#HYPERBOLE STUDIOS

[retrocgads]

UK 1998

[keepingitneutral]

Sinfonía Verde, Península de Osa, Costa Rica,

Courtesy: Studio Saxe

[thekimspoblog]

Is the video game really subverting its genre? Are you sure it's not just doing clever things within its genre, because otherwise the game would be boring and unchallenging and say nothing interesting? I'm just saying, it's cool and all that the internet allows horror game fandoms to overflow into eachother, but not EVERY 2 hour video essay needs to be spent breathlessly sucking off the devs. Sometimes a game is just REGULAR difficult and REGULAR high-quality.

Besides RPGs made over a decade ago, what is the thing supposedly subverting? Clearly not other contemporary indie horror games, because there is clearly a convergent ethos forming of cosmic horror and beginners' traps; that's just what the genre looks like nowadays.

[kuriokurio]

hyperbolic (2020)

⭐️ commission me through Kofi !

⭐️ check my Instagram !

[williamjakespeare]

#'blackguard' was formerly acceptable but has been deprecated because nobody knows how to pronounce it (prev tags)

If I had henchmen I would absolutely be commanding them to "seize him!", and when the target failed to respond with "unhand me!" because people don't actually talk that way, in spite of knowing this would be the outcome I would be bitterly disappointed every single time.

[collinsportmaine]

“Universal Studios has announced that Doja Cat will star as the Bride of Frankenstein in the newest reboot of the Dark Universe.”

(If they didn’t, they should. Couldn’t be any worse than Tom Cruise’s “The Mummy”.)

[lackadaisycats]

Since it's Indie Animation Day...

I figured I'd repost that list of other animation creators on YouTube that I shared last week, separate from it's original, weird context. I've also included several more entries based on suggestions in the comments. Thanks for the feedback! General Content Warning: Some of the below is not for kids, or contains violence or other subject matter some viewers might find distressing. Please use your adult discretion. Also, this is not a list of moral endorsements. I know some of these creators personally, but many of them I do not. While I have tried to make sure I'm not listing anyone who is a criminal or otherwise objectively harmful person, I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of every little internet drama that has gone down (and chances are I'm not super interested in hearing about it all because it's really difficult to tell fact from fiction from hyperbole around here).

Anyway, check out some Indie Animation:

Far-Fetched Worthikids Satina | Scumhouse Noodle and Bun Punch Punch Forever Ramshackle Noodle Papajoolia | Pipi Angel Hare | The East Patch Jonni Peppers Salad Fingers Monkey Wrench Studio Heartbreak Felix Colgrave JelloApocalypse Odd1sout (started indie, got picked up by Netflix) Allie Mehner JaidenAnimations Lumi and the Great Big Galaxy Cloudrise | The Worlds Divide Telepurte RubberRoss James Lee ENA Godspeed | Olan Rogers Ollie and Scoops Meat Canyon Port by the Sea Kekeflipnote Boxtown Kevin Temmer Weebl Joel Haver CircleToons Long Gone Gulch Atlas and the Stars Animist Skibidi Toilet A Fox in Space Alex Henderson Talon Toniko Pantoja Sr. Pelo Hullabaloo Kane Pixels (started indie, picked up by A24) Homestar Runner Fennah Gods' School Alan Becker Dungeon Flippers JazLyte Psychicpebbles (started indie, Smiling Friends picked up by AS) Piemations vewn Metal Family Dead Sound chluaid Jacknjellify Betsy Lee | No Evil My Pride Cranbersher GeoExe | Gwain Saga Horatio the Vampire Mech West Playground | Rodrigo Sousa The Brave Locomotive Finchwing (+ check out other Warrior Cats animators) Quazies SamBakZa Kamikaze: Trial by Fire Parasomnia

[world-smitten]

just finished Arcane season 2 & how could something be so good, and yet so bad? Felt like a yoyo because the writers clearly knew what they were doing, but they wouldn't have been able to take the wild swings they did without Fortiche's production strength. If s1 got around its 9 episode limitations by being lean, spare and hyper-focused, s2 goes wildly in the other direction, a maximalist "bang-for-your-buck" approach that clearly favours the animation. Like Riot always knew that Fortiche was their trump card but i dont think even they could predict how quickly and massively beloved the studio's house style would be. So the plot feels like it's structured both to set up future shows, but also to give Fortiche every single opportunity to flex their skills. Its a season that's intensely cinematic and layered in the ways it visually conveys the external action and the internal psychology of its characters. But this maximalist approach to animation is something im getting slightly tired of - post spiderverse fatigue i guess (to put it simply). But the production isnt as insufferable as ATSV was, partly because all of the characters are a stronger emsemble, but also because the operatic multiverses, timelines etc all feel like a shell to hold the characters vast feelings about themselves & each other. Like the mechanics of time travel are meant to hold Ekko's twin loves of Zaun & Jinx; even the worldending Arcane mumbo jumbo is meant to express Jayce & Viktor's love of each other, of these two men going on a journey of discovery and work together, and where that journey ends.

the problem with the high-concept, big-feeling approach is that it blows away everything that s1 worked towards - namely that this conflict was about two sisters, and two cities. Zaun becomes a passenger to the story. So much gets picked up & left behind. The deep foundation that s1 set up gets built on in patchwork, and very few characters feel like they're written to their full potential. I also think that making Viktor the final boss was frankly ridiculous - why should his journey to heal himself lead him to such a hyperbolic end? Jayce's speech about why Viktor was fine the way he was would be great in any other context - in this context, it neatly sidesteps that there were structural reasons for Viktor's illness. But ofc, when your writing barrels towards the abstract, all kinds of structural, tangible world-building gets left behind.

Much to love (Ambessa, Mel & Ekko's storylines, even Jinx's kinda worked) - and i'll forever love this show for writing black characters that fully take part in the politics and magic of their world. But boyyyy what a crazy rollercoaster. The only consistent act was act 1, and then act 2 & 3 were ping-pong in terms of quality. Eps 4 & 7 were soo beautiful, but what followed them - yikes 😬. Those godawful "music" videos at the start of each ep (so glad they dropped that gimmick in act 3!) & I'm still not over how jarring that Vander flashback w/ Silco & Felicia was. Like wtf.

[ducktracy]

I'm curious, do you have a favorite classic Disney short? 👉👈

OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD Hockey Homicide gets the crowning achievement for that! i've found all my favorite Disney shorts are the ones most (successfully) derivative of Warner cartoons. Clown of the Jungle fits the same niche... i also watched Little Toot for the first time recently and as a lifelong fan of the Andrews Sisters i LOVED IT. THE MUSICCCCC IS STUPIDLY GOOD and i could get lost in its spectacle.

i will say i just watched Duck Pimples for the first time the other day and LOVED IT. genuinely a little burned up it took me so long to see it. it's like... Who Killed Who meets Rooty Toot Toot meets The Great Piggy Bank Robbery. i never expected to see this sort of abstraction in a Disney short. Donald is unsurprisingly my favorite of the characters (well, technically the Aracuan bird is but he barely exists </3) and so i'm excited to see more of his filmography. i tend to prefer '30s Donald but this was very fun

I'M VERY HYPOCRITICAL WITH MY DISNEY TASTES.. i'm averse to the shorts because something about it feels very manufactured goody two-shoes wholesome, and yet i absolutely love the earlier Silly Symphonies, Dumbo and Snow White are my favorite Disney films and i've cried over both multiple times, etc... i really need to do more Disney research because it's been such a blindspot for me. i think i react most strongly to the spectacle and lushness of the art and just the historical magnitude of the studio, and all of that is mainly concentrated in the '30s. when they begin to shed that for their short films and instead try to imitate other studios or do their own attempts at comedy, i'm thinking "well, i could just be watching the Warner or MGM alternative of this instead". IUNNO. i'm at a very odd limbo with Disney. i articulated it a bit more concisely elsewhere (this is what i get for confining all my ramblings and essays on Discord..)

COMPLETELY RAMBLING. BUT YEAH! Hockey Homicide is probably my favorite as of right now, but i enjoy a lot of the '30s Silly Symphonies i've seen as well. i like Donald and want to see more of him--my uncle told me i'd probably like Uncle Scrooge and so i would definitely like to commit to reading Carl Barks' comics because my only real exposure to Barks is a LOONEY TUNES story he did for Dell with Porky and Bugs that is a bit... his ducks are more appealing. but there's some fun grandiosity in the staging you wouldn't get elsewhere. i'm not a huge adventure fan but i'm very curious to see what he has up his sleeves.

nevertheless, i've been liking more Disney the more i've been exposed to it and react most strongly to the '30s stuff. i think i'm more interested in its historical significance than the actual meat of the shorts themselves, which is why i should probably do my research about them. the most well known and easy to research animation studio is the one i know the least about (this is hyperbole but it is particularly egregious to me!)

[vidreview]

VIDREV: "NO CGI is really just INVISIBLE CGI" by The Movie Rabbit Hole

[originally posted march 19th 2024]

like a lot of folks, i've grown weary of the preponderance of CGI in Hollywood flicks these days. it's all but a cultural tradition at this point to watch John Carpenter's The Thing, sigh wistfully at the goopy silicone animatronics, and say "man, you couldn't make anything like this today." the Marvel/Disney machine has done a lot of heavy lifting to engender this perspective, particularly in the cape department where every aspect of the film is under intense and non-negotiable executive revision until quite literally days before theatrical release (as was the case with Marvel's The Marvels). it doesn't help that this shift has a lot less to do with what's best for any given movie, and a hell of a lot more to do with the lack of unionization in the visual effects industries making them a readily exploitable source of labor. in such an environment, films that nevertheless lean on practical effects are enticing (and, quite often, demonstrably better) enough that we'll sing their praises to the point of hyperbole.

enter Jonas of The Movie Rabbit Hole, here with a genuinely essential series of video essays to slap some sense into that hyperbole and bring us all back down to earth.

one of the more important directors for the development of unobtrusive CGI is David Fincher. i have my fair share of issues with his films, but credit where it's due: they're constantly pushing technology in ways that you absolutely would not expect. there's a crane shot at the start of The Social Network that couldn't be shot with a crane for safety reasons, so instead it was stitched together in post from footage taken on multiple 4K cameras at once. a shocking majority of the blood you'll see in his movies is CGI. the praise i've portioned for his recent films, even as i find him sort of a fundamentally anti-human director, is that he understands that visual effects work best as a supplement to existing footage, rather than a pure replacement.

i share all this to underline my use of the word "essential" in describing this series. i worked in film for a few years, i went to film school, i try to understand the production process as pragmatically as possible. i am under no illusions that Christopher Nolan flicks or the John Wick movies are totally practical. i'm not an anti-CGI evangelist! and yet, even then, i had NO idea just how wrongheaded i still was on the subject until i watched these videos.

Jonas brings 18 years of visual effects experience to bear on a series that feels very much like him trying to settle an argument he's been having for about as long. he has countless examples of films praised for their lack of CGI that relied heavily on their CGI, using the demo reels of effects houses as the smoking gun. Jonas speaks with a plain matter-of-fact-ness that's bolstered just so by an edge of smug frustration, the kind you only get after bearing a cross for years. but it's not just an "i'm right, you're wrong" affair by any stretch. Jonas does a fantastic job communicating a lot of complicated subjects in ways that are friendly to even the most casual of viewers, rarely blaming the audience for their ignorance when studios and market trends are the real culprit. and because he's a veteran of the industry, he's able to interview prominent figures that would otherwise be inaccessible for the average essayist, like Academy Award winning VFX supervisor Paul Franklin.

(and here we come up against a question countenanced more than once on this blog-- where is the line between video essay and documentary? i think this readily qualifies as the former given the first-person direct address shot-in-his-living-room style, yet somehow i feel a bit uneasy with the classification. oh well, a topic for another day)

the most eye-opening section for me is also one of the first, where Jonas confronts the public image of Top Gun: Maverick. i haven't seen this film yet, but i have seen the endless and unqualified buzz about its practical effects. and to be sure, these deserve quite a lot of praise-- they put real actors in real fighter jets for crying out loud! yet in all that crowing, a very important fact totally fell by the wayside: nary a single shot in the film is without digital manipulation. and not just in the basic touch-up sense, removing safety anachronisms and the like. the jets, the cockpits, and the actors themselves were all extensively replaced with digital doubles! i felt like an utter fool when he pointed out that quite often films praised for their lack of CGI will have more VFX artists credited than any other department in production. like, holy shit, it's all right there on the screen? what job were those hundreds of people doing if it was "all practical effects"?

which is the crux of the series' title: "NO CGI is really just INVISIBLE CGI." we have --or perhaps it'd be more honest to say i have-- a tendency to address CGI in binaristic terms. either it's there, or it's not there, right? Fincher's team can put digital blood running down Daniel Craig's face in the shower after he gets shot in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but it's Craig's physical presence that sells it. a film like Top Gun: Maverick makes its bones marketing the spectacle, and because there's such fatigue with CGI-heavy blockbusters any mention of intermediary visual effects carries with it a stain on the authenticity. but really, it does nothing to diminish the practical nature of the photography to also acknowledge how much of what makes it to cinemas is, essentially, an extremely realistic cartoon.

and this is what Jonas's series really exposes for me. a lot of what we're looking at here is rotoscoping, the longstanding tradition of animating over top of live footage a la Disney's Snow White in 1937, though the technique was truly mastered by Max Fleischer in the 1910s. is there some gradeschool nag whispering in the back of our head that a rotoscope is just elaborate tracing? that it's a cheat, because "real" animation is done without reference? (for anyone who has actually worked in animation, this is your cue to laugh derisively)

but the truth is that you do not get one without the other. it takes a lot of planning to film a scene with an eye towards being reanimated, just as it takes tremendous skill to make that animation look good. if Top Gun: Maverick feels viscerally real, it is because the visual effects artists had a real reference to work from. one is not inherently better than the other, more pure or authentic. this isn't the 80s anymore, man. i mean, to get real fucking technical, the instant we stopped shooting on film was the death of "true practicality" in cinema, because a digital sensor must by its nature interpret visual information as raw data and then translate it to something we'd recognize as an image. celluloid film is purely optical, but a digital sensor requires someone (or a team of someones) to write an algorithm to do that interpreting-- which is, inherently, subjective. different cameras have different image processing algorithms, different bitrates and dynamic ranges, to say nothing of custom LUTs and the extensive post-processing required to make RAW footage not look like complete ass. and even now, celluloid cannot be said to be truly pure, because any film shot on celluloid is then digitally scanned, subjected to the exact same post production processing as any other digital film, the final product re-scanned to celluloid to give it a true filmic look, and then yet again digitized for wide distribution (because most cinemas today only have digital projectors).

this is not A Bad Thing! it is simply the material reality of film production in the 21st century. it has many upstream and downstream effects, of course, many of which have negatively impacted the quality of films and television in various ways-- but these are not qualities inherent to digital technology! rather, they are the result of a profit-seeking industry eager to cut corners wherever possible. the existence of CGI is not to blame for the bad CGI in Marvel movies, it's the greedy executives exploiting non unionized labor, forcing crunch at every level with no regard for the human cost, endlessly meddling in the production with their indecisive market-analysis driven brand alterations. ah, the age of the executive auteur, when at last the soulless corporate mindset once commonly decried by artists and audiences alike has been fully naturalized and even embraced by people who call themselves fans, who would sooner throw a director under the bus than say a bad word about Kevin fucking Feige.

it's a pathetic state of affairs, and it can only be called a brilliant act of marketing that CGI burnout in the public has been leveraged to only further erase the essential labor of visual effects artists. Jonas here even points out, much to my slack-jawed amazement, that promotional behind the scenes footage today frequently removes green screens and other indicators of a digital-forward production as a way of unduly acquiring practical effects credibility. as someone who watches a lot of these BTS features, i feel lied to and manipulated, and ashamed of myself for not realizing that making-ofs are just as much marketing as they are educational, often moreso by a lot. it's all just an illusion! and it cannot be repeated often enough that this is an erasure of a historically under-unionized industry, one whose exploitation has been thoroughly documented for years. that this erasure is occurring at a moment when finally, finally, finally corners of the visual effects world have begun to shed the libertarian values inherited from the tech industry and actually unionize is pretty fucking conspicuous to say the least.

i call these videos essential because they reveal a tremendous blind spot in our media literacy, even among those like myself who've studied media extensively. we are, generally, pretty good at identifying the weaknesses in a finished film, but our lack of experience and our credulity towards marketing that doesn't feel like marketing leads us to utterly fail when we attempt to diagnose their cause. when our analysis lacks an understanding of the material conditions of production, as informed by firsthand accounts of those who actually do the work, we cannot help but embarrass ourselves and in so doing blatantly misinform our audiences.

it didn't used to be like this. i remember the late 90s and early aughts, when joints like ILM were praised for their innovations. how often do you hear about VFX houses today? probably only when they go bankrupt. it's such a shame, because what Jonas does in these videos most of all is reveal just how astonishing the work of visual effects artists actually is. these are the perils of an industry whose job is to be invisible, which is why it's so important that their labor be made visible after the fact, celebrated rather than papered over, analyzed extensively rather than mentioned offhand. the truth is that quite a lot of us have been boldly, profoundly wrong about CGI in movies for a long time, and we're well past due for a correction of the record.

all of which is to say that these are some really great videos and you should absolutely go watch them right now

NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: episode 4 came out and it's also great.

[c-rowlesblogs]

im really glad the gollum game is not good. there is no timeline where that game should have been good. that is an obscure ps2 game that slipped through the cracks of time and accidentally got developed in 2023. it was meant to release on ps2 and have a hilarious but fun and dedicated speed run community and that was it. if it was good we would have had some quantum issues

I do think the jokes about it being a PS2 game that fell through time are funny, but I do wish the game had been good. I think it could have been wonderful as a smaller-scale game more focused on atmosphere and story rather than platforming and repetitive little quests. It actually makes me a little sad that the backlash to the game is SO gloating and hyperbolic, because it’s got lots of people insisting a game about a character like this could never be good, and who would want to play Gollum as a protagonist anyway, and it’s like… me! I’d want that! I’d love a videogame set in a world of grand epic battles and world-conquering evil plots and wise, powerful wizards and brave warriors where I’m playing as some weird little freak who just gets swept up in the middle of it all.

There is a universe where this point-and-click game studio made a smaller, moodier, more story-forward game that still of course would have its detractors (“ew, who wants to play as Gollum?”) but would be polished and satisfying enough to be a solid game for people who would like that sort of experience. And I do wish that universe was this one.

[matt0044]

The Showrunning Scapegoat: A Troubling Fandom Phenomenon

Knocking about from show to show, from fandom to fandom, you inevitably start to pick up on reoccurring patterns when it comes to the inevitably discourse to come.

One has been this weird sort of "Auteur Theory" that manifests as hate. Where all those pissed off by this season finale, by that episode or by that game installment are pinned on one or at least a few figureheads in the creative team.

Now I focus on television and movie franchises due in part to how with novels (from the ground up) or webcomics, you do have significantly less cooks in the kitchen with one or a few guys making the story decisions. While publishing companies will have a say, nine times out of ten we are seeing what the writer full intended.

But with TV shows, you will have multiple episode directors, multiple episode writers and multiple studio heads overseeing the whole shebang. Yes, there will be a guy or two in charge of the story unfolding and its production. Often the creator of an original show or somebody hired for an installment of a greater franchise.

Buuuuuuut to act like the flaws or features of the show in question start and stop with the one showrunner is... dumb. However, it's a kind of dumb that's depressingly not hard to parse out. A major factor in this is how many fan actually know that television involves many moving parts... and how overwhelming that all is for them to take in.

So fans gotta water it down to lionize/demonize one figurehead or a few. Especially when they have a prescense on Social Media and/or have made themselves known through various interviews. Executives or shareholders who are usually old fogies won't have a Twitter account and when their decisions influence a poorly received creative choice, they're spared.

Twitter often enables a person's impulse to be quick on the trigger and put their two cents before stopping to ask, "Do I have all the facts or am I just rushing things?" Either way, an angry fan often needs an outlet for their growing ire and see the creator as the party who should take responsibility.

It's very much a "The Customer Is Always Right" mentality that even the best of us have to grapple with. The creators and their team make it look so easy to write good, animate good, what have you but only because we don't see the back-breaking process they go through. As much as we don't have to like it, some vocal disagreements border on an angry mob.

To them, their harassment is heroic actually. They have been wronged by the thing and the one credited to the thing are their enemy. And with others feeling the same, they feel like part of the Avengers.

TL;DR - Fandom needs therapists. Like… that’s not even hyperbole.

[tobiasdrake]

Maybe I'm missing something, but about your take that Sonic 3 is absolutely destroying Mufasa at the box office ... does a difference of not even $10 million really qualify as "absolutely destroying"?

- goshdangronpa

(Not being a hater, btw, genuinely asking here)

Oh, no, I was being hyperbolic. Though it's worth noting that the numbers have widened since I checked earlier today. Mufasa's now at $139m to Sonic's $161m in domestic totals, which is a bit more respectable of a gap even if Mufasa's still dominating Sonic in global sales.

The long-anticipated confrontation between Sonic and Mufasa that the fandom's been salivating over for a year now is playing out entirely as expected.

Mufasa's an embarrassing disappointment of a Disney film, but Disney's embarrassing disappointments are still good for an easy half-billion. Disney is such a guaranteed money-printing engine that they even flop differently from other studios.

Sonic 3, meanwhile, is showing a decent bump in ticket sales from Sonic 2, which is also to be expected. Not only did Sonic 2 help build confidence in the brand, but Shadow is one of the series's most popular characters. This movie would have had to fuck up hard in order to fail to grow its numbers.

But it's also a niche fandom movie with a niche fandom audience.

Sonic and Mufasa are at different levels of proficiency but also within wildly different leagues. Sonic is a competent, capable, and battle-tested middleweight boxer, and Mufasa is the shittiest superheavyweight in the league.

So Sonic's getting his licks in here and there. But the sheer size of Mufasa is still rolling over him nonetheless.

Sonic and Mufasa are battling it out on the domestic charts. Sonic kicked off with a strong opening day lead (Sonic accelerates fast; Who'd have thunk), but Mufasa had a better Christmas. Since then, they've been neck and neck over who walks away with a higher day-to-day earning.

As long as Sonic can keep mixing it up and maintain his initial lead, he'll be able to come home with the smaller title belt for Domestic sales. Even though Mufasa is currently murdering him at the global box office.

[themousefromfantasyland]

As an Animation fan I must say, Animation fans are so annoying sometimes.

When DreamWorks suddenly had two hits in their hands, suddenly people were loudly declaring how amazing they were, how much better than Disney they were, how they were in their Revival Era, and would singlehandedly save Western Animation.

But now that DreamWorks unfortunately had some misfires, something that no studio is immune to, people are now turning against DreamWorks, calling their movies soulless, and saying they are already dead.

All that before a highly promising film even came out.

Can you guys please wait a little bit before spreading ridiculously hyperbolic statements? This tango is so annoying.

And DreamWorks deserves better than only being praised in order to bash Disney.

[disneydarlin]

Bolt: Bolt —Aesthetic

Bolt's Character & Personality

Bolt is a white German shepherd and the pet of Penny. He's also the star of a live-action superhero series of the same name in Hollywood, California. Bolt is quite a fervent, lively, and impulsive dog. He's often performing dangerous stunts, even in the real world. Bolt is headstrong as it takes a lot for him to be beaten down. He's also quite caring who'll stay faithful to his closest friends. Bolt's trust and guileless credulity make him a susceptible target for others. Thus, his feelings are easily hurt and he reacts with frustration. Later, Bolt responds with strong disappointment and resignation. At first, he's theatrical and eloquent when speaking due to believing his TV show is real. Bolt often uses articulate expressions, hyperbole, and descriptive metaphors. He'll say typical, hero-like one-liners, along with terms like "classified" and "target acquired," quite frequently. When Bolt is stuck in a fence, he's stubborn and doesn't listen to advice. However, he manages to calm down and it becomes the first time he accepts help from others. It's also the first time Bolt solves a problem with his head rather than superpowers. His ability to solve problems indicates he's intelligent or extraordinarily adaptive despite his delusional view of the world. As Bolt began learning to be a normal dog, he developed the common dog-like playfulness; being joyful and carefree. He enjoys chasing sticks, playing with hamster balls, garden sprinklers, digging, rainy nights, and sticking his head out of moving vehicles. Bolt especially likes wrestling and chewing on his favorite squeaky toy, Mr. Carrot. In contrast, he likes watching fireworks and is disgusted by drinking water out of toilets. After accepting who he really is, Bolt speaks less and seems more introverted. Finally, he's adventurous in the real world, but it's unknown if he enjoyed the fictional adventures at the TV studio. It's likely Bolt's fear of losing his owner made the entire experience stressful most of the time rather than thrilling or stimulating. Additionally, he likely he saw his superpowers merely as a means of protecting Penny. Since Bolt only focused on finding his owner, rarely speaking of his superhero role, these reasons would explain why he's able to quickly accept he doesn’t have powers after only a few days, despite spending almost five years in delusion.

[collinsportmaine]

“Universal Studios has announced that Rita Ora will star as Countess Dracula in the newest reboot of the Dark Universe.”

(If they didn’t, they should!)