My strangest reoccurring nightmare

I don’t have a lot of nightmares. I never have, not by frequency anyway. But I have had a few notable ones.

I very clearly remember having one reoccurring nightmare when I was around 4 or 5. My dad would come into my room and start to put me to bed. And then he would grow multiple heads, which understandably scared the bezeezus out of little me.

The funny part of that dream looking back is that my multiple-headed father kept trying to put me to bed after he grew the multiple heads. It was like it wasn’t a big deal to him, and he didn’t understand why I was losing my mind. It’s funny in retrospect how oblivious this monstrous version of my dad was.

The next reoccurring nightmare had to do with school. This one didn’t happen until I started taking college classes. I would dream that I woke up and missed my class. It wasn’t a particularly intense dream, or even probably particularly unusual. I’m sure loads of school-obsessed kids like me had similar dreams.

My strangest nightmare, on the other hand, doesn’t make a lot of sense, and I feel like it’s a little more unique. See, every once in a while, I’ll dream that I’m in class. Usually, it’s either English or biology. In the dream, I just stop going to the class. I don’t drop the class. I just don’t go anymore. I stop doing the homework. The professor emails me and asks what’s wrong, but I ignore her.

Throughout the dream, this feeling of horrible dread follows me everywhere I go. It’s like I know that I’m going to fail the class, and that’s going to wreck my GPA, but I still can’t bring myself to go to the class or drop it.

This dream is strange for two reasons. The first is that I’m not that kind of person. I was a school junkie. I loved school right up through college. I was either on-time or early to every class, and I only missed classes if I was deathly ill. I turned in all of my assignments on time (I cut a few close, but that’s another story), with the exception of one. I missed one online quiz because of a mix-up with the calendar at the end of the year.

The other reason the dream is odd is because it only started after I graduated from college. Almost immediately after, in fact. The first time I can remember having the nightmare was in the few days between when I finished my last project and when I left after graduation. I’ve continued to have the same dream over and over again once every month or so since then.

I don’t know what causes this particular nightmare. I’ve thought that maybe it’s because I never took a biology or English 101 class at Liberty (I took them at a community college before I came), and my brain unconsciously thinks I should have. But then again, I never took a college math course at all (I CLEPed out), and it’s never a math class I’m ditching.

It’s certainly weird, but it’s nice to wake up, clear the fog from my brain, and realize I don’t have to worry about school anymore. That part of my life is over. Now I have to worry about finding writing gigs, running my photography business, working on selling my book, making enough money to pay off my student loans, buying food…

Wait, what was I talking about?

Where are the new superheros?

I was very sad to hear about Stan Lee’s passing yesterday. He has created or co-created so many characters and storylines that have been incredibly influential for me. Spider-man has always been my favorite superhero. The Spider-man series in the 90s was what made me love superheroes in general. I’ve loved the superhero movies based off of characters that Lee created, even the cheesy ones.

I saw a few photos of the different Marvel characters mourning Stan Lee’s death yesterday, which I thought were quite touching. But I also noticed something about these characters. Namely, they were all old characters.

The Fantastic Four were created in 1961. Spider-man was 1962. The X-Men were created in 1963. Even the Avengers were also first debuted in 1963. DC’s two most well known characters are even older. Superman first showed up in 1938 and Batman in 1939.

I think there’s no denying that the characters I just listed are the most influential and important characters in the superhero comics world, or at least among them. And they’re all 55 years or older.

Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with these characters having existed this long, and they’ve obviously existed in different forms throughout the years. But it does make me think, “Where are all of the new influential superheros?” Every time I thought of one, I Googled it, and it turns out they were much older than I thought. For instance, Daredevil, who doesn’t have quite the influence of other heroes, was made in the 60s as well, although his most famous incarnation, the Frank Miller Daredevil, wasn’t until the 80s. I also assumed that Black Panther was a newer character, but nope. He’s from the 60s too.

I can really only think of two major “superheroes” that have been invented in the last two or three decades. There’s one for DC and one for Marvel, and both were in the early 90s. The term “superhero” does apply rather loosely, especially for one of these.

Harley as she appeared in Assault on Arkham, which is phenomenal, if you haven’t seen it.

The first is Harley Quinn, who rose to prominence in the Batman: The Animated Series show (the best Batman show in existence, in my opinion) in 1992 and showed up in the comics a year later. The character quickly became a favorite on the show, and now you can barely mention the Joker without including his lady.

The other character is Deadpool who debuted as a villain in 1991, but quickly shifted toward anti-hero. His rise to prominence has been more of a slow burn, but there’s no denying now, with two epically successful movies, that he’s one of the most popular modern superheroes.

One interesting thing about both of these characters is that they both started out as villains, but moved more toward the light side as they grew in popularity. Another interesting fact is that you absolutely cannot go to a con without seeing one or multiple versions of them. I saw more Deadpools and Harley Quinns at the last con I went to than Batmans (Batmen?).

I don’t know why there are so few modern influential superhero creations. Maybe it’s our nostalgic tendency to uproot the past and recreate it with our modern ideas. Maybe it’s just easier to use characters that are already established than to make our own. But maybe it’s that we don’t understand heroes anymore. Maybe there’s something culturally that we’ve lost that makes it hard to come up with new heroes.

Or, maybe people have been creating new heroes, but we’re just so over-saturated in superheroes that those newbies fade to the recesses of the public consciousness.

Like I said, I don’t know the reason. I just wanted to point it out. Let me know in the comment if you can think of any modern influential superheroes that I may have forgotten, or if you’ve got an idea why we haven’t come up with any in the last few decades.

NaNoWriMo and a Life Update

Hellllloooooo, everybody. Wow, I’ve been gone for a long time. To be fair, I totally wrote a whole post right after my honeymoon, but I didn’t post it because I wanted two extra photos for them and I didn’t have them yet. And then I forgot about it.

But I’m back now. I got married. I went on my honeymoon. I went to Guam for a month. I wrote 8 episodes of a TV show. And I started a business.

So, yeah, I’ve been kinda busy. First things, first.

Being married is great! I love getting to see my husband everyday and getting to snuggle. I love getting to wake up next to him when I can (he usually wakes up before I do for work, so I get to see him in the mornings on the weekends).

We also had a ton of fun in Guam. It rained a lot while we were there, but we still managed to have a lot of fun.

My favorite part of the Guam trip was snorkeling. I brought my action camera with me and got a TON of great underwater snorkeling footage, which I’ll post later.

I really enjoyed my month in Guam, but I have to say, I am really glad to be back home. Since I’ve been home, I’ve been working on my documentary projects for TBN. So far, I have written 6 whole episodes, and I’ve got two that I’m still working on, which I should be done with sometime in December. The episodes go up in January, so watch TBN and keep an eye out for my name.

I also started a photography business. I did a bunch of free shoots in September to fill out my portfolio. Now I’m taking real customers. I’m also adding a photo booth aspect to the business, which is pretty cool. I’m planning on trying it out at a local farmer’s market.

Just today, I finally got my business license (I needed it for the farmer’s market) after a week of trying desperately to get it done. It was a whole ridiculous process that included me paying for a thing I didn’t need and having to get my money back, visiting City Hall three separate times and the court house once, and waiting a full week to get a copy of my lease from my apartment to prove where I lived.

*takes several deep breaths*

It was crazy, but it’s done now. I’m legal and ready to go.

In other, more fun news, NaNoWriMo is starting on Thursday, and I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve been wanting to do NaNo for years, but this is the first time that I haven’t had tons of homework to do around this time. It’s going to be awesome!

Technically, I’m not doing NaNo exactly as it’s supposed to be used. Instead of writing a single 50,000 word book, I’m going to be writing my third novella in the Deep Hollow series, which is only supposed to be about 20,000 words. I’m also going to be writing the script and outline for a podcast in the same universe (more on that later).

That’s about it for me. To all of my fellow writers who are doing NaNoWriMo, good luck!

And since tomorrow is Halloween, enjoy this adorable picture of a meerkat on a jack-o-lantern.

Instagram #365photochallenge: The first 183 days

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m doing a challenge where I post a photo for every day of 2018. As of yesterday, I have done that for every day so far. Okay, technically, some days I skipped a few days and posted the missing photos later, but the end result is 183 days of photos.

I thought I would share some of my favorite photos that I have taken for the challenge and my thoughts on the challenge itself.

Day 1:

This was the very first photo I took of the year. This is me and The Fiancé posing underneath the Michigan blanket that kept us warm while I watched my Carolina Gamecocks beat the Wolverines.

At this point, I hadn’t even had the idea to do the #365photochallenge. This was just an excuse to tease my favorite person about a football loss. The next day, while scrolling through Facebook, I saw a friend’s post about her own 365 day photo challenge. I decided that it looked like fun, so I hopped on the bandwagon the that day and every day since.

Day 12:

This was an opportunistic photo I took while watching The Fiancé playing with a friend’s baby. It was just too cute not to share, even though I got my thumb in the shot. This is still probably the cutest picture I have of The Fiancé.

Day 13:

Technically, this wasn’t my official #365photochallenge photo of the day. But the other one kinda stunk. So this is the one I’m counting. I wish I had the eye device a little bit farther up my face in the photo, but it’s still cool as is.

On a funny note, I actually used this photo months later to pinpoint the exact day I’d had my last eye appointment. Who knew Instagram could be so useful?

Day 29:

This sunset photo was taken from the top of the new tower that houses the divinity school at Liberty University. The Tower of Bible, as some cheekily call it. If there’s one thing I miss about Liberty and Lynchburg in general, it’s the sunsets.

Day 56:

A LOT of my daily photos ended up being picture of The Fiancé’s cats being adorable. Their names are Ratchet and Clank. I have no clue which this is because they are virtually identical. I’m thinking this is Ratchet, because he’s a tad darker, but in this light, it’s tricky to tell.

They hated both of us when the The Fiancé first brought them home, but they are much more cuddly now. They tend to back and forth in terms of power dynamics. We’ve noticed that whoever seems to be the alpha at a given moment will be the more friendly and cuddly of the two, and the beta will usually hide and run away.

Day 74:

This was the first pretty good photo I posted during this challenge. I was starting to get back into photography and playing around with my old camera (pre-DSLR). I went out on a wet, snowy day and photographed some birds. From this point on, there are a lot more really good photos on my Instagram.

Day 81

If you read my post about what I learned doing nature photography, you’ve already seen this photo. But it’s still worth putting on here because of the impact it had on me. This photo and other cool ones I got on this trip were important because they showed me that I was pretty good at this. This could be a fun hobby that I could turn into something else. If it weren’t for this trip and this photo, I wouldn’t be working on starting a photography business right now.

I also got engaged on this trip. So that was cool.

Day 102:

I got really into hiking the last few weeks of my time at Liberty. This picture comes from a solo hike up on Liberty Mountain on a sunny day in early April. I was looking for birds, but instead I came across this eastern fence lizard. He let me get really close to him, and I got a cool photo out of the encounter.

Day 119:

I finally got my DSLR (a Nikon D3400), and after messing around with it for a few days, my friend here hired me to take her senior photos. This one was my favorite from the bunch. I had several friends ask me to do their senior photos in the next few weeks, and I used this pose for all of them because I liked it that much.

Day 131:

It’s always nice to have friends that share your hobbies. I went on a hike with my friend here, and we both decided to take a version of this photo. She was fun to hike with because she understood my need to stop every few feet and take pictures. If you’re a photographer, I highly recommend going on photography hikes with other photographers.

If you want to follow my friend here, her handle is @eclecticrosephotography.

Day 133:

I actually took this photo while waiting for a friend to show up for her senior photo session. This doggy’s name was Ajax and he was blind, as you can probably tell. He was soooo friendly! It was hard to get him to stay far enough away from me so I could take his picture. He really makes me want to do more pet photography.

Day 137:

Another one of my favorite photos. I took it on a trek up a mountain with one of my best friends. He was such a cute little lizard, and I couldn’t help but take his photo.

Day 139:

This is the only daily photo I didn’t personally take so far. Both my sister and The Fiancé both claim credit for this one, but I wasn’t there, so I can’t tell you who actually took it. A friend texted me afterward and said that my phone quote was his favorite from that day. It still makes me smile whenever I see it.

Day 149:

Not all of my photos are so happy. This was the front of my car after I got clipped trying to get around a totally unrelated accident. I couldn’t see the guy coming because he was hidden in a tunnel behind me.

I was fine, though. And my car is fine now. Not looking forward to my insurance skyrocketing, though.

Day 179:

This was a cute little toad which was just about as big as my thumbnail. I liked that I could see the little pads on the bottom of his feet. I took its picture while on a hike in First Landing State Park with The Fiancé. I got chewed alive by mosquitoes and biting yellow flies. I still have the welts and bumps from it, but thankfully, they aren’t as ungodly itchy as they have been in the last few days.

Day 183:

 

And here we are at the end of the first half of the year. This was an assassin bug (I think…). I took its picture at Kiptopeke State Park out on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. One of these little guys hitched a ride on me and scared the tar out of me when I tried to get out of the car at the place we stopped at for lunch.

…….

It’s been a good year so far, and I love that I’ll have these photos to look back on at the end of the year. Who knows? I might even do it again next year.

If you want to keep up with my #365photochallenge journey, you can follow me on Instagram at @ratherbewriting2018.

An overdue life update

Y’all. Let me tell you, the last few weeks have been some of the craziest, most stressful, and most fun weeks in my life. Aaaaand I’ve been neglecting my blog just a teensy bit. So here is the overdue life update I’m sure all three of you who read my blog have been looking forward to.

First off, I graduated from college, so that’s pretty cool. The ceremony was wet and cold, leading to the photo below.

I actually didn’t get sick, amazingly.

The actual commencement part of the day was… immensely unimpressive. I don’t know whose bright idea it was to invite the ancient Jimmy Carter to be our speaker, but he was baaaaaad. Seriously, the entire speech was him bragging about what he’d accomplished, complaining about conservatives (who made up the vast majority of the crowd), and telling the new grads how much the world stunk.

So inspiring.

Thankfully, my department’s smaller degree conferring ceremony was significant better. I even won an award for my achievement! I had no idea about it until I looked at the program. Another one of my friends also won an award, so my friend group had a blast during that ceremony.

I’ve also been planning my wedding to my awesome Fiancé. It’s a little stressful, but ultimately very rewarding. We’ll be getting married on July 21st, and couldn’t be much more excited.

Then, it’s off to the Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio for the honeymoon. A few days later, we’re spending time with The Fiancé’s family in Michigan camping. And then a few days after that, we’re  driving all the way back to Virginia to get on a plane to go to Guam for a week or two for The Fiancé’s work.

Woof. *wipes brow*

It’s a lot to do in a short amount of time, but it’s going to be a ton of fun as well. I especially look forward to the Guam part of the trip. Even if The Fiancé and I will both be working for quite a bit of it, there will still be plenty of time to swim in gorgeous tropical waters and take pictures all over the island.

My professional life has been exciting as well. I was contracted by Trinity Broadcasting Network to write two episodes of a TV documentary series that they are producing. For money.

 

Source: Giphy

 

It has been a blast researching the topics and learning how to write for a medium I’m not entirely used to. I’m hoping to get a few more gigs over the next few weeks.

In my free time, I’ve been hanging out with The Fiancé and my family. I also started a Dungeons and Dragons group with my family, The Fiancé, and two of my friends, with yours truly as the DM (dungeon master, for those of you not quite on my level of geekiness). It’s really cool to get to invent characters and storylines for people to play out. It’s also incredibly frustrating when the players don’t just do the thing I set up for them... I may have to do a full post on DnD at some point in the future.

Of course, I’ve also been (more or less) keeping up with my Instagram (@ratherbewriting2014) 365 photo challenge. I’ve found that it can be – pardon the pun – challenging to post a photo every day, but still a lot of fun. I’m planning on doing a post about my favorite photos from the first half of the year in the next few days, once I hit that mark.

That about covers the life update that this blog has been sorely lacking. I hope all of my lovely readers have been having a good summer.

RIP My Computer

My final semester of college is starting to wind down. I have two major projects left to finish and some photos from a senior photo shoot I shot for a friend to edit. So of course, now is when my good computer decides to crap out on me.

https://giphy.com/embed/k61nOBRRBMxva

Okay, technically, it’s not totally dead. The display cable that connects the screen to the computer body is what died. Still, it is effectively dead, since I can’t use it anymore.

I actually sent it off to the Lenovo people to have them fix it since it’s still under warranty. They won’t be done with it until after graduation. Soooo, I’m going to be living in the computer labs at Liberty for two weeks so that I can get all of my work done. The last time I lived in a computer lab was when I had awful roommates and didn’t want to go back to my room. All things considered, I’ll take the broken computer.

I am not completely without laptop, thankfully. Sort of thankfully. Thankfully-ish. It’s… not great. It took five times of restarting it just to get it to stop fatally freezing when I first opened it up again for the first time in months. It runs like a manatee on land pulling a semi-truck laden with lard.

(Yes, I am proud of that sentence.)

I’ve got it functioning a tad bit better now, but editing literally anything other than Microsoft Word files (and sometimes not even that) gives the computer a heart attack.

https://giphy.com/embed/uprwwjptZW4Za

The upside is that, because I can’t do anything else productive at home, I’ll be doing a lot of writing in the next two or three weeks. Probably a lot of photography too because I just discovered a new place to hike and I’m currently obsessed with nature photography.

Here’s a few of my (woefully unedited) recent photos.

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If you want to keep up with my writing, follow me on Wattpad. I’ve got a new story, called Deep Hollow, that I’m releasing a chapter at a time. It’s about dragon people.

What I’ve learned doing nature photography

I’ve been learning more about photography and videography in an attempt to diversify my skill set ahead of graduating from college. A few weeks ago, I decided that since I’ve got a halfway decent camera, and I was going to have a lot of free time on my hands while camping, I ought to give nature photography a try.

And I love it!

I have always loved hiking and being in the great outdoors. Now, I just added a camera to mix, and it’s SOOOO much fun. But also enlightening. So I’m going to share some of what I learned on my first nature photographer adventure (along with some of the pictures I captured).

1. Nature does not want to be photographed

Most of the animals I took pictures of were birds. You probably already know this, but birds move. A lot. My camera is a simple point-and-shoot affair that doesn’t have the greatest shutter speed capabilities. Basically, if it was moving, I couldn’t take pictures of it.

I got a lot more blurry photos like this:

And a lot fewer nice, perfectly-focused, crisp shots like this:

That robin was about 3 feet from me by the way. That’s another part of this lesson: nature will run away from you. For my best shots (with the exception of the overly-courageous robin above), I had to sit far away from my subject and sit very, very still. That segues nicely to my next lesson.

2. Patience is a virtue, especially in nature photography

While I got some of my photos just by walking around, for many of them, I had to sit in one place for a long time. This wasn’t easy for me, as I’m fidgety by nature. It was also freezing with the wind blowing fifteen miles an hour for three of the days I was camping.

Still, patience got me one of my absolute best photos. I was out hiking with a friend and The Fiancé (yes, he’s The Fiancé now. I’ll do a full post on it later), and I saw this gorgeous osprey. It flew off as soon as we walked onto its part of the trail, but I saw it circling over the water. I thought that it might come back if we sat down and waited.

And it did. I got some decent long-distance shots, like this one:

As you can see, it’s a little blurry, but I thought I could get a better one if I got closer.

Of course, he flew off again as soon as I got within range. This time, he flew off to another part of the island where we could hear him cawing at us. I realized that he was trying to draw us away from his nest. The Fiancé volunteered to go hike over to the other part of the island to try to scare him back.

The plan worked perfectly, and I got a few more awesome shots of this majestic bird:

3. Auto-focus is garbage

I have a pretty good camera for a point-and-shoot (I’m looking to upgrade to a DSLR soon). But my biggest complaint with it is the lack of manual focus. There were many, many times on this trip that I missed a shot because I couldn’t get the focus right.

It’s not bad if the subject is the only thing in the shot, but it gets tricky when the shot is more crowded. Take this photo for example:

This mockingbird is almost perfectly in focus. But the auto-focus clearly decided those leaves in the background were more important to focus on than the bird. I had a lot of instances like this, and it was incredibly frustrating to have an animal holding still long enough for me to take its picture, but then still have the photo not come out right because of the auto-focus.

Every once in a while, I got an awesome shot despite the auto-focus. For instance, this brown thrasher:

4. Sometimes, even a good photo needs a little correction

I’ve been learning Photoshop in the last few weeks, in addition to learning more about photography. In fact, several of the photos above have been lightly Photoshopped. And I do mean lightly. I mostly used the program to brighten or darken the subjects or the background, so that the viewer’s eye is drawn toward the animal and not something distracting in the background.

The photos I got were pretty good on their own, but they usually needed a little something to make them pop more. The trick is to preserve the spirit of the original as much as possible.

Here is the photo I probably shopped the most (original first):

It was a decent photo to begin with, but I thought it was a little over-exposed (basically, too bright) in certain places and a little too yellow for my tastes.

I like this a lot better. I darkened the leaves in the background as well as the log the turtle was sitting on and the one near his head. I boosted the saturation on his shell to make it more noticeable. Finally, I re-colored the water to give it a red instead of yellow tinge.

Most shots don’t need this much work, but they almost always need some kind of work. Like I said, it’s not about really changing the photo to something it’s not, but instead, it’s about making the photo you have even better than it already was.

Essential Trauma

I made a quip in my last post about missing out on the “essential trauma” of watching The Lion King as a kid. It was a joke, but I got to thinking about that phrase, essential trauma. I realized that I have had a lot of that in my life.

I was talking with my sister the other day, and she said that one of the things that frustrated her about me when we were younger was that I projected an air of not caring about anything. Now, there’s a part of that that’s true. I didn’t care about what I wore or if my hobbies were acceptable to anyone else. But it isn’t entirely true that I didn’t care about what people thought in general.

I think the reason I wore the mask of not caring about anything was because I was bullied when I was a kid. My softball team when I was in middle school made my life miserable. They didn’t like me because I got our star pitcher kicked off the team by reporting her to the coach for threatening to knock my block off. I didn’t know at the time that tattling would make everyone else hate me.

Also in middle school, my youth group treated me like garbage because… I don’t really know. I guess I was just different. Most of the people in my youth group went to the same school and did all the same things. I was taller than average, nerdy, shy homeschooler who liked reading and drawing. Most of the time, the other kids in my youth group just ignored me. It was better than teasing, I guess, but it was still an incredibly lonely time for me.

So I acted like I didn’t care. I tried to convince even myself that how they treated me didn’t matter to me. It did, but I can only recognize that now, years after the pain has lost its freshness.

It wasn’t until late high school and even more in college that I finally “came out of my shell.” It took so long to be able to feel like I could share who I was with people and not worry about being treated like dirt because of it. I can say that I care about things now partially because I know I have friends who will care about it with me.

I wonder how my life would be different if I’d missed out on all that bullying, that essential trauma, when I was younger. In a way, that kind of treatment has shaped me into the person I am today. I’m probably stronger than I would have been without it, but I’m also more cautious and still, after all this time, more guarded with my emotions.

Thankfully, the bullying wasn’t the only thing that shaped who I am today. I’ve met amazing friends and mentors since high school, and they’ve helped me become more free to be myself. Because of them, I’m not afraid to meet new people or try new things. I’m not scared of showing that I care anymore.

So if any of my friends are reading this article, thank you. You may have no idea the impact you’ve made on my life, but thank you for being in it. You’ve been the essential blessing to drown out the trauma.

And to those who made me miserable… I hope you changed. I don’t know, because you weren’t worth keeping in touch with, but I hope you learned to build others up instead of tearing them down. And I hope I’m the only person you scarred with your callous actions and biting words.

Disney animated villains who actually killed

I was having an interesting conversation about Disney villains with my mom last night. I asked her what her favorite Disney villain was. She gave me an interesting answer: the hunter from Bambi.

The hunter who killed Bambi’s mom isn’t what I would have thought about. We never even see the hunter. But the truth is that this unseen hunter does what very few other Disney villains actually accomplish. He actually killed a characters.

So that got me thinking, how many Disney villains have actually killed. I looked it up, and the answer is interesting.

Before I give you the full list, I want to explain how I’m choosing these. I’m going off of this list from Wikipedia of only animated movies from Disney Animation Studios. I’ll admit I haven’t seen all of these, so I may miss one or two, but this list is the closest I can get right now.

I’m only looking at Disney movies, so villains like Syndrome from Pixar’s The Incredibles aren’t going to be on this list. I’m only going to count villains who killed someone in their movie (so villains like Cruella de Vil and Shere Khan, who almost certainly killed outside of the movies won’t count). I’m also not counting villains who managed to kill their victims, but the victims got revived somehow. I’ll list them as honorable mentions at the end.

That said, in chronological order, here are all the Disney villains who actually managed kill someone.

1. The hunter from Bambi (1942)

This was a traumatic moment in the lives of many children for generations. We thought we were watching a cute little movie about an adorable baby deer. And then, BANG, childhood over. I feel like everyone who saw this movie as a kid grew up a little the moment that shot rang out.

2. Scar from The Lion King (1994)

Scar is probably my second favorite Disney Renaissance villain and also the owner of what I believe to be the second best Disney villain song. I actually never saw The Lion King as a kid, so I missed out on the essential emotional trauma from seeing this villain kill Mufasa. Still, even watching it for the first time as a teen, it got me a little bit.

3. Thomas from Pocahontas (1995)

I almost didn’t put Thomas on this list. I don’t really think he’s a villain in the traditional sense. He’s not evil, and he only killed Kocoum to save his friend. Still, he’s a force of antagonism, in the sense that he makes things harder for the heroes. So I think he counts.

4. Frollo from Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

Frollo is my  favorite Disney villain and the owner of the best Disney villain song of all time. He’s just sooo slimy and conniving and just… evil. He kills not only Quasimodo’s mother at the beginning of the movie, but he undoubtedly killed dozens of others by setting fire to half of Paris in his attempt to find Esmeralda. He definitely earns his place on this list.

5. Shan Yu and the Huns from Mulan (1998)

This movie has arguably the highest body count on this list. It’s not shown directly, but the massacre of Shang’s father’s troops did happen during the film, so Shan Yu and the Huns definitely count. It’s a surprisingly somber scene for an otherwise fun movie about a cross-dressing female Chinese soldier.

6 & 7. Clayton and Sabor the leopard from Tarzan (1999)

Clayton isn’t really one of most competent villains in Disney history, especially considering the downright dumb way he died. However, he does manage to kill the leader of Tarzan’s gorilla pack, Kerchak, at the end of the movie.

The one I didn’t immediately think about was Sabor, the leopard that killed Tarzan’s parents. She isn’t a major villain in the movie, but she’s still one of the few Disney villains who’s killed. Actually, she’s one of the few on this list who killed more than one person. Also, how many of you actually knew the leopard’s name? I didn’t until I researched it for this article.

8. Commander Rourke from Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

I would say that Atlantis is my favorite Disney Renaissance movie, but that era only lasted from 1989 to 1999, so Atlantis falls right outside of it. However, it’s still one of the best and most underrated Disney movies ever made. It also happens to have a murderous villain.

Lyle Tiberius Rourke is the suave, charismatic and desperately greedy leader of the expedition to find Atlantis. He kills the king at the near the end of the movie, making Kida one of the few Disney princesses to become a queen. It’s not explicitly stated, but Rourke’s actions probably also caused the deaths of many other Atlantians in the battle to rescue Kida.

9. Scroop from Treasure Planet (2002)

I actually had to be reminded of this one from a friend because the Wikipedia article doesn’t explain what happened very well. But Scroop does kill Mr. Arrow by sabotaging his lifeline, allowing him to float into a black hole. It’s safe to say he belongs on this list.

 

Now for the honorable mentions.

If you count the sleep from Snow White (1937) and Sleeping Beauty (1959) as “death,” then the evil queen and Maleficent both get an honorable mention. I’m pretty sure the Beast was dead before being turned into Adam, so Gaston from Beauty and the Beast (1991) also debatably belongs on this list. Mother Gothel from Tangled kills Flynn quite definitely, so she gets an honorable mention. Finally, I believe Elsa from Frozen also deserves an honorable mention.

I feel like I should explain that last one. There are two different ways of viewing Frozen. You could think about it as a movie with two protagonists, Anna and Elsa. But I think a better argument can be made that there’s only one protagonist, Anna.

If Anna is the protagonist, then I think Elsa counts as a force of antagonism, just like Thomas from Pocahontas. If I count one, then I have to count the other. Since Elsa did freeze Anna solid, whether she meant to or not, she still counts as an antagonist who killed someone. Thankfully, she only gets an honorable mention.

***

And that’s it. As far as I know (and correct me in the comments if I’m wrong), this is the full list of Disney villains who have actually killed someone. There are dozens of Disney movies, but only nine killers in them. There are five additional villains who only temporarily killed someone.

Apparently the 1990s and the early 2000s were a dark time for Disney animators, as all except for one of the murderous villains were from this time period. There have been two recent honorable mentions, but so far, none of the newer Disney villains have managed to get the job done. It’s possible we may see another 52-year gap before we see another Disney murderer.

Finally, before I go, it’s worth pointing out something that I realized while researching for this article. Namely, that the list of Disney heroes who killed someone would be a lot longer than this one. Food for thought.

Late to the Party – Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception

I actually finished this game a while ago, but I haven’t figured out what to say about it. Still, I should probably give it a shot. Drake’s Deception is not my favorite of these games for several reasons.

**Some spoilers ahead**

Perhaps the biggest reason I didn’t like Drake’s Deception as much as I liked the first two was because of Nathan Drake himself. One of my favorite things about his character that I’ve talked about several times is that he’s always been a genuinely good guy who puts his friends’ lives above his own mission. In this, that isn’t so true.

Why were you suddenly a jerk?? Source

There were a lot of instances where I thought Nathan was being kind of a jerk. I get that this particular mission was very personal to him, but it felt like he was being more reckless with not only his life, but that of his friends. Normally, I wouldn’t mind that kind of character. The problem was that it was against his established character.

I’m also getting a little tired of the will-they-won’t-they relationship between Nathan and Elena. I feel like they’ve been through so much together already that they should either stay together or break up and go adventuring with someone else. I mean, they apparently married between games 2 and 3, but they were separated by 3. If they’re broken up again by game 4, I’m going to be very annoyed. Seriously Naughty Dog, there are other ways of manufacturing tension for a game.

Pick a lane, you two! Source

Actually, the consistency of the way Naughty Dog makes the tension and conflict of the games is part of the reason I didn’t like this one as much. It’s just starting to feel like a rehash of the plot from the other games. They all go like this:

• Nathan and Sully get into some trouble
• Bad guy is revealed
• Nathan and Elena meet up again
• They all go to some exotic locations
• Bad guy captures/almost captures them, but they get away
• They find some ancient civilization with a dark secret
• They decide against stealing the secret thing
• The bad guy tries to kill Nathan, fails, and dies
• They destroy the ancient civilization
• Nathan and Elena lovingly bicker a bit before the credits roll

That’s the plot to the first three games (as far as I can remember). It’s getting formulaic, and predictable at this point. I sincerely hope they at least something at least a little different in the next game.

Before I continue, you should understand that I didn’t hate this game entirely. Just because I was a little disappointed, that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy playing it.

The graphics were, as usual, very good. It was a gorgeous game with a lot of interesting locations to visit. The controls were very smooth, although I missed the assisted-aiming feature (to be fair, I may have just not been able to figure out how to turn it on). I also didn’t hate the jumping puzzles in this one.

I also didn’t dislike the driving/riding scene as much as I usually do Source

One plot-related point I did really like was the villain. Marlowe was a much more interesting villain than the villains from the other two games. Most of the reason was because she actually meant something to the main characters. I appreciate that sort of thing.

I also really enjoyed getting to see young Nathan growing up and getting his origin story. That was probably my favorite part of the game.

Overall, it was a bit disappointing as a part of the series, but an enjoyable game to play through at least. It didn’t kill my love of the series, and I am really looking forward to playing the fourth of the Nathan Drake games and starting on some of the spinoffs.

This was probably my favorite Nathan Drake outfit, tbh. Source