Living in Wild Times

   I went to bed 1:00 last night. I woke up at 8:00 today, for my 8:00 class. Made it there before any lesson-ing started, but not early enough to be able to be counted present. I've got class 7:45 tomorrow, in  a building far further away on campus... I think I'll make this quick.

   Madeleine (the one who, runs Animation Workshop) got into Animation Workshop about 15 minutes late, on a day where people actually showed up which they never do. I think it was this girl touring campus, interested in animation, who'd dragged along her whole family, or something like that... Without a teacher there, I just, took charge of everything, temporarily, going over Frank and Ollie's 12 Principles of Animation. Which we hadn't even officially finished covering in normal class, we still needed to do solidity and appeal, but I just ran through all of them (which isn't that tough when you've got a copy of The Illusion of Life on the table in front of you... nevertheless.)

   Even when Madeleine finally walked in a little over halfway through the 12 principles, she sat down and listened and occasionally commented, but, just like, a normal person being taught, and was apparently blown away. Or at least impressed enough that, see apparently she's not hosting the workshop next semester, but is sending me the required paperwork to become, myself, manager of the workshop.

   Well.

   Or, co-manager, if there's someone else to manage with me. Either way, we'll see where that takes us. Also seeing where it takes us: I'm, looking into, a job opening on campus, a graphic design job with application extended to all the graphic design students, who were in graphic design class, today. About, graphic design.

   Okay, so! Wild Times. Depending on how canonical you view tie-in spin-off books to be, finally getting my hands on a copy of Stinky Cheese Files it would appear that Wild Times is still a thing. As much was mentioned in the Official Zootopia Handbook, but this is confirmation of that, and in an environment where we get to see the tension that continues to underlie its existence. It gets mentioned a few times, even visited once or twice (it's apparently a favorite haunt of Duke Weaselton's,) and so we can definitely get a feel of the character of the place. Even in this iteration, it feels very much like the same place-- although by no means restricted to preds only anymore, of course, the release it offers to animals is still kind of, morally ambiguous...

   See, the first thing that happens in The Stinky Cheese Files, the very first thing, is a teenage driver being taken into the ZPD after wrapping his car around a tree, as a direct result of having gone to Wild Times. There's apparently this new wind tunnel attraction there, see, and it's inspiring any mammal who goes into it (and who likes getting their face to be blown into,) to lean out of the car window the next time they go out for a drive...

   Direct thematic confrontation. It's just marvelous.