#Therefore he is still old fashioned (all that implies) well...

[gaypirate420]

Being a Jasper girlie (gender neutral) is constantly living on the fucking threnches.

[saintsenara]

okay, I'm super curious about your thoughts on when and how snape becomes a potions master. some people say he was still working on his mastery when he became a professor but i like to think he got it in early 1980 and he apprenticed with a potions master he was recommended to through his ~connections~ (cough malfoy cough).

although the idea of him teaching and grieving and also attempting to not fail at the one thing he knows he's good at does have its own angsty appeal

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

although i regret to say that i'm going to start the answer to it by being very pedantic...

the idea that masteries are something which exist in the wizarding world is complete fanon.

they have emerged as a trope due to a reading of the phrase "potions master" which does make perfect sense outside of the cultural context in which the books were written - by which i mean that it makes readers unfamiliar with the culturally-specific meaning of this bit of language think of masters degrees or other high-level qualifications - but which is nonetheless incorrect within context.

"master" [and the feminine equivalent, "mistress"] is just an alternative term in british english for "teacher". it doesn't imply anything about a level of qualification. "potions master" and "potions teacher" are synonyms.

the term is archaic - british people nowadays would exclusively say "teacher" - and it's very class-specific, in that it would have particularly been used to describe teachers in elite schools, whether fee-paying private schools or grammar schools [state schools which are academically selective].

as a result, it turns up in lots of the children's literature written before c.1980 - especially in boarding-school stories like malory towers and the worst witch which are explicit influences on the harry potter series. it's used in the text - especially in the earlier books - as part of worldbuilding which generally seeks to make the wizarding world feel whimsical by virtue of being very old-fashioned, which things like the fact that the most advanced technology wizards use is the radio and the steam train also hammer home.

that snape is the only teacher referred to as a master is connected to these genre conventions. because snape is so important to the full arc of the story, he's the teacher we spend the most time in the classroom with throughout the six books in which harry's at school. and he's therefore the teacher who - in the first few books - best fits a children's literature archetype which we would expect to find in any twentieth-century school story [with a magical setting or not] - the hated schoolmaster who is horrible to the child-protagonist and who every child reading can't wait to see get their comeuppance.

so snape is a potions master because he teaches potions. nothing more than that.

but that doesn't mean that it's not worth thinking about his training...

clearly, higher education of the type most of us are familiar with doesn't exist in wizarding britain - nor, i suspect, in wizarding europe more broadly.

and this makes perfect sense - not only because the magical population is so small but because the divergence of the magical and muggle worlds in 1689 takes place well before universities and university-level education look like anything a modern student might recognise. a seventeenth-century university education was still broadly generalist and aimed at trainee clergy, and careers which we would nowadays expect to require a degree - such as law, finance, medicine, science, and engineering - were generally taught by apprenticeship.

this is clearly how things continue to function in the wizarding world of the 1990s, since we know from order of the phoenix that healers are taught by apprenticeship [and, indeed, that hogwarts graduates all go straight into the workforce after they leave school].

potions - since it's analogous to chemistry - is nonetheless understood in-world as an academic discipline. but this doesn't mean - within the post-school educational structures we can suppose the wizarding world has - that it's a discipline in which one needs specific formal training in order to acquire a right to teach or publish about it.

the seventeenth century was a period - especially in britain - marked by a great expansion of scientific inquiry. this was - by our contemporary understanding of academic science - amateur. scientists wouldn't have been expected to have doctorates, to work at universities, or even to have attended them, and their experiments were often self-funded by personal wealth or dependent on a patron. the circles [often international] in which they debated, demonstrated, and reviewed theories and inventions were social ones - the gatekeeping line was class [with the level of education - and, primarily, of literacy - that this implied], rather than level of education itself.

these social circles often had a certain level of official standing - by which i mean they became, during the period, the learned societies, the most famous of which is probably the royal society. membership [or fellowship] of the learned societies requires a demonstration of some sort of contribution to the discipline they relate to - which means that the vast majority of contemporary fellows of such societies are university-based academics. but this wouldn't have been the case in 1689.

and we know that the wizarding world has its own equivalent of learned societies, because slughorn mentions one in half-blood prince - the most extraordinary society of potioneers.

which is to say, snape is probably a member of this society. he may very well publish papers in academic journals connected to the subject [as dumbledore does in transfiguration today], and he undoubtedly has a reputation among the wizarding world's men- and women-of-letters. but he doesn't need to have any formal post-hogwarts qualification in order for him to have acquired this reputation.

so what do i think he's doing between 1978 and 1981?

well... he's a death eater.

my theory has always been that snape comes to voldemort's attention - via lucius malfoy - because of his potions skills. the dark lord's operation would have needed potions - poisons to bump off enemies, healing potions because wanted criminals can't just turn up at st mungo's, potions to trade on the black market [as aberforth dumbledore tells us the death eaters do during deathly hallows], and so on - and voldemort would want to keep the production of these potions in-house, rather than risk hiring a private brewer [even a shady one] who might change their mind and go to the aurors.

[this is also presumably what voldemort - undoubtedly at snape's request - tries to recruit lily to do.]

i have never believed that snape was taken on as a death eater in the expectation that he'd perform a combat role - there is a clear implication throughout the series that the only person he ever directly kills is dumbledore, and that he gets along badly with death eaters [such as bellatrix] who did take more violent roles in voldemort's terrorism.

so i presume that, when he leaves school, he ends up working as a personal brewer for voldemort - on a stipend presumably paid, at the dark lord's request, by either lucius or abraxas malfoy. i also presume that, outside of work voldemort specifically requests, he's given free rein to brew for other clients, study, experiment, and publish as he wishes.

and i further presume that if he trains with anyone, then that person is voldemort himself.

voldemort claims, in goblet of fire, to be interested in experimenting with potions. he appears to invent the potion made from nagini's venom which sustains his half-body prior to his resurrection - and i think the implication of the text is that he also invents the potion guarding the locket-horcrux. voldemort also evidently encourages snape's interest in the dark arts, and he also appears to have some influence over snape's comportment - the teen snape we see in order of the phoenix is extremely rough around the edges, in a way the adult snape, who both speaks and moves in canon very similarly to the adult voldemort, isn't.

voldemort taking such an interest in snape would - obviously - largely be a grooming tactic. snape clearly becomes a death eater because the organisation offers him a chance to belong and succeed which his class-background would ordinarily make impossible for him within wizarding society, and voldemort must therefore massively indulge his belief that he's never given the respect he deserves for his intellect. voldemort's obvious contempt for slughorn - who matters so little to him that he doesn't even bother to kill him - would, i imagine, also win snape round.

and by training snape in an academic rather than a combat sense, voldemort gains a valuable tool - someone he can place at hogwarts as a teacher to spy on dumbledore.

we can assume that voldemort was having dumbledore tailed throughout the first war - and, indeed, that this is what snape is doing when he overhears the prophecy - but that he couldn't watch him at all times because he didn't have a spy among the hogwarts faculty.

it is clearly voldemort who tells snape to apply for a teaching job in early 1980. he must also tell him to apply for the defence against the dark arts post [which we know snape canonically applied for first] - which means he must expect to be imminently victorious in the first war, since snape would only be able to stay in the position for a year...

the prophecy, which snape hears c. january 1980, obviously derails this belief slightly... and snape famously does not get the defence against the dark arts job for the 1980-1981 academic year.

how do we know this? because he tells us in order of the phoenix that he's been teaching at hogwarts for fourteen years. he says this right at the beginning of the autumn term in 1995 - so he clearly means that he's been teaching for fourteen previous academic years and the 1995-1996 year is his fifteenth. so... he started teaching at hogwarts in the 1981-1982 academic year.

voldemort settles on harry as the child the prophecy refers to after harry is born [so, after 31st july 1980]. we don't know how quickly he does this and we don't know exactly when snape defects to the order.

but, clearly, at some point during the 1980-1981 academic year, dumbledore hires snape to begin teaching from september 1981 onwards. he presumably tells snape to tell voldemort that his change of heart was because he didn't think snape was qualified to teach defence against the dark arts but that he does think he's qualified to teach potions [pointing, perhaps, to publications snape got out under voldemort's tutelage], and that slughorn's announcement that he intends to retire means that there's a position available. he then undoubtedly also tells snape to convince voldemort of the same pretence they'll use throughout the second war - that he's a loyal death eater passing information on dumbledore's movements to his master.

which is to say... when lily dies, snape has been in his job for at most nine weeks.

just imagine how miserable that must have been!

[bananaactivity]

I finally finished good old Harry Hook, Now he’s Harry Killian Hook after his dad.

The reason I designed his father first was mostly so I could make them look similar. I suppose I still could have done that with Harry first but shut up I do what I want.

You’ll take notice that Harry looks WILDLY different from his usual self. His nose is slightly hooked and he has curly hair with an eyebrow slit like his father. He also has his dads random ass moles sunken eyes with long lower lashes and a little stubble. He has cuts on his face from training crocodiles. There are some way worse ones when he’s shirtless (he loves it tho, mans is a glutton for pain and suffering even his own💀🙏) I’m gonna withhold what he trained them for at this point in time💀💀💀. I also wanted him to look a little less goofy, he’s a pretty destructive dude and OG Harry is too Camp for me to see his exact likeness doing all I plan for him to do.

He and his dad look very similar which adds another reasoning for people fearing him. His fit is also very different from his usual punk leather, capri pants for some reason??? And absolutely disgusting white hoody shirt thing with fingerless leather hand things.

This is because Carlos refuses to style him any other way 💀. As a part of my au Carlos is now a fashion designer like his mother. His mother used to style Killian before he left for Neverland and in this Au Carlos loves and is obsessed with his mom 💀. So from a young age he’s always told Harry he’d be his stylist in the future when Harry was in power. Harry pays Carlos well and they are actually friends. ( Mal hates how close they are because she believes Harry could use Carlos to take over her turf, and Jay is jealous because Harry is HIS arch enemy or something, he doesn’t know what his problem is)

This Harry is a really rough person to handle, there are a lot of gangs on the isle but there is a separation. The sea gangs and the land gangs rarely get into it and mostly scuffle within each other. Mal and the rest of the core four rule over the most expansive land gang and Harry takes over his father’s old turf and expands it rather quickly. His dad’s gig was illegally giving transport to Auradonians who want a night of fun on the isle, it’s very profitable. He actually mirrors his father a lot, Killian would take down entire ships all alone so that his crew would know that mutiny would lead to so much destruction that there would barely be a crew to lead. Harry follows suit but received so much letal training from so many different people ,as his dad let him come on every trip he took to pick up his “imports”, that he’s much deadlier then his father.

Mal in my au is more like the dark fae/ Demi god that she was implied to be and is therefore heavily reliant on her powers. Harry scares her a little as she can’t understand how someone seemingly so powerless could strike so much fear. Carlos tries to tell her that Harry doesn’t gaf about physical land and his passion is the vast expanse of the sea but she becomes paranoid and shit happens 💀💀💀. Here’s a little scene of that real quick:

Carlos was exasperated. Harry was particularly interested in leathers and tight pants now and it was just awful. The poor dear had no clue it made him look like a disfigured hooligan. Not that Carlos was adverse to furs of course, Harry had given him so many exotic samples over the years… BUT GOD DAMMIT. The way Hook intertwined the two styles made him want to chuck up his lunch. He headed towards his room hoping to settle into a peaceful use of the remainder of the night, testing out some of the fabric and fur samples the Captain had gifted him. Mal made it quite clear it wouldn’t be so easy for him. “We need to talk Carlos.” He knew of only one topic that made her face contort that way. Better to feign ignorance, Mal didn’t like for him to be more clever than her typically . “ What of Darling… and do make it snappy, I’m so dead tired… I’ve been with my dearest client all day. Bless his heart he’s just so very awful with dressing him self the poor dear.” With a huff of her nose she began her rambling. “ About that, “dear client” of yours Carlos, Harry?. You need to stop seeing him.” “ HA!” Carlos couldn’t believe she was back on this tryst of hers with full force so soon, normally she would back off this hard for at least a month or two. “ Surley darling you must mean another dear client! Why Mal I almost believed you meant HARRY HOOK. My closest and most oldest clientele, my dear friend, my most generous patron! No, No darling you just can’t mean Captain Harry Hook, it’d almost sound as tho you meant to take away my most profitable source of revenue and resources~.” Mal was shifting on her feet, sometimes Carlos longed for others to see how vulnerable this king pin was, how nervous and unsure… but then he’d have no where to go and he refused to travel the seas with Harry on the daily day to day. He was much too expensive to upkeep and he wasn’t sure if Harry could stop his crew from murdering him eventually. “ You rely too much on hi-“ “RELY” Carlos scoffed, “ I said Harry was my MOST profitable, NOT my ONLY, anyone would be a fool to drop him as a client.” Mal was glowing with her “anger” now it wasn’t very frightening anymore. “ HES USING YOU TO GET TO ME AND ALL IVE WORKED FOR. Don’t you remember Jake? IZZY?? CHUBBS???? He’s cold and heartless. He’ll take over my turf… and then the whole Isle of the Lost! He’s a danger to our existence and YOU are always consorting with him!! Has he brainwashed you!! What have you told him about us?! HE COULD DESTROY US AT ANY MOMENT!!!” Carlos was exhausted, Mal was falling further into the pit of anxiety that comes with power. Harry avoided that pit rather admirably in Carlos’s eyes. He was so sure of what he wanted as far as power goes and Carlos just PRAYED that Mal would understand that. “ Mal… Harry is a PIRATE he doesn’t care about you beyond you leaving the Shrimp alone and never invading him. Something I disadvise HEAVILY for you to do. He WILL wipe you out if you don’t get ahold of yourself and THINK critically for once!” He breathed out once to calm himself before continuing. “ Mal- Darling, you’ve had me run the analytics of many a situation… I have personal experience with Harry and his behaviors and desires. He is a… very calculating pirate. The Sand Weaver incident occurred at a very strenuous time in Hooks life, he was VERY intentional during that time. All that he wanted ,truly, was planned for over those four years. Harry loves the sea, if he wanted to he would have infiltrated Villanend back then. He didn’t.” He could see the cracks in Mals resolve. It was looking as though he could get to those fabrics after all. “ I don’t like that he has such easy access to a member of my crew- my family…” This development was new to the norm of these conversations with Mal “Darling, I’m all he has left. Ive always wanted to style and now we’re both fulfilling what we wanted as children. Hook is no threat unless you MAKE him one.”-

END ( I’m running outta time lemme know what you think)

[valentinoappreciator]

I DID IT

I finished the Vox fic!

Media: Hazbin Hotel

Rating: E for Explicit

Word count: 9537

Pairing: Vox / Self-Insert (female) Character

Warnings: Referenced / Implied rape, general abuse.

Tags: Valentino being a piece of shit, canon-typical violence, flirty Vox, bisexual Vox, smut (duh), light angst towards the end

Where else to read: AO3; username: TheWeirdDane; title: Tonight I'm Saying Goodbye Valentino

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No one had ever proclaimed that Valentino was a gentle lover and a kind soul. Or, if they had, they had certainly never met him. 

“Vox!” 

Vox swivelled around in his swivelling chair. He knew that voice all too well, not to mention the tone of it. Valentino was pissed about something, and would no doubt make it Vox’s problem. 

“Yes, Val?” he replied, careful to sound respectful and polite. 

Not that Valentino showed him the same courtesy. No, instead, he sent a fist through the air and rammed it into Vox’s screen. Seemingly not caring for his own fist getting torn up by the shards, he only cared for hurting for a loudly groaning Vox. 

“I thought I told you not to complete the transfer tonight!”

He had fallen out of his chair and now lay on the floor by Valentino’s feet. Lifting a hand to his cracked screen, he groaned in pain. 

“Care to explain yourself, Voxy?” 

He grit his sharp teeth. Clenched his hands into fists as he got up from the floor. Valentino was a good deal taller than him, but he was determined to look up into his partner’s eyes. 

“I thought I would complete the transfer as soon as possible to give us more time to---”

“Don’t think, Vox, that’s my job. Your job is to do what I tell you to. Got it? Or do I need to make you understand?” 

Vox was half a breath away from punching those stupid glasses off his face, but thought better of it at the last second. He quite enjoyed being alive, and hurting Valentino was a guaranteed one-way ticket to actual death. 

“Got it, Val,” he therefore hissed through gritted teeth. 

“Then clean yourself up. I don’t want to be seen with broken merchandise.”

“We’re alone,” Vox exclaimed before he could stop himself, and immediately upon speaking the words, he feared for his life. But Valentino simply stood there, as if waiting for more. “No one is seeing us here, Val!”

Valentino scoffed before turning on his heel. 

“You better pray you’re right, Vox. Or I won’t be so forgiving next time.”

It took a few days for his screen to heal. A few days that he spent avoiding Valentino, lest he aggravate the pimp overlord further. However, when he still hadn’t seen Valentino after close to a week, he decided he had had enough. 

Valentino was working late somewhere. Not that Vox really cared; Valentino didn’t care for his work, so why should he then care for him? 

“Going out. Don’t wait up.”

He knew he didn’t owe Valentino a text, but through all their years together, he had been conditioned into notifying Valentino about every little thing, and as such, he didn’t dare not to text him. At the same time, however, he was scared of the consequences. 

He never went out. As in, never. Feeling obligated to be at Valentino’s every beck and call, he felt like he couldn’t allow himself even one evening off. 

But not anymore. Tonight, he was saying ‘goodbye, Valentino’! 

As expected, Vox didn’t get a text back. He took that to mean that Valentino didn’t care for him tonight, and even though he was used to that, it still made a knot of anger rise into his chest. 

Despite never going out, Vox had been eyeing a small bar on the corner of the street where he lived. It was one of the few bars that Valentino didn’t own, and as such, Vox felt safe going there. It was a fairly regular club. Not the kind where pretty girls dance in skimpy outfits for horny sinners, but instead there was live music. Somewhat old fashioned, it seemed perfect to soothe the ache in his soul. Whatever may be left of it. 

Dressing in navy blue suit pants and a white turtleneck sweater under a navy blue suit jacket, he went out. 

Lesser demons recognised him in the streets, and they all bowed or curtseyed, giving his ego a pleasant boost. His screen may still be suffering slightly from their last scuffle, but it was mostly healed by now. No one seemed to notice the more stubborn, minor cracks, for which he was grateful. As he made his way into the bar, he was formally greeted and shown to one of the front seats, which were reserved for only the most important demons. From here, he had a perfect, unspoiled view of the stage, where a band played soft jazz. 

“May I take your order?” 

He turned his head. The voice belonged to a short statured, somewhat chubby lesser demon. Her hair was flaming red, her eyes piercing blue. She wore glasses - purple frames - and a kind smile. She had black-and-white horns that curled around her ears. 

Vox noted how she hadn’t addressed him by his title, nor by his name, as was customary for overlords. It surprised him; he thought everyone in Hell knew who he was. Seems he was mistaken. 

Interesting. 

He gave his order, and she scribbled it down on a notepad before bobbing her head in a polite nod, then took the order to the bar. His eyes followed her as she went. There was a spring to her steps, and she giggled at the bartender. Taking a tray into her hands, she walked around amongst the other patrons, until she ended up by his table again. 

“And here’s your drink, sir,” she smiled. He didn’t immediately reply. He instead took the glass and swirled it slightly, the golden-brown liquid sloshing around lazily. 

“Didn’t you forget something?” he asked, inwardly snickering at the way she instantly panicked. Her eyes widened, and she hugged the now empty tray close to her voluminous chest. 

“I beg your pardon, sir?” she said, her voice a tad too high pitched. 

“I believe it’s customary to address an overlord by their title,” he explained, speaking slowly and peering into his glass for a long moment before fixing his gaze on her face again. Recognition flashed in her eyes a fraction of a second before sheer terror overtook it. It wasn’t something he should delight in, but decades of working with Valentino seemed to, unfortunately, have rubbed off on him. 

“Oh Satan, I’m so sorry, sir, I mean, Mr. Vox, sir,” she whispered, looking mortified. She hugged the metal tray so close to her chest that her knuckles turned white. Her face quickly turned beet-red. 

He snickered. 

“I-I’m new here. It’s my first day, and I don’t really know how this place works.”

“New to Hell, or new to this bar?” he asked, not quite understanding where the genuinity in this voice came from. He eyed her curiously, taking a small sip of his drink. 

“Both,” she replied, a polite but clearly nervous smile on her face. “I arrived in Hell just two days ago, and, well, bills don’t pay themselves. One would think that capitalism was a special sort of hell reserved for the living.”

He let out a sharp, short laugh. That felt... oddly liberating. 

“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” 

Her nervousness seemed to dissipate a bit when he didn’t rip her a new breathing hole for not immediately knowing who he was. 

“But no. Capitalism is a hellscape all on its own. Not reserved for humans, it would seem,” she giggled. The sound was warm and bubbly, and he couldn’t help but glance at her before looking towards the stage again. 

“Enjoy your drink, Mr. Vox,” she said with a much more relaxed smile, “I’ll be right over by the bar, when you need a refill. I mean, if you need a refill, of course. I’m not saying you drink a lot or anything! I’m just saying that... uhm...” 

She laughed nervously, and all air was knocked out of him. 

“I think it’s better to go now before you say something you’ll really regret,” he hummed, swirling his drink while looking at her intently. 

“Yes, Mr. Vox, of course.”

She curtseyed and immediately left, her ears about as red as her hair. He looked after her, a lopsided, curious grin on his screen. 

Well, wasn’t she an interesting little thing? 

He sipped his drink slowly, savouring the taste. It burnt as it trickled down his throat, the sharpness of it ripping into his nostrils. As he drank, it was like his gaze was drawn to her every few minutes. The waitress. He didn’t know her name... yet. There was nothing that dictated that he couldn’t come to know it. 

But he had to be careful. He was an overlord; he couldn’t be seen mingling with the lesser demons. However... if Valentino could fuck - more like rape - the girls he employed, what was stopping Vox from enjoying a night with this particular woman? 

Finishing his drink, he saw another server on his way to his table, and he bared his teeth, waving him away. The server immediately turned on his heel to serve another table. With a satisfied grin, Vox looked for the waitress. When he finally laid eyes on her, he saw that she was giggling with the bartender again. She even put a hand on her arm, however briefly. It made an unpleasant heaviness settle in his chest, and while he didn’t want to examine it further, he did know why.

Somehow, for some reason, he wanted to bring her home with him. It wasn’t like Valentino ever put out, anyway. Not unless he was in the mood, never caring for Vox’s advances or needs. Suffice to say, he had some itches that needed scratching, and he had a feeling that this particular demon wouldn’t be opposed. But if she was into women... that would be a problem. 

Maybe she was into men and women, like himself? 

He sighed.

Maybe, if he asked, he would actually know. 

So, he got her attention and waved his empty glass. She immediately grabbed the tray, hopped down from the stool, and weaved her way through the crowd to get to him. 

“Yes, Mr. Vox, what would you like?”

“Your phone number, please. Along with a refill. As you predicted,” he grinned. 

At first, she looked stunned. Her eyes wide and her mouth slightly agape, she wasn’t far from a fish out of water. 

“My...?” She trailed off. 

“Your phone number,” he agreed. “And another drink. The same as before, if you please.”

She blinked rapidly, but then, a second later, it appeared that she got full control of the situation, turning the tables a full one-hundred-and-eighty degrees.

“I’m afraid the best I can do is my name and another whisky, Mr. Vox.”

He grinned widely. She reached for the glass. 

“I’m all ears, miss...?”

“Miss Cassiopeia,” she hummed as she bent over to take his empty glass. Vox might not be the most well-versed in waitressing, but he knew that she didn’t need to bend down that far to retrieve it. It did, however, mean that he got a proper eyeful of her cleavage, and if anyone was happy about that, it was him, and his cock. 

“Miss Cassiopeia,” he repeated, tasting her name. “A pleasure.”

“Pleasure’s all mine, Mr. Vox,” she practically purred, and once again, all air was knocked out of him. 

When she didn’t move back to the bar, he quirked an eyebrow and smirked. 

“My drink...?”

“Oh!” She blushed deeply. “Yes, of course, right away, sir.” 

She put the glass on the tray and hurried back to the bar. He followed her with his eyes. When he saw that she was glancing back at him, he nodded politely. Even from all the way over here, he could practically feel the heat radiating off of her. 

She came back just a moment later, with two glasses on her tray. He sent her a quizzical look. 

“This one’s on the house,” she smiled and put one of the glasses on his table. 

“And the other?”

“That’s just yours, sir.”

“And here I thought you were buying me a drink,” he said, feigning disappointment. She laughed heartily, and the smile appeared on his screen all by itself. 

“Do I need to buy you a drink, Mr. Vox?”

“That all depends.”

She shot him a puzzled look.

“On?” she eventually asked when he didn’t elaborate.

“On whether or not you’re free tonight.”

“Well, no, obviously not.”

He managed to feel deflated for all of four seconds, before she continued. 

“I’m working all night, and--- oh! Oh, you meant like...”

She blushed again, and now it was his turn to laugh heartily. He patted her hand without second thought as she moved to put the other glass on his table, but the touch seemed to startle her, because she immediately withdrew her hand. It happened fast enough that she spilled half the contents of the glass all over his pants. 

Immediately, that same terrified expression that she had had upon him presenting himself was on her face again. 

“Oh! Oh no, Mr. Vox, I’m so sorry,” she gasped, putting the tray down on his table and fetching a bunch of napkins from her apron’s front pocket. She began dabbing at the stains, and, try as he might, Vox couldn’t help but suddenly feel very warm. She was so close, frantically trying to clean out the whisky stains on his pants. He felt like he was paralyzed; he sat completely still, simply looked down at her as she scrubbed so desperately. 

“I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered without making eye contact. “I didn’t mean to--- you startled me, sir, and I--- I mean, it’s not your fault, of course, I just--- I’m a bit clumsy, and---”

“Miss Cassiopeia,” he then said firmly, but gently, careful not to raise his voice, “it’s okay. Don’t worry about it. It’ll wash out, and if it doesn’t, I’ll just buy another pair.”

She finally looked up at him, and his heart ached slightly when he saw her eyes getting wet. Poor girl would probably get fired for this if management determined it was her fault. 

“Don’t worry about it,” he insisted, softening his voice. “It happens. It’s just a pair of pants.”

“But they look expensive,” she whispered, looking mortified, and took his hand when he offered it to her to help her to her feet. Although he did like seeing her on her knees in front of him. 

“Perks of being an overlord,” he smiled. “You can work off your mistake if you feel so bad about it,” he then added without thinking, or without really wanting to add that. With his tone of voice, plus the insinuation, it was clear as day what he had said between the lines. 

Her already big eyes widened even further, and Vox was eternally grateful that he couldn’t blush, because he certainly would have if he could. 

“That was a joke, Miss Cassiopeia. Please, don’t take that seriously. I don’t know why I said that.”

“Thank you,” she mumbled, and although she did look relieved, there was also a part of her that seemed... almost disappointed. He couldn’t tell if it was the sagging shoulders or the downcast gaze, but there were definitely signs.

Highly curious. 

An awkward silence stretched out between them, before one of the bartenders screamed out her name. 

Cassiopeia startled and quickly grabbed the tray. 

“Again, I’m so sorry, Mr. Vox, sir,” she said hastily, returning to the bar. Once more, he followed her with his eyes, and frowned when the bartender looked to be giving her an earful. Cassiopeia nodded fervently, but it was clear that it wasn’t for fun. When she quickly glanced back at him, it was clear as day that she was on the verge of a breakdown. 

Vox didn’t really know why he cared. It wasn’t like this woman was anything to him. They didn’t know each other. They were only barely on a first name basis. But something inside him twisted unpleasantly at seeing her being scolded so harshly. It was painfully familiar.

He got up from his chair and strode towards the bar. 

“Is there a problem?” he asked the bartender, managing to keep his voice in check. 

“Mr. Vox, sir, I deeply apologise about Cassiopeia’s clumsiness,” the female bartender said. He didn’t like her voice, at all. It was way too slick and ass-kissing. She did have some kick-ass ram-like horns though. “It’s her first shift on her own, but she’s clearly not fit for it. I can have her trained further, or even fired if you---”

“That won’t be necessary,” he interrupted. They both stared at him, Cassiopeia with fearful eyes and the bartender with surprised ones. “I overstepped her boundary. That’s hardly her fault.”

“But, with all due respect, Mr. Vox, you’re an overlord, and such behaviour isn’t acceptable when serving someone of your standing.”

“Do you want me to make a big deal out of this?” he asked coolly. “I can take it up with management, but what do you think they will say to you when they hear that you didn’t train young Miss Cassiopeia adequately?” 

The bartender suddenly got very pale. She swallowed heavily. Vox could almost hear it, even over the soft jazz that was still playing. He leaned his arms on the counter of the bar, and a frisson of delight ran through him when she took a step back. Everybody here - well, maybe aside from Cassiopeia - knew that he was close with Valentino, and thus, they probably figured that he had the same violent, unpredictable tendencies. He didn’t, but she didn’t have to know that. 

“I don’t think they would come for her, but rather for you,” he hummed. “But... I can save you that kind of trouble. I am, after all, an overlord. If I say it’s fine, it’s fine.”

“Y-Yes, of course, sir, Mr. Vox, sir, thank you,” she croaked. 

“Good. Now, Miss Cassiopeia,” he said and turned to Cassiopeia, stretching out his hand, “will you do me the honour of sitting with me?” 

She was pale, but seemed to liven up at his question. She took his hand, albeit hesitantly.

“Of... of course, Mr. Vox.” 

He gently pulled her towards his table where they sat down. 

“Whisky?” he offered and pushed the full glass towards her. “It’s on the house.”

She laughed nervously. 

“Thank you, but I don’t drink on the job.”

He nodded slowly. He could understand that. 

“A wise choice, but you’re not on duty any longer. You can have the rest of the night off. I’ll see to it that your pay isn’t docked.”

She stared at him, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He nudged the glass with an elbow. 

“Unless you want a soft drink instead?” 

“No! I mean... I mean, no, whisky is perfect, sir. Thank you.”

“Anytime,” he smiled, finding that his smile was painfully genuine. 

She took the glass and a sip, and grimaced. Vox couldn’t help a soft chuckle. 

“Phew, it packs quite a punch, doesn’t it?” she laughed. 

“So, what’s your crime?” he eventually asked a few hours later. She was a few drinks in, but didn’t appear intoxicated whatsoever, quite like him. 

She raised an eyebrow. 

“You’re gonna have to be more specific,” she hummed, piquing his curiosity. 

“What landed you in the lust circle of Hell?”

She shrugged and took a long swig of her glass of water. 

“I was... promiscuous as a human. Worked in a whore house controlled by the mafia. Guess the big guy upstairs wasn’t happy about that.”

Vox snorted. 

“What is he happy about, really?”

“Damn good question, Mr. Vox,” she chuckled. “Unconditional loyalty to your fellow humans, I guess? Redeeming qualities? Hell if I know.”

Vox chuckled and sipped his whisky, admiring her. She was awfully pretty, with her chubby cheeks and piercing blue eyes. Her long hair was collected in a high ponytail that she had slung over her shoulder. The tip of the ponytail tickled her cleavage, and although he tried not to be a pervert and a sinner, it was difficult not to look. 

It had been a long time since he had been with a woman. The last many years had been spent with Valentino - a man - yet he was confident he knew what to do with a woman’s body. Obviously, a few main parts were very different, but on the other hand, many parts were the same. 

He was busy mulling over how to ask her to go home with him, when she gently nudged his am. He looked at her, blinking a few times. 

“They’re closing the bar,” she announced. “We have to go.”

Well, wasn’t that convenient timing!

“Would you mind terribly if I took you home?” he asked as they got up. He put down more than enough bills to pay for their drinks; he didn’t like being cheap. 

She didn’t immediately answer, instead just stared up at him, mouth agape. He chuckled, gingerly taking her hand. It was so warm and small in his. 

“No pressure, of course.” 

“No, I would... I would like that, Mr. Vox.”

“Great. I don’t live too far away, it’s easy to walk.”

“Perfect,” she hummed. 

Vox sent the bartender a cheerful smile before they exited the bar and walked towards his home. On the way, he slid an arm around her waist. Initially, she tensed, but it only took a fraction of a second for her to relax. Then she even leaned against him, wrapping her own arm around him. 

They looked at each other. She was blushing and very warm, even through his turtleneck, and his heart was absolutely hammering. Good thing he wasn’t currently monitoring his heartbeat, lest he alert the entire block about his elevated heart rate. 

Was there any way to misinterpret what was going to happen? He hoped not. But on the other hand, he hadn’t picked anyone up in decades. The rules for hooking up could have changed a million times! For all he knew, he could’ve been given off signals of ‘do you want to look at my stamps collection?’ all night. Which, in this case, wasn’t some twisted innuendo. 

However, when they reached his apartment, and he opened the door to let them inside, she stayed close to him. Her hand stroked slowly up and down his back, and she only reluctantly pulled away when he turned around to close the door. 

“Do you mind if I lock the door? You never know what kind of freaks live around here.”

“And here I thought you could afford to live in a respectable neighbourhood,” she chuckled. “Sure, go ahead. I also wouldn’t want to be interrupted.”

He raised an eyebrow, clicked the lock closed. Now, that was an interesting choice of words. 

“What, exactly, would they interrupt us doing?” he asked in a low voice, and oh, her blushing was adorable! 

“N-Nothing incriminating,” she quickly replied, looking up at him with wide eyes as he inched towards her. Eventually, he had her pressed back against the door, one hand on each side of her head. His breathing was uneven, but he tried to camouflage it with a hum. 

“That doesn’t exactly answer my question, now does it?” he murmured, leaning closer, pressing his lithe body against her more plump frame. “That only makes me think you have something... naughty in mind.”

She choked out an embarrassed sound, averting her gaze, and he laughed good-naturedly. 

“Which is exactly what I want as well,” he revealed before pushing off the door with one hand. “So, if I have mistakenly given off vibes of, I don’t know, stamp collections, then now’s the time to bolt.”

“But you locked the door.”

“Guess you’ll have to stay, then. Stamp collections and all.”

She laughed, pushing off the door as well, and suddenly, she was way too close. He could see the small clumps of mascara on her lashes through her glasses. He could see the pores in her skin. 

“Good thing I’m into stamp collections, then,” she murmured, and he inhaled sharply. 

Please be joking.

“I don’t... actually have a stamp collection,” he confessed, suddenly feeling incredibly warm. 

She giggled and swatted his arm gently. 

“I’m kidding, you silly! I’m not here for a stupid stamp collection. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, though, of course.”

He drew a deep sigh of relief. If he could sweat, he would’ve wiped his forehead. But her choice of words was, once more, very intriguing. 

“Then what are you here for, Miss Cassiopeia?” 

She swallowed heavily, the action practically audible.

“I thought that much was obvious, Mr. Vox,” she murmured, her voice wavering slightly, stroking a hand slowly up his arm until she reached his shoulder. 

A surge of warm, crackling electricity went through him. 

Oh fuck. 

She slid her other hand down over his other arm, eventually reaching his hand, where she laced their fingers together. 

Oh double fuck.

“Dance with me?” she asked quietly, looking up at him from under her lashes. 

Now it was his turn to swallow hard. 

“I... don’t dance,” he confessed, his voice a mess of sudden static. 

“You could... start to.”

She was already starting to move rhythmically. Very slow, giving him all the time in the world to pull back if he didn’t want to do it. Strangely enough, however, he didn’t move away. Pulling him in the direction of his living room, which was quite spacious, she giggled softly. 

“You can’t be a worse dance partner than my ex.”

“Are you willing to bet on that?” he chuckled, tentatively putting his hand on her waist. She shivered slightly, and blushed a beautiful, deep crimson. 

“No reason to. I know I’d win.”

He laughed heartily, and it felt good. Liberating. He could laugh with her, and it felt natural. It wasn’t a forced chuckle between gritted teeth, but an actual, warm sound from deep in his stomach, bubbling out from his speakers. 

They stood like that for a little while; simply swaying gently from side to side, standing close to one another. 

Vox wasn’t used to this. Whenever he was... intimate with Valentino, it was hard and rough, almost violent sex. He had gotten so used to that kind of intimacy that this, what he was currently doing with Cassiopeia, felt alien. Good, absolutely, but alien.

“Do you... want me to put on some music?” he offered after a few minutes. The silence was eating him alive. 

“If it’s not too much to ask.”

“I’m the one offering,” he chuckled, riffling through his many, many playlists before finding one fitting for the current scene. Soft jazz, not unlike the music they had been playing at the bar, started drifting from the speakers strewn around the living room. 

Being a tech geek had its perks. 

Cassiopeia hummed softly along to the music as she swayed her hips, taking a few steps to each side now and again. Vox didn’t know what to do, but he did his best to mimic her. 

“And you say you don’t dance,” she giggled, looking up at him. 

“Is this considered dancing, though?” he asked with a breathy laugh. 

She snickered, and then did something so ballsy that Vox froze for a second; she untangled their fingers so that she could move both arms around his neck, pressing them close against each other. He inhaled sharply. 

“I hope this is okay,” she whispered, leaning her cheek against his chest. 

He didn’t have the breath to answer.  

His hands hovered over her shoulders when she shoved herself against him, before sliding down over her body, eventually settling on her lower back. She exhaled shakily, and he couldn’t help but smile. Seems like he wasn’t the only one affected by this. 

The music was soft and gentle. It almost felt like it enveloped them, caressing them tenderly as they moved through the living room at a wonderfully slow pace. Like a lover’s touch. 

Vox was completely at a loss for words. Not that he thought this moment needed any words, but he would like to be verbally prepared, just in case she asked him a question or something. He wasn’t used to not having a good comeback, or a witty retort. It was scary, yet he found that... with her, it was okay. He felt safe in assuming she wouldn’t laugh at or mock him. Not unlike some others.

“You’re warm,” she mumbled, pulling him out of his thoughts. 

“Hmm?”

“You’re warm,” she repeated. 

It was true; he was incredibly warm. His server must be overheating. 

“Maybe you should... undress,” she mumbled, rolling her lower lip between her teeth. He inhaled sharply. 

Oh fuck. 

“You know, if you want to see me naked, you only have to ask,” he chuckled, stroking her lower back through her dress. Her face went bright red. 

“I-I didn’t mean--- that’s not---”

“But, I sense that you’re too innocent and nervous to be so forward,” he teased and pulled back. She put her hands on her face, laughing in embarrassment, but peaked between her fingers when the sound of him shrugging out of his suit jacket reached her ears. 

It was so cute and endearing that he couldn't help but laugh as he neatly folded the jacket and placed it over the backrest of the couch. 

“Do you think I should take this off as well?” he continued, tugging at the hem of his white turtleneck sweater. 

She nodded. 

“If you want to ventilate yourself the best, I think it would be the optimal solution.”

With a wide smile, he grabbed the hem and tugged. He struggled slightly with pulling it over his screen, but when he finally succeeded, Cassiopeia stood right in front of him. He jumped slightly. 

“Well, hello there,” he chuckled, throwing the sweater over his jacket. 

“Hello,” she said quietly, looking up at him. Her arms once more slithered around his neck, pulling them close against each other again. Surely, she would be able to feel his heart throbbing aggressively against its confines when they were this close, and surely, she would think it silly! 

But if she did feel it, she said nothing. She instead came closer and closer with her face, until her lips pressed against the edge of his screen. He inhaled sharply and nearly choked on the influx of air. He stood completely still as she kissed the slim edge, barely even breathing. His eyes closed slightly, and subconsciously, he pushed against her lower back, trying to get her closer. 

She snickered, but it sounded out of breath.

“Shut up,” he mumbled light-heartedly. 

“Not saying anything,” she quipped back. 

Well, he couldn’t deny that. 

He focused on her lips; soft and warm and perfect, they pressed against every inch of the edge of his screen, until she had covered it all. It wasn’t often that he mourned the fact that he had no physical lips to kiss with, but now was one such time. He found himself longing to taste the sweat on her flesh, the skin of her lips. Longing to kiss her, to feel her heated skin against his own mouth. 

But alas, it was part of his punishment, he reckoned. 

Each touch of her lips sent a warm crackle through him, leaving him panting like a dog trying to ventilate itself. 

“Still feeling too hot?” she asked quietly, and her hands started a slow, achingly slow, descent down his body. Sliding over his arms, they soon touched his abdomen and sides, but when they tentatively, almost hesitantly, began working the belt of his suit pants, he almost blacked out. 

He nodded, managing to stay upright by holding on to her. 

“Yeah,” he croaked. “Yeah, still feeling too hot.”

“You need some proper fans, then,” she murmured, pulling the belt from its hoops and folding it over his turtleneck on the couch. “Maybe some... more air, as well,” she continued huskily, popping the button and pulling down the zipper. 

A shudder jerked his body. 

“You’re being a tease, you know that, right?” he laughed softly, lifting a hand to the back of her head. Her hair was so incredibly soft. He carded his long, claw-like fingers through it, loving how the strands slithered between his fingers, much like sand. 

“I’ve never teased a day in my life,” she claimed, an underlying laugh tugging her voice a pitch higher. 

“That’s a bold lie if I ever heard one. You’re a natural at this.”

She giggled, but the sound faded when she reached a hand into his pants and took a hold of him. She gasped softly, whereas he groaned, trying to stifle the sound. 

“Oh, it wasn’t just the alcohol that was packing.”

He barked out a nervous laugh and put a hand on his screen. 

“Shut up, oh my goodness!”

“Not if complimenting your cock gets me this kind of reaction,” she giggled. 

In his mind, he knew that her touches wouldn’t stop at her simply grabbing him through his underwear. Yet, somehow, he had completely thrown the next step out the window. So, when she began stroking him, he could have sworn he blacked out, even if it was just for a second. 

“Fuck, Cassiopeia,” he grunted, gripping her hair tightly. She gasped sharply, and he was already letting go again, thinking he had hurt her, when she asked him to please, don’t let go. Quirking an eyebrow, he tryingly resumed the tight grip, and she made the prettiest, most adorable moan he had ever heard. 

“How... how far do you want to go tonight? Maybe that’s a good thing to ask before we get too carried away.” Why was his voice so staticky already? She was barely touching him!

“As far as you want. I’m prepared to go all the way.”

Oh fuck. She was going to kill him with this, wasn’t she? 

Up until now, he had been a hundred percent convinced that he was primarily into the rough, hardcore BDSM style sex. But, the more they bantered, the more they teased each other, the more he started re-considering that. Maybe he had just thought that because that was all that Valentino had ever shown him? 

He needed to get that out. Before it became too obvious, and she would dip. 

“I’m... not really good at tender sex,” he blurted out, stroking his claws through her hair once more. 

She didn’t bolt. She didn’t look at him weird. On the contrary, she smiled gently, stroking his monitor with her free hand. 

“It’s because of Valentino, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice soft. 

His eyes widened. 

“He doesn’t treat you right, Mr. Vox. I’ve seen your screen. You try to hide it, but I can see the cracks.” 

He shouldn’t let her talk to him like that. How dare she! He was an overlord! She was a mere lesser demon! But… she was right, of course. It was because of him. 

“Don’t worry,” she continued, retrieving her hand from his pants, “I’ll take good care of you.” 

He knew she would. He trusted her, for some bizarre reason. He couldn’t trust anyone, but her… her, he felt like he could spill his soul to. 

He let her drag him towards the couch where she made him sit down with a singular, gentle word. Swallowing hard, he looked up at her, his pants and underwear now down around his ankles. She smiled at him before straddling his lap. He groaned softly, automatically putting his hands on her thighs. They were shielded by a pair of tights, and he wished he could touch her skin. He didn’t feel like he could ask that of her, though. Not yet, at least

Her body weight on him felt positively heavenly. He leaned his head against the backrest of the couch, forcing his breath calm and even. 

“You don’t have to hold back with me, Mr. Vox,” she whispered, and began rolling her hips down against him. Slowly, as if testing the waters. He inhaled sharply, his claws digging into her thighs, which subsequently made her moan and shudder. 

She closed her eyes a sliver, and Vox could’ve sworn he had never seen a more beautiful and alluring demon. Was she, perhaps, an actual succubus? They were as dangerous as they were  exceedingly rare, so what was the chance of him meeting one on his first proper night out? It was highly unlikely. 

“Cassiopeia,” he groaned, unable to not buck his hips up against her. She gasped softly, then purred, looking down at him. 

“Yes?” she asked huskily, stroking the sides of his screen and pressing herself flush against him. 

“I wish I could kiss you.” It was true; everything within him yearned to kiss her, make her unravel in his arms. 

She smiled and let her fingers dance over his monitor. 

“It’s okay that you can’t,” she said, her voice soft and brimming with warmth. Slithering around him, her voice enveloped him in a tight and wonderful embrace. “You can make me feel good in other ways.” 

Electricity surged through him, forcing a shudder to jerk his body. Oh that he could, indeed. 

Retrieving his hands from her lower back, he put them on her breasts instead. She sighed contentedly, looking at him with half-lidded eyes. 

He squeezed her breasts, looking intently at her, and moaned when she once more began rolling her hips against him. His cock bobbed, as if seeking to press itself up into her. 

“Cassiopeia,” he groaned again, rubbing his thumbs over her nipples, and despite wearing - presumably - a bra under her dress, he could feel them harden. 

“Please, call me Cassy,” she whispered. A slight tremor had taken up residency in her voice. She leaned in over him, her face hovering mere inches from his screen, her hands on the backrest of the couch. 

“Is that what your friends call you?”

She smirked. 

“Something like that.” 

He chuckled, and decided that her clothes had to go. It would only be fair; he was stark naked, after all. Thus, he slid his hands under her dress and to her back where he fumbled with her bra. To her credit, she didn’t laugh at him or make a snide comment about his lack of skill or finesse. She simply looked at him, stroking his screen slowly with her thumbs. 

When he finally wrestled her bra open, she slid the straps through the sleeves of her dress before pulling the bra off and dumping it on the couch cushion next to them. He glanced in its direction, noting its purple lace and red floral pattern, and looked back at her. 

Despite being naked, he was still very warm. He definitely needed a new ventilation system. 

Stroking her breasts under her dress, she mewled softly and craned her neck, leaning her head back. As she exposed her throat, Vox groaned deep in his chest, once more cursing his lack of lips. He loathed his inability to kiss her pale skin, to mark her so prettily. 

“It’s okay, Mr. Vox,” she whispered, as if reading his mind. “It wouldn’t be very professional, anyway, to sport love bites at work. People would ask questions.”

“You can drop the title, for now.” Although he did like how it sounded, coming from her lips. 

She shuddered, exhaling deeply, and then yelped when he pinched her nipples. Not too hard, of course, but enough to send a shiver through her. 

“Now who’s the tease?” she giggled. He smirked. 

“Not me.”

She rolled her eyes, but smiled warmly all the same. 

“Yes, you.”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” he claimed, tugging at her nipples and relishing the sharp sound she made. 

“F-Fuck, Vox,” she gasped, sliding her hands to his body where they grabbed tightly, her nails digging into his bony shoulders. 

“Do you like that?”

“Fuck, yeah, I really do.”

Spurred on by her enthusiastic consent, he continued tugging and lightly twisting her nipples for a good while, every now and again squeezing her breasts instead. He made sure to commit every single second to his primary hard drive. Every sound she made, every way she squirmed, every glance she sent his way - it all went to his secret hard drive. 

Having paid good attention to her upper body, he was practically desperate to move lower. 

“Can I... touch you elsewhere?” he eventually asked quietly, stroking his thumbs soothingly over her perky nipples. 

“Please,” she whined, her voice tight. 

“Take off your tights, please.” 

“So polite,” she said, breathlessly, and got off of him for long enough to roll her stockings down, revealing a pair of panties that matched her bra. It drove him insane, and if he could have drooled, he probably would have. 

“Those, too, please.”

She smiled at him through her long lashes, and followed his wish. Putting her tights and panties on the couch, she finally sat back down on him, and he was eternally grateful that he wasn’t the only one who moaned at the intimate skin contact. 

She could now slide her slick folds over his hard cock, and she didn’t waste any time in doing so. Promptly, he shuddered and dug his claws into her thighs, leaning his screen back against the couch. She mewled. 

“Touch me,” she suddenly whined, and Vox immediately obeyed. 

Pushing a hand between their bodies and between her legs, he was careful not to nick her sensitive flesh as he stroked her clit. The second his fingers made contact, she shuddered, squeezing her legs together. 

“Vox,” she gasped, opening her legs again. He moved his other hand to her hip, caressing her, while continuing to stroke her clit. 

“Is that good?” he croaked, feeling as if he could combust any second. 

She nodded eagerly, grinding into his hand while also rubbing her folds over his cock. She was so incredibly wet, and despite his limited knowledge of female anatomy, he knew that was a good thing. A very good thing, even. 

“I want you, Vox,” she then whispered, making his heart skip a beat or two. “I want you inside me.” Without wasting any more time, and without waiting for him to make a move, she lifted herself onto her knees, guided his cock to her entrance, and sank down onto him. 

The second she engulfed him, Vox moaned throatily. His hand on her hip curled tightly, and he had to move his other hand to her other hip as well, to avoid injuring her private area. 

“Cassy,” he gasped, his throat feeling tight and dry. Warmth surged through him, and a shudder made him thrust up into her, subsequently pulling a sharp moan from her lips. 

“Vox! Give a girl a warning next time,” she giggled, but then moaned when he did it again, just to tease her. She felt... she felt... oh hell, there were no words, were there? She felt amazing, obviously, but she felt better than amazing. She was drenched, but tight around him, and combined with the warmth of her pussy, he was fairly certain that she had the ability to fry his hard drive, not to mention his servers. 

“Fucking hell,” he groaned, relaxing his grip of her hips. His cock throbbed repeatedly inside her, and every jerk made a soft mewl escape her. Her eyes were halfway closed, her mouth agape. 

“I’m going to move,” he said, fighting to get the words out in the correct order, and she nodded. 

“Please do,” she whined. 

His mind was reeling. How could a lesser demon feel so good? How could she make him feel better than he could remember ever having felt? Maybe it was the thrill of being with someone new, someone he likely wouldn’t see again. Maybe it was simply because what they were doing was so soft and tender. 

Vox kept his promise and began thrusting up into her. Slowly, steadily. Each move, her cunt gripped him like a vice. Each move, his cock throbbed inside her. He could practically feel every inch of her insides pulsate and flutter around him, and it drove him to the edge of insanity. 

She grabbed his shoulders tightly, whining needily for every thrust and looking at him through her lashes.

“Fuck, Vox, that feels so good,” she whimpered, clenching around him when he pulled back. As if she didn’t want him to pull back, although they both knew he was going to plunge into her again, and again, and again. There was no way he could stop now. 

“It really does,” he agreed with a shaky grunt, squeezing her hips firmly and throwing his screen back in ecstasy when she mewled. 

This was insane. How could anything feel this fantastic? It should be a sin! Which, well, it already kind of was...

Good thing he had never really cared about sins or their so-called consequences. 

Cassiopeia leaned in over him once more, pressing her lips to his screen over and over again. Each kiss made him more and more aroused, until he couldn’t help but push hard up into her. He had wanted to take it easy, had wanted for this to be soft and tender, but with the pleasure forming tight knots in his stomach, it was getting increasingly difficult. 

“You’ll make me come at this rate,” he whispered and laughed breathlessly, pressing her down against his lap while thrusting up into her. Each thrust pulled a sharp moan from her. 

“Oh no, what a travesty,” she giggled and began kissing his neck. This made his heart skip a beat. He inhaled sharply, his hips pressing hard up against her. In response, she bit his neck, and he moaned loudly, automatically throwing his head back and thus exposing his throat even further. He was trembling something fierce, his heart beating aggressively.

She quickly pulled back, a deep blush adorning her face. 

“I-I’m sorry, Vox, I didn’t mean to--- I doubt Valentino would appreciate you having love bites from someone else...”

“Let me worry about him,” he almost growled. “You just worry about feeling good.”

“That’s not hard,” she smiled, tentatively leaning in to kiss his neck again. He shuddered, and his thrusts became harsh. “Easy, Vox, easy,” she gasped, smoothing her hands over his chest. “We have all night.”

“I-I can’t stop,” he gasped, groaning deep in his chest when she began rolling her hips again, meeting each of his thrusts. Her hands on his chest, and his hands on her hips, they were so close to each other that it was hard to figure out where one started and ended. Her scent was all over him, enveloping and embracing him. It was intoxicating. An expensive perfume, no doubt, that only barely covered her natural aroma, which became more and more prominent as the minutes passed. He could smell her arousal so easily; warm and heavy and heady, it made his head spin. 

“Do I feel good, Vox?” she whispered, stroking his nipples and collar bones. 

“You feel amazing, Cassy,” he moaned. His orgasm was imminent and inevitable, but he didn’t want it to end already. While knowing that he had several rounds in him, he didn’t know about her. And if there was one thing he didn’t want, it was for this to end prematurely. 

She smiled, a dazed, stupid smile that made his heart flutter. Butterflies flapped around in his stomach, and he wanted so desperately to blame it on the alcohol. After all, it had been a while since he had had this much to drink. However, he had a feeling he couldn’t write it off as inebriation. 

She then had the audacity to ask a question that very nearly fried his servers and made him shut down. 

“Do you think you can come for me?” How could she sound so innocent and soft when asking such a thing?

“Fuck,” he croaked - he couldn’t say much else - and closed his eyes, focusing solely on the way his stomach jumped and pleasure coursed through him. His hips stuttered for a few seconds before pushing ruthlessly up against her, making her gasp. 

“Yes! Yes, Vox, that’s it, that’s it,” she cried out, wrapping her arms around his slim neck and pressing herself flush against him. “That’s it, don’t stop, oh fuck!”

Vox didn’t intend to stop. On the contrary. He kept drilling into her, his moans growing louder and louder, sharper and sharper, until he suddenly, without knowing what exactly had been the tipping point, knew that this was the point of no return. 

“I’m going to come,” he growled, slamming up into her while at the same time pushing her down on him, eager - no, desperate - to get as deep as possible. 

“Yes,” she whispered on a shaky exhale, “yes, come in me, Vox, please, I need it...”

Hearing her voice so tight and laced with wanton need, Vox couldn’t hold himself back. 

He shuddered before tensing, his entire body going rigid, and he came in her with a loud, throaty groan. 

“Cass--- Cassy,” he groaned as unbelievable, white-hot euphoria sloshed through his cords, making him see binary code that made no sense. His claws dug into her hips, no doubt leaving marks, and he felt light as a feather. He arched his back against her, and despite being so close to her, he couldn’t make out what she was saying. He heard her needy voice, but couldn’t string the words together into something coherent. 

And then it was over. Far too quickly, the sensation of weighing the same as a feather was replaced with one of feeling like a slab of concrete dropped into the ocean. He sagged back against the couch, breathing hard and fast. 

On top of him, Cassiopeia continued to grind against him, desperately seeking her own release. She was now leaning back, her hands on his thighs for support, rolling her hips desperately. 

“Let me help you,” he slurred, reaching a trembling hand down between their bodies, and fondled her clit again. She mewled loudly, and her body went taut for a few seconds before going limp. A loud, high-pitched whine tumbled over her lips, increasing in volume the more he touched her. His other hand’s claws scratched over her thigh, and he watched her face intently as he did so, careful not to be too harsh and tear open her skin. 

“Vox!” she suddenly cried out, and Vox knew that she, too, had passed the point of no return. 

“I’m here,” he growled, stroking her clit a tad faster and harder. “I’m here, Cassy. Can you come for me?” 

“No fucking doubt,” she whispered, and the corners of her lips twitched upwards in a light smile. 

“Then do it,” he said, carefully digging his claws slightly into her thighs. 

That seemed to be what she needed. 

With a gasp, then a long string of something that could potentially have been his name, he felt her cunt clench tightly around him, before fluttering rapidly. She let out a loud whimper, and her body went stiff. Her eyes were closed tightly, but her mouth wide open. 

“That’s it, Cassy, that’s it,” he praised, continuing to stroke her through her orgasm, “look at you, being so good for me.”

She sobbed out a sound he didn’t know how to interpret, and thus, he gradually slowed down his merciless stroking, until she grabbed his wrist, jerking his hand away. 

“No... no more,” she whispered, out of breath and barely able to get the words over her lips. Yet, she was smiling, and her voice was light and airy. 

“Okay,” he whispered, withdrawing his hand to put it on her hip instead. He caressed the flesh soothingly. “You did so well, Cassy.”

Cracking open one eye, she looked at him. 

“You did all the work, Vox.” 

“It was a pleasure,” he assured her, sending her a warm smile. 

She smiled back before slumping against him. 

“I could sleep right here, right now,” she proclaimed, already yawning.

He laughed softly, still trying to catch his breath.

“I do have a bed, you know. It’s big enough for the both of us.”

“Hmm, no. No bed. Only couch,” she giggled. 

He shook his head with a chuckle. 

“We’re going to the bed, whether you like it or not,” he said and gingerly pulled out of her. She whined, and he had to agree; it was so much better to warm his cock in her. But alas, it was necessary to detangle themselves to go to bed. 

“Fine,” she whined and was about to get up, when Vox lifted her under the knees and her back. She hummed, nuzzling her face against his chest. 

“You’re strong.”

“I’m an overlord, what did you expect?” he chuckled and carried her upstairs to his bedroom. Once inside, he carefully laid her down on the massive bed before snuggling up close to her. She moaned softly and offered no resistance when he pulled her back flush against his chest. She stroked his hand as it lay on her stomach, and sighed deeply. 

“That was incredible,” she whispered after a moment of silence. 

“Do you think we’re done?” 

Another moment of silence, then an incredulous laugh. 

“Can you seriously go again already?”

“Again, I’m an overlord. I’m not bound to the same restrictions as you peasants,” he snickered, sliding his hand from her warm stomach and down to her sticky cunt. 

“Peasant. Wow, that’s rude,” she giggled, but hummed in pleasure when he began touching her again. 

“Like you don’t want another round,” he teased, slowly stroking his fingers over her clit, and relishing the shiver that went through her. 

“Easy, Vox, let a girl rest.” There was a teasing lilt to her voice, making him more relaxed about continuing. The more he touched her, the harder he got, until his cock pressed against her lower back, his heart beating incessantly and quickly. 

“Rest is for the weak.”

“Well, then I’m the weakest peasant you’ll ever see,” she yawned, but nonetheless turned on her other side to look at him, touching his screen gently. She was smiling; something that made Vox very happy, for reasons he didn’t dare examine. 

“Do you want it, though?” His voice was soft, genuine. “I don’t want to force you.”

“That’s very considerate of you, Vox. Yes, I do want it.”

His heart rate picked up as he moved on top of her. She looked at him with those big, gorgeous blue eyes, and suddenly, his throat was tight and dry all over again. 

“Tell me if it hurts or anything,” he said quietly, guiding his cock to her entrance. She was still wet - or maybe again? - and as such, it was easy to slide inside her. She moaned softly, closing her eyes a sliver and grabbing the pillow under her head. 

“Vox,” she whispered, and there was something in the way she murmured his name that made the breath hitch in his throat. It was so soft and delicate. Intimate in a way he had never heard it said before. It made him swallow heavily. 

“Cassiopeia,” he whispered back, smiling when a full-body shudder went through her. She didn’t correct him, didn’t tell him to call her ‘Cassy’ again, and he appreciated that more than he had the words to articulate. 

He grabbed her hands with both of his, lacing their fingers together. She moaned softly, closing her eyes fully. 

Vox began pushing inside her, as deep as he could, until she made the smallest, softest whimper, and he met resistance. Then he pulled back, slowly, until just the head of his cock was inside her. The way her pussy clenched around him was delicious, and it took all of his self-control not to slam back inside immediately. 

“Please, don’t tease me,” she murmured. 

“I’ve never teased a day in my life,” he grinned, taking her words from earlier and using them against her, making her snicker. 

“That’s a bold lie, Mr. Vox.”

“I’m nothing if not bold.”

“That you are,” she sighed, the sound turning into a pleased whine when he slowly pushed back inside her. 

This time, there was no rush. Having gotten the worst craving out of his system, Vox actually managed to take it slow and easy, like they had initially agreed upon. It felt absolutely amazing, and he could’ve sworn that this kind, tender, gentle lovemaking rewired his system in real-time. The only thing he regretted was that he couldn’t kiss her. He wanted to so desperately, but it was impossible with his screen and lack of tongue, not to mention lack of lips. 

“You’re amazing, Cassiopeia,” he said softly, rolling his hips gently. 

“You are, too,” she whispered, looking up at him with such sincerity in her eyes that it stole his breath away. “I don’t... want tonight to end.”

He swallowed hard. That was the thing, though, wasn’t it? It would have to end at some point, and he would be forced to go back to Valentino and his abuse. 

“Me neither,” he mumbled, a thick, sticky ball of emotions lodged in his throat, leaning his screen against her forehead. It was the closest thing to a kiss they could come. 

It would have to suffice. For now. 

[haggishlyhagging]

Before the advent of any reproductive technologies, the farming model used to be very distinct from the brothel model. Even though the woman was not human—the land—or was less than human—a cow—farming had the symbolic overtones of old-fashioned agrarian romance: plowing the land was loving it, feeding the cow was tending it. In the farming model, the woman was owned privately; she was the homestead, not a public thoroughfare. One farmer worked her. The land was valued because it produced a valuable crop; and in keeping with the mystique of the model itself, sometimes the land was real pretty, special, richly endowed; a man could love it. The cow was valued because of what she produced: calves, milk; sometimes she took a prize. There was nothing actually idyllic in this. As many as one quarter of all acts of battery may be against pregnant women; and women die from pregnancy even without the intervention of a male fist. But farming implied a relationship of some substance between the farmer and what was his: and it is grander being the earth, being nature, even being a cow, than being a cunt with no redeeming mythology. Motherhood ensconced a woman in the continuing life of a man: how he used her was going to have consequences for him. Since she was his, her state of being reflected on him; and therefore he had a social and psychological stake in her welfare as well as an economic one. Because the man farmed the woman over a period of years, they developed a personal relationship, at least from her point of view: one limited by his notions of her sex and her kind; one strained because she could never rise to the human if it meant abandoning the female; but it was her best chance to be known, to be regarded with some tenderness or compassion meant for her, one particular woman. Nevertheless, the archaic meaning of the verb to husband is "to plow for the purpose of growing crops." There is not a lot of room for tenderness or compassion in that. Still, it is no wonder that women hang on possessively to any generic associations of women as such or "the female" with the land, nature, earth, the environment, even though those culturally sanctioned associations posit a female nature that is not fully human and perpetuate a hard and mean tradition of exploitation: there is some splendor and some honor in the association. The association has a deep resonance for men too, though not the same sentimental meaning: they after all did the plowing. The cultural and sexual intersection of women and earth is potent for men when they bomb "her," strip-mine "her," scorch "her," torch "her," denude "her," defoliate "her," pollute "her," despoil "her," rape "her," plunder "her," overcome, manipulate, dominate, conquer, or destroy "her." The significance of the farming model is both wide and deep. It has been the major way of using women—as mothers to produce children; metaphorically speaking, men have used the earth as if it were female, a huge fertile female that—one way or another—they will fuck to death. There are limits to how much the land can endure and produce, plowed so much, respected so little.

-Andrea Dworkin, Right Wing Women

[spiderlilac]

ik you said you’re writing an update but im dying to know how the other characters feature in to love is to share ….. are Aemond’s siblings aware of the nature of the relationship he’s in? how do they feel about it?

hiiii omg sorry for taking forever to answer this !

dw i got u. i’ve thought about this since posting the first part 🫡 so sorry for the long answer!!! you have been warned

tw implied brainwashing

so the whole reason this au was born was because i thought about a modern au where viserys dies, and all his money, inheritance, etc, was never properly discussed. his will was never updated after aemma’s funeral so the only one who gets anything is rhaenyra— money, the targs famous company, any proprieties, rhaenyra gets it all, while alicent and her children are left with pretty much nothing except for the targaryen family home, as an act of goodwill by rhaenyra. the hightowers used to be wealthy by buying/selling real estate but the company suffered uh….. a huge scandal (let’s say gwayne hightower was arrested several times) and their money isn’t enough for them to keep living the comfortable life they once had, and soon the horror begins = aegon almost cries when alicent tells him he should get a job.

so otto does his magic and convinces alicent that the best prospect for aemond (one-eyed, but an omega nonetheless) is marrying one of rhaenyra’s oldest sons because both will have a more than decent inheritance and therefore, moneyyyyy. westeros still has some families with pretty old-fashioned traditions, so it’s alicent as his mother who approaches rhaenyra with the proposal. surprise surprise, rhaenyra declines almost immediately because she (very rightfully) thinks that aemond will try and murder either of her sons as soon as they’re married, all too resentful for his eye. alicent shamelessly lies (he would never do that!!! he’s such a decent, kind, devoted omega!!!! and— and he cooks so well!!!) and that’s how aemond finds himself in a ‘how to be a good omega’ course, imparted at the local clinic.

they teach him the basics— how to cook, how to clean, how to please their spouses. aemond thinks it’s all bullshit— but, hey, they’re right when they say that your mate should be your top priority. and, well, they are also right when they say that if you love someone, you would be devoted to them. of course i would cook for my spouse!!! they must be so tired after work…

so who knew? it actually works. next time alicent meets rhaenyra, she shows her what a good omega her son is— aemond cooks for them, wears something that creepily looks like something alicent would’ve worn in her youth, and is all gentle smiles and soft movements. only that rhaenyra did not go alone to their meeting. jace and luke join just in time to appreciate the changes in their uncle, and now it’s not who will marry him, but when will they marry him. they’re brothers, after all— they’re shared everything all their lives. this should not be different.

now, what you actually asked (lmao! got a little carried away!) aemond’s siblings are confused. lemme elaborate:

aegon thought aemond was messing with him the first time he said he had to leave early from their night out to cook lucerys dinner. his jaw dropped when aemond also told him he could not drink any alcohol because jacaerys told him not to. don’t get him wrong, he’s glad aemond isn’t the same asshole he used to be, but now talking to him feels weird. his baby brother won’t go anywhere unless his husbands are aware. he won’t wear anything they don’t approve of. and every time aegon tries to make him see how unreasonable his lifestyle is, aemond will fight until aegon drops it. whatever. as long as he’s happy, i guess.

helaena tries to argue on that as well— she insists aemond should have his own say in his life, but her comments are softly spoken, so aemond just chuckles and disregards everything she says. he pats her head, smiling all condescending because she’s a beta, and she wouldn’t understand. after a while, helaena gives up, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t grimace when aemond takes his coat off and she can see his whole neck and wrists covered in bruises and finger marks.

now… daeron is complicated, because he still feels some of the rage aemond shared with him when the eye incident happened. at first, he glares at jace and luke at family gatherings and tells them they would never deserve his brother, and he tries convincing aemond to get a divorce as soon as he gets his hands in some of their money, but aemond looks truly concerned and explains that the past is all behind, daeron. we should not let ourselves rot with resentment, and so daeron tunes the comments off, although he still glares at the velaryon boys.

either way, their acceptance on their marriage grows a bit when jace and luke treat them for sevenmas— they get aegon and helaena an all-included trip to pentos for an entire month on the most luxurious hotel that could possibly exist, while their children get so many toys that helaena doubts they will fit all in their room. and daeron, who is now old enough to drive, gets his first car! i meaaan, they can’t be that bad, can they?

[m4gp13]

Percy Nakamura wears an old cap with the hockey team logo, tight-fitting dark Tank tops, flannel shirts, torn dark blue jeans, dark brown oversized boots and Golden Ring.

Of course, the history of his clothes is much deeper than just "like".

Cap — is an old Daichi cap that he managed to put on Percy's head before the minotaur grabbed him, then Percy believed that his father was dead, and the cap was the last thing left of him.So he wore it all the time, Silena sewed it up and improved the look a little.

Tank tops, — Ethan war tank tops like that and after he went missing [when he ran off to use Nami's mom's errand], Percy started wearing his clothes and started imitating his style of clothing.

Flannel shirts, — the same story as with Ethan, only with Daichi, Percy started wearing them after arriving at the camp, received most of them from Hephaestus' cabin.

Jeans — Daichi wore ordinary jeans of dark blue color, Ethan loved torn, but only light color, Percy combined them in this way, — dark blue color and torn.

Boots — Charlie's last pair of shoes.

Ring — it used to belong to Silena.

The little design pupil in me is vibrating right now, I have so many clothing hcs for pretty much everyone.

The ratty jean and flannels definitely fit with Percy's skater boi thing he's got going on and I like the thing with Charlie having boots, specifically heavy-duty steel-toed boots because he is no chump when it comes to forge safety 😤 Charlie is several sizes larger than Percy so his boots are like a pair of cardboard boxes taped to his feet but that isn't going to stop him. He'll lace them as tightly as he needs to just to keep them on (and maybe a child of Aphrodite or Athena would be willing to get a needle out and tailor them to fit him better so he can wear them without falling all over himself).

I love the ring from Silena but keep in mind tlt came out and was therefore implied to be set in 2005 and tlo was thus implied to be set in 2009. Silena's a 2000s girlie and a very fashion-forward one at that so any jewellery she was wearing would have been dutifully following the trends or an older, more sentimental piece. Cute shit like daisies, smiley faces and butterflies were all the rage back in the day as well as chunky jewellery that most people would now consider to be tacky or cheap. Silena is a very "Love Brings Love" type of person who fully embraces feminism and the parts of feminism that, especially at the time, were frowned upon or demeaned so I can imagine she would wear jewellery that reflects this, stuff that proudly shows her love for love. Therefore I can totally so her putting a lot of sentimental value on something like a chunky or colourful ring with something happy like a smiley face, a daisy or a butterfly on it. It would totally clash with everything else Percy has going on style wise but he could not give less of a SHIT. You think the chunky golden smiley face is tacky? The sparkly purple butterfly kills the vibe? It's hard to take him seriously with a colourful daisy ring on his finger? Fuck off, that's his sister's and he will wear it with pride! (and also ram it in the face of anyone giving him shit for it. while it's still on his finger)

Also, I like the detail that Ethan preferred lighter colour jeans (samesies) because more faded jeans tend to be more well-worn and therefore softer and easier to move in which would have made them more convenient for a militant person like Ethan to move and fight in. His wearing stuff like tight black tank tops is also a hc I have of him, not so much as casual wear (although I can see him casually going out in stuff like that because it would make mobility easy) but more as part of what he'd wear in the army. The only description we ever get of clothes Ethan wore in the books was something about being "dressed for combat", having a helmet on during the Williamsburg bridge scene and having that one super useless chest plate so that means I get all the freedom I want for hcing his other clothes. I like to interpret "dressed for combat" as slightly more modern than the stuff he was wearing in the big battle, stuff like urban camo cargos, combat boots (similar to Beckendorf's), a high-collared fleece and a fancy demigod-safe bulletproof vest like Alabaster had (sans magic runes). Basically just military-esque tech/darkwear and the kind of tight-fitting black tops with minimal sleevege described is constantly popping up.

(sorry I know this was such a long one but I could spend days talking about a character's clothing choices)

[muu-kun]

Speaking of fashion, I will eventually have the appropriate amount of time to dedicate myself to a proper attire headcanon post. For now, I only have examples for silhouettes pertaining to dresses gathered. Which at this point can ultimately be narrowed down in explanation as Muu holding preference for a bodice that does not require even just a modest breast size.

Although he does wear bralettes (which is not out of gender dysphoria or euphoria on any account actually. Instead, it is more so like a running joke with himself at this point due to the fact he's actually had an infatuation with wearing them since he was a sixteen year old boy that found a bra lying in the street) he doesn't do so with the intent of applying padding to them-- especially when considering the fact he has some minor gynaecomastia due to stubbornly persistent baby fat going on. He can deal with those, but he definitely doesn't want to even so much as imply he has "real breasts."

He also isn't one to gravitate towards those built around the necessity for breasts due to the fact that he does not wish for the attire adorning his body to appear as though something (or somethings) is missing. Which is also the given reason why even in his decision to wear what is considered women's underwear underneath the dresses similar to above, he does not engage in the act of tucking. Yes, that does come within treacherous territory per the fact that he is then advertising himself as a flamboyantly youthful individual with an occasionally visible (and not incredibly well endowed, mind you) genitalia outline in his attire. That's not even to mention the detectability of his disabilities on establishing conversation with him.

Beyond that, he's not too partial to much else. Length and material is otherwise irrelevant as long as he can freely move within it to accommodate an in-between active and sedentary lifestyle. He would also best appreciate those that are not overwhelming to the senses in one manner or another-- this includes itchiness, heaviness, lack of breathability, and so on. Textures usually aren't too worrisome to him, however, as he has been raiding the closet of his female friends (such as Hannah of @kannojo predominantly) for years, so by now he knows what he does and doesn't like with enough ease that even unexpectedly finding something is unappealing to him van be easily remedied without any fit.

The bottom line with all of this is while Muu strictly wears what is primarily marketed as women's clothing, he does not do so out of the desire to be a woman. In fact, he's asked that question within himself many times only to come up with the same conclusion each time: He is simply an aged up boy caught up in having to navigate too many things at once, therefore eccentricities intended to lighten his load have transpired. Being that 99% of abusers have been men throughout the years, and women his sanctuary from them, it became sensible at some point for him to cease one struggle for favor of mirroring his safety while he sources through another. Muu has no idea even how to be a person yet, let alone a gendered one.

That is also not to say he wishes to abolish entirely in favor of utilizing they/them pronouns. In fact, it still remains quite the opposite. At this time in his life, he's not looking to be othered more than he always has acquired for himself. Being gridlocked into a perpetual state of regression in his present has been isolating enough as is that he doesn't wish for more beyond that. It also has intriguingly been almost beneficial in keeping some of his identity centered, though, as being so interwoven with his inner teen provides connection with the perspective of character held back then.

When he was sixteen, he was very self assured in nearly all aspects in life until led to second guessing the bulk of them. Of those is one of which where he was well adamant that he was a boy with a preference for he/him pronouns to demonstrate that. And while he's been able to find appreciation for femininity that he'd have otherwise mocked in his youth, that is as far as it goes for the time being. Working beyond the semantics of that just isn't on the table at this time in his life.

Where he might go with it during Pride Month is still up to him, but, really, his focus is far more centered on fulfilling and answering other aspects of his person at this time. Generalized comfort and safety are of the utmost importance to his emotionally led manner of living. Once that is established, whether or not he opts for reintroducing what is considered men's attire back into his wardrobe is completely up in the air.

[hollowed-theory-hall]

Yes! Wandlore!

Honestly, I have so many thoughts about wands (I actually attribute wand woods/core/length/flexibility to characters that don't have canon wands for fun. Its a joy to think about).

I bet there are some stores that make wands to order for anyone who could pay (probably not Ollivanders, he doesn't give me the vibe). But like, Ollivanders is the best wand maker in Britian, it implies there are others out there.

As for how he decides which wand to make, I think it's a combination of a few things. If I had to guess (headcanon territory), I'd say there's a lot of intuition involved. Like, the wood always seemed like the mind of the operation with the strongest will. So, what I think it's like to make a wand, is that you don't really design it from the get go, it's all instinct rather than forethought.

Like, you start with a piece of wood and you start forming it into a wand. You have a vague design of what it looks like, but if the wood challenges it, you go with what the wood wants. Both wands and brooms are made of magical trees, grown in tree farms owned by wizards, so it isn't just some wood. So the wood kinda leads the hand that makes it and the wandmaker needs to listen to the wood.

The core is probably chosen in the same way, with the wood choosing the core and the ore choosing back. Like a wand chooses the wizard, but with the core and wood agreeing on each other.

So, I don't think Ollivanders has a lot of active input in the process. More like, he listens and makes the wand the way it wants to be made.

As for second-hand wands, yes. We know Ron uses Charlie's old wand, and Neville uses his father's old wand. So, basically, when a wizard dies or is chosen by a new wand for whatever reason, the family just keeps the wand.

I guess that families like the Weasleys that don't have a lot of money first let their children try out old family wands to see if one chooses them, or works for them well enough so they don't need to buy a new one.

I headcanon that even richer pureblood families keep most of the old family wands, kinda like items to remember someone by, or to have spare wands 'just in case'. Like, I imagine the Black family has some hidden cellar somewhere that is filled to the brim with old family wands.

But we know some wizards get buried with their wands. Some wands wilt when their owner dies, so there is no other choice, but with wands that can still work for others, I think it's a matter of fashion. Like, I headcanon that in some time periods it was fashionable to be buried with your wand, so everyone did it, and at some points the fashion was to keep the wands in some memorial display at home. I don't think anyone returns the wands to Ollivanders, though, I think doing that is akin to disgracing the dead. At the time of the books (or a little before), the 'fashion' seems to be to reuse old wands.

The Longbottoms seem to have more than enough money to buy Neville a new wand, but it is considered an honor for him to use his father's old wand. It's about legacy and tradition, and it seems like something Agusta truly believes in. Therefore, it's considered 'proper' during the books or when Agusta grew up and she just still holds these beliefs.

As for why some type of wands are better suited for certain things, like, I think wands have an innate magic to them, which is a combination of everything that makes them. In the same way, wizards can be more talented in one area of magic over another, so are wands. They are sentient, with personalities and quirks unique to them. They can bond with a witch or wizard in the same way wizards bond with each other.

Blackthorn wands, for example need to actually pass through hardship or danger to truly foster a bond with their user. Sycamore wands tend to get bored when idle and start bursting into flames if they aren't used creatively in some time.

Wands are just fascinating, and I read that one Pottermore page about wand woods too many times, probably... I just think they're so cool and so much more could be done with them, worldbuilding wise.

And I have no answers to the dragon heartstrings bit... no wonder dragons are pretty rare...

Might try and look into it more sometime - but the effects of a Muggle picking up a wand is such a weird topic.

I would have thought that there would be no effect. Muggles don't have magic to channel through the wand, nor any for the wand core to... 'sense'. 'mesh with'. 'like' or 'dislike'. A muggle picking up a wand would be like picking up a twig - at most perhaps feeling some sort of magical hum from an active core, or the core misfiring from latent magic left in it or something.

And yet from memory there are mentions of a Muggle picking up a wand being dangerous. Like the Muggle that founded the American magical school was blown back (i think?), or general warnings of it 'not being safe'.

But why...? Wands are not particularly safe objects - Moody tells harry off for keeping his in his back pocket - but surely that is due to a Wizards latent magic and the bond the core has with their Wizard. Someone jumps out at you and your twitchy wand core fires a spell directly into your ass - because even if you didn't mean to, your magic still flowed through it.

Wands are trusted enough outside of magical hands not to misfire - left on desks and stuff... Would that not be the same thing as a Muggle holding it?

Muggles have a latent magic to us that we can't control. We ARE magical creatures, we just lack the ability to channel it...?

Wands are SUPER PICKY about who holds them... but not so much to animals. Your cat can pick up your wand, but a fellow human cannot. Wands are anti-muggle for some reason...?

Shaking a wand about without channeling magic through it is a dangerous action...? but then surely an animal knocking it, or having it just roll off a table, would be equally dangerous...?

I'm not thinking too hard about this rn, I'm more making a note for later

[stedesparasol]

if you're still doing the prompts ask thing, stede & ed for the manny/single parent au pls!

I am still taking prompts!  And boy oh boy I did not expect to exceed 1500 words on any of these little fics but here we go I guess.

***

Well.  That wasn’t what Stede had been expecting.

Edward was a little bit of a stuffy, old fashioned name.  And Teach, well, that made Stede think of a professor.  And however silly that kind of assumption may be, when he had spotted this man’s name in the listings, he’d pictured a bespectacled man in a cardigan, not…  Well.

“Stede Bonnet?” the bearded, leather-clad man standing in his doorway asked him.

“Y- uh, yes,” Stede replied, apparently having forgotten his manners in his mild alarm.  Pulling himself together, he held out his hand.  “You must be Edward,” he said, hoping there wasn’t too much of a question in his tone as he spoke.

“Yeah, or Ed – whichever, I don’t mind.”

“Well.  Come in, Ed,” he said, stepping back and allowing this Hells Angels lookalike into his home, wondering how far into the interview process he would have to get before telling the man to his face that he was absolutely not what he was looking for.

For now, as they settled down on the sofa, he prepared to give Ed the usual spiel that he was interviewing a lot of nannies (which was true) and imply that there was therefore a lot of competition (which was false).  The fact of the matter was, not one of them had been the right fit.  Certainly, some of them had seemed to him to be perfectly acceptable, but ultimately, it was the children’s opinions that mattered, and both Alma and Louis managed to have complaints about every single one.  Part of him wondered if they were going to react this way to every nanny at first, and he should just select one himself and hope for the best.  But he knew in his heart that he wouldn’t be able to settle with anyone even slightly insufficient.  He spent enough time feeling woefully inadequate as a parent, and didn’t want to be responsible with lumping his children with an inferior version of himself.

At least that wouldn’t be a concern in this case.  No matter how the rest of this process went, Stede was sure that nobody think to compare him to Edward Teach, for better or for worse.  Although, admittedly, the man did look a little less intimidating now that he’d taken off the leather jacket and folded it across the arm of the sofa.  Aside from the tattoos, at least, but Stede had to remind himself that lots of people were covered in tattoos these days.  It didn’t make them a knife wielding criminal.  Plus, the purple t-shirt definitely took the edge off.  As a matter of fact, he was sure that was Alma’s favourite colour.

“So, it said you were looking for a part time nanny?”

Stede blinked back to reality.  He had almost forgotten he was supposed to be interviewing the man.  “Yes, that’s right,” he said.  “Just for the times I can’t be around, during the work week.  My ex-wife and her husband have the children most of the time, but they’re about to go away for an extended period, and Alma and Louis have to stay in school, so we decided it would be for the best if they lived with me for a while, but I can’t get away from work as often as I’d like and there’s nobody around to help me take care of them and–”

“Hey, hey,” Ed interrupted, which was a relief, because Stede had been beginning to feel like all of his concerns were about to tumble out of his mouth all at once.

“I’m sorry,” he said, hoping he didn’t look too flustered.  “It’s just… a stressful time, you understand.”

“’Course,” Ed nodded, and his voice was surprisingly reassuring.  “That’s why I’m here.”

Stede felt strangely relaxed at this, considering Ed hadn’t actually done anything to ease his tension beyond saying a few words.  But he seemed even less intimidating, now, which was definitely a good thing, so Stede offered him a grateful smile.

Ed leaned back in his seat.  “Carry on,” he said gently.

And so, Stede cleared his throat and tried to get back on track with his planned interview which had very much fallen by the wayside.  “You’ve been with this agency for a while,” he noted.

“Yeah,” Ed nodded.

“Can I ask… can I ask what drew you to this line of work?”  That had not exactly been on Stede’s interview cards, but sitting opposite this particular man, he couldn’t help but ask it.

“You’re thinking I don’t look the type?” Ed asked, practically reading his mind.

Stede nodded weakly.  “Yes, something like that.”

Ed grinned, and Stede got the feeling that he wasn’t unused to questions like that.  “I just like kids, y’know?” he shrugged.  “And I grew up in a pretty rough household, so I know how important those early influences can be.  Things really could have gone either way for me, and luckily I turned out alright.  So I wanna make sure the same’s true for the kids I look after.”

Stede wondered if any of this should have been a red flag to him.  Right now, he had to admit that he was growing fonder of this man by the second.  “That’s… well, that’s very noble,” he finally managed to respond.

Ed shrugged.  “Plus, it’s one of the few careers where I get to blow people’s minds with my rubbish magic tricks,” he said.  At that, he immediately reached over and pulled a coin out from behind Stede’s ear.  “See, do that when you’re working in an office and I reckon they’d think you were nuts.  A seven year old thinks it’s the best thing ever.”

Stede couldn’t help but smile down at the coin in between Ed’s fingers, and briefly wondered if that meant he had the mind of a seven year old.

But now that the situation was more relaxed, he was able to actually conduct a proper interview with Ed, getting all of the important questions out of the way, as well as a few unimportant ones (although, sadly, Ed wouldn’t reveal how he did his magic tricks).  And while Stede knew that the children would have the final say, as he said goodbye to Ed with plans to introduce Alma and Louis to him at the weekend, he couldn’t help but feel that maybe things would be different this time.

***

A shout from the children’s playroom startled Stede from his book.

He had admittedly grown a little nervous in the build up to introducing his children to Ed.  Mostly, he was worried they would take one look at him and be convinced that their father had sold them to a gang leader.  He had even warned them in advance that the man they were about to meet was very little like the previous nannies he had introduced them to.  (Alma, in a tone wise beyond her years, had informed him that this could only be a good thing.)  But when Ed arrived at the door and greeted the children by producing a coin from behind each of their heads simultaneously, they both seemed perfectly happy to give him a chance – especially after he let them keep the coins, with a wink directed towards Stede who tried not to look too pleased.

Once proper introductions had taken place and Stede was satisfied that Alma and Louis were not going to run away in fear, he initiated the customary approach of letting Ed spend some time on his own with them, so that the children could suss him out and come to their own conclusions without their father breathing down their necks.  So he sent them off to the playroom for an hour or so, while he settled himself in the living room with a book and a cup of tea, keeping an ear out for any disturbances.

And he had been sure everything had been going swimmingly, until he heard the shout.

He leaped up from his seat at once, tossing his book aside in a manner that would usually be extremely unlike him, but this was a cause for alarm.  The shout had come from Ed, so at least he was fairly sure that his children weren’t in any kind of danger, which would have been his first concern – but he had to wonder what on earth had happened for Ed to be raising his voice so extremely.  So… aggressively?  Rushing down the corridor, Stede was halfway towards the room when he heard his daughter giving an almighty yell, which was enough for him to run the rest of the way and burst the door open, and…

Well.  That wasn’t what Stede had been expecting.

Ed was pressed against the wall, with Louis wrapping his arms around his legs so that he couldn’t walk, while Alma stood triumphantly in front of him with a wooden sword held at his throat.  All three of their heads swivelled round at Stede’s dramatic entrance, while he stood there in mildly stunned silence, not sure what he’d been planning on saying but knowing he couldn’t exactly say it now.

“Sorry, were we too loud?” Ed asked, as casually as if he had a toy sword held to his throat every day.

“Silence, dog!” Alma demanded viciously, and then turned back to her father.  “We’re playing pirates,” she explained matter-of-factly.

“I see,” Stede responded, looking back at the man held captive by two small children.  “Everything alright there, Ed?”

“Great,” Ed responded, nodding his head towards Alma.  “She’s about to make me walk the plank.”

“Any last words before we send you overboard?” Alma asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Ed replied, clearly thinking on his feet.  “If you kill me, there’ll be nobody to find all the coins hidden behind your ears.”

Alma looked as though she was considering this for a while, before finally heaving an almighty sigh.  “Fine,” she said, withdrawing the sword from Ed’s throat.  “We’ll let you live.  This time.”  And then she walked over to her father, sword down by her side.  She stopped in front of him and looked up at him, a serious expression on her face.  “We like this one,” she said sagely.

From his position on the floor, and still clinging to the man’s legs as if his life depended on it, Louis nodded enthusiastically.  “Can we keep him?”

Stede looked between his two children, and then back up at Ed.

Ed grinned at him.

“I… think that can be arranged.”

(Find this fic on ao3 where, against my better judgement, I am writing more chapters.)

[thanksjro]

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

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

So.

This is a little different than what I usually do.

Clearly.

God, how did we even get here?

Oh, I remember.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

Haha, I doubt it.

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

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

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

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

For loving his child.

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

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

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

No. Not at all, actually.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s just a shame that I don’t care.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right???

RIGHT??????????

RIGH-

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As if women are property to be owned.

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

We’re 17.5 minutes into this film.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can’t be fucking serious.

ANYWAY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which made me groan aloud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right???

RIGHT??????????

RIGH-

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

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

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

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

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

Ed Sheeran does not survive this experience.

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

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

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

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

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

So they try it again.

This time it works, sort of.

At the very least, he’s left now.

Tail fell off, though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Judy doesn’t count.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For about 20 seconds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ratchet’s fine, by the way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We still have another hour of this movie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nope, that doesn’t happen either.

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

Repeatedly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being advocated for by Optimus Goddamn Prime.

We still have another 50 minutes of this movie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, right, because ~girl~.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y’know.

Like a vast, predatory bird.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feminist icon Megatron?

Feminist icon Megatron.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congrats on your first murder, Sam.

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

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

In tow.

In tow-

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

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

Then Bumblebee talks and he’s fucKING BRITISH.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s where they leave us.

IT TOOK THREE PEOPLE TO WRITE THIS SCHLOCK.

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

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

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

What a mess.

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

COMING SOON:

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

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

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

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

[darkacademicfrom2021]

The Dark Team (part 7)

<<Previous part Masterlist��  Next part>>

Join the taglist in here (Taglist: @lucywrites02, @louieboo87, @the-departed-potato, @jesuswasnotawhiteman)

Warnings: mentions of suicide and murder, awfully cheesy petnames (yes I have to put a warning on that).

The streets were so cold you had to rub your hands to your neck as you walked. You had only one piece of information that could’ve been possibly linked to that murder, and therefore that stick.

Saying you weren’t worried about being very undercover was a lie; an almost seven feet tall “man” that dressed like a millionaire, and a man with a metal prosthesis and abnormal sized muscles were not exactly the definition of discrete, much less once they were being categorized as “wanted”.

“Are you sure it’s this way?” asked Loki impatiently.

“No”.

“And why…?”.

“Stop torturing me with questions you know the answer of. Shut it and let me do my thing”.

“What is exactly your thing?”.

“Trying to not stab you in the balls, if you keep being this annoying”.

“Alright, guys, keep it down”, mediated Bucky. His role in the team was starting to be more and more like a third wheel in a car that’s trying to break down purposely, and he hated every second of it. “Can’t wait for this mission to be over”.

“Talking about that, we still have a game of cards on hold”.

“We could never play that with Loki, he has mind powers or some shit like that. He’d cheat”.

“Me?” he held a hand to his chest dramatically, “I would never cheat on a cards game. That is dishonest and I would never do such mischievous thing”.

Your phone beeped and the address changed suddenly. You stopped dead on your tracks and both Loki and Bucky, who were walking in line behind you, stumped with each other and almost made you trip.

“Careful, guys”.

“Are you fucking…”.

“Leave it there, Barnes”.

“What happened?”.

“I don’t know, the address suddenly changed. This isn’t supposed to happen”, you hit a few times your phone after it froze, and realized it wouldn’t work anymore. “Well, we’re gonna have to do this the old fashioned way”.

“And how’s that?”.

“How am I supposed to know? You’re the one that's a thousand years old and he’s a hundred and six. I’m barely around the two decades”.

“I’m beginning to think maybe you’re not one for this job. Aren’t you the one in charge of the planning? How did you even get to this Stank Internship in the first place?”.

“Hey, don’t be mean to them. They’ll cry”.

You rolled your eyes and ignored them. Meanwhile, you looked around. You had to find this person. A person who saw the “death” of the man with the pendrive, but the only one who said nothing about it. Only thing you knew was that he was a worker in a coffee shop. Which coffee shop, you’d ask? Well, that’s a good question.

It had to be in the neighborhood, that was for sure. You looked around a bit more, trying to drink in all the information the streets and its habitants could give you.

“The man was killed being thrown off that building. They said it was suicide. It was not”, you finally said out loud, pointing at the direction of one of the tallest buildings of the city. You were too concentrated to even realize you had stopped talking again.

The man you were looking for had to have a full view of the window the guy was thrown off from, so it would be in… that direction. A reasonable distance to see both guys would be less than two blocks. And it happened in an unreasonable hour for a work break, so… it had to be… alright. I think I got it.

“What are we looking for, then?”.

“There has to be a coffee shop maximum two blocks away from one of these three streets, the counter of the bar has to be near the window (or showcase) and the showcase should be tall enough to see the high part of the building, so I’d say at least three meters tall. I assume the man we’re looking for is old and introverted, quiet, not very friendly. Not less than fifty years old”.

“Alright Sherlock”, said Bucky, patting your back. “I’ll write down not to mock your intellect. Now you don’t have to pretend like you just figure that out all by yourself”.

“Okay”, you said, not paying any attention to his words. You were still juicing all the information you could.

“I got lost in the description of the man, how did you reach that conclusion?”, asked Loki, who apparently was reading your mind, following your thought process.

“Well, he’s the only one who didn’t testify at all. The witnesses in this sort of cases go through a polygraph. If all he saw was a suicide, then he wouldn’t be lying, he’d go through the lie detector and go out as if anything happened. Since he saw more, and didn’t say anything, it’s probably because he wanted to protect himself against the law, or just too lazy to go into all the bureaucracy it’d imply”, you explained. Loki had a full blown smile across his face, not even hiding it. “What are you smiling at?”.

“Nothing”, he brushed it off and pretended to fix his tie.

“No, please, do give me your input”.

“I can’t read whether you’re being sarcastic or not”.

“Wanna find out, dear?”.

“Hey, the aggressive pet names are my thing. Get your own passive-aggressive mechanism”.

“Can you concen…? You know what? Whatever. I’m going there”, cut Bucky. He was so done.

You walked as fast as you could down the nearest street out of the three possible ones, and kept rubbing your (now almost numb) cold fingers.

“Buck, do you have a gun with you?”.

“I don’t think this is the best moment to kill yourself. Let us finish the mission first”.

“Though, honestly, I think it could speed things up a little”, added Loki.

“Wow, you guys are especially mean today. We might need something to threaten the guy with”.

“Just a pocket knife. Do you think it could help at all?”, he searched for more weapons in his pockets, but found none. Going undercover, you all had to leave your suits and armor in the hotel room. Loki cleared suggestively his throat and you gasped.

“Really? You can make it out of nowhere?”.

“No, but give me a weird shaped branch or anything similar and I can transform it. Transfigurations have been my specialty lately, though”.

“I love you wholeheartedly”.

“I’d literally marry you on the spot”.

“In fact, I think I might kiss you right now”.

“You guys have no idea how glad I am to know you’re lying”, said Loki, patting Bucky’s back.

To find the place was way easier than you had anticipated. Firstly, because it matched every single aspect you had predicted. Secondly, because it was the only coffee shop in the whole place.

The clicking bell filled the silent place as the scent of fresh coffee and baked goods infested your noses. There was only an old lady reading a paper and the fifty year old you were looking for. Bucky sat down on a table near the counter and you and Loki greeted the man.

“Hi, how are you?” you said with a fake warmth that would assure you his confidence. “We would like a black coffee…”, you looked at Loki, still acting, and he reached your thoughts telepathically to hear your “act, dude; you’re frowning”. He immediately softened up his expressions. “What would you like to drink, dear?”.

“Same as you, darling”, he smiled even faker than you. “So are we pretending to be a couple, now?”.

“Alright, two blacks, please”, you went back to the barista. “Yes, old people get all softies for young couples. Just follow me, we need him to like us”. “And a strawberry milkshake with extra cream and a cherry on top, for the gentleman on the table”.

“Going right up”, said the old man.

“Do you ever take vacations on mocking people?”.

“Never. It’s a true blessing”.

“So, what’s the plan?”.

“Same as it was before, except we can’t actually cause any harm while threatening him, if we do”.

“Why?”.

“Old lady at twelve o’clock?? Man, you really lack any empathy for innocent civilians, don’t you?”.

“Only with mortals. Don’t really care for them”.

“You’re probably lying. I know behind that shell there must be a big soft heart longing for...”.

“Alright, shut up, here comes our order”.

“Thank you, ah, wonderful”, you said, grabbing the cups. You pretended to just notice the news behind the counter, and Loki made the illusion of a highly realistic periodistic note on the suicide of the man with the stick. “Oh my… is that what I think it is?”.

The old man raised his eyebrows, intrigued.

“Uh, is just… don’t watch that, darling. It’ll make you feel sick”, said Loki tenderly, caressing your shoulder. “We sort of saw that… happening, you know?” he explained the old man.

“Oh, really?”.

“Yes, it was really close from here. Oh God, we saw it all happen, this poor man”.

“Very disturbing. Never seen such a gruesome situation in my short, very, very, very short life”, added Loki.

“Alright, we get it, humans live short lives”. “Believe me, you’re so lucky you didn’t have to see that”.

“Really?”, said again the barista, visibly nervous. “That terrible?”.

“Well, it’s a common tragedy, to be honest. But, you know, the cops and investigators were on our backs all night long”.

“Finally free now”, added Loki, still with his arm protectively wrapped around your shoulders. “You’re truly lucky to miss it”.

“Oh, yes. Sounds terrible. Glad didn’t see it, then”, he lied. And he was a bad liar. You didn’t even need Loki to tell you what you could so clearly see.

“And you know… I didn’t think it’d work, but we…” you chuckled innocently, as a kid telling their devilry to a friend, “we sort of lied to the lie detector, and it worked”.

“Love!”, gasped Loki, and lowered his voice “we shouldn’t be telling this to anyone. What if it spreads around?”.

“But, honey, have you seen this man? Why would you think he could wrong us?” you pointed at him and he, as you predicted, blushed with a smile.

“What did you lie about, if I may ask?”. He fell into the trap. You bent over the counter and lowered your voice.

“We saw it was not a suicide”.

Your expressions drew all seriousness and a terrifying look on your eyes gave the man the trust that you were being honest with him. He bent down on the counter too.

“What do you mean?”.

“We saw… oh God”, you started saying, but your eyes watered and Loki didn’t hesitate to hold your head to his chest, comforting you while you sobbed.

“I know, sweetheart, it’s terrible. I know”, he cooed. “We don’t know what to do with this piece of information. The man was thrown off violently, and the things they did to him before…” Loki hinted. The man swallowed hard and started sweating. Loki muttered nonsense, and you continued his empty explanation with sobs that sounded like words but nobody could actually figure out what you meant.

“That sounds awful, wow”, said the man, pretending he heard. Truth was, he didn’t need to insensitively ask for you to repeat yourself. He knew what had happened.

“We wonder what kind of deals could be behind all that, you know?”.

“Yes, very strange, to try to strip the man like that” started saying the old man, too affected by the situation to actually notice he was spilling the true tea. “It sounds like all a very weird business”.

“And that thing they pulled out of him!”.

“Ah… yes”.

You and Loki had started to lose your patience, and figured the man would be harder to interrogate like this than you’d expected. Loki squeezed your shoulder.

“My love, we should get going, don’t you think?”. And with get going he meant knocking the guy off and getting into his memories through Loki’s magic.

“No, my dearest, let’s stay here”, you insisted, without wanting to cause the fuss this was going to make. Ever since you came into the coffee shop, three other family groups had entered and were waiting for their order.

“But, sweet pie… I think we’re shocking the man enough”.

“Oh, please, I just want a normal day, honey bunny. Let’s stay and drink a cuppa here”.

Bucky chuckled at the pet name war you two were having, and the old man looked at you suspiciously. You sighed.

“Alright. Fuck it”.

“You’re cops, aren’t you?”, asked the old man. You fell off your character.

“No… but sorry anyways”, you said, kicking him on the face and smashing his head against the counter, leaving him unconscious.

“That was unnecessarily violent, I could’ve made him sleep with seiðr”, stated Loki, watching the man drip blood from his nose.

“Guys'', said Bucky, watching how all the clients were running away in fear, “I thought we said ‘keep it low, threaten discreetly’. What happened?”.

“For Fuck’s sake, just get into his head already, sweet muffin”.

“Hold his head, baby cakes”.

[pikahlua]

Hi! Let's say that DFO is canon, how will that turn out? Is it possible that AFO's going to kill Izuku? Will the reveal happen to break Izuku emotionally/mentally? Last of all you said that AFO lacks a heart (which is 100% true) so what do you think he's going to do?

[deep breath]

It’s questions like these that turn me away from the DFO theory. And please don’t take this the wrong way, anon; it’s not that I think the questions are ignorant or anything like that. They are apt. It’s just that these are precisely the sorts of questions that we would expect to drive dramatic tension should DFO turn out to be true. And yet, as time goes on, I want the answers to these questions less and less, because they can only turn out to be disappointing.

Let me explain. I’m coming at this from the angle of a storyteller. What makes a dramatic reveal like DFO entertaining in a story? Foreshadowing. A big plot twist that comes out of no where, that doesn’t follow from the bits of the story that came before it, comes across as clumsy, unfulfilling storytelling.

Should DFO turn out to be true, what narrative purpose would it serve? The questions you ask would be anybody’s first instinct. Perhaps such a twist would serve to shake our protagonist to his core, to give him an emotional event horizon to face. Good old-fashioned drama.

But if Izuku were to learn AFO were his father, it would make no sense for him to be bothered by it.

Izuku has never once mentioned his father, let alone implied he cares about his father’s opinion or even misses him

Izuku has several father figures to fill the void

Izuku has come to the defense of others on behalf of implied bad family connections before and absolved them of blood sin or encouraged them to break away from their families

Izuku is selfless, “doesn’t take himself into account,” and therefore has an ego or sense of pride too small to be particularly threatened by implications from his bloodline

So if Izuku does have a big reaction, it would come across as overblown and underdeveloped, potentially even forced or out-of-character. But then, if Izuku has a relatively small reaction, what’s even the point of a reveal in the first place?

Which is why I kind of hope DFO doesn’t happen.

And that’s not even to get at what AFO’s behavior may turn out to be. I know a lot of people who enjoy the DFO theory like to think there will be some weird yandere or misguided fatherly feelings on AFO’s side but...he doesn’t seem to like Izuku. He certainly doesn’t have anything good to say about Izuku if they are in fact related.

(manga spoilers below the cut)

Given AFO’s general banter and behavior, I think he thrives in prediction and control. I think he’s going to mess around with Izuku in the interest of controlling his behavior, which in some way is another way to defeat All Might who couldn’t control Izuku well enough to stop him from coming to Kamino, as All For One saw it.

That said, whether or not DFO turns out to be true, there are still some elements of it that could easily come into play: particularly that of AFO trying to get Izuku to join his side. AFO clearly has multiple methods of getting people to join him running the whole gambit from seduction (no, not that kind) to coercion. I could see him resorting to much more forceful methods with Izuku should he deem it necessary, assuming that’s his true angle.

[renegadewangs]

Van Zieks - the Examination, part 2

Warnings: SPOILERS for The Great Ace Attorney: Chronicles. Additional warning for racist sentiments uttered by fictional characters (and screencaps to show these sentiments).

Disclaimer: (see Part 1 for the more detailed disclaimer.) - These posts are not meant to be taken as fact. Everything I'm outlining stems from my own views and experiences. If you believe that I've missed or misinterpreted something, please let me know so I can edit the post accordingly.  -The purpose of these posts is an analysis, nothing more. Please do not come into these posts expecting me to either defend Barok van Zieks from haters, nor expecting me to encourage the hatred. - I'm using the Western release of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for these posts, but may refer to the original Japanese dialogue of Dai Gyakuten Saiban if needed to compare what's said. This also means I’m using the localized names and localized romanization of the names to stay consistent. -It doesn't matter one bit to me whether you like Barok van Zieks or dislike him. However, I will ask that everyone who comments refrains from attacking real, actual people.

It’s time to take a close look at Episode 3, The Runaway Room!

Episode 3: The Runaway Room.

We're skipping the first two cases, as they have no relevance to Barok van Zieks, and starting off here.

So Ryu is tossed into the deep. The Lord Chief Justice tells him that he’s basically the defendant’s only hope; if he doesn’t at least try to fight in court, McGilded will lose the trial and die for sure. (HAH… Good one, Stronghart.) So Ryu falls for this would-be motivational speech and heads for the courthouse where he finds out why McGilded doesn’t have a defense attorney to begin with; it’s because of the prosecution. No one dares to go up against Lord Barok van Zieks, also known as the Reaper of the Old Bailey, because all who he prosecutes are damned. This should sound familiar to anyone who’s played an Ace Attorney game before. ‘The prosecution has never been defeated before’ is the implication, which would initially lead us to believe Van Zieks is another one of those prodigies. Sure enough, Susato points out he must be very talented, to which McGilded replies that Van Zieks is not talented, rather, he’s cursed. This sets the mood even further. With words like “Reaper” and “curse” being tossed around, we’re sooner reminded of a prosecutor like Simon Blackquill, who was a convicted murderer wielding psychological manipulation techniques. Either way, with the grim atmosphere set, Ryu is ushered into the courtroom before he can ask any more questions.

As a sidenote, McGilded really scored some negative points with this remark:

Feels a bit softened compared to how fan translations tackled that line, but a nasty jab all the same.

So anyway, entering the courtroom we get our first look at Van Zieks and if the foreshadowing in the Defendant Antechamber wasn’t already bad enough, he honors his eerie reputation.

So far, he’s meeting the requirements then. He’s intimidating and as a wealthy white man, he’s perfectly juxtaposed to Ryu, the rookie from another country. Meanwhile, the first micro-aggression of this trial is actually uttered by the judge:

Which also makes narrative sense. Ryu’s more practical goal isn’t to win the prosecution’s trust. Heck, he could get through any trial just fine with Van Zieks’s dislike. No, what he needs is to win over the judge and the members of the jury. For them to also hold prejudice but put that aside in order to side with the truth is another important end-game here. So let’s continue. Van Zieks also has something to say here:

Initially, the remark about Ryu’s eyes might read as a typical racist jab towards someone from the East, but he is in fact referring to the way Ryu’s eyes are ‘swimming’ when he’s nervous, as evidenced by the next lines. “They shroud your fear, your doubt, your trepidation… They run wild, clinging to some phantom notion of courage.” Van Zieks is saying that while Ryu puts up a brave front, his swimming eyes betray just how nervous and unsure of his cause he really is. So really, he’s targeting the fact that Ryu is new to the courts. He did, however, make a point of tossing the word “Nipponese” in there when he didn’t need to, drawing attention to Ryu’s race in a derogatory fashion.

After the jurors are introduced, something else of interest happens. The judge points out that Van Zieks hasn’t been seen in the courtroom in a number of years. The judge had assumed that Van Zieks had renounced his fame, to which he replies with the following:

This is a very telling line. We learn several things. Firstly, Van Zieks had retired, and secondly, he doesn’t seem to think too highly of his title of Reaper. If he did, he would have gloated. To describe his reputation as infamy implies negative associations with this ‘curse’ that McGilded spoke of. Putting these two things together, one might conclude he retired because of this curse. When asked why he’s returned to the courts, he says that he’ll leave that to the judge’s imagination. So there’s hints of a backstory already being tossed in before the trial’s even properly kicked off.

Which it does now. So the opening statement happens as always and witnesses are brought in, but once it’s done Ryu interjects to say that he doesn’t understand the circumstances. ‘How could the witnesses have seen the inside of a moving carriage’? It shocks the entire courtroom and Van Zieks is the one to speak:

“-But you’re here in London yourself. Are you really so ignorant about our omnibuses? Tell me, my Nipponese friend… Have you even travelled in an omnibus?”

I have to be honest, I struggled to pinpoint just how I felt about these remarks. Sure, I can overanalyze this, looking at how the words “I’d read-” imply he doesn’t know the following sentiment to be true and therefore doesn’t feel confident enough to say something like “I knew-”... But it doesn’t change that he’s being scummy here. In a roundabout way, he’s still saying Japan is far less civilised than Britain and that Ryu is extra ignorant for not knowing about omnibuses when he’s in London. So basically, he gets scumbag points for this. But then there’s…:

Which is just a basic jab at Ryu’s intelligence. It’s the sort of remark we’d get from every single prosecutor. I think even Klavier would say this sort of line with a smile on his face.

But definitely more scumbag points here, because this was a direct attack in more ways than one. Particularly the word “stray” was uncalled for. CEO of Racism, indeed. Something very interesting happens when the knife gets pulled into the story halfway into the first cross-examination, though. When Ryu asks about it, Van Zieks replies with this:

He’s… actually being civil? (I doublechecked with Scarlet Study, and they are in agreement on the timid nature of this line, translating “yes, Counsel” as “Quite so”.) Instead, Van Zieks turns his attention to the fact that there’s an M on the sheath, directing all his offensive attitude towards McGilded. It gets even more curious when the last juror refuses to cast a guilty verdict, instead talking about what a good man she believes McGilded to be. Van Zieks says:

So he’s not only frustrated with McGilded now, he’s frustrated with the people of London for not knowing what sort of person McGilded really is. Van Zieks reveals he’s a dirty money lender who gained his fortune through corrupt means. He even takes the time to inform Ryu of this with the words “Your client is a shylock, sir!” Edit: I feel a need to address this: shylock is a word with antisemitic roots. It originally came from a Shakespeare play involving a very bad stereotype. It later evolved to have a more broad meaning basically synonymous to loan shark and I think that’s the context the localization means to use it in. There’s absolutely no indication of McGilded’s religious beliefs and even if there were, I highly doubt the localization would use that sort of slur. Still, it’s a very unfortunate choice of words and is sure to accidentally sour Van Zieks even more with some players.

With that, the last juror votes, the scale tips towards Guilty and Van Zieks assumes the trial to be over. He thanks the jurors for their work. Unfortunately, once Susato brings up the Summation Examination, Van Zieks gets very frustrated again. This happens:

IIII don’t know what to do with this line. On first glance, I didn’t think much of it and was even willing to consider it was a compliment. Then I thought it must’ve been passive aggressive somehow; that it’s the sort of thing he wouldn’t believe until he’d seen it with his own eyes. A friend directed me to the notion that it might be referencing a stereotype that ‘Eastern women are fierce’ because they were associated with, well, certain ‘paid services’. I don’t think I need to explain, I’m sure you understand what I mean. And if indeed that’s what Barok is insinuating, that’s a new low I never thought he’d reach. However, when you’ve finished the games and know that Barok was friends with a married Japanese man, it’s entirely possible that he’s remembering a story once told to him by Genshin Asogi. So this is either a bittersweet reminiscence or the most scumbag association he ever could’ve made, but I’m not sure we can ever prove which it is. Edit: As another option, it’s possible he’s referring to the Yamato Nadeshiko stereotype, if indeed it already held the ‘touch of iron’ aspect to it back in 1900. He proceeds to toast his hallowed chalice to “the enigmatic East” and to be honest, I’ve once again got nothing. All I know is that he once again drew attention to the defense’s race when he didn’t need to, so… Scumbag point. As a sidenote, in regards to the wine… I don’t count this as a humanizing trait. The same applies to the leg slam. These are animations meant to add some more lighthearted air and breathe more life into Van Zieks, so he doesn’t just stand there like a statue. They’re just quirks meant to have him stand out from other characters. So yeah, fun as the wine and leg slam animations are, they don’t count in the redemption requirements. Anyway, Van Zieks mocks the age of Susato’s book, saying that judging by its bindings it must be fifty years old. Considering the context of the conversation, this isn’t out of bounds. The defense is using ‘outdated’ information on the law, so he points that out. Any prosecutor would’ve done it like this. Simon Blackquill likely would’ve offered to shred that outdated tome to bits for Susato. Van Zieks does toss in a “Hmph, typical Nipponese” later though, which earns him one more scumbag point. Van Zieks continues to dismiss the Summation Examination, but the judge overrules him and allows it. Law is law, after all! And this is what I meant in my previous post when I said it’s satisfying to see Ryu use actual British law against Van Zieks. Ryu is using a perfectly legitimate technique to win the jurors over, and as Susato tells him, he can only do it by turning the jurors against one another with facts. He can’t appeal to them, he can only have them see sense. Which is difficult, because some jurors are more prejudiced than others:

… Yeah. Uh. Calling Ryu a “Dark Jinx” is pretty awful. Scumbag points for Juror No. 1! Meanwhile, Juror No. 4 keeps us updated on Barok’s actions throughout this trial:

Wow. Typical prosecutor behavior, though. Regardless, Ryu manages to win them all over in the end. With enough of the scales set back to not-guilty, the trial is allowed to continue, which leads to this:

Bye, hallowed chalice. A fun animation to keep things fresh and show us that the trial is about to take a turn. Once again, nothing new. We’ve seen prosecutors lose their patience before. What does interest me, though, is that Barok doesn’t direct physical frustration towards the defense. Remember: Franziska snaps a whip at Phoenix, Godot throws coffee at his head, Blackquill sends a hawk to attack the defense or uses that aijutsu slicing move, Nahyuta throws restricting beads… These were all direct physical attacks. Van Zieks, much like Edgeworth and Klavier, directs his frustration more inward and as a result he destroys his own property.

He succeeds in intimidating Ryu, though. Van Zieks explains that he kept silent, as is the norm during Examination Summation, but makes it clear that he considers it a charade all the same.

Van Zieks has been a pretty good gentleman towards the jury up until now, speaking to them politely despite that one remark about having their head in the clouds. Now that he’s seeing them ‘buy into Ryu’s stories’, as one might describe it, he’s getting frustrated with them. Maybe he’s even frustrated they’re choosing the defense’s side over his own.

He removes his cloak, entering what he says to be the next round of their ‘battle’. More typical prosecutor behavior, this. I’m not sure there’s an underlying thought to this, other than to indicate to the audience that ‘things have gotten serious’. When the next bit of testimony is going on, I noticed something odd. Both Fairplay and Furst testify to having seen blood on McGilded’s hands, to which Van Zieks says:

“... Reported that there was no trace of blood on Mr. McGilded’s gloved hands.” So in a way, by establishing this fact, he’s helping the defense and going against what the witnesses are saying. It doesn’t help the prosecution in any way at all.

The trial continues on, with Van Zieks uttering things like “My Nipponese friend” and “my learned friend from the East” and lord knows what else… I suppose to soften the harshness of the original wording a bit and make Van Zieks just a bit less dislikable? Edit: Tumblr user @beevean​ has pointed out that “my learned friend” is an actual term used in courts of law. There’s a tradition (also employed in British courts of law) that when addressing either the court or the judge, a barrister refers to the opposing counsel using the respectful term, "my learned friend". Of course, it can be said with an air of passive aggression and pretending to be respectful to the court while shamelessly disrespecting it is something Barok has always done, so the addition of “my learned friend” to the localization text is amazingly in-character. Then of course we have:

This is both a scumbag remark and foreshadowing. Naturally, those playing the game for the first time won’t recognize it as the latter and therefore take it as nothing more than a harsh blow. Things spiral even further out of control when he starts talking about how people who claim the island nations of the Far East have a learning and culture of their own use those terms ill-advisedly. He also uses the words “artless backwater” and really, this is the low point of the trial right here when it comes to prejudice. Van Zieks is just plain lashing out with these sort of jabs.

Eventually, McGilded is dragged onto the witness stand to testify about whether or not there was another passenger aboard the omnibus. McGilded admits that there was, and Van Zieks snaps at him some more for using convenient excuses. Ryu is forgotten here for a moment. The whole smoke bomb thing happens, Van Zieks confers with McGilded and Gina in his own chambers, then the trial resumes. McGilded testifies, then Gina testifies… The jury votes not-guilty, buying into McGilded’s story about protecting a poor young pickpocket and Van Zieks loses it. He slams his heel down on the bench, pointing out that this is why he doesn’t like the jury system; because emotions are ruling where evidence and facts ought to be paramount. He points out while the cubbyhole Gina had been hiding in was empty now, it had been full of the coachman’s belongings during the police investigation. Someone tampered with the omnibus. This is where things get interesting, because Van Zieks addresses Ryu:

He’s giving Ryu the benefit of the doubt here. He’s offering an option for Ryu to be truthful about this matter. And that’s curious, because any defense attorney would naturally say what’s best for his client- or so it’s assumed. It puts Ryu in a difficult position for sure, but for some reason Van Zieks put the question forward anyway. The game responds as follows:

For the sake of argument, I attempted all three options. So when Ryu says he didn’t look, Van Zieks says: “Hm… Perhaps I credited you with too much intelligence.”

So when feigning ignorance, Van Zieks is kind of a scumbag about it. He is correct in his expectation that any attorney worth his badge would thoroughly examine the details of the evidence, but he didn’t need to be such a jerk about it. Now, when outright lying and saying it was empty, Van Zieks instead says:

The lines are very similar, which is an interesting note. It adds a feel of these responses being 'rehearsed', in a way. Just a default for him to fall back to. But the real kicker comes when Ryu tells the truth and says it wasn’t empty. Van Zieks is actually speechless at first with no more than a “...!” Clearly, he wasn’t expecting Ryu to respond like this. Everyone in court is baffled, McGilded gets angry… Van Zieks is a bit rattled now.

“Your task is to defend the man in the stand. Why would you say something to compromise his position?”

So really, it seems as if Van Zieks had only ever offered the question to Ryu with pessimistic intentions. He too had assumed there was only one answer the defense could give and was prepared for just that with his silly little wine analogies, only to be shocked when Ryu defies his expectations. Ryu confesses that he’s not entirely sure on where he stands in the matter, to which Van Zieks replies with “... Interesting.” 

So now the jury members are doubting themselves again, with some offering guilty verdicts. Van Zieks decides to honor the ‘Scales of Justice’ once more now that they’re back in his favor, like the hypocrite he is. Gina testifies, Ryu points out an inconsistency, Van Zieks takes that opportunity to turn the tables back in his favor by implying Gina is a liar… He passive aggressively thanks Ryu for saving him considerable trouble and whatnot with some more “my learned Nipponese friend” remarks in there… Ryu turns the tables once more by insisting the victim came into the omnibus through the skylight, Van Zieks demands evidence and points out that furthermore, if indeed such a thing had happened, the witnesses on the roof would’ve seen it. McGilded hops into the conversation to imply that the witnesses themselves were the killers, which sends the court into a frenzy. Both Van Zieks and the judge shift the responsibility of the accusation towards Ryu, even though he never said a word to directly accuse the witnesses. Kind of a douchey move. Barok even states that Ryu’s ‘command of the English tongue must be wanting’, since

Yeahhh, that's pretty unfair. McGilded was the one who dropped that implication. However, since the judge basically accuses Ryu of the same thing, it’s a narrative choice to warn Ryu he needs to anticipate where his reasoning will lead him. Fairplay and Furst testify, pandemonium ensues. McGilded eventually gets what he wants when it’s revealed the skylight can open and there’s blood in there. Van Zieks once again turns his attention to McGilded:

He knows McGilded is at the root of all this tomfoolery and evidence manipulation. McGilded is the real enemy here, in Van Zieks’s eyes. The conversation shows this by having Van Zieks point out that he’s well aware of McGilded’s involvement in dubious matters and that evidence is often ‘adapted’ to suit this guy’s stories. And now, once again, he turns his attention to Ryu. Once again, he’s giving the defense the benefit of the doubt:

The game gives you the illusion of choice here. If you choose to say it’s ‘out of the question’ that the evidence was tampered with, Ryu will refuse to say it out loud. If you say it’s entirely possible, Ryu will admit to that.

This is probably baffling to Van Zieks. It would’ve been so easy for Ryu to insist the tampering couldn’t have happened, but he doesn’t. The game won’t even let him. No matter what you choose, Van Zieks is clued in on the fact that Ryu doesn’t condone the deceit that McGilded is resorting to. But it gets even better, because a short time later, we get:

Another option to either draw attention to forgery, or to feign ignorance. Once again, I chose both options for argument’s sake, but having Ryu say he has no idea doesn’t get us anywhere. Susato will instead object to say it for him. With “I have an inkling”, Ryu says it himself. Van Zieks once again confesses, in his own words, that he’s caught off guard.

Ryu clarifies that he thinks the blood stain inside the omnibus is decisive evidence, but he can’t say for certain whether it’s genuine. McGilded loses it and by this point, is outright branding Van Zieks an enemy. Since the player at this point doesn't know whether McGilded is guilty or not, it leaves Van Zieks in a bit of narrative limbo. One might think: 'if the prosecutor is so intent on taking down a murderer, shouldn't we be on his side? Is he perhaps not as bad as he seems?' Unfortunately, McGilded points out that recollection and memories don’t matter, only evidence does. And… Well.

Which means they can’t rule on a guilty verdict and will have to let McGilded go. Van Zieks admits that he has no more witnesses or evidence to present. He’s out of options. As a formality, the judge asks the defense’s closing statement and we get one last option. Do we believe him to be guilty or not-guilty? When claiming he’s innocent, Van Zieks says:

It seems he means “abject” in the sense of “without pride/respect/dignity for oneself”, which… You know, is fair. By this point it’s very clear that McGilded is guilty, and since Ryu has already admitted that the evidence may be forged, insisting otherwise is indeed pretty spineless. Scumbag points to Van Zieks for continuing to draw attention to the fact that Ryu is from Japan, though.

Let’s instead just admit that we can’t say for certain McGilded is innocent. Unfortunately, we don’t see Van Zieks react to this, which is a bummer because this could’ve been very telling. The judge questions Ryu’s sanity (no joke) and McGilded laughs because it doesn’t matter; it was just a formality anyway. The judge scolds Van Zieks, saying that his case was flawed and it was his job to keep the evidence secure. Instead of objecting, Van Zieks just outright takes the blame for this and apologizes. Very interesting reaction, here. He stops pointing the finger to McGilded, he doesn’t attempt to accuse anyone else… He just admits his performance was flawed. Ryu tries to interject here:

(A badly-timed screenshot if I’ve ever seen one.) Ryu is making an attempt here to defend Van Zieks, the guy who has built up like 20 scumbag points by now. Ryu sincerely doesn’t hold a grudge against him. That’s very interesting. It doesn’t matter, though. The judge won’t hear of it, Ryu thinks it’s unfair, Van Zieks warns McGilded that this isn’t over and then we get the not-guilty verdict.

Hurray??? Profit??? It’s a victory that’s bound to leave the player feeling conflicted and jarred.

But after all’s said and done, we get one last cutscene to establish just how ominous Van Zieks really is. The omnibus is on fire, someone is inside and we know McGilded went into the courtroom earlier to investigate the omnibus in question. So really, by putting two and two together we can already guess what’s going on here. Van Zieks approaches the scene and watches silently.

It’s a good reminder to us that every defendant he prosecutes is ‘damned’ and he’s called the Reaper for a reason. Really puts the finishing touch on the eerie undertones of his character.

All in all, a pretty typical first time against a new prosecutor. Now I just want to draw attention to the fact that the first time we face Van Zieks in court… he’s actually on the right side of the courtroom and Ryu is not. Van Zieks presumably specifically returned to the court after those five years to target McGilded, as he knows about this guy’s shady reputation when it comes to ‘adapting’ evidence. Barok is 'cursed' in such a way that every defendant he faces is damned. So long as he stands as the prosecutor, McGilded can’t get away with his crimes. No matter how much forgery is done, the Reaper will go after McGilded and it seems Van Zieks was banking on this happening.

He likely also expected Ryu to have been bought off by McGilded; to say whatever’s convenient for his case. Turns out, Ryu is actually a man of integrity who’s invested in the truth and near the end of the trial, Barok has seen evidence of this. So what will happen next? We’ll have to play The Clouded Kokoro and find out! Stay tuned!

[duckprintspress]

Synonym Stumpers: Walk

Sometimes, finding the perfect synonym can feel impossible, especially since a thesaurus (or a synonym post on Tumblr) will list words that have similar meanings without providing information on how similar those words actually are. Figuring out the nuances and subtle variations between umpteen words that all mean almost-but-not-quite the same thing can be one heck of a stumper but never fear: you want to find the perfect word and we are here to help!

On this edition of Synonym Stumpers - Walk! How many times can you say someone walked across a room before it gets boring? Fortunately, there are lots of awesome words that mean “walk.” Unfortunately, they all mean something a smidge different - and those variations can mean the difference between an evocative turn of phrase and a clunker that makes your readers go, “put away your thesaurus already!” Here’s our handy-dandy guide to our favorite synonyms for “walk,” and what each means!

Note that no one list can be exhaustive, and in certain contexts all of these words make sense, can be used, and might have subtly different meanings. In the end, the best way to learn the nuances of words is to read extensively. No thesaurus or list of synonyms, no matter how thoroughly annotated, can give a complete sense of all the possible usages of a word! 

Note the second, the writer of this list primarily speaks US Northeast English. Other dialects may have subtle differences in these words.

Words on this list: amble, ambulate, constitutional, go on/by foot, hike, hoof it/leg it, limp, lumber, march, meander, mosey, pace, pad, plod, saunter, shamble, shuffle, stalk, step, stomp, stump, stride, stroll, strut, toddle, traipse, tramp, troop, trudge, turn

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amble: ambling can have a few different implications. It suggests a certain aimlessness - “she ambled around the garden” - or, alternatively, a casual attitude - “we ambled through the mall.” Ambling is the opposite of purposeful or rapid walking - if someone is described as ambling, they are unhurried, calm, at ease, likely not walking in a straight line, and probably easily distractable (eg, by seeing a pretty flower or a store they’d like to visit in the mall). When someone ambles, nothing is urgent and all is well. Alternatively, in specific instances, ambling can imply that something is wrong with a person - for example, they may be drunk or wounded. It’s a close synonym of meander and stroll, and related to shambling.

ambulate: yes, ambulate means walk. No, you shouldn’t use it in most cases, unless having your character sound like a thesaurus is intentional, or you are describing certain kinds of limited motion, especially those involving a movement aid/assistive device such as a cane or a foot scooter. For example, a character walking with crutches might ambulate across a room. A robot might self-describe their movement as ambulation. However, in most contexts it will sound stilted, old fashioned, or weird.

constitutional: a constitutional is a type of walk specifically undertaken to improve or maintain health - exercise, but specifically walking as exercise. The term is dated, but would be appropriate in many Western historical settings in the 18th and 19th centuries. “The professor left to take his daily constitutional” is an example of usage. 

go on/by foot or travel on/by foot: one of our relatively straightforward synonyms. It specifically implies a mode of travel. It would be odd to say someone “went by foot across the room,” but more appropriate if describing how a journey is undertaken. It can be a little stilted, though, or old-fashioned. In a lot of contexts it’s probably better to just say walk. “How did you go to the store?” “I traveled by foot.” That sounds weird. “How did you go to the store?” “I walked.” That doesn’t sound weird. “How are we getting to the show?” “Oh, we’ll go by foot.” That also doesn’t sound weird. Just pay attention to your context.

hike: hiking always means the same as walking, but it implies a slog or a trek - a certain ruggedness, if you will. The most obvious context is when one is walking in the forest or climbing a mountain, but “hike” is also appropriate when the destination is far away or off the beaten track - for example, “yeah, I went down to Sal’s yesterday, that was quite a hike!” A person might hike around a lake, hike up a mountain, or hike at a state park, but unless the purpose is intentionally ironic, no one would ever hike to the local corner store or across a room. It is a close synonym to striding.

hoof it or leg it: these are both colloquial ways of saying walk, and make the most sense used in dialog, rather than in description, though it would depend on the point of view character and the type of narrative (as in, first person versus third person). Both imply a certain haste, while still meaning walking. “She legged it to the barn to keep up with the horses” would potentially make sense as a description. Alternatively, “should we drive to the store?” “naw, let’s just hoof it” would be a common way to use this.

limp: limping specifically indicates that someone is having trouble with one of their legs and is therefore walking unevenly, perhaps in a stumbling fashion. They might be injured, or have long-term damage, or use a movement aid, etc. Limping will always imply unevenness of gait. Be very careful using limp as an adjective to describe a person (“the limp man”) as this is increasingly considered ableist, similar to the words “lame” or “gimpy.”

lumber: not to be confused with “lumber” as in wood, lumbering is a plodding, heavy way of walking. It also implies that the person doing it is large in size, and sometimes has a negative/stereotyping connotation that the person doing it is a little dull/unintelligent. Because of that negative (and unreasonable) implication that a large person is automatically stupid, use this one sparingly and only in contexts where it’s clear that the second isn’t the intention (unless your goal is to show that your narrating/PoV/speaking character is the kind of jerk who would describe someone that way, in which case...go for it.) Lumbering is similar to plodding, trudging, and shambling.

march: marching, in its more obvious usage, refers to the way that soldiers in rank walk - high, purposeful steps. However, it can also be used in more casual contexts to suggest a certain type of obstinate stomping. “Furious, he marched across the room and slapped his hand on the table,” is an example of the second usage. In the second usage, march is a close synonym of stomp.

meander: meandering is specifically aimless, casual wandering. It also suggests that a person isn’t going in a straight line. Think of meandering in the way it’s used to describe a stream - a meandering stream has a slow flow in a course with many twists and turns and no purpose behind its course. When used as a term for walking, that’s what meandering implies - a lack of intentionality and haste. It’s a close synonym of ambling and similar to strolling.

mosey: moseying is similar to sauntering, and suggest a certain casual way of walking and an easy attitude. This word is specifically associated with the Old West and cowboy stories, and it’s easiest to imagine it in those terms - when someone has spent a lot of time on a horse, there’s a certain loose-boned way of walking, shoulders back, torso relaxed, pelvis scooped forward, legs a little bowed. That’s a mosey. In most other contexts, mosey would be a very odd word choice. Even other settings with many horses (such as a fantasy or medieval or Mongolian environment) using moseying would be out of place. In most contexts, it would be more appropriate to use sauntering or strolling.

pace: pacing, when used as a movement word (as opposed to its meaning of “keeping pace”) refers specifically to walking back and forth through a regular course. Pacing is most often associated with someone being deep in thought, anxious, or anticipatory - when someone walks back and forth repeatedly across a space, that’s pacing. It can also be used to refer to, for example, a guard walking an established, consistent patrol. “Paces” is another word for “steps,” though it’s a little old fashioned - in this regard, it’s similar to strides.

pad: padding is specifically walking softly and carefully, and also usually implies that the person who is padding is either barefoot or in socks. It would be pretty odd for someone to pad while in shoes, since it’s very difficult for someone to move quietly in shoes. However, unlike stalking, padding has a benign implication. Someone might stalk to quietly sneak up on someone, whereas they’d be more likely to pad if they’re trying to be silent so as not to wake up a friend. 

plod: plodding is a heavy step, often associated with drudgery and exhaustion. For example, a manual laborer carrying a heavy load could be described as plodding, or someone whose steps have slowed as they come near the end of a long journey might be plodding. It’s a word with weight to it, and fatigue, and slowness bourne specifically of being so loaded down that one can hardly go farther. Plodding also has a hint of determination in it - “even though they were exhausted, they plodded on.” It’s similar to lumbering, trudging, and shambling.

saunter: while a lot of words for walking imply a certain awkwardness or fatigue, sauntering is the opposite - a saunter is a cocky, confident, pleased way of walking. It might be accompanied by a saucy wink. The implication to “sauntering” is that the person doing it is carefree, unworried, and unhurried. It’s similar to strolling, but with the addition of utmost self-assurance.

shamble: there’s a good reason shambling is the word we use most for zombies - it heavily implied disordered, clumsy movement. Consider the other meaning of shambles - that someone or something is a mess - and translate that over to a type of walking, and you’ll have the right idea. Shambling communicates hunched shoulders, uneven steps, and difficulty moving - that can be due to undeath, or old age, or injury, or fatigue, but whichever one the writer intends, shambling will include those connotations. It’s a close synonym with shuffle and similar to plodding and lumbering.

shuffle: similar to shambling, shuffling is a slow, stilted way of walking that suggests the person moving is having difficulty. Further, shuffling also specifically means that the person is not lifting their feet. They’re walking by kind of...sliding forward...and going very slowly, taking small steps. It’s most commonly associated with old age, and people who shuffle tend to have poor balance and to be easily challenge by obstructions, such as dips in the roads or stairs. Shuffling can also be caused by injury or extreme fatigue. It’s a close synonym of shambling.

stalk: stalking is a creeping, stealthy way of walking, most commonly associated with sneaking up on someone or something. It also often (but certainly not always!) has a negative connotation. In the same way that a criminal might stalk their victim (as in, following them, scaring them, calling them, doxxing them, etc.), a person who stalks as their way of walking is most likely trying to ambush someone or something. When it’s not directed at one person stalking another, it’s often linked with hunting - a hunter will stalk their prey. In its most benign, stalking could be someone trying to scare a friend; at its most violent, assassins stalk their victims.

step: this is one of the closer synonyms for walk, but it does have some subtle differences. Saying “she walked into the sunlight” would imply someone walked from a shadowed area into a brighter one and then continued; saying “she stepped into the sunlight” instead implies that someone emerged from a shadowed area into a brighter one and then stopped. That said, stepped is probably the most interchangeable with “walked,” though in some contexts it’ll sound awkward or overly formal. “She walked across the room” sounds more casual and modern than “she stepped across the room,” and while it’s hard to define the exact difference, the second suggests a certain intentionality and carefulness that just using “walked” doesn’t.

stomp: stomping is a lot like marching, but without the same military-precision connotation. A soldier marches; a toddler stomps. Stomping is also most likely loud and communicates anger, unhappiness, or frustration. Someone might stomp their feet to disperse some anger during a fight, for example. That said, as I indicated - the standard usage of “stomping” has a connotation of youth and unreasonableness, so if it’s used to describe a grown person, it can imply a certain juvenile inappropriateness to that person’s behavior. As such, use it carefully when describing an adult. If you don’t want to convey that the person is being petulant, it would be better to choose a different word. Stomping is similar to marching and tramping.

stump: though spelled very similarly to stomping, stumping is actually closer in meaning to limping than to stomping. Like stomping, stumping is a loud, heavy way of walking, but like limping, it implies some kind of balance issue that’s causing someone to walk unevenly. Stumping could, for example, apply to someone who has a club leg or peg leg or another historical form of prosthesis. Stumping also implies clumsiness, though, so be careful using it to apply to certain types of people because it could come off as ableist depending on the context.

stride: striding is a specific long-stepped way of walking, and includes the implication that the person who is striding is most likely tall. When used as a verb, striding will always suggest that a person is taking large, rapid steps within a deliberate way, most likely towards a destination (rather than aimlessly). When used as a noun, though, it can be a close synonym for step - “she took two steps” and “she took two strides” mean basically the same thing (though a stride is still longer - two steps would be shorter than two strides). As another way to consider a stride - in some fantasy and historical settings, “one stride” is used as a unit of measurement roughly equivalent to a yard in modern Imperial usage. It is a close synonym of hiking.

stroll: much like ambling, strolling is a casual, easy way of walking. Strolling is a little less aimless than ambling, though - “she strolled through the park” suggests that, even though she is not in a hurry, she’s also following a path and perhaps has a destination in mind. It’s still not very purposeful, but it’s a little more purposeful than meandering or ambling are. Because of how “stroll” has been used historical, it sometimes can conjure up an image of luxury and privilege - imagine an English gentleman, with his arm looped around his wife’s, and her other hand bearing a parasol. This doesn’t mean strolling shouldn’t be used in other contexts, but note that depending on those contexts, it can potentially be a little subversive - to suggest someone poor or who works very hard is strolling is to imply they have a leisure that they may not usually have access to. Strolling is a close synonym of ambling and similar to meandering.

strut: peacocks strut. Strutting is a cocky, over-confident way of walking and includes the connotation that the person (or animal) doing it is trying to show off. In that sense, it’s also often used insultingly - “just look at that jerk, strutting about like he owns the place!” However, it’s not always negative, and can be used to suggest someone is showing off in a more positive sense, like they’re proud of an accomplishment - “she put together an outfit she loved and strutted her stuff at the club.” When used as a direct replacement for walking, it would also connote a higher step, a stiff back - a certain formality (potentially to the point of ridiculousness) to the way that the person is moving.

toddle: intentionally similar to the noun “toddler,” toddling is most closely associated with the way young children or animals move when they don’t quite have control of their limbs yet. It’s clumsy, stumbling, and the person toddling likely falls a lot or needs to be supported. When not used in the specific sense of a youngster, it can apply to (for example) someone who has just stood after a long time bedridden, or who has woken up and hasn’t gotten their bearings yet. When used specifically as “toddle off,” it can be used in dialog (or, in rare instances, description, depending on the point of view character) to say someone is leaving. “Well, if we’re done here, I’ll just toddle off!” is a usage that doesn’t imply clumsiness, but rather suggests someone is leaving casually and in an unhurried manner.

traipse: traipsing is a light-hearted, fleet way of moving, closest to skipping, which isn’t on this list because skipping isn’t walking. Traipsing is bright and happy, casual and a little quick but not in a hasty/hurried sense. It’s often associated with youth. When I imagine someone traipsing, they’ve got a bright smile, a swinging skirt, and maybe a balloon - they’re joyful and spirited and their steps are carefree.

tramp: tramping is a close synonym for stomping, and suggests heavy steps. However, it doesn’t have stomping’s connotation of petulance; instead, tramping is more focused on the firmness and volume of the walking. However, because the noun “tramp” refers to a vagrant, homeless person, or someone very messy, it’s wise to use this word carefully where it’s clear that’s not the intention. While that kind of messiness is not part of the meaning of tramp as a verb, the words will still potentially evoke each other when used in narrative, so it’s best used sparingly.

troop: while it can be similar to marching - especially when used to apply to a group of people - trooping doesn’t have as much of the military implication (even though it’s the same word as “troop” = “soldier). Trooping is a steady walk, and implies covering some distance - it’s similar to plodding, though with less implication of fatigue.

trudge: trudging is very close in meaning to plodding, though it has a slightly greater implication of effort. For example, “he trudged through the deep mud” gives the sense that it’s very difficult, slow going, whereas “plodding through deep mud” would sound a little off because plodding lacks the aspect of the walking itself being a slog (Neither would actually be wrong, though, trudged would just be the better of the two to use in that context). It’s a close synonym for plodding, lumbering, but unlike those, it’s farther from shambling.

turn: “take a turn” is another historical term similar to constitutional. It’s dated for modern usage, but to “take a turn” is to go for a walk, though instead of having health-related implications, turns are more for pleasure.

Words I excluded from this post because they’re a little too far from “walk” but may still be a good word for you: advance, canter, escort, exercise, file, foot, go, hit the road, jaunt, knock about, lead, leg, locomote, parade, patrol, perambulate, promenade, prance, race, ramble, roam, rove, run, schlepp, scuff, slog, tour, traverse, tread, trek, wander, wend one’s way. All of these are great words but they’re not close synonyms for the literally act of walking.

(and a final apology...this is our first synonym stumper post and it got significantly longer than anticipated and I don’t have the brain to edit it right now...let me know if you see any mistakes, disagree with my personal sense of these words, want to add another word, or have any questions!)

[drawnecromancy]

some headcanons about the ants, because brain worms. Under a cut because it's long as hell lmao

- while they are fairly resistant to the elements and don't need clothing, wearing clothing indicates a certain status in the hive.

- People with authority tend to have clothing.

- Jewelry is rare, their island being scarce on precious gems/metals besides the glowing quartz (used to light the hive and mark pathways) and thus reserved for higher ranked people.

- such people include the Emperor, his wives, his direct descendants.

- Asbeth specifically enjoys jewelry that contains any gem that reflects light : he is part crow and therefore the rule of Oooh, shiny ! takes place. Amecareth usually lets him have the shiny small things.

- some specific jobs requiring protection might entitle the worker to wear specific clothing.

- The darker one's clothing is, the higher ranked they are : it is simply hard to keep a good black shade black without it becoming grey over several washes. Currently, only two people are known to wear black : Amecareth himself and his only son currently living in the hive, Asbeth.

- The most common colors are grey, earthy yellows, reds and blues. Other colors do exist, but mostly from goods traded with other species, thus rendering them hard to access for most workers (who do not care).

- the hivemind is kind of like a huge discord server with Amecareth as its admin. He can and will force others to do things, however, one assigned to a role can perform their task however they want it as long as it ends up being done.

- Asbeth in particular is noted to have trouble navigating the anthill : i suppose that this is because he is not fully ant and therefore cannot smell the pheromones they must use to navigate around. Rest in pieces birdman. The guy just carries around a mental map of the whole place all the time

- Under all the chitin, the ants do have flesh and blood because fuck science, and it's purple. This would explain why many of Amecareth's hybrid children end up being purple.

- Literally everyone in the hive knows that Amecareth isn't really interested in his own species, but he gets the job of "getting the whole hive food" done, so no one really cares.

- The hive and its empire are mostly spread because Amecareth strikes deals with other species, often in favor of the ants, because when you're overpowered you can do that without much consequence.

- Allyship is often obtained through, not political weddings, but political... child making. Yet, it works well enough that the hive doesn't have to worry about base materials, and the children of Amecareth often end up in charge of wherever they were born (often off-island).

- Asbeth may have siblings that rule over the bird-people in Amecareth's name, in good empire fashion.

- Most of Amecareth's problems with humans is that they killed a child of his once and he never forgave them for it. He would not care otherwise - the hive has everything it needs.

- It didn't have everything it needed 500 years ago which is why he did try to get a half human kid to make them rule humans. Of course when the 5 year old was murdered, it didn't work out.

- This is the root of the war : humans showed him he couldn't do everything he wanted just because he has a kid somewhere, but also they murdered that kid.

- Since Amecareth knows there is a prophecy about a kingdomless princess and a child of light killing him, he is usually very wary of destroying entire kingdoms.

- Asbeth does not know about the prophecy, so he destroyed all of Shola, thus helping the prophecy advance (Kira becoming the princess with no kingdom).

- The fact that Amecareth has a name picked out for Kira (Narvath) implies that he names his children himself, and might actually like them, instead of only seeing them as tools (granted, he doesn't behave like a loving father to Asbeth, but also he's an entire fucking ant.)

- The hivemind can reach very far, but is still harder to access when across oceans. Thus, Amecareth's children all over the empire can and do send him written messages.

- The ants don't like water because they're not very great at swimming, so they avoid bathing in the sea. However, they do wash themselves, albeit without bathing or showering. They usually use damp cloths, with or without soap depending on how dirty they are.

- This is also the reason why Kira freaked out the first time Armène tried to make her take a bath. Now, she's used to it, but I'd love to see any ants' reaction if she showed them how to bathe. They'd die a little inside.

- Asbeth is the only child that Amecareth currently taught magic to. He is therefore the second most powerful member of the hive, and has good reason to imagine that he will take over after Amecareth dies... If Narvath does not ruin his plans.

- If Kira hadn't been severed from the hive at birth by her mother, she'd probably know how to speak ant, and the entire continent would be in SO MUCH SHIT. Also her name would be Narvath i guess lol