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nevis-the-skeleton · 2 years

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What do you think of Miko ?

First, before I answer this question, we are going to answer another question which is: Who is Miko?

Miko appears in the TFP series, she is a human teenager from Japan who lives with a foster family in Jasper, Nevada. Her real parents are still alive, but she is a minor so she need a guardian abroad.

She enjoys listening to Metal or Heavy Metal, as well as playing the guitar. She also gave Bulkhead, her Autbot guardian, the opportunity to discover this style of music which he greatly appreciates.

She is very brave, but also terribly reckless. She has shown on the show that she can be very smart as well as very dumb. She has a sharp mind, which allows her to make quick decisions in critical situations.

We don't know much about her background, other than the fact that she is from Japan, played the piano, and was terribly bored in her native country.

Well, now that we've laid the basics on the characters, I'll be able to answer the question.

So already, I prefer to be honest, at first I didn't like this character! When I started watching the series, I found Miko unbearable…

Firstly because she was unconscious, and was putting herself in danger. But also because she endangered Raf and Jack! She was also slowing down Autobots who were supposed to help her rather than do their mission.

Plus, she didn't seem to learn from her mistakes, causing the pattern to repeat itself every time: the Autobots go on a mission, by the ground bridge, and Miko foolishly follows them! So every time I saw her cross the ground bridge, I was like, “Oooooh nooooo!! But why are you doing thaaaaat?!" Seriously, she actually make me angry…

For example, when Miko follows Bulkhead, and infiltrates the Nemesis with him, Raf and Jack follow her to try to stop her, but end up getting caught up in the problem. The three children end up to be alone in the Nemesis, and Raf begins to seriously panic, crying and saying he wants to go home. Here, the boy is in distress, and even if Miko consoles him to reassure him, I mostly thought that she should apologize, because basically it was her fault. It's good to console, but she should have thought about the fact that the other two were going to try to stop her, because they would be worried about her.

In addition, she seemed to underestimate the war between the Autobots and the Decepticons, showing that she didn't really understand, and minimized it.

That's why I didn't like Miko at first. But, I ended up starting to like her, and this at a specific time: when she was worried about Bulkhead. And this in several episodes:

1- When Bulkhead was stuck in the cave with her, she showed new emotions, other than joy, courage and determination. And it was fear, worry, and sadness. Of course, these are negative emotions, but it allowed to show a new depth to the character, as well as a very interesting side of his personality. Also, she does her best to get them both out of this situation, despite her own health, as she is starting to run out of oxygen. It shows us how strong her determination is, as well as her attachment to Bulkhead.

2- When Bulkhead loses his memory Miko does everything so that he get it back, and I found that really touching. Plus, she's doing everything she can to save him, and is ready to fight Breakdown and KnockOut if it means saving her friend. And even if it's stupid, I think it's to his credit.

3- When Bulkhead is hurt by Hardshell, and she wants revenge. We discover at this time a whole new facet of Miko, the Miko who demands revenge. That's sort of his dark side, and I find it interesting to see a human who is the side of the good guys having that personality.

Miko is actually a very deep character, with a complex personality, and it was when she started to reveal that personality that I came to like her.

And I must confess that I really admire this courage and this ironclad determination that she has. Like when she fights Soundwave's cable, or when she's ready to fight MECH agents, in the train scene. Not to mention the legendary Apex Armor scene ^^!

In addition, I also started to study his character, and I find that we can guess his background, just by his character and his appearance. And, in truth, I think she has a much sadder story than she lets on.

First, you have to know that she comes from Japan, and Japan is a country where people are not as expressive as Miko, and more often reserved (it's not in general, but most often it's the case). So, in this point Miko is very different.

Also, academic success, as well as success in the business world is an important aspect of Japanese culture. Except that, if you remember correctly, in addition to hating school, Miko is not particularly good in class, and very often finds herself in detention, because she does not like to listen to adults.

I sincerely believe that she must have been mentally and emotionally crushed by the school charge in Japan, plus to always have to listen to adults, even if she didn't wants to and disagree with them.

Even when she talks about the fact that she took piano lessons, when you know that she listens to Metal and plays electric guitar, you easily understand that it was not her who chose.

Also, when a person dyes their hair in Japan, it's not very well seen, not to say very badly seen. It's more the delinquents who do that. So I would be surprised if she made it in Japan, her parents would surely not have accepted it. She had to do it in the USA.

And, there are two scenarios that are possible, of why she ends up to be in the United States:

1- It's her choice, she begged her parents to send her there, by giving an excuse like: "it's to learn English". To make sure she flees far from this culture in which she cannot integrate and which suffocates her.

2- Her parents sent her there, to somehow get rid of her. But, Miko then takes the opportunity to live fully as she really is, without hiding her true identity.

So what do I think of Miko? She's a character that I've come to appreciate over the course of the series, as her character and persona have developed, revealing a deep and interesting personality, of a person who never gives up.

#miko nakadai #tfp miko #tfp #transformers prime #miko #answer #question #ask #she's an interresting character #analyse #maccadam

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lordelmelloi2 · 3 months

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I've always been a bitch about the media I choose to let into my life but when it comes to why I still "play FGO" (see: log in every once in a while, say hi to my fambly and try to go through story chapters) ... its really just trying to get through the main story at this point. Like I do want to see whatever FGO is trying to do but also, I skip events like CCRAAAZZYYYY, I skipped that Samurai Remnant event and my mentee hates it too because they fumbled Chiemon's story & also I can't lie I just think its corny and nothingburger from what I've read of it, I care so little abt it... I skipped the summer events after being disappointed with the story, skipped the Wandijna event because it was culturally insensitive, rushed to finish Traum so I could do the Christmas event because I wanted Santa Nemo and the story seemed like it was pretty good there, obviously I played the Ptolemy event and I played the Beast Nero event...

the thing for me is really whether or not I feel like it ties into something I'm already interested in, obviously, and being late to the party with SR and not finding a lot that hooks me in there leaves me wondering like Why should I even be interested anyways; there's also the fact that as an English speaking fan half of the time you have to wait for translations but Also CCC just got TL'd so there's that added to the thing you have to read/play, also it just seems like.... Lasengle is fumbling the bag rn super hard, FGO needs to be console release ready at some point in the future because there's no way they're devoting all this time and work and effort to such a large installment of the series with it simply being a mobile game,

No sorry theres a new Rose writing this post now. I had to do like 2 switches while doing something else I just read the rest of this. The problem is that FGO loves not tying up loose ends. We're at the later stages of the game. Beast Nero tied up some loose ends that we've had suspicions of since F/Extra. So it was a good event and on top of it, it also added some character and resolution to the idea of a Beast, and why Beasts are summonable, and who Beasts are as spiritual origins. Santa Nemo added some extra character development to Nemo and that team and that was some well-needed warmth during the "wtf is going on" of our current storyline. The Ptolemy story also wrapped up a lot of questions about those who survived the War of the Diadochi, how they felt about that war, and how they regretted that dream but still could not dismiss it, it was an interesting story about those ideas and Theseus and the Minotaur I thought was an extremely EXTREMELY awesome story beat showing that Theseus and Asterios were not on bad terms; even if the big bad thing was kind of eehhh I still would give it a solid 8/10 plus that fight dynamic at the end was cool.

FGO needs to stop adding new shit! That's half of the problem! It needs to start thinking about wrapping up shit and developing the characters it already has. Paper Moon at least brought in some more development on Kama and the other Indian servants but falls flat in other regards. I would like to see more of the characters and plotlines that already exist being developed. Daybit isn't even dead so wtf is he doing rn?

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wackywheel · 2 years

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what is rhsmp??

hi anon! you have invoked the beast with this innocuous ask! thank you :)

rhsmp, or Roughhouse SMP was an smp run by and played on by, as you'd assume, roughhouse! the server started in late october of 2020, and... didn’t really formally conclude? i’m pretty sure the server itself is offline, but it remained playable for nearly a full YEAR after launch. for those unaware, roughhouse is a group of streamers/content creators who mostly met on/during smplive/smpearth. while some friendships predated both servers, the group really only came together during smplive, and finalized being solidified during smpearth. here's their yt channel for their podcast! (their podcast thats sort of on hiatus but its ok its fine its fine we're coping its fine)

while most of the server's run was it simply being a normal minecraft smp for the group, as well as a few friends of the group at the time, such as crumb, sophietexas, a LOT of their s/o's, and fuckin. rav the rapper of all people. yes, as in that rav the one that was on epicsmp.

like most collaborative cc content from 2020 (ie; smpearth, earlier dsmp vods, sbirust) as you'd expect, most of the vods are lost! yipee (derogatory!) the key word there, though, is most. luna and poke have every single one of their vods fully archived! everyone please thank luna and poke. for highlight videos, again, luna and poke are absolutely carrying, especially in luna's case. they have a TON of older rhsmp highlight videos you can find on their main channel! poke also has a few highlight videos, as does james. (...on the topic of james, though, finding those videos may be a bit tricky. the guy privated all of his main channel videos, so the only way to watch his stuff is to either use this archive channel that someone set up (with the downside of the videos being in 360p at best,) or to ermm maybe? maybe join this discord?? and ask for the james archive? and about rhsmp? totally not me shamelessly plugging it?) every other pov, though, has sadly been lost to time. F in chat and the like.

but, enough about vods and lost media, let's talk LORE! rhsmp really didn't start out with intended lore, nor was it ever scripted or acted out, but it very much WAS present, whether it be in the background for the majority of the smp, or right in the forefront right near the end of it.

the two biggest and most noteworthy instances of lore imo were the Console War and The Forbidden Blade of Roughhousia.

let's start with the first one. the Console War was a short, one stream or so long altercation that involved luna building a GIANT XBOX Series X to rival michael's giant and just a little bit ugly PS5 in spawn. it wasn't entirely a "war" in the sense of there being battles, but more in the sense of destruction and petty, low blows. an ingame cat kicks the bucket. an important structure blows up. a god causes problems on purpose. y'know, normal stuff!

speaking of a god, let's talk about The Forbidden Blade of Roughhousia! rhsmp's server admin was the one and only ogbeefstew, and if you're familiar with him already, you likely know what i'm about to describe. for those unfamiliar though, i'll summarize; beef is a silly little quirky fucking unhinged creature. and we love him for that <3 during the server's white elephant gift exchange, beef's gift that he inadvertently submitted by proxy of luna was. uh.

this! the forbidden blade! forged by a god! offered up to mortals as if it were nothing more than a toothpick! i don't think any form of me trying to summarize the impact of this item would do it much justice, so i'll just link poke's vod of the gift exchange to let you watch the carnage yourself. (the sword itself comes into play around the 2:49:00 mark) aside from that though, beef has actually talked about the server's lore in retrospect! a friend and i have been trying to track down the instance in a vod of luna's so obv take this with a grain of "source: dude trust me" flavored salt, but the jist of it is that when the sword was finally broken, the server would either end or reset into a new world. very cool stuff for something as small as a friend group smp!

EDIT: the clip in question has been found! you can watch it here! the jist of the clip is that luna, beef, and dink were discussing how they would theoretically ‘reboot’ the world for a season 2. beef suggested that whoever had ended up with the sword would end up snapping and killing everyone, including beef, the admin. this would then reset the world. how? idk lol

now, with all of that being said, should you watch rhsmp? if you're okay with only having two solid povs at your disposal, then sure!

if you do seriously want to watch this server/series, i would mostly recommend luna's pov of highlights, as its a nice intro into the funny little world that had been built up. if you're dedicated or curious enough about the lore, their vods channel is also the first place i'd recommend you start, before moving on to poke's.

tl;dr- god i love it when minecraft servers accidentally get a crazy compelling storyline that very few people ever know about after the server closes. i love having all of this knowledge trapped in my brain. please watch rhsmp. help me.

#roughhouse smp #rh #pokay #wuna301 #michaelmcchill #michael mcchill #ogbeefstew #beefstew #smplive #smpearth #<- for reach lol

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 1 year

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Cartoon "console wars" and modern Disney villains, possibly part 1?

I don't know... It just seems like on twitter, and other parts of the online animation-fan sphere, no one seems to not enjoy animation and cartoons more than animation fans...

Right now, there's this very, very bizarre and overwhelming hyper-support of PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH. If you can't tell by my current pfp, I liked this movie a lot. Enough to make the titular cat my pfp, in fact I *loved* the movie... But something's eatin' at me, and I want to get some thoughts off my chest...

So, PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH... Hardly an indie darling, this is the sixth film in the ever-reliable (in financial terms) SHREK franchise from a studio that is owned by a massive multimedia conglomerate. It's legging it up something fierce at the box office, too, as it has become the first animated movie since ALADDIN... Yes, you read that right, ALADDIN. Disney's 1992 animated movie... To score a 10x multiplier. Already at about $145m domestic off of a paltry $12m opening weekend, and neck-and-neck with what the first PUSS IN BOOTS made. Exemplary performance, as it looks to peak at about $170m here, and the worldwide total should put it at $400m. Not too far behind what the first PUSS IN BOOTS took in, which got there off of a higher opening and a pre-COVID market (with 3D and IMAX 3D on its side) back in 2011-12.

So... Yeah, on twitter and elsewhere, the more recent work of Disney Animation and Pixar has been repeatedly negatively compared to PUSS IN BOOTS 2, to such an insufferable degree I feel. Never mind any other studios. I don't see DC LEAGUE OF SUPER-PETS or whatever being pitted against PUSS IN BOOTS 2, the other DreamWorks movie that came out this year, and even - in some circles - Illumination's recent work including a yet-to-be-released MARIO movie... Kind of weird, don't you think?

Personal opinion is all fine and well, if one feels that PUSS IN BOOTS 2 is superior to the recent films made by both studios operating under The Walt Disney Company, that's totally okay. I myself liked PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH a great deal, and probably a bit more than two of the films Disney put out this past year. But what I don't get is the constant pitting movies/studios against one another thing. Like this is some kind of rivalry out of the old ANTZ vs. A BUG'S LIFE days of yore.

I loved PUSS IN BOOTS 2, but I also quite loved this past year's original Pixar film TURNING RED. I even really liked the more divisive TOY STORY spin-off LIGHTYEAR, and saw a lot of potential in the rushed but still enjoyable STRANGE WORLD. Most of the animated films of 2022 that I have seen have been satisfactory to me, some I loved more than others but isn't that how life goes? Why do some people online treat this like it's a hierarchy? And by extension, treating films that didn't meet their expectations as some form of spite?

There's a lot to break down, and my thoughts are as unorganized as ever, but here's the first thing that comes to mind.

Villains...

People have groused for a long while, maybe since the release of ZOOTOPIA in 2016, that Walt Disney Animation Studios has been lackluster on the villain front. Apparently it's just twist villain after twist villain... Or, the villains just plain suck...

Okay... Should we start at 2012, when WRECK-IT RALPH was released? In that film, we have King Candy... He's already a bad guy from the start of the picture, he's already antagonistic to both Vanellope and Wreck-It Ralph. The "twist" is that he's Turbo, the very video game star that infamously left his own game in Litwak's Arcade and put two games - his own and Atari's 1987 action-driving game ROADBLASTERS - out of commission. It's implied, when Fix-It Felix, Jr. tells Sgt. Calhoun about what "Going Turbo" means, that Turbo got himself killed in the process... But no, the twist is that he was always around, he was King Candy! So, I don't really count King Candy as a "twist" villain. At least, not in the way that people keep parroting... What they're talking about are Hans from FROZEN, Professor Callaghan from BIG HERO 6, and assistant mayor Bellwether from ZOOTOPIA. These three are very much in the same league as Stinky Pete from TOY STORY 2, Mr. Waternoose from MONSTERS, INC., and Lotso from TOY STORY 3... Three Pixar twist villains... You thought they were good and kind-natured characters, until they weren't. Usually these twists came about 2/3 into their respective movies. Those three films were Pixar films, and the studio's 2017 film COCO re-used that same formula with Ernesto de la Cruz. Funnily enough, TOY STORY 2 and MONSTERS, INC. were co-directed by Lee Unkrich, who directed TOY STORY 3 and COCO. Filmmakers re-using their own devices... John Lasseter, of course, was director of TOY STORY 2... And ran both Pixar and Disney Animation from 2006 to 2018, ran the hierarchical "Brain Trust" that Lee was a part of, and he used a lot of those so-called Pixarisms in WDAS' films as well.

Yes, to be fair, that was three in a row from Disney Animation, from 2013 to 2016. Hans, Callaghan, Bellwether. They all play out like Stinky Pete/Waternoose/Lotso-types. I totally get that. I think it's accidental, though, because FROZEN was originally supposed to be about a villainous Elsa, but at the very last minute the story was redone and Hans was bumped to villain status, with Elsa functioning as a complicated, torn, but ultimately sympathetic character. I never really liked Hans as a villain myself, he feels shoehorned into what should've just been - in my not so humble opinion - a movie about two sisters. I feel he's also there because the film fancies itself a "meta" commentary on Disney fairy tales. As for BIG HERO 6 and ZOOTOPIA, I feel their twists suit the stories that the filmmakers were telling.

But after that?

MOANA's "villain" is, to me, Maui. Arrogant demigod Maui stole the heart of Te Fiti, so... Yeah, Te Ka is a rightfully enraged Te Fiti. Tamatoa is but a mid-movie boss level, though his less than 10 minutes onscreen are indeed a lot of deliciously villainous fun. Some people wish he had had a bigger role, but I'm totally fine with him being a temporary obstacle in the main adventure.

Maui is obviously not an evil, malicious character, but when I say villain... It can mean anything. A villain can be a character who is an antihero, or their own worst enemy even. Think Pinocchio in Walt Disney's PINOCCHIO, a sentient puppet boy who sometimes doesn't listen to Jiminy Cricket and gives into temptation quite a bit. Again, his own worst enemy... He creates a lot of his own problems. If he hadn't said yes to Honest John Foulfellow, he wouldn't have been locked in a birdcage by Stromboli. If he hadn't lied to the Blue Fairy, his nose wouldn't have grown. Him being held captive by Stromboli lead to Geppetto and his pets ending up being swallowed by Monstro the whale. Even Jiminy Cricket is no saint, bailing out on Pinocchio at one point. "What does an actor want with a conscience anyway?"

I'm getting off track here, but you catch my drift, right? Okay, so MOANA... Maui causes all the trouble in the movie, the whole adventure revolves around his past crime of stealing something valuable. There's no malicious overlord looking to threaten Moana's home village of Motunui, there's no bad guy out to kill her. MOANA is purely an environmental story if anything, and it's about colonialism too. Stealing from the land for your own gain, draining it of its life, etc.? You know...

After MOANA came RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET, already a divisive movie for many other reasons... RALPH BREAKS is, from my perspective, a movie about a neurodivergent who is so used to his home and familiar surroundings being thrown into a big, wide, and sometimes scary world... And how he reacts to all of that. Ralph's insecurities and fear of losing the one friend of his, his first at that, if you don't count the other video game villains at the Bad-Anon meetings... His fear of losing that friend, that drives much of the movie's conflict. It is he who causes all the commotion in the third act, by unleashing the virus that hungers "flaws" in things. FROZEN II came next, that was essentially another colonialism/sins of the past-type story. RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON had a sort of pseudo-geopolitical conflict going on with multiple tribes of people in a fantasy setting, with a complicated relationship between the heroine and the antagonist. A source of power that corrupts what should be a harmonious community. *Cough cough* money- ENCANTO is generational trauma, obviously, if that hasn't been made clear a million times. STRANGE WORLD is as well to an extent, definitely a daddy issues story, but it's also an environmental story about a fictional world's population inadvertently killing the world it lives on...

This all forms up a nice variety of stories... Because believe it or not, conflict **can** come from things **other** than malicious, scheming, mustache-twirling bad guys. And get this! Some people complain that *all* Disney movies are just about simplistic evil bad guys, which is certainly untrue.

This variety of stories also applies to the Walt-era films... For every Evil Queen or Maleficent, there were antagonists like "Man" in BAMBI and society's casual cruelty in DUMBO. The Evil Queen, the various foes in PINOCCHIO, Lady Tremaine, Maleficent, Cruella, Shere Khan, etc. all fall into a classic "bad guy" category, characters who willfully want to hurt or harm someone, some who seek power in ways that will hurt many people. Your classic bad guy... Some of them might even see themselves as the hero of their own story. Like, Shere Khan for example... His fear of man shooting him is not unfounded, but he certainly enjoys the prospect of eating an innocent little man-cub, though! So he's definitely more on the bad side than one would expect. He's already feared the jungle over, yet in a way, he has some legitimate motivations.

Okay, so where am I going with this? Yeah, so in plenty of the Walt-era Disney animated movies, you have malicious or harmful bad guys out to harm the protagonists, many of them larger-than-life or have a major presence of sorts in the movies... But let's look at some of the other films. In DUMBO, the gossipy elephants are bullies to Dumbo because of his deformity. And, well, that's reality unfortunately. Was back then (1941), is now. Prejudices exist, and people bully others because of those prejudices. I would know, being autistic and queer for starters. Dumbo is not only bullied by the other elephants, but circus patrons laugh at him, too. Some rough boys pick on him, driving his mother to intervene. The circus staff separated him from his mother, put him through dangerous stunts, and generally treated him rather poorly until he triumphs at the end. The Ringmaster isn't really in the same league as The Evil Queen or Maleficent, he merely runs a circus, and circuses have a history of animal cruelty. Just cold indifference towards living creatures for showbiz. The movie doesn't portray the Ringmaster as Snidley Whiplash, he's merely a showman. Nor the clowns as sniveling goons, but merely as working class guys. (There's a particularly amusing little ditty in the film where the clowns sing about "hitting the big boss for a raise", which was partially in reference to the discrepancies that lead to the Disney Strike of 1941.) Gotta also factor in the historical context, DUMBO is a Great Depression/World War II-era picture. Walt and his story people were careful in their depictions of Dumbo's antagonists. This was a modern-day story, unlike SNOW WHITE, PINOCCHIO, and the many fantastical segments of FANTASIA, so they told this story accordingly. No fairy tale menaces, but simply how mean people can be in the real world. Some people are just plain bullies because it is/was accepted to ostracize certain kinds of people (or in Dumbo's case, animals), and some people are just indifferent to injustices.

Ironically, this makes the Walt-era films - seen by a concerning amount of people as "childish" compared to the studio's later endeavors - more mature than many Western family animated films made over the past 30 or so years. Can't you tell I really love the Walt films?

BAMBI is another favorite of mine... "Man"... Do the animals ever refer to human beings as "evil" in BAMBI? That would be no... Just a few simple lines in what is a rather quiet and lyrical film. Certainly quiet by today's standards, for sure. "Man... Was in the forest." "He is here again... There are many this time..." BAMBI is unique in that it shows, starkly, just how much destruction humans bring to the forest. We never see a human being in the film, nor hear one speak... We only hear gunshots, and honestly? That always made them scarier. It gave them a mystique, an ominous aura. This thing called "Man" shows up, and there's a possibility that you will die when he does. Nothing beyond that. In real life, that's probably how animals with their very different brains than ours process human encroachment in their habitat. Many other animated movies have animals that act like humans and know lots of things about the human world, the animals in BAMBI do not. So, yes, in BAMBI, there is no scheming gun-toting hunter. We don't know the motivations of the human who shot Bambi's mother dead. Was he doing it for the sport? For a venison dinner? The whole point of Walt's film, an adaptation of Felix Salten's novel BAMBI: A LIFE IN THE WOODS, is that the motivation doesn't matter. What matters is, Bambi's mother is dead and his whole life is significantly altered by a bullet shot by one person in a mere second... This is what Man can do to a life, a whole home or world even. Tell me that didn't line up with how the world was reeling from the man-made horrors of World War II?

I'll even throw in LADY AND THE TRAMP for good measure. Who is really the "villain" in that film? The obvious answer may seem to be Aunt Sarah, who is kind of a busybody. She isn't very friendly to Lady, or to dogs in general it seems. She has two cats, though. That seems to line up, right? Doesn't like dogs, has cats, cats are usually portrayed as evil or scheming in a lot of older media and stories. Her two cats cause trouble and frame Lady for an attack, which leads to Aunt Sarah muzzling her. We don't see her for the rest of the picture until the climactic battle with the rat. The rat, of course, just a silent wild animal. Is she really "evil", though? She's antagonistic, for sure. She's a total pain in the ass more so than a powerful, towering bad guy a la Ursula or Hades. The whole movie isn't necessarily hinged around her, Lady gets the muzzle off halfway through the movie and doesn't return home until later. That is by choice, she would rather watch the baby than run off with Tramp and life the free life with him. Aunt Sarah's only role in the climax is to be oblivious, and since it's a dark and stormy night, how would she know about the rat? She just assumes Lady is an annoying barking dog. It's all real-world human stuff, not exaggerated cartoon "muwahaha!" menace. Aunt Sarah gets shut right down at the end of the movie when Jim Dear and Darling make it home from their trip. ("Nonsense, she's trying to tell us something!") Aunt Sarah is more a person who really needed to chill, and be a little nicer to dogs. No, for me, much of LADY AND THE TRAMP's conflict stems from its themes. Lady is a purebred, she's pampered and lives in a lovely neighborhood with loving owners, Tramp is from the wrong side of the tracks, a stray mutt who hasn't had it easy and has a rather cynical outlook on life. Classic polar opposites for this romantic drama that happens to be animated and happens to be have talking dogs as its stars... It is very much a story about class differences, subtly so, because Walt's movies - contrary to popular belief - weren't these paper-thin stories that some folks make them out to be. The class themes are quite obvious actually, in several scenes, such as Lady's first encounter with Tramp, the entire dog pound sequence, and particularly in the third act confrontation between Lady and Tramp at her house. It's natural drama and conflict, not somebody looking to threaten the town they live in.

As for Post-Walt films made before the Disney Renaissance, I could also wax about THE FOX AND THE HOUND being more a parable of race relations in the '70s than anything else, but... Moving on-

As you can see, and if you've read from me elsewhere, I really love me my Walt-era Disney animated films, and I see a nice variety of stories and conflicts in them. By contrast, the films of the Disney Renaissance? It was bad guy after bad guy after bad guy. Even before the Renaissance, start at 1985's THE BLACK CAULDRON with The Horned King... And it's a succession: Ratigan, Sykes, Ursula, McLeach, Gaston, Jafar, Scar, Governor Ratcliffe, Judge Claude Frollo, Hades, Shan-Yu, Clayton. This is the era that a lot of detractors of modern Disney animated features yearn for. They don't seem to like that the recent movies haven't retread the same ground as before, and have opted to tell stories with different kinds of conflict. For me, the variety in the antagonists and conflicts put the films closer to Walt's entire body of animated feature work than the Renaissance period.

Now, if they don't like these stories because of their respective executions? That's totally fine and well...

I myself do think that the recent WDAS films need a little more bite. Even without a bad guy, you can still make certain aspects and scenes intense and thrilling, and make other things stand out. Can I go back to films like DUMBO and LADY AND THE TRAMP for a second? Those may not have had traditional bad guys in them, but they did tell their stories in ways that made the conflicts register, the drama hit hard, and the resolutions hit even harder. It was one of Walt's storytelling tricks, and it was regularly executed so well by his crews. Directors like Wolfgang Reitherman, Ben Sharpsteen, David Hand, Clyde Geronimi, etc., to say nothing of his animators, the Nine Old Men especially. Anyways...

I feel like many of WDAS' recent films are all essentially TANGLED 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, etc. That they got too comfortable with that one style of visuals and the directing, I feel, is not as distinguishable. There are some touches here and there you can pick up on, from films directed by the likes of Byron Howard or the Ron Clements-John Musker duo, but little else... PUSS IN BOOTS 2 by DreamWorks does the opposite, it doesn't feel like the few DreamWorks pictures released before it nor any of the previous SHREK movies for that matter... with or without bad guy villains in it.

I never really found FROZEN or BIG HERO 6 to be too intense, they would've easily been rated G in the 1990s, for sure. ZOOTOPIA comes close in parts, MOANA has some cool action but I heard that the filmmakers were mandated to tone down the scenes of Te Ka. I believe it. Meanwhile, yes, PUSS IN BOOTS 2 doubles-down on the more intense stuff, with some serious style at that! Death/Wolf is legit menacing, what with his sick fighting moves and glowing red eyes. Big Jack Horner is completely malicious, not a moral bone in his body, comically so. When Puss runs through the woods after seeing Death for the third time and his subsequent panic attack, I was reminded of Snow White's run through the scary forest. Just soooo well done. PUSS IN BOOTS 2 knows what kind of story it is, and it doesn't hold itself back. As a fairy tale for a family audience, it doesn't timidly hold back on giving the kids in the audience a good thrill. I don't feel like anyone in higher positions gave notes to the filmmakers, telling them to tone down their vision. Contrast that with what the Disney+ documentary on the making of FROZEN II pointed out: Test screenings with kids lead to certain intense scenes being toned down.

Now that kind of criticism, I do totally get!

But, what I don't get is... "Lol, Disney's villains suck these days!" "DreamWorks' villains were always better anyways, Disney was never good!" "Heck, DreamWorks is just better, period!" Heck, I even saw a meme saying that a Disney film *never* had blood in it, while PUSS IN BOOTS 2 was "top-tier" or "goated" or whatever because Puss gets a small cut in the movie... Like, what? Have these people not seen... Let's see... SLEEPING BEAUTY, THE BLACK CAULDRON, ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE, Pixar's FINDING NEMO and UP, etc.? We're now doing this over onscreen blood? I'm paraphrasing a lot of this nonsense, I know, it's not the exact wording, ***but***... But, but, but... People seem to have the attention span of GNATS when talking about these films. Aren't these the same people who felt that DreamWorks had lost their way? Which was in response to DreamWorks releasing a BOSS BABY sequel and a SPIRIT spin-off movie for 6-year-old horse girls in 2021? "DreamWorks is back"? The TROLLS movies seem to get a lot of flack too, and we have a third one coming out later this year. Will these same people relapse when TROLLS BAND TOGETHER comes out and they all collectively say "DreamWorks, why do you suck now?" I mean, what is all this? Are they all kids or something?

Why the constant rivalry? Why the constant "nyeehhhh, this is king, the other thing sucks"? This isn't the console wars. Someone on twitter summed it up as that, and I think that's brilliant. A spot-on description of what this silliness is. The console wars, yes... Nintendo and Sega went at it in the early 1990s in America, it was all marketing... But it was also all stupid, and a lot of gullible kids ate it up, because they were kids, you know? When I was 12-13 in the mid-aughts, I idiotically and unironically bought into wild conspiracy theories about DreamWorks vs. Disney/Pixar, and I'm not proud of that whatsoever. Or, we can compare this silliness to how the media in the 1960s made it seem like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were these fierce rivals or something...

The reality is, all the studios are full of talented people who work very hard for about four years making these motion pictures a reality. Not a single thing in a single frame of an animated movie comes for free. I mean, I'm a long-time artist, I would also know that. Just one drawing alone of something can be taxing... Now imagine that, but a ton of them, for the numerous amount of frames in a 90-minute movie! Decisions are made and they can't always be corrected. Money, time, etc. What's done is done. It's not like WDAS' filmmakers, or Pixar's, or DreamWorks' filmmakers for that matter are trying to spite you whenever they make a movie. I feel much of the animation fan community treats an animated movie or show they don't personally like as spite.

Most of the time, if not nearly all the time, it is not SPITE. TURNING RED wasn't made to spite you, LIGHTYEAR wasn't made to spite you, STRANGE WORLD, BOSS BABY 2, SPIRIT UNTAMED, you get the idea!

But is this anything new? No.

Remember how, when COCO was coming out, COCO was supposedly this big rip-off of THE BOOK OF LIFE, a similar animated movie about musicians and the Day of the Dead? Remember how COCO was apparently a big ol' insult to BOOK OF LIFE and the country of Mexico as a whole? Remember how COCO was destined to be a failure because BOOK OF LIFE came first and was directed by a Mexican, while COCO was directed by a white American? Remember how COCO was appropriation of Mexican culture while BOOK OF LIFE was ostensibly the more "pure" and "authentic" film? Remember how a major animation news website kept stoking this fire? Then COCO came out... It's one of the highest-grossing films in Mexico, it's beloved, I heard nary a negative thing about it after that.

Or how about... Remember THE EMOJI MOVIE? Remember how Sony Animation was a "bad" studio and that they "redeemed" themselves with SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE the year after? Remember how THE EMOJI MOVIE apparently killed animation or whatever?

Or how about all the raw and perpetual anger over harmless shows like TEEN TITANS GO! and such?

It's just cartoons. It ain't... Ya know, something like running a country.

Chill. Nothing's the greatest thing ever, or the worstest thing ever. There's no need to pit these things against one another, like we're living in HIGHLANDER or something. "There can be only one." If we want animation to look more worthy and sophisticated than it does, then there can't be this playground "nyah nyah, mine's better!" nonsense. At the end of the day, there's stuff you like, and stuff you don't. If I don't like something, I'll just express a little disappointment and go watch/enjoy something I *do* like. Or better yet? Make something of my own that I think is cool.

Last autumn, I caught two horror films in theaters, to use an example... One was Zach Cregger's BARBARIAN, the other Parker Finn's SMILE. I loved BARBARIAN, dug the hell out of it. Whereas I borderline hated SMILE. On Twitter, after seeing SMILE, I made a few tweets about it, posted a Letterboxd review, and that was about it. In another tweet, I briefly brought it up... Unlike toon-twitter or the rest of the whole sphere, I didn't, week after week, pit BARBARIAN and SMILE against each other. I didn't constantly bring up SMILE just to bash it, or use BARBARIAN to one-up it. Because I'm an "adult". SMILE exists, me bashing it doesn't change anything. People saw it, people loved it, it had ludicrous legs at the box office for an *original* *horror* movie. I really disliked SMILE, and I just left it at that. Unless you directly ask me what I thought of SMILE and why I disliked it, I see no need to bring it up. I moved on to other things. In fact, the night I saw SMILE, I went home and streamed DC LEAGUE OF SUPER-PETS - which I hadn't seen yet - to wash it out.

The last mainstream animated movie that I saw that I disliked was THE ADDAMS FAMILY 2. Would you know? Unless you're someone who likes to keep up with my crumby Letterboxd reviews, you probably wouldn't know. I don't think I even mentioned on twitter that I even saw the film, let alone really disliked it... Because I have no need to say that, to keep spreading it like wildfire. You didn't like TURNING RED/LIGHTYEAR/STRANGE WORLD? Fine. PUSS IN BOOTS 2 satisfying your tastes is more than enough, you don't need to keep interjecting why the other three movies were "mid" or whatever. Just a suggestion, ya know?

And if it's about sticking it to big bad corporate Disney? Guess what, DreamWorks is owned by COMCAST. A big multimedia conglomerate that's every bit as evil as Disney is. Oh, and how about two of the other Best Animated Feature of 2022 nominees? PINOCCHIO and THE SEA BEAST? They're from NETFLIX! Even A24, the sole studio in the running that isn't huge, is imperfect and they're quite mainstream I'd argue. On top of that, they sell random trinket merchandise for their films that doesn't justify the price tag. Like c'mon, we're really battling over which corporation or enterprise to worship?

I try to cherish all the animated films we get in a calendar year, especially nowadays... When some of these corporations are just thoughtlessly cancelling projects left and right, even erasing some from existence because "tax write-offs" or some capitalist mumbojumbo nonsense that truly makes no sense. Hundreds of people work on them, and a lot of the time, it's people making decisions that they think are the right decision at the time... But sometimes, it doesn't translate to critical success or commercial success. Like the late William Goldman once said, "No one knows anything. Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one."

I reckon most people mudslinging online and wearing their favorites as some sort of badge of honor wouldn't last a day in a studio, in production of a film... And this isn't unique to the animation fandom, it's elsewhere, too. Any kind of film, really. TV, sports, games, you name it... But I have to see a lot of it on my timelines and on my YouTube recommendeds, and even from people I otherwise really find insightful, and it's just goddamn exhausting. A little nuance would be nice...

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doubleddenden · 2 months

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I read something about how Sony is already planning to make the PS6 because the PS5 wasn't meeting their financial goals. Similarly, I saw something about Microsoft wanting to try working on the next Xbox- both want to try and make the graphics the strongest ever-

God they just do not fucking get it man. The ps5 and Xbox Series SeX are fine, they just came out and they're so strong you can barely differentiate life from them. The graphics are not the issue here- actually, scratch that, the REALISM is not the issue here. The issues are

Price. Nobody can fucking afford those things in this economy. Why are we fucking charging almost a month's rent for a game console 10 people bought?

Availability. I can count the number of times I've seen a wild PS5 last year on ONE hand, man

There's no fucking exclusives worth getting. Horizon? Okay, great, but is there ANYTHING else you can't get for cheaper on the PS4, Xbone, or pc's that are still running just fine? This is the huge things- Remember when Sony used to have a strong lineup of Sly, Spyro, Crash, Jak and Daxter, and eventually Infamous? Remember... Well, Xbox had Halo I guess? I guess Gears of War, but other than that I can't say I can remember anything good that was original and exclusive.

Graphics- Remember how I changed my mind? That's because these big companies think we need to be able to see the exact excretion of sweat from a pore in a horse's nutsack, when we really don't? What's needed is something more cartoonish like the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube era, something that sticks out and isn't lost among games that look exactly the same. This, combined with Exclusives, is why Nintendo just has more memorable games.

Here's my opinion: Stop trying to pursue reality-level graphics and start trying to pursue fun ideas again that don't just appeal to your average brain rotted CoD or EA sports player. Plenty of adults still love cartoonish games like Mario, and you still make a game look GREAT that lasts years later (Okami is a huge one, but also look at Sly 2 for PS2, Sonic Colors for Wii, etc).

Also, stop trying to use top of the line parts that will either get scalped or never sell for way too much. A game console should be no more than $360 max imo, and you don't need to make its "exclusives" completely 1 to 1 with reality because it's just gonna look bad in 5 years. You need something that looks FUN, that appeals to all ages and not just either little kids or adults that think they're too "adult" to enjoy something other than your copy paste war zone or zombie apocalypse.

Focus on stability and accessibility, not a pissing contest to see who can go bankrupt first.

#games #ps5 #xbox #xbox series x

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ericmicael · 7 months

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Could "Frozen 3" become "Star Wars 9"? But what actually was "Star Wars 9" and why is that a problem.

"Star Wars 9" was Disney wanting to please those who didn't like "Star Wars 8", it's a beautiful summary. The film makes several retcons on the previous film.

Important facts like Rey's origin, Kylo Ren's arc, and even Luke Skywalker are completely different in Movie 9 compared to Movie 8. And a lot of those things that certain fans really hated about being in episode 8 are grateful that episode 9 excluded: "episode 9 might suck, but since it got rid of those things I hated it already has my affection", is basically the thought of these guys.

"Frozen 2" was also a very divisive film for the fandom as was "Star Wars 8" with decisions that to this day people want to be retconned with the most important of them being: Elsa ceasing to be Queen of Arendelle and starting to live in the Forest Enchanted.

But "Star Wars 9" wasn't just a retcon of important facts from the previous film:

They made canon the most toxic shipp in the community involving the protagonist and the villain after giving a redemption arc to this villain... although this is not true since after the film in the official book the kiss was called "friends' kiss", and everything before and after takes away any air of romance anyone might have imagined. Officially they were never more than friends

They created a character of the opposite sex with the only reason being to make it clear that the LGBT shipp would never be canon, but they created a couple of LGBT NPCs as a consolation prize

A villain whose arc has already concluded returns just for fanservice and to be a way to redeem the other villain

It's not very difficult to imagine what all this would be like to be included in “Frozen 3”, in fact a lot of people want “Frozen 3” to be that: a slap in the face to those who liked the previous film, because they believe that the film was a slap in the face that they suffered.

But remember that since the end of “Frozen 2,” Disney has been trying to contextualize the film’s divisive themes, which ironically feels like what it’s doing with “Star Wars 9” today, and continues to slap haters in the face as in "Polar Nights" and "Once Upon a Studio". I don't think they will completely disregard the main events of the previous film, create a fanfic about a redemption arc, bring back an unnecessary character just for fanservice, make a toxic shipp "canon", etc. But who knows, it's a new director after all.

#frozen 2 #frozen 3 #star wars the last jedi #star wars rise of skywalker

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the-air-nomad · 11 months

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Our duty (part 2)

part 1: https://www.tumblr.com/the-air-nomad/719043967998656512/our-duty-part-1?source=share

Sokka POV:

After learning the wonderful news, my life underwent a 180-degree turn. First, I had to break up with Suki through a letter. At least now she will have a topic of conversation with Mai. Do I need to mention that Zuko already sent me a message in which he made fun of me with all the subtlety of a lion moose?! I think not! Then I had to witness Katara's argument with father about the fact that arranging the marriage of his own son does not help to prove to the new people from the North that arranged marriages are wrong and that children should be left to choose their own partners. At least Aang had the decency to console me and grieve for me. It would have been much better if he hadn't given a related monologue about how his life would end if Katara was no longer with him. OOGIES! I also received some encouragement from Toph, who advised me to stop crying like a baby koala sheep and to move on like the big boy that I am. Did you think that was the worst part? Nooo! Gran-Gran decided this would be a great time to spend some quality time with my new grandpa. So I had to learn to make an engagement necklace from master Pakku. I don't care what Katara and Aang say, that guy doesn't know how to teach at all. I received more than a dozen slaps on the back of the neck because I have no respect for tradition and for my future wife. In the name of Tui and La, I am a warrior not a jeweler! I hope that Yue is luckier than me and that she doesn't have to go through such torture!

Yue POV:

I can't believe that my father could do such a thing! I will die of shame! The worst thing was that he expected me to be happy! Yes, I really loved Sokka and I still love him, but even though his decision to leave me broke my heart, I had to accept his decision! I know that I also broke his heart when I confessed to him that I was engaged. I can't even think about the fact that he already had a girlfriend. I still remember the moment I found out about his new conquest. A messenger from the Earth Kingdom had come to the palace to announce the end of the war. I was so happy to learn that my friends had succeeded and so proud that they had become extraordinary heroes. Then the messenger started to tell some adventures of the avatar team. To be honest, I still hoped that now that Sokka had become a true hero, and also a prince, he would return to the North to shame all those who had doubted him and to ask for my hand in marriage. I had noticed that my father was thinking the same thing as me when he asked the earthbender more about the Water Tribe warrior. Our hearts dropped at the same time when we heard how Sokka snuck into the best guarded prison in the world alongside the fire prince, all to save his red-haired girlfriend and his father. Tears started to fall almost instantly and I ran as fast as I could to my room. It seems that my prince was already living a fairy tale with another girl.I don't even know how much time I spent crying. At some point I came to terms with the idea that Sokka couldn't have loved a boring woman like me. I'm just a little girl protected from the world, I don't have extraordinary intelligence or beauty and I can't fight. But my father was not reconciled to the idea that his princess was rejected in favor of a scumbag from the Earth Kingdom. He immediately contacted Master Pakku and they tried to do all kinds of things to facilitate a future marriage to unite our tribes. It seems that Master Pakku had not completely given up his old ideas and that he considered the fighter Kyoshi totally unsuitable for his new grandson. He even tried to convince the rest of the family members of this but was unsuccessful and had to give up in order not to sabotage his marriage. Although 5 years have passed in which my father tried to marry me without success, as soon as the problem of the independence of the South appeared, he did not hesitate to take advantage.Tui and La, please forgive me for taking part in such a dishonorable act and give me the chance to get revenge on Sokka and his family.

Although I do not own the characters from avatar the last airbender, this work belongs to me! I sincerely hope you liked it and please rate it and leave a comment! follow me to see the continuation and to see my next posts! 💖💖💨

You can buy me a coffe if you want: buymeacoffee.com/TheAirNomad

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bartoonist · 1 year

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BAR’s PS5 screenshots 11-3-2022: I took these ten screenshots of The Jak 3 PS4 version on my PS5 console 5 days, and I have just beaten that game again for the fourth time yesterday on my PS5 Console, which is why I wanted to post and share my ten pics of proudest moments in Jak 3 on Instagram and Tumblr after I had finished playing Jak 3, and I’m off to play Jak X Combat Racing, and because that Jak and Daxter Racing Game never got any official remaster releases on PS3 or PSVITA before getting a PS4 version later on (which I now have on my PS5 console too of course), I’m gonna take some pictures of my favorite moments in Jak X Combat Racing too both some gameplay pictures and some cutscene pictures too, and while I’ve definitely become aware of J&D Fans pointing out how Jak 2 really was back in the day, I’ve already experienced the challenging and sometimes frustrating difficulty experience of Jak 2 to realize that it indeed a lot more difficult than I remember but also I lot easier when I had to recollect Orbs in Jak 2 Hero Mode to re-unlock the Invulnerability cheat for 30 orbs surprisingly made it more fun being in that God Like Mode stylistically of course. But of course looking back on that one Cutscene where Jak had rejected Ashelin’s offer to come back to Heaven City being confusingly out of character despite winding up traveling back to Haven City at the beginning of Act 2 later on, I started to theorize that Jak rejecting Ashelin’s Haven City comeback offer cutscene and theorize three reasonable points to why Jak told Ashelin that Haven City could rot for all he cared, Jak had a Troubled and Enduring Childhood in Haven City, he was unjustly arrested by Errol and used by him and Baron Praxis to be tortured and experimented on to become a weapon of war, and he was banished by the whole city to die in the wasteland. At least that’s my J&D Fan Theory of course, and I hope you folks like it. #gamepics #jak3 #ps4 #ps5console #jakanddaxter (at Los Angeles, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CkhPkjnJaI5/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#gamepics #jak3 #ps4 #ps5console #jakanddaxter

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fostersffff · 6 months

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Spinning off this response into a separate post because the previous one was already too gatdamn long but yeah, raytracing is a meme. Like, it's impressive on a technical level to be able to realistically simulate light, but for the last 20ish years game devs have (in a general sense) gotten really good at faking lighting. Outside of freaks (affectionate) like Digital Foundry, I don't think I've ever heard people gripe about unrealistic lighting in video games.

The nicest thing about the push for raytracing as far as I'm concerned is that when games have the ability to turn it off (or don't have it at all), the PS5 and Series X shine as "better performance boxes". They can't brute force AAA nightmares from poor performance, or optimize shovelware like Gollum or King Kong, but I think the only PS5 game I've played that has had noticable issues with performance is Stranger of Paradise, because Square-Enix still has some of that Size Queen brainrot from the XIV 1.0 days.

Besides that, there have been scant few "next gen" games.

Sony's Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is the first For Real Tentpole Sony has published for the PS5 that is exclusive to the PS5: Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok were on PS4, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Returnal aren't console-movers.

Circling back to Square-Enix, they have been making an effort to push next-gen, but unfortunately their PS5 exclusives to date have been FF7 Remake Intergrade (DLC), Final Fantasy XVI (fine), and Forspoken (lmao).

Microsoft has put out one (1) game: Halo Infinite, which as far as I can tell died on impact (and also was available on the Xbox One). Even if you want to count Redfall (lmao), Hi-Fi Rush, and Starfield- which I don't, because they were all in active development well before Bethesda was acquired- all of Microsoft's exclusives are also on PC, which inherently removes some of the awe of "CHECK OUT THESE NEW CONSOLES!!!"

The situation is unlikely to improve very much any time soon; the only Microsoft exclusive with an actual release date is Obsidian's Avowed, and dollars to doughnuts, and the only non-live-service game I'm aware of from Sony is Insomniac's Wolverine, which is still also not dated.

My earnest hope is that Nintendo announces a Switch successor that is roughly as strong as a PS4 Pro/Xbone X (or stronger, but there are limits to plausibility), and that between that and how strong mobile phones are these days developers will just start targeting those platforms as their "primary" benchmark. Then, anything multiplat released on PS5/Series X can just take advantage of the extra power to run and look a little nicer, while Sony and Microsoft can focus on making exclusives that highlight Why You Should Buy Their Consoles.

#long post #video games

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onehourhero · 7 months

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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

This one probably doesn't really count because I've already played it quite a bit, but it has been a while and I never finished, so I feel the need to at least replay the opening so I can remember HOW to play the game, and while I'm here, I'll go ahead and do a OHH take on it.

Clearly the rating is Keep Playing

Survivor is the sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order which followed Cal Kestis, a survivor of Order 66 as he attempted to find a holocron full of young potential Jedi's locations before the Dark Side did.

What is interesting about this game mechanically is that it takes that default stance that at the beginning of the game, you have to be depowered so you can build your character back up... and throws it out. As far as I can tell, you're just as 'powerful' at the top of Survivor as you were at the end of Fallen Order (more or less). You've got pretty much all the moves and movement options like wall running and ziplining upwards, etc. that you learned in Fallen Order. Instead, they add NEW things, new movement options like a jetpack and lightsaber stances beyond just one blade or two. You can use a blaster/one handed saber, or even a two-handed greatsword-like heavy saber. You are back down to a smaller health and force pool and only 2 stims at a time, but those feel like they're just his new normal rather than feeling like he was nerfed.

This is a sequel. Should I play the first one first?

You don't really need to, but I'd suggest it. There ARE places in the menus where you can practice your moves and/or learn techniques in a safe environment and there IS a kind of flashback to Fallen Order to jog your memory, but the flashback isn't very narratively coherent, especially if you're starting on Survivor. I DID play Fallen Order all the way through and still didn't remember a lot of what was in the flashback :joy: The good news is if you decide to play Fallen Order before diving into Survivor, it's not like going back in time to play a game before good camera mechanics were developed. It hasn't aged much if at all and still makes for good play.

So! Survivor!

In the opening scene, you're back as Kestis, apparently captured by some mercenaries and being taken back to the center of the Star Wars universe- Coruscant. A senator has attempted to capture Cal in an effort to find more Jedi before turning them over to the Emperor who has made his palace at the Jedi Temple. Cal's been busy, working with Saw Gerrera and acting the 'terrorist'.

You're quickly on the move with BD-1 and a new ally, Bode- a bounty hunter type with a jetpack and blasters. You pick up a skill point or three as you're racing across Coruscant's rooftops, force pushing stormtroopers off ledges in what is always a satisfying mechanic.

Somewhere around the end of the hour, depending on how much time you spend exploring and how long it takes you to get through the platforming sections, you're faced with an unexpected twist and the first of the 'boss battles' against a returning foe. It's... rough lol

Overall, though, the first hour is a pretty good indication of the rest of the game. Pretty good scaffolding and prompting for how to use your abilities and the other mechanics in the game. The only thing it's really missing is the travel between systems and the workbenches. Travel between systems is pretty simple- use the navigation console in a ship. The workbenches give you the opportunity to customize your weapons and BD-1 (colors, materials, and different components that you pick up while exploring). You can also pick up new hairstyles, facial hair styles, and clothes for Cal as you explore.

There's also a huge 'open' world where your new base is that you'll explore between missions, opening new sections as you develop more skills and movement options. This is also not the end of meeting up with returning characters from the first game. You might have split up after Fallen Order, but that doesn't mean you're alone. (Though there might be some... mending of relationships that needs to happen.)

Mechanically, combat and platforming are smooth. There's lots of options but they don't really feel overwhelming, and there is the aforementioned training area where you can go to practice new and old moves to refresh your memory when you find yourself falling back on the basics too often. (Or when you walk away and forget to play for 6 months >.>)

#one hour hero #star wars #star wars jedi survivor #sw jedi survivor #jedi survivor #keep playing

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randomboo256 · 1 year

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Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy (2017) Review [Part One]

The past days I've been slowly going through the world of Crash Bandicoot as I reviewed Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2, Crash Bandicoot 3, and Crash Team Racing. All of which was based on their original Playstation releases. I highly recommend reading those reviews first for context. However, only focusing on the Playstation versions of these games isn't really being all that helpful due to a pair of releases that came out comparatively recently. But first, let's take a step back and see how we even got here.

Crash Bandicoot was a game published by Sony Computer Entertainment, and the titular character later became a mascot of sorts for the console it was on: the Playstation. The original Crash games were developed by a studio called Naughty Dog, however they eventually quit making Crash games. Despite that, the series kept going. On all platforms too.. what? Why are Crash Bandicoot games coming out on Nintendo consoles, Xbox consoles, and even PC? What’s happening? Did Sony do this? Well, no. You see, despite Naughty Dog creating the games and the characters and Sony publishing them, Universal Interactive (yes that Universal) owned the series. Ok, so a long time ago Naughty Dog made a weird fighting game called Way of the Warrior for the 3DO. Despite it's obscurity, this game is shockingly important because after finishing it, Naughty Dog displayed it at the Consumer Electronics Show in search of a publisher. After a bidding war, Universal Interactive won the rights to it. Universal liked it so much that they contracted Naughty Dog to make three more games for them. Those three games ended up being, of course, the Crash Bandicoot trilogy. Before that though, Naughty Dog needed to pick a console to develop the next game on. They thought the Playstation looked “sexy” so they started development for that. After a demonstration from Naughty Dog, Sony agreed to publish and partially fund the game. But Naughty Dog made 4 Crash games right? If they already made an extra one, they could just make more, right? Well in theory, but Naughty Dog thought that Universal was too difficult to communicate with. They had a great relationship with Sony Computer Entertainment though. They were so close in fact that only two years after CTR, Sony outright purchased Naughty Dog, firmly establishing their place as part of the Playstation family.

After Naughty Dog quit, Sony published one more Crash Bandicoot game: Crash Bash. I haven’t really played Crash Bash personally, but from what I’ve heard it’s just a sub-par party game. After that, Universal decided to stop letting Sony publish Crash in favor of publishing the series on all platforms, with the first one being Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. People didn’t like that game, and I didn’t either. I’m not going to talk too much about this game mostly because it's already been mocked to death and also because it’d be kinda redundant. That’s because Wrath of Cortex is literally just a one to one ripoff of Crash Bandicoot 3, even down to the hub world. Except it’s like they saw my review of Crash 3 and said “Hey, what if we took every problem Crash 3 had and made them even worse?”. The platforming is worse because the camera is awful and they messed up the slide somehow. You have to like release the slide button and THEN jump, which is just awkward. Other than that the platforming is playable, but you rarely get to do it. Even more of the game is random bullshit now. Well over half of your playtime will be spent in those vehicle segments. While I didn’t care for the vehicles in Crash 3 because they distracted from the platforming, they were mostly just tolerable filler. In Wrath of Cortex, they all suck soo much ass. They all fucking suck and they're damn near unplayable. I kinda like the ball rolling, but that’s it. They also brought back Crash 2’s awful jetpack. They not only brought back Crash 3’s abysmal underwater stages, but 1. There’s even more of them. and 2. They’re even worse! You get this submarine which is so slow you can’t dodge the obstacles! Anyway, enough ranting. Wrath of Cortex sucks, but that’s no hot take. Everyone knows that, and it’s not just this game. Most Crash games after Naughty Dog left were less than stellar. Even the best one, Twinsanity, was so incredibly rushed that the final result was unpolished and had a lot of cut content. Needless to say, Crash fans weren’t happy, and after a disastrous reboot, they just wanted a simple return to the classics.

Meanwhile, Universal was eventually merged with Vivendi, who owned a bunch of studios including Blizzard Entertainment. The combined new studio became known as "Vivendi Games". Fast forward to the late 2000s, Activision was foaming at the mouth over the idea of microtransactions and other recurring fees to the gaming consumer, and therefore were dying to get their hands on World of Warcraft, a Blizzard game. Vivendi Games was struggling at that time, so the two companies merged, forming into the public menace we now know as Activision Blizzard. But what about our favorite orange marsupial? Well he had games throughout the 2000s, but after the merger he slowly grew silent. In 2011, Activision Blizzard released a game called Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure. Poor Spyro, but that’s a story for another day isn’t it? Skylanders was made by Toys for Bob alongside other companies, most notably Vicarious Visions. In 2016, the final Skylanders game was released, and it had the long awaited yet melancholic return of Crash Bandicoot. His portion of the game was developed by Vicarious Visions. Announced alongside his inclusion however was a full from the ground up remake of the entire classic Crash trilogy. Months later we got a trailer and a name: Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy.

Most people these days play this games in the N. Sane Trilogy, rather than their original Playstation releases so I feel I have to cover it. I'm not going to go super in depth with each game, because I already have done that with my reviews of the originals. Instead, I'm just going to focus on what makes the N. Sane Trilogy different.

Let’s start with the obvious: the graphics. Obviously they’re higher fidelity and they can certainly look quite nice at times, however they're far from perfect. Firstly, I simply don’t think that this realistic artstyle fits Crash Bandicoot. These characters were designed with a low poly, low resolution PS1 game with a far off camera in mind. Crash has big eyes, big eyebrows, and a big mouth so that he can be expressive in a way that still reads when looking at the game from a crappy CRT television. When you put this character in HD with realistic graphics where you can make out every hair on his little bandicock he just looks awful. He looks far better when he's very stylized, ala Crash 4. Even the rest of the graphics just look wrong to me. Something about how some of these levels look just feels off. It doesn't help that the game is also locked to 30fps on every console. For a modern day release, that's not acceptable. Especially considering that neither N. Sane Trilogy nor Nitro Fueled (which trust me I'll get back to) got PS5/Series X upgrades. Considering that even a modest computer like mine can hit 60fps on the PC port of N. Sane, there's absolutely no reason why next gen consoles couldn't also hit that same benchmark. Overall the N. Sane Trilogy only came out like 6 years ago and it already looks really dated to me. I honestly prefer the more timeless look of the originals. Well graphics aside, let’s go through each game one by one:

[Continued in Part Two]

#review #gaming #crash bandicoot

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civ-6-cheats-q3 · 2 years

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civ 6 cheats free PE1A!

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 How to cheat in Civilization 6 to reveal the entire map, exploit trading glitches, and get unlimited gold and resources. The best place to get cheats, codes, cheat codes, walkthrough, guide, FAQ, unlockables, tricks, and secrets for Sid Meier's Civilization 6 for PC. How to Use Cheat Engine in Civ 6 · Open Civilization VI. · Open Cheat Engine (or install it if you haven't already). · Using Cheat Engine, choose. * Select "Reveal All" to reveal the entire map. * There are also other debug options you can enable. Now you can easily access Debug Console in Civilization VI. Civilization 6 console commands are actually relatively limited, but you will at least get access to a cool debug menu, and it won't take you. If you have version 1 that is, if your game says version It will reveal the entire map and give you a variety of cheat options in the F1-F10 menus. You can enter enemy cities, sell their city walls, and then unfortify the defense. This cheat is the best. This randomly selects new qualities like expantionistic or Friendly for the computer civs. If you have embassies, you can monitor it till you find some values you like. Of course, embassies only produce these values if you are playing on the easier difficulty levels. You can continue this until he is doen whatever he is doing. The do it for all your settlers, if you have the patience. This is also handy for settlers on roads. All you do is take two steps, so the moves left thing says ". Immediately reselect him and he has his three moves back. Only take two of those three, of course. The only problem with this is that all of that reselecting and reasigning is accumulative like in the above paragraph, so if you use this cheat to go long distances, your settler may stop somewhere along the line and actually build what you tell him to build proposterous! This is really handy if you have a city which is doomed and you want to evacuate. Buy tonnes of settlers and use this cheat to get them to another city instantly. Then press "B" to settle them in that city. This can really save a city under attack. This cheat can be combined with waterbridging in my strategy guide to build endless waterbridges to nowhere in one turn. Once the fast settler has built one railroad, move the boat. Hit unload, and start again. Sentry a unit in a city as its last move. Enter the city and unsentry it. It now has all of its moves back. Handy for travelling fast across a continent or killing 20 attackers with one chariot attack, sentry, unsentry, repeat. This cheat is employed in the strategy "Ferries" listed under Military Advisor in the strategy page. All you have to know is that a sentried ship can be unsentried by boarding it with one unit. This can not only be used for ferries, but also for travelling around the world in one turn just pass 1 unit back and forth between 2 boats. When this cheat is being used, the "end of turn" message may come up when a sentried ship has just been boarded. Just click on the ship or press "tab" to get control of the ship. Can also use a fast settler to bring its moves back. Or, instead of unsentrying the ship with a unit, use another ship. Put them on the same square and hit "U" or select unload from the Orders menu. This is obvious, but irritating, because Civ has no "load saved game" option once you start. This cheat can also be used to keep the computers from getting wonders. The computer players get them randomly instead of building them, like you do. Go back to your last save, and take it back! This cheat plays off of a useful bug in the game saving part of the program. The game saves the map and where all of your units are, but it does not save a list of which have already moved and which have yet to move. To make use of this, simply move all of your units but one, then save and load and you will be able to move them all. I suppose this might be useful if you are in a crucial point in a nuclear war or perhaps you need a certain unit to be in several places at once. Thanks to Raffa for reminding me about this one. Win the space race easy! Build a space ship with one habitation unit and one engine. There are three ways to hack the save game file: using debug, using a different hex editor, or using the saved game editor application. The exact steps for hacking the saved game file using debug are laid out on this page. If you have a favourite hex editor and you want to use that one instead, then simply follow the directions below for debug, but you may need to subtract from the hex locations for them to work. For example, instead of changing byte for switching sides , you would have to use byte If you want the easiest way, you can download the Civilization Saved Game Editor by clicking here. And now, on with how to use debug…. To hack a civilization save-file using debug a hex editor that is built-in to MS DOS, so everyone has it : , go into DOS and find the directory of your civilization game. Type: debug civil. This is very useful. Start the game. Build one city only and defend it well. Once you have good defense, save and quit. Now, Edit the save file to change the difficulty to something amazingly high Find out how to do this here. Now, go back to the game and try to keep your city alivce for as long as possible. Example: -e 02 this changes the cililization you control to either the Zulus or the Babylonians. Type: e Changes the year. Mess around to find out how the values translate. Some day, I may put in the time and actually get the exact values for you. Note that all this does is change the clock, it does not reverse events. If you want to reverse events you have to go back to an old save game file duh. It is useful for extending the game beyond built-in limits for the difficulty level, allowing a theoretically infinite score. Example: -e 03 02 The last two values were just guesses. Type: e 10a. The values go up, but the possibilty of winning ends there. Example: -e 75 75 Gives the Indians or the Mongols the technology they are currently working on. Note there are exactly 10 sets of FF. Want to play the Canadians, eh? When starting the game, it asks for you to pick a civ from the list. Hit Escape. Now enter the civ you want. Note: when you first hit escape, there was already a name in the box. This is the civ you will "act" like. None of these cheats are original creations, so feel free to use them anywhere you wish. The TTG Guy. Special thanks in particular goes to CivMan who found and documented many of the hex bytes which appear here. It will even suggest some plans for you sometimes. F2 Same as always F3 Some wierd graphics. May be useful??? F4 Same as always F5 Same as always F6 Same as always F7 Civilization breakdown showing government type, diplomatic status, population, treasury, tax rate, of mil units, of cities, of settlers, amount of land units unknown , and technology. F9 Some military thing, listed by continent. I prefer F1 or just scanning the map. Free Moves Sentry a unit in a city as its last move. Ship Sentry This cheat is employed in the strategy "Ferries" listed under Military Advisor in the strategy page. Save Game I This is obvious, but irritating, because Civ has no "load saved game" option once you start. Save Game II This cheat plays off of a useful bug in the game saving part of the program. Space Barge Win the space race easy! Hack the Save File There are three ways to hack the save game file: using debug, using a different hex editor, or using the saved game editor application. And now, on with how to use debug… To hack a civilization save-file using debug a hex editor that is built-in to MS DOS, so everyone has it : , go into DOS and find the directory of your civilization game. Civilization breakdown showing government type, diplomatic status, population, treasury, tax rate, of mil units, of cities, of settlers, amount of land units unknown , and technology. Some military thing, listed by continent.

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threeletterslife · 2 years

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Hi baby!! I've been pretty busy because of exams and stuff, so I'm only just getting time to read chapter 10!

From what I remember we left off on a cliffhanger... I'm so scared to read on 😭 Let's just do this-

He would never feel for a Darlarean, so you must be the firthest thing from one — SOBBING SOBBING SOBBING HE ADMITTED IT I'M GONNA CRY

When the man admits to the love first >>>>>>

Oh... it's kind of sad to me how Yoongi is subtly refusing the fact that she's a Darlarean. I understand that he hates them, and for good reason, but it's like... it feels kind of desperate to me. I understand that he's consoling both of them but damn it hurts to read

If he's not too careful he might just- — babe, you're already too far gone

"I suppose this is war" — MOTHERFUCKER YOU WILL NOT HAVE TAEHYUNG (I'm assuming that's him) BEHEADED UNDER MY WATCH GET YOUR ASS OUT THERE AND STOP THIS SOMEHOW

I do not CARE if he's a Darlarean, so are you bitch get a grip I'm not having any deaths in this story

Don't get me wrong, I am SO glad she feels at home in Solaria and loves her country. She found herself and it makes me incredibly happy. But I don't want her to push her Darlarean side away and act as if it never existed, though I understand why she would want to do that. And I don't want yoongi to act as if she's just not Darlarean, and just ignore it. You can't ignore these things :(

Okay back to the lighthearted mood. This mock interrogation is so adorable i love them!! They're so cute 😭

"I also noticed the shitty posture right away" — it's not a proper chapter if she's not giving him shit about his posture 🥲✋

Oh the story of Haneul was actually quite beautiful. It sounds like an actual folk tale you would hear! I love how Solaria has a whole history to it, with culture and traditions and even stories, you really outdid yourself with the world building!!

NAYOOON best girl 😭😭😭 lovely lovely lovely, I love her. Another character I have a crush on now <3

Y/n seems like someone who's very easy to talk to. Literally everyone is sprouting their life stories to her. This sounds weird but I'd love to talk to her, or at least someone like her. She seems very... I don't know how to describe it, easygoing? At the very least a good friend

NAYOON SAID THE SAME THING LITERALLY TWO SECONDS AFTER I TYPED IT OUT LETS GO TELEPATHY

NO OMG THAT MAN IN THE END WAS TAEHYUNG (still assuming that guy is taehyung argue with a wall)

YOU DONT UNDERSTAND I'M GOING TO CRY. THEY WERE PROBABLY SUPER CLOSE AND WHEN SHE DIDNT RECOGNISE HIM HE MUST HSVE BEEN SO HEARTBROKEN CHANA I AM GOING TO START SOBBING

THAT LAST SCENE AHHHH it was so sad and just absolutely brimming with emotion I'm going to FUCKING cry

Ah :((((( ahhhhhh :((((( gwiavdisbdwigdiejdhdhsjssjjsosjsjsjsjsjshisoqsojssjxvsj nsjsosjsjsisihzjsjshsjss

Okay now that they keyboard smash is over, a little announcement !! It is currently my eid holidays, (Ramadan ends either tomorrow or today, we're not quite sure yet). After eid we're gonna have exams, so I'm trying to limit myself and not go on tumblr for the duration of the exams. Which means I won't be able to read any chapter you post from now till the end of May :/

Very sad, but just hope that I do good in my exams 😭 i can't wait to come back in June <33

Also 1) ASSAULTED?? YOU WERE??? when I get my hands on that dude istfg a bitch is getting slapped 2) please tell me that's past tense. The guy you WERE seeing. PAST TENSE. Tell me he's gone, a dude like him doesn't deserve a queen like you 3) (about the yacht party, not the campus lockdown-) GET YOURSELF A SUGAR DADDY. Find the son of some mafia/ceo/gang leader, bump into him, get your life settled miss y/n 🥳 (but seriously have fun!!) (Or i hope you had fun, I'm very late)

Love youuu MUAH <3

i am SO SORRY i responded to this so late 😭 it's the week before finals for me so things have been *quite* hectic! so you and me both babe LOL exams have got us in a chokehold :')

lod is FULL of sadness and heartbreak and hurt 😳 this def won't be the end of it, unfortunately,,, but we do get happy moments here and there 🤩

"I'm not having any deaths in this story" 💀💀💀💀 you are in for a ride, honey <3

"it's not a proper chapter if she's not giving him shit about his posture" I AM SCREECHING LMAOOO it's not like HER posture is impeccable either 🤨 idk why she gives him so much shit for it 💔 my theory is that she just has to find something imperfect in him... otherwise he'd be too good to be true 😟

THANK YOU! I SPENT A BAJILLION YEARS WRITING THIS CHAPTER JUST BECAUSE I WAS WRITING OUT HANEUL'S STORY LMAO 😭 i'm so so glad you thought it helped with the world-building because that was exactly my intent!

everyone has a girl crush on nayoon. she is the moment. an icon (much like doyun 😩)

YES!! oc is the epitome of an 'easy to talk to' person! she is all-ears for everyone! and she has this sort of very ~trustable~ aura that allows people to ~lower~ their guards around her! (#infj things)

LMAO YOU AND NAYOON ARE ONE 😳😳

good good luck with your exams and stay happy and healthy during your month off of tumblr!!!

yes. i still can't believe it happened

i'll tell him after finals that we're DONE

the yacht party was a success 😩 i just became elected as the director of my club so i'm really excited for next semester too :))

thank you for another amazing commentary!! i literally appreciate you SO MUCH <3 i can't wait to hear from you again! i'm telling you every time i get your ask, i read it AT LEAST five times before i respond (and it's a serotonin boost every time 😩)

#ask #chimchiekookie #lod #legends of darlaria

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biolizardboils · 3 years

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It took 3 days for Paramount to announce Movie!Sonic's redesign.

It's been 3 days since Nintendo announced the Mario Movie's cast.

They've officially let the sun set on their decisions.

In conclusion: Paramount does what Illuminain't

#super mario bros 2022 #super mario bros. movie #mario movie #sonic the hedgehog 2020 #smb #sth #me talking #(look i feel really bad for yall hardcore mario fans. yall dont deserve this #but also... if this really is the start of Console Wars 2 then i already know which side im on yknow? lol)#sonic movie #scu

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littlepadika · 3 years

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hi angel 🥰 i’m just in the middle of rereading calling home !!!! i was just wondering, could you ever do a one shot of like sweet pea calming frankie during the middle of the night if he has like an anxiety attack or nightmare? i love the dynamic between those 2 and would love to see how sweet pea calms frankie 🥺

Hi bb sorry this took me a hot minute to get to. First off... i'm thrilled you are re reading my series! Hope you enjoy!

Warnings: PTSD, anxiety, comfort, fluff

AN: This is early in their relationship. Probably right after chapter 5. Therapy also referred to in this drabble

source: @uuuhshiny

You blinked up at the ceiling, sleep momentarily thinning. You heard low muttering beside you.

"Frankie?" You turned reaching over to his side of the bed. He was shaking and sweaty under your hand. "Frankie!" You sat up, this time going to the other side of the bed to flick on the bedside lamp. The dim yellow light revealed Frankie twitching and muttering incoherently. Sweat clung to his forehead. His mouth was pursed in between a frown and snarl. His jaw was clenched tight. His whole body was stiff as a board. He was deep in a nightmare. You heard him say something like "no no".

You had been over this scenario with Frankie. He advised you not to touch him when he was having nightmares in case he acted on instinct and accidentally hurt you. But now that it was real, you couldn't just watch him endure a nightmare like this.

"Hey... hey..." You stoked his arm with your fingers lightly. He jerked away from your touch with a grunt. When he turned his head you saw that there were tears in the corner of his eyes. "Oh, Frankie... Wake up please. Come on, baby. Please wake up." You just continued to slowly stroke his arm, his chest, eventually making your way up to his face. He seemed to be calming down.

Then he abruptly sat up, scooting away from you reflexively.

"Wha-What's..." He looked around the room and then trailed off when he saw you watching him, concern evident on your face. He wiped his wet eyes.

"Nightmare." You explained though you were sure he already knew.

"Did I hurt you?" He immediately asked, looking away in shame. His humiliation mixed toxically with his adrenaline and fear from the dream.

"No. You didn't hurt me." You answered quickly, pushing yourself up, but you resisted hugging him for fear he was still overstimulated. You offered your water bottle to him. "Do-do you want to talk about it?"

Frankie shook his head, looking down at his sweaty self. "It's the usual dream. The helicopter crash." He shuddered, trying to pull himself into the present and away from his distorted memory. He took a couple sips of water and then handed the bottle back to you. Mentally he did the exercises he had practiced. Name one thing you see: Sweet pea. Name one thing you hear: A passing car. Name one thing you feel: Soft sheets. Where are you? Home. Home. Home.

You waited patiently through all of this, giving Frankie space to speak when he was ready. He took a few deep ragged breaths, his fists clenched on the bed below you. Too scared to touch you yet. He worried that he may have scared you off. That now you would have seen that all of his demons were real.

"I'm sorry I woke you up, sweet pea." His gruff voice was dripping with guilt. You frowned, not in frustration at him but at the stigma that led him to feel so terrible about dreams he could not control.

"Frankie...you didn't bother me." You couldn't resist laying a hand over his bare stomach feeling him relax at your touch. "I'm glad I woke up. I want to comfort you."

He sniffed, new tears in his eyes. He was still looking away from you. You understood. It was such a vulnerable state for anyone, let alone someone who had endured as much rejection as Frankie had.

"Can I hold you? Is that okay?" You feel your own voice shake with emotion. Your power and your love was limited with him not in your arms. As much as you knew your voice could move mountains, you needed to console him with more than words.

"Yes. please." Frankie exhaled finally looking at you, his brown eyes misty and wanting. You wasted no time climbing over his legs and pulling his face into your neck. His arms linked around your back, holding you close.

His skin, that earlier vibrated like it was trying to break apart, settled under your touch. Solidifying enough so he could finally sense each part of his body. Hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, and so on. He mentally listed each one as it related to you. Your hands on his head. Your chest on his chest. Your breath on his neck.

"I have you." You promised, knowing the words would help ground him. "I have you. I'm not going anywhere. Just be here with me."

"I'm so tired of this." He whispered into your warm embrace. "I just want to be better."

"I know." You sat back cupping his face in your hands, rubbing your thumb over that patch of grey in his beard.

"I was doing so well." He continued to beat himself up. He had been so pleased to have gone nearly a month without any nightmares or PTSD. He tried to think of something that could have triggered him but yesterday was a normal Thursday. He didn't drink. He didn't have a stressful customer at work. He had sex. He showered. Sometimes there was no trigger and that was the most unsettling type of episode.

Frankie ducked his head, resting his forehead in between your breasts. He wished he could crawl inside you and away from his thoughts. His PTSD made him nauseous and too hyper to sleep. He was both hyper-focused and dazed at the same time. Every nightmare always felt like an omen that things were going to get bad again. He was going to start craving and then eventually relapse.

You rubbed his back in slow circles trying to coax him into a more normal breathing rate. A minute passed, the only sounds were Frankie's rough breathing and your slower one.

"What else do you need?" You asked gently.

"Can you- can you light the candle please?" He requested in a muffled voice.

"Sure." You smiled, reaching over to his side of the bed and pulling out the lighter. Your candle, already well used, was soon flickering brightly. The floral scent you and Frankie loved, filled your brain making sleep slowly start to edge its way in. You could feel his breathing slow. "That better?"

"Mmhmm." He grumbled. Something about the scent grounded him to this chapter in his life; the one with you in it. He wasn't that lonely guy anymore. He wasn't in a war zone. He had everything he could ever dream of right in his arms... and yet... this still happened. "I'm sorry, sweet pea."

"What for?" You tousled his hair affectionally.

"For-for being messed up."

"Frankie..." You nudged his head up so you could kiss him deeply. You let him take the lead, pressing him tongue into your mouth and pulling you tighter against his chest. At your quiet moan he pulled back letting you finish your thought. You didn't care how many times you had to say it, touch it, kiss it into reality: Frankie was perfect the way he was.

"You aren't messed up." You murmured, holding his eyes with your earnest gaze. "You're strong. You're resilient and brave. I love you because of that. You're like... a phoenix. You rise from the ashes." Then you giggled. "Sorry I just thought of a hybrid between a catfish and a Phoenix."

"Ha." He laughed shakily, tightening his arms around you. "A fish on fire. Sounds about right."

"Or a bird with whiskers." You snorted.

He kissed you again, relishing your little giggles against his lips. You laced your hands with his.

"I'm here to remind you to be kind to yourself. Remember how far you've come. I'm so proud of you, Frankie."

Once again he reflected on how lucky he was to have you in the flesh. Your empathy amazed him. It had from day one but his awe grew monumentally tonight. You weren't scared. You saw all of his brokenness for what it was and you only loved him harder. He had to trust your vision of him when his own internal compass failed.

"You tired, little pea?" He chuckled when you yawned cutely, after trying to hold it in.

"No." You told a small lie, just to keep him from trying to put your needs first. You weren't going to sleep until you knew he felt safe. "How are you feeling? Be honest, please."

Frankie searched his body with another deep breath. "Better. I'm just really amped up from the adrenaline. But go back to sleep, little pea. I'll read or something.”

"Mmm read to me?" You asked holding back another yawn.

"Sure." He chuckled. You rolled off of him pulling the covers back over you both. Frankie grabbed his copy of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. You latched onto him like a koala bear and hung onto his deep voice. Frankie appreciated the weight of your arm on his stomach and head on his chest. You could hear his heartbeat below your ear slowing.

Frankie paused his quiet oration to peer down at your relaxed face and fluttering eye lids. "I love you, sweet pea."

"mmm love you too." You breathed in reply.

For the first time, Frankie was able to go back to sleep after his nightmare.

~~~~~~~~~~

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#frankie catfish morales #frankie morales #frankie morales x reader #frankie morales x you #frankie morales fanfiction #calling home universe #triple frontier fanfiction #anon #ask padika

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