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penvisions · 3 months ago

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one fish, two fish {chapter 3}

Pairing: Local! Frankie Morales x Transplant! Reader

Summary: Your day seems to be turning around for the better and you certainly don't expect for the night to end the way that it is. Maybe this is the start of things to finally settle into place, you can only hope.

Word Count: 5k

Warnings: canon typical language, canon typical bad luck, angst, unlucky encounters, misunderstandings, mentions of reader getting ghosted, then frankie gets ghosted, feelings of inadequacy, recovery, ptsd symptoms, past drug use, na meeting setting, conversations with a sponsor, a lot of feelings, reader has imposter syndrome, reader and frankie finally talk things through, alcohol consumption, illusions to traumatic event involving fire / explosions, illusions to helicopter wreck in the movie, illusions to canon death, reader has a callsign nickname but no assigned name, triple frontier boys, descriptions of both frankie and santi as romantic interests, lemme know if i missed any (nicely) please!

A/N: um hi ♡♡

ao3 link || series masterlist || frankie morales masterlist || navigation

Panic grips Frankie, reminding him of the time he had been stranded in the middle of a field beside a smoking and wrecked chopper, the crash landing he had tried to avoid becoming their new reality. They had been stranded, all five of them, with far too much money pulling taught the netting beneath the vehicle. He had tried his best, to get them to the coast, to get them home. But he had failed, the feeling all too real as he watches with a thudding heart the way you careen down the aisle away from him in the middle of a grocery store with a pinched expression.

“Daddy, why did she run away? I wanted to talk to her!”

“Maybe she was just in a hurry, mija.” He knows it’s bad to lie, especially to his daughter, but the truth is something he himself isn’t too clear on at the moment. He tries not to dwell on the way he hadn’t had the courage to reach out, a couple weeks ago now when you had let him know your phone was repaired and working once again.

He was a cowardly idiot, that’s the only reason he concluded with confidence.

Later that evening, once Cecila was snuggled in her bed with the blankets tucked in around her growing body did he allow himself the chance to sit out on his porch and let his thoughts consume him. He had no reason truly, why he hadn’t responded. The day getting away from him, work calling his attention as a routine check on an engine turned into a full-blown repair as a belt had snapped, too worn from the excessive trips into the air and idling along the runway as students learned out to operate the aerial vehicle. He had showered and thrown himself atop the bed that night after tending to his daughter, no thoughts for the phone still stored in the front pocket of his pants crumpled on the floor.

The next day it had been much the same; the outline for his day tedious but thankfully predictable with teaching, instructing, lecturing, testing, repairing. For nearly five hours until he had been able to catch his breath and take a few bites of something Will had been able to bring over, knowing how overwhelmed he was, how stretched thin he was.

He had no reason other than his own life was barely managed, as to why he hadn’t reached out. Another layer to it was how sleezy he would feel, he met you at a meeting for fuck’s sake. You obviously had been seeking out a lifeline of your own, something to cling to in the low moments. His evening routine of sitting in silence on his porch seemed to be his only respite as of late. The pack of menthol cigarettes he keeps hidden from his daughter taken out once the door to her bedroom shuts. The flick of the lighter almost Pavlovian in the way he eases some of the tension in his shoulders.

The overwhelming feeling of turning to the pills or the powder or the needles that once meant salvation no longer an option. A new need to be better, to do better. And who was he to provide better for you? When he couldn’t even approach you in a friendly enough air to sooth your worries in that moment. At the meeting he was the orchestrator of. He’s by no means a sponsor, but he does hold a bit of authority in the local community. An ear for those too shy to share during meetings, a wealth of information for those seeking it, someone who always plays a part in the annual picnics and events. A family man with no family of his own, save for his friends who give too much of themselves to him even now that their feet are back on US soil.

There’s no space for him in his life, let alone another person who deserves everything and anything. He couldn’t give that to you, the hours spent in the diner already a welcome strain on the one night he had to himself a week. He had given it up for you, your distress at his hand and actions too much for him to handle and not feel like he needed to fix, alter, repent for. Your smile had been shy at first, but oh, when it had bloomed fully before him in the bright lights of the diner? He knew he would give what little of himself was left in order to see it again.

That in itself sounded warning bells inside his head, it was surely to become another vice he would cling to in low moments. But unlike white powder or scored pills, you would were something someone to let down even as he clung to you. Pursuing you would only create more problems, not alleviate any that already plagued him. So he made the decision to keep his head down, work through the strain of being short-staffed at his job, to focus on his daughter. To let his own needs for something more idle and be shoved into the back of his mind along with thoughts of you.

He was okay, Cecilia was okay, their life was good if a bit hectic. If a bit lonely. He would survive, and he’s sure you would too without him complicating things for the both of you.

Frankie tried to be a good man, too many past deeds reminding him of why he felt the need to find repentance and be better. Should he cross paths with you again out in public, he would apologize. Offer to take you to the meeting he had scared you away from. Introduce you to the others, integrate you into the group. As a friend, as a fellow addict, as…a friend. And nothing more. It’s the least he could do if you deign to give him the time of day.

Sighing, he rubs a rough hand over his face, palm catching on his scruff and reminding him he needs to trim it. His grays are visible no matter how short it is, beginning to shine through the dark brown. He was about to get up from his spot in the whicker chair to do something about it, but he feels rooted in his spot. Legs heavy and torso leaned back into the cradle of the chair. His feet are bare, his cut off shorts made from an old pair of sweatpants allowing for him to feel the cool breeze as the evening progresses.

It's nice out. He brings another cigarette to his lips and lights it, smiling softly as the sound of your soft laughter echoes in his ears.

Santiago is rather nicer than Frankie had initially been, though there was no underlying current of mutual attraction. At least, that’s what you were trying to tell yourself, tamping down on the way the man’s eyes would sparkle when they caught both natural and artificial light. The way his curls beautiful and nearly completely steel grey looked effortlessly soft and pliable for wandering hands to tangle in. He was handsome, as you originally thought, but it was his kindness and thoughtfulness that was cementing him in your thoughts.

So unlike the snub of Frankie’s affections after that first night of actually talking to him, that night of the diner where you had thought there would be more just like it. Before you had found out that he had kept the revelation of him being a parent from you, something that hadn’t been mentioned during those long hours you had sat and spoke with him, held his hand and shared in easy laughter. Not that he owed you the truth, you suppose, because for all intents and purposes he was still just a stranger to you. A chance encounter and a lovely night of shared company that was more a memory now than anything.

The sting of his silence and then half-assed explanation and excuses had faded over the last few weeks.

Until he exited out from the truck of his friend that Santiago had called to help tow yours. There was a mechanic shop just next door to the gym one of his other friends owned, something about one of them having worked there or knew the person who operated it and would be able to get you a decent deal that wouldn’t break the bank or your resolve to make this city work.

“Fish! Didn’t expect you to be off work already.” Santiago crowds the man, arms going around his shoulders and a few loud claps of his hand on his back before they part. You see a flash of the smile that had been aimed at you over a low table only once before and your heart skips a beat even as it disappears. Frankie’s eyes land on you and you suddenly feel exposed. The bare skin of your arms blooming with goosebumps despite the warm evening air.

“Can’t believe it myself.” The two men embrace, hands slapping and then Santigo is engulfing you in a side embrace of your own. His eyes catch yours briefly, as if signaling that the next words out of his mouth were genuine.

“Been pretty long days lately. But this one needed some help, and who am I to deny her that?”

It’s quiet for a beat, Santiago looking between you and Frankie who suddenly don’t seem to be on talking terms, while Will beckons you over to ask a few questions about the front bumper. The conversation of whether or not it’s able to handle towing and what kind of issue is going on fades as you both round the front of vehicle.

“Hey,” The older man whispers, sidling up to his friend. “Thought you said you two smoothed things over?”

“We did….until I never texted her back and she ran into me and Ceci at the market.” Frankies large hand rubs at the back of his neck, curls greasy from work. He’s sure he doesn’t look too great, tired from the long day and caught off guard that the ‘friend’ Santiago needed a hand helping out turned out to be you. How did he even know you? He had only ever briefly met you at the bar, all those nights ago. Had only ever been mentioned to the man in passing, not willing to admit to selfishly and cowardly ignoring you for weeks now.

“…you didn’t say anything about that. I take it you hadn’t quite yet told her you’ve got a lil one, then, huh?”

“She nearly knocked into an endcap display once she saw it was me.” Stuffing his hands into the front pockets of his khakis, he shrugs his aching shoulders. Trying not to look too hurt by the way his heart had clenched at the reaction. It hadn’t been great but he had deserved it. He knows he did, he hadn’t been fair to you.

“Shit, Fish. That’s…I thought you said you liked her?” Santiago furrowed his brows and looked at Frankie straight on, not giving the man any space to avert his gaze. He was being a good friend, but he was also sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.

“Liking her ain’t the problem, it’s finding time for her. Which I don’t even have for myself right now.”

“Well, now you’ll have time. Gonna set her up with Will for work, fill that open position for a secondary mechanic they’ve got on the base.” Before he could respond one way or another, Santiago was clapping him on the back and walking over to where Will was just pulling on the chains to ensure they were secure.

Fucking- of course he would end up being in proximity to you. Every detail of your hours long conversation rolled around his head. You would definitely get the job, your background and experience exactly what the base was looking for.

The only issue is that meant he would see you on nearly a daily basis and he’s already botched meeting you for the first time and second…he needed to clear the air. Even if it was going to be difficult to articulate the reasoning behind his actions. You deserve it, to not question in the back of your mind the endless possibilities of what had happened. If you even thought of him, if you even cared at this point.

No thoughts of other than making things right, for the sake of potentially working together and seeing the way you interact with his friends. They like you, an invitation for drinks offered for later.

A short drive down a few blocks and you find yourself standing in a nearly empty parking lot of a gym called ‘Brass Knuckles’. Frankie, Will, and Santiago were idly chatting, waiting for their friend to close up the gym for the night to walk across the street to the dive bar that was mentioned. He looks a little younger than the rest of them, but not by much. You’ve all lived your earlier years for the country, that much is obvious, in the way you all hold yourselves. The comradery was one of the things you missed the most about being around other people who had served as well. But your contact with much of your squadron had fallen by the wayside as things progressed after the attack that had earned you all an honorable discharge…

Shaking your head, you found yourself sat at a table with them all and they were discussing what to get a pitcher of.

“Any preferences, hermosa?” Santiago nudges his shoulder into yours. “You were drinking an amber the other night, maybe one of those?”

“I stick to those just cause they’re pretty even along the board no matter what city, but just get whatever you all want.” To be honest, you’re a little nervous being around Frankie. Let alone amidst his personal friend group, you didn’t want him to feel like you were imposing. He had made it pretty clear he wasn’t interested in you, even if he had tried to smooth things over in the way he had in that rambling voicemail.

It still felt like an invasion, his life his own and something he protected in omitting certain truths.

He keeps glancing at you from across the table and you weren’t sure what to think about him. He had apologized sure, but it seemed that he either feels some sort of obligation to you with all of the mix ups that keep happening or if he truly does wish to extend the hand of friendship. You don’t know him well enough to know which one for certain, thought if you were going off of the man he had been across a dingy table you would have to guess it’s because he was a good person who wanted you to be in his orbit.

“Nah, we’ll get a pitcher of that. And some appetizers to tide everyone over until dinner.” Benny winks at you as he stands and makes his way over to the bar counter.

“Pope here mentioned you’re on the lookout for a service job,” Will meets your eye with a charming smile. “We’ve got openings in Fish’s zone, mechanics and repair work. Don’t have too much in the way of engineering or assembly work, but we do have some instructor roles that need to be filled too. Safety protocol, seminar leaders, stuff like that. What experience do you have, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I was an explosives expert, Navy SEAL. Did foreign tours but spent most of my time at the Pearl Harbor base. Have a background in mechanical engineering and weapons instruction. But I’m not sure how much if it is on file now should I be looked up in the system.” It’s a clipped summary though your tone is open and honest, explaining in the simplest way you’ve come to know how to for exactly that question.

Potential jobs, apartment hunting, casual curiosity when using your discount out and about, it was a constant one in your life. Though the specifics of what happened to cause the way you had been ejected from active service more personal, a little heavier and harder to explain. Your keys jangle in your hand, the plastic chip emblazoned with ‘one year’ a grounding feeling in your palm. The cool plastic gives you a little comfort as you sit amongst strangers with similar pasts.

“Did you finish out your contract? The only time information about your skills gets altered is if you take leave before the end of it.”

“I was, um,” Your eyes catch the movement of Benny moving back toward the table, the phantom feel of flames licking at your sides as the room suddenly feels way too hot. “I was honorably discharged. For medical reasons.”

He watches you closely, eyes roving over your exposed arms, taking in the muscles you’ve managed to keep up as best as you could. There was no evidence you had been sick or otherwise that was visible, all of it shielded by your top. The other two men stealthily check you for the same, though you feel Frankie’s gaze more than the others, something underlying his casual concern. “And is everything okay now?”

“Oh, um, yes. It was…” You averted your eyes to the keys in your lap, unable to formulate a polite summary of the reason you had ended up sitting across from him. It was a lot, endless meetings and deep conversations, of yelling and arguing. Of admittance after too much avoidance of the truth. A lot of fault on your shoulders, on those around you, on medical professionals and the circumstances that had begun it all.

“Don’t need the details, if you’re uncomfortable sharing them. We can discuss is further when you come into the base for a “formal” interview, if you think it’ll affect any aspects of the job.” You feel the band of anxiety around your chest relax, the breath you take in expands your lungs instead of feeling stuck in the back of your throat. “How does- what’s today again-?”

“Wednesday, you big oaf.” Benny teases as he returns to the table with a full pitcher of dark beer and a stack of pint glasses nestled into each other.

“So kind and gracious, little brother.” He rolls his eyes as he thinks something over. “Would Friday work for you? Give me the weekend to run your resume and file over with the higher ups and could probably formally offer you something on Monday.”

You find yourself at the table alone with Frankie. His friends gone to the other side of the bar to start a game of pool amongst themselves. Brother against brother with Santiago to moderate.

It’s…awkward to say the least. Apprehensive tension charging the air around you both as you sip on your beer. It’s the second of yours, though Frankie is still on his first.

“Santiago and I ran into each other,” You blurted out, unable to handle the silence. Frankie had been lost in thought, plush lips twitching as he seemed to go over words he thought to say and then changed his mind. His eyes snap up from the foam he was watching slowly disappear in his drink to you across the table. You swallowed down the way your breath stuck in your throat as his eyes met yours. Dark brown that swirled with so much pulling you toward him. “Literally.”

“He’s got impeccable timing.”

“I was having the worst day, but he helped to turn it around.”

“And now you’re sitting here across from the asshole that ghosted you.” His scoff was subdued, but the distaste he felt about himself and the way things played out was obvious.

“I wasn’t trying to say that. I was trying to- you know what, just forget it. This is all so fucking stupid.” You reach for your bag, hands uncurling from around your own drink. Frustration glowing hot in your chest as he took your words and twisted them. How dare he, you think, reeling from the whiplash of the man’s emotions across from you. You didn’t fault him for feeling things the way he did, but open communication means a lot to you. Honesty means a lot to you and he’s been terrible at both the past few interactions. “You really do know how to make an impression.”

“Shit, wait, please.” The desperation in his voice makes you pause, silent as you wait for him to continue, gauging the wideness to his eyes. He licks at his bottom lip, the pink of his tongue catching your attention far more than you want to admit. “I don’t…I’m not good at…people beyond my small circle.”

“We don’t have to talk like friends, Frankie. But we do have to respect each other as coworkers and share the hangar space if I get this job. If you don’t want to talk to me at all, I can deal with that. We can leave notes on a whiteboard or exchange emails about things that need to get done, no big deal. But I will be damned if whatever happened between us, or lack thereof, affects this opportunity.”

“That’s the last thing I want, Angel.” Frankie’s mouth is a firm line, his hands cupped around his pint glass once again, eyes focused on you and the determination settled in your expression. Almost as if he was grounding himself.

“I wouldn’t ignore you just because of how we met. I…I only regret letting my own shit taint what I thought was a good night after everything had turned around. How I’m letting it fuck this up now, I’m sorry, I know I’m not being the best right now. It’s been a long day, like you said.” You see him pause, one of his hands tensing so much that his knuckles pale. “I can work with you, I’m willing to work with you. We both deserve to do something we’ve got the skills for, I wouldn’t ruin that for you. Believe me.”

“Kinda hard to believe someone who wouldn’t even tell me about their own kid. But hey,” You down the last dredges in your own pint and move to stand up. “I’m just the girl you were trying to make feel welcome after two not so good interactions. You didn’t and don’t owe me an explanation.”

“You deserved the truth.” Frankie agrees, reaching for your arm just as you shoulder the strap to your bag. “You do deserve the truth. Let me- please let me drive you home. I can bring you back tomorrow, talk to Javier, the owner of the shop and get you a deal. I used to work there, I just…I don’t want you to think I didn’t have a good time, that I don’t-it’s me, I’m the problem. Not you, you’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Frankie,” You’re pinching the bridge of your nose, a headache forming as the day progresses. You still really just wanted to curl up on your couch with take out. The greasy appetizers doing their best to fill your grumbling stomach, but the call of more food in the comfort of your home was strong. “I have no energy for this right now, my day has been shit. Can we just agree to…start over? We’re adults and I don’t want to dwell on things. Please?”

“Whatever you want, I swear it. Just- one last thing, just hear me out on one last thing and then I’ll shut up about it.”

“What is it, Frankie?” You don’t wave his hand off and he thankfully squeezes it in his grasp before stepping back. His shoulders square and he emphasizes with them when he speaks next, providing you with the answers to questions you had tumbled around in your head for days after your encounter at the grocery store.

“The reason I didn’t tell you about Ceci, my daughter, is because she gets attached to people very easily since her mother left us. I didn’t…it’s a lot to learn that someone you’re interested in has a kid, let alone a clingy one. I didn’t want it to be a deal breaker for you.”

“Kinda moot now, isn’t it?” You can’t help the hint of sarcasm that leaks into your tone, wanting for all the world to move past what if’s and maybe’s of how you first met each other. If you’re going to be working together, it’s better to start off fresh, to start off on a better foothold than the rickety one you two had been sharing up until this point.

He catches the way the corner of your mouth quirks up, the arch of one of your brows as you cross your arms and jut your head a bit to the side. Teasing, you’re teasing him and when he realizes his entire body relaxes.

“I mean, you’re the one who went out of their way to make amends for not one, but two terrible first encounters. So, I think you may have been a little more invested than I was, Mr. Morales.”

“With the way you were smiling and giggling, bet you were just as invested, querida.”

“Shut up and take me home, I need a mountain of Chinese food.” You can’t help the roll of your eyes as he matches your taunts, truly set on making things better and tiding over the insecurities of past interactions and lack there of. It’s tentative, your nerves alight even as a giddiness settles in just beneath your skin. The back and forth, the easy conversation flowing like it had once upon a time.

“I know a good place, we’ll look it up and place a to go order. Pick it up on the way.” He offers, seemingly willing to try and move forward as well. There’s a hesitancy behind his eyes that thaws your lingering anger and annoyance, the hurt that had bloomed from it.

“Yeah? You gonna pick up the tab?” You challenge, stepping closer to him as you do so. The setting of the bar and the chatter of the crowd melt away as he matches your step. He’s only inches away as he rests a hand on the top of the table, his head ducked down to focus on only you. The bill of his hat brushes your forehead and you feel a flash of warmth as the memory of his lips on your cheek suddenly bubbles up.

“Picked it up last time, why would this time be any different?” He’s smirking, the glint of his teeth behind his plush lips spurring butterflies to life in your middle.

God, why was it so easy to forgive him for the misunderstanding? Because now your body was alight with the giddy feeling of connection, just like it had been that night in the diner. You only hoped that you could keep it professional, keep it friendly. And how were you supposed to know that Frankie was wondering the exact same thing? His own mind racing as his heart beats wildly in his chest that things are finally changing and changing for the better.

Off to the side, the three remaining members of your little party are nursing their new pints. The second pitcher set on the table and left for you both as they started a game of pool.

“How much you wanna bet that’s gonna happen by the end of the month?” Benny’s wolfish smile influenced by his joy of games, though it stems from a place of genuine interest and want for his friend to find the happiness he had been lacking in his personal life.

“I bet it’s gonna take them two months, and one of them is gonna mistake it for being overly touchy- feely and back off again.” Santiago rises to the bait and offers his own idea of what will happen. He knows his best friend, the way things tend to play out. His past intertwined with is own. He thinks back on the past few years, since their collective return from South America. The strides they’ve all taken since then to be better, to actually make a difference and not fall victim to the endless cycle of not feeling good enough. Frankie deserved good things, a second chance at finding someone to share his life with, even if the man didn’t personally believe it.

“I think they’re gonna hit it off, become inseparable and then one of them is gonna get jealous that the other got asked out. That’s how these things typically go, don’t they?” Will chalks the end of his pool stick, eyes trained on you two standing far too close to each other and lost in your own little bubble. All three of them smiling and enjoying seeing Frankie truly relaxed for the first time in what feels like years.

“Either way, they have intoxicating energy. Makes me feel like I’m watching something I’m not supposed to.” Santiago claps his hands together before retrieving his phone from his back pocket. “Think it’s time to call my girl and see when her next night off is.”

They watched on as you both seemed to mess around on Frankie’s phone, fingers pointing at each other and easy laughter shared between you both. Mock frowns and the flash of tongues being teasingly stuck out at each other. They wondered what the conversation was, because when they walked away it looked nothing like it did now. Just as the phone is tucked back into a pocket, you’re both waving at the trio as you make your way to the door.

“I’d have that workplace conduct paperwork at the ready, brother. They’re gonna be trouble once they figure everything out, hell, maybe even as they figure everything out.” Shaking his head and chuckling, Will makes a mental note to stick a blank contract in each of your files tomorrow when he gets to work before going back to the game at hand.

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#dev writes #fic: one fish two fish #triple frontier #triple frontier fanfiction #triple frontier movie #frankie morales #frankie catfish morales #frankie morales fanfiction #frankie morales x reader #frankie morales x you #frankie morales fic #ppcu #ppcu fandom #ppcu fanfiction #pedro pascal fandom

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enretrogue · 9 months ago

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𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗖𝗛 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰 𝗙𝗜𝗖 𝗥𝗘𝗖𝗦

༝༚༝༚ = Black/POC Works ⎢ 24’ Fic Rec M.List

a/n: sorry this is a so short, uni was a bit brutal 🥲

DC:

Multi-Character

Daddy’s Final Deal [B. Wayne + C. Kent] — @milknhonies **DDNE/DARK FIC**

Batmom

Bruce Being Cockblocked — @c-nstantine ༝༚༝༚

Bruce and Batmom Drabble — ^ ༝༚༝༚

For the Man Who Has Everything — ^ ༝༚༝༚

Sense of Normalcy — ^ ༝༚༝༚

Not Alone — @

The Cravings — ^

To the Paparazzi — ^

Is the Reason Good Enough? — ^

Just a Couple More Minutes — ^

When It Becomes Too Much, He’s There ⎢ 2 — ^

Terms and Conditions — ^

It’s Fire, It’s Freedom ⎢ 1 ⎢ 2 ⎢ 3 ⎢ 4 ⎢ 5 — @battymommastuff

Mom Has a Tattoo — @bia-wayne-west

Batsis

Bruce Taking Batsis to Her First Hair Appointment — @c-nstantine ༝༚༝༚

Bruce Wayne/Batman

Phone Calls —@c-nstantine ༝༚༝༚

Smile for the Camera — ^ ༝༚༝༚

Bruce Wayne and His Controversially Young Girlfriend — ^ ༝༚༝༚

Retired DILF!Bruce Wayne — ^ ༝༚༝༚

Country Boy!Bruce Wayne x Grad Student!Reader — @brownsugarwrites ༝༚༝༚

Love Drought — ^ ༝༚༝༚

On Bended Knee — @greedyhoneyz ༝༚༝༚

Staked Claim — @apocalypse-shuffle ༝༚༝༚

C0-Conspirator — @on-leatheredwings

“You’re the Best Thing that Has Ever Happen to Me” — @allysunny

Dick Grayson/Nightwing

Face Sitting w/ Dick — @martiniluvr

Dirty Laundry — @on-leatheredwings

Body Heat — @saylorsaysstop

Sweet Mornings — @millyhelp

TRIPLE FRONTIER:

Frankie Morales

Safe Harbor — @theywhowriteandknowthings

Full — @endlessthxxghts

At Your Service — @pimosworld

Girls Night Out — @polaroidpascal

Hold Fast Ch. 2 — @jeewrites

Cramps — @javierpena-inatacvest

Frankie Isn’t Afraid of Growing Old — @criticallyacclaimedstranger

Will Miller

Aftermath — @charliehoennam

Best Friend’s Brother ⎢ The Debriefing — @theunbearableweightofpedropascal

Real Love, Baby — @violentdelightsandviolentends

Dolly’s Valentine’s Love Language Shorts! — @faerieroyal

Weighted Blanket — @musings-of-a-rose

#navigation

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infoglitch · 1 month ago

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Imma talk about digimon for like a minute so bear with me because uh...

Cringe ahead.

Digimon is a very.. interesting series which I have had a long relationship with. You see "I'm not like other boys" (god kill me PLEASE!) because I just didn't care for Pokemon, I liked shit like Yu-Gi-Oh (cause I just couldn't be anymore lame) because the monster designs were awesome to me. I didn't like Pokemon because it felt so.. cutesy. I'm not saying that's a problem I just at that point in my life found any pokemon remotely interesting... Maybe infernape and emboar because those designs were cool as fuck (I'm not gonna talk about the fire fighting debacle because I'm sorry I just don't get it. Yes without hindsight it seemed like a trend pokemon was going down but outside of that there's nothing wrong with that.) but when I saw digimon I didn't feel that disconnect, yes by all accounts digimon does try to be a little cute but to me it didn't feel like 100% of the monsters were there to be cute and marketable. I thought kabuterimon was cool as shit because of how ugly it was, it wasn't human but it didn't matter to me because it looked like an actual monster. I Loved skull greymon because it was so fucking intimidating, I was literally skeleton of a dinosaur back from the dead with a missile to its back and a second ribcage attached to its back, that was metal as shit and I was all for it.

.. we are not going to talk about angewomon.. we are not going to talk about her... I don't wanna be bullied by the Internet.

A lot of the digimon designs I loved and while I could never keep up with the anime I still loved it.

Og adventure while a product of its time is still fun and I enjoy watching through it. Seeing T.K. grow and becoming more than just Matt's little brother, I loved seeing Izzy connecting with the group and also his interactions with tentomon because those two understand eachother.

Mimi.. look imma be honest I didn't get Mimi and I never got to be able to really connect with sora.

I liked how it was a little more mature especially later on, it wasn't dense in meaning studying the characters but it still felt.. real. T.K and Matt's parents not being Together and T.K being confused on why his family just can't be whole is real, while I couldn't relate to it at the time fully I felt it.

Now I can't say I got tai but I was enjoying Matt's character (what can I say even Young I liked characters who acted more mature.. I'm not bi though I just respect Matt's care for his little brother... I feel like that will get taken out of context.)

Adventure 02 kind of clicked with me, I definitely liked Cody and surprisingly yolei of all characters. I couldn't connect to Davis because much like tai I respected him but I couldn't relate to him.

Now I unfortunately don't have a lot of opinions on 02 because I didn't get to watch almost any of it which sucked.

As for tamers? Oh god where do I begin? Look I'm not gonna be the first to say that tamers has good writing but honestly.. I don't think it's as good as a lot of the fandom says.

It isn't garbage, hell no. But I just don't enjoy it as much. I enjoyed impmon as a character but he was the only character I had strong opinions on.

We are not talking about Renamon. We are NEVER going to talk about Renamon. Moving on.

Frontiers is a oddball, because.. I love it, it is not by any means ground breaking, as it felt somewhat like a soft reboot. But honestly the one thing that drew me into this show was the spirit evolutions, and imma be honest I think once I finally get the chance to rewatch the first four installments of Digimon I'm gonna be locking in on digimon frontiers because I genuinely want to talk about this anime.

But then.. then there's digimon data squad... Now blame it on me liking burst modes and actually liking Marcus as a character.. but like

Digimon data squad is my everything. Primarily it's burst modes that is just always a cool concept because I'm a sucker for mode changes.

You have to have no whimsy in your heart to look at the concept of punching a digimon in the face while yelling "it's fighting time" and not find it baller as shit.. and also just so dumb, and so funny. You have to have no sense of whimsy and if that is the case.. we can't be friends.

As for fusion.. oh god digimon fusion.

Look I hate digimon fusion.. so much,I like a lot of the digimon designs but the anime just grinds my gears with how much it just is a KIDS show. And I mean that in the most insulting way imaginable and specifically mean digimon fusion, not xros wars. Because when it comes to fusion a lot of the story and the characters are just lame. And it feels like I'm watching something that has no respect for its audience.

I understand if people like fusion.. I cannot enjoy it because I think its focused audience.. is for kids specifically.

But why do I talk about digimon? Why do I dedicate an entire post to it?

Because ladies and gentlemen one it is cool as shit and two there are so many stories that can be told using digimon. I love this franchise because It appeals to every neuron in my brain, it scratches an itch I have for monster design and a lot of the stories that it tells are just so interesting and/or very ent, I've especially been reading a lot of Digimon liberator and it actually got me interested in the card game of all things. I've been playing digimon survive and I've gotten invested in these characters (I know I'm going to have to go down wrathful and harmonious I just need to prepare myself for the fact some of my favorite characters are going to die.. oh god I don't wanna see Ryo die AGAIN!)

Digimon means something to me because one it appeals to me in terms of monster design (I will always prefer more monstrous digimon but I'm not gonna bitch about it.) but also in terms of the stories you can tell with the setting. Digimon can be used as a metaphor for human psychology (hell digimon being influenced by their partners, that has so much potential to dive into) digimon has a lot of value to me because it's a lot more open for interpretation and allows it to be more mature with the stories.

But that's my rambling. I apologize to everyone that this is nonsense but I felt like talking about something from my childhood that means a lot to me.

#i apologize to every digimon fan that this is not your daily dose of digi tumblr #digimon #digimon means a lot to me.#glitch talks about digimon

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imglowinginthedarkness · 5 months ago

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currently 2am and i can't tell if i'm having one of those delirious late night old hyperfixation comebacks that go away when i finally succumb to sleep or if it really is coming back full force and knocking me over like a 13ft high ocean wave. said hyperfixation is undertale.

anyways, my dear favorite sans enjoyer (you) immediately came to mind. name everything you love about this skeleton man GO

BEE. OUUGHGHGH BEE YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOUVE JUST UNLEASHED. EVERYPNE SHUT UP I GOTTA TALK ABOUT MY BOY

god bro i literally cannot express how much i love sans the skeleton. like really and genuinely in every which way he is my Favorite Fucking Guy. ages ago my friends and i had a simp-based slideshow night where we made presentations about our biggest fictional crushes/hyperfixations and i made mine into a tier list bc i love putting things into arbitrary categories and the last tier was "category F: the final frontier (I’m pretty sure I’m going to be on my actual fucking deathbed before I get over these fuckers)” and guess who was #1 on the list babyyyy

but besides all the silly sentimental reasons why i like him so much, i just. genuinely he's such a good fuckin character. UT is a game with a fucking MEGALOAD of excellent characters designed in a lab to steal ur heart and sans is no exception. his introduction is so god damn good in terms of characterization. when you (frisk) first enter the underground proper, the only other character (besides flowey/napstablook technically) you've gotten to know at that point is toriel, and you just finished battling her specifically because she was trying to stop you from going through the door. you don't know anything about this new area except what toriel has told you/implied, that it's dangerous and full of monsters who are not your friends, who will try to kill you without a second thought. as you the player step into the snow, the background music is silent, there isn't any sort of comfort from the knowledge that you are now stuck in this new place without toriel's protection/guidance (not to mention your encounter with flowey and the fact that you can't get back into the ruins). the only thing you (frisk) can do is go forward, so you do. you start walking. it's quiet. it's cold. you're alone. and then you start to hear footsteps. you pass a stick on the ground, and the second it's out of view of you (the player), you hear someone (something?) step on it and break it. if you go back to look, no one's there. you're about to reach a small bridge when there's more footsteps, and suddenly you can't move, which is an absolutely terrible thing to happen when you're playing a video game. the footsteps get closer. a voice speaks, slow and purposeful. "human. don't you know how to greet a new pal? turn around, and shake my hand." you don't really have a choice. you turn, you take the figure's hand– and then there's a fucking FART NOISE and instantly the tension is completely fucking broken. it's like a dark cloud is lifted off of you. the music comes back in (sans' theme, bouncy and silly and perfect for him) and you see sans fully for the first time and he's this round dorky little funnyman with the biggest grin of all time and he switches up instantly, becoming a comedic relief character after essentially faking you out as your first “boss battle”. doing this is so freaking smart because it is a perfect showcase of sans as a character, not just hinting at his real level of power while also showing that he is at his core just a funnyman, but also exemplifying his primary strategy when it comes to avoiding conflict. he purposefully scares you, and then lifts the tension by revealing he's not here to hurt you, and that sense of relief makes you instantly trust him a little more. he starts his true introduction off with a joke, not just lowering your guard and making you underestimate him a little but also making you like him more and feel more at ease. not to mention it's the exact opposite of flowey's intro which is just such a cool additional thing. it's so good. it's sooo good.

and that's not even touching his relationship w papyrus, his connection to toriel and alphys, the fact that if you reset after defeating him in the genocide run, he could literally kill you the moment he meets you again (and he'd have every understandable reason to do so) but he chooses not to because at his core he WANTS to give you a chance, he wants to believe that even the worst person can change. not only that but in the genocide run he watches you kill his brother, the most important person in his life, and he STILL doesn't take action because he's holding out hope that you'll make the decision to stop on your own. it's only when you reach the judgment hall and you've killed almost every single other character that he finally decides to fight you himself because he's essentially accepted that you're not going to stop unless he stops you, and even then he knows he can't stop you! he only has 1 god damn hit point!! so he hits you with his biggest move right at the start, hoping that'll kick the wind out of you and make you stop trying to get past him, and then when that doesn't work, he dodges and dodges and dodges until he is literally falling asleep on his feet from pure exhaustion, until he's been fighting so long he physically cannot keep going. like it's framed as him going to sleep but let's be real, it's him passing out from fucking dodging and throwing everything but the kitchen sink at you for fucking ages, and his final resort is stalling you, but eventually his exhaustion catches up to him and you get the opportunity to attack him again. but even then he dodges your first attack, probably out of adrenaline, only to run right into your second because he's so fucking tired, he can't keep doing this, he's so tired.

like dude, i know, i kNOW he is funny haha skeleton but he is also genuinely such a good fucking character. he is silly and goofy but also so, so heartbreaking, lazy and yet so so smart, a silly little guy who loves his brother and who didn't ask to be so aware of the resets but he is and because he is he takes it upon himself to become the judge, to watch over you and if necessary make sure you don't take a step outside that hall. he's my fucking favorite dude. i could go on but this is already way way way too long. tl:dr i love him <3

#glow answers stuff #long post #sans #sans undertale #looooong ramble i am so sorry #thank you so much for this ask bee this was so healing for my heart and soul

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fandomstars · 2 years ago

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Pokemon anime request! Ash’s companions (other than Alola) reacting to his championship win in the Alola league

Misty: Knew from the time at the Orange League that he’d make it, if anything he already did back then. But league being official was just the last step. Still wished he used many of his water type Pokemon.

Brock: He called it the minute Ash forfeit his first gym battle ever. This kid was going to go far. Now if he could just get Kukui and others to help get him some therapy.

Tracy: He was literally drawing Ash’s final league battle from frame to frame. Goes on to make the Pokémon anime series with input from Ash and his other friends across the regions.

May: Knew he’d make it someday, after all, he beat the Battle Frontier. Hopefully he waited to have a big feast until her plane hit Alola.

Max: He finally been able to start his journey. He had just won his first gym badge when the league began. He quickly rushed home to watch the rest with his family. His Treecko and Ralts cheering with him as Ash won it. Of course, he always has a small part of him, guilty for how he treated Ash when they first meet. Boy, if he could go back in time and tell his past self this.

Dawn: Always knew he was going to win someday. She knew Piplup was all for it, plus not having to worry about his Gible’s draco meteor. Just wished she’d had been able to see it in person. But she clearly made that up once he went for the masters tournament!

Iris: Despite their quibbles, she always knew Ash would exceed in Pokémon battling. Now she wished he had more dragon types, let alone used the ones he had besides an ultra beast. But she’s proud either way.

Cilan: He knew it like the back of his hand, like the lines of a cookbook, the station to a train. Yeah he’s basically part of the Ash fanclub and for sure is the co-founder that totally bet Ash would become the best one day.

N: He knew the moment he laid eyes on Ash, that he’d do great things. He’s one of the reasons he can tolerate Pokemon battles, even see the enjoyment and thrill in some cases, but mostly through Ash’s battles. He could defiantly feel Ashs Pokémon’s cheers from all over the region, and perhaps a certain legendary bird or more.

Clemont: He’s a gym leader after all, he could tell from each battle he did whether someone could go far if given the push. Ash was one of those, despite the fact he knew since he first battled him when they first meet.

Serena: Knew he had it in him, and hoped he’d be happy. Also he rejected her and their good friends to this day.

Bonnie: Cheered the loudest, now even more psyched to go on her own journey. Perhaps battle Ash and his mons along the way.

Basing this on if the Alola series was only a couple months since Kalos (since it started as a summer trip) and lasted about a year after, hence why Max is old enough to go on a journey, but Bonnie isn’t.

Bonus! Rivals (and by rivals I mean actual rivals. Not looking at you Cameron and others I forget. Sorry Gladion and others I know but this is excluding Alola.)

Gary: While he wish he could kick his 10 year old’s butt, but he knows Ash won’t have gone as far without his help. So he better mention him in his acceptation speech. But for real, he’s so proud of Ashy Boy.

Paul: Ever since he heard of Ash beating the Battle Frontier, he knew he was going to become a champion. Not that he’d admit it. No, but he’d totally admit he had the better rival battle out of all of Ash’s rivals.

Barry: Now Ash owes him 10 million more, for he knew Ash would become champion. He just wished he’d battle him for that.

Trip: Ever since he loss to Ash in the Unova league, he’s gone through a big change. Ash showed him what the perfect trainer is, caring for Pokémon and people alike. So yeah, he’s less of a jerk.

Alain: While he wished he got a rematch before Ash made it, he’s glad he did. No matter how much of a odd presence keeps saying Ash was the Kalos champ despite the outcome.

Sawyer: He’s Ash’s number one fan. Of course he was going to become champion. Of course, he wished to battle him again before he done so.

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femmeanonymelives · 1 year ago

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Isn't it lovely? (Santiago Garcia x OC)

Santiago Garcia x Singer/Songwriter!OC

Mentioned platonic Frankie Morales x OC

(Santiago refers to her as the nickname "Songbird," but real name is Valerie) Inspired by the song "Lovely" by Billie Eilish (with Khalid)

Series Masterlist

Ari's note: This is pure angst and fluff. Some adult language, usage of alcohol and some spoilers for Triple Frontier. This song somehow keeps showing up on my Spotify rotation. It is very beautiful and heartbreaking. I wanted to write something that deals with this song and somehow it reminds me of Santi.

The rain putters on the window seal.

Seattle.

The warm air fills the room with comfort from the cold, rainy weather outside. Started playing with the keys of the keyboard that someone that I loved bought me for my birthday. Pulls out a small yellow notebook with song lyrics. A familiar tone that I used to play around with when we hang out together.

“Happy Birthday, songbird. You can finally become the real Piano Man,” he joked before taking another gulp of beer as he played with my then-shaggy, long black hair. It was my birthday a few years earlier. A few days before the boys went down to South America and fucked shit up there. Santi hosted the festivities at his house. The boys, their partners, and a few of our mutual friends met up and had dinner. Santi wanted to make his present special.

“Honestly, Frankie could have made that joke, but you honestly made the joke somehow shittier,” laughs softly as I play my legs in his lap. He gives the classic “you know you love me” smirk as he gives me a soft kiss.

“Frankie would have requested Sweet Caroline, but knowing you,” he holds my chin in his hand as he makes look at him in his sweet brown eyes, “you would be performing in stadiums soon, not in a bar. I will be by your side when you headline your first show.”

I moved to Seattle a few years back after the guy I last loved left me for a trip that, according to him, “broke him from the inside out.” I did music before I met him. Choir and piano lessons since I was six. If you are talking to my mother about my musical talents, she blames my father who was a musician that performed at the family bar. Started writing some wanderlust type songs, but never really got anywhere in Florida.

Frankie was the one who introduced us. I am the girl “who can sing Taylor Swift better than Taylor Swift without making it annoying.” He was the pain in the ass that Frankie would constantly tell him to ask me out. He saw I brought out a softer side to Santi, even though Santi is a horrible singer.

When he broke it off with me, he blamed how the fucked the mission was from the beginning, how Tom fucking died, how he was worried what was going to happen to him and his squad, and he was worried how we was going to explain this to me. He wanted his share of the money to go to me so we could move and start my music career.

“Songbird, I fucking love you but I need you to understand that I am doing this to set you free. You don’t need me anymore. I am sorry.” He kissed me like this was the last kiss that he was going to ever take with me. Four years of passion, long-distance phone calls, and stale beer thrown away like Tom’s body near the Andes.

That was the last time I saw him.

Three Years Later

I am back in humid Florida, visiting family and Frankie and performing at a local music venue. I step up on stage. Getting a warm welcome from my hometown crowd. Under the bright stage, I see Frankie and the boys… and then I see him.. Drinking a Bud Light in one hand, and wearing an old baseball cap. His hair and stubble is more gray. He looks tired, not wanting to be there. Worried that Frankie brought him to a trap. I move towards the piano and start playing the song that somehow people are recognizing themselves to. My soft, yet powerful alto voice sings the lyrics when I was alone by myself in Seattle.

“Thought I found a way

Thought I found a way out (found)

But you never go away (never go away)

So I guess I gotta stay now

Oh, I hope someday I'll make it out of here

Even if it takes all night or a hundred years

Need a place to hide, but I can't find one near

Wanna feel alive, outside I can't fight my fear

Isn't it lovely? All alone

Heart made of glass, my mind of stone

Tear me to pieces, skin to bone

Hello, welcome home”

As I look up into the crowd, I stare into his eyes like I did years ago. Making me realizing that the song is hurting him the same way he hurt me all of those years prior. I tried to focus on anyone, but him. Tears swell up as I think of us at our happiest as I sing aloud.

“Walking out of time

Looking for a better place

Something's on my mind

Always in my head space

But I know someday I'll make it out of here

Even if it takes all night or a hundred years

Need a place to hide, but I can't find one near

Wanna feel alive outside I can't fight my fear

Isn't it lovely? All alone

Heart made of glass, my mind of stone

Tear me to pieces, skin to bone

Hello. Welcome home

Whoa, yeah

Yeah, ah

Whoa, whoa

Hello, welcome home”

I hear a mass applause from the crowd as I quickly wipe my tears as I look towards the crowd.

I see Santi and Frankie gone. I focused on the rest of my set that focused on songs from my album and a few covers of Fleetwood Mac.

After the show, I head backstage towards my dressing room. I see Santi standing there, mad and regretful at what he did to me. His knuckles are bloody, which he fought with Frankie in the parking lot.

“Songbird, listen to me-”

“Don’t… just don’t call me.. the bullshit you pulled forfeits the right to call me that.”

“Valerie, I am sorry. I fucked up. I should have told you the truth from the beginning.”

“Santi, it is not that… you fucked up this relationship by using Tom’s fucking death for a reason to end it… That is not a good enough excuse for me. Why are you here?”

“When Frankie told me that you were coming into town, I was scared shitless. The money was for you.”

“Santiago Garcia, don’t be fucking with me about this. The one time I see you are telling more bullshit.”

“Val, that money for you and I to spend a life together.” He takes a deep sigh and runs his fingers through his hair. “That money was for you to actually start your career.”

“Bullshit… absolute bullshit! Stop lying to me just to save your own ass.” He grabs my arm and pulls me back in my dressing room. He locked the door.

“That song.. You wrote that about us…”

“I was hurting. Frankie was the only of you assholes to reach out.” Santiago is shocked; he knew Frankie and I were close, but never knew the impact that our relationship had. “Ben couldn’t even look me in the face when I saw him in Seattle.”

“So you wrote a fucking break-up song, Val? I know I was a dick by how I treated you, but I am telling the truth” He sounds more hurt than angry. The song made him seem like the biggest asshole in the world.

“I wrote it because you left me the minute you came back. I was angry. I was in a town by myself, wishing you called and said that you made a fucking mistake, but you didn’t.” Santi grabs me by my now-long dyed red hair and kisses me like he did three years earlier.

“I love you, Val.. and I am sorry for what I did.”

I walked out of the door; not being able to stay there another second without crying. As I head to my rental car after grabbing my stuff, tears stream down my eyes as I whisper to myself in the car, “I love you too.”

#triple frontier #triple frontier boys #triple frontier fanfic #santiago pope garcia #santiago garcia #oscar issac characters #santiago garcia x oc #santiago garcia x reader #oscar issac x reader

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animebw · 2 years ago

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Short Reflection: Belle

In a sense, Belle feels like the movie that Mamoru Hosoda has been building up to his entire life. Looking back at his work, Hosoda is primarily obsessed with three themes that appear time and time again in his movies. 1: Fairy tales (Wolf Children, Boy and the Beast). 2: Sci-fi, particularly time travel and cyberspace (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars). 3: How those fantastical elements intersect with naturalistic, real-life stories of family and coming of age (Literally all those previous films). Those three themes permeate Hosoda’s filmography, but they’ve never all intersected at once... until now. Here, at last, we have a near-future sci-fi yarn that uses cyberspace to re-imagine a classic Disney fairy tale as the backdrop of a classic teenage coming-of-age story involving complicated family matters. All of the director’s fixations have finally been married in a single package, the definitive example of everything that inspires his creative process.

It’s just a shame the end result is such a disaster.

Okay, “disaster” is probably too harsh. Belle is far from the worst film ever made, and in the rare moments where everything clicks together, it’s damn near perfect. But my god, this movie is a mess. It’s at least three different stories fighting for attention at once, never coming together in the way they’re so clearly trying to, continuously pushing each other out of focus so no one thread is ever developed enough to matter. It jumps back and forth between ideas with minimal justification. It switches its emotional core at least twice without properly resolving what came before. And when it tries to tie everything together for the climax, it runs into yet more problems that transform what should have been a barn-burner ugly cry masterpiece of a finale into a confused and troubled message that doesn’t seem to know what it’s saying and might even end up saying some unintentionally really shitty things. I have liked and loved so much of Hosoda’s work, but this is unquestionably the worst thing he’s ever put out.

Our story, as you can probably guess from the name, is a take on Beauty and the Beast. Well, sort of. It actually starts with our protagonist Suzu joining the new cyberspace world U, a place I can only describe as VR Chat on all the steroids ever. It’s basically an entirely new virtual world that’s supplanted or fully integrated all other forms of social media, so the entire digital world uses it as a community hub. And if you’re already thinking this sounds suspiciously like the premise of Summer Wars, well, yeah. Hosoda likes his motifs, what can I say?

Anyway, the reason Suzu is drawn to U is because it’s an outlet for her to rediscover her love of singing. Singing was something that she shared with her mother, but after her mother died saving someone else’s kid from a flood, Suzu sunk into a depression that basically crippled her ability to sink without descending into a mess of emotions. The real world has become a listless place for her, a place where her connections to other people- including her father, who god bless him is trying his best to carry on- fray and fade more and more every day. But in the virtual world, hidden safely behind an anonymous, much-prettier-than-her-real-face avatar? Suddenly, she’s able to connect with those emotions again and sing unchained by her trauma. And thanks to a lucky video of her performances going viral, she suddenly finds herself possibly the most famous person in the digital frontier, a mega-diva whose songs inspire millions without anyone knowing who she really is. Everyone flocks to hear her sing, she’s beloved and over-scrutinized by everyone... while in real life she’s still an emotionally stunted teenage girl trying to reconnect with what it means to find happiness in life.

It’s at this point in my plot summary that a lot of you are probably asking, “Okay, but where does the whole Beauty and the Beast thing come in? Because that seems like an awful lot of setup for an entirely different movie that doesn’t leave much room for that Disney homage I was promised.” And... yeah.

Yeah.

This is what I mean about Belle feeling like multiple stories fighting for attention. After speedrunning the mom-death-to-digital-superstar plotline I mentioned above with liberal use of montage, the Beast literally comes crashing through the wall of one of Belle’s concerts, and she decided to take an interest in the bestial avatar pursued by justice-seeking mobs because... well, pretty much because. It literally feels like the story’s been hijacked and yanked down an entirely different path than the one it was setting up. And from then on, the plot just never comes together, it bounces back and forth between Suzu’s teen-melodrama struggles in the real world and full-on Disney homage in the digital world, but there’s almost nothing tying them together until the finale. The two sides of Suzu’s journey feel so disconnected they might as well be separate movies. And sometimes it feels like not even Hosoda understood these two stories were supposed to be part of the same movie. Suzu literally has two romantic subplots running simultaneously, one in the real world with her childhood friend and one in the digital world with the beast, and never once does it acknowledge the fact that she’s pining after two guys at once. It’s like she entirely forgets the other guy exists as soon as she leaves his world behind and goes right back to devoting all her attention to the other dude. This is literally the easiest conflict generator you can come up with in a YA story, and Belle can’t even do that right.

And because of this disconnect, both sides of the story are left feeling painfully skin-deep and skeletal. We don’t even get to hear Suzu sing once before her mom dies, so the attempts to wring drama out of her re-finding her voice in U feel like development for a conflict we never even set up. This should be the driving force of the movie’s emotional core, but because the setup is so rushed en route to aping Disney, huge parts of it feel like an afterthought. And the cyberspace side of things is somehow even worse. I don’t ask for exhaustive realism in my speculative sci-fi, especially one that’s literally based on a fairy tale, but I could write a whole separate essay on how U’s world makes no goddamn sense as anything beyond paper-thin allegory. It seems to exist as a perfect libertarian utopia where everyone has true freedom and everyone gets along perfectly, which is so laughably Not How Real Life Works I have to wonder if Hosoda’s actually, like, spent time on the internet at all. The closest it comes to doing something clever with the concept is re-imagining the Gaston figure trying to kill the beast as essentially a moral police doxxer who goes around trying to unmask “dangerous” users’ public identities while spouting the rhetoric of self-righteous justice to justify his hate campaign. But even that is shamefully under-utilized because of how fragmented the narrative is.

Actually, that’s a lie, the best part of the whole cyberspace side of things is a brief moment where Belle’s exploding popularity is showcased by people remixing her songs into different musical styles like electro-swing and hard rock. As someone who’s consumed his fair share of Megalovania jazz covers, I had to laugh at how accurate that was to the online experience.

But it’s in the Beauty and the Beast re-creation itself where Belle’s biggest ambitions and failures lie. Because of how little reason we’re given for Suzu to care about the Beast, every scene she has with him, recreating or paying homage to the most famous beats from the original Disney movie, feels hollow. It’s not until we reach the final act and finally discover the Beast’s identity in the real world that it becomes clear what this whole enterprise is even about. And good god, it is a can of worms. I won’t spoil anything, but the final act is where Belle finally starts trying to pull all its disparate threads together, connecting Suzu’s emotional trauma to what the Beast is suffering and dropping in some uncomfortably real portrayals of familial abuse and the difficulties our world has responding to it. It’s the moment the fairy tale crashes into reality, where the larger-than-life emotions become a vessel to channel something real and raw and powerful... and it ends up Disney-fying the issue to such an extent it honestly feels kind of insulting. You cannot treat real, grounded abuse the same way you treat a fairy tale about a monstrous being learning to love again. You cannot wave a magic wand over something this potent and pretend that makes everything okay. Hosoda used to be so good at marrying the grounded and fantastical sides of his stories, but ever since Wolf Children he’s just been getting worse and worse at it. You were a pro at this, man, what happened?

Look, I don’t hate Belle. If I’m honest, I don’t even dislike it. It’s a wildly ambitious movie trying to do so much at once, and it’s so earnest about it I want to root for it on principle. If nothing else, it’s certainly a gorgeous-looking movie, and the entirely-CG portrayal of the digital world marks another strong step forward for gorgeous and artistic CG anime. Belle’s avatar in particular does a freakishly good job of capturing the precise feel and movement of modern day Disney Princess design; you could slot her into Frozen and she wouldn’t feel out of place. But when the best, most fully realized scene in your movie is a romantic confession between two minor side characters with almost no impact on the main plot (I’m not even kidding, that scene is fucking wonderful), something has clearly gone wrong. Despite trying to say so much at once, it just isn’t well constructed enough to properly say anything at all. And unless Hosoda pulls himself out of this slump very soon, we may sadly have to come to terms with the fact that his days as a certified master are behind him. Until then, I give Belle a score of:

4/10

God, that was disappointing. Please let his next movie be better.

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #belle #Mamoru Hosoda #mamoru hosoda sr #2021 aniwatch

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maverick-werewolf · 2 years ago

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NEW BOOK - Tales of Wulfgard, Volume I

Newly revised for 2023, Tales of Wulfgard: Volume I is a collection of short stories. All have been edited, revised, and expanded, and one of my stories - “Hunted” - has been completely rewritten and greatly expanded to better accompany another of my Wulfgard story collections, The Hunt Never Ends.

For werewolf fans, this book includes two stories focusing on a werewolf/werewolves/lycanthropy and my own fictional takes thereon! Be sure to check it out!

Tales of Wulfgard, Volume 1 is a collection of stories by brother and sister Justin R. R. Stebbins and Maegan A. Stebbins, set in the dark fantasy world of Wulfgard! There are 5 tales, each exploring the background of a particular important character of Wulfgard.

Available for purchase here on Amazon in both ebook and paperback!

Details on each story below:

"Speak No Evil" - Whisper's Tale - by Justin -- Whisper has never lived anywhere except the City - never even been beyond its walls. She knows it like the back of her hand, knows the long faces of its dark buildings like the faces of old friends - almost her only friends. But there is a new gang in town: a shadowy cult kidnapping young street urchins for an unknown purpose. And Whisper becomes one of their victims.

"A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" - Chris's Tale - by Maegan -- On a lonely farm on the far northern frontier of the Achaean Empire, a young boy is born with stark white hair - a sure sign of witchcraft and sorcery. His loving parents protect him and keep him hidden from the sight of other people, who would surely see him killed for his dangerous abilities. But the fearful locals are not the only thing the family has to worry about: something lurks in the shadows of the forest near their home. Something with a taste for blood...

"Potential Energy" - Lord Plutarch's Tale - by Justin -- The House of Plutarchus is one of the oldest and most powerful families in all of the Achaean Empire. But its youngest son, Septimus Plutarch, wishes to make his own way in the world. With great care, he begins planning a life of power and prestige, and more importantly, independence. But one day he makes a discovery about himself that brings all his plans crumbling down... and opens up a new, far more dangerous path to even greater power.

"Hunted" - Caiden's Tale - by Maegan -- Since before recorded history, the ancient organization known as the Venatori have protected the people of the Achaean Empire from the threat of creatures far more powerful than any man: monsters. Even Caiden and Gwen - both highly trained hunters - find themselves outmatched when confronted with one of the deadliest beasts in the mortal realms: a werewolf. It will take all their experience and cunning to survive.

"Wake Not the Sleeping Bull" - Jörgen's Tale - by Justin -- Jörgen the Lone Bull is a proud son of Northrim, despite being an orphan. He wants nothing more than to protect his home from conquest by the ever-expanding Achaean Empire. After fighting skirmishes against them for years as an outlaw, he finally joins a Northern army willing to take the fight to the Imperials directly. But Jörgen finds that real war is not quite as glorious as he had hoped, and he may never be able to go home the same man he was before.

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misfitwashere · 2 months ago

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America’s four stories (Part 1)

Trump has offered extreme versions. The Democrats stopped offering them at all.

Robert Reich

Dec 12, 2024

Friends,

Democrats are finally waking up to the fact that Trump Republicans have succeeded in framing issues to their advantage. While it’s true that Kamala Harris lost by a small margin, the overriding reality is that through many elections, Democrats have failed to speak to America in ways that most Americans understand.

The challenge facing Democrats is deeper than simply finding the right words and phrases. To win back the heart and soul of America, Democrats must retell the four basic stories that have defined and animated the United States since its founding.

For most of the 20th century, Democrats did this instinctively. But in this century, they have tended to speak in technocratic terms, giving Republicans — culminating in Trump — the dominant political narrative.

I want to tell you about how the four basic American stories have been told and explain why it’s urgent that the real story of our era be told: that wealth and power concentrated at the top are corrupting American democracy and shafting most working people.

I. The Four Stories

There are four essential American stories. The first two are about hope; the second two are about fear.

The Triumphant Individual. This is the tale of the little guy who works hard, takes risks, believes in himself, and eventually gains wealth, fame, and honor.

It’s the story of self-made people who buck the odds, spurn the naysayers, and show what can be done with enough gumption and guts. They’re plainspoken, self-reliant, and uncompromising in their ideals — underdogs who make it through hard work and faith in themselves.

Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography is the first in a long line of U.S. self-help manuals about how to make it through self-sacrifice and diligence. The same story is epitomized in the life of Abe Lincoln, born in a log cabin, who believed that “the value of life is to improve one’s condition.”

The identical theme was captured in Horatio Alger’s hundred or so novellas, whose heroes all rise promptly and predictably from rags to riches. It’s celebrated in the tales of immigrant peddlers who become millionaire tycoons. And it’s found in the manifold stories of downtrodden fighters who undertake dangerous quests and find money and glory. Think Rocky Balboa, Norma Rae, and Erin Brockovich. The moral: With enough effort and courage, anyone can make it in the United States.

Trump wants Americans to think of him as the Triumphant Individual, and he has extolled others, such as JD Vance and Elon Musk, as similarly triumphant.

The Benevolent Community. This is the story of neighbors and friends who roll up their sleeves and pitch in for the common good.

Its earliest formulation was John Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity,” delivered on board a ship in Salem Harbor just before the Puritans landed in 1630 — a version of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, in which the new settlers would be “as a City upon a Hill,” “delight in each other,” and be “of the same body.”

Similar communitarian and religious images were used by the abolitionists, suffragettes, and civil rights activists of the 1950s and 1960s. “I have a dream that every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low,” said Martin Luther King Jr., extolling the ideal of the national community.

The story is captured in the iconic New England town meeting, in frontier settlers erecting one another’s barns, in neighbors volunteering as firefighters and librarians, and in small towns sending their high school achievers to college and their boys off to fight foreign wars. It suffuses Norman Rockwell’s paintings and Frank Capra’s movies. Consider the last scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” when George learns he can count on his neighbors’ generosity and goodness, just as they had always counted on him.

Trump Republicans have distorted the story of the Benevolent Community to show what America would be without “woke”ism, Critical Race Theory, transgender kids using bathrooms or being on high school sports teams inconsistent with their sex assigned at birth, “cat ladies” who choose not to have children, and other cultural bogeymen.

The Mob at the Gates. In this story, the United States is a beacon light of virtue in a world of darkness, uniquely blessed but continuously endangered by foreign menaces. Hence our endless efforts to contain the barbarism and tyranny beyond our borders.

Daniel Boone fought Native Americans — white America’s first evil empire. Davy Crockett battled Mexicans. The same story is found in the Whigs’ anti-English and pro-tariff histories of the United States, in the anti-immigration harangues of the late 19th century, and in World War II accounts of Nazi and Japanese barbarism.

It animates modern epics about space explorers (often sporting the stars and stripes) battling alien creatures bent on destroying the world. The narrative gave special force to Cold War tales during the 1950s of an international communist plot to undermine U.S. democracy, and subsequently of “evil” empires and axes.

The underlying lesson: We must maintain vigilance, lest diabolical forces overwhelm us.

Trump and his Republican enablers have emphasized this story to scare Americans into believing we’re being overridden by undocumented immigrants and taken advantage of by foreign nations who are allied with us and major trading partners.

The Rot at the Top. The last story concerns the malevolence of powerful elites. It’s a tale of corruption, decadence, and irresponsibility in high places — of conspiracy against the common citizen.

It started with King George III, and, to this day, it shapes the way we view government — mostly with distrust.

The great bullies of American fiction have often symbolized Rot at the Top: William Faulkner’s Flem Snopes, Willie Stark as the Huey Long-like character in All the King’s Men, Lionel Barrymore’s demonic Mr. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and the antagonists who hound the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath.

Suspicions about Rot at the Top have inspired what historian Richard Hofstadter called the paranoid style in U.S. politics — from the pre-Civil War Know-Nothings and Anti-Masonic movements through the Ku Klux Klan and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts.

The myth has also given force to the great populist movements of U.S. history, from Andrew Jackson’s attack on the Bank of the United States in the 1830s through William Jennings Bryan’s prairie populism of the 1890s.

Trump and his Republicans have used this story against government workers, civil servants, independent agencies, the FBI, and other examples of a so-called “deep state.”

II. The Democrats’ Initial Success in Telling These Four Stories

Speak to these four stories and you resonate with the tales Americans have been telling each other since our founding — the two hopeful stories rendered more vivid by contrast to the two fearful ones.

These four mental boxes are always going to be filled somehow, because people don’t think in terms of isolated policies or issues. If they’re to be understandable, policies and issues must fit into these larger stories about where we have been as a nation, what we are up against, and where we should be going.

Major shifts in governance — in party alignments and political views — have been precipitated by one party or the other becoming better at telling these four stories.

In the early decades of the 20th century, progressives and Democrats filled all four boxes.

They accused leaders of big business of being the Rot at the Top. They argued that the large industrial concentrations of the era, the trusts, were stifling the upward mobility of millions of potential Triumphant Individuals and poisoning democracy.

During his 1912 campaign, Woodrow Wilson (who also promoted racism) promised to wage

“a crusade against powers that have governed us ... that have limited our development, that have determined our lives, that have set us in a straitjacket to do as they please.”

The struggle to break up the trusts would be nothing less than “a second struggle for emancipation,” by a national Benevolent Community intent on restoring freedom and democracy.

Wilson’s Mob at the Gates was composed of the large, bellicose states of prewar Europe who posed similar challenges to democratic freedoms. Wilson grimly rallied Americans to “defeat once and for all ... the sinister forces” that rendered peace impossible.

Theodore Roosevelt shared Wilson’s antipathy toward trusts, but by the 1920s, Republicans were mostly apologists for big business and Wall Street. That was okay with Americans as long as the economy roared, but it left the Grand Old Party vulnerable in harder times, which soon came.

Like today’s Trump Republicans, the GOP’s approach to foreign policy through most of the 20th century was mainly to avoid the Mob at the Gates — close the doors to immigrants, erect tariff walls, and isolate the nation.

They celebrated the wealth of Triumphant Individuals but didn’t champion upward mobility or equal opportunity, and they offered no particular view of the United States as a Benevolent Community. As such, they stayed firmly in the minority most of the first half of the 20th century.

The Great Depression and World War II presented the United States with palpable illustrations of the Democratic stories.

By the 1930s, the Rot at the Top included Wall Street as well as big business. In the 1936 presidential campaign, Franklin D. Roosevelt warned against “economic royalists” who had impressed the whole of society into service. “The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor ... these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship,” he warned. What was at stake, he concluded, was nothing less than the “survival of democracy.”

To cope with the Depression, Americans needed a national Benevolent Community. “I see one third of our nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished,” FDR told a nation whose citizens clearly understood they were all in this together. He described the purpose of the New Deal as “extending to our national life the old principle of the local community.” “We are determined,” Roosevelt said, “to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern.”

The Social Security Act was not just a social insurance scheme but the very symbol of national solidarity. Henceforth, all American families would share the risk of becoming unemployed or losing the family’s breadwinner or retiring without adequate savings.

Then came Adolf Hitler’s war, which cemented this national unity as FDR led the country — over the objections of Republican isolationists — into battle with the most fearsome Mob at the Gates it had ever encountered.

Democrats managed the transition from Depression and world war to postwar prosperity and the Cold War with only slight alterations in story line. The Benevolent Community remained at the core of Harry S Truman’s Fair Deal, John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier, and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

The upwardly mobile Triumphant Individual depended on federal provisions — the GI Bill, government-backed mortgages, a guarantee of equal civil rights.

Meanwhile, the Democrats continued their assault on the Mob at the Gates, but now the Mob was the dangerous and expansive Soviet Union. Truman stopped the communists in Korea. Kennedy stopped them in Berlin and during the Cuban missile crisis. And he tried to stop them in Vietnam, which he saw as “the finger in the dike” holding back the Soviets.

Johnson, of course, tragically tried and failed to erect a dam against the North Vietnamese and their patrons.

While Republicans continued to wrestle with the isolationists and nervous Nellies — such as Senator Robert Taft of Ohio — Democrats spoke of paying any price and bearing any burden to protect the United States.

III. When the Democrats’ Changed Their Stories

In the 1960s, the Rot at the Top gradually dropped out of the Democratic message. Gone were tales of greedy businessmen and unscrupulous financiers.

This was partly because the economy had changed profoundly. Postwar prosperity allowed the middle class to explode in size and the gap between rich and poor to shrink. White-collar workers were now abundant, and blue-collar workers got generous wage increases that could be absorbed by the huge postwar market.

Rot at the Top rhetoric was also a casualty of the Vietnam War, which spawned an anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian New Left and split Democrats down the middle.

For many liberals, the Rot came to be personified by Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and even the federal government itself. (Ironically, Richard Nixon’s White House and the Watergate scandal would hurt the Democrats, too, by confirming that the Rot at the Top was to be found in government rather than among business elites.)

The Vietnam War also undermined Democrats’ confidence about the Mob at the Gates. Soviet communism remained dangerous, to be sure, but the McGovern wing of the party had no clear plan of action. Indeed, its approach seemed redolent of the Republican isolationists of the earlier part of the century, who wanted the United States simply to turn its back on the Mob.

After President Carter and the hostage crisis, even when Democrats did try to tell this story, they seemed uncertain of themselves.

In short, Democrats and progressives came off as confused and conflicted about the dangers the United States faced. They stopped talking about both the Rot at the Top and the Mob at the Gates and thus ceased giving Americans convincing stories about what the nation was up against.

Tomorrow, in Part 2, I discuss why the Democrats left Trump to tell his fake version of the Rot at the Top, not the real one.

#robert reich

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tomorrowedblog · 5 months ago

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Friday Releases for September 20

Friday is the busiest day of the week for new releases, so we've decided to collect them all in one place. Friday Releases for September 20 include Wolfs, A Different Man, The Substance, and more.

Wolfs

Wolfs, the new movie from Jon Watts, is out today.

George Clooney and Brad Pitt reunite for the action comedy WOLFS. Clooney plays a professional fixer hired to cover up a high profile crime. But when a second fixer (Pitt) shows up and the two “lone wolves” are forced to work together, they find their night spiraling out of control in ways that neither one of them expected.

A Different Man

A Different Man, the new movie from Aaron Schimberg, is out today.

Aspiring actor Edward undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance. But his new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare, as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost.

The Substance

The Substance, the new movie from Coralie Fargeat, is out today.

Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? You. Only better in every way. You’ve got to try this new product. It changed my life.

Eureka

Eureka, the new movie from Lisandro Alonso, is out today.

The protean Argentinean director Lisandro Alonso continues to shapeshift, delight, and challenge with his marvelous and immersive new film, which takes the viewer on an unexpected journey through three stories set in wildly different terrain, each of them reflecting lives haunted by the specter of colonialist violence. In the first, Viggo Mortensen and Chiara Mastroianni guest-star in a black-and-white neo-Western pastiche following a taciturn gunslinger seeking revenge in a lawless frontier town. In the second section, in a different kind of law-and-order narrative, set during the present day in the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, we accompany a Native American cop (Alaina Clifford) on her nighttime patrols, revealing a community troubled by addiction and poverty, but also, because of the cop’s good-hearted basketball coach niece (Sadie Lapointe), touched by transcendence. Finally, the film travels to the magnificent Brazilian rainforest of the 1970s, where Indigenous workers pan for gold while articulating their dream lives. Cleverly transitioning between segments without hand-holding the viewer, Alonso has created an improbably unified aesthetic experience that leaves it up to us to make the connections among its transient worlds.

Long Gone Heroes

Long Gone Heroes, the new movie from John Swab, is out today.

Gunner, a special forces soldier who has witnessed the darkest side of country and combat, is forced back into the field of battle to save his niece, who is being held in South America. As the fight intensifies, Gunner and his team discover that her disappearance is part of a corrupt private operation that hits way too close to home.

Never Let Go

Never Let Go, the new movie from Alexandre Aja, is out today.

In this new psychological thriller/horror, as an evil takes over the world beyond their front doorstep, the only protection for a mother, played by Academy Award winner Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball), and her twin sons is their house and their family’s protective bond. Needing to stay connected at all times – even tethering themselves with ropes – they cling to one another, urging each other to never let go. But when one of the boys questions if the evil is real, the ties that bind them together are severed, triggering a terrifying fight for survival.

Omni Loop

Omni Loop, the new movie from Bernardo Britto, is out today.

OMNI LOOP follows Zoya Lowe (Parker), a quantum physicist who finds herself in a time loop, with a black hole growing in her chest and only a week to live. But what the doctors and her family don’t know is that she has already lived this week before; so many times, in fact, that she doesn’t even know how long it’s been. Until one day Zoya meets a gifted student named Paula (Edebiri). Together they team up to save her life – and to unlock the mysteries of time travel.

Transformers One

Transformers One, the new movie from Josh Cooley, is out today.

TRANSFORMERS ONE is the untold origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron, better known as sworn enemies, but once were friends bonded like brothers who changed the fate of Cybertron forever.

La Maison

La Maison, the new TV series from José Caltagirone and Valentine Milville, is out today.

High fashion meets high stakes in this realistic behind-the-scenes look at how an iconic fashion house is thrown into scandal and reinvention by a viral video featuring star designer Vincent Ledu (Lambert Wilson), leaving his family’s iconic and legendary haute couture house, LEDU, hanging by a thread. Perle Foster (Amira Casar), Vincent’s former muse who is still in his shadow, teams up with visionary next-generation designer Paloma Castel (Zita Hanrot) to save, evolve and renew the century-old Maison LEDU. Taking advantage of Vincent’s demise, Diane Rovel (Carole Bouquet), the ruthless CEO of the powerful Rovel luxury group, launches an offensive to acquire what she sees as her most important prize: Maison LEDU. To achieve her goal, anything is fair game, as this is more than acquiring just another brand — it’s about revenge.

Frostpunk 2

Frostpunk 2, the new game from 11 bit studios, is out today.

Develop, expand, and advance your city in a society survival game set 30 years after an apocalyptic blizzard ravaged Earth. In Frostpunk 2, you face not only the perils of never-ending winter, but also the powerful factions that watch your every step inside the Council Hall.

Lorn’s Lure

Lorn’s Lure, the new game from Rubeki Games, is out today.

An android is led through a vast structure by a glitch in his visual system. Lorn's Lure is an atmospheric narrative first-person platformer with novel climb-anything mechanics and modernized retro 3D graphics.

Parking Garage Rally Circuit

Parking Garage Rally Circuit, the new game from Walaber Entertainment, is out today.

Retro Arcade Rally Racing... in Parking Garages?!? Precision driving with tight simple controls and arcade physics, all in a Sega Saturn style presentation.

MIXTAPE PLUTO

MIXTAPE PLUTO, the new album from Future, is out today.

The Genuine Articulate

The Genuine Articulate, the new album from The Alchemist, is out today.

#Games #Movies #TV #Music #News

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project1939 · 8 months ago

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200 Films of 1952

Film number 169: Denver and Rio Grande

Release date: May 16th, 1952

Studio: Paramount

Genre: western

Director: Byron Haskin

Producer: Nat Holt, Harry Templeton

Actors: Edmond O’Brien, Sterling Hayden, Kasey Rogers

Plot Summary: In 1870 as work begins on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, a rival group, led by McCabe, hopes to complete their own railway in the same area. McCabe is willing to resort to any means, including deadly violence, to sabotage the D & RG. Jim Vesser, one of the D & RG’s head men, fights back with his own extra-legal plan.

My Rating (out of five stars): ***

Although there is nothing spectacular about this film, I did find myself engrossed in it all the way through. I’m a big dork who has always found the history of building railroads and telegraph lines in early 19th century America kind of thrilling. In just a few years it totally transformed a country it was believed would take hundreds of years to populate. I also wanted to watch it because I love Sterling Hayden. Overall, it’s not a bad way to spend 90 minutes, even if it’s no cinematic masterpiece. (some spoilers)

The Good

Kasey Rogers! She was the revelation of the film for me. She took a role that could’ve been boring and thankless and elevated it to one of the most interesting. I was really impressed with her acting. Reading about her in real life only increased my affection for her. She was on Bewitched in the 1960s, she was pretty liberal, and she wrote several books. Most badass of all, she got interested in Motocross racing in the 1970s and worked at getting more women into the sport! She helped establish the first association for a women’s pro-league! I found a new love!

Sterling Hayden as a bad guy. I like him a lot as an actor, but he was so good at making me hate him in this! The gross fuzzy beard he wore definitely helped though!

Edmond O’Brien. He was effective as a tough frontier dude- he really looked the part. He’s so much of a man’s man, I didn’t find him all that attractive personally, but I think a pretty boy type wouldn’t have worked as well in the role.

I liked the hint of the romance that happened in it. We saw no kiss or direct evidence of it beyond a little flirting. A slight arm around the waist was more emotionally stirring than a smooch would have been.

The story was interesting and filled with constant back and forth combat. There were several impressive explosions, and I’m not someone who’s really into that stuff. The movie didn’t give you time to get bored, even if you could fairly easily predict the final outcome.

The use of real trains was also impressive. Most of them did not appear to be models.

There was also a lot of nice location footage.

Technicolor always looks better inside a studio than outdoors, but I thought it looked quite good here.

The Bad:

The “good guy” “bad guy” stuff was a little too simplistic at times. There weren’t many grey areas to add complexity.

It wasn’t too difficult to predict how everything would turn out in the end.

There were sooo many gunfights! Yes, I know it’s a western, and gun flights are obligatory, but I got pretty bored with them after a while.

All the extra-legal stuff! It was brought up several times that Vesser should wait to let the law handle things rather than become a billboard for vigilante justice. I kept hoping the film wouldn’t reward him or glorify him for maneuvering outside the law. It did reward him, unsurprisingly. Worst of all, the Sheriff tried to give him some legal repercussions at the end, but when the General in charge of the whole project said, “You’ll have to arrest me too,” the Sherriff totally backed down. So not only did vigilante justice win in the end, it won by proving the law is less important the more power you have. That’s certainly true in real life, but I didn’t like that it was portrayed as a positive thing in this movie!

The comedy relief characters fell flat to me. I like Zasu Pitts, but her escapades with the Irish engineer made me cringe instead of laugh.

Re: the movie poster, who was Laura Elliot? Shouldn't the name Kasey Rogers have been there? Wait, I just figured it out- Rogers was billed under the stage name Laura Elliot earlier in her career. Huh.

#1952 movies #100 films of 1952 #kasey rogers #sterling hayden #200 films of 1952 #200 films of 1952 film 169

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breelandwalker · 8 months ago

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THE FINAL UPDATE:

Y'all know that feeling when you get onto a rollercoaster and you think you're ready and you're all braced for shit, and then you just get thrown around and windwhipped to hell and back and you scream your head off, and then suddenly the ride is over and you're sitting at the depot like tf just happened.

That's kind of how the last stretch of missions went.

With as few spoilers as possible, highlights include:

closure and reconciliation for Wyll and his dad (YES. ULDER. YOUR SON IS A GODDAMN HERO. SHOW SOME RESPECT.)

meeting Voss' dragon pal

finally beating the shit out of Gortash (good GODS if ever a man needed his entire ass kicked up and down the entirety of the Sword Coast TWICE)

sobbing my entire heart out over the ensuing conversation with Karlach (my sweet bestie, the narrative did you so dirty, you deserve the fucking world 😭)

classic puzzle-solving dungeon crawl under Wyrm's Rock with a rotating crew bc different things need different skillsets and maybe i wanted to pretend the whole gang was there don't judge me (but we are judging the SHIT out of Astarion for apparently being a REAL asshole in his previous career, you sure your last name is Ancunin and not Turpin? no more gavel for you)

DRAGON DRAGON DRAGO-....oh. that's gonna complicate things.

WAIT NEVERMIND

....i'm sorry, the Emperor is WHOMST??????

welp.

props to Wyll for coming into his own and also Blade of Avernus sounds way more badass than Blade of Frontiers (also I see you and Karlach vibing back there, don't think we didn't notice 😏)

So then there was nothing left to do but one last supply run, one last round of hugs and kisses in camp, and then off to fight the big brain. (For those wanting to know, my final fight team was Karlach, Astarion, and Shadowheart.) We got thrashed for a bit, then it was into the prism to regroup. We did choose to free Orpheus, which didn't go over well with Tall, Dark, and Squidly.

From there, we portaled back to the Gate for one last rally, walked into the High Hall like Aragorn returning to Edoras, and....wow, I had no idea we had so many allies. Like I knew we'd helped a lot of people but DAMN. The entire room was full!

AND MY BABY OWLBEAR WAS ALL GROWN UP AND ARMORED! Omg my sweet floofy boy, all ready to rip and tear. Mama's so proud! Also SO much tiefling solidarity. All my peeps from Arabella to Zevlor turned up and I know it's game canon but my girl couldn't help having a moment of I Think I Have Done A Good For My People Here.

Then it was all a blur of stairs and fighting and dodging artillery and calling on allies and okay can we BREATHE for five seconds? Angelic Reprieve, Hero's Feast, and....here we fuckin go.

The last fight is BRUTAL. Even in Explorer, it pulls no punches and it took me a few tries. But in the end, WE WON. The big brain went squish, the floating mind palace fell into the river, and we all washed up like half-drowned rats to find a whole lot of dead mindflayers and a city that is once more safe...for now.

The Aftermath: (Spoilers for endgame)

Orpheus asked for an honorable death and bequeathed his dragons and his mission to Lae'zel, who promptly took off for the Astral Sea to liberate her people. Cue my tiefling waving goodbye like, you're still an insufferable cunt, but I respect you.

Gale decided to be a bit of a dick about the crown and sort of just...walked away to become a god. (And then was even MORE of a dick at the reunion party later.) So much for that. Guess my tiefling made the right choice after all.

With the tadpoles out of commission, Astarion became allergic to the sun again and had to SCAMPER away from the docks before he burned up. We'll catch up with him later.

Karlach's engine finally gave out and as she was starting to burn, Wyll stepped in and offered to escort her back to Avernus to save her life, promising he'd keep her safe from Zariel. Then we got a nice little cutscene of the two of them preparing to kick INFERNAL amounts of ass together. (I SHIP IT SO HARD. LARIEN YOU COWARDS, THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN AN AMAZING DLC.)

Once everything calmed down and the remaining party members retreated to the Elfsong for some heavy drink and a good night's sleep, we got our romantic epilogue. And of COURSE, my tiefling is staying with her bitchy feral tomcat of a vampire, who is SO much happier now, and they'll be setting out on a quest to find him a way to walk in the sun again. And is it a coincidence that the Til Death Do Us Part ring is on her finger? No it is not. 🥰

Six months later, we catch up with everyone at the reunion party, learn some fun new developments (AGAIN, MISSED OPPORTUNITIES FOR DLC), read some grateful letters from the people we helped, and rest on our laurels for the time being.

Bit of a shame we have to wait until the party to find out how things went for Halsin, but as predicted, Papa Bear (DADDY HALSIN gfdi devs you did that on purpose) has built a refuge in Reithwin for anyone who needs a place to go and is raising several dozen orphaned children as a single dad. And yes, he will be seeing his tiefling honey there very soon to help with storytime. Among other things. 😏

So that's the end! We saved the world, we saved everyone we could possibly save, the whole party made it out alive and they lived happily ever after. What a glow-up it's been. My tiefling started out with nothing, just a broke homeless druid from the Gate, and wound up becoming a hero, saving the realm, making some amazing friends, elevating her people, and finding love not once, but twice.

Fabulous game, 100/10, will play again and again and again. Feel free to drop questions in my inbox if you have them.

Until next time!

Tfw you're nearing the end of Act II in your BG3 run and you realize you've fallen into the exact trap you said you were going to avoid FROM THE BEGINNING.

The devs knew exactly what they were doing, didn't they.

#bg3 #IT'S FINALLY FINISHED #I AM FEELING ALL OF THE FEELINGS #and hugging my tiefling bb because i'm still not ready to leave this story or the happy place it made in my brain #it was a great ride and i wanna go again!#but i'm not allowed to start another playthrough until i finish a certain project so...i'll have to wait #thank you for coming along and i hope you've enjoyed the saga! 💜

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shihalyfie · 3 years ago

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The meaning of the Beast Spirits in Frontier, and what it means to control it

(On request by @digitalgate02.)

When you think about it, Frontier can be framed as a story of outcasts or misfits having to accept the idea of “changing themselves” in order to become better people, both literally in the sense of embracing physical transformation, and metaphorically in the sense of making attempts to do better. Implicitly, it speaks a lot as to how quickly these kids accept the idea of turning into something else -- perhaps implying as to how ostracized they’ve felt that such a thing instantly sounds appealing -- but it also adds some interesting layers to the concept of the Beast Spirit and how the difficulty of “controlling it” ties into each character’s personal story.

I think a lot of it has to do with the idea that these kids did have inclinations of being selfish or shallow at the beginning -- while they were full of potential to become heroes, they definitely started off as unlikely misfits at the beginning. In that respect, you can see the Beast Spirits arc as a sort of lesson that great power must be used wisely and responsibility...

Believe it or not, our biggest clue to all of this comes from episode 16, Izumi’s episode. It’s not directly stated in words, and the abstract summary of “determination” is passed off as a joke, but looking at the context clues around the episode indicates that’s actually not far off.

The thing is that Calmaramon is depicted as having the hardest time with her Beast Spirit compared to practically about anyone else in the group, and one of the recurring themes about it is that it’s partially because her personality is downright terrible. If you look at the context clues behind the prior episode (15), you’ll notice that while her looks are briefly brought up as an issue there and in this episode, the part that’s really freaking everyone out (and is making everyone worried Izumi will turn out to be the same) is that they actually saw it have an impact on her personality, where she was clearly conscious and able to talk but also indiscriminately destroying everything and enjoying it. At least in the case of Kouji, Takuya, and Junpei, they can be forgiven because they all did their best to keep it under control after the initial fallout, but Ranamon changing into Calmaramon had also involved her becoming someone actively reveling in senseless destruction. When everyone worries that Izumi might turn out like that, they don’t even bring up looks at all, and they all recoil when she does start showing signs of being destructive anyway.

The thing is, the entire rest of the episode puts a massive spotlight on Izumi’s actions of standing up for the Gomamon and empathizing with their loneliness (which, given the contexts added about Izumi’s background and backstory in episodes 8 and 26, are most likely her feeling that the concept of “being isolated from others no matter how much you want to reach them” hit way too hard for her) to the point she puts her foot down to override the boys’ prior plan of chasing the Toucanmon and their Digivices. She actually faces quite a bit of protest from the boys on this issue, and even admits she’s not sure if her own plan will work, but focuses on the idea of doing her best to undo the whirlpool with her abilities -- that is to say, using her power to protect and help others.

This sentiment of “I have to protect everyone” drives Izumi’s actions for the rest of the episode, to the point it’s the only thought consuming her head right before she finds and claims her Beast Spirit. So to make it clear, at the time she claimed it, the thought of “protecting others” was desperately, single-mindedly consuming her head...

...and the contrast is immediately apparent when Shutumon emerges, and the only thing Ranamon cares about is looks.

In other words, the reason the Beast Spirit wasn’t working out for Ranamon/Calmaramon is that she only wanted the Beast Spirit’s power for the sake of pride, vanity, and dominating others, and because of that, she had difficulty controlling it because it resonated with those feelings -- after all, although she wanted to “control” it to the extent of not carrying her all over the place, she was perfectly fine with the part about causing wanton destruction. Izumi, on the other hand, is clearly holding herself back even after her first evolution to Shutumon -- trying to keep a calm head -- and, after all, her entire motivation had been driven by “helping and protecting others” for the whole episode, so she doesn’t want to let this fail on her now, and she keeps that calm head all the way throughout the rest of it.

When we get to the next episode (17), you’ll also notice that one of the first things Blizzarmon (Tomoki) does is actively attempt to restrain himself. If you look back at what Tomoki’s character arc is about, he’d spent the better part of his past being bullied by others and tossed around, so “overpowering the weak” is the last thing Tomoki ever wants to do (especially given the events of this episode, as well). So, having witnessed the potential consequences of the Beast Spirit with the other boys, it stands to reason that Tomoki would want to avoid “hurting others” so much that restraining this would be a strong priority for him. While it’s commented that it does take his personality out of control a bit, the worst it ever gets is that he seems to be overly elated and cheerful about his defeats, but that’s also in line with Tomoki constantly having been pushed down so much during his life that you can imagine he’s enjoying the opportunity to finally be strong and have the spotlight.

But because he hates the concept of bullying and pushing others down so much, it stands to reason that he wouldn’t really have as much of a problem with that.

So when you look back at the prior episodes with the Beast Spirits with this context, you can see it applying there as well. In episode 14, Junpei was spending the better part of the first half of the episode livid at what was happening to his friends -- absolutely pissed at Grottomon for taking Izumi's spirit (and, despite Izumi's doubts, it's pretty apparent he actually does care about it beyond just having a crush on her), and then upset at the idea of being a sitting duck while Agnimon and Wolfmon are getting tossed around. While Junpei initially has trouble keeping the Spirit under control, the exact moment he gets a grip on himself is the moment he reaffirms his determination to fight for the sake of his friends.

Looking back at the other two episodes about rampaging Beast Spirits in episodes 10 and 12, you can also see why the concept applies there as well. It’s interesting how the “worst” rampage shown among the main protagonist Beast Spirits was not the first one obtained (Garmmon) but the second one (Vritramon), and if you look at the circumstances surrounding them, it doesn’t seem to mean as much about Takuya having any particular stronger tendency towards condescending violence as much as the sheer circumstances that went on behind them:

Kouji obtained his Beast Spirit under the circumstances of already knowing that he needed to protect Gotsumon with that power (and, moreover, having spent the end of the prior episode and the duration of the beginning of this one mulling on Ophanimon’s warning that he’d need to “grow” before he could obtain it). Therefore, “using this power for the desire to protect others” was a huge thought in his head from the very beginning, even though -- presumably partially because this was a first time for everyone -- it threw him off just enough for him to end up exhausting himself.

Takuya obtained his without warning and without proper understanding of what he was dealing with, having had it practically forced on him after Shamamon-as-Vritramon’s defeat, and so, with no context of purpose and no real depth of what he was about to get into, he ended up on a complete destructive rampage. He was snapped out successfully by the need to not hurt someone (Tomoki), and spent the rest of the episode agonizing and mulling over the risks and meaning of having such power before he eventually evolved into Vritramon without too much issue the second time.

So the point is made clear: the “destructive” and “uncontrollable” impulses associated with the Beast Spirits will be sent out of control if the user doesn’t have a strong desire to use it with proper purpose. For Ranamon/Calmaramon, she had the worst time with it because she was the single most obsessed out of the Legendary Warriors to use it to stroke her own ego and vanity, whereas at least the other three Cherubimon-allied ones (besides Duskmon -- see below) were at least capable of using it towards a greater goal, and the remaining five went through the proper outlets of thinking about how this power should be used and how it shouldn’t be used lightly.

While the issue of the Beast Spirits being inherently difficult to control isn’t as prominent as we go later into the series, we do actually see shades of it when we get to the tale of Kouichi/Duskmon/Velgrmon, because while part of it can be chalked up to the power of darkness being consuming, Kouichi, during his first transformation to Velgrmon in episode 30, is only able to talk barely coherently and is really just venting his rage and anger out, presumably because his entire state of mind is locked into all of that, making the rampage even worse. (Also keeping in mind the theme of embracing the idea of changing yourself, you can also think of this in terms of how Kouichi is getting so consumed by his own emotions of anger that he’s become almost completely unrecognizable from his original self.)

Once we get his first “proper” evolution in episode 33, however, Kouichi is abundantly aware of what he’s done and has all of the proper determination to never let such a thing happen again -- so it’s not surprising that his evolution to KaiserLeomon happens with relatively little incident.

#digimon #digimon frontier #shihameta

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ohheyitsokay · 3 years ago

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Okay so I finally came up with a Soulmate AU request to celebrate your (very well-deserved) milestone! How about a soulmark au with poly frontier? I’m really curious to hear your thoughts on how everyone would handle having the same mark as four other people! (Aside from Will and Benny of course - so maybe everyone else has two marks while they each have one??) - Ghost

ghost, my first fandom friend, by biggest encourager of self-indulgent chaos... I sincerely hope you enjoy

warnings: this takes place "in" my poly frontier au, which means it's 18+.

and by in, I mean this is an au to my au, so just... yeah. you know what's happening.

soulmate requests / follower celebration

They knew, deep down that they were soulmates before the marks came in solid.

Even when there was just the faintest echo of shading, almost a bruise of a moment, they already knew.

Because the four of them, and Tom, had willing gone to hell and back with each other. They had felt the lifeblood bleed out of each other, and given their very breath to try to make up for it, sacrificed... everything, for each other. Not for their country, like the thought, and it wasn't even for the greater good that they survived - it was the men who's eyes found each other's across the fire that fortified their souls. And they'd been pushed and pulled and stretched together, and when only four remained, thoroughly broken and then healing together, they knew.

Months into therapy, each on their own, and a lifetime into tired phonecalls with quiet apologies, the tattoos solidified.

It was Santi who organized the dinner

"Can... can I ask you guys something?"

"A little late for that, don't you think?" Will’s words were without bite, and he sipped his drink carefully.

"Fuck off," he said begrudgingly, endearingly. "Your guy's... came in, too?" That part was false confidance, a thin veil over wild fear.

"Yep," Frankie's tone was matter-of-fact, satisfied. Glances and nods, they all... processed it. Benny swallowed the last of his drink and Frankie's knuckles ran over his thighs. Santi inhaled deeply before letting the breathe out slowly, trying to ignore the slight tremble of his hands.

It was messy, the soulmate talk. They'd been having it all their lives - the intricacies that even the world's most powerful governments still couldn't untangle. And Frankie and Santi each had two.

Will dragged his thumb through the condensation on his glass, looking involuntarily at his brother.

"I need to tell you guys something." Their heads shot up to look at him, and Benny almost laughed.

"There's someone else."

They were looking at him in blank shock, an appropriate reaction.

"Fuck."

"You know this... how, exactly?"

"Childhood friend. She got two, in college. Matches Will and me, the same as you guys. " Ben sounded almost giddy, his words making the chaos real.

"Mom hated it - was sure one of us was going to die or get our heart broken. But then we saw your guy's and -"

"Fuck."

"Yeah."

"Why didn't you say anything before now?" Frankie was mad. It was too much - it felt unreal.

"She said she didn't want to choose either brother, said it didn't feel right."

"Now we know why, I guess." Benny's hand ran across Frankie's shoulder, his attempt to make light of it all had been put aside.

"She?"

"Yeah."

Pope dragged his hand along his jaw, drink forgotten. There was a familiar glint in his eye, and Will knew he felt it too - like it or not, it felt right. Frankie would take longer to convince - he looked like he wanted to crack his head open and cook whatever was inside.

"You guys should meet her."

Catfish made a strangled noise, and Will couldn't help but kiss his temple.

"Whenever you're ready."

It took weeks.

Frankie went silent for ten days, ignoring calls and texts, before Will came home and found him on his couch.

They talked for awhile and it was nice, different than therapy. Not about being Delta, not about Columbia or cocaine, they talked about... you. About how you'd been Will's first love, since he was a pretend knight in shining armor, and you'd asked to be the dragon. About how he'd seen that same look in Benny's eyes when you'd been the only one to turn up at one of his high school shows. Their long talks, trying to figure out how to move on from their soulmate, how impossible it felt until they all met on the force. About how scary it was, for all these friendships to become something so... unknown.

And over chili, Frankie sighed, and agreed to meet you. Because of Will, he was already in love with you more than he'd admit even to himself.

They invited you over to Santi's for dinner, not wanting to cause a scene at a restaurant.

Benny hugged you the moment you walked in, crushing your nerves and your ribcage at the same time. Your hand cradled his cheek, a reassuring touch.

Then Will gently pulled you into his arms, harboring you against his chest. He asked questions into your hair, and you grabbed fistfulls of his shirt before you nodded.

The one they introduced as Frankie - Catfish - didn't touch you but he might as well have. He stepping into your space, looking right into your eyes, standing over you like he was as tall as Ben. His words were kind, and careful. His tattoos matched yours.

The other - Santi, Pope - dropped the package of farmer's market veggies he'd been holding onto the ground. Then he shook your hand, while the others shot him looks like he'd grown an extra head. You wondered if Will had texted you the wrong names - he didn't seem excited to meet you like they'd said. If anything, he seemed caught off-guard, like there was a confidance you had taken away. But his tattoos matched yours.

Your nerves returned.

Food helped, polite conversations melting into teasing stories and giddy laughter. They ate a lot, and you smiled when they shared bites with each other. Under the table Benny’s hand found yours, and squeezed before he got distracted. Above, Will touched your cheek and for the first time, you let yourself lean into his warmth.

And when you began to clean the dishes, something shifted. Frankie's hands ran over yours in the soapy water, and he seemed startled, but he shifter closer to you, both of you flushing as you sought the touch again.

Moments later you stumbled upon Santi looking at the stars when you took out the trash. It was flattering, that such a man would be nervous because of you. Standing on your toes, you kissed his cheek, and he pulled you into his arms, grab so tight you though you understood his fears. His palm held your head against his neck,, and you wrapped your arms around his broad ribcage. Will found you like that, and leaned against the doorframe, watching.

You felt like you were free falling, and you could tell they felt it too. It was a lot to take in, but no one seemed like they wanted the night to end. Trading stories and sharing glances, it dragged on and on, until Francisco caught you yawning, and coaxed the evening to a close.

By the time he succeeded, you knew, and so did they. Marks be damned - this was it.

Your first individual date was with Benny. It wasn't as easy as either of you expected - his own anxiety about the situation finally catching up to his excitement. He was a good friend, always had been, always would be, and you knew him like the back of your hand. Dating had been off-limits for so long.... it was going to take time to rewrite.

"I just... I love you. I love you all so much." Your Ben was always honest. It would've felt like a crazy thing to say, on a first date, but everything about this wasn't traditional.

"I love you too, Ben, you know I do." Your voice was quiet, trying to convey how strange this was for you, too, and he let out a long, slow breath. After awhile, air full of thoughtful silence, his shoulders relaxed and he smiled, soft and happy.

His rough hands found yours again, and this time, he didn't let go until he had to.

When you met Frankie for lunch, you felt suddenly shy. His dark eyes felt like they could see right into your heart, and you fidgeted, hoping he liked whatever he saw.

He talked like he knew you, and you felt like he did, a strange comfort in the chaos of your worlds. When your wrist bumped your glass he caught both, hand lingering on your skin as he ducked his head and pulled his eyes away.

Words came easier, then, and more and more, until suddenly you felt like maybe fate know what it was doing.

Frankie was thoughtful - so thoughtful and careful and kind, you watched him in awe, tempted to hug him without abandon. And he talked with passion, about your boys, how they saved him time and time again, and how he took care of them, when you couldn't.

You realized, as you kissed his cheek goodbye, that he was the one who helped change Benny's tire, so he could make it to your birthday party a few years ago. Footsteps already on the way down the street, your heart tugged, begging you to take one last look at his fluffy curls and steady eyes. When you turned back, he was watching you, hands in his pockets, and you wondered as you waved if it was too soon to say you were head over heels for Francisco Morales.

Dinner with Santi felt the most like a first date, of all of them. He was quick to flirt, but his eyes held yours, and his smile was perfectly crooked, and you knew he meant every word.

He told you information, rather than stories, rambling excitedly, one train of thought stringing into the next. When he realized his tangents, he flushed, wringing his napkin as he apologized.

"Don't," you shushed him, "Tell me more, please."

He was silent for a moment, pausing to drink you in, heart racing in spite of himself. And then he resumed, and you thought maybe you got it.

For years, he'd had loves all around him, but... you were his first opportunity to be romantic in a dramatic way, as intense as his heart had ached for, silently. It was lovely, watching him settle into his skin, and when he kissed your temple that night, it was a thank you, and a promise.

Despite all logic, the free falling and stumbling steps towards whatever came next, he made you feel safe.

It was a familiar grassy hill, you met Will on, one you'd climb to when you were teens who needed to talk.

He sat close - closer than he ever had - but enough away that you could move, if you wanted to. It was strange, talking about the others with him, seeing the relief in his eyes as your honesty poured out. Moments later, he matched it, and you saw that golden glow as he smiled.

"I'm glad, really I am."

You waited.

"But..." gently, you bumped into him and he looked at you, blue eyes questioning. "I know you, Will."

His smile grew.

"Could I... I want to kiss you." It wasn't really a question - and he held himself back, watching for your response. There was no need to add I want to kiss you because I've been waiting to, aching to. Since we were kids - let me kiss you first. Please. Both lf you knew what he meant.

You weren't sure who leaned in first, but his hands, grabbed at your cheeks, fingertips in your hair, and his lips were warm and soft.

It, all of it, felt like home.

taglist:

@fangirl-316 @scribbledghost @writeforfandoms @beautyagegoodnesssize @princess76179 @mrsbentallmadge @horton-hears-a-honk

#triple frontier poly fic #poly frontier #au au #soulmate requests #will miller x reader #santiago garcia x reader #francisco morales x reader #benny miller x reader #maybe i dont know people #elle only posts soulmate rqs at weird hours thats the rule

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