Dark Magisterium AU
There's no magic, but somehow they all die.
Constantine is the first to die, doing something stupid and dangerous 'for science'.
Jericho killed himself a month later because he couldn't handle his brothers death.
Declan drowned in a river after underestimating how strong the current was
Sarah died in childbirth.
Alistair died from electrocution while trying to repair something while it was still plugged in.
Call was moved to a foster home when both of his parents died, and ended up meeting Aaron.
Call and Aaron tried to run away when they were both five. Their bodies were found together, injured, frozen, dehydrated and starved.
Tamara tried to play in the fireplace when she was seven. Raven tried to save her but they both died.
Alex found out about his twin stepbrothers and tried to replace Constantines experiments, dying in the same way as he did.
Anastasia went insane from the loss and persuaded Master Joseph to kill her. Master Joseph got the death penalty for it.
Drew fell off a horse and broke his neck.
Jasper showed off to the wrong people and was killed for his money and possessions
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2023 Movie Journey #17: Elemental
elemental. i watched this one earlier this week with my family...and i'm finally caught up on movie reviews! which means i can now post new ones right after i see the movies. yay.
this movie's cast has some actors who i know, probably most notably a guy i enjoyed in jurassic world dominion. but much, much more importantly, the star of this movie is leah lewis, so even if i hadn't liked the movie overall i still would have had a great time watching it.
i fell immediately in love with leah lewis's portrayal of george when i started watching nancy drew this year. and i mean immediately--i was watching with somebody who loved bess the most, and i had seen so much ace on my tumblr dash that i knew i'd like him too, but george was still my favorite character by the time i finished the pilot. without even knowing how great and rewarding her season 1 arc would be, or how much depth she would eventually have beyond her introduction as 'grudge-holding black sheep nancy's boss,' i could just tell she was my type of fave.
and even after watching the whole first season of nancy drew, it wasn't until i was rewatching it to show it to @actuallylukedanes that i accidentally learned george was played by leah lewis...and that i already knew her! she was in the half of it! which i watched and reviewed in 2020, and loved so much that i've wanted to get other people to watch it ever since. i didn't connect her performances at all, but even my review back then raved about how she was what made the movie good.
so when i realized she was starring in this, i was thrilled. and what i love about her is that she's consistently the kind of actor who has a real presence: she makes her characters engaging and stands out in a big way for somebody still young (though she started acting as a kid, so i know she's not new just cuz she's newish to me). she's signed on to the matlock reboot with kathy bates and i don't expect to love that cbs show, but i am very excited to try it anyway.
as for the movie though: i couldn't help but spend the first half just hearing george, in all her lines. not in a distracting or bad way, but a nice familiar feeling. i suspect the goal with animated disney heroines is to not make them too distinctive, because there's kind of a 'friendly normal' sound to the modern ones regardless of the actress that means even when i can recognize who's speaking, they all sound a little more similar than i would ever say they do in live action work. (either that or it's just me not being able to differentiate as well in animation, which is certainly possible.)
anyway, i loved everything about her work in this; she was the reason i cried a few times. in my opinion that's always a mark of good work, making an impressive amount of connection with viewers using just your voice.
i also really liked her parents and wade, despite the movie's core conflict revolving around all of them--this movie did a good job of explaining who everybody was as things went along, in a more than superficial way, so that it was much easier to still like people when the Bad Times came because they made more sense and were more sympathetic. as family conflicts go, compared to encanto and turning red, this one was my favorite because of that. no matter how angry or disappointed her father got, or how much that affected ember, i could still sympathize with him too and believe that his love for her was more important than anything else.
now, i know this movie got mixed reviews (or possibly worse? i only saw vague headlines) but i'm not really sure why! the metaphor they used to tell the story about immigration and a diverse society was maybe more blunt than usual, but i don't think that's a bad thing. and while it did center on themes that disney movies cover a lot (family expectations, parental disappointment, feeling like a failure, being an outsider, etc)...there are reasons those themes pop up so much!
especially when pixar movies are trying to appeal to both kids and adult audiences, i think it makes total sense to keep coming back to the 'classics.' again, there were a lot of thematic similarities between encanto and turning red and this movie (despite their differences in the details) and i watched those other two--encanto more than once--but still cried just as easily when ember confessed to her dad that she was a bad daughter, and when they bowed to each other before she left. the wounds between us and our parents never really heal, i think, at least not for everybody. so this movie tugged at me by just representing those feelings well, and making me care about the characters.
and when it comes to caring about the characters, probably my favorite thing about the movie besides the cast was the way the plot genuinely surprised me. i expected a happy ending, because it's a disney movie. but based on the trailer, i didn't know what to expect between ember and wade beyond 'they meet and things happen.' and the movie does such a good job of setting up the world they live in and the rules they live by that i believed them.
so in the beginning, i figured they were going to become unexpected friends, and navigating that alone would be a challenge. in that story, presumably the happy ending would've been something like, she learns that wade is right and she doesn't have to stay with fire people and never interact with the rest of the world, and they get to have further adventures.
but then! it turns out that this movie is going for romance. weirdly, i don't expect that from disney movies--you'd think i would when they're the home of princess culture and everything, but i wasn't a 'princess meets her prince for a happy ending' kid. i grew up with disney classics but didn't imprint on any of them.
instead, i was a don bluth kid! singing music from an american tail is literally one of my earliest memories, and my animated love story growing up was anastasia. if i squint, i can kind of see overlap between that animated romcom and this one, in terms of traumatic family history and a guarded, feisty female lead who gets what she thought she wanted all along just as she's also fallen in love with someone whose difference threatens her new fulfilled goal.
i'm not saying the two movies are very alike, lol...a zombie sorcerer belongs nowhere in elemental, obviously. but they both treat their romances with less sentimental sweetness, more sparkage and sincerity. the flirting in this is cute, and i loved them more the further along we went.
but of course, there's still that pesky plot-established problem that makes them a doomed romance. so once it was clear that their dynamic was about falling in love, not just befriending the 'other'...then i honestly expected a bittersweet ending where friends is all they can be. because this is disney, not pushing daisies, and in a world where nobody seems to have invented the elemental version of saran wrap for characters to safely kiss through, what kind of future could they have?
i did not expect them to give us this story where the characters are all believable in how firmly they believe (or don't, in wade's case) that different elements can't mix, and then for the story to show us those differences being overcome. i mean, that theme isn't exactly a new one, love conquering all, but the differences were so much more concrete here--it was life or death for them! when the parental disapproval alone was almost enough to ruin their chances!
i suppose you could flip my reaction to this movie and look at it the opposite way, and complain that their ability in the end to do what the story all along told us couldn't be done made it a waste of time, like the stakes were fake even if they didn't know that. maybe if you predicted the ending from the beginning, it could have felt that way.
but i didn't have expectations for the ending. so while i was really hoping ember and wade could be together, i was prepared for the alternative, a more modest 'crossing the aisles' journey of discovery for them both that opened her world and future and allowed him into her life from a safe distance going forward. instead, their whole story was wonderful and i love them and i'm so glad that they get to be the odd couple they are in a very divided world.
one last fun (if also slightly vexing) thing about this movie is that while it does end, it leaves a lot open, too. and i wanted to get to see ember start her internship; i wanted to learn about their new life and if it goes well for them once they're out in the broader world. i guess i wasn't ready to say goodbye to them, really, is all.
but that was fun at least on the level of seeing this with my family--it meant that after it ended, we were discussing what a sequel could be about, and that segued into a discussion about whether ember and wade could have kids or if they'd have to adopt--and how cool it would be if them having kids would create new elements or something. i love that idea a lot.
and i enjoyed this movie a lot. it was super pretty, i liked most of the characters, and it was unexpected romcom fun. i'm officially rooting for pixar to make more love stories now.
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