On Mandrills

As a general rule, I don't dislike any type of animal (except the blood-sucking, disease-spreading, parasitic varieties). 

That being said, I definitely have my favorites. Some animals I love, and some I find strange. But as I learn more about the strange animals, I grow to like them. 

When I started at the zoo, there were two species of animals that I found the least interesting. Again ,this doesn't mean that I dont' like them. It just means that I fliked the other species more.

But those two species were chimpanzees and mandrills. 

Chimpanzees because they're so human-like (I just prefer things that are less human XD). And Mandrills because they're so strange. Maybe? I'm not really sure. They're so brightly colored for a mammal, that they don't seem real. Mostly because of the males, and their rainbow butts.

But of course, the more I learned about chimps and mandrills, the more I grew to like them. They are fascinating. Reading Jane Goodall books is an easy way to get more interested in chimpanzees. Plus, a new indoor room was built for the zoo chimps a couple years ago. They could see humans right up close for the first time in a very long time. Before that, you could only see them from across a moat. Some of the chimps love being able to get near people. On of them would kiss people through the glass, or give a handshake, or say hi (grinning and nodding).

 

The zoos first baby mandrill was born shortly after I started there. And he was so endlessly entertaining that you can't not grow to like them. (That baby mandrill is such a brat! But he's so fun to watch!) And now there's a second baby. 

Here's the first baby, trying to bite his mom.

 

You may guess what this was leading up to. Nicole emailed me the trailer for Kipo early last year. This is literally the first thing I wrote after watching the trailer:

"Oh, cool! I started laughing so hard when I saw the bad guy is a mandrill. We have a family of them at the zoo."

And then I proceeded to talk about mandrills some more. I talk about animals for a living, so sometimes it's hard to turn off that switch XD. 

It's appropriate that I only talked about monkeys during my first reaction to Kipo. Some part of me could see into the future and knew that I would love the crazy monkey.

 

Actually, Nicole actually called it "Kubo" the first time instead of "Kipo." I think that might be the reason that I kept getting the name mixed up at first. In my head, I would call it "Kipo and the Two Strings." Which is funny, because in both Kipo and Kubo, the mom is a monkey.

A Day in the Life of the Dead

 I just discovered that Disney Plus released a Coco short a couple days ago. 

My Disney Plus subscription ran out a few weeks ago. And I was just somewhere yesterday where I could have watched that short on someone else's account. I'm in the middle of about 3 series right now, and I didn't want to restart any subscription services until I finished those. 

And yet despite all of these things, I went and renewed my Disney Plus subscription to watch a 2 minute Coco short. 

Less than two minutes, actually. It was more like an animation test than anything. There was no dialogue, and all of the music was straight from the movie. And there were only 3 seconds, probably less, of Hector and Imelda dancing, 

 

Did I feel a bit jipped? Yes. 

But I mean, it was inevitable. There was no way I wasn't going to jump on that sucker the moment I learned of its existence. 

Am I going to watch it again? You bet. I just spent $7 to watch it, after all.

Would I have spent $7 if I knew it would only be 3 seconds of Hector and Imelda dancing? Probably.

New Magic People

 I've been debating on whether or not to add one more race of magical people in Magic-Earth. 

And today I finally caved. There's going to be a race of people with lightning magic. They're going to be a fairly uncommon people, but I think they should be their own separate race.

I've also been resisting on creating matching dragon species for the new magical humans. And I finally went through with that today too. That's going to require a lot of work to get their designs down.

Lioness

Mulan

I recently watched the Mulan remake.  I don't care about most of these remakes, but I really liked the trailer the first time I saw it. The movie itself I didn't feel strongly about.

Though I bet they nailed all the cultural stuff. It's great that Disney is putting in the effort for that. Cultural accuracy was not a priority in some of their other movies, though I must admit I love some of them despite that. This is one of those cases. I'm just too attached to the original Mulan. 

The phoenix is beautiful. And it makes more sense for its role in the movie. The dragon is masculine, and the phoenix feminine in China. (I can't find any pictures of the phoenix that aren't blurry! ) I think a lot of people were upset that Mushu was replaced, but I liked that part. 

Also, that circular village she grew up in caught my eye. They had the same thing in the movie "Big Fish and Begonia." I must look into these.

One main thing confused me. In the animated movie, there were no magical humans. And yet in this one there was a shape-shifting witch. They must have done that to highlight the gender stuff. 

But the main thing that bugged me was how they made little Mulan a warrior. It took a lot of the power out of her story. In the original, Mulan was useless when she began soldier training. But then she used her brains and worked hard to became a war hero. But in this new version, they gave her these magic chi powers.

Chi is important. I know that from similar concepts in aikido and yoga. But they focused on that so much that it took away the original story of Mulan getting ahead because of her brains and perseverance.

Always Have Back-ups

I've been trying for over a year to find a proper name for a mage's animal partner. 

 

I had a name for a while, but I realized that it didn't really click with me. So I started brainstorming again a few months ago. And I came up with a couple potential replacement ideas. I liked them, but I wanted to try them out before I committed. I was excited enough that I wrote a blog post about it.

And now I can't find my notes anywhere. Usually I'm very organized, but they've completely disappeared. It doesn't even look like I typed them up in my world notes.

Which means those names I finally found after so much brainstorming are gone. I guess they weren't meant to be TT^TT

Well, I guess it's back to the drawing board.

Baby kudu (antelope)

Guitar Dad

It occurs to me that there are a lot of guitar dads.

Greg, from Steven Universe

 

 

Hector, from Coco (of course)

Lio, from Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts

(Gotta throw in August Rush too)

At Least They're Trying

You may have noticed that I sometimes get very excited about movies or shows. 

And usually there isn't anyone who's as excited about them as I am, so I can't gush about it. Every now and then I try to explain to my parents what makes a show so fascinating. "Look how this character's grown over the course of the series!"  

 

(Wolf threatened to cut off Benson's arm at the beginning of the series, when he put it over her shoulders. And now she's tolerating this! From a Mute! And let's not forget the owner of those hands, who goes through the most impressive changes. This isn't the example I gave my parents, but I do think this picture is hilarious)
 

And Mom and Dad listen and smile and nod, but they also don't really get it. They don't pay attention to that kind of stuff when they watch TV.

 It's sweet that they act interested though XD

Less Than a Week in

 Well, we didn't get very far into 2021 before the... scat hit the fan.

I'm not going into too much detail about the riots on Wednesday. Everyone else has been analyzing them.

I'll just join the others in saying how disgusting to see how the "authorities" handled a riot on the capitol, compared to the cruelty they rained down on protesters who were actually trying to improve the lives of their fellow Americans. 

All I can say was that when I heard the news on Wednesday, I wasn't surprised. I was at work, and started a Zoom call with a worker. I heard from her the bare basics of what had happened. And I'm afraid to say I just raised my eyebrows and thought, "well, those people were bound to do something like this sooner or later."

I didn't find out the details until I got home. My dad kept saying, "no one could ever have predicted this!" But I was not surprised. Maybe 2020 was just too crazy and it desensitized me to insanity, but I think that was a minor factor. Really, Trump has been threatening to do this kind of things since he lost the election. And I knew he and his followers were insane enough to try something.

Does he feel even an ounce of remorse for what he started?

But another reason I wasn't surprised: I lost most of my faith in this country when he was elected to begin with. And I lost even more when he didn't have a landslide loss in the re-election. (This country has done enough awful things to its people that I've never been blindly in love with the US to begin with, but I really thought our country had some actual values before he was elected).

I will never understand how he has gotten away with all the stuff he's done. 

I will never understand how so much of the country still voted for him to have a second term.

It drives me crazy that even though I can understand some Spanish and Japanese, I panic if I need to speak it, and make an idiot of myself @_@

Scarlemagne: I'd Rather be Shiny

Since I recently wrote that post about connecting characters to songs, I guess my mind easily latched onto this one.  I think it occurred to me when Scarlemagne says, "I like shiny things."

The perfect song for Scarlemagne is "Shiny," from Moana. But only the demo version by Lin Manuel Miranda, because that version talks about "daddy" instead of "granny" (You also have to take out the verse about seafood, because Scarlemagne makes it pretty clear that he's not a fan seafood).

Also, the part where he's talking about being inspired by Maui's tattoos you could change to be about Lio's music. Scarelemagne takes up piano because of Lio (Since both Kipo and Scarlemagne play piano, and we don't ever see Song doing any music, I think we can say that Lio taught them). 

(Also, can I just say that last episode of Kipo: "All I wanna do is see you turn into a giant woman. A GIANT WOMAN!" That's gotta be Emilia's theme song.)

 Actually, I never cared too much about the song "Shiny". That's because while I love the beginning and end of Maona, I don't like the middle. In fact, it's only just after "Shiny" ends that I begin to like it again (Maui just drives me crazy). 

A while ago, I ran across two cute Youtube videos. Someone took Lion King songs and put them together with video from Ouran High School Host Club. 

For Tamakei, it was "I Just Can't Wait to be King."

And for Kyoya, it was "Be Prepared."

So I immediately wanted there to be a music video of Scarelemagne with "Shiny." Except I have very little experience with video editing. Even so, I might still try it if I wasn't afraid of Disney ripping it off the internet for copyright. So if anyone wants to, please make this music video and show me!

I'll just make a little image montage here on the blog. 

I linked to the song in the second paragraph, so play it along for effect, if you like XD

(The image is above the text it goes with)

Scarlemagne hasn't always been this glam

I was a drab little monkey once
Now I know I can be happy as a clam

Because I'm beautiful, baby

Oh, did your daddy say to listen to your heart?

Be who you are on the inside?

I need three words to tear his argument apart

Your daddy lied

I'd rather be shiny

Like a treasure from a sunken pirate wreck
Scrub the deck and make it look shiny

I will sparkle like a wealthy woman's neck
Just a sec, don't you know?

Wow, little Kipo's having trouble with her look

You little semi-demi-mega mute

Ouch! What a terrible performance
Get the hook! You don't swing it like you used to, kid

Yet I have to give you credit for my start
Your guitar and your music lessons

For just like you I made myself a work of art
I'll never hide, I can't

I'm too shiny
I'm the sunrise on the surface of the sea
Look at me, you see I'm so shiny

The monsters see my weaponry and flee
C'est la vie, don't you know
I will shine, shine, shine

Like a rainbow after showers

Your powers will be mine, mine, mine

They'll be mourning you for hours
Bring flowers

Call me selfish  

Call me shellfish 

Far from the ones who abandoned you

Chasing the love of these humans
Who made you feel wanted

It's never enough
Love yourself, get your armor up

They can see, your heart is a vacancy 

So why not be shiny
Watch me dazzle like a diamond in the rough

Strut my stuff, my stuff is so shiny 

Send your armies but they'll never be enough
My shell's too tough, Kipo kid

You could try, try, try

 But I hate negotiations, prostrations

You will die, die, die
Never test a big primate's impatience

Unless you have something shiny
Unless you have something shiny