#he also passed away but walt is determined to get as good as him until Barbara flies into his life.

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Ch. 70-76

I guess anything I say here is a spoiler, so yeah, this is “Heart of Dreams”, “Relics”, “Heart of Iron”, and the arc “Finest Hour”.  Oh, and “Lunatic Dawn”.   Gotta lotta ground to cover.    Treacherous ground.

Not a whole lot to say about Anderson’s death.  He tried to become a monster using one of the Holy Nails from the True Cross, and then Alucard defeated him anyway, once Seras gave him a little help and a reason to go on living.   Alucard was pretty upset about Anderson’s demise, but Anderson says a few soothing words, and reminds him that Al only became a vampire because he couldn’t stand being a human, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense for him to cry now.  

So yeah, as determined as Anderson was to kill Alucard, he’s a pretty good sport about losing this fight, and he seems to genuinely pity the man.   He wonders how long Alucard will go on living with his regrets, and Al replies “Until my expansive future shatters my expansive past.”  So, if we want to take that literally, I guess he’s trying to find redemption by being a good guy to make up for his years as a bad guy.   Well, he’s been a vampire for 523 years, and a servant of Hellsing for 101 of those years, so I guess maybe he figures if he trucks along for another 321 years that’d balance the scales?  

And maybe I’m finally starting to appreciate some of the complexities of Alucard’s character.   The Team Four Star Abridged series spent some time on his desire for redemption, but I couldn’t tell if it was based on the original material or something they came up with for their own version.   For instance, the Abridged!Alucard rejected the forgiveness offered by God himself, but later Anderson spoke of his desire for redemption and Alucard didn’t dispute that.    It seemed contradictory to me at the time, but the manga does seem to support that.    As Vlad Tepes, he refused to ask God for anything, preferring instead to fight and drive himself and his followers to the limits of endurance and decency as proof of their faith.   

I find that idea heretical, because it suggests that a person can “earn” God’s favor, or God’s forgiveness, or a place in heaven.    Arguably, Anderson tried to do the same thing, but I think he was coming more from a place of doing zealous deeds out of gratitude for the Lord’s grace, rather than trying to earn anything he didn’t already have.  

The difference with Alucard is that he seemed to be really wrongheaded about his faith, trying to use violence to become a good person.   Then it didn’t work, and he became a vampire, devoted entirely to his own selfish desires, and I guess he’s spent the 20th Century realizing that he’s back where he started, trying to fight his way to redemption, only now he has centuries of red in his ledger instead of mere decades.   

Oh, anyway, while this is going on, Integra takes a sword and stands it upright so it looks like a cross to mark Anderson’s death.   It’s like this quiet sign of respect.   I’m not sure whose sword that is, but it looks like the one Alucard was using in his Dracula persona.   

Anyway, fuck all that, because Walter finally shows up and stomps the ashes of Anderson just as everyone was having their final farewell with the guy.  Rude.

Young Walter just looks kind of stupid to me.  Why is he still wearing the monocle?  He’s trying to be 14 and 69 at the same time and failing at both.

Seras asks what Millennium did to him, but Walter makes it clear that this isn’t some brainwashing trope.   He’s doing this of his own free will.

He also doesn’t consider himself loyal to Millennium.    They turned him into a vampire, but he’s doing this for himself, and he’s only cooperating with them because their goals are in alignment.  

Yumiko Takagi tries to kill Walter for... Was she mad at him for stomping on Anderson’s remains?    I mean, Alucard’s the one who actually killed Anderson, so shouldn’t she be mad at that guy? 

It doesn’t matter, because Walt just slices her into pieces with his magic filaments.    Now Heinkel Wolfe wants revenge, because she was her long-time partner in assassin stuff.   The TFS Abridged series implied that they were lovers, too, which seemed authentic at the time, but I’m not sure there’s any confirmation to be found in the manga itself. 

But before she can take the shot, the Captain shows up and shoots Heinkel in the face.    Like, through one cheek  and out the other, and the only thing saving her from serious injury was that she happened to have her mouth open at the time.  

Side note: I caught myself referring to Heinkel as “him”, which frustrates me because I’ve known she was a woman for like five years now.    When I first watched the OVA, I was confused, becuase I could tell it was a female voice actor, but maybe that just meant he was really young, like with Schrodinger.   But the Hellsing Wiki set me straight, or so I thought.    I didn’t think I’d still be making this mistake. 

On the other hand, Yumiko sometimes looks a lot like Goemon from Lupin III, so her wearing a nun’s habit isn’t as heteronormative as it might seem.  I’m getting off-track.

You’d think this would be leading up to some big double-team on the Hellsing group, now that the Iscariots are out of the picture, but the Captain’s only stopping Heinkel so Walter can have a clear shot at Alucard.    That’s the sole reason Walter turned traitor, you see.   He wants to fight Alucard and win, and for the last 55 years they’ve been on the same side.  

But is that all it is?   I never got to read or watch “Hellsing: The Dawn”, the prequel manga Kouta Hirano created after Hellsing.  I’ve heard that it never got finished, but also an anime adaptation was released with the home video release of Hellsing Ultimate Episode VIII.  All I really know about it was that there was this time where Alucard and Walter were fighting the Nazis, and the Captain showed up, and Alucard ran away because he didn’t think he could beat that dude. Presumably, he left Walter to fend for himself?   But all three of them survived until 1999, so I’m not sure what the outcome of that was.   I always wondered if Walter held a grudge over that.   But maybe I’m reaching. 

There’s also a suggestion of professional jealousy.  Walter was a rockstar vampire hunter in his youth, but he’s been overshadowed by Alucard, who is--let’s face it-- a living legend.  This would be doubly true in the 90′s, when Integra reawakened Alucard, and Walter having to step back even further from the spotlight.  The only way for him to reclaim his former glory would be to challenge the greatest of all vampires and win.    He’d go down in history as a traitor, but at least he’d be cemented as the absolute best.  

Or... or, you can go with the TFS version, where Walter hints at his motives, only for Alucard to take the wind out of his sails and announce “because you wanna fuck me!”   And I love that theory more than any other explanation, because it just brings everything together a lot more neatly.   I guess you don’t need Walter to have had a crush on Alucard for 55 years, but it’s a lot more compelling than revenge or professional jealousy.    Those things have weight, sure, but they work better as distractions, the things Walter might admit to because they hide the deeper reason that he can’t bring himself to say out loud.   

And it’s not entirely rejected by the manga.  Alucard remarks on how much more beautiful Walter looked in his old age, compared to this treasonous knockoff vampire look he’s sporting now.   The last time he spoke this way, it was when he flirted with Queen Elizabeth II.   The next time he does it, it’ll be with Sir Integra when she’s in her early 50′s.

Speaking of QE2, she’s safe and sound, because the Secret Service evacuated her to a fortified location in Dover before Millennium attacked.   If things get really hairy, they’re prepared to send her to Canada, and if London can’t be secured, they’ll nuke the whole city, though the Queen is certain that Integra and Alucard will win the day.  The vampires acting as Millennium agents outside of London are being contained and destroyed, so things seem to be getting under some semblance of control.  

However, the Royal Order of Protestant Knights, also known as the “Round Table” is down to just three surviving members.   Integra’s in London, but here we have Rob Walsh and Hugh Irons, reflecting on the death of their fellow Round Tabler, Penwood.  

This whole scene struck me as a complete non sequitur when I first saw it in the anime.  Walter’s betrayal seemed to sudden and poorly explained that it felt like the author was just winging it by this point, and now we have these two dudes struggling to provide some justification for the twist.    But reading this manga in 2021, I find that it makes a lot more sense.    We’ve already seen tons of Britons in rather lofty positions, all willing to sell out their principles for a chance to become a vampire.   Walter is no different from any of them.   It’s just more personal when he does it because we actually know the guy.  

But as Walsh discusses the utter debacle of this Millennium invasion, he deduces what we’ve just learned back in London.   There must have been a traitor in their ranks, because that’s the only way Millennium could have made it this far.   I mean, they just flew a bunch of giant blimps full of rockets right into British airspace.   That only worked because they had traitors sabotaging the U.K.’s defenses and communications, and Hellsing was especially vulnerable at the same time.  

The only thing Walsh can’t figure out is who the traitor was, since it had to be someone at the Round Table, but they’re all dead now, except for Integra, Irons, and himself. 

But Irons fills in the missing pieces.   It doesn’t have to have been one of the Round Table’s members, but someone close to one of the members.   Years ago, Irons warned Walter about Richard Hellsing.   Irons knew that when Arthur died, Richard would try to make a play for the Hellsing estate.   But when Irons’ fears came to pass, Walter wasn’t there.   It’s like he wanted things to play out the way they did.  

But why would Walter want events to play out that way?   On her own, Integra had no choice but to unseal Alucard to defend herself, and she’s kept Alucard active ever since.   And now, lo and behold, Walter reveals that he turned traitor just so he could take on Alucard.   It’s like he arranged for all of this to happen years in advance.   But how many years?    Fifty-five, Irons wonders.   

It’s never explicitly confirmed, but Irons’ reasoning makes too much sense to ignore.    Earlier, the Major said that he decided back in ‘44 that Walter “Angel of Death” Dornez would have been a good “get” for his side.    Now, Irons is suggesting that Walter might have agreed in the same year.   So maybe Walter and the Major made a secret agreement even then.   It’s possible that they might have done it later, but why not in 1944?

I mean, the whole backstory here is that Millennium is a continuation of a secret Nazi Vampire project that Walter and Alucard destroyed in 1944.   Except they didn’t destroy it at all, which sure makes Walter and Al seem very bad at their jobs, unless Walter let them escape and covered it up.

Meanwhile, the Captain tosses a first aid kit to Heinkel, kind of like he’s saying that he doesn’t want to kill Heinkel, but he can’t let her interfere either.   We’ll talk about the Captain later.

As for Alucard vs. Walter, Al wants to check with Integra before he goes through with it.   He asks for orders, repeating his big speech from when he killed all those cops in Brazil.    Yeah, Walter’s a traitor, but he’s been a close mentor and advisor to Integra for all these years.   Does she really want Alucard to killerize his ass?

Yes, she does.   If Walter stands against them, then he’s the enemy, and Integra has already ordered Alucard to destroy the enemy, no matter who (snif!) they may be.  Integra doesn’t relish this command, but she refuses to compromise over sentimental feelings.

Man, fuck you, Walter.  

Then the Major lands his airship near the battlefield and invites Integra to come aboard and fight all of his remaining guys.    Alucard orders Seras to join her while he deals with Walter.   I can appreciate Seras’ concern here, because the last time she watched Alucard fight alone, he took a flaming bayonet to the face.   She probably doesn’t care for Integra and Alucard splitting up like this.

Before she goes, she thanks Walter for all of his support, which disarms Walter for just a moment.   Man, fuck you, Walter.   Seras is so nice and grateful and polite and cool and you just go right ahead with your 55-years-in-the-making Nazi Vampire Jilted Lover scheme.  Fuck you, Walter.   You don’t deserve to be in Seras’ life.

So the gals go on board the airship and Schrodinger’s there and Integra just shoots him right between the eyes without bothering to slow down.    This is maybe my favorite Integra moment in this thing.    I sort of wish Kouta Hirano had done a spin-off of Integra and Seras doing cool shit like this for 30 years.

Alucard taunts Walter with the fact that he no longer gets to be a part of Inegra or Seras’ lives anymore.   It sounds kind of petty, but when you think about it, it’s a pretty sick burn.    Walter may have been planning this for 55 years, but he still had to live that double life, and it’s not like he can just say he was faking it the entire time.  

So they fight.   Walter’s magic wire powers seem to be amplified, either because of his restored youth or maybe the boost offered by vampire powers, or maybe he’s always been this strong but now he no longer needs to hold back anymore.  For instance, he can make mesh screens with his wires to deflect Alucard’s bullets.   And when Alucard summons that dog creature he used to dispatch Luke Valentine....

... Walter just bisects it with a flick of the wrist.   You really begin to see why he was “The Angel of Death” back in his heyday.  

I never understood what this dog familiar was supposed to be.   Walter refers to the Hound of the Baskervilles, but as far as I know that’s just a legend confined to the Sherlock Holmes novel of the same name.   But apparently that concept was based upon “black dog” folklore of the same region.  There’s a whole laundry list of “black dog” apparitions in Britain alone.   Black Shuck, Padfoot, Hairy Jack, Bizarro Snoopy, and so on.   So I’m not sure if Hirano is saying that Alucard was the source of these legends, or if they were all based on a single creature which Alucard eventually defeated and absorbed into himself.   

Al tries to use the Jackal to kill Walter, but that’s kind of stupid, since Walter designed the gun in the first place.   In the anime, I thought Walter somehow triggered a bomb he had planted inside it, but maybe he used his wires to make this happen.   It doesn’t really matter, because we already saw that the Casull was useless against Walter’s defenses, and not because it had smaller ammunition.  

Then Luke Valentine emerges from the black dog’s body.   This part never made any sense to me, but I loved how the Major recognized him, but barely.  “Oh yeah, it’s that guy from Volume 2!    The guy with the brother.”

The doctor suggests that when the dog was killed, this allowed Luke to reassert himself from inside the dog.   Something about a “control ratio”, whatever that is.  Like, he was absorbed into the dog’s mass, but now that the dog is no longer conscious, he can think for himself again.    Notably, only half of Luke actually makes it out .   It’s like he’s half-Luke, half dead dog monster. 

But before he can do anything else, Walter puts his wires into Luke and starts controlling him like a puppet, mostly so he can use the dog half to attack Alucard.

Alucard seems more impressed than threatened.   Keep in mind, Walter was doing pretty damn well against him early on.   You’ll notice Alucard’s missing his right arm along with one of his guns.   This is better than Anderson managed to do.   So why does Walter even need this Luke-dog puppet thing in the first place?

Well, it’s because Walter’s body is giving out on him.   Earlier, when the Doctor was performing the procedure to turn Walter into a vampire, he spoke about how rushed the operation was.  I mean, he had to finish the whole thing in one night, after all.   And Walter’s a lot more powerful than Dandyman, whom the Doctor considered his finest artificial vampire work.    So maybe Walter’s just too powerful for this, and he can’t sustain this form.   The Luke-dog-thing is just to keep Alucard busy while he coughs up blood.

The Major sees this development, and likens Walter to a high stakes gambler who’s mortgaged everything for a single hand at a high stakes table.   Walter’s risked everything just to tangle with Alucard, and it still isn’t enough.

Alucard does manage to finish off the dog-Luke thing, and this sets him up for Walter’s next attack, and then he goes to finish him off, so things seem to be going Walter’s way...

But Alucard used a decoy, disguising Luke’s severed torso as his own, all so he could sucker-punch Walter in the face.   As it turns out, Walter’s physical breakdown is making him younger, which amuses Al to no end.

So Alucard follow suits and assumes the form he once used when they fought the Nazis in 1944.   Yeah, say hello to “Girlycard”.   I’m not sure why Alucard looked like a 14-year-old girl during World War II.   I’ve heard this form described as a Japanese 14-year-old girl, and I can’t dispute it, but it also makes Girlycard seem even more random somehow.   

I mean, I guess the idea here was for Walter and Alucard to be able to move inconspicuously through enemy territory.  No one would suspect a couple of kids until it was too late.   I’m imagining a similar scenario to the ones presented in “Cross Fire”.   Heinkel and Yumi would play innocent bystanders, then whip out their guns and swords and go ham on the bad guys.    Knowing Hirano’s style, maybe Girlycard and Young Walter operated the same way.  

And this further supports the Walter-had-an-unrequited-crush-on-Alucard theory.   He might have understood that Girlycard was a disguise.  On an intellectual level he might have known, but maybe he still carried a torch, and told himself that there was some way that they could be together.   Was he just in love with this disguise, or does he love the real thing?  Alucard says that he told Walter the truth decades ago, and claims that this is the reason Walter turned traitor, so yeah, it sure feels like Walter couldn’t handle Alucard’s true nature, one way or another.   

I mean, let’s assume that this isn’t just about Alucard not being a cute girl.  Maybe Walter fell in love with Alucard in all his forms, whatever that means for his sexuality.    The bigger issue is that Alucard’s a vampire, and he’s just fundamentally different from Walter, and maybe that was the problem all along.   It’s interesting to think about, but the point here would be that there was some kind of problem, and Walter couldn’t let it go.

Meanwhile, Seras and Integra are busy looking like total BMFs.   Just HBIC’s.   What’s better than this?   Two gals bein’ pals.   

Hell yeah!

Bad ass!

The vampires on board this airship are happy to meet their doom, and Integra recalls what her father once told her about how vampires want to die on their own terms.   Seras doesn’t get it, because if they want to die so badly, they could have just died in the war they were already in fifty-odd years ago.  

So the Major gets on the PA system and explains to her that they want more than just a glorious death.   They want bigger, better, more perfect battlefield, so as to make their deaths as meaningful as possible.  That’s why I don’t understand that airship captain from a while back.   Everyone else in Millennium seemed to understand that they weren’t necessarily fighting to win.   Britain is prepared to nuke London if they have to, so it’s hard to imagine anyone in Millennium surviving past today, even if they won.  

Anyway, as the Major explains all of this, the Captain appears before the gals.  It looks like he’s here to stop them, or is he?

[forever-rogue]

Disappear Here - What Comes After

A/N: Hi friends! So here is the very much requested sequel to Disappear Here. I had a lot of fun writing of it, and I love these idiots so much, and you guys did too, which just warmed my heart so much. I hope you enjoy, and feedback and comments are always welcome! Surprise, I guess! PS - I am also writing an alternative ending, which is coming soon! 

Pairing:  Javier Peña x Reader

Word Count: 5.5k

Warning: some language and violence

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4

ALTERNATIVE ENDING

MASTERLIST

»»————-　♡　————-««

Mexico was hot. Muggy. Dangerous. But it was yours. There was no one to compete with, no one to impress, no one to prove a point to.

No, rather it was much better and fresh; your current partner and yourself had arrived at the same time and set up shop under the close supervision of Walt Breslin and Jaime Kuykendall. And it had worked. For once in your life, at least at that time, everything seemed to fall into place without a hitch. It had worried you at the beginning, surely something was bound to go wrong. Things couldn’t be this easy, right?

But a year in and everything was cherries, for the most part. Everything was fine, normal; sometimes you were almost able to convince yourself that you had a typical job just everyone else. Until, of course, the occasional bloodshed and capture of a stash of narcotics.

 But...no major hiccups. It was quiet, almost too quiet, and you felt like something was going to break soon. You knew all too well that there was only so much build up before the snap and all hell broke loose. But you pushed that all out of your mind. Why worry about something that may or may not happen? You’d just have to hope that things continued on their current trajectory. Good begets good, right?

“Y/N? Hello, earth to Y/N,” you blinked a few times as you pulled your attention out of your thoughts and back into reality. You were still clutching your cup of coffee, paused halfway to your mouth. Sighing, you set it back down and turned your attention to your current partner, Dan. He was looking at you with an expectant expression on his features, clearly having just asked something, “what do you think?”

“What do I think?” you repeated and he let out a long sigh, but there was an amused expression on his face nonetheless. He’d quickly become your best friend in the foreign county, which was not a surprise since the two of you knew no one else there besides yourselves and your supervisors. The other friends you had acquired had learned to trust you slowly, which didn’t not come as much of a shocker. But with Dan, it was never forced, or awkward, you easily fell into a natural rapport, similar to that of a brother and sister.

“You haven’t heard a single word I’ve said, have you?” he teased and you were determined to prove him wrong. You gave him a firm smile and he just raised an eyebrow.

“I have,” you lied, “and I think we should do it.”

He almost burst out in laughter as you realized you might provided the very incorrect response. Shit. Maybe you should have tried harder to pay attention.

“So what you’re telling me is that you agree with Walt that we should just storm the warehouse,” yup, you had definitely agreed to the wrong thing. While you and Dan were both headstrong and tended to rush into things, just going in somewhere blindly was practical suicide and not either of your styles. He was thorough and calculating, much like you were. Everything was a risk, but with careful planning, things usually went well.

“Ugh….yes?” you tried to suppress the laugh that was bubbling up, but it was hard to keep yourself together. You just didn’t want to give in and give him the satisfaction at that moment. He laughed as well, shaking his head at you.

“Alright, Agent L/N,” he put on a serious tone and gave you a firm nod, “we go in guns blazing-”

“Wait!” you almost shouted at him, eyes wide, “it appears I’ve suffered a change of heart. Perhaps a subtle infiltration after scoping the warehouse out will work…”

“Hmm,” he mused as he slid a portfolio over towards you, “that sounds more like the Y/N I know and love. So you weren’t paying attention at all…”

“I was…I was just…momentarily distracted,” you tried to shrug it off and hoped he wouldn’t pry any further. He was good at reading you, but maybe this time he’d realize it wasn’t anything you wanted to discuss.

Your hope was fruitless.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as you fiddled with the corner of the portfolio, eyes refusing to meet his. You just your head, “you’ve been distracted lately. Where do you go?”

You stilled at the words as time seemed to freeze. Those words were familiar, oh so familiar. Except last time you were on the other end of them. You looked at him and swallowed the lump in your throat, “what do you mean? I’m here, right here, all the time.”

“I think you know what I mean,” he insisted and you felt your heart drop, “your body is here but where does your head go?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about-”

“If you’re not completely focused or all in, anything we do can be comprised. This is a dangerous job, you know that. I want you to stay safe,” he leaned across the table and gave your hand a small squeeze. You knew he meant well, that he cared, but that knowledge didn’t relieve the moment. How could you politely ask him to stop without being too rude?

“Nothing is wrong,” you tried your best to reassure him, sure your smile was probably too fake and strained, “I’m just tired. But I promise nothing is wrong.”

“Tired,” he didn’t believe you for you a second. You didn’t even know what to do besides telling him the truth, which was probably going to be a long and arduous task, one you didn’t want to get into.

“Yes,” you were short and firm in your response as you pushed your chair back and stood up. Rubbing a hand over your face, you grabbed the file and clutched it tightly to your chest, “I’m going to head out for the day. I’ll go over this tonight and we can come with a plan tomorrow.”

“Y/N-”

“I…I’m sorry, I have to go,” you didn’t even let him finish as you hastily grabbed your things off of your desk and headed towards the door to your shared office. Something had snapped suddenly, just as you had anticipated something would. You just hadn’t expected it to be you.

You heard him calling after you in your rush to leave, but you ignored him, apologizing to all the unsuspecting passersby that you rammed into. Everything had blurred and you only had tunnel vision, and the door out of the embassy was the end goal.

When you burst out into the street, the fresh was a welcome relief. You bent over and tried to catch your breath, cursing yourself for forgetting that you had accepted a ride from Dan that morning. You’d either have to swallow your pride and go back inside and play off what had happened, try and get a cab in the busy traffic, or walk home. It was a few miles, but your pride was much too high to go and grovel, and you were short on cash and luck, so you decided to take your chances and walk home. If you had a singular goal, hopefully your mind wouldn’t wander too much. You didn’t dare let it stray far. Not again.

But it was no use.

Despite your best efforts, he still invaded your mind; your every thought and feeling. He’d been on your mind a lot lately. No matter how much you tried to suppress the memories, they kept bubbling up in your mind; how he tasted, how he touched you, how he kissed you, how he used to tell you that he loved you. Everything.

It had been 389 days since you’d last seen Javier Peña.

Not that you were keeping count...not in a physical place, but mentally you marked down each day that passed.

And he still managed to invade all of your senses no matter how hard you’d trying erasing him from every part of your life.

You were so wrapped up in your own thoughts, too far gone to pay attention. You were on autopilot, so deeply entangled in your thoughts that you completely the fact that someone had been following you. 

Not until they were right behind you and the sound of stomping footsteps reached your ears. Turning on your heels, you tensed up at the sight of the large man looming over you and pointing a gun directly at your face. Dropping everything you in your arms from the sheer shock, your instincts took over and reached for the pistol in the back of your waistband. But he easily had the drop on you and the gun was kicked from your hand. The kick was hard and you clutched your sore hand immediately, trying to figure out what to do. 

You hissed at the pain before holding your hands in surrender. You weren’t giving up, but were trying to quickly come up with a plan. If managed to somehow gain trust and he went easy on you, you could break away and fight for your freedom.

But before you could react or anything else, the loud pop of a gun reached your ears and the man that had been formerly threatening you dropped to the ground, right at your feet. Your hands flew to your face in horror as you watched flow from his skull onto the hot concrete, gun discarded and a look of terror permanently etched on his face. Your stomach twisted as you looked around to see where the shot could have some from. But you couldn’t anyone on the quiet street. No one was panicking, hell, no one was even around. Despite your best efforts, you could spy no one.

Gathering your things off the ground quietly, you shoved everything in your bag and retrieved your discard pistol off the ground. You prayed that it was a good sign that no one was nearby, hopefully that meant this couldn’t be traced back to you. Not that you had done anything wrong, but you knew how the system worked, and you wanted to avoid it all costs. Taking one last glance around, eyes wide and wild, you figured it was safe to leave. You had no clue who this man was, or what he wanted, but you figured it couldn’t be anything good. No one would be targeting you without knowing who you were; he had to know.

Almost tripping over your own feet in haste, you ran, almost sprinted, the rest of the way home. It was only a few more blocks, but by the time you reached the door to your apartment, your lungs felt like they were on fire, and the stitch in your side felt like it was tearing your body apart. Dripping in sweat, you were sure you were a sight and if any of your neighbors saw you they might have thought you had just run some kind of marathon. But at least you were home, safe, at least as safe as you could get in the middle of this mess.

Everything seemed to catch up with you at once and your vision ran blurry, and your stomach churned; before you could stop anything from happening, the entire contents of your breakfast and lunch came up, and you grabbed the nearby planter and upchucked into it. Once you were done, you slid to the floor, worn out, mentally and physically, pushing the planter as far away as possible, wiping your mouth with the the sleeve of your blouse.

Casting a small grimace at the flowers, you felt bad; they had been beautiful but were now ruined. Not that you could help it. It was a totally unexpected accident. Hopefully the kind woman who lived at the end of the hall and tended to the small garden and all the plants wouldn’t be mad, or figure out it was you. She was always kind, making sure you were taken care of, and you didn’t want to ruin all of that. You reached up and tried to unlocked your front door from the floor, doing the best thing to use the key and ending up fumbling with the lock for more than a few minutes.

A sigh of relief escaped your lips as you finally managed to get it open, and dragged yourself inside, kicking the door shut again and locking it immediately, making sure everything was well sealed. Your mind was racing as you tried to figure out what to do; the rational part of your brain told you to call the embassy then and there and tell Dan or Walt what had happened. They would have been all over it within seconds. But you didn’t even know what to tell them really; you barely even know what happened, it was over so fast. How would it sound if you just called and said ‘hey, a man just tried to attack me and someone else killed him and I just ran home’?

Instead, you managed to pick yourself up on shaky legs and tossed everything onto the counter, before dragging yourself to the bathroom. Perhaps a shower would be able to help calm you down; at least to scrub away the remainder of the strange occurrence. You turned the water up as high as possible before hastily discarding your clothes onto the cool tile of the floor and step in, letting the stream hit your tired body.

You stood there for a long time, not moving, not bothering to do anything but let the water run down your skin. It was scalding, probably too hot to be a good idea, but it was all you could focus on. If your mind focused on the feeling of the hot water, it couldn’t think about anything else. You definitely weren’t ready to rethink and relive the events of the afternoon. 

You wanted those memories as far gone as possible. You’d been working in the field for some time now, getting used to the violence and horrors that you did witness; but you never had a man fall dead at your feet. That was a whole different sight altogether; already burned into your mind, and you would no doubt have nightmares about it.

Only once the water had run lukewarm did you even make a move to clean your body. You made quick work of washing your hair and scrubbing your skin until was raw and clean. When it turned ice cold, you finally stepped out and wrapped yourself up in a towel, traversing to your bedroom and collapsing on your bed. You didn’t even bother to grab clean clothes or pull on pajamas before slipping under the covers. The sweet pull of sleep had started when you were standing under the cascade of hot water, and you while you were worried about nightmares, you were happy to at least try sleeping. Maybe your mind would calm down.

You didn’t have much time to think about any of that because you were lost to the land of sleep before you knew it. Witnessing an unintended murder had that affect, you supposed.

»»————-　♡　————-««

The next morning, you woke up in a cold sweat, unrested and just as unsettled as the evening before. It was strange, but nothing felt real in the moment. It was all a bad play and you were in the starring role. But you couldn’t let this keep you from going to work, not if you wanted to keep up a normal facade. They were likely already suspicious after your rapid departure from yesterday. So much for keeping a low profile.

“What’s up with you?” Dan was cheery and he looked well rested, like he had not a care in the world. You cursed him silently. Why hadn’t this happened to him? He probably would have handled it much better. 

You remained silent as you put your things down and your desk, flopping into your squeaky desk chair and letting out a long sigh. Before you knew, Dan was at the other side of your desk and set a pipping cup of weak cafeteria coffee in front of you. You gave it a dismal look, but saw that he had prepared just how you liked; he was making an effort at least.

“Truce?” he asked quietly as you picked up the coffee and took a sip, savoring the weak flavor of the liquid in your mouth. It was better than nothing for now. You looked up at him and nodded slowly, “I’m sorry about yesterday. I shouldn’t have pushed you like that. I just...you’re my partner and I want to make sure you’re safe. Okay?”

“Okay,” a small smile spread across your lips at his kindness. You could tell he was just being honest, which caused you to pause for a moment as you wrestled with whether or not to tell him what had happened yesterday. You should have...but just couldn’t bring yourself to do it. What if it was all for naught? You didn’t want to worry him unnecessarily, there was enough of that going around anyway, “truce. How about later we go and find some better coffee than this shitty excuse?”

“Deal.”

It was clear denial and deflection, but it was all you could muster up at the moment. it was something anyway. Maybe, once you were back in your right mindset, you’d tell him. But for now you preferred to keep everything at bay, pushed to the fair recesses of your mind.

As you had been only a few other times in life, you were once again thankful to be stuck doing mind numbing, menial paperwork for the day.

You were glad to had driven to work that day, not wanting a repeat of what had happened the previous day to occur again. Not that you just expected it would...that surely had to be a fluke. Something that was never going to happen again...or so you hoped.

As soon as you got home, you slipped inside and made sure everything was secure before grabbing a bottle of cold white wine from the near empty fridge. You’d have to make sure yourself face the world and go to the market soon and restock on groceries. But that was a problem for future you.

You eyed the cupboard and decided against it, instead quickly uncorking the bottle and taking a large swig from it. When you swallowed that down, you followed it up with a few more gulps, finishing almost half the bottle in rapid succession.

Knowing you’d need something in your stomach to avoid a headache or some form of handover, you were about to settle the bottle down on the counter when a loud knock came at your door. It startled you so much, the bottle totally missed the counter and ended up falling to the floor and shattered into a million pieces. Shit.

Cursing yourself and whoever was at the door, you hopped around the mess and scurried to your bag where you had your trusty gun stashed. Maybe it was all overreaction, but you weren’t expecting any visitors and weren’t about to take any chances. But then again, what kind of intruder would take the time to knock? Either way, you’d rather act first and apologize later, than take the risk.

You slowly made your way to the door as the knocking continued. Using the peephole proved to be unhelpful and you couldn’t see anything through it. Fuck.

Without thinking, you threw open the door and help up the gun, ready to defend yourself with whatever you were faced with.

“Jesus Christ! Were you going to shoot me!?”

You lowered your gun at the familiar voice, chest rising and falling rapidly as you tried to make sense of everything. That voice, you knew that voice so well; but you just never thought you’d hear it again. Slowly looking up, you found those damned velvet honeyed eyes starting back at you.

“Javi?” your voice cracked as you looked at the man in question starting back at you. The same man that had broken you 390 days earlier. He looked the same, but different. Perhaps it was just you that was different. But everything was different.

“Y/N-”

“I told you I never wanted to see you again,” anger immediately flowed through your body. How dare he? You were ready to slam the door in his face and shut him out again. It was like he could read your mind, like he knew he had been occupying everything single one of your thoughts lately and decided to make himself known. But you couldn’t deal with him again. Not now. Probably not ever, “so leave.”

“Y/N,” there was a difficult tone to read in his voice as he put his foot in the doorway to prevent you from closing it completely, “please. I can’t leave. Not without telling you...I...the way things ended, I can’t leave things like that.”

“I have nothing left to say to you,” you insisted, rolling your eyes in a defensive manner. You couldn’t let him see you weak, vulnerable, and go back to him with open arms. He had hurt you in the worst way possible. But here you were, a part of you insanely happy to see his beautiful face again. 

“I have things I need to say to you. I can’t not say them,” he was pleading with you now, and for some reason, the emotional part of your brain took over and you slowly opened the back up, sighing as you walked away and waited for him to follow.

“Speak,” you told him, removing the magazine from the gun and throwing them both back into your bag, “you’ve got ten minutes.”

“What if takes longer?” 

“Then I guess you’re out of luck,” you shrugged as you leaned against the counter and waited for him to speak.

“Y/N...” he ran his hands over his tired face as he tried to figure out where to begin. He had all of this planned out, a whole big speech, but it somehow was going exactly the opposite. Everything he had thought of was going out the window and his mind was blank. He wasn’t exactly sure of how you were going to react, but for some reason, he expected a little more than this. But somehow, seeing your face and hearing your voice again, reminded him exactly of how badly he had fucked up, “I’m sorry. First and foremost, I am so sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” you almost laughed with bitterness, “it took you over a year to figure out to say that? I gave up everything for you, and you had no problem tearing it all down and then you just come back and say I’m sorry?”

“I know what I did was wrong,” he leaned against the counter directly across from you and let out a long breath. He was wringing his hands nervously as he seemed to be looking anywhere but your eyes. He didn’t think he could stand if there was hate in them. But he knew you weren’t capable of that; your heart was too kind and pure to ever truly hate anyone. Even if he did deserve it, “and I never should have done it. I regretted it at the time and every single day since you left.”

“Did you regret it when you’d come into my bed after you fucked your informants? Did you think of them when you were fucking me?” all the words that had been built up for all this time were bubbling to the surface suddenly, and there was prickling at the back of your eyes despite how hard you to tried to keep it together.

“I never thought of anyone but you,” he said quietly, “and I regretted it as soon as I started...”

“Then why the fuck did you do it?” you wished you were stronger, that you could yell and be mad and tell him to curl up and die in a hole or under the hot Mexican sun, but you couldn’t. Instead, you trained your eyes on the floor, counting every single piece of broken glass from your forgotten wine as you tried not to cry. But you didn’t hate him, couldn’t hate him. Truth was, at your core, you’d never stopped loving him, “I-I asked you for one thing, Javi. And that’s the very thing you did. Why? Why? I thought you loved me...”

“I did love you, baby, I still love you,” he thought about reaching out and pulling you into his arms but he stopped himself; he wasn’t sure if he could take that kind of rejection, “I have always loved you.”

“Then why did you do it?” a few tears had run down your cheeks at his words, but you quickly wiped them away, refusing to let them linger. His heart broke at your teary voice,”why?”

“I was scared,” he admitted after a long bout of silence as your eyes finally met his. His dark eyes were glossy as he gave you a pained look, “so scared.”

“Scared?”

“Scared because I never felt the way I feel about you about anyone else before,” he confessed softly, and you couldn’t deny the butterflies that were erupting in your stomach, “I’d never felt so strongly, never loved someone so much before. It was all I could think about. And it scared me to death. So I tried to convince myself in other ways that it wasn’t true, that it wasn’t love. It was easier for me turn to what I knew, then to...just admit that I was in love with you. It was never my thing before, especially not after the first with Lorraine...I didn’t know how to deal.”

“Why would being in love with me scare you?” your question was quiet, barely above a whisper as the tension in the air grew thicker and thicker, “am that I repulsive to you?”

“No,” it was immediate and firm, “never. Do you now what’ it’s like to be loved by you? Someone who is much too good for me, someone so smart, kind, beautiful, lovely? Someone who I absolutely do not deserve? I wondered everyday why someone like you would love me. Surely, you’re much too good for me, and you could do so much better than me. But you still chose me, you loved me. And I fucked it up because I was an idiot and I was scared. And it cost me the best damn thing in my life. Nothing’s been the same since you left. Nothing.”

You remained silent for a long time, letting his words wash over you. It was hard to hear, but a part of your heart felt like it was finally healed now. Like you’d gotten the resolution and closure you deserved. Even if you didn’t agree with his logic, or how he’d handled things, at least you knew now. And he’d been honest; you could tell by the way this all seemed to tear him apart that he was being truthful with you. 

“You’re an idiot, Javier Peña,” you straightened up and wiped away the drying tear tracks, “truly. But you’re wrong, you know.”

“Oh?”

“You weren’t just loved by me then, back before I left,” you decided that you might as well lay it all out now. He was honest with you and deserved that much back at least, “you’ve always been loved by me. Even now, even after I left. I never stopped.”

“You probably should have,” he teased with a small chuckle before the two of shared a laugh. It almost felt the same like it used, warm and familiar, “a horrible decision, really.”

“I know,” you shrugged your shoulders, “but I’ve never been known to make the best decisions. Besides, you don’t chose who you love...it just happens.”

“How lucky I am, “ he mused quietly, “to be loved by you.”

“I just...yeah...Javi, how did you even find me?” you were curious...not that it was probably that hard to track down another DEA agent, but you still wondered. He’d come from Colombia all the way to Mexico...for you. 

“It wasn’t hard,” he admitted with a sheepish grin, “there’s only one embassy here in Mexico. And then finding you wasn’t too hard. I’ve been around a little while.”

“What?!” your heart was doing all sorts of flips in your chest. 

“I wasn’t going to come at first, at least not to talk to you,” your whole mind was running wild with questions as you looked him with a confused expression, “I just…I had to make sure you were safe…because I can’t be the one to protect you anymore. I just had to know for myself that you were okay.”

“I don’t understand…” you looked at him as he waited for you to put two and two together, “you’ve just been here…watching me…”

“Yes.”

“It was you,” it finally clicked. The reason you were safe, the reason you were alive, was because of Javi. He’d been the one who had gotten the drop on the man that had come after you the day before, “the man yesterday...you killed him.”

“Yes,” he nodded, “I saw him and I couldn’t just let him do something to you-”

“Why didn’t you just say it was you then and there?”

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted to see me,” he shrugged, “I followed you home and made sure you were okay. Safe anyway...I know it must have been hard, what happened.”

“What changed today?” your voice was shaky and every part of your body was screaming at you to just grab him and hold him.

“I had to see you.”

“After all this time?”

“Always,” he reassured, “you’ve been on my mind every single day. And even if you didn’t want to see or to talk to me, I had to come and say sorry. I know it probably doesn’t mean much, but I had to at least get it out.”

“Oh,” fuck. You hadn’t expected this in a million years. Suddenly all the old feelings bubbled up inside you, feelings you had tried so hard to repress. They’d never left, just been ignored. But now? You were sure of nothing. All the rules were out the window.

“Yeah,” he scratched the back of neck awkwardly as an air of confusion hung around you thickly. What now?

Javi moved from his place against the counter and started to head out towards the door. You didn’t move to stop him.

“Well, I guess my ten minutes is up,” his hand was on the door and he opened it slowly with a loud creak. Your stomach was in knots as you debated what to do, “thank you for listening. I know this doesn’t make anything better or change anything, but I just had to tell you. I’m sorry, amor, for everything.”

He gave you a last quick glance before walking out and closing the door quietly behind him. You let out a long sigh, listening to his retreating footsteps for a few moments before turning back to the long forgotten mess on the kitchen floor.

You picked up a few pieces, tossing them absentmindedly onto the worn tile of the counter top. Then it hit you - revelation.

Jumping to your feet, you ran to the door and flung it open, popping out of your apartment and booking it out of the building. It was getting dark now, but you could still make out Javi’s retreating back.

“Javi!” you kicked off your work heels so you could easily run. He either didn’t hear you or didn’t care, but it didn’t stop you from running after him, “Javi!”

Just before you reached him, he turned on his heel, a surprised but soft expression on his face. You stopped and almost rammed into him, trying to catch your breath, “Y/N? What’s wrong?”

“I…” where did you start? You still had a million things you wanted to say, a million things you still needed to hash out, but you couldn’t just let him walk away, “don’t go.”

“What?”

“I love you,” you spit out as he took a step closer and left very little distance between your bodies, “and you’re an idiot and I’m still mad, so mad, at you, but I can’t just let you go. Not again. Don’t go. Not like this.”

Only a few moments passed before Javi put his hands on the sides of your face. He trailed a few fingers over your cheek, the familiar feeling warming his soul. A grin crossed his face before he crashed his lips onto yours, and you wrapped your arms around his neck. It was suddenly like no time had passed. You were safe again; you were home.

Javi placed a hand on your waist and held you as close as possible. For a moment he wasn’t sure if this was real or a beautiful dream. But the little moan that spilled from your lips reminded him that this was real, very real.

“God, I’ve missed you,” he closed his eyes and rested his forehead against yours. You still felt the same, smelled the same, tasted the same. But better. Because he finally realized just how madly in love he was with you.

“I’ve missed you too,” you sighed in content. The moment was perfect; back in your lover’s arms after all this time.

“I owe you so much,” he whispered as he pressed a few soft, featherlight kisses to your lips and cheeks, “I’m not perfect, by any means, you know this, but I want to try and make it up to you. I really do…if you’ll have me.”

“You came all this way just to apologize to me?

"Yes…”

“You’re an idiot, Javier Peña. Truly,” you kissed the tip of his nose that you adored so much, “but you have me. All of me. You always have.”

“Does that mean that you’re willing to try this again?”

“Only if you never do anything like what happened in the past again,” you cradled the side of his face, “because if you ever do that anything like again, I will chop your dick off and feed it to the wolves.”

“That’s only fair,” he agreed, “I love you, Y/N. Truly, completely, you and only you.”

“And I you,” you let him wrapped his arms around you and hold you tightly. You rested your head against his chest, listening to the heartbeat that had lulled you do many times, “come back home with me?”

He nodded as he reached down and picked you up and you wrapped your legs around his waist,  as he started to head back to your apartment. You let your head drop on his shoulder and relaxed, “so about this new partner of yours..this Dan guy-”

“Javi, are you jealous?”

“What!? Of that guy?”

“You totally are! You’re jealous of Dan!”

“Never. He seems like a little dork that follows you around like a puppy dog-”

“You’re jealous,” you giggled as kissed his neck, which was your biggest weakness of all, always had been and always would be, “you have nothing to be jealous of.”

“Promise?”

“Promise,” you reassured, “I’ve missed you, Javi. Please don’t ever leave me.”

“Never,” he promised firmly. Something in your bones told you he meant it. This was it, this was everything, “never.”

»»————-　♡　————-««

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[calliecat93]

Callie’s Disney Princess Retrospective: The Little Mermaid

(Snow White) (Cinderella) (Sleeping Beauty)

By the time of 1989, The Walt Disney Company was in it’s Dark Age. Walt had passed, the Nine Old Men were retiring, and their films were viewed as jokes. The Dark Age tends to get what I feel is an overly harsh reputation, but that’s not what we’re here for. The cold hard truth is Disney was a shadow of its former self. Their films just weren’t getting the same praise as they once did, and now with Don Bluth gaining success, with films like An American Tale and The Land Before Time, they weren’t even the top studio anymore. Their lowest point was the colossal failure of The Black Cauldron and while films like The Great Mouse Detective earned some praise, it was just never enough. They’d start getting some steam with Who Framed Roger Rabbit? but considering that they commissioned Richard William’s studio in England over Disney’s own animation studio, it seemed that even the company itself was losing faith in their own talents.

That all changed, however, with the release of their 28th animated feature. This would be the film that changed everything. It brought Disney back into prominence after years of being laughing stocks. It would enter the animation medium into its Renaissance, a time still fondly remembered by many. And for the purposes of this series, it is the film that both resurrected and revitalized the Disney Princess franchise. All of this would be due to 1989’s The Little Mermaid.

Overview

Ariel is a mermaid, but she dreams of one day being able to be part of the human world. Always collecting whatever surface world treasures she can find, to her father’s disapproval, Ariel one day stumbles upon a ship celebrating the birthday of the handsome Prince Eric. It’s love at first sight, but as he is a human, her father King Triton reacts negatively. Hurt, Ariel goes to the sea witch Ursula, who grants her human legs at the cost of her voice. To remain human, Ariel has three days to get Eric to fall in love with her and kiss her. But Ursula has her own wicked plans for Ariel, plans that will endanger both land and sea. Will Ariel be able to get Eric to fall in love with her and become part of his world? Or will Ursula triumph?

Review

I have been waiting for this day for SO LONG. Do you want to know why I decided to do this series, to begin with? Aside from 2020 driving me to insanity? It’s because while the complaints against the Disney Princesses in general have frustrated me for as long as I can remember, there were two in particular that always made my blood boil because they made no sense. Cinderella was the first one, which I already covered. The other? Ariel. I think you all know what I’m referring to here, but let’s put a pin in it for now. We have a LOT to discuss before we get to analyzing Ariel herself. First, let's go over the film.

The film is based on the story of the same name by Hans Christian Anderson. Walt himself had actually planned it long before, but sadly was never able to make it a reality. When the directors pitched it, at first it was denied due to Disney having already releasing a mermaid film called Splash not too long ago. But it was allowed to continue to be worked on as a future project and after a great deal of tweaking, expansion, and reworking, it was approved as a feature film to come out after Oliver and Company. There were a LOT of changes from the original story. The sea witch went from neutral to the villain, characters were expanded and added, and of course the story of unrequited love that ended with the little mermaid committing suicide was thrown out all together. A lot of the story basis was still there, but Disney was taking it and making it their own arguably even moreso than with the Classic Three.

The animation is fantastic. Many of the films prior like The Rescuers and Oliver and Company, while they looked nice, had this… roughness to it. I mean they were outright recycling animation for a good while, with Robin Hood being the biggest example. But the animation here is some of the nicest, most fluid that they’ve had in quite a long time. It’s colorful, expressive, and grand in feel. This is especially true with the musical numbers. I mean Under the Sea has SO much going on, and it is a true spectacle! It’s especially prominent when Ariel is mute. Since she can’t express herself with words, the animation had to be on point so that we could still understand her thoughts and feelings. They did an amazing job. From things like her visual glee at being human when going to bed the first night, to her annoyingly blowing her bangs during the canoe ride, turning into excited glee when Eric guesses her name. It helps Ariel feel more like a three-dimensional character and illustrates everything to us that words couldn’t at that point.

The biggest animation challenge for this film would be to convincingly portray the illusion of being under water. They had to convince us that Ariel was living under the sea, and I’d say they did a pretty good job. It is no easy task and trying to describe it is… hard. But I never had any doubt that they were underwater, especially compared to the scenes that were on the surface/ just look at how Ariel's hair is constantly flowing compared to how it sits when on the surface. It’s that attention to detail that I always appreciate. The opening especially, seeing the underwater landscape thriving as we see the silhouetted merpeople until the grand reveal of King Triton’s castle. Not to mention the seashore setting of Eric’s own castle and kingdom, a perfect match for this sort of movie. As someone who loves water/seaside settings, it’s always a joy to see!

While several of these people worked on the Dark Age films, this is really the first film that allows the then-new talent of Disney to shine. The directors were John Musker and Ron Clements, who are VERY important names to the Princess line. They not only gave us Ariel but also Jasmine, Tiana, and Moana. They’ve been attached to many of Disney’s most beloved films and event cult classics like The Great Mouse Detective and Treasure Planet (both of which you should watch). You also have animators such as Glen Keane, who would go on to animate Pocahontas and Rapunzel and work on some of the future princes (The Beast and Aladdin), and Mark Henn who would animate Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas (alongside Keane), Mulan, and Tiana. They both would be the supervising animators for Ariel, and go on to have very successful careers in future productions. 

But this film also gave us what may have been the best decision that the new management ever made. For the music, they hired lyricist Howard Ashman, who chose composer Alan Menken to collaborate with him. I cannot stress enough how important these two’s contributions were for this (and the next film we’ll be discussing) production, especially the former. Ashman became very passionate about this project and was very influential on it’s direction to the point of being credited as a producer. Menken of course would go on to have a LONG, successful career as a composer on many of the Renaissance films. Many of which we’ll be touching on in this retrospective. These guys won two Oscars for The Little Mermaid for a reason.

I haven’t talked a whole lot about the music in these films outside a little bit about the main song. That’s because while not unimportant, the music didn’t really move the story along. Like Someday My Prince Will Come/ is cute, but does it really drive anything forward? Or tell us anything about Snow White that we didn’t already know from I’m Wishing? Not really. Ashman, using his stage musical experience, wanted to use that kind of styling with The Little Mermaid. To use music to add depth to both the characters and to the story. We’re all used to most Disney films being this Broadway-esque spectacle nowadays, but this film was the first to truly do so. Considering how this formula is still being used to this day, I think it’s safe to say that it was VERY successful. Again, the music won two Oscars for a reason. Heck for a LONG time, the music was all that Disney was able to win from The Academy, so that says a LOT as to how good this was.

So now that we’ve made it here, I’m going to discuss the vocal tracks individually and give my thoughts on each of the major ones:

Fathoms Below: Might be the most underrated song of the bunch. It’s in the style of a sea-shanty discussing the legends of what is below the sea. It’s a great intro to the film, letting us know right off the bat what kind of movie we are in for. I know that it sure had me invested~

Part of Your World/Reprise: I’m gonna go more into depth on the song’s meanings when we analyze Ariel, but this song is perfect. It’s the song that tells us Ariel’s wants and dreams and Jodi Benson does such a great job putting so many different emotions into it. The animators also did a fantastic job with the expressions, fully showcasing Ariel’s longing, sadness, and desperation to be part of a world that she cannot. The reprise equally does a great job showcasing her evolving revolve, going from ‘longing’ to ‘determined’. The song is fondly remembered for a reason… and it almost didn’t make it into the film. During screen testings, Jeffrey Katzenberg (the studio head at the time) wanted the sequence cut as the kid audience was ‘bored’ and ‘restless’. The directors and Ashman HEAVILY disagreed and argued back, with Glen Keane ultimately being the one to convince Katzenberg to keep the scene. Thank God for it because this adds such a strong, emotional core to both the story and to Ariel’s character and it would have taken so much away if removed. I love it~

Under the Sea: This was the number that won the Oscar. I… find it the most overrated track tbh. Not that it’s bad, FAR from it. It’s probably the best animation-wise with how much is going on. Sebastian somehow managed to conduct… all the sea life into a mass spectacle that certainly had me convinced to living under the sea. The calypso style is very fitting and fun, and Samuel E Wright sings it with so much passion. I guess that I find it overrated because I just like other songs more, but this is still a true showstopper that’s worth revisiting.

Poor Unfortunate Souls: Aside from I think Cruella DeVille (and even then Roger’s the one singing it), I think that this is the first true villain song in a Disney film. If so, then they started on a GLORIOUS note. I love this song! It was THE perfect song for Ursula. The first half with her fake reformed villain act but with this condescending air to it (Pat Carroll’s delivery with the  ‘Pathetic’ line is perfection) was already grand, but the second half? Pat Carroll just lets loose and goes utterly insane. It is AMAZING and has so much charisma to it that you can’t help but be invested. It’s also very creepy, especially in the end with Ursula's cauldron bubbling and especially how she takes Ariel’s voice. This would inspire many great villain songs in the future and to this day remains one of the all-time greats.

Les Poissons: I never thought that seeing a chef cook would be so horrifying… the song is fine. It’s a silly sequence, albeit morbid from poor Sebastian’s perspective, and Rene Auberjonois did a fantastic job despite the song being pretty short. It’s my least favorite track, mainly because it doesn’t really add or enhance anything. But it was fun… poor Senastian though XD

Kiss the Girl: The love song of the film. I love the animation for this one. I mean what’s more romantic than taking a canoe out on the lake? That’s where I’d want my first date to end! The mood is set so well with the use of shadows and once more, Sebastian is able to conduct a spectacle effortlessly. Once more Samuel E Wright does a fabulous job singing, this time with a serenade style. Even if poor Scuttle didn’t get the appreciation that he deserved. Let the seagull sing, dang it! The only thing that ruins it is the eels capsizing the canoe, jerks! But yeah a beautiful serenade that is bound to convince anyone to… well, kiss the girl XD

And that’s not even getting into Alan Menken’s score! Alan Menken is my favorite composer of all time, so I love everything that he has ever done. I still remember the opening, hearing the instrumental of Part of Your World and immediately became invested in this film. The man is an EGOT for a reason, and this is only one of the many fantastic soundtracks that we’ll be discussing in this review. He also did some additional music for the Broadway version of the film, and there’s a whole body of demo work that he and Ashman did that you can probably find on Youtube, Spotify, or whatever music streaming service you use. Listen to Ashman’s rendition of Part of Your World, you WILL be driven to tears.

So now we get to characters… and HO BOY do we have a lot. For the sake of this review we will be going over King Triton, Sebastian, Flounder, Scuttle, Ursula, Prince Eric, and as per usual Ariel will have her own section at the end.

King Triton, while not evil, serves as an antagonist early on in the film. By all appearances, Triton is a capable ruler who wields a great deal of power due to his triton. He appears just, and for the most part he is as well as a caring father. The only problem is… well, his anger issues. Triton HATES humans and the surface world. We’re never told why aside from him calling them ‘fish-eaters’ (the DTV prequel suggests it’s due to the death of his wife, but the canonicity is debatable), but considering that his youngest daughter’s greatest passion is learning about the surface world… yeah. Needless to say, they have issues between them. But he is otherwise loving and was even excited that Ariel may have found love until he found out about their species. With how overprotective he is, that was a nice subversion despite how brief it was.

Triton often gets the ‘abusive’ label thrown against him and while I do think that that’s a little too strong, there is no denying that his hatred and anger affects Ariel emotionally. He may have seen destroying Ariel’s grotto as for her own good and is likely the culmination of however long Ariel’s been going to the surface finally boiling over. But to do this right in front of her when she is begging him to stop and outright ridiculing her for saving Eric’s life… yeah. It’s… it’s a horrifying scene that does NOT make Triton look good and is what pushes Ariel into seeing Ursula. It doesn’t matter the reason, destroying your children’s things is something that WILL scar them emotionally. To be far, the moment Ariel breaks down Triton clearly realizes that he crossed the line, but he just leaves because… yeah there was NO WAY that they were reaching a reconciliation at that moment.

Triton has a lot of issues, but the reason I don’t call him abusive and like him as a character is because after the grotto scene, he was clearly remorseful. After Ariel goes missing, he outright says ‘What have I done?” and his demeanor expresses a lot of remorse. If that wasn’t enough, I think that him both selling his soul to free Ariel AND turning her human after realizing how much she loved Eric more than showed that he has learned his lesson. Triton had to learn to allow Ariel to grow up and choose her own direction in life, even if he didn’t like said direction. It’s very relatable to how some parents struggle to let go of their children as they grow up. My only real complaint is, as I said, we don’t know why Triton hates humans so much. If we did and saw him work through it, it may have helped us understand why he was so against Ariel’s passions and not come off as needlessly cruel as he did. Nevertheless, he realized his wrongs and made it right. His hug with Ariel at the end is one that gets me every time.

The sidekicks of the film are Flounder, Scuttle, and Sebastian. IDK why they named Flounder Flounder because he isn’t… well, a flounder. He looks like some kind of tropical fish. Flounder is kind of the kid appeal character, even being voiced by a child in all incarnations except Return to the Sea since he had grown up. He is Ariel’s best friend who goes with her on her adventures, despite almost always being easily frightened. He’s well-meaning, but can cause more trouble like when he accidentally exposed Ariel’s excursion during the concert. But he’s also a sweet little guy and very loyal to Ariel. The kid outright went out of his way to somehow recover the Eric statue, which is ten times his size, and deliver it to her grotto to make her happy. That is friendship. He doesn’t really develop, but he’s a nice supporting character.

Scuttle is… well, dumb. But a fun dumb. He’s a surface creature and thus has more knowledge about surface world items than Ariel does… except he doesn’t. He’s not smart, but they manage to keep him entertaining because he’s so sure that he knows what he’s talking about. Imo, dinglehoppers are a MUCH better name for forks than forks, dang it! He tries to help, like it was his idea to try the serenade during the canoe ride… too bad that he can’t hold a note. Poor bird tried. They also DO allow him to be useful at the end, discovering that Ursula had tricked Eric and he amassed one heck of an army to humiliate her long enough for Ariel to reach the ship. It is one of the funniest AND most awesome moments in the whole film. Scuttle is just fun comedic relief who doesn’t overstay his welcome and his VA Buddy Hackett did such a great job~

But if there’s any character aside from Ariel that we remember from this film, it’s Sebastian. This Jamaican crab is the royal musical conductor and Triton’s advisor. He’s often the one who has to watch over Ariel, which clearly frustrates him on multiple occasions. Tbh, Sebastian probably has the most character development in the film. In the beginning, while understandably upset that Ariel being a no-show ruined his conducting debut (though tbf… NO ONE bothered to make sure she was in place? Really?), he’s mainly upset that /he/ looked bad. After the storm, he’s more concerned about getting into trouble with Triton than about Ariel herself. He knows how much the human world means to her, and while one can argue that Ariel /should/ be more aware of how her actions affect others, Sebastian isn’t much better. He only discourages her to save his own shell, not for her own good. Which eventually leads to him breaking and exposing what happened during the storm when he should know damn well that Triton will explode. Yeah it was because he misunderstood, but still.

However, Sebastian isn’t a bad crab. After the grotto's destruction, he immediately feels guilty and tries to apologize to Ariel, but she angrily dismisses him. He tries to convince Ariel to not go to Ursula, but as she’s still upset she bitterly brushes him off and tells him to get her father since he’s good at that. He therefore follows with only Flounder and at first, panics after Ariel is human. It’s understandable because… yeah, that’s bad. His first reaction is to get Triton to fix this, with Ariel trying to stop him. Once he sees the heartbroken look on her face, Sebastian realizes just how miserable Ariel would be back home. At this point, it's reasonable to assume that Triton will only be stricter about letting her have her ventures, and thus she’d be stuck in an unhappy life. This, along with the situation at least being partially his fault, convinces Sebastian to hold off and help Ariel win Eric over. Which he certainly tries his best. 

One of my favorite scenes is Ariel going to bed and being so excited to experience these new things as Sebastian tries to advise her on getting Eric to kiss her. But he stops when he sees that Ariel has fallen asleep with the biggest smile on her face, and he just affectionately calls her a ‘hopeless child’. The affection in his expressions and Samuel E Wright’s delivery is just so sincere and it really shows that for all his bluster, Sebastian does care for Ariel. The crab is also a seriously talented conductor. Like I said, he put together both Under the Sea AND Kiss the Girl in zero time and they’re both amazing numbers because of it. He really tries hard to help Ariel and once Ursula strikes again, he decides it’s finally been long enough and gets King Triton. Sure that doesn’t go well, but at that point it was absolutely the right call. He also helps fight off Flotsam and Jetsam, willing to put himself in harm’s way to help both Ariel and Eric. 

Sebastian became a much more understanding, more selfless crab over the course of the film, realizing that he needs to care less about saving his own skin and to understand why Ariel does what she does. It’s especially notable at the end. In the beginning, he advised Triton to keep a firm grip on Ariel when he asks if he was too harsh. At the end? He advises him that children have to be free to lead their own lives, which is what convinces Triton to grant Ariel legs. It’s a really nice character arc and this along with Sebastian’s two spectacular musical numbers leaves no question as to why he’s so beloved.

But what’s a great film without a great villain? For that we get one of the best, Ursula the Sea Witch. She is a fantastic villainess. She’s a large octopus woman who used to work in the palace, but for reasons unknown got banished. In early versions, she was going to be Triton’s sister which would have added a VERY twisted dynamic to the whole thing. Maybe that’s where they got the idea for Scar in The Lion King… anyways! Her design was based on Drag Queen Divine who was also going to be the VA for Ursula, but she sadly passed away of an enlarged heart before any recording to be done. After going through various performers, the production staff settled on actress Pat Carroll, who did a spectacular job. You can just tell that she is loving every single second of this role, and she has always happily returned whenever they need new Ursula material like in House of Mouse or in the parks. Just listen as she goes off the chain in Poor Unfortunate Souls that is some amazing acting.

Ursula is confident, manipulative, and a true actress. Her entire gimmick is manipulating vulnerable, insecure people into making deals with her. Deals that are pretty much impossible to keep and thus, she claims them as hers and adds them to her ‘garden’. She targets Ariel specifically because of her passion for the surface world and since she likely knows of Triton’s hatred for it AND of his anger problems, she’s just waiting for the day he screws up and Ariel is vulnerable. I’m gonna go MUCH more in depth with this when we get to Ariel, but this is SO important to note. Ursula struck when Ariel was hurt, emotional, and not thinking straight. It shows just how manipulative she can be. This is who she preys on. She knows how to sway them to act how she wants them to. She’s a saleswoman, and BOY does she sell it. It doesn't help that she gives Ariel very little personal space and manipulates her feelings for Eric to be further swayed. Yet Ariel is the stupid one because she was manipulated by a master manipulator… patience Callie, you’re gonna be able to let it out soon enough…

Ursula works so well as a villain because of how smart and manipulative she is. Like I said, she knows how to prey on the vulnerable and insecure. But she also knows when to get herself involved. After Ariel almost kisses Eric on the second day, Ursula disguises herself and uses Ariel’s voice to hypnotize Eric. And even though Scuttle and his undersea army humiliate her and Ariel gets her voice back, she bought just enough time for the sun to set and the spell breaks. Ursula won. She captured Ariel, forced Triton to sell himself to save his daughter, and claimed ultimate power. It was a truly methodical plan that ultimately succeeded. You gotta give her props for that.

Don’t make any mistakes though. While Ursula is intelligent and confident, she /is/ still evil. I’ve seen people say that she should have won just because they don’t like the ‘abusive tyrant’ Triton. Aside from what I already said about Triton above, Ursula is shown to be far, FAR worse. I mean… I hate to use the term, but she essentially s***-shames Ariel throughout Poor Unfortunate Souls. I mean she outright calls her a ‘little tramp’ after the canoe scene, which in this context is a G-Rated way of calling her a s***. To a sixteen year old. Yeah… plus we saw how power-mad she went once she got the triton, and it didn’t bode well for either land or sea. Triton’s temperamental, but he isn’t a tyrant. Ursula’s only redeeming trait is that she DOES care for her henchmen Flotsam and Jetsam, and their death at Ariel’s hand is what provoked her to go mad with power. This was ultimately her undoing as she was so focused on tormenting Ariel that it allowed Eric to take his ship and kill her. It’s a pretty gruesome Disney Villain Death (we outright see her SKELETON FLASHING at one point), but she brought it upon herself.

If you asked me what villain helped shape many of the ones we got during the Renaissance… I’d say Professor Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective. But Ursula was the first Renaissance villain, and she started it off right. She’s enjoyable enough that we love it when she’s on screen, but still detestable enough that we want her to lose. Many complain about doing ‘purely evil’ villains. That villains HAVE to be sympathetic or nuanced, otherwise they are poorly written. While there’s nothing wrong with sympathetic, or even redeemable villains, having a purely evil one is also perfectly fine. Disney is the master of this. Ursula’s motivation is strictly to gain power, but it works because they give her character so much personality and charisma. Petty motivation, but excellent character writing that makes us not mind. I’d say if you want to learn how to do a Pure Evil character right, study Ursula in particular along with Jafar and Hades. They’re all great examples of how to do it right.

Finally we come to our leading man, Prince Eric. So far the Disney Princes have acted more as a necessity than anything. It’s as I said in the Sleeping Beauty Review, Florian and Charming fill out a plot point and while he was more proactive in comparison, Phillip fell into the same trap. Did Eric finally break the curse? Well… yes and no. He's a firm middle ground between ‘necessity’ and ‘actual character’. He’s allowed FAR more than any of the other princes thus far. Eric is a seasman, he loves going out on the ocean in his ships. He’s adventurous, good-looking, and an overall nice guy. We see that he isn’t really into fancy stuff, outright cringing when Grimsby unveils the statue. He also isn’t interested in Grimsby trying to set him up with various noble women. Like Jasmine and to a degree Prince Charming, he wants to find love for love, but on his own time. These are the traits that attract Ariel to him. Plus he’s also heroic, going back to a BURNING SHIP in order to save his dog Max… yeah I’d fall in love with him too.

After Ariel saves him, Eric becomes determined to find her. But he only briefly saw her face and heard her voice. Funny how NO ONE gets on Eric for this while hating on Ariel, but again we’ll get to that soon enough. When he meets Ariel he recognizes her face… but since she can’t talk, assumes that she can’t be the mystery girl. Still, being a good person, he takes her back to the palace to give her shelter. It’s not long before he becomes endeared by her though. She’s pretty, sweet, and even though she can’t talk he has a good time showing her around the kingdom. It's so clear by /Kiss the Girl/ that he has fallen for her, to the point that even Grimsby points it out to him. It gets him to give up on the mystery girl which is VERY important. It shows us that Eric didn’t fall for Ariel because she happened to be the girl he was looking for, but because of who she is as a person. It shows the audience that his feelings are genuine which makes us further root for him and Ariel… too bad that Ursula goes and ruins it.

As far as personality goes, Eric is more fun than his predecessors, but he’s still stuck with the standard prince-like personality. He’s given more lines than all of them combined and has a real charm to him. You can see why Ariel would like a guy like him. He’s kind, fun, adventurous, and even a little rebellious. He is her ideal vision of what humans are like. The end of the film lets him prove himself as well, going out to help Ariel despite the danger and of course using his own ship to kill Ursula. It does cause Ariel to be a bit of a Damsel in Distress, but she DID save him much earlier and she stops Ursula from blasting him to smithereens, so it balances out. It was enough to prove himself to Triton, at least. So Eric is a nice step up as far as princes go, but we’re not quite out of the well with them yet. But it won’t be much longer, heehee XD

There’s other supporting characters that I really don't have much to say about. Ariel’s sisters are nicely designed, but ultimately bland. I think the series and Ariel’s Beginning did more with them, but otherwise there’s not anything to discuss. Grimsby is fine enough, being the closest thing that Eric has to a parental figure (where ARE Eric’s parents in all of this anyways?) and is stuffy, but otherwise a decent guy. Chef Louie is… crazy. That’s all that I can say. This film has a lot of characters, let’s put it that way. But of course, we have one more to go over. The titular little mermaid herself. I’ve been hinting at this throughout the review, so I think you all know exactly how this will go…

Ariel Analysis

I cannot stress enough how massive a step Ariel was for the Disney Princess line. As much as I have defended the Classic Three and standby all of that, there is certainly some repetition going one with them. All three are beautiful, passive, and can’t directly do much to accomplish their dreams. And at least two of them are dreaming mainly about a man, which is NOT a bad thing, but it was certainly getting old. Feminism has also been evolving since 1959, the last time a Disney Princess film came out. A lot had changed in those thirty years. Women in media could now be more proactive, take matters into their own hands, and have their own hopes and dreams that weren’t just about love while still being allowed to find love. Simply put, as much as I love Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora, the times had changed and it was time for Disney to get with those times. Thus we got Ariel, and she was exactly the right princess to take the line into a whole new direction.

The beginning of the film is a pretty clever way to set her up. The Classic Three are known for being angelic singers, and for good reason. It’s pretty much the first thing they do when we meet them (well, as an adult in Aurora’s case) so the concert sets this up. It’s Ariel’s ‘debut” and her sisters all have the looks and angelic voices that fit the archetypal Disney Princess. But then the shell opens up… and is empty. Then we cut to Ariel, who is about to go inside a sunken ship to look for surface world artifacts. It is an excellent subversion, setting up a Classic Princess move and flipping it on it’s head. It’s shown very quickly that Ariel is adventurous and actively seeking out her dreams despite her situation instead of trying to just make do with the way things were and hoping for the best. We also get a fun sequence of her and Flounder escaping a shark, so first time a Princess got an action scene as well.

The film very quickly establishes Ariel’s love and fascination with the surface world. Exploring sunken ships, going to Scuttle to get more information, later we see her grotto that is filled with so many items that we would consider standard, but that she considers treasures. These mean so much to her. She finds the surface world ‘wonderful’. But there are setbacks and consequences for her actions, in this case her forgetting about the concert. She didn't mean to and feels bad about it, and Flounder mentioning the reason why didn’t help. It’s clear that Ariel and Triton have been arguing about this for a long time, the latter failing to understand how much this means to Ariel and is at his wit’s end. His demands for her to stop upset her, causing her to storm out of the throne room and head for her grotto.

This leads to Part of Your World. This song/sequence is vital to understand Ariel’s character. This is the song where she expresses all her hopes and dreams. How she wants to be human. How she wants to learn more about the surface world. How she wants to experience things like walking down a street or finding out how a fire can burn. Throughout the film, we never learn how Ariel got so interested in human culture and just why she’s so passionate about it. But we really don’t need an in-depth explanation because this song conveys so much sincerity and emotion that it makes us believe in her passion. We understand how much this matters to her, and in turn it makes it matter to us. It’s why if it had gotten removed, it would have robbed Ariel of this depth and in turn, rob the film of something essential to its story. Thank God it remained intact.

This is a good time to talk about Ariel’s voice actress, Jodi Benson. Having originally been in Howard Ashman’s failed musical Smile, she was brought in originally as Ariel’s singing voice before being promoted to also doing the speaking the lines. This was not only her voice acting debut, but as far as I can tell her film debut as well. She did such a lovely job in the role. She perfectly conveys Ariel’s passion, drive, and sincerity while still coming off as a sixteen year old girl. Her singing voice has been rightfully praised, and to this day Ariel is often considered the best singer among the princesses. Benson has gone on to do other voice roles such as Barbie in the Toy Story films, Patsy and Ms. Doe in Camp Lazlo, and Aquagirl in Batman Beyond. She has continued to reprise Ariel to this day when needed and has always expressed so much love and gratitude for the film and her part in it, She’s also supported others who have done the role like Auli’i Cravallho (aka Moana) for the ABC Musical and Halle Bailey for the upcoming live-action remake. She’s a lovely woman and may she continue to do well~

Going back to the film, Ariel finds herself at a ship and this is where she sees Eric for the first time. It’s love at first sight. Of the Renaissance Era Princesses, Ariel is the one who gets the ‘love at first sight’ critique levied at her the most. Belle and Mulan of course didn’t have that issue and I usually see Jasmine and Pocahontas be given a free pass in this regard. Now of the five, The Little Mermaid IS the most blatant with the trope, but let’s look at it through Ariel’s POV. This is the first time that she’s seen so many humans up close. Eric is around her age (to my knowledge, at least. His VA was 16 at the time IIRC). It is very quickly established that Eric is jovial, uninterested in things like statues in his image, rebellious as he has rejected all the women Grimsby has arranged him with, and wants to find love for himself. He has many of the traits that Ariel herself has, being a rebellious, free-spirit teen herself. But most of all he is heroic, as demonstrated when he goes back to his burning ship to save his dog.

In other words, Eric is Ariel’s ideal vision of what people are like. She saves him from drowning, the first time that a Princess has saved her Prince, and is able to look at him more closely. She is clearly infatuated and seeing this man, this good-hearted, handsome young man who is everything that she ever dreamed of. This is what pushes her from just dreaming about being human to swearing that somehow she /will/ be human. Yes, she gets motivated by love, but the goal was there before this moment. It just became a solidified goal. One that she is going to make a reality someway, somehow. She even notes in the Part of Your World Reprise that she doesn’t know when or how, but it doesn’t matter. Compared to how fleeting her hopes were in the main song, the reprise is so much more triumphant and determined and continues to show just how important this truly is to Ariel.

Sadly however she still has one obstacle in between her and her dream; her father. The next day she is so happy and lovesick and it’s really cute, but Sebastian knows that this is going to cause major issues with her father. His big Under the Sea plea goes ignored, and Ariel is led to her grotto by Flounder, who has brought her the Eric statue. She’s so happy and acting like… well, a teenager in love. But unfortunately due to Sebastian jumping the gun, Triton finds out and he is enraged. Not only is he angry that Ariel again went to the surface, but she both saved and fell in love with a human. Thus we get the dark scene of Triton, in his rage, destroying the grotto. Every item, treasure, and relic that Ariel has gathered for who knows how long has become nothing but a pile of dust. Including the statue of the man she loves. 

Say what you want about ‘love at first sight’ or Ariel being a lovesick dummy, but this is outright traumatizing. This sixteen year old girl, a girl who aside from forgetting a few engagements has done nothing wrong, had all of her hopes and dreams shattered by her own father all because of his own blind hatred. Imagine being a teenager and your parents destroying everything you love all because they hated something that you loved. Even if Triton regretted it, it doesn’t change the pain that he inflicted upon his own daughter as she breaks down. She’s so upset that she rejects Sebastian trying to apologize and just tells him and Flounder to go away. They comply, leaving Ariel to cry in her now bare grotto… that is, until Flotsam and Jetsam appear.

So.. let’s now talk about Ariel going to Ursula and accepting the deal. First, her going in the first place. When Flotsam and Jetsam bring Ursula up, Ariel… /refuses/ to go. She is aware that Ursula is bad news. She had no intention of going to her at first and outright tells the eels to leave. What makes her agree? The two knocking the remains of the Eric statue in front of her. At this point, Ariel’s pretty much been rejected by her father and all of her treasures that kept her seabound are gone, so… what’s she got left to lose? She follows and naturally Sebastian tries to stop her, but she just angrily tells him to get her father since he’s good at that.

Ariel enters Ursula’s domain, and we come to the scene. Ursula declares to have changed, demonstrates her power, and offers Ariel the deal to become human for three days and it’ll be permanent if Eric kisses her. If Ariel fails, she not only becomes a mermaid again, but she belongs to Ursula. She also has to give up her voice as payment. Now we all know the big criticism against this, that being Ariel selling her voice and leaving behind her family and all that she ever knew and loved… for some prince that she hasn’t even really met yet, let alone spoken to. Now do I see why people dislike this? Yes. It’s a very rash, very stupid decision not just for those factors, but the fact that Ariel is essentially selling herself to the devil for this one thing. None of this is a good thing… but here is the big question, does the film do enough that this makes sense for Ariel’s character? Is this something that I can see her doing?

Yes, yes I can.

Let’s look at this piece by piece. First, Ariel is clearly uncomfortable the entire time that she is in Ursula’s lair. Ursula continuously gets into her personal space, laying on the manipulation at every step. When she lays out the deal, Ariel is at first hesitant. She herself brings up that if she takes it, she’ll likely never see her family again. She’s also hesitant when Ursula lays out the terms of payment, not just because she has no idea how she’d woo Eric without it, but just the concept of losing her voice clearly unnerves her. Look at her face when she grabs at her own throat, she is NOT okay with this. Even when Ursula begins to create the brew and poof sup the contract, Ariel isn’t excited or just jumps to it without thinking. She is VERY CLEARLY hesitant and unnerved about everything. 

So… why does she do it then? Well remember, she’s still emotional after her confrontation with her father. Her father has rejected her in her eyes and destroyed everything that she had worked for. At this point, her dreams and feelings for Eric are all that she has. She is hurt, emotional, and desperate and when we are hurt, emotional, and desperate we tend to make rash, even outright stupid decisions. Especially when we’re teenagers. Ursula waited to strike at this very moment for this exact reason; so that Ariel wouldn’t be thinking rationally.  These are the exact kind of people that Ursula preys on, and as I said above, she knows how to manipulate them to act how she wants. She gives Ariel the offer of her dreams, assures her that she can woo Eric without talking, poofs Eric’s image up at one point, and makes it clear that she’s giving her very little time to think it over. 

With absolutely nothing left to lose and it being clear that her father will never support her dreams, Ariel reluctantly signs the contract. She outright turns her head away when she signs. She KNOWS that she’s making a big choice and she isn’t 100% okay with it. She didn’t just give up her life callously for a man like some like to make out. It was a rash choice, but she had reluctance and fears about it. But it’s the only chance she’ll get to get her dream of being human and being happy, which is what ultimately drives her to make her choice. Given how she risked her life already against a shark, this is in-character for her and shows how far she’ll go for her dreams. And as we’ll see, this is going to have consequences as we near the end of the film.

So the deal is made. Ariel loses her voice and is transformed into a human. Once she makes it to shore, she gets to see her new legs, and for the first time since the confrontation, is happy. She has legs. She is human. The one thing that she had wanted for so, so long has finally come true. Naturally Sebastian wants to get Triton, but she stops him and gives him the saddest, most pleading look that I think I’ve ever seen. This is Ariel’s one and only chance to get what she dreamed of. Triton would not only stop her, but considering what happened before, who knows what else he’d do if he saw her as a human. It is 10% understandable why Ariel doesn't want him involved, especially once it would just lead her back to a life of misery. Sebastian realizes this and agrees to help her, which pretty much gets her to forgive him for what happened before.

Thus, we get to the first true meeting between Ariel and Eric. Of course, Ariel can’t explain who she is because of her voice being gone, so Eric assumes that she can’t be the same girl he saw despite her looking like her. But he sees her in the makeshift dress that Scuttle got her into and assumes that she’s shipwrecked, especially since she can’t walk well. So he takes her to the palace, and Ariel is able to get refreshed and get used to walking on legs. She is clearly delighted by everything. She is now part of the world that she longed for,, and she is loving every second of it. Sure she quickly finds out that forks aren’t combs, but hey she’s learning exactly what she wanted to learn. She is in utter bliss throughout the two days that she’s on the surface, doing thinks like learn to dance and ride a horse-drawn carriage. It’s all she ever hopes it would be.

But of course, Ariel still needs to get Eric to kiss her, or all of her dreams will end. She almost makes it with Kiss the Girl, which despite not being able to talk she made it pretty clear that she was willing and ready for Eric to kiss her. Ursula ruins that, but Ariel HAS endeared herself to Eric and he even prepares to go to her after giving up on the mystery mermaid. But of course, Ursula disguises herself as Vanessa via Ariel’s voice and hypnotizes Eric into marrying her. It’s sad because when Scuttle informs her of the proposal, Ariel is elated. She runs down the stairs, excited and gleeful… then she sees Eric and Vanessa, and you can see her heart break in two. It especially hits hard as she watches the ship take off, broken-hearted. She’s lost the man she loves, in moments she will be a mermaid again, and she will belong to Ursula fair and square. She pursued her dream, and it all seemed for naught.

But once Scuttle finds out about Ursula, Ariel quickly springs into action. With her friend's help, she reaches the ship just as Ursula’s necklace gets broken. This is a nitpick but I don’t like how Ariel ultimately wasn’t very active in helping rescuer Eric. Tbf IDK what she could have done, but I’d have liked to see her stand against Ursula before things go downhill. Otherwise it feels like this and the other events after… kind if feel handed to her by convenience and luck. But regardless she gets her voice back… but she fails to kiss Eric before the sun sets. That’s right folks, the so-called selfish, stupid deal that Ariel made? She failed to uphold it. She reverts to a Mermaid and now belongs to Ursula, and Triton can’t break it as it’s legally binding. So even if you DO think that Ariel made a bad choice, the film shows that yes, it WAS bad and she is now paying the consequences. Sure Triton sacrifices himself to take her place, but that still means that Ursula not only gets power, but her father is now a husk.

Ariel is enraged at this. Despite everything, I don’t think there’s any doubt that Ariel still loves her daddy. She was reluctant about never seeing him again before, and now seeing how her deal has lead to his fate upsets her. One big issue with Ariel is how… well, the film doesn’t make it clear that Ariel grew or learned anything. Sure there are consequences to her actions, but we don’t see her ponder over them. This is the closest we get to her showing regret as she tries to apologize to Triton and outright attacks Ursula for what she did to him. But she doesn’t express true regret for her actions. She doesn’t have a true reconciliation with her father so that the two can reach a resolution. I guess we can blame timing since we’re in the final ten or so minutes here, but it makes the end feel… convenient.

Eric saves Ariel from getting blasted by Ursula, and she manages to save him from Flotst and Jetsam. How? Bu yanking Ursula back and causing her to kill her own minions. Sure it’s not the Big Bad, but again Ariel marks a First in Disney Princess History by indirectly killing a villain. This provokes Ursula to go kaiju and essentially torment Ariel, who is unable to do anything at this point as she’s caught in a raging whirlpool. While one CAN say she’s a Damsel-in-Distress here (hence why I suggested Ariel should have gotten to do more in the wedding crash), she HAS saved Eric twice now. Plus by allowing Eric to kill Ursula, he essentially proves his worth by saving both the ocean AND the surface, and it contributes to Triton’s ultimate decision.

So yeah, Ursula dies, Triton corrects his wrongs by making Ariel human, and Ariel and Eric can live happily ever after. As I said, it /does/ kind of hurt Ariel’s character as she doesn’t really learn a lesson and it feels like she got incredibly lucky at the end. But at the same time Ariel is still a good character, and she marks a LOT of progression for the Disney Princess line. Sure she is a little selfish (though she usually means no harm), but she’s also someone who actively goes after her dreams. She doesn’t have to wait for it, nor does it center on love. Sure Eric is the catalyst, but that’s it. A catalyst. She’s allowed to rescue her prince. She’s allowed to fight against the villain. Sure she’s still emotional, falls in love, and needs her friends help. But she is also a very proactive, curious, and ambitious girl. Her dream was by far the most impossible of the Princesses thus far, but she still managed to achieve it.

Ariel is divisive, and I get why. The film DOES have some narrative problems (minor, but still) and I get why Ariel may rub some the wrong way. Me personally? I love her. She was a refreshing breath of air in the Princess line. She’s different from the Classic Three. She’s a bit more bratty and far less classy, but she also feels the most like a teenager and she follows her dreams in a very different manner. She’s still a good-hearted person, but she’s a flawed person. That’s what I love about her, she’s imperfect. Could more have been done to develop her? Maybe. But her flaws aren’t so bad that she’s a bad character or unlikeable. Her actions make sense and stay true to her character. I understand why she does what she does. I care for her because I see the sincerity in her. I relate to her longing for something that seems out of reach. And while it was nowhere near as conflicted, I know what it’s like to be in conflict with my father who loved me, but never truly understood who I was. But I loved him, he loved me, he ultimately would have let me lead the life I wanted, and in the end that’s what matters. It’s why Ariel and Triton at the wedding always makes me cry. Yeah, watching this two years after my dad passed… really hit hard.

The point is, I cared about Ariel. I related to Ariel. I did when I was a child, and I still do as an adult. Anyone who loves something or someone despite everyone around you not understanding or being against it I think can relate to Ariel and her position. Plus again, she set forward a new direction for the Disney Princesses. It’s a precedent that stands strong to this day. I’ve done my best to shed light onto Ariel, but it won’t convince everyone. If you hate her, fine. I can’t change your mind and tour free to make all the arguments you want. But I’m allowed to stand by my argument, and I am. Ariel is one of my favorites. She inspires kids to follow their curiosity and their ambitions. It teachers parents to accept their children and who/what they love, and to let them go forward in their lives. One can even argue that her film teaches kids to be careful when emotional to avoid the mistakes that she made, but still achieve a happy ending as well. Either way, I think that the hate against this little mermaid is far too harsh and it ALWAYS centers on the deal without taking anything else into account. It’s time we change that.

Final Thoughts

I love this film. The animation is lovely, the music fantastic, and despite a few issues here and there the story is sound. I don’t remember when I first saw it (it came out four years before I was born so not then), but I’ve loved it since that first time. I’m pretty sure I love the ocean and mermaids in general because of this film. Sure it diverts a good deal from the original Hans Christian Anderson story, but honestly? As someone who found that story unnecessarily cruel? I will take this version any day (no offense to those who like the original story, this is just me talking). It is a masterpiece that changed the game for Disney, for animation, and for the Disney Princesses. Ariel was very much a huge inspiration for many of her successors, and I am grateful for all that this little mermaid did.

Upon its release, Disney was FINALLY able to step into the light after spending over 20 years stuck in the dark. The film was a monumental success. The biggest success that Feature Animation had had since Walt’s days. They also finally beat Don Bluth, winning in the box office over All Dogs Go to Heaven, and returned to the top of the animation world. The Disney Renaissance had officially begun, and it wasn’t even close to slowing down. Just two years later, another Disney Princess film would be released. One that would achieve greatness, but also face great tragedy. So come and be our guest as when we return, we discuss a tale as old as time with 1991’s Beauty and the Beast.

Image Sources: Disney Wiki, Animation Screencaps Other Sources: The Making of The Little Mermaid: Treasures Untold

[sailorchiron]

Merry Christmas @tasyfa !

I loved the prompts of sunlight, ribbons, and poetry!  I confess I forgot to check for your response to my anon ask...  I decided to do a moodboard of a bookshop au, and had so much fun with it that I actually wrote a fic to go with it!  I hope you have a happy holiday season filled with joy and Malex!  

Sunlight, Ribbons, and Poetry | Read on Ao3

When Michael Guerin parked his beat up truck in front of Chapter and Verse, he wasn’t really sure what he was doing, or what to expect. All he knew was that Isobel loved poetry, and he loved his sister, and he was determined to get her a better Christmas present than Max for once in his life.

Chapter and Verse was a popular book store downtown, next door to Uncommon Grounds, which was universally known to be the best coffee in town. According to the barista he’d unsuccessfully flirted with two weeks ago, it was because the owner had connections for an expensive Italian roast that was usually too pricey for small town tastes. Also according to the barista that turned out to have a boyfriend, Chapter and Verse was well known for carrying a wide selection of poetry as well as fiction and nonfiction, and for having antique and special editions as well as new books. Seemed like a no brainer to pop into the quaint store and grab something pretty for Iz, but there was a problem.

Michael knew absolutely nothing about poetry.

He had some vague, foggy memories about studying poetry in high school English, but math and science were his things, not poetry and literature. He had no idea what to get. None.

The bells on the door chimed cheerfully when he went in, and he had to admit that the store was absolutely charming, with sun streaming in the front window and tall, dark wood shelves crammed with colorful volumes. The scuffed wood floor was broken up by old oriental rugs, and the counter sporting the cash register was an antique relic of days gone by. Michael noticed a hand painted sign hanging from the ceiling pointing the way to Uncommon Grounds, and sure enough, there was a door connecting the two businesses that he’d never noticed before. He looked for other helpful ceiling signs, and followed the one to the back right corner labeled ‘Poetry.’

He walked up and down the aisles for a few bewildered minutes, completely out of his element, and not having a single clue what to get. Some of the clearly antique books were beautiful, but what if they were poems about like death or something? Isobel was a romantic and wouldn’t want depressing, morbid poetry. He was starting to get nervous about finding anything, and considering a Target gift card for Christmas, when he decided to find an employee to help him.

Aaaaand, didn’t see a single soul. In fact, it was strangely quiet in the store. Am I the only person in this entire building?

Michael was on the verge of just leaving when he spotted someone in a little alcove with a colorful rug and walked over. French doors were propped open into what was a little reading nook, and sitting on the floor with a cup of coffee and a book was the most beautiful man that Michael had ever seen. He just stared for a minute. Messy dark hair, a little attractive scruff, neck that was begging for his lips, elegant hands, a face you’d definitely write home to mama about. The gorgeous man had kicked off his shoes and a crumpled apron was on the floor next to him. He was engrossed in what he was reading and hadn’t noticed him standing there trying to keep his tongue in his head. “Um, excuse me?”

Michael had been unprepared for that pretty face and his jaw might have dropped open.

“Yes?”

Fuck, his voice is amazing. “Um, do you work here?”

The beautiful man raised an eyebrow and glanced at the apron...then the coffee.

“Oh, you’re on your break, sorry, I’m just completely lost.”

“It’s okay.” He stood up. “What are you looking for?”

“Romantic poetry?” He watched subtle signs of disappointment in the gorgeous clerk. “For my sister! She’s just a really romantic person and I think she’d like love poems.” He watched the man’s face brighten. “Maybe an antique or really pretty book?”

“Sure. I’m Alex, by the way.”

“Michael.” They kind of looked at each other for a minute. He was struck by just how pretty Alex’s dark eyes were.

Alex, for his part, was internally screaming. Who needed a lunch break when someone that sexy wanted help looking for a book? He’d been momentarily crushed by the request for love poems, but the hurried explanation that it was for a romantic sister led him to believe that Michael might be interested. He shook his head to break the tension. “What kind of things does she like? Just in general, not specific to poetry.”

“Um, flowers? Korean dramas, aesthetic photography, huge parties, girly clothes, and make up?”

“How old is she?” Alex laughed, amused by Michael’s exasperated tone.

“28.”

“I was totally picturing 16, okay, revising my poetry ideas.” He led Michael down a narrow aisle. “Does she have a boyfriend or girlfriend?”

“Not right now.”

“Hmm…” Alex pulled the step stool over to the shelf he wanted, cognizant of the fact that he’d been so taken by amber eyes and springy curls that he’d forgotten to put his shoes back on. “Does she like to make grand gestures?”

“Oh god, yes, that’s Isobel to a T.”

“Wordsworth.” He pulled out two books. “Antique or new edition? I have both for this collection.” He held out the old book, black with elegant silver scroll work next to a smaller paperback with a picture of the sky.

“Definitely the antique. What kind of poems are they?”

“Wordsworth basically started the Romantic movement in England. Here, let me read you a poem.

“The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers — Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

“Not romantic like lovers, but romantic, like grand and expressive.”

Michael just stared, entranced by that beautiful voice reading poetry so passionately. “I love it.”

“There are other good ones, too. Here, hold this one.” Alex handed the book to Michael and stepped down before walking down the aisle. “This is another Romantic poet, Keats.

“Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art-- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores, Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask Of snow up on the mountains and the moors-- No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever - or else swoon to death.”

“Uh, that’s dramatic.”

“Would your sister like it? Or is it too dramatic?”

“I think she’d like it, actually. She’s kinda dramatic herself.”

Alex laughed and handed the antique book, bound in red leather with faded gold lettering, into Michael’s careful hands. “Does she like Shakespeare? I just got a really nice edition of his sonnets and those are mostly romantic.”

“I have no idea, but I’m game.” Michael decided he’d basically follow Alex anywhere in the store for the chance to just bask in his presence.

The book was a new edition, not antique, but it was bound in deep rose leather with a fanciful design of roses in gold, pink, and green on the cover. The pages were gilded, and it had a ribbon bookmark. “Sonnet 116 is my favorite.”

“You have a favorite?” Michael blinked. He hadn’t considered that ordinary people had favorite sonnets.

“Well, yah, I’m in here all day selling books of poetry, some of it is bound to stick.”

Michael laughed softly. “What’s your favorite poem of all time?” Not that he’d know it, but he mostly wanted to keep talking to Alex until he could guide the conversation to exchanging phone numbers.

“That’s impossible to answer, because poetry is so dramatically different from era to era. That said, I like early American poetry more, like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickenson, than Romantic poetry.”

“I have to confess I’ve never heard of them. Or if I did, I totally forgot.”

Alex raised an eyebrow at him. “Here, I’ll read you a Whitman poem.” He walked back into the alcove where Michael had found him and picked up the battered paperback he’d left on the floor.

“PASSING stranger! You do not know how longingly I look upon you, You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,) I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you, All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured, You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me, I ate with you, slept with you--your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only, You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass--you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return, I am not to speak to you--I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone, I am to wait--I do not doubt that I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you.”

“I really love that,” Michael admitted, touched by the words. “That’s what so much of life is, just passing by a stranger and wondering if he’s your soulmate.” He hoped that ‘he’ would ensure that Alex knew he was very interested in him. “It’s beautiful.”

Alex smiled, feeling a connection to Michael. “One of my favorites.” Michael really has the most beautiful eyes.

The door bells chiming broke the spell that was keeping their eyes locked. Alex realized that his break was probably long over, his apron was on the floor in the reading room, and he was in his socks. The last thing he wanted was to walk away from Michael. “Which book do you want to get?”

Michael blinked. “Um, I think I’ll get all three. It’s Christmas, she can have three pretty books.”

“Alright.” Alex started walking to the cash register. Now that there were other customers, he couldn’t just hang out with Michael, no matter how cute he was. “I keep forgetting it’s almost Christmas.”

“How can you forget?! There’s Christmas shit everywhere!”

Alex laughed. “I think it’s because my family doesn’t really do much. We don’t even have a tree.”

“Oh, that’s no fun.” Michael was hit with pure, genius inspiration. “We’re decorating our tree tonight, you should come over.”

“What, really? Wouldn’t that be awkward for your family?”

“No, man, the more the merrier. My family loves guests. Especially my sister.”

“I don’t know.” Alex was sorely tempted, he really wanted more time with Michael. “Hey, do you want me to gift wrap these? We have some really pretty wrapping paper and ribbons.”

“Oh, that would be fantastic.” He watched Alex slide behind the counter and start ringing up the books. None of the books had barcodes, they had handwritten labels that Alex was carefully removing. The wrapping paper was really pretty, it was deep blue and shiny with dark pinecones frosted with white glitter. Michael was impressed with Alex’s wrapping skills, he couldn’t do that well if he was given explicit instructions. The ribbons were red satin, and he stacked the three books and tied the long ribbon around all of them. “That looks beautiful.”

“Thanks,” Alex answered, compliment warming him.

Michael had to look away to keep from staring into Alex’s dark eyes, and noticed a rack of postcards with words on them. “What are these?”

“Oh, little poetry quotes. They’re hand lettered.”

“Are you an artist?” Michael smiled.

“Oh, no,” Alex denied, waving. “I’m not an artist, I didn’t do those. I’m a musician.”

“Really? I dabble in guitar.”

“I play, too.” Michael was getting more and more attractive.

Michael reached the decision that this was fate. “Hey, you’ve got glitter on your face, here.” He held out his hand and Alex leaned in for him to brush the sparkles off his cheek. His fingers lingered, and before he knew it, they were moving together, eyes slowly closing as their lips met in a sweet, sweet kiss.

Time slowed down and both Michael and Alex forgot it existed.

Until someone cleared their throat and they pulled apart, surprised that they’d gotten so lost in each other. Alex was immediately flustered, and Michael was grinning so wide that his face almost hurt.

Alex put the books on the counter. “I’m so sorry, I want to keep talking but I have to work,” he apologized. “Can I get your number?” He patted his body. “Fuck, my phone is in my apron.” Which was on the floor in the reading room. He grabbed one of the postcards and scrawled his number on the back. “Text me, I’d love to come over and decorate your tree.”

“I’ll see you tonight then.” He just smiled into Alex’s eyes until they both jumped when more throat clearing interrupted them. He grinned and winked at him, then headed out the front door with his festive package and a phone number.

In the truck, Michael looked at the postcard and immediately added Alex’s number to his phone. He sent a quick message of his name and a heart emoji, then flipped the card back over. It was a Walt Whitman quote.

“We were together. I forget the rest.”

[zebraslovescupcakestoo]

Boy crush

My name is Felix Lockheart. I'm just an average guy with a first year, high school teenage lifestyle. I'm a bit of a bookworm and play soccer by myself on my week days. I am also a self reserve, a bit of a shy person and....

I got a boy crush...

I have... an explainable crush for over two months.

I hate to admit it but....

I know that this is 201X and that people are more open minded with their 'gender relations' to be polite, but to some like myself, it's not that easy...

I got a heart rush...ain't slowin' down.

The boy I've had a 'crush' on... I don't believed he knew me yet. Let alone my existence.

His name... Oswald 'Walt' Disney. He's the most interesting person I've seen since the entrance ceremony. All it took was just once glance and... It just happened.

I got it real bad, want everything he has.

Since then, I've been watching him from afar like a spectator watching the actor. I watched carefully to everything he's doing. He's one of the most attractive students in the whole school for one thing. He's the top martial art member of the karate club along having some pretty good grades. He's also part of that famous Disney family that made cartoons and TV shows, along with his even more famous younger brother, Mickey Disney.

But in my opinion, I still think he's cooler... and more interesting than his family's background.

That smile and that midnight laugh, he's giving them now.

Despite being under his family's shadow, some people still see him as his own person... I glanced often at him behind my library books that I used to cover my face during class breaks. I see him interact and blend in with the other classmates, both guys and girls...

I want to taste his lips, yeah cause they taste like you...

I watched him talk, laugh, and I also try really hard to hear what they were saying. They all talked mostly the regular stuff like what are they doing on weekends, who's at the top charts this week and who's dating who and got dumped...

There were times after school, he had to meet someone that placed a confession letter in his locker or desk...

I was anxious whenever that happened and I had that tied feeling inside my chest.

I wanna drown myself in a bottle of his cologne.

I've witnessed it after school from behind the buildings, the empty classrooms, and sometimes even next to the separate changing rooms. They were girls from first and second years, each had different personalty and quirks, all confessed to him and they asked “I really like you! Please go out with me, even just once!” This time it was a light brunette girl with buns tied with ribbons. She was those stereotypical cute girls that no guy would turn down.

During those confessions, my heart really started to burst through my chest and I was worried of what he was going to say. “I'm sorry, but there's someone I wanted to ask first before I do.” He told her just like he said to the others.

I quickly averted myself to look like I was just passing by or I'm reviewing one of the subjects we had that day. Oswald passed by me very closely and I could help but admire again his features.

I want his long, dark hair...

He had black hair with a twin pony tails in one that looked like rabbit ears. He had those mysterious deep ocean blue eyes, those pale and smooth skin tone and he had that samurai looks that gave a serious, deep thought vibes... He's also the same height as me cause he glace straight in my eyes as he caught me looking....

OH SNAP! HE'S LOOKING AT ME!

I immediately buried my blushing face in the history book I was holding and pray to God that he did not noticed me staring him. He would think of me like I was a creepy stalker. Few seconds later, that girl came around and faced him. “Fine! But I'll wait for you a bit and trust me, I am much better that whoever she is and cuter!” She declared with confidence. I admire those kinds of people who were determined as she was... I can barely have a normal conversation with just one person without over thinking of what to say.

“What makes you think you're better than that person if you never actually met them once?” He responded to her and that upset her a bit. She didn't wanted to draw the school's attention to her rejection as he walked away until he was out of our sight.

She then glanced at me angrily and dropped her cute act. “Hey you! Bookworm!” I jumped a bit. “H-huh? Yes, wh-what is it?!” Oh snap! Did she noticed me spying or staring at him?! “You wouldn't know anyone who would hang out with the karate prince, would ya?” I lowered my history book and I was about to say 'I don't know' until she cut me off. “Never mind. I doubt it could have been any of the girls that did confessed. At least more than half of the girl's population in this prison got rejected by him and they all have that same answer. I doubt someone like you would understand that... Nerd.” She whispered that as she turned to the opposite direction...

I immediately speed walked to the nearest restroom to take a breather from what happened... As soon as I found one that for single use, I entered it and locked it. Then I took a deep breath and exhaled... “I'm not creepy... I'm just different...”

She didn't have to reminded me that. I've been used to it by now. I know that I'm not one of those 'in crowd' hipster kids and that I'm a little different, but that doesn't mean it's bad! Except... I have a bad crush on a boy...

See, I'm a guy and he's a guy... I still don't know if he's interested of, you now, dating... and stuff. Until recently he is waiting for a confession from someone or waiting to be approved by someone... I had to swallow that pill hard. If one truly cared for that person, he or she wanted to give happiness for them, including of letting go.

As soon as I know who it is, maybe this feeling will go away and I can live my school life in peace... and hope for happiness.

I want his gentle touch...

The next day, we had a two person, team up assignment for a science presentation of our choice. It was the teacher's choice to pair us up by the names that were drawn in the hat... and low and behold...

I got 'lucky' to be paired with Oswald... I nearly fell off my chair. Fortunately, nobody caught that.

While almost all the girls were disappointed, they were still glad that it wasn't one of their female rivals who got picked. If only they knew...

He came over to my seat and asked. “Are you free this afternoon?” This was the first 'actual' question he asked me since the entrance ceremony. I just nodded and he said. “Do you want to go to the school's library then? We might find something there that could give us and idea of what to do.”

I nodded twice and then he smiled softly. He's so... nicer than I thought. I then started to fell more in love... is it love? No... it's just a crush! He did have someone he's waiting for, right?

“Are you feeling well? You look red in the face.” His expression had turned sad. My face is red?! Oh no! “No no! I'm just... a bit hot! I just needed to take some cool fresh air and I'm good. I'll met you there after class.” I tried to came up an excuse for it. He looked at me for a few seconds until he said. “Ah... OK. I'll meet you there.” He then regain that wonderful smile and returned to his seat before class starts. I hope he didn't noticed that was a lie or that he thinks what it really was.

Yeah, cause maybe then, you'd want me just as much...

Apart that there were a few other students scattered in the library that day, there were just the two of us at one table that can fit for four to eight people. He told me first that he needed to finish a few math problems before we get started on what we should do on our science project. I simple said ok and decided to take out one of my own books I've owned.

It was a quiet yet a peaceful treasured moment for me. Just me and him together. I was happy.

I then noticed he made a mistake on one of the equations. “Oh, wait! That's the wrong equation for that problem.” I said to him without raising my indoor voice. This is a school Library. “Hm.” Was his response. “Do you know what should be the correct formula?” He look at me directly in the eyes. “You seem like you have a pretty good grades. You were one of the top in our class last time I've seen the results posted on the classroom's board.” He then answered that detailed. I then started to blush a bit and that feeling had returned.

I got a boy crush...

He complimented me for the first time. I never got noticed like that. Usually people just see who's first or who's last, they don't care much on who's in the middle part. “You... noticed that?” He smiled gently at me. “Of course, you were just above me on the last exams. Now tell me what I did wrong.” I snapped back in reality and immediately looked down at the mistaken equation. I explained on what was the correct way of finding the length of the Pythagorean theorem of a triangle. Just as he said, “Ah, I see.” His right hand partially, gently brushed off mines.

There was a sudden electric rush in my spine, my eyes widen a bit and I blushed a bit deeper. 'He touched my hand...' It may be for a second, but it felt... nice. I then realized that we're still in a 'public' library. I immediately buried my face in my book. Why am I acting this way? He's a guy, but a cool and attractive guy. We're so different and yet why... why... am I so.... getting dizzy of thinking about it..?

I got a boy crush...

“Enough.” He said as he closed off his text book. Huh? I looked at him and he was looking straight at me with a frowning face. “Pack your books, we're changing location.” What? What did I... I then realized he was glaring at me to hurry up. That made me scare. Thankfully I only took out one book. “Wh-where are we going instead?” I asked as I stood up. “Somewhere much better than here. Follow me. You don't have anyone waiting back at your place?” He asked for my family as we leave. This is a bit odd of him to say that, but still. “Not really, I just text to my father and sister almost every day to let them know how I'm doing and all.”

His expression soften a bit. “...So you're alone on most nights too.” Huh? My expression was confused as he said that. “Nothing. Just text them you'll be at a friend's place for tonight and that you'll be a bit late.”

Wait. What did he just said?

I don't get no sleep...

He's not lying once we've arrived at his place. It was one of those fancy new apartments with those special security buzz call and all that stuff. I should have known better since he's one of the Disney family. My heart was beating faster and harder. I'm feeling really anxious. I'm visiting his 'personal space.' Yet I'm a bit curious of why he's on his own like this. Did something happened between them that I didn't know?

As soon as we entered his complex, it was like one of those classy black themed apartment that you might see in those magazines. “Come sit down on the couch, I'll make some tea.”

“Mm-hm.” I hummed and nodded with a tiny smile. This boy crush is now taking a toll on me and it took almost all of my strength not to do something awkward. If I do 'something' awkward, I might triggered my first panic attack.

I don't get no peace...

I sat in the living room for quite some time, quietly. I tried to look around me to keep myself calm. I noticed that he had two large posters of Michael Jackson and an Elvis Presley. I didn't know he's into that kind of music. I also noticed he had a blue guitar in his stand near the corner where it was. Guess the neighbors haven't told him to get rid of it yet or he's really good at it that they let him keep it.

I did noticed a few family portraits, most were with his little brother. Guess that he's on a good term relation with him. Most would be either on neutral or rivalry, but I guess that's just me with my nephews whenever they came with my sister for a visit.

Ah! That reminds me! I immediately pulled out my cell phone and I immediately text them of where I'm at and let them know that I'll be late to come home. I've only have two contacts in my phone so it's not a huge surprise for someone like me. After a few minutes, dad responded that it was alright, my sister on the other hand, she was sending a long paragraph of how happy she was for me to make a friend and that I needed to see more 'real' people. I'm a shy person with an out-going sister, OK?

I'll take that as an 'OK' from them.

Thinking about him, under the bed sheets...

I then heard him coming in with two cups of tea. “I've got lavender tea, so I hope you don't mind it with some milk and a bit of sweet in it.” He said. “Oh, no, not at all. I sometimes have some on rainy days and just enjoy watching it through my bedroom window while hearing the droplets-Err!!” I blushed and looked away. Aw, snap! I made it awkward! I doubt that he think it's interesting. He just chuckled and said. “Don't be shy. I love the rain too. It's just sad that most of the other kids preferred to be 'sunshine everyday' of the week. Guess they don't know how rain can be a good thing or appreciate it's good sides.” I looked at him as he smile at me. Why are you so... nice to someone like me?

He sat down next to me. Oh my God! He's so close! I immediately looked down in my tea, took a sip and I was surprised that he used honey instead of sugar. I know that it can be a bit hard to use them for this, but it's really good!

“Not only it's good, but it helps calm down stress and anxiety. It will help greatly for someone I've seen for a while...” He sets down his cup. “There's something I wanted to ask you for quite a while...” He looked at me again and waited me to put mine down. I set it down and wondered what could he mean.

No. It's... too obvious. Right? But I still didn't have the courage to look straight in his eyes. I've kept them down and didn't turned my head. Both my hands were gripping tightly like a fist on my knees and I trembled a bit. I was scared of what might happened. Did I do something wrong? Was it something I've said or maybe... he noticed me following him??

The way that he's whispering...

I then got surprised of a gentle touch on my left cheek that I've let out an “Ah!” and then my head was turned straight in his face. He frowned a bit and said. “Eyes over here.” I looked right in his eyes... they were those beautiful deep ocean blue colors that I can't help but to admire them. I couldn't move nor even blink. I was frozen, paralyzed yet a bit shaken by that guy...

The way that he's pulling me in...

I let out another 'yeep!' as his other hand had been put at my left hip and he pulled me closer to him. I don't know how, but my hands had somewhat gripped both his side of the white long sleeves he's wearing. I was blushing so red and thinking 'what the heck and I DOING?!' “That's a cute face you're making.” He smirked.

Aaaaaah! I want to crawl in a corner and just let me die from this embarrassment! Please!

He then got serious and asked.“Felix, I want to ask you something and I want you to answer it with honesty...” I mentally snapped back in reality and calmed myself. This is it... I nodded cause I was a bit nervous to say it.

“Now tell me... Do you like me?” He said those triggered words and my heart sank. “huh?” What did he said? I might misunderstood it. “D-do I what?” I asked again on what he really meant. “I'm asking if you like me or not.”

Oh... He said if I like him or not... My mind exploded and turned blank. My mouth was slightly opened but no words came out. He said it. I then feel drained and as I faded out of conscious, all I remembered was his worried face and he called my name before I fell on him...

Lord knows I've tried, I can't get him off my mind.

I came to once I've awoken with more lavender scents. I knew that I've smelled this before back at the library, but I've just assumed that it might have been someone else. I feel a soft pillow on my head, a really warm blanket and then I've realized there's someone's gentle hand that's been caressing the back of my head. I opened slightly my eyes and saw Oswald, who he noticed me, smiled again. “You're up. Thank goodness, I thought that I might need to call your next of kin if you're still fainted.”

He... was taking care of me when I fainted? I then realized on what he was doing and I blushed immediately. I've hid my face underneath the blanket and I trembled in embarrassment. I can't believe I've messed up our first interaction alone! “I-I'm so sorry! I d-don't know what came over me!” I then felt the blanket pulled over my head and saw him frowning again. “Don't hide your face when you're talking to me.” He said it seriously. I was at loss and I don't know what to say.

If I say that I like him, he would have freaked out or be disgusted. But then again, he asked that damned question... What's the right way to say it? He then placed his hand on my cheeks again to make me look at him. “Felix, don't be scared. I want to hear it from you. I know for a while now that you've been watching me since early fall after our high school entrance ceremony.” I was surprised. “H-how... did you know?”

He then gently placed me back on a sitting position, but kept himself close.“Cause you've been following me at school everywhere but kept your distance. I would have let it pass as coincidental if you haven't had a few mishaps of pretending to read a book unless you can do it upside down.” He smirked a bit. Yikes! Did I really do that? Sure I might have noticed it but him? How did he knew that detail specifically? I was guessing that it was probably my turn to speak. “Well... I've... seen you a few times and I... couldn't help but admire...” I quietly spoke and started to tremble. Why is it so hard to say it?

I wanna taste his lips, yeah 'cause they taste like you...

“Me? Admirable? I doubt it.” He puts himself down. I was shocked to hear that. “Wh-what do you mean? Sure you may be not as big as your little brother, but I think you're amazing on your own. You're even just as popular as your family, you're kinda like a prince according to most of the girls and you're so... nice...!!!” I clammed my mouth with both my hands when I realized I've spoke too much. Great! Now I've probably creep him out!

But... he didn't reacted like that. He smiled, then pulls my hands away and said. “It's alright. You're being honest unlike most of the people I've knew.” I looked at him again confused. Why... is he not weird out from someone like me? Was he serious when he asked 'that' earlier?

He then gently placed one of my loose hair at the back of my ear. “What makes you notice I'm nice in real person before this? I've rarely show that side to anyone.”

“Well... I've seen that first time I did is when it was raining after school one time. There was an old man who'd probably didn't have much was using some news papers to cover his head. You've offered your own umbrella and then used your school bag to cover your head instead. That makes me think you're a kind, warmhearted person.” I remembered it well.

I wanna drown myself in a bottle of his cologne...

“You've... saw that? It wasn't out of publicity praises I've done that...” His eyes looked on the side, blushing. Holey carp fish! Now this sounded like some cheesy, love confession in those novels! “N-no! It's not like that! I think you're really a great guy! I just... couldn't help but admire.” I've blurred it out.

He looked at me with a surprising eyes and I froze again. Why am I digging my own early grave for my so-called 'social' life? His expression relaxed again and he also placed his right hand on my left cheek. “Funny. I just assumed that I'm just average. Truth is, I believed you're more interesting. To me at least.” He then brushes his thumb on my blushing cheeks as my eyes widen with shock. Little, plain but weird, old me? Interesting? To him? A super cool guy? Probably more famous than I'll ever be in my dreams?

...Wait. I DID fainted, right? “Am I still dreaming?” I asked. He then had an idea and smirked . “Maybe... What if it's real?” I was confused on what he said until he puts his other hand on the other side of my cheeks. He pulls me closer to his face and said with confidence. “If I confessed what I wanted, will you accept it?” I innocently opened my mouth to let out a 'huh?' and then he took that chance to kiss me... on the lips.

“mmh!” Was my reaction. My eyes widen while his were closed. He pulled me close to his chest as I've unconsciously gripped his sleeves again. My heart started to pound faster and felt like it was about to jump off my rib cage. My mind is thinking of numerous things right now, one of them is what's going on right now.

He's kissing me.

He then let my lips go after we needed air. He was blushing a bit deeper, but not as much as I am. “Ah... ah...” I tried to breathe. I was embarrassed, but confused. He then realized what he had done and covered his mouth. “I'm sorry... I got a bit carried away. You were so cute that I... couldn't help myself. Please forgive me.” He then pulls me close again with one hand on my head and the other wrapped around my waist in a hug.

I want his long, dark hair...

Oh. my. Gosh!  Now I know I'm not dreaming! Did 'the' Oswald 'lucky rabbit' Disney just confessed and kissed me?! For reals?!! I don't know what to say but... I wanted to make sure. “Do you really... like me?” I asked. “Yes... I wanted to make sure that you were comfortable with me before I wanted to ask. Especially if I'm a guy...” He sounded like he's having the same problem as I did... “But why me of all the people? There's a lot of cute girls and even some handsome guys who would have been a much better match than boring, old me! I'm not one of those 'in crowd' kids.” Why did he choose me out of all those people?

“Because you're unique to me.” I gasped. “You were pretty much reading books, but they were mostly on more interesting titles than the ones that were recommended by staff picks or even on those Kobo tablets. You even sometimes get some of the most crucial details when everyone else missed like your keen eye senses. A bit reserved, but you're more honest and that you're the type who doesn't go for superficial love relationships or looks... although I've already mentioned that you were cute, heh!” He chuckled on that last part. I felt... happy.

I want his magic touch...

“Now are you willing to go out with me? Even if it's just once, I want to go out with you. If not then... I wanted to be friends at least...?” He then got a bit surprise when I wrapped my arms around his back and placed my head on his chest. I knew he was well built, but it felt good. I finally took all of my courage and I gave him my answer. “Yes... I do... I was so scared of confessing and that well...” I started to shake a bit until he placed another kiss on my cheeks this time. We looked at each other again and then he said. “There's no need to be afraid... I've already fell in love with you on first glance. Now that we've confessed, we can now learn more about each other.”

Yeah 'cause maybe then, you'd want me just as much...

“Wait! What about-” He then placed a finger on my lips. “We can do it tomorrow... I want to enjoy this moment with you.” He answered as if he knew of what I was about to ask on our school project.

I got a boy crush...

He then looked at me again, leaned his head just a bit as if he wanted to kiss me again...

Hate to admit it but...

I may have blushed a bit, but I've nodded a bit and then I've let him... I've spend a long evening with him.

I got a heart rush, ain't slowing down...

----Author’s notes-----

AHHHHHHHHH!!!!! I can’t believe I’ve just made my first boy fluff one shot!

Just to let you know that I did not want to break any rules, including the new Tumbr rule about no adultery here so please don’t take this seriously. (It’s just a kiss, jez!)

I dunno why I’ve been obsessed with this but I just wanted to let it out.

I did choose this particular song not because of the misconception of loving the same gender, but more like kind of an envious way. It’s a bit of the mash of original and the remix of this song.

Girl Crush by Little Big Town and cover AJ.

BBTIM AU characters belongs to Marini4.

[georgieh]

Georgie Henley for The Times of London - ‘There is pressure on child actors not to admit it’s hard’

She had a ball as a child playing Lucy in the Narnia films, but her schoolmates were unkind — not that it stopped her. Now she’s on the London stage // Keep reading for full interview

Georgie Henley vividly remembers her first day in Narnia. She was eight years old, 12,000 miles from home and surrounded by a film crew waiting for her to act on camera for the first time. Henley was playing Lucy, the plucky youngest child of the Pevensie family in the Walt Disney film version of CS Lewis’s wartime fantasy classic The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. On the first take she looked at the camera because she didn’t know better. That error aside, she thought she spoke her lines all right. Yet the director, Andrew Adamson, kept asking her to do the scene again. And again. And again.

After about an hour of this she started welling up. Adamson came over and asked why she was upset. “And I just said, ‘I’m getting it wrong, that’s why you keep doing it over and over again, isn’t it?’ And he said, ‘No, we have to position the camera in different places, we do different shots and then we edit them together.’ ” She laughs at the thought. “I mean, it’s basic stuff, but I didn’t know because I was just plucked from nowhere.”

Now 22, Henley has just started her first professional stage role. She is starring in Angry, a collection of monologues by the restlessly provocative playwright Philip Ridley at the Southwark Playhouse in south London. She is upbeat, articulate and aware of the negative narrative that surrounds child actors and quietly determined to buck it.

She is hugely grateful for her experience on the three Chronicles of Narnia films: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in 2005, Prince Caspian in 2008 and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 2010. They have set her up financially, so that after finishing her degree in English at Cambridge University in 2016, she was able to move to a flat of her own in London. Unlike some other child actors, she says, who get pressured to support their families, her parents — Mike, a former solicitor who now works for HSBC, and Helen, who chaperoned her on all three Narnia films — made sure she kept her earnings.

“And I don’t take any of this for granted,” she says. “To have a franchise at a young age, it’s what a lot of actors spend their whole lives trying to get because you have guaranteed work and a guaranteed pay cheque. Not that I really thought about that at the time.” On the first film she didn’t even realise she was being paid. She did by the second film. “But it was like Monopoly money to me.”

Yet while she thinks there is “scaremongering” about what it’s like to be a child actor, she is quick to admit that it had a big impact on her school life. It happened almost by accident: a casting director, Pippa Hall, who had discovered Jamie Bell for Billy Elliot, held an audition at the drama club to which the seven-year-old Henley went each Tuesday after school in Ilkley, Yorkshire. “I was just lucky,” she says. She laughs awkwardly at the suggestion that, however she got the job, she was unusually good once she started doing it. “Thank you! I can’t cope with people saying nice things to me.”

She was “quite a weird child; on the fringe socially, just always off in my own world”. At first she thought she was auditioning for a panto in Bradford. As the process dragged on for months, and she started to travel down to London to audition alongside children from stage schools, she and her parents got to realise what it might involve. In fact, her parents pulled her out of the process when they were told it would involve four months filming in Canada. Her older sisters Rachael (who played the older version Lucy in the first film) and Laura stepped in, insisting that this was too big an opportunity to pass up. Her parents relented. Whereupon it became seven months in New Zealand instead.

“It changed my life,” Henley says. “It sounds cheesy, but it’s true. And I didn’t know anything. All I knew was what I had learnt in my drama club every Tuesday, and having parents who never told me to be quiet or anything, who liked me for being a little bit odd.”

Filming, give or take that first-day wobble, was wonderful. She apologises again for cheesiness. “It was like this magic thing. Every day it was a new costume, a new setting, new creatures to imagine you were talking to.” She watched the first film again two Christmases ago with her grandmother and enjoyed it. Certain memories from filming linger more than others: the day she played mini golf with Tilda Swinton, who was playing the White Witch, or the surprise party on set for her ninth birthday, when her father and sisters flew out to join her mother. “It was one of the best days of my life. It was just amazing. But it’s so funny when I meet children that age now and I think, ‘You are tiny.’ I remember what I was doing at that age and I can’t believe it.”

She has kept in touch with her co-stars, although they are rarely in the same room together. William Moseley, who played the oldest boy, Peter, acts in Hollywood. Anna Popplewell, who played Susan, still acts and lives round the corner from Henley in north London. Skandar Keynes, who played the younger brother, Edmund, overlapped with Henley at Cambridge. He was in his final year when she was in her first, but by that time he had stopped acting. “Nobody else will ever be able to understand what we did together. It’s this crazy, amazing thing. You just can’t explain it.”

As well as filming in New Zealand — and Eastern Europe and Australia in the later films — there was foreign travel for publicity junkets. She has visited Japan three times, she says, but doesn’t feel she knows the place since she spent most of her time there in hotel rooms. The same goes for New York. She will never forget being 15, waking up in her hotel room in Tokyo and remembering that she had a mock chemistry GCSE to do. She kept up with school work through tutors. The child actors shared classrooms as well as dressing rooms while on location.

Returning to normal life between films was difficult, though. Her family did a great job of keeping her feet on the ground, she says. They are all “very close”. However, she struggled when she got to Bradford Grammar School when she was 11. “Secondary school is where I struggled. I loved the work side of school, I loved learning, but the social side was a minefield. And part of that was worsened by the films that I had done, by me being in and out of school.

“There is such a pressure on child stars not to admit that it’s hard. To smile in interviews and say, ‘Yeah, I love my double life,’ and pretend they are a special agent or something. Because if they admit that it’s hard sometimes they sound like they are difficult.” She wouldn’t change anything about the films, but wishes she hadn’t played her achievement down so much when at school. She didn’t act in anything at school until her final year. “It was that thing of not wanting to put your head above the parapet for fear of it being sliced off, but I should have had the confidence to be proud of what I did. I was bullied mercilessly; people were so awful to me at school. It was amazing getting to uni and people being, like, ‘That’s so cool!’ And I was, like, ‘I know, right, isn’t it?’

“So I wish I could say to the 13-year-old me, ‘Be proud of what you’ve accomplished.’ And that doesn’t mean being arrogant. They are not the same. I think I conflated the two things.”

At university she studied English, but did theatre too. “You can experiment and f*** up or succeed, and if you do well nobody cares a week later and if you f*** up nobody cares a week later.”

She wrote and directed a couple of short films while there. She also kept up her film acting, although without Narnia budgets. In Perfect Sisters she played one of two Canadian teens plotting to kill their mother. The Sisterhood of Night, an American film, was a bit like The Crucible reworked for the age of social media. She also made Access All Areas, which was about a bunch of teenagers who go on the run to an island music festival. “It was amazing to be doing different characters,” she says. “People thought it was me trying to get away from the Lucy Pevensie thing, and maybe it looked like that, but your tastes change.” Before that, she was offered other fantasy or period films, but preferred to wait until she could do something different.

Talking of which, her professional stage debut certainly ticks that box. Ridley, known for troubling plays such as Mercury Fur or Dark Vanilla Jungle, has written six “gender-neutral” monologues, including one long one that is one of Henley’s favourites, about a teenaged sexual experience that may or may not have been entirely consensual. How you view it, Henley suggests, depends on which night you attend. She and her co-star, Tyrone Huntley, alternate who performs which three monologues each night. “You’ve got me, a white, straight woman, and Tyrone is a black, gay man; it’s two entirely different identities, but it’s the same words.”

Henley was already a fan of Ridley and had even written an essay about him at Cambridge, although she was mortified when one of the producers told him this. She will not let him read it, she says with a chuckle. She did some directing at university and would like to do more. Later this year she shoots her next short film. Beyond that some other work seems to be looming, but nothing she is sure about yet. She lives on her own, loves having her own space and isn’t in a relationship. “I’m a single Pringle. I don’t know how people my age have time for anything like that because I sure as hell don’t. I’m trying to keep myself together, let alone worry about someone else.”

The previous day she had picked up her first pay cheque for Angry.Fringe wages can’t be huge, but she’s thrilled to be paid for doing a job she loves. She is happiest when working. “Some child actors grow up and their career gets quite calculated. Their management say, ‘You can do an indie film, then you have got to do a blockbuster, and then you can do two more indies,’ but I’m just looking for stuff that scares me and challenges me; things I haven’t done before. Because I still feel like I don’t know anything and I have still got lots to learn, so having to jump in at the deep end like this . . .” she laughs. There is nowhere to hide when you’re doing monologues. “And that is terrifying, but it’s also a gift.”

[dweemeister]

Pete’s Dragon (1977)

Combining live-action and animation in film has been around longer than you may think. Among those pioneers included Winsor McCay, who synchronized an on-stage performance with Gertie the Dinosaur’s (1914 short) on-screen performance; Max Fleischer’s Koko the Clown short films also experimented here, as did Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks for the Alice Comedies (1923-1927). Of those names, it is Disney’s that is most associated with live-action/animation hybrids – Song of the South (1946), Mary Poppins (1964), and the subject of this review, Pete’s Dragon, which is directed by Don Chaffey. The rights to Pete’s Dragon – based on the unpublished short story by Seton I. Miller (better known for hard-edged film noir and 1938′s The Adventures of Robin Hood) and S.S. Field – were purchased by Walt Disney in the 1950s, who hoped to use it for his anthology television series. The project languished for years, outliving Walt, and is one of the better live-action Disney movies released in a difficult decade for the studio.

The 1970s and early 1980s were marked by the studio’s shifting approaches to its movies by catering more exclusively to children. This is reflective of the Dark Age of Animation (historians and other writers will differ, but I label this as beginning after Walt Disney’s death to 1988), where the overlaps between films intended for children and those intended for adults almost disappeared. Pete’s Dragon is expressly for children, but contains just enough appeal to save itself from being all but permanently locked inside the Disney Vault.

It is the 1900s in coastal Maine. An orphan named Pete (Sean Marshall) is escaping his abusive, bedraggled caretakers, the Gogans (Shelley Winters as the matriarch, Lena). Unbeknownst to the Gogans, Pete has befriended a dragon named Elliott (incredibly, even official sources differ between one “t” or two in his name), who is determined to protect Pete from any danger and can alternate between visibility and invisibility at any time. Pete and Elliott escape to Passamaquoddy, where the local lighthouse operator Lampie (Mickey Rooney) and his daughter Nora (Helen Reddy) provide a place to stay. Elliott, being too large for the lighthouse, stays in a spacious cave nearby. Pete loves Elliott, and speaks of length about him – Nora, Lampie, and other townspeople think that the dragon is just an imaginary friend. In town, snake oil salesman and quack Dr. Terminus (Jim Dale) and assistant Hoagy (Red Buttons) arrive to turn things upside down; the Gogans, too, eventually arrive. As time passes, Pete finds a home and family with Nora and Lampie – but this is a Disney movie, so chaos must ensue first.

After the release of Mary Poppins, a formula of a magical person/creature saving the lives of a hero became the tonic of Disney’s live-action movies. Blackbeard’s Ghost (1968), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971; which is Mary Poppins lite), and Pete’s Dragon rigidly adhere to that structure. Pete’s Dragon offers nothing innovative or profound in terms of its storytelling, and anybody who goes into this movie with slightest expectation of any of that will come away frustrated. This is a safe comfort movie with its messages – depicted with more invention and grace in earlier decades – muted.

Even a young, talented animation team boasting names like Don Bluth (the American Tail series, 1988′s The Land Before Time); Glen Keane (who worked at Disney from 1977′s The Rescuers to 2012′s Paperman) as Elliot’s character animator; Ron Clements (who later directed eight Disney animated features, including 2016′s Moana); Ken Anderson (who worked at Disney from the 1930s-1970s); and Don Hahn (best known as a producer for various films in the Disney Renaissance) were unable to navigate around a breakneck production schedule. This leaves Pete’s Dragon with worse animated effects than even Mary Poppins and Song of the South as characters clip into the animated Elliott and the background-foreground composites are more distractingly artificial than they should be. Given the restrictions and the fact Pete’s Dragon is the first animated or partially-animated Disney movie without the input of the Nine Old Men, the animation’s efforts are valiant, but too limited given the technology of the era.

The screenplay, penned by Malcolm Marmorstein (primarily a television writer for the original Dark Shadows series), is filled with cockamamie characters and cringeworthy attempts at humor. As Pete and Elliot descend upon the unsuspecting population of Passamaquoddy, we are introduced to the mayor, trying to propose a new town motto:

Passamaquoddy... where the sun always rises and where the sun always sets!

Oh brother.

Too many of the supporting characters seem to have a single quirk that defines them throughout the film – a punchline with no modification or a person who adopts a behavioral tone and never alters it regardless of the situation. As Lampie, Rooney is a caricature of crassness (albeit appropriate within the bounds of Disney family movies) in public while almost inexplicably dropping that persona around Pete and Nora. Nora is pining for her beloved, lost at sea for a year, becomes a mother figure to Pete (this part is not a criticism and will be expanded upon shortly, because Nora’s nurturing results in the most genuine moments in Pete’s Dragon), and little else. The schoolteacher, Ms. Taylor (Jane Kean), is a frumpy, no-nonsense woman with little sympathy for misbehavior. And the Gogans? Good lord, the Gogans. Unhygienic backwoods hillbillies with tendencies towards kidnapping and post-Thirteenth Amendment child slavery are as easy to write about as villains can be.

But enter Nora and, to a lesser extent, Lampie. As justified as many of the criticisms directed towards the Walt Disney Studios’ there are, even the bitterest critics concede the studio’s films have long championed non-traditional, surrogate families. Without questions, judgment, they take in Pete as their own. And though their acceptance and early days of taking Pete in seem a little too easy, without conflict, Nora and Lampie (Reddy and Rooney give good performances) give the constancy and nurturing that Pete has been lacking from others. Well, that is if you exclude Elliott, who – at the end of the film – is revealed to be a benevolent soul who goes around helping frightened, vulnerable children. Elliott – imaginary friend to some, menace to others, but a steadfast guardian to Pete – might be the eponymous dragon in the film’s title, but this is still Pete’s story. Sean Marshall is serviceable and never grating as Pete, a character too passive for my liking, but makes up for in his kindness.

Composer Irwin Kostal centers his score around the songs penned by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn. The Kasha-Hirschhorn musical numbers are as uneven as can be. Starting with insomnia-inducing jumpscares, “The Happiest Home in These Hills” opens the film by introducing the audience to the Gogans. Oh yes, the so-called Disney Villain song opens the movie! This is the most menacing the Gogans ever get (thankfully; their other song, “Bill of Sale” makes so little sense in every way imaginable). with threatening lyrics regarding Pete like:

Gonna snag him, gag him, drag him through town. Put his head in the river; let the pup drown. Trap him, strap him, wrap him in a sack, yeah, Tie him screaming to a railroad track.

It’s a juvenile, difficult way to start a movie, and that’s not even mentioning a lyric that has something to do with lynching Pete (which, as a Disney fan, gave me weird flashbacks to the Ku Klux Klan’s appearance in 1976′s Treasure of Matecumbe). Other weak entries include: “Boo Bop Bopbop Bop (I Love You, Too)” (in addition to its shoddy special effects) and “I Saw a Dragon” (Onna White’s choreography recalls her work for 1968′s Oliver!, but this is discount Oliver!). More creative are the likes “Brazzle Dazzle Day” (songs that capitalize on nonsense words are risky, but this one is okay) of “Every Little Piece” (because songs about con artists licking their chops about imminent fortune are usually hilarious).

But the two best songs in the film are the most lyrically modest in this score. “It’s Not Easy” is sung on Pete’s first night with Nora and Lampie, and where Pete talks about Elliott to Nora for the first time. Upon my first listening (as some may know, I get picky with music), I rejected the song because I found the rhyme scheme awkward: early in the song, Nora interjects between Pete’s first rhyme describing Elliott:

PETE He has the head of a camel, The neck of a crocodile...   NORA It sounds rather strange! PETE He’s both a fish and a mammal, And I hope he’ll never change.

Soon after, Nora completes one of Pete’s rhymes, throwing off my expectations of a constant rhyming scheme. But as the song progresses, they sing together (when Nora sings her aside about the one she loves, she changes key and breaks the consecutive rhyming scheme) and their rhymes come together as they begin to better understand each other. In a very subtle way, keeping rhymes close together in a duet can heighten emotion, develop a relationship.

But the film belongs to “Candle on the Water”, a torch song that is referenced throughout the film in Kostal’s score and that might not have been out of place in any musical movie decades earlier. The staging might be unimaginative and the gradual close-up a dreadful decision, but it is Reddy’s performance that defines this scene. “Candle on the Water” should be considered an essential entry in the esteemed Disney songbook, yet it does not appear to be in the canon (why is Mary Poppins the only Disney live-action film that receives that treatment?).

Pete’s Dragon would be the last live-action/traditional animation hybrid released by Disney until Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988; released through the company’s Touchstone Pictures label). These techniques, now even more of a curiosity in times where movies featuring human actors interacting with CGI environments and characters are commonplace, were the culmination of decades of experimentation and punishing handiwork. For the film’s value to today’s audiences, its messages will be fine for children, if they can get past the first musical number featuring the Gogans (if I was younger and watching this for the first time, I would not have accepted those jumpscares if I did not know in advance that this was a Disney movie). Elliott is selfless and lovable to a fault; Pete displays an understandable mixture of courage, courtesy, and fear.

The version shown on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) on December 20/21, 2017 shows how much Disney cares for its older movies – the print was beautiful to look at, despite the questionable yellowscreen. But is the company interested in having their older live-action films not called Mary Poppins a chance to connect to younger viewers? That is something to ponder about as live-action remakes only do so much to raise awareness or interest for the original versions.

My rating: 6.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[thekimmiandjackieshow]

My Day on Main Street.

Main Street, U.S.A. It’s what many Disney fans think of when they think of visiting the parks. Whether guests visit the west coast or the east coast, they will definitely take a stroll down Main Street, one of the most magical streets on Earth. Just under the train tracks at Walt Disney World is the not-so-subtle scent of Disney’s famous popcorn. Guests on one side are rushing into City Hall to get their celebration buttons and park recommendations. Guests on the other side are rushing into the theater to meet Mickey Mouse or Tinkerbell. Right on the corner, where the Town Square ends and Main Street begins, sits the famous Emporium. On the other side sit a variety of shops from a classic confectionary to the famous ice cream parlor. The walk down Main Street turns very sweet as smells of freshly made caramel apples and fudge waft into the air. At the end of Main Street, to the left, sits Casey’s Corner. To the right, Plaza Ice Cream Parlor. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, one can smell hot salted fries and hot dogs, or perfect waffle cones. The street is bustling with guests and upbeat instrumentals throughout the entire day, greeting guests the way they’ve been greeted since Magic Kingdom first opened their gates. Of course, just beyond the quick service restaurant and ice cream parlor, is the hub grass, creating a perfect garden that sits in front of the magnificently tall Cinderella Castle. 

As the day rolls on, parade performers will dance down the street, characters will take to the stage right in front of the castle, the fireworks will signify the end of the night, and the final Kiss Goodnight will light up the castle and thank guests for another magical day.

It’s no wonder that so many Cast Members love working on Main Street. While it has its own challenges, working the shops of Main Street sounded like one of the most magical places a Cast Member could work. So obviously, I had to try it out for myself.

I had been hesitant about picking up a shift at the Emporium. Famous for being “the shop that had it all” and “the one stop shop for Disney merchandise”, it was arguably the busiest store on property, if not second only to World of Disney in Disney Springs. I had gotten so used to Animal Kingdom that I was worried I’d be overwhelmed by the Emporium. My roommate from the spring happened to work there though, and insisted it wasn’t that bad. Sure enough, a shift fell into my lap and I knew I had to take it. 

My shift was a midday shift, so parking at the Magic Cast lot was awful. I parked in a spot near a lake I had never seen before and walked towards costuming. The Emporium costume was easy to find - one of the perks of being such a large store with so many Cast Members. It also helped that I had been in Magic Kingdom costuming several times before for the other shifts I had picked up. The accessory bin in the middle of costuming held the clip on tie I needed, and I was soon on my way. This costume was one of my favorites. While most costumes went perfectly with the theme of the land, most of them were also uncomfortable and fairly unflattering. The Emporium costume is pretty cute for what it is though, looks good on almost everybody, and is comfortable. Though I bet people who have to stock in a skirt are less than thrilled about that. I went into the tunnels, changed into the costume, and took the straight shot beneath the castle to Main Street. 

Finding the doors to the Emporium made me a little nervous. It wasn't that it was difficult to find, but I was worried that I’d open a random door and find myself on stage. I found my way to two large swinging doors at the top of a staircase, but the sign on it said to be sure you were 100% stage ready before going in. I still hadn't found the lockers yet. I walked back down the stairs and a few signs led me to the Main Street breakroom. Lockers sat directly across from that - the type where you punch in your own code to lock it. A few Main Street Cast Members were standing there, throwing things in their locker and putting their name tags on, so I figured I was in the right place. Back to the double doors I went. I thought that even if I had ended up on stage in the middle of the Emporium, I could ask somebody for directions to CDS (where I was meant to clock in). It turned out that the double doors led only to a small stock room with a CDS computer and a shelf where coordinators were planning their day. The CDS corner had a few Cast Members awkwardly shifting their weight back and forth, all wearing skirts that fell at different lengths, who were nervously making conversation with each other. They were all EHH too. 

I imagine that a place as big as the Emporium always has EHH Cast Members awkwardly roaming around. Even our small DAK location had a few EHH come in each day. A small paper just above CDS told us to talk to a coordinator right after clocking in and before getting an assignment. There was so much to take in though, that our entire small group missed this memo and picked up an assignment. 

Cast Members go to CDS frequently throughout their shift to “get assignments”. What it means is that a computer software program has the preset information that determines what position needs to be filled at any given time. A coordinator can add or take away these presets to fill need on-demand. It’s also the system that gives cast their breaks or “bump outs” (for clocking out at the end of their shift). 

A stressed out coordinator turned around and told us we all should have waited. I guess it’s one of those things that seems obvious to the people that are there all the time, but we were all new and all taking everything in. To us, it was just another piece of paper amongst all the other notices surrounding CDS. He rearranged our assignments so that other Cast Members didn’t miss their breaks and assigned us all to a meeting with him. He printed out brochures welcoming us to the Emporium and had information we’d need throughout our shift. It included an actual map of the Emporium with a key stating what merchandise was where. That was the moment I started to feel overwhelmed. Then he assigned each of us a Cast Member to give us a tour of the shop and explain some of the things we’d definitely need to know. 

The Emporium, of course, had some themed language. This was one of my favorite parts about picking up shifts in other places. Animal Kingdom Strollers didn’t tend to have any themed language. Breaks were breaks, registers were just registers, stacking and prepping strollers was just stack/unstack, etc. Themed language made a huge difference for me. It was, to me, (at least in part) what set Disney apart from other places. It was what helped remind Cast Members that they were more than Merchandise Cast Members, they were part of a story. While some assignments in the Emporium were just assignments, going to the bathroom and going on break had code phrasing. Even things as small as that made the job more fun.

My shift started out in one of the large rooms, the one with high ceilings and tall windows. I couldn’t begin to tell you what zone that was, but there I was, ringing guests out left and right. It was mid afternoon, so the store was slow. A guest occasionally asked me where something was, but another Cast Member was always there to walk the guest directly to the item. I stood in one spot, behind the register, until my next assignment. 

It wasn’t long before Festival of Fantasy passed by our windows. The store emptied out to uplifting FOF music, and nearby Cast Members started to hum along as they cleaned up the store. Maleficent stretched her head high above the crowd to breathe fire, and I watched her amaze guests from the tall windows in the room. The Emporium was quickly becoming my favorite place to work.

After the parade, a small rush of people popped into the store. I rang a few guests out back to back, managing the line with another Cast Member on register next to me. A few guests bought an extraordinary amount of souvenirs, while other guests spilled out their pocket change for one last Mickey Mouse keychain for their fully decked out kid. The line dissipated quickly though, and I was once again in awe of Emporium’s efficiency. See, at Animal Kingdom Main Entrance, the person at registers is never JUST the person at registers. They are also the people wandering the store floor to make sure that everybody is finding everything they need. They are the ones tidying up the store to make sure things are in their proper place. They are the ones checking the back for a different sized shirt because the ONE stocker is either on break or is working the cart across the way. They are the ones manning the ENTIRE store. The store is small, but it does sometimes get filled with people, and when it does, there aren’t a lot of Cast Members to get things done. It often leaves the person at register running around the place quite a bit. This also happens at the actual strollers location towards the end of the night. One person is checking people out, collecting strollers/wheelchairs/ECV’s, refunding ECV deposits, collecting locker keys, maintaining the package pick up service, and trying to wish guests one last “wild night” before they leave Animal Kingdom. This might be manageable if guests all stood in one single-file line and waited for assistance, but the reality is that guests are approaching the garage area with their strollers and such while folks waiting to check out hang out by the registers. It’s doable with the right energy and attitude, but picking up a shift at the Emporium made me realize that other locations are well-staffed. Sure they’re busier for a larger percentage of the working day, but it means that each Cast Member is purely responsible for their one job. They trust that the other Cast Members will do their part, so they can do their’s. My assignment was to be on registers, whether a guest was there or not. I stood in one place the entire time. It felt unusual.

Throughout the day I was moved to various rooms. I worked in the princess area for a while and sorted charms. When I got my slip for my “tea” (my break), I was given a 30 minute break. I thought it was a mistake but apparently six and a half hour shifts warrant 30 minute breaks in Magic Kingdom. At Animal Kingdom, six hour shifts = 15 minute break. As I was hanging out in the Magic Kingdom break room, I ran into my old coordinator. He transferred to Magic Kingdom for parade audience control, but had been one of my favorite coordinators at DAK. We talked briefly before I went back upstairs. Shortly after that, I took another 15 minute tea. I felt like I hadn’t even worked at all but there I was, on another break. I spent it talking to a girl who worked outdoor food vending on Main Street before going back upstairs. 

The rest of my day was very casual. I worked at different registers in different rooms. I made acquaintances with the other Cast Members during the slow periods. I hummed along to the princess music in the princess room, up until a little guest pulled on my skirt to ask me if I was a princess. And then, before I knew it, my carriage had arrived and my day was over. Typically at DAK, Cast Members can receive a “bump out” 15 minutes or less before their shift is over. It’s meant to give the Cast Member time to wrap up what they’re doing with the guest they’re working with before walking back to the register to clock out. At Magic Kingdom though, Cast Members are allowed to clock out a few minutes early and still get paid as though they clocked out at the end of their shift to account for the time it takes to get back to their car. This means that bump outs happen even earlier than they usually would. 

I clocked out, but I felt surprised that the day was already over. Between the tour of the Emporium, the 30 minute break and the 15 minute break, and the early bump out, it felt as though I hadn’t even worked. Staying in one position and only being responsible for that one job was also far less exhausting to me. I looked at my phone to see how many steps I had taken during my shift. 

6,000. 

My norm for a 6.5 hour shift at Animal Kingdom was roughly 15-18,000. 

Now I’m not saying a job at the Emporium is easier than a job at DAK. I know it has drawbacks that I didn’t experience. But I was surprised to find that it was so well organized and so well staffed that I didn’t need to do a million things at once. All I had to do was focus on the guest in front of me, and that made for more memorable conversations and more magical moments. 

I walked through the tunnels and back to the shuttle. At that moment, I was so grateful to be a Cast Member. I imagined all the people that dreamed of the day they would get to watch Festival of Fantasy from the window of their workplace before clocking out and making the walk in the infamous tunnels beneath the castle. I thought about all the people who were on Main Street, getting ready to watch the fireworks and thinking about how they never wanted to leave Walt Disney World. I thought about all the people, still at home, applying over and over again to be part of the college program. The simple magic of the Emporium and the fantastic leaders there made me want to continue being a Cast Member for as long as I could. I wished that I felt that way more often as I boarded my bus back to my car.

As I stepped off the shuttle at the Cast parking lot, I realized I had parked in such a hurry that I didn’t really know where I had parked. All I had remembered was that it was by some body of water. I spent the next while trying to find it, and managed to catch some of Wishes as I searched. It made me miss home. It made me miss the days where I would walk back to the Cast parking lot at Disneyland after a shift in Downtown Disney during the fireworks. Although the fireworks at Disneyland are much closer to the cars, so all the car alarms would be blaring and all that could be heard was the sound of cars going haywire and booming fireworks. I did miss home, but I was happy to be where I was. The Emporium was a magical place, and I wish I got the chance to work there more.

[knb5byarabella2019]

Walt Disney

Prepare for an information dump. (recommended to have a beverage on standby because if your determined to read this you are going to need it)

Walter Elias Disney is the most famous person in association with animation, so much so that his name has practically become synonymous with animation. Not only did he elevate animation into a viable industry but he is also why animation has become synonymous with childhood and youth. This in turn has caused a lot of misconceptions about Disney and animation so prepare for some Myth-Busting. For starters he wasn’t even good at drawing.

Walt Disney did NOT invent: animation itself OR the animated cartoon (Charlie Bowers, Winsor McCay and Max Fleisher were doing those before Disney) OR cinematic anthropomorphism (that means things or animals given human qualities, Ladislaw Stareowicz did that before Disney too) OR the first ‘talkie’ (sound synchronized with animation, Max Fleisher again) OR the first animated feature (Lotte Reiniger has the earliest copy) OR Mikey Mouse’s name or design (it was designed by another animator and his wife suggested Mickey instead of Mortimer)

I hope I didn’t just destroy you’re childhood so now I will talk about what he DID do. Walter Elias Disney’s ancestors were from Ireland and when they moved to Canada and then to Chicago, Walt was born on the 5th of December 1901. They didn’t stay there long because when he was 5 they moved to Marceline (I sure hope I’m spelling these names correctly) in Missouri, which is just outside of Kansas City (which actually isn’t in Kansas) but they soon moved into Kansas City itself. Walt loved to wave to the train-drivers as they went past. At school he met another boy with the same name of German decent and they started to reenact plays they saw from vanderville to their classmate. Between them they could reproduce 4 plays and this is what introduced Disney to the theater.

They later moved back to Chicago and despite being unhappy about it Disney was encouraged to take art classes and in high-school he drew patriotic cartoons for the school newspaper. When he was 16 he went to join the army but was a few days late to get recruited, so after telling his mother she forged his birth certificate to make him look older than he was. When he went back they decided to send him to France with the Medical Corp. , specifically the Red Cross. He spent a year there before being discharged, a year of driving ambulances and drawing on them. Yes he got away with drawing on ambulances.

He returned to Kansas City and stayed with his older brother, Roy, who worked at a bank. After weeks of Roy asking clients if they had a job for his brother, Walt finally got a job at a company that made cartoon advertisements. There he met and became good friends with Dutch man called Ubbe Iwerks (later called Ub) who was an amazing animator and illustrator. Where Walt talked a lot with barely any work to show for it, Ub could do 700 illustrations a day but was very quiet.

However Disney eventually got fired because he wasn’t that good an illustrator, so in 1920, at age 19, he and Ub created a company called ‘Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists’, but this didn’t really work because they were considered too young and inexperienced by the other companies. This company was soon taken over by George Winkler & Charles Mintz who financed their company for a while, long enough to create Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, before pulling the plug and keeping the character rights.

Disney then decided to go to Hollywood and start a studio there, but that didn’t work so his uncle Robert gave him his garage so he could continue to work in there. Walt and Ub collaborated and continued to work on some new characters and after four years of hard work he was lucky enough to receive a contract worth $250′000. He had gone back to Winkler and Mintz for money but they both said no, however on his way out he ran into a friend, Mintz’s sister who was also Winkler’s wife, she saw his characters and wrote the check for him. How lucky is that?

When he sent a message to his brother Roy, who had moved to Los Angeles, he found out his brother was in the veterans hospital with tuberculosis in the isolation ward. I am amazed at what his brother did when he found out that Walt got the money. He escaped from the hospital. Escaped, from a veterans hospital. Now that is what I call a dedicated banker. His brother gave Walt financial and business advice, and they formed the Disney Brothers Studios. After telling his friends who worked in the advertisement company in Kansas City, they came to work for him and they created the ‘Alice Comedy’ series. In 1925 he married Lillian Bounds, an inker who worked for him (at the time women weren’t allowed to animate but instead became inkers, they put the coloured ink on the drawings)

in 1928 he went to New York to ask Winkler & Mintz for more money to expand the studio. big mistake because they essentially fired Disney and stole his work because it was with their money. The company, the characters, the workers, the rights. The characters were not recovered until 2006, and I find it ironic that now Disney now seems to own many other companies and rights like Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel.

When he created a rodent character that was to become the central character and iconic figure, Walt told his wife Lillian. Mortimer Mouse. I can only imagine she gave him a look that said ‘seriously?’. What I do know is that she proceeded to explain the french word for ‘death’ was ‘Mort’ and that it had too many syllables to say quickly. She was the one who suggested that he be called ‘Mickey Mouse’ and another animator designed the beloved character.

He started the company now known as Disney and it grew into the globally recognized company it is today. He passed away soon after his 65th birthday (from cancer, he was a chain-smoker, it was cool in that era). Disney was a master storyteller and producer, which is why he was such a giant in the animation and film-making world.

(If you read the whole way through this essay-like rambling, thank you for bearing with me. Treat yourself to a biscuit or cookie, you deserve it.)

[bloojayoolie]

Being Alone, Animals, and Bad: Loveable, sweet MEET OUR BABY BOY! Leviathan A baby puppy, a family pet. Gentle w/toddlers, outgoing & friendly to strangers. An easygoing, wiggly, sweet boy, laid back, affectionate and lovely. Dreams of being your one and only pet. Id 56211, 9 Mos. Old, 62 lbs. ot Sweetness, Walting with Hope at the Manhattan ACC TO BE KILLED – 3/23/2019 Let us tell you what makes us livid over at MLD. What makes us upset is when the parents in a multi-pet home do absolutely NOTHING to ensure the safety of their pets and fail to carefully and successfully manage them so that both cats and dogs remain happy, healthy and live long lives. Leviathan is just a puppy, barely 9 months old, but he has found himself at the shelter because his parents allowed him to “play” with the cat who actually DIDN’T appreciate Leviathan’s puppy rough-housing. Now Leviathan is sitting alone and heartbroken at the shelter, and he truly doesn’t realize what he did wrong. Friendly, social, wiggly and shyly sweet, he is so laid back, easygoing, gentle and sweet. A proven family pet, he lived with very small children and was nothing but gentle with them, and every new person who came to visit got a wiggly reception when they entered the house. Leviathan is a wonderful boy, a good boy who had inexperienced parents. It was a bad adoption, plain and simple. What he needs now is an experienced family, a place where he can be the only pet. He’s so darling – just look at that mushy face! Watch is darling video and see what we mean (it’s below). You can’t help but fall in love. Hurry and PM our page or email us at MustLoveDogsNYC@gmail.com to foster or adopt lovable Leviathan! My Sweet Movie! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmhgl3vlqlI LEVIATHAN, ID# 56211, 9 Mos. Old, 62.6 lbs, Unaltered Male Manhattan ACC, Large Mixed Breed, Gray / White Owner Surrender Reason: Aggressive to other animals Shelter Assessment Rating: New Hope Rescue Only Medical Behavior Rating: 1. GREEN AT RISK MEMO: Leviathan has shown concerning reactivity towards other animals including cats and dogs while in his previous home environment and in the care center. Leviathan would be best suited for placement with a new hope rescue partner that can provide the necessary behavior modification and reward based training. Medically, Leviathan was diagnosed with canine infectious respiratory disease complex which is contagious to other animals and will require in home care. INTAKE NOTES – DATE OF INTAKE, :Upon intake: very loose and wiggly, allowed all handling such as scanning and collaring. He kept sitting and giving paw to the counselor. OWNER SURRENDER NOTES – BASIC INFORMATION: Leviathan is a 9 month old intact male large mixed breed dog that was surrendered due to not getting along with cats in the home. He lived with adults, a child and another dog. Around strangers, Leviathan is friendly/outgoing. He plays gently and exuberant with adults. Leviathan previously lived with a 4 month old. He plays gently with children. Leviathan was reported to be aggressive with other dogs by lunging at them when passing them on walks. Leviathan does not get along with cats. He lunges and darted at the cat he lived with. No history of resource guarding reported. Leviathan had a bite incident regarding the resident cat which resulted in the cat's death. He was noted to have played with the cat before but also dart at him. He is reported to have played too rough with the cat and when the cat scratched him, the dog retaliated ultimately resulting in the death of the cat as well as bites on the cat's head and broken arms as well as a prolapsed eye. Leviathan is housetrained and has a medium energy level. For a New Family to Know: Leviathan was reported to be friendly, affectionate, and playful. He likes to follow you around when you're home. He loves to give you paw. He sleeps on a dog bed. He was given free choice to the indoors and outdoors with a pet door. He eats dry food. He goes potty on the grass. He is well-behaved when left alone in the yard. He is never left alone in the house. He has never been crated. He knows sit, come, and give paw. For exercise, he likes slow and brisk walks on leash as well as play in the yard. On leash he pulls lightly. When off leash he wanders some but comes when called. SHELTER ASSESSMENT – DATE OF ASSESSMENT: 3/10/2019 LEASH WALKING Strength and pulling: None Reactivity to humans: None Reactivity to dogs: None Leash walking comments: None SOCIABILITY Loose in room (15-20 seconds): Moderately social Call over: Approaches with coaxing Sociability comments: Sniffing around room, checks in with assessor HANDLING Soft handling: Seeks contact Exuberant handling: Seeks contact Comments: Soft body, leans into pets AROUSAL Jog: Follows (loose) Arousal comments: None Knock: Approaches (loose) Knock Comments: None Toy: No response Toy comments: None PLAYGROUP NOTES – DOG TO DOG SUMMARIES: A single pet residence is recommended for Leviathan due to bite incidents involving both cats and dogs. 3/9: Leviathan was muzzled for his first interaction off leash due to his hold status. Leviathan greets politely with loose body and wagging tail, engaging in a soft and social manner with the female dog. He then becomes distracted by his muzzle and is removed from the pen. 3/16: Leviathan is now off his hold and eligible for an off leash interaction. At the gate he is loose and wiggly. When the female enters, he begins sniffing her and she turns towards him with a minor vocalization. Leviathan escalates and bites and holds the female dog by the neck for about 10 seconds until handlers are able to separate them. There was no broken skin. INTAKE NOTES - Date of intake:: 3/3/2019 Summary:: Loose body, allowed handling MEDICAL BEHAVIOR - Date of initial:: 3/3/2019 Summary:: Social, relaxed ENERGY LEVEL:: Leviathan is described as having a medium level of activity. BEHAVIOR DETERMINATION:: New Hope Only Behavior Asilomar: TM - Treatable-Manageable Recommendations:: No young children (under 5),No children (under 13),No cats,Single-pet home,Recommend no dog parks,Place with a New Hope partner Recommendations comments:: Leviathan has shown a low threshold for escalation to severe behaviors (biting) with both a cat and a dog. At this time we would recommend placement with a New Hope partner that can work with him. Due to the bite and hold incident (no broken skin) in playgroup at the care center, we would recommend a single pet home for Leviathan and that he not attend dog parks. Potential challenges: : Bite history (other animal),On-leash reactivity/barrier frustration Potential challenges comments:: Leviathan bit the cat in his previous home multiple times, resulting in the cats death. Leviathan may have a very high prey drive and should be kept away from small animals. Please see handout on bite history. Leviathan is reported to react to dogs on leash, lunging towards them. Please see handout on On-leash reactivity/barrier frustration. MEDICAL EXAM NOTES 3/03/2019 [LVT Intake Exam] Microchip Scan: Negative Evidence of Cruelty: No Observed Behavior: Friendly , relaxed and easy to handle. Estimated Age: 9 Months Subjective: O/S Eyes:Wnl Ears:has scratches on the AS Oral Exam:Wnl Abdomen:WNL Musculoskeletal:WNL Mentation: BAR BCS: 6/9 Skin : loss some fur thoracodorsal area between shoulder blade., owner stated (As per owner previously diagnosis (demodicosis ) by private DVM) Has old scratches from cat mate on the top of his head Preliminary Assessment: As per owner : diagnosed by private Vet( demodicosis) Plan: DVM intake .check skin issues 9/03/2019 SO BAR in kennel. Standing at kennel front. EN -- eyes are clear. serous nasal discharge and sneezing during observation A CIRDC P doxycycline 100mg tablet -- give 2.75 tablet PO q24h x 14 days enrofloxacin 136mg tablet -- give 2 tablets PO q24h x 14 days cerenia 60mg tablet -- give 0.5 tablet PO q24h x 4 days *** TO FOSTER OR ADOPT *** CHASE IS RATED NEW HOPE RESCUE ONLY. You must fill out applications with New Hope Rescues to foster or adopt him. He cannot be reserved online at the ACC ARL, nor can he be direct adopted at the shelter. PLEASE HURRY AND MESSAGE OUR PAGE FOR ASSISTANCE! HOW TO RESERVE A “TO BE KILLED” DOG ONLINE (only for those who can get to the shelter IN PERSON to complete the adoption process, and only for the dogs on the list NOT marked New Hope Rescue Only). Follow our Step by Step directions below! *PLEASE NOTE – YOU MUST USE A PC OR TABLET – PHONE RESERVES WILL NOT WORK! ** STEP 1: CLICK ON THIS RESERVE LINK: https://ift.tt/2ynocEZ Step 2: Go to the red menu button on the top right corner, click register and fill in your info. Step 3: Go to your email and verify account \ Step 4: Go back to the website, click the menu button and view available dogs Step 5: Scroll to the animal you are interested and click reserve STEP 6 ( MOST IMPORTANT STEP ): GO TO THE MENU AGAIN AND VIEW YOUR CART. THE ANIMAL SHOULD NOW BE IN YOUR CART! Step 7: Fill in your credit card info and complete transaction HOW TO FOSTER OR ADOPT IF YOU *CANNOT* GET TO THE SHELTER IN PERSON, OR IF THE DOG IS NEW HOPE RESCUE ONLY! You must live within 3 – 4 hours of NY, NJ, PA, CT, RI, DE, MD, MA, NH, VT, ME or Norther VA. Please PM our page for assistance. You will need to fill out applications with a New Hope Rescue Partner to foster or adopt a dog on the To Be Killed list, including those labelled Rescue Only. Hurry please, time is short, and the Rescues need time to process the applications.

[placetobenation]

The Jungle Book

Release Date: October 16th, 1967

Inspiration: “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling

Budget: $4 million

Domestic Gross: $141 million

Worldwide Gross: $378 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

IMDB Score: 7.6/10

Storyline (per IMDB): Abandoned after an accident, baby Mowgli is taken and raised by a family of wolves. As the boy grows older, the wise panther Bagheera realizes he must be returned to his own kind in the nearby man-village. Baloo the bear however thinks differently, taking the young Mowgli under his wing and teaching him that living in the jungle is the best life there is. Bagheera realizes that Mowgli is in danger, particularly from Shere Khan the tiger who hates all people. When Baloo finally comes around, Mowgli runs off into the jungle where he survives a second encounter with Kaa the snake and finally, with Shere Khan. It’s the sight of a pretty girl however that gets Mowgli to go to the nearby man-village and stay there.

Pre-Watching Thoughts: We come now to the final film the 1960s and sadly, the first film to be released following the death of Walt Disney less than a year ago. This was going to be a pretty trying time for Disney as they were now without their patriarch and were going to have to adjust to life without him. On a personal note, this was always one of my favorites growing up and it has been a long time since I had seen this version as I did see the live-action remake when it came out a few years ago. A lot of the films have held up pretty well to this point and hopefully this one does the same for me.

Voice Cast: Now in doing these recaps, the voice cast has usually been fairly balanced between actors and actresses that have appeared in these films, but this one is out of the ordinary in that we have only two actresses in this film and the majority of it are male actors. We also do have a few returns here though not that many as we have a lot of new voices though some of them will also become regulars going forward. One of those returns is Verna Felton who voices Winifred the Elephant in what ended up being a posthumous release as she had sadly passed away prior to the release of the film, and then we have the return of Sebastian Cabot who voices Bagheera the Panther as well as the narrator of the film. We then have Sterling Holloway return after a lengthy absence as he voices Kaa the Snake in a good role, and then we have J. Pat O’Malley who voices Col. Hathi the Elephant as well as Buzzie the Vulture. Finally we have Ben Wright who voices Rami the Wolf and as mentioned, a lot of the cast is relatively new and there are a few that will become regulars going forward. First we have Bruce Reitherman who voices Mowgli in what would end up being his most memorable role aside from an upcoming role, and then we have Phil Harris who voices Baloo the Bear as he would become a regular going forward for Disney. We then have Louis Prima who voices King Louie the Orangutan in what would be one of his last film roles in his career, and then we have George Sanders who voices Shere Khan the Tiger in a great role as he was natural at playing villains. We then have Clint Howard in one of his first roles as Junior the Elephant and then we have Darleen Carr in one of her first roles as she voices the human girl that Mowgli sees in the village. We then have John Abbott as Akela the Wolf in a good role and then we combine the next few as we have Chad Stuart, Tim Hudson, and Digby Wolfe who voice the remaining vultures. We also have Hal Smith and Ralph Wright voicing two of the elephants and finally we have Bill Skiles, Pete Henderson, and Leo De Lyon voicing the various monkeys under King Louie’s rule. It does seem like the number of actors that are returning does seem to be getting smaller and we will see when we get to the point where they only return to do sequels.

Hero/Prince: I strongly debated whether or not any character deserved to be included in this category especially after the last film which should’ve had one on the surface, but ultimately didn’t which was a shame. However, we do have a pair of characters that deserve a mention in this category and first is Baloo the Bear who takes Mowgli under his wing until he realizes Mowgli needs to be with his own kind which leads Mowgli to run away, but then Baloo fights Shere Khan to save Mowgli and nearly loses his life only for Mowgli and the vultures to save him in the end. We also have to give a mention to Bagheera the Panther who watches over Mowgli since he gave him to the wolves who raised him, and he is adamant about Mowgli returning to his own kind and he at one point saves Mowgli from Kaa. While they will probably not end up ranking very high amongst the other heroes and princes, they deserve some recognition for how they look after Mowgli as one of their own.

Princess: N/A

Villain: We have had some pretty memorable villains over the last few films though we did step down a bit with our last one, but we do step back up a bit here as we have Shere Khan the Tiger who returns to the jungle and makes it clear he will kill Mowgli if he finds him. He finally confronts Mowgli when he is with the vultures and he fights Baloo whom he almost kills, but he is stopped when Mowgli ties a burning branch to his tail and frightens him as he retreats into the jungle with his fate being unknown. Shere Khan is an interesting villain in that he sounds very refined and proper, but he never hides his demeanor given that he is a tiger and has no qualms of wanting to kill Mowgli. I also want to give a mention to Kaa the Snake who tries on two occasions to eat Mowgli himself only to be thwarted first by Bagheera, and then again by Shere Khan himself with Kaa being left to think of another plan. He uses hypnosis on his victims which he does to Mowgli twice and even to Bagheera at one point, but his size becomes his biggest determent as when part of him is shoved off a tree, the rest of him follows suit. While these two may not be as memorable as some of the other villains in the Disney film canon, they are good villains and work well for this film.

Other Characters: This is a film that doesn’t have a ton of characters involved, but almost all of them do play a main role in the film in some form or another whether it be a major role or a minor role. At the top we have the man-cub Mowgli who is found by Bagheera as a baby and taken to be raised by the wolves, and when he is old enough Bagheera tries to take him to the man-village though Mowgli wishes to stay in the jungle and Baloo takes him under his wing. Eventually, everyone tells Mowgli he needs to leave and he runs away before coming face-to-face with Shere Khan, but with the help of the vultures he ties a burning branch to Shere Khan’s tail and scares him off before being brough to the village by Baloo and Bagheera where he becomes smitten with a young girl and heads into the village. We then have the wolf clan that looks after Mowgli while he is growing up until it is determined that he must be taken to the man-village, and then we have the jungle patrol of elephants led by Col. Hathi and Mowgli befriends Junior which leads the elephants to search for him when Mowgli runs away. We then have King Louie and his monkeys who kidnap Mowgli under the pretense that he knows how to make fire for Louie though he ends up having his home destroyed by Baloo and Bagheera, and then we have the vultures that befriend Mowgli and help him and Baloo in fighting off Shere Khan. Finally we have the girl at the village that Mowgli quickly becomes smitten with and he leaves the jungle to follow her into the village. As I have mentioned a few times before and not to sound like a broken record, but a film like this is fine with not having a ton of characters and instead only focusing on a main few while some minor ones get some shine as well.

Songs: After the last two films which either didn’t have a lot of songs to begin with or just had songs in there to have them, this film has quite a good number of songs and pretty much almost all of them are memorable not just for the film, but in the history of the Disney film canon. Right at the top of the list is “The Bare Necessities” that Baloo and Mowgli sing and it is still one of those songs that is just fun to sing, and then we have “I Wanna Be Like You” which King Louie sings and that is another fun song to sing along with. We then have a few songs that might not be on the same level as those two, but they are still solid including “Trust in Me” which Kaa sings to Mowgli to put him under a trance and that is also pretty memorable as well. We then have “Col. Hathi’s March” that Col. Hathi and the elephants sing while on patrol which is catchy as well, and then we have “That’s What Friends Are For” that the vultures sing to Mowgli prior to the showdown with Shere Khan. Finally, we have “My Own Home” which the young girl from the village sings and Mowgli is drawn to her through that soft ballad. It is going to be interesting to see where these songs rank amongst the rest, but they are still a collection of good songs that help make the film pretty memorable.

Plot: On the surface, it would seem like Rudyard Kipling’s book would be one of the last things to be adapted into an animated film, but when it was first being adapted the original screenplay had the film resemble the book a lot more closely to the point that it was considered too dark for a family film. Eventually, while certain aspects of the film did follow the original book, there were some parts that were tweaked including the fact that it had a more linear plot as opposed to the episodic nature of the book. Much like the book, Bagheera finds Mowgli as a baby and takes him to the wolves who raise him as their own, and when he is older the wolves and Bagheera determine that Mowgli must return to his own kind lest Shere Khan finds him. Mowgli wants to stay in the jungle and befriends Baloo while avoiding being eaten by Kaa and he is kidnapped by King Louie, and finally even Baloo realizes Mowgli needs to return to his own kind and Mowgli runs away. He is found by a pack of vultures just as Shere Khan finds him and Baloo fights Shere Khan who nearly kills him, but Mowgli ties a branch that is on fire on Shere Khan’s tail and scares him back into the jungle. Mowgli is reunited with Baloo and Bagheera only to be drawn by a young girl’s singing, and he falls in love with her leading to him going to her village while Baloo and Bagheera return to the jungle. While this film does add a lot more light-heartedness to the story than the book does, it is still a good plot that sees Mowgli basically come of age and realize that his place is not in the jungle but rather with his people.

Random Watching Thoughts: I never realized that even this film had the storybook beginning; Interesting enough it says that the film was inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s “Mowgli” stories and not the actual book; I believe this is the first time where they mention who is voicing what character; For some reason, I never thought that India had any jungles; That boat looks like it had been like that for quite a long time which makes you wonder if Mowgli’s parents did survive, why did they not take him with them?; It was a good thing Bagheera didn’t follow his first impulse and walk away; It does seem random that Bagheera would take Mowgli to a family of wolves, but he explains it fine by saying they just had cubs so the mother would be more inclined to look after Mowgli; Rama didn’t need that much swaying into taking Mowgli in; So in the jungle, they tell how many years had gone by the rains; Is Shere Khan that strong that this entire pack of wolves would be unable to kill him?; Bagheera was quite up front with why Mowgli was in danger due to Shere Khan yet Mowgli believes that they can just explain that he won’t grow up to become a hunter; Mowgli made some good points about not being able to get up the tree as Bagheera assumed he would climb up it with ease; Mowgli just shoves Kaa away like he’s nothing even after Kaa called him delicious; You would think that a panther wouldn’t be afraid of a snake yet Bagheera cowers in fear of Kaa after helping Mowgli; How long was Kaa that he was so wrapped around that tree and how at any point was his tail able to get tied in a knot?; So Hathi had them march one way, turn around and march a few paces only to turn back around and come to a halt, that just seems like a waste of energy; How many other herds of elephants are there really in this jungle that the one can transfer to another one?; They all stick their trunks out and Mowgli just stands completely upright until Junior tells him to stick his nose out; Of all the military groups that are out there, there are none more prestigious than the Maharajah’s Fifth Pachyderm Brigade; There aren’t many elephants that can say they were awarded the Victoria Cross; How sharp is Hathi’s stick that he was able to slice off that elephant’s hair so easily?; So Hathi thinks that because he’s a colonel he is in charge of the jungle; Hathi says that an elephant never forgets yet in the span of a minute, he forgot about his son and then he forgot to tell the brigade to stop marching leading to an elephant pileup; That is quite the loin cloth Mowgli is wearing that Bagheera grabbed at it with all his might and yet it didn’t rip off, though obviously they won’t do that in a Disney film; Of all the names Baloo could’ve thought of, he comes up with “Little Britches” for Mowgli; Mowgli can yell as loud as he wants, but he will never match up to Baloo’s yell; He didn’t even hit Mowgli that hard, it was just the momentum that sent Mowgli into the log; Mowgli did hit a nice uppercut there on Baloo; Well of course the man-village will make a man out of him, what else would you expect Baloo?; He knocks down a whole bushel of bananas, takes one out, and then throws the rest away, talk about a waste; He makes a stack of about six or seven prickly fruits yet he is able to scoff them down his throat with no trouble at all; With all the scratching he’s doing, he better be careful or he’ll end up bleeding; Baloo is floating on that water fairly easily and not sinking a bit which you would probably expect for a bear his size; Again, another example of wasted food with what the monkeys throw at Baloo; Apparently, these monkeys are also fans of puns; It is always weird hearing the animals make their actual sounds at points during the film; I wonder what the actor who played King Louie must’ve thought when he saw the script and noticed that most of the dialogue was nonsense words; Why would an orangutan really want to be a man for?; I’ve noticed watching this that Mowgli is very easily influenced as he goes along with whoever he is with; Baloo was all ready to take Louie apart until he was taken by the beat; Those monkeys must not be too bright if they couldn’t recognize Baloo immediately even with the disguise simply because he’s a bear; One thing to note is that a few of the motions that we see here would be used throughout the next couple of films, I’m guessing it was a cost-cutting measure; I know that Louie and his crew live in ancient ruins, but they must be really ancient if they came down after knocking out just two pillars; So Baloo and Bagheera both had a black eye to the point that they could barely open them, and then in one shot they are both able to open those eyes with no pain at all; Depending on what time of night it was when the scene started, you have to wonder how many hours they were up talking when the sun came up and morning started; The way Baloo answered that question about if he would marry a panther make me wonder if he would actually marry a panther if they asked him; It is a bit odd that Bagheera would assume that Mowgli would grow up to become a hunter; You do feel bad for Baloo because he truly sees Mowgli as his son and he doesn’t want to give him up; We are over 47 minutes into the film and finally we see Shere Khan; Is it just me or this that deer that Shere Khan was hunting look suspiciously like Bambi’s mother?; I love how Hathi is so confident that Shere Khan is nowhere near in the jungle not realizing that he is mere feet away listening to them; Winifred sure put Hathi in his place in threating to taking over his post unless he finds Mowgli; Hathi tells them to take one pace forward if they want to volunteer and they all take a step back to get out of it, yet when Hathi turns around he thinks they are all trying to volunteer; I always laugh when people are leaning in to hear a whisper and then all of a sudden the person shouts and startles everyone; How long has Mowgli been walking and isn’t he getting hungry at all, or has he eaten and it was just off screen?; It just would happen that Mowgli sits under a tree where Kaa is; Mowgli says that he doesn’t trust anyone anymore so Kaa has to resort to his hypnosis to lure Mowgli in; Kind of funny seeing Kaa and Shere Khan interact and Kaa basically have to try and convince Shere Khan that he doesn’t have Mowgli; That would’ve been something if Kaa could’ve hypnotized Shere Khan, but he clearly has too strong of willpower to fall for that; Shere Khan must have hyper hearing if he could’ve heard that soft snore from Mowgli way up in the tree; We have repeated animation with Kaa being pushed out of the tree and getting his tail caught up in a knot before slithering away all bent out of shape; These are not just vultures, but they are British vultures; These vultures must not have exciting lives if they argue about just wanting to do something; These vultures definitely have some great harmony; Why would they let the shortest and roundest vulture have to be the base of their little tower?; Mowgli is either the bravest person ever or the dumbest person ever if he is willing to stand face-to-face with a tiger, but then again Shere Khan isn’t the brightest in that he doesn’t just attack him and gives him a fighting chance; Baloo tells Shere Khan to take it easy and slow down while he continues to hang onto his tail; Shere Khan really put a beating on Baloo; He takes that burning branch all the way through that grass yet somehow it doesn’t cause a massive brush fire; Bagheera gives this really heartfelt speech putting Baloo over for his courage and his sacrifice, yet Baloo shows he is still alive and sells being dead just so he can hear Bagheera put him over; The vultures started this by asking what they were going to do, they befriended Mowgli, they helped him and Baloo fight off Shere Khan, and now they finish by wondering what they would do now; Baloo says that nothing will come between him and Mowgli until Mowgli hears the girl singing; I love how Bagheera is all smiles when he sees Mowgli go to see the girl knowing that he’s going to go after her; Mowgli had never seen another human before and then he sees the girl, and he quickly falls in love with her to the point that he would carry her water jug back to the village; You know, this girl has never seen Mowgli before yet she is immediately smitten with him, it makes you wonder what she really thinks about the other boys in her village; How often would you ever see a bear and a panther walk arm-in-arm in the jungle?

Overall Thoughts: Overall, this film was one of my favorites growing up and thankfully, that hasn’t changed at all as it is thus far the best film I have watched since starting these recaps. I had mentioned during the Sleeping Beauty recap that I had that pegged as my first perfect score, but it ended up falling just a bit short while I was just hoping this one held up and instead it wound up being far better than I remembered it being. As mentioned, this was a trying time for Disney as Walt had passed away and they were not going to have to move on without him, but if the films end up like this then they will have absolutely no problems as we head into the next decade. In conclusion, this was a tremendous film and it ends up being the first film since starting this recap that gets my first perfect score.

Final Grade: 10/10

[writingshiz]

Strawberries CHAP 3

"Rather feels like we've met before, hasn't it?"

He let his fingertips rasp across her damp palm as their hands clasped, enjoying the sight of chills plucking across her skin. He kept her gaze trapped within his, saw the way she jutted out her chin slightly, in challenge, threatening to spill blood if he breathed a word.

"Does it?" Mikasa breathed out, her voice giving the most satisfying quiver.

"It does." Levi murmured after several moments.

And still their hands remained in one another's.

"Oh dear." Hanji murmured, barely audible as she walked towards Erwin's office down the hall with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I'm leaving. Good luck, Eren."

Eren looked baffled but forced himself to give an awkward laugh, turning back to them. Eren smiled a little nervously as he stepped forward, looking painfully oblivious. "Ah, have you two met before?"

Mikasa tore her hand out of his, her nails raking across his palm as she stepped away. Her body was very still as she spoke, her gaze focused intently on the ground, making Levi smirk. She couldn't lie very well, it seemed. "No, we haven't." She spun on her heel, pulling Eren away, murmuring into his ear as discreetly as she could. "Eren, I don't think we need dancing lessons." She tucked a stray strand of black hair behind her ear. "You don't have to make up for anything."

Eren shook his head stubbornly, all confused determination. "You don't need lessons, Mikasa, but I do." Eren smiled at her gently, touching her cheek tenderly, making Mikasa freeze in surprise—and Levi felt his gut tighten. "I want to do this for you. Please. I don't want to look like an idiot dancing next to you. Wouldn't you like to dance the Walt on our wedding?"

Levi sighed. "The Waltz." He barely bit back the idiot at the end.

They didn't seem to hear him, only looking at one another stubbornly.

She made a good show of appearing calm, pulling away from his touch. "We don't have to dance at all, Eren."

Levi placed a finger over the bridge of his nose, waiting impatiently until they finished their stupid argument. He had half a mind to go over to the bar and serve himself a drink.

"Mikasa," Eren tugged at her scarf—that same stupid scarf she'd worn last night— impatiently. "Stop."

Mikasa swallowed thickly, and Levi leaned against the wall, watching her panic in dark amusement. She reached out and grasped the green flyer on the table behind him. "What will this cost you, Eren?" Her pretty eyes skimmed over the prices, and he could see the slight shake in her hands, the paper fluttering. "It's too expensive."

Eren flushed darkly. "I haven't been able to afford an engagement ring for you yet, Mikasa, and I may not have a lot of money but I can afford a few measly dancing lessons."

Mikasa crumpled the edges of the page between her slender pale fingers. "None of that matters, Eren."

"It does to me."

"Eren—"

And Levi had had enough of this nonsense.

"Actually," Levi cut in, tilting his head as he met her gaze. "This first lesson is free. Think of it as an…" His eyes traveled over her. "Evaluation. Or, at least, Eren's evaluation as I know how you dance." He eyed the peeling bandages on her knees and ankle. Wondered if they still bothered her. Wondered if the moron knew he was the cause of them.

Eren's brow furrowed. "You know how she dances?"

Mikasa gave him a glare that he was sure would make anyone else's blood boil, her pale hand bunching the fabric over Eren's shoulder. "Eren—"

"You could say there's a certain grace about her." Levi murmured, stepping forward, circling them both while looking them over critically. "She dances well, doesn't she Eren?"

Eren nodded, still looking rather confused. "Mikasa does everything well."

Levi gave Mikasa a suggestive glance over Eren's shoulder. "Is that so?" He held out his hand, like he had the night before, daring her to take it. "I suppose I should see for myself, shouldn't I, Mikasa?"

She went still, her eyes on his upturned palm, tracing up his arm, his shoulder and throat, snagging over his lips—pausing there. He clenched his jaw, felt his own pulse stutter in response, narrowed his eyes when she looked into them. Take my hand, he challenged, a little bitterly, a little viciously, let me see you dance again.

She spoke softly, her eyes never leaving his, and it took Levi several moments to comprehend that she was speaking to Eren—wasn't quite sure if the words were for him instead. "We don't have to do this."

Her gaze was a strange mixture of demand and pleading, and for a moment he was reminded of how broken she'd looked last night, of how vulnerable she'd been in his arms and in his bed.

"I'm sorry." Eren stepped between them, breaking the moment, grabbing Mikasa's arm and pulling her aside. "Let me talk to her for a second."

Levi pressed his lips together, dropping his hand and crossing his arms, trying to pry his clenched jaw apart.

Eren was whispering but his voice carried, and Levi settled to face away from them as he sat at the bar—watched their reflections in the mirror across from him.

"Mikasa," Eren scratched the back of his head. "This was supposed to be my present for you. I didn't get you anything else because you already have everything and I can't afford jewelry—but I thought I could maybe learn to dance so that I could dance with you whenever you want." Color bloomed across his cheekbones. "Please." He pressed his forehead to hers, his hands bunching her scarf pleadingly, their faces inches apart—and Levi almost looked away. "Don't make me feel like shit, Mikasa. I'm trying to make it up." He cleared his throat. "I want us both to be happy."

Levi watched as Mikasa looked at Eren for several moments, her eyes searching, her resolution breaking. She shut her eyes and breathed. "Eren…"

Some kind of unspoken softness passed between them, an intimacy that spoke of years of familiarity, something that irritated him endlessly. Yes, this was all going to be very venomous.

Eren pulled away, tugging Mikasa forward with a hesitant smile.

Levi forced himself to breathe deeply before turning to face them, arching a brow in question.

Eren linked his fingers with Mikasa's. "We're ready."

Levi wasn't quite sure if he was. He rolled up his sleeves, took in a deep breath, trying to slow the vicious beating of his pulse. "Alright." He set his hard gaze on Eren. "Let's begin with you."

There was something undeniably frightening about the small woman, Reiner admitted without a shred of dignity or pride. He'd known she was back in town, had felt himself sweat a little when she'd called him and informed him that she was outside of his door.

He let her walk into his apartment, shutting the door, tried for nonchalance. "Long time no see, Annie." Reiner clenched his hands into fists, pushed them deep into his jean pockets to stop their shaking. "Ah, what brings you here?"

She surveyed the inside of his apartment with listless blue eyes, speaking bluntly. "I need Eren's phone number."

Reiner glanced at his cell phone atop the coffee table. "Eren's phone number?" He bit the inside of his cheek. "Annie, I don't think that's a good idea. He's…he's with Mikasa now. They're going to get married."

Annie turned away, hiding her expression. "I know." She pushed her hair away, her hand pale and small. "I need his number."

Reiner looked at her grimly. "Annie, I can't do that. You really screwed up Eren when you left. You screwed up…you screwed up Bertolt, too. If you go near Eren again I don't think Mikasa will just sit by. She'll go at you with all she's got and these past few years she's climbed up enough to have enough power to—"

"Reiner," She looked at him over her shoulder, her bright blue eyes hypnotic. There was the faintest hint of shakiness in her voice, but he must be mistaken. Annie's voice didn't quiver. Annie was rock steady. Annie was steel. "He doesn't love her. He still loves me." She looked away again. "If they get married it'll be a mistake." Annie reached out, plucking a small pair of scissors off the table, twirling it carelessly, the metal gleaming in the low sunlight streaming from his window. "You could say I'm trying to fix the mess I've made. If you really care about them, Reiner, you'll let me stop this before it's too late."

Reiner kept his eyes on the scissors in her hand. It was true that everyone knew how much Eren had loved Annie. They'd all seen how screwed up he'd been for months afterwards, how much Mikasa and Armin had struggled to put him back together. It hadn't been a surprise when Eren and Mikasa had gotten together. They knew each other, fought against one another, fought together, had lived together since they'd been children. No, it wasn't a surprise.

But there had always been something not quite right. Always something that seemed off, a sort of stiffness to their smiles, a forced quality to their kisses or embraces. Just sometimes—and while he'd at first thought Eren had simply never gotten over Annie, he'd also sometimes seen Mikasa pull away and withdraw. And that had really thrown him off.

It was as if they'd both gotten together because it seemed inevitable.

They loved one another, fiercely, but there was a romantic passion lacking between them. Maybe they understood that but stayed together for the sake of not causing one another more pain.

Maybe Annie was right.

But he had to try.

"And if…if I don't?" The question was difficult, dry and cracking. But he was no coward.

Annie put the scissors down on the table, spinning it idly. "I'll ask Bertolt."

Ah, shit.

Eren never really thought of himself as stupid. Rather, he thought he was reasonably intelligent, resourceful and…tenacious.

And he wasn't a fool, but he couldn't quite understand what the hell was going on either. It felt so awkward, so painfully tense and he was cursing himself for making such a huge blunder on Mikasa's gift no less and—shit.

Eren landed hard on his knees, Levi holding his wrist in his grip, pulling his arm over his head. "I'm sorry." Eren muttered, letting Levi help him stand. "I'm not used to dancing with…ah." He swallowed when Levi's stormy blue eyes narrowed.

"Not used to dancing with a man?" Levi queried.

Eren forced out an awkward laugh. "I'm just not used to dancing. The last time I danced was a few years ago…"

With Annie.

He saw the way Mikasa stiffened, the way she quickly looked away, tugging up her scarf, hiding her expression. But he didn't need to see her expression to know what it was. Guilt slowly wrapped about his throat, constricting it, and he shook his head when Levi raised his brows in question, looking between the two perceptively.

"I can try again." Eren muttered.

Levi waited for a few more moments, his gaze scrutinizing him, searching for something—then shifted over to Mikasa, who had her back to them her hard gaze latched onto the window. And this was what had Eren so confused, so hesitant—it felt as if he was missing something, as if every word or look had some kind of double-meaning and no, Eren wasn't stupid but he wasn't intuitive enough to understand what the hell this was all about.

Levi moved, forcing Eren to move with him, their steps stiff. "You move as if your joints are rusty hinges."

Eren felt his cheeks sting with heat. "Sorry."

"Keep your upper body held still and upright. You're slouching." Levi slid Eren's hand higher on his back. "Keep your hand up here. You keep sliding it lower and I'm beginning to think you're trying to make a fucking pass at me."

Eren's blush intensified. "Sorry."

Levi ignored him. "Spin me."

"What?"

"Spin me."

Eren sucked in a breath, stepping back, clumsily turning them—but then he tripped over Levi's foot, stumbling right smack into Levi's chest.

"Ah, shit, I'm sorry, I didn't see—"

Levi shoved Eren off his chest. "If I didn't see your body whole I'd swear your head was disconnected from your fucking feet. This is the sixth time you've tripped over my foot—do you expect me to shift away every time you make a mistake?"

"No, I didn't—"

"Good. Because I'm not. Now do it again, keep your form in line, and spread your feet wider. What are they glued together?"

"Ah, yes…I mean no—"

"I'd like to dance now." Suddenly Mikasa was there, her gaze threatening, fixed on Levi. "Let him go."

Crap. She was protecting him again. "Mikasa—"

Levi went very still. "He needs to learn how to lead." And he saw the cords in Levi's neck strain, saw that weird something in his gaze, making Eren feel like he was a part of the background. "How else will he make his fiancée happy if he doesn't know how to move his own two feet for his wedding dance?"

Mikasa didn't look away. "He doesn't need to know how to dance to make me happy."

Why did Eren feel like they weren't talking about dancing?

"And you'll be happy with never dancing again, Mikasa?" Levi tilted his head in question, looking almost mocking. "To never know that thrill for the rest of your life?"

"The rest of my life isn't any of your concern." Mikasa looked away now.

Eren shifted awkwardly, Levi still in his arms.

"Alright." Levi stepped away, gesturing to the both of them. He walked away, pulling himself atop a stool, his hands clasped, his elbows on his knees. "Let's see if you guys have any hope." His gaze was only on Mikasa, and Eren knew that he was invisible. "Dance." He commanded. "Show me what you two know, Mikasa."

Mikasa set her jaw defiantly, turning back to face Eren.

And Eren was really, really regretting these dancing lessons.

She'd been called a good person, once. Just once—by Armin, no less. The words had struck her deeply, bitterly—those words had haunted her most when she'd climbed aboard the plane, the entire flight, every night spent apart from Eren.

And Eren had filled her head in a way she'd never thought possible.

She'd lie on her bed, stare at the ceiling, remember the way his large hands had felt on her body, the way his mouth had covered hers insistently, the way he'd made her promise she'd never leave him.

Perhaps he'd known.

And she'd really thought she could bury him in her past, that she could dedicate herself to her father's wishes, dedicate herself to living the life he'd raised her to live by—but it had been so empty, so cold.

And the thought of his large green eyes and stupid grin had always made her chest ache. She'd been swallowed up by stacks of folders and paper, by sleazy business men who'd pass an unwelcome hand over her body—and it had sickened her.

It had made her remember how welcome Eren's touch had been.

He had always been the one touching her, had always been the one to initiate the physical, grumbled about her iciness when it came to affection. And so when she'd finally returned, finally had him in front of her, and she'd hesitantly reached up for a kiss she had never, ever expected him to shove her away. Had never known how viciously that would sting her. How much it could hurt.

"You think I'd fall for that so easily?"

She hadn't really known what to say, had felt so confused, so stiff. She'd never been well at handling emotions and Eren brimmed with them so brightly.

"Leave me alone, Annie. I don't care that you're back. Stay away from me. I've moved on."

But he hadn't been able to look at her, hadn't been able to release his grip on her arms, had only tightened his fingers. He was still holding onto her.

"Are you in love with her?"

The question had bubbled out of her mouth, had come out of nowhere, a place she hadn't known existed within her.

"Do you love her as much as you loved me?"

And he'd looked so stunned, so bewildered, his hands falling away from her, the chill prickling across her skin as his heat left her.

"Yeah. I do."

He'd walked away then, and she'd called out, thrown the same words he'd once thrown at her.

"You're a terrible liar, Eren."

She exhaled, bringing herself back to the present. She stood across the street from the dance studio, her hood tugged over her head, warding off the chill. She exhaled, hardening her resolve, her hands steady as she dialed his number.

Mikasa and Eren didn't know it yet but she was doing them a favor.

They'd thank her later.

Mikasa could call it many things—Karma, perhaps, divine punishment, maybe. She'd told herself the entire morning that nothing had occurred, that she hadn't really done anything wrong, that she had remained faithful but it didn't prevent the culpability that clawed up her throat, that kept her heart pounding and made her hands clammy, her movements clumsy and jerky as Levi watched her and Eren attempt to dance.

Attempt.

Eren stumbled over his own foot as they turned, falling sideways. She twisted, falling against the mirrored wall so that he fell onto her, his curses muffled against her neck as he tried to right himself.

"Eren—are you—?"

"I'm fine." His voice cracked, his skin flushed brightly with sweat as he adjusted his twisted shirt. "Did I hurt you?"

She shook her head instantly, worry knotting her insides as she straightened herself.

"Right," Eren muttered. "Of course I didn't." He looked a little more than disgruntled.

"Eren, we don't have to do this." She spared Levi a side glance, watched him glare at everything and nothing in particular. She lowered her voice as she stepped towards him, her hair straggling and clinging to her neck and temples, letting the music blanket her words as she repeated them for seemingly the billionth time. "Eren, we can have a slow dance. We don't need lessons—"

Eren's cell phone rang from across the room and they pulled away from one another. He mumbled an apology, walking towards his phone with a grimace. She watched Eren for a moment, then reluctantly looked to the bar, finding Levi's gaze focused on her.

He'd was sitting on the stool, his boots propped up on the horizontal leg comfortably, his elbows on his thighs as he'd studied them. To anyone else it might have looked like a normal instructor studying what they could or couldn't do—but to her his intent gaze had felt predatory, mocking, his clasped fingers itching to reach out to her, to tempt her, to try and own her.

They stared at one another from across the room for several moments—him still and calm, while she was breathless and uneasy—and then Eren began walking towards the door.

Levi glanced at Eren, who had the phone pressed to his ear, slipping outside to talk, giving Mikasa an apologetic and nervous look. I'll be back in a minute, he mouthed, you guys go ahead without me.

A minute.

Yet it only took seconds for Levi to move towards her.

"Why the hell are you calling me, Annie?" Eren growled into his cell as he stepped onto the sidewalk, pacing restlessly. "Who gave you my number?"

"Reiner." Annie answered simply, in that same unruffled tone as she always had—except it wasn't always unruffled. He'd been able to crack her cool several times, had enjoyed seeing her crumble beneath his hands.

But this wasn't the time to think of those things.

"I'm busy, Annie. I can't talk right now." He inhaled, looking behind him to see Levi approaching a very stiff Mikasa. That probably wasn't going to go well. Mikasa had had it in for the guy since the first insult had left his lips. "Leave me alone, Annie." He shut his eyes. "You can't keep doing this to me."

"We need to talk."

"We already did." Eren broke, gesturing about himself angrily, several people circling around and away from him. "How many times did I beg for you to talk to me before you got on the airplane, Annie? Did you give me a fucking chance? No, you didn't, so why the hell should I give you one now?"

There was a pause before she spoke, and Eren almost wondered if she'd hung up. Felt his stomach hurt at the thought—and her words caught him off guard.

"Do you hate me, Eren?"

Fuck. No. I want to but I can't.

"No, Annie, I…" He looked over his shoulder again, saw both Levi and Mikasa give him a curious glance. He forced a smile, walking further down the sidewalk, out of their sight. "Annie, I just can't risk…feeling that again." He felt chills prickle across his skin, wished he'd grabbed his jacket before he'd stepped out. "Maybe for you it was…it was nothing. But for me it was the worst fucking—"

He felt someone grab the back of his shirt and heft him backwards into the alley beside the studio, cursed when his phone slipped out of his grip and hit the ground.

"What the fuck—?"

His assailant forced him deeper into the alley, away from the public—and he struggled viciously. Like hell if he was getting mugged without a fight. "Get the fuck off of me—" He threw out his fist but it was caught, his arm twisted backwards—and he felt a painful kick to his leg, flopping him onto his back awkwardly, in a position that was humiliatingly familiar.

Annie?

He rolled onto his back—saw her stand over him, looking both deadly and small.

And lovely.

"Annie what the hell?" He groaned, a little breathless. She lowered herself, straddling his hips and suddenly he was breathless for a very different reason—and since when did Annie wear skirts? "Annie—"

Her small hands grabbed the front of his shirt, tugging him up—and her soft mouth caught his, her teeth sharp, striking his, the sound like thunder in his skull.

And it broke the fragile control he'd been clinging to all day.

He kissed her, fiercely, forcing her lips apart with his tongue—but she broke the kiss, the heel of her hands pushing against his throat hard enough to make him choke.

"Annie—"

"It wasn't nothing." She wouldn't meet his gaze, but she was breathless, her blue eyes curtained by blonde lashes.

"What?"

"Leaving you." She slid her hand away from his throat, down his hard chest. "It wasn't 'nothing' it was…" She licked her chapped lips. "I didn't move on. Didn't date anyone else. I kept remembering you every time I tried to."

Eren tried to slow his breathing. And if he was honest with himself her confession made his chest swell with something akin to pride, to relief, because the thought of anyone else touching her the way he had, the thought of her being happy and vulnerable with anyone else but him had enraged him like nothing else had.

It had hurt him the most, kept him awake night after night, images of her naked and entwined with another man in bed burning his throat.

But she hadn't.

He reached up, threading his hands into her hair, arching her neck back as he sat up. "Annie," He breathed against her parted mouth, his hands running over her small body, pulling her farther onto his lap. "Fuck, Annie." He shuddered, his lips trailing down her neck.

And for several moments Eren forgot he hated her. Eren forgot she'd left him. Eren didn't remember that they were in a filthy alley, rolling on the ground, lifting her skirt as she unzipped his jeans.

Eren forgot that Mikasa was just past the wall now pressed against Annie's back, forgot about the promises he'd made to her as he pushed into Annie's small body, jaw clenched hard enough to snap, fingers gripping hard enough to bruise.

Eren only remembered how much he had loved Annie as they moved against one another.

Eren only knew that he still did.

Levi slipped off the stool, reaching over the bar and skipping several songs, taking a deep drink of his coffee—until he found the song they'd danced last night. He put his cup down, raising the volume, sparing another look at Eren pacing on the sidewalk outside. He turned, giving her a peculiar look—a look of challenge—then walked towards her.

He saw her breath hitch, her voice breathy and desperate and threatening all at once. "What are you doing?"

He reached her—and instead of touching her he circled her, much like he had to her and Eren, except now he was much, much closer, his breath tickling her shoulder, the back of her hair.

"It seems your dancing partner is a bit preoccupied at the moment. I figured we could continue the lesson until he decides to remember he has a fiancée." He walked behind her, tracing his fingertips across the arch in her lower back, felt her body shudder. "You're slouching. Arch your back. You look as if you're trying to make yourself seem smaller, weaker." He murmured softly, letting his fingertips drag across her hip.

"I'm not." Her jaw was set stubbornly, and Levi decided he liked her angry far more than he liked her wretched and depressed. He'd watched them dance enough to almost feel pity for them—almost. It was as if they were afraid of each other's proximity, fumbling, Eren didn't know how to lead and Mikasa knew all too well. He'd seen her try to correct him a few times and his temper would flare and she'd hunch within on herself—and it angered him more than anything.

Where was that passion she'd crackled with last night? Restrained perhaps in her tightly knotted hair, tucked away between the folds of her red dress deep in her closet, washed away like the scent of her strawberry perfume.

Or perhaps it was just past her clenched teeth, between her curled fingers, threading at her pulse points.

Perhaps he just needed to push the right button. The right touch.

"Hmm," He slid his hands up over the front of her body, adjusting her posture, lingering. "I'm tired of seeing you play-pretend, Mikasa. I want your strength." Higher still, his fingertips tracing her collarbones, sifting beneath her scarf, finding the racing pulse at the base of her neck. "If you won't display it willingly perhaps…" His fingers tightened about her scarf. "You'll need some motivation."

He ripped it away from her, almost enjoying the strangled sound of rage that tore from her throat. He jerked aside, snapping the scarf out tauntingly, holding it away from her.

She inhaled deeply, looking as if she a second from dropping him on his ass. He rather enjoyed the thought of her trying. "Give me my scarf." She struggled with her anger for several moments. "Levi."

He gave her a very hard look. "Take it from me." He held out his other hand, palm turned up, waiting for her to take it. "If you can."

She snapped her teeth together—and he saw something harden in her expression, a bone deep stubbornness that thrilled him, filling him with expectation. She moved towards him slowly, all iced over fire, her hips swinging with each step, the walk predatory, confident, powerful—and she took his hand.

Got you.

He tugged in a breath—and suddenly she was pressed against him, hooking her knee over his thigh, pressing their hips together. The sudden weight of her against his body made him freeze, his breath catching in his throat with a hiss. Her palms slid up his chest, firmly, possessively, then slid out over his shoulders, down his arms, her fingers creeping up his wrists—and he pulled the scarf back quickly, the scarlet material slipping from the tips of her fingers as he bowed her back.

She wrapped both of her legs about his narrow waist, her other hand anchored behind his neck, letting him take her weight without a moment's hesitation.

"There you go." She had her head turned away, her dark eyes latched onto the scarf, and Levi took advantage of her exposed neck, pressed his mouth to its side and inhaled. "I was beginning to wonder if I had danced with a completely different woman last night."

She leaned forward, her teeth catching his ear, her breath tickling it, jolting him—and she reached for the scarf again. He jerked his arm behind his back, hearing her give the softest curse.

"Did you think it would be that easy, Mikasa?" He tried for teasing but he knew he sounded much, much too breathless.

She took a deep, slow breath, spoke softly."Not at all."

She shifted beneath him, arching, her other hand slipping down the side of his body and tightening on his hip, pressing herself against him at just the right angle, enough to make any rational thought blow away like smoke. She slid her lips across his cheek, to the corner of his mouth, lingering there, her open mouth tempting him. He moved his mouth over hers, slipping his hands up her back, taking her bottom lip between his teeth—and he felt her grip tighten on the scarf.

Shit.

He straightened, ripping her away, sending her spinning—and felt the scarf tighten as she clung to the other end of it. The scarlet fabric was stretched between them, anchoring them to one another, tightly gripped in their fists. And he could curse himself for letting her take him by surprise but he could taste the strawberry lip balm on the tip of his tongue, could see the challenge and almost triumph in her eyes as she held an end of her scarf, the way she jutted her chin out as she held his gaze.

Power. Strength.

He wondered if Eren ever saw her like this. He wondered if he knew how beautiful it was to see her revel in it.

"You'll need to do better." He sounded winded, even to himself, his thoughts a little muddled. He cleared his throat, regained his control. "Much better."

The corner of her pink lips lifted. "So will you."

True.

He shifted forward, sliding his foot out as he used his strength to yank the scarf towards him. She was forced forward, her heels giving her no grip on the polished wood floor. When she was close enough she tried to yank the scarf out of his grip by spinning but he took advantage of her movements, wrapping the scarf around her waist and yanking her back to his chest, pinning her there.

"Do you feel the difference in the way we move together and against each other?" She tried to shift away but he only pressed the scarf about her waist more tightly, keeping her imprisoned. "I watched you both try to dance." His lips found her ear. "And do you know what I've deduced, Mikasa?"

"Nothing." She leaned against him, her body softening against his, a sharp contrast to her breathless words. "You've deduced nothing."

"I see a young couple that has not a shred of real passion between them." Her eyes opened, slid across the room to the mirrored wall, her gaze locking with his. His pitch lowered, didn't let her look away as he continued to speak. "I see a boy that doesn't know how to deal with the power a woman can possess. I see a boy who thinks it unmans him."

She pulled away, twisting, her hands pulling the scarf out and away, letting it give her enough room to twist and face him, her gaze sharpened razor thin with anger. "You see nothing."

He pulled it forward, her forward, anchoring her to him, stomach to stomach. "I see a woman holding back. I see a woman full of passion, withering herself to accommodate his inexperience, his immaturity." She twisted again, this time trying to rip away the scarf in earnest—but he only jerked her back, bending his knee so that she fell onto it sideways, almost cradling her in his lap and against his chest, his arm around her back, his hand spanning her side, the other still holding the end of the scarf.

"Stop slouching, Mikasa."

She shivered and he let the scarf slip out of his fingers, allowing her to pull away if she wished.

Her hands curled into the front of his shirt—and she shifted, her heels twisting to move away—but she paused, still sitting on his bent knee, her eyes locked onto his mouth.

His pulse sped up. "Stop trying to make yourself seem weaker, less powerful because you don't want to intimidate him. Don't hold back for him." She looked over his shoulder, but Eren still paced on the sidewalk restlessly, his hand gesturing wildly as he spoke.

Levi grabbed her chin, jerking her face toward his, demanding her attention. His fingers slipped down over her throat, tracing her collarbones, sliding down the middle of her chest, touching her stomach as he had the night before, watching her as he did, looking almost exultant when she shuddered. "Do you feel that?" Her nails dug into his chest. "Have you ever felt that with him, Mikasa?"

She shuddered and he could read the answer written all over her. "I feel…What I feel for you is..." A blush tinged her cheeks. "Lust. It's just a passing—" She looked over his shoulder—they both did, and Eren's gaze suddenly met theirs.

They froze in place.

But Eren only gave them a very strained smile, oblivious to their suggestive positions, walking out of their view, his phone still pressed to his ear.

Her nails bit into his skin as she released a pent up breath. "Levi…" Her expression was a strange mixture of guilt and relief. "We shouldn't…Eren could..."

"He seems rather preoccupied with his phone call, don't you think?" No, they really shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be saying what he was. But Levi had never been one to curb the sharpness of his tongue. "Are you wondering who he's speaking to, Mikasa?"

She went rigid against him. She pulled out of his grip, surprising him with the force of her shove. She faced away from him, her hands clenched into fists at her sides, her back rigid.

"I'm right, aren't I?" Levi pressed his lips together as he straightened, standing. "It's eating you up, wondering who he's speaking to, if it's that other woman, if perhaps they're arranging another…visit. I wonder who'll pick you up off the street this time."

She looked at him over her shoulder—and the pain in her gaze momentarily silenced him, an agonizing defenselessness within them, her brow furrowed as she struggled to hold herself together.

And Levi wasn't a saint but he didn't enjoy her pain. He didn't enjoy it at all.

"Stop." She cracked, barely audible, her words as thin as paper. "Don't you think I know?" She touched her stomach as if she was going to be sick. "Don't make me say it." She hissed, the words sounding vicious.

"Whatever paltry flame you're trying to fan between you two isn't enough, Mikasa. It's already dying out. Trying to breathe life back into it only makes you seem pathetic."

Mikasa seemed to wind up further, looking close to fracturing. "It isn't any of your business."

Levi stepped towards her—paused. He clenched his jaw, got a hold of himself. "It's your choice." He felt his throat thickening, memories flickering through him sharply. He shook his head. "You're the one who'll have to live with them. I'd say I hope you don't regret them but marrying a man who doesn't look at you with a shred of passion is as moronic as you can get."

She turned towards him, and before he could blink she was on him, making him stumble backwards as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, her mouth on his. He felt his heart thunder in his skull, in his palms, in his throat, her scent faint but potent. He muttered a shaky curse, tried to move forward but she only shoved him backwards, roughly sitting him onto a chair in the corner of the room, straddling him. She wrapped her legs around his waist, struggled with the tightness of her skirt but his hands were there, pushing it up, his hips shifting beneath hers, seeking the right angle, a groan catching in his throat when he found it.

She breathed his name, her hands slipping down his chest as her mouth moved down his throat, her nails catching at the fabric. He reached up, tearing the clip out of her hair, watched the silky strands fall about her cheeks and her jaw as the clip clattered to the floor—and there, there she was. All fire, all rage and power, scorching him.

She reached up, tugging his head towards hers as their lips touched again—and she paused as the song ended, a soft moment of static before it switched tracks, giving them a brief moment of clarity.

And Levi didn't do this. She was engaged and she was tortured and she was a bloody mess beneath her cool exterior, beneath her anger—and Levi didn't do this. He didn't get involved.

She was right. She was none of his business.

And as her mouth touched his again he realized that he desperately wanted her to be.

His tongue slid past her lips, the tip of his tongue tracing over teeth, searching, delving into her soft mouth—but it was different, he thought distantly, his heart pounding deeply, harshly, slowly. He angled his mouth under hers, the movements of his mouth almost hesitant, wondering. He deepened the kiss as the heart pounding seconds passed, the taste of her skin and strawberry lip balm filling his mouth. She took his bottom lip between hers when they broke for a breath, sucked at it, his entire body tightening at the sensation.

They heard the door swing open—Mikasa made a strangled sound, shoving at Levi hard enough to send her stumbling backwards. She fell against the mirrored wall, her damp palms slicking over the surface as she tried to catch her balance, her eyes wide as she looked up at Eren.

"Eren..."

He blinked at the way Levi was scowling as he stood, pacing away muttering curses, frowned at the way Mikasa was leaning against the wall awkwardly, her hair messily strung about her face, the clip and scarf on the floor, their lips kiss stung.

"What…" His green eyes hardened as he locked them onto hers. "Mikasa, what's going on?"

[marialouisestoffregen]

Into the Wild

James Gallien had driven five miles out of Fairbanks when he spotted the hitchhiker standing in the snow beside the road, thumb raised high, shivering in the gray Alaskan dawn. A rifle protruded from the young man's pack, but he looked friendly enough; a hitchhiker with a Remington semiautomatic isn't the sort of thing that gives motorists pause in the 49th state. Gallien steered his four-by-four onto the shoulder and told him to climb in. The hitchhiker introduced himself as Alex. "Alex?" Gallien responded, fishing for a last name. "Just Alex," the young man replied, pointedly rejecting the bait. He explained that he wanted a ride as far as the edge of Denali National Park, where he intended to walk deep into the bush and "live off the land for a few months." Alex's backpack appeared to weigh only 25 or 30 pounds, which struck Gallien, an accomplished outdoorsman, as a the alarm if he got into trouble and was overdue--Alex answered calmly that, no, nobody knew of his plans, that in fact he hadn't spoken to his family in nearly three years. "I'm absolutely positive," he assured Gallien, "I won't run into anything I can't deal with on my own." "There was just no talking the guy out of it," Gallien recalls. "He was determined. He couldn't wait to head out there and get started." So Gallien drove Alex to the head of the Stampede Trail, an old mining track that begins ten miles west of the town of Healy, convinced him to accept a tuna melt and a pair of rubber boots to keep his feet dry, and wished him good luck. Alex pulled a camera from his backpack and asked Gallien to snap a picture of him. Then, smiling broadly, he disappeared down the snow-covered trail. The date was Tuesday, April 28, 1992. More than four months passed before Gallien heard anything more of the hitchhiker. His real name turned out to be Christopher J. McCandless. He was the product of a happy family from an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C. And although he wasn't burdened with a surfeit of common sense and possessed a streak of stubborn idealism that did not readily mesh with the realities of modern life, he was no psychopath. McCandless was in fact an honors graduate of Emory University, an accomplished athlete, and a veteran of several solo excursions into wild, inhospitable terrain. An extremely intense young man, McCandless had been captivated by the writing of Leo Tolstoy. He particularly admired the fact that the great novelist had forsaken a life of wealth and privilege to wander among the destitute. For several years he had been emulating the count's asceticism and moral rigor to a degree that astonished and occasionally alarmed those who knew him well. When he took leave of James Gallien, McCandless entertained no illusions that he was trekking into Club Med; peril, adversity, and Tolstoyan renunciation were what he was seeking. And that is precisely what he found on the Stampede Trail, in spades. For most of 16 weeks McCandless more than held his own. Indeed, were it not for one or two innocent and seemingly insignificant blunders he would have walked out of the Alaskan woods in July or August as anonymously as he walked into them in April. Instead, the name of Chris McCandless has become the stuff of tabloid headlines, and his bewildered family is left clutching the shards of a fierce and painful love. On the northern margin of the Alaska Range, just before the hulking escarpments of Denali and its satellites surrender to the low Kantishna plain, a series of lesser ridges known as the Outer Ranges sprawls across the flats like a rumpled blanket on an unmade bed. Between the flinty crests of the two outermost Outer Ranges runs an east-west trough, maybe five miles across, carpeted in a boggy amalgam of muskeg, alder thickets, and scrawny spruce. Meandering through this tangled, rolling bottomland is the Stampede Trail, the route Chris McCandless followed into the wilderness. Twenty or so miles due west of Healy, not far from the boundary of Denali National Park, a derelict bus--a blue and white, 1940s-vintage International from the Fairbanks City Transit System--rusts incongruously in the fireweed beside the Stampede Trail. Many winters ago the bus was fitted with bedding and a crude barrel stove, then skidded into the bush by enterprising hunters to serve as a backcountry shelter. These days it isn't unusual for nine or ten months to pass without the bus seeing a human visitor, but on September 6, 1992, six people in three separate parties happened to visit it on the same afternoon, including Ken Thompson, Gordon Samel, and Ferdie Swanson, moose hunters who drove in on all-terrain vehicles. When they arrived at the bus, says Thompson, they found "a guy and a girl from Anchorage standing 50 feet away, looking kinda spooked. A real bad smell was coming from inside the bus, and there was this weird note tacked by the door." The note, written in neat block letters on a page torn from a novel by Gogol, read: "S.O.S. I need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone, this is no joke. In the name of God, please remain to save me. I am out collecting berries close by and shall return this evening. Thank you, Chris McCandless. August?" The Anchorage couple had been too upset by the implications of the note to examine the bus's interior, so Thompson and Samel steeled themselves to take a look. A peek through a window revealed a .22-caliber rifle, a box of shells, some books and clothing, a backpack, and, on a makeshift bunk in the rear of the vehicle, a blue sleeping bag that appeared to have something or someone inside it. "It was hard to be absolutely sure," says Samel. "I stood on a stump, reached through a back window, and gave the bag a shake. There was definitely something in it, but whatever it was didn't weigh much. It wasn't until I walked around to the other side and saw a head sticking out that I knew for certain what it was." Chris McCandless had been dead for some two and a half weeks. The Alaska State Troopers were contacted, and the next morning a police helicopter evacuated the decomposed body, a camera with five rolls of exposed film, and a diary--written across the last two pages of a field guide to edible plants--that recorded the young man's final weeks in 113 terse, haunting entries. An autopsy revealed no internal injuries or broken bones. Starvation was suggested as the most probable cause of death. McCandless's signature had been penned at the bottom of the S.O.S. note, and the photos, when developed, included many self-portraits. But because he had been carrying no identification, the police knew almost nothing about who he was or where he was from. Carthage, South Dakota, population 274, is a sleepy little cluster of clapboard houses, weathered brick storefronts, and shaded yards that rises humbly from the immensity of the northern plains, adrift in time. It has one grocery, one bank, a single gas station, a lone bar--the Cabaret, where Wayne Westerberg, a hyperkinetic man with thick shoulders and a rakish black goatee, is sipping a White Russian, chewing on a sweet cigar, and remembering the enigmatic young man he knew as Alex. "These are what Alex used to drink," says Westerberg with a smile, hoisting his glass. "He used to sit right there at the end of the bar and tell us these amazing stories of his travels. He could talk for hours." Westerberg owns a grain elevator in town but spends every summer running a custom combine crew that follows the harvest from Texas north to Montana. In September 1990 he'd been in Montana cutting barley when, on the highway east of Cut Bank, he'd given a ride to a hungry-looking hitchhiker, a friendly young man who said his name was Alex McCandless. They hit it off immediately, and before they went their separate ways Westerberg told Alex to look him up in Carthage if he ever needed a job. "About two weeks later," says Westerberg, "he thumbed into town, moved into my house, and went to work at the elevator. He was the hardest worker I've ever seen. And totally honest--what you'd call extremely ethical. He set pretty high standards for himself. "You could tell right away that Alex was intelligent," Westerberg continues. "In fact, I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often. A couple of times I tried to tell him it was a mistake to get too deep into that kind of stuff, but Alex got stuck on things. He always had to know the absolute right answer before he could go on to the next thing." McCandless didn't stay in Carthage long--by the end of October he was on the road again--but he dropped Westerberg a postcard every month or two in the course of his travels. He also had all his mail forwarded to Westerberg's house and told everybody he met thereafter that he was from South Dakota. In truth McCandless had been raised in the comfortable, upper-middle-class environs of Annandale, Virginia. His father, Walt, was an aerospace engineer who ran a small but very prosperous consulting firm with Chris's mother, Billie. There were eight children in the extended family: Chris; a younger sister, Carine, with whom Chris was extremely close; and six older half-siblings from Walt's first marriage. McCandless had graduated in June 1990 from Emory University in Atlanta, where he distinguished himself as a history/anthropology major and was offered but declined membership in Phi Beta Kappa, insisting that titles and honors were of no importance. His education had been paid for by a college fund established by his parents; there was some $20,000 in this account at the time of his graduation, money his parents thought he intended to use for law school. Instead, he donated the entire sum to the Oxford Famine Relief Fund. Then, without notifying any friends or family members, he loaded all his belongings into a decrepit yellow Datsun and headed west without itinerary, relieved to shed a life of abstraction and security, a life he felt was removed from the heat and throb of the real world. Chris McCandless intended to invent a new life for himself, one in which he would be free to wallow in unfiltered experience. In July 1990, on a 120-degree afternoon near Lake Mead, his car broke down and he abandoned it in the Arizona desert. McCandless was exhilarated, so much so that he decided to bury most of his worldly possessions in the parched earth of Detrital Wash and then--in a gesture that would have done Tolstoy proud--burned his last remaining cash, about $160 in small bills. We know this because he documented the conflagration, and most of the events that followed, in a journal/snapshot album he would later give to Westerberg. Although the tone of the journal occasionally veers toward melodrama, the available evidence indicates that McCandless did not misrepresent the facts; telling the truth was a credo he took very seriously. McCandless tramped around the West for the next two months, spellbound by the scale and power of the landscape, thrilled by minor brushes with repeatedly. But he made it to the gulf, where he struggled to control the canoe in a violent squall far from shore and, exhausted, decided to head north again. On January 16, 1991, McCandless left the stubby metal boat on a hummock of dune grass southeast of Golfo de Santa Clara and started walking north up the deserted beach. He had not seen or talked to another soul in 36 days. For that entire period he had subsisted on nothing but five pounds of rice and what he could pull from the sea, an experience that would later convince him he could survive on similarly meager rations when he went to live in the Alaskan bush. Back at the border two days later, he was caught trying to slip into the United States without ID and spent a night in custody before concocting a story that got him across. McCandless spent most of the next year in the Southwest, but the last entry in the journal he left with Westerberg is dated May 10, 1991, and so the record of his travels in this period is sketchy. He slummed his way through San Diego, El Paso, and Houston. To avoid being rolled and robbed by the unsavory characters who ruled the streets and freeway overpasses where he slept, he learned to bury what money he had before entering a city, then recover it on the way out of town. Snapshots in the album document visits to Bryce and Zion, the Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree, Palm Springs. For several weeks he lived with "bums, tramps, and winos" on the streets of Las Vegas. When 1991 drew to a close McCandless was in Bullhead City, Arizona, where for three months he lived in a tent and flipped burgers at McDonald's. A letter from this period reveals that "a girl Tracy" had a crush on him. In a note to Westerberg he admitted that he liked Bullhead City and "might finally settle down and abandon my tramping life, for good. I'll see what happens when spring comes around, because that's when I tend to get really itchy feet." Itchy feet prevailed. He soon called Westerberg and said that he wanted to work in the grain elevator for a while, just long enough to put together a little grubstake. He needed money to buy some new gear, he said, because he was going to Alaska. When McCandless arrived back in Carthage on a bitter February morning in 1992, he'd already decided that he would depart for Alaska on April 15. He wanted to be in Fairbanks by the end of April in order to have as much time as possible in the North before heading back to South Dakota to help out with the autumn harvest. By mid-April Westerberg was shorthanded and very busy, so he asked McCandless to postpone his departure date and work a week or two longer. But, Westerberg says, "Once Alex made up his mind about something there was no changing it. I even offered to buy him a plane ticket to Fairbanks, which would have let him work an extra ten days and still get to Alaska by the end of April. But he said, 'No, I want to hitch north. Flying would be cheating. It would wreck the whole trip.'" McCandless left Carthage on April 15. In early May Westerberg received a postcard of a polar bear, postmarked April 27. "Greetings from Fairbanks!" it read. This is the last you shall hear from me Wayne. Arrived here 2 days ago. It was very difficult to catch rides in the Yukon Territory. But I finally got here. Please return all mail I receive to the sender. It might be a very long time before I return South. If this adventure proves fatal and you don't ever hear from me again, I want you to know your a great man. I now walk into the wild. McCandless's last postcard to Westerberg fueled widespread speculation, after his adventure did prove fatal, that he'd intended suicide from the start, that when he walked into the bush alone he had no intention of ever walking out again. But I for one am not so sure. In 1977, when I was 23--a year younger than McCandless at the time of his death--I hitched a ride to Alaska on a fishing boat and set off alone into the backcountry to attempt an ascent of a malevolent stone digit called the Devils Thumb, a towering prong of vertical rock and avalanching ice, ignoring pleas from friends, family, and utter strangers to come to my senses. Simply reaching the foot of the mountain entailed traveling 30 miles up a badly crevassed, storm-wracked glacier that hadn't seen a human footprint in many years. By choice I had no radio, no way of summoning help, no safety net of any kind. I had several harrowing shaves, but eventually I reached the summit of the Thumb. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, I was an angst-ridden youth who read too much Nietzsche, mistook passion for insight, and functioned according to an obscure gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devils Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end it changed almost nothing, of course. I came to appreciate, however, that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. And I lived to tell my tale. As a young man, I was unlike Chris McCandless in many important respects--most notably I lacked his intellect and his altruistic leanings--but I suspect we had a similar intensity, a similar heedlessness, a similar agitation of the soul. The fact that I survived my Alaskan adventure and McCandless did not survive his was largely a matter of chance; had I died on the Stikine Icecap in 1977 people would have been quick to say of me, as they now say of him, that I had a death wish. Fifteen years after the event, I now recognize that I suffered from hubris, perhaps, and a monstrous innocence, certainly, but I wasn't suicidal. At the time, death was a concept I understood only in the abstract. I didn't yet appreciate its terrible finality or the havoc it could wreak on those who'd entrusted the deceased with their hearts. I was stirred by the mystery of death; I couldn't resist stealing up to the edge of doom and peering over the brink. The view into that swirling black vortex terrified me, but I caught sight of something elemental in that shadowy glimpse, some forbidden, fascinating riddle. That's a very different thing from wanting to die. Westerberg heard nothing else from McCandless for the remainder of the spring and summer. Then, last September 13, he was rolling down an empty ribbon of South Dakota blacktop, leading his harvest crew home to Carthage after wrapping up a four-month cutting season in northern Montana, when the VHF barked to life. "Wayne!" an anxious voice crackled over the radio from one of the crew's other trucks. "Quick--turn on your AM and listen to Paul Harvey. He's talking about some kid who starved to death up in Alaska. The police don't know who he is. Sounds a whole lot like Alex." As soon as he got to Carthage, a dispirited Westerberg called the Alaska State Troopers and said that he thought he knew the identity of the hiker. McCandless had never told Westerberg anything about his family, including where they lived, but Westerberg unearthed a W-4 form bearing McCandless's Social Security number, which led the police to an address in Virginia. A few days after the Paul Harvey broadcast, an Alaskan police sergeant made a phone call to the distant suburbs of the nation's capital, confirming the worst fears of Walt and Billie McCandless and raining a flood of confusion and grief down upon their world. Walt McCandless, 56, dressed in gray sweatpants and a rayon jacket bearing the logo of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is a stocky, bearded man with longish salt-and-pepper hair combed straight back from a high forehead. Seven weeks after his youngest son's body turned up in Alaska wrapped in a blue sleeping bag that Billie had sewn for Chris from a kit, he studies a sailboat scudding beneath the window of his waterfront townhouse. "How is it," he wonders aloud as he gazes blankly across Chesapeake Bay, "that a kid with so much compassion could cause his parents so much pain?" Four large pieces of posterboard covered with dozens of photos documenting the whole brief span of Chris's life stand on the dining room table. Moving deliberately around the display, Billie points out Chris as a toddler astride a hobbyhorse, Chris as a rapt eight-year-old in a yellow slicker on his first backpacking trip, Chris at his high school commencement. "The hardest part," says Walt, pausing over a shot of his son clowning around on a family vacation, "is simply not having him around any more. I spent a lot of time with Chris, perhaps more than with any of my other kids. I really liked his company, even though he frustrated us so often." It is impossible to know what murky convergence of chromosomal matter, parent-child dynamics, and alignment of the cosmos was responsible, but Chris McCandless came into the world with unusual gifts and a will not easily deflected from its trajectory. As early as third grade, a bemused teacher was moved to pull Chris's parents aside and inform them that their son "marched to a different drummer." At the age of ten, he entered his first running competition, a 10k road race, and finished 69th, beating more than 1,000 adults. By high school he was effortlessly bringing home A's (punctuated by a single F, the result of butting heads with a particularly rigid physics teacher) and had developed into one of the top distance runners in the region. As captain of his high school cross-country team he concocted novel, grueling training regimens that his teammates still remember well. "Chris invented this workout he called Road Warriors," explains Gordy Cucullu, a close friend from those days. "He would lead us on long, killer runs, as far and as fast as we could go, down strange roads, through the woods, whatever. The whole idea was to lose our bearings, to push ourselves into unknown territory. Then we'd run at a slightly slower pace until we found a road we recognized, and race home again at full speed. In a certain sense, that's how Chris lived his entire life." McCandless viewed running as an intensely spiritual exercise akin to meditation. "Chris would use the spiritual aspect to try to motivate us," recalls Eric Hathaway, another friend on the team. "He'd tell us to think about all the evil in the world, all the hatred, and imagine ourselves running against the forces of darkness, the evil wall that was trying to keep us from running our best. He believed doing well was all mental, a simple matter of harnessing whatever energy was available. As impressionable high school kids, we were blown away by that kind of talk." McCandless's musings on good and evil were more than a training technique; he took life's inequities to heart. "Chris didn't understand how people could possibly be allowed to go hungry, especially in this country," says Billie McCandless, a small woman with large, expressive eyes--the same eyes Chris is said to have had. "He would rave about that kind of thing for hours." For months he spoke seriously of traveling to South Africa and joining the struggle to end apartheid. On weekends, when his high school pals were attending keggers and trying to sneak into Georgetown bars, McCandless would wander the seedier quarters of Washington, chatting with pimps and hookers and homeless people, buying them meals, earnestly suggesting ways they might improve their lives. Once, he actually picked up a homeless man from downtown D.C., brought him to the leafy streets of Annandale, and secretly set him up in the Airstream trailer that his parents kept parked in the driveway. Walt and Billie never even knew they were hosting a vagrant. McCandless's personality was puzzling in its complexity. He was intensely private but could be convivial and gregarious in the extreme. And despite his overdeveloped social conscience, he was no tight-lipped, perpetually grim do-gooder who frowned on fun. To the contrary, he enjoyed tipping a glass now and then and was an incorrigible ham who would seize any excuse to regale friends and strangers with spirited renditions of Tony Bennett tunes. In college he directed and starred in a witty video parody of Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone's vault. And he was a natural salesman: Throughout his youth McCandless launched a series of entrepreneurial schemes (a photocopying service, among others), some of which brought in impressive amounts of cash. Upon graduating from high school, he took the earnings he'd socked away, bought a used Datsun B210, and promptly embarked on the first of his extemporaneous transcontinental odysseys. For half the summer he complied with his parents' insistence that he phone every three days, but he didn't check in at all the last couple of weeks and returned just two days before he was due at college, sporting torn clothes, a scruffy beard, and tangled hair and packing a machete and a .30-06 rifle, which he insisted on taking with him to school. With each new adventure, Walt and Billie grew increasingly anxious about the risks Chris was taking. Before his senior year at Emory he returned from a summer on the road looking gaunt and weak, having shed 30 pounds from his already lean frame; he'd gotten lost in the Mojave Desert, it turned out, and had nearly succumbed to dehydration. Walt and Billie urged their son to exercise more caution in the future and pleaded with him to keep them better informed of his whereabouts; Chris responded by telling them even less about his escapades and checking in less frequently when he was on the road. "He thought we were idiots for worrying about him," Billie says. "He took pride in his ability to go without food for extended periods, and he had complete confidence that he could get himself out of any jam." "He was good at almost everything he ever tried," says Walt, "which made him supremely overconfident. If you attempted to talk him out of something, he wouldn't argue. He'd just nod politely and then do exactly what he wanted." McCandless could be generous and caring to a fault, but he had a darker side as well, characterized by monomania, impatience, and unwavering self-absorption, qualities that seemed to intensify throughout his college years. "I saw Chris at a party after his freshman year at Emory," remembers Eric Hathaway, "and it was obvious that he had changed. He seemed very introverted, almost cold. Social life at Emory revolved around fraternities and sororities, something Chris wanted no part of. And when everybody started going Greek, he kind of pulled back from his old friends and got more heavily into himself." When Walt and Billie went to Atlanta in the spring of 1990 for Chris's college graduation, he told them that he was planning another summerlong trip and that he'd drive up to visit them in Annandale before hitting the road. But he never showed. Shortly thereafter he donated the $20,000 in his bank account to Oxfam, loaded up his car, and disappeared. From then on he scrupulously avoided contacting either his parents or Carine, the sister for whom he purportedly cared immensely. "We were all worried when we didn't hear from him," says Carine, "and I think my parents' worry was mixed with hurt and anger. But I didn't really feel hurt. I knew that he was happy and doing what he wanted to do. I understood that it was important for him to see how independent he could be. And he knew that if he wrote or called me, Mom and Dad would find out where he was, fly out there, and try to bring him home." In September--by which time Chris had long since abandoned the yellow Datsun in the desert and burned his money--Walt and Billie grew worried enough to hire a private investigator. "We worked pretty hard to trace him," says Walt. "We eventually picked up his trail on the northern California coast, where he'd gotten a ticket for hitchhiking, but we lost track of him for good right after that, probably about the time he met Wayne Westerberg." Walt and Billie would hear nothing more about Chris's whereabouts until their son's body turned up in Alaska two years later. After Chris had been identified, Carine and their oldest half-brother, Sam, flew to Fairbanks to bring home his ashes and those few possessions--the rifle, a fishing rod, a Swiss Army knife, the book in which he'd kept his journal, and not much else--that had been recovered with the body, including the photographs he'd taken in Alaska. Sifting through this pictorial record of Chris's final days, it is all Billie can do to force herself to examine the fuzzy snapshots. As she studies the pictures she breaks down from time to time, weeping as only a mother who has outlived a child can weep, betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure. Such bereavement, witnessed at close range, makes even the most eloquent apologia for high-risk activities ring fatuous and hollow. "I just don't understand why he had to take those kinds of chances," Billie protests through her tears. "I just don't understand it at all." When news of McCandless's fate came to light, most Alaskans were quick to dismiss him as a nut case. According to the conventional wisdom he was simply one more dreamy, half-cocked greenhorn who went into the bush expecting to find answers to all his problems and instead found nothing but mosquitoes and a lonely death. Dozens of marginal characters have gone into the Alaskan backcountry over the years, never to reappear. A few have lodged firmly in the state's collective memory. There is, for example, the sad tale of John Mallon Waterman, a visionary climber much celebrated for making one of the most astonishing first ascents in the history of North American mountaineering--an extremely dangerous 145-day solo climb of Mount Hunter's Southeast Spur. Upon completing this epic deed in 1979, though, he found that instead of putting his demons to rest, success merely agitated them. In the years that followed, Waterman's mind unraveled. He took to prancing around Fairbanks in a black cape and announced he was running for president under the banner of the Feed the Starving Party, the main priority of which was to ensure that nobody on the planet died of hunger. To publicize his campaign he laid plans to make a solo ascent of Denali, in winter, with a minimum of food. After his first attempt on the mountain was aborted prematurely, Waterman committed himself to the Anchorage Psychiatric Institute but checked out after two weeks, convinced that there was a conspiracy afoot to put him away permanently. Then, in the winter of 1981, he launched another solo attempt on Denali. He was last placed on the upper Ruth Glacier, heading unroped through the middle of a deadly crevasse field en route to the mountain's difficult East Buttress, carrying neither sleeping bag nor tent. He was never seen after that, but a note was later found atop some of his gear in a nearby shelter. It read, "3-13-81 My last kiss 1:42 PM." Perhaps inevitably, parallels have been drawn between John Waterman and Chris McCandless. Comparisons have also been made between McCandless and Carl McCunn, a likable, absentminded Texan who in 1981 paid a bush pilot to drop him at a lake deep in the Brooks Range to photograph wildlife. He flew in with 500 rolls of film and 1,400 pounds of provisions but forgot to arrange for the pilot to pick him up again. Nobody realized he was missing until state troopers came across his body a year later, lying beside a 100-page diary that documented his demise. Rather than starve, McCunn had reclined in his tent and shot himself in the head. There are similarities among Waterman, McCunn, and McCandless, most notably a certain dreaminess and a paucity of common sense. But unlike Waterman, McCandless was not mentally unbalanced. And unlike McCunn, he didn't go into the bush assuming that someone would magically appear to bring him out again before he came to grief. McCandless doesn't really conform to the common bush-casualty stereotype: He wasn't a kook, he wasn't an outcast, and although he was rash and incautious to the point of foolhardiness, he was hardly incompetent or he would never have lasted 113 days. If one is searching for predecessors cut from the same exotic cloth, if one hopes to understand the personal tragedy of Chris McCandless by placing it in some larger context, one would do well to look at another northern land, in a different century altogether. Off the southeastern coast of Iceland sits a low barrier island called Papos. Treeless and rocky, perpetually knocked by gales howling off the North Atlantic, the island takes its name from its first settlers, now long gone, the Irish monks known as papar. They arrived as early as the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., having sailed and rowed from the western coast of Ireland. Setting out in small open boats called curraghs, made from cowhide stretched over light wicker frames, they crossed one of the most treacherous stretches of ocean in the world without knowing what they'd find on the other side. The papar risked their lives--and lost them in untold droves--but not in the pursuit of wealth or personal glory or to claim new lands in the name of a despot. As the great Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen points out, they undertook their remarkable voyages "chiefly from the wish to find lonely places, where these anchorites might dwell in peace, undisturbed by the turmoil and temptations of the world." When the first handful of Norwegians showed up on the shores of Iceland in the ninth century, the papar decided the country had become too crowded, even though it was still all but uninhabited. They climbed back into into their curraghs and rowed off toward Greenland. They were drawn west across the storm-wracked ocean, past the edge of the known world, by nothing more than hunger of the spirit, a queer, pure yearning that burned in their souls. Reading of the these monks, one is struck by their courage, their reckless innocence, and the intensity of their desire. And one can't help thinking of Chris McCandless. On April 25, 1992, ten days after leaving South Dakota, McCandless rode his thumb into Fairbanks. After perusing the classified ads, he bought a used Remington Nylon 66--a semiautomatic .22- caliber rifle with a 4x20 scope and a plastic stock that was favored by Alaskan trappers for its light weight and reliability. When James Gallien dropped McCandless off at the head of the Stampede Trail on April 28 the temperature was in the low thirties--it would drop into the low teens at night--and a foot of crusty spring snow covered the ground. As he trudged expectantly down the trail in a fake-fur parka, the heaviest item in McCandless's half-full backpack was his library: nine or ten paperbacks ranging from Michael Crichton's The Terminal Man to Thoreau's Walden and Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Illyich. One of these volumes, Tanaina Plantlore, by Priscilla Russel Kari, was a scholarly, exhaustively researched field guide to edible plants in the region; it was in the back of this book that McCandless began keeping an abbreviated record of his journey. From his journal we know that on April 29 McCandless fell through the ice--perhaps crossing the frozen surface of the Teklanika River, perhaps in the maze of broad, shallow beaver ponds that lie just beyond its western bank--although there is no indication that he suffered any injury. A day later he got his first glimpse of Denali's gleaming white ramparts, and a day after that, about 20 miles down the trail from where he started, he stumbled upon the bus and decided to make it his base camp. He was elated to be there. Inside the bus, on a sheet of weathered plywood spanning a broken window, McCandless scrawled an exultant declaration of independence: Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild. Alexander Supertramp May 1992 But reality quickly intruded. McCandless had difficulty killing game, and the daily journal entries during his first week at the bus include "weakness," "snowed in," and "disaster." He saw but did not shoot a grizzly on May 2, shot at but missed some ducks on May 4, and finally killed and ate a spruce grouse on May 5. But he didn't kill any more game until May 9, when he bagged a single small squirrel, by which point he'd written "4th day famine" in the journal. Soon thereafter McCandless's fortunes took a sharp turn for the better. By mid-May the snowpack was melting down to bare ground, exposing the previous season's rose hips and lingonberries, preserved beneath the frost, which he gathered and ate. He also became much more successful at hunting and for the next six weeks feasted regularly on squirrel, spruce grouse, duck, goose, and porcupine. On May 22 he lost a crown from a tooth, but it didn't seem to dampen his spirits much, because the following day he scrambled up the nameless 3,000-foot butte that rose directly north of the bus, giving him a view of the whole icy sweep of the Alaska Range and mile after mile of stunning, completely uninhabited country. His journal entry for the day is characteristically terse but unmistakably joyous: "CLIMB MOUNTAIN!" Although McCandless was enough of a realist to know that hunting was an unavoidable component of living off the land, he had always been ambivalent about killing animals. That ambivalence turned to regret on June 9, when he shot and killed a large caribou, which he mistakenly identified as a moose in his journal. For six days he toiled to preserve the meat, believing that it was morally indefensible to waste any part of an animal that has been killed for food. He butchered the carcass under a thick cloud of flies and mosquitoes, boiled the internal organs into a stew, and then laboriously dug a cave in the rocky earth in which he tried to preserve, by smoking, the huge amount of meat that he was unable to eat immediately. Despite his efforts, on June 14 his journal records, "Maggots already! Smoking appears ineffective. Don't know, looks like disaster. I now wish I had never shot the moose. One of the greatest tragedies of my life." Although he recriminated himself severely for this waste of a life he had taken, a day later McCandless appeared to regain some perspective--his journal notes, "henceforth will learn to accept my errors, however great they be"--and the period of contentment that began in mid-May resumed and continued until early July. Then, in the midst of this idyll, came the first of two pivotal setbacks. Satisfied, apparently, with what he had accomplished during his two months of solitary existence, McCandless decided to return to civilization. It was time to bring his "final and greatest adventure" to a close and get himself back to the world of men and women, where he could chug a beer, discuss philosophy, enthrall strangers with tales of what he'd done. He seemed to have turned the corner on his need to assert his autonomy from his parents. He seemed ready, perhaps, to go home. On a parchmentlike strip of birch bark he drew up a list of tasks to do before he departed: "patch jeans, shave!, organize pack." Then, on July 3--the day after a journal entry that reads, "Family happiness"- -he shouldered his backpack, departed the bus, and began the 30-mile walk to the highway. Two days later, halfway to the road, he arrived in heavy rain on the west bank of the Teklanika River, a major stream spawned by distant glaciers on the crest of the Alaska Range. Sixty-seven days earlier it had been frozen over, and he had simply strolled across it. Now, however, swollen with rain and melting snow, the Teklanika was running big, cold, and fast. If he could reach the far shore, the rest of the hike to the highway would be trivial, but to get there he would have to negotiate a 75-foot channel of chest-deep water that churned with the power of a freight train. In his journal McCandless wrote, "Rained in. River look impossible. Lonely, scared." Concluding that he would drown if he attempted to cross, he turned around and walked back toward the bus, back into the fickle heart of the bush. McCandless got back to the bus on July 8. It's impossible to know what was going through his mind at that point, believing that his escape had been cut off, for his journal betrays nothing. Actually, he wasn't cut off at all: A quarter-mile downstream from where he had tried to cross, the Teklanika rushes through a narrow gorge spanned by a hand-operated tram--a metal basket suspended from pulleys on a steel cable. If he had known about it, crossing the Teklanika to safety would have been little more than a casual task. Also, six miles due south of the bus, an easy day's walk up the main fork of the Sushana, the National Park Service maintains a cabin stocked with food, bedding, and first-aid supplies for the use of backcountry rangers on their winter patrols. This cabin is plainly marked on most topographic maps of the area, but McCandless, lacking such a map, had no way of knowing about it. His friends point out, of course, that had he carried a map and known the cabin was so close, his muleheaded obsession with self-reliance would have kept him from staying anywhere near the bus; rather, he would have headed even deeper into the bush. So he went back to the bus, which was a sensible course of action: It was the height of summer, the country was fecund with plant and animal life, and his food supply was still adequate. He probably surmised that if he could just bide his time until August, the Teklanika would subside enough to be forded. For the rest of July McCandless fell back into his routine of hunting and gathering. His snapshots and journal entries indicate that over those three weeks he killed 35 squirrels, four spruce grouse, five jays and woodpeckers, and two frogs, which he supplemented with wild potatoes, wild rhubarb, various berries, and mushrooms. Despite this apparent munificence, the meat he'd been killing was very lean, and he was consuming fewer calories than he was burning. After three months on a marginal diet, McCandless had run up a sizable caloric deficit. He was balanced on a precarious, razor-thin edge. And then, on July 30, he made the mistake that pulled him down. His journal entry for that date reads, "Extremely weak. Fault of pot[ato] seed. Much trouble just to stand up. Starving. Great Jeopardy." McCandless had been digging and eating the root of the wild potato--Hedysarum alpinum, a common area wildflower also known as Eskimo potato, which Kari's book told him was widely eaten by native Alaskans--for more than a month without ill effect. On July 14 he apparently started eating the pealike seedpods of the plant as well, again without ill effect. There is, however, a closely related plant--wild sweet pea, Hedysarum mackenzii--that is very difficult to distinguish from wild potato, grows beside it, and is poisonous. In all likelihood McCandless mistakenly ate some seeds from the wild sweet pea and became gravely ill. Laid low by the poisonous seeds, he was too weak to hunt effectively and thus slid toward starvation. Things began to spin out of control with terrible speed. "DAY 100! MADE IT!" he noted jubilantly on August 5, proud of achieving such a significant milestone, "but in weakest condition of life. Death looms as serious threat. Too weak to walk out." Over the next week or so the only game he bagged was five squirrels and a spruce grouse. Many Alaskans have wondered why, at this point, he didn't start a forest fire as a distress signal; small planes fly over the area every few days, they say, and the Park Service would surely have dispatched a crew to control the conflagration. "Chris would never intentionally burn down a forest, not even to save his life," answers Carine McCandless. "Anybody who would suggest otherwise doesn't understand the first thing about my brother." Starvation is not a pleasant way to die. In advanced stages, as the body begins to consume itself, the victim suffers muscle pain, heart disturbances, loss of hair, shortness of breath. Convulsions and hallucinations are not uncommon. Some who have been brought back from the far edge of starvation, though, report that near the end their suffering was replaced by a sublime euphoria, a sense of calm accompanied by transcendent mental clarity. Perhaps, it would be nice to think, McCandless enjoyed a similar rapture. From August 13 through 18 his journal records nothing beyond a tally of the days. At some point during this week, he tore the final page from Louis L'Amour's memoir, Education of a Wandering Man. On one side were some lines that L'Amour had quoted from Robinson Jeffers's poem "Wise Men in Their Bad Hours": Death's a fierce meadowlark: but to die having made Something more equal to the centuries Than muscle and bone, is mostly to shed weakness. On the other side of the page, which was blank, McCandless penned a brief adios: "I have had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless all!" Then he crawled into the sleeping bag his mother had made for him and slipped into unconsciousness. He probably died on August 18, 113 days after he'd walked into the wild, 19 days before six hunters and hikers would happen across the bus and discover his body inside. One of his last acts was to take a photograph of himself, standing near the bus under the high Alaskan sky, one hand holding his final note toward the camera lens, the other raised in a brave, beatific farewell. He is smiling in the photo, and there is no mistaking the look in his eyes: Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God.

[bloojayoolie]

Being Alone, Andrew Bogut, and Animals: Loveable, sweet MEET OUR BABY BOY! Leviathan A baby puppy, a family pet. Gentle w/toddlers, outgoing & friendly to strangers. An easygoing, wiggly, sweet boy, laid back, affectionate and lovely. Dreams of being your one and only pet. Id 56211, 9 Mos. Old, 62 lbs. ot Sweetness, Walting with Hope at the Manhattan ACC TO BE KILLED – 3/21/2019 Let us tell you what makes us livid over at MLD. What makes us upset is when the parents in a multi-pet home do absolutely NOTHING to ensure the safety of their pets and fail to carefully and successfully manage them so that both cats and dogs remain happy, healthy and live long lives. Leviathan is just a puppy, barely 9 months old, but he has found himself at the shelter because his parents allowed him to “play” with the cat who actually DIDN’T appreciate Leviathan’s puppy rough-housing. Now Leviathan is sitting alone and heartbroken at the shelter, and he truly doesn’t realize what he did wrong. Friendly, social, wiggly and shyly sweet, he is so laid back, easygoing, gentle and sweet. A proven family pet, he lived with very small children and was nothing but gentle with them, and every new person who came to visit got a wiggly reception when they entered the house. Leviathan is a wonderful boy, a good boy who had inexperienced parents. It was a bad adoption, plain and simple. What he needs now is an experienced family, a place where he can be the only pet. He’s so darling – just look at that mushy face! Watch is darling video and see what we mean (it’s below). You can’t help but fall in love. Hurry and PM our page or email us at MustLoveDogsNYC@gmail.com to foster or adopt lovable Leviathan! My Sweet Movie! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmhgl3vlqlI LEVIATHAN, ID# 56211, 9 Mos. Old, 62.6 lbs, Unaltered Male Manhattan ACC, Large Mixed Breed, Gray / White Owner Surrender Reason: Aggressive to other animals Shelter Assessment Rating: New Hope Rescue Only Medical Behavior Rating: 1. GREEN AT RISK MEMO: Leviathan has shown concerning reactivity towards other animals including cats and dogs while in his previous home environment and in the care center. Leviathan would be best suited for placement with a new hope rescue partner that can provide the necessary behavior modification and reward based training. Medically, Leviathan was diagnosed with canine infectious respiratory disease complex which is contagious to other animals and will require in home care. INTAKE NOTES – DATE OF INTAKE, :Upon intake: very loose and wiggly, allowed all handling such as scanning and collaring. He kept sitting and giving paw to the counselor. OWNER SURRENDER NOTES – BASIC INFORMATION: Leviathan is a 9 month old intact male large mixed breed dog that was surrendered due to not getting along with cats in the home. He lived with adults, a child and another dog. Around strangers, Leviathan is friendly/outgoing. He plays gently and exuberant with adults. Leviathan previously lived with a 4 month old. He plays gently with children. Leviathan was reported to be aggressive with other dogs by lunging at them when passing them on walks. Leviathan does not get along with cats. He lunges and darted at the cat he lived with. No history of resource guarding reported. Leviathan had a bite incident regarding the resident cat which resulted in the cat's death. He was noted to have played with the cat before but also dart at him. He is reported to have played too rough with the cat and when the cat scratched him, the dog retaliated ultimately resulting in the death of the cat as well as bites on the cat's head and broken arms as well as a prolapsed eye. Leviathan is housetrained and has a medium energy level. For a New Family to Know: Leviathan was reported to be friendly, affectionate, and playful. He likes to follow you around when you're home. He loves to give you paw. He sleeps on a dog bed. He was given free choice to the indoors and outdoors with a pet door. He eats dry food. He goes potty on the grass. He is well-behaved when left alone in the yard. He is never left alone in the house. He has never been crated. He knows sit, come, and give paw. For exercise, he likes slow and brisk walks on leash as well as play in the yard. On leash he pulls lightly. When off leash he wanders some but comes when called. SHELTER ASSESSMENT – DATE OF ASSESSMENT: 3/10/2019 LEASH WALKING Strength and pulling: None Reactivity to humans: None Reactivity to dogs: None Leash walking comments: None SOCIABILITY Loose in room (15-20 seconds): Moderately social Call over: Approaches with coaxing Sociability comments: Sniffing around room, checks in with assessor HANDLING Soft handling: Seeks contact Exuberant handling: Seeks contact Comments: Soft body, leans into pets AROUSAL Jog: Follows (loose) Arousal comments: None Knock: Approaches (loose) Knock Comments: None Toy: No response Toy comments: None PLAYGROUP NOTES – DOG TO DOG SUMMARIES: A single pet residence is recommended for Leviathan due to bite incidents involving both cats and dogs. 3/9: Leviathan was muzzled for his first interaction off leash due to his hold status. Leviathan greets politely with loose body and wagging tail, engaging in a soft and social manner with the female dog. He then becomes distracted by his muzzle and is removed from the pen. 3/16: Leviathan is now off his hold and eligible for an off leash interaction. At the gate he is loose and wiggly. When the female enters, he begins sniffing her and she turns towards him with a minor vocalization. Leviathan escalates and bites and holds the female dog by the neck for about 10 seconds until handlers are able to separate them. There was no broken skin. INTAKE NOTES - Date of intake:: 3/3/2019 Summary:: Loose body, allowed handling MEDICAL BEHAVIOR - Date of initial:: 3/3/2019 Summary:: Social, relaxed ENERGY LEVEL:: Leviathan is described as having a medium level of activity. BEHAVIOR DETERMINATION:: New Hope Only Behavior Asilomar: TM - Treatable-Manageable Recommendations:: No young children (under 5),No children (under 13),No cats,Single-pet home,Recommend no dog parks,Place with a New Hope partner Recommendations comments:: Leviathan has shown a low threshold for escalation to severe behaviors (biting) with both a cat and a dog. At this time we would recommend placement with a New Hope partner that can work with him. Due to the bite and hold incident (no broken skin) in playgroup at the care center, we would recommend a single pet home for Leviathan and that he not attend dog parks. Potential challenges: : Bite history (other animal),On-leash reactivity/barrier frustration Potential challenges comments:: Leviathan bit the cat in his previous home multiple times, resulting in the cats death. Leviathan may have a very high prey drive and should be kept away from small animals. Please see handout on bite history. Leviathan is reported to react to dogs on leash, lunging towards them. Please see handout on On-leash reactivity/barrier frustration. MEDICAL EXAM NOTES 3/03/2019 [LVT Intake Exam] Microchip Scan: Negative Evidence of Cruelty: No Observed Behavior: Friendly , relaxed and easy to handle. Estimated Age: 9 Months Subjective: O/S Eyes:Wnl Ears:has scratches on the AS Oral Exam:Wnl Abdomen:WNL Musculoskeletal:WNL Mentation: BAR BCS: 6/9 Skin : loss some fur thoracodorsal area between shoulder blade., owner stated (As per owner previously diagnosis (demodicosis ) by private DVM) Has old scratches from cat mate on the top of his head Preliminary Assessment: As per owner : diagnosed by private Vet( demodicosis) Plan: DVM intake .check skin issues 9/03/2019 SO BAR in kennel. Standing at kennel front. EN -- eyes are clear. serous nasal discharge and sneezing during observation A CIRDC P doxycycline 100mg tablet -- give 2.75 tablet PO q24h x 14 days enrofloxacin 136mg tablet -- give 2 tablets PO q24h x 14 days cerenia 60mg tablet -- give 0.5 tablet PO q24h x 4 days *** TO FOSTER OR ADOPT *** CHASE IS RATED NEW HOPE RESCUE ONLY. You must fill out applications with New Hope Rescues to foster or adopt him. He cannot be reserved online at the ACC ARL, nor can he be direct adopted at the shelter. PLEASE HURRY AND MESSAGE OUR PAGE FOR ASSISTANCE! HOW TO RESERVE A “TO BE KILLED” DOG ONLINE (only for those who can get to the shelter IN PERSON to complete the adoption process, and only for the dogs on the list NOT marked New Hope Rescue Only). Follow our Step by Step directions below! *PLEASE NOTE – YOU MUST USE A PC OR TABLET – PHONE RESERVES WILL NOT WORK! ** STEP 1: CLICK ON THIS RESERVE LINK: https://ift.tt/2ynocEZ Step 2: Go to the red menu button on the top right corner, click register and fill in your info. Step 3: Go to your email and verify account \ Step 4: Go back to the website, click the menu button and view available dogs Step 5: Scroll to the animal you are interested and click reserve STEP 6 ( MOST IMPORTANT STEP ): GO TO THE MENU AGAIN AND VIEW YOUR CART. THE ANIMAL SHOULD NOW BE IN YOUR CART! Step 7: Fill in your credit card info and complete transaction HOW TO FOSTER OR ADOPT IF YOU *CANNOT* GET TO THE SHELTER IN PERSON, OR IF THE DOG IS NEW HOPE RESCUE ONLY! You must live within 3 – 4 hours of NY, NJ, PA, CT, RI, DE, MD, MA, NH, VT, ME or Norther VA. Please PM our page for assistance. You will need to fill out applications with a New Hope Rescue Partner to foster or adopt a dog on the To Be Killed list, including those labelled Rescue Only. Hurry please, time is short, and the Rescues need time to process the applications. Shelter contact information Phone number (212) 788-4000 Email adoption@nycacc.org Shelter Addresses: Brooklyn Shelter: 2336 Linden Boulevard Brooklyn, NY 11208 Manhattan Shelter: 326 East 110 St. New York, NY 10029 Staten Island Shelter: 3139 Veterans Road West Staten Island, NY 10309 *** NEW NYC ACC RATING SYSTEM *** Level 1 Dogs with Level 1 determinations are suitable for the majority of homes. These dogs are not displaying concerning behaviors in shelter, and the owner surrender profile (where available) is positive. Some dogs with Level 1 determinations may still have potential challenges, but these are challenges that the behavior team believe can be handled by the majority of adopters. The potential challenges could include no young children, prefers to be the only dog, no dog parks, no cats, kennel presence, basic manners, low level fear and mild anxiety. Level 2 Dogs with Level 2 determinations will be suitable for adopters with some previous dog experience. They will have displayed behavior in the shelter (or have owner reported behavior) that requires some training, or is simply not suitable for an adopter with minimal experience. Dogs with a Level 2 determination may have multiple potential challenges and these may be presenting at differing levels of intensity, so careful consideration of the behavior notes will be required for counselling. Potential challenges at Level 2 include no young children, single pet home, resource guarding, on-leash reactivity, mouthiness, fear with potential for escalation, impulse control/arousal, anxiety and separation anxiety. Level 3 Dogs with Level 3 determinations will need to go to homes with experienced adopters, and the ACC strongly suggest that the adopter have prior experience with the challenges described and/or an understanding of the challenge and how to manage it safely in a home environment. In many cases, a trainer will be needed to manage and work on the behaviors safely in a home environment. It is likely that every dog with a Level 3 determination will have a behavior modification or training plan available to them from the behavior department that will go home with the adopters and be made available to the New Hope Partners for their fosters and adopters. Some of the challenges seen at Level 3 are also seen at Level 1 and Level 2, but when seen alongside a Level 3 determination can be assumed to be more severe. The potential challenges for Level 3 determinations include adult only home (no children under the age of 13), single pet home, resource guarding, on-leash reactivity with potential for redirection, mouthiness with pressure, potential escalation to threatening behavior, impulse control, arousal, anxiety, separation anxiety, bite history (human), bite history (dog) and bite history (other). New Hope Rescue Only Dog is not publicly adoptable. Prospective fosters or adopters need to fill out applications with New Hope Partner Rescues to save this dog.