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sylphidine · 1 day

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[Fic] Bedtime Story

Fandom: DELTARUNE

Pairing: Swatchton

Characters: Swatch, Spamton, and Clippa

Summary:

Swatch's and Spamton's child Clippa insists on having the same story read to her, over and over again, every single night.

Notes: Originally written in May 2022 for @ne0nwithazero and posted on Archive of Our Own, not quite sure why I didn't post it here as well. Clippa is Jay's OC and is used with permission.

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“What is it, my little [[balloon animal]]?”

Spamton bent down to hear Clippa’s whisper, even though he knew exactly what she was going to ask for.

“[Dwagon!]” she chortled into the audio receiver on the side of his head, her breath stirring his fluffy hair. Holding her arms up in the air, she flapped them briskly and turned in circles like a demented top, nearly knocking Spamton’s glasses off his face.

Of course that was the moment when his spouse walked in with a full basket of folded laundry. They did not have a chance to put it safely down before a happiness-propelled toddler missile collided with their knees.

The basket was knocked to the floor with the impact. Towels, shirts and socks went flying everywhere. Fortunately, the bed was right behind Swatch; they half-fell, half-sat to prevent serious harm to their anatomy.

The same could not be said for the bird’s dignity. Clippa, the little devil, hugged their legs tightly and looked up at them with pure mischief in her eyes.

Spamton, bless him, was trying his best not to laugh, though the red spots on the puppet’s cheeks became even redder with the effort to hold his amusement in. Swatch picked Clippa up and cuddled her to their chest, saying in as stern a tone as they could muster, “You need to be more careful, dear. You’re getting big and strong and you don’t want to hurt your papa or me, do you?”

“[ DWAGON! ]” she shrieked merrily in response.

Swatch sighed. “I surrender. 'Dwagon’, it is.” They looked across the room at Spamton, who gave them a big smile and two thumbs up before he retrieved the basket and started picking up the scattered laundry. Swatch smiled back and walked to the head of the bed, pulling back the covers.

They put Clippa down and got in beside her, tucking the blankets around her with one hand as they grabbed the storybook off the night table. They started to read aloud the chapter where the Old Alley Cat tells Elmer Elevator about the imprisoned baby dragon on Wild Island, doing a rather good imitation of Seam’s voice.

“...Wild Island and Tangerina are joined together by a long string of rocks, but people never go to Wild Island because it’s mostly jungle and inhabited by very wild animals. So, I decided to go across the rocks and explore it for myself…”

Spamton tiptoed out of the room with the once-again full laundry basket that was as big as he was. He took his time rerunning the loads through the washer and dryer. When he got back with the once-again clean laundry, an adorable sight met his eyes.

His and Swatch’s rambunctious daughter was curled up asleep in the curve of Swatch’s left arm. Swatch silently waved Spamton over to the bed with the hand that wasn’t holding the book.

The puppet didn’t need to be asked twice. He carefully put the basket on the floor near the dresser, carefully got into bed on Swatch’s right side, and carefully snuggled into the curve of Swatch’s right arm, closing his eyes and enjoying the vibrations of Swatch’s chest against his cheek as his spouse purred.

Soon enough, Swatch’s eyes were closed as well.

#swatchton #spamton #swatch #deltarune fanfiction #gift fic #sylph writes

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masterwords · 2 years

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a hundred years of blood (pt. 2)

Summary: One of Jessica's favorite clients is an old hermit who lives deep in the woods. When he stops answering his phone, she fears the worst and asks Hotch to come with her...just to check it out. Bad things are about to happen. When Derek realizes Hotch is missing and he might be in danger will the team be able to save them in time? Or will they, too, only find themselves in danger?

Pairing: Hotch/Morgan (established as usual, they just exist as husbands in my head)

Warnings: in this chapter, we talk about cannibals and heroin and broken arms and hotch is definitely drugged and being held captive.

Words: 2.9k

Notes: This chapter is all Hotch being held captive and marched through the woods and...unhappy. Next chapter we'll see where Jess is and what she's up to.

Read on AO3: a hundred years of blood

** CHAPTER LIST **

“There are cannibals in these hills.”

Aaron scoffed; his attention faraway on the echoes of footsteps through the woods. His steps, familiar, one then two at a cadence he found fascinating. Left foot heavier than the right, he thought. Maybe, maybe not. His gun was gone and yet...it still felt heavy. Every so often he stumbled and was jerked upright by rough, sure hands. Back onto his uneven footsteps.

“That's what they say, anyway. I been here all my life and never seen 'em, I guess, but maybe you wouldn't really know huh? Probably look just like you and me. Not like they'd just out and say hey the name's Bill and I ate ol' Larry the mechanic's left butt cheek last night with potatoes and carrots like a pot roast, huh? But you might just make their acquaintance tonight. Little further now.”

He couldn't remember how he'd gotten here, out in this starchy bright sunlight filtered through scabby old pine trees, ragged and overgrown with wizard beard lichen. Everything looked dried out, smoked woods, lazy silvery greens and dusty oranges and sickly yellows. Up here, elevation so high, nothing lush grew...it was all barely alive, like a movie with all the saturation turned way down, littered with giant rocky growths that looked like half-buried Stegosaurus. A paleontologist's playground. he thought of Jack and his chest constricted painfully.

The air was thin, and he sucked it eagerly into aching lungs through his nose.

“Right up here,” came Elmer's foggy rich voice, so thick with the hills that Aaron got lost in the words. Every sentence was enchanting, a spell spoken in a whisper of wind through molasses. “This was my daddy's cavern. Kept his stills here. Granddad, he kept his in the old mine down below. See what my daddy didn't realize is that this cavern, you go far enough in, you dip and you wind and maybe you trip a few times over wet old rocks...you get to that mine. They were connected, see, and didn't even know it. Spose no one ever thought to look, what with the tale of the trolls in the hills scaring the kids away. Course there's no trolls, least I don't think there are. Maybe they're about as real as the cannibals, huh?”

Aaron whimpered, the pull of the rope on his broken arm getting to him. He was able to ignore it while it was loose, while there was slack, but when his feet stuck in the murky underbrush, and he stumbled that rope pulled at broken bones bandaged with rough old materials that only pressed and ground them together. The feeling, painful as it were, was far away too. It still belonged to him but was estranged.

He thought the cannibals were a far likelier threat than trolls, but at this point he couldn't afford to pick and choose what he believed and what he didn't. Trolls, sure. He'd be on the lookout for trolls. Why should I worry? Why should I care? Billy Joel's voice echoed through him, became an off-kilter mantra to drown out Elmer's spells. Derek would find him, would bring him home and they'd watch "Oliver and Company" and maybe after this ordeal Derek wouldn't be mean about Billy Joel's singing...it was just enough to keep him putting one foot in front of the other.

He didn't know what it was, exactly, but he knew he'd been drugged. That was about all he needed to know. He had just enough experience with that disconnected from your body feeling, no longer Captain of your own ship floating lost at sea, to know this was no accident. No way his mind should be wandering off to the land of Disney movies when he was in mortal danger, and yet here he was.

“You know I did some digging. Looked your family up. Hotch-ner. Seems you got a lot of sway through these old hills, your name carries some weight...what I understand, you got a little shine in your bloodline too. But your mama, she's too proud to admit she's got cousins up here huh? Yeah, figures. You got some hill in you, that's what makes you...right.”

Aaron couldn't have spoken if he wanted to, his mouth duct taped shut with a sock stuffed deep inside. One of his own, he knew and though it wasn't ideal he figured it was better than any other alternative. Maybe that was why his left foot felt heavier, it was still socked. Right foot was slipping around sweaty in his shoe and he could already feel the blisters rubbing themselves into existence. His tongue felt dry, wasted, the taste of river water and air drying all he could think about. Every sense he had was on overdrive but disconnected from anything corporeal.

The tea, he'd been force fed more of that tea. At first it was just a gently seductive quieting in his skull, and it did dull the ache in his arm. Jess had smiled at him dreamily and drifted off to sleep on that sofa bed snuggled up beside him while Elmer told them stories about...something. Hill people. Aliens. Moon People? But the tea didn't keep him beneath the pain in his arm and after a while he started coming to, eyes open watching Elmer whisper in the shadows to something oily and shapeless in the corner of the room. Elmer must have heard him move, because he'd come flying toward the bed so fast and he came with the tea, but it wasn't really tea anymore it was more of a syrup that tasted like ambrosia and evil and Aaron floated away on a thick honey golden ray of light into the ether. He had no idea what was in it, didn't really matter now, not really.

By morning, he'd woken with a beat at his skull so hard he really thought something was wrong. That he was dying. It was sharp, an ice pick in his eye. His memories of the night before were vague, floaty and painful. It took more time than it should have just for him to come to his senses and realize that Jessica wasn't beside him.

Her car was gone, and he was alone with Elmer Chambers.

“She's gone to fetch a doctor for you, alright son. You just lie here and stay quiet. You're sick as a dog. Musta come on you sometime in the night, fever sky high.” With every thread of rational thought, everything he could cling to like water through his fingers, he just hoped that she'd called Derek. The team could figure it out from there if she could just get them to Elmer's house. He had to assume Elmer had led her away on a wild goose chase though...that doctor couldn't possibly be real, could he?

Jess and her heart of gold. Her unfailing and unyielding belief in the good of people. Isn't that why she stuck beside him, even after what happened to her sister? To her family? He couldn't blame her, not seeing this side of Elmer, he was good. Probably one of the best Aaron had ever seen. He'd laid back on the futon with his eyes closed for most of the early morning, miserable and willing himself not to be sick in the bed sheets while Jess visited with Elmer and worried over him. He remembered hearing her wind chime voice. It had soothed him to sleep more than once, no matter how bad he felt she was there. And Elmer was endearing. Sweet, charming old man. Anyone would have been taken in. He wasn't hiding anything; it was almost like this was a wholly separate person.

Without actually being that. This wasn't an act; this wasn't a diagnosis...this was something else entirely and Aaron in his drug addled mind couldn't figure it out. It had taken him too long to even realize that he was being drugged, that's how good Elmer was.

“Drink this son, it'll help the pain in your arm...old family recipe. Gosh, I am sorry about that.” Yeah, easy. He drank it, set that ceramic mug right to his lips and sucked that mug dry. It tasted good, all those fleeting summery flavors of honeysuckle and blueberry. Like something his mother used to give him at night when he was anxious or sick. It tasted like the most saccharine comfort. “The ginseng will settle ya right to sleep.” It didn't sound right, but he was in no condition to argue. His arm hurt so bad he probably would have done anything to make it stop howling. Truthfully, no matter how he hated that sticky resin in his veins, it had taken the pain away even faster than the tea and he hadn't minded it a bit.

“Why are you doing this?” he'd asked when Elmer tied the ropes too tight around his wrists and began tugging him toward the door.

“Well, son, you see...I ain't got no choice. One of those Dumont morons went and violated the contract, and that means he got himself killed. I was well within my rights. But retaliation laws as they are, my Trudy was taken as collateral. Ain't fair, see...I can't...it ain't right. She bein' all I had left in this world. But they said if I sacrifice something important maybe I get her back.”

Aaron stumbled and fell to his knees with a cry, curling himself up around his painful arm. “I'm not important.”

“Naw but see...that's where you're wrong. I thought maybe Jessie was the one I should pick, but that'd only hurt me, and I don't think that's good enough cos I love her. I love that girl. She's like the daughter I never got. Killin' her won't do no good, they'll seek more. No, I gotta break her heart and let her live...breakin' her heart, that's already killin' me. So, I know it's right. You. Losing you will break her heart, see?”

Aaron didn't think that sounded right, it sounded insane, like the ravings of a complete lunatic but he wasn't in any state of mind to argue logic. Especially not with a man who had so completely given logic up long ago. “My team...” he whispered, waiting for Elmer to tug him to his feet again but Elmer only let him rest. He was old, he needed the moment too. They had plenty of daylight left.

“Yes, your team will come, I reckon. Maybe not today, if they're smart, but tomorrow when they got enough daylight. Sure thing. And hell, one of 'em might kill me...but not before the others get to you. Lotta blood gonna be spilled in these hills, they'll be fed good tonight.”

Everything was unnaturally still, no wildlife chirping or buzzing or mewling. It was just the sound of their breath. Elmer's was heavy, winded, he was too old for this trek and his body was letting him know. Aaron should have been able to do it easily except for the strange concoction of Elmer's drugs in his system and the intensity of the swollen, black and blue throbbing in his arm.

It was quiet after that, the way they trudged through the pine needles and oak leaves, scattered, dried to a crisp but wet far enough beneath to know that some slippery slimy creatures were enjoying themselves plenty. Feeding on a bountiful harvest of sweet decay. He thought about offering Elmer a deal, something to make him stop, plead for his life with some sort of dignity but there wasn't a single damned thing he was willing to offer a man who would try to hurt Jessica. Claim to love her and then do this to her. No, he wouldn't offer a thing, he would just have to resign himself to staying alive long enough to bring her back up that mountain with a doctor and the team in tow.

“What was in that tea?” he asked, almost thoughtfully, coherently. He'd gathered enough of his wits to know he needed to keep Elmer talking...he wasn't any different from any other old man. He loved to talk, to tell stories, to ruminate like a cow chewing cud on the past and spit it out thoughtfully. Old memories made anew on the tip of his tongue.

“Old family recipe,” he replied quietly, tugging at the rope fast enough to make Aaron skip a step and stumble again. His legs flew out from under him, and he struggled to get them back, to land upright, but he hit chest first right on that arm and he cried out again. Couldn't help that. Wasn't going to try. Eventually it would get old. “Oh we got some peppermint, some chamomile, some turmeric and marshmallow root...” his voice was soothing, in direct opposition to the way he jerked Aaron to his feet harsh and fast. Strong for a man in his eighties. “Ginseng, of course. And you promise not to give away the secret ingredient?”

Aaron swallowed hard and nodded, as if he cared, as if it was important. Just stalling. Elmer smiled.

“Papaver somniferum...” he drawled that last bit and Aaron shut his eyes, closed them tight and willed his stomach to stop flipping and flopping anxiously. “I see you're familiar with it. Well, son, guess you might as well know my fortune doesn't solely come from those decades' old stills or that damned rotten root that eats up my life, makes me and everyone around me bleed...no, I got my own gig. When I was a kid, I thought they were pretty. Wanted a field of 'em, just like in Wizard of Oz see. First color movie I ever saw and it was somethin'...never seen poppies before, couldn't get 'em outta my mind after. You ever seen anything so beautiful in your life? But just like my granddaddy and his ginseng, my daddy and his moonshine, those lights in the sky opened a door into my head and they spoke to me...boy you know what they said?”

“Opium,” Aaron whispered to himself. Elmer clapped his enormous hands, tugging Aaron's together painfully too.

“Right oh! Boy, it's easy, and just like those lights changed the ginseng and the shine til they were something special, so they did my poppies. Can't get anything like it in the whole world. Course Ms. Brooks doesn't know about the poppy field. Thinks all my money comes to me from my daddy and his stills. Seein' as either you or me is about to die I figure it's fine if I divulge. Just a little. I'm a lonely old man and unburdening myself to a good listener such as yourself feels downright nice.”

“You gave me...” he couldn't seem to wrap his mind around it.

“Opium. That's right. It's easy enough to hide in tea, at least small amounts. The rest you'll find went in easy in other ways once you were dead to the world. And when it starts wearing off...”

That was when the sock went in, pulled out of the sawdust and dirt filled pocket of Elmer's pilled old flannel, followed by a strip of duct tape that was going to rip out more than a few of his hairs and maybe his lips when all was said and done. That was when talk of cannibals began. Aaron thought he'd be sick but that sounded damned awful, and he did his best not to give much thought to the way his stomach lurched, fought to eject everything he'd put inside over the last day. If he didn't give it power, maybe he could hold it at bay. Why should I worry? Why should I care?

The cave was cold, the sound of water dripping echoed through every one of his senses. It hummed a deep earthy song that rattled around in the marrow of his bones. Through the inkblot shadows they walked, he stumbled, and then down down over crumbling rocky steps...so far down. The steps seemed carved into the stone, so crisp and clean they couldn't have been as old as Elmer claimed they were. So far, so far down.

He kept his back to the cave wall, dragging his shoulders against it for some relief to the falling feeling of going so deep. Above them, there was only a pinprick of light left, nothing to walk by, and Elmer seemed to know the way by something other than light. He just...knew. “You just keep followin' me, don't try to look for nothin, don't stumble...we got a long way here, son, but you just keep pressin' forward and the steps will guide you. Don't know how, but they will. Darndest thing.”

Solid ground came after a time, but his legs stumbled and turned to jelly as he tried to take another step that wasn't there. He crashed to the ground and couldn't get back up, not on his own. He just lay there panting, half-breathing the dank musty air. Around them were walls covered in old barrels, piled high high high. Stacked precariously, some of them, leaning like a child's block tower and ready to fall. Elmer didn't bother to try and move him, just left him lying there sprawled on the ground with his sweaty face in the dirt and his heart thundering a wildly erratic drum beat in his chest.

“Gonna take that sock outta your mouth now. You can scream and holler all you like from in here, ain't no one gonna hear you 'cept the wrong sorts of people I reckon, so it might do you good to stay quiet. There's bound to be someone guarding each of the tunnels, see. Never know who you'll run into, who lives so deep in here. Might be best you stay put in this cavern, see. Don't try to go back up, neither, you'll never make it without me. Just stay put and maybe this turns out okay for us both, huh?”

#aaron hotchner #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction

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olympain · 1 year

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And I'll be here for you when you get back.

#animationedit #filmedit #cartoon saloon #my father's dragon #elmer elevator #boris the dragon #jacob tremblay #gaten matarazzo #nora twomey #original #*gifs

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donovanoliver715 · 1 year

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Let’s be honest here, many of us can relate to a character who naturally has parental issues but none gets me down than following my heart. Seeing the main character relate to Princess Ariel in The Little Mermaid is so emotional at best. Inspired and dedicated by many users, here’s my cast for this Italian wonderful Pixar movie of a time about Luca. Which in this case, Elmer Cast: Flounder (Little Mermaid) as Luca Paguro Elmer (My Father’s Dragon) as Luca Paguro (Human) Nemo (Finding Nemo) as Alberto Scofano Barney Pudowski (Ron’s Gone Wrong) as Alberto Scofano (Human) Nash Durango (Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures) as Gulia Marcovaldo Buttsquat (Camp Lakebottom) as Ercole Visconti Rainbow Fish’s Mother as Daniela Paguro Dela Elevator (My Father’s Dragon) as Daniela Paguro (Human) Rainbow Fish’s Father as Lorenzo Paguro Del (Playmobil: The Movie) as Lorenzo Paguro (Human) The Terminator (Film Series) as Massimo Marcavaldo Patches (Pound Puppies) as Machiavelli Grandma Grooper (Freddi Fish) as Grandma Paguro Grandma Dynamite (Napoleon Dynamite) as Grandma Paguro (Human) Scut Farkus and Grover Dill (A Christmas Story) as Ciccio and Guido Jocktopus (Fish Hooks) as Uncle Ugo https://www.instagram.com/p/CoE7UWkuRT8/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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daexgifs · 1 year

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watching my father's dragon... you know I'm right when I say this elmer elevator looks like daehyun 🥰

#daehyun #jung daehyun #b.a.p #my father's dragon

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dweemeister · 1 year

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My Father’s Dragon (2022)

Kilkenny, Ireland-based Cartoon Saloon has now released its last two films in collaboration with companies more interested in maintaining their streaming services than granting a significant theatrical release. Wolfwalkers (2020), a production alongside Apple TV+, was an excellent addition to the studio’s Irish folklore triptych, and understandably few theaters showed it due to COVID-19 pandemic closures. Nora Twomey’s My Father’s Dragon is a Netflix feature, and this is her first directorial effort since The Breadwinner (2017). With a similarly nominal theatrical release, My Father’s Dragon also represents another departure from all of Cartoon Saloon’s feature films thus far: it is specifically for a younger audience. I dislike the prevalent conflation of animated filmmaking as children’s entertainment (whether by those who write about films or filmmakers themselves), but this is an adaptation of Ruth Stiles Gannett’s book of the same name (itself a runner-up for the Newbery Medal, which honors American children’s literature).

My Father’s Dragon is visually striking, although it contains some of Cartoon Saloon’s most simplistic character design yet. But what makes this the studio’s most prosaic work yet are its tonal inconsistencies, noticeably modern sense of humor, and a conventional resolution to the central drama.

Elmer Elevator (Jacob Tremblay) and mother Dela (Golshifteh Farahani) move to a big city when their small-town candy store forecloses in difficult economic times. Money is short, and a distant Dela spends much of her time looking for stable work in order to help open a new store. Soon, Elmer encounters a talking cat (Whoopi Goldberg), who suggests that he might travel to faraway Wild Island to kidnap the lone dragon that lives there, and use the dragon for entertainment and exhibition purposes. With help from Soda the Whale (Judy Greer) and Saiwa the Gorilla (Ian McShane), Elmer travels to Wild Island and tracks down the dragon. The situation on Wild Island is more perilous than first impressions suggest, as Elmer befriends the young and immature dragon, Boris (Gaten Matarazzo) in order to address the situation.

All the animals on Wild Island are anything but nightmare-inducing, so younger viewers will probably be remarking how cute or cool the primates (Chris O’Dowd and Jackie Earle Haley), the rhino (Dianne Wiest), the crocodile (Alan Cumming), and the tigers (Leighton Meester and Spence Moore II) appear.

We do not see much of Dela after the opening minutes of the film, but her and Elmer’s character designs are a development from what viewers saw in The Breadwinner as opposed to Cartoon Saloon’s Irish folklore triptych. The oval faces and oftentimes half crescent/quasi-crescent eyes of the two human characters (and, strangely enough, Boris) in My Father’s Dragon are not quite enough to evoke responses that seem emotional enough for the moment. Acting teachers will say – and this is true for animated characters as well – that emotion typically precipitates an action (not the inverse of this). The degree of that action is up to the actor or, in this case, the animator. Too often, the human and the animal characters – in moments of distress, peril, and relief – are too still when expressing themselves. Frowns, tears, and anguished shouting convey only so much; through bodily movement and facial expressions do films, animated or otherwise, provoke an emotional response from a viewer. Twomey’s animators closely replicate Boris from how he appeared in Gannett’s book. But in that replication, they produce an inelastic character design that lends humor and a sense of fun, but largely incapable of handling pathos – which invariably harms the film’s closing act.

Gannett’s My Father’s Dragon lies somewhere between a picture book for the youngest children and a chapter book for students in the middle of primary school. At just over eighty pages, it is an abbreviated plot that sees Elmer encounter the dragon only in the final ten pages. The episodic nature of Gannett’s book makes the book difficult to adapt for screenwriter Meg LeFauve (2015’s Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur). LeFauve elects to understandably introduce Boris much earlier in the narrative and to introduce a catastrophic crisis to Wild Island that frames most of Elmer’s time there. Without spoiling much, such a calamity is nowhere to be found in Gannett’s original work, and one detects the influence of the interchangeable, humanity-threatening stakes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Was this sense of world-ending danger necessary? If one is targeting the audience that would also read My Father’s Dragon, the film’s climax is much too intense for them. Gannett’s book is defined by episodic, child-friendly peril from the animals (i.e., hungry carnivores that have peculiar quirks and can be reasoned with) and not existential stakes. Converting My Father’s Dragon away from an episodic narrative might be the primary narrative concern for most, but the counter to this is that LeFauve’s adapted screenplay dispenses with Gannett’s gentle wit that can delight those of any age.

Thus, Nora Twomey’s My Father’s Dragon can be a clamorous work that shows none of the patience – for its characters and viewers – of any of Cartoon Saloon’s previous work. Despite some impressive backgrounds (the most polished ever seen in the studio’s work) and wonderful color palette, no amount of visual mastery can cover up a screenplay that is trying too much to draw out laughs from Boris’ emotional immaturity. This writing tactic – in which modern screenwriters attempt to placate supposedly gratification-hungry viewers with one garrulous punchline-spewing character – is something I associate with the major American animation studios.

Another characteristic of My Father’s Dragon that seems more characteristic to its mainstream American peers is the presence of an all-star voice cast that does little to no modification of their typical vocal inflections while recording for the film. It is distracting to hear Whoopi Goldberg, Dianne Wiest, Rita Moreno (as the Elevators’ landlord), and Matarazzo (who essentially plays a character not too far removed from his character of Dustin in Stranger Things) acquit themselves in this manner. Too little thought has gone into how can they best voice their characters, given their characters’ appearances and the situations of the moment. Are these developments – the hyperactive and comedy-seeking writing, merely adequate voice acting, and declarations about courage and the Power of Friendship – indicative of Netflix’s influence over Cartoon Saloon’s approach to this adaptation of My Father’s Dragon? Or is it a sign of things to come for the Irish studio?

Whatever the case, this is a disappointing fifth effort from Cartoon Saloon over the last thirteen years. Given the standards of their previous work, the studio deserves mercy from further barbs from yours truly. The missteps seen in My Father’s Dragon pale in comparison to some of the work that the likes of Disney, DreamWorks, and especially Illumination have offered in recent years, The tenor of Cartoon Saloon’s upcoming work appears, at least for the new future, to be similar to that seen in My Father’s Dragon. Up next for the studio is a feature film treatment for their children’s television series Puffin Rock (on Netflix in the U.S.) and Louise Bagnall’s directorial feature debut in Julián (adapted from the picture book Julián is a Mermaid by Jessica Love; Bagnall previously directed the Academy Award-nominated short film Late Afternoon for Cartoon Saloon).

As for Nora Twomey – one of the co-founders of Cartoon Saloon alongside Tomm Moore and Paul Young – she remains a figure in animated cinema to keep an eye out for. The co-director for The Secret of Kells (2009) and sole director on The Breadwinner has shown her ability to guide projects along with emotionally and thematically nuanced narratives and stunning visual splendor. And though My Father’s Dragon represents the first miscue on the former element, Cartoon Saloon’s animation remains a visual balm in an industry that, at least among those that financially dominate animated filmmaking, is as far away from hand-drawn work as it ever has been.

My rating: 6.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL). Half-points are always rounded down.

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

#My Father's Dragon #Nora Twomey #Meg LeFauve #Jacob Tremblay #Gaten Matarazzo #Golshifteh Farahani #Dianne Wiest #Rita Moreno #Chris O'Dowd #Judy Greer #Alan Cumming #Yara Shahidi #Jackie Earle Haley #Whoopi Goldberg #Mychael Danna #Jeff Danna #Cartoon Saloon #Netflix #My Movie Odyssey

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 7 months

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"FIRE IN PENITENTIARY," Weekly British Whig. October 23, 1913. Page 3. --- DID $15,000 WORTH OF DAMAGE SATURDAY EVENING. ---- Blaze Started in the Drying Room of the Laundry, and Spread to the Prisoners' Changing Room City Fire Brigade Called. ---- On Saturday evening, about seven o'clock, a fire broke out in the drying-room of the Portsmouth penitentiary, and did damage to the extent of about $15,000. It is thought that the fire started in the north-west corner of the room. It spread up the elevator shait to the changing-room, which is situated on the second floor. After completely gutting that floor, the blaze made its way to the ceiling and roof above, and ruined them.

The changing-room is the place where the convicts go once a week to get clean clothing and to leave the soiled garments so as to have them sent to the laundry. At the time of the fire there was a considerable quantity of clothing, blankets and boots stored away, and all these things were completely destroyed.

At 7.08 o'clock the city fire department received a telephone message from the hospital at the prison, asking the chief to send his men and apparatus to the fire. It was only a minute before Chief Armstrong and seven men were on their way to the prison with a hook and ladder truck, a hose cart and a steamer. Upon arrival at the institution the guards were waiting at the gates so as to help the brigade into the yard.

By this time the guards and keepers had organized themselves into a fire brigade and were fighting the blaze with six streams of water. The local fire fighters attached the seventh line of hose and did excellent work.

Every ladder on the truck was used and by this means excellent work was accomplished. The big prison is equipped with 2,000 feet of hose, but there are not nearly enough ladders to fight a big blaze.

The fire fighters were greatly handicapped on account of being unable to get the hose through the bars on the windows. The distance between the bars is about one-half inch too narrow to allow the coupling to pass through.

All the guards at the prison are deserving of great credit for the work they did. On one occasion the men organized themselves into a small brigade and carried a line of hose to the top of the east end of the burning building. On several occasions they stood their ground when nearly drowned by water and suffocated by the dense smoke.

It was indeed a grand sight when the cupola of the building burned away and fell into the yard. The local fire brigade had the hose in the windows on the west and south sides of the building, while all ladders were leading to the roof. At one time it was feared that the fire had spread into the attic of the tailor shop. Chief Armstrong crawled up on the building and chopped a hole through the roof and Fireman Cockade crawled into the hole, but found that it was only smoke from the other fire which was emerging.

Five of the local fire fighters returned to the station on Sunday morning at two o'clock, while Firemen Murray and Cockcade stayed until 8.30 o'clock Sunday morning. When the brigade received the call Chief Armstrong brought the apparatus up from the lower station and left it at No. 2 station, in charge of Assistant Chief Elmer.

None of the convicts were in the slightest danger, as the place where the fire occurred in a long distance from the cells.

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