Month: January 2022

Mirabel Madrigal

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(WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD)

For this semester I decided to analyze the Encanto characters and why I love them. I’m starting off the blog with Mirabel Madrigal. Mirabel is the youngest daughter of Julieta and Augustine and is the only Madrigal cousin that did not receive a power. Mirabel was often overlooked by her grandmother and other members of the family, solely because she did not have a gift like the rest of them. She faces backlash from Abuela because the gift is deteriorating and Abuela believes that the root of all if the Madrigal family’s problems is Mirablel.

Despite the family’s harsh treatment, Mirabel is still happy and bubbly and she cares deeply for her family. She helps both of her sisters to embrace themselves and be who they are. She teaches them that they are more than just their powers. Her sole goal in life is to make her family proud, in fact she says it many times throughout the film.

Mirabel is an amazing example and role model for young boys and girls everywhere. Being powerless, she has nothing but her kind heart and her wits to guide her throughout the entire movie. Her family makes her feel inadequate on many occasions during the movie and at one point she even speaks on how nothing she ever does will be good enough for Abuela. Mirabel is not extraordinary, especially compared to the rest of her family. She is the one ordinary character in a family full of amazing gifts and talents. However, she never lets the fact that she’s powerless stop her. If anything, this is her driving force throughout the film. She knows that she is just as special as the rest of her family, in fact she says it multiple times throughout the film. She doesn’t let not having a gift stop her from achieving her goals.

Later on in the film, the family’s gift–and all of their powers–are in danger. With the threat of losing their gift, Mirabel devises a plan to save the miracle. She teams up with Bruno, the family outcast who can see the future, to find out what’s happening with the miracle and work out how to save it. Unfortunately, in the end, the candle that gave them their gift does end up blowing out and the family loses their powers.

However, even throughout all of this, Mirabel still doesn’t lose her hope or her love for her family. In the end, the whole town comes and helps the Madrigal family rebuild their house from the ground up, as it had been destroyed from the loss of the miracle. At the end, her youngest cousin hands her a doorknob with her initial on it, telling her that it was made specially for her. When Mirabel puts the knob on the door, the entire house lights up with gold, glitter, and magic. It ends up being Mirabel, the one that does not have a gift, to be the one to restore the gifts and save the miracle.

This I Believe Draft

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Life is short. That is a worldwide known fact. But, nobody ever gets the chance to realize exactly how short life is. Not until it is too late.

On May 18, 2020, I got to experience first hand just how short life could be. I was 16 years old and I had Leukemia. As I laid in the hospital bed, absorbing the information that I had just received, many thoughts went through my head. “I should’ve done this.” “I should’ve said this.” “I should’ve went here.” It was then that I realized that it was now too late. The time had passed, and I could no longer change what I did in the past. There was nothing that I can do to alter what I did or didn’t do.

Spending those six months laying in a hospital bed with nothing else to do but think, I realized how lamely I had been living my life. I said “no” a lot and I no longer wanted to do that anymore. I decided to make a change. I have always known that life is too short. It was something that had been swimming around in the back of my mind for as long as I could remember. However, it is also something that I never really had too much thought about until 2020.

I was lucky enough to be able to not only experience first hand how short life was, but to do something to change it as well. It was in 2020 that I truly decided to live my life to the fullest extent that I possibly could. I was no longer saying no, or thinking about things as much as I previously would. Instead I adapted a “go, go, go” attitude. I said yes, and I did what I wanted and said what I wanted. I stopped keeping silly secrets like when I had a crush on someone or when someone had upset me.

Before I would describe myself as a homebody, but now that I’ve experienced life being short, I go out and hang out with my friends as much as I possibly can. I smile and laugh a lot more, and I have stopped being so shy, and not speaking out and trying to make friends in fear of rejection. I will still always be an introvert at heart, but now I work towards putting myself out there more.

I believe in the phrase that life is short. But I also believe that we can change that. We can do something and work towards changing our lives for the better. I believe in living life to the fullest. I believe in having fun. I believe that life is short, but I also believe that if you make the most of it, then it is long enough.

SP22 Blog and Project Ideas

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This I Believe:

  1. Life is Short. In 2020, I went through one of the most life changing experiences that I ever have before in my entire life. This experience caused me to do a total 180 on my outlook of life and change the way that I respond to situations and how often I say “no” to doing things.
  2. The blood of covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. The ties that you create in your life that are not family oriented will always be there for you no matter what. In some cases, your friends become even closer to you than your family.

Passion Blog:

  1. Last semester, I talked about Harry Potter characters that I have beef with for my passion blog. This semester I would like to maybe go into the Harry Potter characters that I love so much and that can do no wrong.
  2. I would also like to do a deep dive into the characters of the Disney original movie Encanto, analyzing the plot and talking about how I relate to each of them on different levels and analyzing specific plot points that shaped who the characters ended up becoming.

Civic Issues:

  1. Black Lives Matter. This is one of the biggest civic issues plaguing the nation today. I feel a special connection to it as a black student going to a PWI and seeing what is happening to my people online almost daily.
  2. Women’s rights. Women have been fighting for centuries in this country to obtain our rights and somehow, even in 2022 we’re still being oppressed. There are so many issues that I could do a deep dive into when discussing the oppression and the objectification that women are constantly facing in America today.