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entomycetic · 2 years

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Been seein a lot of salmon run tips being thrown around here, so here's my two cents (as a profreshional part timer to 2+) of what's really helped to keep in mind:

Keep your priorities straight when it comes to the boss salmonids

The super long range bosses like flyfish, stinger, and drizzler should be taken care of ASAP! More than one and you're askin for trouble

Then you got the big boys- steelhead, steel eel, and big shot. While not as destructive to your team and environment, they take up enough space and do enough damage to be a problem if stacked.

The scrapper, flipper flopper, and maws will come to you, so deal with them as they arrive. A gang of scrappers can get real annoying though

The fish stick and slammin lid are pretty low in priority imo? Unless theyre preventing efficient mobility, don't worry about these guys if you got way more on your hands. With that said,

Some tricks for the individual bosses

Slammin Lid: With the proper setup, you can annihilate 3-4+ bosses with a single slammin lid- don't get greedy though, just take what you can get. Don't forget that you can squid surge to get out of the way when dropping it down!

Fish stick: The pole can be a great place to hide if you're targeted by bosses like steel eel or scrapper. Other bosses are still able to reach you depending on the placement though- like a high enough steelhead bomb or a really determined maws

Maws: Don't waste your ink- bomb go boom! Since it's mobile, try to bring it closer to the net first for easy transport

Flipper Flopper: If you have a low inkage weapon, bait it over to a teammate if you can! Unless you're certain you can cover its turf, you're better off saving that ink for other enemies

Scrapper: If you're first to shoot it/it pauses to aim at you, try to turn it so its back faces any nearby teammates, or at least away from where the salmonid are coming from. Easier to take down like that! And again- it's mobile, let it transport the eggs to the basket for you

Big Shot: This guy sucks idk honestly. It was my first instinct to throw bombs at it, but if your timing sucks like mine does then you'll just waste more ink and end up dead faster since you're near the shore- just shoot it as long as possible while its outta the water then scram, rinse and repeat

Steel Eel: if you're targeted, LEAD IT AWAY. STOP TAKING IT THROUGH SPAWN. Ik its mobile and yea it can drop eggs closer but if everyones getting hosed down and cut off then whats the POINT. This is one of the best times to tell your teammates to come to you! If you can take it out on your own by jumping between paths, even better. If someone else is targeted, try to take it out asap so they can get back to helping the team too!

Steelhead: unless you can lead them to a place where youre near level with their head, short range weapons are nigh useless on these guys. If you can, i sometimes find it helpful to bodyguard the long range weapons while they focus on taking em out!

Drizzler: Ok I said I suck at timing bombs for the big shots but the drizzler i can actually get right for some reason. So uh. If you can! Bomb that bitch! You can also hit them from underneath while they're in the air

Stinger: it takes very little ink to wack a pot from under these guys so don't bother wasting a whole tank on em. Take great pride in knowing you kept your team safe from their bullshit

Flyfish: ive lost count of the times ive seen 2-4 people throw all their bombs in the same bucket. Take a second to watch and avoid this very silly and costly mistake. Blease. Also EXPLOSHER EXPLODES THEM LIKE A BOMB TOO wtf didnt know that

Anyway about the special bosses/waves

Grillers: literally theyre so easy to herd with enough practice. Get targeted. Walk up a platform with only one ramp up. Take a step down to the platform below/beside it. Step back up platform. Repeat and squish smallfry until your teammates splat them. There might be a few high enough walls for you to camp that the grillers cant reach? Havent confirmed that

Glowflies: GO TO THE LONGEST CHOKEPOINT. Any long enough ramp will do. And do NOT leave!! If anyone leaves then reviving and regrouping becomes a nightmare and at that point you hope and pray you don't all get splatted at the same time. Where's that post going around about Fission. Go There

Goldie: talking specifically about the gusher rounds- SLAP AS MANY OF THOSE OPEN AS POSSIBLE. do NOT rely on rng it WILL laugh in your face as you run out of time needing just one more egg

Mothership: next best time to use 'this way' is when that shit is heading for the basket. Inkjet and long range are great for getting some damage on it before it makes contact; also when i play long range, 80% of my time is spent cracking open the containers for eggs, works when i play it!

Cohock cannon: typically it helps to let the lower dps take the cannons and have the high dps charge through the cohocks, so they dont get stuck in a corner as easily. Cannons also work on bosses of course! When on cannon i try to time my ink refill when the other cannon is active, so theres never a time without someone firing

Cohozuna: THE BIG BOY IS HERE. Hey fun fact, the egg canon can obliterate a boss in one good hit! You pay egg for even more egg! Of course dont JUST splat the bosses, you have a king to overthrow. Also if the cohozuna is targeting you, try to swim inland and strafe while your teammates are close to the shore and getting rid of bosses; stay close but not THAT close. Also don't worry too much about splatting them!! The scale rewards are so fucking random it really doesn't matter; the only golden scales i got were from 'defeated' xtra waves lol

Also!

Don't be greedy unless youre responsibly confident and not just smug that a round went so well! If you hit your goal, Not Dying is your new top priority! Same with eggs- everyone wants the big number at the end of a game, but if you think about that too much and get greedy, its not gonna go well! This is co-op, don't listen to the numbers!! Communicate!! And!!! Have fun :]

#splatoon #splatoon 3 #salmon run #this is just from my experience im sure theres plenty more higher quality stuff out there to learn #booyah BACK DAMMIT #i just wanted to talk abt salmonids honestly lol #really almost put 'profreshional pp' at the beginning there.#also idk if the readmore thing works :( sorry if it didnt

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pestopascal · 3 years

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While I will absolutely agree that CB2077 isn’t the ONLY game doing all this bullshit, or that other AAA studios don’t deserve the flack CDPR is getting, I have to say that this is absolutely the perfect storm and I think people are FINALLY seeing the problems in modern AAA gaming. CB2077 might be fun to play, may have a good story, but it’s almost impossible to see because of the glaring issues. Which, honestly, is a good thing. I hope games change after this.

under here

AAA studios have been like this and this sort of release has been completely normalised on all accounts by both the businesses themselves and fans because of the inherent reliance on modders (bethesda at the forefront of this), as well as the pushback every time companies actually go ‘uh we need a lil more time’ (although... they just shouldnt announce potential release dates, im even of the camp they shouldnt even start releasing the game until like 6 months out from their official date because they fuck it up every time. borderlands 3 being the only game i know of being in “secret” development and then announcing itself in march for a september release. game itself aside, thats how companies should do it). easily i can remember a lot of 2011 release games which have had the exact same issues as cp77′s release, and then every other game in between since. very rarely do you actually have a game that isn’t a fucked up mess of a pile of pixels. and it is always the customisable character ones that are honestly, genuinely, ugly looking at release. but you can definitely say its been happening looooooong before 2011, with unrealistic expectations, word limits, 11 month time frames, offloading sequels to smaller companies so they can suffer if it fails, etc etc. the entire system has been like this for so long... they dont know any real different nowadays.

i mean look. tlou2 released under crunch conditions this year, and was rewarded. it was ALL over the social media feeds, it was quite the controversy because, surprise surprise, the company promised they wouldnt do it uwu and then. bam ! crunch conditions. literally around that time too, bioware employees came out with a statement saying ‘man we wish dai FAILED so that back in 2014 we couldve proven crunch was a wrong practice’. they say this as well after having to produce da2 in 14 months, which just suffered from fans and journalism for reusing environments, because it was produced in 14 months, and honestly? no one pointed that out back then, bioware themselves pointed it out again this year, 6 years after release, that that game was produced in 14 months. rdr2′s release was hounded by stories of crunch, and they all disappeared into the night because... it was heralded as the best game of all time. that was 2018, 2 years ago.

i think too is that some people get kind of ... morally and ethically concerned. which is understandable. can you consume something when you know it was made under conditions like crunch? and i think one of the most confronting things about it is that 9/10, not only has your favourite company engaged in crunch conditions, they almost actively choose to continue with them. and then that’s a whole other bag of issues blown up over there when it comes to what is able to be consumed what isn’t etc etc

i think also like a mix of marketing, promises and then the expectations of what the game will be like have really had cdpr earn the ire of fans which is just like... you don’t believe what these companies are saying. you never should, esp when it’s their ceo’s saying it who don’t work on the actual floor. bioware itself is the main culprit of doing this to the point they finally came around with all the da4 concept art and teasing to be like ‘ummm but actually dont get invested?’. remember all that qunari lady fanart that bioware management was like ... please dont get attached? yeah. yeah. like at what point as well is there going to be heavy level of apprehension to approach this? and i can’t really talk either, i cracked open the door for mass effect again. i know exactly what kind of shit bioware will pull, i know they are teasing it already on social media, but mass effect is my ride or die series. that’s why people keep opening the door on letting these companies get away with it. and you can’t fault fans entirely either because this is down to a science of how to get money. i mean, fuck, mass effect andromeda’s entire advertising campaign HINGED on the n7 logo. for the nostalgia value. and i see text posts in the same vein of both ‘guys, disney isnt gonna fuck you if you consume every remake for nostalgia value’ and ‘its understandable why people do it’.

so then you have to go ‘well are fans as just to blame’ and then that’s a whole other argument.

i think also like. i personally havent run into aaaannnyyyyyyy of the issues that you see posted online. which is ironic bc 1) i play on ps4 and 2) its an old dusty ps4. in fact a lot of ppl i have spoken to who have had issues have played on pc. does this mean the glitches dont exist? ofc not, the vids and screenshots are right there. but like... ive had a basically unhindered experience so far, and i get where ppl are coming from (i do, i promise) where theyve basically found the game unplayable. is there also a standard of what ppl consider unplayable because ive played most AAA games at launch when they basically rushed to slap the box label on the game and called it a day until they work on patches. when ppl consider unplayable is also just... different per person. some people have a slight blur on the screen when turning too fast even in an MMO and decide the game is horrible and unplayable. some people can have broken quests and npcs not loading and falling through maps and still be fine. there’s no agreed statement of what makes a game unplayable either, which is why you read threads on twitter and someone goes ‘yeah this npc t-posed so i quit in the first hour’ with a dozen replies. everyone has different levels of it.

it’s a mixed bag of issues. im not excusing cdpr, but the ppl who worked on the game are honestly likely not the ones who pushed for a release. you’ve gotta look at sony and microsoft and ceo’s with bonuses coming up and the investors and shareholders and people who sit behind computers and read numbers detailing interest and demand and supply and how every single time they had to delay this game, the loudest (but smallest) bunch of assholes on like reddit and in the twitter threads complained that it was delayed AGAIN even though back in what 2015? they said it’ll come out when it’s ready. and yeah there are times when game delays result in a mismatched half assed sort of story (kh3... p5... ffxv... dai...) and then there are times when, if they need to delay the game... they probably need to delay the game. sometimes delays are bad sometimes theyre good sometimes you are sitting there like whew if you only didn’t try to be like THIS TIME this is the release date.

the ONLY WAY this will stop happening is, quite frankly, unionising. and everyone is allergic to that whole concept so like... this is “the perfect storm” as you put it. but it’s also not. people have been so disappointed over the last 2 years alone for gaming companies, the final product, the attitudes from higher ups, that i think cdpr is receiving a good few years worth of anger. i think theyre also on the receiving end of misdirection from american fans who still don’t fucking get the company isn’t american, because that’s another bag of issues as well. like we’re holding at least 8 bags of groceries out of the back of the car now, and we don’t want to take another trip, because there are so many little bits of this entire situation to look at. there’s so much back and forth.

i think the worst, but most realistic thing is: games won’t change. how they will social media wise will. maybe. assuming bioware gets their heads out their asses but... they’re going to be a lot more careful. i mean, hell, sony offered refunds. that was just a publicity stint. they dont give a fuck if the game was bad. as i said before, if they did, they would make all companies fix trophy problems, starting from like 2010 or whenever the trophy system first came out. they just don’t wanna fall in alongside cdpr being thrown on its sword. but the companies are gonna learn from this, get smarter, still do the same shit to their employees, still pay off journalists, still do media blackouts, etc etc. and we’re gonna be here in another year’s time, with another game, having these same roundabout arguments, and cp77′s issues are gonna fade into just a wikipedia article.

#replies #this got long so i threw it under a cut #i just like wrote as i was thinking too in between ovw sry lol #Anonymous

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swordbreakerz · 4 years

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✨ for all of them, 🎥 for treasure planet and guardians of gahoole, 🍀 for 9-1-1 and penumbra, 📃 for unicorn chronicles, 🏳️‍🌈 for howls, treasure planet and legend of zelda, and 💎 for any ones you have facts for lol

you spoil me uwu

🎥 - ok for treasure planet, gotta be the 12 years later scene in the beginning and the zoom in to the spaceport, the way it transitions from jim reading under the blankets to him flying on his solar surfer is so chefs kiss, and just like. everything about to the spaceport lmao, fr guardians definitely the scene where soren flies through the fire and then blows up the pulley system to get rid of the flecks energy, bro when hes flying above it all holding the lantern before he dives down to save them? chills

🍀 - you know im on that projection shit w/ juno steel, ive truly never like connected with a character like that before and he’s really really helped me thru my recovery and transition lol, fr 911 uhhh ig buck or eddie? i havent Thought About It or like consumed it enough times yet to rly settle on someone but fr now,,, they

🏳️‍🌈 - ok for howls, Everyone Is Bi/Pan, howl is trans and autistic and i will die on that hill, fr treasure planet jim and cpt amelia are both trans and both of them + doppler are autistic, fr loz link is trans, autistic and semi nonverbal and communicates primarily with asl, post twilight princess zelda says fuck it and finds a way back into the twilight realm and she midna and link hang out, most of these boil down to everyone i love is trans gay and autistic because i say so lmaooo

📃 - OK SO. without like, spoiling too many plot points, our main character is cara and she lives with her grandmother. her mom is dead and dad is out of the picture. one day theyre getting chased by these people that her grandma knows and cara gets thrown into an alternate realm full of fantasy creatures using her grandmothers amulet. she meets a unicorn named lightfoot and a bunch of other rad people and basically, starts a journey to save that world from the Hunters. the Hunters are an organisation who specifically hate unicorns and want them all dead, led by Beloved, and cara and her friends have to try and stop them from entering the world and wiping them out. its sooo so so good and i highly recommend it cause i have no one to talk to about it please god

✨ - oh boy uh, well. im just gonna like list them out lmao

unicorn chronicles: i loved unicorns as a kid and read it when i was in elementary school, and over the years its remained just as compelling and well written as i remember and like. god the whole concept is so godamn cool and all the subplots that get introduced are fuckign fantastic and like all the different creatures are amazing i literally cant sing its praises enough

howls moving castle: must i have a logical reason? is it not to vicariously live my fantasy of running away to the countryside with a wizard boyfriend, his demon and his apprentice?? for real though, its such a fantastic story with beautiful visuals in the movie and wonderfully compelling prose in the book, and esp in the movie the whole time travel subplot with sophie seeing howl and calcifer in the past and then howl finding her in the future makes me go feral

penumbra: gays in space. need i say more? im a huge slut for gay found family and especially in futuristic space, and im a huge big fan of the lgbt utopia its created. like yeah capitalism sucks but at least im not gonne get misgendered in space starbucks, u kno? all the writing and dialogue is so incredible and the SOUND DESIGN GOD, alex i know u specifically can relate when i say i would kill a man for sophie and her incredible sound design skills, like dude the dance scene in man in glass p2 you can hear every single individual step they take and every swish of junos dress and i jusT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! god its so good, plus the whole the characters help me work through my trauma and repressed anger haha

911: this one is entirely your fault. so obligatory horny on main everyone on that show is so hot i want oliver stark to cradle me gently in his beefy arms oh my god. other than Men, the way it drives home the whole ‘you can’t save everyone, and it will kill you to try, so just focus on what you can do and keep living’ makes me so emo. the way it tackles big bureaucratic issues as well as closer to home interpersonal ones is amazing and i love how it shows people going through and dealing realistically with trauma.

treasure planet: again, who doesnt want to live in Cool Steampunk Space Travel Future? i really really love jims story and his arc, the way he deals with his trauma is uhh very familiar lol and his relationship with silver is like the ideal. the story is just the coolest concept and i love all the wonderful character design and animation, plus the soundtrack SLAPS and everything is beautiful

legend of zelda: ive been associated with this series from a very young age due to my name and as soon as i gave into my fate and looked it up for real i just kinda fell into it lol. i cant really tell you exactly what draws me to it besides ‘wow fun game!’ and ‘god i wish that were me,’ but like the absurd amount of detail thats put into each installment and the creative ways they retell essentially the same/similar story over and over is incredible

guardians of gahoole: so i had the same experience with this and treasure planet which is i remembered ‘oh hey this is a movie that exists and i cant clearly remember watching it, ill look it up :)’ and then it consumed my life for a solid 3 months. firstly this movie is absolutely gorgeous, the animation and framing is fucking stunning and the way they handled owls talking like people as far as the movement of their very inflexible beaks was amazing. it sort of has the same draw for me as warrior cats? secret animal society ft incredibly traumatic experiences and the characters dealing with it. like, the whole concept is just so fuckign wild and it works so well, i rly enjoy this niche genre.

💎 - alright trivia time, so guardians of gahoole is based on a book series and the movie only covers part of the first arc i think idk, BUT theres another series set in the same universe called wolves of the beyond that i devoured when i was younger! i didnt know they were connected for the longest time and when i found out i was :000, i still rly love wolves of the beyond and wanna reread it, as well as read the actual gahoole books. in the howls books, sophie is a redhead! also, markl is named michael and like a fully functioning young adult who ends up marrying one of sophies sisters. treasure planet is, obviously, based off treasure island but its so much better than the book dont bother reading it lol i tried and it was boring. there was plans for a treasure planet sequel that was fully scripted and cast but it was cancelled cause disney sabotaged treasure planet from the start with the shitty release and advertising and tldr we were ROBBED, also amelias concept was much more octopus like and while that wldve been rad im p glad she was switched to a cat for. several reasons lol. uhh i dont have a lot of Fun Facts abt the unicorn chronicles but for the longest time i thought there were only 3 books and then last year i found the fourth book by chance in a kitsch store and nearly had a breakdown i was so happy, like full on i started shaking and crying cause there was so much joy in my body i cldnt contain it.

thats all i can think of tysm ily, to anyone who read all of this bless u please watch guardians of gahoole and read the unicorn chronicles i will love u forever

#IM LOVE U #friendos #alex #and z answers #astrallouis

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frigfridge · 5 years

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just finished rewatching toy story 1 thru 3 over the past few days, wanted to share my thoughts:

i love these movies a whole lot. the first 2 hold a bunch of nostalgia for me because i was A Baby when 2 came out and when i was also A Baby i would just watch our VHS copy of toy story 1 over and over again. this also makes me the exact age group to be emotionally destroyed by toy story 3, which came out just as i was entering high school and hit really close to home

individual thoughts:

toy story: the first thing i noticed was it still looks really nice even watching in 2019!! which i think is kind of spectacular for the first feature-length computer-animated film. it no doubt helps that the plot is mostly focused on little plastic dolls without realistic hair or clothing to animate but the semi-”cartoon” art direction means the human characters also look pretty nice without going too far into the uncanny valley.

also, the plot is WAY darker than i remember?? not because of sid and all the body horror toys, but because for like half of the movie woodys friends think hes an actual (toy) murderer carrying around the severed arm of his victim (!!) like, its hilarious, but also wow theres a LONG way to go between there and the climax of toy story 3.

the soundtrack is probably my favorite of the bunch. part of that is probably nostalgia but i just really like the consistency of having randy newman singing every song. it sort of elevates him to part of the story, like an omniscient narrator singing woodys (and later buzzs) inner monologue. 2 (and especially 3) didnt have as many musical numbers, which i can understand with a shift to a larger-scale approach to storytelling, but i really like the feeling it gives number 1. “you got a friend in me” is an obvious classic thats been remixed and brought back in just about every piece of toy story media im aware of, but “strange things” and “i will go sailing no more” deserve just as much recognition and praise. there just isnt a weak number among them

toy story 2: heres where the story started getting bigger and more existential, which basically becomes the new direction of the series. which makes sense! this one released 4 years after the first, and while theres no real timeskip in the story (maybe 6 months?) it had been a little while since we last saw woody and the gang. everybody in the real world had gotten older, and with the turn of the millennium approaching, the theme of impermanence loomed large in the collective unconscious. well, maybe not in my unconscious, because i was 2. but its really interesting as kind of a “time capsule” to what people were thinking about as the 90s came to a close.

so toy story 2 was a little more grounded, a little more focus on the human world, but it was also more fantastical in its presentation. the opening “video game” sequence (which still looks amazing!!) and woodys nightmare (”i dont wanna play with you anymore...”) show the animators at pixar really found their groove and started getting experimental. and to great result!! the fantasy sequences are a lot of fun and help 2 really stand out.

i would be remiss not to mention jessies flashback song here. its something else they hadnt really done in the first film and i think it really works. jessie in this film unfortunately doesnt get to do much other than fight with woody about whether he should stay or go (except for when she saves him in the end) but this song makes her character work. it also helps that it destroys me every time

also i think this is the movie that gave me an appreciation for the acting of kelsey grammer. i dont really agree with his politics (i also dont know specifically what they are) but he is a damn fine actor and gives the prospector a very genuinely intimidating edge after his heel turn. the casting really makes the character here, but thats nothing new for toy story-- every voice works. if i were the casting director, i probably wouldnt have pulled erudite kelsey grammer for a character named “stinky pete,” but as it is now i couldnt imagine him voiced by anyone else.

the last thing about toy story 2 is it feels like there were a lot more pop culture references? at least as far as i noticed. there are apparently even more than i noticed but i caught on to the “also sprach zarathustra” riff in the opening, and the jurassic park rearview mirror gag. and of course the extended star wars reference with zurg vs. utility belt buzz (and i guess zurg in general.) the references are cute and mostly unobtrusive but really i could take or leave them.

oh yeah also al is hilarious. just this rude, neurotic businessman whos incredibly self-important for the owner of a minor(?) toy store chain. hes such a puffed-up jerk, every time hes on-screen is a delight

toy story 3: this one kills me to death. i always get misty-eyed during “when somebody loved me” but the ending of 3 where andy introduces his toys to bonnie and plays with them one last time made me sob the first time i watched it. and it still does! thats the long game right there, thats the payoff of over 10 years loving these characters. its an emotional ketchup bomb, everything gets all messy and soggy and sweet. hopefully 4 can follow up, but im not really worried about that-- ive heard some good things. damn, its been 9 years since this movie came out, though! it really doesnt feel all that long, but i guess i havent been doing all that much

i actually dont know if i have much else to say about 3. the opening with the re-imagining of the previous films openings (woody versus one-eyed bart, buzz and woody vs. the evil dr. porkchop) is a highlight, although theres a conspicuous lack of bo peep. ive heard she has a big part in 4, but it was kind of weird to see a lot of toys missing and their absence (mostly) glossed over after the first few minutes. i miss r.c. and lenny, but i get they wanted to narrow down the cast so all of them could get in on the plot.

speaking of which, the escape scene is great too. its kind of a crystallizing moment of how close these characters are, and how well they work together. it reminds me a lot of the escape from sids house in the first movie, but there woody was working with sids body-horror toys and seemed to strike up a rapport with them bizarrely quickly. (speaking of which, i miss those toys! their designs were super cool, but i cant imagine they got much merchandise, especially babyface with the sharp, metal spider legs.) here, though, woody and the gang cooperate the best they ever have, and it really paints a picture of how close theyve become over the years, and justifies the emotional climax in the landfill. this is what i was talking about when i said i was surprised how dark toy story 1 got! these toys all hated woodys guts back then for what they thought he did to buzz. they kicked him out of a moving truck! its just weird to think about that conflict between them when you know how long they end up sticking together. but thats, like, neat, so its ok. it feels earned, its just kind of crazy in hindsight.

toy story 3 was also obviously made long after the first two-- by comparison, the lighting is way more sophisticated, the humans are a lot more detailed. theres just a lot more detail In General. the main cast is, like, super dirty for the middle 90% of the film, and it feels like, yeah, We Have This Technology Now. we can render so many individual glitter sprinkles suck to hamms ass and they will be in every single scene. the “fur tech” on lotso and buster is also an obvious clue, especially in the flashback to lotso trudging through the rain back to his owners house. its like “look! we can make this teddy bear SO wet!” and wow! yeah! you did! so wet!

lotso himself is also an interesting villain in terms of sheer bastardness. he is just a huge jerk. he could have hit that button so easily! and he was so mean to the baby! but at the same time hes a great character in how he slowly “changes” throughout the movie. he is kind of an obvious “pixar ‘twist’ villain” but again, the amazing performance by ned beatty really saves him. also he does get a nice comeuppance at the end, which was necessary because hes really the biggest villain in the series so far. hes knowingly malicious and doesnt have any greater motive, hes just an embittered megalomaniac who (apparently) has sent other toys to be broken, thrown away, and incinerated at the landfill. he honestly deserves worse than being strapped to the front of a truck but it works for a family movie.

i have a couple more thoughts on 3 (i guess i did have a fair amount of stuff to say about it) but im getting tired of writing. the music is good as usual, but the vocal stuff being entirely back-loaded (in the credits) is a bit disappointing since ive always been a fan of the songs, but i get that they were going for something different. the jokes about ken being, uh, ‘flamboyant’ felt out of place, mostly the one at the end (”uh, buzz? barbie didnt write this”) because it comes from one of the gang and not unnamed lotso goon #3, but i guess its pretty tame in the scheme of things.

overall im really looking forward to seeing what 4 does with the series. whew!

#hopefully ill see 4 this weekend #personal essay #got pretty honkin long. click at your own risk

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sulevinblade · 5 years

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(Talesfromthefade) things you said when you were drunk, for the DWC?

OH MY GOD this was a little idea that got away from me in a big big way but I’m still pretty happy with it. For this and for “cafune - the act of running your fingers through the hair of someone you love,” from @contreparry! For @dadrunkwriting!!

Alistair/Leohta Aeducan, T for language, dumb suggestive jokes, and alcohol use, 4k+ words (awaaaay from me, I wish I had time to edit it but uh I spent the entire time writing it instead).

On the cusp of the party’s visit to Orzammar, Alistair learns what kind of drunk Leohta can be, and shares a little lesson of his own. Light angst, serious fluff.

He finds her standing on the rocky beach, well away from the dim glow provided by the Spoiled Princess’s small windows. It takes a moment for Alistair’s eyes to adjust to the complete dark–the night watch Templar doused all the torches at the dock, as clear an indication as anything that no one else would cross Lake Calenhad tonight–but even if he’d had to follow her blind he could’ve found her by the sound.

Bloop.

Normally finding Leohta by sound means the clank or grind of armour, the grunts or barks of Leon, or even her rare laughter at something Zevran said (it was always Zevran making her laugh), but tonight the sound is completely unfamiliar. It’s still enough to guide him, though.

Bloop.

Last he’d seen her, she was swapping some of the coin they’d made selling things to the Templar quartermaster for three large bottles of deep pink liquid. It seemed a bit of a racket to Alistair, that they should collect the mages’ items as they cleared the Tower only to sell them to the Templars who would then in turn sell them back to the Mages, but surely if that wasn’t how the economy of the Circle usually worked, Wynne would’ve said something. That was Alistair’s hope, anyway, as he’d watched Leohta count the coins before they left, then again at the tavern’s bar. She’d tossed the bag back to him before collecting the bottles and heading outside, and he in turn had left it with Zevran.

Bloop.

“You have known our illustrious leader the longest among any of us. Has this always been a habit of hers?” Alistair squinted across the table, trying to determine Zevran’s game, but succeeded only in giving up his own. “You think I see this as a weakness I can exploit, but I would think even you would see that if I were going to do so, I would have done it by now and certainly would not draw attention to my plans by involving you.” His eyes only narrowed further–how does Zevran make talking down to him still seem so seductive?–but Alistair did sit back in his chair.

“I haven’t known her all that long, really, but I don’t think so. Why d'you ask?”

“My Antiva makes the finest wines in Thedas, so it is not uncommon to see those there who overindulge, but there are many types. Leohta, she is young and exploring her limits, yes, but she is also trying to drown things she does not want to feel. Her limits are low and the things she seeks to kill are very large. It is a dangerous combination.”

Alistair glanced again toward the door. Of course she hadn’t come back inside, that’d be too much to ask for, but what was he supposed to do?

“If it is too much for you, I will go after her, but she should not be alone.” Both of their chairs scraped back at the same time but Alistair was the first to stand, something that for some reason brought a sad smile to Zevran’s face. Alistair could only look at it for a moment before looking away. "I know you do not think much of me, Alistair, and while that is entirely your loss, I do know that one thing we have in common is how much we care for her. Go see to her, my friend, before her sorrows are not all she drowns. It is probably for the best; I am not much of a swimmer myself.“

Bloop.

So now here he is, approaching carefully, pretending to be taking in the constellations while Leohta hurls rocks at the water like she’s trying to knock the waves down before they can reach the shore. The night is perfectly clear; Kinloch Hold is merely a dark space in the sky where the stars are missing, but everything else is black sky and white twinkles. He clears his throat in case she somehow hasn’t noticed since he doesn’t fancy getting one of those stones thrown at him, but she only pauses for a moment before bending to search the area around her feet for another suitable candidate. One bottle is already empty, stuffed mouth down among the pebbles and into the sand underneath them, and as Alistair finishes closing the distance Leohta gives up her search and instead tips to land on her backside, legs out in front of her and a second bottle in her hand. He knows they’re not small but her stature makes them seem even larger; it makes the sight of her lifting one to her lips almost comical but the effect is spoiled by how long it stays there. Maker’s breath, Zevran was right when he talked about drowning.

"You planning on coming up for air any time soon?”

There’s a pop as she breaks the vacuum she’s created, then a dry laugh. She still isn’t looking at him. It makes his chest hurt, how badly he wants her to turn her head. “Breathe through your nose and you can use your mouth for whatever you want.”

“You’re spending too much time with Zevran, saying things like that.” Sighing, Alistair drops down crosslegged at her side and extends a hand. “What are you even drinking? I’ve never seen anything that color in a tavern before.”

“One of the Templars told me about it. I guess–” there’s a pause and she bunches up her eyebrows, apparently trying to put the pieces back together, “I guess the mother started making it as a tribute to her daughter and now of course it’s all very sad but the owner still makes it as a specialty. Sweet mead made with roses.” She passes over the open bottle, not bothering to wipe the top, and the expression on her face, like she’s sharing a secret, distracts him so much he can’t be bothered either. She wasn’t kidding when she said it was sweet but the roses are strong too, floral and delicate. He passes the bottle back after just one mouthful.

“I’ve never had a mead like that before. It’s very… different.” Leohta seems to accept that answer, nodding before lifting the bottle to her lips again.

“There’s nothing like this in Orzammar. Not even in the palace. Not even to make it. No honey, no roses, and when there is if you said you wanted to make something like this with it, you’d be laughed out of the kitchen.” She holds the bottle in front of her contemplatively, swishing the contents back and forth gently and tilting her head in time with the motion. Alistair’d almost think it was a contented sort of gesture but then she sighs and drops her head back, hair falling over her shoulders as she lifts the bottle skyward. “Nothing like that, either. No stars, no sky. Some of the caverns are so high the ceilings are invisible, but you still know they’re up there.” Slowly, she lowers the bottle but keeps her gaze fixed upward.

“Do you miss that?” It’s not something he’s given a lot of thought to but it’s hard to imagine. Even within the walls of the Chantry there were windows. The sky was always there, or not-there maybe, when compared to a ceiling of stone. Trying to imagine life without it or everything it held–the sun, the moons, the clouds and stars and birds–was virtually impossible, but here was Leohta not just imagining the opposite but living it.

“Dunno. I still don’t understand all this. What keeps it up there?” Her hand waves up at the stars but only briefly; even sitting down she’s unsteady without both hands to support her. “With the stone, you know that even if you can’t see the ceiling, it’s still held there by the stone. Nothing floats, nothing rises or sets.” Watching her profile, he can see the way it hardens as her train of thought jumps the track. “Nothing changes.”

He shifts a little, the pebbles grinding softly underneath him as he leans to try to catch her eye. “You changed.”

This time when she looks over at him, it gives him a chill. The stone she’s been so contemplative about has found a home in her eyes, the set of her mouth. They seem cold and stiff and almost lifeless, soft evening blue turned to lapis lazuli. Still beautiful but hard. “I left, and not by choice. You wouldn’t know how much I’ve changed, Alistair. You have no idea what I was like before we met.”

“I suppose not, but I do know you’ve changed in the time I’ve known you.” He keeps his voice softer now, speaking carefully to avoid that stony shift becoming somehow permanent. He hasn’t seen her look like that since before Ostagar, and to lose all the little ways she’s softened since then would be the greatest waste. “Do you miss that? Or her, I guess. Do you miss who you were before?”

Her laugh is a single humorless sound that moves her entire body, shaking her shoulders and flexing her stomach. “What does that matter? She’s dead. Worse than dead.” There’s venom in her voice but Alistair doesn’t flinch since for once he’s certain it’s not directed at him. He watches as Leohta stands, a wobbly process that involves repeated planting of hands and feet before she can push herself vertical. There’s a powerful temptation to offer her help but the set of her jaw makes him stay his hand, even if whatever effect she might be going for is already ruined by her own unsteadiness. “Nobody mourned her, nobody misses her, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s dead. Bhelen killed her as sure as he killed Trian. The prince is dead, the princess is dead. Princess Aeducan is dead.” Her voice is raising, getting louder and more raw the longer she speaks, until finally she’s yelling out at the water. “Princess Leohta Aeducan, second born and best beloved daughter of House Aeducan, is dead!” She punctuates the last word by throwing the empty bottle into the water but it’s a bad throw, short and shallow. The bottle makes only a small splash then floats, reflecting the moonlight as it bobs its way back toward the shore.

Alistair rises, brushing at the back of his breeches, and makes his way up to stand beside her. He’s well within punching range, possibly a dangerous gamble, but if the way she’s carrying herself is any indication, it wouldn’t hurt very much right now. Plus, if she punched him, at least it’d prove she was feeling something. “I’d mourn her but like you said, I never did get to meet her. I’ve met Warden Aeducan, though, and I think she’s pretty great. Accomplished a lot, too.”

She’s bent back down and is sorting through the stones at her feet, tucking some in the bend of her other arm. Standing back up is a careful process but she’s shaking her head the entire time. “They’re not gonna think so.” Her voice is normal again but her profile is still stony.

Bloop.

Was this was he was like heading into Redcliffe? Of course, he hadn’t gotten drunk on sickly sweet mead to deal with it, but he’d had his turn as the prodigal royal-but-not-really. The main difference was he never wanted it, but she spoke so little of her life before the Grey Wardens. Was the crown of Orzammar what she’d really wanted? Not that it really mattered now. “Seems to me they had their chance to appreciate you and they blew it.”

“Oh, no. That’s the thing. Up until the end, they loved Princess Aeducan. That was the whole problem. She was too well-loved. Luckily, I’m not.” Leohta stares out at the ripples from her last throw but the fight’s going out of her. It ought to be a comfort, less risk of being punched, but instead it just hurts more. He curls his hands into fists at his sides to keep from reaching out, swallows the words that’d tell her just how deeply loved she is and not only by him, as much as he might wish it were so.

“We could go back to Denerim without going to Orzammar.” Aaaaaaaalistair, what’re you doooooooing? He ignores the voice in the back of his head, prepared to make an argument for mounting their assault without the help of the dwarves, but Leohta shakes her head. She’s drunk and she’s still got better sense than you.

“Just because I don’t want to go back doesn’t mean we don’t have to. Being a Grey Warden isn’t supposed to be fun, hasn’t been so far, why start now?” She seems to consider the matter closed as she turns her attention back to the rocks she’s holding, sorting through them as though looking for a particular one. They start to slip away and clack into the pebbles below and with a frustrated sigh she picks one, letting the remainder drop. “This is supposed to be, though. How the fuck do you do this?” Another windup, another bloop.

“Wait. What are you trying to do?”

“Make it…” She shakes her head, the word apparently lost, and instead makes a bouncing motion with her hand.

“You’re trying to skip stones… by heaving them at the surface of the water with all your might?” And there’s the punch he was waiting for, exactly as painless as expected. It’s not even hard enough to stop him laughing.

“I saw you and Zevran do it in Redcliffe before we left and it seemed to calm you down so I thought I’d try. You made it look easy, but if you’re just gonna laugh then forg–”

Alistair intercepts her before she can start to walk away. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just that I never would have guessed that’s what you were trying to do. I thought you were mad at the lake or something.” She’s looking up at him, wary, so he holds his hands up in innocence. “If you still want to try, I can show you.”

“No more laughing?”

“No more laughing. Warden’s honor.” When Leohta seems satisfied with his intentions, Alistair finally looks away from her, crouching down. “The first thing you need is the right kind of rock. It needs to be pretty flat and you want a triangle shape if you can find one, but flat will do for now.”

She’s crouching as well. “I thought it would be better with a round rock, like a ball.” She’s quiet, almost chastized, and Alistair has to duck his head and cough into his fist to hide the grin it conjures.

“No, that’ll break through the water and sink. A flat rock will bounce better. Something like these.” He shows her the three he’s found, all rounder still than he’d like but they should do the trick. She holds up a couple of her own and really, they’re no better, but they’re only for learning. “Yes, those will do. Now.” Alistair drops to his knees and crooks his fingers around one of the stones. “You have to hold it like this, because the important part is that you get it to spin. That’s what makes it skip.”

Leohta’s squinting at his hand, then she tries it out herself. Her hands are smaller so she can’t quite circle it the way he does, but Alistair hopes it’ll work out. “Like this?”

“Just like that. Now, the other trick is not to throw it up but to flick it. You want it to stay flat so you have to kind of–” He turns his arm out at the elbow and flicks the rock out onto the water. Four hops, not his best work but not bad.

When he looks back at Leohta, though, she’s entranced. She watches the ripples so long he has to clear his throat to get her attention back, but this time every trace of the stone is gone from her face. She looks eager, determined, but also a little embarrassed. Surprised to have been caught, probably, but it’s a charming expression nonetheless. She turns to face the water again, weighing the rock in her hand, then moves her arm and throws.

It splashes and sinks just like all her other attempts. Leohta curses softly and starts to turn away but Alistair catches her wrist.

“Hey, no way. You’re not giving up after one attempt. C'mon. We’ve got two more rocks, so two more tries, then I guess I can let you give up.” He starts to move before she can start to argue.

“It’s not giving up, Alistair, it’s accepting the inedible. Inedibibble. Ined… remind me to compliment the tavernkeeper tomorrow. His stuff is good.” Her voice gradually gets softer, a delayed reaction to where Alistair has taken up a position just behind her. It’s extremely convenient for him: she can’t see how his face is burning up from the presumptuousness of being so close to her, but it’s also the best position to show her how to move her arm. He wraps his hand around hers and lifts her arm into position.

“From here, you have to flick your hand out. Try to imagine the rock spinning out from the inside of your thumb and taking all that energy with it. The harder you can flick it, the more it’ll bounce and the more hops you’ll–all right, that’s it, you and Zevran are officially being separated because that’s not even dirty and now you’ve made it dirty. I hope you’re happy.” The woman in front of him is struggling to contain her laughter, he can tell, and as much as he wants to keep her focus on him, it’s hard to be genuinely upset. She doesn’t laugh nearly enough and especially not around him. The fact that whatever is so funny is lost on him is a far distant concern.

Alistair waits for her to compose herself then takes a moment to compose himself in turn when she settles back into a proper posture that puts her in contact with him from shoulder to hip. She’s nearly as tall as he is when he’s on his knees like this, a fact he’s thought about many times but never quite in this situation. Leohta gives herself a little shake, tossing her hair in his face as she does. He tries to blow it out of the way but there’s just too much. All right then, one thing at a time.

“Now. Just remember, angle your hand back and then flick. That word is ruined for me now, I think. You’ve ruined flicking.” In front of him Leohta snorts and Alistair make a private vow to forbid Zevran from using that word. He wants it to be their joke even if he doesn’t understand it. “Do you think you can manage?”

“To flick? I’ve done all right for the last few years anyway.” She giggles and clears her throat. “All right. Angle my hand back,” and her hand is moving inside of his so he loosens his grip, “then forward and flick!”

Alistair peers over her shoulder and sure enough. Blip, blip. One hop, but it’s one more than she’d managed before. He puts his hands on her shoulders and squeezes. “There you go! Well done, Warden Aeducan.” She lifts one hand to pat his but he can tell she’s still looking at the ripples.

After a moment, he releases her shoulders and, feeling a little bolder by the fact that she hasn’t elbowed him away yet, reaches forward to comb his fingers through her hair. It’s a practical gesture–even as he’s speaking, her hair is getting in his mouth–but hardly exclusively practical. Her hair is thick and her scalp surprisingly warm underneath it. In front of him she’s gone very still; he thinks she might even be holding her breath but then again, so is he. He focuses on his own hands until he’s gathered her hair at the back of her neck, but then the tension in it changes and oh.

Alistair looks up and she’s right there, her head turned to look at him. Maker’s breath but she’s close, her mouth gently open and her eyes searching his face. Her breath smells like honey and roses and his hand is still in her hair, it’d be so easy and it might be perfect but she’s been drinking and that’s not right. Or might it be OK, with her looking at him like that? The motion of her lips is so mesmerizing that it takes him a moment to realize she’s speaking to him.

“Alistair.” And like that, the moment is over, or at least set aside. “Would you do that again?”

“Of course.” She could ask him to fetch the moons from the sky right now and he’d say yes, but… “Wait, do what?” He didn’t do anything other than have a whole lot of thoughts in a very short span of time.

“Touch my hair. That was nice.” She’s leaning more of her weight against him now and it’s nice but also just starting to make him concerned. Still, he already said yes, so Alistair releases her hair from where he’s holding it and threads his fingers through it again, starting at her temple, mindful of and parallel to the little braid she’s so meticulous about. As he does it, her eyes drift closed but her face is relaxed. It’s not quite a smile but he’ll take it. “Again,” she murmurs as his hand comes to rest on the back of her neck.

Alistair laughs softly but he complies with her request, stroking his fingers through her hair again. And again, and once more, until she leans forward completely and drops her head onto his shoulder. Her breath is warm on his neck as he gives her one last stroke, then stops to reach out away from her. She grumbles softly in protest but he hushes her. “I’m just getting your other bottle. It’s bought and paid for, no sense leaving it here.”

“Why, where’re we going?”

“I don’t know yet about myself but you are doing to bed. Sleeping standing up is only good for horses and probably Sten, and sleeping on your knees is good for no one. Now, come on, up you get.” He hooks the hand holding the unopened bottle of rhodomel under Leohta’s knees, his other arm coming up behind her shoulders. She grumbles again as he starts to stand and he pauses before beginning to walk.

“You’re carrying me like a princess.” The humor in her voice warms him but now he feels a little more confident about deflecting it.

“I’m a Warden carrying another Warden like a Warden. No princesses here. Well, except for the tavern but I’m certainly not trying to pick that up. I could throw you over my shoulder if you wanted, but you have to promise not to throw up on my back.”

“No promises.” She slumps against his shoulder as he starts to walk. It’s only a few steps from the beach to the door but he takes his time. Who knows what Orzammar will do to her, or what she might do to Orzammar? The answer is liable to be complicated but this, for as unexpected as it is, feels strangely simple. She might not even remember it in the morning, but it’s not a feeling Alistair’s going to forget any time soon. “Alistair.”

“I don’t have a free hand to pet you, but if you can stay awake until we get inside, maybe I’ll give you scritches once I get you upstairs.” He’s trying to figure out how he’s going to open the door when she shakes her head and answers.

“Thank you for coming out tonight. I’m sorry I’m–”

“None of that now. You have nothing to be sorry for, and if anything I should say thank you for having me.” Alistair manages to hook the latch with his pinkie then wedge his foot into the gap, kicking the door open as he maneuvers her inside. “You may not have found it so, but I think being a Warden can be a little bit fun, if you’re with the right person. Or people,” he continues, scrambling to cover for himself while trying to ease the door’s closing with his foot. Once he’s got both feet back on the ground, he looks down at the woman in his arms. Fast asleep, looking as young as he’s ever seen her and more peaceful than she has possibly the entire time he’s known her. The inn’s main room is empty, the fire doused, and he’s almost loathe to speak again and interrupt the silence, but he does.

“Or person. Just the right person.”

#my writing #dadwc #dwc #alistair theirin #leohta aeducan #alistair x f!warden #alistair x f!aeducan #alcohol #but also fluff #and feels #leohta's such a mess #oh and yes she and jonah gave their mabaris the same name #it's a thing

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keenlovernacho-blog · 4 years

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how i quit smoking

It’s midnight now Which spliff remains to be sitting by my ashtray. This hasn't transpired right before. If I've anything I would smoke. Quickly if there was no Remarkable explanation never to.

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Identical below. Commenced all around 13/14yrs aged smoking hash about a mates house when his rents were being out. Now to The purpose wherever I’m in a very flat residing alone at 32 and not with my girlfriend. I messed up two previous romance more than not committing to it more than enough and I suppose residing daily life inside of my very own head. Had a connection where she was fine with smoking it as well as had a tad her self to now aquiring a romantic relationship in which she hates weed and it has begun hating me for it much too. I am able to’t blame here as I seem to be all discuss and no prof, arrived to the point where I thought I wasn’t happy coz she could well be stopping me smoking or at worse I will be lying to her to even now keep my means of dwelling/wondering likely how I wanted, this finished with me ending things along with her since u thought if I didn’t have her least I would've my own flat and Room to smoke and do wot I want. For some time iv been telling my self to stop smoking it not less than not as much as I do. Very well this wound up with me sat in by myself smoking and wondering more about her. Their comes a point in everyday life the place u want to do this however it’s the fear of committing to it. This created me realise which i had all the things with my ex And that i chucked it absent more than contemplating more about wen I’m upcoming smoking than pondering her. So iv produced matters get the job done concerning us in The key reason why that I will change the gap weed thing. My issue is I’m a skateboard and like most of us, every one of us smoke. Iv been an beginner skater for year and know the type of circles u wind up in but how am i able to even now contain the appreciate and keenness for skating still like every one of the posts say, is endeavor to not place ur self in the those positions, perfectly their all my closest good friends. And would modify them for the entire world still all of them smoke. This has now manufactured me Imagine I'm able to try this and at finest check out to generate someone else do a similar. However it’s hard and I haven’t even commenced nevertheless. Haven’t thrown just about anything away nevertheless. Haven’t smoked the last of my weed, haven’t stopped viewing my buddies. But I think the another thing I've is usually that providing up an habit is never likely to be straightforward. Yet we all detail we could do it. I feel the way for me to do this is ensuring ur legitimate to ur self ahead of u may even say u can quit. I feel the outlet flushing it down the rest room and getting rid of all skins, grinders and something that’s appears like I may make a joint outside of it.

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vitalmindandbody · 6 years

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The mettle of darkness that still drums within our 24 -hour cities

With technology man has inhibited the night. Yet walk wall street alone at 3am, and still the occult and whodunit ooze through

On some nighttimes, in the insomniac intervals between reverberating goods trains, and beneath the audio of ambulance alarms, I can sounds owls calling mournfully to one another from the trees that screen the rail lines extending past the back of the house in which I live in inner London. On most darkness, alongside the wails of parties crusading or having fornication, I sounds the bag of cats and foxes screaming intermittently, as if they are being tortured. On some mornings, when a thin sun first reveals through my dazzles, I can hear a cockerel squawking from a plot in which chickens are prevented got a couple of streets away. Rarely, when the mornings are resonantly still, the insistent tap of a woodpecker chiselling at a tree trunk wakes me.

The city at night is far eerier, far more feral than it is in the day. It is far harder to anthropomorphise, far more difficult to domesticate. In reality, the city doesnt necessarily sound and feel like a metropolis, a centre of advanced civilisation, when most of its population is fast asleep. It can resound and find closer to nature than culture. As Virginia Woolf once pointed out with a noticeable sense of frisson, we are no longer quite ourselves after dark. She basked the irresponsibility which darkness and lamplight bestow. Our cities, like ourselves, can seem immigrant and unfamiliar at night. And if you listen to them attentively, as though through an echo sounder, you can hear the embracing darkness transmit from its depths the rackets and pulsates of the capital city pre-modern past.

The seems I sometimes hear from my bedroom, for example, are identifiably descendants of those that the author and printer William Baldwin enumerated in his eccentric satire Beware the Cat ( 1553 ), one of the most evocative accounts we have of London in the 16 th century. At one point, Baldwins protagonist, Gregory Streamer, absorbs a narcotic and lies in his chamber at Aldersgate listening with preternatural listening to the commixed rackets of the nocturnal municipality. These include the barking of puppies, grunting of swine, weeping of felines, thundering of rats; the ringing of buzzers, counting of coppers, organizing of groins, moaning of buffs; also the scratching of owl, flit of fowls, routing of knaves, snorting of slaves. He might have added the tapping of cobblers and the shovelling and scraping of nightmen, popularly known as Tom-Turd-Men, who were employed to clean the citys streets and johns after dark.

The night-time brooks our metropolitans pasts. It channels their historic persistences and discontinuities with a clarity and vitality that our everyday lives, who the hell is influenced by an nearly uninterrupted purposefulness, constantly obscure. It wishes to point out that we once shared these cities with innumerable swine, some of them tamed, some of them not; and that to some extent we still do. It reminds us that, although we think of the 24 -hour city as a comparatively recent phenomenon if in the UK it is a phenomenon at all cities have always been hives of labour and leisure after nightfall. Baldwin, in his remarkable onomatopoeic prose song, refers to the audible nocturnal acts of , among other things, grouting and rotating, broiling and brewing. It reminds us, very, that we were once terrible of the nighttime, and of the people who occupy it, whether these assume the form of potential felons or the police; and that, to a astonishing level, especially if we come from socially marginalised groups, we still are.

However efficiently artificial sunlight overpowers the difference between night and day, the poet and critic Al Alvarez wrote, it never wholly eliminates the primitive suspicion that night parties are up to no good. Over the last four or five centuries, a series of social and technological changes have reshaped the city at night, progressively colonising it. The preamble of petroleum lighting, gaslight and electric light has, for example, successively reshaped it according to the needs of a diurnal country. And the postponement of working hours has reshaped it according to the needs of a daytime economy. But these changes havent totally dispelled its pre-modern past. Metropolis nurture a nerve of darkness that even the processes of industrialisation and electrification, the purpose of applying all-night mills and shops, all-night buses and teaches, have flunked fully to conquer.

Gaslight earmarks high-jinks, circa 1820. Illustration: SSPL via Getty Images

In 1788, at the high levels of the Enlightenment, the Daily Universal Register triumphantly reported that not a single building in all London is perhaps now to be heard of which makes the repute of being an haunted room. Scientific rationalism, it was optimistically accepted, had cleaned the citys darker, more strange lieu with the coldnes, shining illuminate of reason, just as it had driven supernatural back to the dark ages. But, in the 21 st century as in previous ones, London remains, like all cities, a repository of archaic, if not primal, anxieties and nervousness at night. Anyone who has ambled through its empty streets alone at 3am, sensitive to the slightest glint of push in the darkness, knows this( not, of course, that these panics and nervousness are necessarily irrational, specially if you happen to be a woman ).

Intellectual enlightenment and the practical illumination of the streets, both organizations that sought to eradicate remnants of the medieval past, were closely complicit developments in the cities of early modern Europe. Coordinated public street lighting had set in place in center regions of the British uppercase for a century by the time the newspaper report Ive paraphrased complacently declared that its constructs were finally free of specters. Paris, operating under the initiative of Louis XIVs council for the the process of reforming the policing of the city, spearheaded the policy in 1667. Other European municipalities, is cognizant of the need to pre-empt inessential felonies and foreclose political conspiracies, are still in speedy succession: Amsterdam in 1669, Turin in 1675, Berlin in 1682, and London in 1684.

Replacing the lantern candles that private householders had formerly been required to erect outside their front doors, most European civic powers distributed petroleum torches, remain at public expenditure, to light-colored the street on moonless nights. The impression, is in accordance with peers, was virtually overwhelming. The first report on the New Lights of the British metropolis, published in 1690 , was reported in rapturous colours that they grew such a mutual thoughtfulnes, that they all seem to be but one enormous Solar-Light.

Public igniting had a decisive impact on Europes central avenues, transforming them into the locations where, at least when the condition was clement, beings could promenade and shop after dark. The German novelist Sophie von La Roche, enraptured by Londons culture of consumption, use a note of 1786 to describe the double rows of brightly glowing lamps that enabled pedestrians and people in coach-and-fours to gaze at Oxford Streets excellently lit shop fronts.

In some quite literal feel, the city at night in the late 17 th and 18 th centuries was ostentatious. As the rise of Londons coffee houses and pleasure gardens expressed, nightlife became a distinct social phenomenon from this time. It was increasingly fashionable to stay up dancing, booze, gambling and soliciting prostitutes all night and then be retained in bed throughout the next day. This was in part because it dramatised an noble repudiation of the protestant ethic and the minds of the capitalism. In populous, upwardly mobile societies like those pioneered in London and Paris, where differences of grade could all too easily be obscured in the press of torsoes on the streets, the human rights of wander freely at night was a advantage. And at first light, when revellers careen residence delivered labourers ambling to task, it was once again unambiguously clear to which social class these people belonged.

A gentleman stops to talk to a polouse in the rain on the Thames embankment, 1929. Photograph: Fox Photos/ Getty Images

But if street lighting gentrified and glamorised the commercial and political centres of Europes metropolis in this period, it relegated other regions to no-go orbits. The French dramatist Louis-Sbastien Mercier conveyed relief in 1780 that thousands of lubricant reflectors has only replaced lamps in the French capital. But, as well as protesting that this excellent innovation had been impaired by misdirected economy, he pointedly noted that, outside the shallow consortia of fascinating daylight that the oil lamps ejected, wall street had been thrown into a despair that seemed deeper and more impenetrable than ever. Certainly, in the poorer areas of Europes metropolitans, the new technology became little change to publics everyday lives. At nighttime, the serpentine streets, suffocating the tribunals and labyrinthine slums of the city were quite as obliterate and harmful as they had been in the middle ages.

The introduction of gaslight in the early 19 th century had much the same effect, transforming the areas frequented by the upper and middle class but leaving those inhabited by the poor pretty much untouched. Even so, alongside the professionalisation of Europes police forces, it revolutionised municipalities at night. In 1807, as part of an energetic expedition to stimulate London the first metropolis to be chiefly lit at night by gas, the expat German entrepreneur Frederick Winsor mounted an exhibition of its benefits in Pall Mall. The Monthly Magazine praised the success of this experiment and the beautifully lily-white and brilliant dawn it induced. By 1823 more than 200 miles of streets in London were lit by nearly 40,000 lamps. Light had been industrialised.

Not everyone was happy about this development. Like other Romantics, John Keats deplored that the insinuate forms of brightnes links with candles and oil lamps, which ignited small areas with an uneven, gently flickering flare, and which consequently generated a kind of contemplative halo, were being consigned to the past. An impersonal artificial flare, especially in the regions where the retail merchants let loose the gas, was progressively fighting all the powers of darkness. Keats mourned the facts of the case that the citys authorities and commercial-grade interests were exiling nighttimes magic, its mystery and its magnificence, from the city. And his famed Ode to a Nightingale( 1819 ), which celebrates the embalmed darkness, was a carefully staged is making an effort to summon it back.

The illuminating the consequences of gaslight were far more uniform than those of oil, but electric lighting, which emerged in the 1880 s, flooded rather than plainly pooled wall street in which it was installed with an intense, apparently grey light. Caricatures and covers from the period proudly depict parties digesting about on sidewalks reading newspapers beneath etiolated electrical lamps. Electric street lighting grew the eventual button of metropolitan modernity, and European metropolis rivalled with each other to be the pre-eminent City of Light. In the end, New York overtook all of them, including Paris. Meanwhile, cities that retained their medieval topography, and that were slow to establish the new technology, were delivered to the past. In an section named Against Past-Loving Venice( 1910 ), the Italian Futurist FT Marinetti pealed: Make the predominate of pious Electric Light ultimately come, to liberate Venice from its venal moonshine

Harrods in London, inundated with sun in 1935. Photograph: Fox Photos/ Getty Images

But, in spite of the unvarying glare of electrical street lights at the commercial, industrial and residential cores, even the 20 th centurys most futuristic metropolitans were determined by socially peripheral, primarily working-class areas that remained plunged in darkness at night. The German astronomer Bruno H Brgel, echoing in 1930 the dignity with which “his fathers”, who came from the working day of igniting by oil-lamp, produced him through Berlins wealth of lighter, drily find: A step into the side streets, and you felt put back by centuries. It was not merely the absence of sun, but the presence of the poor at night, and above all the homeless, that made these regions seem like remnants of the pre-Enlightenment, pre-capitalist past. The houseless, as they used to be called, had been an endemic proximity in Europes metropolitans after dark since the middle ages, when males and denizens of the streets were criminalised as common nightwalkers.

The 20 th-century city nonetheless staged the progressive colonisation of the darknes by the day, darkness by light. Tables, cinema, golf-clubs, music halls, theaters and amusement parks gratified ever more forcefully to people appetite for leisure after hours. Surely, the word after hours seemed more and more futile, as factories, hospitals, places and supermarkets thrummed throughout the darknes. Even in what had for centuries been called the dead night, roughly between 2am and 4am, the center of major metropolitan cities regions like Piccadilly Circus and Times Square pulsated with people. Electric light, Thomas Edison had contended, makes darknes life, and night life entails progress.

In the early 1940 s, when the British uppercase was regularly jumped into darkness during the course of its offensive, Edisons formula seemed all the more irrefutable. For at that time, conversely, the absence of electric light plunged London, and other European municipalities, into a commonwealth of cruelty. It was perhaps in part because of this distressing experience that the postwar generation redoubled its commitment to obtaining the value of both labour and leisure from the night. The word clubbing was first are applied to aim going to nightclubs in the mid-1 960 s, when the family of those who been adults through the second largest world war start out overcoming this inheritance and regaining the night.

Since then, as the artwork historian Jonathan Crary recently wrote in his fine polemic 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep , the capitalist system has fostered the rise of a society in which a position of permanent radiance is indispensable to the non-stop functioning of world exchange and lighting. In the late 1990 s, to present a spectacular speciman, a Russian-European opening consortium developed programs to use satellites with parabolic reflectors to illuminate remote regions of Earth with sunlight and so enable work to be performed all over the clock. Promising daylight all nighttime long, it also proposed that entire metropolitan areas are likely to be illuminated after dark along these lines, making electric light itself anachronistic. Dreams of the elimination of the night can no longer be dismissed as science fiction.

In the 21 st century, electric lighting in advanced capitalist countries if not in innumerable developing nations is a uniform and universal feature of cities at night. So is commuting, store, making and other activities that for much of the past seemed unimaginable taking place after dark. But in practice, as has been the case for millennia, some people have freer and fuller access to the city at night than others. Lone girls may appear be exempted from it, for example, if exclusively because at certain times and in certain places they are made to feel unacceptably vulnerable. Black and Asian souls, for their component, are far more likely to be criminalised in west cities than lily-white humankinds at night.

The 24-hour tubing, “its probably” safe to predict, will not essentially vary the facts of the case that for numerous beings, if not for the citys person of cats and feral foxes, London abides, like other British metropolis, at the least partially off limits at night. We have a night-time economy; the work requires a night-time politics.

Matthew Beaumont is the author of Nightwalking: a Nocturnal Biography of London, 9.99, Verso. Click here to buy it for 8.19