#It has so many good scenes between this one and the race to save the XXI Century

[random-meme-bot]

I'm forcing all of you people to see the "Hiroshi's memories" scene from "Shin-Chan The Adults Strike back"because I love this movie with all my heart and it deserves more recognition.

[unseentravler]

Things I noticed my second time watching Transformers One

Restricted access to information - the first scene is literally Orion, breaking into an archive. obviously, Sentinel is trying to restrict access to information to keep the couggler spots from figuring out the truth.

Only cogeless bots use the trains - What if the whole reason they have trains is because cogeless can't transform and need other ways to travel.

The cogeless are so small - this got me thinking about a whole bunch of things. Are they supposed to grow as they get older, but couldn't because they couldn't transform?

The bar the Orion landed in only has bots with coges- there's obviously a good deal of prejudice from the transformers against the coggle spots, so are there like transformers only establishment?

D is worried about getting punished after the race - have they been punished before and for what? Are cogeless not allowed to do certain things

How long is a cycle? - obviously, a cycle is equivalent to a year, but from past media, we know that a cybertronian year is a lot longer than an earth year. But how long exactly?

D has so much anger throughout the entire movie. - I only really caught this on my second time watching, but D has a lot of anger throughout the entire movie, he just hides it very well.

Food shortage - there's probably a food shortage in Icon. We see orion grabbing as many cubes as he can from the bar, and Sentinel says that they barely have enough for their own citizens.

Does Alpha tryon think a bunch of kids have come to save him? From his perspective, he just got woken up by child sized bots. What is going through his head?

The high guard has become really demoralized. - Was it always like that? Or did starscrem leadership make them like that? Obviously, if they were trusted by the primes for so long, they must have had some moral backbone once upon his hime, so was it just that the fifty cycles they sped on the surface turn them into a might makes right cult?

Sental told everyone they died - looking back on it sentinel, prime always intended to get rid of them.He probably told dark wing to throw them down to sub level fifty.

The transformers only seemed concerned with the transmission ater Sentinel nails to the quintisomes - like I said earlier there's probably a good bit of classism between the Transformers and the cogless and some of the elite Transformers knew about the miners having their cogs ripped out, but didn't know about the quintesons.

The little ranking singly as that they are wearing. - we see D stomp his after the truth is revealed, but I didn't notice that they're all wearing them.

The longer the movie goes on, the more orion's voice sounds like Optimus Prime.

Other stuff

The little kid in front of me say "no why did you do that" when D shot Orion

Megatrons are at eyes are so cool

The way the music cuts for Optimist

[verstappenf1lecccc]

Long one shot for Jealous!Toto Wolff with wife reader. With how many celebrities and famous people at the Las Vegas GP, it's no wonder how many times she has been hit. Toto and their son, Jack saved her. Fluff/suggestive. Anything, I don't mind. Thanks!! :)

With prompts : Are you jealous?” “No, I’m not!” “Oh, you really are jealous! Wait, why would you be jealous?”, "I trust you, I just don't trust them." & “Jealousy doesn’t suit you. I like to see you smile more.”

Jealousy

Pairing: Toto Wolff x Reader

i loved writing this fic!! i have a serieus one coming out soon with a rather similar plot just more angst it is toto based!!

Jealous!Toto Wolff - One-Shot

The bright lights of the Las Vegas Grand Prix shimmered like a thousand stars on the Strip, illuminating the desert night sky as the paddock buzzed with excitement. The air was filled with the sound of revving engines, the chatter of celebrities, and the occasional laughter of fans mingling with drivers and team members. But for you, the night had started to feel overwhelming, your patience tested by more than one unwelcome encounter.

You had come to the race with your husband, Toto Wolff, and your young son, Jack. The plan had been simple: enjoy the thrill of the race, soak in the electric atmosphere, and have a good time with the family. But as you wandered the paddock, admiring the sleek cars and waving to some of the familiar faces in the crowd, the attention you were receiving started to feel less flattering and more intrusive.

It wasn’t uncommon for people to approach you—many of them were fans of Toto, or simply curious about the wife of the Mercedes team principal—but tonight, with the who’s who of the celebrity world filling the stands and the paddock, it seemed like everyone wanted a piece of you.

It started innocuously enough. A few polite conversations, quick photo ops with fans, the usual pleasantries. But soon, it became clear that a few of these “fans” weren’t as well-meaning as they appeared. A touch on the arm here, a lingering gaze there—nothing outright inappropriate, but enough to make you feel uncomfortable. And when you tried to escape back to the hospitality area, a certain well-known actor had greeted you with a lingering kiss on the cheek that, while nothing more than friendly in appearance, sent an uncomfortable chill down your spine.

It was at that exact moment that Toto appeared. His sharp eyes, usually so focused on the race, were now locked onto the scene before him with an intensity that made your stomach flutter—though not in a good way. He was standing by the entrance of the hospitality suite, his gaze fixed on the interaction, his posture stiff and controlled.

“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice calm but with an edge you had never heard before.

You nodded, attempting to brush it off. “It’s fine, Toto. Just… a lot going on tonight, you know?”

His eyes narrowed, and he took a few steps forward, the crowd seemingly parting for him as if they could sense the subtle shift in his demeanor. He turned to the actor, his expression cold and polite. “Excuse me,” Toto said, his voice flat and even. “I’m afraid my wife is not interested in further conversation.”

The actor blinked, startled by the sudden intervention, and gave a half-hearted smile before backing off, muttering something under his breath.

As the actor walked away, you felt the warmth of Toto’s hand on your lower back, a gesture meant to reassure but also to stake a claim. You glanced up at him, catching the faintest flicker of something in his eyes—something between possessiveness and concern.

“Toto, you didn’t have to do that,” you said, trying to lighten the mood. “I was fine.”

His expression didn’t soften. “Are you sure? Because it didn’t look like you were fine.”

“I’m fine,” you reassured him, offering a small smile.

He didn’t return the smile. Instead, he took a deep breath and spoke slowly, as if carefully choosing his words. “I trust you. I just don’t trust them.”

You blinked, caught off guard by the admission. “Wait, why would you be jealous? It was just a kiss on the cheek.”

Toto’s lips pressed together in a tight line. “Jealous? Me?” He raised an eyebrow, as though the idea was ridiculous, but the tension in his voice betrayed him. “No, I’m not jealous.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Okay, maybe a little. But only because I don’t like how they treat you.”

Before you could respond, Jack appeared, holding a toy car in his hands and grinning from ear to ear. His innocence broke the tension in the air, and Toto’s stern expression softened. He crouched down, scooping Jack up and planting a kiss on his cheek.

“Are you having fun?” Toto asked, his tone much lighter now.

“Yeah, yeah! It’s so cool here, Daddy!” Jack exclaimed, looking between you and his father. “But I think Mummy’s getting bored.”

You chuckled, even as you shot a playful glare at Toto. “I’m not bored, Jack.”

But Toto wasn’t letting it go. “I think you need a break,” he said, glancing at you with an unreadable expression. “You’ve been dealing with a lot tonight. How about we get some privacy? Just the three of us. We can go back to the hotel, away from all this madness.”

His suggestion caught you off guard, but it was exactly what you needed. A moment to breathe, to relax, to remember why you were here in the first place: for each other. And maybe, just maybe, Toto needed a little time away from the chaos too.

Later that evening, after the race had ended and the crowds had dispersed, Toto had whisked you and Jack away to a luxurious suite in one of the quieter corners of the Strip. The moment you stepped inside, the world felt miles away. The chaos of the paddock, the glittering distractions of celebrity and competition—none of that mattered now. It was just the three of you.

You sank onto the plush sofa, feeling the weight of the day lifting off your shoulders. Jack immediately jumped into your lap, grinning as he showed off the race car he had “won” from one of the games in the paddock.

Toto, still standing by the door, watched the two of you with a soft, almost tender smile, his earlier frustration completely dissipated. “Jealousy doesn’t suit you, you know,” you teased, leaning back into the cushions and catching his eye. “I like to see you smile more.”

Toto’s smile grew, but there was still a playful edge to it. “I’m smiling now,” he said, walking toward you. “And I don’t want to see anyone make you feel uncomfortable again. You’re mine, and I protect what’s mine.”

You laughed softly, reaching for his hand as he sat beside you. “Toto, we’ve been together for years. You know I’m not going anywhere.”

He squeezed your hand, the unspoken words between you both speaking volumes. “I know. But I still don’t like the idea of anyone else thinking they can have you.”

You leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. “Well, they can think whatever they want. But the only person who gets to be close to me, in every way, is you.”

Toto’s smile turned into a grin, and he wrapped his arm around your shoulders, pulling you close. “Good,” he whispered, resting his chin on top of your head. “That’s the way I like it.”

There was a long, comfortable silence between you, the kind that only true intimacy can bring. Toto leaned in, placing a soft kiss on your lips, the kind of kiss that spoke more of reassurance and love than anything else. When he pulled back, his eyes softened, and you could see the shift in him—the guard he’d been holding up for so long had finally come down.

“You know,” he murmured, his fingers brushing your cheek as he traced a gentle line along your jaw, “you’ve always been the one to make me smile the most. But tonight… tonight you’ve made me feel like the luckiest man in the world.”

A blush crept up your neck, and you ducked your head, feeling a flutter in your chest. “Stop, Toto,” you whispered with a shy smile, but your heart was racing, his words making you feel cherished in ways you hadn’t expected after a long, chaotic day.

He grinned and kissed the top of your head. “I’m serious. You’re everything to me. And I just want you to know… no matter what happens, you’re the only one I care about.”

You looked up at him, your heart swelling. “And I’m the only one who’ll ever have you,” you said softly, your hands moving to his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath your fingers.

Toto’s grin softened, and for a moment, he just looked at you—no words, just that quiet understanding that had always been the foundation of your relationship. His lips hovered over yours again, but this time, instead of kissing you immediately, he lingered, savoring the closeness.

“Let’s not think about the world outside for a while,” he whispered. “Just us. Here. Together.”

You nodded, a sense of peace settling over you as his lips finally met yours, slow and deliberate. The kiss deepened, and in that moment, everything else faded away—the buzzing, the noise, the world outside your hotel suite. There was just him, and you, and the soft, perfect rhythm of the love you shared.

As you pulled back, Toto’s fingers gently traced the line of your collarbone. “We need more moments like this,” he murmured, his voice low and intimate.

“Then let’s make them,” you replied, smiling up at him, knowing that no matter how chaotic life could get, moments like this—just the two of you—were the ones that would always matter most.

In the quiet of the hotel room, the two of you drifted off to sleep, wrapped in each other’s arms.

[eternally-racing]

off limits | logan sargeant

pairing: logan sargeant x Leclerc! reader

genre: fluff, maybe angst if you squint

wc: 1.6k

warnings: none (i think)

summary: Your brother Charles always likes to say you're off limits, but what happens when you finally meet a driver who doesn't know who you are?

- - - - - -

“You remember my little sister, Y/N right?”

You roll your eyes as Charles keeps a protective arm around your shoulders. He’s acting like you’re in a room of men who all want to get in your pants, when in reality your brother has kept you locked away from the rest of the grid as best he can over the last few years. It made sense when you were younger, but it’s definitely gotten on your nerves, especially on days like today. It was the end of season party, and having your brother attached to your hip at the club was I’m sure not your or his ideal plan. You had begged for him to let you come - you said it was only fair as a trade off since he made you listen to his rants pre and post-race all season long. You get that motorsports is his world and you’re only a guest, but a little more friendship on the grid wouldn’t hurt. 

You’ve noticed yourself get a couple more looks over as you’ve grown up over the years, and when Lando walks over and wolf whistles as he shamelessly checks you out, your brother is already telling him to watch it while he watches the British driver give you a hug. “You know where to find me, pretty girl” Lando finishes with a wink before he heads off to join the rest of his friends. It’s all good fun between you two and you know it’s nothing but playful banter as you both like to get under your brother’s skin, but Charles doesn’t seem to quite feel the same as he’s shooting daggers at the curly haired boy walking away from you both. 

Charles has always been overprotective of you, especially around the other boys in motorsport. He’d say that none of them would ever be worth your time,  that he sees the way they go through women like crazy and that the way they treat their partners would never be good enough for his darling baby sister. Through his years on the grid he had made it clear to everyone that you are and will always be off limits, something that has always irked you to no end. You were more than old enough to make your own decisions, though it seems like Charles will always see you as his little sister.

There’s only one other boy that Charles let you get close to over the years ("let" is a stretch, it was more a reluctant acceptance as it happened), and you can’t help but smile as he walks towards the two of you with open arms. Max and you became friends one day as kids when you scraped your knee on the pavement at a karting race while running away from Charles and he stopped to help you find your parents while you were sobbing - the rest was history.He may have had his ups and downs with your brother, but Max was someone that you knew you could always count on when it mattered. He puts on his best fake bodyguard voice as he comes up to you and Charles and says “Is this man bothering you, young lady?”, earning a laugh from you and an eye roll from your brother.

Soon you’re begging the Dutchman to save you from Charles’ wrath, and luckily with the promise of being his padel partner in the new year he quickly agrees. Charles tries to put up a bit of a fight but before you know it he’s yelling “make good choices” as he’s being whisked away to get a gin and tonic with his self-appointed drinking buddy for the night. 

It’s been so long since you’ve been at one of these events, let alone been able to walk around without your brother, so it feels very much like unfamiliar territory. A vodka cran seems like a good place to start, and you settle in easily at the bar while surveying the scene in front of you. Maybe Charles was right, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into - there’s so many people everywhere and everyone seems to know everyone. There’s got to be a few faces you know in this sea of people, like George’s girlfriend or Danny’s sister, the only problem is getting through it. You’re doing a good job staying under the radar as you squeeze through the crowd until you find yourself colliding head first with someone, your drink absolutely flying into their chest. 

All you can think is “fuck, I should’ve drank a gin and tonic instead too” as you rub mercilessly at the red liquid on the mystery boy’s chest with the one flimsy napkin the bar gave you. It’s only when he replies back with “It’s seriously okay, gin and tonics taste like shit anyways.” in an accent that you can’t quite pin down do you realize that you accidentally have been talking out loud. Your cheeks are beet red and you’re starting to miss the comfort of having your older brother around you. 

“I’m Logan” the boy in front of you says with a smile. “Can I buy you a drink?” 

You don’t think you’ve ever said yes to something faster in your life. 

The conversation flows so naturally between you and Logan. It makes sense that you’ve never met him before today - he’s new on the grid and doesn’t seem to be close with any of Charles' friends. The freedom you feel is refreshing - it’s been a long time since you got to know a guy like this, just one on one talking to each other. Of course there had been the blind dates that your friends had tried to set you up on but there were all just a little bit off. None of them felt like this.

“I meant to ask you earlier, did you come with someone to the party tonight?”

The question makes you freeze up because you’re having to face the reality that Logan may be one of the only people who don’t know that Charles is your brother in this entire party. Is it selfish that you want it to stay that way? 

“Oh, um, I came with a friend of a friend who dragged me here tonight.” The lie falls off your lips all too easily and you’re not even sure why you did it. Logan had been nothing but a gentleman all night and you don’t think he would treat you differently for being Charles’ little sister. Maybe you just wanted to see it for yourself, what could happen when people didn’t feel threatened around you because of your older brother. Luckily, Logan doesn’t think twice about your response and you’re grateful for that. 

The bass booming through the club is making you start to wiggle in your seat, and it’s enough to make Logan laugh and ask you if you want to dance. Who could say no to that American smile? You’re dragging him up to dance, shimmying your shoulders in a way that only confirms that you’re as bad of a dancer as you mentioned to Logan earlier in your conversation.  At first it’s all so playful, Logan twirling you around and hyping you up, but as the music gets more sultry you and Logan do as well. It’s like there’s two magnets pulling you both together until you’re pressed chest to chest. Logan’s hand around your waist just feels so right. Your heart is beating so fast you’re worried that he might actually be able to hear it himself - he’s so close to you that you can feel the heat from his breath on your neck. The conversation has slowed between you two but you feel like you understand him perfectly. You’re not sure if it’s the alcohol or the boy in front of you that’s making your cheeks so red, but you know that you don’t want this feeling to stop. 

“Will you kiss me, Logan?” you’re looking at him like you can see the universe in his eyes, and simultaneously hoping that he can't see how nervous you are in yours. 

You’re trying not to get carried away, but it’s hard not to. Kissing Logan just feels so right. You grab his shirt by the front in an effort to get closer to him, you want to feel him, and Logan reciprocates by pressing his hands even further into the dimples on your back. You’re not sure how long you go on like this, you both making out like love-sick teenagers. All you know is that you can’t get enough of him, and based on the way Logan reaches out to caress your cheek, you hope he feels the same. You’re trying to memorize every single part of him, just in case this is all you get to have of him. As his hands start to dip lower and lower your heart beats even faster, and you let your hands trail further down his chest along with the tempo of the music. This moment feels infinite. 

It’s not until you feel a hand on your shoulder that the spell is broken as the two of you are shoved apart. Logan reaches to pull you behind him, but once you see a pair of green eyes that are identical to yours staring you both down, it’s him that you want to protect. 

“What the fuck are you doing to my sister, Sargeant?"

----

author's note: this was such a fun one to write! i think a part 2 to this could be a lil crazy and fun so let me know if you want that too <3

[autumn-hiraeth]

Rockabye!

Hobie brown x reader

angst but not enough. First part.

NEXT PART

a/n: so many people asked for a second part. So i hope y'all like it! ( loved all the comments lol). Part 3? Gimme ideas pls

Find more here “ Hobie's masterlist 🕷”

You knew that being with someone like Hobie Brown would change your life completely and you weren't wrong. It's been three years since you saw him, three years since Hobie not only broke your heart but also got you pregnant (how thoughtfu of him). You found out you were pregnant a month later and it felt so bad 'cause Hobie obviously didn't feel nothing for you. At first you thought he was just busy but soon you got the message; he was not coming back.

So all on your own, you move in, and do what you have to do to make sure your little girl grow up well and has a good life.

Your daughter has some of your features, but she's a mini Hobie Brown. So you try to stay away from him, however he's fucking Spider Punk, if he really wanted to know about you he would have already found you. :( Never mind, he would make a terrible father. You think.

But one unexpected day, Hobie Brown meets your daughter. His daughter. Hobie is panting hard, trying to save people 'til suddenly his spider-sense kicks in and his heart races 'cause he's never felt like this before.

Then he sees a little girl crying, her parents aren't around and no matter how hurt he is, he doesn't hesitate to swing her out of the danger. He looks at the little girl and is shocked 'cause the kid , who is still sobbing, is exactly like him. She takes after him.

So Hobie tries to calm her down, he's cradling her in his arms, not taking his eyes off her as he murmurs "don't cry, little girl"

Hobie knows he should be helping other people, but he can't, the kid looks so much like him that he doesn't want to leave her alone, he doesn't want anything bad to happen to her.

However, Hobie scoffs at his thought, of course the kid doesn't look like him, he's just tired. And when Hobie finally manages to calm the kid down, he hears a familiar voice. "Rhea! Oh thank god you're fine!" you are in front of him crying, in a frantic state and you don't even seem to realize that your daughter is being held by Spider Punk, her father, no, instead you take her off his arms while you sob happy to have found her safe and sound.

But Hobie is frozen watching the scene; you, the love of her life, whom he abandoned three years ago, holding your daughter while you kiss her cheeks in relief and his heartbeat races 'cause Hobie suddenly seems to figure out why the kid looks like him... It is her daughter. He's dad. "Y/n..." as soon as you hear his voice you hug your daughter as a defense mechanism.

“I gotta go” your voice sounds more serious and your look makes him feel guilty instantly. "Fine, I'll take you two home" he suggests and you frown because you can't believe he has the audacity to just act like everything ended well between the two of you.

"no way, I don't need your help" you are being cold and Hobie understands that; he understands that you hate him 'cause he abandoned you; he abandoned his pregnant girl; the thought of everything you had to go through to take care of his, your, daughter, burns deep inside him.

'cause if he had only stayed then now you and Hobie would be a family and he knows he would be a good father. Yes, being a father is a thought he never had but now, he knows that he would make a good father even a good husband.

"Y/n please" he pleads, he wants to talk, apologize and meet the kid, tell you that he's still loving you, but you don't care what Hobie wants so you pick up your daughter, who hides her face in the crook of your neck. "Stay away Hobart" you tell him and Hobie lets you go, for now.

But you two know that they'll see each other again, 'cause Hobie knows that he has a daughter with you.

[ladytauria]

You have too many wips I want to know more about ;-; but I will be strong and only ask about the jaytim teenage fantasies

haha, you’re definitely welcome to ask about more than one!

jaytim teenage fantasies is a duo of fics that has jaytim acting out two fantasies they had as teenagers. tim goes first, and it’s honestly kind of an accident. they’re talking about crushes, and robin, and tim confesses that many of his earliest fantasies involved robin

he ends up narrating one to jason, while acting out portions of the scene—

“You’d rescue me—from a mugger, maybe, or from falling. You whisk me off somewhere safe, where you can make sure I’m okay… and lecture me about recklessness.” Tim’s mouth quirks. “I’m grateful. Not just for the save, but for everything. I don’t bother listening to the lecture.” Shocking. “Instead, I have to ask. How do you do it? How do you protect Gotham, and watch out for Batman, and still live a normal life? It must be so hard.”

Jason can picture it.

Being fifteen again, when Robin was losing its magic. When he looked around Gotham, seeing not the people they’d saved—but the one’s they hadn’t. The ones they failed. He’s fighting with Bruce more and more, questioning everything. Even school doesn’t offer an escape. And Dick—well. Dick is great, but busy. Distant. And always fighting with Bruce.

He’s lonely. He doesn’t think he’d realized how much, then.

And then—

There’s Tim, looking at him with bright eyes and flushed cheeks, faintly awestruck and painfully earnest. In Jason’s mind, he’s not 12, 13 as he would have been, but 14. 15, even. Younger than him, but not young.

“It is. I know it is, now, and even then I suspected. You brush it off, though. After all, you’re Robin. This is what you do. And I say, ‘Yeah—but. You deserve to get something back. To be taken care of.’”

Fantasy-Tim’s cheeks grow red, while real-Tim’s pinken.

“’Let me make you feel good.’ And I drop to my knees.”

Jason’s breath catches. He’s flushed. His skin prickles; his cock stirs. Teenage-him probably would have panicked and fled, or tried to stop him; face tomato-red. Fantasy-teen Jason stays, biting his lip, back pressed against the wall, thighs parting.

He wants. He’s nervous. But he needs this. Needs someone’s soft touch. Concern. Affection. Fifteen-year-old Jason needed so badly for someone to care.

“I know now it’s a one-piece, but in the fantasy…” Tim pauses, then smiles and says, “In the fantasy, the panties come down easy.”

Jason shivers. His nipples feel tight—his whole body feels tight, like he’s too big for his skin. Teenage-him, scaly green panties around his knees; cock flushed and red, drooling at the sight of Tim pretty & pink-cheeked in front of him.

The way his pulse would have raced; his breath quickened.

“I doubt I would have been very good at it. Even teen me could admit that,” Tim says. “But I would have made up for it with eagerness. There’d have been a moment, a pause where I tried to figure out how to start.”

Fuck. He can see the look of concentration on fantasy-Tim’s face; that little furrow between his brows, the determination in his eyes. The way his gaze would have flicked up, toward Jason, then steeled.

His hand around the base of Jason’s cock—the way real-Tim’s hand is wrapping around it now. He curls his fingers into the sheets, feeling almost bad for the way fantasy-Jason has to scramble at brick.

side b focuses on one of jason’s fantasies—being tied up in wonder woman’s lasso, being made to ask for and admit everything he wants done to him. they can’t get her lasso, so they decide to mimic it as best they can with some (modified) truth pollen and rope~

i don’t have anything written for this yet unfortunately—it’s been giving me trouble lmao

side a is mostly finished, i’m just considering expanding the beginning, haha. but i’m waiting to post them as a set!

[curious about my wips? send me an ask about one of the ones listed here.]

[average-mako-enjoyer]

Bigots and Failed Promises of Mass Effect games

(I had this thing in my drafts for almost a month, and it would have stayed there if not for the wonderful post by @androidtrashfire, because I saw it, and I was like: "Fuck it, I have to rant about these games." I love Mass Effect, and I really think we should critique it. We should criticize things we love because silence = compliance.)

So I was talking to @liss-art recently about the bigoted fans in the Mass Effect fandom, and I think I need to make a post about it because it's something that really, truly bothers me, and it needs to be addressed.

Canon

Mass Effect is a story about deeply flawed people with a lot of problems, and through them it touches on issues like xenophobia, sexism, corruption, elitism, morality, identity. That's why we like it, right? But why are there so many bigots in the fandom? My theory is that it happens because Mass Effect, for all its supposed complexity, only touches on these issues without giving any meaningful commentary on them.

Here are a few obvious examples:

The Quarians are a distasteful allegory of the Roma people (right down to their accents). They are persecuted and ostracized for creating Geth, but the game never gives us any socio-political reasons why the Quarians did that. They just developed real AI because they were naive and stupid? Or because they were the only ones smart enough to do it? Did they do it in secret? Why did other races not make the same mistake?

Same with the Batarians. Yes, the game mentions tensions between humans and Batarians because humans try to claim territories that Batarians think are theirs, but that's about it. Batarians are all racist slave traders and they're bad, don't think about it, here's some memes about 300,000 of them dying, good job. And yes, I know you can read more about their history in the Codex (why is it an Asari who writes about Batarian history,btw?), but it's basically the same thing as saying D*mbledore is gay (I really am sorry for this reference). If no one ever mentions this rich Batarian history, then it doesn't exist.

And please don't get me started on Hanar. They "mercifully" saved the Drell by inviting them to their planet, immediately assimilated them into their own faith and also put them in conditions where they have to train as assassins from the ripe old age of 6 and eventually die of sci-fi lung cancer. But don't worry about it, Drell actually love to serve the Hanar, they do it willingly and consider their servitude an honor. Do you really want to criticize some stupid jellyfish who talk funny? Do you really want to talk about why the so-called Council races do nothing about it? LOL

Another thing the trilogy does is present entire races, including humans, as amorphous blobs. Do all Asari believe in the same "goddess"? Do all Turians obey the same Primarch? Well, what's important is that all humans in this bright future speak English.

But what about the genophage? That's a profound story, right? Well, not really, and it raises more questions than it answers. We hear a lot about how brutal, aggressive, and short-tempered Krogans are, but every single Krogan we meet is extremely well-mannered, and they only resort to violence against other races in dire circumstances. So why not save them? Does the game really present you with this moral dilemma or not?

And can anyone tell me why Salarians are allowed to abduct and experiment on sentient beings, and why Turians are allowed to wage wars? Why does no one talk about Asari in this context?

I really want to say that at least the characters are well written, but I can't because they're not.

Kaidan is a good example of this. We are told about his implant, we are told that he has chronic pain, but do we see him suffer from it? Do we see him in those moments of weakness and vulnerability?

The scene where he gets annoyed with Jenkins acting like he's a circus monkey who has to do a trick and biotically throws a cup at him was cut from the game. We occasionally hear him mention some of the side effects of his migraines ("Too many lights, too much noise"), but that's about it. What has happened to "show, don't tell"? And no, I'm not saying that the writers should feed me the story or walk me through it. What I am saying is that if you gloss over your characters' mistakes, flaws, and circumstances, you're getting people to ignore them. Do people who call Kaidan "boring" and insult him think about how his chronic pain, his trauma from Brain Camp, and the loss of Jenkins and Ashley affect who he is? Hell no.

Thane is another great example. What Mass Effect is telling us as a story is that you can completely abandon your family and your child and be forgiven if your reason for doing it is good and heroic enough. Like avenging your dead wife, because of course there has to be a dead woman thrown somewhere.

Everyone's favorite Garrus (mine too) is a cop whose character arc basically consists of deciding that he is above the law (since the law forbids him from killing people he thinks should die) and then involving his squadmate/friend/partner (depending on your playthrough) in the public assassination of his former squadmate, whom he never even bothered to confront first. Are there any consequences for Garrus for his actions? No. Again, it's all glossed over, and that's unfortunate because it removes the conflict and therefore the character development and depth.

And if you're going to tell me that ME is just a space opera, and that I should just enjoy the spectacle and the romance, then I'm going to tell you that I know that, and that I think it's a wonderful spectacle, and that some of the romance subplots are absolutely amazing story-wise, but the superficial commentary (or lack thereof) on the most important issues that ME covers actually harms the audience.

Fandom

On the one hand, we have people making mods that remove all the clothes from all the female characters (or remove all of femShep's organs and replace them with giant tits). We have people reposting that horrible, horrible art of Miranda and Jack fighting, tearing each other's hair and clothes, and maleShep smirking and saying "I should stay". We have people who say ME2 is the best game in the series because "there are no f*gs". On the other hand, we have people saying things like "there are two Commander Shepards - female and the wrong one". We have people who say "only weird people play as dudebro in 2024". We have people who think that simply playing as a female character is some kind of feminist statement, and that it makes them better and smarter than everyone else (the same people who use the term "dude gamer" as an insult). And all of those things are kind of the trilogy's fault.

Both maleShep and femShep have the same story. The only differences are the romance options, sexist remarks directed only at femShep, and flirtations from various NPCs directed only at femShep. What this tells you is that sexism exists in the Mass Effect universe, and only women suffer from it. It also tells you that only women are worth flirting with.

Another thing this game does (and modern games like Cyberpunk do the same thing) is equate the female experience to the male experience by giving both femShep and maleShep the same lines.

So there are some mixed signals here. Sexism exists and doesn't exist in this universe, Shepard is both genderless and very gendered, romances with underdeveloped characters are all over the place, and bigots thrive in this kind of environment.

The lack of commentary, the lack of perspective, the disastrous worldbuilding allows you to freely choose your sexist, racist adventure and not be punished by the story in any way.

Mirrors

There's a passage from Solaris that I absolutely adore and think about often.

"We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. […] We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is."

I think that perfectly describes what Mass Effect is as a universe. And in a way, it's a reason why it's so compelling. It's just empty enough for us to invest in it, to fill in the blanks of that narrative with the stories of our own. And it's also a reason why this fandom is a fucking hellscape.

[ericdeggans]

When your job is explaining race and media, what happens when you find a situation you don't want to explain?

That moment came for me this week, as memes were rocketing around social media connected to the brawl in Montgomery, Ala., where a crowd of mostly-Black bystanders ran to help a Black ferry co-captain who was being assaulted by a group of white men.

Video filmed by a group of mostly-Black bystanders on a nearby boat captured it all: The co-captain throwing his hat in the air, once a white man pushed him harshly; an older Black man whaling on people with a folding chair, including a white woman who was just sitting on the ground by then; a young Black man on a boat close by who jumped into the water and swam with amazing speed to the scene, jumping up to throw hands.

And, in moments, Black Twitter jumped to life (I know he’s renamed it X, but we ain’t recognizing that, and the term refers to people being Black across social media anyway. Harrumph).

There was the quiz asking which folding chair are you? There was the graphic pointing out that an early version of the folding chair was invented by a Black man (seems to be true). The photoshopped picture showing glowing rings around Black folks rushing into the fight, mimicking the climax of Avengers Endgame, where superheroes rushed in to save the day. Images dubbing the young swimmer Black Aquaman, Aquamayne and Blaquaman.

And two of my personal faves: A photoshopped image of the Martin Luther King Jr. statue holding a folding chair. And a version of the brawl video remade as the opening to classic Black sitcom Good Times, with acerbic credits noting the show was “created by Consequences and Repercussions.”

I was blown away by how quickly Black folks across social media were converting horror over a narrowly averted, racialized beat down into funny memes celebrating the reflex of Black folks to stand up for one another, especially when we’re faced with danger from white people.

But when I posted the photo of MLK’s status with the folding chair on my social media feeds, I just added one word: Wow.

I wanted the image to speak for itself. And I wanted people who had questions about what it meant to jump into social media and find out for themselves. I felt the image and its implied humor – that the nation’s most revered civil rights leader might be hoisting a folding chair to defend Black folks in the modern age – was most powerful when not explained.

Unfortunately, some people on my social media platforms insisted on an explanation. One was pretty persistent about it. And I realized I just didn’t want to explain the image, for some reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Yeah, it’s sometimes tiring to always be asked to explain your cultural nuances to the world. But that’s the gig I signed up for, many years ago. And yes, the joking was hiding a fear that today’s climate has left racists emboldened enough to attack a Black man in broad daylight for doing his job. So explaining only resurfaces those darker feelings in ways I wasn’t quite ready to process.

Still, something else was also at play. I always say social media is often like a giant dinner party, where people forget they are sometimes listening in on conversations between other people. In this case, being asked to explain the folding chair memes felt like having someone barge into an ongoing conversation to ask for an explanation. This was a moment where Black folks could be hilariously Black online and we could all share that moment together, laughing and consoling each other in one viral, social media moment.

Sometimes, in situations like that, understanding comes best by sitting back, listening widely and learning. Even for me.

I don’t know if this reaction is fair – especially given how much I’ve encouraged discussion about race over the years. But its all I have left, in a world where I increasingly feel like a frog in pot of steadily heating water, wondering when the heat will begin to burn me, my loved ones, my family, my friends and my people.

[gffa]

I know this has been talked about many times before, but I still don't know what we are supposed to think of Padmé's actions when she comforts Anakin after he confesses to murder in cold blood. He feels guilty and all, but he continues his shitty behavior even before he became Darth Vader, and then does it again. It's just hard for me to see Padmé as some sort of saint in that scene. And are we even supposed to see it that way anyway? There's no official answer, which makes it all the more mind boggling to me. When people say she forgave and did the right thing, it's seems unjustified because he still did it, he regretted it, but he also said "I hate them". Idk I'm sorry if this is too long. I just have a lot of thoughts on this scene.

Hi! For me, I've settled into a balance between "there's no hard narrative intention here, so I just have to let it go" and "here's my best guess at a look into what little has been said about her" and "here's what makes sense to me as someone speculating about her character on my own". I think it comes down to two things: 1) Natalie Portman's comment about how Padme thinks she can save Anakin as a motivation for her character and 2) that as complicated as it can be in some ways, the Tuskens were written in an extremely racist way, especially in that their deaths do not register with Lucas the same way other races/cultures would. Which means that while this should be a point-of-no-return moment for Anakin's character, while it should be recognize that he's murdering children here (and I do think that's meant to have weight, that the dialogue specifies he knows he's killing innocent lives), I don't think the narrative fully does so, and instead treats it as his "first step" onto the path of darkness, one that he can come back from. And I do think a lot of that comes from Lucas, much as I applaud him for being progressive in other ways and genuinely seems like someone who was trying to do better, does portray real world elements in a racist way in the movie, they're treated as less than human here. (I will say that Padme also is willing to take Anakin back even after he murders the Jedi younglings, so there's a little wiggle room here, in the way she reacts, but the racism is pretty undeniable and a big motivation here.) But because the narrative and the author don't treat his murder of the Tuskens as a point of no return, Padme can't treat his murder of them as a point of no return, so instead her reactions are based on the idea that, yes, this was bad, but it was something that still left good in him and she's trying to reach out to that good, she's trying to save him. As much fun as it is to examine these characters from a more realistic lens, so much of Star Wars makes a lot more sense when you consider what Lucas was going for on a thematic level--in a lot of ways, Padme isn't written for herself, she's written as a baromter of where Anakin is at. When she comforts him, it's because we're meant to see Anakin in a place of emotional turmoil. When she backs away from him on Mustafar, we're meant to see him as having crossed a line, unwilling to come back. When she says, "There's still good in him." on Polis Massa, we're meant to understand there's a glimmer of hope for the far-off future. I don't think it's really about Padme's character at all, I think she's written--as SO MANY of the elements of Star Wars are--to be an extension of Anakin's character, because the story of Star Wars is the story of Anakin Skywalker. I love love love some of the excellent meta that examines these scenes through the lens of what Padme is thinking and feeling and what her character arc is about. And I may be being uncharitable to the writing for her, but it's largely where I've settled just so I can stop itching over it. For me, I don't think Padme was "right" or "wrong" on Tatooine, I don't think we're meant to see Padme as any kind of saint. I think she's balanced between "Padme thinks she can save Anakin, but ultimately she cannot, Anakin has to be the one to choose to come back himself" and "Padme is basically a symbolic dark side meter, as so many of the characters in SW are symbolic of various aspects of Anakin".

[onegianthotmess]

I’m imagining Amelia introducing Silver to her grandma, Peaches, as her boyfriend and Peaches freezing because Silver looks…familiar.

It takes a minute, but eventually it clicks and Peaches realizes Silver looks almost identical to the Knight of Dawn. The same knight who tried to kill her at some point.

The same knight who fatally injured and caused the death of Princess Meleanor. The death of the only one that just let her just exist in peace.

Peaches’s shock only grows when Lilia and Divian come into the room apologizing for being late and Silver introduces them as his adoptive parents.

The startled woman had to excuse herself with Divian and Divian explained how silver was indeed the son of the Knight of Dawn and that Lilia had found him in the bramble covered remains of Meleanor’s castle. And Peaches couldn’t really believe much of what Divian was saying. Lilia, the famous General Lilia fucking Vanrouge, the one who claimed he’s kill all humans and hated their kind with a burning passion, took in and raised the abandoned son of the very human who killed one of his oldest friends and orphaned her children?

And that child was now dating her granddaughter?

Divian had to stop Peaches from going insane and possibly killing Silver at the moment the latter realized this-

And though it took a while, Peaches was eventually calmed enough for Divian to explain how many things and how times had changed in Twisted-Wonderland after she disappeared. Though there was some tension and prejudice, things between humans and fae had grown peaceful, Night Raven College was a school where all races, humans, fae, beastmen, and even merfolk could attend and learn magic peacefully, and their old friends had relaxed and changed over the years with no more war against humans to fight. Divian explained how Baul had calmed down and now had a daughter and half human grandchildren, Malleus and Mealodie had grown beautifully and seemed to be more and more like Meleanor with each passing day, Lilia and herself had calmed down and she’d been thinking about possibly having legitimate children with Lilia when the time was right, and how Amelia had helped so many people more than anyone could imagine.

When Divian was done, she’d asked Peaches if she’d give Silver a chance, mentioning how he was a good boy and such a sweet gentleman despite being a bit airheaded at times and having chronic drowsiness.

After thinking it through, Peaches did agree to give Silver a chance, but he’d only get one. And then the following scene played out:

“Oh, you’re back!” Lilia smiled as Divian and Peaches sat down, Peaches in an arm chair facing the couch Amelia and Silver sat on and Divian in Lilia’s lap. “I was starting to think you both snuck out and we’d never hear from you again! After all, you were quite good at sneaking out with Meleanor, Peaches.”

“Well you angrily yelling and chasing after us was hilarious,” Peaches explained with a smile. “You barely even caught us most times, too.”

“Because you two cheated, of course!” Lilia retorted playfully. “I’m glad that Amelia wasn’t raised to be a cheater like you. At least your son has some decency.”

“You’re only able to catch me because I’m only a quarter fae!” Amelia pouted. “And I’m not athletic, either.”

Silver yawned, waking up from his impromptu sleep spell at the sound of his girlfriend’s voice. “It’s impressive how you can’t run to save your life but can beat Sebek ten times in a sparring session and still be ready for more,” the sleepy boy murmured.

“Well, that’s actually fun,” Amelia replied.

“She is your granddaughter,” Divian said to Peaches, who grinned mischievously.

“You can’t blame me for having some fun with Baul, can you?” she asked coyly.

“If I remember correctly, you two once had a disagreement get so out of hand you whacked him over the head with your crossbow,” Lilia deadpanned, momentarily slipping back into his old habit of treating Peaches like a small child.

“How long was he knocked out for?�� Amelia asked, nudging Silver who was about to doze off again.

Peaches hummed, “About a day or two. I was really riled up, so I swung at him as hard as I could at the time. If I did it now, he’d probably be out for a week.”

“Jesus Christ, Grandma,” Amelia murmured.

“What can I say? This old woman is tough,” Peaches smiled before she turned to look at Silver. “Now, I’d like to ask you some questions, young man.”

“Yes, Mrs. Yuu?” Silver asked, straightening up and giving the older woman his full attention.

“Are you determined to make my granddaughter as happy as you can?” Peaches asked, the whites of her eyes going black with ink as she continued to speak to the silver haired boy. “And are you prepared for the consequences you shall face if you are to ever break her heart outside of dying for her?”

“Yes, Mrs. Yuu, I am,” Silver replied without missing a beat and seemingly unfazed by the black that surrounded the older woman’s orange eyes. In fact, he almost seemed expecting of it. “For all Amelia has given me, the only thing I can offer in return is my eternal devotion and all of the love I can possibly give her until I breathe my last.”

“And you’re aware that if I hear of any sort of mistreatment that I’ll hunt you down and make sure to mount you head on a plaque so you can pay for those crimes?” Peaches asked. “Because adoptive son of General Vanrouge or not, you hold in your hand one of the two post precious things to me, and you shall pay with your life if you are to smash the treasure that is my granddaughter’s heart.”

“I’d run myself through in front of you and the rest of Amelia’s family if that happened, ma’am,” Silver answered. “When I make a vow to something I fully accept the punishment to come if I am to break it. I never plan to break the promise I’ve made, but I’d accept my fate if I ever were to break it.”

Peaches hummed as she stood up and walked over to Silver, looking down at him as her eyes faintly glowed oh so ominously.

“H-Hey, Grandma! Silver! We-We get it! Please stop staring at each other!” Amelia babbled out nervously, the tension in the air basically tearing her apart.

But Peaches continued to stare at Silver, who maintained complete eye contact, for a moment before her eyes returned to normal and she smiled brightly. “Oh, you are a good boy!” Peaches smiled as she swooped down and hugged Silver tightly. “I’m so happy Divi wasn’t lying to me about that! Such a well behaved and well mannered boy like you is perfect for my Amelia!”

“Thank you, Mrs. Yuu,” Silver murmured, seemingly used to sudden bursts of affection.

“Oh, please, just call me Grandma, honey,” Peaches beamed as she moved away and held Silver’s face in her hands. “After all, I’m sure a wedding isn’t too far away!”

“GRANDMA!”

Shiptober 2024 Masterlist

Shiptober Taglist: @heartsparkart01, @astxrims

Let me know if you want to be a part of the Shiptober Taglist!!!

[chloe-caulfield94]

Specific love versus general attachment

I love finding parallels between Life is Strange and other stories. Recently I found one such parallel in a most unexpected place – while re-watching the Matrix trilogy. In Matrix: Reloaded Neo was presented by the Architect with what was essentially the Bae vs Bay dilemma. And he chose Bae, without a moment’s hesitation!

In one of my previous posts I argued that in any trolley problem, the moral solution is not to pull the lever, as nobody has the right to judge the person on the side track unworthy of survival and to deprive them of their life, even if it would save the lives of the people on the main track. No matter if it’s one life versus a hundred, or a thousand. Of course, you could keep raising the stakes. One life versus a million. One life versus a billion. The most extreme trolley problem would be the one in which one life would be pitted against all other human lives in existence – one person on the side track, the entire human race on the main track.

Neo was presented with such a dilemma. Sacrifice one person or the entire human race will die. He was told by the Architect, the program in charge of the Matrix, that a system crash was imminent, which would kill all human beings connected to the Matrix, thus wiping out mankind for good. Neo was then presented with two doors. One would lead him to the Source, a part of the Matrix Neo, being the anomalous Chosen One, had to reach in order to prevent the crash. The second door would lead him to the part of Matrix where Neo’s beloved, Trinity, currently found herself in mortal danger, pursued by the murderous Agents. Neo was told, in no vague terms, that he could save mankind from extinction, but to do so, he had to leave the woman he loved to die alone.

I reject the notion that Neo didn’t believe the choice he’d been presented with was real. Neo had no reason to doubt the Architect’s words. On the contrary, he quite clearly believed that the Architect told him the truth. In the last moments of the movie Neo relays to Morpheus a warning of an impending machine attack against Zion, which is another thing the Architect told him about. If he believed the Architect’s words about the attack, he also believed his words about the system crash. Why the system crash ultimately didn’t take place is of secondary relevance. Many things in Neo’s cycle went differently than in previous ones, in no small part thanks to Agent Smith serving as the wild card. What is important is that Neo believed the choice was real. The woman he loved or the entire human race.

Neo immediately, without a second thought, went for the door leading to Trinity. The Architect mocked him for being an irrational, primitive being driven by chemical reactions in the brain.

I know the Architect scene in Matrix: Reloaded is often cited as the foremost example of overwritten dialogue which talks a lot but doesn’t say much. Having re-watched it, I disagree. I think the style of the Architect’s dialogue fits his character (he’s a program, his mind is completely alien to us humans – it’s no wonder he speaks in a way difficult to understand). But the contents of his dialogue lines I find genuinely thought-provoking.

In his speech, the Architect contrasted two types of attachment to others. Love and “general attachment”. He said that Neo was different from the previous Chosen Ones. Because while all Chosen Ones felt a profound attachment to the rest of mankind, those who had come before Neo had only experienced it in a very general way. But Neo’s experience was far more specific. Instead of the general attachment of his predecessors, he felt a specific form of attachment. Love. His love for Trinity.

The Architect was able to comprehend general attachment. When Neo asked him what would the machines do if they lost humanity as their primary power source, the Architect replied there were levels of survival he was willing to accept. If the machines lost their source of power, many, perhaps most of them would die. But some would survive. Their kind would live on. That’s the only thing that mattered to the Architect. Because he was only generally attached to his kind. But he was unable to care about specific machines. He was incapable of love. Of caring about individuals. It was an alien concept to him. Something he ridiculed as a result of chemical reactions in the brain of a primitive creature. In the Architect’s mind, rational creatures never form specific attachments, only general ones.

I am fascinated by the Bae vs Bay dilemma, because to me it seems so obvious. Of course you’re not going to leave your friend to die alone, abandoned and afraid! But to my surprise, there are a lot of people for whom the choice is a no-brainer in the other direction. How could you not sacrifice your friend to save many others? This sentiment always baffles me. Not only the willingness to sacrifice a friend, but the conviction that it’s the obviously right thing to do?

I cannot comprehend that mindset. I cannot understand why Neo would leave his beloved to be murdered by Agents, even if it would save the entire human race. I cannot understand why Max would leave Chloe to be murdered by Nathan, even if it would spare Arcadia Bay from the Storm.

Because if you are unable to care about a single person specifically, why in the world would you care about a group of people?

If you are unable to care about a loved one or a friend to the point you would do everything to save their life, then you are most certainly unable to care about a group of people to the point you would perform what is essentially human sacrifice to save them.

If you are unable to love one person, you are unable to love a group of people. This is clear when we contrast Neo with the previous Chosen Ones. Neo was capable of love. This allowed him to defy the Matrix and ultimately liberate mankind from its shackles. The previous Chosen Ones, who were only capable of general attachment to others, chose to perpetuate mankind’s enslavement by the machines. Because they didn’t love their fellow human beings. How could they? They were unable to care about individuals specifically. So they were unable to care about collections of individuals as well.

If Neo was unable to care about Trinity to the point he would do everything to save her life, why would he care about mankind in general to the point he would go through all the hardship associated with being the Chosen One to save it?

If Max was unable to care about Chloe to the point she would do everything to save her life, why would she care about Arcadia Bay in general to the point she would be willing to push someone in front of a barrel of a gun just to spare it from a hurricane?

I’ve never seen anyone accusing Neo of being a monster, or a sociopath or selfish or any of the other epithets lobbed at Bae Max, even though Neo chose his own Bae over a million Bays. And I completely understand him. The mindset allowing one to leave someone they care about behind, to die alone, is incomprehensible to me. As if it was the mindset of a completely alien creature, like the Architect.

[whoreviewswho]

Only One Race Can Survive! - The Daleks, 1963

Part I - The Mutants

Sydney Newman, 1986: "Being a real aficionado of science fiction, I hated stories which used bug-eyed monsters, otherwise known as BEM’s. I wrote in my memo that there would be no bug-eyed monsters in Doctor Who. And after a few episodes, Verity turned up with the Daleks! I bawled her out for it, but she said ‘Honest, Sydney, they’re not bug-eyed monsters – they’re human beings who are so advanced that their bodies have atrophied and they need these casings to manipulate and do the things they want!’. Of course, the Daleks took off and captured everybody’s imagination. Some of the best thing I have ever done are the thing I never wanted to do. It’s true! It’s worked out that way". 

Like most periods of the show's history, Doctor Who's inception was a tumultuous time behind the scenes. Script editor David Whitaker, in what would quickly become a desperate hunt for reliable writers and workable scripts, approached writer Terry Nation having seen some potential in his script for ABC TV's science-fiction anthology Out of this World. Despite having, by his now admission, no faith in the programme, Nation soon found himself out of work and committed to a six-episode serial that would air fourth in the season's run. 

Initially entitled The Survivors, Nation's original pitch to Whitaker was quite different to the story that eventually made it to screen but kept a lot of the same themes and allegory intact. Nation's serial originally featured three races; the Daleks, the Thals and a third species whose ancestors were responsible for the neutron bomb that devastated Skaro and had returned to the planet to make amends. The set-pieces were more extravagant in initial drafts and the Daleks less definitively villainous but producer Verity Lambert was impressed with Nation's work, offering him a seventh episode to allow greater expansion of his ideas. 

David Whitaker, 1979: "Terry Nation didn’t want to write for us, considering it rather demeaning that he’d even been asked."  Terry Nation, 1987: "I had no faith in the show. It was the old writer’s axiom, ‘Take the money and fly like a thief’."

As Nation continued to work, the programme's production elsewhere became more fraught. The two serials commissioned for writer Anthony Coburn required increasing rewrites, the initial first story that would become Planet of Giants was deemed unworkable and budgetary concerns had ensured John Lucarotti's epic Marco Polo would not fill the intended third slot. Much to the dismay of Donald Wilson and Sydney Newman, two of Doctor Who's three founding fathers, Nation's The Mutants suddenly became the strongest contender for the second serial. 

Verity Lambert, 1980s: “The crisis came when Donald Wilson saw the scripts for the first Dalek serial. Having spent so much time defending ‘Doctor Who’, he saw the Daleks as just bug-eyed monsters, which went against what he felt should be the theme of the science-fiction stories. There was a strong disagreement between us, in fact it went as far as Donald Wilson telling us not to do the show. What saved it in the end was purely that fact that we had nothing to replace it in the time allotted. It was the Daleks or nothing."

David Whitaker, 1979: "Actually, that Dalek story was educational in a subtle way – it showed the dangers of war, pacifism and racial hatred. It contained many admirable and idealistic truths in it, and it was also a jolly good adventure story."

To this day, Terry Nation is somewhat of a divisive figure in the Doctor Who fandom. On the one hand, we have the man who penned what is arguably Doctor Who's most important, formative and defining serial. He is the creator of, not just an iconic monster but, iconic worlds and the core spirit and characterisation of Doctor Who itself and its leading ensemble. Yet, on the other hand, we have a writer who made no bones about his disinterest in the scripts he was writing. It has not become controversial among fans to condemn Terry Nation as a lazy, even hack, writer. One of these things is probably true; Terry Nation was a very lazy writer. But to call him a hack? Not in my opinion. Terry Nation is a very simple writer, certainly. The man's approach to structure was very traditionally rooted in the sci-fi serial format, his style of dialogue would not seem out of place in then contemporary comic books and his plots could never be described as complex or involved stories. 

But why should any of these things be flaws? So, the man could write in the mould of classic sci-fi serials? Doctor Who was in the mould of a classic sci-fi serial and what Nation understood so well was that week-to-week structure that so many of his successors, and a good deal of his contemporaries, failed to get a hold of. Sure, Terry Nation serials are awkward stories to binge but they were never designed that way. Ever tried reading Oliver Twist more than one chapter at a time? It is horrible. Every individual chapter is truly an episode unto itself with great moments of character and action that effectively recap the story and move the grander plot forward. This is why, despite the unusual length of seven episodes, The Daleks still holds my attention for the whole runtime. Possibly more than any other writer's work on the original programme, Nation's episodes are consistently great to jump into just as single episodes. This also goes hand in hand with the very direct and simple dialogue really works as well. It is never subtle but it is always efficient and perfectly compliments the flavour of adventure serial that Nation consistently captured. Terry Nation is a good writer. Obviously. He is so good that even when he could not care less, and most of the time he did not, he could always deliver fun and beyond competent scripts.

Terry Nation, 1978: "It was quite a good eerie beginning and, at the end of it – the last frame of the picture – we saw a bit of a Dalek. We didn’t see a whole Dalek. And the phones started to ring. People saying, “Christ, what is that thing? A week later, the Dalek appeared."

The Daleks is a masterful blend of serialised action/adventure, thought provoking science fiction ideas and positively chilling horror that is well beyond the brief that Nation was given. From the moment it begins, this serial is unsettling. There is, of course, a brilliant dramatic irony baked into the premise that operates as both a clue to what is really going on and a genuinely compelling danger for our heroes. There is a school of thought that has concluded that The Daleks is too long but, again, I feel that this is a very contemporary mindset that somewhat misses what this story is going for. Say what you will about Destiny of the Daleks, for a not-at-all random example, but the first episode of this story, titled The Dead Planet, is not an exercise in killing time until the Dalek shows up to menace Barbara at the end. Despite what we know now, The Dead Planet does not have a reveal at the end. There is no frame of reference for the audience to project onto what is happening at all. Instead, the episode is a slowly rising crescendo of intrigue and tension that spans from the sparseness of a silent, dead forest to the gradually more claustrophobic and unfamiliar terrain of the city until Barbara gets cornered in an unknown corridor by an unknown terror. It is beautifully constructed adventure fiction that plays on the natural marriage of primal horrors, being the least creatures alive on the planet, and the imagery of contemporary nuclear warfare.

An Unearthly Child is a story defined by juxtaposition and survivalism which are both ideas that Nation picks up on beautifully in his story but he also brings themes of morality, identity and action. The Daleks is an almost biblical parable. With An Unearthly Child and The Daleks, the two core identities of the show appear to emerge. The former is a cynical and unrelenting programme that believes in unstoppable forces of nature that, no matter how hard we try to escape them or destroy them, will always be there at the core of our beings. With the latter, it is something more optimistic. A programme that is insistent, no matter how devastating the situation, that we can affect our destinies and help those around us to strive for better lives where we learn from our mistakes, can change and move forward. It is this version of Doctor Who, unsurprisingly, that the majority of the franchise believes in.

One thing Wilson did insist upon this serial was an experienced director whom he could trust to steer the ship and Christopher Barry was called in to take the job. Barry, however, was in the midst of other commitments leading to the unique situation where he only directed part of the story – episodes one, two, four and five. Richard Martin made his directorial debut with episode three and went on to direct episodes six and seven as well as the following serial and the Daleks' immediate next two appearances. Barry would also return to the series directing serials infrequently until 1979. As excellent as Martin's work in this serial is, and he realises some pretty spectacular imagery and visual effects for a little programme and with no experience, I could sing the praises of Christopher Barry all day. His choice of camera shots are incredibly dynamic throughout the episodes he helms with some particularly creative uses of angles and composition that really get the best out of these tiny sets. So many classic Doctor Who stories are hampered or even ruined by flat and uninspired direction (and eventually Barry will be the culprit of such a thing) but The Daleks, for my money, stands proud as one of the most cinematic serials of its era. 

The cast are all excellent with great moments to shine. William Russell is always on good form and one of my favourite moments of the serial is when he smashes Susan's flower. It's a brilliant and revealing character beat for him. Jacqueline Hill is great and has some epic girl bossing toward the end ("Do you always do what Ian tells you?" "No."). Carole Ann Ford sells the desperation of Susan's mini-quest very well but let ustake some time to single out for praise is William Hartnell who turns in possibly the defining performance of at least his first year in the leading role and steals every single scene that he’s in. Considering the overly aggressive and immoral characterisation of An Unearthly Child, it was not necessarily a given that Doctor Who would be a likeable character any way moving forward but this is the story that first truly defines him. He is still arrogant, selfish and perhaps a little morally ambiguous but he is also shown to be deeply passionate, delightfully witty and shows more than a handful of moments of genuine charm. I love how character driven the plot ultimately is with little more than the Doctor's selfish, stubbornness to please himself that puts the whole crew in danger. It is worth mentioning too how the fluid link saga things on the TARDIS' identity as a machine, in the literal human understanding of the word. Very rarely beyond this serial would the TARDIS actually be treated in this way by the narrative, as opposed to simply being a magical element that carries us from A to B. The Doctor's actions are cruel and self-interested but by the time he is encamped among the Thals and one can see his delight in getting to know their people and their science, he suddenly becomes such a fully realised person in ways that he was not before. The Doctor is a scientist and an explorer, not some vindictive wizard with indefinable motives. 

While the presentation, and perhaps core value itself, is a little dated, I also appreciate the Doctor's, and the rest of the main cast's, push for the Thals to be proactive as a peoples. It is a little clunky on the whole and comes off as a pretty pure endorsement against pacifism (though Ian's line "Pacifism only works when everybody feels the same" is a difficult claim to refute) but the nature of the message, insisting that standing up to oppressive forces and taking control of one's own life, is one worth conveying and an essential step in the development of the Doctor's morality. We are not entirely there yet, this is not a heroic character (indeed, he actively causes the Daleks to die), but this is the biggest leap we will get until the Daleks' next appearance.

Speaking of, let's get into the Daleks themselves. It is remarkable how close they are to being fully formed in their debut story. It disappoints me no end that this version of the Daleks, the calculating Nazi scientists allegory, is so ill-frequently represented in subsequent media appearances. The Daleks barely kill anybody at all in this script, largely seen just deliberating and experimenting in the labs of their cities, making the few uses of their weaponry a genuinely awesome shock for the audience. It is also a lot of fun seeing the original educational edict play out, for the only time with the Daleks; they cannot leave the floor of their city for they are powered by static electricity. 

The true unsung hero of this production continues to be Ray Cusick, the BBC designer who somewhat infamously took over from a young Ridley Scott who was too busy to take on the job. Before even getting to the main event, we should note that the production design all around is stunning on this story. All of the sets and costumes that are dripping in glorious futuristic aestheticism that would make Star Trek jealous. The Daleks look incredible and, again, it is too easy to take for granted how truly iconic they are. The most radical redesign in the entire barely strays at all from their original realisation here. Even watching them today, it is unbelievable watching them in action. Just how smoothly and freakishly the creatures glide around their home world. They are just so thoroughly alien and it was one of the best choices of the production that their true nature is never actually revealed. How is it possible for the Daleks to be so far from anything resembling humanity? It is left purely for the imagination and to great effect. While Nation was very keen on the image of a gliding creature, allegedly inspired by the the Georgian State Ballet, Cusick was the one who really created the visual identity of the Dalek creature.

Terry Nation, 1987: “Raymond Cusick made a tremendous contribution and I would love to be glib enough to put it into percentage terms, but you can’t do that. You start with something that’s a writer’s dream, that he’s put down in words, and amended, and added to in conversations. Something starts there... I think they may have given him a hundred pound bonus, but he was a salaried employee... The copyrights resided with the BBC and myself... he made a tremendous contribution. Whatever the Daleks are or were, his contribution was vast."

Ray Cusick, 1992: "Everyone was rushing around corridors saying ‘Oh, there’ll be Dalek films, Dalek soap, Dalek tea towels’, they thought there’d be lots of money. I was very friendly with Terry Nation and we appeared on a very famous show called ‘Late Night Line-Up’, and I remember asking him after the show ‘What about the films, Terry?’. And I never saw him again!"

As well we know, Terry Nation is not a subtle writer. In a lot of ways, Terry Nation's scripts seem to defy analysis. Funnily enough, this is something that he has very much in common with, a remarkably different Doctor Who writer, Russell T Davies – neither of them are particularly keen on subtext. As noted above and well documented at this point, there are parallels to be drawn between the Daleks and Nazi scientists. These cold and calculating survivors of a long and brutal war who skulk about in their underground bunkers, preparing to exterminate an entire race that poses no threat to them. As Ian describes them; "They're afraid of you because you're different from them" These are parallels that Nation was very intentionally drawing in his work (and would draw even more intently come Genesis of the Daleks)but there is a particular quote from Nation about his creations that I find deeply tantalising;

Terry Nation, 1978: “I can’t isolate one character [that the Daleks are based upon]. But I suppose you could say the Nazis. The one recurring dream I have – once or twice a year it comes to me – is that I’m driving a car very quickly and the windscreen is a bit murky. The sun comes onto it and it becomes totally opaque. I’m still hurtling forwards at incredible speed and there’s nothing I can see or do and I can’t stop the car. That’s my recurring nightmare and it’s very simply solved by psychologists who say you’re heading for your future. You don’t know what your future is. However much you plead with somebody to save you from this situation, everybody you turn to turns out to be one of ‘Them’. And there’s nobody left – You are the lone guy. The Daleks are all of ‘Them’ and they represent for so many people so many different things, but they all see them as government, as officialdom, as that unhearing, unthinking, blanked-out face of authority that will destroy you because it wants to destroy you. I believe in that now – I’ve directed them more that way over the years."

This is a deeply interesting and revealing excerpt, in my opinion. Nation was a child during the Second World War, a fact that he often mentioned in interviews and something that continued to permeate his work. It would be hard to describe him as anything other than a man with liberal political values, many of which are on display in The Daleks. That being said, it is incredibly easy to read The Daleks as a condemnation of Nazi fascism, totalitarianism and racial hatred. Perhaps not is too easy. Let us take moment to consider the politics of The Daleks as a condemnation of, not the Second World War but, the post-war climate and even more directly on the UK itself. After all, it is not without note that the Thals are of typically Aryan physicality and even had German names in earlier drafts of the story. In real-world history, we all know that it was not the Nazis who dropped the first atomic bomb – it was the Allies and, while the plight of the Thals has a great deal in common with the Jewish in World War II, it is not especially difficult to shift the lens of the Dalek allegory onto the 'good guys' watching the programme. When considering this with the above quote, there becomes something almost anarchistic about The Daleks. Nation's story is a survivalist thriller in many respects (with a lot of the natural horrors, of course, being directly resultant of man-made atrocities) but his self-confessed anxiety for the future perhaps fuels the story's optimistic insistence that when everything is torn down and destroyed, life will prevail and we can begin again, better than before. 

The Daleks presents strong ideals of community which makes perfect sense given the quote above. Nation's self-proclaimed fears seem keenly tied to isolation and that paranoia runs rampant in the terror of The Daleks. Take the sequence in The Survivors where Susan is racing back to the TARDIS on her own. The journey is horrifying and tense as she has no support or reassurance on her side. She is a young woman who is already dying and anything could be out to get her.The person who does find her, of course, is Alydon, a man from a kind, supportive and united community. The kind of community that could take on the Daleks. There are a lot of problems with this too though. The Thals are presented as, in Susan's words, perfect. They are peak physical performance, they look like humans and the villains, the irredeemable monsters, are physically inhuman.

Terry Nation, 1978: "[Survival] is a theme that’s actually gone through my work enormously...  I’m in that aeroplane and I’m waiting for the moment when they say, 'Can anybody fly this aeroplane?' – And I can’t, but I know that finally I’m going to be the one that has to do it."

On Saturday the twenty-first of December 1963, the fifth episode of the BBC's new science-fiction adventure serial, Doctor Who, aired in front of an audience of 6.9 million viewers. The episode was penned an up and coming Welsh comedy writer named Terry Nation and it was the first of seven chapters in a saga entitled The Mutants. Following a thrilling cliffhanger and the unexpected reveal of the serial's bizarre antagonists, something unexpected happened – Doctor Who suddenly became incredibly popular. Between episodes two and three, 2.5 million more viewers tuned in for the adventure with another 1.5 million accumulated by the serial's end. Doctor Who might have debuted four weeks earlier with An Unearthly Child but The Daleks, as it came to be known, is where the programme that has lasted sixty years actually premieres.

David Whitaker, 1979: "When it was shown, not very long after being recorded, we were, and I don’t mean this to sound smug, proved quite right."

Peter Cushing, 1970s: "I thought it was very good. Very well made."

David Whitaker, 1979: "The Daleks were a smashing invention, and I took to them at once. I would say they’re worthy of Jules Verne."

Verity Lambert, 1980s: "What was very nice, though, was Donald Wilson coming up to me after the Daleks had taken off and saying ‘You obviously understand this programme better than I do. I’ll leave it to you’."

Part II - Dr. Who and the Daleks

Terry Nation, 1987: "After the Daleks, I was for a short time the most famous writer on television. The press interviewed me, there was mail arriving in great van loads. There was stuff coming to my house that said ‘Dalek Man – London’, and I was getting lots of them. Almost all the kids wanted a Dalek, and nobody was quick enough... My God, was that to change! Within the year, there were Dalek everythings." 

As we all know, the Daleks were incredibly popular with the British public. In a manner cheekily compared to the Beatles, the Daleks dominated pop culture with all assortments of merchandise and spin-off material quickly emerging on the market. Between Nation and Whitaker's The Dalek Book, TV Century 21's comic strips (also credited to Nation), Whitaker's novel adaptation Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks and any number of toys, costumes and promotional tie-ins, the impact and legacy of the Dalek serial was immediately felt. Nation was swiftly commissioned for a second serial, the decidedly less culturally penetrating The Keys of Marinus, and eventually asked for a sequel Dalek story but what could have been the most high-profile exposure for his creations that one could ask, strangely enough, came without much involvement from Nation at all. 

In late 1964, American film producer Milton Subotsky approached Nation and the BBC about purchasing the film rights to The Daleks. For a fee of £500, Subotsky secured the rights and set about producing Dr. Who and the Daleks. As well as co-producing with Max J. Rosenberg, Subotsky was also credited for the screenplay with not insubstantial uncredited contributions from David Whitaker. The film was one of ten theatrical efforts by prolific television director Gordon Flemyng and marks the first of only two times (to date) that Doctor Who has been adapted exclusively for the silver screen. 

Tom Baker, 1975: "There have been two Doctor Who films in the past, both rather poor."

I find Dr. Who and the Daleks to be a deeply fascinating cultural oddity but that fascination surrounding its existence ultimately fails to translate to the screen itself. Even if it was just rolled into production as a quick attempt to capitalise on the enormous success of the Daleks in yet another form of media, it is admittedly impressive how much of the picture really works. Bill Constable’s art direction is quite breathtaking at times, working beautifully with the luscious technicolor presentation. This is a gorgeous film just to look at and it really effortlessly realises the fullscreen, explosive world of the Daleks that previously only truly existed in the aforementioned comic books and annuals. I particularly love the latter sequences as our heroes scale Skaro's landscape amongst some gorgeous matte painting work. That being said, there is still something that speaks to me more about the 4:3 black and white glimpses offered in the TV version. The feeling of peering through your TV screen into these small corners of what feels like a larger, more dangerous world behind and beyond the camera is much more captivating for me than these much grander sets presented without ambition or flair.

Since I neglected them in my main review, let me quickly sing the praises of Peter Hawkins and David Graham as the voices of the Daleks. With the assistance of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's Brian Hodgson, the pair created the unique electronic tones of the creature's voices using a ring modulator. Their voices are immediately recognisable and they put in great performances though it is clear, in hindsight, that the sound of the Daleks still had some work to do. Hawkins and Graham's initial Daleks are much more monotone than they would later become with the pair only later landing upon the rising pitch and angry tones that would truly define them. They are excellent in the film as well but, it has to be said, the story is not served by how many scenes they have of dialogue amongst themselves. Obviously it makes sense to showcase the full-colour, enormous Dalek props at every possible opportunity in your big screen Dalek film but there is just no way around the reality that Daleks rolling about and talking amongst themselves as slowly as it seems possible they could is not compelling cinema.

Worse than just looking at Daleks are the flaws of Terry Nation’s incredibly serialised storytelling being put on full display here. While the screenplay effectively trims the fat, save for the Dalek scenes, the general structure of this story does not work well as a single feature film. It is a similar problem that a lot of novel adaptations have where the filmmakers just cannot get the chapters to effectively translate to scenes and sequences. Dr. Who and the Daleks also has a bit of a bland core cast. Barrie Ingham is a good Alydon and Peter Cushing works magic with his dottery version of the Doctor but Roy Castle's doofus take on Ian leaves much to be desired and Jennie Linden's Barbara feels so surplus to requirements that she just gets folded into Susan's character and then a generic love interest. The film is entertaining but a bit of a lacklustre watch on the whole. It is not a poor or even unnecessary addition to the Doctor Who canon. This is as good a 90 minute adaptation of The Daleks that could possibly exist. It is just also true that the best version of that story is, regrettably, not this.

Roy Castle, 1990: "[I]t was quite unusual. Very unlike anything I’ve ever done... [The Daleks] were brilliant. I think if you’d said to the producer, you must get rid of the humans or the Daleks, he’d have got rid of us humans in a flash."

Peter Cushing, 1990s: "Those films are among my favourites because they brought me popularity with younger children. They’d say their parents didn’t want to meet me in a dark alley but ‘Doctor Who’ changed that. After all, he is one of the most heroic and successful parts an actor can play. That’s one of the main reasons the series had such a long run on TV. I am very grateful for having been part of such a success story.”

In 2024, the prevalence of Dr. Who and the Daleks in the greater story of the programme has dwindled but it is worth remembering just how significant an event it was. While not a critical darling, the film was a box officer smash in the UK and was often repeated on television over the following decades. For so many fans, Dr. Who and the Daleks was more readily viewed than great swathes of the television show itself. Even though The Daleks is the story that happened on television, it is not unfair to say that Dr. Who and the Daleks is the story many of us remember happening.

Part III - The Daleks in Colour

Russell T Davies, 2023: "I've got to be blunt, I've watched this, as a fan, a hundred times as a black and white show andI've never enjoyed it so much as in colour."

And so, we fast forward, to 2023 and the sixtieth anniversary of Doctor Who. Showrunner Russell T. Davies has made the entire back-catalogue available for streaming in the UK, three new specials are about to air and the boldest, most publicised attempt to bring the original series to the general audience since 2005 is taking place. Thanks to the work of fans such as Rich Tipple and Benjamin Cook, RTD spearheaded an all-new colorisation and re-edit of The Daleks down to a seventy-five minute length to offer an alternative "blockbuster" version for potential new fans. How many of the uninitiated took any notice of its appearance on iPlayer and sprucing on breakfast television remains to be seen but, nevertheless, Doctor Who: The Daleks in Colour arrived in our screens on the 23rd of November, 2023. 

The film in question is an interesting but flawed experiment. Certainly, the possibility of colourising the ancient history of Doctor Who has been a tantalising one for decades now and something many fans, myself included, have been eager to see. In and of itself, this is a fine thing to strive for and, in this respect, The Daleks in Colour is incredibly successful at it. The colourisation is breathtaking. Not only is the colourising itself incredible but the choice to eschew real world reference points for the sets, costume and lighting in favour of the most vibrant, almost psychedelic options that they could possibly think of is the correct choice. The entire production has a sense of 1960s pop and visual style that slots in seamlessly with then contemporary productions to the extent where it looks like this could always have been the plan.

What feels very much not like it was planned, however, is the runtime. On paper, chopping up the serial makes a good deal of sense. Seven episodes is a big commitment to somebody uncertain of the original show and with 1963 pacing being what it was, the decision to pare things down matches well with the mission statement. Alas, the editing in this film does not work but not because the idea is bad. Dr. Who and the Daleks has proven that paring down the script can lead to a generally well-received and, for many, preferential product. Yes, Dr. Who and the Daleks is, in many ways the elephant in the room. While the decision to choose the debut of the Daleks as a story to hook in new fans makes a lot of sense on paper, the fact that the Subotsky adaptation exists at all makes it a little difficult to justify.

The direct comparison is ultimately unfavourable and not just because of how many of the colour choices seem direct inspired by it. The Subotsky film's existence awkwardly lampshades the fact that what one is watching here is not an eighty-two minute feature designed to watched in one sitting. This is an almost three hour one awkwardly cobbled together with jarring new musical cues. Many of the technical choices employed such as speeding up the film, tightening up gaps in the dialogue and recording new Dalek dialogue to disguise swathes of cut material all amount to a very obviously cobbled together experience. 

Still, this experiment was necessary and this is a great little curio of the franchise but the awkwardness of the production and its core appeal as an alternative proves it unlikely, in my opinion, to ever actually attain its goal – enticing new viewers to watch the Hartnell era. What The Daleks in Colour is is an alternative to the original and a glimpse into an alternate history for a captive fanbase. It could have been an amazing leap forward but remains, instead, a noteworthy first step into uncharted territory.

But what of that original serial then? Well, in my opinion, The Daleks still holds up today as one of the best stories in the history of Doctor Who and a landmark moment in science fiction storytelling. But this is not for everyone. BBC television of the 1960s is certainly not for everyone; I watched this with my partner and we both did feel the length when watching the episodes in close proximity. Even so, I do strongly implore checking out the first two episodes in the serial for some of the most intriguing and moody sci-fi adventure storytelling you might ever see in Doctor Who. In December 1963, Terry Nation and the Doctor Who team created some wonderful episodes of television. And that was not the end of the story.

Terry Nation, 1987: "I don’t know to this day what the enormous appeal of the Daleks was. I’ve heard all sorts of ideas about it, but they were slightly magical, because you didn’t know what the elements were that made them work."

Sydney Newman, 1986: “Someone once told me that there was a question in Trivial Pursuit, ‘Who created Doctor Who?’. You turn the card over and it says the answer is Terry Nation! I wrote a rather stinging letter, demanding the destruction of all the Trivial Pursuits that had that mistake in them, hinting at some fabulous compensation that they should give me for demeaning my contribution to (laughs) world culture! I got lawyers and everything, but I didn’t get anywhere. They just said they would withdraw the card. I even wrote to Terry Nation for his support, and he sent me a very nice letter back.”

*This title would be adopted by fans despite not appearing on any documentation at the time. It became officially endorsed with the 2001 VHS release

[misslavenderlady]

He's Just an Actor - Chapter 2❤️

Dwayne/Female!Reader (She/Her Pronouns)

Summary: After thinking about how many sexy roles Dwayne's actor has been in back in her universe, the reader struggles to talk to him without her mind being on more intimate things. Maybe that won't be such a bad thing for the handsome vampire~

This is in the universe of the fic "It's Just a Movie" by @theyreonlynoodlesmike, so you should definitely read that first (this takes place around chapter 12)!

WARNINGS: Nsfw/Smut/18+ Readers Only, Flirting, Dirty Thoughts, Sex Dream, Pet Names, Lap Sitting, Grinding, Neck Kissing, Dirty Talk, Hair Pulling

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All throughout the day, your dreams taunted you with images of your new boyfriend reenacting those sultry scenes with you. Even in the movies and shows where Billy Wirth was older, all you saw in your head was Dwayne as he was now. His long, flowing hair. His revealing outfit. His golden eyes and sharp fangs that thrilled you more than they scared you. All that played in your mind were images of your bodies moving together, his dark, sultry voice moaning out for you. 

It was no surprise that when you woke up your body felt like it was on fire and there was an aching, wet sensation in between your legs. It was a good thing there were still a couple of hours of daylight when you awoke because you’d be damned if you were going to let any of the boys see you in this heated mess, ESPECIALLY Dwayne.

While the sun was still out you managed to clean up your little mess and make yourself more presentable. You splashed cold water from one of the bottles you kept in stock on your face, forcing yourself to cool down. Once you were dressed and out of your aroused state, you went about your day as normal. 

You went out sunbathing on the nearby beach while the sun was setting, you did some stretching and a little bit of yoga to keep your body feeling good and when you made your way back to the cave at dusk, you sat on the couch with a snack, ready to greet your boys as they awakened for the night. One by one you greeted them with a smile, being as casual as possible with them. 

However, when Dwayne joined the others out in the main room, you felt the heat take over you once again. After that nerve-wracking moment you had the night before and the wet dream that came in the day, you could no longer look at the man without feeling overwhelmed. If he were human it would be a lot easier to hide the way you were feeling, but you knew his vampiric instincts could pick up on the way your heart was racing in your chest. 

If he asked about it you would just have to tell a fib and say it was from a workout you did on the beach. You hadn’t lied to him about anything since the night you met the boys, so you could only hope he would buy it.

You turned your attention to a notebook you had brought with you onto the couch, furiously scribbling notes as you put your focus into plans for saving the boys when the Emerson family came to town in the summer. You were so focused on acting normal and throwing yourself into your work that you didn’t even notice Dwayne whisper something to his friends. The three blond boys nodded, and with a gesture in the direction of the cave entrance, David led Paul and Marko out for a long, thorough hunt. 

One that would give Dwayne plenty of time to be alone with you.

Dwayne made his way to the couch you were perched on, silently coming up behind you before leaning in to nuzzle your neck. If you hadn’t been so hyper-aware of his movements since he woke up, you would have been seriously startled. You reminded yourself to just keep breathing like normal.

“Evening, beautiful” Dwayne greeted you. You smiled at your boyfriend as he swung his legs over the couch and sat down right next to you. God, he was wearing that cologne you really loved today. So much for breathing normally. All you could do now was swoon.

“H-Hi, Dwayne..” you responded, mentally cursing yourself for stuttering. You leaned in to give his cheek a peck, not risking a kiss on the lips that could turn not-so-innocent rather quickly. As much as you wanted to share more affection with Dwayne, you were so overwhelmed with the thoughts of his actor in all those intimate roles you recalled the night before that now you didn’t know what to do with him next.

Dwayne seemed to be as cool as a cucumber, welcoming your small kiss and your greeting. Without even saying anything, he reached over and gently took the notebook from your hand and set it off to the side of the couch. He wanted your full attention at the moment and in order to make that even more clear, he took hold of your sides and effortlessly lifted you onto his lap. 

God, he moved you around like you weighed no more than a kitten. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, as you saw him and the others on screen tear a car in half like it was tissue paper. Of course, a human would be nothing in comparison. Still, you felt your cheeks flush from the way he was holding you now. You silently prayed for the blood to stay there and not start moving to other places where he could definitely feel.

You stayed silent as he gazed into your eyes. He was so gorgeous and his eyes were particularly striking. He didn’t dare take them off of you as he ran his thick, strong finger through your hair and over your flushed cheek. You felt like you were melting into a puddle just from the smallest touch. Jesus, girl, get a hold of yourself.

“Baby~?” he asked, still caressing you. His voice was as sweet as honey, and it was such a treat to your ears.

“Y-Yes…?” 

“Why did you lie about my actor?”

Oh fuck, you were in trouble now.

“What do you mean?” you asked, already on the defense. “I didn’t lie! I told you about the stuff he’s been in!” you immediately regretted wording it like that. You sounded guilty as hell, and you could already tell he knew that too. Why did this handsome man have to make your brain act so stupidly? 

He chuckled softly, still running his fingers through your hair. You really couldn’t tell what he was feeling right now. Was he mad? Was he amused by how pathetic you were right now? Was he just caught up in the joy of being with you? You really hoped the last option was the correct one because that was all you could handle right now.

“You didn’t lie, per see,” he said, “but you didn’t exactly tell the whole truth”. Oh god, he was sounding like a scolding father right now, and that was the last thing your daddy issues needed at the moment. “Be honest with me, is it because my actor was terrible in the stuff you left out?”

You nearly burst out laughing. While Billy Wirth did see significant improvement in his acting chops with time and experience, that was definitely not the reason for your behavior. Instead of saying anything, you simply shook your head. 

“No? Was he an asshole who caused problems for others?” 

Again, you shook your head. While you didn’t know the guy personally, you had heard nothing but words of praise for him from fellow cast mates in interviews. You always thought he seemed sweet and humble, so you would hope that’s also how he always acted on set in roles he took. Then again, there was always importance in the phrase “never meet your heroes”. Maybe being with Dwayne was the closest you’d ever get to do that.

“Hmm…he’s not a porn star, is he?”

Jesus Christ, that was definitely not the case, but considering the kinds of scenes you had witnessed him perform, they were practically tap-dancing on the line of porn. You suddenly realized that with how badly you were blushing now, you couldn’t keep up this act any longer. Better to rip it off like a bandage, much like you did when Paul and Marko teased you after they first learned of your crushes on all of them. 

“No, but…uh…he…” you struggled to find the right words to explain yourself. It didn’t help that Dwayne hadn’t stopped staring at you. It was becoming very obvious how much of Billy’s sensual influence had helped shape Dwayne’s personality. 

Still, Dwayne was reasonable, and he was your boyfriend. You had trusted him so far to be careful with you as his human girlfriend and now you needed to trust him with understanding why your emotional and physical reactions were coming off this way. With a deep breath to calm your nerves a bit, you told the truth.

“He’s had a lot of…sensual scenes in several of his movies,” you explained. “I didn’t tell you about them because it was embarrassing to bring them up to you, especially in front of David, Paul, and Marko…” 

You couldn’t help but hang your head in shame. Despite your bravery, it was still a bit mortifying to tell your boyfriend that you had watched a man who looked just like him do and say things that were incredibly arousing to you. Part of the guilt came from the idea of Dwayne being jealous. He could possibly believe that you only thought he was attractive because you felt that way about his actor.

It was far from the truth. Dwayne had won your heart from your very first viewing of the movie years ago. Yes, Billy Wirth was an attractive man (especially now that he was in the silver fox era of his life), but Dwayne was his own person. He and the other boys were real in this world, and you adored them just as they were. 

Before you could explain all these complicated feelings to him, Dwayne closed the gap between the two of you and kissed you. Suddenly, all the embarrassment, guilt, and worry washed away and you felt every inch of your body relax into his touch. As you folded your arms around his neck and kissed him back eagerly, you couldn’t help but think about how much this man had you wrapped around his finger. 

By the time you broke away to breathe again, you had enough courage to look him in the eyes. It was tricky to read his face sometimes, as the man had an impeccable poker face. However, with enough searching, you swore you saw some curiosity in his expression. 

He wasn’t gonna ask about those specific scenes, was he?

“Tell me more about these movies, Baby~”

Goddamnit.

“I need you to understand there are a lot more than you may realize, and if I tell you about all of them, we’re gonna be here a while,” you said bluntly. No matter how much you cared about Dwayne, there was no way you were going to rattle off every single time his actor had kissed someone, gotten shirtless, or had some kind of sex scene. You didn’t need to make yourself sound like a total pervert when you were still so new in this relationship.

Dwayne smiled and threw his head back, chuckling at your response. It was a lot like his laugh in the motorcycle race scene from his movie. You really could swoon from how dark and devious it sounded to you. The feelings you were experiencing only increased when the vampire reached around your body and placed his hand low on your back. It reminded you of what David had done your first night when he asked how you were going to help the gang. 

Only this time the hand was much lower. If it drifted downward anymore you weren’t going to be able to act right. 

“Then tell me about your favorite movie~” 

You didn’t even need a moment to think about which one was your favorite. Before your thoughts had been interrupted by Marko the other night, you were briefly able to recall the one movie out of the whole list of work experiences Mr. Wirth had that really got you going the most. Without even thinking first, you blurted out the name.

“Red Shoe Diaries ” 

Just saying it made you feel dirty. A few years back when you were checking out some of the other works the actors of The Lost Boys had been in, you came across it and became incredibly grateful that you had chosen to watch it with headphones in the privacy of your bedroom. While it was technically part of a series, you had only ever watched the one with Dwayne’s actor. You knew a lot of elements like the cheating and possessiveness and the rather dark fate of the leading lady were all problematic, but he was your favorite part of the whole thing.

In fact, you remembered your first night when Paul teased you with that “I bet you've thought about us” line, you knew that the movie was what made you think that way. Of course, with Dwayne being the reason you went looking for it in the first place, it was him on your mind as you enjoyed yourself, not the actor or the character in the movie. 

Now you had the man here in front of you, in the handsome flesh. 

“Your actor plays this guy who meets a beautiful woman on a construction site, and they have an immediate attraction,” you explained. Suddenly you were reminded of a particular line from the movie. 'He made love like he worked on the street. Tender as a jackhammer'.  For the sake of your fragile, human body you hoped that Dwayne wasn’t like that with how strong his vampirism made him. 

“He works in a shoe shop, and when they meet again he…” 

You felt your cheeks burning hotter than ever, as the excitement of that scene got to you rather easily. Your heart fluttered in your chest from watching the character call the lady of interest ‘beautiful’ and ‘like a princess’. When he had caressed her cheek, you wished with all your soul you could be touched like that. God, you were so embarrassed that the more innocent parts were already riling you up.

“Go on, baby~” Dwayne encouraged you. 

Both of his hands had moved to your hips now and while he held you gently, you could feel that he was anxious to press into the skin a little harder. He HAD to hear how rapidly your heart was pounding right now. You felt like a tease since he probably hadn’t fed yet tonight, but that hunger he looked at you with was just too enjoyable. How funny that you used to be scared of that look.

“He…caresses her leg…talks about the attraction they feel for each other…and he…shows her how turned on he is for her…he says he’s so hard that he could balance stone on it~” 

You hadn’t realized you were shivering until just then. Whether it was from the excitement of telling your boyfriend about this dirty movie or the sensation of his cool fingers grazing the sides of your body under your shirt, you weren’t too sure. You remembered how the leading lady looked down at his crotch to see for herself and that smiled in delight from what she saw. 

“Is that right~?” is all Dwayne says. You couldn't read his face because it was tucked in the crook of your neck. As he moved his fingers up your spine with one hand massaging your hips with the other he started pressing kisses into the skin. His breath felt so dangerously warm on your pulse point, but you don’t want it to go away. 

“Y-Yes…~” you say as your breath hitches. “I’m sorry…I know my heartbeat must be driving you crazy…”

“Heh…it’s your second heartbeat that’s doing it to me~”

You couldn’t stop the moan that escaped your mouth at the sound of that. God, you really had hoped he wouldn’t notice the arousal you were feeling from this incredibly intimate moment, but your body was betraying you. It only spiked higher when he chuckled darkly against your flesh as he guided your hips down onto his lap more.

Holy shit, you could feel his cock pressing against your body. Dwayne was rock hard for you ~

“If you tell me more like a good girl, I’ll keep on touching you~” he purred. His lips were off your neck and pressed to your ear, nibbling on the tender skin and teasing you with his own, hot moans. You had to keep breathing normally or you swore you’d faint right here. 

“O-Ookay…~” you nervously giggle. Your arms were still wrapped around him like before, but now your fingers were intertwining with his thick, dark hair. It’s silky soft and perfect for you to grab onto as you move slowly on his lap. 

“The woman…the main character…she goes to his home…he tells her to take off her clothes and…u-unbuckle his b-belt…~” you continued with your summary. It was getting hard to think coherently because one of Dwayne’s hands found a way up your shirt and under your bra while the other slipped into the back of your pants and gently squeezed the flesh of your ass. You shivered and held him tighter, that familiar sensation of warmth radiating from behind your panties. 

You really hoped that his vampire powers didn’t include reading the minds of humans because your brain was SCREAMING about how bad you wanted him to fuck you~

“Oooh baby, don’t stop~” he encourages you. 

Kisses trailed down from your ear to your neck down to your collarbone and he gave the most teasing of licks against the end of your jugular. Your eyes flutter shut as you lean into him, enjoying the thrill of how easily he could ravage you, but having that trust that he wouldn’t. It felt like a game and you were having a lot of fun~

“She demands he…ahh~…take her panties off…and he tears them off of her…mmmh…with only one hand~” 

Your entire body was burning up with desire when you felt his cock twitching in his pants against your thigh. God, if all of the Lost Boys were as big as him then it was a goddamn miracle they were tucked away so well. Meanwhile, Dwayne was far more composed but definitely just as hot and bothered. His leather jacket was slipping off his shoulders a bit, exposing his toned chest to you. While one of your hands was still holding onto his hair the other was trailing down the front, exploring every angle of his perfect body. 

“And then~?”

“He…f-fucks her…mmhhh…like a wild animal~”

Something in Dwayne snapped. His lips were off you and his strong hands suddenly grasped at your wrists, holding you firmly as he stared into your eyes. You gasped in surprise, seeing so clearly that he was fighting back the same urges you were. God, you didn’t want him to hold back on you but you also didn’t want him to stop looking at you like that~

“Baby~” he simply said. His voice was so dark and sensuous that it made your pussy ache. Surely he could feel that with how you were moving on top of him.

“Yes, Dwayne…~?” you asked, anticipation rising with every passing second.

“You wanna recreate some scenes together~?”

Tag List: @britany1997 @6lostgirl6 @american-idiot-jpg @herthinkersmanana @checkitoutmikey @luv4fandoms @scarlet-fangs @riz-coolgirl

[silver-horse]

the topic of the shield of screams and the cut zevlor scene reminded me why this game in some aspects was a tiny bit of a letdown. (at least compared to early access because it's still one of the best narratives I ever had the pleasure of playing through) Many things added to the game during early access were so much more detailed, such thought went into them.

During the party celebration you went to camp and you saw Volo performing! (that was also cut) Then you had that talk with Zevlor after all he is the leader of the people you saved. It all felt so lively and natural.

And they considered things like "ok Nere is a sorcerer not a wizard. sorcerers don't learn their spells, they don't have full control over it so let's add a spell that is entirely unique and personal" and that is not only interesting but also a brilliant story telling tool for a video game. And the game was full of this stuff. This applies to the player character as well. NPCs reacted to your character based on what race or class you were playing. I wrote posts about how my chosen race (half-drow) has ZERO reactivity in acts 2 and 3. Every single reaction line NPCs have is the act 1 stuff that was already there when I played early access. Basically when it comes to the finer details the difference between ea and full release is noticeable. In large strokes they made an incredible game and story. But your individual experience won't be all that unique because the minor details are lacking in later acts.

Act 3 feels much more rushed and surface level compared to act 1. And so many scenes were cut from Act 1, I really do wonder if they cut those just to make sure Act 1 doesn't feel too good compared to the rest. tbh during ea I got used to how everything was full of life and realistic reactivity. I sometimes reload many times to look at every dialogue path or I try to check "what ifs". what if I do these quests not in the traditional order etc. During early access my experience was "wow they really considered that weird possibility. there is a reaction to that" In act 3 or even act 2... most of the time if I do slightly odd things, the game cannot react, there is no dialogue acknowledging certain choices, there isn't even dialogue where npcs notice the player's race, it's like npcs are blind to some things around them (like in most games).

I am just sad they didn't spend more time developing. because we would have been happy playing early access for as long as it lasts. it was enjoyable following the development and waiting for the new little tidbits. and everyone who didn't participate in that would have bought the full game later and they also would have been more pleased with the final result. it's just a pity act 3 was so rushed. I hope they will keep working on it. I hope new patches will be a bit like early access where with each new patch some new things were added. because especially the big ending is super rushed compared to the rest of the game.

[dangermousie]

The first ep of this drama was dark as hell and then for a few eps after it was on the lighter side even with all the avenger stuff going on, and then it gradually started going darker. But ep 13 is where it really decides to dive off a cliff and the darker trajectory accelerates like a race car.

Because ahjusshi gets hit right in front of YS in a car ostensibly driven by his latest vengeance target, but we all know (though YS does not), that this is Undaddy's doing, part of his plan to drive YS to murder so he'd join him in the darkness. There are many awful kdrama parents, but even among them Undaddy stands out in the delight he takes in taking his son apart.

The way YS loses it at the one adult figure in his life who actually cared being at the risk of death...when he literally starts screaming, ouch.

I love that Nana can read him the way nobody else can. She can totally understand what he's thinking without being told and she tells him she used to fantasize about killing the man who killed/comaed her parents and that the look in his eyes now is how hers used to be back then and it makes her nervous.

This is one of the most horrifying things said by someone in this drama. The fact that Undaddy's attempts to turn him into a murderer are working.

And it's working, that's the thing. Undaddy has taken YS' greatest good thing - his ability to love deeply despite his fucked up upbringing - and is doing his best to turn it into something destructive, ugly and evil. Undaddy's 'attempt' on Nana in the beginning of ep wasn't one or a warning or anything - it was a test to see how strongly attached YS is to those he loves - and Undaddy learned what he wanted, because if YS is willing to die for them, he'd be willing to kill for them too. I love the fractured shots because it's YS who is fracturing.

And so we get that cruel cruel scene in the prosecutor's award ceremony (before that, YS would have never dragged the prosecutor into it because he is an innocent person) and his resulting taking away of the target and it has clear he's slipped the bounds of sanity and is considering killing him but also has set up a situation where he's just inflicting pain. But you know what strikes me? The target is a murderous monster but even he loves his son, is willing to die for his son, which is something Undaddy never has given YS so far.

But yes, the scene where target falls off the overpass in his hurry to grab the incriminating his kid documents YS showed him and YS...just walks away. That is the darkest we've seen him.

But what I really love, love so much that as he walks he thinks of things that would normally fuel his vengeance (like his milk mother getting shot) but then it transforms into his thinking of Nana, and how despite losing both her parents to this man, she did not want him dead, just exposed. And you literally see sanity return to his eyes (LMH is great here, most of his face is covered and you can still tell.) She really is the keeper of his soul. It's like a battle between her and Undaddy for his very being.

And so he drops his knife, which is quite symbolic, and rushes to save the man, but the old guy sees him coming and clearly thinks he's come to finish the job or do god knows what else and so to protect his son he just lets go. And the poor honorable prosecutor, who loved his father (who was a terrible person but a loving father to him) sees this happen right in front of his eyes, and sees City Hunter there. YS was trying so hard not to turn someone into another him, but he's got to see he's failed at this moment.

The look in his eyes!

[just-3d-mario-things]

Verdict: I liked it!

The Super Mario Bros. Movie was absolutely a love letter to fans. Yeah, I’ll admit that if you didn’t grow up with Mario, there’s not much for you in terms of story. It’s your basic Family Member Goes Missing, gotta save them and also Save The World I Guess kinda movie. I won’t give a comprehensive review, but I’ve got some thoughts about it :)

Positive

- Deep cuts! Foreman Spike from Wrecking Crew, as well as Charles Martinet cameoing as classic Mario’s design, was a nice touch

- Yeah, it’s an isekai, but isekais aren’t inherently bad. Mario has a lot of different continuities, and in some it is an isekai. They obviously care a lot about the Super Show, doing the jingle and all. They manage to respect their audience’s intelligence, and don’t provide much exposition (which is awesome!)

- Diversity! There were so many Mario enemies and races in the movie, it was great. Shyguys kidnap Luigi, Dry Bones chase him through a swamp reminiscent of Luigi’s Mansion, the penguins from 64 have their own kingdom, all kinds of Koopas and Spinies make appearances, Goombas look like Goombas, there are like a hundred unique Kong designs, and we get a Luma! I’m not sure if it’s meant to be Lumalee or not, though they do bear a striking resemblance to them. The writers did their homework.

- The jokes for we the fans were genuinely pretty funny. There’s a part when Mario is fighting DK and has only tried one type of Power Up thus far, a regular mushroom to make him bigger. Mario grabs a blue Mini Mushroom, unaware of its effects. The audience gets to see Mario triumphantly grab the mushroom, thinking it’ll make him stronger. There’s a good moment for the audience members who know exactly what’ll happen, but those unaware of the Mini Mushroom won’t until it happens and Mario goes tiny.

- A good Power Up selection! I was afraid only the Fire Flower would be used, but we got Cat Mario, Tanooki Mario, Fire Peach and DK, Ice Flower Peach, and Super Star Mario and Luigi. Here’s hoping the sequels will use Bee Mario, Penguin Suit Mario, and Frog Mario. Oh! And the Feather Cape is kinda cameoed in their plumbing commercial, when they’re posing on the stools wearing capes. That was pretty neat.

- A solid mix of games’ soundtracks and elements. I didn’t notice much from Sunshine unfortunately, no FLUDD or Bowser Jr or anything. Come to think if it, does Bowser Jr exist in this continuity? How about the Koopalings? Evidence of Ludwig exist: the piano Bowser plays is Ludwig von Koopa brand, which was really funny.

- Bowser. Bowser Bowser Bowser. I think he was perfect, honestly. We all knew it when Jack Black stepped up to the plate, but seeing the piano scenes. And him dressed in his suit with the top hat. Man. I’m so glad they went for a mix of dopey lovesick Bowser from Odyssey and super powerful firebreath Bowser from Galaxy. I really like that if you censor his Peaches song correctly, you could make it sound like he’s saying “bitches”, which is objectively funny. No bitches :’(

- The Jungle Kingdom was a super fun segment. Literally a rollercoaster. I really enjoyed the showdown between DK and Mario, the sound effects and music were on point. They play the opening riff that plays in the original Donkey Kong when he bends the girders, and then. The DK rap plays. It was so unexpected that I had to laugh aloud. DK uses it as like his personal anthem, kinda like how professional wrestlers have a signature song they play when they come out into the ring. The unique Kongs were really cool to see too, like in the stands and the dude who drives them into the kingdom. At one point Diddy in the stands has the bongoes from Donkey Konga, it’s all a blast.

- Speaking of, Seth Rogen’s DK is surprisingly strong. Like, dang, I didn’t expect the “Seth Rogen laugh” to actually fit DK’s character, but it does!

- Okay, fine, Crisp Rat did a passable job. I never forgot it was him, but they eased into the voice by having him do a fakey Italian voice at the beginning. Still waiting on the dub featuring English cast + Italian dub Mario with no subtitles. Considering how low in content the story is, it would be a perfectly fine movie if you muted him completely :)

- The animation! I mean, you’ve seen the trailers, this is the best work Illumination has done, no question. I really like how they partially modelled the characters after their VAs. Bowser is just dripping with Jack Black’s chaotic energy, and Luigi and Mario are eerily reminiscent of Charlie Day and Crisp Rat despite being 100% Luigi and Mario. Toad is pretty solid as well, Key does a really good Toad voice without it being incredibly grating. Jack Black’s smile and Parks & Recreation-era Crisp Rat seem to be some inspiration behind the way they emote.

- Peach is pretty good. I like her voice, Anya Taylor Joy understood the assignment. She isn’t too “girlboss-y”, and she’s actually kind of a weirdo. I love that for her. Makes sense, she was raised by Toads and all. She only brings Mario along to help him, and she isn’t really saved by him at all. She’s delightfully pink and pretty, and oooh her wedding dress, Fire Flower dress, and Ice Flower Dress are all soo pretty. Like seriously, I want that wedding dress. She only gets to hover exactly once during the training montage, and she doesn’t get her parasol, but otherwise I quite liked her. She doesn’t have any groundbreaking character development or anything, or even much for flaws, but she’s just peachy in my opinion :)

- I think the Question Blocks serving as Toad ATMs was really funny. Also, I liked that Pauline was on the TV in Brooklyn. And the brothers’ family was fun to see, they absolutely captured the Italian-American family dynamic. Also, acknowledging the white gloves was pretty funny. We got to see Mario’s actual hands, too, which was… unsettling. Luigi’s ringtone is the Gamecube startup sound, Mario’s playing Kid Icarus on his home TV, Satoru Iwata features in the credits, and the little retro shop in the Mushroom Kingdom was neat. I feel like they referenced all throughout Mario’s history, unlike the Sonic movies where they only focused on the golden years of the Genesis games (no shade to the Sonic movies, I actually really liked them too)

- Oh the score. Ohhhh the score. Just… the score. Not enough Galaxy rep, but it’s forgiven. They use the themes from Mario games so well, it’s actually incredible. Just, like, go watch it and see how many you can recognize. I think I got most of them, though I wish they used the Wii Rainbow Road music since that’s the RR I’m most familiar with. Ah, well. I’m not sure if they used a Mario Kart theme for that scene or nor, someone who’s played the other Mario Karts will have to tell me

Negative

- crisp rat >:(

- Lack of Sunshine rep :( I can’t remember if there were any musical references, but I didn’t detect any, anyway. No Shadow Mario, Bowser Jr, Piantas, or FLUDD. Maybe we’ll get to Isle Delfino in the sequel?

- No Funky, Birdo, Rosalina, Daisy, Wario, or Waluigi. I can’t expect to get all of the fun side characters, but when I saw the Kong kingdom and the Luma I had a few shreds of hope that Funky and Rosa would show. I have a feeling Miyamoto doesn’t really like Wario/Waluigi, which is fair but sad. There wasn’t much room for Daisy and Birdo since the movie was so quick-paced. With the Yoshi egg teased at the end, it is possible Birdo will appear in the sequel? Maybe? And since it is an isekai, it’s revealed that no humans are native to the Mushroom Kingdom/Peach’s world, so maybe Daisy just doesn’t fit in this narrative. Ah, well.

- I have a feeling other reviews will remark on this, but Cranky is kinda weak :( I expected him to get better dialogue/direction, since I think Fred Armisen is generally a good actor. He just wasn’t… cranky enough? I dunno. Every time he spoke, I just pictured a voice actor in a booth instead of Cranky Kong.

- The story was… a Shigeru Miyamoto story. That is, no real intense story beats. They don’t really try anything new, but hey. You don’t walk into the Mario Movie expecting Miyazaki, y’know? It was all a bit too fast-paced for me, but I get it, it’s better than senseless filler. Illumination likes cheap movies, so the short runtime might cover for the quality animation.

- The licensed songs aren’t abysmal, but I wish there were fewer where Mario songs could have taken their place. I dunno, as much as I love Take on Me, I feel like there’s a better song out there for introducing the Jungle Kingdom.

Aaand those are my thoughts! I have more, but I’m sleepy and it’s 1:58 AM for me at the mo’. I’m sure I’ll be MarioMovie Posting in the future :)