#fictionaddict

[angelicakatebooks]

🏚️💔 When her world falls apart, she finds refuge in a place that promises healing—Restoration Ranch. But even sanctuaries hold secrets, and when her first love reenters the picture, she must decide whether to run again or finally fight for the life and love she deserves. 🌹✨

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVVFF4FC

[simbacapeman]

🔥 DID YOU KNOW? 🔥

Hakku and his friends thought they were just exploring… until they uncovered The Cause—a secret rebellion against King Alverius! 👑⚔️ But what happens when they realize they’re in too deep? 😱

Will they escape, or will they be forced to fight for a cause they never chose? 🤯

📖 Find out now! CLICK LINK IN BIO to dive into the adventure! 📚✨

[kritzmat]

And then there are times when your heart goes out for your favourite character in the book you're reading, and you just don't want to read the next page for fear of what they are to face. Does this happen with you??

[danniawani-blog]

Fiction Addict - Intro

I love Fiction. Reality full of so much darkness that it’s just so much easier to escape into a completely made up world with made up places and made up people. 

I read a lot of books from the popular classics like Jane Austen novels like Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion to epic fantasies like A Song of Ice and Fire and Ice and the monumental Harry Potter (I know GOT is popular these days but that’s really because of the series cause none can match the power of J. K. Rowling.)

So it’s no surprise that I love to dabble in a bit of writing myself. Literature was one of my fave subjects in school and a part of me wishes I studied that at Uni. Here I am though, barrelling through and hoping that someone (people!) find interest in my work.  So I am going to dedicate this blog to talking about my favourite works of fiction from the classics that I’ve read, to the epic fantasies I just cant get enough of and all the other stuff in between...including my shit...lol!!

[hecallsmehischild]

Fiction Fix: Mr. Peabody and Sherman

Welcome to a new segment borrowed from the kind-of-sort-of suspended Storytrollers reviews: the Fiction Fix. It's where I review movies, books, animes, and whatever I feel like reviewing. Storytrollers is kind of... I don't see anything happening anymore. It kind of fizzled, for various factors, and I apologize to anyone who may have been watching it. It was fun while it lasted. But I'd like to review some things still, but maybe in writing. It takes me less time than video editing. All reviews have the potential to spoiler, so I'll tag them all as such, and stick them under Read Mores.

So, I walked into the theater expecting a big fat disappointment. I didn't watch a TON of Rocky & Bullwinkle as a child, but I did go through a phase where I watched a lot of it for a few months, and I grew to love most of the shorts in between. Dudley Do-Right will always be my favorite, but Peabody & Sherman was probably a close second.

And so many reboots of cartoons have flopped so terribly. Garfield. The Smurfs. Even Rocky and Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right have been tried, with terrible results. So why, I reasoned, would Mr. Peabody and Sherman be any different?

Dreamworks.

I swear this company has either the best or worst marketing team in the history of the movie business. Either they are brilliant, churning out trailers with the stupidest bits of the movie all jammed together in order to lower everyone's expectations before blowing them out of their seats with the full-length marvel, or their marketing team is just inept. Because I can't recall a single Dreamworks trailer I've seen where I did not say, "This movie is going to be SO stupid." and I can't recall a movie of theirs I saw (post Shark Tale, guh) that did not shatter my disappointment into little tiny bits. Megamind was the first movie where I really started to take notice of this trend, which continued on into subsequent movies (I don't count How To Train Your Dragon because I got promo passes and never saw the trailer). The Croods, Kung Fu Panda, Turbo, Rise of the Guardians. All of these movies have had TERRIBLE trailers or concepts so ridiculous I thought, "Get real, who would pay to see that?" And I was promptly knocked flat by the fantastic storytelling and compelling visuals.

So, Mr. Peabody & Sherman. First off, it starts exactly like the very first episode, which is a nice tip of the hat. It deviates a bit, but adaptation to modern times calls for a little bit of tweaking that I suppose I can overlook. I enjoyed seeing Mr. Peabody's beginnings, how he was often rejected and never taken in because he didn't behave like other dogs. You could see how much that affected him on his face. And we don't delve RIGHT into why he adopted Sherman either, no. That's saved for just the right moment.

We see for the first time some of the issues of Sherman being raised by a dog, even a highly intelligent one, the main one being that he's a target for bullying. Not to say he might not have been otherwise, but it becomes a particularly painful one right off that is latched onto by a rather obnoxious little girl named Penny. She treats him like he's a dog, and calls him one, and even physically harasses him until he bites her. This leads to an issue with Child Protection and their 2 dimensional villain Ms. Grunion. This is one of the few flaws I find in this movie, Ms. Grunion has no depth, and seems to only want to remove Sherman from Mr. Peabody's care because "A dog should never raise a boy." I suppose it could be stretched that she's a satirization of society, but 2 dimensional villains bug me.

Mr. Peabody scolds Sherman firmly, and walks out to a wall of photos. We see Sherman's childhood going backwards, from him riding a bike the Wright brothers made, flying a kite with Benjamin Franklin, playing the piano with (Beethoven, I think?), and then, we see it. In the cartoons, we are led to believe Sherman's adoption is recent, that he was adopted as a seven year old child. But in this movie, Mr. Peabody passes by an alley, where a baby in a box is crying. Sherman. Is it canon? No. Does it make for a deeper story? Absolutely. Because nobody wanted Sherman, just like nobody wanted Mr. Peabody, and you can practically see it crossing his face as he picks Sherman up and goes to court to adopt him. Then you pull back to the present, Mr. Peabody staring at the wall of photos and news clippings of Sherman, and the determination on his face. He is NOT going to lose Sherman.

I won't go on for every single scene, but I want to cover a few points.

Penny and character development: This girl is an obnoxious brat, and ALSO a 2 dimensional villain--at first glimpse. She antagonizes Sherman and breaks every rule she can at first, and is thoroughly unlikeable. We see her parents, though, and note quickly that her father probably isn't exactly fawning over her, and introduces the question, is she jealous of Sherman and his adoptive father? She acts fairly tough, but when things come down to the wire, she's a scared 7 year old girl and it shows fast when she gets in over her head in ancient Egypt. She softens up to Sherman after that, but still thinks' he's pretty much a loser, and forces him out of his comfort zone. Whether this is manipulative or good for him is up for debate, but it's interesting he can do something when she believes in him, and as soon as Peabody says he can't, he suddenly finds himself unable to, but more on that in the father/son Dynamic. By the end of the film she has believably come around to being a good friend (potential future love interest?) for Sherman. This is called good character development, and it was a well-earned personality change.

Puns and overly cartoony historical figures: I'm usually not one for bad puns in a movie (first person who tells me to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 will die a slow and painful death) or for making historical figures exaggerated and overly cartoony, but here's the thing... that's exactly what the original shorts did. Mr. Peabody was ALWAYS cracking witty puns that sailed over Sherman's head while even as he was immensely pleased with his own wit. And the historical figures were always caricatures of themselves, often with ridiculous problems and absurd reasons for the issues they were facing. So even though these historical characters were... ridiculous... I could look past it and see the original source material they were paying homage to. And it became an asset to the movie.

Death: So at one point, Mr. Peabody is assumed to be dead. The appropriate 7 year old reactions occur. Shock. Grief. What do I do? And the obvious answer, take a time machine back to the living Mr. Peabody and make him fix it. Of course, what seven year old wouldn't do that? No, seriously though. If you were 7 years old and had a time machine, wouldn't you take it back to the one person you knew could fix the problem? I actually really like this. He isn't even sad after he gets this idea, because he knows Mr. Peabody is smart enough to fix the problem, he has complete and total faith in this dog, to the point where he doesn't consider the death he just saw an issue, because it will never have happened once it is fixed. This moment impacted me more than I thought it would, especially because Mr. Peabody supposedly died saving Sherman and Penny...

Father/Son Dynamic: This is the single strongest point in the entire movie, and it forms the backbone. The cartoon was never meant to be an in-depth exploration of this dynamic, it was meant to be funny vignettes on history and time travel. The movie took the main focus of the cartoons and made it the backseat driver to exploring the relationship between Sherman and Peabody. I like that Sherman, as sweet and loving and obedient as he is, is conflicted. He wants to obey Peabody, but starts to feel like Peabody is treating him as "less than" or like a human would treat a dog. This is handled fantastically when Sherman goes off to prove himself and gets himself in trouble. Peabody immediately comes to save him when Sherman calls, and tells him the reason he has Sherman obey him is because it is his job as the parent to protect Sherman. He also admits to not telling Sherman about Ms. Grunion potentially taking him away because it is his problem to worry about, not Sherman's, and Sherman shouldn't have to worry about that. This is a pretty powerful message, in my opinion. Mr. Peabody really wants Sherman to have a childhood, and not have to worry about the things he himself has to worry about. A lot of children's movies I grew up with ONLY had the child's point of view on this issue. I really appreciate how (good) children's movies are starting to incorporate subtler themes about what parents have to go through too (The Croods was another fantastic example of this). However we also see the other perspective, that the child needs the parent, the most important person in their life, to believe in them. When Sherman is flying Da Vinci's prototype, Penny tells him he can, and he gets the hang of it. The second Mr. Peabody worriedly shouts that he can't fly, he says, "I can't?" and panics, losing control of the plane. Toward the end, Mr. Peabody puts the navigation of the Way Back machine in Sherman's hands, telling him he can do it, and he can. One more thing, remember the only time Mr. Peabody is driven to real violence? When Ms. Grunion is pulling Sherman away and Sherman cries, "You're hurting me!" You see Mr. Peabody's eyes narrow, he growls, then he charges forward and bites her. You can see afterwards he can hardly believe what he did, but you know where it came from. It's not "just cause he's a dog." It's cause he's a Dad, even if he never lets Sherman call him that. There's a dozen more points that could be made about this theme and what it did and how well it did it, but I really really really REALLY want you to just see the movie, even if I've spoiled everything.

Truth be told, I really could have done without the "I'm a dog too!" bit at the end. If Sherman was the only one who had said it, that would be more than enough. We really didn't need all the historical figures, Penny's parents, and Penny saying it too. It got annoying fast. But aside from that, and Ms. Grunion, this movie was absolutely fantastic, and it's going on my list of DVDs to own.

FictionAddict Score: I say it's between Rainbow High and Cloud 9. Score Key:

Train Wreck

9 car pile-up

Head-on collision

Fender Bender

Traffic Jam

Open Road

Taking off

Rainbow high

Cloud 9

Outta this world

[fictitiousaddictus]

A Perfect World

The ideal life, for me, would be one where I would never leave the couch. I would have pizza and Thai food constantly delivered and I would binge watch every television show over and over again and read my favorite books over and over again, until I can quote them line for line, and know the characters better than I know myself. This would be the ideal life. 

But alas, we do not live in an ideal world. Money does not grow on trees and Hulu does not stream Game of Thrones. The best job I can think of having would be to get paid to watch television. The second best to get paid to write about television. Neither is an option so I shall settle for the third: Write about television with no monetary compensation. 

I figure this will give me an opportunity to not only improve my writing and my voice as a writer, but also share with you the things that I love most in this world. Good writing. Be it film, television, novels, short stories. Anything with a strong plot and a powerful voice. 

So I hope you like what I have to say, though I really don't care. I tend to rant and go off on random tangents and I have appalling spelling and grammar. But if you are a TV/ Book lover, this is the right place to be. Enjoy.

-Ashleigh Macdonald-Bennett

[storytrollers]

Published on Nov 5, 2012

What does sponsorship entail? Why would anyone want to sponsor us? And who is this mysterious sponsor?

[storytrollers]

Thoughts on upcoming "Daring Don't"

CJ: So...Daring Don't is going to revolve around Rainbow Dash meeting the author of Daring Do. As big of a book fan as you are, be very worried

Addict: ...... I am...... but it has potential... most people are afraid of meeting their heroes and thinking they're so amazing and could never even look twice at them. Writers do that for their favorite authors all the time... if it's handled carefully it could be really good.

CJ: I've seen the trope of the fan meeting the writer, who has lost their muse or inspiration to write more and the fan inspires them to write more.

I feel that's gonna be this ones trope.

Addict: I hope not... I hope it's what I said... it's a much more serious and underused idea that actually could encourage people. People like me who would love to someday meet their favorite author and not be afraid to shake their hand. Because in the end they are people like us. That would be such a great lesson..... crap, CJ I'm getting my hopes up

CJ: Yeah but with how MLP is going this year, I feel like it's gonna fall into that trope, which is

Addict: no... I'm.... I'm going to... hope...

CJ: Fangushing, the author not caring, feeling uninspired, and then Fan doing everything in their power to inspire them and it not working, which will end up in a situation where they do in fact connect and she gets her inspiration back, and the moral will be to never lose hope and inspiration can come in the most wondrous of ways, even in friendship, and then Ill go jump off a cliff.

Addict: no.... no please... stop... *shields tiny hope-flower*