#i don’t like disney at all but i think it’s important for mainstream corporations to represent poc specifically black people

[opinionated-b1tch]

@disney make another black princess but this time actually delve into African culture and folklore and like maybe don’t make her an animal

[highly-important]

My inner theater kid comes and goes in waves, and currently getting re-obsessed with "Tick, Tick.... Boom!”

One thing that I think is handled really well is the gay/straight friendship between Michael and Jonathan- they are not afraid to touch, or even be flirty. In mainstream American culture there is a fear and stigma associated with nonsexual touch, especially between men, but this movie does a lot to casually combat that stigma.

The benefits of nonsexual touch are scientifically vetted. Touch reduces stress, heart rate, blood pressure, and even cortisol levels. (I won’t go much deeper into this, but you can read more here if you are curious.)

While babies and toddlers are held, that contact often drops off when boys stop being toddlers. By the time they reach puberty, boys have learned to touch only through aggressive ways like roughhousing or team sports. And if they do seek gentle touch, it is expected to be through the highly sexualized context of dating. If a young man attempts gentle platonic contact with another man, he faces the real risk of homophobic backlash either by that person or those who witness the contact. Men have very few options when it comes to acceptable platonic touch. For 20th and 21st century men, physical contact is usually restricted to violence or sex.

But it didn’t always used to be like this. Physical affection between American men was common as a way to show camaraderie. “But at the turn of the 20th century, thinking of men as either “homosexual” or “heterosexual” became common. And this new category of identity was at the same time pathologized — decried by psychiatrists as a mental illness, by ministers as a perversion, and by politicians as something to be legislated against. As this new conception of homosexuality as a stigmatized and onerous identifier took root in American culture, men began to be much more careful to not send messages to other men, and to women, that they were gay. And this is the reason why, it is theorized, men have become less comfortable with showing affection towards each other over the last century.” (source)

I think this connects to the way that America sexualizes gay people and same-sex couples in a way that straight couples are not sexualized. And this leads me to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida, and its successor in Georgia. Conservatives have a double standard when it comes to showing children heterosexual vs homosexual couples. They think nothing of exposing t heir kids to heterosexual couples and marriage, even in children's’ movies, but the existence of gay people is seen as corrupting or capable of ruining a child’s innocence. Conservatives use this equivalency to pretend that any portrayal of a same-sex couple in the classroom is tantamount to predatory grooming.

And its not just politics. Disney not only donated to the politicians who supported the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, they have a history of suppressing LGBTQIA+ characters and even same-sex affection. According to a letter written to Disney by LGBTQIA+ employees and their allies at Pixar, Disney corporate executives have demanded cuts from “nearly every moment of overtly gay affection... regardless of when there is protest from both the creative teams and executive leadership at Pixar.”

And this is part of a larger problem with how gay characters are depicted on TV. Even at a time when gay characters are finally getting more screen time. Gay sexuality is still considered more risque than heterosexual sexuality. The MPAA actually rates films with gay subject matter more harshly.  Gay characters exist in the media, but apart from some exceptions, depictions of same-sex affection are still very rare.

And media plays a VERY important role in all this: artists and creatives are cultural workers. The labor of creative workers, at least a fraction of it, occurs with the intention to uphold a certain culture. Your work as an artist is accountable to the idea of culture. And if we are committed to upholding a revolutionary culture, than our labor as cultural workers is accountable to the notion of working to uphold that revolutionary culture. Meaning: “we are not simply making art for arts sake”, but “we have a moral obligation to use our artistic and linguistic talents in the service of liberation.” (source) I think imagery of platonic, same-sex affection like in “Tick, Tick...Boom!” can be really important to normalize platonic male affection.

Its important that LGBTQ+ people be allowed to tell their stories. That we are allowed to exist in public spaces including classrooms. Its important to remember that homophobia doesn’t just negatively affect gay people. Our culture has created an isolating trap where men have few options for platonic touch, and it means they can go for days or weeks at a time without touching another human being. We need to fix our sexually repressed/obsessed American culture and put an end to the distorted and hateful parts that allow homophobic people to police others actions and existences like this. Media is a really important tool in shaping culture and putting an end to homophobic ideals.

[silverthetheorist]

The Dream smp will have a bad ending (And why preparation beats improvisation)

So. I am back after a little while. And this is a topic that has been on my mind for a long time. But before we get to my main point we have to clear some things.

The medium where a story is told dramatically affects the story in many ways. A story cannot be the same in a book, or a film, or a tv show, or an anime, or a comicbooks. They are all different mediums that have their own positives and negatives when it comes to telling stories. A book can fit more information but a tv show can have music and good camera work, etc. 

Now, the Dream Smp is a completely different thing. This is a medium that has (I think) never been used before (Or at least not at this extend). And as all mediums it has its positives and negatives. The positives are very clear, strong and interesting: You can watch multiple POVs, follow the storylines you care about, you can see events from different perspectives and see whoever your favourite streamer is as the main character. And all of these positives are amazing and unique. No other medium has something like it... but it also has negatives no other medium has. As I see the Dream Smp has three big flaws due to it’s medium:

First of all, real life sometimes gets in the way. In books, movies and tv shows you can just pretend life does not exists for the duration of the episode or movie. This is called escapism, the reason why storytelling is so attractive. The problem with the medium of the Dream SMP is that the storyline sometimes is affected by real life in ways other mediums aren’t. For example a streamer deciding not to do roleplay after a big event when we could use a nice view of the after-effects of said event, or a streamer missing an important event that they could have been a major part of. And this is not the streamer’s fault at all. Real life is inevitable. An example is when Wilbur missed the festival because he forgot to read the groupchat. But it is still an unfortunate negative of the medium.

Second, improvisation can be great. But it can also... not. It is a miracle, a truly testament of how good everyone’s improvisation skills are that the story has been so good for a long time (As I have said in prior post, the story is basically flawless until the manberg/pogtopia war. Then it all kind of went downhill). But I think it is starting to show that preparation beats improvisation 9 times out of 10. Improvisation only works when people have a small guideline, something that tells them point A and point B for them to connect. And I don’t think that is happening a lot nowadays. Furthermore, I don’t think the current writer are doing a good job of communicating the plot to other and including everyone. We can see this in many ways: Nicky not knowing about the festival until the day before because of her chat, Dream leaving Techno on read when he asked what the next plotline was, Tommy not reading the scripts, the story becoming more and more the “Tommy and other two people show” instead of the “Dream Smp show”, and many other examples. (I have many thoughts about how I feel like Tommy sometimes is grabbing all the story/clout of the SMP for himself, not on purpose probably, but... I just feel I bad vibe from that. It is not something I can really put into words. Just a feeling. Not accusing him of doing that or being evil or anything. Just an unfortunate side-effect of him being the center of attention all the time which can lead to fatigue from the viewers when the plot is always about one guy and his discs all the time)

And finally the main negative. The biggest problem and challenge the SMP will have. It’s ending: It is not a secret that the SMP is successful, popular and makes a ton of money. So of course they will continue the SMP. But the problem is that the smp has a story and stories can only go so far. For example, Tommy’s discs being a motivation for his character for one or two arcs is understandable. But when the discs are his motivation for several arcs (And counting), it kind hurts your suspension of disbelief (That is the amount of things you can take in a story before you say “This story is not believable at all”). I am not comparing the smp to Disney. But when they continue to stretch the story more than it should because it is successful... yikes. The manberg/pogtopia war could have been the finally if they changed around a couple of things. And I fully understand them wanting to continue the story after that arc (Which I agree was a good idea despite their not so successful attempt of replicating prior arcs). And the point where we are now although kind of weird, I can totally see the story continuing. But there will be a point where it just feels like everything should have ended long ago. You cannot have a character go through the same arcs, the story having the same events all the time. Writing a long story is hard and complicated, you have to justificate why there is more all the time. 

And if they don’t start organizing better, including everyone, planning things out, and deciding on a satisfying ending... then the Dream Smp has a will have a boring repeated ending that few people will watch because it will happen when people start moving on from the smp. And I really don’t want that. They should quit when they are ahead, when they feel comfortable ending the story, when all arcs are resolved, before things start going even more downhill. 

PS1: Again, english. Sorry if i’m a bit negative on my blog. But there are already thousands of people explaining an analysis all the amazing things from the smp that I would just be repeating what everyone says. Criticising something you love is not a bad thing. I see as your love for something is so big that even with flaws you can still love it... that sounds corny, jesus christs it is just minecraft roleplay. As always, I am never sending hate ever. 

PS2: Something irks about Tommy and Tubbo not streaming together almost at all even though in the story they are friends again. That and Tubbo not being on any of Tommy’s videos but other are just... It is probably nothing... probably. Maybe it is just me projecting my own insecurities with my own friends. I am not saying they had a fight or they hate each other now or whatever. But... it’s still a bit sad and weird. Maybe it is because Tommy only wants to do content with like big youtubers and he is focused on always improving and stuff, while Tubbo is more about relaxing and streaming shit he enjoys. A shame. After months of no content from them, they are back but not really. 

PS3: Nothing has happened story wise at all since Doomsday. Which is odd. Is Tommy moving on from the smp? He did say he is focusing on youtube at the moment (And unfortunate negative of the medium, real life gets in the way of the story as I said) so maybe it is that. Nothing major has really happened. Not even small things. Why is Tommy streaming less and less all the time? I don’t know. I also do not think there will be an event on the 16th because of the chess tournament and the lack of any plot developments at all since Doomsday. Many questions, few answers. I kinda feel like I am getting a bit tired/moving from the smp. And Tommy specifically, I am glad for him and happy that he is getting all this success but I think his persona made more sense/was more bearable when he was a relatively smaller streamer/youtuber. With the risk of sounding corny again... I feel like Tommy is too mainstream now (Tiktokers are commenting on his instagram posts and that is never a good sign) and has become more corporate (Only streaming and making videos with people who benefit his video’s/streams instead of HIS BEST FRIEND TUBBO. But that really could just be my anxiety talking. Don’t think to hard about it, I am no one to say what he should or should not do, and I do not know of his life to say things definitively. Just a hunch, a bad vibe I am getting from him.).

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Hello! (Different anon here). So, re the recent discussions abt the MCU/Disney as imperialist propaganda, how do you think we as fans should approach the issue? Bc--I mean personally speaking I only engage w Disney properties via fandom, don't reblog (cont.)

(part 2) or promote the films/shows themselves, but still worry about the issues of fan complicity in corporate mythmaking. And I totally understand that the answer is "it's complicated", but I wanted to hear your thoughts?

Hi ^-^

It is a complicated matter and I think there’s two major perspective on which you can see the issue and I don’t think one is ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong’, they’re both valid points and sadly coexist. (Not to be like ‘we live in a society’ but we cannot decide to exit capitalism, we can only move inside it.)

One is fandom as resistance: by engaging with the text in a manner that deconstructs it and that transforms it (transformative works that queer the text up, for instance), I am doing an exercise in resistance, and my act of putting queerness in a text that evades it is radical.

The other is fandom as advertising: we’re effectively giving visibility and attaching positive connotations to a product. How many people check out shows after seeing gifsets and fanart on tumblr? A lot. We should be consuming “good” media (say, indie content over megacorporation stuff) and giving visibility to that.

I don’t think that refusing to engage with the “problematic” text at all lest we dirty our hands by making ourselves complicit of the system is a particularly fruitful approach (obviously I’m talking about collective actions, individually one can just do whatever they want within the limits of manners, it’s fandom), it seems to me more like an act of purity. Transformative works have a long, long history and I do think there’s power in that history. Transformative works do help people. And “problematic” media attracts fandoms because there’s so much fertile ground for transformation.

Also, not less importantly imo, it’s not like you can trace a line between Evil Media and Good Media. The MCU is so blatant it’s not really difficult to see it, but how much media just incorporates values that are just mainstream in the culture that produced it and are not good? How do you trace a line? Is Drarry fanfiction advertising for Rowling? Should we stop it at all? What counts as propaganda? Must it have gone through the pencil of the American military or also not?

Maybe I’m just trying to justify my own actions, but I think that maybe we kind of overstate our own importance...? Disney spends billions on marketing, and unless it turns out half of you are Disney accounts swaying the population like the Russian blogs in 2016, I’m not even sure fandom is really that big a part of the marketing strategy. (Do we stop watching actors’ interviews? Is Anthony Mackie’s face problematic during a marketing tour? We end up in directions I’m not comfortable with.) I mean, I know that social media activity is still part of the marketing strategy, and an important one at that. But social media activity comes in many forms and some of those are transformative. Where do you trace the line? Edits are good but gifsets are bad? What about a gifset with different captions that make the scene gay? Slash fanart? Non-slash fanart? Fanart of a canon straight ship? (Hint: none of those are bad.)

Something else I want to point out: this kind of talk comes up when they (not just Disney) make content aimed at progressive audiences. It’s natural. An audience that will pay attention to this kind of issues will not really care about stuff that doesn’t really ping their radar. But the result is that it seems like we’re particularly vicious against “good” things: movies with a female lead, shows with a Black lead. You’ll see arguments like “oh, you weren’t saying this before, but you’re saying it for this product about a woman/Black person so you’re misogynist/racist!”. That’s in bad faith. Of course it stands out when the propaganda is done in something that markets itself as progressive. Nobody really goes to see Macho Batman With Biceps Feels Manly Angst #37 and expects intersectional feminism in it. But they make a movie with a female lead for the first time since 1926, and you’re like “oh? Maybe good? Maybe one good thing finally?” and then brown-skinned people with beards in sandy places want more bombs. Guess which one progressive-leaning people will talk about the most?

I have one Harry Potter fic on my ao3. It’s something I wrote as a teen and found a few years ago and, while it’s not really great, I decided to publish it. I recently debated with myself whether to delete it. I didn’t want to have something related to Rowling on my account. But then I thought, then what? Should everyone delete all Harry Potter fanart ever? Sure, no one will miss my old fic because it’s bad, but that’s not the point. Do I think that deleting HP fics is a “good” gesture? Then do I think everyone should do the same? No. The world of HP fanworks is vast and rich and has a lot of beauty in it. Same with the MCU fandom.

This said, individually one chooses. If you’re personally uncomfortable engaging with a text, you stop engaging with that text. If you want to make transformative works of the most problematic text ever, you make them. (And really, who decides what is too problematic for posting on tumblr about it? Fandom’s still having debates on that nazi manga with the big monsters.) Mega-popular texts are also good collective exercises in text analysis and further debates because they become a common language for many people. (There’s also the fact that the MCU didn’t create the characters, and they have actually a long and often powerful history, although that’s not a culture I’m familiar with.)

Tl,dr... don’t subscribe to the platform :p

[jamboreeofsurprises]

idk how to say this in a way that wont come across as whiny and dumb and make it even more apparent how autistic i am but whatever, its my personal blog, it’s meant to be a judge-free zone anyway. its not like im not putting out this thought to change how anyone feels about anything im just ranting.

pixar has been an important special interest of mine for decades (!) as their movies were literally some of the only movies i looked forward to seeing as a kid. i hated going to the theater because of the sensory nightmare of it all but braved it for pixar movies because they tickled my imagination so much. nearly every year had a new pixar movie which was a big event in my life for that year. i think they have struggled a lot since the 2010s especially as an over-focus on sequels happened (largely as a result of corporate disney grip) so don’t assume by any means i’m uncritical of them. as with anything else i like, i’m not about to pretend like it’s golden all the time just because i’m a fan

but i feel like most of my mutuals now immediately want to assume negatively of pixar because theyre mainstream and un-vogue and pretend like the incredibly stagnant, unchanged western animation landscape they were born of didn’t exist and how crucial their defiance towards it was for moving the medium forward. when it came to western animated movies we had disney movies and disney-imitation movies, that is to say, Fairy Tale Musicals and Other Fairy Tale Musicals. which, don’t get me wrong, i love a good fairy tale musical, but pixar were special and not just for beautifully introducing & advancing 3d cg feature animation, but because their angle was telling completely new stories that challenged this whole format. it was absolutely a breath of fresh air. and the movies could be pretty genuinely touching too for both older and younger members of the audience, usually without even having to have melodramatic character deaths or anything. monsters inc. is pure character-motivated drama and the ending made me cry buckets as a kid and still does because the characters are lovable and relatable. you don’t have to throw in a dead parents backstory or whatever for me to sincerely feel that emotion for them.

as we ushered into the 00s and walt disney animation, dreamworks, etc got a load of the critical and commercial success of pixar, their response was to copy the technology but very little of the creativity/heart. dreamworks i have come to realize at least with Shrek were still doing something pretty subversive albeit in a different direction that i think was forward-thinking but by and large, attempts to hop on the wagon of what made Pixar capture the world’s attention were pretty misguided. i think as the 00s progressed more unique animated movies started coming out as things picked up real good around 2009 (you need only glance at the academy nominations that year to realize just how varied and good every entry was) so pixar kinda got left in the dust a bit in the 2010s, and the change of direction didnt help but my god, that doesnt override their significance in the whole pantheon of animation. but i feel like everyone is forgetting that and it makes me feel like im losing my mind that im the only person remembering just how crummy most other american animated movies of the 00s were. dont get me wrong im not saying that anyone who dislikes pixar or is critical of a movie of theirs is doing it to be some Mean Hater™, but i feel that the level of negativity is strangely disproportionate to that of other animation studios which is like ??? is it just because people like them and have for years so now we have to turn that around arbitrarily?

idk i just feel like because other studios have stepped up their game some people discredit pixar entirely and that hurts. the thing that has sucked the most about it is how i don’t even feel allowed to eagerly anticipate anything pixar is going to put out even when i want to because it has to immediately be couched in such harsh judgment and discourse, which /*AGAIN*/ is not me saying they’re infallible and should never be criticized. anything and everything is open to criticism, i have my own apprehensions about some of their movies too. i just feel like the aura of negativity online surrounding each pixar release now leaves me an anxious mess while anticipating/watching the movie instead of going into it with the childlike wonder i want to go in with and could go in with because i feel like ppl are going to think i’m basic or just flat out stupid for liking the thing, no matter how sincerely.

which like, i’m not friggin basic. kanashimi no belladonna is one of my favorite animated movies lol. and so is up (the movie that made me interested in animation & storytelling as artforms), ratatouille, etc ... its almost like some mainstream things are good and popular for a reason?

this rant isnt even telling you anything, i know ive historically been overly sensitive to people being critical/negative about things that mean a lot to me and i need to get the hell over it, i just feel frustrated by everyone’s relentless negativity these days and feel like at this point so much of it’s not even coming from good faith

[picturejasper20]

Animation and LGBT+ representantion

I need animation fans,specially western fans to read this, please it's very important.

Lately i have been seeing this a lot of misinformation about animation, one common trend is that the people who work on these shows "are lazy" and "don't want to write LGBT+ characters".

Here's the thing: writting LGBT characters in animated children's media it's very difficult and hard. There are many restrictions about what you can or can't write.

It's not that the people who work behind these shows are cowards or don't want to make real LGBT representation. Many want to, but it depends on the restrictions they are given by their superiors.

Examples:

Adventure time

Marceline and Bubblegum (video from 2014):

"In the video you can see Olsen also made a point to ask Ward if the couple would be visible on the show or in the upcoming book. Unfortunately, not so much."

Olson: "And I said, 'Are they going to do it on the show at all, or can we say anything about it in the book?" And he's like, 'I don't know about the book, but in some countries where the show airs, it's sort of illegal.' So that's why they're not putting it in the show."

Here's she explains they that they couldn't be very explicit about Marceline's and Bubblegum's relationship because of these restrictions (they latter could though).

Avatar: Legend of Korra

Korra and Asami (from one of the creators of the show)

"As we wrote Book 1, before the audience had ever laid eyes on Korra and Asami, it was an idea I would kick around the writers’ room. At first we didn’t give it much weight, not because we think same-sex relationships are a joke, but because we never assumed it was something we would ever get away with depicting on an animated show for a kids network in this day and age, or at least in 2010."

"The more Korra and Asami’s relationship progressed, the more the idea of a romance between them organically blossomed for us. However, we still operated under this notion, another “unwritten rule,” that we would not be allowed to depict that in our show."

"We approached the network and while they were supportive there was a limit to how far we could go with it, as just about every article I read accurately deduced."

Gravity falls

"Hirsch confirms that though he attempted to push for LGBT+ characters in Gravity Falls, Disney executives prevented him from including explicitly gay characters."

Alex confirming this on his twitter:

https://mobile.twitter.com/_AlexHirsch/status/1292328558921003009?s=20

"Back when I made GF Disney FORBADE me from any explicit LGBTQ+ rep. Apparently “happiest place on earth” meant “straightest”"

In 2012 the Disney censor note on this image (refering to The owl house) would have been: “inappropriate for channel, please revise, call to discuss” (to avoid a paper trail)

The owl house

Luz and Amity

Dana Terrace talking about how it was difficult for her to write LGBT characters in her show:

"In dev I was very open about my intention to put queer kids in the main cast. I'm a horrible liar so sneaking it in would've been hard haha. When we were greenlit I was told by certain Disney leadership that I could NOT represent any form of bi or gay relationship on the Channel."

I'm bi! I want to write a bi character, dammit! Luckily my stubbornness paid off and now I am VERY supported by current Disney leadership.

Steven universe

Ruby and Sapphire (talking about the LGTB+ wedding in Reunited):

That took years of work because of sensitivities around LGBT+ content in programs aimed at children, which often have to work for a global market, said Sugar, 32, who is bisexual.

"We are held to standards of extremely bigoted countries. It took several years of fighting internally to get the wedding to happen," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

"So much bigotry is based on the idea that (LGBT+ content) is something inherently adult, which is entirely false."

"Sugar recalled the frustration of not being able to be open about her personal experiences in the early years of her career before she made her sexuality public."

“As I’m writing about this, as I’m pitching this, I’m also getting a lot of pushback,” Sugar said. “This was not considered acceptable material for children at the time. … [But] who is speaking to a generation of children about why they deserve to exist? About how they deserve to exist? I wanted to be able to do that.”

"While working on “Jail Break” in 2014, “it became clear to the network that I was incorporating LGBTQIA+ characters and themes into the show,” Sugar said. She was told that there was a chance the show could be canceled if authorities in conservative countries noticed and objected to those themes."

"Sugar tells EW it has been “extremely difficult” for her to earn this kind of visibility on Steven Universe, but acknowledges that large strides have been made. “When we started doing this in 2011, it was impossible and it has become possible over the last many years of working really hard to do this,” she explains."

"Yeah. Every time we would cover this ground, it would be a conversation. I think part of the challenge is that this show was an international show. We would be getting notes not just from the US but also from Europe, from around the world about what we could and couldn’t show, and they would be different notes from different countries."

"There was a point at which it was brought to my attention that the studio… I was brought up to a meeting where they [the studio] said, “We know that you’re doing this, and we support that you’re doing this… We don’t want to be giving notes on this, but we have to give notes on this” and it was all very difficult to navigate. Ultimately, I said, “If this is going to cost me my show that’s fine because this is a huge injustice and I need to be able to represent myself and my team through this show and anything less would be unfair to my audience.”

I could add tons of examples about this... but here's my point and it's something a lot of people need to understand: It's difficult to put LGTB+ characters in animated children media. There are certain limitations, restrictions, many times the creators cannot be very explicit about it for many reasons.

So next time you want call creators who want to write LGTB+ characters in their shows "lazy" or "queerbaiting" reconsider the fact that they are actually taking a risk by writing LGTB+ characters and they don't have all the control in their show. They can't always make their characters say "I'm gay" or "I'm bisexual" because of these restrictions. Of course, some are given more freedom than others.

If you don't like how the characters are written or a show.. that's completely fine. But reconsider that corporations have control over the creators on what they can and can't do and that it only ends up hurting their cartoons.

I would really like for people to know about this, since there's this misconception going around that animators don't really care about this. But in reality they do. And i think this it's very important thing to know when it comes to talking about animation.

[dweemeister]

Movie Odyssey Retrospective

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

On December 21, 1937, Hollywood’s stars and executives strode a blue carpet ushering them into a packed Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. The chilly night air typified expectations of the film premiering that evening. This was a premiere unlike any other, one for an animated feature film. During the silent film era and first decade of talkies, animated film evolved from simple gag drawings to endowing animated characters with personalities to character-driven short films heavy on slapstick (think Looney Tunes). For Walt Disney, supervising director David Hand, and the band of underpaid animators that they oversaw, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (the first cel-animated feature film; the oldest-surviving animated feature is from 1926 and the first animated feature is now lost) was a statement of purpose – an artistic culmination stemming from the Mickey Mouse shorts and especially the Silly Symphony series. But on the night of the premiere, Walt, Hand, and the animators that were invited or purchased a ticket had no clue how the audience would receive their work. With a fortune invested in the movie’s production, “Disney’s Folly” was predicted to be financially ruinous.

The lights dimmed. The audience found themselves entranced by the opening shot of the Queen’s castle; they applauded the background art when no animation was on the screen; they laughed at the dwarfs’ antics and adored the childlike Snow White. Then came Snow White’s presumed death. As her body rested in a glass coffin and the dwarfs and woodland animals tended to her wake, Walt, Hand, and the animators looked around the theater in disbelief. The calculating Hollywood executives, the pampered actors, and the cynical journalists and film reviewers sniffed their noses, some openly weeping. “Love’s first kiss” be damned; the animators, Hand, and Walt had triumphed. Walt’s dream of making animated cinema as dramatically and emotionally impactful as any live-action film had been realized. Securing the studio’s future to the temporary relief of Roy O. Disney (who managed the studio’s finances so often overspent by Walt), Snow White began the most important and accomplished run of consecutive animated features in history. By the end of that run with Bambi (1942), seldom would any animated films in the decades that followed achieve that mix of dramatic and emotional power without condescending to its audience.

I sometimes wonder about what it must have been like to be present when the Lumière brothers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896 short film, France) premiered to an audience that, according to some accounts, panicked and dove out of the way as the train moved closer to the camera. Or when Atlanta Mayor William B. Hartsfield organized three days of celebration prior to the whites-only premiere of Gone with the Wind (1939). These are moments where the spectators could rightfully say they had never seen anything like the film they had watched. The same is true with Snow White’s premiere.

The Silly Symphony series allowed Walt’s animators to experiment with techniques that might be used in a feature film; the multiplane camera introduced during these short films provided depth and dimension, infusing backgrounds with atmosphere to influence emotion. Snow White utilized the multiplane camera to create the grandeur of the Queen’s castle and, perhaps most astonishingly, capturing Snow White’s disorientation and fear after the Huntsman – ordered by the Queen to murder the Fairest of Them All – spares her, beseeching her to flee. During Snow White’s flight, the lighting, fast-moving multiplane camera effects (blink or you will miss them), and the personification of nature as she descends deeper into the forest can be attributed to the innovations of Silly Symphonies, particularly The Old Mill (1937 short). The techniques found in this scene alone (yes, this includes those mysterious eyes in the dark and mossy trees that bear human faces) continue to influence countless animated films and television shows. It is magnificent artwork in any era, deserving to be taught frame-by-frame to those aspiring to make animated cinema.

The expenses taken to make Snow White required that character designs and movements portray only what is essential. Characters are designed and move in a way that helps them act in their scenes. With little experience in animating humans prior to Snow White, the title character (designed by Charles Thorson, who left Disney in protest for Warner Bros. to design Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd) and the Prince’s facial movements occasionally awkward. The Queen, who becomes larger than life with her flowing black and red cloak, is imposing – before and after drinking her transfiguring formula. But the best work is animation supervisor Fred Moore’s (pre-donkey Lampwick from 1940’s Pinocchio, Timothy Q. Mouse in 1941’s Dumbo) character design for the seven dwarfs. If one had no idea of each dwarf’s name – Doc, Grumpy, Sleepy, Happy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey – prior to watching Snow White, their personalities could be guessed even without audio or motion. Their features would be terrifying in live-action, but the audience has already accepted their design because they have suspended their disbelief in magic mirrors and a princess who is understood by animals. Their body shapes and exaggerated facial features (nobody in real life has a nose like Grumpy; no drowsy person’s eyelids stay that half-shut like Sleepy’s) make each dwarf distinct, allowing the audience to recognize which dwarf is which without much confusion.

The famous “Heigh-Ho” sets this table early. When animator Shamus Culhane (a Bray Productions animator during the silent era; an uncredited co-director on 1941’s Mr. Bug Goes to Town from Fleischer Studios) was assigned the sequence where the dwarfs march home, it took him and his assistants a half-year to complete the animation. With direction from Hand and Moore, Culhane was directed to have the dwarfs march to the tempo of the musical number, but to bestow each with their own physicality. For a moment that lasts less than fifty seconds within a song, Culhane and his assistants’ painstaking labors set the standard of granular detail and individuality that the animating teams working on Snow White took upon themselves. Snow White’s seven dwarfs are brilliant comic actors, prancing in front of gorgeous watercolor backgrounds. The character design practices implemented in Snow White were improved on each entry of Disney’s Golden Age (which I demarcate as Snow White to Bambi). This development saw the early Disney animated features – along with the best Technicolor films of the 1930s and ‘40s such as The Wizard of Oz (1939) – become instrumental in setting Western cinema’s color coding, where characters and backgrounds express ideas and emotions in conjunction with character and production design.

As Snow White is a fairy tale, so it has the logic of one. In a time where filmmakers and audiences obsess over plot rather than character-driven emotion and themes, viewers could be taken aback by how abruptly Snow White changes moods and the title character’s behavior. Snow White has been ridiculed by some feminist critics, but I find that many of their justified concerns about the character – from her unprompted cleaning of the dwarfs’ house and her pining for a handsome man to whisk her away upholding gendered roles – are too often based on the assumption that she is a woman and that this film was intended for children. That is incorrect on both counts. Snow White in the original Grimm fairytale is a child, and in Disney’s version she has been thankfully aged up to (or is on the cusp of becoming) an adolescent. Walt made a film appealing to people of any age, hoping that its humor and pathos could be accessible to all.

Snow White, a young girl who has known nothing but submission to her stepmother, the Queen, is quite naïve, knowing little of the dangers outside the castle walls. Her stepmother’s obsession of physical beauty has influenced how she thinks, especially as she seeks personal validation from others (be it the Prince or the dwarfs). In the context in which she was raised, her passivity is understandable. Even if that means Snow White is a passive, unambitious character, her gentleness, which remains after the trauma with the Huntsman, is what makes her the fairest of them all. Characters act the way they do because of her compassion. Snow White, with her romantic longings, probably should not be emulated, but she sets the template that the most fascinating Disney animated heroines have built on.

One of the common themes in fairy tales is the assumption of increasing responsibilities as an individual matures. Though far more obvious in Pinocchio and Bambi (the latter is not a fairy tale), this dynamic also exists in Snow White. With the Queen’s physical and sexual withering, it is Snow White’s time, the film implies, to become an adult – adulthood arrives at differing times among human cultures. Her interactions with the dwarfs serve as a kind of rehearsal for adulthood, effectuated the moment the Prince revives her. These adult responsibilities are communicated through the gendered lens of mainstream 1930s filmmakers. When a female character is the star in a Disney animated canon film, how these responsibilities are portrayed and related to the protagonist depend on how each film’s writers understood gendered roles of their respective eras – the submissiveness of the 1930s; the corporate (in the negative sense), sloganeering feminism of the 2010s; and the rare exceptions. No matter the Disney animated film, those themes of one’s duties in the natural order are omnipresent across the canon. Such lessons are not only for children. Don’t let those dismissive of animated cinema (especially if they think that film history can be written without the Disney animated canon) tell you otherwise.

Musical films became possible after the introduction of synchronized sound, which heralded the end of the silent film era. In the early talkie years, studios – looking to experiment with sound – saturated theaters with musicals. Across the 1930s, the popularity of the genre rose and fell. Snow White arrived at a low tide for musicals, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ partnership nearing its end and Shirley Temple, though still a massive draw, approaching her teenage years. Yet 1937 proved one of the most important years in musical film history, as those that adored Snow White linked animated features with musicals (the fact that Snow White boasted the world’s first soundtrack album for a film also helped). It is not coincidental that when Fleischer Studios set forth on Gulliver’s Travels (1939) – distributed by Paramount – as their response to Snow White, that film was also a musical. This link has proven resilient to the present day – pointless and unimaginative metatextual scoffing aside.

The creators of this early Disney sound are composer Frank Churchill (numerous Disney shorts and features from 1930 until Bambi) and lyricist Larry Morey (select shorts and Bambi) on the songs and composers Paul J. Smith (Pinocchio and 1954’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) and Leigh Harline (Pinocchio, Mr. Bug Goes to Town) for the score. Despite the audio quality showing its age and the somewhat limited orchestra, the collective musical work is sublime, representing one of the greatest musical movie soundtracks as well as one of the best film scores of all time.

After a grand overture from Smith and Harline, “I’m Wishing/One Song”, considered a single song with two halves, is sung by Snow White (Adriana Caselotti and her distinctive high-pitched voice that is perfect for the character), then the Prince (Henry Stockwell). Simple are the lyrics. In a world of love at first sight, we learn so much about Snow White, the Prince, and the Queen in just three minutes. Delicate strings and a subtle harp line reflect Snow White’s longing and the Prince’s passion (listen closely to the score from start to finish and you’ll hear a rare film score where the harpist does plenty of emotional heavy lifting). The second half, “One Song” introduces us all too briefly to Stockwell’s beautiful singing voice – a type of voice that would all but disappear from popular music after the 1930s ended – and lyrics that, to reiterate, seem simple but are tremendously evocative.

One song I have but one song One song Only for you

One heart Tenderly beating Ever entreating Constant and true

Other musical highlights appear as Snow White flees into the forest (a dynamic example of action scoring in a Disney animated film), as well as her accompaniment through the forest by the woodland animals with, “A Smile and a Song”. Soon after, “Whistle While You Work” appears as the film is barely thirty minutes in. “Heigh-Ho” follows immediately after that. Snow White is packed with hit songs that have gained pop culture cachet outside the film. The weakest song in Snow White might be “Dwarf’s Washing Song”, which adds nothing to the dwarfs’ characterization but exemplifies how committed the musical team are in supporting the animators’ use of slapstick. When articulating the Queen’s villainy and second act transformation, Smith and Harline depend on string tremolos and churning strings and brass to reflect her whirlwind of fury.

Snow White’s signature song speaks to her nascent romantic desires. In the film’s greater subtext, it is also about her coming of age, the end of childhood, to take her place in what she believes is the natural order of things. “Someday My Prince Will Come”, in a slow three-quarter time evoking a Strauss waltz, allows Caselotti to breathe. Listen to Caselotti’s musical phrasing. In each luftpause, Churchill’s music and Morey’s lyrics allow the lines to rise and fall between two words, imbuing each bar with torrents of feeling. The same thing exists in “I’m Wishing/One Song”, to breathtaking results. “Someday My Prince Will Come” is popular among jazz musicians due to its chord structure, becoming a jazz standard when a Jewish band named the Ghetto Swingers, taking inspiration in the song’s hope for happier days ahead, performed the song at Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943.

No one composes songs like “Someday My Prince Will Come” or “I’m Wishing/One Song” in films anymore – yes, I realize how trite that statement is – as modern composers and lyricists working in musical films/theater oftentimes try to fill out a meter with a repeated lyric (which, to my ears, is an admission of creative surrender) or, more interestingly to yours truly, rely more on ballad-like tunes. The voices of Caselotti and Stockwell lend well to the compositions they sing – reminiscent of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy’s musical movies at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in the 1930s. The partnership of Churchill, Morey, Smith, and Harline produced a stunning musical gift to audiences, setting the Disney musical sound that would last through the mid-century.

As the attendees of Snow White’s premiere left in jubilation, few could have imagined how complete Disney’s victory would be. Charlie Chaplin extolled the film as surpassing even his wildest expectations; esteemed director Cecil B. DeMille expressed his desire to make films like Snow White. Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, who founded Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for Warner Bros. and were currently Disney’s rivals at MGM, sent a telegram: “Our pride in the production is scarcely less than yours must be and we are grateful to you for fulfilling an ambition which many of us have long held for our industry.” In Europe, the admiration was just as vocal. Snow White’s native Germany received Disney’s adaptation ecstatically; the nation’s then-leader – soon to set Europe and North Africa aflame – considered it a great cinematic achievement. In the Soviet Union, the state media praised the dwarfs for reflecting communist ideals; outside of the Kremlin’s propagandists, no less than Sergei Eisenstein – the director of the most infamous massacre scene in cinematic history – proclaimed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as the greatest film ever made.

After cinemagoers made Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the highest-grossing film of all time when adjusting for inflation, Walt Disney, David Hand, and their crewmembers knew that the world’s expectations for animated feature films had been raised to unimaginable heights. The studio – soon to be housed in a Burbank headquarters designed and constructed thanks to the profits from Snow White – continued to make short films including Mickey Mouse and friends, but short films would no longer be its focus. The Disney animators soon set themselves to work on four history-altering films: a wooden boy who learns selflessness and integrity, a “concert feature”, a pachyderm who triumphs because of his difference, and the growth of the Young Prince of the Forest. Despite the financial windfall of Snow White, Disney did not distribute their own films – RKO distributed all Disney (which did not become a major studio until the 1990s) films until 1956 – and Snow White was the only Golden Age Disney film that was an immediate financial success upon release (the others would recoup their costs after 1945).

During Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ release and in the years immediately after, the world was shattered by violence and remade. Like its fellow great films of the 1930s, Snow White provided solace to those seeking escape from global forces beyond their control. But few of its contemporaries could be said to have been as influential. Almost every animated film – no matter its origin, style, or year released – owes something to Snow White. Animated film has existed since the nineteenth century and there were animated features before its release. Cinema is one of the youngest of artforms, but the mythos of Snow White does not look likely to change. It is the beginning of animated cinema as we know it.

My rating: 10/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was upgraded from an initial score of 9/10. It is the one hundred and sixtieth feature-length or short film I have rated a ten on imdb.

This is the fourteenth Movie Odyssey Retrospective. Movie Odyssey Retrospectives are reviews on films I had seen in their entirety before this blog’s creation or films I failed to give a full-length write-up to following the blog’s creation. Previous Retrospectives include Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Dumbo (1941), and Oliver! (1968).

NOTE: This is the 700th full-length Movie Odyssey review I have published on tumblr.

[tjkiahgb]

I try not to get too involved in the discourse, but now this has gotten all the way to Josh and it’s becoming weird and personal so I wanted to say a few things.

I’d seen TCC floating around before and just rolled my eyes at it because I’m not going to sit here and get upset about tumblr posts, especially because I believe it’s really only a small group of people who are actually propagating this nonsense.

Here’s the thing, we all want Cyrus’s storyline to receive more attention, but TCC is not making your point. It’s bad on multiple levels.

TCC (or referring to Tyrus as “The Coward’s Choice,” if you’re unaware) is based on a faulty premise. It begins with the idea that Jyrus was the endgame and Disney Channel killed it (which, fine, I don’t necessarily believe that, but there’s no way to really prove or disprove this claim), and is then built up on a purely hypothetical vision of what season 3 would’ve been.

I keep seeing having Jonah and Cyrus couple up would be great representation because it would be two main characters and Disney couldn’t push them off to the side, but, again, this is entirely a creation of the mind of the people behind TCC. This assumes Jyrus happens quickly in season 3 and then receives equal airtime for the rest of the season as any other ship. There’s no basis in reality for these claims. There’s no reason to assume Jyrus couldn’t be kept to minimal airtime and there’s no reason to assume Jyrus couldn’t have been delayed until episode 23 or whenever.

It’s fine to headcanon a show in which Cyrus and Jonah have a super visible storyline in season 3, where they go on dates and have good times, but getting angry at Disney for not making your headcanons into reality is a wild stretch. Frankly, it makes as much sense as me getting mad at Disney for not calling the show “Cyrus” from the start and having it be three seasons where Cyrus and Jonah are the only characters and they date the whole time. Would that also be great representation? Yes, of course. It’d be even better representation. It’s also something I just created in my head. Getting mad at a corporation because what I’ve envisioned in my head is not coming to fruition is foolhardy. But taking that anger and lashing out at the show’s actors and producers is puerile and inappropriate.

Here’s the other reason TCC is terrible. I understand what you think you’re saying. You believe you’re calling Disney the cowards. (I’m not going to get into an argument about how cowardly they might be. You can decide on your own, but, in my opinion, even allowing Cyrus a boyfriend at all is way farther than I ever believed they’d go.) But what you are actually doing when you use TCC is labeling Tyrus itself (it is the “choice” in this equation). You’re referring to whatever representation we get in season 3 as being not enough, being the result of cowardly actions, and in doing so, you are, intentionally or not, invalidating the work that the show’s producers, and Josh (and ultimately, Luke) are putting in.

And this is why I’m putting this out there. Josh is actually doing something incredible. I’m old enough to remember a time when actors were scared to take gay roles because they feared what it would do to their careers. That Josh is still a kid and has taken on a very visible role like this on a mainstream network like Disney impresses me so much. And it hasn’t been easy. He’s had to step into the shoes of this important character while shouldering stuff like One Million Moms and other idiotic groups like that hating him. It requires a lot of maturity and strength to ignore the haters like that and continue to push on. And put aside him screwing around on tumblr – it’s all fun anyway, who cares? – he’s handled this all with a lot of class and grace. In every interview I’ve seen him do about Cyrus, he’s spoken with clarity about how it’s important to him to get it right and how it’s important to him to deliver representation to the community.

So this thing where you pretend that what he and Luke are going to be doing in season 3 is going to be a cakewalk because it’s going to receive just slightly less screentime than you hoped for is nonsense. It’s parochial. This is still groundbreaking and difficult, and you shouldn’t be degrading it.

Some of you who may have used TCC might see this and believe that wasn’t your intention. You might actually believe you’re somehow supporting Tyrus because you’re calling Disney out on its behavior. Fine. But I’m telling you this from an outsider’s perspective: that’s not how everyone else is reading it. That’s why when Josh very specifically referred to people who call Tyrus “The Coward’s Choice” as cowards themselves, he received support from the community. If you really think that your message of support is being misconstrued this badly, you need to rethink how you’re conveying your message. First things first, I’d stop using the term altogether.

And please, for the love of God, stop sending Josh anon hate. He gets enough of that from the idiots in the outside world. He doesn’t need it coming from the so-called fans.

[dmitrilyalikov]

Why do America’s generations keep getting dumber?

America is the global symbol of individual liberty and opportunity. Defined by capitalism and democracy, the very concepts that have made the U.S. the hallmark in innovative thinking and societal development. With arguably the best ‘system’ in the world able to work at great scale, American renegades have been the frontrunners in many aspects of society many countries wish they could compete with. Walt Disney, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, all American icons for creative thinking and execution. Creative, intelligent men that any company would love to have on their team if they could convince them to come. They’ve accomplished things that some would believe to be impossible, and not only that, they all dropped out of college. The education system failed them. 

The current American educational system was first introduced in the 1910′s during the industrial era to create a scaled up version of a youth knowledge assembly line. Children are crammed into large classrooms and are taught general knowledge to enter the next level of education. The strict regimen of be quiet, listen, and regurgitate what you have heard onto a standardized exam to get a letter grade has been used for over a century. This practice is nowhere near teaching a child to think and solve problems. Tests do not work. They do not represent any more than words on a paper. Example, the Chinese Box Experiment. In short, a Chinese professor inserts a test of different Mandarin characters that a robot on the other side of the door must answer. The robot identified every character correctly and returned the paper. The Professor says “Wow, this pupil understands Mandarin very well!”. She is unaware the answers came from a machine programmed by humans. The robot does not actually understand what is going on, it is simply responding with what it’s been told to do. Understanding is using memory to create predictions. However, this is exactly how school teaches children in America. They program children to respond to an input with a correct output, and those that compute such information correctly, are deemed the brightest. If we are programming children to act as robots, robots will win every time, bar none. The only way to fundamentally beat a robot is to be more human. Humans have creativity, emotional intelligence, morals, historical and societal awareness. Schools are essentially building kids like robots in an assembly line. They are writing code in our brains on how to think, act, and behave in many situations. The smartest natural child can be nurtured in such an environment to become average. 

The most beautiful aspect of a child is its sense of curiosity and creativity. Left to its own, many will fantasize about spaceships and rockets and trains. They will dance on couches, spill their parent’s coffee on the rug, They ask naive questions about complex issues. I was lucky enough as a child as my father would make me understand how any toy or tool worked when I used it. I was made to inquire about the world around me. How does a car engine work? What could make it better? Why do planes not fall from the sky? I was then sent to day school and would be told to shut up and listen to the teacher, because he is smarter than you. What does it mean to be smart then? To know more information and algorithms downloaded into the hippocampus? Memory is not intelligence. Intelligence and consciousness are manifested in the neocortex. The part of the brain that operates high level thought. Children in American society are suppressed and told to remember things to graduate. After a certain point of indoctrinated thinking, children lose their sense of curiosity and are more focused on execution then the process of learning and solving the problem itself. The most commonly asked question in American schools is “Will this be on the test next week?”.

So how can we make this better? This epidemic starts on the very system of education itself. The end goal of school is to obtain a degree, a rough representation of what college taught you, or maybe you were just wily enough to cheat (which is highly incentivized in the ends justify the means environment.). School’s are not obligated to innovate. Colleges are businesses. They force 18 year old children to take on 200 thousand dollar debt decisions. They don't need all that money. The books that cost hundreds of dollars for students, cost 6$ to make. NO INDUSTRY IN THE WORLD HAS A MONOPOLY THAT BOASTS SUCH GREAT PROFIT MARGINS. Colleges have young generations on a string with the rhetoric that a degree is worth such money. Millions of kids cry joyfully over getting into a school, just to give them money that is taken from loans to enslave them once they get out with a degree. College is enslavement. It is a monopolistic business. It is a shame to see such an important factor to human development being exploited for profit. They pay zero taxes on the profits they make. They teach general knowledge in a lecture style. Is that worth it? Why do kids want this? Why do parents make them do this? Because they did it when they were kids? We are in a new age. 

Fast forward over a century later, the digital age. Children have smartphones, smartphones with all the information they need. Why sit in a room listening to someone lecture when you can just look something up? Children are put in classrooms that are part of a school, that are part of a district, that is part of a school board. These scaled up versions of education pump out millions of children with a broad range of general knowledge, or at least that is the intent. Now most of these kids go to college, work a 9-5 job, and start a family and the cycle goes on with their children. That is not fulfillment, that is not happiness for most. The average school tuition has increased by more than 200% while the average salary of college graduates has plateaued since the start of mass schooling. We live in an era of economies of “unscale”. With artificial intelligence and cloud computing, vertically integrated corporations with huge factories and inventory cannot compete with lean, agile startups that rent cloud storage on Amazon Web Services, outsource manufacturing to Chinese factories, and utilize open source Machine Learning algorithms instead of spending great capital to build it all individually. This gives power to creative, niche startups that can effectively run a business from their basement. Think back to the 1990′s. The internet had just gone mainstream, thousands of employees quit their jobs to create internet companies during the Dot-Com Boom before it crashed. They would plan their IPO before even incorporating, this new technology was a home run in their eyes. How does this relate to education? The rapid evolution of technology can be attributed to new platforms. Telecommunications created a global platform for information to be spread from Boston to Australia in an instant, the internet has revolutionized virtually every industry. My generation is growing up in the advent of the AI and cloud computing platform. Essentially, the innovation of big tech platforms should equate to radically different education. However, because school systems have no incentive to change and make less profit, they are still preparing kids for an industrial era to be interchangeable pieces working for large corporations rather than agile startups and small to medium companies. 

Artificial Intelligence will radically change education. Harvard, Stanford, and a few other large brand schools have noticed this trend and created online courses already that use machine learning engines to tailor a course to a students understanding. AI can use big data to understand how a pupil learns, what he/she is struggling in, and create a report on their level of thought that is a perfect representation on what they can do, rather than a vague degree. Many companies such as Microsoft and Google are receptive to this and an increasing number of developers enter the software field with no degrees. Because there is no system that could exemplify a student’s intelligence in the past, an expensive degree was the next best thing and college became a booming business but quite an enslaving process for the children utilizing it. AI can guide a student while virtual classrooms and teachers can connect to children across the globe for real organic conversation. Now, the physical classroom is very important for social development and should still be used to an extent. Perhaps we Americans should look towards Finland, the country with the best ranked educational system in the world. Their primary and secondary schools are incredibly different. School days are 3 hours long, there is no homework, and there are no private schools. The philosophy is that kids should be emancipated from the institutions and be left to be kids and develop intuitiveness organically through real world social experiences. There are no private schools so that rich families send their kids to public schools and those parents make sure the school is up to par with what they can afford.This forces schools nationwide to keep a standard that is universal, much unlike the U.S. with many inner city public schools without internet while capitalistic private and public district schools spend money on football field renovations. 

To create a more productive generation of students, we must “unscale” education, remove private schools, reduce length of school hours, ban or at least regulate student loan firms, set a price ceiling on all college tuitions and utilize the platform of Artificial Intelligence to create a market of one for all students starting from Kindergarten to beyond college. Hiring more teachers and building would effectively make the problem worse. Teachers can be the greatest minds on the planet, but under such a restrictive there is little hope to save a whole generation. Khan Academy has implemented an unscaled online system, leading the way for more personalized education programs. There is little chance this can happen unless this is derived from the Federal Government, which is famously bureaucratic and slow to act especially with education. Changes are needed. This will make children more excited to learn, ask questions and solve the great global issues that are long overdue to be solved. Kids will strengthen critical thinking skills and experience freedom of thought that will create a wave of further technological development and accelerate American education to new heights. 

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Brie Larson and Captain Marvel Are Very Different People (Thank Fuck)

WARNING: I’m about to insult one of your favourite celebrities EVEN WHILE COMPLIMENTING A MOVIE THEY’RE IN. Because I’m on fire, today, that’s fucking why.

As you might have noticed, we all have to live through a pretentiously-titled and idiotic ‘Culture War’ because dumb people from every corner of the political spectrum have decided that liminal, cultural space is limited like actual physical territory and therefore every single scrap of IP needs to be fought for. For the record, this fighting is usually at the cost of the gentle nerd villagers who live there and would rather not see their cultural settlements bombed to dust by dueling factions of slobbering fuckwits. On the one hand, you’ve got your rightwing neocon bastard-holes who think that there’s a conspiracy of ‘Cultural Marxists’ out to ruin culture by SJW-ing it up a notch- which is stupid, because I’m a Marxist and I can promise you none of us asked for Ghostbusters 2016 either. Nobody fucking did. Anyhoo, on the other hand there’s a bunch of quasi-liberal representation hipsters who lack the imagination to create original IP and so keep colonising other peoples’ with cheap and lazy gender-swaps and other ill-advised ‘reimaginings’. As some of you might have figured out, I like to think of myself as broadly impartial war correspondent in this idiotic struggle for western culture’s fractured zeitgeist. Impartial, of course, in the sense that I wish everyone involved would fall down a gigantic fucking well never to be seen again.

Anyway, the latest battle in the culture war (a term I have only used twice and already fucking loathe) really does plumb fresh new depths of the Great Grey Idiotsea. As some of the more astute of you may have noticed, Captain Marvel has caused a bit of a skirmish, despite being fundamentally inoffensive. I mean, it’s made by Disney (who are evil on a corporate level), but what isn’t nowadays? As a piece of media in its own right, it’s basically fine. It’s not a lazy hipster reboot of something that was already done better; it’s not displacing any of the existing pieces of media in its genre; it’s just a superhero film that happens to star An Woman. The fact that it’s in any way controversial is mad, mad, mad, mad. I’m as pissed off as anyone about the way something that should be good (i.e. improved representation) has been used to co-opt geek spaces into the mainstream, but this isn’t even that. So yeah- shocking people who haven’t paid sufficient attention to the nuances of my opinions on this, I’m actually on Captain Marvel’s side on this one, at least nominally. It’s insane that this mid-tier, fairly-true-to-recent-source-material comic book movie has pissed off so many people.

Of course, there were always going to be a few people who hated the film just for existing, but they might not have gained so much traction if it wasn’t for the fact that Brie Larson (the actress playing the titular Captain Marvel) literally cannot keep her fucking gob shut for five minutes at a stretch. During a press conference, she was basically supposed to talk about how the film was going to be screened for (and reviewed by) different types of critic from different genders and ethnic background so that reviews weren’t weighted as much in favour of older white male film critics as usual. That’s fair enough. Unfortunately, because Brie is Brie (and what can you expect of someone who’s named after cheese), what she actually said was “I don’t care what some 40-year old white guy thinks” and other such deliberately antagonistic phrasing, designed seemingly to alienate every member of the critical press NOT in a Larson-approved demographic. Naturally enough, a bunch of nerds on the internet felt this was an attack on them and kicked off against the film...

... Which gives me the opportunity to address an important point. Specifically: Brie Larson is NOT Captain Marvel. She is not the character, nor is she representative of the vast, complicated, interconnected multiplicity of production teams behind it. She’s just one actress. Her on-screen role is major; her actually-being-allowed-to-make-important-decisions-role is probably pretty negligible. That doesn’t mean she’s not a chippy jerkoff who needs to learn to either Engage Brain Before Opening Mouth or (failing that) Not Open Mouth At All. It just means that you shouldn’t judge the film on her (admittedly antagonistic and irritating) antics when she isn’t reading from a script.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: while intelligent, thoughtful actors and actresses do exist (I just started dating one) most Big Names are either dumb, or simply terrible people. Chris Pratt is a big game hunter, apparently- he spends his free time killing innocent animals with a gun ‘cause he’s a prick. Michael Fassbender beat his wife. Allison Mack cheerfully joined a sex slavery cult. Let’s be frank, here. As much as I’m grateful that the acting profession exists (without it, movies wouldn’t happen), the most well-known people in it aren’t, as a rule, normal, functional human beings. To be an actor or actress on that level, you kind of have to be a needy egomaniac who doesn’t mind being gawped at by strangers for your entire professional life.

So, Brie Larson is a tool and her professional I’m-Not-a-Tool Mask slipped off for a minute when she erroneously thought the Real Her might be acceptable for public consumption. You know what? It doesn’t fucking matter. She doesn’t have to be the type of person you’d want to spend more than two minutes alone in an elevator with- she just needs to be good at acting, which she mostly is. Captain Marvel looks like a good movie, so if it’s your sort of thing, go see it and just try to forget that Captain Marvel is, of necessity, played by a real human who happens to be a dipstick. There are lots of truly terrible media products swimming around, waiting to have your ire and mine sprayed at them. Save your rage for those.

And if you are going to buoycott Captain Marvel, maybe consider doing so because Disney (who own Marvel Studios) exploits the workers who make its merch to the extent that they’ve actually been known to use sweatshop slave labour. ‘Cause that’s still a thing everyone ignores, regardless  of which side of the fucking “culture war” they claim to be on.

[emperorren]

"uwu fascism is bad sweaty" is kind of the base point where the story starts, it would be boring af if that was all the movies had to say. though the shitfits antis throw are still hilarious as they realize the message of the story isn't /just/ "fascism is bad" and they slowly learn star wars did the radical and unprecedented plot move of making a dark side skywalker morally-complex and redeemable. no one could've predicted /that/ would happen could they

“Fascism is bad” is something everyone knows. The current political scenario (especially in the us) might make you think that “fascism is bad” is the most important political message we need these days, but put it in these terms it’s really just a platitude, and on its own it accomplishes nothing. Nobody is “a fascist”, just like nobody is “racist”. Yet the world is full of them. You really want to make a movie with a political conscience? Then don’t just spoon feed the audience with textbook reminders that [x] universally despised -ism is bad. Go deep into why it’s bad, what are the beliefs and the concrete ideologies that fall under [x] umbrella, what are the conditions that can lead to its rise, what are the subtle and/or unintentional ways [x] manifests in otherwise decent individuals. Make people question themselves, their friends, their neighbors. If you don’t do this, your audience will keep thinking of that “-ism” as something performed by generic faceless “other people”, instead of a real thing that affects their lives and daily routine; they will walk out of the theatre sated with the abstract moral lesson they received (which is always the same, blockbuster after blockbuster) but this will have no real impact on their lives and politics. 

But of course REAL political ideas are rare in mainstream fiction, which usually depicts those -isms in generic, heavily stereotyped ways that reassure the audience their own morality and politics are perfectly fine because they’re able to identify with the heroes and loathe the villains. The real problem with SW isn’t that it sells stormtrooper toys, it’s that its “democracy vs oppressive empire” political message is really just a comfort zone that allows EVERYONE (including actual racists, sexist pigs and alt-rights) to cheer for Luke Skywalker and the righteous destruction of the First Order.

On this topic, I really recommend reading this post by @cephiedvariable​ on how blockbuster movies run by massive corporations (like Disney) tend to regurgitate the same 2 or 3 surface-level leftist, incredibly vanilla and uncontroversial political ideas (really the bare minimum of a political conscience: universal enough to speak viscerally to the audience regardless of class, gender, sexual orientation, race or geographical location, toothless enough not to significantly threaten the status quo irl because we don’t wanna breed a generation of anti-capitalists, for fuck’s sake) and how Tumblr unironically hails them as shockingly brave and revolutionary political statements, while accusing villain fans of supposedly blurring morality for latching on whatever tiny scrap of nuance exists in a narrative that relies on trite binaries, without offering any real original insight.

Because of the above, I don’t have terribly high hopes that SW can do subtle political commentary, and I know it’s probably too much to ask for in what is essentially a space fairytale for families. But in the character of Kylo Ren there’s potential for introspection and nuance. If he finally faces the bloodshed and oppression that comes with the whole first order package; if he eventually rejects it while remaining critical of the Resistance; if he is able to course-correct the direction he took years ago and learns to channel his /dark side/ (his inner rage, frustration and boiling desire to wipe the slate clean) into something constructive rather than destructive, well that’s an ideological if not strictly political message that would make me happy.

[cobblecord]

A Call for More User Control Over the Streaming UX

Will Streaming Heed the Lessons that Cable Didn’t?

We all know that streaming has come a long way over the last 20 years and OTT video usage continues to increase. However, there are some glaring consumer pain points that should be addressed sooner rather than later. If not, percolating dissatisfaction could bubble up and undermine the considerable ‘user good-will’ that streaming services have generally been afforded. It's time for streaming services to start giving consumers more control over their user experience before it comes back to haunt them.

Consider what’s happening to the Traditional TV Providers, that didn’t heed the call for more consumer-centric approach, until it was too late – and obviously, pushed people into the awaiting arms of OTT. Clearly, the user interfaces and smart use of data on the part of the online streaming giants is far superior to that of the Traditional Pay-TV world. But the increasingly frequent lament we all hear is that users (or viewers) spend more time searching for something to watch than actually watching. And the new OTT launches from Apple, Disney, WarnerMedia, NBC, etc. on the horizon promise to amplify the problem.

If you don’t believe me, just take a look at the results of a recent PwC survey that showed almost 90% of consumers are dissatisfied with content discovery and recommendations. That certainly doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement for the multitude of content recommendation AIs many streaming services have put so much stock in.

Now that streaming has become fully mainstream and the embarrassment of content riches continues to explode, giving users the option to take (at least some of) the reins seems like a logical next step in the industry’s evolution.

Lean Back or Look Forward?

During the early development of video streaming app ecosystem, most of the players decided that the overarching UX approach should give users some straightforward controls (like add to watchlist, basic search and very simple filtering), but largely reinforced the ‘lean back’ nature of video viewing, particularly with apps created for the TV screen.

The assumption was that viewers would want to be served up content while they sit back and passively receive it, essentially recreating the traditional TV viewing experience. Netflix has practically spun its programming recommendations and auto-play features into a veritable product-design art form. Of course, they’ve done quite well with that approach to date.

But the streaming landscape has changed dramatically over the last few years, and the new flood of content choices has made the lean-back model a source of increasing frustration rather than assistance. The endless rows of scrolling content artwork, the seemingly arbitrary arrays of content categories and obscure micro-genres, the limited and confining search and filtering functions, and the infernal auto-play trailers (my personal pet peeve) are really starting to grate on the nerves of streamers.

And of course, the more people stream, the more of an annoyance it becomes. This sad state of affairs is especially irritating to the self-determined millennial generation, who value freedom, control, flexibility and ultra-customization above all else.

Borrowing from the Past to Shape the Future

In a perfect world, relevant content would be easily discovered and displayed to the right person at the right time across the countless walled-gardens of apps. That’s surely a goal to work toward, but there are various corporate conflicts and technical hurdles that have slowed its progress (which is another story for another day).

In the meantime, I’m suggesting to simply give users more control within each individual app or service as an incremental way to improve streaming’s overall experience. Addressing the ‘content fatigue’ issue quickly is key to keeping OTT’s momentum going.

I believe that this is a product-design challenge more than a technology one. We need a shift within the very product-driven culture of Streaming Tech to a more user-empowered approach – specifically when it comes to the content selection and curation process.

Many long-standing online companies have been perfecting the use of interactive customization and filtering tools for decades. In fact, they are some of the basic tenets of the internet and e-commerce. The streaming world could easily borrow from some of the tried and true, ‘lean-forward’ techniques of these businesses, such as online retail, publishing and travel. Granted, translating these concepts to the TV screen using the clunky remote control as a navigation device surely doesn’t lend itself to ease of use. But it’s not an insurmountable hurdle.

Imagine if you could harness the multiple-criteria filtering capabilities of Zappos, the self-curation controls of Flipboard and the sorting capabilities of Expedia to help you determine exactly what you’d like to watch on an average Saturday night. Here are a few ways to start the ball rolling toward more user-empowered Streaming UX.

Customizable Home Screen Displays - The ability for a user to organize and personalize the home screen of an app/streaming service to their taste. For instance:

-- Want to always see New Releases in the top row? And Nature Documentaries below that because that happens to be your thing? And so on… -- Users should be able to arrange the content rows that are displayed and at what levels.

-- Don’t want to see the Recommended Rom-Com row, just because you watched that one Hugh Grant movie six months ago? -- Let users easily remove certain categories or micro-genres from the display to create a more focused, less cluttered screen.

Ramp Up the Filters & Sorting Capabilities – Think about how much time could be saved if you were able to punch in multiple criteria to surface exactly what you were in the mood to watch. Then sort the results by various components. And those controls were front and center (or at least easy to find).  For instance:

-- Want to see Comedies made in the 90’s? And drill down to those starring Sandra Bullock. Then sort by director? -- Those options should be a few clicks away.

Some services have attempted to address this with predictive or related search functionality, which I’ve found to be middling at best, and way off-base, at worst. Amazon borrows from their e-commerce roots to allow for multi-layer filtering of video on their desktop and mobile experiences, but they haven’t carried it over to their TV app.

Features Checklists - Giving people the ability to turn certain features on or off within an app should be as easy as subscribing or unsubscribing to an e-newsletter. For instance:

-- Want to disable auto-play trailers (or at least have the option to mute their volume), stop next episode auto-plays completely, turn on credits-skipping and closed captions for all titles in one fell swoop? -- Imagine if each streaming service had an easy-to-use personalization screen or module that allowed you to check or uncheck a few boxes to enable or disable these options, just like you would with parental controls.

Some services do allow for a degree of feature control on an asset basis. For example, on Netflix you can skip credits and intros while you’re binging an individual show. Others have enabled very lightweight customization buried deep within the user profile sections on their websites or mobile apps. But so much more could be done.

Emerging platform aggregators (like Apple and Roku) may have plans to enable some feature control on a platform level, which could be helpful. However, most subscribers watch streaming services across multiple platforms and devices, so giving users more control on a service level is a better solution.

Of course, a major counter-argument to user-empowered streaming UX is that streaming services need to promote and curate their best titles. They’ve invested millions (even billions) into original titles and high-stakes libraries to drive awareness, trial, retention and increasingly important brand equity. I totally get it and I believe that they absolutely should (and must) highlight their best wares.

But the right to showcase top content and the option of user personalization are not necessarily mutually exclusive. There is enough screen real estate to go around, if smartly engineered and cleverly carved up. I’m sure that there are ways to solve for it, given all the smart technical, product and creative talent there is in the industry.

And let’s not forget that this type of customer-centric thinking will actually help the streaming services in the long run. Personalization contributes to customer stickiness and higher retention rates, which will become increasingly important as new high-profile players enter the space and the streaming wars begin in earnest.

Nothing But Choice

OTT is on its way to becoming the dominant way of watching video, and the last thing we need is to stall or jeopardize its progress by not helping users get a handle on, what is essentially, too much of a good thing – content.

At core, OTT streaming is about customer choice and empowerment. It’s about options and personalization. It’s about transparency and control. What it’s definitely NOT about is expecting newly liberated consumers to go back to the type of one-way relationship that Traditional Pay TV Providers forced on them for many years, when there were no other choices.

Now, for better or worse, there is nothing but choice (I, for one, think it’s for better). Services that focus on giving users the tools to navigate this newfound choice will be the ones that have an advantage that will translate into streamers’ hearts and minds. And most importantly, into happy, loyal subscribers.

By: Virginia Juliano

Virginia Juliano is the Founder & CEO of CobbleCord (www.CobbleCord.com), a disruptive startup that helps people cobble together personalized bundles of both free and paid streaming services. Its patented process uses customer content, device, internet and price preferences to craft a custom list of services for each user, empowering them to find the best streaming solution to fit their needs and get the most from streaming.

For this article and many other insightful pieces on the #OTT space, get a FREE digital subscription to OTT Executive Magazine and instantly download the Spring 2019 Issue: https://OTTexec.com/magazine.

[erictmason]

Top 10 Disney Movies They SHOULD Remake

The Great Disney Remake Train shows no sign of stopping, especially after its most recent entry, “Beauty and the Beast”, managed to make a killing at the box office despite being, y’know, pretty Not Good At All.  Combine that with the fact that, last year, they were even willing to do a remake of “Pete’s Dragon”, a movie which has only ever been a cult classic at best, and it becomes clear there’s basically no aspect of its considerable film library Disney isn’t willing to mine going forward.  So, rather than bemoan the admittedly-tiresome reality of just how Corporate that strategy is, I thought I’d take the opportunity to think over a few Disney films that I’d actually like to see receive a remake.  The only criteria here are pretty simple:

1.) If Disney publicly attached its name to the film in question, regardless of in what capacity, it’s eligible.  

2.) The movie cannot have been remade by Disney already, nor can a remake be, concretely, in the offing.  There are a lot of prospective remakes supposedly under development at Disney right now, but if they don’t have as much as an announced director, I don’t count them as really underway.

Otherwise, though, it’s basically all fair game.  So let’s see what Disney movies might, in fact, have something to gain by being revisited, shall we?

10.) Atlantis: The Lost Empire (Gary Trousdale/Kirk Wise, 2001):

I don’t necessarily share the immense nostalgic affection with which quite a few Disney fans view the original “Atlantis: The Lost Empire”.  Even so, I do feel like it’s a movie with an easily workable core and a solid cast of characters which, by virtue of the rather-desperate circumstances under which it was made (the movie was pretty transparently aiming to capitalize on the then-recent explosion of Anime into the American mainstream, to the point where some suspect it cribbed more than slightly from “Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water”), came out rushed and incoherent.  A remake, able to capitalize on the aforementioned Nostalgia cache the move has built up over the years thanks to its atypical-for-Disney aesthetic and tone, could very easily step in and fix those flaws (not least of all by doing more to address the White Savior stuff that fuels the plot).  As well, I can’t help but feel like Live Action/full-stop CGI animation could prove a much better fit for the Mike Mignola-designed aesthetic of the original.  And, if nothing else, don’t you want to find an actress capable of bringing Kidagakash to life?

9.) Oliver and Company (George Scribner, 1988):

For the most part, the beginning of the “Disney Renaissance”, that period of consistent box-office and critical success Disney experienced during the late 80’s and early-to-mid-90’s, is credited to the 1989 release of “The Little Mermaid”.  And to be sure, that mega success is unquestionably important.  But prior to that, Disney kept itself afloat with somewhat humbler success stories.  But where, to my mind anyway, 1986’s “The Great Mouse Detective” is basically perfect as it is, its successor, a peculiar attempt to translate Charles Dicken’s classic “Oliver Twist” to modern-day New York City with animals as its primary characters, feels like an interesting concept marred in the execution.  Keep the animal conceit, sure, and maybe some of the songs too.  But dump the more dated stuff (Bill Sykes as a predatory lender especially) and try to find some way to put Dickens’ edges back into the story a bit.  Definitely work to make the cast better defined and more engaging, too. Do all that, and you could wind up with a version of this story that is just crazy enough to work.  

8.) Condorman (Charles Jarott, 1981):

You know what’s all the rage these days at the movies?  Superheroes.  And wouldn’t you know it, Disney currently owns the absolute cream of that particular crop in the form of Marvel Studios.  But, as the smash-hit successes of both “Deadpool” and “Logan” over at 20th Century Fox have shown, audiences are also growing hungry for works that poke fun at, deconstruct, and do something to meaningfully comment on the nature of the genre as a whole.  So far, though, Marvel Studios proper, and thus Disney itself, has yet to capitalize on that quickly-growing trend.  The thing of it is, though, they already have a perfect vehicle to do so if they choose to use it.  The original “Condorman” is not an especially good film, awkward and uneven as it is.  But its dopey attempt to send up Spy Films and superheroes, combined with the brilliant design of its title “hero” (in reality a dorky comic book artist who stumbles into an espionage plot almost purely by accident), creates, to my eye at least, a perfect blueprint for a potential remake to run with in a sharp, satirical direction.  

7.) The Aristocats (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1970):

The 1970’s were not one of Disney’s better periods, either creatively or financially, and a lot of that can be seen pretty clearly in “The Aristocats”.  It’s not without its charms, to be sure, but it’s also pretty obviously just “101 Dalmatians” all over again, except with contemporary-England-and-dogs swapped out for old-school-France-and-cats.  Still, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that idea, and hey, as far as I’m concerned, cats could always use more movies about them that portray them in a positive light.  Plus, the opportunities for a remake to improve on this one are almost painfully obvious: heighten the absurdity, tighten the pacing, and if you’re really feeling daring, maybe do more with the class gap between O’Malley and Duchess the original only ever lightly touched.  It’s the absurdity element that feels especially key to me, though, especially in terms of differentiating “Aristocats” from “101 Dalmatians”.  The original’s best moments are unquestionably its most ridiculous, after all, and amping that up, could do a lot to inject the movie with a more unique and enjoyable sense of personality.  

6.) The Black Cauldron (Ted Berman/Richard Rich, 1985): At this point, "The Black Cauldron"'s reputation as one of the biggest flops in Disney history precedes it, even given the not-insignificant cult following it's picked up after finally receiving its first home video release in 1998 (nearly a decade and a half after its theatrical run).  But lost in analysis of its contentious place in the studio's canon is the fact that it's also a weirdly garbeld adaptation of the first two books of Lloyd Alexander's "Chronicles of Prydain" cycle of fantasy novels.  And as often happens in those cases, that means there are a lot of details that go unexplained or unresolved, from running gags like Flewder's harp and its breaking strings to significant plot points like the magic sword Taryn discovers.  But a big recurring choice in a lot of Disney's remakes of late is restoring elements of the source material that the previous Disneyification left out, and I don't know that any movie in the canon would benefit from that choice more than "The Black Cauldron".  You can keep the broad structure of the original, i.e. the characters of the first Prydain book, "The Book of Three", placed into the general plot of the second book for which the film is named.  But not only can we add some clarification around the edges (seriously, it is so easy to connect the story of that sword to even the heavily-revised version of the Horned King Disney created), more importantly we can also implant a lot more of the arch tone the books had, which would go a long way toward reconciling the original's rather confused take on the more-than-slightly deconstructionist story elements, to say nothing of likely making the movie less of a chore to sit through.  Supposedly, a new "Chronicles of Prydain" movie is in fact under development at Disney, so who knows?  Maybe we'll get the chance to see if this idea could actually work sooner than we think.

5.) The Black Hole (Gary Nelson, 1979): You've probably noticed a running theme of my choices here, namely that a lot of them come from eras where Disney, facing the loss of its traditional audiences in the wake of a changing cultural landscape, decided to start experimenting well outside their usual wheelhouse.  And perhaps the most wildly experimental periods of them all occurred in the late 70's and early 80's, when Disney committed its efforts to making some surprisingly-dark Sci-Fi/Fantasy live-action films.  But where 1982's "Tron" became a cult classic (if not an especially strong box office success) and 1983's "Something Wicked This Way Comes" has its Ray Bradbury source material to keep it alive in the cultural memory, "The Black Hole" has more or less fallen down the memory hole.  Not that it's hard to figure out why; its grim, existential tone and nightmarish imagery (most noticeably its robotic villain Maximillian) combined with its vague, confusing plot make it a movie without much in the way of a natural audience.  And while that sort of thing is no easier to sell to a massive audience now than it was back then, there is nonetheless too much potential that can be dug out of "The Black Hole" without really having to alter too much of the fundamentals.  Working to really dig into the sense of cosmic dread of the original, clarifying the moral and personal conflicts that drive its central antagonist, the Captain Nemo-esque Reinhardt, maybe easing up on the cutesy robot sidekicks (or else leaning into them as a way to underscore just how unnerving the atmosphere really is)...but most importantly, working to earn the frightfully illogical ending of the original.  Of all the picks on this list, "The Black Hole" strikes me as the least likely, because even today an outright Horror movie seems outside the Disney purview...but for that very reason, it feels all the more compelling a choice.

4.) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Gary Trousdale/Kirk Wise, 1996): Even just a couple years ago, I don't know that I would have put this one on here at all, let alone this high up.  Disney's first "Hunchback" movie, while certainly not perfect, is nonetheless one of the more uniquely mature and well-crafted entries in the canon, and I don't know that the various simple nips and tucks one could make to it (like committing to the Gargoyles as solely creations of Quasimodo's imagination, as was originally planned) would really warrant a full-blown remake.  But then, early last year, I learned about a Broadway-style stage musical based on the movie (adapted from a German production from 1999).  This version, though it retains the original's soundtrack and some of its creative choices, incorporates a lot more of Victor Hugo's brutally-dark novel into the story (in particular, it is one of the only adaptations ever that allows Frollo to be the archdeacon of the cathedral as he was in the book).  That is not a choice I ever would have expected Disney to sanction (indeed, the original German version is a much more straightforward adaptation of the Disney movie), but now that I know they have, I'd say it is a very, very intriguing notion to bring that idea to the big screen.  Like "The Black Hole", that would indeed mean a movie the tone, themes, and aesthetic of which would indeed be well outside the studio's usual box, but not only is that a risk the company can afford to take more so now than ever before, I'd say there's a not-insignificant audience out there that is waiting for them to make exactly that kind of choice.  After all, as Disney and the studios it owns take up more and more space on the release schedule, a movie like this one could be might be welcomed as a positive sign that the studio can and will use its power position to take genuine risks.  

3.) The Rescuers (Wolfgang Reitherman/John Lounsbery/Art Stevens, 1977): Sometimes, you want to see a remake because the original has some kind of untapped potential; a wasted premise, an unexplored thematic angle, that sort of thing.  Other times, you want to see a remake because you love the original, and simply want to see the thing you love expanded upon.  That isn't quite the case for how "The Rescuers" wound up in this slot; I do love that movie, indeed it and its sequel (the very first Disney-made sequel to one of its animated films, and by a fair margin the best of them to date) are among my personal favorites of the Disney canon.  But you know what else I love?  The original "Miss Bianca" books by Margery Sharp, to which the film version, whatever else its merits, bears only the faintest resemblance (in particular, as you might note from the admittedly unofficial name I gave to the series, Bianca herself is much more emphatically the main character).  It's another case, in other words, of a Disney movie whose remake could benefit tremendously from returning to the source material and re-integrating it into the overall mixture.  But it's also the case, to my mind at least, where it's not only the easiest to reconcile the original movie with said source material (like "The Black Cauldron", the original movie essentially plucks the characters from one book and plugs them into the plot of another, though the attendant adjustments to the characters are less radical in this case, and the plots of both books have a lot more overlap), but also the easiest for me to envision what, exactly, the resulting movie would look like.  I realize that one can count, on one hand, without needing all the fingers, the number of actually-good movies centered around realistic tiny CGI characters interacting with a real-life environment, but I can think of no story more ideally suited to the format than "The Rescuers".

2.) Bedknobs and Broomsticks (Robert Stevenson, 1971): When one thinks of "splashy Disney musical primarily done in live-action but with significant animated elements", one naturally thinks first of "Mary Poppins".  Which makes sense, because "Mary Poppins" is a stone-cold classic (with a sequel/remake/??? on the way in the not-too-distant future, in fact).  But, even as its attempts to replicate that earlier success are pretty transparent, "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" has always struck me as an underrated little gem in its own right.  An ambitious narrative combining witchcraft with World War II, magical talking animals, and more, it's always resided mostly in "Poppins"' shadow, but its peculiar, distinctive identity not only could stand a bit more attention, it feels like a strong enough basis for a story that a second bite at the apple would seem warranted.  A remake in the present day would not have to contend with the legacy of "Mary Poppins" quite so tightly (even setting aside the aforementioned new "Poppins" film coming down the pipe), which means it wouldn't feel the need to imitate it quite so consciously, allowing the particular personality of its own story to shine through.  Because, for real, especially these days?  The idea of an older woman, seeking to explore the full potential of her abilities forced to contend with the relentless destruction of the Nazi War Machine, as seen through the prism of her reluctantly taking on a group of helpless kids in need of shelter?  Almost feels too relevant, on multiple levels, to The World Today, even as you don't need to draw the necessary lines all that explicitly to make those connections compelling.  And that's without even touching a finale that feels like it's begging for the modern effects industry to give it a go.  A "Bedknobs" remake, in other words, would not only rehabilitate a too-often-overlooked original, but provide a great experience in its own right.

1.) Robin Hood (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1973):   Hear me out on this one, folks.  I love this movie too, a great deal.  A lot of people my age do; even as it is still largely considered "minor" Disney at best, it has become a real nostalgic touchstone for a whole generation of kids.  And it's a great deal of fun, with wit and genuine whimsy and wonderful characters and even a remarkably adult perspective on Romance that is nonetheless entirely in keeping with Disney's usual fairy-tale love stories.  But even with all those things being true, it was also made on a nearly non-existent budget, not only forcing large chunks of it to be done by way of re-used animation (with some swipes going back as far as "Snow White And The Seven Dwarves", for goodness sake), but forcing the whole thing to just sort of...stop, rather than properly end.  It seems to me a remake could easily resolve both those problems (oh what I would not give to see the film's originally-planned ending executed properly), without losing an ounce of the special charm that made the original such an enduring movie for me and so many others.  Heck, it might even provide Disney a good excuse to do a cel-based movie for the first time in over half a decade, since they have every reason to think this thing would have a strong built-in audience that will show up no matter what and can thus afford to risk one last try at the olden ways.  After all, two of their biggest hits of 2016 were "The Jungle Book" (a remake) and "Zootopia" (a movie about anthropomorphic animals, with a fox as one of its lead characters no less).  Still, it's the creative more so than the financial potential that secures "Robin Hood" the top slot here.  The original is a good, special movie, but there is so obviously a great well of potential right there in plain view, begging for the opportunity to truly realize itself.  And that's the best reason for a remake there is, in the end.

[geeky-galpal]

A Start Up List of Working Latina Actresses who reasonably *could* play Henry Mills’ Love Interest and Lucy Mills’ Mother

So I saw a few people yesterday trying to come up with actresses who might play next year’s “Mystery Woman” (who I think we are all for the moment predicting will be Princess Elena of Avalor). Anyway, I meant to do this yesterday.... but life, you know?.... so here are Latina actresses in their late 20s/very early 30s who could reasonably audition for the role.

In general, I try to keep up with Latinx Hollywood, but still this list was harder than I thought! Most of the more well known working Latinas are too old for the role, the famous ones who are the right age are OBVIOUSLY WAY TO EXPENSIVE for Once (Selena, Demi, I’m looking at you!) or currently working in large, mainstream roles (Stephanie Beatriz, Aubrey Plaza, etc). 

But here’s a starting list of roughly 10 or so potentials that I came up with, mostly former child stars looking for a “transition role”, a few from edgy streaming dramas who might be interested in the stability of a mainstream network paycheck, one who is so perfect I can’t imagine anything else now. I will put this out there, in case anyone is interested or curious...

Naya Rivera- 30

So let’s get this out of the way right now, I (admit with shame) loved Glee. I love Naya and think she’s incredibly talented. I think Naya is the right age and looks a lot like Elena. She would be reasonably priced, since her reputation has taken a hit in recent years, and she’s looking for work.  There are almost too many reasons why she would be perfect.

But that hit her reputation took? It was lethal. Her parting ways with Glee was brutal, ugly, and public. She also went through an awkward and unfortunate “I’m angling to be a pseudo Khardasian phase”, which would not look great for the Disney brand and probably not what they are looking for in someone who might potentially play a Disney Princess ™. And, even though her asking ticket is certainly lower than it would’ve been a few years ago, it still might be more than OUAT is looking to pay with their current budget cuts.

Still,Naya is a guaranteed headline. She’s the right age and the right look for the role. And you cannot possibly make a list of Latina actresses in their late 20s/ early 30s without her being at the top of it. So here we are.

Alexa Vega- 28

Alexa Vega is still most famous for her childhood role as Carmen Cortez in the Spy Kids franchise in the late 90s and 00s. But, her recent “comeback” adult career is very interesting to me. She did a stint on Nashville a few years back, she stared in a few low budget movies that gained headlines, but not a lot of warm critical attention. But she’s around and steadily looking for work. She’s wholesome enough and I could see Disney being comfortable linking their brand to her. 

Much like Naya, her casting would bring a headline, and she doesn’t come with the same BTS baggage or relatively high asking price. She’d have to be willing to die her hair back to its original dark brown color (she’s been going blonde the last few years), but I think this has realistic potential...

Francia Raisa- 28

Francia is best known for her fan favorite role as Adrian Lee, a pregnant teenager on ABC Family’s hit teen drama, The Secret Life of the American Teenager. She also starred in the cult classic Bring It On: All or Nothing (my favorite in the guilty pleasure franchise).  She’s currently a radio host, but she definitely shopped around last pilot season and might still be looking for work that will bring her back to the screen.

Seychelle Gabriel- 26

Seychelle is maybe best known for her role as Princess Yue in the (racist- but I won’t hold it against her this time) Last Airbender, but she had a memorable role in Eva Mendes’ The Spirit a few years back, and a reoccurring role on Weeds. She also was a series regular on Fallen Skies and had regular voice over work for The Legend of Korra as Asami Sato. She hasn’t had regular on screen work in a few years, but continues to guest star here and there. I’m positive she’s looking for a bigger opportunity.

Josie Loren- 30

Josie played another fan favorite, Kaylie Cruz, on ABC Family’s, Make It or Break It. She went on to have a regular role on season 7 of The Mentalist, but hasn’t worked regularly in while. She’s probably the cheapest asking price on this list? Which I could see being important for OUAT’s current financial outlook.

 Christian Serratos- 26 (Never mind, I just found out her character is still on The Walking Dead)

Christian worked heavily as a tween and teenager, first on Nickelodeon shows Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide and Zoey 101, then in the Twilight series. I thought she had a lot of potential, but since I don’t watch TWD I had no idea she was currently working in a regular role (on one of the highest rated TV show’s in the country at that!). So yay for her, but she’s not viable anymore :(  

Jackie Cruz- 30

Jackie Cruz has regular work on Orange is the New Black, but her character is used sparingly and a lot of that cast has branched off into other, more mainstream roles in the last few years, I can’t help but wonder if that might also interest her? She’s exceedingly talented, but I’m not sure she’s the right “look” for the show- both physically (she is super tall, and let’s be real the OUAT cast is a bunch of short actors, her signature bangs would be out of look for Elena) and in a PR sense, she’s an openly queer actress on a trendy, hot button show about prisons. I am not convinced that Disney would want to take that risk.

Diane Guerrero- 30

Diane works opposite Jackie on OITNB. She has almost the exact same pluses and minuses to her casting. Diane’s not queer (that we know of), but is an incredibly outspoken DREAM activist working on immigrants’ rights. She’s on an edgy show about female prisons. But, she also works reoccurring on Jane the Virgin and has proven to “clean up well”. So, there’s that? I guess... Much like Jackie, she has a lot of “buzz” and “heat” around her, but has yet to be able to turn that into viable, stable, long term work. 

And Last, but CERTAINLY NOT LEAST....

Aimee Carrero- 28 

Aimee Carrero is BY FAR MY FAVORITE GUESS FOR THIS ROLE. She has everything they are looking for- she’s the right age, the right “look”, she’s coming from ABC Family/ Freeform-- which is both under the Disney corporate umbrella and has the kind of wholesome branding that they would be looking for, she’s been publicly cordial/friendly with Lana in the past, and this is the kicker.... 

SHE VOICES PRINCESS ELENA ON THE CARTOON ALREADY!!!!!

You can not beat this.

She’s currently working as a supporting regular on Young & Hungry, but was poised to star in a spin off last year that never came to fruition; she’s looking to branch out into a bigger role. This could be that role for her.

Make it happen, ABC :)

Ok, that list was super detailed and so long that probably only a few of you are going to read it anyway. My apologies! My inner researcher came out to play and I couldn’t reign her back in :) But hopefully those of you who did make it to the end had fun imagining with me and maybe this will spark some excited “head castings” of your own!

[mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker]

One decade on MOST people are still sore about this Rich.

 Dan Slott is being overly presumptuous because how the Hell can he predict the future like this? This is seriously like someone in 2002 saying believe all you want but you will never see a revival of the Clone Saga characters and concepts because of how dedicated editorial have been to bury them. Except we did because the people in power changed.

 He is also disingenuous because not every editorial since the marriage worked hard to undo it.

  The Jim Salicrup regime did not work hard to undo it at all.

 Danny Fingeroth’s regime wasn’t truly working hard to undo it at all and if you were to take the most consistent writers of the Spider titles under his regime into account (David Michelinie, JM DeMatteis, Howard Mackie, Terry Kavanagh, Tom DeFalco) only one of them, Kavanagh (one of the worst Spider-Man writers ever) was outright against Spider-Man being married. Michelinie came around to the idea eventually and Mackie at worst had a take it or leave it attitude but tried to get rid of it when editorially mandated to do so not by the spider office but by the EIC himself. Everyone else under Fingeroth’s regime was PRO-marriage.

 In the Budiansky regime that was the same story. MOST writers were pro-marriage but higher ups wanted it undone.

 It was always the higher ups who wanted it gone but rarely the actual editorial regimes composing the Spider-Man group.

 It is particularly bullshit considering the first regime in power after the marriage was DeFalco as EIC and he defienitly didn’t want the marriage gone.

 And again it presumes that

 a)      Those higher ups were right which they weren’t and

b)      That EVERY higher up in the future will defeinitly want the same thing when there is no proof of that. Alonso for instance is apparently more lenient over the marriage in some shape of form than Quesada. Editorials change and generations cycle in and out. There is no evidence to suggest 100% every editorial will want the same thing.

 I mean he talks about it like Marvel is this never changing entity unto itself which has decided there should be no spider marriage when again ‘Marvel’ is made up of people with jobs and positions which change. Only Ike Pearlmutter is in it for life and I don’t think he honestly gives a shit about if Spider-Man is married or not so long as he can make action figures.

 Like he talks about not having a good grasp of the business but literally it is pretty much as far as we know Alonso, Quesada and Brevoort who are against the marriage. MOST marvel creators do not seem to be at all. When those guys eventually leave who knows what will happen.

 I mean he talks about branding but putting aside how that’s proven to be utter bullshit given how brandingwise Sam Wilson’s mere existence as Cap fucks that arguement up as far as Cap is concerned or Flash as Venom fucked that up as far as branding was concerned for Venom, for many years and even now what is happening in the mainstream universe Spider-Man has been out of order with the branding.

 If branding really was the big thing at play here why the fuck HASN’T Spider-Man been regressed back into being a teenager or a teen version of Peter Parker become an ongoing series? Why was he married throughout the 90s and most of the 2000s when that was also at odds with the branding?

 I don’t think Slott himself understands the branding or corporate structure at all.

 Like sure there are people above the EIC, like Brevoort and Quesada. Again, there is no guarantee that they would remain in power forever at all.

 As for the argument about every 8 year old who’s grown up with Post-OMD Spider-Man, putting aside how they are in the minority and less and less fans are coming to the series every year (hence sales are lower now than 10 years ago) the argument holds no water when you consider this.

 Every Spider-Man fan from 1962-1987 grew up with an unmarried Spider-Man fan.

 Like think about it. Most of those guys eventually WANTED Spider-Man to get married, more than this even if they were indifferent to it they were mostly okay with him getting married when it happened because it was additive character development. Same with him leaving high school.

 Most fans were not bemoaning it and similarly most fans of post-marriage Spider-Man were not bemoaning OMD merely BECAUSE they grew up on the marriage.

 It all revolved around the character development. They accepted and liked the marriage because it was developmental for the hero. They disliked OMD both because of HOW it was being done and why it was being done and how it threw out and damaged the character.

  Given how Spider-Man getting married again would be less of a fuck you and undoing of the post-OMD stuff and more of a forward momentum additive step for Spider-Man I do not see why the Post-OMD fans would be inherently inclined to never want to have Spider-Man get married again, especially when most of them clearly also like Mary Jane and Spider-Man being in a relationship.Essentially like the pre-marriage fans they’d probably get fed up with the doomed to fail strings of relationships which do not matter as much as his relationship with MJ (which thanks to Marvel unlimited, trades, info books and pop culture osmosis they are probably going to have become aware of because MOST fans do re-read the older runs) and probably will want to give him something more permanent too.

 Also a lot of Post-OMD fans who’re okay with the status quo would probably be similarly okay witht he marriage’ returning. Most people don’t like Spider-Man purely or mainly upon the basis of what his relationship status on facebook would be.

  Then you got OTHER characters to consider.

 Editorials hated the Super marriage too. Its back..

 Editorials were against Green Arrow and Black Canary’s relationship. Its back.

 If you go by branding and pop culture osmosis it’d make a shitton more sense for Nightwing to not exist and for Dick to have forever remained Robin as opposed to Damien who is a far less known character to the public. Even then people in the public are hardly going to just shrug off the idea of Robin being Batman’s actual son.

 Iceman’s sexuality, the ages of the original X-Men, the list goes on and on about branding vs what is in the books themselves and how there is a double standard at play as far as the Spider marriage is concenred.

 Oh and btw, SUPERMAN and BATMAN both have kids. THAT is even more of a out of lockstep branding thing than Spider-Man being married. It is far from the most egregious example of dissonant brand snergy

 I mean Disney clear don’t give a shit about the content of the comic books and have not for a long time. I am not even believing of the idea that Marvel Entertainment on the whole is. I think it is basically Quesda, Brevoort and a few other guys who are not in the job for life. I mean he talks about the Senior Vice Presidents and CCO and all that and again...those are just people who will roll out of power someday whilst marriage friendsly people will likely replace them given how much younger they are than those men. And again I don’t believe anyone at Disney itself gives a shit if Spider-Man is married in the comics considering they do not care that he is married in the newspaper strips, in an AU comic book or that Venom and Doc Ock for the longest time have never resembled their typically branded counterparts. I mean Brock not being Venom has stuck for over a decade too and he was around for less time than the marriage. But look at how that’s reversing gears too. Shit Jean Grey came back and other reversals in continuity have happened throughout the decades too.

 He speaks about Ben Reilly too. He tries to say the situations are different but they really are not. Multiple people wanted him back including higher ups (which i am not convinced of at all, I don’t think Quesada wanted Ben back or gave a shit) and that still happened. Basically Slott said enough people and the people in charge wanted it, which means obviously people inclined towards it rolled into power. Literally there is no reason that couldn’t happen with the marriage. The powers that be could retire, die or change their minds, there is an overwhelming preference for the marriage within the fandom and most writers and artists and who is to say the way branding is considered as far as the marriage is concerned won’t change.

 I mean the idea is really ridiculous when you think about it. People who don’t like the marriage will always be there and will never be replaced by people who do or are at least open to the idea. And at the same time whether Spider-Man is wearing a wedding ring (cos he could still to all other intents and purposes be married and in a relationship with MJ) in one particular comic book series is utterly pivitol to the sales of all other Spider-Man merchandise? 

 C’mon.

 Even if you look at it the other way around f the comic sales being affected by the other stuff that also is clearly not true and Marvel clearly do not care about it.

 Basically Slott is talking shit because he’s presumed everyone in power up to and beyond the EIC level will never change their minds and also will remain in power forever.

All this is especially poignant when you consider how truly off to the side and irrelvent the comic books are compared to everything else. The adaptations are more prized and important than the comics so branding considerations are really kind of asinine if you are to lump them all in together.

 And then You have his comments about Spider-Man being a high schooler being in line with the original intention of the creators.

 Maybe, maybe, maybe that is true of Ditko but it sure as fuck isn’t the intention of Stan Lee. Even in Ditko era letters pages Stan was making comments about how Spider-Man wasn’t married yet. Fans wanted Spider-Man to age and develop and go to college which Stan eventually instituted.

 Then it was in Wolfman’s run where he graduated from college and in Roger Stern’s run in that Spider-Man exited full time education altogether.

 If Spider-Man’s point was about being young you’d think either of these writers or editorial regimes would have prevented that, let alone Stan Lee outright aging Spider-Man out of college. Hell in ASM #39 he stated that Peter was 19 years old so he’d obviously ages not just since he got his powers but since he even began attending college. And Stan was working towards Peter getting married someday. He did that in the newspaper strips and has in other short stories or comments expressed a preference for Spider-Man to eventually get married, even referencing the fact that MJ used to be pregnant.

 He also noticeably had many of his other characters age and develop over time. for instance Reed and Sue didn’t remain dating or engaged forever. Ben Grimm got over his grumpy stages. Johnny storm went to college. Reed and Sue had a kid. The X-Men graduated.

 Few if any of Stan’s teen characters remained teens or at least in the same context they were created in. The entire MU was bult with continuity and character development in mind so the idea that Spider-Man was intended to be about youth as far as Stan was concerned is idiotic.

 This isn’t getting into how accounts from Stan have outright stated that Spider-Man was about being an ordinary guy as his core concept not about being young or how Tom DeFalco, EIC of marvel, long time Spider-Man writer, author of the most definitive Spider-Man guidebook of all time and someone who had been reading Spider-Man since literally Amazing Fantasy #15 has outright stated Spider-Man isn’t about youth...along with other creators like Peter David, J.M. DeMatteis, etc.

 Combine this statement with Slott’s assertion about Peter being emotionally 15 years old and suddenly so much makes sense about his take on Spider-Man.

 Again, this man should never have been allowed near the character.

  P.S. Even Steve Wacker admitted that the marriage probably would come back someday.

 P.P.S. Slott admits Spidey could get the win over Mephisto. This basically proves that even he knows Spider-Man’s been on a colossal losing streak ever since that story contrary to what he and Quesada have said about it in the past.

 P.P.P.S. I find it questionable that Slott doesn’t actually go into details to elaborate on why it’d be so impossible for the marriage to return. He says there are VPs to consiuder and stuff but leaves it at that.

P.P.P.P.S. Rich should know better than to take Slott’s word as gospel

[1000-directions]

i almost forgot that @heartdevouring tagged me in a thing!! which is sad because i was so excited to get tagged <3

RULES : ANSWER all questions, ADD one question of your own and then TAG as many people as there are questions whoever i want cause i don’t even know 50 people on tumblr :)

i’m gonna tag at the top, because this is long. tagging people makes me so nervous, thanks anxiety!! feel free to ignore altogether. @akai-coat @bigbrotherlouis @jiksax @busy-nothings @alligatornyc @magicalrocketships @rickshawala @flora-flauna @gretawhy

live session or studio session? this is off to a bad start because i legitimately don’t understand what this question is asking! like a live recording or a studio recording of a song? i only enjoy live recordings like...while i’m there listening to it. i hate watching concert videos on youtube or whatever, and i never take photos or video at shows. i’ve been to around 80 live shows for various artists, so i love me some live music, but i still prefer to listen to the meticulously mixed and balanced music that comes from a studio session. IF THAT’S EVEN WHAT THIS IS ASKING?

coke or pepsi? i can’t drink soda because it hurts my mouth, and i don’t like fluids that much in general :( :( on the one hand, i’ve never even tasted pepsi? but i had coke exactly once and i hated it. so, neither.

disney or dreamworks? i guess disney but in a super casual “maybe i’ll watch ‘cinderella’ one more time someday” way and not like “i wanna get married at disney AND go there for my honeymoon AND go back every single year and never visit anywhere else ever disney disney disney” way.

coffee or tea? i love them both so much in so many varieties. if i had to choose, i would choose coffee, but i wouldn’t turn down either. i’ve been drinking a lot of taro milk tea lately and it’s fucking amazing.

books or movies? lol i’m one of those jerks who’s like “i’m too busy to read a book!!!!!!!!” but i have no problem getting through a 100k fic in one weekend. okay actually, i feel like these days i don’t super love books OR movies, i just love fanfic and tv shows, and that’s because both of them give you sooooooo much backstory and characterization, and you get to spend so much time living with them in a way you don’t get from a movie. that being said, when i was a kid i used to stay up reading in the bathroom with a flashlight until 3am like every night. i am a lapsed book lover.

windows or mac? mac

dc or marvel? ugh i love the old campy batman show, it was an important part of my childhood and my weird relationship with my father. and i LOVED “lois and clark: the new adventures of superman.” so i love that sort of nostalgia feeling i get from dc. actually you know what, i was gonna hedge and say dc for old stuff and marvel for new stuff, but i’m going dc regardless, because i’m not super into all the new marvel properties anyway. dc, final answer. batgirl could get it.

xbox or playstation? the last game system i played was a super nintendo, but i was always more of a sega genesis gal tbh

night owl or early riser? because of my schedule and my shitty decision-making, it ends up being both. i sleep like four hours each night :/

cards or chess? i’ll go cards, but i am probably garbage at both

chocolate or vanilla? like, you can’t ruin anything by adding a really beautiful freshly scraped vanilla bean to it, whereas there is a lot of extremely shitty chocolate in the world. or, i guess mostly in america, we’re pretty shit at chocolate :(

vans or converse? converse. i have like seven pairs of chucks right now, though most of them are falling apart.

star wars or star trek? star trek: the next generation. omg it’s on netflix??? i’m gonna marathon the hell out of that 🙃

one episode per week or marathoning? MARATHON. my attention span is too short to keep up with something i only see once a week.

gandalf or obi-wan? i literally don’t care at all

heroes or villains? i don’t know, just be nice?

john williams or hans zimmer? i have no opinion about this

disneyland/disney world or six flags? i kind of hate all theme parks, but i really especially hate disney theme parks because i think it’s a huge scam. it’s expensive as shit, and there’s this creepy mythology around it where we brainwash kids into wanting to go there before they even understand wtf it is, and you’re not a good parent if you don’t take your kids there, and it’s EXPENSIVE AS SHIT, and you wait in lines for ten million hours, unless you hire a kid in a wheelchair to pretend to be your kid so you can cut lines (this is a real thing, people are fucking monsters). it’s just extremely unappealing to me, but the corporation seems to be doing okay without my support. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

forest or sea? i like hiking and i don’t like swimming, so let’s go forest. however, i love birds, but i REALLY love fucking weird deep sea creatures, so this is tough. i don’t wanna go for a swim or anything, but i would get in some kind of boat and look at weird fucking rays and anemonefish and shit like that.

flying or reading minds? when i was a kid, i legitimately thought people could read my mind, and it was The Worst, so let’s go with flying. so i can hang out with birds :)

twin peaks or northern exposure? never seen northern exposure, so twin peaks

harry potter or lord of the rings? i really liked the lotr books and really did not care about the lotr movies. i am not super passionate about harry potter books or movies, but i fucking love one direction harry potter AUs, so let’s go potter. i found out today that my patronus is a chow dog.

cake or pie? both both both but if i have to choose i would pick pie but also both both both

you are banished to a desert island, which benedict cumberbatch character would you choose to take with you? THIS IS MY FAVORITE QUESTION IN THE WHOLE THING. BECAUSE. THIS MEANS I GET TO BE ON AN ISLAND WITH VICTORIAN SCIENTIST JOSEPH FUCKING HOOKER. DARWIN’S BEST FRIEND!!!!!!! he could teach me about plants, and then we could gossip about darwin and huxley!!!!! omg i want it so bad

train or cruise ship? i would rather drive, but i guess a train is fine.

brian cox or neil degrasse-tyson?  neil. he can be Too Much, but i like that he’s actively trying to defend science in a mainstream, accessible way.

wizard of oz or alice in wonderland? i’ve never made it all the way through wizard of oz because i was too scared of the flying monkeys :(

fanfiction or fanart? i am more into fic personally but good on you for creating something whatever it is <3

the hunger games - books or movies? books

be able to see the future or travel into the past? fuck the future, i wanna hang out with dinosaurs and/or victorian scientists

han solo or luke skywalker? yeah i don’t care. princess leia.

lilacs or sunflowers? omg don’t get me started on plants, i love em!!! turning sunlight into food, little legends :’)

spring or autumn? spring is good but it only lasts for about 14 seconds around here. we pretty much go from “ahhhhh it’s too cold!!!” straight into “ahhhhh it’s too hot!!!!”

campfire or fireplace? campfire 🔥🔥

french fries or onion rings? fries

truth or dare? truth. i’m pretty open about most things, but i ain’t doing shit and you can’t make me :) :)

winter or summer? i kinda hate them both. summer is too hot for me. but in winter, you have snow, which is the worst. and then you bundle up to go outside but when you get inside the heat is BLASTING and you’re overdressed for it, so winter ends up being too hot for me, too :( i’m always too hot :( :(

vampires or werewolves? vampire tv shows, werewolf one direction aus

red or blue? GREEN

eyes or lips? idk i mean they both serve an important purpose, i’d like to keep both

burgers or sandwiches? i don’t eat meat so let’s go sandwiches

friends-to-lovers or enemies-to-lovers trope? i guess friends to lovers but as long as louis is loved and cherished and gets everything he wants then i don’t care how it started

pizza or pasta? eating pasta right now :)

ancient rome or ancient greece? omg don’t make me choose. classical languages and civilizations and mythology, my first ever academic passion <3 guess who’s read the odyssey in three languages THIS GUY (guess who doesn’t remember any language except for english anymore, also this guy)

foxes or wolves? FOXES!! fennec foxes!! darwin’s foxes!! arctic foxes!! all the lil foxes 

mermaids or dragons? MERMAIDS. EXTREMELY MERMAIDS. the only reason i even started liking louis tomlinson is because i read a fic where he was a mermaid, but that’s a story for another day.

sci-fi or fantasy? ahhhhh don’t make me choose. gimme all the dystopian societies

watch a film in theaters or at home? going to the theater sounds exhausting, i’m good right here

fireproof or no more sad songs? fireproof, on account of louis tomlinson rolling and rolling until he changes his luck, which is basically my mantra

bands or individual singers? individual singers within bands

sweet or salty? if i only get one, i’ll choose salty, but i want both. both together!! salted caramel!!! cheese and caramel popcorn mixed in a bag together!! chocolate covered pretzels!!!!

monotype corsiva or comic sans? both of these make me itchy. BUT. i’m gonna go with the dreaded comic sans BUT ONLY BECAUSE i read a thing once that people with dyslexia have an easier time reading it, and i’m on board with it from an accessibility standpoint ONLY.

my question: turtles or frogs? i know this is tough because they are both so awesome <3