#I’ve had so many people gasp in utter horror when I mention I write in my books

[snowywolff]

Hm one thing I am glad I stopped doing is obsessing over keeping books in perfect condition while reading them, as if it would give me bonus points in the afterlife or smth

I got a beautiful edition of Persuasion and while I got the urge to keep it “clean”, I had to stop and ask for who? It will remain in my possession for the rest of my life, and once I am dead, people will do with it whatever they want—I won’t know either way

So if I scribble in them, bend pages or otherwise love a book as it is meant to be loved, who cares?

[thanksjro]

Bayverse: Treating These Movies with More Dignity than They Deserve or Contain, Because I’m a Goddamned Professional - Part One

TRANSFORMERS (2007) - UNCOMFORTABLE SEXUAL TENSION BETWEEN TEENAGERS THAT I DIDN’T NEED TO SEE

So.

This is a little different than what I usually do.

Clearly.

God, how did we even get here?

Oh, I remember.

The date was September 17th, 2020, and I was in a stream with nine or ten other people watching the first Bayverse Transformers movie. Why we were watching it doesn’t particularly matter- sometimes you just gotta watch garbage so you can refresh your palate for the good stuff, I suppose. Also, a couple of folks wanted to make goo-goo eyes at Blackout’s rotors.

...It’s not my thing, but I’m glad they’ve got something to make the journey worth taking.

I made some sort of comment about only using my brain for this blog’s content, and someone (you know who you are :)) suggested that I take a proper look at the film. Being who I am, I immediately latched onto this idea, despite it being technically outside of what I write about.

And then I quintuple-downed, because winners don’t quit.

Good to know that my BA in Film Production wasn’t a complete waste of time.

Fun fact, I broke my television trying to watch Transformers for this. I think the universe was trying to stop me, by making me perform surgery on electronics, and also aggravating my carpal tunnel.

This movie came out when I was 13, and it was the first Transformers thing I saw after Cybertron. Yes, the anime one. No, not the one that’s objectively terrible.

Anyway.

How did I feel about Transformers when I saw it the first time? Well… it was okay. I liked the robots. I thought Mikaela was pretty, not that I knew what that meant back then. I watched it a few times, if only because my oldest younger brother kept renting it at Blockbuster. It was fun.

Now I’m older, and wiser, and know feminist theory, so my opinion is less “this exists” and more “blind, murderous rage”.

Our film opens up with some claptrap about the Cube™, a MacGuffin of ultimate power that allows the Transformers to create worlds in their image and populate them. Which means this is how they reproduce.

It always comes back to baby-making, doesn’t it?

The narration goes on about how the Cube™ is very powerful, and some folks wanted it for good, and others for evil. The criteria for being “good” and “evil” isn’t established, and I’m not exactly sure how one would define such a thing, when all the Cube™ does is create life, but, well, we’ve only just begun. Maybe we’ll get some answers later on.

Haha, I doubt it.

So, the Cube™ is the catalyst for our 4 million year war this continuity, and that sucker was lost in the shuffle a while back. This is a problem, because, again, the Cube™ is how the Transformers reproduce. Now everyone’s in a mad scramble to find the thing so their species doesn’t die out.

Three guesses as to where it ended up, and the first two don’t count.

Smashcut to the shit nobody cares about- the humans. We see an Osprey fly over the Qatar desert, carrying a buttload of American soldiers. We get a taste of some good old-fashioned xenophobia, as several soldiers mock a guy for not speaking English and loving his mother’s cooking, going full “funny haha gibberish language” on him. We’re two and a half minutes into the film, and I already want to stab something.

Ed Sheeran breaks into the conversation, I guess because he was feeling left out, revealing that he is the New Yorker stereotype of the film, for some reason. The fellas ask their captain, Lennox, what he’s looking forward to most about getting home from their tour, and he reveals himself to be a family man. While he’s been away, his wife had a baby, who he hasn’t so much as held yet. His men respond by mocking him.

For loving his child.

We’re three minutes into the film, and the toxic masculinity might actually make me have an aneurysm.

The Ospreys land, the lads disembark, and we get a snapshot of what downtime during deployment looks like to Bay. There are a lot of kiddie swimming pools involved. Two men play basketball. We watch multiple men take outdoor showers. A young Qatari boy brings Lennox a camelback water pack with a smile on his face. This lets me know that he’s a prop and not a character in this film. I can’t wait to see how many horrors he’ll be put through to simulate pathos.

We get a shot of a helicopter flying over the desert, one that the US military doesn’t recognize as their own. They send a couple of planes to check it out, and said planes get their shop wrecked. The helicopter is revealed to be the same ‘copter that was shot down several months prior. That’s… not good. Ghost helicopter?

No. Not at all, actually.

Lennox gets on a video chat with his wife and daughter, who is wearing one of the most ridiculous baby outfits I’ve seen in a hot minute. And I used to work in childcare, so I’ve seen a good amount of those. The writing implies that normal bodily functions are unladylike and therefore undesirable… in an infant… and that’s when all hell breaks loose, thankfully saving me from more of Bay trying to make me give a shit about these characters.

The helicopter lands, we get a shot of the mustachioed pilot, who glitches (gasp), and the line “have your crew step out or we will kill you” is uttered. Not even trying to hide the nationalism, are you?

This film hit theaters in 2007, when the xenophobia from 9/11 was still heavy in the air of the general populace, so things like this were more tolerated, and in fact approved of. Of course, it’s not like America has really improved on that subject, or ever really had a point where we weren’t terrible about it, since we live in a world where the military-entertainment complex exists.

See, the Department of Defense and a good chunk of American entertainment industries have a little deal going, and have for the last few decades, and it goes like this: The DoD will allow the use of their vehicles, personnel, and bases, or the likenesses of such, for free, in exchange for their operations being shown in a positive/morally justified light. This is why you never see the armed forces portrayed in a way that makes them out as anything less than heroes- nobody would be able to afford the sets/likenesses without the DoD’s aid. This is also why you see straight-up advertisements for the military branches on televison, in cinemas, and online, and why both the Army and Navy have flirted with having Twitch channels.

It’s all a ploy to get you to join the military, kids. It’s propaganda.

But enough about that, it’s time for our first transformation sequence!

We get a lot of moving parts with this, since it’s realistic CGI in a live-action movie, and it still holds up. It’s hard to tell what’s actually happening, but it, if nothing else, feels alien, surreal, and horrific to behold. They even included the original sound effect in the cacophony, which is nice.

Our ghost helicopter reveals itself to be a Transformer, not that we get that terminology at any point in this film. This specifically is Blackout, a Decepticon. The soldiers start firing on him the moment he starts transforming, then are surprised when the thing they started shooting with several guns retaliates. This is the point where everything ever in this military base explodes, brilliantly and repeatedly, because it wouldn’t be a Bay film without it. There’s a lot of shouting and bright lights, and I’m positively certain that a great deal of people died during this fight.

It’s just a shame that I don’t care.

Blackout rips the top off of a building like it’s a tin of anchovies, and then snags all the hard drives he can, downloading everything. This is a problem, but it seems like nobody was prepared for a giant alien robot hack-attack, because in order to shut down the power to the servers, you need to be able to unlock the breaker box, and no one seems to have the key. They solve the problem with a fire ax.

Lennox is leading the Qatari boy through the base towards safety. I should mention that it’s night now, and several hours seem to have passed since the Ospreys landed, so I don’t know why this kid is still here. He’s got, like, a house and family to go home to.

We get some more tank-throwing action, Sergeant Epps almost gets flattened under Blackout’s foot, then the movie decides it’s going to try to make things more interesting by having each shot cut flash, for whatever reason.

Someone shoots Blackout with a rocket launcher, I think, and this is the point where he throws his tiny little man off his back to go do his job. Yes, Blackout’s got a baby, and that baby is Scorponok, his symbiotic pal who likes to dig into the ground and be a sneaky little bastard.

Blackout blows up a ton more military equipment and personnel, and then it’s time for another smashcut.

Now we’re in high school, just like all those dreams I’ve had where I’ve forgotten my homework. This is where we meet Sam Witwicky, our main character, and also the stand-in for our target demographic. He’s insufferable, and I don’t like him. Mikaela Banes, our love interest, is also present in this scene, but we don’t get to know about her character for, like, another 20 minutes, because who gives a shit about women, right? They’re just props, right?

Right???

RIGHT??????????

RIGH-

Sam is presenting on his great-great-grandfather, Archibald Witwicky, for his family genealogy report, in front of a class containing maybe three actors who are age appropriate.

I know child labor laws are a good thing, and that hiring adults to play teenagers is just the lay of the land, but I swear some of these students look like they’re old enough to be on their second mortgage and third kid.

Anyway.

Archibald Witwicky was an explorer, one of the first to traverse the Arctic circle, and apparently his crew was made up of folks from 2007, because I swear the clothing for a few of these dudes isn’t period-appropriate. We get a seamen joke, because of course we do, and a sextant joke, because of course we do. Sam is also hawking all this crap he’s brought in for the presentation, because he is a little bastard who has no idea what his peers would want to buy, or really how to relate to them at all. He’s selling these “priceless” artifacts so he can get a car. Mikaela finds this charming, for some fucking reason. Also, her boyfriend is weirdly stroking her shoulder blade with his knuckles the whole time this is happening, and I hate it.

Archibald Witwicky went mad after his expedition, talking about an “ice man” so often that his family ended up locking him in a mental asylum, likely to be forgotten about. Which is sad. But we won’t be getting into the medical mistreatment of the mentally ill in Bayverse, now will we? That’s just Too Deep™.

Sam’s teacher didn’t very much appreciate having his class be turned into an episode of Antiques Roadshow, but still gives Sam an “A” on the project, despite it being a very poor report that lasted all of two minutes. I suspect the teacher has tenure, and therefore no longer gives a shit about academic integrity. This “A” means that Sam’s father will buy him a car.

Which is nice, I suppose, if I gave a damn.

Sam’s father, Ron, picks up his son in a car he probably bought at the crux of his midlife crisis, in a green that reminds me of a school gymnasium floor, then plays a prank on his child by pretending to pull into the Porsche dealership. Sam isn’t getting a Porsche, which is good, because he doesn’t deserve one. As Sam gripes to his father, a yellow Camaro drives by oh so conspicuously. Wonder what’s up with that.

Instead of the Porshe dealership, they head over to the used car lot, which is being run by Bobby Bolivia, who spends his time yelling at his employees and wanting to murder his mother. Sam is incredibly ungrateful about the fact that his dad is helping him get a car, even though it’s his FIRST car, and nobody gets a nice one the first go around. Or, at least, they shouldn’t, given the statistics about accidents with young drivers.

“No sacrifice, no victory” is uttered by Ron, which is the family motto, or so he claims. Archibald Witwicky said the same thing when he had multiple people dying trying to get to the Arctic Circle, so there’s precedence for the phrase, but we’ll see how it holds up throughout the film.

Bobby Bolivia shows Sam and Ron the cars he has for sale, and Sam is immediately drawn to the yellow Camaro in the lot, though there’s a small problem- it’s too expensive for what he and his father agreed to. Also, nobody knows where the hell it came from, so paperwork might be an issue. When Bobby tries to show Sam the yellow Beetle they have right down the line, everything explodes, because this is a Bay film, and fuck the original material this movie was based on. Bobby lets them have the Camaro for a lower price, suddenly fearful of whatever strange powers have just visited his place of business. “The car picks the driver” is suddenly more than a bullshit line to spout off in order to sell cars, and I’m certain that’s shaken the poor man.

Over in Washington, D.C., the Secretary of Defense prepares to address just what the hell happened in Qatar, lamenting on how young the audience he’s going to be speaking to is. In particular, he’s referring to the two dweebs and the hot chick sitting in one of the rows. All the women in this movie who aren’t someone’s mom are made up to be very pretty. And not even in a realistic way. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

So, the military network was hacked. That’s bad. Nobody knows who did it. That’s also bad. The only lead the US has is a soundbite, which is the signal that hacked the network.

Everyone here at the briefing is going to be helping to figure this mess out. This is great, if you like looking at Rachael Taylor for a few seconds at a time, and can compartmentalize hard enough to make that worth the effort of watching this godforsaken film.

Back at the Witwicky household, we meet Mojo, a chihuahua with a cast that doesn’t seem like it’s actually doing anything. I wish he was the main character instead of Sam.

Sam arrives home from the dealership, and says “alright, Mojo, I’ve got the car. Now I need the girl.”

As if ownership of a person is something to aspire to.

As if women are property to be owned.

As if women aren’t people, but rather commodities.

We’re 17.5 minutes into this film.

We’re introduced to Judy, Sam’s mother. She’s shrill, and annoying. This is by design, because none of the women in this film are actually people, but rather archetypes to bounce off of the male characters.

Sam and his father have a moment of what some might consider banter, then Sam gets huffy with his mom over gender roles for the dog. I, for one, think Mojo looks positively dashing in his bedazzled collar, and to hell with whatever Sam says to the contrary.

Sam drives off to go be a misogynist, with the promise to be back by 11PM.

Over in Qatar, the soldiers and that little boy are running from the attack on their base, as Lennox’s wife watches a public announcement on the matter back at home. The Secretary of Defense lets us know that we’re at DEFCON Delta at this point. Lennox Jr. cries, and all I can think about is how they probably pinched that baby to make that happen. They pinched a baby for Transformers (2007).

The soldiers in Qatar talk about shit they have no idea about, Sergeant Epps going on about somehow having been able to see a forcefield around Blackout through his super special binoculars. I don’t know how, or why, he knows this. I don’t know anything anymore.

Ed Sheeran has his doubts about this whole thing, and Lennox is also present in the scene, because I guess he’s important. Through a bit of dramatic irony, Fig- the guy everyone was making fun of for being bilingual at the start of the film- says that this probably isn’t over, as the shape of Scorponok shifts through the sand just beyond them.

Epps is having a minor crisis over the fact that Blackout saw him, but we don’t have time for that, because we’ve got to get to cover. The lads decide to head to the little Qatari boy’s house. Again, I wonder why he was at the base at all, considering that it seems like they’ve been traveling for a good portion of the day.

Back with Sam, he’s picked up his friend Miles, and together they’re going to a lake party. Are they invited to this party? Yes, but also no. It’s public property though, so it should be fine. As they park, Sam notices that Mikaela is here, which is great for him.

Mikaela’s boyfriend, Trent- whose name I had to look up- is a massive tool, and starts pestering the two boys for daring to exist in his airspace. Miles climbs a tree. I’m glad he’s having fun, at least. Sam makes a joke at the expense of people with brain injuries, and this for some reason? Warrants a shot of Mikaela making the blank “pretty girl” face? In response?

Mikaela saves Sam from becoming a wet stain on the grass, which is very kind of her, and more than Sam really deserves. Trent, his boys, and Mikaela start to head off for another party, to get away from Sam and his tree-loving friend. Mikaela offers to drive, and Trent says that she can’t handle his truck, because she’s a ~girl~. This causes Mikaela to ditch him, and start walking home.

The script knows enough about misogyny to know that this would be a nice “take that”. Michael Bay, however, likely fails to see why everything he did with said script involving this character is a goddamned problem.

Because Mikaela, bless her heart, has a lot of problems.

Let’s start with the outfit: a croptop, a jean skirt that BARELY covers her ass, and a pair of wedge heels that are at least four inches tall. On a character that is, at oldest, freshly 18.

Look, I’m all about self-expression and the freedom to choose how you dress for yourself and yourself alone, but this clearly isn’t that. This is a character, not a person, whose wardrobe was designed for the straight male gaze. She’s wearing fucking STRAP HEELS to the lake. This is about oogling. This is about reducing a whole-ass person to the same status as a piece of meat. In fact, who was on wardrobe for this? I’d like to have a few words with-

A woman? Okay, well, what else has she worked on?

You can’t be fucking serious.

ANYWAY.

Miles just called Mikaela an “evil jock concubine.” I don’t like Miles anymore.

As Mikaela walks down the road, strutting hard enough that I’ve got sympathy pains in my hips, the radio in the Camaro turns on, playing “Drive” by the Cars, and giving Sam a hell of an idea; he’s gonna drive Mikaela home, so she doesn’t have to walk the 10 miles to her house. Why he knows how far she lives from the lake isn’t addressed.

Sam kicks Miles out of the car and goes to give Mikaela a ride, which she accepts after a bit of self-deliberation, and also him making an ass of himself. The shot here is framed with Sam like he’s a normal-ass person, and Mikaela from her breasts to the top of her waist. Because of COURSE it is.

She hops in the car and then goes off about her taste in hot guys. Which is weird, and out of left field. Sam is about as confused as I am, then continues to make a fool of himself. This is his nature as a person. Mikaela has no idea who Sam is, even though they’ve gone to the same school for the last 10 years and have multiple classes together. And the fact that she was staring him down all through his genealogy presentation. And at the lake.

This movie isn’t very well thought out, I feel.

It’s at this point the the Camaro turns the key on itself and starts to sputter out and die, as “Sexual Healing” by Marvin Gaye pops on the radio.

I don’t like how this car is trying to get Sam laid.

I don’t like how this car is trying to get Sam laid with a girl who didn’t even know his name five minutes ago.

I don’t like how this car knows what sex is.

The Camaro breaks down on a cliff, and Mikaela hops out to work on the engine, and also to get the hell away from Sam’s sputtering.

As Mikaela admires the sweet engine in this Camaro, showing off her knowledge of cars, we get several shots of her from her breasts to her thighs, while Sam is treated like an actual person. Don’t bother trying to play it off as an artistic choice, Bay, this is blatant horndogging. This adds to NOTHING, other than my ire.

Sam says more stupid shit, and Mikaela, who must be the nicest fucking person in the world, just tells him to fire up the engine so she can try to sort out the problem. Then he asks why she goes for jackasses like Trent, and she decides that she’s hit her limit for today, opting to walk the rest of the way home. Good on you, Mikaela. Don’t take Sam’s bullshit.

Sam, realizing that he’s put his foot in his mouth for the 80th time today, pleads with his Camaro to do him a solid and work, and this actually works out for him. Great. Sam, victorious, once again offers Mikaela a ride, which she, once again, takes.

He drops her off without further incident, and she thanks him for listening. Even though they didn’t really talk that much. I dunno, maybe they had a super deep conversation offscreen. Mikaela asks Sam if he thinks she’s shallow, because clearly all women need approval from the men around them, and Sam says that there’s more to her than meets the eye.

Which made me groan aloud.

Anyway, she gets inside without a problem, and Sam professes his love for his new Camaro for allowing him to talk to a girl. Or at least talk at her.

Back in Washington, D.C., at the Pentagon National Military Command Center, we’re making weirdly racist calls on who hacked the military.

Up with Air Force One, a conspicuous boombox transforms into a robot, and then runs off to hack shit. The President of the United States requests some snack cakes. A flight attendant goes down to storage to retrieve said snack cakes, and finds that boombox in the elevator with her. Considering this is Air Force One, you’d perhaps expect her to immediately be suspicious of such a thing, but this is Bayverse, and we don’t think here.

The flight attendant brings the boombox down with her and places it on the counter as she goes to get the presidential snack cakes. The boombox immediately disappears. Now, you’d perhaps expect her to immediately be suspicious of such a thing, but this is Bayverse-

The flight attendant opens up the snack cake package, for some reason, and drops the cake on the floor. She then proceeds to eat it, and then act shocked when it tastes like floor. There’s a robot in her fucking line of sight, and you’d perhaps expect her to immediately be suspicious of such a thing-

She leaves to go feed the President floor cakes, and our little robot friend gets to work stealing government secrets. He, if nothing else, looks pretty cool doing it. He’s a very pointy lad.

Back at the Pentagon, Maddie- Rachael Taylor’s character- can hear the hacking. This sends everyone into a panic, because, well, that shouldn’t be happening. The hacking noise is a direct match to the one from Qatar, so that’s obviously a problem.

Back on Air Force One, our little robot friend is looking for “Project Iceman”, which he very quickly finds, and downloads everything they’ve got on it, and also plants a virus. The process seems to be… doing things to him. It’s weird. This movie is weird.

The Pentagon cuts all the system hardlines, stopping the process, but it’s too late- he got what he wanted, just about. Two security personnel come into the room, and the robot kills them both with some spinning blade disc nonsense. Air Force One is forced to land for the safety of everyone on-board. More security detail comes in to deal with the little bastard, but he transforms into a boombox and sits on a shelf to avoid suspicion. Now, you’d perhaps expect-

With the plane grounded, our robot is able to walk his little ass over to a cop car. And when I say walk, I do mean walk; this fucker is in multiple folks’ line of sight and nobody notices a thing. When he enters the car, he’s greeted by the mustachioed driver- the same driver who was operating the helicopter at the beginning of the film. This mustache man is a holographic avatar, one that’s being used by all the Decepticons.

We get our first real taste of Cybertronian language, as our robot- it’s Frenzy, his name is Frenzy- lets everyone know that he’s found a clue to the location of the AllSpark, and, through the power of the internet, knows where to find the guy who’s gonna give them what they need.

Three guesses to who it is, and the first two don’t count.

Back at the Witwicky household, Sam’s car does a runner in the middle of the night. Sam, horrified that his property is being stolen, pursues on a bike, screaming at his dad to call the cops. Sam also calls the cops, as he tears through the neighborhood.

The Camaro breaks into an abandoned building, Sam follows, and we finally get a shot of our audience appeal character. Sam watches in disbelief as a giant yellow space robot shines a beacon into the sky, then makes a video on his flip phone recording the experience. He apologizes to his parents for owning pornographic magazines, and goes to face his probable demise.

However, death does not come from above, instead manifesting itself as two of the strongest junkyard dogs in the known universe, who break their brick-inlaid chains to get at this little dip of a man. Sam is chased through the yard, climbing on top of a couple precarious oil drums, even though there’s a ladder, like, right there. The Camaro rolls in, scaring off the dogs, and Sam bolts, throwing the keys to his ride at his ride. When he gets outside, the cops have arrived, and immediately arrest him.

Back with the US government, the Secretary of State is having a conversation about all the bullshit that just went down with Air Force One. He and his fellow cishet old white men discuss their options, until Maddie comes in to set them straight on some of the facts. They act all indignant about it, because women can’t be smart, right?

Right???

RIGHT??????????

RIGH-

Anyway, we get a weird little deflection of Maddie’s role in everything, because a woman is nothing without the men around her, then she brings up the point that the bullshit that happened on Air Force One went down in just a few seconds, which isn’t something that anyone can actually do. She brings up quantum mechanics, which everyone blows off as nonsense- not that I wouldn’t as well- and theorizes on a DNA-based computer, which is technically a thing, if not trapped in the realm of speculation. It’s at this point that the Secretary of Defense tells her to come back when she can back these wild claims up, and isn’t just clearly spitballing.

And then he snaps his fingers at her, and any point he might have had leaves my brain so I have more room for being enraged.

Back with Sam, we’re at the police station talking to the cops. His dad is here, and Sam is trying to explain that his car is a dude. Even though he took at a video (one that was likely crap, given how quickly he spun his phone around to show off what he was seeing) the cops, understandably, don’t believe him. Then one of them, not so understandably, starts… threatening Sam? With his sidearm? And daring him to try something? This isn’t any sort of statement on the corruption of American law enforcement, it’s just bizarre.

Back in Qatar, our soldier buddies have found a telephone line, and are going to try to use it to get in contact with the rest of the world. It’s just too bad that Scorponok’s decided to make an entrance, and knock said telephone line the hell down. Ed Sheeran has next to no reaction to this, despite it happening maybe ten feet behind him. Fig speaks Spanish, and Ed Sheeran makes a point to be an asshole about it.

Scorponok is about to stab Lennox with his very pointy tail, when Epps notices- finally, someone with peripheral vision- and starts shooting. Then everyone starts shooting, kicking up enough sand to blind themselves, as Scorponok scuttles away, buries himself, then reappears behind Ed Sheeran.

Ed Sheeran does not survive this experience.

The others bolt, not wanting the same to happen to them, and for the fourth time I wonder just why the hell this young boy was at the base in the first place.

Off in the distance, the community of a nearby town wonders just what the shit is going on out in the desert. Our soldiers run into the town, and everyone gets their guns and start firing on Scorponok, who retaliates, because why the hell wouldn’t he?

Lennox demands that the young boy take him to his father, and proceeds to borrow his phone. As shit goes down outside, we have a sort-of gag where Lennox is trying to contact the Pentagon, while a telemarketer tries to get him to buy a phone package. In order for this call to go through, he’s going to need a credit card. This is where the well-known “pocket” scene comes from, as Lennox searches Epps’ pants for his wallet as he fires on Scorponok. It’s probably the best-written thing in this whole film.

With the credit card acquired, Lennox finally gets through to the Pentagon, and tosses Epps the phone so he can talk. Maybe he’s got anxiety about speaking on the phone, I dunno.

Scorponok shows off his disregard for historical architecture, blowing up several buildings, and the US government just watches this all go down. One of the actors in this scene looks like my dad, and it trips me up every time he’s on screen. Anyway, now the Pentagon knows about the giant space robots running around in Qatar. They send over some air support about it. All this manages to do is piss Scorponok off.

So they try it again.

This time it works, sort of.

At the very least, he’s left now.

Tail fell off, though.

Also, Fig’s been grievously wounded. The others, for once, don’t make fun of his native language while they help him hold his blood inside his body.

Back at the Pentagon, Maddie’s looking to prove that the bullshit that’s been going on is of the sci-fi variety, and in order to do that, she’s going to need a little outside help. She takes the information from the Pentagon, slaps it into an SD card, hides that shit in her blush compact, and then runs out the door to Glenn Whitmann’s house. Or, rather, his grandma’s house.

Glenn is a hacker, and shouldn’t be seeing anything that Maddie’s brought him, but everyone knows that confidentiality is for nerds, so whatever.

Back at the Pentagon, Maddie’s immediately been caught. It’s almost like slapping the military network onto an SD card maybe wasn’t such a hot idea. But what do I know?

Glenn takes a look at the soundbite and figures out that there’s a code embedded in the thing in about two seconds. Good to know our tax dollars are being well-spent on the US military, that some dude in his jammies can figure this shit out faster than a whole team of analysts. They figure out that “Project Iceman” is involved with this somehow, and also the existence of Sector Seven. It’s at this point that the FBI busts in. Good. I kind of want Maddie to go to jail for this, because she was about as stupid as she could be handling the situation.

Glenn’s cousin goes through a closed glass door- don’t worry, it’s tempered- and there’s a weird cut before that exact same shot continues, and he’s tackled into the pool. There was no reason for that to have happened, but here we are.

Back with Sam, we’re treated to him in his boxers, shooting basketballs in his room. He goes into the kitchen, where Mojo is standing on a stool. It’s a very tall stool, the sort you sit on, and he’s just… there. I don’t know how he got there. There’s no one else in the room besides Sam, and I know he didn’t put him there.

Clearly this must mean Mojo is God, and being on that stool is his divine will. I will be approaching the rest of the franchise with this in mind, because it’s clearly the only answer.

Our merciful Lord Mojo jumps up on the kitchen counter and begins growling at something through the window. Sam looks out… the opposite window… to find that his Camaro has returned to him, and is less than thrilled about it, to put it lightly. He drops a jug of milk- luckily it was mostly empty, given the sound it makes when it hits the floor- and gives his buddy Miles a call. You remember Miles, don’t you? If you don’t, it’s fine, because he reestablishes his quirkiness with a single shot, as he sits in a swimsuit and bathes his huge-ass dog in a kiddie pool, and answers the phone with a headset he just happened to be wearing. He must get a lot of calls during Dog Washing Hours.


After giving us one of the most intense voice cracks I’ve ever heard, Sam books it out of his house, hopping on a bike to escape his murderous Camaro. He’s not seen the thing commit any murders, mind you, but he seems pretty convinced that it would do the job, given half a chance. Also, this isn’t the bike he rode the night before; that one is likely being chewed on by those strong-ass junkyard dogs. No, for some reason, the Witwickys have a pastel pink girl’s bike, with the fun little handle tassels and the basket and everything. As far as I can tell, Sam is an only child, and if you think Bay’s going to allow for a teenage boy to have the vulnerability to own a pink bike, you’ve not been paying attention for the last 48.5 minutes.

The Camaro gives chase, rolling after Sam on his bike at a brisk 7 MPH down the friggin’ sidewalk, one of the only scenes in this travesty of a film to actually get me to crack a smile. Sam races through town until city planning puts a stop to him, through the magic of using chunks of cement to decorate the mulch around their trees. He crashes his bike, faceplants into the concrete in front of Mikaela, and promptly dies, thus ending the film.

No, he doesn’t die. I just told a fib. I’m sorry.

Instead, he does a flip and lands on his back, likely receiving a concussion, in front of Mikaela and her friends. Her friends laugh, because everyone hates Sam, as they should, and Mikaela says that what he just did was “really awesome.” Don’t try to be nice, Mikaela, this is Sam we’re talking about; you could stick the dude in the freezer overnight and he still wouldn’t be even remotely cool.

Sam gets back to the whole “running away from a car” deal, and Mikaela decides that this is the sort of thing she’d like to do with her day, so she ditches her friends in the middle of their scheduled Burger King™ time to go see what the hell Sam’s on about.

As Sam is chased by the Camaro who is being chased by Mikaela on her motorized scooter, a cop becomes involved, tearing through the streets to join this ridiculous game of tag. Now, we’ve seen two different flavor of cop so far- the mustachioed avatar cop car that picked up Frenzy from the airport, and the dude who threatened a teenage boy with a gun after accusing him of being under the influence of drugs. Either way, I don’t think this is going to turn out well for Sam.

Sam’s cornered himself under one of those really wide bridges where people can park their cars, which wasn’t terribly smart, but it’s Sam, so this is about par for the course. The Camaro manages to miss him, but the cop car does not. Sam is actually pretty cool with the cops being here, as if they could do anything about “Satan’s Camaro.” I guess he didn’t see the decal on the side of this car that says “to punish and enslave…”

Sam attempts to approach the car for help, and gets clotheslined by a car door for his troubles. He hits his head on the pavement, certainly exasperating the brain injury he received not ten minutes ago. Still, he continues to try to talk to the holographic avatar through the windshield, revealing that the bike he’s been riding is his mother’s. Mystery solved, I suppose.

The cop car doesn’t much appreciate being slapped on the hood, and begins to rev violently at Sam, threatening to run him over several times. Then it explodes into being a robot. Sam, who’s seen a lot of really weird shit in the last 24 hours, nopes out of the situation. It’s at this point that I realize he’s wearing a shirt for the band the Strokes. I don’t know why that stuck out to me, but it did. Guess my brain needed something to latch onto during all this.

Sam is running as fast as his little legs allow, as our newest robot friend takes up a leisurely jog to keep pace. Then he kicks Sam. He kicks Sam’s body like the football. This, of course, instantly turns Sam into a bag of jelly and kills him, thus ending the film.

No, he doesn’t die. I just told another fib. I’m sorry.

Sam somehow survives being punted by a giant metal leg and lands in the windshield of a car that doesn’t turn into a robot. Then he gets yelled at by the cop car. This is Barricade, a member of the Decepticons, and Sam’s got something he wants. Or, should I say “LadiesMan217” has something he wants.

LadiesMan217 is Sam’s Ebay username. This is both stupid because no teenage boy existing beyond the year 1985 would have ever called himself that, and also because it’s just stupid.

Barricade wants the glasses Sam presented for his genealogy report, and he wants them NOW. Seeing as the thing he wants is for sale, and nobody had been bidding on it, one would wonder why Barricade and his associates didn’t just try to purchase them like upstanding citizens. Perhaps Decepticons don’t understand the concept of money, or perhaps they don’t have a stable address to have the glasses shipped to. Or perhaps nobody considered that angle when the script was being put together. Who can say?

Sam gets back to running away from Barricade, we see where Mikaela got to, and the two of them collide. Sam rips Mikaela off of her scooter, and they both fall to the ground. Mikaela, who did not buckle the clasp on her helmet, asks Sam what his fucking problem is. Then his problem shows up, and they take a very long time to get up so they can run. So long, in fact, that the Camaro has to swing in to save them. After much pleading from Sam, Mikaela gets inside Satan’s Camaro, and the two of them are whisked away to safety. Barricade pursues, and then the butt rock starts.

There’s a lot of screaming and yelling, the Camaro busts through a window and several shelves in an abandoned building, there’s some drifting, and then suddenly it’s nighttime. Barricade somehow got in front of the Camaro, and is circling like a shark. The Camaro locks the two teenagers inside itself, though I suppose they could climb out through the still-open windows if they really wanted to. The Camaro cuts the engine off, then cuts it back on and bolts for the exit, and this somehow tricks Barricade long enough for them to get past.

The Camaro dumps Mikaela and Sam out one of the doors and then transforms into that yellow space robot we saw a bit ago. It’s Bumblebee! Nearly an hour in, and we finally get a proper look at the little bastard. I guess that’s what happens when you spend the first 20-something minutes on being xenophobic and appealing to the focus groups that think it’s fine sexualize high schoolers.

Bumblebee- no, he’s not introduced himself yet, but I just can’t keep calling him “the Camaro” anymore- comes out of his transformation ready to square the fuck up. Barricade throws himself at Bumblebee, they roll around on the ground for a bit, then things start sparking and exploding, because this is a Michael Bay film. Frenzy jumps out and starts chasing down Mikaela and Sam, while Bumblebee and Barricade murder death punch each other. Frenzy manages to grab Sam by the ankles, drag him to the ground, and rip his pants off. Not sure how that happened, considering he’s still got his shoes on.

While Sam’s busy being chased by a sentient pile of safety pins, Mikaela’s taken it upon herself to be proactive about her survival, and is raiding a nearby building for power tools. She sprints out holding an electric jig saw and saves Sam by decapitating Frenzy. If you know anything about Transformers, then you know this doesn’t actually kill Frenzy, but good on her for being a badass. Why couldn’t Mikaela be our main character again? Oh, right, because she’s a ~girl~.

Sam punts Frenzy’s head, like, 50 yards, which seems like something he shouldn’t be able to do, given that he’s a massive weenie, but there you are. With that out of the way, Sam takes Mikaela’s hand and they run off to go watch the giant robot fight. The bottom of Frenzy’s head turns into a spider and he crawls his way over to Mikaela’s purse. He’s gonna steal her gum, the fiend!

Mikaela and Sam have, unfortunately, missed the giant robot fight, which means that we, as the audience, have also missed the giant robot fight. Which is unbelievably stupid, seeing as everyone who has ever watched this movie came for the GIANT GODDAMN ROBOTS.

Mikaela asks just who the hell the yellow robot is, I guess because she’s finally had a second to process what the hell’s going on. Sam claims that he’s a super-advanced robot, “probably from Japan.” Whether or not this is a reference to the Japanese origins of the original toy line isn’t clear, though somehow I think it’s more xenophobia. Sam also makes the claim that if Bumblebee had intended to hurt them, he would have done it by now. This is quite the jump from a few hours ago, when he was calling the poor guy “Satan’s Camaro.”

Sam finally, finally asks Bumblebee what his deal is, and we get our first taste of the Bayverse Bumblebee Gimmick. The Gimmick here is that, due to an injury to his vocal processing, Bumblebee cannot communicate through traditional means, i.e. speech. Because of this, he instead strings together sentences by flicking through the radio frequencies and choosing key words. This can lead to some interesting audio design, like describing his fellow Autobots to “rain down like visitors form heaven, Hallelujah!” because a radio sermon fit what he was trying to say best.

This gimmick is one that has been used in other pieces of Transformers media, at least in part. Bumblebee is unable to speak traditionally in Transformers: Prime, and instead communicates in beeps and clicks that his teammates can understand, but not so much the humans, save for Raf. In Bumblebee (2018), the idea was used whole-cloth, with the injury resulting in his inability to speak happening on-camera within the first 10 minutes of the movie, and the idea of “expressing oneself through music” being introduced by his human companion Charlie Watson.

All in all, I rather like the idea going on here; it’s an interesting part of his character that opens up for a lot of interesting and creative moments.

It’s just too bad it was introduced in fucking Bayverse.

But yeah, anyway, the other Autobots are coming to Earth. Shit’s gonna be lit.

Bumblebee turns back into a Camaro, and Sam uses the power of FOMO to get Mikaela to go in the car with him. We get a shot of Barricade fucking dying on the side of the road. Frenzy murders Mikaela’s phone, and then steals its identity, including the little bejeweled heart stickers. Good thing Mikaela remembered to go get her purse, otherwise he probably would have felt very silly doing that.

Mikaela refuses to sit in the driver’s seat, seeing as she now knows Sam’s car is sentient, and sort of feels weird about this whole thing. Sam suggests that she sit in his lap instead, as the camera angles to give us a peek at the cup of Mikaela’s bra. When asked why the hell she should do such a thing, Sam says it’s a concern about her safety, given that the middle console of the car does not have a seatbelt. Sam either fails to recognize that seatbelts going over two layered bodies won’t save either of them in the event of a crash, or he’s just trying to make an excuse to have a pretty girl in his lap.

Given what movie this is, I’m going to guess it’s the latter.

Mikaela has a similar line of thought, but scoots over anyway, saying that the seatbelt line was a “smooth move”. It wasn’t, but if I picked apart every single bad line Sam had in this film, I’d be here all day.

Mikaela questions Bumblebee’s taste in alt-mode, which offends him to the point of dumping both her and Sam out in the street and driving away. He returns, moments later, as a sleek new Camaro, that I’m sure some car aficionados would call “sexy.”

Bumblebee’s alt-mode is a 2009 Chevrolet Camaro, of which there were none during the time of filming. It was put together for this movie in roughly five weeks. Sam is blown away by the fact that he now owns a car that does not currently exist in his universe. Mikaela is impressed, or at least she would be, if women were allowed to show that emotion in a non-horny way in a Bay film.

Judy doesn’t count.

As Bumblebee breaks into yet another restricted area, we get a shot of the Earth from orbit, as several objects rocket towards the planet. Sam and Mikaela watch the Autobots burn up in the atmosphere, and Mikaela tries to hold Sam’s hand as they do, and it’s at this point that I have to address how much I hate these two’s dynamic.

I don’t give a single solitary shit about this romance, because A) it’s poorly written, B) Mikaela could do infinitely better than Sam, C) I dislike Sam so very much, D) Mikaela, who is a way more interesting character, got placed on friggin’ love interest duty because ~girl~, and E) it’s useless padding to try and make me care about what’s happening here, and I just DON’T. I do NOT care about whether these two get together or not.

We see the Autobots crash-land, three out of four of them causing massive amounts of property damage and possibly killing at least one person. Their stasis pods crack open, and they each climb out, completely naked and in desperate need of clothing to hide their shame. With a quick scan of nearby vehicles, they’re once again decent to be seen in public.

Bumblebee drives the kids out to what I can only assume is the warehouse district he sent that beacon out in, as our collection of good guys finally come together at long last. A massive Peterbilt semi-truck stops directly in front of Mikaela and Sam.

We’re over an hour into this film, and we’re just now getting to the quintessential Transformer, Optimus Prime himself.

In the original cartoon, Optimus’s alt-mode was what’s known as a cabover truck, one where the cab- where the driver sits- is seated directly over the engine. These were popular during the days when maximum truck-lengths were much shorter than they are currently. This is why when you look at height charts for Optimus over various continuities, his G1 cartoon counterpart much shorter than his other iterations.

Modern trucks are longer, and don’t need the cab to sit on top of the engine to save on space. The designers chose to use a Peterbilt to make sure that Optimus would have an imposing stature when compared to his fellow Autobots.

Because heaven forbid we not have heightism come into play in this film.

Our Autobots transform, and say what you will about these bastards being visually incomprehensible, the transformations themselves are cool as hell. My personal favorite is Jazz’s, where he does a cool windmill into his root mode.

Optimus crouches like he’s looking at a cool bug on the sidewalk and addresses Sam by name. He doesn’t even acknowledge Mikaela, which I find to be a bit rude, but whatever. He then introduces himself as the leader of the Autobots.

Peter Cullen is back as the voice for Optimus Prime, sounding wonderful as always. He almost wasn’t brought on for this project, because Michael Bay didn’t want him. If the fans hadn’t thrown a hissyfit, who knows who we would have gotten to be our space dad for the next hour and a half?

This is actually an issue that’s recurred several times in the last few years, and not just with Cullen; Frank Welker, the voice of Megatron, as well as many other Transformers, has been refused roles within Transformers properties. In general, this is because both Cullen and Welker are union actors, and Hasbro would prefer to hire sound-alikes than pay more money for the originals. This isn’t to shame the non-union actors, goodness no, just to merely point out less-than-fantastic business practices.

I realize there have been a lot of tangents, but you have to understand that I am suffering as I do this.

Optimus then introduces his team- there’s Jazz, whose first line is “What’s crackin’ little bitches?”, Ironhide, who incorrectly quotes Dirty Harry, and Ratchet, who calls out just how obnoxiously horny Sam’s character is. We also finally get Bumblebee’s name.

Mikaela asks the very good question of why the fuck the Autobots are here on Earth. Optimus explains that the AllSpark is here, and they’ve got to get to it before Megatron does. He then goes on to explain who Megatron is, stating that he “betrayed” the Cybertronian empire.

No, how exactly he did that isn’t addressed. We’ll just have to take Optimus’s word, I suppose.

If you’ve sussed out by this point the the AllSpark and the Cube™ are the same thing, congrats! You win. Megatron followed the AllSpark to Earth, where he promptly was neutralized by the cold of the Arctic circle. This was 110 years prior to the events of this film, and where Archibald Witwicky came in to the story.

When the expedition was happening, Archibald fell through the ice during a collapse, and ended up finding Megatron’s frozen body in an ice cave. He went poking around on this strange metal giant, and ended up activating Megatron’s navigation systems, which imprinted the coordinates of the AllSpark onto Archibald’s glasses.

Don’t ask how that works, it just does.

So, the Autobots need the glasses, so they can find the AllSpark before the Decepticons do, so those guys don’t use it to build an army out of Earth’s machines, which will destroy humanity.

Sounds simple enough, let’s go get that vision correction device!

Back with the military dudes, everyone’s taking a gander at the tail that Scorponok left behind. They theorize that the metal that makes up these giant murder-robots reacts to extreme heat, but elaboration on that point will have to wait, because the tail has begun to flail. They quickly strap it down, then call the military to let them know to strap anti-tank guns onto anything that’s going to be approaching any giant robots.

Meanwhile, in an interrogation room, Maddie and Glen have been left to sweat a bit. Glen takes to stress-eating, while framing it as a psychological tactic to subconsciously prove his innocence to the FBI.

This is a fat joke, with the added nasty layer of Glen being a black man about to be interrogated by one of the most intimidating white cops I’ve seen in a hot minute.

Glen immediately folds, pinning all the blame on Maddie, and claiming that he’s been a perfect angel his whole life. We get some weird purity culture out of him, before Maddie lets the FBI know that she needs to talk to the Secretary of Defense, NOW.

Over at the Witwicky household, Sam’s parents are watching the news, trying to find out what all those loud crashes were about. Optimus Prime drives down their residential street, the rest of the gang in tow, then they all park to wait for Sam to go get the glasses.

For about 20 seconds.

Sam has to physically hold the door shut to prevent his father from coming out and seeing several very tall robots from outer space tip-toeing around his freshly-landscaped yard, I guess because they got antsy. Optimus plods around on the grass and breaks a fountain, and our benevolent god Mojo comes out of the house, assuredly to smite the leader of the Autobots.

Mikaela runs onto the scene, and Sam chastises her for not controlling the robots who didn’t even acknowledge her existence, outside of pointing out Sam was sexually attracted to her.

Mojo pees on Ironhide’s foot, which prompts Ironhide to threaten to shoot the creature. This is why Ironhide isn’t getting into heaven. Sam, one of Mojo’s chosen few, claims that the mortal shell of his god is seen as a beloved pet by many humans. Sam runs into the house, before Mojo can incur his divine wrath on the Autobots.

While Sam goes to get the glasses, the Autobots decide to do a little peeping on the house, watching his parents watch TV. Sam tears his room apart trying to find the glasses, and Optimus thinks that it would be helpful if he brought Mikaela up to help look. It’s at this point that I realize that Sam has an utterly bizarre fish tank.

I mean, legitimately, what the fuck is this? No filter, no plants, might not even have any rocks on the bottom. Is this a comically oversized bong Sam threw a couple fish into? What the fuck.

Mikaela starts looking for the glasses, running into what is likely a box of porn mags, then they both look out the window to find that the Autobots have decided to hide in plain sight by transforming... in the middle of Sam’s backyard. Amazing work, gentlemen.

Sam finally convinces the Autobots to go sit in the alley and wait, only for Ratchet to run into a power line and trip into a greenhouse. The resulting impact is interpreted as an earthquake. Judy does not have the reaction one might expect from someone who’s lived in California for at least ten years.

Ratchet’s fine, by the way.

The power cuts out, and Ron goes up to check on his son, because he’s at least a halfway-decent father. Ratchet’s shining a light to aid in the search for the glasses. Sam’s parents notice this bright light, and bang on Sam’s door to see what’s up.

Sam quickly hides Mikaela and then attempts to salvage the situation, answering the door and trying to control the narrative. Unfortunately, Ron is far too inquisitive for Sam to do this, and then Judy asks if Sam was masturbating.

Judy, is privacy just not a thing to you? Because if not, it really ought to be.

She keeps going with it too, trying to come up with code words, until another one of the Autobots trips and causes Ron to panic again, climbing into Sam’s ancient claw-foot bathtub to protect himself. He looks out the window to check on his beloved yard, lamenting that the earthquake tore it up.

Ironhide is strongly considering killing Sam’s parents. Optimus tells him that they don’t harm humans, and also begins to wonder if he made a mistake bringing this guy along.

Back in Sam’s room, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Sam is an absolutely terrible liar, and Mikaela reveals herself, if only to prevent Judy from trying to talk about self-pleasure again. Of course, now she gets to be subjected to both of Sam’s parents objectifying her, so this might be a lose-lose situation.

Sam is reminded that his backpack is in the kitchen, just in time for the government to show up at his house. Mikaela makes a comment about Judy being nice. I suppose on a surface level, yes, being told that you’re gorgeous by someone’s mom is nice. I do have to question the context that compliment took place in, however.

Sam’s about to hand the glasses over to the Autobots, when someone rings the doorbell. It’s Sector Seven, and they’re here to talk to Sam about his stolen car being part of an issue involving national security. Ron and Judy are more concerned about their yard being torn up, Judy yelling that they “need to get their hands off [her] bush.”

We still have another hour of this movie.

The agent leading this mission asks Sam to come with him for questioning, which his parents are very much against. Mojo also voices his displeasure, but it would seem that Agent Simmons is not a follower of the Tenets of Mojo. Sam gets geigered, and his readings are high enough for Sector Seven to take him and everyone in this house into custody.

As Sam and Mikaela are riding in the back of the car, Simmons brings up Sam’s Ebay account, and also the phone video he took of Bumblebee earlier in the week. Mikaela is rather unimpressed with Sam at the moment, probably because he’s gotten her arrested. She still tries to help him out though, because she really is just the nicest fucking person on the planet.

Alas, the combined efforts of these two teenagers isn’t enough to fool the long arm of the law, especially when it’s a branch of said law that deals with extraterrestrial activity. Simmons threatens to lock up these literal children for life if they don’t start talking. Mikaela isn’t taking the bait, so he goes after her father’s parole hearing instead.

Yep! As it turns out, Mikaela and her father stole cars to get by, and she’s got the record to back that claim up. Simmons calls her a criminal, then says that criminals are hot. Mikaela looks like she’s about to cry, and I don’t blame her in the slightest.

Optimus, I suppose because his dad senses were tingling, takes the opportunity to place his leg in the road for the car to run into, then grabs said car like an unruly cat and lifts it until the roof rips off due to stress. The agents in the other cars pile out and point their guns at the giant space robot. The rest of the Autobots quickly relieve them of their weapons.

Optimus notes that Simmons doesn’t seem surprised that a bunch of giant robots just took all his guys’ guns, and demands that he exit the vehicle, posthaste. Simmons obliges, after a bit more prodding. Mikaela undoes Sam’s handcuffs, and he gets fucking pissy about it, as if this girl he’s had a grand total of three (awkward) conversations with should have told him something as personal as “hey, so my dad’s in jail and I’ve been to juvenile detention.”

Luckily, she doesn’t let him get away with it, calling him out as the spoiled, self-centered, privileged little shithead that he is.

Of course, we don’t get any sort of real acknowledgement from Sam, having to move on with the plot. Perhaps, if we hadn’t spent the last hour and 20 minutes faffing about on drivel, we could have had Sam get an actual moment of self-reflection, and potentially even character growth. However, this is Bayverse, and everyone knows that personal accountability is for fucking sissies.

Mikaela and Sam ask several questions, but get no answers from Agent Simmons. And then Bumblebee pees on him.

I hate that I had to write that. I hate it very much.

Anyway, I don’t know why that had to happen, but it did, and I’m nothing if not thorough.

Optimus tells Bumblebee to cut it out, and with that the Sector Seven agents are cuffs and left on the side of the road. Mikaela orders Simmons to strip, as punishment for threatening her father, then cuffs him to a street lamp.

...Yes, that does sound like a bizarre sexual fantasy, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately for our teen heroes, they forgot to confiscate everyone’s phones, and Sector Seven knows what’s up, thanks to the power of speakerphone. More cars and a couple of helicopters show up basically immediately, and the Autobots decide it’s time to dip.

But not before Ironhide fires off a pulsewave into the ground that causes a five-car pileup.

Optimus, I suppose because he knows he chose a ridiculously flashy alt-mode that is in no way practical, just picks the kids up in and places them on his shoulder like a couple of parakeets, then takes up a leisurely jog to get away from the eyes in the sky. He runs through the city, racking up what is likely millions in property damage, as the helicopters pursue. He passes by a “Legalize LA” billboard, which feels odd to see, given what movie this is.

The ‘copters somehow manage to lose Optimus, despite him being relatively slow, and having a notable radiation level that they’ve been using to track him. He hides inside the scaffolding of a bridge, only for Mikaela and Sam to slip off of his polished body to their deaths, thus ending the film.

No, they don’t die. I just told another fib. I’m sorry.

Bumblebee snatches them up just before they hit the ground, the impact of his metal body catching them at 75 mph, killing them instantly and ending the film.

Nope, that doesn’t happen either.

Mikaela and Sam are fine, some-fucking-how, but Sam’s dropped the MacGuffin glasses. The helicopters swing back around, having noticed the sound of a car crashing into the ground and the screams of two whole adolescents. They break out a fucking harpoon gun and fire on our kid appeal character.

Repeatedly.

They wrap up Bumblebee in a series of cables, as he screams like a moose. Mikaela and Sam are held at gunpoint by what is honestly far too many dudes, and are then arrested for the second time in ten minutes. Bumblebee is smoked... because he’s a bee? Sam, not liking this one bit, finds the strength in his weenie body to push a cop off of himself, run at one of the dudes with the smoke guns, throw him to the ground, and then start smoking him. He’s immediately tackled, but points for trying.

Sam and Mikaela are placed back into custody, and the rest of the Autobots regroup with Optimus to see what the plan is. Optimus says that they can’t save Bumblebee without hurting humans, so I guess Bumblebee is just a POW now. Well, at least they got the glasses. That’s cool.

Back at the Pentagon, things are getting dicey, as the other world powers are starting to suspect that something’s up. The Secretary of Defense is approached by a man with a mustache and a briefcase. He’s from Sector Seven, but the Secretary gives not a fuck about mysterious organizations. All the computers in the room suddenly go down, the virus from earlier working its magic- only this time, the blackout is global.

Mr. Mustache opens his briefcase, while explaining that Sector Seven is something known as a “special access” sector of the government, which is why nobody’s ever heard of it; it’s beyond top secret. Commissioned by President Herbert Hoover 80 years prior, it deals with alien life.

When the Beagle 2 spacecraft was lost on the way to Mars in 2003, the mission was declared a failure. This was a lie. The Beagle 2 recorded several seconds of Mars before being crushed to death by a Transformer. This tidbit is pretty funny, given that the Beagle 2 was rediscovered on Mars in 2014, seven years after this film released. Not a terribly mysterious death anymore, is it?

Comparing the footage from Mars to the footage from Qatar has Sector Seven thinking that these are the same species. Which they are. God, it’d be so fucked up if there were two species of giant robots in this film.

Mr. Mustache theorizes that because the Transformers now know that they can be harmed by human weaponry, they’re being proactive about their safety and shutting down all forms of communication technology with that virus that keeps popping up. It’s only a matter of time before the shit hits the fan for humanity.

Mr. Secretary tells his guys to try going analog with comms, breaking out the short-wave radios, to tell their ships to return home.

Over at an Air Force base, Lennox and the gang have landed, only to be scooped up by a bunch of dudes in suits.

Back with Maddie and Glen, the two of them have fallen asleep in the interrogation room, Maddie still wearing her friggin’ four inch pumps as her legs are propped up on the table, crossed in a way that seems rather uncomfortable. Glen gets to sleep like a normal human being, with his head resting on his forearms. Why this place doesn’t have a holding cell for these situations is beyond me.

Mr. Secretary comes in to bring Maddie on as his advisor. Glen can come too, I guess, considering he’s the one who actually figured out the sound file virus.

We get a little military glorification, and then it’s revealed that Mikaela and Sam, as well as Maddie and Glen, are aboard this helicopter. Their paths cross at last. Our heroes are transported to the Hoover Dam, where Bumblebee is also. They are still smoking him.

Meanwhile, the Autobots are figuring out where to go, with the power of Archibald’s glasses. Ratchet, who I guess is omnipotent, senses that the Decepticons have also figured out the location, and that this is going to be a race against the clock. And I mean, he’s right, but the phrasing is a bit odd.

Jazz wants to know when they’re going to save Bumblebee. Optimus says that they aren’t, and that Bumblebee’s sacrifice is noble, and that he would want the Autobots to leave him and complete the mission. As this is said, we get another shot of Bumblebee getting smoked and trapped in a lab. Yep, this is totally what he would want. He absolutely signed up for this, giving himself up to the government and not at all fighting like mad to not be captured.

I don’t think Bayverse Optimus actually knows what martyrdom is, which is bizarre, given that it’s a major trait in a lot of other iterations of the character.

Ironhide isn’t even sure why they’re bothering to save humanity, given that humans are violent and awful, his point being hammered home as Bumblebee is tortured for scientific reasons. Ironhide seems to have forgotten that Cybertron has been at war for literally millions of years. Optimus has faith in humanity, however, stating that we’re “young”.

And then he says that he’s going to end his own race, by destroying the Cube™, which is how they reproduce, because that’s the only way to end the war.

Which is arguably one of the most hardcore fictional applications of eugenics ever conceived.

Being advocated for by Optimus Goddamn Prime.

We still have another 50 minutes of this movie.

Optimus then proves that he does, in fact, know what self-sacrifice is, stating that, if all else fails, he’ll shove the AllSpark into his spark, which will destroy them both. He’s pretty chill about it, too.

Up on top of the Hoover Dam, Frenzy has fallen out of Mikaela’s bag.

Mr. Secretary is also at the Hoover Dam now, as is Lennox’s team. Oh, and Agent Simmons, who is thankfully wearing pants. He offers to buy Sam a coffee, as repartitions for threatening his family, arresting him, and being a complete creep to a teenage girl. Sam gives not a fuck about caramel macchiatos with extra foam and chocolate drizzle, however. He only cares about his car.

Mr. Mustache, who is also here, needs Sam to spill the beans on all these friggin’ giant robots that are running around. This is where Sam realizes he has the upper hand for once, and he starts making demands. One such demand is having Mikaela’s record scrubbed clean, which is an actually very nice thing for him to have done for her. We’ll see if his intent comes to fruition. For now, it’s time to talk about Bumblebee.

We get a shot of all these folks heading into the secret base hidden inside the Hoover Dam, and it’s at this point that I notice that Maddie’s shirt is basically see-through.

Inside the Dam, we see that Sector Seven′s been keeping Megatron this entire time, keeping him neutralized with cryo-stasis since 1935. Cryopreservation was invented in the 50′s. This isn’t a nitpick, I just thought it was a neat little fact.

Megatron being on Earth has resulted in most modern technology. This sort of plot point always bothers me, because it takes away agency from the entire human race. We didn’t use our own ingenuity and work ethic to advance society, we plagiarized from a more advanced species. I dunno, it just rubs me the wrong way.

We get the part of the movie where info is hashed out, so that everyone is on the same page, Sam spouting off Autobot propaganda. We can forgive him for this,considering he’s 16, and no one is immune to propaganda, especially when they have zero way of doing their own research to form their own opinion with.

Sector Seven also has the AllSpark, kept in the room next to Megatron’s, like the chumps they will soon find themselves to be. It’s about ten stories tall and the reason the Hoover Dam exists. With so much concrete suppressing its alien energies, surely no one will ever find it!

Except for Frenzy, who came in through a mouse hole. Whoopsie-doodle!

The AllSpark zaps the nasty little man, restoring his body with its weird MacGuffin powers. Frenzy tells all his coworkers that he found what they were looking for, and everyone starts heading over.

Maddie asks Mr. Mustache what exactly he means by “energies”, perhaps worried that this whole thing has been some elaborate ploy to get her to invest in magic healing stones. Mr. Mustache brings everyone into a testing chamber, since the best way to explain how the AllSpark works is through a demonstration.

There’s a big fish tank in the middle of this testing chamber, in which Agent Simmons places a donated device from the crowd- Glen’s Nokia phone, specifically. Simmons makes a geologically-confused comment. When this is pointed out by Maddie, Mr. Secretary hushes her, simply saying that Simmons is a strange man. The tank is locked down, and then the show starts.

Cube™ energies are shot into the tank, and the phone explodes into life, transforming into a gorilla-shaped gremlin creature. Happy birthday, little dude!

Little dude starts shooting at the tank walls, cracking the glass until Simmons pulls the trigger and ends it. Happy deathday, little dude!

The Decepticons are making tracks towards the Hoover Dam, but Starscream- yeah, he’s in this now, don’t worry about it- arrives first, because he is a very fast jet. He transforms, showing off his ridiculous Dorito body, and fires on the base’s generators. The resulting explosions can be heard all the way down in the testing chamber, and Mr. Mustache calls upstairs to see what’s up. Looks like Megatron may be getting warmed up, seeing as his ice bath has been cut off. Lennox asks if there’s an arms room in Sector Seven, which sort of feels like asking a bakery if they have any flour.

Frenzy has entered the room that houses the controls for the cryo-stasis and set that whole system to “no, thank you”.

Mr. Mustache runs through the base, screaming for everyone to get to the Megatron chamber. Off in the distance, the Autobots approach. Could probably used some fliers on your team, huh Optimus?

Back with Frenzy, he’s decided to just straight-up raise Megatron’s core temperature directly. Hope he doesn’t do it too fast; rewarming hypothermia victims recklessly can do some serious damage.

Outside of the base, Lennox and the boys are loading up with weaponry, along with what’s the entirety of Sector Seven′s cannon-fodder department. Oh, and all the main cast. Yep, just got a couple of teenagers chillin’ in the munitions room.

Sam wants Simmons to take him to his car- he hasn’t used Bumblebee’s name in a hot minute, not sure what’s up with that- even though Simmons is currently busy loading a very large gun. Simmons doesn’t want to do that, because he’s got no idea if what Sam mentioned earlier is even true, and he doesn’t want to pin the fate of humanity on a single Camaro. Lennox takes this opportunity to tackle Simmons, despite likely not knowing that Bumblebee is one of the “good guys”. A Sector Seven guy very much doesn’t like that, and points a gun at Lennox, which prompts all of his guys to also start threatening folks with guns.

Mr. Mustache walks in on the scene, but doesn’t do anything, since he isn’t armed and knows better than to tangle with someone who’s packing. Simmons tries to intimidate Lennox, because he must have missed the day of boot camp where they tell you that guns kill people. Lennox is fully committed to shooting this dude in the lungs before Mr. Secretary suggests he give the people what they want, before things get ugly.

Simmons takes everyone to the robot torture department of Sector Seven, where they are still smoking Bumblebee. Geez, you’d think they’d have something in place for if they ever came across another giant robot after Megatron, but I guess not. The gang gets everyone to stop smoking Bumblebee, which allows him to stop moose-screaming and strongly consider murdering everyone involved with his forced captivity. Unfortunately, revenge with have to wait, as we’ve still got to deal with the AllSpark, and the fact that the Decepticons are here.

They take Bumblebee to the AllSpark, where he makes direct contact the thing, causing the AllSpark to transform, compacting itself down into a far more reasonable size that Bumblebee can carry in one hand. It doesn’t seem to weigh more than a grown adult, if his body language is saying anything. I’d make a joke about the conservation of mass being ignored, but since this is Transformers, I can’t really say much. Conservation of mass doesn’t exist for this franchise.

Bumblebee would really like to get this show on the road, and Lennox agrees, quickly formulating a plan to get away from Megatron and taking the AllSpark to Mission City, which is relatively close to their current location, so that they can hide it there.

Lennox, I know this plan is a first draft, and we don’t have a ton of time for revisions, but the whole point of building a whole-ass dam around the Cube™ was because it was very difficult to hide, given its magical MacGuffin powers. Regardless of this flaw, Mr. Secretary agrees. Lennox also asks that the Air Force be involved in this, I guess because the U.S. military wanted more screentime.

Of course, that whole “global blackout” thing is still going on, so we’re going to have to get creative with how we’re going to contact the Air Force. Mr. Secretary and Simmons make a break for the WWII-era radio Sector Seven has, while Lennox and the boys head out to shoot things, and Mikaela and Sam hop into Bumblebee with the Cube™.

This is about the point that Megatron wakes up. The first thing he does is introduce himself, which I thought was very polite of him. Then he breaks out his flail and starts bashing shit around. Not so polite, that.

Over with Bumblebee, we’re shown that the AllSpark, all-powerful object that can create life and is the whole reason this conflict is even happening, is just chillin’ in the back seat by itself. It’s not even buckled up.

Megatron escapes the base, and it’s actually super easy. He just transforms, goes through the tunnel, and he’s free. I feel like we could have at least attempted some security measures for in case the cryo-stasis failed, given that we’ve had this dude in containment for the last 70-something years, but okay.

Starscream comes over to say hi to his boss, not that Megatron gives a shit. He just wants to know where that fucking Cube™ is. When Starscream tells him that the humans have it, Megatron makes a comment about how Starscream has failed him yet again. This is their first interaction in this movie, and Starscream’s been in the story for a grand total of five minutes at this point. I know that this is a reference to their dynamic in just about every installment of the franchise up to this point, but it doesn’t feel earned in the slightest. Even if it’s going to be expanded upon in future sequels, this is a shit-tier way to set their (awful) relationship up.

Not that anyone should ever bank on getting a sequel anyway, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Megatron tells Starscream to retrieve the AllSpark, and then we cut over to the radio plotline. The radio, which is so cobweb-covered I feel like Sector Seven needs to have a serious discussion with their custodial staff, has its nobs and buttons fiddled with by Simmons until it crackles to life. But where are the microphones? Everyone starts looking for the mics, as Simmons pushes Glen into the seat, I guess because hacking modern computers and using Depression-era radio tech are similar enough.

Maddie asks Glen if he can hotwire a 90′s-era computer to transmit a tone through the radio, so that they can send a Morse code message to the Air Force. Which sounds ridiculous to me, but I don’t know enough about radios or computers to know if that sort of thing would be possible. Maybe it’s fine. Or maybe it’s Hollywood bullshit. Who knows?

Back over with Bumblebee, we get a bunch of car commercial shots, of both him and the other Autobots. Aww, the gang’s back together again! Nobody tell Bumblebee that Optimus was completely cool with leaving him to his fate.

Optimus and the gang whip around to join the convoy, and everyone makes their way towards Mission City.

Back at the radio subplot, someone’s bangin’ on the door, trying to get in. The others try to block the intruder, while Glen does his hacking stuff. Mr. Secretary breaks a case and pulls out a gun that’s about as old as he is.

Glen gets the computer working, and Mr. Secretary gives him the Super Secret Military Codewords™ to use to talk to the Air Force. While he does that, Simmons finds a flamethrower and starts burning Frenzy as he attempts to enter the room. The Air Force receives the message for an air strike. Oh, goody.

Over with the convoy, it appears that the Autobots and Lennox’s boys are being pursued by the Decepticons. It’s difficult to tell, seeing as the cameras have gone full Bay-mode, but I’m guessing that’s what’s up. One of the Decepticons flips over a minivan, likely killing a family of five. another causes a multi-car pileup.

Bonecrusher transforms, then Optimus transforms. Bonecrusher iceskates across the highway, slamming into a bus so hard it just straight-up explodes. He is on fire. He tackles Optimus, and they proceed to fall off the side of the raised highway they’re on. Then they beat the shit out of each other, until Optimus decapitates Bonecrusher with his arm-sword.

Yeah, space dad is a little intense in the Bayverse.

Back at Sector Seven, Frenzy’s decided to leave the door alone, and instead is crawling through the ventilation shaft. Mr. Secretary and Simmons fire off shots into the duct above them, as if bullets would do anything against this nasty little pile of needles.

Frenzy bursts through the bottom of the duct and crash-lands into a glass case, taking cover behind a pillar and fires on the humans on the other side of the room. While this shootout is happening, Glen receives a response from the Air Force, just in time for Frenzy to accidentally decapitate himself with one of his own spinning blades of death. This time, he does not survive losing his head.

The Air Force will be sending fighter planes to Mission City, and to establish this, we get several shots of what some might call “military porn.”

Over in the city, the convoy has arrived. Lennox hands several short-wave radios over to Epps, telling him to use them to direct the Air Force when they arrive, so they can take the AllSpark... somewhere, I guess. Above, an F-22 zooms across the sky. It is not one of the Air Force’s F-22s.

Ironhide recognizes Starscream, and gets ready to throw down. Bumblebee grabs a nearby Furby truck and hoists it up to use as a shield. This marginally works, as the missile that hits the truck doesn’t immediately kill him, though it probably did all those Furbies inside.

The resulting explosion throws all the humans around, Mikaela getting weird heaven lighting as she lies unconscious on the pavement. Sam gets it too, though, so I suppose I can’t complain too much about this particular shot. They touch hands. I really wish that I could take this moment of vulnerability as being anything other than an attempt to set up a romance between these two teens who have known each other for maybe half a week. This movie has so starved me of genuine human interaction I'm jumping at the smallest of scraps.

Bumblebee actually didn’t get out of that missile-strike unscathed, his legs having been blown off. All those Furbies died for nothing. Tragic. Sam asks Bumblebee if he’s alright, and immediately tells him to get up. Sam then remembers that Bumblebee’s legs are off, so he yells for Ratchet.

Over with Lennox and Epps, they’ve realized that the plane they saw wasn’t one of theirs. Which, you know, has already been established, but points for getting caught up, fellas. Sam is crying and still telling Bumblebee to get up. Bumblebee is dragging himself across the pavement and whimpering. It’s awful. Where the fuck is Ratchet? This is basically the only reason he’s in this film, and he’s nowhere to be found.

The actual Air Force calls on the radio, asking for their location. Brawl, who is a tank, starts firing on Lennox’s gang. Jazz and Ratchet race through the city streets. How they were separated from the rest of the team is anyone’s guess.

Sam takes a little sit on the pavement to be with Bumblebee, while Mikaela decides to problem-solve and heads for a nearby tow truck. Bumblebee hands Sam the Cube™ because, as the designated protagonist, it’s his job to handle it in the climax of the film.

Ironhide is shot at several times by Brawl, narrowly avoiding being hit each time. This, of course, means that the people he drives by in this shot are almost assuredly dead, since they’re right next to the explosions. He transforms and does a flip, as the film goes slow-mo on a shot of a woman in a low-cut dress watching him flip. She screams. Ironhide screams. I scream, though probably for a different reason.

Jazz jumps on Brawl, managing to kick off a couple pieces of kibble before Brawl grabs him and throws him into the side of a building. Ironhide, Optimus, and Ratchet descend on Brawl, and so does Lennox’s team, Brawl losing a hand and getting thrown into his own building as a result.

Mikaela breaks into the tow truck and starts to hotwire that shit. Wow, a relevant back story that culminates in her being able to save the day, thus completing her arc and staying on-theme for her character. Why isn’t Mikaela the protagonist again?

Oh, right, because ~girl~.

Megatron lands in a nearby alleyway, and Ratchet, knowing this dude is bad news, tells everyone to head for the hills. Jazz isn’t fast enough, however, and gets shot for his troubles.

Mikaela drives the truck over to Sam, who is still sitting there with the Cube™, and tells him to get his ass in gear.

Jazz gets taken to the top of a nearby building and is ripped in two by Megatron, who acts like a bird of prey the whole sequence. Down on the ground, Brawl is starting to get back up from his smackdown. Blackout appears on a nearby skyscraper. Things are looking grim for humanity.

Mikaela and Sam hook Bumblebee up to the tow line as Lennox approaches them. Sam has left the AllSpark out of his line of sight, like a fool. Despite seeing this, Lennox still gives him the flare to let the military know where to pick up the AllSpark. Doesn’t even acknowledge Mikaela. He tells Sam to head for the white building with statues on top of it and set the flare on top of the roof. Lennox can’t leave his men, because he’s the head of his operation. Why he can’t send literally anyone else who isn’t a 16 year-old boy isn’t made clear.

Sam really doesn’t want to do this, probably because he’s a child, but Lennox has recruited him to the military against his will, so he must. Lennox then attempts to make Mikaela leave for her own good, but she tells him to fuck off, because she’s gonna save Bumblebee. Clearly, this is a win for feminism.

Epps radios the choppers coming from the Air Force to let them know they’ll be picking up a package from a teenager, thus locking Sam into the job. Ironhide and Ratchet vow to protect Sam from the Decepticons on his way to the pickup point. Not one single person has pointed out how fucked up this is.

Sam starts to run off, when Mikaela stops him to let him know that she’s glad she got in the car with him roughly an hour ago. They don’t kiss goodbye, which, honestly? Good. This fucking movie hasn’t earned that. Sam for sure hasn’t earned that, even if he did clear her juvie record. No word on that having actually been done, by the way. Sam never got confirmation, and I feel like he’s not really the type to follow up on things.

Brawl fires off some shots and makes things explode. Ratchet and Ironhide provide cover fire as Sam sprints down the road. Yep, they’re making this idiot WALK to the pickup point. Sure hope the elevators are working today, otherwise this is going to take forever.

Sam carries the AllSpark like a football, and in a better movie, this would have been foreshadowed by Sam having actually been a football player prior to the events of the film, perhaps removed from the team for some character flaw he’s since grown from/accepted. However, this is Bayverse, and well, men don’t have to justify their existence in the story with things like themes and having even an ounce of thought put into their character.

Back with Mikaela, Lennox has refused to learn her name, calling her “girl” as he screams at her to get Bumblebee hooked up to the tow truck. Which she was already doing when he got here. Lennox, dude, you’ve got a daughter now, you’re super extra not allowed to treat women like this.

Optimus Prime pulls through an alleyway and crashes into a pile of garbage. I can forgive him being late, seeing as he is a big rig, and probably had to take the long way into town so he didn’t get stuck in too-low tunnels. Don’t worry about how we briefly saw him during the Brawl take-down. This is his for real entrance into the climax.

He whips around and transforms, ready to throw the fuck down. Megatron spots him from his perch and descends.

Y’know.

Like a vast, predatory bird.

Megatron shoots at Optimus in his alt-mode, and Optimus catches him like a frisbee. Unfortunately for Optimus, it would appear that the horsepower on a Cybertronian flightcraft is hella intense, and he’s carried away. The two of them crash through an office building, then roll around in the streets punching each other in the face, debating the worth of humanity as they do so. Wish I actually gave a shit about either of these people, but alas! The film spent most of its runtime objectifying women and insulting minorities. I know nothing about Optimus, and even less about Megatron.

Megatron transforms his arms into a laser gun, and Optimus does the same. They shoot at each other. Optimus gets thrown into a building, then lands on the sidewalk below, definitely crushing a dude underneath him, but I guess we didn’t check that the shot was clear for where the CGI was gonna go, so he’s fine.

Sam’s still running through the streets, while Blackout murders, like, so many people behind him. Starscream lands in front of Sam, running into roughly 30 cars as he skids to a halt. Ratchet and Ironhide fire on him, as Sam takes a breather behind a car. Starscream transforms and blasts off. He was here for about 15 seconds. Sam begins running again.

Megatron is now following Sam, because he wants that Cube™. Sam is hit by a car- not an evil one, just a regular car- and trips. The impact makes the AllSpark activate, which grants several machines in the vicinity the gift of life, including the car full of bitchy women that just hit Sam, who are upset that hitting a human being might have scratched the paint.

I get it, you hate women, can we PLEASE stop beating this dead horse?

Sam finally gets to the pickup building, which turns out to be abandoned and fenced off. Good thing the gate was open, otherwise things could get really complicated. He heads inside, Megatron crashing through a floor-to-ceiling window shortly behind him. Megatron makes the claim that he can smell where Sam is. I’m going to choose to believe that he isn’t lying here, since Ratchet did something similar earlier.

Sam finds the stairs, and Megatron calls him a slur.

He doesn’t, really, but the voice modulation certainly makes it sound that way.

While this is happening, Mikaela is driving the tow truck down an alley, dragging Bumblebee behind her with the tow cable. She stops for a moment to have a short breakdown, seeing as she is a teenager in what is currently a warzone.

Sam is still running up the stairs. Outside, the military shoots at one of the Decepticons. It is, of course, doing absolutely nothing to the giant metal space robot. Mikaela concludes her moment, looking back at Bumblebee, who gives her the okay to keep going with dragging his ass across the pavement. She whips the truck around and tells Bumblebee “I’ll drive, you shoot.”

Mikaela then proceeds to speed down a main road of this sizable city backwards, running into cars and more or less shoving Bumblebee along to his destination.

The military has finally realized that their efforts have been pointless, but it’s okay because Bumblebee is here with his superior firepower. Bumblebee proceeds to shoot Brawl in the chest, which kills him. After this, he tries to act cute, lifting up his battle mask in a very “did I do that?” way, as if he’s not the same guy who ripped Barricade apart earlier.

Sam, meanwhile, has finally reached the top of this dilapidated building. Helicopters are approaching his location, but will they make it to him before Megatron does? Honestly, I’d be more worried about Starscream on the building just due East.

Sam is just about to hand the AllSpark over, when Starscream fires at the ‘copter, causing it to crash and nearly chop Sam to pieces. Optimus Prime runs towards the scene, on a roof that I refuse to believe could actually support him. Megatron punches thought the roof from the bottom and asks Sam some philosophical questions. Sam can’t answer, given that he’s hiding on the edge of this building, his flimsy grip on one of the angel statues being the only thing keeping him from falling.

Megatron tells him to give him the AllSpark, and in exchange he might not kill him immediately. Sam tells him to fuck off, and Megatron flails the chunk of building he was hanging on to, causing Sam to fall to his death, thus ending the film.

I’m lying to you. Michael Bay is making me into a liar.

No, Sam is, instead, caught by Optimus, very likely breaking several ribs on impact. This is the point where I realize that they’ve given Optimus fingernails. Sam clings to him like a baby koala, as Optimus parkours down the sides of two buildings, Megatron in pursuit. Megatron actually lands on Optimus 2/3rds of the way down, causing the both of them to fall onto the pavement below. How Sam survives this is a mystery.

Megatron recovers from the fall first, flicking a human away from him for having the audacity to exist in his space. The flicked person hits a car, and is almost assuredly dead. At least, I sure hope so, given that this is the director cameo by the Bayman himself.

Feminist icon Megatron?

Feminist icon Megatron.

Optimus comments on the fact that Sam almost fucking died to get the AllSpark out of dodge, and we get the return of “No Sacrifice, No Victory”. Which, I mean, I guess he’s allowed to say that, since he’s actually had to do something that warranted it. His dad doesn’t get to, though.

Optimus then tells this teenage boy, who has already had a hell of a day, to kill him by shoving the AllSpark into his robot-soul-heart, should he be unable to defeat Megatron.

I dunno, I just feel like it’s a bit of an ask.

Sam climbs off of Optimus so the Prime and Megatron can rumble. He runs through the ruined infrastructure of the city, so he’s less likely to be crushed. Optimus tells Megatron to square the fuck up, stating that “one shall stand, one shall fall.”

Then he gets ragdolled around a bunch, so maybe he should have saved the talk for later in the game.

The military is running around some more, stopping in an alley to see Blackout transform to root mode. Yes, the goo-goo eyes were indeed made by several members of the watch party that started this whole thing. People went wild for Rotor-Cape Johnson.

The fighter jets from the US military are arriving in a minute. Epps warns them to aim for the robots that aren’t evil. Lennox and the gang spread out, reminding each other to aim for the underboob, since Transformers’ armor is weak there. Epps marks Blackout with a little green light, which Blackout almost immediately notices. Blackout fires on the military.

Lennox has stolen a motorcycle and is driving through the streets to circle back around and jump off of the bike, sliding on his back to shoot Blackout directly in his underboob. Wonder what his uniform is rated for for road rash.

Sam is watching as Optimus gets his ass handed to him. Up in the sky, Starscream commits identity theft, and then attacks the Air Force. The Air Force can multitask however, and light Megatron the fuck up. Sam has, for some reason, come out of hiding, and Megatron uses this to his advantage, trying to take the AllSpark from him.

Optimus tells Sam to put the AllSpark in his chest, but Sam has a better idea. He shoves it into Megatron’s chest, which has been basically shot open at this point. Megatron makes a Space Invader noise, convulses a bit, then falls over dead.

Congrats on your first murder, Sam.

Optimus tells Megatron’s corpse that he got what was coming to him, then implies that they’re brothers. What flavor of brother isn’t established, but neither was basically anything between the two main faces of the franchise in this film, so it’s fine.

Ironhide walks up holding the two halves of Jazz. Optimus informs Sam that he now has a life-debt to this child. Whether or not Sam is absorbing any information at this point is up in the air. Mikaela shows up, with Bumblebee in tow.

In tow.

In tow-

Sam stares at her blankly. Mikaela stares back, making the pretty girl face. Man, what a great dynamic these two have.

Jazz is dead. That sucks. Optimus is handed his corpse to hold, while he thanks his new friends for helping out.

Then Bumblebee talks and he’s fucKING BRITISH.

Sam is obviously shocked by the fact that Bumblebee is British able to talk now, since not talking has been his whole thing up to this point. Optimus doesn’t let it phase him. Neither does Ratchet, despite having been working on Bumblebee’s throat injury for centuries at this point.

Bumblebee wants to stay on Earth with Sam. Optimus is just like whatever. Sam agrees to have a sweet Camaro from outer space.

Optimus pulls what is left of the AllSpark out of Megatron’s chest. I’m sure that’s not a setup for potential conflicts, not in the slightest.

Over in Washington, D.C., the US President has ordered Sector Seven be terminated, and all the Transformer corpses be disposed of. And by “disposed of” they mean “thrown into the ocean.” Dang, sure hope Earth signed some sort of agreement with the Transformers so that they never come to Earth again. You know, just be proactive about our galactic safety.

The Linkin Park kicks on, as Optimus gives us our bookend narration, telling us what the Autobots plan to do now that their race is at a genological dead end. As he does, we see Lennox reunite with his wife and child, who I had genuinely forgotten were in this movie.

Optimus is pretty chill with Cybertron dying out, because now they know about Earth. We get a shot of Sam and Mikaela making out, a shot that becomes more and more horrifying the further they zoom out, because they’re making out on top of Bumblebee. Who they KNOW is a sentient creature at this point.

And then it gets even worse, because the shot changes, and oh hey! Turns out that the rest of the Autobots were just chillin’ off to the side while this went down. Optimus continues his monologue, just walking around in his root mode as he tells all of Makeout Point how they’re “robots in disguise” now.

The monologue is actually a transmission he’s sending out into space, inviting any of his leftover pals to come kick it on Earth with them, because Earth is pretty cool.

And that’s where they leave us.

IT TOOK THREE PEOPLE TO WRITE THIS SCHLOCK.

So. Bayverse 1. A film showcasing xenophobia, misogyny, and toxic nationalism. It’s rough. Is it the worst film I’ve ever seen? Not even close, but it’s bad, and it was a huge deal at the time of release. Everyone was seeing it, everyone knew the actors and robots, everyone had a scene that they liked. Everyone was exposed to Bayverse, and as a result, a lot of people entered the Transformers franchise thinking that it was all like this.

And really, how far off would they have been in 2007?

When a franchise refuses to introduce female characters until years after being established, when all those female characters have the exact same body type, when a franchise hires misogynists to write stories, when it allows shit like “Prime’s Rib!” to be published- no wonder Michael Bay was approached to direct.

What a mess.

--------------------------

COMING SOON:

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009) - MEGAN FOX I AM SO FUCKING SORRY

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON (2011) - WILL YOU JUST STAY DEAD

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (2014) - SHUT UP ABOUT THE LAW SHUT UP ABOUT THE LAW

TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT (2017) - ACTUALLY, FUCK CONTINUITY

[suueeeeeee]

Superhuman.

Warnings: mentions of death, cursing, I don’t know what else xD.

A\N; so this is like my second or third time writing so no judging! This is a part of Cavillanche writing challenge, but I’ve been too lazy to do it, so here it is! hope you all like it.

Word count: 3155.

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Looking over Gotham’s bright lights again was a dream that Anna never really knew it would come true. Last time she was in the city was when she was merely a few years old, so it was all a distant memory that she barely remembers. She smiled as the tall, clouds-ripping sky scraper came into the view and all that she could only do was let her mind fall back to her late parents. However, she was soon ripped off of her thoughts as she heard the pilot’s announcement of the nearing land. She was bouncing her legs from how excited she was to be back home to her favourite two people. With her assistants following behind her as she departure the jet, smiling widely as the two men finally come into her view as they’re waiting for her down the plane’s stairs.

Last two or three steps may have been a delusion to her as she skipped past them, nearly knocking her tall brother over. Laughing loudly both of them, twirling and as everyone seemed to be moving past them, they stayed in their tight embrace, not seeming to have yet gotten bored.

“well well well, if it isn’t for the old Bruce Wayne.” She teased as they finally let go of each other and she stood back on her high heels covered feet.

“well well well if it isn’t for the biggest child on earth.” Bruce shot right back at her as he looked at her with a faint smile that could only be seen once in a few hundred years.

Bruce never smiled, never once uttered a joke or had a fun light hearted conversation with anyone in the whole world except for Alfred and Anna. When their parents died leaving a 15 year-old Bruce in charge of his only 8 months’ sister, it was as if the whole world had stopped. What the hell was he supposed to do? Where to go? What would happen to them? Having to face the cruelty of the world very soon in age, Bruce realized how dangerous Gotham can be, especially for the lots like him and Anna, and he couldn’t bear the fact of losing her as well as their parents. Therefore, he made the toughest decision someone could ever take. He sent her abroad to be raised and educated and promised himself that the moment he makes Gotham safe, Anna would be back home, in his arms.

But much to his displeasure, the moment she graduated it was decided that she would go back to Gotham, no matter how many arguments they had over the phone, or how many warnings Bruce had sent. He knew that his sister grew into that beautiful young woman that had an extraordinary mind of her own, and a very stubborn one at that, so when he saw that there were no point in stopping her, he decided on the lesser evil and have her back to protect her as she stayed right beside him.

She glanced behind Bruce, looking at Alfred, not their butler no, Alfred was her father, he raised her, he gave them the unconditioned love of both parental figures.

“Aren’t you going to welcome me, Al?” she grins, heading to crash him in a hug and she feels his chest vibrating with a small chuckle at the nickname that she still called him.

“How could I not miss Wayne?” smiles as she pulls back, looking at him with a small pout.

“Are you ever going to stop calling me that?” she sighs as she shakes her head at him, not believing that he never even once in her lifetime called her by her first name.

“I don’t think so.” He winks at her as he points to her assistants and guides them to the car where they load all of her luggage and bags. She clings to Bruce’s side, linking her arms with him as they both walk together.

“What’s up with you?” Bruce glances down at her as he feels her tight grip around his arm and her clinginess are being doubled up.

“Nothing, I just really missed you and I’m happy to finally be back.” She shrugs, looking up at him with a sincere smile. He wraps his arms around his shoulders, pulling her closer to him.

“Put your face down and be ready.” He mumbles, knowing that a crowd of paps are going to be surrounding the airport and he wanted to stay low as much as possible. She nods, looking down, with her sunglasses over her eyes to hide her and her hands over her head, and that was enough until they got in the car and started heading home.

“Wow, it’s still intense as ever.” She lets out a breath of relief as they manage to dodge the nosey reporters. Bruce nods her head and looks outside the window, and as if on cue, she senses his discomfort, placing her hand over his knee.

“Are you alright?” she asks quietly as she looks at him with a look of concern, but he only shrugs her off and smiles trying to reassure her, yet she knows her brother better than to be fooled by that act.

“Bruce, I can tell that there’s something bothering you. What is it?” she raised an eyebrow at him, and for a second he was speechless. What would he say? Oh yeah, just plotting a plan to get rid of that clown in the blue and red suit? He decided against it and looked back out of the window, causing her frown to deepen. She glanced at Alfred in the mirror and he just nodded his head which meant that he would be telling you later.

The moment they got home, she felt the jet lag kicking in and she excused herself to her room. She ignored all the servants the wanted the room to unpack her stuff and she just went straight for the bed, informing everyone not to wake her up for any reason, even if it was dinner. After a good 14 hour-nap, she woke up I the middle of the night, feeling thirsty and in need of some food. She wrapped a robe around her tiny figure and went to the kitchen, she noticed that the place was too quiet, it was 3 a.m in the middle of the night after all, but she didn’t find Bruce nor Alfred in their rooms.

She grinned as she knew it only meant one thing. They’re in the batcave. She only saw Bruce in the suit a handful of times, but she was still overwhelmed by the sense of pride, protection and fear. She headed to the cave, only to hear their angry voices. She decided that it was the best idea to stay back and listen, since she knew that they would’ve been talking about whatever’s been pissing Bruce off.

“Master Wayne, this is not right.” Alfred said calmly, yet his voice was full of rage.

“What do you want me to do Alfred? leave that clown fly around with his super power that only god knows its limit? I will not allow it.” Bruce practically yelled and she could only assume they were talking about one clown.

Superman. Oh how Bruce hated him, she never understood why though. She looked up to him, she always thought he was just a man seeking acceptance amongst the human race. She respected him deeply for the fact that he wasn’t obligated to protect them, yet he did and people still hate him. She could never voice her thoughts to Bruce cause he would’ve disowned her right away.

“I’m not going to sit around and watch him destroy everything again. He did it once. Who knows what he’ll bring next.” Bruce speaks calmly and she sees something shiny, something green? She frowns, trying to have a better look.

“and you think that having the only means to kill him is the best option?” Alfred speaks up again and she gasps, making both men turn to her direction. She comes out from behind the big wall and she stares at Bruce and disbelief. “K…kill him?” she whispers with teary eyes as she looks at him with a look of both horror and confusion. Bruce frowns more and looks at her,

“You don’t understand. He…” he tried to reason with her, but she cut him off.

“No! I completely understand. I knew you hated him Bruce, but not to this extinct! This is wrong! I won’t let you!” she glares at Bruce, yelling at him in a tone she’s never used it with him ever once in her life.

“I’m trying to protect us. I won’t kill him. This is just a safety precaution.” He looks at her with a serious look.

“that guy who killed our parents, he knew he had a gun, he had the intention. What’s the difference between you two now?” she spoke in a monotone voice, she knew she hit a nerve for Bruce, but she couldn’t just let him fall into that place. Her brother wasn’t a murderer, but she knew he wasn’t in his best state the last couple of years. His demons were getting the best of him, and she was trying to help but being far from him wasn’t that much of an aid. He told her that she was the last thread he was hanging to for his own sanity. She was trying, but standing and seeing someone innocent die wasn’t a part of the deal.

She left behind a hurt Bruce and a shocked Alfred and she went back to sleep, However, that night she couldn’t blink an eye, far too engrossed in her thoughts. After a few hours, she finally went back to sleep, only to be awoken 2 hours later at 9 a.m.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She groaned as she felt someone quietly shake her.

“Go away or you’re fired.” She mumbles to whoever maid was trying to wake her up from her peaceful slumber. She heard a deep chuckle, then feeling the bed dig down.

“This is why I’m always the one waking you up, miss Wayne.” Alfred spoke with a small smile, placing the ray of breakfast next to her. She hummed at the smell and looked at him with only an open eye.

“Cause I would never fire you.” She smiles at him, sitting up in bed and feels her stomach growl at the sight of food. Alfred pats her head and gets up to leave the room, but she quickly stops him.

“Ummm….. Where’s Bruce?” she asks, quietly, looking down at the toast, feeling a little it ashamed of what she said the previous night.

“He left very early, having to attend to some business. And also, he’s informing you that he’s throwing you a welcome party this evening so get ready.” Alfred sends her a small smile then leaves the room before she even starts to protest which she ,both, internally and externally groans about.

“God, I hate that stuff.” She huffs to herself and starts to eat in silence. She decided to go back to sleep, still not fully recovered from her long flight. She decided to leave all the preparations to Alfred an the maids and just spoil herself with extra hours of beauty sleep.

The night rolls in and she starts getting ready by putting on an off-shoulder long black dress, with a slit from the side that reaches her mid thigh. Her ears and hands, decorated by the finest designs of jewelries. She absolutely despised those galas, because of the amount of hypocrisy that stands within those snobby rich bastards, who all come to kiss their asses for some sort of an investment. She puts on a fake smile all the way, mentally applauding herself for surviving and even making a speech about oh how she’s so happy to be back to her beloved city with them all. She was in the middle of a conversation with some empty headed rich heiresses of other companies when she spotted Bruce talking to someone who seemed to be a reporter.

“Is everything alright?” She smiled at the two men, placing her hand on Bruce’s arm. She looked at the other man, biting her lip instantly. He was a piece of work, tall, masculed, deep blue eyes, black hair, cute glasses. She was blushing as she noticed that she’s been staring at that handsome stranger. She cleared her throat as she felt her face and neck turn red, extending her hands to him.

“Anna Wayne, nice to meet you.” She smiles, flirtatiously at him, with a sultry expression that screams to just let him take her right where they were standing.

He smiles softly, glancing at Bruce who was deeply frowning at the situation, before deciding to take her hands in his, pressing a soft kiss to its back, noticing how small and soft they are. They seem to be in a world of their own, only to be rudely interrupted by Bruce’s voice.

“Mr. Kent has already taken his statement. We shall go.” He doesn’t wait for any of them to respond and just pulls Anna with him, but she looks back at Clark with a strange feeling.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Months after Anna’s safe return to Gotham, she dives into work, deciding that it was about time she helped Bruce out with the business, sometimes taking over as he went off and played hero, she never minded though, she knew he was doing good, but the whole subject about yhe Kryptonite and Superman hunted her. Will Bruce be really doing that? Is he really considering finishing superman off?

She shook off those thoughts and she knew that they were just empty threats. Bruce always did those whenever he was angry. That confrontation night between them both now long gone, along with the mean words she threw.

It was one rainy night when all hell broke loose. She was just back from some late night conference calls at the company, with aching feet from the herls she’s been enduring all day, to find a very anxious Alfred, pacing back and forth. The moment she steps inside the house, he stares at her not knowing what to say.

“What’s wrong?” She frowns, walking to the fridge, pulling out a bottle of water with her back to Alfred, but when she doesn’t get a response, a bad feeling seeps into her. She turns to look at Alfred, who has this lost look on his face. “What is it?” She insists, putting the bottle down, looking at him seriously.

“It seems like Master Wayne has decided to finish the business with superman.” Alfred speaks quietly and her face goes pale. That could only be summed into one possibility . A one that she didn’t want to think about. She trusted Bruce, she knew what he was capable of, but that was superman we’re speaking off. He was literally a Superhuman with a power of 1000x men combined. If he wanted Bruce down, he would take him in one shot.

All she could think about was that she was running to her car in the pouring rain, bare feet, with Alfred calling after her. She drives off into the dark night, turning on the GPS she has on him. She asked Alfred to secretly connect her devices to the GPS in all of Bruce’s suits and batmobiles. She drives off to the port and runs around like a maniac, with a soaked dress, scratched, blooded and cut feet from the harsh floor and a tear stained face. She looks everywhere until she spots the green light and runs there.

“STOP!” She screams, climbing up the destroyed remains of buildings. Bruce whips his head around at the sound of his sister and watches in disbelief as she throws her body over the huge mass of the man with the blue suit. She looks up at Bruce with red eyes.

“Don’t do it. You’d be no better than those criminals.” She begs with a weak voice, trying to get to Bruce, trying to get to the inside of him. Not that harsh appearance of a man that was leaning before her.

“Anna, it’s not the same. Move.” He growls at her, which only makes her tighten her grip around Superman, looking at his vulnerable face, feeling both sad and angry. She looks up at Bruce again, with a look of determination and anger.

“You’ll have to go through me. I won’t let you.” She spits when she hears him whimper behind her. “Save Martha.” He lets out, gasping, making the two siblings look at each other with a stunned expression. Bruce pushes past her only to hold him by his collar, while she still tries to process what he would mean.

“Why did you say that name?!” Bruce yells so loud that echoes can be heard far away and Anna stand in front of them, wanting to move but for some reason she seems to be tied down. Immediately, a woman comes running in, separating Bruce from Superman.

“That’s his mother’s name!” She gasps as she examines Superman’s body and tries to stop the killing expression on Bruce’s face. He steps back next to Anna and glances at her, seeing as she wrapped her arms around herself, frowning but still somewhat of a frightened expression on her face.

“Lex said he would kill her if I didn’t fight you. I was trying to explain.” Superman coughs out as the woman next to him tries to support him to stand up. You share a look with him, then quickly look at Bruce, who sighs and closes her eyes as if thinking.

“I’ll save her, you go deal with Lex.” Bruce grumbles, taking off at once. You look at him and release a breath you didn’t know you’ve been holding. All of a sudden, you feel your legs goving out underneath you, as all of the action that happened started to take a toll on you. You prepare yourself to be hit to the ground, instead you land on a soft body. You look up, seeing the red ‘S’ symbol and you smile gratefully at him.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” He whispered as he stroked your face gently, looking at you with a look that was mixed with love, confusion and appreciation. She looked at him with a small smile and uttered out with the last bit of energy she had left.

“Because you’re more human than the rest of us.” She whispers.

@cavillanche

[nauseateddrive]

I ALMOST KILLED MY FURBY by Kristine Brown

"One day, you'll say, 'I want kids.'"

Surely. Pfft.

"...so keep in mind that when you do have children, you know that..."

I find that when it comes to offspring, precedents are implausible. But, go on.

"When are you having kids?"

Thanks for your concerns, people older than myself. By the way, I'm twenty and I just moved in with the guy.

* * *

Many of these discussions took place in 2012. Today, I'm twenty-eight. A generous plenty say I look seventeen, twelve on days speckled with sunshine and free of humidity. I have not seriously dated a man in more than two years. Silence is joyful, and my bank account is calm. I should also mention that my vocal chords are so much less strained because I've hardly engaged in another argument about when to get pregnant, how many times, and who would perform tasks of necessity while the other did all the indoctrination. My first relationship - the only serious one I've had - was outwardly quirky in that Wall-E and EVE sort of way, but if anyone was our neighbor, he or she would tell a different story. My live-in boyfriend had a dogged coldness resembling Kevin Lomax from The Devil's Advocate, and my meltdowns were just as grating as Mrs. Lomax's pleas to just "make a baby." Oddly enough, he was the one proposing plans for The Spawning. I just wanted him to spend time with me more.

My opinion on kids? I would make for an unfit mother. Possibly because of maladaptive behaviors, my urge to crush Pepsi cans to bite-sized accordions, a desensitization to insults my friends would classify as "bullying." I couldn't possibly impart a set of ethics to foster happiness and prosperity in the life of a child. "Oh, but that would be my job, love bug." Let's assume that besides diapering, clothing, breastfeeding, and these advanced duties to follow, I couldn't possibly have any sort of influence on my child. Doubtful.

Sometimes, whether at work or in a doctor's office, I witness an angry child thrashing a baby doll, or a careless, soporific child who drags the tiny mannequin by the hair. The parent may reprimand the child, and might even say: "Look what you did to your baby. No, don't do that!"

I can't say I've had these experiences, at least at a very young age. I never took an interest in baby dolls. Now, I do remember having multiple miniature dolls either given to me by older children or found in the clamor of Saturday swap meets. I do remember the Ken and Barbie, not genuinely Mattel but sufficiently humanoid to warrant their being called such. And with the screech of cheap Velcro, their garments were gone, and Ken slept on top. Well, I thought they were sleeping, but adults were displeased with my mission in choreography. I never saw those miniature knockoffs again. Predictably, I was supervised as I played with the Native American doll set. The male was removed, and eventually, so was the horse.

The clarity of my childhood memories astounds a handful of people, partly because of my current tendency to gloss over details and fail to follow directions. I could readily retell the plots and messages of numerous commercials in the mid-to-late '90s, the older Generation X-ers nodding and smirking in a way that asks, "Why do you know all this?" I was especially terrified of public safety announcements. "Only you can prevent forest fires" disconcerts me as much as "Hi, I'm Chucky. Wanna play?” But one campaign I couldn't tolerate was the one with the shaken baby. The teddy bear etched in stone, the infant's screams in the background, a camera in a dance of epilepsy. Then you see the whole tombstone and something along the lines of "Our Beloved Child." I think I was five or six at the time, but that was quite a horror flick.

What the frustrated adult committed against the baby, I would replicate three years later. To my Furby.

We were better off then and at this point my parents had learned the rules of Keeping Up with the Joneses. But they didn't buy the Furby. Even now, I question the merits by which he entered our home. Oreo. That's what my babysitter's older sister introduced him as, placing the box in my twiggy little arms, pinching my cheeks because that's what people do to you when you're eight, chubby, and loudly pretentious. She was fired the week after. I still remember being asked if the Furby was supposed to be paid for.

So consensus states that Furbies are Satan's little mercenaries. Infantilized Gremlins, wingless bats with beaks, sorely mutated flying monkeys. Whatever they may be, and in whatever year they were manufactured and marketed, we know that each and every Furby could use obedience classes with S.T.F.U. Consulting (I suppose we should add "LLC" to this, protecting the venture from lawsuits should the classes not work). That little gem plastered onto their foreheads? I don't believe it was ever a sophisticated camera, or a recording device. I couldn't teach Oreo anything. If I couldn't make him dance like my friends could with theirs, how could my children follow simple rules? Not that I was making this irrational connection in 1998, but my friends often joked that as much as I carried that loudmouth around, he was "kinda" my baby.

Furbies have this creepy voice a bit too similar to that of an aggressive cougar you've either known or heard of with a burgeoning case of emphysema. Yes, I also remember some graphic anti-smoking ads. I think above all demands, mine's signature croon was "Hungry." I'd press my finger on its plastic red tongue to hear those simpering "Mmmm"s and so many "Hungry"s that wouldn't cease no matter how often I fed the damn thing. Frustrated, I'd bury Oreo beneath layers of blankets, chuck him in multiple pillowcases, wedge him beneath the wall and my mattress. His nighttime cravings annoyed us all. 

There was a point where I was reprimanded harshly for walking by Oreo during his "naps." We had had it with his shit.

We couldn't figure out how to turn the fucker off. Honestly, I don't remember anyone even taking steps to activate the Furby. He came into the world as is. It's eerily similar to those robotic babies they hoist onto high school freshmen in state-mandated health class. Abstinence only, this will teach you. And in those health classes I do remember some frustrated girls perpetrating acts of legitimate mannequin abuse. Kind of like those angry toddlers in doctors' offices. Oreo once again begged for food. I couldn't quite teach him to dance on cue. He never did anything other Furbies did in all the commercials. I knew you could rub them on the tummy and all, but I thought, "What if I turn him upside down?"

And he hung from my grasp, looking very much like an obese bat that lost its wings long atrophied. Characteristically, he screamed, "Weeeeee. Fun!"

My intention was to punish him. So I shook him.

"Weeeee. Fun! Tuba, woah! Do do do do do dooooo..."

(Oreo uttered this phrase multiple times. I could never really make out exactly what he was saying, but I am certain that he did say "Tuba.")

As my hands were too tiny for one to do all the handling, I tried to spin him around. Really, I churned the animatronic butterball in multiple directions, my arms growing tired, my frustrations projected.

"Woahhh! Woahhh!"

I continued with this odd punishment.

"Woaaaahhhh! Me scared!"

The cry was loud. But that "Me scared" was a bit unsettling. It was a mix between a coo and a gasp, like he knew what I was trying to do. But I continued in my campaign to silence Oreo.

"Whooopeeeee! Fuuuunnnn!"

Blatantly contradicting the sentiments expressed immediately prior. I continued.

"Woaaahhh! Me scared! Heeeee."

That "heeee" actually sounded remorseful. I felt a twinge of remorse. But it wasn't enough, as I did continue.

Repeatedly, he would cry about being scared. And suddenly, a snorting sound. And while he hung upside down, the base of his odd little person in the clutches of my white-knuckled hands, he spoke the awaited mantra.

"Wooooo. Wooooo. Wooooo. Something something. Cocoa."

(Again, it's often hard for me to properly recall exactly what that thing said. I'm pretty confident he said "cocoa." He had some decent taste.)

And silence. For a good two years. Despite several jabs and pinches in evenings to follow, Oreo persisted in his slumber. Or coma.

Twenty years later, and I'm ordering books on Amazon to better address my anger, impatience, and tendency to seethe. Babies, and children in general, stay absent in my plans. But really, no one would take the story of Oreo seriously enough in reviewing my constant fears. That day, I became a little scared of myself.

Kristine Brown shuffles between poetry, prose, data entry, and wishing she could properly fly a kite. She photographs strangers' cats and writes poems for them. You can find these poems on her blog, Crumpled Paper Cranes (https://crumpledpapercranes.com). Her writing appears in Hobart, Philosophical Idiot, Burningword Literary Journal, among others. Her novel, Connie Undone, will be released on March 1st, 2020.

[kenshi-vakarian7]

MERweek2019 - Day 5 - Extreme Emotions

Event hosted by @cactuarkitty with fanfic prompts by @vorchagirl

Prompt - Write about a moment when emotions between your characters became a little extreme. Did their relationship become stressed? Did things get hot? Did loves almost break up? Drama, angst, smut, fluff - everything is on the table!

I can’t believe it took me over two years to FINALLY write my version of the High Noon mission.  After seeing this particular prompt, I figured now was the time to get it out there.  Honestly, I don’t think it really holds a candle to all the other amazing versions I’ve read, but I do hope you enjoy it regardless!

Also, please note that I DO NOT hate Sloane... it’s just how the story is since it’s written in the perspective of my Pathfinder, Kira Ryder.

---

“Untimely Grief”

“Ready, princess?”

Pathfinder Kira Ryder didn't usually let things get under her skin, especially things that would be considered petty and low.  Sloane Kelly's condescending tone with those words should've been one of them... and yet the words struck her as though those she was stabbed with a knife right through the gut.

Kira knew exactly why.  Had it been any other noun, it would've been so much easier to deal with.  Hell, even being called a bitch would've sufficed.

But no... it just had to be 'Princess.'  It had been years since called anyone ever called her that... more specifically, her late father.  

The noun jogged old memories Kira hadn't thought about since before leaving the Milky Way for the Andromeda galaxy – memories of simpler times of her childhood where Alec Ryder was an attache on the Citadel; how she looked up to him as her hero, who was proud of even her smallest achievements, and who wasn't as distant as he would become the older she got.  He was the reason she wanted to join the military.

She couldn't remember when he stopped calling her Princess, but she did remember realizing that he hadn't called her that for a long time at around thirteen-years-old.  And somehow, at that moment, the realization hurt more than it should've.  Between that, and the emotional distance he created, Kira eventually grew to resent her father.  It was easy to deal with while she attended Arcturus Academy in her high school years and, later, as an Alliance soldier since it meant not being around him all that much.  When she and the rest of the family were together, the most common companion at the dinner table was awkward silence.

It also didn't help when she and her brother Luke were discharged from the Alliance due to Alec's illegal AI research, nor the fact that neither of them could find a decent job in the aftermath.

After her mom died, it seemed to serve as a wake-up call of sorts for Alec.  It was only then, despite everything, that she and her father began to slowly mend the wounds that were left behind, and close the distance that was between them.  By the time they left for Andromeda, things still weren't perfect, but the mending process was still heading in the right direction.

They were barely in Andromeda when bad luck hit the family.  Not only was Luke in a coma due to a malfunction in his cryo pod after they hit the scourge, but Alec sacrificed himself to save Kira's and, for whatever reason, entrusted her his role as Pathfinder.  Since then, she had been constantly on the go with establishing outposts, dealing with the crummy half of Nexus leadership, maintaining morale for her crew, forming a trusting alliance with the angara, and trying everything possible to make sure that everyone who came to Andromeda didn't starve.

As she followed Sloane, the leader of the Outcasts, into one of the many hidden caves of Kadara, Kira realized that she never had the chance to mourn the loss of her father... and now she was forced to fight the floodgates that threatened to open and spill forth all the emotions she held in for months since his passing.

Of course this has to happen at the worst time, Kira thought as she struggled to get control of herself.  The last thing she needed was to break down right then and there, especially in front of Sloane.

She did manage to finally get a grip as soon as they reached an open space within the cave.  Kira focused on her surroundings... they were here because they were supposed to meet with the Charlatan, the leader of the Outcasts' rival gang, the Collective, to settle things once and for all.

Kira would be lying if she wasn't curious about who the Charlatan was.  After all, whoever they were, they seemed to have an interest in the Pathfinder despite never approaching her directly.  With the exception of her first day out in the Badlands, none of the Collective have tried to attack.  She later found out that they had orders not to harm her or her crew from one member with no reason given other than they were under the Charlatan’s orders.

Five seconds later, she figured out why...

“You look like you're waiting for someone,” a voice – a very familiar voice – spoke within the cave's shadows.

Kira turned her head to where the voice came from just as Reyes Vidal – a man she was slowly growing attached to since they met, with him introducing himself with the very same words he uttered moments ago - stepped out of the shadows and into the light. Seeing him standing there, a subtle frown on his face as he stared back at her, everything she knew about the Charlatan, the Collective, all the missions she and Reyes went on together suddenly fell together and made much more sense.

“Reyes?” Kira whispered, unable to hide the shock in her voice.

Sloane spoke up with disinterest, “I'm here for the Charlatan, not some third-rate smuggler.”

Kira glared at Sloane, who had her back turned to her, with a raised eyebrow.  She’s in denial.  She can’t be that stupid...  “They're one in the same,” Kira said.

“Surprise?” Reyes spoke up, his arms spread out at his sides as though he was emphasizing his reveal.

Between her whirlwind emotions from moments before, and now the shock of finding out who Reyes really was, Kira couldn't help but shake her head as, once more, she fought to get control of her emotions.  “So, did you really lie to me this whole time?”

Reyes didn't hesitate to reply.  “Not about everything.  You know who I really am.”

“Do I?” Kira couldn't help but ask with some contempt.

Sloane decided to get down to business, clearly not interested in their exchange .  “You said you wanted to settle things.  How?”

Reyes jumped down from the rock he was standing up before he faced Sloane.  “It's simple; a duel.  You and me, right now.  Winner takes Kadara Port.”

Kira's eyes widened in horror at his suggest.  A duel?!  She screamed in her head.  Reyes, what the hell are you thinking?!  Sloane's former Alliance military for crying out loud!

She wanted to shout these words to Reyes as panic began to set in.  Once more, she was forced to clamp down her emotions before she managed to calmly say to him, “You want to avoid war by shooting each other?”

“Two people shooting each other is better than a lot of people shooting each other,” Reyes reasoned.

Kira drew a quiet breath at that... knowing he was right.  This really was the best way to settle things between the two factions.  The rival between them was bloody enough as it was; worse for the innocent people who were caught in the middle of this gang war they wanted no part of.

“I'll take those terms,” Sloane accepted.

And then, they began to slowly circle each other, their hands close to their pistols.  Neither of them once took their eye off the other as they waited to see who would make the first move.  Kira stood in her spot, only able to watch what was unfolding in front of her.

Don’t die, Kira suddenly thought as she stared at Reyes.  Despite being mad about him keeping his secret from her, she knew he likely had his reasons.  It was irrational, she knew, but she didn’t care at this point.  All she cared about right now is that he survived the duel somehow.  I lost my Dad, and my brother is in a coma, and now I might lose y-

Her running thoughts suddenly stopped as she caught a glint within the cave's darkness.  Kira turned her attention to where it came from.  Despite the shadows, she was able to spot someone lying on their stomach watching what was unfolding in front of her.  She knew right away why they were there even before SAM mentioned it barely a second later.

Sniper, the AI alerted her through their private channel.  His sights are set on Sloane.

There was a split moment of relief; he wasn't there to kill Reyes... but she then realized that it was Reyes who brought the sniper here without Sloane's knowledge.  Instinctively, and for a couple of seconds, Kira thought about how wrong it was, how she can stop this duel right now.  She nearly took a step forward...

But then she stopped herself.  Looking at Sloane, Kira was reminded of all the horrible things she let happen here on Kadara.  The innocents who suffered under her rule, forcing them to pay protection before kicking them off into the unforgiving Badlands, not considering the needs of the angara who were here long before they arrived, among other things.

The Charlatan was not much better, but at the end of the day, they, no – he - her own feelings for him aside, was the lesser of two evils.

Kira also realized why a sniper was there to begin with. Sloane was former military.  Reyes was not.  It was a smart backup strategy on his part, as sneaky as it was...

With all that in mind, Kira didn't make another move...

The shot rang out and echoed against the cave walls. Sloane leaned forward as blood began to seep from her chest – right where her heart was – and she let out a pained gasped as she collapsed onto her knees.  Her eyes looked to Reyes, and then to the Pathfinder.  Kira read the single question in her shocked eyes – Why?

Kira, with her face neutral as she stared at Sloane, couldn't help her next thoughts.  I guess I'm not the 'princess' you thought I was...

And then, Sloane collapsed completely on her right side, her eyes closing as her life seeped from her.  As this happened, Kira was, once more, flooded with memories of her father and how he died to save her; memories of her brother who was currently in a coma on the Nexus with no way of knowing when he would wake up... if ever...

...And how she came close to losing Reyes today.

Kira didn't pay any attention as Reyes spoke to his sniper, who began to carry Sloane's body out of the cave to who knows where.  She didn't even realize that she fell to her knees and, suddenly, it was hard to breathe.  Barely grasping for her throat, she struggled to fully get air in her lungs.  She vaguely heard SAM say something, but she didn't catch what was said...

And then, someone pulled her to them and held her close...

Kira knew it was Reyes.  She should've been angry with him.  She should've been screaming and pushing him away, shouting to him about how he lied to her... but instead, she was tired. She was tired of the pressure that was on her shoulders, she was tired of fighting with the crummy side of Nexus leadership, she was tired of feeling alone in her struggle.  She nearly lost Reyes today, she wanted Luke to wake up already, and Dad, why did you have to die?!

The tears finally began to pour down her cheeks as she collapsed into Reyes's arms and sobbed into his shoulder.  Months of being on-the-go with no time to mourn her father, being worried about whether or not Luke would ever wake up, and now nearly losing the one person in Andromeda she come to deeply care for – it was too much to take, so much so that the vulnerability she dreaded to show to anyone was now out on the surface.

Kira wasn't sure how long she cried in Reyes's shoulder, venting out the mix of grief, pain, anger, and fear from her system. Eventually, the sobs subsided and she pulled back, though she didn't look at him right away.  A part of her wanted to bolt up and run away simply because she didn't want him to see her like this...

But she was tired... so damn tired...

Kira soon managed to pull away slightly to look Reyes in the eyes, despite knowing hers likely didn't look so great.  Looking at him, she was taken aback by what she saw – his lips were frowning, his eyes were dilated, and his eyebrows were furrowed.  It was all subtle, but she was able to read loud and clear that, whatever was running through his mind right now, he was frightened.

“Why didn't you trust me?” she ended up asking, her voice sounding more pitiful than she meant to.

Reyes reached a hand out to her face to wipe away the tears that stained her cheeks.  The features on his face seemed to turn less subtle and more clear.  Momentarily, he looked at the space that laid between them before he drew in a breath and gazed back up at her.

“I... wasn't sure what you would think,” Reyes finally said.  “I... liked the way you looked at me.  I was afraid that would change.”

It was Kira's turn to look between them.  She thought about the time they spent together ever since they met at Kralla's Song at the port.  It started out as them being nothing more than business partners, but the more time they were around each other, the more Kira... liked him, more than she had ever expected.  In fact, Reyes Vidal was the first person in Andromeda who made her feel normal and not just the Pathfinder.

“The thing about Reyes is that he always has a good reason.”  That was what Reyes's friend, Keema Dohrgun, said to her when they attended Sloane's party just a few weeks ago.  It was at the same party where they kissed for the first time – and where he let out a little of his own vulnerability over why he came to Andromeda in the first place.  To be someone...

She hadn't forgotten how soft his eyes would get when he thought she wasn't looking.  She hadn't forgotten the hopeful gaze he gave her after she kissed him in the storage room as a 'distraction.' And she certainly hadn't forgotten the way his voice growled in defense when his ex tried to involve her in their professional/personal dispute.  Even now, as she cried in his shoulder, he gently caressed her back and whispered in her ear in comfort despite her not catching what he was saying due to her not paying attention.

Kira wasn't thrilled about Reyes lying about who he was  she would’ve preferred being told the truth in the first place... but there was no denying that his actions, and the way he looked at her, told the truth about how he felt about her...

Thinking of all this, and with some caution about the future in mind, Kira made a decision... one that she knew she wouldn't hear the end of from her crew once they knew what happened here today.  But truthfully, she didn't care, because for one thing, she deeply cared for Reyes even before all this, and, well...

“Nothing's changed,” she finally said as she gazed back up at him.

His reaction was something to see, and it was almost like watching his mind process what she declared to him; there was a momentary shock in his eyes before he began to smile, almost in relief.  Then that same smile subtly transformed into something more... playful.

“You have bad taste in men,” he said, low and husky. He quickly closed the space between and pressed his lips to her, deep and yearning.  She returned the kiss with equal fervor just as they both held each other close, neither of them moving from the ground they sat on.

The kiss lasted a while until they were forced to stop in order to catch their breathes.  Kira moved to hug him closer, her face next to his.  “The worst,” she teased, her words whispered in his ear.

In response, Reyes kissed her once more, and she welcomed it.

[supercasey]

Why I don't make many friends over the internet anymore

Alright, so, I know I've vagued about this a lot. I know I've been leaving y'all in the dark, and I'm sorry for that. I thought I could hold this all in until it went away, but she isn't going away, and I don't want to be angry anymore; I just want to move on and get better.

So yeah... This is why I don't try to make friends online anymore. This is why I don't talk online much at all. This is what happened. Take it as you will, all I ask is that you understand that I'm at my limit with this person, and I ask that you please don't harass her once you realize all that went down (if you even figure out who she is. She's sorta... infamous in the RvB fandom, and not in a good way). I just want her to leave me alone, and starting a fight won't solve this mess.

It started with a bad fanfic that I wrote.

...

I will not say the name, but I wrote it for RvB and it was... a vent story. On my alternate account. About... gross shit. I double guessed posting it at all but I was determined to vent about my fucking issues, and this seemed like the best way to do so. And, surprise surprise... It's my most well received RvB fic, and I'm not even taking full credit for it.

To make it simple, it's about age regression. No, it is not sexualized. No, I don't get off on it. Yes... I age-slide. I hate it. It hasn't happened in a bit here, but I still hate it, so I made a fic where the characters are forcibly made to age-slide and it's written out as the psychological horror that it's meant to be. Except... there was always this one Anon, the one consistently rooting for the villains. Even when the heroes were rescued, they begged for more time with the heroes kidnapped and abused. They loved their "pwecious wittle babies UwU" and wanted nothing more but for the torture to continue.

I... humored them. I joked and bantered, but nothing was done. I never undid the rescue, and while the characters were still very much suffering from the results of their kidnapping, they were actively recovering, and I loved it. The small crowd of regulars I had following my story were pleased, and always willing to give me support. I felt validated. I felt good knowing that I was able to expose age-sliding in a way that wasn't grossly sexualized or enjoyed. While the characters were happy at times, it was a naive happiness, and it was made clear that what was happening wasn't safe or okay.

A few months pass without an update. I've grown a bit tired of the story, still plagued by self doubtful fears of my work being perceived as some sexual bastardization of a story. Then, one day, I get a message on Tumblr. I don't recognize the username but... they found me out. They knew it was me writing the story (to be fair my style kinda stands out in the fandom, not to mention that I'm bad at lying) and they wanted to talk about it. I was, of course, fucking terrified. But, to my utter surprise... they liked it. And they wanted to discuss my thoughts on it!

I was estatic! Finally, someone who understood! Someone who I could talk to about this horror story that means so much to me! However, it soon became clear that we interpreted the story... very differently. Where I used it as a means of venting and exposing the trauma of unwillingly regressing at a moment's notice, my newfound "friend" loved the "baby fantasy" and wanted to "adopt" the main characters, especially the boy.

I kinda just... enabled it. No, I encouraged it. I was so desperate for a friend, I actively wrote little things for her where the age-sliding was more consensual/enjoyable, all while wishing for it to go back to being an insight on abuse. But it never was about that; it was about fulfilling her needs and making a baby doll for her to fantasize about.

Before long, we had been chitchatting back and forth for a few months, and eventually over a year. I was happy, or at least, I convinced myself that I was. I struggled to respond regularly so it wasn't that bad, right? I wasn't always around her so I couldn't be that upset, right? Time passes, I idly mention having an online friend to my family and they, the loving family that they are, support me. They're amazed that the loner of the family has finally made an actual online friend.

Suddenly, talk of meeting face to face becomes commonplace. She's in Washington and I'm in Michigan, so I figure it's never gonna happen. I'm wrong. The year is 2018, and February's just hit. Talk of RTX has started, and I, a shy little RvB fan with hardly any money, know I'm not going. But my friend is. She's excited, already telling me about her plans, when she suddenly asks if I'm going.

I of course say no. I mean, come on, I'm not even close to rich enough to pay for a whole trip across the US. But my friend is... insistent. I make if clear that I can't afford it, and out of the blue, she offers to take me. No strings attached, no payment on my part (except of course for merch), just bring... me.

I'm of course floored. RTX? Really? My siblings and I have always wanted to go, ever since we started with AH videos. But here it is, right in front of me. An opportunity to go to the biggest convention I've ever heard of, and she... really wasn't taking no for an answer. I tell her that I'll think about it, that I need time to figure it out. She assures me that it's fine, take all the time I need. I tell my family about the offer, about how I've known her for over a year and trust her (I don't, but I'm too afraid to admit it). Mom's scared, but at the promise of a video call with my friend, she chills out. Dad's supportive, but also a bit worried. My siblings are over the moon, excited for me and raring to someday go as well.

It's obvious, right? Now I have to go. After all, my friend HAS to have someone go with her, and no one else she knows wants to go. After all, my siblings have always wanted to go, and it would be shitty to say no when they'd say yes in a heartbeat. After all, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and really, who wouldn't?

I say yes. I save all the money I can, my dad video chats her, and then... I'm off. I fly to Texas (I insisted on buying my own plane ticket). Up to that point I had never left my family before, not for over forty-eight hours, and yet here I was, leaving for over a week. My therapist, my parents, and my siblings were all cheering for me to go, to get out of my comfort zone and do the thing I never should've been able to do.

I didn't have the heart to tell them that I was scared I wouldn't come home alive.

I land in Austin, Texas the day before RTX begins. I meet her in the airport. I'd already seen her face before, so I wasn't exactly surprised, but I felt safer seeing she was a bit heavier. I could outrun her, if need be. I could get away, if she tried to take me. Unless I was in headspace. Unless I was a little fucking baby. Unless I was sliding and woke up on a one way trip to Washington-

I shook my head. No, I thought. No, I'll be okay. Stop being paranoid, Ted, it's all in your fucking head. Again. Paranoid motherfucker.

We got to our hotel room, and after a long day of walking around and exploring Austin, we called it an early night, eager for tomorrow's adventures.

It was fun, at least at first. She got me a platinum badge, so we got a garanteed spot everywhere we went. There was a cool-ass rec room for platinum badge wearers where we could chill in-between events. I stuck close to her, as she's been to RTX a thousand times over, and I felt like it was going to be okay. That night, I streamed all of Nomad of Nowhere, and intended on going to the panel the next day. Unfortunately, things took a... bad turn.

You see, my friend had enemies. People she believes are "heartless abusers who are evil and cannot be trusted", especially not near me. Well, I'm a dumbass, and I can't keep track of everyone in her fucking burn book (too many names to count). Cue a mutual from Tumblr contacting me, wishing to finally meet me in person (I made a post about being at RTX and they saw it). I, of course, agreed.

Later, I nonchalantly mention that I'm going to meet up with a mutual at the RvB panel. She asks who it is. Still unaware of the shift in my friend's mood, I casually say the username. She goes white.

"I'm sorry, did you say [INSERT NAME]?"

"Uh... Yeah? Is that... bad?"

Holy. Fucking. Shit. She loses it, sobbing like I shot her dog. Empathetic little bastard that I am, I also begin to cry, begging to know what's wrong. Cue a lot of "How could you!?"s Followed by me desperately apologizing, still completely in the dark.

Apparently, my mutual? Her worst enemy. Number one. They who must not be named. And me, a dumbass with PTSD induced memory issues, did not remember the one time she mentioned them. So now I'm fucked, in-between a sobbing friend and a promise to meet a mutual. I've gotta fix this, and fast. I was scared, and in a panic, I promised her that, no, I'm not meeting to "be their friend". I'm just... seeing what they look like! So I can protect my REAL friend!

This all felt very dramatic, and honestly a tad juvenile. Here we were, me just shy of twenty, and her over twenty-one. I felt like I was in second grade, promising not to be friends with anyone else on the playground. Hell, I was still in the dark as to what this person had fucking DONE.

Later, we meet. My mutual is, unsurprisingly, incredibly nice and sweet. We compliment each other's writing in the back of the room after the panel, all while I know my friend is watching from afar, glaring at us. I make it quick, too scared to get in trouble, and then it's over. I felt like such an asshole, blowing my mutual off, but I was afraid of the lion a few feet away, ready to pounce and maim me.

Afterwards, I was grilled about our talk. What'd we talk about? What did they say? Was that laughing she heard? Were we laughing at her? *Gasp* Am I turning on her!? Oh, she knew it, she knew it! I'm an ABUSER! Another monster!

This, of course, gets me crying. I'm empathetic as all hell and as a result I'm unfortunately prone to taking on other's emotions. She knows this. We get out of there, but the tension is high. She has a panel only she's interested in, so I stay alone in the hotel room.

Again, I made the most of it. I binged all of Nomad of Nowhere for the first time, and it was enough to calm me down. Delighted, I discovered that the panel for NoN would be the next day, around noon. When my friend returned, I was quick to fill her in, begging if we could go. She smiled, and promised we would. I fell asleep quickly that night, momentarily forgetting the drama for a bit.

The next morning, my friend's dead quiet. I ask if she's alright, and I'm repeatedly assured that she's fine. We reach the convention center around 8AM, and agree to meet up at 11 so we can catch the NoN panel together. I run off to wander and explore, and my friend goes off on her own for awhile.

For two hours, I'm chill. Everything's super. I talk to cosplayers and I listen to my music, and at around 10AM... I get a worrying text from my friend. I'm not going to post screenshots (because they're out of context/confusing/taking screenshots for a call out makes me feel shitty) but it started as her repeatedly saying how her enemy was "ruining the con for her" and how she was crying. I immediately start looking for her, but I have no idea where she is. Just as I'm getting ready to check the hotel, she sends me this:

"I'm writing down a statement!" ((Reporting my mutual))

I panic. I'm fuckin' bolting through the con, looking for the help desk. I'm crying, I'm shaking, I'm scared I'm gonna pass out. Thankfully, I find a guardian. She leads me to the help desk and there my friend is, crying her eyes out while filling out a form to report her enemy for... existing. And being "mean" to her on Tumblr. Yeah.

I was still kinda having a panic attack when this occurred, so it's kinda blurry at bits. I remember sitting on the floor next to her (there weren't a lot of chairs and I didn't want to be rude and ask for one) and rubbing her back. I gave her my extra Arizona green tea because it was still cold and had honey in it.

The guardians praised me, saying I was a great friend. I felt like the scum of the earth.

Awhile passed. She filled out her form, and after the guardians checked over her "screenshot evidence", they told her there was nothing they could- or should- do. They chilled her out and told her it was HER con, and to not let some bully get in the way of it. Tearfully, I apologized over and over again. They just smiled and assured me that it was fine. It wasn't.

We almost missed the NoN panel. Almost. I wonder, sometimes, if that was intentional.

I should mention now, while I have the chance, that I was keeping contact with my older brother through all of this. When I was sitting on the floor panicking, I texted my brother for advice. He offered to talk to my friend about this (I knew exactly how that would go, considering how my friend was), and I just... cried. Cried and begged him not to make my friend mad. He didn't, but I could tell he was willing (and wanting) to tell her off.

The rest of the convention went... bumpy. There were a few more meltdowns, but overall, I survived. We went to the airport early (because I was afraid) because there was nothing to do, and after she left to wait for her flight... I felt safe again. I breathed in. I breathed out. If I cried, all the more reason to leave early.

Back home, life returned to normal. My older brother was worried about me, but I blew him off in favor of trying to be like him and have a successful online friendship. I was not backing down. People are sensitive sometimes, right? It doesn't matter that her reasons for hating my mutual are inaccurate and fake. I'm her friend. It doesn't matter that she scares me. She took me to RTX. It doesn't matter that I'd rather die than keep talking to her when all she does is make me afraid. I owe her. She's been nothing but kind. I'm just a selfish, greedy little bastard that needs to be grateful and stop questioning this.

It gets worse. Now she wants to know everything about me. She wants to hear every detail of my trauma, every moment of fear or weakness. I tell her I'm scared, and not ready.

"Just a little, sweetie. Just tell me a bit. How am I supposed to be your friend if I don't know what's damaged you? How am I supposed to have you if you keep running to your big brother?"

So... I told her everything. I tried to keep it small, but lord knows I'm an oversharing mess. The minute I start, I can't stop. She knows that. A few hours and it's all typed out; my heart, my soul, my damaged bastard of a body. She says she loves me. She says she'll take care of me forever. I tell her I need a break, and for over two weeks I'm mentally fucked, drifting in and out of headspace, struggling to coexist with my dug up trauma. I'm drowning. I'm scared.

While all of this occurred, my friend took it too far. When discussions of next year's RTX came up (always from her. I'm never going back there, not with her, maybe never again), she balked at the thought of me bringing my siblings (with them paying for themselves of course).

Mostly, she feared my brother. She caught wind of his suspicions, and immediately began to try and convince me that my brother was Bad, and he was gonna Hurt Her. Didn't I promise to protect her? Didn't I promise to keep her safe? Now's the time, Ted, chop chop! Your best friend needs you!

Except... she was a dumbass to think I'd ever turn on my brother. One night, after all of this; after telling her everything about me, after sharing my deepest traumas, after refusing to turn against my brother... She went off. She began mass texting me, accusing me of abusing her, of being a monster. How could I? How could I be so mean and terrible? That must make me an abuser, and all abusers are the same! Evil!

I was... shocked. And hurt. And crying. I broke down, and finally- fucking finally- I told my brother everything. About the emotional abuse, about the pressure, about the guilt... I must've talked for two hours straight, just flipping out. By the end, I was ready to do what I needed to do, and with my brother's support... I cut ties. I told her I was done.

Three days later (she always texted back right away, so I knew she was giving me time to wonder what she'd do) she responded with a "I think we need a break from each other :/ we're both pretty terrible, huh? :/// Mostly you but whatever bye ://///"

Since then, I've been trying to get better. She still sometimes does things in order to remind me that she's around and stalking my Tumblr (sent a few messages before she abruptly deleted the blog she used to talk to me (still has her main), passive aggressively messaged me for a spell, finally made me lose my cool by harassing my sister, etc) but I'm trying to ignore it.

I know this is a lot... but they're hard lessons to learn, and I'd much rather you all learn them through my stupid actions before you get hurt or cornered: Not everyone online is your friend. Just because they say they love you doesn't mean they love YOU. Trust your fucking gut before you drag your ass onto a plane because someone told you to. And most importantly of all... Not everyone you're told to hate is bad, because guess what? Everytime I've been down, been questioning shit, or just vented, do you know who's almost always responded? The very mutual I was told was evil. And you know what else? I found out every fuckin' thing my ex said about them was a straight up lie; every screenshot was fake/out of context, and every "abusive" word was from my ex, not my mutual.

So yeah... I know better now, Natalie. I hope that if you see this, you actually try and get help. You need to realize that you don't own people, and that you can't force everyone who doesn't adore you to be an antagonist in your story... all you're doing is hurting yourself. I never lied when I said I loved you; I still sorta do, even after what you've done to me. I fucking love you, Natalie, and it's because I love you that I'm getting away from you. Please oh please get yourself actual help, before you make things any worse for yourself.

Sincerely, Ted.

[radfemetc]

When Bindels speak*

Fourteen years ago, in an opinion column in The Guardian provocatively entitled ‘Gender Benders, Beware’, lesbian feminist activist Julie Bindel wrote that:

“I don’t have a problem with men disposing of their genitals, but it does not make them women, in the same way that shoving a bit of vacuum hose down your 501s does not make you a man.”

I vaguely remember reading this at the time, slightly bemused both at the piece and then at the subsequent outraged public reaction to it. Fast forward to a few months ago, and I’ve just published some blog pieces which, though not reaching Bindelesque proportions, have proved moderately controversial in my discipline, academic philosophy. As I discuss and defend my views on social media, and watch others discuss them, the name of Julie Bindel comes up repeatedly, as an example of company which, it is presumed, I absolutely don’t want to keep. A well-established male philosopher intones repeatedly about Bindel’s ‘offensive, transphobic’ comments in the past. Another describes her to me as a ‘loopy extremist’, and ‘potty’. I go back to find the article online and rather disbelievingly check whether it’s the same one I vaguely remember. It is.

Now, to attempt to mitigate against such perceptions, which perhaps you share, I could tell you about Bindel’s frankly stunning track record of effective activism, working on behalf of natal women and girls world-wide with an energy and bravery which borders on heroic. I could tell you that the context of her Guardian piece was partly a discussion of an attempt by trans women Kimberley Nixon to sue Vancouver Rape Relief for not allowing her to work with traumatised natal women fleeing male sexual violence: a case which rumbled on for another three years before Nixon lost, costing the shelter thousands of dollars to defend against. I could point out that the idiom of the piece was clearly intended to be comic, colourful, and frank, and was pretty funny in several places; for instance:

“When I were a lass, new to feminism and lesbianism, I was among the brigade who would sit in the women’s disco wearing vegetarian shoes and staring in disbelief at the butch/femme couples, mainly because they were having a better time than me”.

I could tell you that even so, she later apologised ‘unreservedly’ for writing the article. I could point out that many of the things she says in the piece are prescient, and over time have only got more troubling: worries about how trans ideology often essentialises wholly sexist gender stereotypes about masculine and feminine behaviour; about the development of a culture apparently in favour of cutting off parts of healthy bodies if one is ‘unhappy with the constraints of .. gender’; and about the harmful implied message sent by this culture to butch lesbians and camp gay men. And I could also easily manifest the anger I felt, as I read these online comments from middle-class heterosexual males, typing smugly and contemptuously about one moment fourteen years ago in the life of a working-class lesbian, who has devoted most of the rest of that life to addressing issues such as child grooming, sex trafficking, prostitution, and cross-border surrogacy; doing activism in the field, and not just from the armchair.

But to cite these facts as exculpatory of Bindel would suggest that an ordinary woman who had said roughly the same thing as her– that is, that trans women aren’t, in fact, women — and yet who was not already a heroic feminist defender of natal women, or who wasn’t partly talking about an odiously selfish individual such as Nixon, would be at fault. I deny this too. That is, I reject the near-pathological zeal with which trans activists, ‘trans allies’, and ‘woke blokes’ generally, seek to monitor and control natal women’s language in this domain: not just with respect to discussing whether trans women are actually women, but also in uses of particular names and pronouns, and gender attributions.

The statement “transwomen are women” has become a kind of mantra for so-called progressives. To understand what it is meant by it, we need to distinguish the use of that phrase, in those mouths, from two other contexts. One of those involves a claim about the law. Since 2004, those in the UK with a Gender Recognition Certificate are counted as having had their gender ‘reassigned’. This is not, and was never intended to be, any pronouncement on a biological fact. It is in fact impossible for a child or adult to biologically change sex. (I’m prepared to offer arguments for this, if needed, but most readers will, I hope, accept it as true). Nor was this law supposed to pronounce definitively on the question of whether a trans woman with a GRC ‘really is’ a woman. The Gender Recognition Act was at most intended to allow for a legal status — that of ‘gender reassignment’ — for the purposes of access to certain protections under the law.

A second version of the claim “trans women are women” is uttered for therapeutic reasons. One basis for self-identifying as a trans person is the condition of gender dysphoria. It is assumed by many medical practitioners that, on diagnosis of this condition, treating a person ‘as if’ belonging to their self-identified gender is helpful to their well-being; whereas confronting them with their ‘birth-assigned’ gender, or the biological facts of their sex, is not. We might easily interpret this as a kind of benevolent role-playing or method-acting, extending from the medical practitioner out into the wider community: act as if a trans woman is a woman, in most social contexts. But this is completely compatible with denying that trans women really arewomen, in a more committed sense.

Somehow, though, in recent years, a respectful concern for the well-being of trans people has supposedly morphed into a literal claim about category membership: trans women really are women. That is: trans women belong unambiguously in the category of women; the concept of woman literally applies to them. For most trans activists, this is supposed to be true whether the trans woman is a post-operative transsexual, or a trans woman on hormones, or whether she belongs to the significant proportion of trans women who are neither. She ‘is’ a women, whether she transitioned in her teens, or in middle-age; whether thirty years ago, or yesterday. Moreover, for many trans activists, not only are trans women literally women, but if they have children, they can be mothers. If they have female partners, they can be lesbians. They can be victims of misogyny. And so on. One by one, the familiar words women have used to describe themselves tumble like a chain of dominoes.

Such claims are usually unargued-for. They are presented more as self-evident truths; the outcome of revelation, perhaps, or as some article of faith which it would be downright evil to try to deny or complicate. As this description suggests, agreement with such claims is ruthlessly socially enforced by trans activists. Not only are you not supposed to refer to or imply, in front of a trans person, any fact about their natally-bestowed gender or biological sex; you aren’t suppose to mention these, even in their absence. To do otherwise is sometimes called a form of ‘violence’. Even on a massive UK discussion forum like Mumsnet, in a thread about trans people written by gender-critical feminists and directed towards fellow gender-critical feminists, you aren’t supposed to mention it. Even on a Whatsapp group chat involving natal women working at the BBC, you aren’t supposed to mention it. It doesn’t matter if your subject matter is Labour party all-woman shortlists, what to do about children who think they are trans, medical discussions, biology teaching, or presumably, your own relatives; you are never, ever, eversupposed to describe trans women as men or male, ‘deadname’, ‘misgender’, or use the ‘wrong’ pronouns out loud. Even trans women themselves aren’t supposed to do these things: see the bullying treatment that trans women in the UK such as Miranda Yardley, Kristina Harrison, and Debbie Hayton get, when they deny that they themselves are ‘really’ women, and seek a different narrative.

This is in itself quite striking, as for other false claims about category membership, people are normally socially permitted to assert them. Take the claims: “Elton John is straight”. “Marvin Gaye is white”. Those claims are obviously false, but there was, presumably, no inward gasp of horror as you just read them. Now contrast with: “Caitlyn Jenner is a man”; “Lily Madigan is biologically male; he is a man”. Even though I mention these as exemplary sentences, rather than assert them myself, I assume that at least some readers think I just wrote something awful. Moreover, this is presumably not just the feeling that I showed a lack of respect for the addressee’s wishes; for if I tell you that the composer of the song ‘Rocket Man’ is Reginald Dwight, presumably you don’t think I just committed ‘violence’ against Elton John by ‘deadnaming’ him.

Writing down those phrases about Jenner and Madigan just now, but without quotation marks, would be enough to have me banned from Twitter. Articles have been removed from Medium for less. This is not, despite what opponents have sometimes suggested, because such statements are obviously morally equivalent to denying the personhood or humanity of those who are racially different to oneself. (Again, I’m happy to offer arguments for this — it won’t take long — but I leave it aside for the moment, on the assumption that most readers aren’t so sophomoric). Nor is it reasonable to think that hearing such statements will generally cause trans people to have thoughts of suicide, as is sometimes dramatically suggested by Owen Jones, in a way that means we should never utter them.

A better explanation seems to involve the thought that, should a speaker X publically refer to a trans person Y by their natally-bestowed name or pronouns, even out of the earshot of Y, Y might later find out about it; or at least, some other trans person might find out about it, and by extrapolation to their own case, be caused to experience a distressing episode of dysphoria. Equally, presumably, it is worried that if a trans woman overhears a general claim such as “trans women are men/ males”, she will be caused great distress; perhaps too, a trans man might be caused great distress, again by extrapolating to his own case.

However, this reasoning clearly has limits. If gender critical feminists are talking to each other on a discussion thread clearly advertised for the purpose, or in a Whatsapp group, then it just seems too demanding to require they talk a certain way, just in case a trans woman or trans man reads or ‘hears’ them. The trans woman in question would almost certainly have to be specially looking. Quite often trans activists will equate misgendering along the lines of going up to a trans person and screaming ‘you’re a man!’ in their face(always ‘screaming’, of course). Obviously this isn’t what is happening in the contexts just mentioned: this is natal women talking to other natal women, about matters of great importance to them, as such, and with no reasonable expectation that they will be accidentally ‘overheard’.

In any case: even if one can foresee that trans people will overhear when one denies that trans women are women — is that a compelling reason not to say what one thinks? It rather depends on what is at stake. It was part of the original argument of my blog pieces that rather a lot is currently at stake in the UK with respect to this matter. There are several conflicts of interest that arise between trans women, as a category, and women, as a category, competing for the same spaces and resources. Trans activists seem to think that natal women should accede to all their demands. In that context, I think natal women should be allowed to speak freely in a critical way about the underpinnings of trans activist views. If natal women conclude after consideration that trans women aren’t women, they should be able to say so, whether or not they’re ultimately right.

Partly too, though, I think that the moral horror which unconsciously accompanies ‘misgendering’ in particular is, perversely, an artefact of sexist normative stereotypes for natal women and men. We tend to frame statements like “Caitlyn Jenner is a man/ male” in terms of insults launched at ‘butch’ or ‘manly’ natal women. The combination of a woman’s name and the epithet ‘man’ or ‘male’ sounds insulting, automatically. Compare: “Kathleen Stock is a man”. Were you to hear someone else saying this, perhaps you would empathically imagine me hearing the same thing and finding it distressing or embarrassing; you might assume that as a woman, I must aspire to the norm of a feminised appearance, and must suffer if I miss the mark. But — of course — to say e.g. that “Caitlyn Jenner is a man” isn’t an insult, in many contexts in which it is uttered. It is, in the mouths of many, a descriptive fact, not a slur or insult. Indeed, arguably it could only be an insult in the way just indicated, if in fact the speaker already assumed that Caitlyn Jenner was a woman. And this is, precisely, not assumed by those that tend to say it.

What else might underly the reaction to Bindel, in particular? I’m sure that part of it is to do with another sexist assumption: that women cannot be bawdy, frank, or colourful in their language; they must be sober, measured, cautious, responsible, kind. At this point we might as well also revisit Germaine Greer’s statement from the Victoria Derbyshire show in 2015:

“Just because you lop off your penis and then wear a dress doesn’t make you a fucking woman .. I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and I’m going to wear a brown coat but that won’t turn me into a fucking cocker spaniel.”

This is a vividly Rabelaisian way of making the basic claim — which I have argued that natal women should be freely permitted to make, whether or not it is true — that trans women aren’t women. It caused an enormous fuss at the time, and is still regularly cited, along with other such statements, as evidence of Greer’s ‘transphobia’. Yet in her brilliant and funny seminal work of feminism The Female Eunuch, published in 1970, it is clear from Greer’s discussion of April Ashley that she held the same position then as she does now. Greer expresses herself frankly about many things, and always has. See also, for instance, this brutal passage, also from The Female Eunuch, about female students in Universities:

“Their energy is all expended on conforming with disciplinary and other requirements, not in gratifying their own curiosity about the subject that they are studying, and so most of it is misdirected into meaningless assiduity. This phenomenon is still very common among female students, who are forming a large proportion of the arts intake at universities, and dominating the teaching profession as a result. The process is clearly one of diminishing returns: the servile induce servility to teach the servile, in a realm where the unknown ought to be continually assailed with all the human faculties: education cannot be, and has never been a matter of obedience”. (p.75)

Now, you very possibly disagree with this, and so do I. And the style may not be to your taste. You might prefer your lady writers hedged, scholarly, sympathetic, and so on. Myself, I find it refreshing, like a bucket of cold salt water has been chucked over me after days of humid air. That is of course, compatible with saying that I disagree with a lot of what Greer says: as I have a mind of my own, this is hardly surprising. But whether Greer is to your taste or not, it is simply obvious that we don’t police colourful derogatory male speech in anything like the same way, whether the males in question are talking about natal women/ females, or even trans people.

The constant harping of progressive men on supposedly salutary examples like Bindel and Greer sends a message to natal women. Don’t say what you think. Don’t express an opinion on what women are; leave it to trans women to decide that. Don’t be assured. Don’t be bold. Don’t be whimsical or linguistically playful. Don’t try to be funny. Watch your mouth. Given the typical circumstances of female socialisation, natal women are already highly susceptible to such messages, and to feeling shame as a result. So here’s a task for any progressive males reading. Next time a natal woman expresses herself in a way you find unattractive, unseemly, unkind, or downright rude about trans people, then, assuming they aren’t “screaming it in a trans person’s face”: why not shut the fuck up and keep it to yourself.

Kathleen Stock 

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Steroline Appreciation Week (#scaw17) The Snow Globe Part 2

Continued from here X

Writing this has made me feel super emo. I tried to combine all the elements of Steroline I love (friendship, teasing, angst, romance and passion). It’s basically a trip from S2 to S8 and I hope you all enjoy it.

***

Approaching her doorstep, Caroline let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. After being locked up and tortured by a pack of werewolves, all she wanted was a hot bath and a lot of junk food. Stefan followed behind, concern dripping off him, his shoulders tense with anxiety. As bad as her ordeal had been, it could have been much worse if it hadn't been for the Salvatores and creepy Dr Martin. She shivered as she pulled her key chain from her pocket. Behind her, she sensed his footsteps pause obviously waiting for her to open the door. Then she heard it.

A stifled chuckle.

Was he laughing at her? Because if he was, she was about to kick his ass, hero hair or not.

She spun around to see Stefan's grin smooth out into his more standard earnest face. "What was that?"

"What was what?" He replied, the picture of innocence.

"See, I thought I heard someone laugh and we both know that's not really your style." Her eyes narrowed. "Is being burned with vervain and shot with wooden bullets amusing?"

"No, no, no." His own eyes widened in horror. He gestured at the key in the door as yet unturned. She gave him a 'wtf?' look. "You said it was a shit gift!"

Dangling down was that damn snow globe. After having misplaced her keys several times recently, she had resorted to attaching them to something big and ugly. Funny how she never had that issue since. "It IS a shit gift, but because I am gracious, I will admit it has it's uses. Still, I don't know if I'll ever forgive you." She turned to Stefan who was grinning from ear to ear like she was the most amusing thing in the whole world. Just for a moment, she forgot the existence of vampire hating werewolves and psychotic doppelgangers.

"I'll take useful."

"Oh, shut up!"

***

Stefan had passed a fitful night on the Forbes' family couch. He was grateful to Caroline for putting him up after Elena moved into the boarding house to avoid by murdered in her own bed by Jeremy. Still he wasn’t looking forward to having to discuss their sire bond revelation with his brother. Stepping out of Caroline's en suite shower, he picked up the towel she had left him and wrapped it snugly around his hips. It didn't leave much to the imagination, all Liz's bigger towels must have been dirty. He moved into her room to start dressing.

Caroline's room was pretty and feminine. To say she was a neat freak was an understatement. Stefan hadn't really been in here before and interested to see what secrets her boudoir might give up. In one corner, there were several shelves containing cheerleader trophies, commendation medals for various good deeds and a suspiciously home-made certificate declaring her third grade hopscotch champion. Caroline Forbes really was multi-talented. In pride of place, her Miss Mystic Falls trophy twinkled and next to it, hung on a small hook, was the snow globe key chain from his one and only attempt at Secret Santa.

His heart fluttered in his undead chest.

Why would she still have this given how much she hated it?

He ran his fingertips over the rounded surface and for the first time in weeks, he smiled.

***

Stefan and Caroline stood watching the burning log shed. Even as a ghost, Enzo was a royal pain in ass.

"I have a secret for you."

Caroline mesmerised by the fire was stumped. "What?"

"I have a secret I never told Elena." Stefan grinned. "Aside from the ‘dirt on your cheek’ thing."

"Okay." She looked dubious.

"You remember that Secret Santa gift?"

She rolled her eyes at him. "How could I forget!"

Stefan looked chastised. "I had a completely different gift for you, but Damon being Damon ruined the whole thing."

"So not a snow globe then?"

Doubt etched Stefan's face. He had always figured that someone as whimsical as Caroline would love such things, maybe he didn’t know her so well. "It was a snow globe, it was just a better one." He went on to describe the pretty, glass globe and where and when he had got it. At the mention of Lexi, he glanced away as if wishing to hide his sadness from her.

"It's okay to miss her. Damon may be your brother, but he's also a complete dick."

"I'm no better than him."

"Duh, you're a 1000% better."

"I killed Enzo."

"Your brother left him to die in a fire." Caroline cocked her head to one side. "Anyway, I don't want to talk about Enzo or Damon, who is this Disney character you associate with me?"

"Tinker Bell." He replied simply.

"I've never seen Peter Pan."

"Disappointed it wasn't Cinderella?" He teased. She narrowed her eyes. "Tink is misunderstood. People see her as impatient, jealous and impetuous." She frowned at him and opened her mouth to protest. "But it comes from a place of love, she would do anything for her friends." He smiled at her. "And she has really cute shoes."

She punched him on the arm. "You're so annoying."

He smiled. "I just can't believe you've never seen the film. Youngsters of today, don't know you're born.”  And then, even though, he really didn’t want to, he added “Come on, let's go check on Damon and Elena."

***

Spending an afternoon watching movies with her mom had been one of Caroline's favourite childhood things to do. Now Liz was dying, Caroline was desperate to make as many memories as possible. Stefan had dropped off a couple of DVDs from his collection, along with some chocolates and popcorn so she decided that given how miserable the weather was that was what the two of them would do. Liz was installed on the couch, tucked under a blanket. She looked pale and worn, the fragility of life etched across her features.

One of the movies Stefan had picked was Peter Pan. Curious, she popped in the DVD in the DVD player and snuggled up next to Liz.

"This takes me back." Her mom commented. "I know it's a cartoon, but it's kind of dark. Do you really want to watch it?"

"Wouldn't be Disney otherwise. Besides..." She looked away coyly. "Stefan once told me that Tinker Bell reminds him of me."

Liz made a strangled noise, half way between a snort and a gasp.

"What?" Caroline demanded. “She’s an icon!”

"Nothing. Let's just watch the movie." Liz passed her daughter the popcorn and they settled down to enjoy the film. "He's nice, Stefan. I mean for a vampire."

"Well your comparison is Damon so..."

"Still, he made us dinner the other night, he cleaned up and loaded the dishwasher. I don't think your father ever did that."

"He's trying to get in your good books." Caroline scoffed.

"Ask yourself why he's doing that." Liz glanced over. "He likes you."

"He's my friend, that's all."

"I don't think that's true. He cares about you Caroline and when I'm gone, you're going to need someone there for you."

"I don't want think about that."

The movie continued to play. Tinker Bell appeared on screen, jingling her bells and never once uttering a single word.

"I'm going to kill Stefan." Caroline complained.

"I thought you might." Smiled Liz.

***

Caroline didn't know how long she could keep up this book club ruse. Her Nook kept her from having to explain the physical lack of books to Alaric, but even with vampire healing, her eyes were constantly red and puffy. Stefan had been gone for six long months, the twins were exhausting and Ric was frankly as much use as a chocolate teapot. Which seemed to be the default setting for most new dads, but then he had a knack of making dusty academia seem like the hardest job in the world. For all his 'you can't explain what you love' bs, she suspected Klaus had never changed a diaper in his life.

Stefan, however, would have been different. She was certain of he would have got up in the night, warmed bottles and changed diapers even the really disgusting ones. He would have decorated the nursery and child proofed the house with bitching and moaning about needing easy access to a crossbow.

She opened the glove box and took out the pile of letters tied in a red ribbon and the snow globe. The key chain was a comforting weight in her palm as she handled the envelopes. She desperately wanted to open them, to indulge in his words, but part of her was too scared to admit he was gone. What if he told her that he no longer wanted her, that he was in love with someone else. By not knowing, she could live in her fantasies of a perfect life with the perfect man.

Turning the globe upside down, she focused on the swirling white flakes. This stupid tacky gift brought her closer to Stefan, easing the ache in her heart. It gave her the reminder he had promised her all those years ago.

Home, it reminded her of home.

***

"Put me down."

"No, I said I would carry you over the threshold and that's what I'm doing, damn it."

"It's not like we're getting married, I'm just moving in." She squealed.

"Well, Caroline. It is a slippery slope. Just go with my old fashioned, traditionalist ways." He gently set her down, smiling.

She grinned back at him. "So, you want me to be a prim Victorian lady?" She batted her lashes coyly at him before looking demurely away.

In a flash, she was pressed up against wall, Stefan's hands firmly planted on her hips as he raked his dark eyes down her face, settling on her lips before, meeting her eyes once again. "Definitely not." He growled. Hungrily, he pressed his lips to hers as one hand snaked up her body and into her curls. The jokey atmosphere dissipated, replaced by desire.

"I need to unpack." She murmured initiating another kiss.

"That can wait until later." He groaned back and whisked them upstairs.

A few hours later, Caroline was curled up, content in Stefan's arms, planning where all her stuff was going to go. There was some decent closet space and Stefan had cleared some shelves for things she wanted to display.

"I can hear your mind whirring."

"Shut up."

"It's getting late. May I suggest we take a shower together and I’ll help you unpack tomorrow?" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

She shot him a thoughtful look. "There's just one of thing I need first."

Stefan hoped that it was some sexy nightwear, preferably short and sheer that he could get his teeth into, literally. He wasn't prepared for her to open up a bag and slide out the snow globe. She proudly placed at eye level, front and centre of the shelf. "You've still got that?"

"Of course." She replied incredulously. "Now let's get that shower."

***

"I understand." She paused in her message.  "I will love you forever." She broke down, sobs wracking her body. She didn't want to get back into the car. She didn't want to be 'safe'; she wanted to be with Stefan. But she did understand. He would always choose to die if it meant protecting others, that was just him. Stefan the Hero, Stefan the Martyr. The things she both loved and hated about him.

She rooted through her handbag to find the one thing that always gave her hope. When she couldn't locate it instantly, she started to panic. Then her fingers met the cool plastic right at the bottom of her bag. Only it felt slimy.

She pulled the key chain from her bag to see it cracked and broken. The contents had leaked out and the snowflakes no longer danced. She knew, then, her home was gone.

***

Two hundred years later

The sunlight shone through the window waking Caroline. There she was, in her old room at her mom's house, laid on her old bed, dressed in a short black dress with low black pumps encasing her feet. Shards of memories flooded her brain - the crackle of magic, the screams of vampires as they were felled, the sharp spike of wood between her ribs and the warmth of Ilya Bennett’s arms as the world finally faded to black.

To die protecting one of Bonnie’s distant relatives that was a pretty good way to go.

So, this was peace.

She was surprised. She expected to wake up in Salvatore Mansion her home for the past two centuries. She got up, smoothed her dress and took a look around. The room was obviously old fashioned, but warm, neat and stuffed with childhood memories.  Her eye was instantly drawn to the snow globe, hanging on its little hook. She welcomed it like an old friend taking it in her hand and fingering the smooth surface.

There was a knock at the front door, the sound of knuckles on wood could only mean one person.

She raced down the stairs and paused at the bottom.

Standing at the door, no curtains to obscure him, was Stefan, a large toothy smile on his face. She turned the door knob, smiling back at him.

"Caroline.” He said warmly, taking her hands in his. "I see you found it."

"Well, obviously." She replied, holding up the gift.

"Who would have thought Heaven would have a Quick Stop?" He grinned, brushing his lips against hers.

"Shut up." She murmured as she pulled him into a deeper kiss.

She was home.

The End