Hello, everyone, it is I, the junior Scalzi! I have come from the deepest and laziest depths of quarantine to bring you a post that I have been meaning to write since January and just haven’t gotten around to. I figure now is a better time to write it anyways, since it pertains to Frozen 2, a movie that was still in theaters in January, and I figure by now anyone who has the desire to see it has already done so. That being said, I will go ahead and include a spoiler warning right now! Ready?

Spoilers ahead!

There we go. Now that the formal stuff is out of the way, let’s just dive straight into this thing, shall we?

Many people, including me, love Disney songs with an unparalleled passion. The songs in a Disney movie can really make or break the film, and I guarantee at least half of you reading have a Disney song playlist on Spotify (like me).

Anyways, the song “Let It Go” from Frozen made Frozen’s soundtrack one of the most popular and listened to soundtracks in all of Disney history. This put a lot of pressure on the songs in Frozen II to be just as good and well-liked as the first movie’s soundtrack, if not more so.

For the most part, I think Frozen 2’s new batch of songs were great! I do thoroughly enjoy the first soundtrack, but the second one really does hold its own. It’s strong, emotional, inspiring, all those good attributes. And yet, I have major beef with one song, that being “Lost In the Woods”.

Not because it’s a bad song! The lyrics are great, honestly, and it’s really nice to hear Kristoff sing. He never really got much song-time in the first one, so having a whole song for himself is a nice change. And in theory, it’s a great song, about him expressing his worries regarding his and Anna’s relationship. Things have been rough between them; he’s confused and scared and trying to express how lost he feels. When I think of a song where someone is expressing their fears about their relationship, I imagine a very serious, sad sort of song, as the topic itself is both serious and sad!

And yet, what we were given is a comical eighties love song rendition of what I believe should’ve been serious and heartfelt. 

“Lost In the Woods” is undoubtedly designed to make people laugh, and it succeeded. I saw Frozen II in theaters twice. Both times, when the song came on, the entire theater burst out laughing at the ridiculousness that was Kristoff lamenting into a pinecone like a microphone, with reindeers giving him backup in an obvious Queen reference. They gave Kristoff an intentionally over-dramatic spotlight and multiple cross-cuts that were sure to inspire laughter from the audience.

I want to be clear, the issue here is not that people laughed at the song. I’m not upset people laughed at it. It makes total sense they did, because it was intentionally made to be humorous. I’m upset that it was made to be humorous at all. 

When I saw people tweeting about Frozen 2 before I got around to seeing it myself, I saw a lot of people saying how progressive it was that Kristoff had his own song where he expressed his emotions. Which, yeah, that is progressive. In a society where men aren’t allowed to feel sad, and are generally brought up to believe anger is the only emotion they can express in public, it does sound good that there’s a song for Kristoff where he gets to be sad and gets to talk about his feelings.

However, the movie made a mockery of those emotions. The audience laughs at him for having them. It’s impossible to take what he’s saying seriously, because it’s displayed in such a comedic and over-dramatic manner.

Look at these lyrics!

“But is this what it feels like to be growing apart?” 

“Up till now the next step was a question of how, I never thought it was a question of whether.” 

These right here are genuine concerns in a relationship! The feeling of growing apart is a horrible and sad thing to deal with. Kristoff is struggling throughout most of the film with feeling like Anna is pulling away from him. He is unsure if she really cares for him, and he doesn’t know how to process this feeling of being lost and confused. This should not be presented as a comedic thing! 

Imagine if Anna’s super-serious sad song about moving on and how hard it is to take the next step forward was made fun of! No, instead, Anna is allowed to be sad, and gets to have her tearful ballad of loss and grief. It’s made into an emotional piece where she literally climbs out of a deep dark cave towards the light. It was beautiful and moving, and it was the right way to handle that song, given the topic.

So why wasn’t Kristoff shown the same respect? I’m not saying his song had to be on par with Anna’s song, because obviously Anna’s song is about death and grief. But Kristoff’s song was a blatant mockery of his very real, very valid emotions. 

In conclusion, yes, in theory it was progressive to give Kristoff a song where he sings about his romantic problems. But it was all for naught since it was just turned into something comedic. Everybody laughed and dismissed his true feelings, simply because of how it was presented. Again, I’m not mad at people for laughing. I’m just disheartened to see that a super sweet character who was really sad and confused about the love of his life was given a song that closely resembled “Glory of Love” from the Karate Kid II soundtrack.

It’s just disappointing, y’know? Kristoff deserved better. Men deserve better representation of emotions and sadness, and that’s the mothafuckin tea. 

Hello, everyone! Welcome to my final post. Today, I’m just here to say what a pleasure it has been, and close the curtain.

I moved into my dorm at Miami today, and me being back here means summer is officially over for me, and that means after I post this, I am no longer a summer intern at Whatever.

I’m excited to start classes and be back on campus with the friends I made last year, but it is sad that summer is ending. However, I will definitely not miss the heat. Summer is the worst season. There are a lot of good things about it, no doubt, but the sweating and heat stroke kind of cancel it out.

Anyways, writing for Whatever proved to be a lot of fun! Sometimes it was hard to think of what to write, but I was so happy to be able to choose to write about whatever I wanted to. Thank you all for being such an amazing audience. If I posted music, you listened to it, if I posted a video, you watched it, and if I asked a question, you all answered! It has been so awesome reading y’all’s comments. I wish I had responded to more. I don’t know why I pretty much never responded, considering I read all of them. If I could go back, I would definitely reply to you all more often.

I sincerely hope you all have enjoyed reading my posts; I know I enjoyed writing them! If you want to follow me on Twitter or Instagram, my handle is ascalzi98 on both. I will really miss writing on here, but I’m totally stoked I got to do it at all, even if it was just for the summer.

When I went to camp as a kid, there was always a closing campfire on the last night of the week. At the very end of the ceremony, we would sing a certain song, and the last line of it was, “this is goodnight and not goodbye”. And that’s exactly what this is.

So, without further ado, I bid you all goodnight.

Hey, everyone, hope you’re having an awesome Friday! One thing some of you might possibly know about me is that my dad is a writer. A successful one, at that! And as such, he knows a lot of other successful writers. Because of that, I’ve had the amazing chance to meet so many super cool, fantastic authors and be immersed in a book-filled, writing-intensive world. A world where words on a page are basically blood in your veins, where hardcovers are the air you breathe and paperbacks the water you drink. I’ve lived in this world for as long as I can remember.

And, honestly, it’s pretty daunting. It makes you think, how can I ever amount to what all these amazing people have? Will I ever be at their level, going on book tours and having signing lines hundreds of people long? How can I become as great as them, have my writing be as loved as theirs?

So, I started writing, determined to get to that point, hellbent on having a best-seller out by the time I was eighteen, having my book translated into twenty different languages and tour the world by the time I graduated high school. Obviously, that didn’t happen.

I don’t have anything to show for all my time spent writing. Because I can never finish anything. And I know writer’s block is a thing and that a lot of professional authors struggle with completing a book, but eventually, they do complete it! And I have never been able to do that. I keep thinking, this will be the story I finish, and it never is. I can’t make it past a certain page number in any of my stories.

So I contemplate why I can’t just crank something out, why I can’t just sit down and finish any number of things I’ve started and abandoned in my Google Drive cemetery. I think the main reason is because I love all my concepts and ideas, but as soon as I start putting those thoughts onto the page, they’re not what they were when they were still in my head. Trying to write them out seems to almost ruin them. I can’t seem to convey the things in my head well enough to be satisfied with the thousands of words I’ve written.

And the whole thing of being a writer is conveying your ideas to others through the written word, but I just can’t seem to do that. How can I ever be a writer? I’ve got the support, the connections, everything anyone who wants to be a writer could wish for, and I just can’t write. It’s not even like I’m trying to write a whole novel, I’m just trying to get something finished, and it seems impossible.

My whole life I’ve been around successful people who are doing exactly what I want to do, who are living the life I want to live, and I don’t think I’ll ever catch up.

Anyways, this is my second to last post on here, so I wanted to share that with y’all. I know a lot of you like to write, too, and it probably seems like an impossible task sometimes. Well, you’re definitely not alone. Keep at it, though. That’s the best advice I have for you.

And have a great weekend!

Hello, everyone! Today I’m here to share with you some awesome music from a very talented friend of mine, Jon R. Mohr. He’s a composer/musician, plays piano and writes music, all that jazz, and he has some pretty awesome sounding stuff I thought was worth sharing. He’s got slow, pretty piano pieces, action-y ones that sound like they’re straight off a video game, fantastical/otherworldly sounding stuff, even 8-bit music!

He says he uses a couple of different programs, like Reaper and EastWest. He is self-taught on all the programs and on piano, so that’s neat.

Anyways, you can check out his channel here. He is also open for commission work! You can email him at jonrmohrmusic@gmail.com.

Here’s a couple of my favorites by him:

Those two are from his Action playlist, which is probably my favorite playlist of his, that or the fantasy one, which this one is from:

But this dark fantasy one is also awesome:

Aside from these, his piano covers are definitely worth noting, too, like in this Hallelujah cover:

Anyways, those are just a couple of really great ones, but be sure to check out others on his channel, he has lots of fantastic stuff and I think he deserves a lot more recognition.

Hope you enjoy, and as always, have a great day!

Howdy, everyone! How’s your weekend going? Hopefully, it’s going well, but if it’s not, I’d like to offer you a Smupdate in this trying time.

Smudge is getting bigger and becoming even more of an asshole than before, but I’ll be darned if he ain’t the cutest thing I ever did see. One down side of him getting bigger is that he’s stronger now, so he bites a lot harder when he plays.

The other cats are still not entirely used to him, which I figured they would have been okay with him by now, but, cats are weird. Sugar is really the only one that actively hates him, the other two only dislike him when he attacks them randomly, which he does several times a day.

I can tell he’s getting cabin fever, since every time anyone opens a door he sprints to it in an attempt to escape, alas he is the perfect size for an eagle to carry him away, so, he’ll just have to live with being stir-crazy. And crazy he is! If Smudge was a power source, he could give an entire city energy. This can prove troublesome at four in the morning when all he wants to do is attack your toes, but you kind of already have plans to sleep.

Anyways, he’s doing great and is super cute, so enjoy these pictures.

Hey, everyone! As I’ve been packing and sorting clothes and junk, I’ve been listening to a lot of music, and I stumbled upon a song I think is really interesting. It’s got that old sound to it, like it’s from another era of music, but I think it’s really good and I like the lyrics a lot. It’s pretty different from some of the music I’ve posted in the past, so I thought it was worth sharing.

Let me know what you think of it, or if you know of any other songs that have the same sort of vibe this one does. And as always, have a great day!

Hello, everyone! Summer is coming to a close, which means I only have one week left of posting on here. It also means that I move into my dorm next week, and will be starting classes soon after.

Last year, I definitely went overboard on back-to-school clothes and supplies shopping, but that just means I have supplies for this year and don’t have to go out and buy new stuff, so really it was a smart move in the long run, right? Turns out at college you need approximately one pen and one notebook, and that’s only occasionally.

Going back to school has its pros and cons. I mean, I can just walk to any restaurant or store in town, so that’s pretty cool. It’s like a little city, it has everything you could need close by, unlike Bradford, where you have to drive twenty minutes for literally anything. On the downside, I will be living in a dorm, which has communal bathrooms and definitely does not have my huge comfy bed in it, so that sucks. Worst of all, though, I won’t be around the cats. Sugar, Spice, Smudge, and that one that starts with a Z no one remembers. I will miss them all dearly. Another plus, though, is that Miami has therapy dog petting sessions, like, every Monday for an hour, so at least I’ll get the chance to pet some good bois.

Last year, I didn’t join any clubs. I definitely wish I had, and I plan to this semester. Miami has, like, hundreds of clubs, and one I would really like to try out for is one of the singing groups, Just Duet. I wanted to audition last year, but already had plans for when they were holding the auditions, so I didn’t. Also, I’m afraid of rejection, because who isn’t? So, wish me luck! I’m not sure what I’ll sing yet. Oh, and if you would like to hear what they sound like you can check out this video of them that I think is pretty awesome.

So, for the next week, I’ll be busy frantically packing and making a hundred checklists before setting off to Oxford. I’ll also be thinking of what my final few posts should be about.

Do any of you have kids about to go off to their first year of college? Tell me about it in the comments, and as always, have a great day!

Hello, everyone! I hope y’all’s weekend has been awesome so far! My week has been pretty uneventful, but today I actually did something fun and exciting! I got to go kayaking at Lodi Lake with my Cali family.

I’ve only been kayaking a couple of times before, and each time my arms get insanely sore, but I always have a great time! I’ve never not had fun kayaking, it’s so great. It’s very rare that I enjoy physical activity of any sort, but it makes sense that I like kayaking so much because of my love of water.

Lodi Lake is insanely pretty. I thought it was just a little lake at first, but it actually goes on for a really long time, more like a river, really. There were wild raspberries growing along the side, tons of trees and tall grass galore, and we passed several beautiful Lodi homes that were probably millions of dollars. The water is actually much colder than I would’ve guessed, but that didn’t stop us from swimming around! We also passed people on paddle-boards, boats, jet-skis, all sorts of modes of transportation, and literally every single person waved or said hello, it was crazy how friendly everyone was out there!

I also got to see a few adorable water pups, including a German Shepard (one of my favorite kinds of dogs!), so that was super awesome, too.

After kayaking, I went to Habit Burger, per recommendation of some commenters on my In-N-Out post, and I have to say, it’s good, but it’s no In-N-Out. Although, their tempura green beans were delicious!

My arms feel fine as of right now, but I doubt I’ll be able to say the same tomorrow morning. Hopefully you all have an awesome rest of the weekend, I certainly intend to!

Hey, everyone! Welcome to another edition of “What You Should Be Watching”! And, yes, it’s another YouTube one because, hey, there’s a lot of good content on YouTube, and it’s free, unlike Netflix or whatever, so.

For this edition, I have chosen another cooking channel, mainly because I have only posted like one cooking related thing during my time here because I literally never cook, even though I love it. Aside from that, though, this channel is amazing and I’ve been watching it for a while now, and I think it is super awesome and worth sharing!

Basically, this dude makes specific food that has been shown in certain movies or TV shows, like Matilda’s chocolate cake, the Ultimeatum sandwich from Regular Show, the Michael Scott Pretzel from The Office, burgers from Bob’s Burgers, even a whole episode of foods from Harry Potter. Aside from those videos, he also has Basics With Babish where he teaches actual cooking skills and basics in the kitchen.

Even if you don’t like cooking that much, he’s very entertaining and it’s interesting to see him make things from famous shows and movies. Also, I think he has a nice voice. Check out a couple of my personal favorites:

He also has a cookbook out that you can buy here! Anyways, I hope you give this channel a chance, personally it’s one of my all-time favorites on YouTube. Have a great day!

Hello, everyone! Tomorrow is Monday, and that is always a bummer. So I thought I would bestow upon y’all this song I recently found to help you make it through. Also, it’s been in my head for about a week and I want others to suffer the ear-worm with me.

I heard this from the Season 7 trailer of Voltron. If you haven’t seen my post on the amazing show known as Voltron, check it out here. You can also see the Season 7 trailer here.

Anyways, this song is fantastic, definitely a new favorite, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Hello, everyone! Today I will be sharing a short story I just wrote the other night for class. It had to be two and a half pages long, no more, no less, which was kind of difficult to make it fit perfectly into that amount of space, mostly because of pacing issues. This is also a very dialogue heavy story because I wanted it to be more about the interaction between the two characters than anything else.

If you’ll remember a couple weeks ago I posted about what I imagine Death to look like, and how he’s a character in one of my stories. Well, this is not that specific story but I decided to use the same Death character in this piece because I love him.

Anyways, here’s the story, I sincerely hope you enjoy it. Please let me know if you have any questions about Death or anything, I love talking about him! And as always, have a great day!

Ah, yes, the Big Apple! I have no idea why they call it that, but in case you didn’t read my last post, that’s where I was last week!

Instead of going to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, Meg and I went to the Brooklyn Museum because it was a hundred million degrees outside and the museum had air conditioning. Though I was stoked to see the gardens, the museum ended up being super awesome! They have this exhibit there right now called “Infinite Blue”, and it’s a huge collection of blue artwork. Paintings, vases, jewelry, so much blue stuff everywhere! Blue is an excellent color; the only way the exhibit could’ve been better is if it was purple.

The next day, my final full day in New York, Meg threw the most amazing party for me. A pie party! She spent a whole day baking numerous pies, including a guava cheesecake, a Goblin-berry pie, a sugar cream pie, and a stellar brownie cake sort of thingy with cream cheese frosting. I had, like, nine pieces of pie that night, and got to talk with tons of awesome people.

My time in New York was well spent, in the company of spectacular people.

Oh man, my flights were crazy though! On the way to New York, my direct flight got cancelled, so I had to go through Charlotte to get there. Then, on the way back, my direct flight got cancelled so I had to go through O’Hare and I arrived six hours later than I originally planned on. Reminds me of my post on my love-hate relationship with travel. Cancelled flights are seriously the worst.

So, now I’m home. I hadn’t posted sooner because I’ve been decompressing and catching up on homework. The city can really wear you out! Next week, I’ll be travelling again, this time to California, but for now, I’m just going to kick it at home.

Hope you all had an amazing week as well, and hope you have a great day!

Hello, everyone! I hope you have all been having a fantastic week, I know I have been! New York has been awesome so far and it hasn’t rained nearly as much as I thought it would, so that’s a plus.

Honestly, I haven’t done too much. I’m generally a pretty lazy person, so I might go see/do one or two things a day, but I’m not one of those people that wakes up at 8am to cram in as much activity as possible. So far, I had spaghetti at a friend’s house, went to Battery City and saw the Hudson and Brookfield Place, had some awesome crab cakes at a place on the waterfront called Miramar, and took a ferry to Williamsburg, where I tried the Republic of Booza’s ice cream.

The ferry ride was great, I love traveling by water. The unsteadiness of the boat makes it fun to walk around, and the sun was setting when we rode it, so I got an awesome view of Manhattan and Brooklyn. I also got to see the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridge while on the ferry, which was a super cool perspective of them.

I saw a video for the Republic of Booza on Facebook like, two days ago, and really wanted to try it. In fact, that’s the only reason we even went to Williamsburg at all. Sadly, I didn’t like it that much. Ice cream is my favorite food, but I just didn’t like their ice cream that much. It was a cute little shop and the employees were super nice, it was just not the greatest ice cream I’ve ever had, y’know? So, kind of bummed about that, but the trip to Williamsburg was really cool, so it was worth it.

I also saw finally saw Ocean’s 8. I just have to say, that movie was so flippin’ awesome! I didn’t know what to expect from it, since I haven’t seen the other ones, but it was so much better than I ever expected. The cast is amazing, the plot is great, it’s super funny, not predictable at all, and the characters are all badass! It makes me want to watch the other films of the franchise, but I doubt they’re as good as this one. I highly recommend this movie. Also, the movie theater I saw it in was more than one story! Wild stuff.

Anyways, like I said, I haven’t really done too much, just been chilling and hanging out, which is really what I came to do. Today, I’m going to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and other than that, I’m not really sure, but I guarantee I’ll find something! Have a great day!

Who doesn’t love traveling? Everyone loves a good vacation; so many amazing places to go, spectacles to behold, adventurous things to do, traveling is enriching and can be super awesome! Unfortunately, traveling is also expensive, and tiring, both physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Personally, traveling is one of my favorite things to do. It’s so nice to get away from Bradford, and in most cases, the farther the better. But one thing I loathe is packing. I don’t know why, but I seriously struggle to even function as a human being when packing is on my to-do list. After managing to pack, the stress of the airport comes next, and that’s really everyone’s least favorite part, I think.

Which is worse: waiting in line at security, waiting in line to board the plane, or waiting in your seat to take off? Trick question, they all suck. Even after you get off the plane, your stresses aren’t over yet, because then you either have to take a bus to the car rental place or get a taxi, and then check in to your hotel, blah blah blah, when does the fun part start?!

So, yeah, I can understand why someone wouldn’t like traveling very much, but I believe the stress is beyond worth it. It’s worth it when you’re standing at the top of the Freedom Tower, looking out over New York as the sun sets, every window gleaming and golden. And it’s worth it when you’re parasailing over water clearer than crystals, or when you see a 2,000 foot tall waterfall. It’s worth it when you try foods you’ve never even heard of before; at least, that part is important to me, maybe not so much to someone who isn’t totally obsessed with food.

The point is, there is so much to see in this world. There’s oceans and mountains and everything in between, and I intend to see as much of it as possible.

In case you didn’t know, I’m in New York right now! Brooklyn, specifically. I’m so happy to be here, but it’s also super overwhelming. Does anyone else have the problem of everything looking the same? There’s a million different shops and buildings, but I feel like every deli or corner store looks the exact same, it’s very disorientating. I can’t figure out the subway, the traffic is terrible, and there’s a thousand people to move out of the way of on the sidewalk. But I’ll be darned if I don’t enjoy every minute of being here!

Thank you to everyone who commented on my previous post about New York, your recommendations were super fun to read and I will definitely take some of them into consideration when planning what all I’m going to do while here. I will be sure to post about any amazing restaurants I try or spectacular things I see throughout the week.

Where’s the best place you’ve ever traveled to? Do you hate flying or several day long car trips more? Anyways, hope you all have a great day!

Hey, everyone! Hope you all had an awesome weekend. This weekend, thanks to my friend, I got to try virtual reality. More specifically, I played Beat Saber for like, three hours, and my arms are extremely sore.

Beat Saber is this awesome rhythm game where you basically have two light sabers, red in the left hand and blue in the right, and boxes fly at you, and the goal is to slice the boxes with the correct saber in the correct arrow-direction. It has mostly techno songs, as those are generally the fastest, craziest songs with the most intense box-slicing.

If you’ve never tried VR before, it is a whole ‘nother experience. In Beat Saber, there are obstacles sometimes, like walls you have to dodge, and let me tell you, when the first wall came at me, I almost screamed. You really feel like you’re about to get hit by something, it’s so immersive!

I know it sounds kind of lame, just hitting boxes, but watch these videos and I guarantee it’ll change your mind.

Those are all on expert, by the way, so don’t be daunted if it looks too crazy to be physically possible.

Anyways, if you get the chance to play VR, you should definitely try it, if not for the game, at least for the experience.