#but also there's no rush ive seen so much awesome stuff already. im just happy rn honestly. im just chillin

[funnywormz]

im turning 23 in a week what in the goddamn

[madisonrooney]

THOUGHTS ON D3

(some of these may be points about stuff we already knew going into it but like now that weve gotten to see it all together its easier to discuss)

- i like what they did with audrey’s plot. her and mal’s relationship did feel pretty unresolved after d1 so im glad they went this route. not to mention being able to bring her back after her being absent in the second. also i like the message that it gave off about being able to be good or bad regardless of where you come from

- i loved hades! he was so fun and i loved how things ended up with him. and DO WHAT YOU GOTTA DO WAS AWESOME probably my fav song. but i cant say im a huge fan of him being mal’s dad. like i loved the way their relationship played out but while the descendants fan in me is happy the disney stickler thinks its a bit too much creative license for them to make a kid the child of two disney characters from two different movies. it also kinda like...almost invalidates her character of “maleficent’s daughter” now shes the daughter of two villains and it?? feels different?? if that makes sense?? could the other VKs possibly have another villain as their other parent?? who knows. also i wish they hadn’t made it so obvious so early like people guessed this A YEAR AND A HALF AGO WHEN THE TEASER CAME OUT. maybe had it just been a few months it wouldnt have been as bad but yeesh. it made the shock factor...well, almost non-existant.

- continuing on their relationship, i thought tackling the idea of an absentee dad was a bold move for a movie like this and i applaud it. not to mention with an upbeat musical number? they really did that

- i loved celia too!! i was afraid she was gonna be more bad news than she was but she was super cute and sweet. loved her friendship with dizzy. and loved getting to see more of dizzy! and even though dr facilier wasnt in it much he was fun. i thought it was sweet that he and celia seemed to have a good relationship. im also glad we got to see lady tremaine! but wheres drizella lol

- also in regards to hades and celia, i liked that they brought in two more movies into the universe that hadnt yet been acknowledged (not counting wicked world or the books). i love both hercules and princess and the frog and while i wouldnt call them underrated theyre not quite as mainstream as some of the other movies in the descendants universe so im happy with that.

- on the other hand, i dont really like it when they get more kids from movies that they already have kids from. in this case, squeaky and squirmy. gil seemed out of place to me when i first watched d2, especially cuz like why would gastons son be a pirate, but since he had some funny lines with ben (in this movie too!) it was worth it. but squeaky and squirmy had no lines with harry? THEY ALMOST DIDNT HAVE ANY LINES AT ALL??? so why couldnt they have had them be kids from a movie they hadnt used yet? the more the merrier imo. idk.

- mal and uma repairing their relationship was like the highlight for me ugh it was so good. i think we all had a feeling that would happen (not just from speculation but from set pics and whatnot) but it felt satisfying regardless. uma saying “im right here mal you got this”? love that

- WE LOVE MORE DRAGON MAL. EVEN MORE THAN IN D2. WE LOVE THAT A LOT.

- WE ALSO LOVE MORE DUDE. OK SO MAYBE THATS JUST ME BUT SCREW IT I LOVE TALKING DOGS SO IM GLAD HE STILL TALKED. DOVE CAMERON AND A TALKING DOG IN THE SAME MOVIE IS BASICALLY PANDERING TO ME OK

- WE ALSO LOVE MALVIE CONTENT!!! love that evie was the only one who knew hades was her dad AND LOVE THAT THEY SAID I LOVE YOU TO EACH OTHER LIKE DAMN. AND DURING MY ONCE UPON A TIME WHEN MAL LIKE CARESSES HER FACE??? LIKE HER INTERACTION WITH HER WAS MORE INTENSE THAN WITH ANYONE ELSE EVEN BEN??? GOOD SHIT

- OK I KNEW ABOUT THE DID I MENTION REPRISE AS OF A FEW DAYS AGO BUT IM A SLUT FOR PARALLELS SO THAT STILL KILLED ME

- any parallels killed me. especially, ofc, ending with “cuz were rotten...to the core” (tho i was hoping the rotten remix thats on the soundtrack would be in the movie)

- loved getting more harry and gil content. gil is so blissfully stupid and precious and i love him and harry is so chaotic and i love him too

- and just...love the sea three bonding with the core four. also it felt well paced. wasnt rushed, had its moments to slowly get us there (mal+uma, jay+gil+harry) it felt like it went just the way it was supposed to.

- the whole series of events felt well paced and well ordered

- tbh i think its hilarious how chad’s douche baggery never dies down. i mean points for consistency i guess

- (did anyone catch the sign on the isle that mentioned monstro? good easter egg)

- (im really going out of order ik)

- one kiss was fun and cute, but i never felt like doug and evie were like...behind in their relationship? if anything i thought as of d2 their relationship was more stable than that of mal and ben

- night falls was a little silly and felt a little too similar to its goin down to me but it served a purpose and it was still fun

- and ofc it was so bittersweet to watch cam. the dedications were heart-wrenching but beautiful.

overall it really could not have been better! great new characters, great development on the characters we love, great soundtrack, and, most importantly, a story that perfectly wraps up the franchise. its hard to get a trilogy right. i love a lot of trilogies but a lot of them have some major flaws. with like say the kung fu panda movies, the 2nd and 3rd feel like theyre about very different things than the first. it doesnt feel like its telling one cohesive story. some have a second that feels unimportant to be between the 1st and 3rd. this just felt like perfectly coming full circle. everything from the beginning of the first movie to the end of the third felt necessary to tell the story. no useless filler, all essential to the plot, adding more as we go and resolving more, but having a hell of a lot of fun the entire time. i remember d2 being one of the most, if not the most, satisfying sequels ive ever seen. maybe part of that has to do with descendants being such a main fandom of mine when it came out, but sometimes, even new additions to my main fandoms can disappoint. these sequels really haven’t. part of that may just have to do with my love for the franchise regardless of the direction it goes in, but i know that it also has to do with just a great job in storytelling. continuing the story and wrapping it up just right. when the first one came out, we didn’t know it would be a trilogy. it works great as a standalone movie, but when you see the third one, you would think it was intended this way from the beginning, which honestly gives it even more power.

it breaks my heart to let this franchise go, but ofc in mal’s words “this is not the end.” with it just coming out, that means its just the beginning of discussions, gifs, memes, fanart, and all that fun stuff. so lets jump right in!

and, as always, every bit of love in my heart goes to cam tonight. we still miss you endlessly and we always will.

[flyingcookierambles]

i finished reading uratarou

basically uratarou is this.

cute genki girl princess chiyo searches for a way to become immortal so she doesn’t die of a curse. angsty 800-something year old immortal uratarou has seen everything and just wants to rip in piece. they find a way to reverse their conditions (chiyo becomes immortal, uratarou mortal), go on a journey to a magic mountain that is the gate between the life and death, and fall in love along the way. unfortunately things happen.

the good : the art was really pretty and the color spreads/ chapter pages were so cool and colorful! i really loved it. the story was p interesting until the second act (ill get to that) and the characters were all unique looking. we got the other angsty wolf boy, a goddess/emperor and her stoic bodyguard (he honestly didnt do much tho), and a demon turned human / the youngest kid of the family that generally is terrible at his job.

the bad : well, the ending was very awkward. ive learned that this is because the manga got canceled, so the ending was rushed. which is a shame because i wanted it to go on a bit longer so maybe things can be explained.

so like chiyo was cursed to be the mother of the demon king, which happened by a magic arrow. her curse also said that when the demon king was born, she would die. so, at the end of the first act, she gave birth to the king, who looked like some weird white alien with giant moth wings and those antenna things. then she kinda died. or, well, exploded. so that’s a thing. also, uratarou became mortal like he wanted but this was the first time that i guess he wanted to be immortal so he could fight demons and avenge chiyo. so yup, their plan went up in flames.

so then act 2 started. and it was a bit weird so ill just give a summery of the ending. 

now, uratarou is acting like chiyo. the sun? shining and beautiful! the air? fresh and nice! the sky? blue and lovely! wow, life is great, despite the fact that im like 800 years old i just sat on a rock for most of those years to avoid making contact with people and feeling the pain of outliving everyone i know and love.  

this was later explained by uratarou trying to emulate chiyo’s cheerful outlook on life and appreciate being mortal, and he himself kinda admitted by the last few chapters that it was very forced and that he really didn’t care at all about japan or humans or demons, only that chiyo would get to live again. understandable, there’s the grumpy man we’ve seen for the past like 30 or so chapters. so then he battles chiyo’s creepy brother, who already has the rest of her body, and wins. chiyo comes back to life, and the art is really creepy because she kinda had like maggots and stuff crawling out of her. those were not fun pages to look at i must say. so she’s like a zombie or something bc she ate food in the land of the dead, but don’t worry! uratarou accepts her as she is, bugs and all, and then kinda gets infected by the bugs and just like dies. oh also, he gave his life to her and i think that she became sort of normal/not a zombie? and then a peach from the life-death tree falls and its him i guess instantly reincarnated as a baby. the end is a child uratarou going to see the grave of the original one and chiyo, being grandma chiyo now, following him, being an old lady. like. ok? 

so the uratarou 1 dies and gets reincarnated and chiyo, who got to live a full and happy life i  assume, raised him as a grandchild and all is right in the world. that’s nice. oh except like a lot of things???

so the demon king that chiyo had? an emo kid who questioned why he was born and then wanted to kill everything and took over japan. the wolf demon kid? no where to be found. the other demon kid that chiyo spared? also no where to be found. immortal and god-blessed emperor antoku and her mightly moving castle/bodyguard? WHERE THE HECK WERE THE REST OF THE PARTY MEMBERS WHILE URATAROU WAS TRYING TO SEARCH FOR CHIYO’S BODY? IT SEEMS LIKE THEY DIDN’T HELP HIM AT ALL AND JUST WENT OFF DOING WHO KNOWS WHAT. 

and going back to the demon king that took over japan, like. well. japan is now a hostile land to humans and there are demons everywhere and uratarou didn’t do anything about it because he just cared about getting chiyo back. idk, maybe i missed something, like once chiyo was brought back from death the demon  king just like dies or something off screen? idk. it wasn’t explained but basically i guess the demons still have japan in their grasp. honestly, the only explanation that i will accept about emperor antoku not being with uratarou for the journey is that she was off screen being awesome and forming some human rebellion. idk. 

im sure that maybe we would have gotten at least some scrap of information on the rest of the characters who just ditched uratarou and chiyo during the second half and left for who knows where if the manga wasn’t cancelled. 

and that’s all my complaints about the ending.

well anyways i would say that up until the last few chapters i did really like uratarou. maybe you should only read it if you don’t mind crappy endings and just want to enjoy the art (minus the buggy chiyo). i mean, its only 50 chapters so its not a super long read, so its a decent time killer if anything i suppose. 

maybe the mangaka made some other story that they were properly able to finish and not worry about cancelation? because i really wouldn’t mind seeing the unique art style again.

[audreyineu]

budapest 4/6-4/7

getting to budapest i knew my time was limited, i only got a day and a half there, so i tried my best to hit the ground running. arriving at the hostel i found that check-in did not begin for 2 more hours though, so that kind of stopped me, but i just used the time to get some food. using that lovely little app called google maps i found a small pizza shop called pizza manufaktura and had a hawaiian pizza (pineapple on pizza is GOOD just accept it already). i also had some cherry juice, which was really good actually. i’ve never really seen fully cherry flavored drinks outside of icees, so that's definitely something that america needs to work on. i also discovered that the hungarian word for cherry is meggy. nice. 

i still had an hour to kill after that though so i tried to go find an atm and accidentally walked into the nagyvásárcsarnok, or, for english speakers, the great market hall. it’s an actual full-blown market where people bought their groceries

like people actually came here and picked out their meats, got some vegetables, maybe some spices. it was so cool to see. yeah sure i’ve been farmers markets back home but this was fully someone’s grocery store and it was just interesting to see the difference

the upstairs part was for the tourists and had a bunch of handmaid souvenirs, sometimes the person was sitting out in front of the stall sewing the cloths like the ones in the picture (its blurry, sorry)

there was also a basement-like area and i’m pretty sure the budapest black market operates in it. i’m on a pacific rim kick right now because of the sequel (which wasn’t that good but that’s a different blog post) and if you’ve seen the first one, i really felt like ron pearlman was about to walk out of a secret doorway and offer me some kaiju bone. it was honestly kinda scary, no one was really down there and most of what was being sold was meat and HUGE fish that they kept in a really really small tank, which i’m not really sure would be considered humane? but i guess they were there to get killed so. i’ll let peta deal with that one. 

i wanted to get a picture but the guys behind the stands were very big and also staring me down every time i passed. i decided they wouldn’t like the tourist girl taking pictures of their very compact fish.

anyway, i went back upstairs and bought some cookies, isler and puszedli. isler was a cookie covered with chocolate with jam in the middle and puszedli was a kind of gingerbread muffin type thing covered in a chocolate or vanilla frosting (chocolate was the best one for me). they were both really good but i gotta give a special shout-out to the isler. 

after that it was time to check in so i got changed out of my travel clothes and tried to figure out what to do. i decided to take one of those hop-on hop-off tours, which i typically try to avoid like the plague because i’m not a fan of blatantly shouting out to a place that “hey i’m a tourist!!” but, i had a limited time and those are good to see a city quickly

i rode around for a while. now consider these photos were all #shotonaniphone7 and taken on a moving vehicle so they're not great but.. its what i saw . budapest is pretty darn cool

i got intrigued by a set of stairs looked a bit italian, so i got off on the next stop, and that was definitely the right choice. i found myself at what i think was the bud castle (turns out budapest has two parts, buda and pest separated - i think - by the danube).

to get up you could either walk up a hill or pay to take a little tram car. i obviously chose the tram car, i can walk up a hill any day

all of the museums and the castle were closed by this point (it was around 6), so i couldn’t go in, but the views from up top were stunning

so i roamed around a bit

and started heading in the direction of the stairs that made me get off the bus in the first place. i wasn’t disappointed. it was a really cool little area, and felt really romantic. being there just kinda made you happy

and because i knew how to get back home from the liberty bridge, which was about two bridges down from where i was, i decided to walk back along the river (i took an evening stroll next to the danube!! how cool!) to the bridge to get back to my hostel. 

in my room i met a really nice girl from finland, she’ll come back into the story later, and got ready for bed for what i wanted to be an early morning so i could see as much as possible

of course this didn’t happen, i had a snorer in my room which kept me up so i slept through my alarm and didn’t end up leaving until 11. but it put me starting my day at lunchtime, and i’m not gonna complain about that! i found a small little restaurant called drum cafe who were known for their lángos and goulash. their menu was a trading card display book, which i loved, and i ordered from traditional beef goulash with rice

it was amazing. so so so good. i maybe ate it embarrassingly fast considering how much food there was but it was amazing, i didn’t want to stop eating it

after that i stopped in a small thrift shop i saw on the way there in hopes of buying the shirt that was on a mannequin in the window, but sadly the shirt was “only decoration.” i did get two shirts there anyway

after i decided to walk over to the house of terror, a museum about the facist and communist regimes that held power in hungary and honoring those who died at the hands of those in power.

on the walk there i found a little antique market going on in an alley 

i almost bought an old hungarian swimming medal because why not, but i decided against it. there were all kinds of cool little knick knacks, but i restrained myself and began to actually walk to the museum

pictures were not allowed in the museum (i snuck one of the entrance) so i don't have any (except for the one i snuck) but the museum was increibily interesting. its one thing learning in history class about stuff that went on in eastern europe in the 40s-80s but its another to actually BE in a building where people were kept and tortured, a building where the arrow cross party (a nazi party based in hungary) and the state protection authority (the soviet secret police force in hungary) actually operated. it was. very very solemn. reading about life in that time and seeing the faces of all those who were killed. you ended the museum tour in the basement where the cells were and it was terrifying in there. maybe didn’t help that i was completely alone in the cells at that point, but it was so silent and dark and i think absolutely perfect to demonstrate how horrifying the experience would have been to be one of those prisoners. the doors to the cells weren’t even barred, they were fully solid. you wouldn’t even be able to see outside if you were shut in. every cell was solitary confinement.

so i left the house of terror and decided it was time for something a bit lighter and headed to the széchenyi thermal bath

yep, its THAT yellow building that you see in everyone’s pictures when they go to budapest. it was really nice and relaxing, though i gotta say would probably be better with a group rather than alone. i did meet some people there, but not the same as being there with friends goofing off, so i’ll have to make a return trip

afterwards i decided i’d get on the hop-on hop-off bus again since the man the first time never actually took my ticket and got some REAL hungarian lángos on my way there (if you remember i had some at the easter market in prague) and OH MY GOD was it good. the dough being freshly deep fried makes ALL the difference oh my god. literally just handed it to me out of the frier. i got it with cheese again and honestly i wish i’d just gotten it plain because the cheese took away from the dough. so, so good. it is a lot though, so if you ever get one i recommend that you get it to share

i got back on the bus and road around a bit, i really just wanted to get a better view of the parliament building

i got it for a little bit! not long enough to get a picture because i sat on the wrong side of the bus, but damn that's a beautiful building

i rode until the stop closest to my hostel & got off so i could pack up my stuff. i had a 6 am flight (i just got back to bristol as i’m writing this) and i wanted to be sure i had everything for my 3 am departure time to the airport. while packing my roommate from finland came in & we started talking and she invited me out with her and another guy in the hostel to go to one of the ruin bars called szimpla kert.  i thought you know what, we’d be out till around 2:00, why not just stay awake till i need to leave for airport and have a little fun doing it. so i booked a minibus to take me from the hostel at 3 am with another girl at the hostel and we set off to this ruin bar and 

WOW

they were playing a movie on a huge screen outside??? there was a room with a piano so people could just play music and sing?? there were so many different roms with different vibes and it was absolutely amazing . i wish i could have stayed longer! it was what every little hipster bar in williamsburg (brooklyn) is trying to be and god now that i’ve been to this bar i don’t think i’m gonna be able to go to another bar ever again 

after a night filled with singing (i WAS hanging out with two singers) we headed back at two so i could grab my bag and meet the other girl to leave for the airport and i made it with no problems. 

was i incredibly tired by the time i got on the plane? absolutely! but i had a fantastic time with some really cool people. and with that i’m back in bristol and ready to have some dinner. so i guess closing remarks? plan but at the same time don’t. let there be some spontaneity because spontaneity caused some of the best parts of my trip. also, WALK EVERY WHERE (if you can)

thanks for reading!

audrey