EliseArainai

Sorry if I worried anybody on here; I was taking a bit of a dA break when important family stuff came up and I guess I was gone longer than I had anticipated.  Said family stuff has delayed me for a bit, but I can assure you I'm working on my next submission right now.  I should be able to get it out sometime next week, so please look forward to it!

(Also, if anybody might possibly want details on the family stuff, feel free to ask)

I don't think I've brought this up here, but I happen to be a HUGE Harry Potter fan.  I love the books and the movies, and I'm really looking forward to the movie "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" coming out by the end of this year.  Speaking of which, guess who managed to get her hands on a copy of the actual book?  Yep, I did... and it's a bloody good read if I do say so myself.  The book in fact is based on the textbook "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" by Newt Scamander, used by Harry during his school years; in fact, when you open the book it's revealed to (supposedly) be a duplicate of Harry's actual textbook.  As a bonus, little notes and doodles made by Harry, Ron and even Hermione are scattered throughout, adding some additional humor.

The information supplied in this book is fascinating, and really adds to the lore of the Harry Potter universe.  Of course, there's one particular section of the book that is my favorite and shouldn't go without mention: the Dragon section.  Might be kind of an obvious choice, but I must've read through this part half a dozen times before moving on, I love it so much!  According to the book, there are ten main species of Dragons in the HP world (not including rare hybrids), half of which I can name off the top of my head.  Allow me to give you the details of these five dragons which were featured throughout the books.  Enjoy your lesson! 

Chinese Fireball (aka Liondragon) – The only oriental dragon has a particularly striking appearance.  Scarlett and smooth-scaled, it has a fringe of golden spikes around its snub-snouted face and extremely protuberant eyes.  The Fireball gained its name for the mushroom-shaped flame that bursts from its nostrils when it is angered.  It weighs between two and four tonnes, the female being larger than the male.  Eggs are a vivid crimson speckled with gold and the shells are much prized for use in Chinese wizardry.  The Fireball is aggressive but more tolerant of its own species than most dragons, sometimes consenting to share its territory with up to two others.  The Fireball will feast on most mammals, though it prefers pigs and humans.

Common Welsh Green – The Welsh Green blends well with the lush grass of its homeland, though it nests in the higher mountains, where a reservation has been established for its preservation.  This breed is among the least troublesome of the dragons, preferring to prey on sheep and actively avoiding humans unless provoked.  The Welsh Green has an easily recognizable and surprisingly melodious roar.  Fire is issued in thin jets.  The Welsh Green’s eggs are an earthy brown flecked with green.

Hungarian Horntail – Supposedly the most dangerous of all dragon breeds, the Hungarian Horntail has black scales and is lizard-like in appearance.  It has yellow eyes, bronze horns and similarly colored spikes that protrude from its long tail.  The Horntail has one of the longest fire-breathing ranges (up to fifty feet).  Its eggs are cement-colored and particularly hard-shelled; the young club their way out using their tails, whose spikes are well developed at birth.  The Hungarian Horntail feeds on goats, sheep and, whenever possible, humans.

Norwegian Ridgeback – The Norwegian Ridgeback resembles the Horntail in most respects, though instead of tail spikes it sports particularly prominent jet-black ridges along its back.  Exceptionally aggressive to its own kind, the Ridgeback is nowadays one of the rarer dragon breeds.  It has been known to attack most kinds of large land mammal and, unusually for a dragon, the Ridgeback will also feed on water-dwelling creatures.  An unsubstantiated report alleges that a Ridgeback carried off a whale calf off the coast of Norway in 1802.  Ridgeback eggs are black and the young develop fire-breathing abilities earlier than other breeds (at between one and three months).

Swedish Short-Snout – The Swedish Short-Snout is an attractive silvery-blue dragon whose skin is sought after for the manufacture of protective gloves and shields.  The flame that issues from its nostrils is a brilliant blue and can reduce timber and bone to ash in a matter of seconds.  The Short-Snout has fewer human killings to its name than most dragons, though as it prefers to live in wild and uninhabited mountainous areas, this is not much to its credit.

This lesson about dragons comes courtesy of “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” by Newt Scamander.  If you wish to learn more, please secure your own copy at Flourish and Blotts or your nearest Muggle bookstore.  Any Muggles looking to purchase this book, I assure you the creatures featured within are fictional and cannot harm you.   To wizards, I say merely: Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus.

The other night my boyfriend Chris and I were hanging out at a local bar and lampooning a few of the music videos that were playing on one of the screens.  At one point the video for "All About That Bass" by Meghan Trainor started playing.  (Have I mentioned that I really don't like Meghan Trainor?)  As the video played, I asked, "Ugh, what is with the overabundance of pastels?"

"Not just pastels, but vertical stripes," Chris added.  "They're supposed to make you look thinner."

Out of habit, I looked down at my less-than-flat stomach which has been driving me nuts for a while.  Chris noticed the annoyed look on my face, leaned over to me and said, "And if I catch you looking at your stomach again, I will Gibbs slap you."  

For all you non-NCIS fans out there, the Gibbs slap is just a firm slap upside the head frequently used by NCIS protagonist Leroy Jethro Gibbs.  Both Chris and I are fans of the show, and this statement by him is another one of his ways of saying he loves me just the way I am.

Yep, he's a keeper

Guys, I'm gonna be totally honest here:  I can't seem to get into the holiday spirit.  Now don't get me wrong; Christmas is a wonderful holiday.  It's a time to spend with family and friends, to give gifts, and to celebrate a miracle from a time long ago.  It also happens to be the most commercialized holiday in existence!  

I blame my time in retail for this, but when the first Christmas decorations start coming out in late September and then the entire seasonal section of Target is Christmas TWO DAYS after Halloween is over, we have a serious problem!  (And no I'm not exaggerating, that's literally what happened at my store.)  On the subject of shopping, finding the right gift for someone is one thing, but regardless of whether it's in a store or online, things are so expensive these days that a retail cashier like myself has to be super careful buying stuff lest I go broke by the new year.  And then of course people this time of the year are even worse about the whole "customer is right" BS, half of the Christmas music that is played on the radio makes me cringe, and as much as I normally love kids, some of the most spoiled of spoiled brats show their colors around this time.  (Though that's mostly from my middle school and high school days; lot of spoiled rich kids at those schools)  It's like I need some sort of trigger to feel even remotely excited about Christmas like watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" or "It's a Wonderful Life", but since I've yet to see those this year, that's yet to happen.  ("Elf" kinda works, but the classics seem to work better somehow...)  

HOWEVER... there is still hope for my Grinchy heart.  About a week ago, a mom and her three very energetic kids (Lawrence and twins Luke and Lea) came through my lane with a cart chock full of gifts.  Ordinarily this wouldn't surprise me until Lawrence asked me if he could borrow my pen to write a card for the kids.  I asked his mom "what kids?", and it turned out that her kids were doing angel gift shopping; in other words, all the toys that were in that cart were going to be given to children who otherwise might not get anything on Christmas, and as a trade-off, Lawrence and the twins would receive fewer gifts for Christmas this year.  I couldn't help but feel very proud of them at that moment; Lawrence can't be older than 10, and yet he and his siblings are doing something so wonderful for children less fortunate than them and were even excited about it!  We honestly need more kids like them in this world, those who are willing to give something up in order to make others feel happy.  These kids are embracing the holiday spirit, and when they came through my lane again a couple days later, I greeted them with a genuine warm smile.  Merry Christmas to Lawrence, Luke and Lea, and I'm sure your gifts will be truly appreciated and loved.

...And yes, at first I misheard the twins' names as Luke and Leia.  Shut up! XD

I'm sure I'm not the only one, but a lot of us grew up with the beloved comic strip "Peanuts" as well as the countless TV specials that came with it.  Memorable characters like Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Peppermint Patty, and of course that lovable beagle Snoopy are parts of our childhood that most likely will never leave our hearts.  We may never get that jazzy theme out of our heads (but then why would you want to?), and nowadays watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is one of the few ways I can get into the holiday spirit.  So when I heard that a full-length movie was in the works, I only had 2 words: Good grief!  Yeah, I'll admit that I was skeptical at first; these days, movies and TV shows try to update classic series for the modern audience, and to be honest it almost never works. *cough cough* Pink Panther *cough cough* I was afraid that Blue Sky Studios was gonna screw everything up and modernize the heck out of it, and let's be honest it would've been kinda strange if Lucy had a cell phone or something like that.  Of course that was before I saw the trailer for the film which actually looked pretty promising, and it made me excited to go see the movie when it came out.  And what do I think of it now that I've seen it for myself?  Let's just say that Charles Schultz would be very, very proud.

Let's cover the story first; it's simple and easy to follow, but that's always worked for Peanuts.  Basically, on one end Charlie Brown is trying to work up the courage to talk to and impress a new girl in town, known only as the Little Red-Haired Girl (more on her in a bit), while Snoopy gets his own story-line where his imagination runs wild, leading to a few clashes with his nemesis the Red Baron.  Both are entertaining story-lines and I enjoyed each one equally, and Snoopy's shenanigans had me laughing a lot throughout the film.  There are plenty of light-hearted moments that will have you laughing, and just about every trope you can associate with Peanuts is in the movie somewhere: Snoopy's typewriter, Lucy pulling the football away, Charlie Brown getting clobbered by a baseball, etc.  Blue Sky Studios kept things simple, much like the classic Peanuts formula, and that's something I can appreciate.

Of course, where the movie really shines for me is the presentation: the animation is very crisp and while it is CGI, I'm not complaining because it's still very reminiscent of Schultz's artwork.  Rather than try to implement modern elements into the world of Peanuts such as computers, cell phones and all that stuff, the world remains where it's always been which is a simple suburban environment.  The music is a charming mix of classic tunes from the specials such as "Skating" and of course the classic Peanuts theme "Linus and Lucy", and a couple of songs by Meghan Trainor are also in the film. I'll admit I'm not the biggest fan of Meghan Trainor (understatement of the year), but her songs do fit with the film's theme and I gotta give her credit for that just this once.  

As for the characters, I was blown away; every single one of them is in character, and they look and even sound a lot like they did back in the days of the specials.  It really helps that the cast is filled with child voice actors who sound a lot like the Peanuts gang and makes the performances more believable.  Lucy is as bossy as ever, Schroeder's love of Beethoven hasn't waned an inch, Linus is supportive of our hero, Snoopy is a delightful mix of supportive, creative and mischievous, and Charlie Brown is maximum Charlie Brown, never giving up even when the odds are against him which is really admirable to me.  In the case of Snoopy and Woodstock, recycled voice clips were used from the specials, but they never sound out of place and watching the two characters interact is just adorable and funny.  I do have to point out one slight inconsistency and that's the appearance of the side character Patty: in the specials she had brown hair and wore an orange-red dress, while in the film she has blonde hair and wears a green dress.  But honestly that's just me nitpicking.  Also, I love the fact that they went so far as to include the Little Red-Haired Girl in the film!  For those of you who aren't aware, in the comics the Little Red-Haired Girl is the object of Charlie Brown's affection, much like she is in the movie, but sadly he never got up the nerve to talk to her and so we never actually see her with the exception of a silhouette once.  But here, we finally get to see her in her first vocal role which I'm really happy about.  And this is just a small detail, but I have to bring it up: the animators paid so much attention to detail that they even got each character's signature dance down correctly!  That's just perfect, okay?!

Overall, I can honestly say that I'm proud that Blue Sky Studios did the source material justice.  If you're a fan of Peanuts, then take it from me right now: go see this movie!  It's a big ol' ball of nostalgia for any fan, it's a good film for kids and adults alike, and when it's over, I can guarantee you'll leave the theater with a big smile.  Now if you'll excuse me, I feel the sudden urge to save up for a keyboard; I wanna learn how to play "Linus and Lucy"...