#i gotta watch this movie if only to have a justifiable reason to have this printed and up on my wall. holy shit

[gffa]

I saw your post defending the way Jedi adopt the children/accept them into their culture, and I absolutely loved it! It was so well-informed, and you are right: It is all there in the original content!

I find it very ironic that many people spew these lies about the Jedi when that’s exactly what the Empire did. Iirc, this argument of Jedi being “kidnappers” was actually fueled by Emperor Palpatine and the Empire in their campaign against the Jedi. They wanted to discredit them and make the people turn against them so that they could erase them all more easily. So I find it very ironic that these lies are now being upheld by some people as the truth. (Really, have people forgotten the Empire was created bases on the Nazi’s and their own racist strategies?)

You are not inmune to the Empire’s propaganda.

Please correct me if I’m wrong. I’m not as good at pulling examples and proof from all the SW content as you are.

Hi! Thank you for the very sweet ask! Navigating stuff in fandom like this can be difficult at times, because there has to be room for compassion and tolerance for disagreement, like it's fine if people disagree with my views, I'm not your mom, I'm not telling you want to do or say, especially since this is fiction, these are made up space stories. But there also has to be room to understand that sometimes our commentary on fictional stories are echoes of reflection of real world attitudes--we can't just go around spewing racist, sexist, homophobic commentary and be like, "It's just fiction, you can't get upset!" There's no easy line for any of this, no single hard set in stone rule for when it's truly just fiction and when it's an echo of a real world attitude, especially in Star Wars, which often draws influence from a lot of non-Western sources and traditional Western sources. (My general rule of thumb is: I think it's fair to criticize those things through the influences they have, but if your criticism is then ended with, "So that's why we shouldn't have or acknowledge any Buddhism/Black people/queer people/women in Star Wars!" then fuck right on off with that.) And I also understand a lot of the anti-Jedi attitudes (or at least what I've personally experienced of them) because I've talked a bunch of times about how I started out as pretty Jedi-critical myself! I did the whole, "They had grown stagnant and refused to evolve with the galaxy, so they needed to be wiped out." thing because nobody had framed it explicitly as what it was: a genocide. It wasn't until a friend and I were talking and they mentioned that lens of it that it just sort of crashed down on me, oh, that's literally what it was and genocide is never justifiable. I did the whole, "The Jedi failed Anakin and taught him to repress his emotions." thing as well, because I saw it all over the place in fandom and just automatically folded it into my view, until I went back and actually watched Lucas' movies and Lucas' animation (first six movies + first six seasons of TCW) and read his interviews, which blew me onto my ass when I saw Obi-Wan being supportive of Anakin, when I saw Anakin not listening to the advice he was given, when I saw that Jedi were expressing emotion all over the place, when I saw they were respecting other Force traditions in the galaxy. I can't speak to why so many people think badly of the Jedi, there's probably a thousand reasons and I'm only vaguely aware of like half of them, but I do think that it's often unpopular to promote the idea of emotional regulation already being achieved, instead of something to be struggled with. I think we're all primed by a lot of mainstream media saying that an explosion of anger is what will save the day. I think there's so much anger in the world today that we're all angry and being told to let go of it feels really insulting at times. (But, as someone who has lost years of my life when I was younger to anger, I gotta say, I am so much better off having let go of as much of that shit as I can. It was poison in my veins, carrying that anger around. I lost so many friendships and opportunities and just time to being miserably mad about stuff.)

I'm getting off topic of the kidnapping aspect about the Jedi, but a lot of it starts to swirl together in what I've experienced (especially people who try to put this stuff on my posts--thankfully, that's died down/I block the people who won't respect boundaries) and so I kind of bounce from one aspect of it to another.

I do think it's good to talk about these things--both from "it's fun to analyze the content of the story on a meta level" perspective and "here's how this echoes into and from the real world" perspective, like I enjoy saying, okay, here's what's actually said in the movies/TCW, but also I think talking about how the Jedi are Buddhist influenced is important because that means they're going to have values that are meant to be reflected in that and Western fandom has a really big problem of being derisive about non-Western influences or automatically saying they're wrong. (I come from anime/manga fandoms, let me tell you, it's a big problem.)

And, yeah, in a way where it's really awful, but I think one of the most well-done things Disney's Star Wars has done is that it's really focused on showing that the Empire was a fascist one and the propaganda they used about the Jedi are ones that are super relevant to the conversation.

[valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn]

I will not stand for Stephen Strange slander like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VIlrrQndG8

Well, that's a load of bullshit. I get not liking a character but this is such a basic misunderstanding of Stephen that I don't even know where to start.

I'm seeing a pattern lately in fandom that is starting to worry me a bit. I see many fans listing the mistakes of the heroes and using that to claim they're not actually heroes because they made a mistake or they were wrong once in the past. It's a weird belief that unless the heroes are perfect and do everything right, one single mistake is enough to condemn them. Or not even a mistake, if they take action and the outcome is anything but ideal and perfect and results in zero casualties, these fans will tear them apart.

Another thing that worries me is how many fans seem to be so against disobeying rules. I've seen this in discussions regarding CW, Wanda and now Stephen. A character not following rules is enough reason to be called a villain in these fans' eyes. But that only applies to the heroes though. The villains who do in fact break those rules are usually justified and coddled, their intentions assumed to be better than they really are and they're almost automatically made sympathetic by these fans.

Related to that, I've also noticed a lot of talk about the heroes sacrificing something big to save someone, and these fans wondering why would they even bother to do that. Like OP wonders why Stephen would get into so much trouble to save America's life when she's not that important and incursions are far more relevant. It blows my mind that these fans need to have it explained to them that yes, heroes do in fact save people. That's the whole point of their existence and the people they save don't need to be VIPs or crucial to the story, even if it's just one civilian... you gotta save them too. Do we really need to explain this now?

In Stephen's case, the whole point of his first movie is that he has to learn and let go of his need for control and his unmovable beliefs. It's to get him out of his comfort zone so that he will be open to other people's views so that he will see beyond himself. The OP just lists his mistakes and claims those are the only things that define him while at the same time completely ignoring every single time he showed he had learnt from them.

The NWH hate doesn't surprise me, Stephen was misunderstood heavily by a lot of fans in that movie, but I gotta say what bothers me the most is that OP seems to believe everyone suffered from the Snap... and what, Stephen didn't? The one man who had to watch 14 million different outcomes, who had to sacrifice his own life and had the weight of the entire universe upon his shoulders, who is most likely traumatized by it, he didn't suffer? No empathy at all for him?

And what's worse, OP blames Stephen for Wanda's behaviour. Lovely. Not the Darkhold, no, it's Stephen's fault. He should have reasoned with her. It's not like he literally tried to do that in the garden. 🙄

But this thing OP says is like a slap in the face: "Strange learnt nothing from any of this. He is still going to break the rules and cause problems because, ultimately, he's not really the one paying the price."

He's not the one paying the price. Unfuckingbelievable.

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

Watched this with the oomf @yurisorcerer, I came across it multiple years ago and cannot remember where (my best guess is it qualifying as a magical girl anime for the mahou shoujo achievement on MAL graph?) and just yesterday as I was clearing my plan to watch for funsies I decided to torrent this so I could have it watched and thus remove another ptw entry.

It was fucking incredible! What the fuck! Like I didn't go into this expecting it to be bad I had no preconceived notions of what it was even about it's just the score was kinda low and I was like "if it's good it'll be like 6 or 7 good" but nah this shit was awesome, awesome to such a degree that I'm almost mad I hadn't already seen it before, and now I'm mad that it released so long ago that the fucking blu-ray is long out of print and sold for way more money than I'm willing to part with. Joy to be found at least in having shared this experience with a friend whom, spoilers for her presumed post (unless she posts before I do anyway) also really enjoyed it.

Elaborating a bit more specifically, I'd really say this movie is split into three acts. The intro gives us an overview of lead pair Dual and Dorothy, how their setting works, and how it's about to be changed with the introduction of Remo. The start's cool if a little slow, but there's magical girl adjacent action in a visually appealing cyber-world with fucky gravity and shit. I was already having fun here. Midsection of the movie sees Dual and Dorothy having become genuine friends with Remo, and there's a ton of genuinely adorable slice of life and character building antics here. The two music montages in a row are both particularly peak. There's a weird bit in the middle of said montages that shows the destruction of humanity and overwhelming dread of war - it works with what the movie is actually about thematically although I get the sense it was meant to be a little longer. We're still very good though. At this point 6 isn't even on the table for score anymore, and I'm genuinely having a lot of fun. And then we get our final act, which I can't even begin to succinctly describe and can really only say that the stakes go crazy, the plot goes crazier, and it was one of the best endings I've seen in what feels like forever. Absolutely incredible. Shot the movie up to an 8. I cannot stress enough that the movie is already pretty solid by this point and then just becomes peak beyond reason. Phenomenal.

Will say more broadly that the literary idea of computers continuing after human extinction is a common idea, but I gotta say this movie executed on said idea in a much more optimistic manner than I usually see, and I think the plot itself and how we get to all this comes together in a really nice way. Like the ending isn't just epic and emotional it's also naratively satisfying and thematically well justified. This movie being such a uniquely particular vibe would be enough for me to find it passively interesting already but being as generally well written as it is does a lot as well. Fuckin, really liked this thing.

Only drawback is count how many times it fades to black though lol.

[danthepest]

Its always interesting to see the difference between how fans who have seen/read OG Dragon Ball before Z and fans who only watched Z perceive Yamcha as a character. Doubly so if they only watched the English dubs.

Z-only viewers treat Yamcha as this pathetic loser who is a regular cheater/womanizer and that of course Bulma would dump him for the murderous space pirate who barely a couple of years ago was indirectly responsible for his death among others.

Fans who have followed DB from the beginning know Yamcha is none of those things. Aside from his stint as a bandit, he was nothing but a firendly, helpful and respectful dude. Hell, it was Bulma who drove him away twice over petty nonsense and he still hoped that there was a future for them together. Their relationship was pretty toxic at times. Him cheating on her was a dub line and for some reason Toriyama decided that it totally makes sense Yamcha is a sudden cheater when it was Bulma who was drooling after every attractive dude before she settled on Vegeta. Gotta justify her banging the unrepentent space pirate somehow.

He took on the Saibaman for Krillin not out of arrogance, but to avoid the risk of Krillin dying again. At the time a second death would have been permanent. And he beat the little plant gremlin and was only killed due to the surprise attack, not because he was weak. To most OG fans, this wasn’t a meme or a lol-yamcha-so-weak moment. It was a shocking and iconic moment that really raised the stakes for the battle.

The whole womanizer thing is usually brought up or implied in the games and the like, but the main series shows no evidence of it. Trunks says his mom told him that he cheated, but as mentioned above, I take it with a container’s worth of salt.

And Yamcha could’ve easily been a prick about it. He was saddened, but he didn’t resent Bulma or Vegeta or even Trunks. He was humble enough to get out of the way during the Android scuffle since he knew he was dead weight by then and as such opted to take care of one of his oldest friends while the others kept fighting. It was Yamcha who told Trunks about how Vegeta reacted to Cell killing him. He didn’t have to do it, but did it anyway. When Vegeta had his dumbass Majin stint and then died, Yamcha comforted Bulma but never tried to take advantage of her. If that isn’t a good dude right there, I don’t know what is.

And before someone gives the “But Toriyama said” spiel, keep in mind that he manages to contradict himself multiple times with regards to Yamcha’s “womanizing ways”.

“Oh, he cheats now that he’s more confident”

“He has a girlfriend at the end of the Cell arc”

“No wait, he hasn’t really gotten over his fear of women, but worked as host in a host bar and then lost his job and lived with Tenshinhan and Chaozu for a bit”

Toriyama has always been forgetful towards his own series. His infamous conversation with Oda when Oda had to remind him who Tao was. He forgot Super Saiyan 2 was a thing. He forgot to draw Launch in the Boo arc and replaced her with #17. He fucking forgot that the recent Dragon Ball anime/manga was called DB Super, which is why the last movie was called Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. So a lot of what the guy says in interviews is most likely the result of him making shit up on the fly because people just wouldn’t let Dragon Ball end.

Basically, Yamcha was the sacrificial lamp for most of the series. Was given a bad hand multiple times and is still a good dude in spite of it. I could write for days on how many issues I have with the Dragon Team just accepts Vegeta before he actually shows any redeeming qualities.

[mdhwrites]

The Problem With the Harem Childhood Love

"I met this girl a decade ago and she changed how I viewed everything. We only knew each other for a single day but I know she's the one."

"Oh, so you two are easily going to have the most chemistry of anyone in your own story if you were to ever meet, right?"

"Why would we need that? I've already made my mind up a decade ago that I love her. So long as I say that, I can get with her at any time."

And then I start staring at the writer across from me until they finally leave because of the cardinal sin they have committed: Writing while assuming the ending.

Let me elaborate: It's actually a good thing for most stories to know what their ending is. It allows for better narrative planning and build up so that each block of your story can build on one another. Foreshadowing is only possible by knowing what plot points are coming up. Some writers can go by the seat of their pants and plan on the fly like the late Akira Toriyama and still have something coherent but it is usually considered better for a narratives pacing to know what it is.

This isn't about that though. It is when a writer knows what is coming and assumes it as self evident. This is almost always a bad thing to do because if you assume something is self evident, you'll put less narrative work into justifying it. You get this a lot when a character seems to only know something because the author says they do or they run off to a specific place without any real reason because the writer either thinks that's already been justified or because they just need that to happen for the sake of the plot.

Romance is the genre where this problem is at its worst with a pretty clear lead over most other genres. This is mostly due to two elements: Genre and the 'nature of love'.

Let's tackle the second one first since genre is going to come up more importantly with this specific trope. Love is seen oftentimes as mysterious and essentially impossible to explain. We fall in love. We slip into love. We find our soulmate. Many forms of romantic literature doesn't frame love as a choice but as an inevitability which isn't actually a bad thing. It's part of the appeal. Part of why Hallmark movies are as popular as they are is because the idea of one day having someone crash into your life, fill you with what most consider to be the best feeling in existence and change your life for the better is pretty damn attractive.

If you have watched a Hallmark movie though, you will often look at one half of that pairing and go "Why the hell are you interested in this person?" I've literally been told off in the past for analyzing why a character loves another character (positively even btw which made the reaction incredibly confusing for me) because it's like... Love man. You don't gotta explain it. If they say they're in love, they're in love!

Yes, that is undeniably how reality works but this isn't talking about reality. It's talking about fiction. In fiction, characters are theoretically supposed to have motivations and personalities and if you never sell your audience on why your two romantic leads would theoretically want to grow closer with the other one, besides lust, then it's not going to be a truly engaging romance. You don't even have to interrogate it that hard. We have tried and true ship dynamics for a reason to help with this because how those dynamics play off of each other commonly showcases why they would like each other. That doesn't mean you can just present the ship dynamic either but it can help give you a proper baseline to work from.

Second: Genre. You're reading a romance story so of course the main two characters are going to get together. If the story is not about that then you're not writing a romance. That mindset of it being a genre necessity and a foregone conclusion is already a death sentence for a lot of romance works. After all, they're together, they're your leads, you had them blush a couple times around each other, jobs done, right?

WRONG! It is still your job as a writer to sell us that they got there naturally and believably. There's a reason this is a GENRE. Part of why romantic subplots suck in so many things is because romance is seen as this thing you can just throw in a story easily and then walk away from because you said it happened so it did. Love is such a complex topic, and the process of falling in it so compelling and powerful (or if you're even braver, the process of dealing with those feeling after the confession) that it can carry a story entirely on its own. This is also because love is such a powerful emotion, terrifying in that strength and its mystery, and a relationship such a big commitment that someone actually deciding to go through with either is a genuinely big deal. There's lots of people out there, and not just those who are aromantic, who don't understand why we fall in love because it's absolutely fucking terrifying and you lose a lot just to gain a romantic partner, at least if you look at it derivatively.

BUT! What if you could write yourself an out of all of this complexity? Better yet, what if this out could allow you to expand your cast to a frankly ludicrous degree for a romance story while still making who wins make narrative sense? How glorious would it be if you could make the final question not "Who does the main character like most," but instead "Who is the one he was destined to be with?"

Enter the trope at the top of this blog. Harem stories are frankly a touch terrifying to write. As someone who has done three different erotic takes on the genre, I have fucked up one of three SPECTACULARLY and my other two are taking cheats of their own to get around some of the ensemble problems of a harem. Because this blog is already going long, I won't get into hard why harem writing is difficult or why its protagonists are the way they are here but uh... Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there and it's not all for wish fulfillment. I mean, it's a genre with a lot of wish fulfillment too but there's still other reasons behind it.

The core thing that makes them a struggle though is that time is your explicit enemy. An ensemble cast always consumes time in a way that few are always ready to deal with. You may want five main characters but you may quickly realize that only three are any good or that to make all five good, you're going to need add another season to your show, volume to your manga, etc. like that because expanding on each character, especially equally, is a big ask. Again, romance as a genre normally deals with only two main characters for a reason. The question of falling in love is bad enough when you have to sell a relationship with one character, let alone three or more. Even worse if they're all supposed to be seen as equally valid options.

So how do you pick one over the rest? Well, if you're not a coward, you make them into a polycule but as that's not all that socially acceptable and not a lot of big harem works have gone that route, you aren't going to see that option too often. Instead, you need a final plot beat/arc that will make it crystal clear who the choice is and why.

And what better way to do that than with some predestination!? Yeah, this trope actually has a crap ton of problems. The fact that people change from when they were kids, the fact that promises made when young should not define your entire life, etc. like that. That all can be said to be like saying that implying a high school romance will be forever is stupid though. That you're already clearly against the genre or the romanticization of love and so your opinion is skewed.

That's why my complaint is the one it is. See, this sort of excuse makes it so you can say that one of the girls in a harem was always the one and it's in character and fuck EVERYTHING up in the process. After all, with such a... profound eye roll explanation as this, why do you need to build their relationship? You have two to four other girls, potentially even more, to explore, tease and string along until finally getting with the one left out. They don't need chemistry even more than a normal romantic couple because of this singular moment in the past.

And if you, as a writer, actually believe that, you deserve to be smacked. All you're going to do is piss off essentially your ENTIRE audience who got invested in these other characters, who you told them through narrative to care about and get invested in, because the one they were told didn't matter was actually the one they should have been watching out for. Even if it's explicitly clear from go who it is, if your entire audience hates them then they're still going to throw away your story because of the bad taste the last bite leaves because you somehow chose the worst member in your roster to be the one that deserves the happy ending while the rest can eat shit.

And the reasonable argument against this complaint is that if you're that invested in the rest, the author still succeeded. It's the journey that matters, not the destination, right? Well... Actually, romance is the genre where that is the least true. It's why romance stories end with implying a happily ever after because treating these two that you've come to know and care about as just a school yard fling makes all those sweet moments, all that care and growth, seem meaningless and cheap. Like it was all for naught, especially because of how desirable love is for most people and how devastating heart break can be.

So if you can't even go "At least one of the ones that deserved it got their happy ending" then it can make all those moments of harem fun just feel all the more painful. Like the hand of the author is holding a knife to your back, waiting to betray you at any second. That is a feeling that will leave very few in an audience happy, at least if they genuinely care about the characters and romances you've written.

And all because the writer assumed their brilliant excuse was all it would take to make you agree that their ending made sense.

======+++++======

This blog is brought to you today by Quintessential Quintuplets, an anime I couldn't finish because while I don't watch much harem stuff, I could still clearly see that every girl who deserved a happy ending in that show wasn't going to get it, even before being told who got with the MC in the end. It's also somewhat brought to you by me working on the concept of a harem story and my musings on some of its specific tropes. Again, I could do several blogs on it frankly. Shocking, I know, that the romance writer has thoughts on romance genres.

(Also, if you're more immune to this problem than I am, Quintessential Quintuplets is worth your time. It's not perfect but I did find the cast compelling and charming enough to get worked up about them and there are some really smart narrative choices made along the way.)

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[gam3rsuar5sr3x]

problems with sending bible verses and the judgement of teachers and the church and undertale

@metakazkz was one guy i shared it to. hes the one who made the abysstale and moonside comics, of course ill admit i admired him too much to the point of putting his au in my take on dustfell (witch i think i,m at a possablility to quit because i saw a video on judgement day that scared me ill explain later) but to all my christian friends. my pastor did pray for me sence i had wierd ocd like thoughts like "i,m this person" or that person and it was usally about fictional characters like some of them were from undertale stuff and from roblox piggy like the abysstale frisk and sans and alphys (and i didnt want them cause i thought it was making me out to claim it and i refused cause my identity is in christ not in fictional characters) and plus evolution isnt biblical, and he told me that the lord told him that i was listening and watching some dark things that open up the door to demons and i had to cut off certian things and i first thought it was undertale but i kept listening to it until i saw a youtube short on a rebellious girl going to hell, and it scared me cause it had a scene from a movie of her out of body expierence and it was her in an ambulance and then shes in hell screaming (not burning but probably going to somewhere where she would burn) and laying down and it shows us shes screaming as she slowly gose into an area in her torment area and it scared the MESS out of me for some reason cause all i saw was her going somewhere and her screaming, i dont know what part of it scared me but i dont wanna see it ever again cause of how scary it was. but in the end i cut off undertale music and the entire genre of undertale and aus as a whole out of fear of going to hell, then i began repenting everyday just to make myself "clean" incase id die one of my nights on earth cause our lives could end in a flash and tomorrow isnt garunteed then i made it to sunday by the grace of god, and in the end i go from cutting it off without any problem of doing so to being greived by the fact i might have to cut it off and never enjoy undertale and its genre ever again, and not just undertale and aus but also piggy and the reading moonside comic with metakaz. but then that fear where i have to get clean from sin before dying went away and everytime i,m outside my room out my house i,m always thinking id wanna go enjoy undertale and aus and piggy and moonside comic (witch is fnaf fan so thats why i also wouldnt wanna read it) but whenever i go back into my room or am in my room i would have that tired feeling and irretated a bit like i shouldnt do it, so i told this to my mom and she asked if this was some religous spirit on me. to me it probably could have been cause i think "i gotta get clean or i,m going to hell" whenever i repent and in doing so i think i made the mistake of trusting in my works to get right with god, and she told me that it wasnt like i was trying to rebel against god whenever i listen to that stuff unless gods trying to call me away from it to show me something about or saying "hey come here". so i went along with the same thing she said and said it to myself as well. but of course she said that was as long as i put jesus first and by first we mean our priority cause the lord should be priority, as a result i still enjoyed it (probably too much) but i had a tendancy cut off undertale and piggy and moonside comic ect from time to time as well as waiting for a week or longer until i can finally go back to it (though i did during those weeks think of undertale and all that stuff). then i saw videos on judgement day and it really scared me cause the main character who got judged had sin of divorce and adultry but what had me back in the fear is that he justified his sin. it scared me cause i,m looking back at what i said saying "its not like i,m trying to rebel against god when i enjoy it its only when it becomes an idol" and i probably think i did go that far and shoudlnt have, it scared me and now i feel like by saying all that i think and feel as if i was trying justifying it as sin and got exposed. ima reblog

[whumpitisthen]

here's a quick rundown on astarion: gay vampire spawn (not a vampire. like a demo version vampire. a "lesser" one but don't let him hear that) who has been kept for 200 years by his master as a slave. guy (who was an actual vampire) carved him up, tortured him and forced him to lure victims into his manor. astarion has been abused in so many ways i'd hit some sort of character limit if i listed half of them. he was only allowed to feet on rats and small vermin in the sewers. poor little meow meow astarion is now free due to [game story] reasons and seeks power and revenge -- he's an edgy fuck with a lot of swag and no moral compass. bro is a menace and loves causing problems on purpose. [slight spoiler] he will literally try to suck some of your blood like a day or two after you meet him and unless you succeed a skill check he'll just keep doing it until you die. if you resurrect yourself afterwards he'll go like "ooooh ooopsie sowwy! i wouldn't kill you if i knew you'll be back teehee can we forget about this? ;) <3 don't fucking kill me". he's such a good fucking whumpee you don't even know. it's insane. i don't want to ramble but he's almost everything i've ever wanted from a character like this in a large scale rpg. [slightly bigger spoiler] despite being the go-to "fuckable" character who everyone finds hot as hell (both in-universe and online) he's HORRIBLY traumatized by his sexual experiences from when he used to be a slave and when you romance him a good portion of his storyline revolves around trying to make him realize that he's more than just a slab of very attractive meat. he hides his feelings behind a facade of "evil tumblr sexyman-esque" mannierisms and getting to finally peel it back and see him for the poor wet cat that he is is so fucking satisfying. [an even bigger spoiler] i loved watching him cry when he finally gets to confront his former master. pristine content. there's so much more to his character (and this game in general) but if you ever need to justify spending full price on a new videogame release, there's nothing better than bg3. if i could choose one game to beam directly into the brain of each whumpblr user, it'd be this one.

Okay so i already loved him from the very little information i had about him, but this is so delicious

I saw some pics of bad scars which are always hhh and heard that he is a whumpee but i didn't know the extent and now i think ive collected a new blorbo

You are telling me he meets his old master at some point...... and he cries..... and hes all sad....... he rly was made for tumblr but especially me youre telling me he has white hair and is a vampire twink who was a slave and hurt and traumatised and he has incredible sad wet cat energy and he only has a flimsy layer of confidence and absolutely no idea what morals are. i knew i needed to know more you have to understand my knowledge of the game stopped at the bear sex scene like that is it and yet i somehow always find the most pathetic little men no matter what in any media i could not give a shit about any of the rest i will consume the entire thing just to know the exact extent of his sad little life

Also i wish i had the opportunity to even consider buying a full price new release no matter how good the game is there is no world in which id be able to pay for that. Also idk about the gameplay either it seems very story oriented roleplay and almost dating sim-ish? Not a huge fan of those in general its gotta have more gameplay than walking around and basically watching a movie, but, again. No idea about anything, maybe it has incredible gameplay and i just dont know. Dont tell me if it does itll just make ms sadder bc that would absolutely make me wanna play it myself. Its kinda funny honestly the longer i spend not knowing anything the crazier everyone seems to me both online and irl. Its like im living in a separate world, i know no one who hasn't played this fucking game fjfhskhfd

[cousticks]

Fave character and why (overall)

What type of characters do you typically enjoy? (for me i usually like dead characters because of their... idk there's just so much to work w there 😭 like so many things for interpretation/potential)

What got you into bsd

What got you into tumblr

Can you give at least one tip or advice on how to recover from a hyperfixation on something when u need to be productive?

Are you better at writing or drawing?

If you could choose, which would you be better at?

Do you like painting?

Are your friends nice?

Forgive me for the random asks. jus answer the ones you want to ty ❤️

Is it weird if I answer all of them? I think all of these are fun to answer so I'm gonna answer all of them. Tysm!!

Favorite character overall is... really difficult. I like so many different characters for so many reasons across so many different medias. Even choosing a favorite from BSD is wildly difficult. Of all characters ever, one of my favorites is Cal Trask from John Steinbeck's East of Eden (the book, not the movie, even though he is played by James Dean). East of Eden is one of my favorite books ever, and most of the incredible themes in it, all of the cycles it represents, as well as the cycles it finally breaks, are done through Cal. He struggles with being good despite a thematic predisposition to being anything but throughout his portion of the novel doomed-by-the-narrative style, until at the end the resolution is that... he doesn't have to be either, he only really has to be him. I love that book dearly and could talk about its themes for hours (and have!). As far as favorite BSD characters specifically, that's near impossible for me to say, but a rough top-group would include Kyusaku, Kouyou, Dazai but specifically mafia era, Kunikida, and Albatross. I don't have any really good reasoning for those top favorites beyond "hehe, I like them," honestly.

I usually enjoy characters that it takes a while to piece together their motivations. Morally grey. And I mean actually morally grey, not the asshole-that-does-nice-things antihero type. I like characters that make me want to think about them and piece them together and study them like bugs under a magnifying glass until they start to catch on fire. Dudes who suck but have so much potential to be more. Make me have to justify why I enjoy them in front of a board of directors. I love to be able to fill in between the lines.

A former friend group got me into BSD back in 2019 because they were all watching it and I happened to have the time and energy to. The sheer amount of media to consume & intrigue of the characters is what made me stay, though.

This is horribly embarrassing but my first stint on Tumblr ~7 or 8 years ago was sparked by learning that the Onceler fandom existed and being absolutely fascinated by it. It was already dying out by this point, so I wasn't active or anything in it, but I thought the way people interacted across blogs to make these wild stories was so fascinating. Specifically the Truffula Flu zombie arcs. I was a Camp Entre loyalist. A couple years later I accidentally deleted my blog and didn't get active on Tumblr again until a little over a year ago, though, when I wanted to start engaging with the fanbases some media I was fixating on at the time.

If I could figure out the secret for recovering from a hyperfixation in a productive way I would be a much more functional person. Sometimes I'm able to approach things with an "if you can't beat it, join it" mentality, and can come up with ways to connect my current task to whatever I'm fixating on. Here's the secret: you're allowed to be cringe with it. If you need to do the dishes and need to make it a mental competition for "oh boy I need to be less of a disaster than Dazai its fucking on" or "I need to do my math homework so Kunikida will be proud of me" or "gotta do my laundry... I gotta be dressy for my port mafia work attire..." then do it. Who cares. That doesn't work all the time, but it can work sometimes. And when it doesn't? I normally just try to clear my mind entirely by doing something that sucks so much I can't think of anything except how it sucks. For me its cardio. I hate cardio exercise. But if I go on a jog and come back I a) feel a little better and more functional because I went on a stupid exercise for my stupid mental health, b) got some of the excess fixation energy out, and c) that sucked so bad i would literally rather do Anything else i might as well be fucking productive. These are not sure-fire ways but they help me. And my most important one? You can't focus when you're stressed. Trying to force yourself to focus when you're stressed about an assignment and panicking because you can't focus will not help you, it will make the problem worse. It is okay to give yourself some grace, walk away, try to put yourself into a healthier mindset, and come back. That's another reason I like to take walks when I can't focus, even if its just a small one down the hall for a glass of water and then back. Don't force yourself. Never force yourself. You'll feel worse and more frustrated.

I'm much better at writing. I'm horrible at drawing, I just do it anyway for fun because sometimes I need to get my fixation kick out in a visual manner. Writing has always been my strong suit.

If I could choose? I think I'd still pick writing, honestly. I'm sometimes jealous of those that can make gorgeous art, but I'm happy in my world of writing because it has helped me in so many other areas of my life as well. I don't live an artists life, unfortunately, and writing has served me well.

I do like painting! I haven't in a very long time, as I don't have the time or energy much, but I used to sculpt and paint my creations. I'm not saying I was particularly good at either, but I used to, and I enjoyed it.

I didn't always have nice friends. But these days? They are. I wouldn't trade the friends I have now for the world.

[pricklythepear]

THIS!!

I made a post about this recently, but I think one of the main reasons Starscream/the Elite Trine, and really Decepticons in general don’t get the same emotional complexity as Autobots do is because they’re usually the enemy, and it’s already hard enough writing emotionally complex protagonists.

Transformer shows and movies have a history of being pushed and pressured by production, so they end up being slightly rushed and have to cut corners and sacrifice stories to make ends meet.

A lot of people have been talking about how EarthSpark had a quality drop between the first and second seasons, and with that we can see how Starscream got turned into Ultimate Villain whose main motive is power. With Megatron having already been redeemed and turned into an Autobot, Starscream becomes the de facto enemy leader, and the story needs some way to justify conflict between him and the Terrans/Autobots where audience can clearly tell the Autobots are in the right.

After all, it’s a children’s show isn’t it? Don’t kids famously hate stories with grey areas or complexity? Don’t those just make shows so boring? (Note the sarcasm in my tone)

While there have recently been more shows that set a better example (like Bluey), a lot of children shows fall back on the idea that they don’t have to be complex because their main audience are children. They think that a combination of absurdity and flashy action will keep their main audience entertained, and it doesn’t matter if the story is really shallow or kind of stupid because adults aren’t watching the show, they won’t care! and ignore that a lot of people over the age of 12 do still watch cartoons and TV shows.

To circle back to Transformers, it’s also easier to keep your audience rooting for the heroes if there is nothing to like about the antagonists. If we got media of Starscream and his Trine caring about each other and doing funny things together, or have Megatron caring for his troops and their health, or Decepticons caring about each other like the Autobots do, then we wouldn’t want the Autobots to beat them as much. We would want a peaceful resolution where everybody gets along and gets to be happy, and that’s not really how transformers works. The whole brand is these cool transforming alien robots fighting in a war, and it’s kind of hard to keep up that cool action and stakes when the audience wants both sides to make it out ok.

It’s much easier to have the audience rooting against Megatron if he’s this crazy violent mech high on the blood of the god of destruction, or Starscream if he’s cruel and backstabbing, and to get those kinds of cruel and unsympathetic people you need to not show them also being people. People, like characters, are rarely 100% cruel or without a speck of kindness or care in them, so it’s annoying when so many antagonists are written like they’re just one sided bad guys.

Like I said on the other post, All of these Cybertronians are characters, not caricatures 

Also, yes to the seekers being an actual fragging threat!

Do you realize how terrifying it must be for all the grounders? To hear the roar of engines above your head, where your only option is to flee and take cover before the ground erupts at your feet as bombs rain from the sky? I know in fics the Terror Twins’ Jet Judo is funny, but how terrifying must it be to be up hundreds of feet in the air on the seekers? There’s a reason they’re the only two who do it! And to the rest of the bots, seekers are practically untouchable! Seekers are most often warframes built for combat, and their main fighting tactic is just dive bombing the enemy before quickly getting out of range.

A lot of the fandom treats seekers like they’re birds (which I love and very much also do) but we really gotta remember that on top of being silly and kind of stupid, birds are scary to most creatures. Birds will drop turtles/tortoises from dozens of feet in the air to break their shells open, will snatch sloths and monkeys off of branches in the blink of an eye, will break the spines of their prey by freaking falcon punching them(yes, that is a real thing). Australia lost a war to emus. Australia

Birds do not, have not, and will not ever give a fuck. They are very happy to remind us that they are the descendants of dinosaurs, and they are the ones that lived.

(Sorry for the long post, but I love the points you make and really wanted to add on)

Guys I want angry starscream please I'm begging. I want him calculating every move he does. I want Megatron keeping him by his side because he's frightened on just how much worse starscream will become if he isn't tied down. I wanted a respected starscream because while Megatron can bash your head in star Will easily rip everything from you so he can just watch as you do it yourself. I want a starscream that confronts the others and holds his wings high. I want him to always make it aware he's the second in command for a reason. I want him to have a upper hand on Megatron as well. I want him seeking blood for his fallen fleets. I want him to be ready to carve Vos back up againfrom, the ground up. I want him to remind all the other deceptions he earned his place. I need to him to randomly show Soundwave and Shockwave just why he was and always will be second in command. I adore sympathetic Starscream but please let this man prove he's strong my mental health relys on it.

[toiletwipes]

and i'd give up forever to touch you

chapter seventeen. ah yes, what could go wrong?

Summary: Wilbur is about two defining truths about his life, he doesn't have a chance with Rosie and that it can get worse.

ao3 link. ~3k words. masterlist.

---

you and quackity made your way back to the dorm, not before you made will promise to head over for some good takeout and movie marathon. his awkward smile and gesture to the gremlin child he called his brother, but you assured him, he could come over whenever, you knew he had family over. whenever he could make it, you told him, smiling at him as you hugged him goodbye.

quackity called you a simp in the car, “who invites someone over when they have family?” he questioned you. you shook your head as you buckled yourself into the car.

“it’s not like that-”

“then what is it like? i’ve only been around you and him for a day or two but you gotta admit, you two have chemistry, he really doesn’t like being close to me unless you’re close too, not to mention, the way he looks at you-”

“be realistic,” you interrupt him, your face dropping, a frown shoving itself onto your face, “i’m pretty sure i’m his first friend in a while, besides,” you remember the morning he’d stayed over, the way he couldn’t stop glancing at rosie. even though he told you, a mere shock he’d get over, his favorite streamer being just less than an inch away of course he’d make sure she was real.

but still, it didn’t sit right.

“it’s complicated.”

preparations for a dinner wasn’t completed until rosie and jared showed with grey goose and tito’s, talking of what they’re gonna do for hangouts in the future and when they saw only you and quackity, they shared a look. “wasn’t wilbur going to come?” rosie asks, eyes on the bottles of vodka as she places them on the counter, making sure she acted normal.

“his family’s in town, wanted to spend time with them,” you hum, stirring the pot with one arm wrapped around your middle, you were mildly disappointed but it was towards yourself more so than him. like quackity said, who in their right mind would invite someone who’s got family visiting?

“well, at least he knows he’s welcome,” rosie gave jared a look, who upon seeing it, was still confused. rosie rolls her eyes, before moving to give you a side hug.

“don’t know how we’ll be able to hang out without our favorite greasy-haired friend,” and you just smile into the hug, “but we’ll just save the alcohol for when he gets here, though, i am kinda hungry, what are you making?” rosie peers over your shoulder, and the night continues in a light fashion.

you offer a sleepover in your room but quackity says he’s okay with the couch, too full and too tired to move from it. the reasons for not accepting are valid, you accept them as such, but you couldn’t help… thinking about that night again.

sleeping in the same bed as will. twice. you don’t know how to justify that.

as long as you don’t tell quackity, you decide, you don’t have to.

~~~

will comes over the next night, holding in his hands a bag, he tells you, “just in case,” with a small smile, and you accept it, throwing his bag onto the couch while dragging him to the stove.

“i have to take a shower real quick, just make sure it doesn’t boil,” and when he’s about to ask you what to do after that, you race off to the bathroom, the shower already running water, and from the steam that had floated out of the doorway- it was boiling temperatures.

he stares into the pot of sauce, watching it as it slowly heats up, forcing himself to stick to the hot steam steadily coming out of the pot, he hesitates before taking the pot off the stove, turning it off and hoping maybe if he waits a few minutes then puts it back on- then it's the right thing to do.

until the bathroom door opens and you call out, “can you pass me the towel will! i left mine on my bed.”

bells ring his head like a christmas carol, this could be his chance to make it right, just grab the cameras and be done with it, die with a somewhat muggy conscience.

he lets you know he’ll get it with a shout, before moving to your room, he finds the towel but gestures toward the cluttered surface the cameras were on, and yet, with how little space there seemed to be, there was a perfect view of the bed. of you that morning, changing right in front of it.

you had to have known about them, that’s the only way when everyone on that dresser had moved except for the camera’s placement and the lack of anything standing in the camera’s way. it had to be on purpose.

there’s no other way, it has to be. but the bathroom door is opening and you’re walking into the bedroom with your head turned to the side as if yelling for him, and when you turn to look in front of you, your friend is holding your towel but stares you down.

“i uh, i found a towel, um, did you take the sauce off the stove?” you ask, moving around him as you went to grab some clothes, holding them close to your chest.

“erm, yeah.”

“good, well, unless you’ve bought a ticket for the show, you can’t stay,” you joke, waving down the towel wrapped around your wet, and probably warm skin, body. he nods but he doesn’t move, unable to look away for a second.

until a second does pass and he pales, “well i- uh well, i left my wallet in the car, i could go get it!” will breathes out a laugh, jabbing his thumb behind him as if to say he’s gonna stay and watch.

“how sweet but you can’t afford me,” you smile without missing a beat, pushing him out the door as you all but nearly dropped the towel from the effort and moving limbs.

sighing, you drop the towel and will thinks he’s so funny for opening the door and holding a pot of sauce, having the audacity to ask, “but don't you think this looks a little weird?” you kick him in the shin and he almost goes down before leaving the room for the last time.

it’s not that you didn’t want will to see you naked, just not under these circumstances, as you curse the gods above.

~~~

“if we’re being completely honest i didn’t know you had taken your towel off until after you kicked me-” “-wilbur i’ll kick you again if you don’t shut up.”

~~~

the sauce is poured over the large shells and there’s a heavy amount of cheese that goes on top of the pasta, but you and him high five over it both and when he goes to stab a shell with a fork, you slap his hand, “we’re waiting on jared and rosie, mostly jared because this is his favorite.”

will grumbles about something but after you send him to the couch you promise alcohol, “they said wait for them to get here to start eating but not to start drinking.” you grin at him as you hand him a cup, and after taking a sip, wilbur understood quite well.

they better hurry up if they don’t want the two of you to get shit-faced.

~~~

“secret time! when i was a kid, i used to run around listening to one song on my dad’s mp3 player, guess which one?” you hummed, tapping your chin as you squint at your friend from the other side of the couch.

“is it bring me to life?” he snorts, his head slumping forward, chin hitting his chest as you shove his shoulder. “what? you sometimes dress as if you work at hot topic or spencer’s, you know?”

“no i do not know,” he laughs and his head leans against the couch, looking at you like it's his first time, like he hasn’t seen you before. and you know it's the alcohol making you feel giddy and warm, like you’re fifteen again, but you let yourself indulge in it. what’s the harm? you usually keep your secrets to yourself when you’re drunk.

it’ll be fine. you know it will be.

~~~

you’re on your second green, wine glass of grey goose, wilbur’s head in your lap and his feet hanging off the arm of the couch when rosie and jared open the door and enter through it, their chatter dying off as you make eye contact and wave.

“already drinking, i’d thought you’d wait for us to get here before then,” you burped a little before you shrug your shoulders without little thought.

“i thought you meant the food, sorry, that one is on me!” you raise your hand to take the blame and when rosie takes it into hers she just sighs bigger than the breath in her chest. when she’s done swinging your hands, she heads straight to the bottles.

“you didn’t drink all of it right?” rosie opens the squeaky fridge door and you shake your head.

“nope! wilby is barely on his first glass and i may be on my second, oops,” you bite your lip as you strain your neck to meet her eyes. she just waves you off.

“we’ll buy another bottle if we have to, don’t worry!”

~~~

jared is squished in the middle of you and will, pulling you two into a headlock as he starts to sing a sea shanty. “it’s about drive, it’s about power, we stay hungry we devour,” he sings out like it’s a sea shanty and with the confidence of twenty pirates, no less. his tenor voice carried itself pretty easily, you think to yourself as you try and hold back down the bile for two bowls of marinara pasta.

“no, jared, the instructions were to get the three of you to sing, not just you,” rosie sits with her legs crossed on the small chair in the corner, grinning widely. “it clearly states so in the card, are you not reading?” and then jared throws his head back, almost spilling his cup all over your shirt.

“what? what’s so funny?” will asks, quiet but smiling with mirth, life filling his eyes in a way it hadn’t done so before, you liked the way he smiles here and now.

“don’t you know, my name is jared, i may be older than nineteen but i still can’t read,” and then rosie just cackles, loses her composure and when jared releases the two of you, rosie has no qualms putting her own drink down and pushing jared back, throwing her legs over his and settling into his lap, stealing his lips into a kiss.

you catch wilbur’s face from the other side, he was about to take a sip from his drink and he’s still in the middle of it, lips drawn slack on his face as he takes in the scene before him. he nearly slams the cup down before stumbling over the living room to the bathroom, all the meanwhile, jared pulls away and makes eye contact with you, rosie making a dive into his neck, “is he okay?”

~~~

it takes you twenty minutes of sitting outside the bathroom door in silence before wilbur opens the door and lets you in, letting you sit next to him as he moves back to his original spot.

you know the gears are turning, they’re turning during a time they should not. you think that timing is a little cruel, he was having so much fun-

he should’ve found out when he was sober, when they’re out of the apartment and not in the living room, probably still in the middle of a makeout session. he should’ve been told not shown that maybe rosie isn’t into him like that, or something just a little less cruel than what he just saw.

you open your mouth, but he looks at you, as if asking you what could you possibly say to make this situation better? that jared was actually choking? that rosie is still saving his esophagus at this very moment like the great person she is? that she hadn’t meant to kiss him? that she aimed for wilbur but clearly doesn’t care that she missed? that jared is in dire need of oxygen and rosie has the magic air that’ll save every conventionally attractive buff guy?

what could you possibly say to make it hurt less?

to make it that it was anything but a rejection? a public one, no less.

a declaration for will to go fuck himself and any feelings he may have harbored.

“you don’t need her, you’re a great person all on your own, and loving her wouldn’t have changed it then.” you say slowly, as if you were still figuring out the script. “and for what it’s worth, you wouldn’t have liked dating her. she doesn’t change for anyone or anything.” you continue and he doesn’t stop you, so you’ll take it as a win.

but in his mind, he wonders how ironic did your words have to taste, that they almost tasted like blood with the amount of iron? a great person? did you know about the cameras? did you know that he had to pay a considerable amount of money to find out rosie’s ip address, and when he found out she lived on campus? how fast did he apply and work to make sure he would be accepted to her university? just for the chance to see her in real life? see how her body would look against his and yet never get the chance to?

he was never a good person, shit from the start, a rotten garden planted with seeds sown from hell.

(what the hell did you see in him? where is this good you can see? why can’t he see it?)

he supposed if you could see the sins of everyone, you wouldn’t be the person you are today. maybe if you knew the truth, you wouldn’t be so kind, so close to him.

his thoughts are interrupted when you wrap an arm around him, pulling him close to your side as you use your other arm to hold him still against you.

he closes his eyes, burying his face into your shoulder as he let the waves of hurt ride out, let the steady stream of tears soak into your shirt, using his own arms to wrap them around you too, feeling shaky as sobs left his mouth quietly, shoulders heaving up and down with every stunted breath, having to bask in the way loneliness tasted so bitter and yet like nothing at all. because it was just like before. before you, before the two of them, before quackity.

it’s just him now.

and yet, he’s wrong. you’re here. you’re here, sitting here next to him as you give him comfort as best as you could, and he wonders what you’re playing. yes, you wanted to collaborate with him but this is not a crescendo or rehearsal. this isn’t music.

and it continues to confuse him when his breathing evens out, when the tears stop pouring but his eyes begin to feel puffy.

what the hell do you want from him?

you guide him to your room, careful to make sure the two weren’t having sex on the good couch, and let him sit on your bed, barely looking at anything beyond his hands in his lap.

you grab the ice cream bucket and two spoons, heading back to your room and you find him picking up one of the transcribed papers for background vocals and a guitar part, and he’s mumbling to himself, even humming as you lean around to put the ice cream on the desk. “it wasn’t making any sense, it just sounds wrong somewhere and i don’t know what to do with it, maybe scrap it-” you begin to rant though will scramble for a pencil somewhere.

he starts to erase a couple of notes and though you make a noise of disagreement, he starts to write in replacement ones and then he pushes the paper into your hand, motioning for you to take a look at it. and when you do, you don’t realize it at first.

then it clicks. it clicks and when you sing it to yourself in a quiet whisper, your eyes widen as you grasp the paper with both hands now. “will, i’ve been struggling for days now, oh my god,” you lean against your bed, putting aside your sheet music in favor of the guitar leaning against the bed, making sure it’s tuned before using your fingers to make the notes sing in the quiet air.

you breathe out, shaky as anything, in shock, before you look up at him and then you push your guitar onto the bed along with the paper and throw your arms around will, pulling him into a tight hug as you thank him over and over again.

“oh my god, thank you so, so, so much, you have no idea-” you cut yourself off and when you pull away you see a dopey smile on his face. before you could stop yourself, you reached up to pull his cheeks down, crashing your lips onto his and just as quickly as it began you let go, turning around in your excitement and spinning before you froze.

you face wilbur, his face blank but with a hint of shock, like he wasn’t expecting that to happen. and you hadn’t either to be honest, but it happened- not an hour after he found out that the girl he’s probably liked for years isn’t into him.

the two of you don’t say anything, the temperature dropping in your bedroom as if it were the polar ice caps and not your dorm room.

“i-”

“-guess who managed to get sangria?” rosie bellows out as she barges in your room before catching the two of you like deer in headlights. “did i miss something?”

...

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[crymeariveronceagain]

heads up i’m gonna rant about the forgive the bad parent redemption trope

so you have this parent that neglects/abuses/abandons their kid, sometimes they even sing about it. the whole show/movie you watch this kid talk about how much their parent did to them, how the parent never loved them, how angry the are at the parent. (rightfully so) then they have to go to the parent for help. because for some reason they are the only person who can help (there’s gotta be someone else come on writers). the parent starts too act the same way they always did and the kid gets mad and just deals with it. then for some reason the parent suddenly feels remorseful, and tells the kid how crappy their life was to justify how they treated them (because a shitty childhood is a good excuse for being a shitty parent). kids “best friend” says that kid should forgive them because parents is their parent and they should love their parents no matter what because they’re family (which is disgusting). bad parent saves kids life kid hugs them and you get a “cute family moment”.

then there’s that version where the kids grandparent is the bad person. but because the grandparent is nice to the kid. they spends the whole movie teaching their parent to forgive their abusive parent, and basically take the best place and use the same bs excuse to get their parent to forgive.

(speaking from experience that’s not a child’s thought process, it’s more of a i’d disown you for what you did to my mom if you didn’t have money and might pay for my missionary college)

(the only book that did this trope properly was FREAKING DOG MAN, grandpa stole all their things after they let him live with them because sometimes bad people don’t change and it’s not safe to let them back in your life)

and this trope is most common in KIDS BOOK AND MOVIES. i don’t know what the writers where thinking, make the kids feel better by seeing that parents can become good people? “family values”? because the only messages they’re sending to kids is

“it doesn’t matter what your family does to you, you need to forgive them and love them because they are your family”

“having a shitty childhood is a excuse and a reason to be a bad person and to abuse your kids”

“to forgive and forget and let the bad person back in your life because it’s the right thing to do”

and the second version of this trope is the parents get back together because the dad (normally) is a good person again because he decided that he loved his family enough to change into a better person. and all that does is

make kids wonder why their parents doesn’t love them that much, and make them wonder if they are the problem. (which they are already dealing with)

give kids false hope that their parents will get back together (see also the parent trap trope)

it’s a horrible lesson to be teaching to kids and it makes me so mad, i saw it most in movies and books and movies from the 90-2000s but probably earlier too.

if Shannon tries to pull this with Cassius i’m gonna be so pissed

thank for coming to my rant

Aaaand Frizzle's right about everything. I hate that trope so much.

You're never under constraint to forgive crappy parents.

They should try to redeem themselves in your eyes but expect nothing from you, and if you forgive them it should be on your own time and because you don't want to be held down by the way they've hurt you anymore.

It's not gonna erase the bad.

Forgiveness is about moving on, and if you're not ready to forgive, that's absolutely okay.

[faelapis]

i know some of you guys will probably instinctively wince because you got caught up in gamergate during your youth and only reformed/grew out of it later... but i think many would really benefit from watching the feminist frequency tropes vs women series (yes, it's been review bombed to hell and back by anti-sjw types.)

i was a huge fan of it back in the day, watched all the videos - but unlike current discourse, which is (and i’ve also been guilty of this) hyperfocusing on the perceived flaws of a single intellectual property, it took the broader approach that we ought to be critical of just how common these tropes are.

it really helps you look at media with a bird’s eye view, if you’re new to that kind of analysis. seeing your fave there doesn’t mean they’re “bad,” it means that they’re a part of a broader pattern that maybe shouldn’t be so widespread. you can always make justifications for why a certain trope exists within the context of (your favorite media), but the point is the broader discussion, NOT individual examples.

this is part of why it’s so frustrating how many “response” videos will pause the video at a split frame showing an example to mock - trying to “disprove” problematic aspects by arguing about the very particular examples - rather than understanding it as a critique of the tropes themselves. like. guys. the point isn’t whether mario is problematic. the point is how integral damsel in distress narratives and heteronormativity are in video games right up to present day.

this, i think, is also useful when judging the "base intentions" or "base politics" of a piece of media. a huge part of what initially appealed to my feminist sensibilities about steven universe was how it avoided many of the problematic tropes that plague most animation even today.

outside of representation, it also intentionally challenged the notion of hierarchy itself, by making its "heroes" thoroughly flawed and dressing down the notion of the perfect leader. a lot of media will challenge authority, but then just install a "good" king to replace the "evil" one. SU future is super important here, as it challenges the notion of steven as the "good" diamond/leader to replace the "bad" ones. you can't just replace the leaders, you gotta dismantle that unfair hierarchy. good intentions can lead to bad outcomes when someone thinks of themselves as a hero or savior, and hence "above" others. hence, a degree of empathy for everyone in that system is key. you're not better than them, and they're not better than you.

that's also a big reason why the criticism it eventually got was so frustrating to me. there seemed to be little awareness in the fandom how it was still better and had more progressive sensibilities than 99% of the media out there. it was like they thought steven universe was the first cartoon since the 40s to ever have blind spots, rather than that being the norm.

so, yes, there is also individualistic appeal to understanding the commonality of tropes as they relate to underlying systemic issues. when (non-youtube 🙃) critics call something “progressive” or “refreshing,” it’s usually not because they have lower standards than you or can’t see the problematic nitpicks - it’s because they’re able to put it in the context of what most media is actually like. they haven’t hitched their wagon to hating or loving one piece of media. they can't; they have to look at A LOT of media.

i’m far from the first to say this, but this kind of systemic approach is also applicable to things like the bechdel test. the point was never that passing or not made an individual intellectual property “good” or “bad” - it was how. fucking. common. it was for media to center men and male perspectives. it was pointing out that most movies don’t have several female characters who are able to have dialogue about something other than men. yes, trash like showgirls passes. nobody thinks that makes it good.

~drama about individual pieces of media tends to get more clicks and views, and that is occasionally important! i’m not saying individual pieces of media or its fanbases can never be questioned or, inversely, defended (otherwise, how could i justify spending so much time defending steven universe from that big overblown hypocritical backlash?)... but it also makes me sad.

like. i’m 25. i’m not that old, but in fandom spaces i feel fucking ancient. i feel like i'm from a different time in terms of media consumption and analysis - one where me and my fellow lefties knew that all media was in some way problematic.

maybe it was just more "in your face" then, so it was easier to spot... but whatever the reason, i felt like a huge part of leftist analysis was the acknowledgment that everything, even the media you love, is a product of a broader, unfair system. just like people are shaped by that system, too - and that's "the enemy," not individuals or individual works of art (almost like SU had a point about that). the unfairness in society at large will be reflected in the products that culture creates and consumes. so intentions and caring does, actually, matter.

[fics-n-stuff]

Affluenza | Pt2

Pairing: JJ × Kook!Reader

Summary: Y/N celebrates her birthday with a party that she didn't want to throw and finds out a sad truth about the boy that's not quite her boyfriend, but being in each other's company makes things at least a little better.

Warnings: Mentions of abuse and descriptions of injury, reference to drugs

Word Count: 3.5k

A/N: I'm so happy that so many people liked pt1!! It means the absolute world to me that people are reading and enjoying my work 🥰 Pt3 might take a little longer to get out, but I'll try to post it asap.

Taglist: @alotbnouf @fairypitou @305weasley @thecraziestcrayon @sofamochi @arvinrussellseggplant

Thanks for reading guys ❤

Pt1 here | Pt3 here

“Why didn’t you tell me it’s your birthday on Saturday!?” JJ exclaimed, letting go of your hand and sitting up from where you had both been lying on the deck of your boat.

“I didn’t think it was that big a deal.” You replied with a laugh. “I kinda just forgot to mention it.”

“But what if I wanted to buy you a present?”

“I don’t need a present from you JJ.” You smiled, reaching up to cup his cheek and pulling him down for a kiss.

The two of you had been dating for a couple of months now, and although you very much considered yourselves to be together neither of you had said the words ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’ yet. The time you spent together was private, you kept it a secret from everyone; you didn’t want your family to know and he was hesitant to tell his friends, exactly why you weren’t sure but you didn’t want to pry. It wasn’t as if you were sneaking around, you were just being careful.

“I have plenty things already, your company is enough.” You said, pulling away from the kiss and sitting up yourself. “But unfortunately I won’t be able to see you on my actual birthday. Mom’s making me throw a party and every teenager on Figure Eight will be there, so I doubt you’d want to come.”

“I wouldn’t be welcome even if I did want to.” JJ chuckled. You hummed in agreement.

“That’s why I wanted to celebrate today.” You chirped, getting up to retrieve a cooler that you had brought with you.

“What’s in there?”

“A special birthday picnic.”

“Oh, I see.” He grinned as you took your seat opposite him again. “And what does that consist of?”

“Well, let’s have a look.” You opened up the cooler and looked in at what you had packed with a smile. “Of course the standard picnic items; sandwiches, fruit, some baked sweets.” You listed as you took them out of the cooler. “And then, as I learned from my mother, a young lady cannot celebrate her birthday without a bottle of champagne.”

“Fancy.” JJ nodded, taking the bottle from you.

“Not as fancy as these.” You said, taking the glasses out. “Crystal champagne flutes. I snuck them out of the cabinet. We only use them for the most special of occasions and my mom loves them so we have to be careful.”

“I can be careful.” JJ poured the champagne, and you clinked your glasses with a smile. “Happy early birthday.”

“This is a much better celebration than my party will be.” You sighed, finishing your sip and setting your glass down. “I don’t understand why my mom insists that I have to have one, I’m not actually friends with anyone that’s coming.”

“But I thought you said every kid on Figure Eight was going? You’re not friends with anybody?”

“No, not really. They’re all just so fake, I can’t stand it. I genuinely don’t think that any of them are really friends with each other and they’re just constantly pretending, but I can’t be bothered to pretend.” You rolled your eyes and JJ laughed.

“Sounds exhausting.” He smiled.

“What are your friends like, J?” You asked, genuinely just curious. He told you a bit about them, stories of the crazy stuff they had done, but you never got in depth about it. You felt like it was probably because he wasn’t ready to integrate the two parts of his life.

“They’re good.” He nodded. “I mean, we’re basically family. They’re just not the biggest fans of Kooks.”

“Well, neither are you.” You giggled.

“You know what I mean. I think you’d like them, I’m just worried that they wouldn’t want to give you chance.”

“How much do you bet I could win them over just like I did you?”

“I wouldn’t love it if you won them over exactly the same way as me.” He smirked, gently taking hold of your chin and pulling you in for a kiss, which you both laughed into. “I'm gonna get you a birthday present. What if I come by on Saturday just for a minute to deliver it?”

“You know I’ll be happy to see you, but nobody else at the party will.”

“Eh, who cares.” He shrugged, and you grinned broadly.

“Okay, if you insist.” You conceded. “Now let’s eat this picnic that I so painstakingly curated.”

+ + +

Your birthday party was in full swing, the ground floor of your house teeming with teenagers. People were drinking, dancing and jumping in the pool and you weren’t enjoying any of it.

Your mother had gifted you a particularly ugly necklace that was basically just a tangle of gold chain, and Nicholas had openly bad mouthed your father for only getting you a few books, even though that’s what you had asked for. The detest that you felt for him was justified. Your dad was actually supposed to have arrived back on the island the day before, but it wasn’t unusual for him to get held up with work.

You pushed past a group of boys having some loud conversation on your way into the kitchen and poured yourself a strong drink. You threw the drink back in one gulp and slammed the plastic cup back down onto the countertop with a loud sigh.

“What’s wrong, birthday girl?” Topper asked over the music, his arm slung around Sarah’s shoulders as they came up beside you.

“I’m fine.” You shrugged.

“Did your dad get you a good present this year?” Sarah asked with a smile. “A new car maybe?”

“I already have a car.” You replied with a flat chuckle. “He got me some books that I asked for.”

“That’s kinda boring.” Topper commented. You rolled your eyes and Sarah smacked him in the side.

“I think that’s sweet. What kind if books?”

You told Sarah about the books you had gotten, actually kind if enjoying the conversation. Sarah was actually pretty easy to talk to, you felt like the fact that you weren’t putting on an act made her kind of drop hers, and it was a refreshing break from the way that the rest of the teens on Figure Eight were constantly pretending to be the perfect versions of themselves.

Your explanation of the premise of one of your books was interrupted when you felt your phone ringing in your pocket. You took it out and saw that it was your dad, and you smiled.

“I gotta take this.” You excused quickly before rushing outside to get away from the music. You answered the call excitedly, greeting your dad with a bright tone.

“Hey, Pumpkin, happy birthday!” He exclaimed. “I’m sorry I didn’t call this morning, I got caught up in meetings. You know how it is.”

“I know, dad. It’s okay, you’re calling now. Are you done with work? Do you think you’ll get here tonight?” You questioned eagerly. You heard him let out a sigh, and your smile fell.

“About that, sweetheart, I’ve had a few bumps in the road.” He began. You felt your heart sink and you were already scolding yourself for getting your hopes up before he could even tell you what the reason for missing your birthday was. “My meetings haven’t gone as well as I’d hoped and it looks like I’m going to be held up for a few more days.”

“Oh, right, okay.” You nodded, keeping your voice steady even as your eyes welled with tears. “Hope things get better then.”

“I’m sorry, Y/N, I really did want to be there. I promise I’ll make it up to you when I get back; we can have a movie marathon night, completely your pick.” You let out a chuckle despite yourself. He might not be around much but he still knew you well, and movie marathon nights were one of your favourite things to do with him.

“Sounds great, dad. I can’t wait.”

“I hope you’ve had a good day, at least. What have you been getting up to?”

“I’m having a party, actually.” You replied. You didn’t need to tell him that you didn’t want to have the party and weren’t actually really enjoying it.

“Right now? I’ll let you get back to it then.” Your dad smiled down the phone. “Have fun.”

“Thanks, dad.”

“Love you, Pumpkin.”

“Love you too.”

You said your goodbyes and ended the call, and you tucked your phone back into the pocket of your shorts. You just stood there for a few moments, the loud music and whooping of partying teenagers emanating from the house, before tears began to fall. You shook with a silent sob and had to take a seat on the concrete of your driveway.

You sat there, with your legs pulled up to your chest and your head in your knees, for a few minutes. You sniffed, wiping your tears away on the back of your hand, when you heard a shuffle of footsteps and looked up quickly.

“JJ.” You acknowledged quickly, furiously wiping at your eyes as he walked up the driveway.

“What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” He asked, his voice edged with concern. You were ready to brush away his concerns, but as he got closer you saw the bruising on his face and suddenly you had some worries of your own.

“What happened to you?”

“I asked first.” JJ countered. You watched him as he came to sit down next to you, lifting your hand and softly placing it just below his purpled cheekbone, inspecting the fresh bruising around his eye and the split in his lip, then noticing the discolouration around his collarbone. He took the hand away gently, intertwining your fingers, and you saw that there was no bruising on his knuckles; these weren’t injuries earned in a fair fight. “Why are you crying?” He repeated.

“No, that doesn’t matter.” You shook your head. You weren’t trying to downplay your upset anymore, you just knew that whatever had happened to JJ was more important. “Who did this to you, JJ?”

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.” He smiled, but there was no joy or amusement behind it. You hesitated for a moment before conceding.

“My dad missed my birthday again.” You told him. “The last time he actually made it home for my actual birthday was when I turned eleven, and yet somehow I still get my hopes up every year. I hate this party, there are at least three different types of club drugs being taken in my house right now, I’m sad. You’re turn.”

JJ sighed. He looked down at your joined hands, pausing to think for a moment before looking back up at you. He let out a short breath of soft laughter, lifting his free hand and smoothing his thumb over the crease that had formed on your brow.

“Promise not to freak out?” He asked.

“Okay.” You replied shakily. You could try to limit your reaction at least. “But you have to tell me the truth, J.”

“My dad hits me.” JJ said quickly, and you felt your lips part in shock. “I stay with John B most of the time, I try to stay out of his way when I’m home, but it’s not like I can avoid him completely.”

“Wha- Why don’t you tell somebody?” You stuttered. “Call the police or protective services or-?”

“I don’t want to.” He interrupted. “I’m happy here with my friends and if I get protective services involved then they’ll ship me off to the mainland. I can deal with my dad.”

“This doesn’t look like dealing.” You muttered softly, pushing the collar of his t-shirt to the side to get a better look at the bruise that it was partially covering. “When is this from?”

“Yesterday. I went home to get some money so I could buy you this.” JJ shifted to reach into his pocket and pulled out a small, flat box. “It’s not much but it’s all I could afford.”

You took the box from him curiously, unlinking your hand from his so that you could pull off the lid. Inside was a small silver necklace, a thin chain with a small circular pendant. When you lifted it up you saw that the pendant had a map of the world etched into it. The necklace was simple and sweet, and you felt a big smile take over your face.

“You didn’t have to get me this, J.” You simpered.

“I told you I wanted to.” He smiled back. You handed the box back to him and turned to face away, and JJ eagerly fastened the chain around your neck. He struggled a little with the tiny clasp, making you giggle. His hands ran over your shoulders before he dropped them, and you turned back to him with the smile gone from your face.

“You went through that just so you could buy this for me?” You murmured. JJ's smile faltered but didn’t fall, and he nodded slightly.

“It’s not your fault, Y/N. It’s just what happens.”

You sat silently for a little while, but your peaceful moment was interrupted by a loud round of cheering from inside. You looked over your shoulder towards the house with a groan, but then lightened up when you got an idea.

“You wanna get away from this bullshit?” You asked, gesturing towards the party.

“You wanna leave your own birthday party?” He asked with a chuckle. You shrugged.

“Nobody will notice that I’m gone. I’ll just have to come back at, like, midnight to kick everybody out.”

“Okay, then let’s go.” JJ smiled.

“Alright. Give me one minute.” You giggled, getting up quickly. “Just wait here a sec.”

You ran back into the house and pushed past all of the people to the stairs, heading up to your bedroom. You had kept the door locked to keep out horny couples. You rooted through one of your drawers until you found a set of keys, switched out of your party sandals to a pair of converse, and grabbed your car key off of your vanity before heading back out, making sure to lock your door behind you again.

You paused on the stairs to scan the crowd until you spotted Sarah, and pushed past the bodies towards her.

“Y/N! Where’d you go?” She shouted over the music.

“Just outside. I’m gonna disappear from the party for the bit, can you call me if something major happens?” You asked. Sarah frowned.

“But this is your birthday party.”

“I know it’s weird, but I’ve got some other stuff going on right now and I just need to get away for a bit.”

“Okay, I guess that makes sense. I’ll call you if anything happens.” She nodded, though the confusion was still clear on her face.

“Thanks. I’ll see you later.” You smiled, before heading back out.

JJ was stood at the side of the driveway waiting for you when you came back out, slamming the front door shut after yourself. You grabbed his hand and pulled him after you to your car with a smile.

“Where are we going?” He questioned as you started the engine and began backing out.

“My other house.” You answered.

“Sorry, did you say ‘other house’?”

“My dad’s house. He hasn’t been home in eight months and I haven’t been there in about five, but a cleaner comes by every two weeks to maintain it.” You explained.

“Jesus you’re rich.” JJ mumbled. He had a teasing smile on his face but the comment made you feel a little guilty.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to show off or anything. We don’t have to go to my dad’s if you don't want-"

“Y/N, it’s fine.” He laughed. “You didn’t choose to be born into a rich family the same way I didn’t choose to be born into a poor one.”

“I know, I just don’t want to be... insensitive isn’t the right word. I just don’t want to seem like I take it for granted; I don’t want you think that I’m that kind of person.”

“I don’t.” He assured you. “You don’t treat me like I’m any different for being poor, so I don’t care that you’re rich.”

It wasn’t long until you were pulling into the driveway of your dad’s house. It was grand and expensive looking, but it was still smaller than your mom’s; she had kept the house after the divorce and since your dad wasn’t even home most of the time he’d decided that he didn’t need quote so much space.

The inside was modestly decorated, no elaborate sculptures or outlandish wall decorations like so many of the other houses on Figure Eight. The furniture was very nice, and the few paintings and things that were on the walls were expensive, but your father was a man of simple taste. He didn’t even have any fancy chandeliers.

“I expected something more opulent for the richest man in the Outer Banks.” JJ commented as he looked around.

“Since when was opulent a word in your vocabulary?” You questioned with a giggle. JJ gasped, and pinched you in the side with a frown.

“I’m not completely dumb.” He objected.

You laughed, grabbing his hand and dragging him after you into the living room. You flicked on the light before dropping yourself onto the sofa and pulling JJ down with you.

“What kind of movies do you like?” You asked him as you picked up the remote and switched on the TV.

“Uh, I don’t know, action and horror.” He shrugged.

“What kind of horror? Slasher? Psychological? Paranormal?”

“I don’t know.” He chuckled. You gave an exaggerated sigh, going into the horror section on Netflix.

“Fine, I guess I’ll pick.”

You ended up putting on The Blair Witch Project after discovering that JJ had never seen it, and the two of you settled down. You were thankful to be away from the crowded mess of your birthday party and just have a quiet night with JJ.

“But I don’t understand how they managed to make it scary, basically nothing happened.” JJ perplexed after the movie ended.

“Yeah, that’s why it’s genius.” You grinned up at him. Throughout the course of the film you had ended up lying across the sofa with your head resting on his lap. “All of the horror is in the fact that you know that something this out there but you never see it. Modern horror movies could never.”

“That’s crazy bro.” He said, making you laugh. He looked down at you with an amused smile and a sparkle in his eye that made your heart jump.

“Do you wanna stay here for the night?” You offered once your laughter subsided. “I’m sure my dad has some stuff in his closet that you can sleep in.”

“Are you sure? I mean, don’t you have to go home?”

“Nah, my mom and Nicholas are staying at a hotel tonight so that I can have my party so they won’t know that I’m not there.” You shrugged. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

“No, I’d like to stay.” He smiled. You let out a relieved breath that you didn’t realise you’d been holding.

“Cool. I need to go and kick everyone out of my house but we can watch another movie when I get back if you want?”

“Sounds good to me. Do you want me to come with you?”

“Probably best if you don’t, you know, with the whole ‘every Kook on the island is there’ thing.” JJ laughed lightly at that.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He nodded. “Can I have a shower while you’re gone.”

“Sure.” You chuckled as you sat up. “You can use my en suite and I’ll get you something to change into.”

You took him upstairs, grabbing a t-shirt and a pair of gym shorts from one of your dad’s drawers before showing him into your room. It was plainly decorated like the rest of the house, but you had posters and photos tacked up and covering almost every inch of the walls.

“This is nice.” JJ smiled, looking around.

“Don’t go snooping around while I’m gone, a person’s bedroom is their kingdom.”

“I’ll mind my own business.” He agreed with a salute that made you grin.

“And make sure you dry off properly, I don’t want you dripping all over my nice carpet.”

“Jeeze, any more rules?”

“Uh, nope. I think that’s it.” You chirped. “I should be back in, like, half an hour. I’m pretty sure I left some chicken nuggets in the freezer last time I was here, you can have those if you get hungry. Or maybe I’ll get takeout on my way back?”

“Takeout sounds good.” JJ nodded, beaming, and pulled you in for a kiss before you left.

[chiliiscereal]

Well my standards have really lowered when I comes to writing fanfiction a XD

First I didn’t want to write any at all, then I didn’t want to write for any cartoons, then I didn’t want to write for cartoon turtles... and here i am.

Here I am starting a x reader fanfiction... with the 2014/2016 version of Raph

Still a bit uncomfortable with this but I had an idea so here we go! If I like it then I’ll keep going :p

Lol what am I doing with my life XD

Too tall

Raph x tall! Fem! Reader

Summary: yes this is me self projecting. Reader is 6 foot 4 inches tall and literally every boy she meets is too insecure to date her when she’s that tall. After a while of being treated like she unbreakable and a giant she gets tired of it. Luckily there’s someone else out there who understands how she feels.

———-

You tapped the cafe table impatiently, trying not to watch your friend and her boyfriend across from you. You attempted to look at the door instead. Maybe if you stared at it long enough then your date would show up.

“It’s okay! I’m sure he’ll show up.” She tried to console you as her boyfriend held her tiny little hand.

Perfect.

Small.

You looked at your own clenched hands and wished that yours could fit so perfectly in someone else’s hands. But, sadly, big hands come with height.

No boy your age ever came close to you.

It’s not that you minded.

It’s that they did.

You didn’t care that practically every boy you met barely went up to your shoulder. You wanted companionship. You didn’t need them to be a hulking giant. You needed someone who loved you.

This wasn’t Tall Girl for goodness sake.

You weren’t waiting around for some tall man to show up.

Unfortunately no guy was willing to step up to the plate.

Why might you ask?

Insecurity of course.

The last three guys that turned you down all said they weren’t comfortable with being shorter than their girlfriend. Others said they weren’t looking for a girlfriend.

Funnily enough they all ended up with girlfriends maybe a week later.

The other girls were incredibly tiny. They barely even made it to the boys shoulders. If that.

But you thought maybe this boy would be different.

He seemed like he was.

He seemed interested at least.

He SEEMED like he was excited when you asked him on a double date with your best friend and her boyfriend.

But an hour passed already and he wasn’t there.

You sat up with a bit of a huff. “It’s fine. Let’s just... let’s just enjoy dinner.”

Your friend frowned at you but decided to let it drop. She knew you hated whenever anything like this was addressed so she bit her tongue and changed the subject.

You couldn’t enjoy dinner or pay attention to anything brought up.

Oh you tried.

You gave it the old college try.

But you found your mind wandering back to the lost date way to often.

After another thirty minutes you stood up. “You know what? I’m kind of tired and I still have some homework to finish up. You two enjoy your date!” You grabbed your bag and walked out before your friend could even call you back.

You just needed some time to yourself.

Time to think.

You walked down the sidewalk slowly, half heartedly wishing that the boy would call you and give an amazing reason as to why he was two hours late.

You stopped yourself from reaching for your phone to check for a text.

No it was his loss.

Not yours.

Surely there was someone out there for you... waiting for you to come along.

Someone that wouldn’t care if you were a little taller than them.

You huffed and zipped your bag shut. Whoever they were, they definitely weren’t that boy.

“Hey girl, who you all dressed up for?” Came a voice from the alley you were about to pass.

“No time to talk.” You answered quickly and continued walking.

You weren’t about to give them the time of day. There was a tub of ice cream and a sappy romance movie waiting for you back at your apartment.

“Come on, a girl like you with legs like that? Surely you’re dressed up for somebody.” The man stepped out of the alleyway and leaned against the brick wall. “I’m thinkin’ maybe it’s me.”

Oh you wanted to turn him around and hit him with your bag.

But it wasn’t worth the risk.

“Hell no.” You stated curtly and walked by him briskly.

He snatched your wrist, effectively making your skin crawl. “Look at me when I’m talking to ya.”

He pulled you into the alley before you could stop him.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me.” You growled and tried to rip yourself away. “HELL. NO.”

“Come on, baby! Give me a chance-!” He attempted you sweet talk before he was interrupted.

You caught his hand before he could grab you anywhere inappropriate. “I have had a REALLY terrible day. I am a MINOR and if you don’t get lost RIGHT NOW then you’re gonna have some serious problems.”

He was close enough that you could smell the bitter alcohol on his breath.

He was probably a head shorter than you and had no idea what he was getting into.

“I don’t care if you’re a minor-.” He started.

Your fist smashing into his nose stopped his words.

“Like I said!” You growled as you shook the pain out of your knuckles, “I have had a really really REALLY bad day. And YOU are some little gnat just buzzing in my FACE!”

He gripped his nose with a cry, blood dripping down it like a waterfall. “YOU BROKE MY NOSE!”

“YOU PULLED ME INTO AN ALLEY AND TRIED TO TOUCH ME!” You shouted back, hitting him with your purse before he could charge at you. “YOU MADE THIS CHOICE AFTER I WARNED YOU!”

It felt good to take your rage out on somebody. And it was justified to! It wasn’t like you were just beating this man. He wasn’t letting you leave! He kept grabbing you before you could go.

————-

Turtles pov

They crouched above the alleyway, watching the man pull you into the alleyway.

“We gotta get involved man.” The red masked one whispered. “This doesn’t look to good.”

“I told you, we only get involved if it gets really bad.” The blue one responded with an eye roll. “We can’t risk being seen!”

“It already looks really bad!”

“If she gets anymore hurt then we jump in!”

The orange masked turtle jumped into the conversation. “I don’t know, I think my money’s on the girl.”

“Mikey shut up!” The purple masked brother whispered. “This is serious!”

“So am I! Look at her! She isn’t even scared!”

“I think she at least looks a little scared.”

“Probably cause she’s trying to keep herself from beating the shit out of him!”

Raph rolled his eyes and shoved his younger brother. “It’s our job to do the protectin’ round here. Shut up and- HOLY SHIT!”

The all gasped as you reeled your hand back and knocked your fist into the creeps nose.

“Damn that looked like it hurt.” Leo observed. “Maybe she doesn’t need our help.”

“I say we stay here in case it goes south.” Raph argued, waiting for Leo to argue with him.

“Fine, but we leave when it looks like she’s safe.” Leo nodded and looked back to the fight.

Raph didn’t have time to feel proud that he’d been listened to. Mikey was inching closer to watch. “What the hell are ya doin’?” He reached forward to pull him back. “She’s gonna see ya!”

Mikey leaned over the edge anyway. “Look at her go! I told you he didn’t stand a chance!”

“Who knew using a purse was so effective?” Leo nodded. “Think she’s got it?”

“Looks like it to me!” Mikey laughed and watched with glee. “This is real entertainment.”

“Mikey you’re too close to the edge!” Raph tried to grab him but was shoved away. “You’re gonna fall-!”

————

With that you shoved the man into the wall. “Are you FINALLY done? Have you FINALLY learned your lesson?”

He spit out the blood from his mouth and nodded. “Fine! Please just leave me alone!”

“Good choice!” You shoved him away from you. “Go before I change my mind!”

He was gone before you could even blink.

“That’s right! Get out of here!” You shouted to him as he scurried away.

You lifted your chin triumphantly.

Maybe you hadn’t gotten that date but you sure did beat the crap out of a creep.

You dusted your hands off and snatched your purse off the ground.

“If I catch you harassing anyone else you’ll get it twice as bad!”

No answer of course.

He was long gone.

Still, it felt good to shout.

You could finally go home.

You turned back to the edge of the alleyway with a sigh of relief.

You took one step forward.

Then, the least expected thing happened.

“OH SHIT!”

Next thing you knew you were on the ground after something very large crashed into you.

“What the hell!” You sat up and rubbed your head. “Who just sits on a roof above an alleyway?!”

You grabbed your purse quickly and stood up, ready for another fight.

It wasn’t another creep.

And from the looks of it... it wasn’t even human.

Well, THEY weren’t even human.

You didn’t know what they were.

Green...

Huge...

And shells...

The finally looked at you.

Why were they wearing masks?

What even were they?

Why were they there!?

The one in orange immediately scurried behind the one in red. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit!”

The one in red looked at you and then looked at the guy behind him. “You dragged me into this! You fix it!”

He pulled him forward.

Honestly you had no idea what to think.

There were two GIANT turtles right in front of you! And they were talking!

You gripped your purse a little tighter, waiting to see what they would do.

The one directly in front of you tried to speak only to look back at the red masked one and then back up at where they had fallen.

You looked from him to where he was looking quickly. “Are there more of you?”

He gulped quickly and attempted to hide behind the bigger turtle. “Uh... yeah?”

You took a small step to the exit. “Are you... are you gonna try to take my purse or something?”

The red one glared at you. “No! We’re just.. just here to protect the city. We ain’t monsters!”

You noticed him getting defensive immediately and nodded. “...okay then. Well, if you’re not going to rob me then I’m going to pretend I saw nothing and go on my way.”

The red one frowned.

You were acting waaaaaaay too casual.

Surely there had to be some other motive.

“Hold on a minute... you ain’t goin’ anywhere yet.”

You glared at him and held out your purse. “Are you gonna stop me?”

Mikey took a step back and Raph rolled his eyes.

“I don’t think a purse is gonna do much against someone like me.” He stated.

“I don’t even know who you are.” You stepped back again and tightened your grip. “I didn’t even know people like you existed until now.”

You looked them up and down, taking them all in.

This couldn’t be real.

It couldn’t be.

“You say anything bout this and you’re dead, got it?” He pointed around you as if aggression could make you quiet.

“Can you at least let me go home and finish my ice cream before you decide to kill me?” You backed up again.

You were so close to running away.

So close to escape.

Before you could back up any further, two more creatures dropped from the sky behind you.

You jumped and scrambled away, nearly running into the red masked turtle.

“Listen, I’m sorry about the way my brother phrased everything.” The new turtle glared at his companion. “What he meant to say is that we protect the city. We were watching that man just in case he tried anything and these two,” he glared at the first two again, “fell off the roof.”

The one next to him pushed up his glasses. “I’m surprised you haven’t passed out from fear yet. The first person we met did just that!”

Your back hit the wall and you had no where else to go. “I’m not too sure if I won’t do that.” You glanced between the four of them. “What even are you guys?”

“Turtles!” The orange one spoke up before the red one could shush him.

“Mutants as well.” The purple one joined.

“And ninjas.”

“And teenagers.”

You couldn’t help but snort. “Mutant turtle teen ninjas? I think you need to rebrand that.”

Maybe you were insane.

Here you were cracking jokes with large turtles at dinner time.

But so far they were harmless, despite their stature. According to the blue one they protect New York.

“Ya got a problem with it?” The red one grew even more tense.

You shook your head quickly. “No. Just... surprised.”

“And scared?” He added. “Scared of monsters like us?”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “I thought you just said you weren’t monsters.”

That seemed to stop him.

So you continued with a deep breath. “You’re all just... really huge. I thought I was tall but standing next to you...” you swallowed and tried not to let your nerves get to you. You turned to the blue one since he seemed to be the leader. “...can I go now? I won’t tell anyone you exist or... whatever it is you want.”

The blue one was skeptical but the purple one butted in.

“Do you have a way home? Like a friend you can call?”

You opened your purse. “Yeah I should be able to call an Uber with my...” you pulled out the broken device. “...my phone.”

Well crap.

You stuffed it back in quickly. “It’s okay I’ll just walk-!”

“I can fix it.” He offered. “Besides it’ll be an extra security measure for us if we have your contact information.” He gestured loosely to the hand you’d punched the creep with. “We could also bandage up those cuts.”

You brought up your hand and inspected the blood with surprise.

Well... when were you gonna get another opportunity like this? It’s not everyday a girl gets invited into the homes of local mutants.

Besides you really didn’t want to walk home with your phone destroyed.

The red one looked at the purple one angrily. “You wanna being ‘er back??”

“Our job is to help people, Raph.” He rolled his eyes.

“I’m with Donnie. It’s only fair since we broke her phone.” The blue one nodded.

“Well if it’s not too much trouble...”

—————

Next thing you know you were whisked away to none other than the sewers.

Well that kind of made sense.

No one would ever really want to go down there anyway.

The purple one, whose name you learned was Donnie, had your phone in his three fingers the moment you stepped foot in their home.

“I’ll do a little fixing up, maybe an upgrade, and Raph can take a look at your hands.” He muttered as he started to disappear into a lab like room.

Raph...

He was the red angry one wasn’t he.

The tallest and biggest out of them all.

He didn’t seem too happy about it either.

“Why me?” He protested. “What ‘bout Leo? Or-or Master Splinter? Heck, even Mikey!” He gestured to his orange masked brother as if to showcase how he’d be better at it.

You couldn’t help but silently agree with him.

Mikey seemed the most open on the way here. He’d talked your ear off the whole trip, asking questions about what it was like to be a human and bragging about all the people he’d saved. He’d even wanted you to play a video game with you when you got to their home. He’d been a bit overbearing but that was better than Mr. miffed muscle mountain.

“Hey you’ve broken the skin on your knuckles before. You’ve got experience in it. Just fix her hand and be done.” With that, Donnie was gone.

You shared an awkward moment of eye contact with Raph before he sighed.

“Well, I’m gonna go play my game.” Mikey dashed over to the tv. “Let me know when you two are done and we can play!” He grabbed Leo by the back of his shell and pulled him along.

You bit the inside of your cheek nervously.

It was just you two.

You and the giant turtle boy beside you.

“Aight well...” he cleared his throat. “I guess I’ll take you up to the work out room then?”

He stopped and you realized he was waiting for you to say something. You quickly tried to scrounge up a comprehensible sentence.

“Y-yeah, sounds good with me.” You followed after him quietly, holding your hand so the blood wouldn’t drip everywhere.

The room was smaller than you imagined but still... it was huge to you.

He began rummaging through a box on the table, fumbling with objects. “You can uh... you can sit down while I grab the-the stuff.” He told you quickly.

You didn’t know where to sit so you interpreted his words to mean that you should sit on the work out bench.

You watched patiently as he found the roll of gauze.

Clearly he was just as nervous as you.

You didn’t know why HE was nervous though. He was a giant turtle for goodness sake. He could snap you in half easily.

“Here lemme see that hand.” He shuffled over and reached out.

You gave your right one to him, trying to hold in your nervous shaking.

“Ain’t gonna bite ya.” He rolled his eyes.

“I know.” You commented, watching him start applying disinfectant. “Just never been in a situation like this before.”

He snorted and continued his work.

You couldn’t help but notice how small your hand looked compared to his. Ha. That was new. Usually it was you watching little pick me girls compare their hand size to their crushes. How strange it was for it to be you.

“And I thought I had big hands.” You couldn’t help but blurt out.

He kept his eyes on your hand, examining it a little more. “Ya call this big?”

“Yep.” You glanced around the room, taking in the ‘scenery’.

He snorted. “Damn tiny to me.” He pulled out the gauze and began wrapping your knuckles. “Look, I’m uh... I’m sorry ‘bout the way I handled earlier. My dumbnut brother got us exposed when ya clearly had the situation handled.”

You cringed, remembering that they’d seen you beating the creep. “Yeah I could have handled that better as well.”

He paused for a half second, as if considering his next words, and then continued. “Heard ya say you were havin’ a shit day as well.”

You weren’t exactly sure if you wanted this brought up in the middle of the weirdest experience ever but you were desperate for a smooth conversation. “Yeah, some jackass stood me up.”

He frowned and momentarily made confused eye contact with you. “Stood ya up?”

“You know, as in he said he was gonna go on a date with me and just didn’t show up.” You forced out a laugh. “But it’s fine I got ice cream at home.”

“Mmm.” He muttered. “Sounds like a douche bag.”

Well outta room! Part two will be up I had too much fun :)

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 303: And What, Pray Tell, Is a “One For All”

Previously on BnHA: The Todorokis (really just Enji) looked at their children and went “how can we screw up all four of them in uniquely different ways” and proceeded to do just that. Touya was all “just because practicing how to set myself on fire better hasn’t worked to win my dad’s affections YET doesn’t mean it will NEVER work”, because child logic. Turns out setting oneself on fire real hard isn’t so effective at winning affections, but is actually incredibly effective when it comes to burning oneself to death, so there’s that. Back in the present day, the Todorokis basked in their various misplaced (again, except for Enji) feelings of guilt, and were all “anyway but get over yourself already Enji, you still have to do something to stop this kid”, and Shouto was all “I’ll help too”, and Enji was all “(╥_╥)”, and Hawks and Jeanist were all “[surreptitiously listening in from outside the door]”, and that’s basically where we left off.

Today on BnHA: Hawks and Jeanist are all “mind if we join you on this family journey?” and proceed to stroll in uninvited with their puns and their perceptive insights. Hawks is all “so to sum everything up, we’re fucked, but at least you have us here to help you out! by the way, no clue why I’m the first person to ask this in three hundred chapters, but wtf is One For All.” We then cut to Deku, who’s still all “[(－－)]z”, and All Might, who is all “I’m just going to ignore the extremely loud racket going on right outside this room.” Which, btw, is happening on account of Bakugou, who is all “(╬◣Д◢)” as Satou, Tsuyu, and Mineta cart him away. Anyway so that’s a lot of antics, and also it looks like Hawks has gotten tired of the Todorokis refusing to put the pieces together on their own about OFA and so he is fast-tracking that shit. And meanwhile Deku is chatting it up with the Vestiges exactly like we all thought. And now we have to wait another whole week for updates on all of this. This really is not fair.

omfg lol

“our bad, we were kind of accidentally listening in on purpose.” like I said last week guys, no fuss. it’s a tradition

OMG

I am absolutely fucking floored. Hawks literally said that so casually that it’s impossible for me to rewrite it so as to be even more casual. that’s literally what I would write in the “today on bnha” section. in fact I probably will write that

(ETA: just for laughs I tried it and it really worked.)

a couple more things to point out about this panel: 

“TOP 3” omg yes. more like “top only” at this point, honestly. interested to see how that goes

Hawks’s phone is freaking the fuck out about something, calm down there

I know this is a standard Jeanist hair-fixing gesture that he does all the time, but I can’t help but form hypotheses about this being a stress reaction because Hawks’s hair is making him internally freak out. Hawks, if this man tries to get you alone with him and some hairspray and a comb, please for the love of god do not listen to him. get out of there and call the authorities

omg Shouto’s face

okay confession, I wasn’t really sold on the whole “Shouto has a schoolboy crush on Hawks” thing until exactly now, when I became 100% sold on it. that is adorable

and heck with it, gotta show Enji and Rei’s reactions here as well because lol

“omg my son who’s not my son, and he just overheard everything about me being a terrible shitty father and person overall, oh and plus my actual-son set him on fire and called him out on a national broadcast. I’m just gonna stare at him baffledly.” versus Rei, who is all “hmm, who are these people”

so Hawks is all “I got released from the hospital after one day for some reason so I made Jeanist drive me around places while we talked about life” but uh, heyyyyy, what’s Rei doing

okay, uh

SO FUCKING FORMAL OMFG. “SORRY MY KID TRIED TO BURN YOU TO DEATH, APPARENTLY HE DOES THAT” REI NO IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT

HAWKS IS ALL “I’M JUST GONNA LAUGH SINCE THAT’S MY DEFAULT RESPONSE TO BEING PROFOUNDLY UNCOMFORTABLE”

let me tell you a secret Hawks, it’s my default response too. ahahahahahahaha oh thank god Jeanist is helping her up -- AND MAKING A JEANS PUN, OF COURSE. IT’S BEEN ALMOST THIRTY SECONDS. MY MAN WAS DYING

“WTF IS ILLEGAL DENIM” he’s talking ‘bout them counterfeit jeans, Rei. Antoine Bugleboy knows

THANK YOU JEANIST!! OUT HERE ASKING THE RELEVANT QUESTIONS

damn straight. we’re not gonna sit around waiting another 300 chapters for this information on this man’s watch

now Hawks is telling Endeavor he used to watch videos of him all the time, and calling him his “childhood obsession” I can’t

OH MY SWEET STARS AND MOONS

1000% CANON. “SO CLOSE...” ARE YOU SERIOUS. YOU REALLY PUT THAT THOUGHT BUBBLE THERE AND EVERYTHING. “GOOD MORNING EVERYONE, SO JUST IN CASE YOU WEREN’T ALREADY AWARE, TODOROKI SHOUTO IS NOT ACTUALLY STRAIGHT.” HORIKOSHI KOUHEI I AM LITERALLY DUMBFOUNDED. THIS IS AMAZING

and meanwhile that look on Hawks’s face while he casually-but-not-really-casually-at-all asks this question. that phone app better be using his actual voice. I’m not sure I could take this scene in the anime at this point if it was like Alexa talking or something

that look in his eyes is basically saying that so far, based on the information he has absorbed up until this point, Hawks is prepared to view his former childhood obsession as a flawed but changed man. however I get the distinct feeling that depending on Endeavor’s answer now, he would be willing to drastically shift some of his opinions on him

(ETA: this is maybe my favorite panel in the entire chapter. the fact that his question isn’t addressed to anyone in particular, but his eyes are zeroing on on Endeavor. and the way his leaning-on-Shouto pose manages to be simultaneously nonchalant and yet ever-so-slightly protective. there’s so much going on in this one question and gesture and I’m mildly obsessed with it.)

however, Rei is all “that was me” and ONCE AGAIN WITH THE FACES IN THIS CHAPTER holy shit

Hawks definitely did not see that one coming sob. it’s so fun watching him frantically recalculate his ideas about this family every two seconds

DAMN IT HORIKOSHI I UNDERSTOOD THE PARALLELS ALREADY, YOU REALLY DIDN’T HAVE TO DO THIS

yes, Hawks, you get it. it’s not exactly the same, but it’s close enough. though unlike your shitty parents, Rei and Enji are at least trying

OKAY I SERIOUSLY CANNOT WITH ALL OF THIS

fljkdlaskfjlwkjl okay we’re doing the bullet-points breakdown here

first of all, the fact that poor little Shouto’s heart is still thumping away at this proximity and all he can think is “CLOSE” all intelligently as he stares at him with that face omg

and meanwhile Horikoshi has these STRATEGIC BANDAGES WRAPPED AROUND HIS CHEEKS TO HIDE ALL OF HIS SHOUJO BLUSHING omfg. SENPAI NOTICED YOU SWEETIE!!!

HAWKS YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY ZERO OBLIGATION TO WASTE ANOTHER SECOND OF YOUR LIFE WORRYING ABOUT THESE TWO ASSHOLES WHO NEVER SPARED YOU THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF REGARD OR CONCERN IN THEIR ENTIRE LIVES. THE NICEST THING YOUR MOM EVER DID FOR YOU WAS BUY YOU A $2 ENDEAVOR PLUSH FROM THE DISCOUNT BIN TO KEEP YOU QUIET, AND YOU WERE SO AWED BY THAT ONE ACT OF SORTA KINDA APPROXIMATE KINDNESS THAT YOU SHAPED YOUR ENTIRE WORLDVIEW AROUND IT. PLEASE LET ME PICK YOU UP IN A BIG HUG FOR JUST A SEC, YOU DESERVE THE WORLD AND YOU WERE ONE THOUSAND PERCENT JUSTIFIED IN LEAVING THEM IN THE DUST THE SECOND THAT YOU COULD

but all that said, he immediately recognizes that Shouto would also have had cause to do the same in his situation, and yet hasn’t. and so he has that much more admiration for him all of a sudden, which is just super sweet, and fully appropriate. Shouto does deserve props. I’m choosing to take this as an “it takes a lot of strength to be able to forgive, and people who choose to do that even though they’re not obligated to are really amazing" type of thing, as opposed to “people who don’t forgive other people who severely wronged them are bad.” and if I’m wrong and Hawks’s line here is meant to be seen as actual failing on his part, well then fuck that, but we’ll move on

SO NOW, DOWN TO BUSINESS!

I am so, so curious as to what kind of strategy Hawks has for this (if he even has any), so I’ll just be quiet now and read

so Hawks is summing up basically what we already knew -- that Tomura and his inner circle (curious that there’s no mention of AFO, because if Hawks doesn’t know about him, that implies almost no one does) are still on the lam with a few PLF stragglers and some High Ends; that a bunch of prisons have been “liberated” (I assume this means all of the inmates escaped, so if that’s the case then where’s Kurogiri??); that the HPSC is fucked; and that heroes are resigning all over the place, and so civilians are taking matters into their own hands

OH DAMN!?

does this mean we’ll actually see some international heroes?? I will LOSE MY DAMN SHIT omg

(ETA: apparently people who paid more attention to the first BnHA movie than I did recognized the silhouettes as belonging to some background characters from Two Heroes. so maybe they were just cameos and they’re not actually new characters who are soon to join us lol. oh well.)

anyway so Hawks agrees with the other Todorokis that Endeavor has no choice but to fight

awww

DON’T WORRY ENJI THEY’VE GOT YOUR BACK. WITH YOUR FLAMES, AND JEANIST’S PUNS, AND HAWKS’S BOYISHLY GOOD LOOKS, THE THREE OF YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU SET YOUR MINDS TO

so Enji is very pertinently asking why they’re standing by him in spite of the... [gestures vaguely to everything]

oh my lordy lord

Shouto you had better do something to combat this soon, or this man will sneak past you on my favorite character ranking after all. his face. his cheeky lil finger gun. the fact that he sums it up so fucking simply. “if someone is trying to do the right thing, I want to support them.” exactly. exactly

(ETA: and one last thing I love but forgot to mention, which is the fact that Hawks calls it a team-up despite the fact that he is clearly in charge.)

meanwhile Jeanist is all “as for me, at this point I just straight up don’t give a fuck”

I can’t handle how fucking cool this chapter is you guys

so Hawks is all “you good?” at Enji. and Enji...

if anyone needs me, I will be building myself a discourse-proof fort made entirely out of problematic characters. I don’t even care. I will go on living my life very happily in here

lol at Natsu being all “BUT DON’T THINK THIS MAKES US FRIENDS”

I’m living for this weird and no-doubt entirely unintended implication that Natsu and them all are gonna join in the fight with the rest of them. I mean, they do presumably all have very powerful ice quirks. and Natsu has medical training on top of that, and Fuyu is skilled at getting eight-year-olds to behave which could be a useful talent for dealing with Tomura hahaha I kid, but I’M JUST SAYING. who needs hero licenses anyway

OH SHIT FINALLY SOME DISCUSSION OF AN ACTUAL STRATEGY. even if it’s just a PR strategy

WHAKLHL

and now for some reason we’re flashing back to Natsu and Fuyu’s attempts to navigate through the media crowd outside the hospital

well I guess this is why I’m not the mangaka. if I were writing this I would have done something trite and predictable like using that “One for All” line as an excuse to cut to Deku!! as opposed to this entirely unrelated scene!!

seriously though why do we need to see this lol

no one in this crowd has ever heard of Alexander Dumas huh. or even the popular 2007 Disney Channel original movie, High School Musical 2

so now there’s an entire page of Hawks saying they need to know what One for All is, and Endeavor having one of those patented Todoroki WHOOSH realizations lmao look at this

just wait until this man figures out that one of the scrappy new interns he took on three months ago was actually the main character all along

SKDFIOHWIERLKSJGLWLK!!

NOW IS PROBABLY A GOOD TIME TO ASK MYSELF WHY I CHOSE THIS CHARACTER WHO KEEPS DISAPPEARING FOR SIX OR TWELVE OR FORTY CHAPTERS AT A TIME TO BE MY FUCKING FAVORITE. WELCOME BACK SON PLEASE DON’T SCREAM YOURSELF TO DEATH YOU STILL HAVE A HOLE IN YOUR TORSO

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

(ETA: can we just take a moment to appreciate how Bakugou even got so close to Deku’s room in the first place though. in this giant hospital with no idea of where to even go. does he have Deku Radar or something.)

YOU SIX ARE OFFICIALLY ON MY HIT LIST!! SPARE ME YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS!! MY BAKUDEKU REUNION KEEPS GETTING POSTPONED WEEK AFTER WEEK!! YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE HEROES WHERE IS YOUR CONCEPT OF MERCY

(ETA: btw just to be clear, I’m not actually angry lol; it makes total sense that they don’t want this rampaging feral toddler who was still in his own coma all of fifteen minutes ago to come and start screaming at the other coma child until he tears all his stitches out. if there’s anything we Bakugou fans should be familiar with by now, it’s being patient.)

also, Tsuyu wrapping her tongue around Bakugou’s still-healing torso wound absolutely can’t be hygienic at all. also wait is that Inko??

(ETA: pretty sure it is her. she got all of one line smdh.)

Iida is all “thank god Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight pulled through, I thought for sure he was a goner back there”

for the record this is actually really sweet to see how relieved he is. he’s one of the few people who saw the original injury close up, back when he was still at the battlefield and unconscious, so I imagine it really did freak him out quite a bit

JIROUUUUUU

“sometimes I just like to stand here and tug on my imaginary suspenders, what of it”

how come you guys get to loiter around Deku’s room but Kacchan doesn’t. god fucking dammit. AND WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN

I BET KACCHAN COULD WAKE HIM UP FROM HIS COMA WITH THE POWER OF RIVAL INTENSITY!! BUT NOOOOOOOO, [is dragged away back to my fort]

OH MY GOD!?!

"this seems to be an entirely normal and above-board situation that we have just stumbled onto”

I see Jeanist comes from the Iida Tenya school of respectfully using people’s full names

Jeanist becoming one of the main characters is the best thing to ever happen to this series

EXCUSE YOU, IIDA

BUT I’M SURE HE’D MAKE AN EXCEPTION FOR KACCHAN THOUGH!! [elbowing my way back out of the fort] HAWKS, PLEASE --

DON’T GO ALL OMINIOUSLY PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER ALL ON YOUR OWN GODDAMMIT

“there’s absolutely no way this angry wriggling shoulder burrito kid here could answer literally all of my questions, so I’ll just ignore him”

OH MY GOD WE’RE FINALLY CUTTING BACK TO HIM BUT THE CHAPTER IS ENDING

[jumps up, throws a folding chair at Iida and the rest of the gang, and then runs]

oh my god. actually this chapter was awesome. but I’m so fucking mad at this cliffhanger though lol

at least we got a couple of answers! and some hints and teases! poor Deku looks so worn out even though he’s asleep dlwkjl my little green baby. and is it just me or is his quirk activated?? All Might’s all “I can feel it” as if it isn’t obvious just looking at him, why are you trying to be all mysterious dude

anyway! so at least we finally have confirmation and a date for those vestige antics at long last. looking forward to meeting Mister The Fourth next week so we can finally ask him “hey dude, what the fuck”

[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.

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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