The Hangman’s Daughter- Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13- BLOOD AND WATER

This is the room where Marie and Isabella are spending the night. That’s Isabella is bed over there beside the door. There she is, sleeping deep. She sleeps like a boy, limbs splayed, snoring noisily.

That’s Marie’s bed, by the window. The window looks out over the hill, which is bathed in moonlight.

Marie is sleeping sound, the comb clenched in her fist. The bed is good and warm, and she is so tired that she doesn’t have the energy to dream of Rashgiel, or her father lying on the bed, grey as a tombstone. She sleeps sound and black.
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The Unshaved Mouse’s Top 10 Most Tear-Jerking Disney Moments

Being a tough, grizzled, tobaccy chewin’ kind of rodent I rarely succumb to displays of emotion. But there have been times over the past two years that have caused my granite-like emotional stoicism to crack. Reviewing the entire Disney canon is a bit like pregnancy *dodges wife-flung heavy object* in that no one ever warns you what it does to your hormones and such. This is a list I’ve wanted to do for a while now: the Unshaved Mouse’s Top Ten Moments That Made Me bawl like an infant Chop Onions. How weepy are these moments? Let me put it this way; Bambi’s mother getting shot doesn’t even make the list. So stiffen your upper lip and think happy thoughts because this list is about to nutsack you right in the feels.

# 10- “NO! They pretend they’re going to always be there for you, and then one day they pack up and move away and take their love with them, and leave their declawed cat to fend for herself! They leave her, wondering what she did wrong.” Bolt.

Good grief but this movie does not get the respect it’s due.

#9- “You see, Willie was a miracle. And people just aren’t used to miracles.” Make Mine Music.

The oldest, and certainly the most obscure entry on this list, The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met is a short from Make Mine Music that starts out as an hilarious comedy about a whale with a talent for singing opera and takes a sudden massive swerve into darker territory when Willie is harpooned by an opera impresario who mistakenly believes that he’s swallowed an opera singer. It’s incredibly bleak, a story about someone who simply wanted to share his gift being destroyed by a world that cannot accept the unbelievable, no matter how wonderful it is.

#8- “Waiting” “For what?” “Family.”-Lilo and Stitch

Man, I could have made this list up of bits from Lilo and Stitch alone if I wanted to. Stitch’s transformation from furry sociopath to someone who needs love and affection has many steps along the way. This is the scene where he wanders into the forest, hoping that he will find someone to be his family only to be told by his creator that he was never meant to be loved. Harsh.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh Pooh and Christopher Robin

#7- “Promise me that you’ll never forget me? Even when I’m a hundred?” “How old shall I be?” “Ninety-nine. Silly old bear.” The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Aw jeez…he’s had him since he was a year old! Keep it together Mouse, keep it together…

#6- “Well…yes boy. Yes, in its way I’d say it’s the greatest force on earth.”- The Sword in the Stone.

There are only entry two entires on this list from the Scratchy Era, which tended to go pretty easy on the emotional trauma all things considered, but this scene manages to wring real tragedy out of what is, on the surface, a pretty farcical situation. Wart is transformed into a squirrel by Merlin and meets a girl-squirrel who falls instantly in love with him. It’s played for laughs until Wart is transformed back into a human and his admirer’s dreams are transformed to ash. In the midst of all the emotional wreckage, Merlin sadly tells Wart that love is “powerful business”. Even the mightiest wizard in the universe knows that there are some forces that simply should not be trifled with.

#5- “The greatest glory and honour is having you for a daughter.” Mulan

Did I find this scene as affecting before I had a daughter of my own? No. What can I say? Becoming a dad flips a switch. It’s the way that Fa-Zhou casts aside the medal and the sword, articles of honour beyond any price, as if they mean nothing. His little girl is home. And nothing matters compared to that.

#4-“This is my family. I found it. It is small and broken. But still good. Yeah. Still good.” Lilo and Stitch

Look, I just want five minutes where Lilo and Stitch is not trying to break me like glass, is that too much to ask? Seriously, what did I ever do to this movie?

#3- “Dad. Come on. We gotta go home.” The Lion King

Yeah, you all knew this was coming. I don’t even know what I can say about this scene. Incredibly harsh, emotionally raw, utterly beautiful. And I’ve said it before, Jonathan Taylor Thomas does not get enough praise for his voicework in this movie. Absolutely phenomenal.

Onions. Shut up.

#2- “Aloha ‘oe.” Lilo & Stitch

And for the hat-trick…

#1-“Do you want to build a snowman?”- Frozen

Part of me wants to hold off on this until I finally review Frozen, but I couldn’t have any other entry on the top of this list. This is the only one that will, without fail, get me to cry chop onions whenever I hear it. It’s sneaky too, it starts out with that joyous little piano intro so you think it’s going to be a happy, chirpy little number about a little girl whose unflagging optimism finally convinces her sister to open the door and come play with her. But she never does, and the song follows Anna’s mood, starting out happy and light, becoming more forceful and energetic as she gets older, then slower and more melancholy as she stops even trying. And then, after the death of her parents, Anna finally slumps down with her back to Elsa’s door, trying one last time to get through to her. The final, world-weary, “Do you want to build a snowman?” is utterly devastating not because of what’s being said but what’s left unsaid: I know you don’t. I just have to ask one more time. Because after this…I give up.

“Do you want to build a snowman?” in my opinion, is the single most emotionally devastating song in the entire canon because it is about the death of hope.

Now wasn’t that fun? What did I leave out? What should have been higher? What has no business on this list? Let me know in comments.

Mouse out.

The Hangman’s Daughter- Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12- NEW TERRITORY

They were deep in unknown land now.

They were in a place that Marie had never even heard people in the village talking out. Fields and forests went passed, and as she looked at them they were mute, and did not speak their names to her.

She felt herself shrinking, as she sat in the seat of the carriage. She alone was all that was left of her entire world. And she looked at Isabella, who smiled crookedly back at her.

“Cheer up.” she said “It’ll be fine.”

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Akira (1988)

(DISCLAIMER: This blog is not for profit. All images and footage used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise. I do not claim ownership of this material. New to the blog? Start at the start with Snow White.)

When it received a limited release in US theatres in 1988, Akira was by no means the first exposure Americans had had to Japanese animation. Animé had a small but continuos presence on American television screens since at least Astro Boy in the early sixties. But it’s undoubtedly true that no one in the West had ever seen anything like this movie before. Shows like Astro Boy, Battle of the Planets and Kimba the White Lion were exported to the West because they were children’s shows, and they fit into Western perceptions of animation as being entertainment for the man cubs. Darker, more mature animé for adult audiences simply did not have a market outside of Japan, and in fact even Akira only received a limited release after Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas passed on it, considering it “unmarketable” to American audiences. While there had been a fandom for Japanese animation in the States since at least the seventies, Akira was a seismic event, massively swelling the ranks of fans in the US and other Western nations and hugely increasing the genre’s visibility in mainstream pop culture. Why? Well, the animation for starters. Over a quarter of a century later and it’s still one of the greatest technical achievements in cel-animation ever drawn. It’s jaw-dropping. When fans of animé want to induct new members into the church, Akira is more often than not the movie they reach for. Now, I know I’ve already reviewed one animé movie on this blog before, but honestly Studio Ghibli are very much their own little sub-genre with very distinctive tropes and styles that don’t really hold true for the rest of animé. Akira is much closer to what people picture when they hear the word “animé”, which is not surprising given how big a role it played in shaping the genre. With that in mind, and since this is a blog usually devoted to Western animation, now is probably a good place to talk about animé in general and address some of the more common questions.

“Manga”, “Animé”, what’s the diff?

Short version: Manga is comics, Animé is animation. The two industries are much more closely linked than in the West. Many comicbook writers work in animation and vice versa, and the director of Akira was no exception, the movie actually being Katsuhiro Otomo’s adapation of his own manga series.

Why does everyone in animé look white and how guilty should I feel about it?

All animé owes a debt to the work of Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy. Tezuka’s was hugely influenced by Western animators like the Fleischer Brothers and of course Walt Disney.

“Did you really think you could escape me?”

The big round eyes of so many animé characters are not as a result of some kind of ethnic inferiority complex, but because they’re drawn in a style influenced by Betty Boop and Mickey Mouse. Also, everyone has different colour hair just because it’s more interesting visually. Not all animé comforms to this however. A lot of more naturalistic animé will have characters that are more recognisably Asian (Akira for example).

So much of animé seems obsessed with huge explosions and the end of the world. What’s up with that?

Oh wow. I can’t imagine why that would be. Let’s just sit here for seven days and nights and see if we can crack this inscrutable conundrum.

Animé seems to be so full of sex and violence. Won’t somebody please think of the children? Also, the Japanese are clearly all perverts.

Thought experiment. If you sat an alien down and screened for him all the movies made in America in any given year, their first question would be “why do most of these have close up shots of dicks going into various orifices?” See, a huge percentage of films made in North America are hardcore porn because it’s cheap as chips to make and very lucrative. But when we think of “American cinema”, My Ass is Haunted is not usually part of the conversation. We compartmentalise porn and regular cinema, while filing Japanese hentai simply under “animé”. Japan’s porn tends to be animated, but other that there’s no real difference. The Japanese are no more “weird” or “sick” than we are.

Um…tentacles?

Yeah, okay, that shit’s pretty weird and sick.

What’s good against steel-type Pokémon?

I don’t know. No one does. And anyone in the comments who says they do is a liar.

That’s the basics. Keep in mind though, I’m just a casual fan, not an animé expert by any stretch of the imagination. If you do want to go deeper down the anime rabbit hole allow me to recommend Anime Reporter. Oh, and while I usually don’t put up spoiler warnings (it’s a blog where I recap the entire plots of movies in detail what do you think is going to happen?) I should mention I’ll also be discussing plot points from the manga as well, so fair warning.

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Check this girl out!

My friend Sahar Mohamed-Ali hai wears many hats; actor, teacher, blogger, devout Muslim and comedy writer to name a few (she also wears many actual hats. She’s a hat person). Recently she left us all the poorer by accepting a teaching gig in Saudi Arabia, an experience which she is currently documenting in her blog, Saharcasm which I am telling you to go read right now because it is made of awesome. Sahar recounts the culture shock of a sassy Irish girl dealing with life in The Kingdom in a way that is often hilarious, sometimes depressing and always, always utterly fascinating. She’s also been nominated for Best Art and Culture Blog at the Blog Awards Ireland 2014 so you know we’re talking crème de la crème.

Oh dear, did I leave this old thing lying around again? Head like a sieve, me.

Anyway, do yourselves a favor and check it out.

Mouse.

The Hangman’s Daughter-Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11- GOODBYE TO ST. ANNE

She ran through the rain, her face and arms aching from the sky’s lashing. Once her foot disappeared into a quagmire, and she sank three feet, screaming and scrabbling for solid ground. She pulled herself out again and half ran half staggered back to the cottage to where Doctor Toureil sat in the doorway, his face buried in his hands.
He looked up at her approach, and there were tears in his eyes. Great, kind tears.
For a second they simply stared at each other, the old weeping man and the tiny girl, caked in mud, her red hair plastered black to her face, her green eyes stained bloodshot red.
The Doctor simply shook his head.

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We who are about to blog salute you…

A very big and heartfelt thank you to everyone who nominated me for the Blog Awards Ireland 2014. I’m delighted to report that Unshaved Mouse has made the long list for Best Humour Blog and Best Art & Culture Blog. This means three things;

1) As people now think this is an Art and Culture Blog, we need to class up this joint. No more cussin’ in the comments section and you all need to start spittin’ in the spittoon like I asked ye.

And not ON the spittoon. IN the spittoon.

2) As with last year, all nominated blogs are eligible for the Best Blog Post award, which is decided by popular vote. In the coming weeks I’ll be asking you all to vote for me whenever you can which of course means…

3) Weekly updates. Not weekly reviews unfortunately (guys, I’m only flesh and blood) but I do have some articles lined up to go in between the regular reviews. And of course, The Hangman’s Daughter will now be going up a chapter a week, starting tonight.

Thanks a million guys, you’re amazing.

Mouse out.

Missing chapter of the Hangman’s Daughter (which will now be weekly)

Aaaaaaaaargh and so on.

So it seems I’ve made a bit of a clanger. For the last few months I’ve been updating the blog fortnightly with chapters from my novel The Hangman’s Daughter which many of you have been very kindly reading and critiquing. It was pointed out to me, however, that I’ve actually been updating with excerpts from my original draft, not the newer one. This is not really a big deal as both drafts start out pretty much identical but there is a fairly substantial chunk in Chapter 5 that acts as the first bit of foreshadowing of the book’s main villain that I left out. I’ve put it back in now (it’s everything after “silent acrimony”) so if you want to go and read that you should be up to speed. Also, it’s been pointed out to me that my habit of posting short chapters that typically end in cliff-hangers once every two weeks is the kind of thing that gets you dragged before the Hague (and also would have us finishing the first book sometime in mid-2016) so I’ve decided from now on there’s going to be a new chapter every week, updating on Saturdays.

Oh, and if you wanna get caught up? Got your back, bro.

Single White Rodent seeks Video Editor for Internet Adventures (and maybe more…)

Hello peoples of the net!

Erik’s audio reviews for Melody Time and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad are now up, so be sure to give them a listen. To anyone who’s recently followed the blog, Erik Copper has been doing audio versions of my Disney reviews. We’re now getting to the point where the blog stopped being “movie reviews” and became more me deciding that I didn’t need no goddam anti-psychotic medication and we’ve started to realise that a lot of the comedy from this period kind of needs a visual element (Erik’s fantastic vocal skills notwithstanding). Now, we used to have a guy who did video versions of Erik’s audio versions of my text reviews (keep up damn it) but ~~he betrayed us and turned to evil~~ he unfortunately had to give it up for study commitments. So we’re now looking for someone with editing skills to adapt the reviews into a video form. Now before you say “no”, let me assure you: Yes, the work is hard. But on the other hand, there is no money.

However, if you’re someone who’s wants to hone their editing skills before an enthusiastic and always growing audience (cough cough freshly pressed cough cough)…eh, you could do worse. Here’s a link to Mauricio’s videos to give you an idea of what’s gone before and if you think it’s something you’d enjoy send me an email at unshavedmouse@gmail.com and we’ll take it from there.

The Hangman’s Daughter- Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10: THE SHADE

She lay there in the mud for a few minutes, not quite sure if she had gone mad. After all, she had seen some incredible things when she had had the fever. But the figure in front of her was real. She was seeing it before her eyes, not in her head. Slowly, she clambered to her feet, rivers of muddy water running off her now thoroughly soiled white night-dress. She took five steps, and stood at the right hand side of the figure. From where she was, she could just about see the tip of an elegant chin, the end of a nose, but everything else hidden by the folds of the hood.
“Hello.” said Marie quietly.
The figure started, and Marie realised that she had taken him by surprise. If this person was what she thought he was, then how was that possible?

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