All posts by HPSH Plaid Line

Movies/TV/Theaters

‘Elf’ movie review

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By: Lily Sheldon & Sophie Elmstrom

*Warning: This review contains spoilers.

The movie ‘Elf’ is a comedy Christmas movie starring Zooey Deschanel and Will Ferrell. It was directed by Jon Favreau and was released on November 7th, 2003. This movie is a fan favorite amongst many Christmas fans and we will give you a rundown.

The movie starts when Buddy the Elf (Will Ferrell) is accidentally transported to the North Pole as a baby and raised with Santa’s elves. One elf (Bob Newhart) in particular stands up and becomes Buddy’s “father”. Buddy realizes that he doesn’t fit in when he starts towering over the elves, so he travels to New York to find his real father (James Caan). Santa (Edward Asner) gives Buddy a warning ahead of time informing Buddy that his father is on the naughty list and Buddy is determined to fix him.

Buddy goes through quite the journey while he is walking to New York City, including a scuffle with a local raccoon. Once Buddy arrives he soon realizes that people aren’t as nice as they seem to be. He visits his father’s office in the Empire State Building but Buddy is quickly kicked out by the security. With nowhere to go Buddy finds himself at the store Gimbels and gets mistaken for a worker at their Christmas area. He meets Jovie (Zooey Deschanel) who shows a cold personality towards the Christmas season and is just at her job for the money.

Buddy learns that Santa is visiting the store the next day and spends all night setting up decorations for “Santa”. Buddy then causes a brawl when he realizes this mall Santa is not in fact the one he knew in the North Pole. Buddy goes to jail and his father picks him up with resentment towards him, but he gives in and takes Buddy to get a DNA test where they soon discover that Buddy is in fact his real son.

Once Buddy finds a place to stay with his father and brother he begins hanging out with Jovie a lot more and introduces her to why Christmas is the best holiday. They soon fall in love with each other.

Walter, Buddy’s father, works as a publisher and gets fired once Buddy runs away from home and he has to leave his meeting to search for him. Michael (Buddy’s half brother) is concerned and scared for his safety while he and Walter frantically search for Buddy. While on this search, on Christmas Eve, Santa’s real sleigh crashes in Central Park, and Buddy and his family are left to save Christmas. In order to save this holiday they must make the holiday spirit come back to life as this is how Santa’s sleigh is powered. Many people in the park begin to sing Christmas carols and it generates enough energy to power his sleigh. Christmas is saved and Buddy makes a book about his adventure to New York with his father’s publishing company. Buddy marries Jovie and they bring their newborn to the North Pole to visit Papa Elf.

This movie received 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 7.1/10 on IMDb. Some audience reviews loved the humor aspect of the movie, and the light-hearted feel. People also really enjoyed seeing Will Ferrell as Buddy, as they think he fit the role very well with his humor. Reviewers think that this is one of the best Christmas movies out there and it will put you in the holiday spirit with a smile on your face.

Overall, we rated this movie a 10/10. It is very funny, and a classic Christmas movie. We have both watched this movie countless times, and it never fails to keep us entertained. We think the story line is very unique and that they casted the movie perfectly. This movie gives us more Christmas cheer every time we watch it. We are so glad to have this heart-warming comedy for the holiday season.

You can watch ‘Elf’ on Hulu.

Student Creative Writing

WORLD IN FLAMES | CONTINENTALS WAR: ARCERIUM RISING 9

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By: Hoaseng Thao

THE NEXENS OF GREAT TERRA

Nexens, or Homo Nexums, evolved from Humans like many other races, however unlike most of them that evolved to have animalistic body parts, Nexums retained nearly 99% of Human traits with the exception of being naturally taller with the average healthy Nexen growing up to, or even over, seven feet tall.

Their lack of animalistic traits and unusually tall stature, made the Nexens visually inferior to other humanoid races, who believed them to be a mistake in human evolution and were not worthy of having special traits like themselves. Because of this, Nexens were often forced into slavery, with them being the main labor force for Great Terra. That was until 32 BH.

In 32 BH, the slavery of Nexens in Great Terra gave birth to a Nexen boy in Triaag, a mining town for slaves. Growing up, the boy learned to read and write from the few books he stole, where he learned what life of being free was like, or at least from what few words he understood.

But when Great Terra’s economy collapsed in 16 BH and the empires within started to show their cracks, the boy seized the opportunity and fled from the small town, to embark on a journey across the world.

His journey across the known world as a Nexen on the run, would see the start of his radical ideas of a new world, one where freedom, liberty, and justice was the norm for all beings. By the time the Revolutionary War started in 18 BH, the boy, amongst the low ranks of the revolutionary army, stood above his fellow soldiers and preached his ideas of a new world.

His words enlightened those who listened, and they too would spread his words. As the Revolutionary War continued, the boy grew to become a prominent figure amongst the revolutionaries; historians still don’t know his real name but he is known by his moniker, Hero.

THE CONTINENT OF EUSONA

“Map of the Eusonan Continent, c. 1949”

After the failed Terran September offensive of 1949, Great Terra realized that they could not break Coalition forces in Kyusia. So their focus turned to Eusona, a continent known for its abundant arcerium fields, but one that had fallen behind most of the world in technology.

“Tectonic Coalition propaganda, c.1949”

Most Eusonan nations at the beginning of the 20th century, especially those in the south and east, lacked the industrial power to exploit its abundant arcerium fields. Many countries still relied on horse drawn carriages to travel from place to place, despite the car being made in the dawn of the century. But the few Eusonan nations that had the industry to exploit the abundant amounts of arcerium, became the dominant powers on the continent.

The wealth sustained by arcerium guaranteed the lucky few nations to rapidly modernize, such as the case of the Kirston Empire, who by the time of the war, had the largest arcerium deposit on the continent.

“Great Terran Propaganda, c.1949”

THE START OF THE EUSONAN THEATER

January 15th, 1950, The Cazar Empire invades Kirsto with an army of 500,000 strong. For the past eight months, the Cazars had steadily mobilized their army to the Kirston border without detection. The Cazars overwhelmed the unprepared Kirston army, and within four days, they had already conquered the Kirston capital, Eve. The Kirston army retreated to the Grai mountain range, a strategic range that is home to the tallest mountain in the world, Mount Torrest at around 32,000 feet tall.

With two thirds of their country under occupation by March 12th, and their abundant arcerium fields in the north now under Terran control, Kirsto’s civilian population found themselves the target of Cazar’s wrath.

At first the occupation plan was to relocate the civilian population from the country to central Cazar where they would be put into refugee camps, but when they discovered that most Kirstons in occupied territories were Nexens, the plans changed. The Cazars would still relocate Kirstons, but with the exception of those who were of Nexen origin.

Believing that the inferior Nexen race was the cause for the downfall of Great Terra in the past and for their part in the creation of the “false” Hero, the Cazars in their fit for glory, rounded up the Nexens population en masse, prolonging them to harsh conditions for days before executing them. The numbers vary, but historians believe over 9 million Nexens were killed. A new word would sprout from this mass murder campaign, they call it genocide.

“‘A Nexen painted Red’ by Jon Reese, c.1960. Was once believed to be destroyed in a bombing during The Grants War”

THE WRATH OF GREAT TERRA

As refugees from Kirsto fled into neighboring nations, they brought with them tales of the horrors committed by the Cazars, their illegal removal of Kirston natives and their mass executions of Nexens would only spread fear across the continent.

Before the Coalition could even respond to the invasion of Kirsto, the Cazars in an ambitious operation, invaded its way to Coalition member states on the Valkyrie peninsula. Countries like Icana and Polka fell to Cazar within the first week of April, as their armies were no match to Cazars due to the large technological gap between them.

Coalition member states on the Valkyrie peninsula, Pavlovia, Luxona and Kalavia, panicked as not only was Cazar already within Luxonan territory, but another Great Terran state, The Osteran Socialist Union, was now invading through the Lapish Channel and were now threatening to take Luxona’s capital.

The quick advancements of Great Terra in April saw the Coalition states in Eusona caught off guard, and by June 2nd, the peninsula was cut in half as Cazar and Osteran forces met one another at the Battle for Tattburg.

Although being important Coalition member states, the Coalition did not have the logistical capabilities to send troops and supplies to support their allies in Eusona, as Great Terran states such as Epreau and Hoshira, controlled the Krinian ocean with their superior fleets. With no support, the Coalition in Eusona had only one choice to protect their people.

August 20th, 1950, the Federal Republic of Luxona, the Kingdom of Pavlovia, and the Grand Duchy of Kalavia, issued their terms of surrender to Great Terra, which was accepted immediately. The Coalition was hit with their worst loss of the war, as they now lost three of their founding members to Great Terra. It appeared that soon enough the war was going to be a Great Terran victory.

Clubs and Activities

Widji Leaders

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By: Siri David

Photo by Thirdman on Pexels.com

In the beginning of November some friends and I went to Crosby farm in Saint Paul. While we were there, we planted trees. The organization we do this with is called Widji Leaders. Widji is a YMCA summer camp that focuses on getting kids into the environment while, teaching them life skills. They lead backpacking all over the western part of the country and canoeing trips all over the Boundary Waters and Quetico. During the winter they want to keep kids outside and teach them how to help the environment.

We met at Crosby Farm at nine and worked until 12. We planted a total of 60 trees in the forest.

They shared a step-by-step process of how to plant them and how each step will help the trees grow. We covered the trees in a biodegradable plastic to protect them from animals who will eat the growing trees. On top of the plastic we would put mesh so that way birds wouldn’t land on the plastic and fall inside and get stuck.

We were also taught about the environment down by the Mississippi River. We learned about how the water affected soil and caused it to become a lot softer. That area of land also goes through a lot of harsh weather including flooding, rain storms, hail, and intense winters. This means that the trees that are growing have to go through a lot to survive, and not all of them do.

There are so many steps you can take to help better the environment in your community. There are so many organizations that do volunteer work where they clean up areas that have larger amounts of trash or areas that are just clearly struggling more within the environment. Along with that there are also places you can volunteer to help plant trees like I did. Doing these tasks might not seem like a big deal, but if you look at where our environment is heading you realize anything can help.

Getting To Know/History

The story of Gobi

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By: Kara Fini

The story of Gobi is a story of a dog who ran 77 miles of an ultra marathon in the Gobi Desert of north-central China back in 2015. She is a small female chihuahua who ran with the runner Dion Leonard. Dion Leonard is from Edinburgh, Scotland and traveled to China to race one of the toughest races in his life.

On day two of Dion’s race a little stray dog started to follow him and run alongside him. It annoyed him at first, but his attitude changed on day three. Right before he was about to take the lead, there was a huge water crossing he had to wade through. He started going through the water, but heard whimpering behind him, so doing something he had never done before, he turned back and carried the dog across. After that day his main priority changed from winning the race, to protecting and running with Gobi.

When the race ended, Dion asked to see if anyone was her owner, but when no one claimed her he decided he wanted to take her home to Scotland. Because of policies that stopped Dion from just taking her, he went back to Scotland and left Gobi with a local family who offered to take her.

After a few weeks apart Dion got heartbreaking news that Gobi went missing. Dion was heartbroken, and decided to fly to China to start a rescue team to try and find her. They set up posters and searched everywhere. By this time, the story of Gobi and Dion had gone viral in this area so many people were wanting to try and help find Gobi.

Dion wasn’t convinced that Gobi had just escaped and thought that someone would take her because of how viral she had become. He started to lose hope when someone claimed to have found her, but it was the wrong dog.

Then one day, a person on Dion’s search team came up to him and showed him a picture of a dog that people had sent to him thinking it was Gobi. Dion glanced at it, but was not convinced that this was Gobi. He decided to go and meet with them anyway. They got there and as soon as the dog saw Dion it came sprinting towards him. It leaped into his arms and Dion knew that it was Gobi.

They spent a couple months living in Beijing while Gobi was waiting for the necessary paperwork, so she could go to Scotland with Dion.

She now lives there full time with Dion and his wife. She is retired from running, but they travel the world to inspire others to run.

If you want to hear more about Gobi’s story, Dion wrote a memoir called ‘Finding Gobi’ where he talks about his whole experience in running with Gobi and the journey to take her back to Scotland.

Music/Concerts

“Thick of it” by KSI

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By: Samson Belihu

KSI, a famous British rapper, released a song called “Thick of It” in early October 2024 connecting it to his life. It got a lot of attention for its catchy rhythm and people created their own videos with the song acting out how the song goes especially the part that goes “From the screen, to the ring, to the pen, to the king…”.

Let’s break down how that line probably connects to KSI’s life.

“From the screen”: Likely referring to when he started out as a YouTuber and he gained much fame through his video.

“To the ring”: Here, KSI is talking about his venture into boxing, where he participated in high-profile matches, including going against his fellow YouTubers and celebrities.

“To the pen”: This part is when he’s talking about how he wanted to be a musician, and that’s exactly what he became. He wrote songs that he personally was able to express himself through his lyrics.

“To the King”: This symbolizes how he has succeeded in many fields as a “king” of the industry.

The song “Thick of It” is a hit, but not for the reason he wanted it to be. A lot of people find it as a funny song, and social media has transformed it to how they felt, from a life story, to a catchy humorous song.

Many people have added their own twist to their songs. This includes a 1950’s version, 90’s Rap song version, Rock song, pop version, Kanye West version, and many more doing whatever they can to add their own pizzazz into the song.

In my opinion, I find the original song very catchy, and also a bit humorous only because of the way social media has shaped the song. KSI is very talented when it comes to many things, but when you publish songs on social media you have almost no control over how it’ll transform into an amazing song or just like this song, pretty catchy with the twist of it being funny.

Basketball, Hockey, Scoreboard/Schedule

Sports schedule for: Nov 25-30

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ATHLETIC EVENTS SCHEDULE: NOVEMBER 25 – NOVEMBER 30  
MONDAYNOVEMBER 25 
TIMEBUS TIMESEVENTLOCATION
    
TUESDAYNOVEMBER 26
TIMEBUS TIMESEVENTLOCATION
5:00pm Girls Basketball vs. SouthMinneapolis South High School
5:15pm | 7:00pm Girls Hockey vs. Northern TierEast Bethel Ice Arena
WEDNESDAYNOVEMBER 27
TIMEBUS TIMESEVENTLOCATION
5:00pm Girls Basketball vs. HumboldtHumboldt High School
THURSDAYNOVEMBER 28
TIMEBUS TIMESEVENTLOCATION
    
FRIDAYNOVEMBER 29
TIMEBUS TIMESEVENTLOCATION
JV: 1:00pm V: 3:00pmJV: 11:00am V: 12:30pm | 5:00pmBoys Hockey River Falls InviteWildcat Center
SATURDAYNOVEMBER 30
TIMEBUS TIMESEVENTLOCATION
JV: 5:00pm V: 7:00pmJV: 3:00pm V: 4:30pm | 9:00pmBoys Hockey River Falls InviteWildcat Center
Movies/TV/Theaters

Movie review of ‘Twilight’

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By: Max Cahoon & Norah Hoglund

Overview

We did a review on the movie ‘Twilight’. The movie came out in 2008. It’s based on the book ‘Twilight’ by Stephanie Ann Meyer. The 2 main characters, Bella and Edward, are played by Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. The movie is 2 hours and 10 minutes long, which is pretty average for a movie.

Summary

This story starts off by the main character, Bella Swan, introducing herself. She is moving from living with her mom in Arizona to living with her dad in a small, rainy town in Washington called Forks. She immediately notices the Cullen family at school, a family of adopted children with a local doctor as their father. She notices how beautiful and graceful they all are and is curious about them. She goes to her next class and sits next to Edward, one of the Cullen boys. He doesn’t talk to her and tries to stay as far from her as possible, and she wonders what she did wrong.

He doesn’t show up to school for 2 months, until one day he comes back and talks to Bella in class. He says he wants to be friends with her, but it wouldn’t be a good idea for her to be friends with him. They start talking to each other more and she notices strange things about him. His eyes change colors, his skin is very cold and he doesn’t want her to touch him, and when Bella almost gets hit by a car, she notices he got from very far away to right next to her in a second and blocked the car from hitting her.

He won’t tell her anything. She and her friends visit the beach on the Quileute tribe reservation and she hears one of the boys there mention the Cullens. She decides to ask a boy she knows about the Cullens, and he tells them the legend the tribe has about them being vampires.

The next Monday, she confronts Edward about it and it’s true. Edward explains that his family doesn’t drink human blood, only the blood of animals. He also admits that Bella’s blood was the most appealing he had ever come across and he had a hard time not killing her. Even so, they now love each other and she trusts him enough to believe he wouldn’t kill her.

They start acting like a normal couple would, and then one day Bella went with the Cullen family to a vampire baseball game. Another group of vampires came and found them, and these ones did drink human blood. The Cullens tried to hide Bella but they found out she was there. One of them was a tracker named James, and he hunted down humans. He wanted to hunt down Bella now.

The Cullens split up and Bella goes with 2 of them to Arizona while Edward and his brother and father go hunt James. In the end, he finds her in Arizona and tries to kill her, but Edward gets there in time to save her. She has a broken leg and lost a lot of blood. Edward sees how dangerous it is for Bella to be with him, and it’s clear he thinks leaving her would be the best option.

Review

This movie was very intriguing. There were a lot of small conflicts that intertwined with the main one, like the fact that Bella was so appealing to Edward and Edward’s family thought it was a bad idea. It also kept you wanting to see what was going to happen next.

The main conflict wasn’t introduced until pretty late in the story, but it was very intense. The story didn’t come to a full resolution.

The acting was pretty bad in our opinion. It was very corny and way too dramatic at times which got very tiring to watch.

Overall we rate this movie a 7/10 and would recommend it to anyone that is interested in drama, romance, and vampires.

You can watch ‘Twilight’ on Amazon Prime.

Books/Art, PRIZM

“We’re Alive” review

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By: Munira Ahmadad

*Warning: this review contains spoilers for the short story “We’re Alive” (located in the PRIZM section of the Plaid Line)

“We’re Alive” is a short horror story written by HPSH student Daniel Kendle, and this article is a review of it and a discussion of my thoughts about the story.

The short story begins with an unnamed narrator in a jungle, they’re inside a garden sanctum when they watch a monstrous creature made of the jungle’s organic life become animated. Initially the being is referred to as the jungle’s newest creation which led me to think it never existed before, but it’s soon described as ancient and something of a folk story. The narrator watches, petrified and intrigued as it moves towards them. Spores surrounded them as they stared at each other. After the narrator’s reluctant escape, a month later, they remain haunted by the interaction with the garden’s monster and become unable to function normally. After dreaming of being with the creature in a physical and emotional loving bind, we see the narrator lose their grip on reality and by the end they harm themself with a crazed desire to return to the garden.

The story truly succeeds at providing the descriptions necessary to paint a detailed visualization of the scenes in the story. I don’t read much horror, but the narrator losing their grip on reality is a relatively common trope. After reading through, I wondered if the inspiration for this work was “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe since both use obsession as its element and have narrators you know next to nothing about. The plot itself reminds me of “The Black Cat”, also by Edgar Allan Poe.

One of the very first things that made me feel iffy while reading through was the literary diction. Written in the narrator’s perspective, they describe how they felt, what they did and thought, and what was going on. Since it’s all in past tense, I assumed this was a retelling of what happened, which explained the dramatic storytelling style. But as the speaker describes their loss of sanity due to their growing obsession, it seems as though readers are going along with the scenes at the same time as the narrator. This makes the descriptive writing come off as pretty verbose. The flowery language is prioritized over the plot which makes the first time reading through unsatisfactory, especially since the goal of the story was to capture the essence of what an all-consuming obsession feels like.

Speaking of the goal of the story, the attempt at disorientating storytelling by the narrator did not invoke any feelings of repulsion, suspense, or horror in me. It’s very tell-not-show, like instead of showing us the fear the narrator was experiencing during their interaction with the monster via description (hands shaking, heart pounding, stomach churning), we’re just told directly by the speaker that they were afraid. The conflicting feelings the narrator had towards the garden creature was very clear, to the point it feels tedious. Scary stories aren’t supposed to hold the reader’s hand and walk them through the entire thing.

For all the time spent making sure the audience was absolutely certain the narrator had an obsession, they aren’t given much of a reason to care. When we have an unnamed narrator of unknown origin, you’d assume their narration would give you more information of who they are and their personality as you read along. However, in this short story the narrator’s identity didn’t seem to matter. We’re given vague ideas about the characteristics of this person, such as their acutely aware of their flaws, immediately scorning their humanity and views themselves as a “mangy ape” in the presence of the monster that becomes their obsession. They call themselves a hedonistic wretch, and we just kind of have to take their word for it.

Overall, though, I liked reading this. Because I have my own bias against horror, I wasn’t the target audience, and so I probably didn’t enjoy it as much as someone who likes horror. I think the author definitely is a skilled writer and has the descriptive skills to create vivid imagery for the reader to enjoy. I feel as though Kendle would be an excellent fantasy writer and I hope he continues to share more of his work. This review was for fun and from the perspective of a reader despite my criticism, which itself may be flawed.

World

Senator Thorpe’s pledge scandal

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By: Baarika Suresh

Note: This is the third article in a series that looks at ethics.

Photo by deep Bhullar on Pexels.com

Australia’s Senator Thorpe’s pledge scandal has shocked the world as she claims to have sworn to the “queen’s hairs” not the queen’s heirs after her confrontation with King Charles The Third. She claimed this after she allegedly broke the pledge into parliament as a Senator by shouting out “You are not our king” to King Charles The Third. Senator Lydia Thorpe, the former Greens Senator for the state of Victoria, made the pledge when Queen Elizabeth was still alive and reigning.

The Parliamentary Oath of Allegiance is as follows; “I (full name) do swear that I will be faithful and bear full allegiance to Her majesty Queen Elizabeth The Second, Her heirs and successors according to law. So help me god.” Senator Thorpe took two tries to say her pledge. The first try she said, “I bear true allegiance to – the colonizing – her majesty Queen Elizabeth The Second” before the senate president made her start again. In her second attempt she did seem to say “hairs” and was sarcastically laughing. She also had an outburst at the King and Queen on their visit to Australia.

“Give us back what you stole from us: our bones, our skulls, our people. You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty. We want a treaty in this country,” she said. She continued with, “You are not my King. You are not our King… F*** the colony, F*** the colony, F*** the colony.”

These outbursts have resulted in many people in parliament calling for her to resign, including the opposition minister Peter Dutton. He claims that someone who doesn’t believe in the system should “rest in principle.”

I think that this whole situation is very interesting in the eyes of the law. Senator Thorpe is an aboriginal person whose people have faced many hardships due to the colonization of the British empire and Thorpe is obviously very angry about this. That is understandable as aboriginal people had their rights taken away and were treated extremely bad. Thorpe wants a treaty Republic of Australia and says that King Charles is not the king of the First Nations people of Australia.

Student Creative Writing

Prince of the Swallowed Kingdom

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By: Charlotte Bistodeau

Once upon a time there was a prince, an o so beautiful prince, whose long hair shone as bright as the stars. But though he shone bright, his heart was rotten. Rotten and brown with greed and desire. He would steal from the poor and give to the rich. He would punish the innocent and free the guilty. But he cared not, for his father was the king, and he was the prince. No one dared to stop him. Until one fateful day, an old lady visited the prince’s castle. And as she walked down the corridors decorated with gold and gemstones, she was plagued with anger for all of those jewels he had not earned, but stole from the beggarly. There, she was let into the throne room where the prince sat haughty in his chair, looking down on her as if she were a mere roach.

”Speak old hag! You should feel lucky I have even let your eyes wander upon me, so speak!” 

“I only wish for you to give back what you have taken…”

”Taken?! What is this you speak of? All I have is what I worked for! I am not like you, who sits and does nothing but complain, you peasants are all the same,”

The words the prince spoke had angered her. And as her anger turned to rage the skies started to rumble, being overtaken by the dark clouds of wrath. The winds howled and blew throughout the castle into the throne room making all of the candles that lit the room go out. 

In the silence the prince saw nothing but dark, his guards nowhere to be found. Only a faint voice so dull and somber that one would think it was the whisper of the wind. 

“You pitiful prince,” The whisper started, “Your greed and insolence will turn this kingdom to ruin,” The wind had stopped, “So I shall give you a gift, a gift that lets you take and take and take without getting full.”

”You- YOU FOOLISH WENCH! HOW DARE YOU LOOK DOWN UPON ME!? I SHALL-“ he stopped as he heard the sound of the old lady laugh. She was laughing and laughing and as she laughed he had realized that he was no longer in his castle, but somewhere in a different realm. 

“YOU WITCH, TAKE ME BACK TO MY CASTLE!!”

”My poor prince, that castle was never yours to begin with.” 

Suddenly the prince’s vision began to haze over as a smoke thick like poison, filled the room making him slump to the ground. Then the witch spoke for the last time.

”Goodbye my fair prince, for when tomorrow comes, you shall wake-up to find yourself cursed by this old hag.”

Daybreak had come and awakened the prince from his slumber. He looked around scared to find a trace of the previous day, but there was none. He must have only dreamed it.

“My prince!” a servant cried as the throne room doors creaked open, “What are you doing in here? The king wants to see you in the dining hall for breakfast! Immediately!”

So the prince made his way to the dining hall, his stomach growling as if he hadn’t eaten for days. And having finally made it to the dining hall, he looked across a table filled with all kinds of foods. Each and every food making him drool and stare, as in a daze.

“My fine boy, does the food look so good to have bewitched you?”

The prince responds, “Ah, I believe I’m just a little hungry as I fell asleep before dinner.”

Then the prince sat down and began to eat. He took one bite, then another bite, then another bite, then another. To the king’s horror, he looked up to find the prince had started to eat up every single dish on the table, as if he were a ravenous animal.

“My son, what is this nonsense? Are you that of a beast!?” the king cried.

“No, father! I don’t know what came over me! And it’s not as though we can’t get more…”

“You fool! This is not about more, you selfish swine! I refuse to have such a beast in my house! You have done far more than enough, you don’t even know the half of what I’ve had to cover for you, do you!?” The king was furious, “I hereby banish you to the kingdom in the woods! Until you get your act together and make up for your sins, you are no longer my son!” So the prince was sent to the woods, to rule over its kingdom. Cursing and scowling the whole way there, understanding just then that yesterday’s feat was not just a mere dream.

When the people of the woods heard the coming of a new ruler, all they could do was hope he would bring prosperity to their cursed lands. But when the prince finally set foot in his new kingdom, all he could think about was the pain from his abdomen that shrouded his thoughts with agony. He was hungry again. It had only been a couple hours since his last meal, but he knew what his very first order of the kingdom would be. He ordered all the people of the woods to hand over all of their food and crops, and in return he promised to give them enough food to last them a thousand years. They believed this as they had nothing left to lose, but they realized their mistake when they heard the prince had eaten all of their crops in one sitting. 

“Such horror,” the farmer said.

“What beast is he,” the knights all sang.

”How could the king leave us to such a glutton,” all the people cried.

But the prince was still hungry. He then ordered for all the animals to be sent to him, slaughtered and cooked. 

“Such vile behavior,” the people all thought, but could not betray him as they were still hoping the prince might keep his promise to them.

Soon after eating all his people’s delectable livestock, the prince thought about the things that might fill him up other than food. He came to a conclusion and ordered for all of the jewels and gold to be stripped from his new castle walls. The people of the woods saw him as crazy, but did as he asked as they were afraid what he would do if they betrayed him. 

“Such divine jewels,” the prince drooled. He ate the whole pile and finally, no, he was still hungry.

This made him angry. The hunger he had tried to stop, that ravaged inside him, felt as though it would eat him alive. 

“BRING ME THE POOR AND THE FILTHY! NO! BRING ME ALL THE PEOPLE OF THIS KINGDOM!” He finally screamed, “I will do anything to satisfy my hunger.”

All of the prince’s servants were now terrified. What did the prince plan to do with the filth of his newfound kingdom they wondered. As his royal subjects began to pour into the castle, the prince’s hunger worsened. Scraping and tearing as if trying to rip him open from the inside out. 

“Hah…, Well, come into my dining hall,” he declared, “I told you I would have you for a royal feast, didn’t I?” 

His people didn’t know what to think about the sight they let their eyes upon. A long table filled with thousands of dishes, at least a couple helpings for each of them once over. But as the dining hall doors shut behind them, so did any chance of their escape. It was said that the screams of terror from inside those halls could be heard from two kingdoms away. A truly horrid sound.

But that was not the end of the prince. Wandering the empty corridors of an o-so empty kingdom, looking at the empty walls where gold and gemstones once adorned each and every wall, he realized the witch had gotten what she wanted. So he sat down on his brand new throne, thinking. He still had not yet satisfied his hunger. In fact, the hunger had gotten worse, as if everything he had eaten made the pain grow. Then he realized something. That the scraping and tearing was not just a feeling, but it was his stomach eating away at his very own flesh. He hated the feeling, but weak in his famished state, could only look upon the empty throne room, cursing the witch for bringing him to such a desolate place.