#Hector IS to blame as he says but he isn’t actually the bad guy either | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

treeni · 4 years

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Sanders Side Theory: Creativity’s Name and Roman’s Struggles

Theories Masterpost

Well, apparently some people were interested in my Orange side theory and stuff.

So let’s talk about “King Creativity” and why I disagree with every name theory I’ve seen so far and what I think instead. I’m not certain “King Creativity” is ever going to be named in the show, just knowing he existed is probably enough, but wouldn’t it be fantastic if there was a backstory episode? Or even aside episode?

First! Let’s start with the fact that I actually think it’s really interesting that everyone’s defaulting to Creativity being “King” when it is in fact Emperors who ruled Rome. Not a criticize, just interesting thought. Second, Kings were supposed to sit back and let their knights and armies basically do all of the physical work (Unless your Arthur, but it usually got him into trouble so! Moving on!) while you lead them as whatever supreme ruler title you take. However, a Crowned Prince was often at the head of said adventures and battles, in the thick of it all, but was basically indisputably the accepted next in line. (Approved by the courts and all that jazz, I mean historically it didn’t always go that way, but that was the intention). However, a regular Prince and a Duke could absolutely have a power struggle, especially in the situation where the Duke was previously “next in line” before the Prince’s birth. So if Roman and Remus ever did duke it out (also mini theory that Remus chose Duke for the fighting reference) I think one of them could/would become King, but I don’t think that’s who creativity was before the split.

Now I have a particular crowned prince in mind that creativity is named after, but lets not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s start by talking about some of the most popular theories and why I disagree with them.

CW: for before the “Keep Reading” section. There is mention of metaphorical and fictional murder, war, lgbt theory (not that, that should surprise anyone). Roman backstory (aka things he might regret now.)

Romulus: While I suppose it’s convenient in the fact that its sort of the names combined, Romulus is already the role that Roman is filling in his relationship with Remus. Twins that supposedly found Rome, but Romulus killed his brother Remus to do so and become the ruler. Romulus literally named Rome after himself. This isn’t a hint, this isn’t something that’s upcoming or anything, this is backstory. Roman is literally just a modernized version of the name Romulus. Remus’ banishment to the darkside was his metaphorical murder. It also suggests that Roman took an active role in sending Remus away, which also helps explain a lot of Roman’s current struggle with Janus. Can you imagine the kind of guilt he might be feeling if he was the one who decided his brother was evil and he was good and then he passed judgement? If the darksides aren’t evil, then Roman and he metaphorically murdered Remus, then he wasn’t the hero slaying the beast anymore. Instead, he’s suddenly the bad guy.

Buuuut Treeni, what about Patton??? I hear you say. It would have had to have been morality right?

And to that I say you’re WRONG! And also right. Patton’s kinda been shown to be the most accepting bean of the whole lot, he doesn’t really try to force the others away the way some of the other sides do. Instead, he puts his foot down on his own convictions and refuses to listen to reason. (I didn’t say he was perfect.) Still, he doesn’t try to physically push the others away, not Virgil when he tried scaring Thomas, not Janus when they argued and Patton was clearly distressed by the courtroom situation, and not even Remus when Patton was clearly scared of him (also defensive of Roman). He doesn’t need to, he’s self-assured in his own place and convictions that he doesn’t worry about Thomas pushing him out. Instead, Patton kinda takes the family holiday party route and will do his best to put out the emotional fires and stand his ground on his opinion to Thomas when he needs to. (The ONLY time I could find Patton sort of pushing someone away was when they were in his room and Patton asked Logan to stop. While that could weaken my argument about Patton, I think it strengthens it because it shows how big of a deal it was at the time that Patton tried shutting him down. Logan reacted the way he did by immediately storming off because it’s not something Patton does.) While it could absolutely be Patton’s influence that caused the split, it would be out of character (as he’s currently defined) for Patton to actively push a side away. (I’ll get into some of his more negative aspects in another post if ya’ll wanna hear about it.)

Remember, Roman was the one who tried shutting down Virgil with bullying tactics, Logan too sometimes. Then he tried to use the same tactics on Janus when he tried putting his foot down on maintaining a black and white view point of the world after Remus’ appearance. Keep in mind that Remus actively told us that he blames Roman for his banishment. He compared himself and Roman to Cain and Able. While c!Thomas and even the audience as a whole were sort of led to think of Remus as Cain because of the “dark and evil” association, Remus is telling us that he is Abel. Roman is his destroyer. (Before you feel too bad for Remus, that misconception was also on purpose because while Remus isn’t a liar, he can manipulate a situation with honesty. Again, another post if you wanna hear about why.)

So now there is some general understanding of the twins backstory, you’ll see why Romulus would be a terrible fit for their combined name because Roman is already Romulus. Period. He’s the one who betrayed his brother by “murdering” him and taking over.

Making Romulus the name of who creativity was before because the names kinda morph together would lazy writing compared to very carefully woven details the show has had thus far (particularly in season 2). Okay, that went on a bit of a tangent, so next!

Caesar: This is a person who brought about the destruction of Rome, not the creation of it. (With Rome basically being the metaphorical state c!Thomas is living in now with clear lines between good/bad, right/wrong etc.) While it’s not a horrible ideology, it would be moving forward in a historical timeline instead of backwards. If you subscribe to the idea that Roman and Remus cannot go back to who they were (even with some kind of theoretical re-morphing) Caesar might be who they become, but it seems unlikely that is who they were. Remember that both sides are individuals now and those individual traits they’ve gained since splitting may not re-mesh cleanly back into who they once were. I personally don’t think there’s any “going back” for Creativity.

If they show him as he once was, it would likely only be in either a backstory bit or in a temporary situation where the re-combining doesn’t hold. However, if Creativity ever did become one thing again, I think it would be something completely new and I think Caesar would be a good fit for that in particular.

Aeneas: Again, it would be kinda lazy writing comparatively. Instead of using a sorta combination of the names that had some historical basis, this theory is based entirely on the idea of a convenient ancestor who quested and failed over and over to create Rome. I could have bought this had it been from lesser writers, but Thomas, Joan and the whole team do not mess around in story crafting and really carefully woven in references. I am literally degreed in writing and analysis and I keep finding myself impressed at the layers.

The name Aeneas also implies that the character Creativity was specifically questing for a change and that seems doubtful given the resentment between the brothers. Aeneas was essentially a left-over scavenger trying to scrape together a new home from what he could from already broken pieces and that does not sound like what Creativity is implied to be.

If we look at child development, I would theorize that Creativity is the oldest side. In the creative process, there are two major steps, first is information absorption, then second is application. The first thing any child must do is learn, anything and everything. The world is a limitless and imaginative playground. New material is around every corner and there it takes a while before the distinction between reality and fiction to be understood. It was probably just c!Thomas and Creativity for a while and as the others emerged, they looked up to him. It could even be potentially argued that Creativity was literally their creators.

This would imply that Aeneas would be a pretty terrible fit for him in that case because there’s nothing broken that he’s trying to salvage. The kingdom is his and c!Thomas’ to preside over with the other sides as his subjects. (c!Thomas being the distant “King” and Creativity being the “Crowned Prince”).

So, with all of that out of the way on why some of these theories are probably wrong, what do I think?

I think Creativity’s name is Hector.

Now, hear me out on this. For those of you who have read the Iliad you probably know exactly who I am referencing. You just may not know why. So stay with me here.

1. First, for those of you who don’t know, Hector was the Crowned Prince of Troy, the leader of the army that the Greeks (the perspective we’re getting) are facing off against. He’s also cousin to Aeneas, but actually accomplished things during the war beyond being saved by Aphrodite. This means he’s also an ancestor to both Romulus and Remus (albeit technically less direct). However, Hector’s family is where the royal lineage of Aeneas comes from. Though we follow the story mainly from the perspective of the Greeks (and the gods because they’re TROLLS), the Greek’s are pretty villainous in a lot of their actions throughout the story and they are most definitely the invaders. In this case, I would liken the Greek army to “outside opinion” for c!Thomas. Others interjecting their views on to someone and breaking his own beliefs. In this situation, Creativity would have been his biggest defender and hero, retreating into magical imaginary worlds to escape judgement.

2. So lets get onto the character and why him, shall we? Hector will literally do anything for his family. The war takes place because his little brother, Paris (one of a whopping 49 brothers mind you) either kidnaps, has Aphrodite kidnap or runs away with the Spartan Queen Helen because he fell in love with her. (It varies on the version and she was forced into her previous marriage at about 13 anyway, so Helen leaving willingly for the guy who the gods deem is the most attractive man alive is a popular modern reading.) It would have been so easy for the Trojans to yeet Helen back to Greece, but they don’t and Hector’s defense of her and his brother is a big reason why. Hector even chastises his brother for the mess he’s caused, but still stands by him and defends him. He also defends the hell out of Helen and refuses to blame her for their problems. Then in Troilus and Criseyde (Basically published Iliad perspective shift fanfiction with OCs) he defends the hell out of Criseyde when even Troilus, (apparently one of the 50 brothers) the person who claims to be in love with her, wont. Hector’s truly an all around good guy, great leader and has a very distinctive and personal moral compass that doesn’t always align with what’s being told to him is right. You want a character representation for someone who led the sides despite their clear struggles? Someone with Roman’s charm and heroism, and Remus’ understanding and drive? Hector is probably it.

3. Hector’s death is both a huge symbol for the end of Troy, but also isn’t? Let me explain, narratively speaking, Hector’s death is the point you know that Troy is basically doomed. His end is the representation of the end of it all. His corpse was literally paraded around as Achilles’s dragged it on the back of a chariot for days to show their doom. There was a distinct “aura” shift from Hector’s death as all of Troy mourned his death. We as an audience know Troy is basically doomed from Hector’s death alone. Hector was a person that even the enemy Greeks hella respected as a warrior and leader. Essentially, this was the point that the war that had been raging for about a decade became serious. At the same time, it just simply isn’t the end of the war. There’s the whole horse thing still to come and all that jazz. Still though, Hector’s death is very much a symbol of “everything changes, but nothing does.” Which is the perfect symbol for the twins split to me. Just because they split doesn’t mean that all of the sides did immediately, yet it was still probably the turning point that drove a wedge between the “dark” and “light” sides.

4. The character Hector arguably died in the name of gay love. Okay, story time. So in the Iliad, Achilles is being a little bitch and refusing to fight anymore because drama between him and the king of Athens, but he’s their best fighter and the Greek’s are basically sorta loosing because of him not helping. His boyf- I mean best friend Patroclus goes out in Achilles armor and leads his army in his place because Achilles is a whiny baby. Except Hector kinda immediately kills Patroclus, thinking he’s Achilles with reinforcements.(This was full body armor baby and distinctive cause baby of a god and all that mocha frappe.) Of course, Achilles has to immediately get angry revenge for his boyf- BEST friend and ends up killing Hector. This would make the character Hector a great metaphor for Creativity if his split had anything to do with sexuality or even acceptance as a whole. (Though we know acceptance is definitely a part of it considering Remus.) We know that Remus wants c!Thomas to explore darker themes and the struggle of sexuality and acceptance could be a possibility in what is to come as a previously “off-limits” theme.

5. A big one is that the destruction of Troy is what eventually brought about the creation of Rome. Essentially Troy would be the metaphor of c!Thomas’ existence/mentality before the sides split into dark/light factions. Then Rome would be the metaphor of c!Thomas’ existence/mentality after the sides split into factions.

6.Finally, the name Hector literally means “to restrain” which would work well for Creativity as he was likely trying to reign in the others from infighting (and you can see how well that went with him being gone).

Cheers to another rant into the void. Huzzah! God this is nearly as long as some of my seminar papers. Do what you will with this information.

Please keep in mind that I adore Roman as a character. This post isn’t meant to hate on him. It’s meant to bring awareness of the layers of his character. Every Prince Charming was a villain to someone, every hero that slays the beast is a murderer from a different light.

I don’t bring these things to light to cause pain, I bring them to light to help bring awareness of what’s probably going through his head.

(Yes, in regards to the Creativity being made first thing, I DO even have a theory about existence order, I promise you I have theories about everything. My mind does not stop with this crap. I have theories on everything from what animal association Roman and Logan have to Virgil’s key role in Roman’s backstory. I’ve ranted about a bunch of these things to a few specific people so if you ever want me to go on a rant about anything in particular let me know. I didn’t expect anyone to actually look at the other theory post tbh. Inbox me if you want me to go to unnecessary lengths on something else.)

(Also, correct me on the Patton thing if I’m wrong. I took notes on a recent watch through, but I wasn’t specifically looking for his rejection sooo, if there are other moments of it you can find that didn’t jump out at me I totally accept criticism.)

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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Toons for Our Times: The Casagrandes: Four Course Catchup

I take some time to catch up with everyone’s faviorite mexican-american family with a four course meal of shenanigans.

Mexican Makeover: The thorny issue of racial identity erasure is handled via a lot of costumes, spicy food and a second Sergio, which suprisingly isn’t my own personal hell. Then again giving rusty a brother wasn’t either so there’s a precident. Uptown Funk: Carl goes full Zach Morris, minus the white privlage, and marries Adelaide to get a free train ride, then let’s his hallucinations talk him into nearly killing everyone. At least the Leprechaun in the sandbox isn’t telling him to burn things anymore. Bo-Bo Business: Hector won’t respect Bobby’s genius new ideas so Bobby sets shop at the near by hong’s market and procedes to nearly get murdered by bunnies. Dear god Anya was right. Blunder Party: Ronnie Anne and Sid host their first event as a couple, a sleepover campout on the roof with their running crew. Adilade and Carl crash it causing their sibling and cousin to send the two on a dangerous scavenger hunt. As you do. Context for what’s going on the page image under the cut.

So yeah I originally wasn’t going to add the Casagrandes to regular coverage.... but what can I say. I had way more to talk about with the recent crop of episodes than I thought, the show often airs with loud house so it increases my coverage output and most importantly.. i’ts just damn good. While still having some kinks to work out, like forgetting to use CJ, the show is just really charming and uses i’ts premise well. So yeah when the show, at least according to the wiki, so expect full coverage of both this years halloween special and the show in full when it comes back in november... and with bobby being hypnotized into thinking he’s a cat apparently.. so yeah i’d be watching anyway, so why not go all in. .So with that out of the way we’ve got a lot of ground to cover so, Golpeteo de pitter, which is spanish for pitter patter... maybe. If google translate mangled that I apologize.

Mexican Makeover:

Like with our last bit of loud house coverage, we start with the least of the episodes first. That being said this one isn’t TERRIBLE, just a waste of a good concept and something intresting to explore. It’s also a real shame given this episode is written by Lalo Alcaraz, the writer of the comic strip La Cucaracha who works as a consultant on the show and previously wrote my favorite episode of the season, Croaked!, which we’ll be talking about soon. But he seems like a great guy, but everyone dosen’t bat a thousand. This episode centers around Rosa, whose mother Mama Lupe, and her parrot sidekick Paco, coming to visit. Paco is a recolor of sergio which actually explains a LOT honestly, as I now feel Sergio is the Quaks to Paco’s Squaks.

As in the crappy recolor who dosen’t have as many skills. As you can tell I don’t like Sergio much. He’s annoying, not very funny and only rarely has his moments and also spent one episode constnatly being obnoxious to Bobby, who as we’ve discussed and will soon discuss some more, is my boy. My precious baby boy. So bullying him is the equilvent of slapping me with a dueling glove. So yeah Paco is better than Sergio, being more laid back, less obnoxious.. and voiced by, of all people, legendary cartonist and the namesake of the parrot sergio, Sergio Aragones. I grew up with the guy in middle and high school as he frequently, and I belivie still does, work for parody magazine MAD Magazine, and while I haven’t read it also did 80′s indie comic Groo the Wanderer with Mark Evainer of Garfield and Friends Fame. The guy’s really damn funny and it was a real treat to find out he’s involved here, especailly since the namesakes for the loud pets have all sadly passed, so it’s nice at least one pet namesake between shows gets to guest star. But my fanboying aside, Rosa is worried she hasn’t been making her family Mexican enough and thus goes a bit absolutley nuts. She steals the kids clothes and replaces them with various traditional mexican outfits, which is a bit psycotic, and gives us a shot of carl’s ass when he compalins about his underwear being replaced, which...

Yes thank you wayne. I’m sure even some of the 7 year old’s watching this don’t want to see a fellow 7 year old’s butt. Stop that. There’s a reason the parent show stopped the gag of having Lincoln in his underwear all the time and it wasn’t just because only chris savino thought it was funny. It’s especially creepy given after Savino’s sexual harassment, John K’s reveal of being a pedophile and whatever Dan Schinder did they refuse to talk about to the public but has ciruclated around, you TIHNK the’yd be more congizant of not showing borderline child porn. I mean it’s one thing to have a kid in underpants for a gag it’s another to have a close up of his butt. Just stop. Stop. So the episode goes as you’d expect, Rosa keeps pushing things harder without explaining herself, including trying to force the kids to speak in spanish, feeding them extra spicy food and againt eh whole replacing their clothes thing.. which\ do look nice though and we do get that blessed image of bobby up top. The kids eventually confront Rosa who reveals she just dosent’ want to give her mom a heart attack, they go along with it with Sergio feeding ronnie anne spanish, which is nice continuity as her not knowing i’ts come up before, and everyone putting on a show.. which goes horribly wrong with super spicy food understandably not being built for a 80-100 year old woman, and while i’ts nice Bobby’s buddy par, we’ll cover their episode at some point too, shows up he also heavy metals so hard it knocks her over and destroys the painting, which yeah of course. Rosa comes clean and Lupe.. is entirely fine with it and feels that culture is more in values than in what you know about it, though she will teach them a few things because knowing where you came from is still important. Also Paco returns and.. why coudln’t both he and Lupe stay. For all my issues with the episode besides Carl’s butt shot, which we’ll get to in a second, I do really like Lupe and Paco is better than sergio in every way shape and form apart from the name. just color him read and have him smother sergio in his sleep and we’re up a better parot.

Final Thoughts for Mexican Makeover: This one was eh. I saved my thoughts on the main plot for here because it IS a topic worth talking about: loss of cultural idetntity, especailly for first or second generation, as our main kids and their parents are, kids, how to ballance the cultures, what really matters.. it’s all good, deep really senstiive topics that i’m in no way qulaified to entirley judge because i’m very much white and am not going to whitesplain topics that I have no personal experince with. But I can at least say they could’ve done MORE with this. For one thing Maria was absent, and it would’ve been REALLY intresting to get her take on it since Croaked! established she didn’t really give Ronnie Anne at the very least much of a lesson in their heritage. You can’t really BLAME HER: She works a demanding job, ended up having to raise them alone, and is tired a lot. As I said i’ts a VERY complex topic that’s created some VERY brilliant works around the subject, and while i’m not asking for “Moonlight... for Kids!” I am asking you to explore something like this. How aclimated the kids are to white culture is a topic worth exploring and could’ve been a special and while yes I know, it probably would’ve been “A Very Special Episode”..sometimes you need to tackle complex topics for kids. The Proud Family was also a screwball comedy, but it tackled the civil rights movement, xenophobia and other heavy subjects from time to time.. it also thought music piracy was the root of all evil but as I said no one bats a thousand. And it wouldn’t lack jokes as Alcaraz’s career is in satire: He knows how to write jokes about heavily charged topics and be clever about it on the freaking comics page, and given The Casagrandes like it’s sister show is basically a comic strip in animated form, he has the right format tow ork with it just ultimately becomes instead the cliche “person is coming time to hide everything we’ve been doing plot”, which has never been that good and is even worse on top of a more interesting idea. I don’t expect the show to be super deep all the time but I expect better than broaching a clearly difficult subject and not really giving it any weight.

Uptown Funk: Now we’re past the one I was eh on because I knew how it’d turn out, and somehow got even less on board as it wasted a good concept and good ideas, and to the one out of the four I was most pumped for. And of all things it was a CARL episode. I passingly mentioned last time I didn’t like Carl, and that opinon’s started to change. I’m still not a huge fan, his voice is grating and he STILL hasn’t given up on Lori seasons later after Clyde long has and the other show long regonized this was a bad idea. Buuut i’ve come to realize he has his moments, with Monster Cash, which i’ll cover very soon for Halloween Havoc, and this very episdoe which is utterly fantastic. Though part of that is also the supporting cast, who were the reason I was pumped. I talked abotu the Changs Breifly in my Operation Dad review but since Adalaide and Stanley are more promenent here and Becca will be, if not in person, in Croaked!, i’ll gladly dive into them. The Changs are the Casagrandes next door neighbors and EASILY one of the best parts of the show. A lovely interacial nuclear family, the four are all really likeable and distinct. I’ve talked about Sid before, so we’ll save more of that for in a bit. Stanley her dorky dad voiced by Kim Jeong who works as the subway conductor for Great Lakes City. He’s just a treat, in both sense of hte word, and really sweet interacting with his daughter and has a tendency to make small apperances due to Ronnie Anne and Sid riding the subway wherever they need to go. As i’ve said it’s nice to see Ken Jeong get to play a goofy, normal-ish dad and be funny without having to either play an over the top lunatic, weirdo or asshole. I love community but Chang could be a lot but this Chang is alright.. and probably dosen’t speak to his community college student brother that often for his family’s saftey. He does have Rabi Chang, his other brother over a lot though. Look if Teen Titans go can be jammed into the same multiverse as ok ko and steven universe, this show can take place in the same unvierse as community.

Becca is stan’s wife and the head zookeeper at the zoo as well as the runner of their various shows, voiced by melissa joan hart and while not around as mcuh as her husband, is still a delight and it’s a delight to have clarissa back. Also together with her husband they make one hell of a couple to get sandiwthced between.. and no shame there, and yes i’m aware they have kids, i’d be happy to help raise them. I”m no asshole.

Anyways speaking of those kids, we lastly have Adalaide, the star of this show and an adorable 6 year old and as Sid calls her “A sass bucket” which is accurate both for 6 year olds in general, and for this one, though like most kids her age she flips from being adorable to entirely blunt when warranted. She also has a Frog, named Froggy II. We’ll get into what happened to Froggy I and how she met Froggy II in October.

So yeah two of my faviorite side characters, I consider sid main, PLUS one of my other faviorites Vito in a supporting roll. What’s not to love? As for the plot Carl brushes off Adalaide, because he’s a little jerk festival, but changes his tune when he overhears Stanley offering to have Adilaide join him on the train even see the control. Carl being a fanboy for trains among many other things which I shall list now: Things Carl’s a Fanboy For: 1. Money 2. Petty Schemes 3. Zack Morris 4. The Ladies 5. AC Slater 6. Luchadores 7. Trains.

He naturally has his eyes light up like a christler buliding and given numbers 2 and 3 on the list quickly comes up with a scheme to get that train ride, since Stanely offered her a plus one. Granted he could’ve PROBABLY just asked Stanley for a ride and being the upstanding guy he is, and given Carl’s also a train nerd and stanley is their king, he would’ve said yes, but this is the same boy who thought his adult cousin’s same aged girlfriend would want to go out with him when said girlfriend lives in a house with at least 3 girls close to his age instead she could set him up with. The boy is more of a short term planner, like most schemers in fiction really, he sees the dollar signs like eddy from ed edd n eddy and has some good ideas, but not the more obvious solutions that aren’t as scheme based around him. I swear if this kid didn’t have a moral center this would be him in 50 years

I mean the only reason the boy hasn’t used sharks or explosives is because his parents and grandparents won’t’t let him.

Anyways Addie is skepteical for about 5 seconds and my one real complaint about the episode is it felt like she was genuinely skeptical, and playing him slightly with their games.. but it turns out nope she just genuinely bought it. But as smart as she is she’s also only 6, and her being adorably trusting works just as well. So they play games. They have a tea party, with carl wearing a truly glorious peacock that I guarnatee sid has worn both for playing with her sister and just to feel fancy. They then play with Froggy.. which gets uncomfotable as Adaladie forces Carl to kiss him, and then basically goes full on “NOW KISS” when it fails to turn froggy into a prince and Froggy runs because he wisely dosen’t want to make out with Carl, and is omly passable and not disturbing instead because she’s 6 and dosen’t know better. They then play chase froggy, which Carl wins but gets flies thrown at him in hte process so does he really? They get to their final game superheroes, with carly playing his faviorite el falcone.. but also being the hostage while Adalaide saves him because this is 2020, she don’t need to be no damsel in distress. And this to me is why the episode works.. Carl IS a huge jerk here, manipulating a younger child who just wants to be his friend to get a train ride he could’ve gotten just by asking her.. but he gets put through the ringer, and most of his “humilation” is stuff that isn’t that bad: Tea is alright, there’s no shame in wearing makeup or a veil, and being rescued by a woman is awesome. It’s just Carl’s own baby’s first toxic masuclinity that makes these situations minus kissing froggy uncomfortable, so it adds to it as Addy’s doing nothing wrong really and any pain on carl’s part is an accident on hers. She’s just an imaginatiee little lady and he’s jsut a jerk. But they pair well together his underserved ego with her adorablility and creativity and as we’ll see smarts. Part of the reason I was so excited is their one real scene togehter in monster cash, when Carl is throiwng everyon’es money back at them which is also the best bit of the episode and we’ll get to that when we cover it her response is a stern “Don’t you even dare” and he hands it back to her because you don’t mess with Addy.

Addy then brings up pretend marriage and while Carl has his first , and probably not last, panic attack over comitment he does realilze this can be used and gets his train ride over it, with the two taking Froggy along as their baby. But being Carl, he’s not ready for marriage to a strong judge on the supreme court who makes him change the diapers and humilaties him in public, whcih i’d be more upset about if again he didn’t deserve it. We also have VITO! Local itallian, the Mercado’s best customer and Hector’s only friend. He also has his two winer dogs with him which.. yes. Just yes. And they have matching hats and sweaters because Vito is the best. Hedecides to toss froggy and book it for the train car. Adalaide realizes she’s been played and is understandably pissed but sadly, needing to find her friend her husband threw, dosen’t storm into Stanley’s conductor car and throw him off the train.

Instead Carl geeks out with Stanley over the train, which means he probably is meant to marry into this family, and Stanley’s glart awards. When Stanley’s called away to deal with the frog fracas, Carl is left told not to touch anything. So the obvious happens.. Carl hallunciates a bunch of pre school level choo choos who tell him to press the button. I love .. everything about this. It’s just pure hilarity and insanity and I’m here for it and a really creative, and insane gag and a nice take on the shoulder devil trope.

Naturally Carl, being Carl, presses the big button which turns on the ac and then blasts Stan’s train mix. Which sadly isn’t just this over and over and over and over again.

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With Carl possibly banned from trains for life he naturally turns to his wife for help, who is none to happy with his bullshit, and not willing to help him because why would she? But Carl.. genuinely apologizes. It’s why I mentioned he has a moral center. Unlike say Zack morris 80% of hte time or Eddy from Ed Edd N Eddy at his worst, Carl can FEEL human emotions like guilt, and while he does need Addy’s help to not get in massive trouble, you can tell he genuinely feels bad about hurting her and is only asking because she’s his only hope and for the sake of the various passengers who if she dosen’t step in will go off the rails on a crazy train, she agrees. Turns out though Addy is pretty badass on top of being adorable, and uses Froggy II as a grappling hook, then turns out to have inherited her dad’s knowledge of trains, which was foreshadowed earlier as she said she’s gone with him a lot and was bored at his offer and won two time junior glart awards.. which given that likely includes teens and tweens, is Valeria Richards levels of acomplished. God damn kid. Kudos. Stanley gets understandably mad at carl But Addy covers for him and since she saved her dad’s awards, Carl can live.. and come back sometimes. Carl, first through his action figure then himself apologizes for being a jerk toa ddy and manipulating her.. a genuine one that shows he means it and finds she’s pretty cool. Gues this marriage CAN be saved. And so we end this episode as you’d expect.

No.. for one thing i’td be leprechaun-train monstrosity. For another the happy couple team up as superheros and thwart froggy being hit by a train , who greatfully smooches carl who, having grown, takes it in stride. Happy end

Final Thoughts: I love this one. It was funny, intresting and had carl develop as a character while fleshing addy out and giving us some great stanley stuff. It made having a jerk as the protagnist here work and made me go from begrudgingly liking carl to actuallyl iking him. while he’s pretty terrible here he suffers for most of his actions and learns from it, and he and Adelade ahve a great dynamic that we thankfully do indeed see again this very marathon. But first. IT’S BOBBY TIME.

Bo-Bo Buisness It’s my first episode starring Bobby on this blog and i’ts been TOO long and there will be more to come I promise. As i’ve made no secret of Bobby is my faviorite character here, and as you can tell that’s a tight race, and is just.. great here. The move to the city fleshed him out by giving him drive with his desire to run the mercado, franchise it, and go to buisness school to do all of it properly, while keeping his loveable sweetness, stupidity and relationship with Lori which has gone from deeply unhealthy to awwwwwwwww.

So naturally I was on board for another Bobby Bonaza, and this one like most of his eps is pretty good: This time around it focuses on Bobby’s hard work ethic and youthful energy..and it leading him AWAY from the mercado. Bobby tries setting up free wifi and a table like a cafe in the Mercado, but Hector flatly refuses and refuses anthing Bobby comes up with, citing his 30 years running the place sucessfully, while Bobby cites his less than a year of it and his book of ideas, though Hector refuses to budge. And what I like here is that while hector IS still the bad guy here, it’s not in a one dimensional “Jerk for the episode’ way this show’s sister episode tends to fall into. Or treating a character being a jerk like their the wronged party, or.. you get the idea. Point is hector has SOME points: He has run a small buisness in a huge city for 30 years, beating out gentrification, racisim, big buisness and other threats to run at thriving mercado, even with another market across the street. He also owns a sizeable apartment with room for two diffrent families, 5 adults, 6 kids, a dog and an asshole, and his wife is super for the building as a whole. He’s done MARVELOUSLY for himself and deserves to be proud and his stubborness likely comes from just how much he’s been able to acomplish while others fell around him. However.. Bobby is still sympathetic. It’s very clear working here is his dream job: His plan for his life is to expland the place into a franchise and run it himself one day, he’s the clear sucessor and Hector wont’ be around forever.. probably for a LONNNG time still, and his ghost will probably haunt the place with Rosa’s scolding him, but since ghosts can’t own property probably, someone has to take over. Bobby is his clear sucessor and his ideas aren’t bad.. poorly exceuted in this case, but not bad. As we’ll see in a bit the table idea can work, bobby just didn’t think it through and Hector could’ve HELPED HIM with it and as we’ll see most of the ideas Bobby ends up doing elsehwere are just common sense for this day and age and the one that isn’t is the one that does him in. But Hector, likely seeing any change as a threat to his bottom line and his legacy, rejects him out of hand. H’es likely scared that his protege can do BETTER, or worried that one wrong move could cost him his life’s work. I also find this ironic since a few episodes ago, though I still need to see it, Bobby himself had the same problem letting go and letting someone else control the buisness with his sister and cousins running the place while he had his anniversary with Lori. Bobby DESERVES to be given his shot.. and so when he decides to quit the mercado in a huff and take his table and his ideas with him.. you agree with him. Sure he’s leaving the family legacy.. but if Hector wont let him make it his own or appricate how much fucking work he does or love he has for the place, then what legacy is there? That got heavy. We get a great joke next as bobby makes a metaphor about the dinosaurs.. then wonders what happened to them and like me on any given day stops to google it.. and since he uses a laptop unlike me and my desktop computer or phone, and his table, he inadveratly sets up a table outside.. which fixes the problems with his idea, if by accident and impresses Mr.Hong the owner of a nearbye market who could use a fresh faced go getter like bobby and hires him right on sight and agrees to start putting his ideas in.

And the wifi table.. is a huge sucess and putting it outside gave the customers more room, so it fixes the one flaw in his plan, and serving out cafe and snacks I can’t prounounce or spell properly, bobby shows his idea WOULD have worked: instead of creating loiterers it simply gives customers like Vito, who pretty much lives at the Mercado anyway so why not, a place to sit, eat and check their email and stuff, and bobby’s a good enough salesman he can convince them to eat and given the mercado already has a customers only policy on toilets.. they could’ve just made the table purchase only, and once per hour, and their regulars would’ve lapepd it up. Hector refuses to accept this though and stews and drives sergio and carl away.. which yeah if you can out asshole Sergio, you may be the bad guy here. The two feud over dinner to their family’s confusion, and to Rosa’s annoyance and dope slaps when she spills her hard worked on food over their petty sniping but bobby’ sstar continues to rise with a music video for hongs including that bit seen above, rapping and just.. whatever the fuck that video was it was the third best rap in nick history behind that “nnnnnnick” rap and this.

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So yeah with the comeerical, Hongs has tons of customers, and Hector stews more. However things can’t be good forever, as the last 4 years have proven they can be bad for an especially long time but good? Sadly no, as Bobby gets what he always wanted: The keys to the store.. maybe not the store he wanted but still and gets to run hongs solo. Sadly though Bobby ends up fucking up, letting people bring their pets which wrecks the place, and ends up with bobby getting swarmed by an ever multiplying batch of bunnies.

As Bobby is cuddled to death, his exact words, Hector finally relents and saves the boy from literally drowning, and the two get the rabbits out.. but well with social media and all that hong knows what happen and bobby’s fired. But back at the Mercado, Hector rehires bobby, and genuinely apologizes. I do feel it comes a bit quick.. but I guess after your grandson almost got bunnied to death, you rethink your life choices. Bobby admits he was in over his head while Hector genuinely admits Bobby has good ideas and he was being a stubborn jackass and decides he can use them after all. Starting with the commerical where the two perform a nice mexican song, the whole family adorably dresses up like various mercado items as seen at the veyr top and we also get this.

Yes, yes to all of this. And we’re out.. for a moment then back in but you get it.

Final Thoughts for Bo Bo Buisness: While not the best Bobby episode, that would be the one that introduces Par and again i’ll get to that one, this one is still pretty good. While I do feel Hector turns around a bit quick, otherwise it’s funny enough and has enough character stuff with bobbby, even if i’ts mostly just from knowing him in this series to work out. I”m not ANTI-nonsense episodes, I just don’t want them there when ther’es clearly a way heavier issue your steping around. This wasn’t the BEST the series has done comedy wise but it was fun enough. Alright one more...

Blunder Party:

And we end on another pretty good one. And oddly for this show it’s the only Ronnie Anne focused one of the four. Usually she’s dead center but it seems the series is getting comfortable enough, much like it’s parent show, to ease out of focusing on just one character as the viewpoint and letting the others breathe. Still this was a good un and let’s talk about it.

It’s Party Time and Ronnie and Sid are having a sleepover on the roof. Their first party of a couple.. i’m so proud of by baby gays.. or gabies as I call them. I mean.. yes i’m not subtle with my shipping but they act less like close friends and more like two tiny lebisan awww factories. Anywho the whole crew’s here, which as with a lot of things this episode let’s talk about them: Casey, Nikki and Sameeer were introduced in a loud house I haven’t seen and naturally carried over to the show proper, showing up when Lincoln visted in an episode I will defintely cover at some point, and accepting Ronnie Anne wasn’t a born city kid. They have neat designs, are nicely diverse, and while lthey do need some fleshing out, given that like Lincoln’s own friend team squad they show up in a good chunk of ronnie anne episodes, we got time for that so we’re good. There’s also new addition Laird, the school’s own screech powers, and your standard awkward dork whose not that great. So yes even this group has a waste of a character, though he’s not AS bad as rusty or useless as Liam, just feeling a bit less essentail than Ronnie Anne’s running crew, who match her general vibne, and Sid whose her soulmate.

But as the pizza arrives via Sergio, because he has to be useful at least once, our heroes soon find the party crashed by Great Lakes City’s newest power couple: Carl and Adelaide! Looking like their fucking team rocket. Seriously I had other options for this episode, including bobby sliding around on his back comically, so it says something just how great that iamge is and how fucking gloriously smug yet awesome they look.

The two want to join and even outdo the big kids at stretcing and flinging pizza, but as many little siblings like myself know all too well, the big siblings don’t want you there. I can’t count the number of times I wanted to hang with my brothers friends, but he refused frome lementary all the way up to high school. It was maddening. SO I sympathize with them, but i’ve grown tor ealize grown up kids want to have their own time and fun so I sympathize with both parties: Carl and Addy just want pizza and games and to hang with the big kids and Ronnie Anne and Sid just want to host a party as a couple without watching their siblings.

However Carl forces a compromise.. by using his special mood.. whining loudly and summoning Rosa.. whos eriously just.. teleports behind the kids. I thought only Lucy could do that in this unvierse. Respect.

Rosa however is resonable. While she dosen’t want the kids to be excluded, and it’s understandable and nice of her: The kids just wan’t to feel included and Rosa is resonable enough to say they will have to leave eventually wehn it’s time for bed. A fair compromise. Also i’d wonder why Adelaide is here but I assume the Chang Parents had her come over there, which Rosa being the lovely person she is agreed to. I didn’t get into her above but I do like Rosa a lot as a character as she’s a resonable authority figure.. but liable to slip into her own foibles, and is kind and loving with her family if strong and strict when she needs to lower the boom. Mostly on Hector who i’m amazed survived last episode and getting his own grandson to leave in one piece.

But yeah I mean I can only imagine what’s going on there...

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Also sex obviously, but since I obviously can’t and won’t show you that, have this video to jodeci’s freak n you instead and let your imagination fill the blanks if you want.

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I will use this song any time I can. Anyway, Sid being the peach she is tries to convince Ronnie anne all is not lost. Earlier she used a metaphor saying how they had all the perfect ingredents like a smore, and now adds pizzza.. which ot be fair a pizza smore, but using bagles or something sounds great, but pizza on a smore sounds like my own personal hell.. though Sid likes it so i’ll let it live.. for now. That’s also why Sergio is alive. FOr now.

But even sid has a limit and the power couple soon break those: An attempted scary ghost story session goes bad as they break poor sameer by predicting eveyr story he has even the one the poor kid wings, and he and his prehinsile hair are sad. Cheer up kid at least you can probably go live on Krakoa at some point. Free health care, free housing, living on a giant paradise. Good stuff.

The two then ruin an attempted dance party, which unlike the above which was just bad timing, this time their just obnoxious as addy wnats to ballet, and Carl wants to... put it to his butt whle playing fart noises. Okay for starters.

Secondly if he wanted to do that he could’ve got a cd of Nickleback cheaper and no one would’ve noticed.. then again they might of thought the poor boy had Dihera. Somehow this isn’t the last draw. Nikki, being a real one, holds a gross drink contest which carl spits out on the crowd.. which really WHAT DID YOU ALL EXPECT. This is how those things end. WIth spit up and fury.

Anyways enough is enough, so our ambigiously gay duo hatch a plan and send the little kids on a scavanger hunt. So while the Ronnie’s Running Crew have fun, and spot bobby and his best buddy par and bobby flop on some mangos and slide around on mango juice all episode as a result, the dream team work on getting that list done. From getting one of Hector’s nosehairs to Mr. Nakamura’s faviorite sweatervest (which takes a while) , to Carlota’s diary they do it with flair. Of note is the two having to steal Sergio’s crackes.. and nearly getting murdeered by the parot who seriously looks like he’s about to skin a child.. thankfully when HE does a shining by crashing through the door, he just gets stuck so no child murder tonight. Horay! Well until Carlota finds out her diary missing then this happens.

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But things get dire when the kids think they see the smaller kids get stuck in par’s truck. Thankfully bobby knows where his best friend is at all times, because he’s consdierate and knows where he’s headed next, and the kids end up following him, while Sameer stays behind to distract with his hair puppets since Rosa wants to little ones to go to bed.

Sid and Ronnie anne and co head to the dump , shenagins insue and they think they lost their sibling and cousin.. only to find them, the two having gotten a mango that looks like Vito and won.. and Sid and Ronnie apologizing and admitting their scam. In a nice bit though while Carl gets upset, Addy quickly points out they DID ruin their fun, and crash the party, and Carl begrudingly admits he’s wrong. Again, keep them married show. Carl needs Addy to keep him honest and Addy needs carl to hide the bodies of her enmies. They make a good pair, just like their big sis and cousin.

Anyways, Ronnie Anne and Sid ask to have the kids for just a bit longer to repair them and again this is why I repsect Rosa. She finds out the kids disobeyed her or at least found a loophole but isn’t mad and gets both sides learned from it. Our kidlets get a giant ass smore for their heroic efforrts, Nikki returns Carlota’s diary in secret to avoid their deaths while Sergio is arrested for attempted murder of two minors. A good night all around. Bobby joins in to close out, which isn’t met with any resitance because who dosen’t love bobby, while Hector wakes up to the vito mango and wonders what happened to him.. okay apparently Vito’s been turned into a non-sapient piece of fruit before and I want details show. Final Thoughts Finally: A pretty good one. Carly and Adleadie continue to prove to a hell of a combo, whie the proven dream team of Sid and Ronnie Anne work well off their younger counterparts. It overall leads to a fun episode with lots of great gags.. and also bobby sliding around on his back comically like he’s a goddamn roomba and I am hear for it. Just overally really good stuff and a really fun plot. This really feels like stife of the party done right. Both sides screw up but make up instead of one just getting their way because protaganist. And overall this batch of episodes was really damn good and I look forward to watching the series reguarlly from now on. Until then, just one more day then this blog gets all spooky! SO stay tuned, stay safe and go team venture! Play us out nickleback! WAIT WHY DID i SAY THAT NO NO NO NO NOOOOOOO

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coco-because-its-loco · 6 years

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Get ready for a long post. Sorry about the scrolling. I just feel the need to analyze this scene. I’ve said it before but it is one of my FAVORITE Coco scenes and is what inspired me to pursue animating.

I found an awesome site that has LOADS of screenshots of Coco in very nice quality. Which I got from another amazing Coco blogger @twilit-violet-one so special thanks for that!

Alright onto the scene dissection!

Imelda, “I want nothing to do with you! Not in life, not in death.”

Interesting about this one. You’d think she’d be angry but this face looks more hurt and sad then frustrated or angry. I like to think it’s because deep down she hates that she is saying this. Obviously she wants to say it and she means it. But we all know Hector is the love of her life. I think it pains her to think that Hector abandoned her. She loved him with all her heart and wanted him to stay and never leave. But when he did leave and never came back, it broke her heart, not out of anger necessarily but because it hurts her to think someone she loved so deeply could cause her that much pain.

I will be putting some bonus Hector screenshots in here too cuz OH MY FREAKING GOODNESS LOOK AT HOW SAD HE IS!!!! He is so dadgum sorry for what happened! He hates seeing her in so much pain ugh guys this is one of the frames that really gets me. If I stare too long I might just cry. But we can’t move on yet. You might be wondering Why doesn’t Imelda notice how sorry he is?! She says in this scene “How many times must I turn you away?” Which would imply that he had tried making contact with her since she died. She’s turned him away many times and I’m sure he was just as sorrowful looking before. She probably assumes that he is “cowaring” because of her yelling and not because he is actually sorry. We all know Imelda can be quite intimidating. She’s probably used to giving people these reactions 🤣 Ok sorry yes moving on.

Miguel, “He was trying to get me home. I didn’t wanna listen. But he was right. Nothing is more important than family.”

This is her face RIGHT after Miguel says “Nothing is more important than family.” The entire rest of his line before hand she still looks furious. I mean think about it. Miguel said “He was right” Imelda probably thought that Miguel was about to go on a long explanation as to why music is the most important thing. As soon as he says “Nothing is more important than family” she is SHOCKED. Like that is the last thing she expected Miguel to learn from Hector, the man she believed has put music before everything for nearly a century. She’s just properly confused. It doesn’t make any sense to her.

Miguel, “He’s part of our family.”

Imelda, “He left this family!”

At this point she still has no reason to believe that he would ever put family first. As she said, he left his family. Hence the anger rising again.

Miguel, “He tried to go home to you and Coco. But de la Cruz murdered him.”

She actually listens here! You can see in her face she’s truly listening and never suspected what had actually happened. She’s shocked and sad... again. Why is this shocking? If she has turned Hector away so many times in the past few decades, why hasn’t Hector told her that he died trying to come home? Even though Hector didn’t know he was murdered by Ernesto, he still thought he died by a bad chorizo. The thing is... Imelda is quite a force to be reckoned with. I highly doubt any interaction between the two of them in the land of the dead prior to this movie consisted of much conversationing. It probably mainly involved her yelling and throwing shoes at him. I don’t think she ever gave Hector the chance to explain himself. But NOW Imelda is hearing it from her great great grandson who just claimed Hector is putting family first. I think she’s a bit more curious and definitely more open to listening to Miguel rather than Hector himself.

No pictures for this next part but I still wanted to comment on the dialogue here.

Imelda, “And so what if it’s true?! You leave me alone with a child to raise and I’m just supposed to forgive you?”

This I think is one of the main lines people think she is being too harsh. But let’s just step in her Rivera shoes for a second here. She literally JUST found out that he was murdered... she doesn’t know when, how? or anything else. For all she knows he could’ve been gone on the road for 5 years before wanting to come home. Now of course we all know that wasn’t the case but my point is, this is all new information for her and for the past 100 years she has been angry that he left them for music. Just because he was murdered doesn’t change the fact that he still left and she still raised Coco on her own. Also I imagine it’s difficult to let go of a century of anger after hearing 1 sentence. I mean I’ve never been angry at someone for 100 years straight but I’d imagine it’s hard to get over.

Imelda, “You leave me alone with a child to raise and I’m just supposed to forgive you?”

Hector, “Imelda, I-“

(Imelda gasps)

That first pic man. That hurts. I feel that. Her empathy! Sadness! Surprise! Regret! How many emotions is this woman feeling in this ONE SHOT! I got to really break it down now.

Sadness- She is genuinely sad to see him this way. It looks like she’d cry to see him in that much pain. Her sadness proves that she DOES care for him. If she truly wanted him forgotten, seeing him fade wouldn’t be this emotional.

Surprise- It’s as if she has never even thought about him facing the final death. I mean surely she must’ve known ripping his photo, banning music, and never talking about him would lead to him being forgotten? The mind is a curious thing. While she wanted to forget him and wanted her family to forget him, she never truly wanted to harm the person she loved! She wanted to forget the hurtful actions, not her love. But the only way to forget the pain was to snuff him out too. I think she’s surprised because she never wanted to face the truth that by banning his stories, she was killing the love of her life.

Regret- This goes with the surprise in a way. She didn’t want to ever imagine Hector facing the final death. She is now regretting all of her own actions that is leading him to be forgotten.

Also Hector again DADGUM GOODNESS YOUR EYES ARE TEARING THROUGH MY SOUL! HE LOOKS SO BROKEN!

Right, sorry, moving on.

Imelda, “I wanted to forget you. I wanted Coco to forget you too.”

I’d like to point out her shoulder blades here. First of all it’s pretty cool cuz usually you wouldn’t be able to notice them on a living person but since you can see through her ribs it’s easy to spot... that sentence though 🤣

The first pic where she’s “slouching” (lower shoulder blades) you can tell she’s “defeated” and feels awful about what happened and how she handled everything. I can’t even put it to words, you can see she is almost like shameful! And then the second pic she tightens her shoulders when she admits that she wanted to forget him! Like it’s painful for her to admit it and she doesn’t want to show it.

Hector, “This is my fault. Not yours. I’m sorry, Imelda.”

Wow k. So many things where do I start.

Picture one. I’d like to note here that Hector cut her off. She was going to keep talking after “I wanted Coco to forget you too.” but he interjected. She actually stopped talking and let HIM speak. This entire time has been Imelda and Miguel going back and forth and she finally let him speak! You know how huge that is? Like I said earlier, I doubt she has ever let him explain himself since he could have very well said “I tried coming home but I died because of food poisoning!” If she hasn’t let him say that, I doubt she has let him speak to her at all. He just interjected her and she is allowing him to talk. That first pic just screams regret and shame to me. She isn’t even looking him in the eye and it’s as if she’s pondering all that had truly happened and trying to process. Right there she can feel the blame and the fault of the situation. Why do you think Hector just said “This is my fault.” He can see she is blaming herself and taking the guilt. He said that to relieve HER pain.

Now a lot of people don’t like that Hector blames himself. and I get it. It’s not his fault that his best friend murdered him. But he was the one who left. He still walked out the door for music. And there was no way for Imelda to know that he died. What was she supposed to think? And even if after she died she found out that he died trying to return, there’d be no way to communicate with the land of the living. Imelda can’t just contact her living family like, ‘Hey Elena! It was all a big misunderstanding! You can play music and tell Hector’s stories now!” Imelda couldn’t physically have prevented Hector being forgotten. But it also isn’t Hector’s fault either. Yes, he left, but he tried fixing his mistake. We all know Ernesto is to blame here, you know he is the murderer and everything but it’s obvious Hector feels guilty for leaving in the first place and he doesn’t want Imelda taking the blame for any of it. {Which is so dadgum cute oh my goodness}

Picture two. This may very well be the first time Hector said he was sorry. Whether it was his fault or not, whether he thinks it’s his fault or not, he is sorry that Imelda was left alone. Judging by her surprised expression, I don’t think Hector has ever apologized to her before. She had always believed it was his fault but now she’s unsure. She’s blaming herself and still processing. This is a lot to take in. And still, his fault or not, she truly hears his apology. I don’t even know how to explain it but it’s almost like she is feeling the words.

And the third pic. She is sorry too. And still surprised and completely touched that he is apologizing. I mean the way he apologized too! You can see in HIS face and hear through HIS words how sorry he is and I think that Imelda feels bad for how sorry he feels. Otherwise I don’t think she’d look so sad.

Imelda, “I can’t forgive you.”

LOOK AT HOW FREAKING SAD SHE IS!!! It's as if she wants to forgive him but she can't and again, I can't stress enough, OVER NINETY YEARS she believed he intentionally abandoned her and their daughter. Anger that long doesn't just go away after a single minute and I think she feels sad about that. Real quick though, can you honestly imagine her jumping back into his arms right this second? We all know she does end up literally jumping into his arms after La Llorona but right now in this scene can you really picture her just being like "Oooooooh ok l get it now. Nah, it's cool, I forgive you. Clean slate! You can just forget that I was angry for almost a century. We're good."

I've already made an ENTIRE post just about her "But I will help you." Line but I am out of open slots for pictures and have probably effectively wrote your eyes out. But I hope you enjoyed it, if not at least found something interesting.

I would like to say one more thing! The amount of time and heart that was poured into this scene to give these characters such incredible emotion just stuns me. Truly, the people who worked on this scene need an oscar themselves and if I ever got the chance to meet them I would be incredibly awe struck because this scene took some serious skill. Thank you for being an inspiration!

#pixar coco #coco #disney #disney pixar #pixar #hector rivera #imelda rivera #mama imelda #dia de muertos #imector #hector x imelda #character animation

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nicolawritesnovels · 8 years

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ABC Tag

I was tagged by @merigreenleaf! This look really cool. I’m going to do it for both Alex and Terry because they’re probably my most developed characters.

A is for Age: The story kind of covers Alex’s entire life. But at the time of the first story I wrote for them, Alex is 15, and Terry is somewhere between 30 and 33, depending on which version I’m using. B is for Biggest Fear: Alex’s biggest fear is probably losing more people. She lost Tina so early in their lives. And then a few years later her dad died, and then her mom. She drifted away from Mini. Lexi left. It was all of the people she cares about dying or leaving her.

Terry is... afraid of becoming like his parents. Cruel and heartless like his mother. And weak and submissive like his father. Also, he hates spiders. C is for Current Time: tbh, half the scenes written for these losers take place in the fall D is for Drink Last Had: Alex drinks like 90% water. Terry... you know, I have no idea. He’s a tea person, I think. E is for Everyday Starts With: Terry yelling at Alex to get her ass out of bed, and demanding to know what she’s doing in his house again. Alex rolling her eye at his fake surprise. F is for Favorite Song: I’ve got a lot of songs that I have on their playlist, but I’m not really sure which ones are their favorites. Alex is a pretty big fan of Here Comes The Sun by The Beatles. I don’t really know Terry’s music tastes, but I bet they’re songs I don’t know. G is for Ghosts, Are They Real?: Alex would argue that they are, just for the sake of arguing. And secretly, she wishes that Tina were there, even if it was only as a ghost. And her dad. But I don’t think she truly believes. Terry hasn’t dismissed the possibility, but he’s never met one. H is for Hometown: Alex has lived her whole life in Rachel, NY, and that’s where she stays her whole life. Terry grew up in Merry, NY. The next town over.

I is for In Love With: Each other, for the most part. In the past, Alex was in love with Tina, and to a degree, with Lexi. And I’m inclined to think that Terry was in love with Alcyone. He loved Aliet, but I don’t think he was in love with her. J is for Jealous Of: Terry gets jealous of Lexi, in Dark Blue. That leads to some very dramatic situations. Alex... I don’t think so? Maybe a little jealous of Aleit before she died? But not really.

K is for Killed Someone: Nah, neither of them killed anyone. Alex blames herself for Aliet’s death for awhile, but it wasn’t her fault. L is for Last Time They Cried: Depends on what time we’re in. There are points where Alex cries a lot. But the general answer is, Tuesday. For both of them. M is for Middle Name: Jean. Her full name is Hannah-Alexandria Jean Hyreh. And his is Lawrence. Terrin Lawrence Hassen. N is for Number of Siblings: Alex has 2 sisters, one younger (Mini), and one older (Andi). Terry also has 2 sisters, but only one of them is still alive. Twins, Lauren and Laurel. Lauren died when she was 9, and Terry was 12. O is for One Wish: Alex doesn’t believe in wishes. She thinks that when you wish, the world will arrange to make it happen and it would always have bad consequences. She refuses to wish. But if she did, I think she would wish that her sisters would be more understanding of her coping mechanisms. Terry... I think he wishes for his baby sister back. For a good life for his daughters.

P is for Person Last Called/Texted: Alex... probably Haidee, or Andi yelling at her to get her butt home. Or Jaci. She’s got a lot of people she talks to. Terry, probably either Lani or Alex. Maybe JH? Q is for Questions They’re Always Asked: For Alex: “What’s your excuse this time?” “Is that a lie?” “Did you do your homework?” “Alex, what’s the answer to blahblahblah?” “Alex, would you please stop upsetting my staff?” “Alex, why are you friends with a serial killer?” “How are you happy right now?”

For Terry: “Why are you so stubborn?” “Dad, can I go to Terry’s?” “Why do you always pretend you don’t want me here?” “Do I really have to do the homework even though we both know I know the material?” “Why do you spend some much time with Alex?”

R is for Reasons to Smile: Alex is a pretty happy person, all things considering. There’s a lot of things that make her smile. Terry. Jonathan. Haidee. Documentaries. Confusing people. Science. History. Learning in general. Climbing things. Rain. Later on, Ace.

For Terry: his daughter, Alex, his job, history, learning, teaching, tea, cooking, boxing. S is for Song Last Sang: I feel like Alex sings ridiculous songs in the shower. Like the song that never ends. T is for Time They Wake Up: On a normal day, early. They both have school to do. If it were up to her, Alex would get up a lot later. Terry is a morning person though. U is for Underwear Color: Terry usually wears green or black. Alex... probably black, but also whatever color there is. She isn’t picky. V is for Vacation Destination: There’s a plan for a world trip. Terry started one when he was young, he went to Kenya and Japan and Greece, and then Germany. But then he met Aleit when he was in Germany and she got pregnant and he ended up settling there for 10 years. After he moves back to the US, he and Alex plan to travel the rest of the world, especially Germany (to visit Lani’s grandparents), India (Alex’s family), Iran (Alex’s family), Israel, Mecca, Greece (to see Alcyone), and others. But then Cippie gets pregnant with Ace, and that doesn’t end up happening. And it still doesn’t happen before Terry dies. Eventually, Alex takes Lani and Ace on a trip around the world. They visit a lot of places. Germany (to see Lani’s family and friends), Greece (to meet Alcyone, and see parts of Grandma Blythe’s life), Israel, Mecca (Alex isn’t that close to her Islamic faith but since she’s doing a world trip, a pilgrimage feels like a thing to do), Iran (to see Saam’s family there), India (to see Jaya and the rest of Chandra’s family), Spain (to see where Ace’s Grandma Blythe grew up, and also Abuelo Hector’s childhood home and everything), Egypt (where Abuelo Hector’s family was from, and also Alex has always wanted to go there), Argentina (related to Grandpa Paulo’s family) Peru (there are cool ruins there), Iceland (where Lilja is from), Italy (it sounds fun), Poland (there’s no one here from Poland but I like Poland so they’d go there too). Ace is a child of the world, and she’s Alex and Terry’s daughter. They want her to see all of the parts of the world that helped to bring her into existence. All of the places her parents are from, her grand parents, her sister.

I’d say the place they keep going back to is Germany, because Lani likes to visit her grandparents there. And all her old friends. W is for Worst Habit: Alex has a lot of bad habits. She lies. She cheats. She steals. She sneaks into Terry’s house. She’s friends with a serial killer. She never does her homework and comes up with lots of excuses. She never tells her sister where she’s going. She has hacked the police records before (to be fair, Andi has a really easy to guess password). Oh, and she blackmails people a lot.

Terry... he’s stubborn. He used to have a lot of aggression issues, but now he keeps things bottled up. I feel like the fact that he started dating Alex when she was so young is probably a bad thing, even though everything was 100% consensual and generally initiated by her. X is for X-Rays; Ever Broken a Bone?: There was a plan for a separate story where Alex breaks an arm, but I never wrote it. But she does shit like chill on roofs and climb trees, so probably.

Terry was an angry kid, and rightfully so. He punched a lot of walls before he got into boxing. So I imagine he’s broken his hand before. Y is for Youth:

Terry’s youth was pretty unpleasant. He was close with his dad, but his mom was abusive, emotionally and physically. When he was 12, his mom killed his sister Lauren. A month or so later, his father committed suicide. He was pretty angry. He got in trouble at school. He was always smart, but well, his life sucked. He got into boxing. When he turned 18 and graduated high school, he got a passport and promptly went to go travel the world. It was less than a year later that he stopped in Germany and got Aliet pregnant and ended up starting a family there.

Alex... I don’t even know where to start. Half the stories are about her youth. She was a brilliant kid. Her family was well known and well liked around town. Her dad was a cop and she helped him solve cases a lot. She got married at the age of 8 to Tina Valentine in a playground wedding that actually made the news because it was protested by a homophobic kid named Maria. Less than a year later, Tina died of brain cancer, and Alex stayed with her to the end. When she was 12, her father was murdered by serial killer Jonathan Stratten. Her mother committed suicide soon after that, and Alex was left in the custody of her older sister Andi, who wasn’t exactly responsible but was trying to learn to be. Andi’s boyfriend and her father’s former partner, Hemming, moved in with them. Uh, the homophobic kid Maria teased Alex about her parents death, so Alex put her in a coma although I don’t think she meant to. Then she met Lexi, who helped her solve her father’s murder. Alex caught Jonathan Stratten and was a key witness at his trial, and along the way, developed an interesting relationship with him. In 9th grade, she ended up being abused by her history teacher, which was a nightmare. And in 10th grade, she met Terry and things changed. Let’s see what else does she do in youth? Catches Jonathan when he escapes again, helps engineer a genetic miracle in the form of Ace, adopts Ace. Catches more bad guys. Z is for Zealous: What Are They Passionate About?: Alex is passionate about a lot of things. Catching bad guys. Helping people. Sleeping. Poetry. Learning. History. Healing from the past. Curing cancer. Making the world a better place for Ace, and Lani, and the other kids. Terry.

Terry is passionate about... Ace, Alex, history, the world, teaching, becoming better, surviving.

And I tag: @thejollywriter, @fuzzyfuckingllamas (do it for Riley), @gxlden-dayss, @itstartswithablankpage . Pick a character and do the thing!

#Tag Meme #Ally Series #Alex Hyreh #Terry Hassan #tw abuse #tw death mention

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365footballorg-blog · 6 years

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Armchair Analyst: Rooney's DC debut, Atlanta lag & more from Week 20

July 15, 20189:30PM EDT

Week 20 is now in the books, and so’s the World Cup. Allez les Bleus!

Let’s take a look at the weekend that was in MLS:

Give Me the Cure

I want you to read this from my colleague Charlie Boehm. CLICKY!

Charlie’s been in D.C. for a million years and put into words, better than I could, what the opening of Audi Field meant for that team and that community. He also put into words just how much work is left to be done both by the club and by said community to bring United back to their once incandescent glory. To crib Charlie’s point: Saturday night’s 3-1 win over Vancouver wasn’t the end of that process, but very much the beginning.

So D.C. have a lot of work to do, but it needs to be noted that they’ve been playing well, and they showed a lot of how/why against the ‘Caps. They dominated possession and made it useful possession, then cranked said useful possession up to 11 when Wayne Rooney subbed on:

There was some discussion over where Rooney would play – he hasn’t played as an out-and-out No. 9 for years, and most recently was used as a pure midfielder by Sam Allardyce the second half of this past season. But for this D.C. team, it doesn’t make any sense to use him anywhere but as a center forward.

Why? Because D.C. haven’t had any real problems shuttling the ball from the back to the front. In large part that’s because they’ve got skill all over the field, but also/especially it’s because Chris Durkin has beaten out the competition and is having a quietly excellent year as a defensive midfielder with regista tendencies (and to be clear: he’s, at this point, much better in attack and possession than defense). His ability to do Wil Trapp-style things has made it easier for United to move forward as a unit, which is why they’ve been a good attacking team.

Rooney can potentially make them a great attacking team. No disrespect to Darren Mattocks, but I suspect Rooney will both find and finish chances at a higher level than the Jamaican international. But what really matters are two things: His passing ability (which has always been even more of a calling card than his finishing ability) and his attacking gravity.

When Wayne Rooney’s out there in the attacking third, you have to pay attention to him. You take a step or two or three closer to him, and that creates more room for the other guys on the field, and it turns out that smart attackers like Paul Arriola and Zoltan Stieber and Lucho Acosta and Yamil Asad know what to do with that space.

“We saw what Wayne is – a high quality, elite soccer player,” is how United head coach Ben Olsen put it. “He didn’t lose possession, made some key passes, and got on the end of a few balls in the box. This is what he’s going to do for us. There’s been a lot of talk about where Wayne is going to play. In my mind he’s a number nine, but he’s a versatile number nine. He can drop off as a 10 in scenarios and even make plays as a No. 8. It’s nice to have versatility and I think he’s going to be fine wherever he plays.”

Mattocks doesn’t bring that. And again: He’s had a fine year, and has proved his smarts in figuring out how to make use of space that others have created, and while he doesn’t have the same kind of attacking gravity that Rooney does, his straight-line speed opens space underneath in its own way. He is an asset.

That won’t go away, and Mattocks has a place in this team. But Rooney has the potential to make this attack legitimately great – as in, second half of 2016-level great – and that means D.C. are very much a threat to climb their way into the East playoff race.

Last Chance for a Slow Dance

Atlanta are a respectable-but-not-great 5-3-4 in their last 12 games, haven’t won back-to-back games since late April/early May, and have taken only eight of the last 18 home points available. Their 1-1 home draw against the Sounders officially knocked the Five Stripes from first to third in the league on PPG. They clearly, clearly clearly have issues against teams that bunker.

Right now the diagnosis is simple: They’re similar to the Red Bulls in that they have just one consistent, open finisher (Josef Martinez). Miguel Almiron hasn’t been that guy, and Hector Villalba has been injured/not as clinical as last year, and Ezequiel Barco is, at this point, a pretty average MLS winger with occasional moments of 1v1 brilliance, but little end product.

The issue, again, is breaking down a defense that 1) is packed in, 2) refuses to let Almiron get into space and be an open-field creator, and 3) isn’t going to try to play through the press. “Bunker and counter” works against high pressing teams, and while Atlanta don’t press nearly so hard as they did last year, they still spend a ton of time on the front foot and still love to generate a ton of their attack by forcing turnovers way up the pitch.

So Seattle, to their credit, decided not to play out of the back. And they marked Almiron especially tight (scroll to the 9 minute mark of this video… or honestly, watch the whole thing):

“Teams are playing differently here,” said Atlanta United d-mid Jeff Larentowicz after the game. “It seems like there’s a formula and it’s up to us to crack it.”

Here’s how my colleague Bobby Warshaw put it:

This is another game Atlanta didn’t beat a defensive team. Revs, Red Bulls, Portland, Dallas, and now Seattle.

When a team doesn’t want the ball and forces Atlanta to use the ball to beat them, Atlanta are now 0-2-3.

The prognosis isn’t as simple as the diagnosis, beyond “trust the system.” The Five Stripes rang the crossbar and forced Stefan Frei into a couple of huge saves, and even with the day’s frustration they were clearly the far superior team, both when it was 11v11 and 11v10 (xG had it at 2.3 for Atlanta to 1.05 for Seattle, a number that includes Nicolas Lodeiro’s penalty).

Which is all a long way of saying that I still think the Five Stripes are probably the best team in MLS, and are at worst the fourth-best. They are still very much a threat to do the Supporters’ Shield/MLS Cup double, and if Almiron or Barco or Villalba improve by just a touch in front of net, they go from a threat to do the double to outright favorites.

But yeah… Larentowicz is right: There’s a formula against Atlanta now, and it’s up to Tata Martino & Co. to come up with a solution.

A few more things to ponder…

9. Red Bulls needed a heroic performance from Marc Rzatkowski to take a 3-2 win over a short-handed, visiting Sporting KC team. The big assumption was that the transition from Jesse Marsch to Chris Armas would be seamless, but… no, it really hasn’t been. The Red Bulls, through two games under Armas, are still a pressing team, but it’s neither as high nor as hard, and there’s been more emphasis on using the ball to break teams down.

It cost them the game last week at NYCFC, and it cost them a goal this week against Sporting. And spoiler alert: RBNY aren’t going to get two outside-the-box thunderbolts every week to save the result. (That said, dap to Armas for making much better subs this time).

Sporting have some issues, though:

KC allowing 2 or more goals: 2017 – 6 times in 40 games. 2018 – 11 times in 22 games.#SportingKC

— Nathan Martin (@NMthenoise) July 15, 2018

Granted, they played this one with backup center backs. But they’ve played a lot, and conceded a lot (by their standards) even when they’ve had their first-choice backline on the field.

8. Chicago played a lineup of reserves at FC Dallas on Saturday night, and got drilled 3-1. I don’t blame Veljko Paunovic et al for putting their emphasis upon/saving their vets for Wednesday’s USOC quarterfinal at home against Louisville City.

Dallas, who are still easing into the post-Magic Unicorn era, played a 4-2-3-1 with Roland Lamah as a No. 10 underneath center forward Maxi Urruti. Lamah is a very different type of playmaker from Mauro Diaz – much more mobile, a greater goal threat from open play, and nowhere near as inventive a passer or overall game conductor.

It will be an ongoing adjustment for FCD.

7. Our Pass of the Week goes to Jonathan Lewis, who keeps coming in and changing games for NYCFC. In this case it was the game-winning assist against visiting Columbus, who’ve now won just once in their last eight:

Is this the greatest pass of all-time? Obviously not. But what I love about Lewis’s game is his ability to sort through where on the pitch everybody else is, and then make the game simple for them. It’s a rare skill – the game gets especially frenetic in the attacking third as the defense gets more and more desperate.

So for most players, the game speeds up. For Lewis it seems to slow down. He has 1g/2a and has hit the post twice in just 117 minutes, and so far the best part of the Dome Torrent era has been Lewis’s ascent into the regular rotation.

6. Colorado and Houston played a game of soccer on Saturday night. Both came out in versions of the 5-4-1. There were no goals and few good chances for either side.

5. There were plenty of good chances in LA’s wild, come-from-behind 3-2 win over the slumping Revs (3-3-5 in their last 11 after a 4-2-2 start). The Galaxy actually played most of this one 11v10, but couldn’t take advantage at all until Ashley Cole got sent off with five minutes left.

Going down to 10v10 seemed to spark LA, who got a pair of goals in second-half stoppage time – one from Dave Romney, and one from Chris Pontius. That was Pontius’s second of the night and 50th of his very good MLS career.

And look, this is going to break some hearts, but LA aren’t bad. They’re now 5-1-3 in the past two months, and while their defense is flammable the attack keeps proving, week after week, good enough to mostly make up for it.

New England, as I mentioned, are headed in the opposite direction and are now staring at a stretch in which they play five of six on the road.

4. One of the teams that may put some pressure on the Revs in the playoff race? It could be Orlando City, who broke their nine-game losing streak with a 2-1 home win over Toronto FC on Saturday night, marking the first win of the James O’Connor era:

Simplifying and tightening their defensive structure was a smart move from O’Connor. Toronto – whose playoff chances are now just about dead – need to do something similar, and need to start finishing their chances if they’re going to have a prayer of playing in November. Their next two games are against Chicago, and they need to win both.

3. Mike Petke provided another epic postgame press conference, this time after he was unhappy with a pair of decisions in RSL’s 3-2 loss at Minnesota United. And Adrian Heath had a pretty great postgame interview of his own – though he was angry at his players, not the refs.

I think the folks with most reason to be upset are RSL fans, who had to watch Damir Kreilach as a false 9 once again. I just don’t get it, and it should be noted that once Petke subbed actual attackers on, RSL began dominating the game.

2. LAFC’s scoreless home draw against the visiting Timbers was not great entertainment, but it was a very worthwhile bullet point in my “actually, Diego Chara’s a top 3 MVP candidate” argument. He’s been remarkable since getting healthy at the end of March, and Portland are now on a 12-game unbeaten run – the longest since the Rapids went 15 unbeaten back in 2016.

1. And finally, our Face of the Week goes to San Jose’s Fatai Alashe from the Quakes’ 2-0 loss at Montreal:

Here is the sequence of events:

In the 41st minute, Quakes head coach Mikael Stahre subbed off starting center mid Anibal Godoy.

Godoy walked straight to the locker room, not to the bench and did not interact with Stahre.

In the postgame Stahre said that Godoy “asked me 3 or 4 times to be subbed out.”

Alashe was Godoy’s replacement, and he finished out the first half.

At 45:40 on the game clock (first half stoppage), you could see Alashe pull up lame while chasing a play, an injury the coach cited after the match.

Alashe was still seen warming up with the subs during halftime and stayed out on the field with the XI after Stahre “asked him to start the second half so we could prepare our second sub.”

During the sequence described above, Alashe and strength & conditioning coach Greg Tella were both demonstrably arguing with Stahre

There are many questions left unanswered: If Alashe injured his groin just before the half, why was he out there after halftime? What was the point of letting him out there to almost take the field, only to ostentatiously sub him off just before the whistle? And what was the argument with the S&C coach about?

Also, if you look at the picture and the video of the incident… it sure didn’t seem like Alashe wanted to come out.

It was a truly bizarre sight in the midst of a truly bizarre stretch for the Quakes. Florian Jungwirth ethered his teammates last week, and then Chris Wondolowski responded by retweeting (and since un-retweeting) an ex-teammate who called Jungwirth out. It seemed like battle lines had been drawn, but then after this game, Wondo tweeted his support of Stahre. Stahre’s contribution to all of this was describing his team as “not just dogs***” which was, I think, meant as a compliment.

None of this makes any sense, and none of it has led to anything approaching respectable soccer. The Quakes are 2-11-6 on the season (2-0-0 against Minnesota United, 0-11-6 against everyone else), and are on a 10-game winless skid. At least their USL affiliate in Reno’s a ton of fun.

The Impact aren’t a ton of fun, and I’m not sure they’re all that good, but they’re no longer bad. And they did yeoman’s work over the past month-and-a-half pulling themselves out of the abyss and into the playoff race. The schedule toughens up now – the rest of their year is pretty brutal, to be perfectly honest – but they’ve discovered and embraced their identity, Ignacio Piatti’s forever young, and they’ve got a puncher’s chance of hanging onto that sixth spot.

Series:

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Armchair Analyst: Rooney's DC debut, Atlanta lag & more from Week 20 was originally published on 365 Football

#Analyst #Armchair #Atlanta #debut #from #more #Rooney&039s #week

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wine-k · 7 years

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The Absolutely Huge and Incredible Injustice in the World

By Ron Padgett

What makes us so mean?

We are meaner than gorillas,

the ones we like to blame our genetic aggression on.

It is in our nature to hide behind what Darwin said about survival,

as if survival were the most important thing on earth.

It isn't.

You know—surely it has occurred to you—

that there is no way that humankind will survive

another million years. We'll be lucky to be around

another five hundred. Why?

Because we are so mean

that we would rather kill everyone and everything on earth

than let anybody get the better of us:

"Give me liberty or give me death!"

Why didn't he just say "Grrr, let's kill each other!"?

A nosegay of pansies leans toward us in a glass of water

on a white tablecloth bright in the sunlight

at the ocean where children are frolicking,

then looking around and wondering—

about what we cannot say, for we are imagining

how we would kill the disgusting man and woman

at the next table. Tonight we could throw an electrical storm

into their bed. No more would they spit on the veranda!

Actually they aren't that bad, it's just

that I am talking mean in order to be more

like my fellow humans—it's lonely feeling like a saint,

which I do one second every five weeks,

but that one second is so intense I can't stand up

and then I figure out that it's ersatz, I can't be a saint,

I am not even a religious person, I am hardly a person at all

except when I look at you and think

that this life with you must go on forever

because it is so perfect, with all its imperfections,

like your waistline that exists a little too much,

like my hairline that doesn't exist at all!

Which means that my bald head feels good

on your soft round belly that feels good too.

If only everyone were us!

But sometimes we are everyone, we get mad

at the world and mean as all get-out,

which means we want to tell the world to get out

of this, our world. Who are all these awful people?

Why, it's your own grandma, who was so nice to you—

you mistook her for someone else. She actually was

someone else, but you had no way of knowing that,

just as you had no way of knowing that the taxi driver

saves his pennies all year

to go to Paris for Racine at the Comédie Francaise.

Now he is reciting a long speech in French from Andromache

and you arrive at the corner of This and That

and though Andromache's noble husband Hector has been killed

and his corpse has been dragged around the walls of Troy by an

unusually mean Achilles,

although she is forced into slavery and a marriage

to save the life of her son, and then people around her

get killed, commit suicide, and go crazy, the driver is in paradise,

he has taken you back to his very mean teacher

in the unhappy school in Port-au-Prince and then

to Paris and back to the French language of the seventeenth century

and then to ancient Greece and then to the corner of This and That.

Only a mean world would have this man driving around in a city

where for no reason someone is going to fire a bullet into the back of

his head!

It was an act of kindness

on the part of the person who placed both numbers and letters

on the dial of the phone so we could call WAverly,

ATwater, CAnareggio, BLenheim, and MAdison,

DUnbar and OCean, little worlds in themselves

we drift into as we dial, and an act of cruelty

to change everything into numbers only, not just phone numbers

that get longer and longer, but statistical analysis,

cost averaging, collateral damage, death by peanut,

inflation rates, personal identification numbers, access codes,

and the whole raving Raft of the Medusa

that drives out any thought of pleasantness

until you dial I-8OO-MATTRES and in no time get a mattress

that is complete and comfy and almost under you,

even though you didn't need one! The men

come in and say Here's the mattress where's

the bedroom? And the bedroom realizes it can't run away.

You can't say that the people who invented the bedroom were mean,

only a bedroom could say that, if it could say anything.

It's a good thing that bedrooms can't talk!

They might keep you up all night telling you things

you don't want to know. "Many years ago,

in this very room. . . ." Eeek, shut up! I mean,

please don't tell me anything, I'm sorry I shouted at you.

And the walls subside into their somewhat foreverness.

The wrecking ball will mash its grimace into the plaster and oof,

down they will come, lathe and layers of personal history,

but the ball is not mean, nor is the man who pulls the handle

that directs the ball on its pendulous course, but another man

—and now a woman strides into his office and slaps his face hard

the man whose bottom line is changing its color

wants to change it back. So good-bye, building

where we made love, laughed, wept, ate, and watched TV

all at the same time! Where our dog waited by the door,

eyes fixed on the knob, where a runaway stream came whooshing

down the hallway, where I once expanded to fill the whole room

and then deflated, just to see what it would feel like,

where on Saturday mornings my infant son stood by the bedside

and sang, quietly, "Wa-a-a-ke up" to his snoozing parents.

I can never leave all the kindness I have felt in this apartment,

but if a big black iron wrecking ball comes flying toward me,

zoop, out I go! For there must be

kindness somewhere else in the world,

maybe even out of it, though I'm not crazy

about the emptiness of outer space. I have to live

here, with finite life and inner space and with

the horrible desire to love everything and be disappointed

the way my mother was until that moment

when she rolled her eyes toward me as best she could

and squeezed my hand when I asked, "Do you know who I am?"

then let go of life.

The other question was, Did I know who I was?

It is hard not to be appalled by existence.

The pointlessness of matter turns us into cornered animals

that otherwise are placid or indifferent,

we hiss and bare our fangs and attack.

But how many people have felt the terror of existence?

Was Genghis Khan horrified that he and everything else existed?

Was Hitler or Pol Pot?

Or any of the other charming figures of history?

Je m'en doute.

It was something else made them mean.

Something else made Napoleon think it glorious

to cover the frozen earth with a hundred thousand bloody corpses.

Something else made . . . oh, name your monster

and his penchant for destruction,

name your own period in history when a darkness swept over us

and made not existing seem like the better choice,

as if the solution to hunger were to hurl oneself

into a vat of boiling radioactive carrots!

Life is so awful!

I hope that lion tears me to pieces!

It is good that those men wearing black hoods

are going to strip off my skin and force me

to gape at my own intestines spilling down onto the floor!

Please drive spikes through not only my hands and feet

but through my eyes as well!

For this world is to be fled as soon as possible

via the purification of martyrdom.

This from the God of Christian Love.

Cupid hovers overhead, perplexed.

Long ago Zeus said he was tired

and went to bed: if you're not going to exist

it's best to be asleep.

The Christian God is like a cranky two-thousand-year-old baby

whose fatigue delivers him into an endless tantrum.

He will never grow up

because you can't grow up unless people listen to you,

and they can't listen because they are too busy being mean

or fearing the meanness of others.

How can I blame them?

I too am afraid. I can be jolted by an extremely violent movie,

but what is really scary is that someone wanted to make the film!

He is only a step away from the father

who took his eight-year-old daughter and her friend to the park

and beat and stabbed them to death. Uh-oh.

"He seemed like a normal guy," said his neighbor, Thelma,

who refused to divulge her last name to reporters.

She seemed like a normal gal, just as the reporters seemed like

normal vampires.

In some cultures it is normal to eat bugs or people

or to smear placenta on your face at night, to buy

a car whose price would feed a village for thirty years,

to waste your life and, while you're at it, waste everyone

else's too!

Hello, America. It is dawn,

wake up and smell yourselves.

You smell normal.

My father was not normal,

he was a criminal, a scuffler, a tough guy,

and though he did bad things

he was never mean.

He didn't like mean people, either.

Sometimes he would beat them up

or chop up their shoes!

I have never beaten anyone up,

but it might be fun to chop up some shoes.

Would you please hand me that cleaver, Thelma?

But Thelma is insulted by my request,

even though I said please, because she has the face of a cleaver

that flies through the air toward me and lodges

in my forehead. "Get it yourself,

lughead!" she spits, then twenty years later

she changes lughead to fuckhead.

I change my name to Jughead

and go into the poetry protection program

so my poems can go out and live under assumed names

in Utah and Muskogee.

Anna Chukhno looks up and sees me

through her violet Ukrainian eyes

and says Good morning most pleasantly inflected. Oh

to ride in a horse-drawn carriage with her at midnight

down the wide avenues of Kiev and erase

the ditch at Babi Yar from human history!

She looks up and asks How would you like that?

I say In twenties and she counts them out

as if the air around her were not shattered by her beauty

and my body thus divided into zones:

hands the place of metaphysics, shins the area of moo,

bones the cost of living, and so on.

Is it cruel that I cannot cover her with kisses?

No, it is beautiful that I cannot cover her with kisses,

it is better that I walk out into the sunlight

with the blessing of having spoken with an actual goddess

who gave me four hundred dollars!

And I am reassembled

as my car goes forward

into the oncoming rays of aggression

that bounce off my glasses and then

start penetrating, and soon my eyes

turn into abandoned coal mines

whose canaries explode into an evil song

that echoes exactly nowhere.

At least I am not in Rwanda in 1994 or the Sudan in '05

or Guantanamo or Rikers, or in a ditch outside Rio,

clubbed to death and mutilated. No Cossack

bears down on me with sword raised and gleaming

at my Jewish neck and no time for me

to cry out "It is only my neck that is Jewish!

The rest is Russian Orthodox!" No smiling man tips back

his hat and says to his buddies, "Let's teach

this nigguh a lesson." I don't need a lesson, sir,

I am Ethiopian, this is my first time in your country!

But you gentlemen are joking. . . .

Prepare my cave and then kindly forget where it was.

A crust of bread will suffice and a stream nearby,

the chill of evening filtering in with the blind god

who is the chill of evening and who touches us

though we can't raise our hands to stroke his misty beard

in which

two hundred million stars have wink and glimmer needles.

I had better go back to the bank, we have

only three hundred and eighty-five dollars left.

Those fifteen units of beauty went fast.

As does everything.

But meanness comes back right away

while kindness takes its own sweet time

and compassion is busy shimmering always a little above us and

behind,

swooping down and transfusing us only when we don't expect it

and then only for a moment.

How can I trap it?

Allow it in and then

turn my body into steel? No.

The exit holes will still be there and besides

compassion doesn't need an exit it is an exit—

from the prison that each moment is,

and just as each moment replaces the one before it

each jolt of meanness replaces the one before it

and pretty soon you get to like those jolts,

you and millions of other dolts who like to be electrocuted

by their own feelings. The hippopotamus

sits on you with no sense of pleasure, he doesn't

even know you are there, any more than he takes notice

of the little white bird atop his head, and when

he sees you flattened against the ground

he doesn't even think Uh-oh he just trots away

with the bird still up there looking around.

Saint Augustine stole the pears from his neighbor's tree

and didn't apologize for thirty years, by which time

his neighbor was probably dead and in no mood

for apologies. Augustine's mother became a saint

and then a city in California—Santa Monica,

where everything exists so it can be driven past,

except the hippopotamus that stands on the freeway

in the early dawn and yawns into your high beams.

"Hello," he seems to grunt, "I can't be your friend

and I can't be your enemy, I am like compassion,

I go on just beyond you, no matter how many times

you crash into me and die because you never learned

to crash and live." Then he ambles away.

Could Saint Augustine have put on that much weight?

I thought compassion makes you light

or at least have light, the way it has light around it

in paintings, like the one of the screwdriver

that appeared just when the screw was coming loose

from the wing of the airplane in which Santa Monica was riding into

heaven,

smiling as if she had just imagined how to smile

the first smile of any saint, a promise toward the perfection

of everything that is and isn't.

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