Morning Doves. Wowie. I wanna start this blog with talking about a series of short stories and flashfictions I’ve been working on for a while now. The start to all this was when I was writing a flashfiction for my portfolio. It had some issues and I forgot about it for a bit until later in around I want to say March or April I opened my google docs in English class to get out a little bit of creativity. “Cal” and “Buck” gained form as “Callahan Brau” and “Buck Buchanan.”

Currently, I have two blurbs written about them. The original “Morning Doves” which has a really sad ending because I didn’t have enough words to continue happily. The second is unnamed, but goes over the relationship Cal and Buck have in the beginning of their story together and lays out their basic character tropes and characteristics. The third is also unnamed, following the development of a relationship between the pair.

My main goal at first was to get in here with something that represented me, sad queer cowboys. As it is now, the story is really just me wanting to do research on acceptance of queer peoples in the wildwest of the late 1800s. Did you know that derogatory terms for queer people weren’t very much in practice until the early 1900s? I didn’t until I was trying to find some choice words for Buck to use in his refusal of Cal’s advances and internalized homophobia. The reason that harsh terms weren’t used in that time period is because it wasn’t really something you talked about or showed off. Even if you did around an outlaw like Cal or Buck, they wouldn’t care. Most cowboys were actually people of color, queer, or any other group that you would think was excluded in that era. They had a lot more to worry about than if the guy two tents over liked kissing boys sometimes.

Some may assume based off of my love for Brokeback Mountain that it’s based off of them… NO!!!!!!!!! Completely different types of cowboys. Cal and Buck are from the 1880s-1890s and BBM is set in the 1960s-1980s. Cal and Buck are in the category of outlaws that so happened to take up work on ranches because they were poor and couldn’t get actual stable jobs because no one would hire the guys with their wanted posters all over town. Jack and Ennis were in the category of working class that needed to work where they got it; though they went out to herd sheep, they still would be lumped in with other ranchers and herders.

I am kind of refusing to talk about the plot because I want to continue writing out their storylines and develop the backstories of the pair. My current beta readers are Sarah (biggest fan of the series & most tortured soul) and Danny. I’ve started working on a fourth installment, but don’t have any ideas on how to continue further (sad face). I’m gonna lock in an write another like five pages in a few days probably. That’s enough vagueness for now. Next week I’ll do a more in depth overview for anyone who wants to read!! ByeBye!!

Hello everyone, this week’s blog is going to be about the things I love, simply so that I can yap about them. This post won’t include all the things I love, just a few.

First things first,

Phone Cases

I love phone cases, I love to get new phone cases, I love looking at phone cases on Pinterest. It’s kind of an odd fixation of mine; phone cases just make me really happy. I should probably start a collection. There’s really not much to say here so moving right along…

Perfume

I also love perfume. Perfume is probably one of my favorite things in the whole wide world. The ones I love to reach for are Mon Guerlain, Mugler Alien, and Good Girl perfumes are great too, Versace Bright Crystal, so on and so on. I really really want to get my hands on the Delina perfumes. Even just one singular bottle would be a dream come true.

The Nutcracker

Back when I was in ballet Nutcracker season was my favorite season, not even Christmas. Just as soon as we started practicing for the Nutcracker, I was one happy girl. Everything from Mice to the Land of Sweets is perfect in my opinion. My favorite roles were Flowers and Snowflake, I think those were the best roles I ever got in the nutcracker, but I will say that Porcelain Doll was a close third for me. The role I always wanted to get was Dew Drop, Arabian is such a beautiful role, but the flexibility required is not for me.

TikTok

Call me brain dead all you want, I love TikTok. My feed is hilarious, the edits I see are great, and you can learn so much from TikTok if you know where to look. Trust me.

Colors

I love different colors. I can’t really talk about a specific color because my favorite color is constantly changing, but I love color in general. I hate millennial grey. There is nothing that enrages me more than when I see someone buy a beautiful home and destroy it buy taking all the color, personality, all the life out of a home and replacing it with grey.

I hope whoever is reading this enjoyed listening to me yap and maybe even got a few solid perfume recommendations from me. Please, if you see me in the hall and ever want to chat perfume, pull me aside. I would love to.

Okay so, this is a blog I’ve wanted to write for a while now, but I have been trying to wait for all the episodes of the new season to come out so I can give a full review. For those that don’t know this is the very last season ever to come out of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” ever! If you’ve never seen it before, or it’s just been a while, well obviously you should go watch it since its awesome, but here’s a quick break down, it’s a teen romance, love triangle, coming of age, and very much a summer beach movie. Now that we have a base on what it’s about, that’s jump on in. 

LOTS of drama, throughout this entire series, between two brothers and theirs best friend’s little sister Isabella Cocklin aka (Belly) The brothers are Conrad Fisher, and Jeramiah Fisher their mother owns a beach house on Cousins Beach which they visit every summer. The kids have been meeting up there since they were little and have continued to since. 

Season one, there’s all getting older and things and changing. It’s the summer of Belly’s sixteenth birthday, and she has had a “glow up” from last summer. The normal for every summer was to stay in with her mother and Susannah, (the Fisher boy’s mom) and watch a movie and bake brownie, but this summer was different. When stopping at the gas station for snacks she was invited to a bonfire on the beach. From there we could tell thing were changing. 

Conrad Fisher, young hot, gorgeous, daydreaming, he’s the boy Belly wished for every birthday since she was twelve. Conrad is this sweet boy who always steps in from winning her the iconic Junior Mint at the fair when they were young to getting her an infinity necklace for her sixteenth birthday. This summer Conrad he was just different wasn’t himself. He found out a secret and had to hold onto it since he wasn’t supposed to know about his mother, and it tore him; he quit football and became overall different. 

Times past, the worst of all because like what AHH okay so we ended that season at Belly’s deb ball, and Jeramiah punched Conrad! This got me mad because Conrad was hurting holding onto the news by himself, but it wasn’t his information to share, Jeramiah found out that their mother has cancer when he took her phone and stared reading her emails. Mind you there at Belly’s Deb ball while all this is happing! They go home after, and the boys convinced their mom to do the cancer trail, and this was a very emotional night. Her and Conrad finally became real near the end of this season.

Susannah has passed away, when we start the next season. Conrad and Belly start dating in secret, but it falls apart as Conrad struggles with depression when his mom died and he stared pushing people away. While also Susannah’s sister is trying to sell the beach house, so Conrad is trying to stop that because that is his mother’s home. Jermiah and Belly were on the phone soon they find out Conrad is missing so they go on to Cousens to find him when they realized about the house and decide to help. Steven finds out (Belly’s brother) where they and drives down there with Taylor (Belly’s best friend) to help Belly drunk calls her mother and she show up upset with them. They explain the house, and she calls the Fisher boy’s father, and they figure out a way to save the house. Time goes by and Jermiah figures out he has feelings her Belly!!

Okay last but not least, Jermiah and Belly dating, in collage now, and Conrad is in med school in California. The perfect relationship some people think. Going well collage life, he works for his dad, she got accepted into a semester abroad in Paris. Taylor and steven together. Belly found out about Jeramiah cheating on her in Cabo over spring break when they were at a party and it struck an argument. Later Taylor and Steven got in a car accident, while they were at the hospital he confected that he cheated twice! After that he proposed to her with no ring or nothing in front of the hospital that her brother is currently in!! Even worse she said YES like bruh, Jeramiah is also having to repeat his senior year because he FORGOT to read an email, and he told Belly not to go to Paris.

After that has settle down they announce the wedding, none of the family was on board, soo yeah, Steven is the best man and Conrad is the co-best man so he flew down there they did his best to stay away from Belly but after he found out about Cabo AHHHH Belly and Jeremaiah were supposed to meet on the beach since it was the night before the rehearsal dinner but Jeremaiah got drunk as per usual and didn’t go. BUT you know who CONNIE BABY, and he was there said he LOVED HER!!!! He also did it again the day of the wedding AHHH my Conrad in finally confessing his feelings to and Jermiah ended up calling the wedding off she went to Paris to find a new life and while Shes been there for almost a year he came!!! They finally got together I was screaming, so happy literally love Connie baby. Proud to say I’ve been team Conrad since season one! 

This blog, if you couldn’t tell, is going to be about Ratatouille, the movie not the food. This movie is one of my favorite Disney movies. I love how the animation is done and how the colors work so well together.  

Ratatouille is not just a cute kids movie made by Disney. It is a movie about a rat who has synesthesia(taste-to-color). Its visuals portray this due to Michel Gangne, the person who was put in charge of portraying Remy’s synesthesia in the film due to his own experience with synesthesia. He designed the colors and patterns Remy saw throughout the movie to depict what it is like to experience flavors through synesthesia. This made the film so much better. I honestly can’t imagine Ratatouille without the vivid colors, patterns, and just overall animation and cinematography. 

Ratatouille is a movie about a rat who as we have established has synesthesia and is obsessed with food due to this. He thinks that rats should steal real food rather than trash if they are going to steal. He eventually is put over smelling food, trash, for rat poison. He does good at his job but one day he goes into the house beside where they live and causes the whole population of rats to flee. Remi gets separated and inevitably finds a restaurant he used to watch at the house near his and decides to go in and try to steal food but ends up befriending a man named Alfredo Linguini, who tries to become a garbage boy for the restaurant but ends up becoming a chef thanks to Remy.

Now that you are all caught up on the overall gist of the movie let’s talk about the cinematography, I guess you would call it, of this movie. Ratatouille is a masterpiece. Its animation is beautifully done, and its subject is well portrayed.  It’s an artistic movie really. The movie consists of a very bright light color scheme throughout the majority. The movie does use darker color schemes when needed but it’s an overall pastel color scheme. The color scheme was the work of Harley Jessup (production designer) and Sharon Calahan (director of photography). They used more restrained colors in backgrounds throughout the movie to give more contrast with the bright deep colors used in the food. They used lighting as well. They used it to guide the films visual mood to evoke emotions and support the story throughout the movie. They use these aspects in such a way that the two blind together to make the movie. It flows together adding to the film in a very positive way. 

The animation also adds to the film. It was animated by Pixar. The film uses a trad frame by frame animation method rather than motion capture. It took a lot of research and time to get every detail right. The animation is a 3d computer      animation style. Its animation is slick,      precise and well developed. 

The movie was followed by a short film called “your friend the rat”. I personally have never seen this film. It is done in 2d animation and is a film where Remy and Emile (Remy’s older brother) tell the history of rats and argue the case of their species. It’s roughly 11 minutes long. 

A theory some have made about the movie is that the old women who lives in the house at the beginning of the movie is the food critic Anton Ego’s mother. They support this with the decor showing in both his childhood home and her house being the same or similar.

My favorite character in this movie is obviously Remy, but Anton Ego is a close second and Alfredo is third followed by the great Colette Tatou. The character creation and development in this movie is amazing, and the plot is so well written. The movie was released in 2007. It was pretty amazing for the time. I suggest everyone watch Ratatouille it’s a great movie with so many good themes and lessons. It shaped my childhood, and it will always be one of my favorite movies. I could go on and on about this movie, but I think this is a good stopping point. Can’t wait for next week’s blog. 

“Anyone can cook, but a great artist can come from anywhere” – Chef Gusteau

warning spoilerss!!!!!!

This movie is an absolute hidden gem not a lot of people watched and if you didn’t, I highly recommend it. This coming-of-age movie shows the value of friendship, adversity, hardship, and the importance of not backing down to “bullies”. echo brings the 3 main characters together even more than they already were although this journey couldn’t keep them together in the end, they became brothers for life.  you will find earth to echo similar to E.T it’s meant to appeal to crowds like those. it’s a movie for people who believe in the power of friendship and magic. 

The journey starts with one of the main characters “tuck” recording an anomaly happening in the neighborhood. Everyone who lives on the street devices has been messing up and the government is paying people to hand the devices over: There’s also been construction happening a new highway is being built. tuck finds this weird, so he records the interaction. the friends discover that the devices show a map in the middle of the desert and decide to investigate leading down a series of events, and eventually to them finding “echo”.  after making their way through the desert the groups determination was questionable. the harsh sun beat down on them as they went through the desert. their water supply drained fast. just when their spirits began to give up a small gas station appeared seeming from nowhere. overjoyed they rushed towards it. seeking refuge from the relentless heat. inside they found an old map, which they happily examined. hoping to find a shortcut to echos next coordinates. munch tinkering with the gas pumps got just enough fuel for their bikes. Alex was cautious and scanned the area to see if anyone were following them. As they work with one another their bond deepens and, each playing a crucial role to their mission. with renewed energy and a clear sense of direction they head towards the coordinated with their revved-up bikes. ready to face whatever comes their way per their commitment to echo.

I’m not going to do a whole review explaining everything that happened because no one likes spoilers for real. I do have a couple questions though if you and your friends found an alien robot thingy how would y’all react? what would y’all do next? if you and your friends were being split up, what lengths would you go to avoid separation?

Older, Richer, Higher and Smarter are the four words that tell you all you need to know about In Utero Nirvanas final studio Album.  

In early 1993 Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic would arrive at Pachyderm studios deep in the woods of Minesota about two to three days later Dave Grohl would fly in. With the gang there and a new producer in Steve Albini in Utero was ready to be kicked off.  

Steve Albini is in all words a legend of punk rock. He prior to Nirvana produced The Pixies and Jesus Lizard among many others to great critical success. His style was a perfect blind of the previous Nirvana producers, Albini featured the harsh noisy alternative rock sound mixed with the carefully cleaned sound of Butch Vig. Albini also featured an ability to do something that was largely overlooked by creating odd sounds just from the guitar and pedals. 

GEAR USED FOR In Utero  

                                  Kurt 

1965 Fender Jaguar modified to have a Dimarzio humbucker and a three-way style selector switch and coil split controls on the guitar. 

A 1960-69 Jaguar with Seymour Duncan pickups installed and DiMarzio’s. 

Potentially an Ibanez Les Paul with Dimarzio humbuckers  

A Stella 12 string guitar that was strung up with only 5 nylon strings (Writers note that the same guitar featured on Something in the way and Polly from Nevermind.) 

A Hi flier with a set of humbuckers (possibly the stock ones)  

A fender twin reverb  

A Modded Fender Frankenstein amp with several different tubes’ speakers and wiring configurations. 

A Boss Ds-2 super distortion pedal 

An Electro Harmonix Chorus Pedal 

A Sans amp Classic  

A mysterious Pedal X 

A Echo Flanger Pedal. 

    Krist  

A Marshall Combo Head and Cabinet  

A Gibson Rd Bass 

(Note he didn’t use any pedals most of his distortion comes from his preamp being cranked loud with high gain and him simply playing harder and with the volume pot on his guitar being turned up as well.) 

    Dave 

His Drumkit often varied but the studio recording featured a Tama large kit with that iconic large Tom and Kick. Plus, a sonar hi hat stand that was indeed high 

The lead off track of this album in many ways is a change of pace.” Serve the Servants” sounded different even from “Blew” and “Smells like teen spirit”. Nirvana was trying hard to distance themselves from the clean production or “Nevermind” while finding ways to maintain it. So more came out of the production phase. The trio would play in a rehearsal room and track songs live. “Serve the Servants” is wonderfully dissonant, and it clashes itself it embraces its loud noisiness while staying relatively easy on the ears the studio magic of Steve Albini.  

“Scentless Apprentice” has iconic moments throughout; this is one of the songs you hear once and just know the drumbeat to start off a powerful 4/4 fast paced loop encroaches the song the cymbals ring out well. Kurt employs a very nice use of chromatic walk downs throughout the song I.E the opening bar to the guitar part features a F to F# to G ending on a 19th fret B (Fourth octave) with a clash of the open B (B3 in concordance to a piano) string. This creates a lot of dissonance with the vocal part Kurt sings at a F# as the main chorus features a G# fretted hammer on sound from the guitar barely reaching a harmony as the song moves in full steps and barely remains in the key of G and F.

This is the end to part one a lot of my posts have been extremely long and not as in depth as I would hope so my compromise shorter more in detail in depth posts. This Allows for the first part to show what gear the artist used (pedals, amps, and guitars.) and maybe how they used them (amp settings pedal chain order and settings) . Part two will have the rest of songs from In Utero as well as some of the changes the live versions of these songs saw.