miracle: i got the bug in my brain to start playing the sims again but when i tried to open it i discovered that everything has been royally fucked since i last played and now that i've been waiting for about 2 hours for 51% progress re-installing it from steam i have almost entirely lost interest again

Keeping Up A-fear-ance's Thoughts

I finished writing this shortly after 3 am after watching the new episode like three times because I simply had too much energy about it and I have so many thoughts because I simply live for clawthornes and also I tried to break it up with more photos this time sorry not sorry if it's a lot ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

YOUNG EDA!! let me just say I am quite a fan of opening with a flashback like we've done here and the last episode

"we have never seen a curse like this before" Lilith you had shit luck picking out curses huh

"cut it out if we have to" goddamn Gwen let'a calm the fuck down a bit.

anyways we've only really seen young Eda as a wild and confident and happy little child so I appreciate seeing this side of her with the anxiety and fear she's feeling here. I love seeing what the curse stuff was like for her as a kid

Gwen: I raised a perfectly fine kid

Me: no you didn't look at her she's got anxiety

I'm guessing this is their backyard or just some woods behind their house?? wonder if the portal was placed there by another elder family member.

lmao I can't even begin to imagine what small Eda experiencing the human realm was like for the first time

Gwens giving me "I can't accept that my child is disabled/chronically ill/etc." here. y’know the kinda parent that'll put their kid through hell over something they probably will find a way to learn to live with (which Eda did do)

ok that's it I humbly request to know the story behind the fang now (also the noise she made when she put it in was freaking cute)

new dress! new boots! new dress! new boots!

..yikes that fridge is empty

"calm down the curse acts stronger when you're stressed" Eda do you know who you're talking to here

confirmation losing limbs is in fact a side effect of the curse!! (y'know since Eda originally said it just happens when you get older)

please I love these sisters they're so sweet and make me wanna go 🥺

"suddenly curious about my past" "always. always curious" Luz says exactly what we all think

witchlet?? sweet flea?? she's got pet names for them 🥺 (although idk how much I'd like to be referred to as any kind of flea sorry Lilith)

ok Gwen is very much not close to what I expected and I'm kinda grateful for that

she's more like super caring but still managed to royally fuck up which was my original head canon for clawthorne parents so uh that's cool. but literally, look at their body language, Eda's pissed, Lilith's sad and making herself small. she's clearly messed up with her parenting on both of them along the way.

"who knows what they put in those nasty concoctions?" mama clawthorne would be a fucking anti-vaxxer wouldn't she

ok I side with Eda here more than Luz and Lilith. just because Luz misses her mother, or Lilith hasn’t seen their mom in so long doesn’t mean Eda has to feel all grateful for the presence of Gwen, especially if the woman has caused her a lot of trouble over the years

I feel like the fact that its actually both Lilith and Gwendolyn have spent their whole lives dedicated to trying to find a cure could probably have held some kind of weight on Eda at some point. Even though she shouldn't feel guilty or responsible for that, I still feel like it's gotta suck knowing these people have spent so much time on something you know is likely never gonna happen, all for you.

Lilith 😞 her mother really just didn't pay attention to her all these years

hey if this guy does some next level healing magic then why isn't he more well-known, huh? why’d it take so long to come across him?? Gwen do you know what the fuck you're doing cause I think you don't

Lilith just because you're depressed about your mom doesn't mean you have to bring king down too 😠

SUPER irrelevant but is anyone else just bothered by the way Lilith is holding her spoon?? that doesn't seem like a comfortable way to hold a spoon. also is she left handed??

"knife season came early" EDA WHAT DOES THAT MEAN. is this a boiling isles things or is this a it’s common for people to throw knives at you thing

also I want to be surprised Eda fell for the apple blood signs but I am not 😔 

Luz please trust you're gut on this one and not mama clawthorne

ok now I need to know why the fridge was empty but they had 18 cartons of ice cream this is why you guys don't have food you're wasting it all on ice cream.

wow never thought I'd see the day hooty became the voice of reason

also, night market ice cream?? are they implying this ice cream is like, edibles of some sort?? Lilith does seem kinda high here ngl. idk man but at least she wants to stand up for herself so good for her.

PLEASE kings just offering her ice cream while she transforms

"first in a series" Gwen honey oh no. you've been duped. I think we can see where Lilith got her naïveté from huh.

Also, nice snatch Luz 😊

anyways love how this show is basically making fun of moms who refuse to give their kids proper medical treatment or listen to medical professionals here

EXCUSE ME why do we know Gwen's palisman's name before we know Lilith's?????

"I am a mother who'll do anything for her daughter" you're mom who's suffocating obsession with one daughter has left the other neglected and is currently causing her to turn into a full on beast ya dummy

Eda DOES have a right to be upset. it sucks that her own valid emotions that she should get to feel will cause her while body to betray her.

PLEASE I’M SO GLAD LILITH’S BEAST DESIGN LOOKS LIKE HER AND IS NOT THE THING FROM THE TRAILER THAT IS ACTUALLY IN EDA"S HEAD WHEN SHE’S TRANSFORMED

but also why is she SO massive?? also anyone concerned that this is her first transformation and the light glyph trick wouldn't even work??

Gwen look at what you've done, you've fostered feelings of inferiority in one daughter causing her to feel the need for sibling rivalry that the pure instincts of the raven beast cannot suppress no matter how much their sisterly relationship had improved.

HOW COULD YOUR OTHER DAUGHTER ALSO BEING CURSED BE A PART OF THE PROCESS GWEN??

"after Eda was cursed, I joined the beast keeping coven" woah woah WOAH. you're telling me you only joined because of trying to help Eda. that covens existed, before Eda got cursed, and you very much weren't a part of one. combine that with "some words for belos" she has and do I smell wild witch theory still plausible???

anyways at least mama clawthorne is getting some sense into her head here

Morton c'mon help a girl out, that's some dang good art too what the heck dude

ok fine mama clawthorne to the rescue

no pls not raven beast Lilith crying im crying now

Gwen: I raised a fine and self-sufficient child

Me: no you didn't look at her. she's got, SO MUCH.

GODDAMN THATS SOME POWER. ngl this only adds fuel to the fire in my head that there was some kinda reasoning these sisters were torn apart, that someone felt they'd be too powerful together (and they were probably right)

"I heard you but I couldn't stop myself, I couldn't do anything" may be just because she's not used to the curse but again part of me is concerned that because she couldn't pull herself out of it even a little bit like Eda did that there's something wrong there. but she also could've been stressed beyond reasonably calming herself down too.

ok but this is sweet

NOOO im so sad Lilith's leaving :( I literally cried ok

"you lived here?" fine OKAY king that was hilarious even if im sad about this

"reconnect with dad" excuse me where the fuck has this man been in the middle of all of this. curse shit is going DOWN and he's just chilling at home.

I am curious about people's thoughts regarding the whole Lilith regression thing and the fact that she's literally going to be living with her parents again. I feel like it could help nurture that inner child she's been reverting back to and help her out a LOT. but I could also be concerned about it feeding into the regression and making it worse?? idk and this show probably ain't getting that actually deep into psych anyways

"some day my hair is gonna be big enough to do that too" Luz I cannot wait for the day. also mood, I wish I could do that too.

alright who's holding the fucking pen for hooty we need a volunteer RIGHT NOW so we can remain in contact with Lulu

NOT THE ONLY HUMAN? my bets on the real azura rip never mind she said he

Titan’s Blood?? interesting. If the blood of the titan is around I wonder what that means regarding the titans existence, and how long its been since the titan fell.

AHH BABY LUZ PHOTO

ALSO WHO THE FUCK IS THAT?? They're really gonna spring that on us like this??? Camila's gotta notice somethings wrong right??? Unless any differences she just chalks up to the camp?? oh god :(

well, anyways lumity shippers come get yo juice next weekend

anyways im gonna need to add a NOT canon compliant tag on that one Gwendolyn fic I wrote because it definitely do not comply anymore

Peonies Chapter 2

Okay so this is a long chapter and we’re finally getting into more Chiara x Grigor. No it’s not what you think but I know you’ll be enjoying what I’ve written hopefully. Don’t worry there will be 

Also. For those who read my other stories. Those who are not aware Chapter Four of Wildest Notes (The Gardner one) has been uploaded. For those who are curious. 

Next Chapter

Masterlist 

Previous Chapter 

Life of a Duchess consists of balls, tea parties, making under the table deals for the country, and then an occasional outing. Life for me..it is..well.. Different. Obviously. I mean I dropped everything to now help Catherine stage a Coup against her own husband. But I’m still trying to manage my habits so I don’t lose them, even all the way out here. 

My morning always begins at seven a.m. Fernanda is to come into the rooms and open the curtains whether the sunshine is glaring into my room or it’s a cloudy day. Then after waking up I’m treated to a warm breakfast. Honestly I’m not quite sure what exactly is a Russian breakfast because I’ve never had it. 

Fernanda came into the bedroom as I was rubbing my eyes to adjust to the light. Doing a few neck stretches then plopping my arms and my legs as my hair fell in my face. To think only a few nights ago we were burying heads in the dirt and now we’re writing drafts on some sort of constitution. She placed the breakfast tray right in front of me then revealed breakfast. What looked like porridge that had raspberries on top of them, some bacon and dumplings? 

“What is this?” Crossing my legs as I lifted one of the dumplings to my nose. Smelled very sweet for a dumpling. 

“They call it vareniki I think. It’s a dumpling and they tasted good when we had them for dinner last night. I promise I wouldn’t let them serve you anything you wouldn’t like.” She stood next to me as I handed her one of the raspberries from on top of the porridge. 

“Is Catherine awake yet by chance?” Asking her as she finished the raspberry. 

“I’m not quite sure. I can go check for you.” 

“It's not too urgent yet. I just need to know when she’s wanting to have our meetings. If you happen to see her maid, send her my way. Oh! I need a sabre coach if you could keep an eye on Hernán. He’s coming sometime today and I would rather him see a familiar face than one of the ladies.” She nodded as I took my spoon into the porridge. Eh. It’s alright. Makes me miss the cooking of Chef Columbus. 

After breakfast I am to get dressed for the day which is usually my black pants, my brown and black boots, and my white button up shirt. Makes the life of Fernanda and I extremely simple because there’s no buttons or corsets. In addition. It’s either braided hairstyles or just flopping down due to the fact those big hairstyles hurt my head. 

“She’s awake and already has some sort of Count in her chambers.” Fernanda told me as I finished placing my hair in a braid. I then grabbed my cross necklace as I stared into the vanity mirror before me. 

The words of Catherine talking about Grigor after the funeral keep bouncing around in my head. If he’s an advisor he must have some sort of genius inside his head. But when you’re supposed to be an advisor or friends with someone like Peter, you lose sight of what your potential is. He is quite loyal for starters and he studied alongside Peter the Great from what I’ve been told. So..there was so much potential that is in Grigor..just needs to be pushed. Extremely hard. But don’t think I’ve pushed aside his little comment on my first night here. 

He is extremely attractive..I mean he’s tall, has beautiful green forest of eyes..maybe this is just sexual tension. I mean me having some sort of dream last night about him is sexual desire then I’m guilty. Even if I want to slap him across the face due to the comment from last night. Grigor is definitely one I would have molded into clay to have in my room. 

I’ll figure him out later. Getting up from the bench as I began twirling the cross for my walk towards Catherines apartment. If I knew we were going to stage a coup I would’ve brought my books and a trunk full of papers and pens. 

When I made it to the entrance of the apartment. The young man was standing at the entrance as I smiled at him. 

“Duchess Chiara to see Empress Catherine.” Smiling at him as they opened the door as I was led into her apartment. 

“Catherine! Coming in!” I yelled as she was sitting on the floor as she was talking with Count Orlov. Did she finally convince him? I’m going to assume so because the amount of pamphlets and books that were scattered around the room means they’re trying to start a draft of something.  

“Ah Count Orlov. Do you remember my cousin Duchess Chiara?” Waving to him as I noticed she was barefoot. Genius Catherine. Slipping off my boots as I tiptoed across her pamphlets to sit down across from her. 

“Does she?” He was going to ask the question but I nodded. Alright let me see what she’s got scattered across in her room. Dierdot, Kant, and even some Plato. Wow. We’re really trying to do a book club/Coup. Not that I don’t find the words of Plato interesting but...what person is wanting to listen to Plato when trying to change a country? 

“Ah yes. So I’ve written a 74 page treatise that should really get the people behind us on your ideals.” 

“74 pages?” Asking him as I was in shook. A little over stepping it wouldn’t you say? Do they not realize this is for the people and anything over at least two pages will make them lose interest. 

“I thought perhaps some Montaigne.” 

“I got stuck on Machiavelli. Read in the French translation he says the ends justify the means. But in the original Italian he merely asks..” Marial dropped the entire tray of tea cups as we all looked up at her. 

“Oh sorry. I was holding..holding that tray...and then I fell asleep listening to you both! Is this a coup or a fucking book club?” 

“She’s right Catherine. Remember what kind of environment you’re trying to rule. Most of these people don’t know how to read and write. So if we go on beginning to quote great men then why even stage a coup. We have to be original and sound like we truly care about them.” Catherine sighed as she got up from the ground to start walking back and forth. I crawled over to help Marial clean up all the broken tea cups. 

“Why do we not just kill him?” I love Marials enthusiasm of trying to get rid of Peter but killing him literally will not solve anything if we don’t have a good backbone of support and ideals. 

“Too messy. Anyways if we kill an Emperor, they will tie Catherine up by her toes and beat her with the blunt heads of pistols.” Marial sighed as she stopped picking up the cracked tea cups. 

“Next time he is on you, stab him in the face. In the back, Orlo cuts his throat, and then you are empress, and I am Lady Marial. The end.” Ah! It all makes sense now! How intelligent. They won’t kill them all in an instant. 

“But it..it is not so simple.” Sadly it isn't and Count Orlo is right. They will get shot and I’m not in the most chipperest of moods to lose my favorite cousin!

“The two most important things in any country is the main religion and the military. If you could at least get one of the two backing Catherine, you’re golden. Although they’re both extremely popular to everyone, I’d say get the military behind you Catherine. Fire scares more people than any man in the sky.” Forgive me God but I’m only trying to help. 

“We need the church to ratify her to the whole of Russia from the pulpit after, so they must support her.” Orlo pointed out as I nodded in agreement. Both are important to Governments damn it.  

“Not to mention if Ivan is alive, we need a sympathetic military for if we kill him before that is all in place, then the military and others may get behind Ivan, and run over Catherine in the process.” Whose Ivan? 

“No one even knows where Ivan is.” Again who is Ivan? 

“Who is Ivan?” Catherine and I both asked. 

“Ivan is Peter’s half-brother, bastard son to Peter the Great. His supporters tried to take the throne after Peter first came to power.” Buffa. If there’s a half son we will be royally screwed! And if they do find this Ivan we’re even more screwed! Not that I can get involved when the coup finally happens but I’m here to give it a good push. 

“I will find out where he is?” Now we’re doing a ghost hunt. What a fun time!

“How?” Count Orlo asked as we all looked upon Catherine.

“Cleverly.” 

“I suspect we need a year to get our pamphlets just right.” A year? Mamma mia at this point I’d rather watch paint dry! 

“It’s no wonder you never fuck anyone.” My eyes widened as I got up from the floor to sit on Catherine's bed. 

“You..you cannot speak to me like that!” 

“Because I am a serf?” 

“Because it’s rude.” A throat laugh began as I covered my mouth with my hand. Looking at the door as some strange man came walking into the room with a book in his hand! Oh shit! 

“How dare you! You just walk into my chambers sir!” My hand was slithering down to my left leg as I kept a dagger there. Tell me we already don’t have a spy. 

“I would have ridden, but my horse has trouble with stairs.” Smart ass. 

“Empress?” EVEN BIGGER OH SHIT! Standing up from the bed as I rapidly walked to stand next to Catherine. 

“Orlo, what are you doing here?” 

“He brought us some books. I left mine back home.” Chiming in as I waved at the Empress. 

“I...uh..thought the Duchess and Empress would be interested..”

“Oh God you’re dull. Get out!” I thought he was being somewhat helpful. 

“Sir.” 

��If you’ll excuse me Catherine.” Slipping out with Marial as we turned the corner but tried to listen in on what was going on. 

He’s giving her a lover? And is the name Leo..and has a big loch? It was either loch or cock but I sadly couldn’t hear what he said. Though he was loud sadly it was a little mumbled. He walked past us as I stared at the wall. Catherine came walking out from the bedroom as the three of us followed her. 

“Is that your lover?” Asking her as she rolled her eyes. 

“Sadly.” How can that be sadly because wow he’s a beautiful dessert.

“Catherine..he’s extremely good looking. I think I would have a sculpture molded from his face at home.” He would look quite beautiful right next to Da Vinci. Seems appropriate wouldn’t you think? Grigors sculpture would be on the left of Da Vinci if I lived in a perfect will. 

“It is disgusting that he would just give me a lover, like I am an animal to be serviced.” Looking up to Count Orlo who had no idea what to even say in this conversation. 

“You would be serviced well. He’s a Voronsky, they are well-known lovers.” I zoned out for a second till Orlo started panicking in front of us. Does he really think that Peter noticed all the pamphlets? He gives him more credit than he deserves because he doesn’t even know Catherine. He thinks of her as some dumb wife at the moment and she’s from Europe. Makes her quite the bookworm. 

“Fuck fuck fuck! The very week we start our adventure, Peter gifts you a man!” He slammed down everything on the table as the three of us watched him panic. 

“He’s well known to insert spies into situations because he’s paranoid that no one truly likes him. It’s something common he does oh fuck! Maybe he knows! And I was there and we had pamphlets about Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!” Approaching him as I gripped his shoulders. 

“Count Orlo will you please take one second and just breath!” Yelling as he stopped panicking and took in a very deep breath in. 

“Orlo will it make you feel better if I give him back?” Catherine asked him as he slightly nodded. 

“How? He’s Peter's gift.” I mean giving back a gift is a whole new world of being a giant dick. 

“Cleverly.” A boy came into the room and got everyone to stop talking. 

“Empress, you wanted to know when the dresses for the ladies’ tea arrived.” There’s no way they came in that quickly! We’ve got some fast fingers in our midst! Catherine and I smirked at each other as we began to walk off. 

“What dresses?” Marial asked as Catherine and I smirked. 

“Just wait and see!” Telling her as we linked arms to start walking out of her apartment. 

“Do you think this plan will work?” I asked Catherine as we hurried towards The Ladies tea room. What’s the best way you can get back at a woman besides being a gossiping old lady like them? Their appearance. Women of the court need to look their best constantly and if you destroy their image by one minor miscommunication. You bring down their entire existence. 

“Oh yes. Vlad. Have some tea ready for us when we get down there.” Catherine told him as we hurried into the tea room. 

“What colors did you make the dress?” I asked her as she smirked. 

“This extremely ugly green and purple. It's all the rage in Europe.” Ah yes I forgot they are. 

The wives were already gasping and filled with excitement for the new dresses as we walked over to the small tea table for us. I’m much more of a coffee person but I will dabble in tea of course. We sat down as I poured her the tea for the show to begin. We’re supposed to keep our eye on the stripped one that should be THERE IT IS! 

Watching the dress being bounced around as I took a sip of my tea waiting for someone to take a nice hold of it. That being The Lady that has the horse's face grabbed a hold of it as she held it up against her. She was smiling like an idiot as she turned towards Catherine and I. 

“Empress, do you like it?” Oh my god if I don’t drink my tea I will die of laughter. 

“Mhm. It looks marvelous.” 

“Truly wonderful colors mixing together.” Trying to be nice to the horse is extremely harder than it looks. 

“You will stand out.” In more ways than one. The face she placed on her horse face was a fake smile and she’s wearing far too much makeup. 

“As I always do.” I might throw up because of this conversation. She took the dress with her as we both looked at each other to give ourselves a little cheer. Fernanda came into the room as she was walking straight towards me. She leaned down towards my ear as I was told that Hernán had arrived. 

“Catherine I know you’ll be greeting the Generals. But my instructor has arrived and I do need to have my lessons.” Telling her as she nodded. We stood up as she stopped me to ask questions. 

“What lesson?” Catherine asked as I smiled. 

“Fencing, sabres, and actual sword fighting. Oh is there an empty hall that I may use” Asking her as she thought for a moment. 

“I’ll arrange the music hall to be yours. For as long as you need.” Perfect. 

“Thank you Catherine. Come by if you need me.” Fernanda and I left the tea room. 

My instructor was a day behind when I left Trento due to the fact this was a last second decision. Luckily he’s made it and I can get back into the habit of training with swords and sabres. I also owe Catherine a big thank you due to the fact that she’s letting me train in the music hall. PlusI imagine no one is going to be playing Handel or Arcangelo Corelli. 

Two of the servants followed me into the music hall as I was standing in an empty room. Guess he’s getting comfortable in his room. The servants placed down the trunk as I popped it open to look at my gear. How I have surely missed this. 

“Ah Duchess Chiara!” He yelled as I raised my head up from my fencing trunk. 

“Hernán Gil! Glad that you could make it to Russia extremely last second.” Placing my foot on the stool to fix my left boot. 

“Of course. Anything to get out of Palma. Hopefully you haven’t lost your touch with a sabre Dear Duchess.” He swung his sabre sword around in front of him as I put my foot down then into my fencing trunk. 

“Have I ever lost my touch?” Pulling my sabre out to do a few little tricks before we got into our positions. Standing across from one another with my left foot back and my right foot ancy ready to go. 

“Vamos!” He came swinging as I blocked his attack then swinging it around to then smack the sabre on his arm.

“Excellent!” He cheered as I took in a deep breath as both Hernán and I got into our standing positions. 

“Vamos!” Our blades instantly met as I spun my wrist trying to knock his sabre out of his hand. But he took a step back to try to aim for my head but I held my sabre horizontally to block his attack. He took a step back then swiftly smacked the sword against my shoulder. Cursing under my breath as I shook my head. 

“Cheap shot.” I laughed as we got back into our positions. 

“Vamos!” Raising my sabre as I tried to aim for his shoulder out of the corner of my eye Grigor came into the room to watch. That was a quick meet and greet from the Generals. Thought it would last a lot longer. 

All I could pay attention to was the fact that Grigor was just waiting for one of us to win so he could do something. What does he want? Blocking his outside attack to then move my sabre right into his chest. 

“Is there something I can help you with?” Taking off my mask as I was beginning to fix my gloves. Grigor shook his head as he approached me and looked like he had something stuck up his own ass. 

“You think strolling into the palace and our first introduction being a little bitch was something adorable?” Someone’s wife just got screwed. But not by his own cock. Does he not remember how that conversation started? Because I remember him saying that I was able to make his cock hard after my introduction to the Emperor. Most women would find that flattering, I find it repulsive. 

“Not adorable. I believe they call it an honest chap who calls you out on your wrong doings. Hernán if you want to take a break go for it. You’ve had a long journey.” Turning my attention completely on Grigor as Hernán left the room. Grigor marched towards me as I stood there watching this poor excuse of a man try to act as if he was a top bitch. Poor men like him make me sigh and want to drink for them. 

“Are you trying to intimidate me?” When he got a little close for comfort I stuck out my sabre to aim it directly in the middle of his chest. 

“Trust me. You don’t want to get any closer.” 

“You think you’re flimsy little sword scares me? It’s fake.” He pushed it away as I hit him in the shoulder with it. 

“Ouch!” He grabbed his arm to then march towards me with all of his wrath showing. Smacking him on his leg which caused him to yelp in pain. 

“I should have the guards whip you!” I would love him to try and have one of the guards lay a finger on me. Oh how I would love it!

“Grigor. I warn you. IF you think Russian women are crazy, you wouldn’t last a minute back in Italy. We women use our fist and words to solve our problems. Instead of whispers and tea parties like your wife.” He reached down for one of the fencing swords as if he was going to stab me. 

“Go ahead. Do you think you scare me? Catherine told me everything about you. You let the Emperor eat fruit out of your own wife’s cunt. If you let the Emperor walk all over you like that, then why would I let you try to intimidate me. You even threatened to have guards sent after me instead of dealing it yourself.” My sabre lashed towards the fencing sword of mine to knock it out of his hands. 

“Besides. You can’t lay one finger on my body. If one scar is placed on my body from you, the guards, or Peter himself. Italy joins the Swedish and we run over your little shit hole of a palace. Then I place my own private home in St. Petersburg and have you wash the floors.” The tip of my blade was underneath his chin as he kept a straight face. 

“I don’t like making threats but when you come storming in here expecting me to bend over to kiss your ass. A position you're familiar with obviously. But when you threaten to have the guards whip me well.” Grigor began storming off as I followed him very close. 

“Tell me Grigor. Do you wish this kind of life for yourself?” He kept shaking his head as I was trying to talk to him. 

“To allow some man child rule over such a beautiful country!” Halting in front of me to turn his heel sharply. 

“He’s not a man child!” He growled as he turned towards me. 

“And you’re a dumb ass. We can be doing this all day.” 

“What do you want?” 

“You approached me Grigor! I was quite content having my fencing lessons then you came waltzing in here expecting an apology. To quote my mother when I argue with my brothers from home. Ladies are not allowed to start fights, but we are surely allowed to finish them.” Grabbing his collar to pull him closer to me. 

“For once be a man and solve your own problems instead of cowering under the fucking bed.” Grigor's eyes widened at my statement as we just kind of stared at each other. I noticed that both my and Grigors bottom lips were shaking a little bit. Biting it to stop it twitching as I let go of him. 

“Forgive me. I can be..quite..of a dick when it comes to my passions.” Taking a step back as my throat gets dry. 

“I am too. Perhaps we both got off on the wrong foot with each other.” I placed down my sabre to rub my hands together. 

“Perhaps we did. After hearing what Catherine was doing through and Peter punching her in the stomach. I was sort of mad at the world and everyone in it.” 

“And with my wife..constantly sleeping with the Emperor. I’m sort of not in the right place with myself. May I reintroduce myself.” Grigor finished as I slightly smiled at him. 

“You may.” 

“Grigor Dymov.” He bowed as I was going to play along. 

“Duchess Chiara of Trento.” Holding out my hand for him to place a kiss on it. 

A quite refreshing restart. 

Taglist

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Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron

Summary: Magic has a price—if you’re willing to pay.

Born into a family of powerful witchdoctors, Arrah yearns for magic of her own. But each year she fails to call forth her ancestral powers, while her ambitious mother watches with growing disapproval.

There’s only one thing Arrah hasn’t tried, a deadly last resort: trading years of her own life for scraps of magic. Until the Kingdom’s children begin to disappear, and Arrah is desperate to find the culprit.

She uncovers something worse. The long-imprisoned Demon King is stirring. And if he rises, his hunger for souls will bring the world to its knees… unless Arrah pays the price for the magic to stop him. (Taken from Goodreads)

Our Ratings:  

 → Geena:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

 → Kae: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐⭐️

Overall: Kingdom of Souls is full of worldbuilding and characters that draw you in, thought sometimes their actions want to make you rip you hair out. BUT! We really loved this book and are excited to see where this trilogy takes us! Oh also, we should mention there are a few trigger warnings that Rena Barron has listed on the goodreads. 

Spoiler-full review below!

The Good:

→ The Worldbuilding

Geena: So, one of the best things about reading this book was the amazing worldbuilding, which she based off of West African mythology. The kingdoms are complex, and the separation of the different people and their faiths was super easy to follow too. I’ve read so many books where they have some wildass worldbuilding that leaves you scratching your head but this author did a good job at making it easy to understand. Also, Rena Barron did such a good job at describing the magic system? When she introduced the witch doctors in the first few chapters I could just visualize how they were and it was like watching a movie in my head. Like I’m still thinking about that one witchdoctor and her tribe that came down on clouds….. Poetic cinema… 

Kae: OK, so! I really enjoyed reading the differences between the tribes and how they are distinguished from each other. Some people had their bodies covered in tattoos others were known for their tall and lean figure, light eyes, etc. it was very wonderfully written and I always knew who Rena was talking about when she was mentioning the characters or introducing new ones.  Sometimes others don’t do a very good job of separating characters by looks and they expect the reader to remember everything based off of personality, which is quite annoying. Rena did a wonderful job of giving all of the characters their own individuality so we wouldn’t have to struggle and figure out who was who even if they weren’t mentioned by name. The way she wrote the big city (which I cannot remember the name), was very well done and you could easily see the differences between the city and the tribal lands.  I also love the way she incorporated the religious ties to magic in this world and the origin story of how they got their magic. There was a war between the gods, and the God of gods gifted humans with his magic. There are even mentions of fallen angels technically. It was just really interesting altogether. 

Geena: Yesss, the origin story was also one of the coolest components of the book. Also, Rena Barron does this cool thing of interspersing chapters throughout the book that are from the perspectives of different gods and their opinions on whatever is going on in the book. I really enjoyed that even though the first time I read it I was lowkey confused.

→ Arrah

Kae: Arrah!! My sweet summer, very cursed child. Arrah is the daughter of two of the most powerful witch doctors in this world. Her mother, Arti,  comes from a tribe where she was known for being the next in line to be the chief and a high witch doctor. Her father, Oshhe; who is the son of the high priestess/witch doctor and his tribe, making him one of the highest as well. This lineage from which Arrah comes from, left many to have very high expectations for her and her magical abilities. Unfortunately for Arrah, no matter  how many magical rituals she went through, was not blessed with magic. She often beats herself up about it because she feels she has let her family down, and truthfully the only person she let down was her mother. Her mother is The high priestess, and I mean THE HIGH PRIESTESS The entire kingdom. So she often waves her daughter off and is not home most of the time anyway because she is fulfilling her duties at the temple. So our main character is very close with her father who is honestly everyone’s dream dad.  oshhe is the epitome of a perfect father. 

Geena: Reading about her relationship with her dad, I was like “it’s just not realistic.”

Kae: LMAO BUT HONESTLY THO!! So when the children start to go missing in the city people begin to worry. Arrah’s Self-proclaimed a little brother ends up going missing as well. This leads her to sell small pieces of her life in order to use magic for a short period of time and figure out who is stealing the children.

Geena: LMAO Kae’s “sweet summer, cursed child” is so accurate. All she wants to do is become a powerful witchdoctor so her mom will love her :(  Despite everyone around her saying that her magic (or lack of) doesn’t define her, Arrah lives in a constant state of anxiety where magic is on her mind. She isn’t the most perfect protagonist and I liked that about her, she made dumb decisions and recognized they were stupid… but did them anyways 💀 A big fucken mood… But then again a lot of what she does throughout the book is driven by her need to help others, like finding her self-proclaimed younger brother or selling more of her lifespan to find a way to free her father from her mother’s spell. Her personal relationships are a wreck too like this girl had a crush on Rudjek, the future royal vizier, it was very much a two way crush but the whole time Arrah was like “Idk does he :////” like u absolute dumbo… EVERY SIGN POINTED TO “YES”  AND SHE WAS STILL LIKE “I’m imagining things.”

→ Arrah’s Squad

Geena: Barron also wrote Arrah an amazing group of friends. Primarily, Sukar and Essnai, both her friends from the city who would travel to the tribal lands to visit their own tribes for the yearly magic ritual. Sukar was very much a himbo (like almost every guy in this book lmao) and Essnai was a wlw QUEEN who was the oNLY ONE WITH A STEADY RELATIONSHIP THROUGHOUT THIS BOOK. Barron really said lesbian rights by giving Essnai the most wholesome relationship. Sukar and Essnai didn't turn their backs on Arrah even after her family was banished from the kingdom for crimes that Arrah had nothing to do with, and even accompanied her when it was revealed that Arrah would have to die to set the world to its original state. Also…. Omg when Sukar, Essnai, and Rudjek found out that she gave some of her lifespan for magic they were literally that meme:

Arrah: So I did a thing

Them: What?

Arrah: Sold my life for 3 hours of magic

Them: 

Kae: LMAOOOOOOO BINCH 

Geena: I JUST LOVED HOW THEY WERE LIKE “U DUMB BITHC!!!!! I GUESS NOW WE ALL GOTTA HELP U DEAL WITH THIS” I loved their friendship so much :’) 

Kae: IT WAS REALISTIC AF. I’d also like to mention how everyone and her friend group was basically like “Did you and Rudjek finally kiss yet? No? Typical.” And they would tease Arrah and Rudjek CONSTANTLY. Arrah’s friends had her back through literally everything and were ready to die by her and Rudjek’s side. They were some real ride or die friends when it came down to it. THEY WERE WITH THE SHITS. 

Arrah and Rudjek: *standing near each other* 

The homies:

→ Arrah’s Dad

Kae: OK so we have Arrah’s father, Oshhe, who is honestly the kindest man that I have ever encountered. He is such a wonderful father to Arrah and does everything in his power to let her know that she is loved and that she does not need to possess magic in order to be loved. He is constantly showering her with the reassurance that she needs to have two accept who she is. Arrah is in love with the stories he tells her. He also allows her to hang out with Rudjek when they both know that Arti, Arrah’s mother, would forbid it. (Rudjeks father did some foul shit to Arti when they were young and she isn’t over it… which is understandable, considering he had her tortured.) sadly, Arti curses oshhe and he is under her spell. He tried to fight it, but his magic just isn’t as strong as hers. He is complicit in whatever Arti says while he is under her curse, but he is often sweating or staring off into the distance, because he is still trying to break free. He’s basically under my control, knows he’s under my control, but is stuck behind magical, mental bars watching everything go down well he can do nothing to stop it. It’s really fucked up.

Geena: Kae summed up Oshhe really well. We learn about how he met and married someone as unloving as Arti and it’s so sad. He’d always been in love with Arti from their time at the tribes, and he still loved her when she came to the kingdom and fell in love with the King. And he was the one there after Arti was freed from her torture, even though he knew that Arti would never love him back and that she wasn’t the same woman he’d fallen for. Also, when he tells Arrah something along the lines of that when she was born he knew she’d be the love of his life bc he loved his daughter so much it’s unREAL. He went to a dangerous forest and killed a mystical animal for her. And he would have killed the gods themselves if it had come to that. And like Kae mentioned he was under Arti’s mind control but was aware of the torture she was putting Arrah through, and when he finally gains back control at the VERY END… AND DIES RIGHT AFTER?????? BRO????? I WAS LIKE THE FUCK!!! HE DID NOT DESERVE THIS!!!!!

Kae: I WAS SILENTLY SCREAMING AT MY DESK 

Geena: GIRL RIGHT… IDK BUT HER DAD JUST WARMED MY HEART. HE DIDN’T DESERVE HIS DEATH… 

Kae: THAT SHIT HURTED. 

The Bad:

→ Arrah NOT CATCHING A BREAK  

Kae: So, I’m going to backtrack just a little bit. But when Arrah sells some of her so for magic, she does like this magic phantom walk and finds out that her mother is the child snatcher. Her mother discovers that Arrah knows this and curses her so she can never speak with ill intent against her mother. So whenever Arrah tries to get help or tell someone what’s going on she literally cannot talk. It’s pure agony for her. So her mother curses Oshhe, gets pregnant by a demon via possession of him, and is exiled from the country. So they take a boat and travel to this small town that is known for its unresting spirit activity. Time also doesn’t exist in this town so it’s very hard for her to keep track of minutes, days, months, etc. they get to like this hidden Temple where Arti gives birth to Efiya, the demon baby. Efiya grows rapidly. She is born, then she’s like 5 the next day, then she’s 10. Then she’s Arrah’s age, 16. Efiya is a SUPER powerful girl who has the power of actual Gods, and she is completely unstoppable. Arrah escapes, returns home to her friends, and they’re on a mission to try to stop Efiya. Rudjek dies, comes back, she and he ditch the homies because they don’t want the homies to get hurt. WELL!!!!!!!!!!!! Gotdamn EFIYA shape shifts to look like her sister, waits until Arrah leaves for a moment to collect herself after it gets a little HOT with Rudjek, and goes to take some herbs. OUR GIRL SAID I'M NOT GETTING PREGNANT. comes back and boom. She sees him having sex with her sister. She’s shooketh. And PISSED. And hurt. Then the homies find them, blah blah blah. And long story short, they find the temple of the Gods, she fights and Efiya and they  basically kill each other. BUT Arrah comes back and learns her and Rudjek can’t be together. BUT THEY KISS ANYWAY. THEY WERE LIKE FUCK IT. I'M HERE FOR A GOOD TIME NOT A LONG TIME. Oh, yeah… and Efiya killed her parents. That happened. And her grandmother. And all the elder witch doctors because she wanted to steal  their magic. 

Geena: Poor girl was just knocked around like a ping-pong ball. One tragedy to another 🤕 First, she can’t do magic for SHIT and her mom doesn’t love her because of that. Second, the guy she likes is her mom’s nemesis’ son. Third, every single person she cares about is taken from her one way or the other, from her adoptive lil bro to her dad. Like I thought the book couldn’t get any worse when she saw her dad be possessed, but then Rudjek dies? And when he comes back to life he ends up sleeping with her evil sister thinking it was Arrah. Right, we gotta mention… in an attempt to free the demon king Arrah’s mom has a half-demon half-god baby, aka Arrah’s sister 

Kae: SHE FUCKS A DEMON!!!!!

Geena: A DEMON IN HER HUSBAND’S BODY TOO… AND ARRAH WATCHES THIS HAPPEN IM SCREAM .. AT LEAST I THINK SHE DOES BC I HAD TO RE-READ THAT CHAPTER LIKE 2 TIMES

Kae: GIRL THAT SHIT WAS SO WILD WHAT THE  F U C K 

Geena: AND YEA…. TO TOP IT ALL OFF TURNS OUT ARRAH IS  THE REINCARNATION OF THE DEMON KING’S SOULMATE…. SO THERE’S THAT, NOT TO MENTION SHE AND RUDJEK ARE ILL-FATED BC TOUCHING EACH OTHER SAPS ARRAH’S MAGIC (which she acquires permanently after some wild rituals her grandma does before dying at Efiya’s hands). THE LIST OF EVERYTHING THAT GOES WRONG WITH ARRAH’S LIFE IS SO FUCKING LONG OH MY GOD I FORGOT HOW SHIT SHE HAD IT

The Ugly:  

→ Arti and Efiya

Geena:  The ugliest villains can be found in this book. We have Rudjek’s dad that had Arti tortured, which broke her mind and twisted her into an unloving and terrible person. Hearing Arti’s story pulled at your heartstrings, but did it justify her killing 12 underprivileged children to resurrect a demon with whom she’d have a baby with JUST so she could resurrect the demon king. In my opinion… no. Not even just that, but treating your own child like shit and basically ignoring she exists until the very end of the book where suddenly she feels regret for neglecting Arrah for 16 years. Overall, on a scale of 0-10 Arti is a -5 when it comes to the mom scale.  Also, Arti is a powerful witchdoctor, and she cant feign ignorance because I’m pretty sure she would’ve seen the future at one point and seen everything that goes down. The only good thing she did do was kill the man that tortured her and countless other women. I feel like I’m too harsh on her given what she’s gone through, but she essentially puts Arrah through the wringer by cursing her and forcing her to watch her dad lose his own body. I’M LIKE I DONT WANT PPL TO BE LIKE ‘UR JUS BEIN A BITCH, ARTI SUFFERED TOO’ LIKE yes she did suffer, but rather than taking action against those that put her through hell she chose to ruin the lives of innocents ju kno. 

Kae: YES!! Arti was on some bullshit and I get she got fucked up and the love of her life was against her. But like… don’t take that out on your daughter because you can’t use her to get back at your enemies. I think that’s exactly why she treated Arrah the way she did. Arti married Oshhe for his power in hopes to have a powerful child. When that didn’t happen, she was pissed and started planning for that damn demon baby. Her actions are all based on revenge and power and in the end, they kill everyone. Including Arrah, though she doesn’t stay dead for long. She literally is like “Nah, I got shit to do.” And the gods are like “Mmm ... we can’t let our sister be reincarnated into you again… soooo, no?” And Arrah is like “Too bad bitches!” And zooms back into her own body. 

And then there’s Efiya. Efiya is described as beautiful and looks much like their mother. She starts off as a sweet little girl who just likes being around her big sister. But once she learns human things, like playing and being a child, she gets interested in that, and begins to abuse her powers. 

Geena: I was kinda disappointed on how the Efiya storyline went because like Kae mentioned, she had started off as a sweet girl who loved Arrah. And I had thought Arrah would run away with Efiya and train her against Arti but bOY WAS I WRONG. Efiya is powerful and she knows it, she kills countless gods and absorbs their power, and when she kills Arrah’s grandma she tries to take her power too but for some reason it doesn’t take. Instead, Arrah ends up taking her grandma’s magic (along with every other powerful witch doctor). This annoyed the fuck out of Efiya, bc she’s supposed to more powerful than Arrah, prettier than Arrah, and just generally better at everything. So, Efiya is like ‘I can’t take your powers or see your future so I’ll fuck your man instead” …… very much 0-100. Near the end of the novel I still couldn’t tell, did Efiya really love Arti and Arrah? Because on the one hand it seemed like she hated the prospect of killing them, but on the other hand Efiya didn’t care about skewering Arti. She was a complex villain for sure, kinda in the same way Arti was. 

Kae:  OH. AND THE DEMON KING GAVE ARRAH SOME OF HER PAST LIFE MEMORIES BACK. So like, now a piece of Arrah feels torn because she loves everyone in her current life. But she was married to the Demon King in a past life and he is determined to have her love him again. And I feel like a very small piece of Arrah does. The Demon King wants her back so they can resurrect demons, kill the remaining Gods, and take over the world like they originally planned. SO. THERE’S  THAT. A big whammy for ya there. But yeah. Shits crazy. 

Geena:  KJDNFDS RIGHT THE WHOLE ‘MARRIED TO THE DEMON KING IN A PAST LIFE’ SCHTICK…. THE POTENTIAL FOR ANGST???? GOD I CAN’T WAIT. This is a love triangle I CAN get behind because it’s gonna be MESSY 

Kae: He also mentioned possibly trying to kill Rudjek. 

Geena: Oh yea oh man.... Wait... there is a meme for this 

Arrah seeing the Demon King and Rudjek throwing hands:

Conclusion

Kae: SO! In conclusion, we loved this book. The story was WILD from  Start to finish. Rena is such an amazing storyteller and her descriptions that were vivid without being overdone. You know how some others like to go on for 10 pages about the smell of the wind and the bark of a tree. But Ren does it right! My favourite part of the book has to be Arrah and Rudjek . being so awkward around each other and dodging the fact that they’re both in love with each other. It was really cute because neither of them wanted to ruin their friendship and I think that was very realistic. The friendships are also beautifully written as well. And the way Rena differentiates the cultures of the tribes from one another is amazing and I felt like I was there. 

Geena:  I agree to everything Kae said above, Barron does an amazing job in (like what we mentioned before) worldbuilding shit. AND YEA my favourite part was like when Sukar purposely hangs around Arrah to make Rudjek jealous JUST BECAUSE IT WAS SO FUNNY TO ME. But honest to god I’m so excited to see how it’ll go from here because it’s supposed to be a trilogy right, so there is SO MUCH that can happen and there are SO MANY paths this can take. 

ooc: First anyone can comment on this post or like it. If you want to ask me questions my ask box is open. I am more than willing to answer questions you may have.

A more cohesive list of my comments and thoughts on cats 2019, let it be known it is still hot garbage and still does not belong in the jellicle junkyard. Before I go on, I want to say, Cat’s is my favorite musical. I RP Munkustrap. To critique any version (and their are lots) you have to love The Musical. Any other critique is objectively a person who will rate it badly. Cats was never going to do well, it never has despite its run length through tours and different countries. Cats has never been viewed well by critiques, and is hugely hated in the theater community which is why when you see and read those reviews you have to know they have a preconceived notion of what cats is, and that is that its weird and therefore they cannot like it.

The three biggest critiques I see of the movie (and the show for the first one) is their is no plot, which I will discuss in this review how their in fact is one, how its horny and if you thought the movie was horny well John Partridge is knocking at your door asking if you’ve had your sexual awakening yet, and that the CGI is bad, which yes it is. My goal is to show why some of these are a bit unfounded but also let you see why a person who likes the musical is so disappointed that this movie only perpetuates that this musical is a joke.

Now onto the review. It is around 10k words, so negatives are under the cut.

Positives:

Robbie tried really hard, but sadly he wasn’t enough. He had a few off beats such as his initial intro, and his smile at the end that was weird. But he was good, and he made the shit show of gumbie cat and tugger’s song slightly better by joking with jenny any dots which was one of the best jokes in the whole movie.

Jennifer was a good Grizabella. Anyone making fun of her snot has forgotten Anne Hathaway singing I Dreamed a Dream, and should rightfully shut up.

The rewritten plot was bad, but the song that fit the best with the adaptions made for this horrid movie, besides Skimble’s song which I will talk about in a second, was Bustopher Jones. In the original his number is all about how well respected he is, but people remember his song is a story to make him seem better, we should not be surprised he is dumpster diving for food at all, sorry of a reality hit for old busty but its the truth.

Ian was a good choice for Gus, it was very similar to John Mills’ portrayal with only a bit more backstory. What was missing was a back and forth between someone, such as Jellylorum. Monologues are great but having a scene partner is better because that energy helps momentum and you feel things. Gus is arguably the slowest song, and it needs some livelness and no Misto’s little magic trick was not enough.

Mungo and Rumple were good. I hate the debut version of the song and they made me like it. For those wondering why we didn’t get the fun jazz number and got this slow moving one its because it came from the Debut on West End. The issue with the slow moving one is it falls in the middle where the pacing is already slow packed with more slow songs so it can seem a bit boring. I also wish Rumple kept her accent up.

The idea of the rundown theater/ballroom was really good. It allowed for a very similar feel that the junkyard presents with props and such for the cats to use. The issue is it was not our set the entire time and we are constantly taken out of it.

Skimble’s number was probably the best in the entire movie. It had the feel of the original with freshness from the tap which was genius. The tap dancing added the sounds of the railway in the same way the cats original make the train whistle noise. And the guy tapping was one of the originators of the Mad hatter in The Royal Opera House’s Alice in Wonderland so he was good. The issue with Skimble is the cut to the train and rail station which I will get to.

Negatives:

Three categories

Plot ( songs, characters, dance ), Technical ( movie stuff, CGI, proportions ), Anything I forgot.

Plot

Lets start generally. People say their is no plot even though Hooper attempted to “give” it a plot he failed. Their was no reason because all Hooper did was not only drop his plot halfway through, but he didn’t adhere to his own rules, nor did he need to add a plot at all. The dialogue was clunky at best, and not funny.

So the plot that Cats has always had is said almost immediately after the opening numbers. It is said by a grey cat that unless you know the musical you don’t know the name of but considering his prominence in the musical you know he’s important. He has solos in most songs, and even more in the movie. In the stage show this plot is seen through with a few interuptions. But here is he plot of the stage show for you. The jellicles come together for a ball where a cat will be chosen to be reborn. At times you get this threat, a cat by the name of macavity who you never seen he’s just scary. The cats ask who will it be, and the reason the songs are sung is because the cats are suggesting names of who it could be hence “i have a gumbie cat in mind...” This goes on for a bit their are two songs that don’t seem to fit in this formula, technically three, Grizabella’s songs (not memory), Peeks and Pollicles, and Growltiger’s Last Stand. Grizabella’s songs are to point out who she is and how she is distinctively not a jellicle, or no longer one. Peeks and Pollicles is entertainment they got a whole night to waste before dawn. The same can be said of Growltiger, but it is also paired with being Gus reprising a role more or less. The last two are for entertainment, just like the Jellicle Ball song where jellicles literally describe what kinds of cats they are, its also a bit of a mating dance but hey they are supposed to be cats. So we get to Macavaty he has threatened to appear quite a few times, he is scary, that is all we know. His song is sung as a cautionary tale to the audience and the kittens, he then finally appears and fights and hurts the protector among a few others and takes The Leader Old Deuteronomy. The cats are a bit distraught, then elvis cat struts in and is like what about Misto the magic guy. He then proceeds to say what Misto can do before Misto officially appears as Misto, he has been their all along though using his powers subtly to help the show progress he’s confident if their is something he is unsure about its where his powers come from. Misto brings Old Deuts back, and then Grizabella makes one last plea to the cats IN FRONT OF THEM explaining what happened and such. She gets the touch she craves and Deuts chooses her no words needed. Her plea isn’t part of a competition, it is one to be accepted being chosen is a secondary thing to that. Then we the audience get addressed formally like we did at the beginning a la “are you blind when your born” but this time its like “so you’re not a cat, so now you get us a bit more.” Then it ends.

The movie takes this fairly simple plot of party, guessing who could be chosen, we have to wait a bit before the choice can be made, threat appears, leader who makes the choice disappears then comes back, makes the choice, and turns it into a farce. Something that TS Eliot would hate. TS Eliot didn’t want his cats to be pussy cats, he wanted Hot Gossip. He didn’t want something cartoonish, which is why Andrew was given the rights in the first place. The thing is poetry should not ever be spelled out for you, is up to you to interpret, and these songs and plot is pieced together straight from Poetry. Hooper fucked with that vision, I mean Macavity falling at the end shows this perfectly, that was something you see in a damn cartoon.

The plot Hooper added didn’t work because he dropped it like halfway through. It was no consistent and because their were so many breakaways to the barge letting you see the barge instead of just thinking these cats are in perilous danger it ruins the steaks of not having them there. The plot was bad.

Additionally, and I’ll speak more on this a little later, when the cats are taken away you lose chorus cats. The only cats that are not in the entirety of the show are Bustopher Jones and Growltiger who are generally played by the same actor as the true range for them is that of an opera singer which you would never know looking at this movie.

Songs

Overture: It was weird. I thought the throwing a cat out of a car was a bit harsh and unnecessary. Also the choreography didn’t work. The camera did not know what to do. Additionally, their was some very bad CGI with opening said back. The individual cats did not get their little moments like they do in the stage show which only made them all blend together.

Prologue: Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats: It was drastically cut. Not all the cats get their correct solos, or solos. Some were duets which takes away from the individuality of certain cats. It again like the overture was messy with choreography with the camera not knowing where to go or who to look at. The beauty of the cinematography of the 98 production is you got to see the full stage when dancing happened so your eye could find a focus, you could focus on what you want. We are robbed of that with the choppy cutting and the camera telling us who to focus on. Its poor film choice. Cats a musical that is more music based than les mis you can’t just cut back and forth in a duet or in a song to who is singing like you can with les mis ( which hooper also fucked up ). Also what was with only like five cats singing the solos. I’m sorry this is when we are supposed to meat the chorus, this was like a bad choir rehearsal.

The Naming of Cats: Blink and you’ll fucking miss it. They make such a big deal about a second name but then ITS CUT! They don’t name any second names, only boring first names. Like why even include the fucking song if you aren’t going to tell us character’s names or second names. This would have been a perfect moment with the sloppy cutting to at least let us put names to faces. Everyone walked out of that theater not having a clue that the silver dad cat was Munkustrap cause as important as he is his name is said once in a song, that isn’t about him. This song was pointless in the movie because they cut so much of it. 

Invitation to the Jellicle Ball: So much is cut. So much. We don’t get solos from more than Munk. Its such a sad song with how much is cut and how important it is. It gives us Victoria’s solo which is also cut in favor of a Pas De Deux, which I get you got two great ballet dancers as your leads, but like let her have her damn moment since your so focused on making sure she is the focus of the movie.

Also my second fault to Munk, aside from him having no confidence or the write key in his first line “Are you blind when you’re born.” His solo here is weirdly paced and he doesn’t speak with confidence like he is telling a story, it sounds like he is speaking fast, and just not caring what he is delivering. If your audience conduit is confused the whole time, like this chick is, then don’t rush the deliverance of what the plot is.

This song also tells us the point of the musical and invokes the question “who will it be” which traditionally leads to the cats singing songs about different cats who may or may not appear suggesting who they think could be chosen. The competition which is completetely stupid, having each cat sing their song does not work. Most of the songs are songs sung by other cats about cats. Hence the opening line of the next number.

Gumbie Cat: Rebel Wilson cannot sing well. She has decent pitch. But she cannot sing well, nor does she understand the character. She calls Jenny lazy and fat. The stage version she’s essentially the opposite. Jenny is not a fat joke. She is busy cat who doesn’t get out much, but she does alot of good.

The cockroaches and mice. Besides bad CGI aside, this concept was poorly executed. It was a good concept, a good theory but the execution made it bad. In the stage production the cats in the junkyard portray the mice and cockroaches because its an act its like a play within a play. Here we get badly CGIed kids in mice costumes that ever version of the damn Nutcracker has done better. We get tap dancing cockroaches. However unlike with Skimbleshanks’ number, we do not get to focus on the tap or the clarity of the tap because of the poor filmography which I’ll talk about later.

This number was pretty much ruined by Rebel making a joke out of the whole. Additionally, she zips off her fur. Like its not a coat, or a bigger bit of fur its her literal fur. Its just wrong and it looks cartoonish which again TS Eliot did not want for his cats poems.

Rum Tum Tugger: Jason was a smart choice, but he also did not care about the number. He wasn’t giving it all he had. He has the vocals for it, but he wasn’t giving it. The dancing in this number suffered, none of the kittens or cats in general seem to be loosing their shits over him. They seem more happy about the damn milk.

Many critics say the movie is horny, let me tell you this number has nothing on John Partridge or any person who has ever played Tugger. I mention John because he is the only one who really went their with the hip thrusts and the kittens were the only ones willing to get up in there. Their was no fear the in 98 version, here they all seemed scared to show anything more than emotion. In a song that helps define some of the chorus cats we don’t get any definition from them.

Alot of people hate some of Rebel’s jokes, but the one that Robbie teased her about was well timed and much better than the rest of the jokes in the movie. It seemed natural and not forced. It also kind of goes with the traditional relationship of Jenny and Munk, and how they view Tugger.

This is the only time we see Tugger til the very end with Munk’s song. Because he sings a song, and its not for the competition it already fucks with the plot that Hooper set forth and thus doesn’t really fit into the narrative that Hooper is trying to weave. He should have left it. Originally the song is a mix of the adult cats and the kittens talking about Tugger and having Tugger more or less clarify for them. Its a waste of his character to be honest, and a waste of Jason’s actual talents.

Grizabella the Glamor Cat: Why do we need to know her specific backstory. Her costuming and song should be enough to tell the audience what we need to know. This is classic example of telling not showing, which is a big no no in writing.

Also because of how the beginning of this movie has gone we have no connection to the damn cats singing this song. Two of them typically have had parts in two other songs by now, and one of the cats is a “psychopath” as t-swiftizzle has said and doesn’t appear til much later in the movie. Like why do these cats care. The apprehension from the stage show is not there.

Kudos to Robbie for keeping the strange relationship up where he is hairs standing on end, but still admonishing the rudeness. However it didn’t seem to have an effect. These actors are so scared to touch each other, why would they make fun of and scratch at a cat they aren’t supposed to like. The song had very little agency because of how it was performed and who performed it because we had no connection to those cats prior. Jennifer tried but damn its hard to carry a whole shit show on your back even if Robbie is trying to help.

Bustopher Jones: I said it above and I’ll say it again, this was probably the best integrated song into the plot, while the shit plot still existed. However James Cordon’s jokes did not land. He didn’t carry himself as a distinguished cat in those deliveries which would have helped the character. I didn’t mind the junk and garbage surfing because it gives you a bit of a realistic look on what he probably does at the clubs and such. Think of him like a bit of a dirtier version of lady and the Tramp.

Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer: Again I said it above, this number objectively wasn’t bad. They took a song that I found grating and made it fun to watch and sung pretty well. However again it doesn’t fit into the contrived plot that Hooper was trying to form. Having Victoria there seemed very stupid, I will say more about how she is a poor choice for an Audience insert later. But she did not need to be there. The glory of Mungo and Rumple’s song is that no one is there, and they are taking a mick out of everyone who thinks they are Macavity. Whether it is the West End debut version, or the faster brassier verseion of the 98 show, they are alone making fun of the fact that they fooled everyone, and explain why they can do it through their song.

Old Deuteronomy: It was fine, decent. Until Judi Dench opened her mouth. I am bitter that Tugger didn’t sing the song with Munk but considering how much of the song was fucking cut what would he have sung? That is another issue this musical had, they cut so many songs, and left in songs that weren’t needed or added songs not written by TS Eliot originally at all. You miss the softer side to Tugger by not having him sing or even be here.

Judi Dench, she’s a great actress, she was not a great Old Deuteronomy. This has nothing to do with the fact that she was a woman. I would have been happy if it was Julie Andrews or Maggie Smith ANYONE, but Judi Dench. Judi can’t sing, the talk singing she did was pitchy at best. And the issue is Old Deuteronomy is one of the more powerful singers in the show. Not only that, Judi just did not command any presence. It wasn’t that she was small, it was just that she didn’t draw you to her, the camera had to do that. She molded into the background and none of the cats aside from Munk interacted with her, which made her seem like a stranger and not a cat that these other cats love and trust.

Jellicle Ball: I am crying for Gillian Lynne. This in the stage show is what many call the orgy number. It is more or less a mating dance and where we get the lovely victoria having her second big solo, followed by a lovely pas de deux with Plato who later becomes Macavity which I find intriguing.

In the movie we get Jason asking if its okay to party then they try to bring up the tempo by cutting the music awkwardly. This song just does not work with the choreography given to it. I am sure the Les Twins are great dancers, but first why couldn’t their cat names have been Coricopat and Tantomile they seemed to serve a similar purpose. Second why were they in this. The shoes ugh, but the hip hop does not match the song at all. The stick out and are just awkward.

Instead of this being a beautiful dance, with amazing choreography we get a very strange dance circle after the choreographer attempted to have the dancers dance on the softer notes and down beats, which does not work in a song with very hard up beats, and that isn’t a ballet number. The choreography over all just didn’t fit and seemed ill timed at best.

Also all of the damn lyrics were cut. The Jellicle Ball essentially explains what a jellicle is, which is what Victoria wants to be yet its not fucking explained to her, its poorly explained through dialogue and even then she doesn’t know. Like why take out the lyrics of this number. It made no sense.

Grizabella’s Reprise: Unlike the first song being in front of people, this song isn’t. But if I recall cats are watching. This is where we get the first inklings of memory. This is her plight. Its ruined by Victoria.

Beautiful Ghosts: I will say straight up I am not a fan of T-Swiftie her songs are petty at best, and this one is no different. This song was not needed. We did not need this blatant reason for Victoria to connect with Grizabella, we didn’t need it forced. The beautiful thing about the stage show is the touch and connection between Victoria and Griz is that it happens at the end of the show, and ITS NATURAL and is in combination with Jemima/Silabaub.

The song’s words are written by Taylor, and everyone is saying it fits so well with the musical and it doesn’t. We have no reason to feel bad for Victoria, yes she was dumped out of a car, but we know nothing about her past, and the song doesn’t do anything but allude to what happened. It is the epitome of “I had bad shit happen to me my whole life, but at least your life was good.” It is a song that completely lacks empathy. Sympathy is when you say “well it could be worse” and the last thing Grizabella wants is fucking sympathy. She needs someone to feel with her, not say it could be worse. This song is horrible with a horrible message and sung by a person who can sing well. BUT, its sung by the wrong character, and with the contrived plot that is being forced down our throats, it does not fit into the plot because we don’t know anything about Victoria at all.

Also it greatly irks me that everyone was okay with adding a song that wasn’t based of Eliot’s poems. Every single song in the stage production is a variation of one of Eliot’s poems whether published or not. It is a butchering of his work in a whole new way saying “here we’ll make it better” which is a huge insult to a poet.

The Moments of Happiness: Is it even in the movie? IDK, if it is its probably pitchy and sing talked all the way through, and does nothing for the story or anything. I think it might be when Deuts is looking out the window. But like the song is an addressing to the cats, kind of like an introduction or a toast for the Ball. 

Magical Gus/Gus the Theater Cat: Ian was a smart choice, like John Mills he was a smart choice. BUT, the number felt long. John Mills’ number ran long and we didn’t get all of Mungo and Rumple’s song and Growltiger’s last stand was cut. Gus’ song is the slowest in the show. What helps the song have life in the stage version is Jellylorum singing with him. Actors in my opinion do better with a scene partner, and boy did this song need. It was slow and boring.

Growltiger’s Last Stand: We were robbed a good song. And what we did get, the one line we got was contrived and Growltiger’s song was reduced to a shitty villain song, on a shitty barge, to help this shitty plot. The worst thing is that this whole barge plot WASN’T NEEDED. We do not need to see people in danger to know they are in danger. It is better to not know than to know. This is the whole issue with upping Macavity’s role in the whole musical. A villain is better when they are unknown that’s why scary movies work.

I understand the original Growltiger song is racist, but they already cut songs, and they have shown no issues in changing lyrics, so they could have done. Growltiger originally is supposed to be a reenactment of a play that Gus did. The cats all help. This is another example of ruining the relationships the chorus cats have with each other, and robs them of characterization for us to see. Because remember in the stage show every cat is on stage 90 percent of the time, minus Bustopher, who I believe doubles as Growltiger because of the ranges and such needed. When we lose the cats we are introduced to the chorus becomes nameless faces and it makes me wonder why they are even there because they have nothing that makes them stand out.

Also because so much of Growltiger was cut we loose Griddlebone which is a fucking shame. We loose that tragedy of a tail. We loose a glorious opratic number. All for the sake of a shitty villain plot that had no real steaks at all because it all seemed so contrived and fake.

Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat: Possibly the best number in the show as it stayed the truest to its original form. It didn’t have much cut song wise. My issue with the song lies in the cinematography of it. This song I say rings the truest to the stage show because at the beginning we clearly see a formed railway track of beams. We get the lovely tapping to simulate the train which adds onto the other train sounds that are made in the number.

The issue is the fact that they take us out of the ballroom. There was no need for that. I will talk more about it later. But this number shows us the real issue with scale in this movie and how they have no clue how to address it at all. The cats at one point look like they are two inches tall, and at another point look like the scaling is correct. Their are many many bad bad jump cuts when they are on the actual railroad tracks. One was so bad you couldn’t even see the cast anymore. The scale is very off because it makes you question are they the correct portions when standing, or are they they correct portions when on their hands and feet.

The stage show manages to show everything this song showed within the confines of the junkyard, and it was completely feasible to do in the fucking ballroom but Hooper didn’t do that. When you have a big budget do not add unnecessary shots. That is what made the 98 version so great. They had a huge budget but didn’t over complicate the base show. The emphasized the dancing and singing and let those shine, and let the actors tell the story instead of letting the camera work and new shots tell the story.

Also the actor that played Skimble was Scottish I wish he let that come through. It would have made certain words and inflections just that much better.

Macavity: The Mystery Cat: In this stage show this song is a duet. In the movie is sung by T-Swizzle in order to get money from all her little fans. Taylor is an okay singer, i have heard better, and I have heard better for Bombalurina, both in seeing the musical live, and in the 98 version. They framed the song to be the one Macavity sings to show why he should be chosen but their are not cats to be chosen, remember that was the plot. Yeah its easy to forget.

Here’s the issue with how this song and its subsequent fight is worked out. The song’s lyrics are not changed so they talk about how bad Macavity is which in the frame of a competition to show your best qualities and why you should be chosen it does not fit. We know he was not going to get chosen, we knew from the beginning because it was shoved in our faces. Cats 2019 is a great example of a poorly written villain.

The song in the stage production is a cautionary tale told by two people who have likely had relations with Macavity. They are not only warning us the audience about him, but also the kittens who wonder who he is, who have never seen him. When you keep the context of the lyrics in with this new plot frame it doesn’t fit and only explains why he wouldn’t be chosen.

Additionally because its not a duet, and its sung by a cat we have never seen before, nor have any frame of reference for it doesn’t mesh well. Like why should we care?

Also the catnip. That is so pointless. Macavity is a magical cat, his powers to deceive and hypnotize are seen through his choreography in the fight seen with Munkustrap and Alonzo. But no we have to have magical cat nip spread by Bomby, Mungo, Rumple, and Griddlebone. Why even mention Griddlebone like this with the inclusion of Rumple if we do not get the song where we actually see just why she is an agent other than some lacky. Like this diminishes her character so much. ( And yes her inclsuion in the stage shows that don’t do growltiger like the 98 movie does also bug me this is not just a movie gripe, but the movie takes the stance to show us to her, but she is not the glorious white cat that is also so very evil, she is a wimpy little black cat who is scared that she is called out ).

Macavity’s fight seen mainly with Munk is taken away from us and given to the dumb barge cats fighting Growltiger. Again we have no real steaks in this fight. However we don’t see the barge cats again so why did it matter that we saw them off Growltiger? In the stage show, we actually see Munk, our silver tabby dad fight Macavity. It is a show of raw power that both he and Macavity have. It shows how dangerous Macavity is. It shows what cats do. They fight. We do not get this. We do not get see why all these other cats defer to Munk because his role as the protector is diminished to “I am dad cat hear me roar.” Losing this fight we loose alot of the connections we see between the main cats and the chorus cats. They all help each other, and want to fight. We see them care for a hurt Munk in the stage show. All that is gone and diminished to poor jokes, and twirling chains on a barge that looks about as real as a toy bathtub boat.

In the stage show, Macavity is scared away in this number. Which means he is still a threat but not for now. Not for the rest of the fight. Additionally this number we get the fake out of Deuteronomy coming back because that is how the fight happens. Macavity stole Deuteronomy just moments ago and to see Deut’s come back, we get a false sense of hope and a true feeling of Macavity’s madness. We don’t get that in the movie.

The movie boils him down to a bad villain in a cartoon. Which is the exact opposite of Eliot’s wishes. It is exactly the opposite of what Eliot wanted and why he was so scared to actually give away the rights to his poems.

Mr Mistoffelees: A song traditionally sung by the most confident cat in the musical Tugger, is sung by a character assassination in progress. This version of Mr. Mistoffelees tries to fit into the contrived plot of competing for a Jellicle Life and it fails miserably. A number that is traditionally loved by so many is utterly ruined by the lack of confidence in the entire delivery of the song. I will talk more about Mistoffelees’ character later.

But this song is riddled with so many starts and stops that we don’t actually get a climax to the song. And look Jason is back as Tugger, but his part is taken by Victoria, and the number just doesn’t work. I do not care what you ship. The number does not work the way it was sung or staged. Also Tugger shows back up in this number and when you think he is going to sing the a part its sung by Victoria, it cuts to her, and I was disappointed.

When Tugger sings the song, he tells you of a cat with powers. Powers that we see used throughout the show in subtle ways. Its not shoved in our damn faces. its used in helpful ways. In stage productions he opens the car for Jenny, He lights the stage lights for Peeks and Pollicles. Its all these subtle things, but he knows he is good at magic. Tugger knows this. Tugger sings it.

Victoria and Mistoffelees singing the song rips that all away. Mistoffelees has no confidence in himself though he used magic through the show, it was shoved in our faces. Victoria suggesting he can bring Old Deut’s back is completely pointless because the only magic she has ever seen Misto do is bad magic that only half worked. Now granted she has this insane ability to see the best in everyone and see them ALONE so like who knows.

But the number is ruined because their is no continuation or build up. And no conjuring turn come on. Also Robbie tried, but he is no Tugger. It feels weird coming from him. Like yes he encourages the cats, but like we also never see the other side of being parent, because they cut Peeks and Pollicles which I will discuss at the very end of the song section.

Beautiful Ghosts Reprise: I have no clue if this is before or after Memory. But Victoria’s agency in this number is so stupid. All her interactions with Grizabella were in private where no one saw. Her touching Grizabella means absolutely nothing to us as an audience for many reasons which I will go into later. But here it means nothing because Victoria means nothing to the Jellicles as she isn’t one.

Memory: If you have an issue with the snot go watch Anne Hathaway sing I dreamed a dream and come back to me okay. Tom Hooper has a fetish about that kind of stuff or something.

But snot aside IT FITS THE SONG! Grizabella is supposed to be sad. This is her moment, her chance to cry out for someone to touch her her. Her chance to be accepted again.

We get back to the contrived plot cause she sings a song for a chance to win. But the song does not fit into the contrived plot because even if we are following the shit plot, because of Beautiful Ghosts it seems more like she wants to belong again rather than a chance to go to the Heavy Side Layer hence why Beautiful Ghosts is a pointless song even more than it already was.

In the stage show, Jemima sings with Grizabella. She is a chorus cat mostly but this is her moment to shine. Victoria gets it which fine, but also takes away from the Jellicles accepting Griz because Victoria is not a Jellicle herself. Why on earth should these cats listen to her? They have no reason to. Also because not only was the initial touch done in private, because all these characters don’t interact with each other the touch is rendered meaningless which almost renders the song meaningless. Which is a shame cause Jennifer killed it.

Journey to the Heavyside Layer: It was fine. I could have done without the Macavity bit at the end that was literally pulled from a Tom and Jerry Cartoon, which again Eliot would have hated. Yes its acted by a real person, but its cartoon like in nature ( just like jenny zipper her fur off ) which is the antithesis of what Eliot wanted to become of his poems.

The Ad-dressing of Cats: Why was this song kept in? Out of all the songs this one more or less directly addresses the audience. They had Judi Dench break the fourth wall and stare directly into the camera which was uncomfortable, and not done well. I have seen staring straight into the camera done well in exactly one piece of film and that is Mr. Robot. Here it was weird and uncomfortable. No one seemed to know what to do. The chorus was stronger than Judi so her words were overpowered. She was pitchy at best, and just downright awful in this song.

Then she tells Victoria she is a Jellicle which... like yeah finish out your contrived plot Hooper, but all if it was pointless. And it ruins the “Victoria is the Audience stand in” because the song actually addressed directly to the audience was not addressed to our stand in. It does not match the opening at all which is also addressed to the audience in the stage show. The book ends don’t match and its weird.

When I say book ends, at the beginning the number asks questions about cats can you do this can you do that. At the end it asks you “so you get what a cat is now right?” Its a pretty clever way to begin and end a show. But the movie got lost and forget what it was doing so here it seems weird and out of place.

Peeks and Pollicles: A number that was cut. This number is one of my favorites in the musical because it helps waste time til the end. It allows the cats to interact with each other and Old Deuteronomy. It is one of the best numbers to see the interpersonal relationships between our chorus of cats and our main cats.

This number not being in takes all that away and does not let us see personality in any of the chorus cats. Even Mungo and Rumple fall flat because we do not get to see them not be evil or talk about being mischievous.

This number also provides context for what a Peek is. In Macavity the word Peek is said but if you have only ever seen the movie you have no idea what that word is. In the stage show we learn that it is a term for a type of dog. Additionally, when we take this song out, we also lose some plot context of the cats and the junkyard putting plays to help act out the songs of who they think it will be. And in this case what looks like to be a rehearsed play that the cats are determined to mess up and make our silver tabby go from silver to grey.

Dance

There was so much sacrificed for the sake of cinematography. A musical based in dance had barely any dancing shown because of quick cuts. And what was shown was often clunky and didn’t actually look feline. Nor did it match the music because the choreographer tried to hard to be like the greats who choreographed the nut cracker and other ballets. He also ruined Gillian Lynne’s choreography.

They looked like trained dancers when they danced. Which yeah is good, but they didn’t look like cats. Their hands were often turned up, when to make them slightly more catlike they should be turned down. None of them got comfortable with being on the ground. They all seemed so very very stiff which is the exact opposite of how a cat should be.

None of them understood how to dance like a cat.

The tap dancing in Gumbie Cat as opposed to Skimbleshanks is astonishing. The tap dancing in Gumbie Cat is messy and hardly focused on, when its the star of the stage show. It looks contrived and like they were trying to hard to recreate a scene from a famous black and white film. Also this is a CGI comment but if you look hard enough you can tell that the cockroaches are like the same three dancers copied and pasted over and over.

Contrast that to Skimble with his clear taps. Now the actor who played Skimble is known for tapping. He is a member of the Royal Opera House, which is a ballet company in England. His tapping was made famous when he originated the role of the Mad Hatter, with some brilliant choreography that he was given. His tapping hear shines. It is just a really good example of tap. And its a shame it had to share the stage with the cockroach crap.

The opening numbers was not given what it deserved by the cats jumping everywhere. The opening is a highly for the choreography of the show. Its supposed to show you what you can expect. In the movie it was just alot of jump cuts, and Misto fucking it all up, sorry not sorry. I did not fall for the cute factor. Additionally the choral portion was not choral. They did not line up thus when they line up at the end at Trafalgar Square, we have no reference to them doing this before. Its a shame.

Tugger did not dance sexually enough. I know I know I shouldn’t say this. But most actors who play Tugger try to do some variation of John Partridge’s version, with less hip thrusts. Jason didn’t even try, and thus none of the kittens were enthralled with him. It made the point of his song pointless. Additionally Tugger is one of the strongest dancers in the show in my opinion. He dances in every number and adds his flare. Because Jason is in the movie all of 5 minutes we don’t see this.

I am sure the Les Twins are great dancers. But none of that was showcased. They were pigeon holed into this and tried to fit and failed.

So much choreography was cut because so much of the songs were cut. Jellicle Ball has so many lyrics that are danced and they are cut. So much dancing was cut in favor of showing us Grizabella running away. In the musical that is subtle and you know WHY? its supposed to be it is not supposed to completely take our attention of of the magic that is happening with the dance. That is why Griz is chased away because she draws your attention to her. We didn’t need the camera doing that, and thus ruining the flow of the number.

Characters:

Munkustrap: Not much bad about him. He had a few off beats. He tried. Thought their are times where he looked bored, and his face was not good at hiding it.

Victoria: One face wonder, she is like the Maddie from dance mom’s of this movie. She’s got a Maddie face, and it made it hard to think she had any emotion at all because she didn’t emote. Also white cats are more often than not deaf which the musical often shows as mute because Victoria has no solos. For her to speak was jarring. The speaking was jarring in general but most of the lines coming from her was off putting.

Her not being a jellicle outright ruined any agency she had in the movie. She had more say in things like Misto and Griz than she should have had. The solo she was given was petty and very very condescending to Griz.

She was a bad audience stand in because in trying to keep her original stage role they tried to mix it with this new plot role and it just did not work. And made you forget what they were doing with the plot because the plot was so contrived.

I don’t get why she had to have stripes and spots. She’s a solid white house cat, not some fucking snow leopard.

Misto: He was ruined. He has forced us to see his magic, then doubts himself when asked to use it. He is not confident in himself and a bumbling fool. In the stage production he is confident. The only thing he doesn’t understand is where his powers come from. This is seen wonderfully in the 1998 version where he looks at his hands as he is shooting sparks from them. His character was ruined.

Skimble: Like Munk nothing wrong. But we don’t see him interact with the regular chorus cats so it begs to wonder why is he even trying to show them anything. They don’t seem to know him. Their is no connection between the cats with songs named after them and the chorus aside from maybe Misto.

Tugger: He was not John Partridge. Just watch 98 cats and you will see what you are missing when it comes to who Tugger is.

Jenny-any-Dots: She was mischaracterized by Rebel as being fat, lazy, and old. Her character of being a respectable busy cat who seems lazy to her owners is assassinated. Like their is a reason Munk likes her but that reason is gone in the movie.

Old Deuteronomy: Judy Dench was bad. She couldn’t sing, and commanded no real authority or presence. Robbie could only do so much to give that to her. But she did nothing to earn it.

Admetus/Rumpus Cat: Sadly gone from this movie, though probably because Rumpus would have been more cartoonish than Macavity was and they were already hurting Eliot’s legacy enough. Also I’m not sure we could have handled the camp superhero of Rumpus Cat in this shit CGI.

Alonzo: Was he there? I don’t know. The chorus cats were all a singular blob that did not stand out and had not individuality and personality. He interacts with Munk alot but we didn’t see that.

Asparagus: Not present, granted he wouldn’t have been present anyways because Gus was only present for his number (and that awful barge seen) but in the 98 version and most stage versions he is the chorus version of Gus the Theater Cat. In 98 he is argued to be a son of Gus, or just a younger version of Gus. Because remember what I said in the stage production every cat is on stage for about 90% of the time.

Bombalurina: She’s apparently psychotic in this version. Which she’s not, but also in the stage version she’s not either. Instead of being someone who survived the influence of a less than pleasing purpose she is henchman number one. The Smee ( but more coordinated ) to Macavity’s Hook.

Bustopher Jones: Was decent. James was good, but he also missed the mark with his jokes and they didn’t land well. We saw a more realistic version of him instead of the show’s idealized version which I was fine with. But his lines were wooden and not good. Hence why this show should not have spoken lines.

Cassandra: Was apparently there? She looked purplish I think or maybe that was Demeter. I don’t know but she was rude, and more catty than show Cassandra. But we don’t really know who she is because beyond the Glamor Cat song she along with Demeter disappear into the background with cats that don’t matter.

Coricopat and Tantomile: Replaced with Plato and whatever the other philosopher was played by the Les Twins. They didn’t fit in. Shoving hip hop into cats has been proven to not work, hip hop tugger anyone? So why they tried again here, I don’t know. But they failed. We loose these lovely mystical twins, and get stuck with twins in converse? Like why? What brought on that costume choice, why did that slip through?

Demeter: Could be Cassandra. We don’t know. She’s just a mean girl and not a traumatized cat who is the first to think a sign of danger is Macavity. She was robbed of her duet cause t-swizzle needs all the fame. Munk doesn’t get his moments with her cause VICTORIA! Ugh.

Electra, Etcetera, Exotica: Were any of them there? The world may never know. The movie didn’t show us faces to put with names like the 98 version did. So if they were there who knows. You probably would have no seen or heard them since most solos they had were covered by like four other cats only. And the rest of the chorus cats was a brown grey blob because those are the only cat colors apparently.

Grizabella: We did not need to be told her back story. The song alludes to enough. Jennifer did great though. I just wish her moments were not in so much seclusion. It ruins her final song. We are robbed of young Griz in the opening number.

Gus: Ian did great. He was the right choice, the went a John Mills route. But his number dragged. Ian also didn’t have any connection to anyone in the cast. Like when Misto talks to him his reactions make it seem like he does not care who these cats are now. It makes him seem stuck up rather than reminiscent.

Jellylorum: Apparently was a kitten? Sigh. She is supposed to give Gus as a suggest and sing his song with him as a duet to kind of play off of each other. It gives the number some action and liveliness. Even with all the cuts, the number still dragged.

Jemima/Silabaub: First her name varies depending on where you are watching the stage show. Whatever she had was given to Victoria. Apparently this is because that cat was based of ALW’s wife. Which like fine, but like Hooper can you at least be more cohesive with your plot if you are going to cut a character out?

Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer: We see no real personality from them. Sorry but we don’t. We just see them scheming with each other because they are “evil.” We don’t get the story that the show or the 98 musical gives us. A moment i love from the 98 version is when Macavity does come Mungo ducks and covers his head with hands. It just shows that even Macavity’s own guys, cause Mungo is mentioned in the song not Rumple ( which leads me to think she came later or pulled him out of that ), but it shows just how scary Macavity is. And we don’t get that in the movie. In the movie we get them not knowing Macavity’s plan, which like what use are you then?

Plato: Commandeered by the Les Twins he is ruined. In the show he has a pas de deux with victoria and its a bit sexy and still gorgeous with the gorgeous famous overhead lift that the show is known for. He also doubles as Macavity cause again all the cats are on stage for about 90% of the musical save for a few.

Pouncival: Not there as far as I can tell. Which is a shame Pouncival is a cutie pie in the 98 version.

Tumblebrutus/Carbuckety: His name varies depending on what stage show you are watching. He is the one who tumbles alot. He may have been there, but because of the crappy cinematography whatever tumbling there was, we didn’t see.

Growltiger: Ruined to a poor attempt at a pirate on a toy boat barge.

Griddlebone: Ruined, and demeaned to a low lackey instead of a lavish cat who does with movie Macavity wishes he could.

Macavity: He became a cartoon villain as opposed to an actual threat. He wasn’t ginger, and his eyes were weird he was the only one with weird eyes. He wasn’t scary, any agency he had as a threat was ruined by shoving his badness in our face. They could have just had the cats disappear. Its like Tom Hooper saw a scary movie saw what made it scary, the unknown, and decided I’m not going to do that. Also any thing that would have shown his strenght is gone because hsi fight was taken away.

Any cat in the chorus is just a blob, or not CGIed. LOL. Part of this is because the cast does not interact with each other. In the stage production touch is important. Interpersonal relationships are important. We don’t get any of that. We are not used to touching and nuzzling thus when we see it is awkward. Not to mention the awkard rubbing noise we get when it does happen, it doesn’t help. The cast aside from the named cats, and munk have no personality, they fade into the back and its such a shame because each cat is so unique and different. Granted we wouldn’t know that since when they explain that in the stage show, they cut it out in the movie.

Technical Stuff

The first four songs are pretty much ruined because it takes just about that long to get accustomed to the strange CGI. The CGI is bad, I have seen better CGI cats in video games. Honestly I know makeup is time consuming, but it is cheaper than CGI. Better cats make up that isn’t just the theater makeup can be seen in Doctor Who. What made this CGI so jarring is the lack of noses and lips that looked like cats. We know via BTS pics that the actors wore make up. So why they couldn’t put noses on, or the line straught down to the mouth then curled up the ends of the mouth to give us a muzzle is beyond me. It looks like bad photoshop. I will never understand that decision.

I don’t care that dicks were CGIed out. That is not what made cats “sexy” in the first place. The dancing made it sexy. The CGI was equal to that of movies in the 90s and poorly made video games from the early 2000s.

From a film standpoint it was poorly shot. Tom Hooper does not know how to shoot dance. And it shows. He does so many swift cuts and pans that we don’t get a good view of what the choreography is.

We are too often forced to see things that are already obvious because of other tactics like shadows and voices. We do not need to see a cat disappearing via Macavity. We do not need to see so much yet our focus is taken from the group ruining whatever connection the group had to eachother and us the audience in order to show us bad dialogue and special effects to show capturing. I said it earlier its like Tom Hooper saw scary movies and said I wont do that I’m gonna do it like Tom and Jerry do, but that’s an insult to Tom and Jerry. Or he has never seen a horror movie in his life.

Their are far to many unnecessary scenes paired with jump cuts. We never get a sense of the group of cats as a whole because not only are they seperated from the only cats we know the names of, but we have to see where those cats are since we have to know they are in danger. No one knows of the thread, except like once, which is when Griz arrives. Its like the chorus doesn’t care, even though Hooper does his damndest to make sure we the audience care, but we don’t even our audience stand in doesn’t. These scenes are mainly Growltiger’s barge, and taking us out of the ballroom for Skimble’s number.

Now onto proportions. They are all over the place. A watch would strangle a cat, a ring would not fit around their wrist. They at some points can just reach a door knob, while at other parts barely reach a foot off the ground. The cockroaches and mice did not size down well. Skimble’s number had so many issues with size and cinematography which is a shame cause it was one of the best of the movie. The cats can walk on the tracks like with 3 feet on either side of their own. Yet we all know that is not correct. They look two inchest tall in comparison to the tracks. Yet we see them inside the train and they are like child sized. Then we have weird cuts to wide shots of the bridge which doesn’t help with proportion as one wide shot is so wide the cats nearly disappear. Another proportion issue was the stage in the ballroom it was a normal stage and they measured to it like a normal stage. The moon looked like something out of 1920s black and white film so was proportioned for a normal human, but the chandelier was big and felt oddly proportioned in the ballroom. Like it should not have been able to fit through the whole in the roof.

Tom Hooper did not know what he was doing with this movie. It is very clear he had no vision and did no know what the show was about hence why he had to push his new plot in while keeping everything the same so it seemed like hot garbage which is exactly what it was.

Tom does not know how to film dancing, and he has been notorious for cutting songs and such with Les Mis and he did it again. He cut songs, and then added a song which he did with Les Mis too. He messed up guys.

Back to the CGI for a minute besides the overall choice being bad because all the did could be done with practical makeup and would have looked better. It was poorly done. Their ar emoments when their is just color on the actor’s hands, when their is no color, when their is fur. Judi’s main is curled under her chin so it looks like a really bad fake beird. If you are in the background you may not be CGIed at all. There wer emoments where the connections did work such as feet on the ground, and Munkustrap helping Victoria off the car looked weird cause Victoria’s fur slid around but not with her body. And that is just a few things I noticed. The tails were good but like, it took away from the dancing.

Their was real awkward sound design. First of all the butchering of Andrews music to fit certain aspects like Tugger asking for the party to be turnt up. It was weird and didn’t fit. Additionally any moment where nuzzles or touches happened were awkwardly silent with a sound that sounds like the rubbing of a plasticky material together. None of which is helped by they never actually touch eachother because their is somoene blocking the camera. A show that has a character essentially scream “touch me” lacks touch one of the most basic cat interactions.

Breaking the fourth wall was jarring because it didn’t happen throughout. The 98 version gets away with it because they do it from the beginning. But this was weird. It was a poor choice, and an example of wanting to keep the original but it not coming across because of choices made prior.

Other Stuff and Random Thoughts

The movie was really confused at what it wanted to be. It wanted to have the original plot, but also this new plot which was forotten half way through and remembered again. Continuity was a huge issue with this movie. Victoria as audience stand in doesn’t work because the audience is addressed at the end. The jokes didn’t land. And the subtle jokes in the stage version are all but erased.

Cats would have never done well, even with an extended timeline and good CGI. If it was a perfect movie it would not have done well because it is Cats. Cats has never done well with critics. Its biggest fans are often children because they get the story because it is such a simple story. This movie forgot that, but also tried to make it easier to follow, but they failed cause it was confused.

This movie is a huge disservice to TS Eliot. Eliot did not want pussy cats, that is why he didn’t give the rights to Disney. It wasn’t that he didn’t want animated cats like in Aristocats. He didn’t want his cats to be like Tom from Tom and Jerry, which Macavity became more or less. Their were cartoon moments in the movie, and its a disservice to the Poet. Adding to his works with a new song is a disservice. Making the choreography so contrived because the new choreographer wants to show he has subtlties like Balanchine of Nutcracker fame was a disservice to Gillian Lynne.

The movie lost the vision of what cats is and was. It lost the vision of what a cat is because the cats did not act like cats. We never saw a true cat fight, or the cats interact with each other in ways that weren’t awkward. We never saw them being cats yet we are told that they are cause Judi told us so. They never acted like cats or moved like cats. Simple hand turning downwards instead of upwards, or bending of the legs, holding yourself a little differently that makes all the difference.

The move wasn’t aboslutely terrible, but it was pretty bad. I still think its garbage, and I don’t think its worthy of the title Cats because it was hardly that. A bigger budget does not mean cool CGI, and more shots, it means improve the basics to the very best. The Corridor Crew on Youtube say it best, if you can do it practically do it because it will always look better. This movie missed so many marks.

I say all this out of love because Cats is my favorite musical. But this movie failed. I wish it could be chosen to be reborn, but I’m afraid what we’d get. So I’ll stick with the stage production, if you can see a tour or any of the productions around the world do it. If not watch the 98 version, get the DVD because the one on youtube cuts out some good parts like Tugger playing bagpipes.

I wanted this movie to be good. I wanted to be proud to say I like Cats and I can’t unless I specify the stage version, because this version is not deserving of a like from me.

So I’ll repeat what I said at the beginning of this review, Cats 2019 is garbage that does not belong in the jellicle junkyard. Granted, no one from the 2019 movie or who has seen it would get that reference, but that’s okay. Us real fans know. We’re the true fans we get it. We will love this musical, but I say we cannot love this movie for so many reasons, and I hope I have laid out a few of my own.

*flops down on sofa*

*exhales*

Tumblr gives me a lot of wild shit every now and again. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's hilarious, sometimes it's disheartening. And then yesterday came along and gave me the one-two punch of:

Captain Marvel being dolled up by the Russos instead of a jacket, S.H.I.E.L.D baseball cap and a Nine Inch Nails shirt, which is how she should be (not gonna talk about this, just want it out there that I'm pissed about it)

One Day At A Time being cancelled

ODAAT I'm gonna kind of touch on because it's not really what I want to talk about, but it did help me finalize the words for what I do, and that's capitalism in entertainment.

The most annoying goddamn trend in filmmaking (and of course in TV and Netflix/Prime originals) is companies caring more about their bottom line and less about making good content, and yeah I know this dead horse isn't just beaten, it's thrown into an active supervolcano but it really pisses me off and it's why I hate the new Star Wars stuff (well OK hate is a bit strong but they're uh Not Good) but I'll get to that. What corpos can't seem to get into their bloated skulls is that one cannot exist without the other. You need to put out good, quality content with value so that fans like it so they give you money so they increase your profits so you can make more content and so on. But somewhere down the line some fuckhead went "what if we just pushed out what we have?" and just kinda expected us to not take notice.

Now before the comments section gets all hot and bothered because I know some people on this site don't have the gift of reading comprehension, I know profits are important, I'm saying when companies shun good filmmaking for more money, they get lazy and all they can think about is profit and not how they make that profit, they don't care at all about using that money to make more good, valuable content.

One Day At A Time

I've never watched One Day At A Time but the fact Netflix just outright cancelled it knowing damn well what it meant to the people the characters are representing is just disgusting. And they have the fucking audacity to blame it on the viewership? I've seen hundreds of artworks, gifs and a video clip here and there of this show. I've seen precisely one (1) meme of 13 Reasons Why and that is literally it. I'm not following the tags for either. Plus, #saveODAAT has, last I checked, 350k tweets on trending or thereabouts?

So obviously the viewership isn't the problem, it's the racism and homophobia of cancelling a Spanish (? - again, never seen it), LGBT+ focused show that a lot of people quite happily and positively connect with when a crap show about suicide and Friends gets to stay on. It's just ugh. Cancelling a show like this then paying something like $100mil to keep Friends. I was going to expand on the shitty capitalism here but tbh that's it, Netflix are making bad decisions and like I say, I'm only going to touch on it because it's not the main part.

Star Wars

Go watch the original trilogy and it's clear George Lucas was trying to create and do. He was trying to make art. The key difference between that and modern SW to me is BB8. Look at C3PO and R2D2 and already you can see they belong. C3PO is a translator droid and I'm not sure what exactly R2's job description is but it's obvious he does some kind of pilot assistance for X-Wing fighters. I never understood people who said R2 never did anything, because they obviously haven't seen Star Wars. You get that this is an R2 unit, right? Like, there's more than one out there and they have a job they were specifically built to do, it's just this one particular R2 unit who had to carry the message? Anyway, I'm derailing. R2 and C3PO have functions and they're clearly not new, they've been used for a long time. Then you look at BB8 and instantly it's like "this is a toy. This so called character was designed to sell toys". And then he was. He's a toy, he's on bags, notebooks, pens, clothes, everywhere. Disney is less concerned about making a Star Wars movie and more about making money off of the Star Wars name.

Into The Spider-Verse VS YA Movies

YA movies tend to suck because they were adapted from books and we all know how that pans out but the reason I'm using YA books specifically is because my mind jumped to The Hunger Games. I couldn't tell you a single fucking thing that happens in those movies. They're so dull and dead and forgettable and the characters are borderline unlikeable but you know which one I do like? Catching Fire, for one reason and one reason only: Jena Malone as Joanna Mason. Save for Haymitch, she's the only character I liked because those two are the only characters with any kind of charisma or life to them. They made an at most halfway decent attempt overall at recreating some otherwise really great books and they made a big show out of it, hiring some pretty well known names. And I'm not disparaging their performances, it was just what I call, ever since Suicide Squad came out, the Harley Quinn effect, in which good actors get given a good character and perform them really well and, through no fault of their own, fuck it up because the character was written poorly and no matter how well they act, if the script doesn't change, the performance will always be shit. The same for Divergent. And Percy Jackson. And Fault In Our Stars.

Then outside all of that you have Perks Of Being A Wallflower which is just a great, heartwarming movie because the characters feel like people and the brightness isn't turned way the fuck down in post and you actually want to be invested, and they're not afraid to have a colour palette beyond a splash of pink here and blue there and red there. Plus, Ant-Man as an English teacher. THEN you go watch Spider-Verse and oh hey. I can actually see the movie now. And I mean see it. They do not slack off when it comes to visuals. Even by animation's standards, everyone is so expressive and alive and... animated. Sorry, I couldn't get a better word but they are! When you look at Miles in comparison to Katniss in terms of writing and performance, the difference is just startling. The only times I can think of where Katniss shows any kind of emotion in the first movie is when she slams the knife in the table and Rue's funeral and I had to think about that. Without thinking for Miles, already I've got "who's Morales?", the scene where Uncle Aaron teaches him the shoulder touch, the scene where Miles spray paints in the subway, that scene in the alley, the moment in Olivia's office when he just freezes after she says she can't wait to watch Peter in immense pain Like That and made all the wlws melt in their seats. You get the idea. So what's the point for this section? Well, as simply as I can put it, Hunger Games was made with money, for money. Spiderverse was made with love, for love. Spiderverse cared about people who read comic books and paid more than enough tribute to the art forms people think of as lesser for no goddamn reason other than elitism and proved for the thousandth time that it is something that can be used in filmmaking. They were trying to make art. Hunger Games and most other YA novel movie adaptations saw a preestablished fan base they could exploit for money. They were trying to make money.

Rambo

This was a weird one, yeah. Don't worry I was confused too when it popped into my head. I saw the original Rambo a while back and what I liked about it (and Apocalypse Now) is it wasn't a war film where the USA charge in and hooray everything's all right, this movie grabs your shirt and says "hey. Vietnam did something to these guys and they're not OK. Probably they'll never be OK". Then I watched the Rambo reboot that came out in like 2011 or something and I remember thinking "OK so now he's just this dude? Who lives in Thailand... And what, that's it?" There was no scene to show his psychological state today. Nothing to acknowledge his PTSD. They just thought "hey! Let's make Rambo but this time, just give him guns and and yelling and spray some blood!" The reason I kind of ended this train of thought quickly is because I realised that, let's be real, the main body of Rambo's audience just want to see Sly Stallone kill some fools. But yeah, the fact that they just ignored John's mental state in place of mega violence is such a glaringly obvious move to just appeal to violent teenage boys.

The Auteur

My favourite director is Wes Anderson and my favourite movie is The Grand Budapest Hotel (though Panos Cosmatos seems to be eyeing these titles with Beyond The Black Rainbow and Mandy, I haven't watched them yet). Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, Wes Anderson, auteurs always stand out even though their movies are all the same, and I think the reason they're so successful is because that specific style is so much better than most other mainstream cinema. I'm not saying that those other movies are bad, I love them and will watch them again and again but I'm saying Wes Anderson could make a short movie and it would be better than most Marvel movies put together (don't talk to me about Captain Marvel, I haven't seen it yet. Gonna see it this Sunday). No matter what you think of these directors, you can instantly tell the difference between these movies that they care about and the passion and hard work they put in and Disney pumping out their 400th reboot.

It Keeps Working

You guys wanna know the thought that keeps me up at night? Someday they're going to make a Fortnite movie. You guys wanna know why it keeps me up at night? Because it's going to be popular. Yeah, obviously not at the box office, because it'll be a videogame movie and those are worse than book movies, but it will be popular for no apparent reason. And what pisses me off is that Fortnite's popularity is only because of the battle royale mode, which has now essentially become synonymous with dying franchises and it just adds another layer to the lack of creative effort and the movie will just be Hunger Games with guns. Exactly the same as what I said at the start of this rant, there's a really noticeable shift from making content to jumping on whatever bandwagon is passing by because you know it'll make you money. Yeah, you have to spend money to make money but that doesn't mean you get complacent in what you spend your money on or if you spend money at all because when you cut corners, consumers can see that shit.

Anyway I'm done complaining thanks for having the willpower to pay attention to my dumb opinions.

Saving You - Part III

*Hello loves! This is Part III, we get to meet Kendra and read a little bit into more of Leah’s backstory. Bear with me here, I promise all of the details mentioned have meaning in future parts! For now, enjoy!*

A few hours pass by since I left the clubhouse. As soon as I got home, I showered and changed into a pair of old raggedy pajama shorts and an old Chicago Cubs t-shirt. Chicago is where I’m originally from, at least that’s where I was born and raised until I was 5.

I hear a knock at my door, and sure enough it’s my girl Kenz.

I open the door and let her in and give her a weird look as she has a key to my place.

“My hands are full, I couldn’t reach for my key.” She says laughing, and then I look down and see she has a million bags.

“What the hell did you bring?” I ask eagerly as she passes by me and into my home.

She plops one bag on the couch and takes everything else into the kitchen. “Well, my overnight bag for one because I plan on getting wine drunk and I ain’t going anywhere. Secondly, I had to stop and get our favorite men – Ben & Jerry, and I also picked up some stuff to make tacos, because you know I’m Mexican and I can make tacos in my sleep.” She explains as she places all of the items on my kitchen table.

I cannot stop laughing because Kendra always makes me laugh. It’s just her personality, she rarely takes anything seriously. She is the literal definition of zero fucks given, but the girl demands respect. She was one of my first friends I made in nursing school. Actually, she was my only friend I had made at that point, and by the grace of God we were able to come up through the ranks together. Kendra has been my side through a lot of shit. She’s had her fair share of family shit and guy drama, but she’s always been there for me – no questions asked.

“I was just going to order us a pizza.” I say, staring in awe at the groceries she has brought over.

“Well, think of it this way – you save some money on food tonight and you can repay me by holding my hair back when I hug the toilet later.”

“That’s fair.” I reply, and we shake on it.

Kendra takes over my kitchen as she preps the tacos, and I assist. We have our usual girl talk banter, because even at 26, we still act like teenagers.

“So, did you go to the club today?” She asks.

“Yup. They called before I was even walking out of the clinic.” I say as I dice up some onions.

“EZ and Angel?” She asks without missing a beat.

“EZ and Angel.” I repeat and nod.

Kendra, although she has no direct blood ties to the club, she is still clued in on myconnections – she knows everything, it was part of the deal Marcus and I worked out.

“Who started it this time?” She asks as she seasons the meat in the pan.

“I honestly don’t even know, EZ had a nasty cut on his face but Angel took a nasty beating as well.”

Kendra just rolls her eyes as she knows how immature this whole ordeal is.

“Did Angel thank you this time?” She asks even though she already knows the answer to that. I stop dicing the onions and stare at her with my “really?” face.

She puts her hands up and says “You know, I was kinda hoping for a miracle. You’d think after cleaning up his messes for the fourth time in a month, a ‘thank you’ would accidentally escape his lips as if he truly is thankful for someone who gives a damn.”

I let out a sarcastic laugh, “I’m just doing my job because it’s what I do for the club. They save my ass when I need them too, and I save theirs.” I say pouring all the veggies together in one big mixing bowl.

“When have they had to save your ass, Lee?” Kendra asks with a quirked brow.

Before I can even respond, she answers for me “exactly, they haven’t. You’ve held up your end of the deal, the least Angel can do is fucking say thank you – he’s such an asshole.”

One would think that after all of the disrespect Angel has thrown my way these last eight months, I wouldn’t give him a thought after I fix him up. It’s hard to explain, but he’s like a puzzle to me and I highly dislike how I cannot figure it out. He doesn’t go out of his way to bully me or anything, it’s nothing like that. It’s just, he doesn’t really care to acknowledge my existence whenever I’m around, and he’s the only member to do so.

Kendra lets out a chuckle, “Okay enough MC talk, let’s eat like the hangry fat girls we are.”

We end up laughing most of the night, stuffing our faces with tacos and wine, oh and catching up on some trash tv.

“How does someone let a so-called doctor inject cement into their face?!” I exclaim and look at Kendra with a major what the royal fuck face as we watch an episode of Botched on E!

“It’s like a nasty car wreck out on the 405, I don’t want to look but I can’t stop staring. Look at their cheeks, like legit cement is in there. How? Why? But like seriously why are we watching this? Isn’t there some cheesy romcom we can watch?” Kendra suggests as she snatches the remote from my hand.

“Bad Moms, perfect.” She says as she tosses the remote on the other side of my sectional.

I take another sip of my wine and tilt my head back, simply enjoying this moment – a quiet night in with my best friend.

“We’re going to be cool moms like these bitches. Right?” Kendra asks as she takes a bite out of a cookie that came out of nowhere.

“Cool moms are the only options, babe.” I answer, and we clink our glasses.

“I know you and I both got shit on in the mom department, but I really don’t want that to hang over our heads when we have kids. Like, if I see you slipping up, I will go full hoodrat Kendra on you.” She announces, and let me just say, hoodrat Kendra is a real thing.

“I promise, I’m not going to be like Briana. I can’t be. Also, if I see you being a shit mom, I’ll first smack you into next week, and if you don’t respond to that, I’ll just use my 1-800-MC card.” I say with a big smirk.

“You chicken shit, you rather call Marcus or Samcro than kick my ass?”

“Kenz, we all know you could kick my ass twice and your own ass at the same time.” I admit, and that’s the full on truth. I’ve seen Kendra scrap before, and I think everyone around Kenz should want her to be on their team.

“I’m so glad you know the true me, it will only continue to benefit you my young one.” Kendra tells me as she reaches out and touches my shoulder in a gentle way but it’s with full sarcasm.

“Okay real talk, what is the weekend plan Aleeah Starr?” Kendra asks while opening up her calendar app on her phone.

“Middle name? Really?” I say with a look, my look of ‘was that necessary?’

“Hoodrat Kenz can come out to play if you’d like.” She replies with a smile.

I laugh and eye roll, “Okay then, Kendra Sofia…” I say to her with an evil eye as I open up my calendar.

“Hmm, I’m off this weekend, all I have going on is Tessa’s birthday party on Sunday. Would you like to come?” I ask.

“Eva already called me and said she’ll see me Sunday.” Kendra says with a nervous expression on her face.

I give her a funny look, questioning why she looks like that.

“Aside from my Abuela Natalia, Eva fucking terrifies me – you just don’t say no to her.” She says deadpan.

I laugh, “A-freaking-men”.

Eva, she’s a true bad-ass. She and Marcus, I think they’re still married? They’ve spent more time apart than together in recent years, but they both love each other tremendously.

“Okay, so Sunday we can drive up together. Do you want to drive together tomorrow and go visit your dad?” Kendra asks.

I let out a big sigh, and I give her another look as Kendra knows my feelings about this subject.

“Why do you ask me this every weekend?” I plead.

“Lee, he’s still your dad. Prison jumpsuit and all, he’s still your dad and he still loves you.”

“I haven’t seen him in a while.” I confess.

Kendra nods, “I know, that’s why I asked if you want to go.”

“I don’t know Kenz, I just feel the older I get and the longer he’s in there, that Father/Daughter connection dies each day. He doesn’t even want to see me half the time.”

“He just hates the situation he’s in, babes. He got a shit deal, but we both know you’re still the light of his life.”

I rub my eyes, trying to keep it together yet again.

“I just don’t know how I would feel going up there now, especially when I’ve dealt with so much shit from the club. I don’t need anyone on the inside seeing me talk to my cop father turned inmate. That’s just asking for me to get someone killed or get myself killed.”

“Aleeah Starr Parker.” Kendra says with her eyes rolling, and I am deeply confused.

“What?”

“Are you so exhausted that you forgot who is even protecting your dad?” Kendra asks, and I palm my face.

“No, I didn’t forget…well maybe for a second.” I admit.

“Lorenzo has Jesse’s back, okay? Our dads are prison buds! How poetic is that?” She says as she pulls me in for a cheesy hug.

I give off a look of disgust, because Kendra is never this touchy feely. But my facial expression does not stop Kenz from continuing on.

“Oh, stop that, give your best friend a hug and smile. Hell, could you even bother to laugh? Come on, if we can’t laugh that our fathers are both in prison, our moms are both dead due to their stupid choices, we would be miserable unsuccessful sluts working on a pole for a living.”

Kendra has a big grin on her face, and she keeps giving me the famous Kendra look – the one where it always makes me smile because she knows how to make me smile; that’s what a best friend is for.

I do end up laughing, quite a bit.

“Thanks for making me laugh, I needed it.” I say looking at Kendra with a puppy dog face, because I am on the verge of tears – it’s been a chaotic week, ending it with the cherry on top that is the Mayans MC. And wine always has me feeling some type of way.

“My little Lee-Lee, come here, give me another hug.” Kendra says as she pulls me in for a hug.

“Okay, time to refill. We are finishing this second bottle and then we are going to sleep like precious babies.” She says as she stands up from the couch and heads to my kitchen.

As Kendra heads to the kitchen, I look down at my wrist and I start snapping my pony-tail holder. It takes me a moment to realize what I’ve even doing or why I’m doing it.

“Breathe, Leah. Just breathe.” I whisper to myself.

“I’ll be okay, just breathe.”

sensitive

I’m thinking today about the word “sensitive,” likely because it came up yesterday in two different contexts.

 Context One.

 In writing my book, my very diligent editor flagged insensitive language—words like blind, dumb, idiot, stupid, freak, tribe. Words that I used to use routinely and now avoid. While I cuss quite a bit in my writing and the characters also have slurs slung at them by enemies, the book doesn’t have any language that one might find objectionable.

 Or so I thought.

 I’ll admit that my first reaction to removing lines like “I’m such an idiot” or “I’m freaking out” was resistance. The lines can be funny, punchy, to the point. They’re common. And, I thought, is someone really going to object to those words? The world is getting too sensitive.

 But “idiot” has connotations of psychiatric illness and “freak” can refer to a circus freak, i.e. someone who is physically deformed or has an extraordinary medical condition. Those aren’t connotations I want associated with my work. I’m not going to make fun of the mentally ill or physically deformed. The point of sensitivity reading is to make sure the language doesn’t unintentionally do something it isn’t supposed to because of my cis White privileged background. I genuinely do not want to step into something I don’t mean.

 Plus, English evolves and so do I. My editor was right that I want to be a leader and ahead of the game as far as language use. I can’t fix anything I’ve written before, but I can make sure new work is better.

 So, I deleted insensitive language and substituted other words. An example: instead of saying, “don’t freak out about Jason” (or something similar) I changed it to “tamp down your Jason kink,” which is now one of my favorite lines in the whole book. By avoiding common but insensitive language, it forced me to be more creative and accurate. Win-win.

 I’m very happy with the way the book turned out.

 But then I read a review that objected to a line.

 And it ruined my day.

 (I’m exaggerating, but there were real tears from me, multiple times.)

 The character’s line wasn’t intended to be taken literally. It was a flippant line from an imperfect character. A throwaway (like most insensitive language).

 Fuck.

 I can justify it all I want. But the bottom line is that the reader was sensitive to it, so despite all my efforts to take out insensitive language, I have a phrase that someone doesn’t like. Out of 87,000 words.

 Context Two.

 This bothered me.

 For a variety of reasons.

 First, I genuinely did not want to offend someone unintentionally. (This is separate from having a bully in a book call someone a bad name. I would hope that no one would think I approve of bullying for obvious reasons. Books just are better if there are villains in them.)

 Second, I was annoyed because I thought I had fine-tooth combed the book specifically for sensitivity issues. (Or rather, had others do it, since I cannot see these things.) Thus, I also had that same original kneejerk reaction—that they were being too sensitive. Hadn’t I gone through this already?

 That made me argue (to myself)—at what stage do we sanitize writing so much that it becomes bland? Plus, (more arguing…) the character is flawed. If he did everything perfectly, the book would be boring. And more justification: I ran it past a gay friend and he said he says it all the time, it’s completely acceptable, and that “no gay man” would object. Even so, do I apologize? If I apologize, does it mean I did something wrong? Is it wrong? I don’t think it is, but I don’t want to hurt someone … (And so on.) Blah, blah, blah, I can justify it all I want.

 Third, though, the review bothered me because I am sensitive. I’m sensitive to what that reader was saying about my writing. I’ve written about this before, but I truly believe that readers have the right to their opinions and bad reviews help because they keep away people who feel the same way. But personally speaking, I can’t read them. (And incidentally, this wasn’t a bad review, just one phrase royally pissed off the reader.)

 I’m the kind of person who will pull up some throwaway, thoughtless comment someone made YEARS ago, and have it still affect me. Couple that with being a people pleaser, and I can pretty much torture myself for the rest of my life. So, for self-preservation reasons I have to step back.

 I could tell the part in the review from the reader objecting to my line was going to bother me—and it did. Probably for all of the above reasons: I want people to like me, I don’t want to hurt anyone, it was a joke (and I am not excusing jokes, because those can hurt the most), maybe we’re all too sensitive, maybe I’m too sensitive, maybe I should’ve taken it out, maybe I should fight for it because character flaws, maybe it’s not that serious/bad/objectively offensive, etc.

 So, what is the solution here?

 In the grand scheme of things, I think the throwaway line is either (1) not objectionable or (2) objectionable but from a flawed character. Yes, I realize that’s contradicting myself, but this is my blog and I can be inconsistent.

 I guess what I mean is I hope most readers won’t be so sensitive that it will stop them from liking the book (if they like the sort of book I wrote). The phrase is mild. My character didn’t actually believe what he said. Perhaps the reader is just too sensitive. (As I am.) Perhaps the reader is allowed to be “too sensitive.” (As am I.) 

 But if readers do find it objectionable, I hope they will take it with the spirit it was intended—a flawed character making a joke, and sometimes those jokes fall flat with some audiences. He made a mistake, and he actually got called on the carpet about it both from a friend and realizing it himself at the end of the book. So maybe it was a growth point for him. Maybe he needed to be imperfect so he could grow and learn.

 Like me.

 As far as the second issue, me being too sensitive, well … I’m not sure I can change that. I have thicker skin than I used to have and I also have protective mechanisms in place (I don’t usually read reviews unless people send them to me) that take care of my thin skin. I don’t also think necessarily that being sensitive is a bad thing. And like I said, I learned with this book on what to do the next time.

 Bottom line: I’m not perfect, the book isn’t perfect, the character isn’t perfect. Even though those are presented as ideals, I suppose it’s much more interesting to not be.

 And, if it does offend you, I’m sorry to have caused offense. It genuinely was not meant.

In POTC5: DMTNT, do you think there wasn't enough scenes showing depth of everyone's relationships? Ex: Jack could have told Henry the stories of his parents' adventures ("Your mother was the Pirate Queen."). Henry and Carina could have confided in and learned more about each other and thus begin to fall in love. There could have been a scene or two of Carina and Barbossa bonding over their love of stars/astronomy and/or Barbossa telling his pirate tales. What do you think?

Sheath those swords, readers… This is gonna be a long read.

I’m just gonna start off by saying that, as much as I prefer “Dead Men Tell No Tales” to “On Stranger Tides” – because it wasn’t full of 2D characters, because it wasn’t focused solely on the sudden post-AWE idiocy of Capt’ Jack – it was definitely the weakest Pirates’ movie of them all in terms of actual fucking piracy.

There was (absolutely?) no sword play in DMTNT, which was disappointing as hell because this franchise was one a swashbuckling extravaganza. The main villain was (sorry not sorry to say it) a serious bloody letdown – I had no connection to this guy at all, and his backstory was just so… dull. (This coming from someone who finds sympathy in the tale of Davy Jones’, and who really loved Beckett’s whole scheme.)

The supporting characters? Bloody useless. Gibbs was under-utilised so much that I actually fail to understand why they even brought him back. And him sassing Jack, and being ready to up and leave him at any turn was just messy and way too OOC for my liking. Marty being back? Could’ve been better. Scrum? Kind of entertaining, really filler. Murtogg and Mullroy? What the fuck was even happening with those two, I’ll never know.

I get that they tried to cut off all ties to OST, and I’m honestly quite glad of this. But Barbossa going back to his shiny, quite frankly grandiose costume, was just a giant plot hole – one that I think the writers built a bridge over because they needed a way to bring Barbossa back into the world of Jack’s fuckups and he needed a reason to be ticked off by Salazar. Also, the makeup they gave him this time around was somehow worse yet somehow the same as that in OST. Basically, I missed Original Trilogy!Hector and I’m still pissed at how they ended his run.

Overall, the plot was sketchy as fuck (plot holes galore! continuity errors everywhere!) and it got dragged out for way longer than it needed to even though it’s the shortest film in the saga – this is semi-hypocritical coming from me because “At World’s End” still ranks in the top spot for me despite its critical reception (general movie reviewers are ignorant to so much! they didn’t really pay attention! … but that’s a different story).

All this to say… I think the film did its best with what it was given. The writing was truthfully rather weak. The direction was just… a little all over the place.

The Barbossa-Carina plot could’ve been golden but instead they went for the shock factor only to (spoiler!) kill him off five minutes later. Any other conversation they could’ve had about constellations or Galileo’s book would have ruined the Plotwist! He’s her daddy! thing they were aiming for.

Jack’s reactions to anything relating back to Will/Elizabeth seriously pissed me off. Those two saved him on numerous occasions and yet… he’s degrading her and insulting him? In front of their son? How nice, Uncle Jack. Elizabeth has surely told Henry some stories over the years so I don’t doubt that he already knows of his parents’ adventures with Jack and Hector and Gibbs’ and co – he mentions Krakens being real and all that jazz – (Where was Gibb’s scene with Henry, or Barbossa mentioning that he was, I don’t know, basically his parents’ fucking reverend?!) Jack’s overall reception to Henry and the way he treats him throughout the film just had me sheltering my eyes (but that’s probably because Sparrow was so unlike himself in this instalment, and I’m gonna attribute 90% of that to Johnny Depp’s fuzzy, messy, probably actually-drunken portrayal of a once iconic character. (Every word he spoke had me cringing in my cinema seat, honestly.)

I mean, yeah, there was definitely room for some more meaningful scenes. They could’ve had Carina/Henry bonding more instead of just forcing them (very quickly, I might add) down the ‘pretty boy and pretty girl fall in love’ path. They could’ve had Jack (actually acting like the end of AWE’s Jack) sharing a moment with Henry, in which he tells him of how he reminds him of both his parents, in which he doesn’t roll his eyes or wag his tongue at the sheer thought of W/E.

And though all of this absolutely contradicts what I first said in my post-first viewing review, I firmly believe that this movie had one goal, and that was to just tie up loose ends. (Though only half the ends they tied up were ever really dangling in the first place.)

The one thing that actually made this movie worthwhile to me was the Turner endgame, and that’s because it was the only thing that was driving the movie in the first place. I don’t know anyone who went to see this because they wanted to know more about Salazar, or how Jack screwed him over. That wasn’t selling it to anyone, imo. The driving force behind this movie, to me, was “Meet Henry. He’s Will and Elizabeth’s kid. He’s the hero.”

They (writers, directors) were given the task of resolving the Will/Elizabeth plot, and they decided to do this through Henry being their tether. He wants to free Will, he frees Will. That was Henry’s plot. Carina is (despite them giving her a side-plot that gets resolved in like two minutes) just there for the ride.

They wrote a story based solely on fantasy and magic, and they needed a character to actually understand this convoluted tale. We’re gonna talk about stars and shit. Shit, we need someone who can read the stars. Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if she was Barbossa’s daughter too?

The whole storyline of DMTNT is just a giant fucking muddy puddle of magic and stuff… I cannot stress this enough. It literally could’ve been a movie about a bunch of sailors who get lost at sea ad discover an island littered in constellations. The only things that tied the magic to the piracy were Salazar’s plot (which was incomprehensible as all hell), and the unresolved endgame for one William Turner (which they royally fucked with, by the way).

So, do I think they could’ve or should’ve had more scenes that brought the characters together a little bit more? Yes. Do I think they wanted to? No. I think they wrote a beginning, wrote an ending, and then filled in the middle with a bunch of random crap nobody really cared about – 80% of that movie was filler.

Sorry for the rant btw, I’m just super salty when it comes to DMTNT. Disney gave them the keys to reboot the franchise and return it to its former glory, but instead they chose to ruin what were once important characters and/or take some pretty serious liberties with plot elements from past movies. The only highlights were anything involving Orlando and Keira, believe me. That’s the general consensus I’m seeing, and I find it impossible to disagree.

I’m just thankful they resolved that ambiguous Turner family dilemma that’s been haunting me for a fucking decade now, even if it did come at the price of a mediocre movie that I half-regret watching, chock full of plot holes and nonsensical decisions).

(In the words of Veep’s Dan Egan, “of all the mediocres, it was the mediest.”)

Know how I did that story evolution thing where I wasn’t sure if I’d do it for multiple stories or just Embers, welp its happening again. Story Title: Untitled (yes that is seriously the title) Year Created: 2014 Status: Hella unfinished and unpolished Current Plot: In the land of Belor adventure comes to everyone. Whether their adventure be small or world-altering, everyone will embark on one in their life. Here in the heart of Pine, the trading city of Kite holds the potential for thousands of adventures and destiny could quite literally wait around the corner. To call Kite home is a promise for a great adventure! That is, if you want one. Robyn Soulseer hates adventures and adventurers. She wants nothing to do with them and would love to live her life quietly going unnoticed by any higher powers, or frankly even lower powers. Her plan for a quiet life was going perfectly, she had a simple, mundane job and no one noticed her. The plan was perfect until the tent for “Wessel’s Freak Show” went up in Kite, and suddenly her life is caught up a web of trouble, and annoyingly, adventure.

Evolution of/talking about story under cut (It’s written very stream of consciousness style I’m sorry)

So, this story was born from a manga excerpt I saw actually. I don’t know what it was actually called but I just know that the main protagonist despised being the main protagonist. I loved that idea, so I sort of adopted it into a trope heavy fantasy setting and thus Robyn was born. Basically Belor is supposed to be a fantasy world where everything that is a common fantasy trope will happen. Some old grandmother crosses the street and begs you to find a mysterious flower, don’t question that shit you just go get the flower, hell yeah. Originally it was a very comedic sort of thing where people just accepted this sort of thing and were aware of it, but about two or three years ago it changed to be more subtle and only Robyn is aware of each ‘quest’ point that she comes across. Sort of like “is no one going to question the cat in the spotlight? No? Well it better not want my fucking help” Robyn was originally actually called Robyn Spiritgale apparently. I’m just now seeing this in my notes, but I’ve been calling her Soulseer since like 2018 for a while and it’s far more fitting. She has kept a lot of the same personality traits that she started with, which is mostly stubborn and a little too forward to the point of coming off as rude to most people. The one large character change she had was a year or two after creating the story I changed Robyn’s character so that she was completely deaf in one ear and incredibly hard of hearing in the other ear. The cause being a sickness when she was very young. None of her personality changed, just the one trait. The only other character that was in the first draft as a main character was Tabor. Tabor was originally much taller than I imagine him now. At least five inches, and he was also far more mature than he is now. Tabor also originally shared Robyn’s scene where she points out a bunch of people starting their adventures through menial means and is the scene where I point out some tropes. This scene was scrapped at one point and then very recently I rewrote it so that Robyn shares it with a character named West. Tabor was originally just called a shape-shifter, and I think it was about six months before I finally gave his species/race a name which was Rarin. Basically the Rarin are people of the country of Rarck. Rarin are shape-shifters that can turn into nearly any animal. They are each born with a soul animal that is their first shift and their easiest shift. The only animal that Rarin cannot shift into are extinct animals, save the Dragon. Dragons created the Rarin race so the royal line of Rarck can shift into dragons. Unfortunately for Tabor, he’s not royal, but his soul animal is a dragon, which makes life very hard at home. No one really leaves that country and no outside people are allowed in, but Tabor wanted to join the circus so he ran off from home. His backstory is basically a really bad home life and more tropes of him being the bastard child of the crown Prince. Rarin are very rare to see outside Rarck since it’s a closed country so most people call Tabor a shifter, which isn’t the politest way of putting it. Tabor originally joined up with Trewst’s Troop, a circus troop, but it was illegally bought out by the main villain, Wessel. Wessel has remained the same since his creation a few months after Robyn and Tabor. He’s a sleazebag human businessman that I gave illegal magic to. He uses something called command magic which forces people to do what he wants and that’s how he got the circus troop from Earlin Trewst and turned it into Wessel’s freakshow. Reasonably upsetting the very diverse troop by being a racist buttweed. The story originally revolved around Tabor getting seriously hurt in an act and running from the circus and begging Robyn for help to get him away from Wessel, which she tried to deny, but she was seen with Tabor which forced her to get involved. This has mostly stayed the same. Tabor’s escape was changed early on to include two other characters: Bolt and Peter. Bolt is a middle-aged man since I saw the need for some sort of voice of reason since I had been lowering Tabor’s maturity more and more, (his age stayed 16 he just keeps getting more immature cause he’s the ‘baby’ of the troop) and Robyn is just too stubborn and selfish to actually be seen as a voice of reason so I needed someone to play middleman between two very different teenagers and that was Bolt. Bolt is a mechanic and gets along super well with the dwarves and gnomes of the troop since he can build some real high tech stuff. The southern dwarves when he lived in the mountains making Peter’s robot body called him Bolt since he was a tinkerer. His actual name I didn’t come up with until probably two or three years into this project and it’s Clarence Allen. Along with Bolt comes Peter. Peter is 18, but he appears ten due to being a human soul trapped in a robot body. Peter and Bolt’s storyline is such an Inkheart ripoff it’s not even funny, but it’s staying. Basically Peter has what I call Story-weaving magic, where he can pull things out of books so people can see what he’s reading. Except he has no clue he has this magic and it’s out of control because he has no body and magic needs a body to function correctly. He lost his body in a surge of accidentally magic where he read himself into the book, but his body stayed out of the book. He pulled Bolt in completely since Bolt is his actual human father though they keep that secret throughout the book. It was later added that Robyn has hearing aids because her father, who is a soul catcher, caught Peter’s soul for Bolt years ago, and Bolt repaid him with the hearing aid. It’s the addition of Peter and his magic that brought the minor character of West into more light. West was originally just the head librarian of the library that Robyn worked for. His name appears in the first draft as just West. He’s said to be in his early thirties and a prodigy and he’s very bland. West went under major changes when I realized I had called him a prodigy of Story-weaving magic, I had offhandedly mentioned he went on some huge quest, and I now had a character who needed help with Story-weaving magic. Thus West the minor librarian who was only supposed to be there start and end of the story to push Robyn on her adventure became a reoccurring character. Reoccuring to the point where he’s actually one of my favorites. First change was that I made him a tad younger and he’s now 25. I kept the fact he had white hair and offhandedly attributed it to some adventure that I had yet to iron out what it had been. I may have mentioned that he collected stones at this point as part of the adventure. His main job in the story was for Peter to take a shipment of books to the library (that Robyn had been out on the road getting for West in the original plot and this hasn’t changed) and when he returns the books he gets a lesson in story-weaving magic and starts to understand his magic. I then ‘kill’ Peter a few scenes later, he gets his body back but he’s in the wrong world (our world) and I basically make things super fucking complicated as I’m wont to do. West’s backstory has grown almost out of control to the point where I have hundreds of pages on him and like 8 on Robyn. Around 2017 West’s backstory started taking shape and his character really started to become more rounded. I now have nearly his whole quest plotted out, with a lot of it actually written. His story being that he is originally from a country (Vassar) that doesn’t have magic because it was cursed by the dragons when they were hunted off of Belor. So to have magic in Vassar is seen as unnatural and demonic. When West is born with magic it’s not great, his parents call him a demon. He has a bad childhood and one thing leads to another and he’s on a quest for the seven sorcerer stones, which are basically seven stones of magic that have the souls of the seven greatest sorcerers in all of Belor sealed inside of them, they brought magic to Belor after being gifted the magic by the dragons...there’s so much backstory here. If I go into full backstory I think I’ll find out if tumblr has a word limit on these posts. Main thing that came from me fully rounding out West’s backstory is he now has a last name of Brightstone. He’s the King’s appointed Storyteller. He is the most powerful Story-Weaver in all of Belor now. Plus he is far more flamboyant and flashy with his personality than before. The entire reason that Robyn works for him is because he is so loud and bright that people look at him and not her. I also added the character Lexton that works at the library with them. He’s a cursed half-satyr half-fairy man. By the time the story starts he’s not really cursed anymore, but the green sorcerer Kutrix, cursed him 200 some years ago to be a donkey forever (he could not die which means I kill his character a lot in the prequel cause he just pops back up). He was a very young satyr/fairy when he was cursed (23), and remained that age when he lost his curse when West was 20. So the two of them are very close having spent a lot of time together and basically I’ve been trying to find a good way to add in that at the end of the book they’re dating. Because this book is so convoluted I may as well have minor characters dating be one of my main concerns. Around the time West was starting to grow as a character I also added an overly protective brother sort of character for Tabor. This character being an Argonian man named Gerur. Gerur was originally also very minor character. He’s the second half of a Tabor’s circus act and works as a beast tamer. Since Tabor can shift into any animal they used to just jokingly do mock beast tamer shows, but under Wessel it’s become insulting to both Gerur and Tabor. Gerur joined the troop when he was 14. In Argonia he was under a debt to reclaim his family’s honor since his father had been executed for helping a Rarin escape. Argonia and Rarck have been at war for over a thousand years and neither country truly remembers how it actually started. There’s just a deep hatred in each country for the other. Earlin Trewst invited Gerur to join the troop and find a better life free of any honor debt, where he could make his own honor. At this point Tabor was 8 and very new to the troop. Gerur wanted nothing to do with him, but since Tabor wasn’t aware of the hatred between Rarin and Argonia, he wanted to be friends and Trewst wanted Gerur to work with Tabor and take care of him. So, basically Gerur and Tabor are super close now, Gerur is overprotective. Gerur has always been a ranger sort of character and very skilled at fighting, which I just cemented with his later backstory. For a while all these characters were great. I had Robyn, Tabor, Bolt, Gerur, and Peter wandering around and I was ironing out details and when I got to the point where I decided I was keeping the whole ‘killing’ Peter thing so he got his body back (I’m not going into full detail there it’s too much) I had created a character named Lily. Lily is a nymph who was 2 years older than Peter and did view him as his actual age because they had grown up together in the circus. As I wrote more with Lily I found that it didn’t make sense for someone who was such good friends of Tabor, Gerur, and Peter to just stay behind when they ran, so now Lily was in the group. With Lily came her backstory, and hoo boy we’re not fully going into that, but main things that changed when her backstory, which happened around 2016, I created the characters Knot, Sundew, and Cornflower. Cornflower appears in the main story as a very minor character, and Knot’s appearance is currently under works because he is such a huge character now. Sundew was originally named Robin before I thought for a minute about how fucking annoying that would be so she became Sundew. If she appears in the story it’ll be minor to just explain she was the one who kept Knot alive for years, but again, hoo boy Knot’s story. Don’t know how he’s playing a part yet but I have dozens of pages explaining him and he is the reason this story took the turn into a mess of plotlines that I don’t know how to iron out. The main problem this story has been falling into for the past four years is I have a lot of characters I love. A huge world to play with them in. Like I drew out a map of this world and I have an entire document of the countries and what races live where and the languages they speak. There’s an excel sheet in my Untitled folder that maps out the entire history of Belor from the Age of Creation to hundreds of thousands of years later where this story begins. Because I dove into backstories and because of how I explore backstories a lot of characters have taken shape. West’s backstory gave me the need to explore who these seven sorcerers were. So now disembodied voices of rocks have been given physical descriptions of who they once were and a lot more character even though they don’t show up in the story except in passing comment. At most Kyjes and Kutrix the other five likely won’t be mentioned, but so much has been written about Akvira because they’re awesome. Exploring the sorcerers led me to wonder about the Dragons, which gave birth to Ancient One who is thankfully the only dragon I deal with. She is the dragon who curses Vassar and gifts magic to the sorcerers so that everyone on Belor can learn magic. Ancient One was the first and last dragon on Belor, who was born from an egg cared for by three unseated Divine named Phoenix, Raven, and Sparrow who I have given a lot of thought, but written very little about, but there’s not much worry about ironing them out cause at most they’ll just be passing references. I have also thought a lot into how odd each of these characters are and what do all Fantasy stories need? Prophecy. Which guess what? The Lore of Belor popped up around the end of 2017 when I was working on a completely unrelated story based off a dream I had. Most stories start out as dreams for me. It was a fantasy world though so I just shoved the characters into Belor to play around with them for a bit, and then things started tumbling out of control because I knit the characters into the storyline completely and I fell in love with the character Tab. Which is terrible because his name is so goddamn similar to Tabor and I don’t want to change either of them. Still, when I realized that Tab’s character is some crazy magicked up character I decided to throw a prophecy in for him and related his prophecy to the seven sorcerers. Problem was if I related him to the seven sorcerers then he was now intertwined with West Brightstone. Which made West Brightstone really important. And if this minor character is suddenly important, why don’t I just throw everything out the window and make a Lore that includes what became known as the Divine Nine in my story. So now Robyn, Tabor, Peter, Lily, Knot, West, Tab, Earlin, and Gerur are super uber important Divine Nine, Children of the Divine, the Lore of Belor prophecy people. This Lore basically saying that they’re supposed to be the new voices of the Divine (which I had created ‘voices’ for them in every era before the Age of Absence which would be the story age). And they’ve all got these crazy skills based off things I already knew they possessed. With making them super uber important prophecy people I also wrote in a sequel thing with how they figured out they were the Divine Nine and created the Seconds. The Seconds would be another bout of minor and major characters who were the closest to each of the characters. So the Seconds became: Gilly, Autumn, Bolt, Cornflower, Sundew, Lexton, Gem, Fex, and Keryon. Which that’s a bunch of new names! Gilly was a totally new character at that point and he’s actually found his way into the main story because of me messing around with this stuff. Though he’s incredibly minor and more of a storyplot point than a character. Keryon is the same way, because they were a character I had created when I was filling up Trewst’s Troop with filler characters. But I accidently made them Gerur’s closest friend outside of Peter, Lily, and Tabor and woo they make it into the story. I’ve come to the conclusion that this story, if it ever sees any sort of finished product is going to be very long. I have no clue what order I want to write it, but I have story ideas all over the place. If I write chronologically I run into a lot of problems so I’ve just been thinking of writing it as it makes sense to write it. The real question is where do I actually throw in the Lore? Cause I have yet to write a version of that Prophecy that doesn’t sound like shit. I’m no good at poetry so it’s about to undergo so many translations that it doesn’t rhyme anymore. And it also might just not be prophetic verse and more of just storytime. This has gone on for a very long time and I can just sum it up as Untitled is 22 different documents on my computer. From a simple joke of a story in 2014 that wasn’t actually supposed to be taken seriously, it has actually turned into the story that I most want to finish out of every WIP I have. I don’t think I love any of my characters as much as I love the menagerie of characters I have here. There are dozens of characters that I have trouble calling minor because of how much information I know about them, and I have to try really hard not to let them steal the show from Robyn or the others, because I really want this to flow well. Though I suppose the fact that I’m not focusing on Robyn is quite literally exactly what she would want.

On His Mane’s Secret Service - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Ra’Jirra didn’t tell Dar’Amon until the next morning.

“I’m going over there right now and turn in my resignation,” Dar’Amon declared flatly, jumping down off the bed where Ra’Jirra lay, her eyes red.

“You’ll do no such thing,” she shot back at him, anger in her voice. “Dar, I can’t tell you the specifics, but he was justified.”

“That’s just not possible! You and I both know you’re the best agent they have. They’ve fired their best! Why would I want to work for an agency that would do that?”

“I’m not their best, Dar. It’s the Dominion. I really hate them.”

“With good cause!”

“I told you Dar, it’s affecting my judgement. I thought about it seriously all day. He’s right. I can’t do this anymore. Now get back up here. You can’t open the door anyway.”

The Alfiq complied to his fiance’s wishes and curled up on her stomach.

“Besides, if you quit we’d both be out of a job,” she said, stroking him. “Which reminds me, when are you supposed to go back in?”

He began to purr and knead her instinctively. His claws hurt a little, but she enjoyed the companionship and closeness, and never bothered to tell him. It was a minor, loving pain.

“Supposed to report in tomorrow. But that was before all this. Even if I don’t quit, it’s going to be strained.”

“They’ll probably send you out of town.”

“Most likely. I’m always partnered with another agent. It will be weird.”

“Yeah. I’ve gotten used to you being around,” she agreed. “Well, I’m not going to become a recluse. I’m going to get dressed and go out downtown. Maybe look for a job or something. And just think.”

“I understand,” Dar’Amon said, recognizing that her intent was to do these things alone. She liked that about her lover. He knew when to not be there.

She got up, undressed and went to the shower with Dar’Amon shadowing her. She’d gotten used to his presence by now when bathing, though she still drew the line at other bathroom functions. He enjoyed watching her. Truth be told, she thought, she rather enjoyed it herself, though social convention required that she put on an air of mild disgust.

“Raj!” he said unexpectedly. “There’s someone at the door.”

Ra’Jirra shut off the water. “Oh? Go see who it is while I put my hair up.”

The cat left the bathroom while Ra’Jirra wrapped her hair in a towel and began to dry herself quickly.

“It’s Em, Raj!” Dar said excitedly. “Maybe…”

“Don’t get your hopes up, Dar. I probably left something.”

“And he came to deliver it personally? Not likely.”

Ra’Jirra wrapped another towel around herself and answered the door.

“Hi Em. Come in. Was just getting ready.”

Dar’Amon hissed at the head of the most powerful secret service in all of Tamriel.

“Now Dar, I told you…” she started.

Em stepped into the small apartment and Ra’Jirra closed the door behind him.

“Hello Dar’Amon,” he said, smiling despite the Alfiq’s reaction.

“You’ve come to ask her back, haven’t you?” Dar’Amon asked angrily. “Took you long enough to realize your mistake!”

“No Dar’Amon. I’ve come for another reason.  Ra’Jirra, you’ve been summoned to an audience with the Mane. Tomorrow.”

“With the Mane?! Me? Why?”

“I expect you know why. That proposal from the Dominion - he wants to talk to you about it. I think he wants to know what you really think.”

“You already know what I think. But I’m just a field agent. The Mane wants to talk with me? Geeze Em, I don’t know anything about Royal protocol and all that stuff! I’ll make a fool of myself!”

“Yes, you will. Which is another reason I’m here,”  he said as she sat on the bed, her mind racing.

He handed her a card with a name and an address. The address was part of the Royal Palace estate, though not the Palace itself.

“This is the card of Princess Sauki, one of the Mane’s Royal Concubines. She will see you at noon today to train you in what you absolutely need to know before meeting with the Mane tomorrow.”

Ra’Jirra stared at the card.  “Holy shit, Em.”

“I know. But the Mane is the leader of our country. When he asks for you, you come. But protocol in the Palace is pretty strict, and even more so around the Mane. Learn quickly, Raj.”

“Can I take Dar with me?” she asked.

“No Raj. Just you. They’ll know an Alfiq and it’s women-only in the Princess’ room today too.”

Ra’Jirra literally gulped. She was not cut out for Royalty.

“I’ll screw something up, Em. I know I will!”

 Yes, you will Raj,” he said, smiling. “But it’s been years since the last beheading for a protocol violation. Just don’t screw up too bad.”

She saw Em out the door and sat back on the bed. Dar’Amon slunk up beside her and looked at the card she was staring at too.

“You’ll do fine,” he said reassuringly.

“I’ll fuck up. I’m a damn field agent! I’ve no experience in this sort of stuff!”

“You’re not a field agent anymore, Raj. I think maybe you’d better dress a bit better than for a walk around downtown.”

-----------------------------

In fact, she wore her best outfit - a gown that she had once felt was the most beautiful gown in the world, and now she noticed every frayed thread. But she had no time, so she followed Dar’s advice and tried to not think about it.

She turned the card in to the guards at the front gate of the palace and in a few minutes two women came to escort her to Princess’s wing of the Palace - actually a separate building from the Palace proper. Every woman was dressed in the transparent finery of the Royal court and she felt like she was a country rube fresh from the mud farms.

“You are Ra’Jirra?” said an older khajiit lady.

“I am,” she said, eyes downcast. “Princess Sauki?”

“Please, don’t do that Ra’Jirra,” said the Princess, lifting Ra’Jirra’s chin up with a finger. “I have a lot to teach you today, and you’re going to have to look at me. Yes, I am Princess Sauki. But remember, I am not a member of the Royal Family. The office of Concubine is old and respected, but I’m just a commoner like you. But one who knows what you need to know before your meeting with the Mane tomorrow.”

“Sorry, Princess,” she began…

“And let’s stop that right now, or you’re going to be saying ‘Sorry’ all day long, Ra’Jirra. You know things I don’t know, and I know things you don’t know. The only difference between us is that you need to know things I know, and I don’t need to know things you know. Doesn’t make either better or worse, it’s just the situation.  So let’s get started, shall we?”

“Yes,” Ra’Jirra said, taking a deep breath.  “Let’s do this.”

“Mmm. Right,” said the princess, standing back away from her and appraising her.

“Okay, first thing we have to do is get you fitted. No female comes to the Mane without wearing the Raba - at least, not in the palace. It is the traditional robe of office for females here, and you will wear it. Remove your clothes, Ra’Jirra.”

She did so without complaint. Two tailors came in and measured her from top to bottom, even the length of her tail. When they were finished, a Raba was brought in that fit her fairly closely and, with some instruction from the Princess, she got herself into it without tearing any of the flimsy cloth.

She stood in front of a mirror, the Princess behind her. The Raba was disturbingly transparent, with multiple layers of gauzy silk-like fabric. Though close-fitting in the torso, it flared at the legs and skirt with necklaces of jewelry about the bust and waist. The fabric on hers was colored in various shades of pale blue. From the jewel-encrusted belt hung two more drapings of beaded jewels that met, framing her lower abdomen in a sort of curved triangle, while a similarly draped necklace did the same, surrounding each breast. The effect was somehow more dignified than she expected though, even though her body was completely exposed visually.

“Yes,” said the Princess. “Very fetching. I think the blue works well with your coloration, don’t you agree?”

“I… guess. Sorry, I’m not very good with colors. But it looks good!”

“For the last time, Ra’Jirra, STOP saying Sorry all the time! I get sick of it!”

“Okay, okay! S… I mean. Yes. I will. But Princess, this slit… is it supposed to go up all this way? It’s practically to my tail! You can’t even see it when walking, but if I should bend over or something…”

“Yes Ra’Jirra. That is inherent in the design and function of the Raba. Come, sit beside me. Let’s talk a moment.”

She patted the seat beside her on a long cushioned couch.

“Ra’Jirra, we live in a shameless Patriarchy here. We know this, yes? We have come a long way from where the society was as children, and we will continue to advance. The current Mane is a forward thinking khajiit, you will see. And yet traditions are slow to change. That is why they’re called traditions, you see?”

“I know.”

“The Raba, it has been in use for hundreds of years in the Palace, but its design and function remains rather obvious when you wear it. Its origins are in the bedroom, undoubtedly, though modified over the years into the Raba we have today. I think I don’t need to tell you this. Long ago, it is thought, we khajiit women were gathered into prides, like lions, all under a dominant Mane along with subservient men. If this is true or not, we cannot know, but it is clear our society is formed to mimic that myth. Many of the traditions in the Palace reflect this.”

“Such as…”

“For instance, when at dinner with the Mane, nothing is eaten or drank until he begins. All are subservient to the Mane. If you remember that, it is the core of all our protocols. If you break protocol, as long as you remain subservient to the Mane, it will be forgiven immediately. Now, understand, all of this is only while in the Throne Room or other public situation. Your actual interview will be in private where you can be yourself.”

“Well, that’s a relief anyway!”

“Honestly, it’s not so bad once you get used to it. But if you’re bothered about the slit in the Raba, I’m afraid there’s worse to come. Now, let’s talk about the Presentation. The men prostrate themselves before the presence of the Mane. Females perform a similar Presentation, but reversed...”

“But that means the slit would… In front of the Mane?!”

“That is correct, Ra’Jirra. Welcome to the center of the khajiit Patriarchy.”

---------------

Night was falling by the time she left the Palace grounds. Her head was spinning with all the things she’d tried to learn, and she felt less ready to handle the audience than when she’d arrived.

“Dar!” she called in a panicked tone as she opened the door

“That bad?”

“Oh Dar, I’m going to fuck up so bad! There’s a million things! I don’t think I can remember any of them!”

“Well, I’ll be sure and be there at the decapitation.”

“I’m serious, Dar. I spent hours there and all I can remember how to do is stick my damn tail in the air!”

“What?”

“Oh, nevermind,” she said, plopping onto the bed. “It would just piss you off anyway.”

Dar’Amon jumped up beside her head.

She covered her face with her hands and began to cry. “Oh Dar, I’m serious. I’m going to embarrass myself so bad…”

“You could always refuse to go.”

“Sure. And get expelled to Hammerfell. They love me in Hammerfell. That would be just my luck. I’ll end up living in stinking Rihad!”

“Listen to yourself, Ra’Jirra! Is this the woman who defeated the Dominion single handedly? This isn’t you. You sound like some damn scaredy cat! This Mane, he may be the leader of Elsweyr, but YOU are one of it’s best defenders!”

Hearing this from Dar’Amon stung like a slap to the face and she stared at the little Alfiq while her mind shifted gears.

“You know, you’re right. Dar, I may get banished from Elsweyr, but I’m going to deal with this my way. Let me get changed, and then we’re going out! I’ve got some shopping to do!”

“Um... Raj? Maybe I came off a little too harsh,” Dar’Amon said, seeing the change come over her.

“Trust me,” she smiled back. 

An Unfortunate Spinal Tap Update: Leaking Again

After nine months of working so hard to stay sealed, and marking incredible progress with you along the way, I have releaked. When working on getting sealed, I explained here and on social media that the stakes were quite high, as a wrong move could re open the CSF leak that took so many patches to seal.

For many, the body can withstand the uncertainties of daily movement as the dura slowly heals. For others, the connective tissue is weaker or faulty, or they have bone spurs or cysts involved, and small movements carry big risks. Reaching for something too aggressively. Doing laundry. Picking something up off the floor. (One woman’s complicated case study here.)

To maximize my chances of staying sealed, I limited my movements during recovery. I slowly reintroduced actions that put slight traction on the dura – I opened the oven, or drawers, or slowly climbed up hills. But I used a picker-upper device to get anything on the floor, and didn’t lift anything over a few pounds. I was patient, but vigilant.

What happened was a whimper, and not a bang. I simply sat down. And it seems that I sat the wrong way, stretching my hamstrings and dura in a way that it was not ready for. I didn’t notice much at first, except the taste of CSF in my throat occasionally. I texted my doctor about it but with no other obvious symptoms of a leak again, I took it easy and waited.

Days later, I walked to meet friends for dinner and I felt crazy numbness and burning at the leak site, that had spread all over my back and thighs by the time I arrived.

I’ve been back in bed over since.

I have about 20-30 seconds of “uptime” before that nauseatingly familiar “brain sag” feeling starts. Along with it, dizziness, neck pain, nerve pain and back pain. Familiar tortures that had mostly disappeared when I was sealed.

My body is in way healthier shape than last year after a strong focus on eating well and keeping my mind calm. I hoped that the improvement would mean I would be able to seal up the leak again without intervention.

I have spent two full weeks on strict bedrest, even eating lying down, following the protocol for sealing – flat on my back, no pillow, waiting. I started back on the meditation schedule I went to following patch 4. Friends came and brought supplies.

It has been over two weeks and so far no change. I called Duke and will try to get on the schedule for another round of patching.

Those who read my prior post on how I went into anaphylaxis during round four of patching at Duke know that I cannot get glue patching again.

I did ask my doctor.

Me: what if you premedicate me with steroids and Benadryl to temper a reaction?

Him: no really Jodi, that was NOT mild anaphylaxis. It was the real deal.

Me: so that’s a no on premedicating?

Him: […]

Nope. No more fibrin.

This means that we can try my own blood, at the same sites as the last round of patching that did work (there were several targeted patches within that round). As with patching generally, it requires the body to kick in and create the scar tissues needed to seal up the leak in the dura.

Until then, I will keep hope that my body may create its own seal.

To state the obvious: this is a real mind-fuck. I worked incredibly hard to stay sealed, to feel vaguely human again. It feels bewildering, and oh so unjust, that climbing Mount Royal weekly was fine but sitting down the wrong way unspooled my healing. And there’s a “PTSD Groundhog Day” aspect to it as well. Yet ANOTHER October on bedrest, anticipating another December at Duke.

The silver lining is that I know the beast I’m working with, and there is no panic. Last autumn there was a lot of panic. This time, the symptoms are familiar and I know they all went away when I got sealed. I now know where to go for treatment, and how to maximize my chances of healing.

But I am heartbroken, really and truly, to be back here.

Regardless, I am doing what I said in my original post. Focusing on the progress I DID make. On the gratitude of being upright for those months of waking again. On this army of help and love I’ve been gifted around the world.

Yes, there are many people who don’t get sealed, but many more who do. And I have a doctor who has my back (literally, in December, and figuratively overall), and who patches people every day in his work.

And when I get too sad, I have Zack the cat at my side here, to keep me smiling.

I wanted to update you with this news, and say thank you once again for the incredible grace, love, and compassion you’ve all shown me during the last year of ups and downs.

As usual, more frequent updates can be found on Instagram and Facebook on the Legal Nomads pages there, as it’s easier for me than writing on WordPress via mobile.

With love from Montreal,

Jodi

    The post An Unfortunate Spinal Tap Update:<br /> Leaking Again appeared first on Legal Nomads.

An Unfortunate Spinal Tap Update: Leaking Again published first on https://oceandreamblog.tumblr.com/

An Unfortunate Spinal Tap Update: Leaking Again

After nine months of working so hard to stay sealed, and marking incredible progress with you along the way, I have releaked. When working on getting sealed, I explained here and on social media that the stakes were quite high, as a wrong move could re open the CSF leak that took so many patches to seal.

For many, the body can withstand the uncertainties of daily movement as the dura slowly heals. For others, the connective tissue is weaker or faulty, or they have bone spurs or cysts involved, and small movements carry big risks. Reaching for something too aggressively. Doing laundry. Picking something up off the floor. (One woman’s complicated case study here.)

To maximize my chances of staying sealed, I limited my movements during recovery. I slowly reintroduced actions that put slight traction on the dura – I opened the oven, or drawers, or slowly climbed up hills. But I used a picker-upper device to get anything on the floor, and didn’t lift anything over a few pounds. I was patient, but vigilant.

What happened was a whimper, and not a bang. I simply sat down. And it seems that I sat the wrong way, stretching my hamstrings and dura in a way that it was not ready for. I didn’t notice much at first, except the taste of CSF in my throat occasionally. I texted my doctor about it but with no other obvious symptoms of a leak again, I took it easy and waited.

Days later, I walked to meet friends for dinner and I felt crazy numbness and burning at the leak site, that had spread all over my back and thighs by the time I arrived.

I’ve been back in bed over since.

I have about 20-30 seconds of “uptime” before that nauseatingly familiar “brain sag” feeling starts. Along with it, dizziness, neck pain, nerve pain and back pain. Familiar tortures that had mostly disappeared when I was sealed.

My body is in way healthier shape than last year after a strong focus on eating well and keeping my mind calm. I hoped that the improvement would mean I would be able to seal up the leak again without intervention.

I have spent two full weeks on strict bedrest, even eating lying down, following the protocol for sealing – flat on my back, no pillow, waiting. I started back on the meditation schedule I went to following patch 4. Friends came and brought supplies.

It has been over two weeks and so far no change. I called Duke and will try to get on the schedule for another round of patching.

Those who read my prior post on how I went into anaphylaxis during round four of patching at Duke know that I cannot get glue patching again.

I did ask my doctor.

Me: what if you premedicate me with steroids and Benadryl to temper a reaction?

Him: no really Jodi, that was NOT mild anaphylaxis. It was the real deal.

Me: so that’s a no on premedicating?

Him: […]

Nope. No more fibrin.

This means that we can try my own blood, at the same sites as the last round of patching that did work (there were several targeted patches within that round). As with patching generally, it requires the body to kick in and create the scar tissues needed to seal up the leak in the dura.

Until then, I will keep hope that my body may create its own seal.

To state the obvious: this is a real mind-fuck. I worked incredibly hard to stay sealed, to feel vaguely human again. It feels bewildering, and oh so unjust, that climbing Mount Royal weekly was fine but sitting down the wrong way unspooled my healing. And there’s a “PTSD Groundhog Day” aspect to it as well. Yet ANOTHER October on bedrest, anticipating another December at Duke.

The silver lining is that I know the beast I’m working with, and there is no panic. Last autumn there was a lot of panic. This time, the symptoms are familiar and I know they all went away when I got sealed. I now know where to go for treatment, and how to maximize my chances of healing.

But I am heartbroken, really and truly, to be back here.

Regardless, I am doing what I said in my original post. Focusing on the progress I DID make. On the gratitude of being upright for those months of waking again. On this army of help and love I’ve been gifted around the world.

Yes, there are many people who don’t get sealed, but many more who do. And I have a doctor who has my back (literally, in December, and figuratively overall), and who patches people every day in his work.

And when I get too sad, I have Zack the cat at my side here, to keep me smiling.

I wanted to update you with this news, and say thank you once again for the incredible grace, love, and compassion you’ve all shown me during the last year of ups and downs.

As usual, more frequent updates can be found on Instagram and Facebook on the Legal Nomads pages there, as it’s easier for me than writing on WordPress via mobile.

With love from Montreal,

Jodi

    The post An Unfortunate Spinal Tap Update:<br /> Leaking Again appeared first on Legal Nomads.

An Unfortunate Spinal Tap Update: Leaking Again published first on https://takebreaktravel.tumblr.com/

An Unfortunate Spinal Tap Update: Leaking Again

After nine months of working so hard to stay sealed, and marking incredible progress with you along the way, I have releaked. When working on getting sealed, I explained here and on social media that the stakes were quite high, as a wrong move could re open the CSF leak that took so many patches to seal.

For many, the body can withstand the uncertainties of daily movement as the dura slowly heals. For others, the connective tissue is weaker or faulty, or they have bone spurs or cysts involved, and small movements carry big risks. Reaching for something too aggressively. Doing laundry. Picking something up off the floor. (One woman’s complicated case study here.)

To maximize my chances of staying sealed, I limited my movements during recovery. I slowly reintroduced actions that put slight traction on the dura – I opened the oven, or drawers, or slowly climbed up hills. But I used a picker-upper device to get anything on the floor, and didn’t lift anything over a few pounds. I was patient, but vigilant.

What happened was a whimper, and not a bang. I simply sat down. And it seems that I sat the wrong way, stretching my hamstrings and dura in a way that it was not ready for. I didn’t notice much at first, except the taste of CSF in my throat occasionally. I texted my doctor about it but with no other obvious symptoms of a leak again, I took it easy and waited.

Days later, I walked to meet friends for dinner and I felt crazy numbness and burning at the leak site, that had spread all over my back and thighs by the time I arrived.

I’ve been back in bed over since.

I have about 20-30 seconds of “uptime” before that nauseatingly familiar “brain sag” feeling starts. Along with it, dizziness, neck pain, nerve pain and back pain. Familiar tortures that had mostly disappeared when I was sealed.

My body is in way healthier shape than last year after a strong focus on eating well and keeping my mind calm. I hoped that the improvement would mean I would be able to seal up the leak again without intervention.

I have spent two full weeks on strict bedrest, even eating lying down, following the protocol for sealing – flat on my back, no pillow, waiting. I started back on the meditation schedule I went to following patch 4. Friends came and brought supplies.

It has been over two weeks and so far no change. I called Duke and will try to get on the schedule for another round of patching.

Those who read my prior post on how I went into anaphylaxis during round four of patching at Duke know that I cannot get glue patching again.

I did ask my doctor.

Me: what if you premedicate me with steroids and Benadryl to temper a reaction?

Him: no really Jodi, that was NOT mild anaphylaxis. It was the real deal.

Me: so that’s a no on premedicating?

Him: […]

Nope. No more fibrin.

This means that we can try my own blood, at the same sites as the last round of patching that did work (there were several targeted patches within that round). As with patching generally, it requires the body to kick in and create the scar tissues needed to seal up the leak in the dura.

Until then, I will keep hope that my body may create its own seal.

To state the obvious: this is a real mind-fuck. I worked incredibly hard to stay sealed, to feel vaguely human again. It feels bewildering, and oh so unjust, that climbing Mount Royal weekly was fine but sitting down the wrong way unspooled my healing. And there’s a “PTSD Groundhog Day” aspect to it as well. Yet ANOTHER October on bedrest, anticipating another December at Duke.

The silver lining is that I know the beast I’m working with, and there is no panic. Last autumn there was a lot of panic. This time, the symptoms are familiar and I know they all went away when I got sealed. I now know where to go for treatment, and how to maximize my chances of healing.

But I am heartbroken, really and truly, to be back here.

Regardless, I am doing what I said in my original post. Focusing on the progress I DID make. On the gratitude of being upright for those months of waking again. On this army of help and love I’ve been gifted around the world.

Yes, there are many people who don’t get sealed, but many more who do. And I have a doctor who has my back (literally, in December, and figuratively overall), and who patches people every day in his work.

And when I get too sad, I have Zack the cat at my side here, to keep me smiling.

I wanted to update you with this news, and say thank you once again for the incredible grace, love, and compassion you’ve all shown me during the last year of ups and downs.

As usual, more frequent updates can be found on Instagram and Facebook on the Legal Nomads pages there, as it’s easier for me than writing on WordPress via mobile.

With love from Montreal,

Jodi

    The post An Unfortunate Spinal Tap Update:<br /> Leaking Again appeared first on Legal Nomads.

An Unfortunate Spinal Tap Update: Leaking Again published first on https://whartonstravel.tumblr.com/