunny was alternating her attentions by gazing around her cheering family, looking at her littermates steel themselves for their first steps, and rolling the police car around. To her big sister’s utter disappointment, Judy showed no interest in the competition. 

“Still,” the sullen doe muttered, sitting back and giving up. She crossed her arms and glared at the others as she practically heard herself losing twenty bucks on this event. Letting out a frustrated sigh, she turned back to Jack. “Will you at least take it while I distract her, please.”

“Five bucks,” came his clipped response. His sister rolled her eyes again.

“Fine!” 

Jack snickered at his victory and set the book aside. 

“Judy, sweetie!” Their sister called. “Look at me! Hi, sweetie!”

Judy turned to her for only a moment before they went back to the car in her paws. A few whacks on the floor with it with some baby babble to voice her approval and it was a day well spent in her mind. Light footsteps caught her attention. She paused her game to look up at her big brother creeping across the carpet. Her big purple eyes met Jack’s and her face split into a grin.

“Dak!” she shrieked. He stumbled to a halt, his eyes going wide at that. “Dak!”

Nearly everyone in the room paused to look at her, then Jack, who was staring at his baby sister with absolute shock. Judy flopped over to her front and pushed herself up into a crawl before standing on two very unstable legs. 

“Dak!” With a final shriek of his name, she barreled towards him as fast as she could go. 

On instinct, he opened his arms and caught her, falling on his bottom as he did. She laughed with happiness only a baby like her could have. Jack sat up with his sister in his arms and smiled down at her.

“She said my name! Mom! Dad! Judy’s first word was my name!” Jack stood up with her balanced in his arms, grinning and bouncing her, giving her head the occasional kiss as he did. 

Everyone else had gotten over her first word (something many of them- him included- had experienced several times already) and now were grumbling over the results. His older sister was singing their praises as she collected her winnings. 

Jack, however, smiled at his little sister, finally setting her down and accepting the police car she offered him. Judy clutched his leg, looking up at her big brother with adoring eyes.

“Dak!”

PRESENT DAY

“Jack?”

He shook his head and focused on his baby sister.

“Jack?” She took a step towards him. “Is everything okay?”

He took a breath…

“I was just wondering….” 

Judy’s eyebrows rose expectantly. 

“What do you say about doing a ski trip before school starts back up?”

Confused, Judy looked at him with incredulity.

“Uh, sure,” she agreed with a nod, a smile forming on her muzzle. “Yeah, that would be cool.” She giggled a bit. “No pun intended.”

Jack smiled again, this time less strained, but still tense. “Okay, great! I’ll do some research and we’ll set a date.” Still facing her he turned the knob and opened the door again. “Now get back to work. I need to find something up here, so I’ll be down in a moment.”

“Okay, weirdo! I can’t believe you were so stressed over that!”

He laughed. “I just know how you’re not fond of Tundratown.”

With one last grin, she was out the door and down the stairs. He waited for her footsteps to fade before closing the door and leaning against it. Against his will, realizing what he had just done, he began to cry.

…………

Water poured over Skye’s body, her paws and claws moving through her fur, working the shampoo into a lather and rinsing thoroughly. Her thoughts lingered on Jack. Considering how tender she was between her legs and how sore she felt from last night, she was amazed she was even able to function. Jack had felt better than she had expected and it was a pleasant surprise finding out rabbit bucks could go multiple rounds without going soft. Had she known that, she would have skipped out on the two todds she dated and hunted him down when she first turned eighteen.

“Skye! We’re going to be late.”

Nick banging on her bathroom door had her jumping. She had completely forgotten he was here. Easy to do when he had spent their walk from David’s home in thoughtful, comfortable silence followed by a quick race through her apartment to get ready. Other than a cheerful hello and happy smile, neither had a lot to say.

“Be right out!” The water was shut off and her fur hastily toweled off. She was still damp when she slipped on fresh underwear and grabbed the jeans she was wearing. Jack’s shirt fell from where it had been resting on top of them. Skye smiled and scooped it up, bringing it to her nose and inhaling deeply. It still smelled like him. Fresh and soothing. Holding it close, it soaked into her. Satisfied and eager to see him again, she tossed it onto her bed and grabbed her black button down.

The walk back to the Perk was almost completely silent. Brother and sister chatted about their afternoon and evening from the previous day and speculated on what their mother could be doing that moment. Skye edited her version of things for Nick's sake, but the younger fox was regretfully able to figure out what she and Jack were up to all night. But he was thankfully spared when the Perk came into view. Her paw pushed the door open and they were greeted by an enthusiastic Judy. 

"Ready to get your tail kicked, Slick?"

"I'm ready to see you try, Carrots."

The vixen laughed and glanced around. "Play nice, kits."

Skye grinned as soon as she saw the striped buck. Giving Nick a hug before he went to Judy, she strolled over to Jack sitting at the table with his head in his paws. He jumped slightly before relaxing when her paws landed on his shoulders. Her thumbs found a sore spot where they pressed causing him to tense his in discomfort before sighing in pleasure. But she was only there for a moment before he reached up to stop her ministrations. 

"Skye," he began in a quiet voice, " we need to talk." 

Her eyes grew concerned as she walked around to look at him. He kept his eyes on a spot in the corner of the window and her paw trapped in his.

“Are you okay?” A paw went to his face to bring his gaze up to hers, only to be stopped by his other paw. “Jack? What’s wron-”

“You’re fired, Skye.”

His words were cold and his expression completely blank. Nick and Judy, who had begun to joke and banter with each other, paused, both moving their stricken gaze towards the buck, and their jaws dropped. Jack’s eyes found Judy’s and watched as they filled with confusion and hurt. He stayed on her even as her own moved back to Skye.

The vixen felt a chill set in.

“Wh-what?” Her question, small and weakly asked as it was, did not pull his gaze from his younger sister. She tugged her paws from his grip and backed away. “Ar… are you serious?”

She looked over at Judy who looked back, horrified, before turning her tear filled, purple stare to her brother. Skye looked at him again, watched as he took a deep breath and stood, facing her, with eyes she couldn’t quite read. 

“It���s over,” he said in a voice just barely over a whisper.

“Jack?” Judy’s voice cut through the myriad of emotions Skye was feeling. “What the hell are you doing?”

His mouth opened but words didn’t come out.

“He’s breaking up with me.” Skye met his gaze head on, her eyes filling with tears and refusing to spill them. “I get it.” She backed away slowly, trying to keep her emotions in check. “Bunny does are easy lays. He was hoping I would be more of a challenge.” The cafe staff had paused their work to look at the scene in the lobby. Nick’s face held no expression as he looked at his sister, ears and tail on alert. Skye stood straighter and nodded at the rabbit buck in front of her. “So sorry to disappoint.”

Without another word, she turned and left, her tears spilling over once her back was turned. All eyes turned from the fleeing vixen to the striped buck who watched her leave. His own eyes seemed unfocused and his expression detached. Judy let out a huff of disbelief before turning to Nick and grabbing his paw.

“Come on, Nick, we gotta-”

Nick ripped his paw from hers and growled; her ears dropped in surprise.

“What sort of sick game are you trying to pull here?”

“Nick, I- I didn’t know-”

“This had nothing to do with her, Nick. I promise-”

“Oh, excuse me if don’t exactly trust you and your stupid, fucking promise.” He glared at him before turning his anger towards her. Judy moved towards him and he suddenly turned away and stormed for the door. “Fuck both of you!”

“Nick, please, I’m nothing like him! I swear!”

“Yeah, sure you're not! I'm just supposed to trust you won't want to be just like your hero. Go find Kody, if you're so eager to experiment. I'm sure he was next on your list of foxes to try!”

Nick shot her a final glare over his shoulder before leaving. He was deaf to her when she called out again and already down the street when her feet remembered how to work and she dashed after him. Jack remained where he stood, staring blankly at where his sister had vanished. Only to refocus once Judy returned looking defeated and sobbing. He moved towards her, the action drawing an expression he had never seen before. Or at least he had never seen directed at him.

“I hate you,” she stated, simply. Vhemonately. 

“Judy, I-” He took a step, only for her to step back.

“I don’t want to even look at you,” she spat, backing away from him towards the stairs. He looked from her to Sandra, Jon, and Bobby watching them with slack jaws. Tears stained his cheeks when he looked back towards his baby sister. “I wanna go home. I’m not going to spend another second with you. You’re exactly like them! You horrible, disgusting jerk!” Jack started towards her, the explanation on his lips when she turned away from him and ran upstairs. 

“Judy, wait!” But she didn’t.

The walls of the cafe seemed to vibrate when she slammed the apartment door. Jack could only stand in his spot and take several deep breaths to keep his thoughts in order. He just needed to explain. To tell her so she would know what had really happened today. Just as he started to move towards the staircase and everyone awkwardly began to restart their work, the door opened again. He looked up as her footsteps hit his ears. She stormed down, her backpack on and small suitcase in paw.

“Wait, Judy!" He dashed after her as she reached the front of the cafe and stormed out, past Gideon and Daisy who were just about to enter. “You can’t just leave! Please, let me-” His paw had reached for her arm only for it to whip out of his grasp and her other paw slapped him across the face, suitcase clattering to the ground. He staggered back and blinked down at her. She fought her tears and backed away from him.

 “That’s for ruining everything.”

A paw stayed pressed to his cheek even as the sting faded away. He watched his little sister vanish around the corner, choking back tears before he pulled himself together long enough to dig his cell free from his pocket. Vaguely he heard Daisy say she’ll go with her with Gideon agreeing while the pair rushed away. Watching them vanish, he sent a quick text to Bogo, asking to keep an eye out for Judy at the train station. Another was sent to Bonnie, letting her know her daughter was on her way home, but didn’t elaborate any further. 

For a long moment, he stared in the direction everyone had left in before heading back inside. The buck kept his head ducked as he reentered, but raised it up once he realized all eyes were on him. A hush fell over the cafe as he gathered as much of his dignity as he could to walk towards the kitchen. His head was held high, but not his eyes, which struggled to stay off the floor. Several times his ears and chin threatened to fall, the urge fought off as he passed through the coffee bar into the kitchen.

Almost robotically, he put on an apron, took up the next order, and paused to focus on it. Materials were taken up and put to use as he set about his work. Tension was thick as nearly every pair of eyes were on him. But still, he paid them no mind, tuning them out, and focusing on his task.

Jon, for the first time in his job at the Perk, was completely speechless. He opened his mouth and took a step towards his boss. But a paw on his arm had him pausing. His eyes met Sandra’s and he understood her silent order to leave the kitchen. Jack kept his back to everyone and piped the decorations for the order in front of him. She approached him cautiously and opened her mouth to speak.

“Say anything and you’re fired.” Her mouth closed briefly before opening again. “And if you think I’m kidding, today’s not the day to test me.”

Sandra’s eyes watered a bit but she nodded and backed away. Returning to her position at the counter, she picked up where she left off, the others following her lead. And so the day passed in tense silence, Jack too far removed from everything to notice anything happening around him.

And out of respect, no one mentioned the tears running down his cheeks.

………………………. 

Skye didn’t even realize Nick was next to her until she stopped at a crosswalk. He came to a stop beside her, paw going to her elbow. She instinctively jerked away before seeing who it was. As soon as she met her brother’s eyes, she broke. He dove into her arms and held tight as she sobbed into his shoulder and hugged him back.

“Let’s go home, Skye,” he mumbled after a moment. 

His paw firmly guided her past her apartment, towards their mother’s. Vivian Wilde may have been out of Savanna Central, but there was a comfort in going back to her childhood home.

Nick navigated her there, thankful they had not stopped rushing away from the Perk until they were closer to the Wilde residence than Skye’s. Through the building lobby, up the stairs, to the front door, and greeted by Greg lounging on the couch in his usual position. His legs thrown over the back of the couch, with the rest of him upside down, he tapped away at his phone and grinned at the sound of the door opening.

“Welcome home, kits!” he called out with a happy grin. “Our camping trip got rained out, so I’m home early. SURPRISE! How was your da-....” His eyes finally looked towards his brother and sister and he fell silent at their expressions. “Day?” Legs were swung down and he maneuvered himself into an upright position before standing.

“What happened?”

Nick looked up at his brother then back at his sister, before casting his gaze to the ground with an angry shake of his head. Greg took her in his arms and walked her towards the couch, waiting for Nick as he made for the kitchen. Skye’s sobs had tapered off, leaving her in a shocked silence. Her breath came in pants and eyes stared blankly at the floor.

Returning with a mug in his paws, Nick came to sit next on her opposite side, passing the mug to her. It was accepted quietly and sipped from, but she still didn’t speak.

“I’m guessing,” her eyes moved to Greg as he spoke, “Jack?”

Of course.

Skye still reeked of him. Her nose had gone blind to it; Nick, too, apparently. But it was very prominent to any other mammal.

“Let’s draw you a bath,” Greg suddenly announced. That seemed to pull her out of whatever daze she had fallen into.

“What?” she asked, positive she heard incorrectly.

Nick grinned and jumped up. “Great idea, Greg! I’ll get started on it.”

“Mom has that Musk Mask Bubble Bath. I think it’s under the sink and it’s a eucalyptus… something. Add some of it, will you?” His little brother left for the bathroom, leaving just the two of them. Skye looked at her little brother and gave him a watery smile.

“Thank you,” she murmured, hugging him. He hugged her back tightly.

“Anything for you, sis.” 

Hours later, after the sun had set, wearing pajamas stolen from her mother, she sat on the couch and thought.... 

Nothing.

Looking at her, one would assume she was a flurry of emotions, rabid thoughts, and feelings. Even she was surprised. Skye had assumed she would still be in intense pain. But she felt nothing. It took convincing to get her brothers to believe she was fine on her own, but when they finally did it was a great relief. 

Now….

Now she could reset. Her eyes looked down at her phone. Seven missed calls. Seven voicemails. More texts than she had ever seen. All from Jack, all ignored and deleted. He had flooded her inbox, too. All emails from him were now auto sent to a separate folder. She looked at the screen and pressed confirm.

‘Your Number Has Been Changed.’

With a sigh and fresh wave of tears, Skye turned her gaze out the living room window and waited for morning.

………………..

In his room, Nick lay on his bed with tears streaming down his cheeks. 

Dave, Finnick, and Brooklynn had been messaging him non stop asking about what happened. Brook had gone to get a drink and muffin from the cafe and visit with her friends only to find no Judy, Nick, or Skye, Jack deaf to everyone and thing, and a very dismal staff. So of course, she called Judy to find out what happened. No doubt she was calling Nick to get his side of the story. Or yell at him. Either way, he wasn’t ready to face them just yet. He picked up his phone and unlocked it. Pressing a thumb to his call log, he selected his voicemail and listened to the message again.

“Hey, Nick,” Judy’s voice greeted in a small tone. It made him close his eyes and breathe deep. “I just wanted to say I’m so sorry. Again. Please, believe me, I had no idea he was going to do that, I swear. If you could, you know, just call me back. So we can talk and maybe… I don’t know. What do you do in a situation like this? I still owe you ice cream! Remember? Maybe we can get ice cream?” She gave a sad chuckle. “Anyway…. Call me.”

Nick was tempted. Very tempted. He already regretted what he told her and he knew that family wasn’t always just carbon copies of the same mammal. But every time his thumb hovered over her number, Jack’s face popped up. That tone, that expression…

How heartbroken Skye was….

If that’s what love was, Nick was better off without it. He exited out of the call screen and moved to set his phone aside. If his eyes stayed open any longer, they would go cross. As he did, a message from an unknown number popped up.

Unknown: Hey, it’s me Natasha. Finnick gave me your number. I just heard what happened! I’m so sorry, Nick. Bunnies are just so awful! It's better you found out sooner rather than later. I hope you’re doing okay…

Annoyance filled him knowing his ‘friend’ was giving his number out to vixens who couldn’t take a hint. Nick was ready with a response as indignation filled him. 

How dare she talk about Judy like that!

But the message was never typed. 

Was she wrong?

Wasn’t this why the term crush was coined?

If loving someone could end with this much pain, what was the point?

Nick sat up and opened his gallery. His green eyes stared down at the picture of him and Judy at the party. The way her nose was adorably scrunched as she glared at him. It was exactly what he was hoping for when he said she looked cute. With a quick swipe, the picture changed. This time it was one he snuck of her in the Museum. The lights were dim and the stars faintly reflected onto the ceiling. And onto Judy. Her eyes were wide in that picture. Full of wonder and amazement, with a hint of excitement. His favorite part was remembering two seconds after he took it, she turned that gaze to him. Nick was only thirteen years old but he knew that was the moment he fell in love with her.

Nick exited his gallery and reopened his messages.

Thanks, Natasha. That means a lot.

……………………….

Judy was tucked into a compartment, her legs folded under her, staring down at her phone. She had tried every way she could to get ahold of Nick, to explain that she had no idea Jack would do what he did. But he had yet to respond. Her messages were on read and occasionally a thought bubble would pop up. It only lasted a few moments before it vanished.

Now it was just silence.

Silence suddenly broken by Brook calling her. Judy jumped in surprise before she slid her thumb over the answer button. 

“Judy, what happened?” she demanded before the doe could speak. “I just stopped by to visit you and Nick and you’re not here! Sandra said there was a big falling out and you left for Bunnyburrow. What happened? Are you okay? Did something happen to Nick? What’s going on with Jack? Aren’t we supposed to go to the beach this weekend?”

When Brook was finally questioned out, Judy took a shaky breath and opened her mouth to explain, only to burst into tears. Brook listened in stunned silence as she sobbed out the story. It really was a testament to their friendship that she even understood what was being said to her. Brook listened without interrupting until Judy fell into hiccupping silence broken by the occasional sniffle. 

“Judy, Nick’s a jerk.”

The statement shocked her for a moment. “What? What do you mean?”

“He just took all of his anger out on you!” The tigress declared. “I totally get being pissed at your brother. What he did was terrible! But you had nothing to do with it! It was in no way your fault! And he needs to stop being a dick and grow the fuck up!”

“Brook, you don’t understand. Jack-”

“Fucked up. Yes. I know. I get it, Hopps. But the simple fact of the matter is, Nick had no right to blame you for Jack’s actions. That dumb fox should consider himself lucky a female like you was willing to even look at him, let alone be willing to date him! You deserve to be treated better and if you can’t see that then you really are just a dumb bunny!”

And with that, she hung up. Judy kept the phone to her ear for a moment longer before it fell to her lap. At a loss for words and with much to think about, she turned her gaze to the window and watched the platform for Bunnyburrow station come into view. 

“Now arriving at Bunnyburrow station. Please exit to the right and mind the gap.”

She stood and took her bag and backpack before heading towards the exit. And there waiting for her was her mother and father, beaming happily as she drew closer. Bonnie rushed forward and scooped her up in a hug.

“Oh!” she squealed. “I’m so happy you’re back, baby! And I’m so sorry about Jack and your summer. I know how much you were looking forward to it.”

A few tears leaked out as Judy hugged her back. “Thanks, Mom.” She pulled away to look up at her with watery eyes. “Can I sleep in one of the guest bedrooms? I’m not up for being around the litter.”

“Well, thankfully, everyone was moved out into their own bedrooms. We left your stuff there, though.” She was given another squeeze. “The room’s all yours.”

Judy buried her nose into her mother’s fur and cried silently. “Thank you, mommy.”

Stu smiled and embraced her before grabbing her things and heading to the truck. One bumpy truck ride and several hours later, she sat on her bed, a fox plushie in her paws. Gideon had given it to her as a gift for her last birthday. Now that she was really looking at it, she was reminded of Nick. A thumb brushed over the button eyes before it was brought to her chest for a snuggle, tears falling a bit harder. 

Brook had given her a lot to think about and while she knew she was right, it still hurt knowing Nick hated her. Almost as much as seeing her big brother, her hero, the one who was as odd as she was…

A light tap on her door and she looked up to see Quintin peeking in at her.

“Hey,” he began with concerned eyes. “Are you okay?”

She nodded and looked back down. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Super crazy about Jack, huh?” Her brother came to sit next to her, bouncing her as he did. Judy only nodded. “I can’t believe Mom and Dad did that to him.”

Half way through another nod, she stopped and looked up at him questioningly. “What?” 

“He didn’t tell you? Everyone in the burrow is freaking out about it. It’s practically divided everyone.” He looked up in thought. “I don’t think I’ve spoken to Mom or Dad since this morning. I’m actually going to do some part time work for the Fleece family tomorrow for money so I can get my food and shit from somewhere else. It’s been pretty fucked up around here.”

“What? What did they do?” 

Quin studied her for a moment before he answered. “Mom told Jack that he either he leaves that vixen or he says goodbye to you and Bunnyburrow.” His paw grasped hers with sympathetic eyes. “I’m sorry he chose her over you.”

Judy looked away, feeling floored. “He didn’t. He broke things off with her and Nick was so angry, he broke things off with me.”

Quin's eyebrows shot up. “Well, at least it must be nice knowing he chose you, right?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Now I just feel worse. I still feel so angry at him, Quin. It’s great he chose me, but I wish he had talked to me about it first. If he had, we could have figured it out together. Like we always do. I would have come back here and found a way to get Mom and Dad to change their minds. But…" She shrugged. "He really is just like everyone else.” Quin studied her in confusion until she continued. “He doesn’t think I could handle anything on my own. He had zero faith in me and what I can do. Jack made the choice for me and I don’t think I can forgive that.”

She looked up at him and he gave her a sad smile. “So… Everything’s gonna suck for a while. Huh?”

“Yup," Judy agreed. 

And together, the siblings sat in silence, waiting for the moment and feeling to pass.

……………………….

Jack listened to the other line ring and ring. This is what happened now. It was only a few hours since he had broken things off with Skye and now there was just this-

“Hello?” The voice, while feminine like Skye’s, sounded much younger, with a hint of confusion and fear.

He cleared his throat to clear it of the drunken slur he knew he would have and tried to not to be thrown. 

“Hi, yes, is Skye there, please?” Just because it wasn’t Skye who answered didn’t mean she wasn’t nearby.

Right?

The young female just sounded more confused, though the fear was gone. “No, I’m sorry. I think you have the wrong number.”

“What?” Jack pulled his phone away from his ear and looked down at the display picture and name. Skye beamed up at him, her name in bold across the top of the. He brought it back to his ear in disbelief. “I- I guess she must have changed it. So sorry to have bothered you. Have a great night.”

He hung up before she could respond and his paw fell to his lap, phone still clutched in it. Numbness. That’s what he expected to feel. What he wanted to feel and was aiming for with the bottle by his feet and drink in his paw. The pain he had anticipated to be overwhelming was exactly that. 

And he felt every. 

Last. 

Bit. 

Drinking deeply, he sat at the foot of his bed, every light in his apartment off. The room reflected the light of the bar behind the ally, illuminating it enough to highlight how empty it now was. Judy was gone. The cafe was dark and silent. The apartment was dark and silent. Skye was gone.

Jack was completely, and utterly, heartbroken.

#zootopia #jack savage #skyefrost #nick wilde #judy hopps #wildehopps #savageskye #au-alternative universe

[sxnyarostova]

darla otp ask game!

What was their first impression of each other?

Carla: She’s so pretty! I love her necklace. I wonder where she got it from; ooh, I have to get this job secured first, though. I’ll ask her later!

Daniela: Hmm. She’s very energetic; a little confused, but that’s alright. I like her.

What is their ship name?

Darla, Cariela, and I’m pretty sure there are other ones that I’m unaware of at the moment.

Describe their relationship dynamic.

They have an extremely healthy and functioning relationship! They both have clear communication with each other and will never hesitate to tell the other anything that has been bothering them. Super healthy, 100000/10 would recommend 

What was their relationship like before they got together?

They were coworkers. Lots of sexual tension, though. 

How would they describe each other?

Carla: She’s the love of my life! Dani’s the sweetest person ever. I’m sure she’ll probably say the same about me, so I’ll leave it to her to 

Daniela: I love her. She’s a ray of sunshine in my otherwise extremely dark life and we bring out the best in each other. We’re like two sides of one of those friendship heart lockets. 

What do they love about each other?

Carla: Daniela’s sass, her vibrancy, her love for her community, 

Daniela: The way Carla kisses, Carla’s strawberry lip gloss, her hair, her clothing choices, her personality (super vivacious and outgoing)

What do they have in common?

BOTH OF THEM ARE REALLY REALLY GOOD AT COMFORTING PEOPLE? I CAN’T EXPLAIN THIS THEY’RE JUST REALLY GOOD COMFORTERS

Describe or write a really fluffy scene!

“This is a nice spot for a date,” Daniela says. She’s impressed; Carla has managed to transform their living room into a giant pillow fort. “Yeah, and we can pick a movie to watch, too,” Carla adds. “I borrowed Vanessa’s Disney+ account.”

“Do you wanna choose the movie?” Daniela asks, sitting down on the couch. It’s not the comfiest, given how their couch was on clearance when they bought it, but Carla has placed some cushions onto the cracked vinyl. Daniela grins; she can’t feel the springs. 

“You can,” Carla says, nuzzling against her girlfriend. Daniela’s wearing the set of silk pyjamas that Carla had bought for her birthday. It’s soft, and Carla loves the feel of the fabric against her skin as she snuggles closer to Daniela. 

Daniela picks Zootopia. The two of them snuggle together as the opening credits start, and Carla wants for nothing more but to stay like this forever. 

Talk about a headcanon you’ve never talked about before.

Carla and Dani both love watching drag shows

What’s a really significant moment in their relationship?

When Carla literally kissed Daniela during work and Dani was like “wow she really Does love me”

#in the heights #in the heights carla #in the heights daniela #darla

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 11/24/21 - ENCANTO, HOUSE OF GUCCI, RESIDENT EVIL, SUMMIT OF THE GODS, LICORICE PIZZA, THE HUMANS, HAWKEYE, and More!

Well, this is gonna be fun. With Thursday being Thanksgiving, that means I need to try to get this column done before then, and that’s even bearing in mind how tough it’s been to get this column done by Thursdays. You should be reading this on Wednesday unless something has gone horribly, horribly wrong, which could be the case. (Or on Tuesday, cause I took Monday night off to work on this. Huzzah!)

In case you haven’t been reading my Weekend Warrior columns for 20 years, you probably won’t understand why I hate Thanksgiving so much, particularly when it comes to the box office. In the pre-COVID times, it was a fairly hearty time for movie business, but it was also hard to predict which movies would be released Wednesday and then be dead by the weekend. Then, other movies would actually do huge business on the Black Friday after Thanksgiving since most people are off, a lot of them are doing their early holiday shopping, and families end up going to the movies together, which gives Friday a huge bump for the weekend. This generally helps family and holiday films the most, which is why Walt Disney continues to be the Thanksgiving weekend champ. Last year was obviously an exception.

First up, we have the latest from Walt Disney Pictures. In fact, ENCANTO (Disney Animation) is Walt Disney Pictures Animation’s 60th animated feature with, presumably, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves being the first. Set in the rural Colombian village of Encanto, this is about a young girl named Mirabel Madrigal (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz from In the Heights) whose family is well-known for their “gifts” or powers that help them aid and defend their community. For instance, Mirabel’s sister Luisa (voiced by Jessica Darrow) has great strength, while her other sister, Isabela (Diane Gurrero) can make plant life and flowers grow anywhere. So essentially, it’s like a LatinX Fantastic Four but actually a much, bigger family all with powers… except Mirabel, who was never given a gift.

Encanto is directed by Byron Howard and co-directed and co-written by Jared Bush both from Zootopia, a pretty big Disney animated hit, and co-directed and co-written by Charise Castro Smith, the first Latina filmmaker to helm a Disney animated movie. Actually, a lot of attention is being put on Ms. Castro Smith and rightfully so, and having a very LatinX-targeted film like this will definitely help bring in LatinX families, since that’s a demographic that makes up a very large part of the moviegoing demographic.

More importantly, this is an animated movie with songs and music with the majority of the former penned by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who seriously is so close to adding an Oscar to his EGOT, he can probably taste it. I mean, besides this movie and the songs he wrote for Netflix’s Vivo (formerly Sony Pictures Animation), he also finally got his adaptation of In the Heights out there, and maybe there’s an original song in there, too? Who knows? Oh, yeah, there’s also Tick Tick… BOOM! On Netflix, Miranda’s directorial debut. But Miranda certainly is very popular with Hamilton back on Broadway and his music being everywhere. I’ll be curious if any of the songs from Encanto breakout and hit ala “Let It Go” from Frozen. (See my review below for more on that.)

One key thing about the movie is that it’s also Disney’s first non-Fox animated theatrical release since the Pixar movie, Onward, because Pixar’s last two movies, Soul and Luca were thrown onto the Disney+ streamer. This may not be a big deal to some who were perfectly happy to get those movies as part of their Disney+ subscription, but it’s a big deal to theaters and with kids getting vaccinated very quickly, there’s a chance that families will pick this as their weekend moviegoing choice. The fact that the movie is getting positively GLOWING reviews doesn’t hurt either.

The big question is how the opening week box office for Encanto will be split between Weds (including Tuesday previews), Thanksgiving and the three-day weekend. I expect that Weds and Friday will be two big days for the movie with maybe $12 or 13 million made through Thanksgiving and then another $28 to 35 million being made over the weekend, which isn’t a lot compared to Disney’s Thanksgiving records, but it’s pretty damn good for the pandemic

Mini-Review: I feel like I should preface this review by admitting that I have gotten fairly cynical about animated movies, and particularly those from Disney and its subsidiaries, because they no longer seem to be about fun entertainment and more about one message or another. While I fully get behind these animated features being used to introduce young viewers to other cultures, like the Colombian traditions of Encanto, there is a certain point where it’s hard not to think that the creators are losing sight of that audience in favor of pushing an agenda.

My biggest issue with the movie is that it took me quite a long time to warm up to the character of Mirabel, because I found Beatriz’s performance to be quite strident, not just from her voice performance but also her singing in some ways, which I didn’t find to be a problem with In the Heights. (I guess a lot of that comes from the directors and sound team>) in general, the voice performances aren’t that great, but I did enjoy the film’s humor and how the various family members’ gifts are used in that sense.

Where the movie really picks up is where John Leguizamo shows up to voice Bruno, the black sheep of the Madrigal family who vanished mysteriously many years earlier, and that’s really where the movie started winning me over. The filmmakers also have a good sense of pacing and being able to mix the music in with the action and comedy and drama.

Overall, Encanto may not be the best Disney animated movie, but I ultimately enjoyed it more than expected, and definitely more than Pixar’s Luca and Netflix’s Vivo, the other movie for which Lin-Manuel Miranda did the music. Encanto should sufficiently entertain any and all members of the family, making it a solid holiday film choice.

Rating: 8/10

Next up, we have the second movie of the year from director Sir Ridley Scott, HOUSE OF GUCCI (MGM), which takes a look at the fashion empire of the Gucci family in the ‘70s and ‘80s, as it was infiltrated by Patrizia Reggiani (as played by Lady Gaga), who charms and then seduces Adam Driver’s Maurizio Gucci, the heir to that empire. The movie also stars Jeremy Irons as Maurizio’s father Rodolfo Gucci, Al Pacino as his uncle Aldo, and an unrecognizable Jared Leto as his cousin Paolo, all of whom are involved in fashion or design in some way. And I’m going to take it all as truth cause I know nothing about “Gucci” other than its a name and a brand and something to do with fashion.

There’s a lot of interest in the movie due to Lady Gaga and her fanbase, as well as interest in Scott’s telling of the Gucci story, which involved family squabbles and eventually murder. Since I’m not into fashion at all, I kind of get this story confused with that of Gianni Versace, which told as part of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story on FX a few years back. (I didn’t see that.) The movie’s male cast is certainly respectable, although I feel it’s been a while since we’ve seen anything starring Irons or Pacino really break out, although Leto at least has his breakthrough role as the Joker in Suicide Squad as a box office hit that can be at least partially attributed to him, maybe? Either way, Leto has been making movies longer than Driver and appearing in films like David Fincher’s Panic Room, Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, and even American Psycho opposite Christian Bale.

It’s hard to imagine any of them men have even half the draw of Gaga, who starring role in Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born in 2018 helped take that movie to a domestic gross of $215 million, and either Oscar nominations, two for Gaga, of which she won one for the song “Shallow” which she co-wrote. Other than that, I really don’t know what else could possibly get people into theaters.

Reviews were held until this past Monday, which is not a good sign of confidence from MGM, a studio one expects is pushing Gucci for awards, but maybe it’s just for Gaga or maybe Leto or some of the crafts like makeup and costumes. As expected, reviews are generally MIXED at best with some people actively hating the movie and others just gushing over Lady Gaga.

The thing is that those who are really interested in seeing the movie might go out on Weds (or Tuesday night) to see it and maybe it’ll still have some business on the weekend, but House of Gucci is not exactly the kind of movie you want to take your family to see, even though Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, also about a squabbling family, did quite well over the Thanksgiving weekend, though that was pre-pandemic, of course. If people rush out and help House of Gucci bring in $4 to 5 million in its first two days (i.e. more than The Last Duel made in its opening weekend), then it should be good for another $13 to 14 million over the three-day weekend. That would add up to under $20 million in its first five days, though, and then we’ll have to see if it can make more than $50 million total, which would require getting some early awards love in early December.

Incidentally, I spoke briefly with frequent Ridley Scott collaborators, Composer Harry Gregson-Williams and Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (for both Gucci and The Last Duel), and both those interviews will run on Below the Line, probably sometime in the next month.

Maxi-Review: As a long-time Ridley Scott fan and/or apologist, it excites me to no end that the master filmmaker has a second movie out this year, even if House of Gucci deals with a subject matter that I literally cannot give two shits for. I’ve heard the name “Gucci.” I know it’s involved with the kind of high fashion that I have less than zero interest in, so for me, the movie is more about the crafts and performances and whether they can keep me interested enough in a movie that’s over 2 and a half hours long. (Seriously?!)

The story is relatively simple despite all its intricacies. Lady Gaga plays Patrizia Reggiani, the daughter of a man who runs a trucking company, but at a party, she meets Adam Driver’s Maurizio Gucci, and the dollar signs go KACHING in her eyes, because if she can seduce this rich but bashful bachelor, she’ll have it made. Of course, Maurizio’s father Rodolfo Gucci (Jeremy Irons) disapproves of Patrizia and actually disowns his son, who goes off to live a life with his hot new wife. Maurizio’s uncle Aldo (Al Pacino) connects more with Patrizia and he treats Mauricio like the son he never had, which doesn’t go over well with Jared Leto’s Paolo, Aldo’s eccentric actual son who is following his father into the design business.

So yeah, a lot of the movie is about these family dynamics, but it’s set amidst a backdrop of the high-class and luxurious lifestyle of what it’s about to be a Gucci. Even so, the movie is fairly episodic as it covers a number of decades and the familial relationships bend and sway, get better then get worse. Aldo ends up in jail, Rodolfo eventually dies, and amidst it all, Patrizia is still scheming and leveraging the family so that she can get a big chunk of the family fortune, despite being constantly reminded by everyone named “Gucci” that “she’s not really a Gucci.”

Everyone loves Lady Gaga. I’m just not a fan and while I thought she was very good in A Star is Born, here she’s given way too much to try to handle without really having the support of her co-stars. Driver gives such a low-key emotionless performance so she can’t get much help there, and Salma Hayak, who plays Patrizia’s spiritual advisor, just seems to be travelling the same path of over-emoting, although at least her bad accent is her own.

Going back to my status as a Ridley Scott apologist, he works with a lot of the same team he’s done so on many of his other recent movies, and while things like Prometheus and Alien: Covenant were probably more my bag, this one is probably more in line with All in the Money in the World, maybe because it also involves wealth and crime and things like that. I generally like the characters and performances in this one better, particularly Leto and Pacino, who are particularly hilarious, especially in the scenes they share. Some critics have taken issue with the bad Italian accents, and I semi-agree with some of them, but that may actually keep the movie from seeming too grimly serious, which may have hurt All the Money in the World.

What I especially like about the beginning of the movie is how it allows Scott to play further into classic Italian cinema like the movies of Fellini and such, and it also allows his music supervisor to throw in lots of great ‘70s and ‘80s disco tracks. So yeah, I’m definitely a fan of that aspect of the movie, but still, part of me feels that this could have been better with a stronger script or performances.

House of Gucci is about half a good movie and with proper editing, it definitely would have been better. I just couldn’t get past Lady Gaga’s hackneyed and erratic performance, which is so over the top and so all over the place, that it detracted from my enjoyment. This isn’t awful, but there’s just no way around the fact that this would have been a much better movie in the hands of Martin Scorsese.

Rating: 7/10

In some ways, this week’s third wide release, RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY (Sony/Screen Gems), probably meets my own personal interests more than the other two, since I have played some of the video games on which this is based. As you might expect from the title, this installment of the series is a prequel and a bit of a reboot from 45 Meters Down and 45 Meters Down Uncaged director Johannes Roberts. Those movies were surprise hits in the States with the first movie opening with $11.2 million in June 2017 and making $44 million in North America and $18 million overseas. That really isn’t bad when you consider its price tag of $5.3 million to make. It sequel opened two years later with $8.4 million and made only $22.3 million domestically, and it had a much bigger production budget of $12 million, still not terrible.

One has to have a little sympathy for Roberts since Resident Evil was already made into a six-picture franchise by Paul WS Anderson (vs. Paul W. Anderson, who we discuss below), starring Milla Jovovich. Those six movies cost $292.5 million under the Clive Culpepper era of Screen Gems, but they grossed $1.2 million worldwide, so that’s a million in profits? Oddly, the first movie only opened with $17.7 million on a $35 million budget, but international helped it to be profitable with a worldwide gross of $104 million. That was in March 2002, but by the time Anderson’s final film, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, was released in 2017 after a five-year gap, it only opened with $13.6 million in North America … and, well, $314 million worldwide, so can we say it altogether? FUCK AMERICA!

Still, it was time for a change and a reboot and joining Roberts on this journey are actors Kaya Scodelario (The Maze Runner) and Robbie Amell (Arrow) as Claire and Chris Redfield, and Hannah John-Kamen (Ant-Man and the Wasp) as Jill Valentine, all three very popular characters from the games. But that right there is some heavy-duty genre casting, especially Amell, considering the popularity and fanbase of the CW’s “Arrowverse.” The movie also stars Neil McDonough, Avan Jogia, Donal Logue, Tom Hopper, and my absolute favorite, Marina Mazepa, who was the amazing physical creature performer in James Wan’s Malignant! She plays Lisa Trevor, one of the popular characters from the game we have yet to see in the movies.

And yet, this is the problem with opening a movie like this over Thanksgiving weekend, and it’s something we’ve seen so many times before over the holiday. A movie like Resident Evil will primarily be targeting guys of a certain age, because it’s genre/horror but also because it’s based on a video game. We can look at something like the Hitman movie, which opened over Thanksgiving in 2007. It made $4.4 million its opening day, had a slight bump up on Friday and Saturday and ended up with $21 million in its first five days. It barely made twice that in its entire domestic theatrical run. Oddly, 2009’s Ninja Assassin performed similarly for Warner Bros, making almost the exact same amount. Other genre films have performed better over Thanksgiving, such as M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable ($46 million five-day) and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s End of Days ($31.8 million), but those were much earlier. Jason Statham’s Transporter 3 ended up with $18 million over the five-days and $31.7 million total. The point is that these movies ended up being fairly frontloaded and true fans will likely go out to see them on Tuesday might or Weds. rather than on the weekend.

Unlike some of Paul Anderson’s Resident Evil movies, Sony did screen this one for critics I think, and I’ll be curious to see how it fares once the embargo is up on Monday night. I myself saw it but ended up not reviewing just ‘cause I’ve had way too much on my mind, but I did like it and thought Roberts did a great job taking stuff from the video game and incorporating it into a spooky and cool action-horror hybrid, which leans more on the horror side of things.

Something even more curious is that Sony is only releasing the movie into roughly 2,600 theaters, which is much less than the other wide releases. As mentioned, due to the nature of the movie, fans are more likely to rush out early, especially since this is having screenings on Monday night as well as starting fairly early with screenings on Tuesday. This is although its official release date is on Wednesday, but the numbers from earlier screenings will be dumped into the Weds number, making it even MORE frontloaded. I think it could make as much as $4 million but then it will drop on Thursday, and I’ll be shocked if it makes more than $10 million over the three-day weekend. With Ghostbusters: Afterlife holding strong, that puts it in fourth place, at very best.

You can read my interview with Roberts over at Below the Line. (It’ll be live after noon Eastern on Tuesday.)

Also opening in roughly 600 theaters is the Leslie Small-directed FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY (Freestyle Releasing), which I know very little about, actually almost nothing, but it stars Keri Hilson, Katt Williams, and Jason Mitchell, and it seems to involve a single mother who returns to a life of crime in order to protect her daughter. In fact, I’m just gonna link you to the movie’s IMDb page, because that will give you more of an idea what the movie is about than anything I can tell you. Despite this being released fairly wide, I don’t think anyone really knows of its existence, and I’ll be fairly shocked if this makes more than a million this weekend

A couple other movies expanding wide or wider this week include Focus Features’ Belfast, which should be in 1,000 or more theaters starting today, and Sony Pictures Classics’ doc Julia, my “Chosen One” from a few weeks back, which probably will be in 500 to 600 theaters. I’m not sure either of these will get into the top 10 or back into it, as is the case with Belfast.

These are all just for the three-day portion of the weekend, just cause I don’t feel like doing the whole 3-day/5-day breakdown I normally would do:

1. Encanto (Walt Disney Animation - $33.5 million N/A

2. Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Sony) - $28.5 million -35%

3. House of Gucci (MGM) - $13.5 million N/A

4. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (Sony/Screen Gems) - $9 million N/A

5. Eternals (Marvel/Disney) - $8.3 million -25%

6. Clifford The Big Red Dog (Paramount) - $5.5 million -32%

7. King Richard (Warner Bros.) - $4.3 million -20%

8. Dune (Warner Bros.) - $2.2 million -32%

9. No Time to Die (MGM) - $2.1 million -24%

10. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Sony) - $1.9 million -35%

This week’s “Chosen One” is THE SUMMIT OF THE GODS (Netflix), Patrick Imbert’s amazing animated film about a Japanese journalist named Fukamachi Makoto, who becomes fascinaetd with the stories of George Mallory and his companion Andrew Irvine being the first men to scale Everest in 1924, something that can only be proven by developing the film in a small Kodak camera found nearly 70 years later by an outcast climber named Habu Joji, who has been believed missing for years. This was actually adapted from a manga series by Jiro Taniguchi, based on the novel by Baku Yumemakura.

If you remember my review of The Alpinist earlier this year or Free Solo a few years back, you’ll know that I generally love mountain climbing movies, and it doesn’t matter that this one is animated and partially based on a fictionalized Japanese manga, it’s still about mountain climbing. In fact, this is storytelling at its finest, as director Patrick Imbert, who won France’s César for his animated feature, The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales, finds a good way to tell this story of two men on a search for truth and also redemption.

Fukamachi is obsessed with learning the truth about whether George Mallory reached the summit before he died or died on his way there, while Habu Joji is trying to recover from a horrible incident that killed a friend and assistant and eventually drove Joji into seclusion. The two men decide to go on a journey to make the dangerous climb of Everest in order to get the answers they so desperately need.

It’s a wonderful story told in such a distinct way that you quickly will forget you’re watching animation (or a foreign film) as you just get absorbed into the story Imbert is telling. Sure, it was a little bothersome (vs. “problematic”) that this film mostly involving Japanese characters and set in Asia had everyone talking in French (with English subtitles) but you quickly get over that.

The animation is great mixing classic anime with photo-realistic settings, and it’s all enhanced by a gorgeous score from Amine Bouhafa, which really is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve heard this year in a particularly great year for film scores.

Netflix will release The Summit of the Gods into select U.S. theaters TODAY, and then in the UK on Friday, but it will then hit Netflix next Tuesday, Nov. 30. Honestly, if you have a chance to see it on the big screen, then make the effort, especially if you enjoy animated pseudo-docs like Waltz with Bashir or next week’s Flea. Summit of the Gods is right up there with both of them in terms of the beauty of the animation and storytelling.

I’m not quite sure if I’ll have my interview with the director up on Below the Line this week but definitely by next week.

Also opening this week is Paul Thomas Anderson’s LICORICE PIZZA (UA Releasing), which gets a limited release on Friday, and then will slowly expand over the course of November before its wide release over Christmas. This is a semi-old-fashioned way of releasing a movie, but it’s something that tends to work, because it allows the movie to build up an audience and buzz in the big movie cities and create even more anticipation elsewhere. (Incidentally, this is what A24 did with Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon last weekend, and that fared pretty well.) This is actually one of Anderson’s most L.A. movies, if you don’t count Boogie Nights and Magnolia.

This one is set in the ‘70s Valley, and it stars Cooper Hoffman, the son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman (a frequent PTA collaborator), as Gary Valentine, an overly-confident 15-year-old child actor who tries to get the older Alana (Alana Haim from the rock group Haim) to go to dinner with him, but she’s not having any of it. Still, they become friends and business partners as Gary decides to invest in the waterbed craze of the early ‘70s, and we get a movie full of will-they or won’t-they moments. The movie also stars Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper (in a very hilarious role), Tom Waits, and more.

I’ll definitely be curious to see how this one fares as it rolls out across the country, because if you remember, Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love (def. One of my favorites of his) did great in a platform release but then expanded wide and barely did much of anything. Without a known name like Adam Sandler, how can a weird-titled movie like Licorice Pizza do better?

This one I already reviewed for Below the Line, and I thought it was pretty decent -- most critics seem to agree with me.

Stephen Karam adapted his own Tony-winning play THE HUMANS (A24) for the screen, this one involving a family having a Thanksgiving dinner in a downtown Manhattan duplex that’s falling apart, and may be haunted? Okay, maybe I just made the last part up, but it’s kind of funny how much Karam relies on jump scares in a movie that’s essentially a drama. The movie stars Beanie Feldstein and Steve Yuen as a fairly young married couple, whose parents (played by Richard Jenkins and Jayne Houdyshell) come over for the holiday, along with her old sister (Amy Schumer) and her dementia-stricken grandmother (played by June Squibb). It’s a pretty decent ensemble, and while I’m’ not really I’m the best person to review this, having little to no concept of the Broadway hit play (other than the fact that Houdyshell reprises her role, and she’s the only one), I thought this was a pretty decent drama, maybe not quite on par with August Osage County in terms of filmmaking, but this is only Karam’s first film, and he does a decent job with the single location and the set that was built on which to tell this movie about a squabbling family, which I guess has become the theme for Thanksgiving releases between this and House of Gucci.

A movie that I haven’t seen yet, although it’s opening in select cities is THE UNFORGIVABLE (Netflix), starring Sandra Bullock as Ruth Slater, a woman who is just getting out of prison for a violent crime who tries to reenter society even though few are ready to forgive her past. Her only redemption is by finding the estranged younger sister she left behind when put in jail. I’d like to see this. I have no idea when I’ll see it but the way things are going with me and Netflix, I imagine I won’t be seeing it until it’s streaming on December 10 unless I want to pay to see it at one of the NYC theaters where it’s playing. Eh, probably not.

One of the big prize-winning hits from this year’s Cannes is Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s DRIVE MY CAR (Janus Films/Sideshow), which will open at the Film Forum in New York City, and unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to see this yet, but that’s also because it’s three hours long. I guess in Japan, House of Gucci would seem “kinda short,” huh? It stars Hidetoshi Nishijima as stage actor and director Yusuke Kafuku, whose wife died two years earlier unexpectedly. He’s invited to Hiroshima to stage a production of “Uncle Vanay” where he meets Misaki Watari (Toko Miura), a young woman assigned to be his chauffeur, driving him in his red Saab 900. Based on Haruki Murakami’s short story, there’s a lot more to the story in this film and maybe after I watch it, I’ll read up more on it, but for now, I’m just going to say that this will be out at New York’s Film Forum as well as uptown at Film at Lincoln Center, actually today, and as Japan’s Oscar selection, I fully expect it to make it into the Oscar nominations in the International Feature category, and that’s without even seeing it!

Disney+ has some great stuff to watch over the extended Thanksgiving break, including the first two episodes of Marvel Studios’ new HAWKEYE (Disney+) series, starring Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld, which I had the fortune to see already, and I like what I’ve seen. Sure, this isn’t as flashy as some of the previous Disney+ Marvel shows like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but it’s definitely in the vein of the comics in terms of being a gritty and funny crime-based story (actually more like the Netflix Marvel shows maybe?) with Renner and Steinfeld having some great “buddy comedy” chemistry. It’s also set in New York City during the holidays, so it has a nice connection to how Thanksgiving kicks off the holidays for real, and it should be a fun show to watch with the family this weekend.

Also, a docuseries I’m looking forward to is Peter Jackson’s GET BACK (Disney+), a six-hour series in three parts that cuts together footage of the Beatles recording their final album together in January 1969. I have gotten screeners of this but being six hours long, I doubt I’ll have a chance to watch the whole thing before it debuts on the streamer this Thursday, but I’ve watched a little bit of it… and unfortunately, I’m under embargo until Thursday, so maybe I’ll have more to say about the series next week.

Movies that I just wasn’t able to get to this week ...

WRITING WITH FIRE (Music Box Films) THE SHUROO PROCESS (Gravitas Ventures) AYAR

Next week, the only wide release is an indie called Wolf, being released by Focus Features, and while I have no confidence it will make much of an impact or money, I’ll still have a column to talk about that and the other movies, because there’s a lot of good stuff.

#the Weekend Warrior #movies #Reviews #Encanto #House of Gucci #Resident Evil #Box Office #Summit of the Gods #licorice pizza #the humans #drive my car