Are those your parents?
In more joyful news, I received this book today, The Art of The Wild Robot, which I warmly recommend, it's beautiful.
Small blurb about Fink and Pedro Pascal below:
"Over time [Fink] lets his guard down, and it opens him up to new ways of thinking. [...] He's funny and sharp and goes through incredible growth as a character as he realizes that he needs connection with other beings, and Pedro Pascal brings so much humor and warmth to the character."
While fleshing out the character for the screenplay, writer-director Chris Sanders wanted the character to come across as self-serving and edgy, but not "evil." It took the production team some time to find the right actor to embody the multidimensional red fox. "When Pedro finally came into the recording studio, he brought this impish, mischievous tone to the character that was completely unexpected," recalls Sanders. "It reminded us of a little kid in the back seat of a car, constantly asking 'Are we there yet? Can we stop and get some ice cream?' [...] Despite his self-serving tendencies, he really is quite charming, and Pedro was just spot-on in finding the character."
I decided to innovate a bit and write something different than usual for Day 2. I've been completely taken by The Wild Robot lately, so here's a small story about Fink and Brightbill.
As always, prompts are here if you want to have a look! I will also be creating a collection on ao3 as soon as possible for everyone to use if they want. :)
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“Can we go say hi to Paddler?”
Fink’s day was ruined. Ruined. He’d intended to go hunt for some tasty eggs away from prying impressionable eyes and nagging robotic voices, but he’d just been relegated to babysitting duties. For 4 hours. FOUR HOURS. This was the ridiculous amount of time Roz needed to recharge her batteries. The sun had just appeared in the sky after several long grey and rainy days during which the robot had drained all her power.
“Nothing a goose expert shouldn’t be able to handle,” she had said. And was that sarcasm he’d heard in her usually no-nonsense voice? The robot was clearly spending far too much time around him. But he had detected something else in her tone – worry. And not just because her lack of resources meant her voice had started to sound wobbly and faint. Fink knew very well she had no one else to ask. Sure, Pinktail would have been a smarter choice – a saner choice – but with 7 kids of her own and an understandable knack for forgetting their names and current locations, Roz had rejected the idea.
Which meant she’d chosen him. Deliberately. Consciously. No one ever chose Fink. For anything. Least of all to protect another life. And yet…
“Yes, let’s go see Paddler,” he replied, and the still incredibly small gosling jumped on his back with a happy tweet. And so they went to see Paddler and agreed that yes, that giant tree wasn’t going to fall today. Or tomorrow. Or probably even this century. After that, the kid wanted to go say hi to the rabbits. The mice. The bloody raccoons. Those damn squirrels.
“Bonjour! Guten Tag! Hujambo! Hola!”
He never tired of saying it – he greeted everyone they came across. And at first he never seemed to grow sad when he barely received any reply. He was the monster’s son after all, and Fink was just…well, Fink. The fox did grow restless and snarled a couple of times, ready to pounce on anyone who would dare not show a modicum of kindness to that sweet though deluded kid. But Roz had entrusted said kid’s wellbeing to him. As much as he wanted to bite and punch and yell at those thoughtless invertebrates, he couldn’t lose his cool. Not yet, at least. Nothing was stopping him from returning later to get his revenge.
This was made especially clear when Brightbill sighed deeply and mumbled “Why does no one want to be my friend?”
“They’re morons,” Fink replied automatically, which earned him a small smile.
“That’s a bad word, mom says bad words should be avoided.”
“Well, your mom isn’t here, and this one can’t be avoided. They are morons.”
Brightbill laughed whole heartedly this time.
“Can we go see if there are some fresh berries behind the old oak?” he asked, and Fink agreed.
Funny, saying yes to everything was proving easy. Telling the truth, too. Which went against everything in his nature. His programming, Roz would say, and he realized he was missing the robot a little. More than a little. Surely she would be recharged soon.
“What is your mommy like? Is she like Roz?”
“Is she a robot, you mean?” he replied quickly, deflecting. Perhaps telling the truth wasn’t actually always so easy or so wise. There were things Brightbill didn’t need to hear.
“No,” the gosling chuckled, “but she must have been good at telling stories, you tell good stories.”
Fink paused in his foraging. They had found so very tasty raspberries.
“They’re better than mom’s, but don’t tell her!” the child added.
“My mother wasn’t very nice,” Fink eventually admitted, because for once he didn’t feel like lying so much. “And my siblings bickered a lot and didn’t really like me either.”
“Oh,” Brightbill said in a small voice, and looked up at him with those big sad eyes that always managed to unravel something deep inside of him. Something he wasn’t sure he wanted to touch. Ever.
“But it meant I got very good at other things,” he went on with more assurance. “Like reading people and knowing how they will react in any given situation.”
“Which made you good at telling stories!” the kid concluded, and he certainly wasn’t wrong there, even if Fink had never looked at things that way.
“Exactly,” he agreed, because why not.
“And good at finding the best spots on the island for berries.”
“That, too.”
Brightbill went back to eating, and Fink took a deep breath in – this had gone much better than he had expected. And that uneasy feeling inside him had morphed into something much nicer. Much warmer.
“Can we go see if mom is awake now?”
“Yes, let’s go,” Fink agreed immediately.
"When you grow up without something, you spend a lot of time thinking about it."
The jerk wants to speak.
What if I need to tell you something, and you're not here?
Which is robot for: she loves you, very much.
azertyrobaz reblogged
#Pedro Pascal is really the cutest with Fink 🥹 (fun fact, Fink is called Escobar (yes like Pablo) in french!)
Now say I'm cool, and don't lie.