What I Would've Done at Jordancon

Followers of my blog already know that I go to a few conventions every year and that I *love* this stuff. I get to talk writing and books and geeky wonderful content with writers, creatives, and fans all weekend. Sometimes, there are games and drinks and delicious food. Often, there are presents to buy in the vendor room.

Next weekend, April 17-19, I was schedule to go to JordanCon in Atlanta, Georgia, named for Robert Jordan, author of the Wheel of Time series. I haven't attended JordanCon before (a little further away from home than I generally go for weekend events during the school year), so a new convention for me, This is the first big event of my author life to be cancelled for COVID-19 quarantine, and I'm feeling its loss, especially after a month of being home.

My sister, me, and a Wookie at Conapalooza 2019. Guess which is which!

So, Friday, 17 April, I would have gotten up early, excited, happy, and a little sleepy. It's a 5.5 hour drive according to google maps, and I like to get there by lunch time when I can. I would have been happy about taking a day off of school to focus on my writer life.

I'd pick up my sister, who often goes to these events with me, and we'd hit the road, Stevia soda, nuts, and other vegan-friendly snacks in tow (she's vegan; I'm on omnivore). While I drove, we'd talk and catch up and sometimes sing along to power ballads from the 80s.

Nicole Givens Kurtz is one of the big reasons I applied to be a guest at JordanCon; she's attended this and other Atlanta events and talks so happily about her experiences there that I wanted in! So I would have been plotting to meet up with her on Friday, maybe catching lunch before the con really got rolling with her and her husband. Since she's also a publisher, she might have been busy at her table, but I could always bring take out to her if she can't get out.

Assuming I got there early enough, I'd walk around the con for a while, checking out the dealer's hall offerings and looking for con-friends to collect "long-time-no-see" hugs from, and locating all the rooms I had scheduled events in. I'd check in with my publisher, Falstaff Books, and arrange a time to come staff the table and sign books.

John Hartness, my publisher, when I said, "Look like someone
people would want to buy books from." 

Since my first scheduled event was "An Hour With . . ." session, which I gather to be an open author-chat session, with opportunities to interact with readers and maybe do a reading, I'd have been looking for Venessa Giunta because we were supposed to share the time and we've never met. Based on her website, I'm betting we would have hit it off. This time slot is kind of early in the convention, so we may or may not have had much audience. If we didn't, I'd ask my sister to record me doing a reading so I could post it to my YouTube later. 

At a lot of conventions I attend, I offer ten or twelve hours of programming, but I was pretty lightly scheduled for JordanCon. In fact, that was my only Friday commitment, so my sister and I would have chosen some other events to attend, gotten dinner with friends (new or old), and maybe found some music or dancing to end the night with. She's more of a night owl than me, so I might have gone to the room earlier than her, to get a little quiet and recoup time. While I love conventions, I have to allow myself proper introvert recharge time or I fall apart. 

Saturday, I love to start my convention days with room service breakfast, so assuming the hotel offered it, I'd enjoy some bacon and eggs with some fruit and coffee before venturing out into the world and having to be nice to people. My sister knows, so she wouldn't talk to me until after I consumed the coffee. 

I had a 10:00 a.m. panel scheduled on Character and Theme, in particular: superhero stories, character flaws, and how theme relates to internal and external plots. My fellow panelists would have been Bobby Nash, Aleron Kong, James Maxey, and Robyn Huss, so one acquaintance, one friend, and two strangers. From a promotion standpoint, I'd have been looking forward to this one. James knows me well and would "throw me a bone" if I had trouble getting in the conversation, and I was neither the least nor the most published author on the panel, which is a middle ground I'm comfortable in. 

Character flaws are so much fun to work with in superhero stories. In fact, each of my menopausal superheroes has been her own worst enemy in different scenarios, acting from the gut instead of from the head and making situations worse. 

No one illustrates this better than hot-headed, self-assured, and used-to-being-in charge Patricia O'Neill, the Lizard Woman of Springfield. 

I'd have been looking for an opportunity to talk about the time she got Leonel shot, or Suzie kidnapped and the self-blame and guilt she dealt with afterwards. 

Since my next panel wasn't until after 2:00, I'd have tried to have a writer lunch and talk writing life and life in general with interesting people before getting my head together for This Body Ain't Mine! a panel on body horror with MM Schill, Emily Lavin Leverett, and Nicole Givens Kurtz. 

I'm only a dabbler in horror, having published only some five or six short stories in the genre, but I'm a fan. Emily and Nicole are friends, and I was looking forward to meeting MM Schill, especially since she has an affiliation with Pseudopod, a venue I'd love to place work in. Nicole and Emily are both passionate, articulate women I'd talk about *anything* with, so I know the conversation would have been fierce, and, given the content, I'd have shuddered at least once. 

My contributions would probably have included references to movies like John Carpenter's The Thing, the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and 2006's The Host as well as books like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Lauren Beukes's Broken Monsters.  

image source

Almost right after the body horror panel, I'd have hopped over to talk about The Active Protagonist with Nicole (yay! two panels in a row!), Milton J Davis and Kyoko M. I haven't yet met Mr. Davis, but I know about him through Nicole and was looking forward to meeting him in person. After checking out the website, I was excited to meet Kyoko M, too. She who writes monsters? Heck yeah! Sign me up. 

The Active Protagonist doesn't have a panel description in my calendar, but I'd expect us to talk about the importance of agency for characters and some of our favorite take-action characters. I'm often bored by stories where a character just kind of sits and waits for something to happen and then reacts, so I have some strong opinions on this topic. 

Passivity is a hard sell for readers, and if the passive character is a woman? I'm likely to toss that book across the room (I break more Kindles . . .just kidding). A character doesn't have to be an overpowered machine to be the person who takes action; they just have to try something besides waiting or hiding when it comes to conflict. 

My panel day would have ended at that point, and I'd already be with Nicole, so if my other panelists were available, I'd propose dinner and further conversation and then look for some gaming or music fun in the evening. I probably wouldn't have found time to write yet, so I'd head back to the room kind of early and put down a couple hundred words on my WIP before sleep. 

image source

I only had one event on my Sunday calendar and it was a game! I'm a pretty avid boardgamer, and this was going to be my first time running a game at a con. Gloom is a storytelling card game with an Edward Gorey vibe. Each player receives a family of oddballs (circus freaks, eccentric misfits, etc.) and tries to kill off with the most negative points. 

The game uses transparent cards that stack atop one another covering points and adding life events to the story of each character like "was badly burned" or "was diverted by drink." There are some inherently hilarious ones like "was mauled by manatees" and "pursued by poodles." 

For me, the fun comes in the storytelling--elaborating on what the cards say to create a narrative for the short and unhappy lives of your characters as you gloom them to death. Mostly, I don't even care if I win.

I was really looking forward to my first time leading a game for strangers at a con like this, and hope it's something I'll be invited to do at future events. 

All in all, it would've been a great weekend and I hope for the chance to be a part of JordanCon (and other cons) in 2021! 

In the meantime, if you're a would-be con-goer, don't forget that your creatives rely on these events to sell their wares. If you have the means, consider still supporting the authors, game creators, clothing designers, jewelry makers, and collectors of fine geeky wares with online purchases. If we don't keep each other going now, some of our favorites won't be able to keep doing what you love! 

Disney+ Project: Part 9: the 1980s

More Disney! (See our earlier thoughts here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here)

We've hit a few Disney movies I hadn't seen in this batch. While I remember The Fox and the Hound through a veil of tears, I had never seen The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, or Oliver and Company. I'm guessing it's because I was a young teenager right as they came out. I'm sure I thought I was "too old" for "kid cartoons." Luckily I grew out of that misconception not long after. I was looking forward to seeing Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid again. 

I still know *all* the songs in the Little Mermaid. For me, that's when Disney became a double threat hitting my musical nerd and fairy tale fan buttons all at the same time.

My daughter had seen NONE of these, though she's familiar with the music from The Little Mermaid since our middle school put it on as a musical a year or two ago.

So here's what we thought of 80s Disney:

Fox and the Hound: We knew we were set up for heartbreak from the outset. Heck, Todd's mother didn't last as long as Bambi's! We sat and talked about this one for a while when it was over because it was pretty morally complicated.

The hunter and his dogs weren't just simple villains (though the movie is pretty solidly anti-hunting), but what hope was there for the doomed friendship between natural enemies? And what a bittersweet ending. Way more adult and nuanced than we were expecting.

The Black Cauldron: So, is Gurgi actually Smeagol? The vocal resemblance was uncanny, even down to some of the lines (munchies and crunchies? talking about himself in the third person?) This Disney film had a very different feel than any of the previous ones. It wasn't a musical--no songs at

all, actually. It was darker and more directly scary than any of the others, too. We found it a little sloppy in building character arcs, so lacking in the emotional impact it might have had, but definitely worth seeing. While we enjoyed it, it didn't feel like a Disney movie to us.

The Great Mouse Detective was definitely more for me than for my twelve year old. She knows who Sherlock Holmes is only vaguely, and certainly didn't know about Basil Rathbone, so some of the Easter Eggs remained hidden for her, while I was cackling with inner glee. We both love Vincent Price, though, and he was magnificent as Ratigan. Still she found our Dr. Dawson charming in the same way as The Rescuers' Bernard. A very satisfying little gem we would watch again.

Roger Rabbit, too, was filled with references that went right over my girl's head. She's not steeped in noir like I am. 

On the other hand, she is a fan of old animation, so she had a blast identifying old characters as they wandered through and where they are from. We were both so pleased to see Betty Boop. 

When I watched this one for the first time (when it was new), I had not predicted the big bad guy reveal until just before it happened, and I was pleased that my daughter didn't guess ahead of time either. She's far too good at guessing where a story is going, so she's hard to surprise with a twist!

We were both lukewarm on Oliver and Company. We liked the relationship between Fagin and the dogs, and Sikes was a strong villain, but the whole thing just felt a little lackluster. Maybe too polished? It's the first time Disney used established singers like Billy Joel and Bette Midler as opposed to voice actors. It didn't feel like the characters were singing the songs, but like they were lip syncing, if that makes any sense. In fact, writing this now, a few days later, I can't remember a single song from the film. I guess music is a bigger part of what we love in Disney than I realized. 

That made The Little Mermaid truly welcome. It's the first of a new style of Disney princesses that dominated the 1990s and still continues today: spunky women with agency. 

It really feels like a stage musical, too, hitting all the expected notes: a yearning ballad for our heroine, a gloating moment for the villain, a comedy number (the cook), a setting piece (Under the Sea), etc. 

Instead of the musical numbers being a break from the action as they often were in older films, the songs are the major vehicle for the emotional highpoints. We're only missing the hero and heroine singing their love together, but in most of the screentime they share, her voice is stuck in a seashell, so there are some limits there. 

My daughter commented repeatedly on how strange Ariel looks--giant headed with shockingly skinny arms, ridiculously small waist, etc. I have to agree--even in a long field of unrealistic portrayals of female bodies, Ariel stands out (swims out?) as ridiculously proportioned. 

And, as a Greek mythology buff, my girl was confused by this version of Poseidon, who seems to be less of a god of the sea and more of just the king of the merpeople, but who has some of Poseidon's traditional attributes and powers. 

But we really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to enjoying 1990s Disney with her. 

What I Was Reading When the Pandemic Hit

Focusing on reading in March proved difficult for me. I started strong, with Margaret Atwood's The Testaments and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, books I had begun right as February became March. (click the links to see my full reviews on Goodreads).

I had just finished Silenced by Nicole Givens Kurtz when the Corona crisis hit. All three pleased me in different ways: The Testaments made me think. Wide Sargasso Sea washed over me with tragic poetry. Silenced fascinated me with its futuristic gritty noir world.

But, I couldn't seem to find the stillness for reading for a while once we went into lockdown. Too much uncertainty. Too much feeling like I should be *doing* something, something more obviously productive than reading. Something that made my family more comfortable or eased someone's suffering (someone else's suffering apparently: because reading really does make me feel better). That restless energy doesn't work for a reading life, at least not for me.

I was still able to write--I guess I see that as productive, since it does earn me some income and builds my second career. I returned edits on the next novella for The Menopausal Superhero series, promoted the release of the first one (Friend or Foe, book 1.5--came out just 2 days ago), promoted the 99¢ sale of book 1 in my series, and made some forward progress on my WIP, a gothic romance, The Architect and the Heir. Steady, if slow progress, my normal pace.

Reading-wise, though, I've slowed way down. I've been working my way through Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass for a book club selection, but it's not charming me like it should. I think I'm just in the wrong headspace for punny nonsense without a plot.

I've also been listening to Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, and quite liking it, but it's a 34 hour book, so I've still got some 20 hours to go. I'll probably finish it while it's still April.

I finally decided that what I needed was short, escapist work. That's working for now. Feathers by Jorge Corona and Captured by the Alien Vampire Highlander by Crymsyn Hart both distracted me by immersing me in fantasy worlds with unusual main characters. I think this is a trend I'll continue into April, looking for fun distractions and remembering that brevity can indeed be the soul of wit.

What are you reading? Does being at home have you reading more or less? Any suggestions for my immediate TBR? I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

IWSG April: Pandemic Edition

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking.

If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

The awesome co-hosts for the April posting of the IWSG are Diane Burton, JH Moncrieff, Anna @ Emaginette, Karen @ Reprobate Typewriter, Erika Beebe, and Lisa Buie-Collard! I hope you'll check out their blogs as well as some of the others on this blog hop after you see what I have to say.

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April 1 question - The IWSG’s focus is on our writers. Each month, from all over the globe, we are a united group sharing our insecurities, our troubles, and our pain. So, in this time when our world is in crisis with the covid-19 pandemic, our optional question this month is: how are things in your world?

In the larger scheme of things, we're fortunate here at la Casa Bryant. We're all in good health, the adults are able to work from home and be paid as usual, the larders were well stocked before the crisis hit. 

We're all introverts and have great technology access and plenty of distractions in stock. Our child still at home is twelve, which makes this way easier than it would have been if she were two. The hubby and I are solid in our relationship and united in this fight. 

My scheduled new release was even still released on time yesterday. (Friend or Foe: Book 1.5, a novella in the Menopausal Superhero series that fills in the gap between books 1 and 2). 

Complaining, when I know how much harder this is hitting others in the world, feels ridiculous. 

My day job is teaching, so I see firsthand our families struggling to feed themselves and children struggling with isolation. Even if I try to stay away from news poisoning--limiting my news sources and time spent reviewing them--the wider problems poke sharp fingers into the corners of my awareness and I can't be blithe and ignorant, even if I'd like to be in some ways. 

I have a constant restless energy beneath my skin, fueled by anxiety and worry. Although finding time to write is easier than it usually is during the school year, finding focus and using that time well is harder. We're trying to balance preparing for the worst with generosity to others. 

I'm staying focused on the positives. My recent blog posts try to highlight the good: I have time to try new recipes and cook better meals. We're getting so much family time! My house is slowly coming into better order than it has been the entire time we've lived here. 

I'm taking nature walks every day, and the time among trees, flowers, and running water calms the wild panic to manageable levels, leaving me better equipped to care for my family. 

I hope all of you are safe and well, and able to find some cause for joy during our forced isolation. I pray that our nation and communities will learn lasting lessons that make us a better people--a people who value the work of our service industry and recognize that the pace we're trying to keep is killing us. When we get back to normal, may normal be better than it was in the past! 

My Apocalypse Kitchen: Eating Well Helps

Food is one of my love languages, so here in our time of crisis, I've turned to my kitchen to prepare comforts for myself and my family. Even though I didn't learn to cook until I was in my thirties, I've become a pretty decent and adventurous home cook in the intervening years. I never would have expected to take so much pleasure in preparing food for my family, but I really really do.

I don't always get to cook the way I want to. We're busy people, and often have to plan a meal based more on speed of preparation and facility of reheating than on taste or nutritional value. Since I teach for a living, the amount of standing time is usually a factor, too--I can't handle something that requires too much on-my-feet-time when I've just been on my feet for eight hours already. I'm getting old, y'all. The feet can't take it!

But without commutes and evening commitments, we have more time. Teaching from home is *way* easier on my poor little feet, too.

I've collected a fair amount of ambitious kitchen equipment that doesn't usually sees much use in the hurly burly of my lightspeed life. Standing mixer, fancy blender, food processor, insta pot, etc. Now I finally have time to play with all my kitchen toys!

We also have a good collection of spices and herbs, bought a jar at a time over the past few years as we tried out culinary experiments. And we managed to get our deep freeze and pantry stocked with meats and other useful things before the crisis hit.

All this together means that we're eating well during the Corona Crisis!

Here's what we've been having:

Week One: The Dinner Plan: We comforted ourselves with current favorites, mostly from The Dinner Plan cookbook by Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion. I've been a devotee of this cookbook for a year or so, ever since taking a class with one of the authors at A Southern Season (a fancy kitchen store near us that recently closed). 

It's a great recipe book for a busy household. Recipes are categorized and tagged with helpful headers like "staggered" (for meals that can be served in shifts without loss of taste), "make ahead" (for when you can't cook tomorrow, but you still want to eat), "one dish" (when mess matters as much as taste), and "extra fast" (when speed is your top priority).

We also love this one because the dishes are diverse and interesting enough to please my husband and me, but not so fancy or alien that the picky twelve-year-old won't eat them.

Sheet-Pan Fajitas, Japanese-Style Fried Chicken, Turkey Meatballs with Yogurt Sauce, Crunchy Pork Cutlets, and Beef Stew in a Hurry found their way to our dinner table in the first week of school from home and work from home.

Each can be prepared in a half hour or so (though it always takes me longer the first time I make a new recipe). Even after a year, there are still some wonderful sounding meals in these pages that I haven't yet tried making, and we've only had one or two that didn't have the family excited.

Week Two: Curry and Experiments:  When we moved into the second week, I pulled out 660 curries by Raghavan Iyer, a cookbook I bought shortly after I married my husband and found out that he loves Indian food. Even though that's "been a minute" now, I haven't made even a third of the recipes in this book yet. 

Our youngest, as mentioned, is picky. So, in the past, we've mostly made curries on "just us two"

nights--which didn't happen all that often. I made Yogurt-Almond Chicken, something I make a couple of times of year and never fails to please us. We were prepared to give the kiddo a frozen pizza or something if she didn't like it, but she surprised us by enjoying it, too.

A plus side of making curry is how wonderful it makes the whole house smell. It's high prep, requiring grinding of spices and blending of marinades, but well worth it!

I have come to enjoy making something more complicated. On top of pleasing our palates, it gives me a feeling of accomplishment and pride in my kitchen skills. Indian dishes often have me reaching for seldom used kitchen equipment as well, which is like getting to play with new toys.

Because trying new things is part of how I stay interested in cooking, I pulled out Keepers by Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion, the same authors who put together The Dinner Plan. I bought it at the same time, but hadn't yet used any of the recipes inside. They always looked just a little too fancy for the youngest Bryant, or too long in prep time for a week night.

But my parameters have changed! So, we've now tried the Chicken Pot Pie recipe (delish!), Miso-Lime Chicken Lettuce Wraps (tasty, if less wow-ing), Asian Pork Sliders with Magic Miso-Mayo (the kiddo LOVED these), and Sausage and White Bean Gratin (a new favorite for the adults).

We have plans to try Chicken and Rice with Ginger-Scallion Sauce and Japanese Style "Meat and Potatoes" in the next few days, assuming our next foraging trip to the grocery store can fill in a few ingredients.

A lot of things are hard about staying at home, even for a group of introverts like us.

I'm so grateful to have this way of taking care of myself and my family. When the house smells of cooking spices, we know that happiness follows.

What are you eating during this time at home? Were you already a cook? Are you learning? Do you lean toward easy comforts or daring experiments when you need comfort and distraction?

I'd love to hear about your apocalypse kitchen in the comments!

Plus Sides to the Pandemic at la Casa Bryant

I lean towards optimism in most circumstances, trusting that time and energy spent can improve most situations. At least I believe that nothing gets any better if you don't try something.

Looking at our leadership in my country right now, holding onto that optimism has been harder. But at least I'm in this with an intelligent and thoughtful partner, who has a very useful skillset for managing an isolationist life for a while.

And we're lucky, truly, on a lot of fronts. We're all still healthy. Both adults are able to work from home and are still being paid. The kiddo at home is introverted and digitally connected to her friends, so is handling social distancing pretty well for someone her age. The dog is old enough to appreciate a slow life.

So, looking to the sunny side: here are some plus sides to the pandemic at our house.

1. We're playing with our toys. Over the years, we've collected a lot of them: video games, board games, legos, musical instruments, books, craft supplies, DIY project tools, recipe books, etc. An embarrassment of riches really: more than we can realistically use.

But with extra time at home, we're digging into all these wonderful things and enjoying them. Go past us! For buying things even though we didn't have time for them? At least we're occupied now, without having to shop while we're money worried.

View this post on Instagram

#funinthewoods with #mygirl today. #natureheals #sunshine

A post shared by Samantha Dunaway Bryant (@samanthabwriter) on Mar 20, 2020 at 4:17pm PDT

2. We're getting out in nature more. I'm a walker. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll see that my feed is full of pictures of beauty I spot on my daily nature walks. It's my main stress relief.

Because I'm a teacher and my hours are early, even during the winter months, I can usually make it to a trail with a little daylight left to burn. But, my daughter is not so much a walker, and my husband isn't usually home in daylight, so it's usually just me and the pup.

But, without commutes to worry about and with the kiddo legit needing a stretch of the legs, we're able to get out into the woods together. It's a real joy to me to share this love with my people (and still the pupper).

3. Lots of family time. My husband and I have been feeling the rush of time whooshing past us in recent years, as our baby turns into a teenager and our older child becomes an adult.

We've struggled to arrange our days so that we get time together as a family, time for each of us with our daughters, time for just the two of us, etc. all while still holding down demanding day jobs and handling the business of the household.

It's been lovely to be right there for our daughter when she hits a bump in completing her school-from-home assignments, to help her problem solve or just be amazed by how well she does this on her own.

We're playing games and watching shows together. We're really in tune with how everyone is feeling and doing a good job balancing the needs of each of us.

I think we'll miss this part when the speed of life picks back up.

4. The house is getting cleaner and better organized. When it's time to "take a break" from our work from home situations, we're each handling household tasks: cleaning up messes that have been allowed to linger, changing out loads of laundry, running the dishwasher, re-organizing storage situations, sorting things, etc.  It gets us moving and clears mental space as well by making our surroundings more pleasant.

It's lovely to slip these tasks into down moments of the work day, instead of struggling to do them *after* work when we're exhausted and wanting some relaxation and more playful togetherness.

We're even making progress on our giant attic project (building an entire new room up there for game storage). The supplies were mostly already purchased, and now we can repurpose that commuting time for mudding, sanding, and (hopefully soon) painting!

5. We're eating better. We're planner-aheaders, the sort of people who usually have a deep freeze full of meats and boxes and cans lining the shelves waiting for use. So, without panic shopping or hoarding, we've stayed pretty well supplied.

Since I'm not coming home from school emotionally and physically exhausted from managing 160 children across the day, our dinners have become more luxuriant affairs, rather than the "what can I make in 30 minutes that is palatable?" trick we'd mastered so well.

So, new recipes, and old favorites that "take too long" for a school night. Cooking together because we're all there. Dancing to music while the potato pancakes fry. I'm enjoying the prep time as much as the eating.


What's a plus side to isolation time for you and yours? Anything you'd like to hold onto when life returns to something more like normal? I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

Disney+ Project, Part 8: the 1970s

More Disney! (See our earlier thoughts here, here, here, here, here, here, and here)

Welcome to the 1970s in Disney animation. We've finally reached films that were made during my lifetime. While Disney has often echoed its earlier work, using the same voice actors or animators or a similar style, that seemed especially obvious in these films, which is something my daughter and I both enjoyed. 

We delighted in hearing Phil Harris (Baloo of Jungle Book) as Thomas O'Malley and Little John; Eva Gabor as Duchess and Bianca; Pat Buttram as Napoleon, the Sheriff of Nottingham, and Luke the Swamp Mouse; Sterling Holloway whom we'd already admired as Mr. Stork, Flower, The Cheshire Cat, and Kaa, returning in the 1970s as Roquefort and Winnie the Pooh. 

My daughter is interested in voice acting as a possible future career, so we make special note of those performances and these voice actors were so much a part of the soundtrack of my childhood that I feel that warm and gushy rush of nostalgia whenever and I hear them. 

We also saw a lot of visual echoes, with familiar animal shapes in chase scenes from Robin Hood and the Rescuers, and Cruella de Vil's seeming cousin Madame Medusa. 

Three of our four selections had couples that crossed "class" barriers: Duchess and Thomas, Robin and Maid Marian (in Disney's version, there's no mention of Robin being nobility--he's just some guy), and Bianca and Bernard. 

The music of the Aristocats is similar to the tunes from Jungle Book in the jazz influence, too. My daughter and I enjoyed that "Easter egg" feeling that spotting these connections and echoes gave us. 

In case, you haven't read the other posts, the basic project is that my 12 year old daughter and I are watching all the Disney animated features in chronological order since Dad got us Disney plus this winter. We're using the wikipedia list and so far there have been only a few that weren't available on Disney Plus: Academy Award Review of Walt Disney Cartoons, Victory Through Air Power, Make Mine Music, Song of the South, So Dear to My Heart, and The Sword and the Stone (which we found from another source and watched). So, we've watched 23 films so far.

So how do the 70s stack up?

Story-wise, we found these less problematic. While Duchess was a bit of a damsel in distress, Marian and Bianca have serious backbone and a sense of adventure.

The films were mostly free of "ick" moments of leering men and voluptuous women or racial stereotyping or outright offensive portrayals as we'd found in earlier films. They still play well to twenty-first century women like us. We weren't pulled out by outmoded references or outdated humor like we sometimes were with earlier flicks.

Animation-wise, production seemed a little less careful. Thomas O'Malley in the Aristocats looked like a completely different cat in some scenes, especially when he was supposed to be frightened. He changed shape and size throughout. We were pretty sure we spotted some repeated footage in Robin Hood and the Rescuers, like you might see in a Hanna Barbera production, a sign of cost-cutting.

In contrast Winnie the Pooh was highly creative with its use of the text of the books as part of the animation and breaking of the fourth wall as characters interacted directly with the narrator and seemed to know they were in a story.

So far as animation sequences, we loved Tigger sliding down the words on the page when the narrator shook him out of his tree and the opening sequence where a book is opened and all the drawings begin to move. Or when Pooh Bear bounced on lines of text. It was fun how this feature in particular kept reminding you that it was really a storybook.

Even though, she came in to this one expecting she might be "too old" for it, my daughter really enjoyed the sweet stories and fun characters. She thought a lot of the denizens of the Hundred Acre Woods reminded her of her own friends. It's a low stress cartoon that feels very soothing, in the same way that Totoro has been for her throughout her childhood: something you watch when you want something calm.

The 70s get a bad rap sometimes artistically as an era of tacky exploitation and low production values, but we felt these films are still well-worth seeing.