#i hate being an adult why does grocery shopping set off my 'were in danger' response?

[nerdie-faerie]

Oh sure I can try a new supermarket no problem 👌 *having an anxiety attack trying to find bread*

[witchyclispe]

Master Of Balance

Posted first on ao3! Check it out there too!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22412821/chapters/53549695

Chapter One 

The Princess and Elder Mechanic 

Rysheladon, one of the coldest planets in the galaxy . The planet was so cold most ships tend to stay far , FAR away from it . Coldest it has ever gotten was below -647 ° which to the people and creatures who inhabit the planet was slightly more than a walk in the park. Thirteen months of winter in a year with only one for spring , two for summer and one for fall , you kinda get used to the never-ending "freeze your ears off" weather.

The planet was on the very edge of the outer rim , almost past it . Rysheladon seemed very similar to Earth yet instead of 75% being water, 80% of the planet had enormous trees that overlooked even the tallest of buildings. They seemed to touch the stars to the citizens who resided there. Often there had been tales the elders would tell the young-lings of their ancestors reaching the stars through the spirits of those very trees. They would call the trees spiritus trees because of the stories.

In these large forests resided many terrible and kind creatures . Large beasts to the smallest of insects that would enchant the unsuspecting traveler if you weren't careful enough , which is why the people of Rysheladon decided to dig underneath the cold surface and make home below away from the cruel weather up top . Though not all could afford to live below so others created tall civilizations atop the surface . For traders of any kind lived above whether they were wealthy like the people below. Only the rich or royalty were able to live beneath the surface . The royal family lived the largest tunnel and cave systems in the below, while the poor people above lived in the terrifying and never ending sea of forests .

Many years ago there had been word of the eldest daughter of the royal family coming to bear a child , but a child with no father. So she had been cast out to raise her child alone and in the cold harsh land above. Never to return unless the child was dead . The eldest princess was to bear the weight of the throne and craved that power unlike anyone in her family ever had before so when she had been tossed out , the eldest daughter had been devastated.  She hated the being growing inside her . Each day closer to the child's birth gave the princess more hatred and anger towards it so she came up with a plan. No one would miss this child, so why keep it? She could easily leave the infant to the storms and creatures of the forest so why shouldn't she?

That was how the eldest princess decided on giving her own child up to die . No remorse , no love , not even a hint of guilt in this poor woman's soul for her own child . But you see, the reason she wasn't happy with the child was because the infant would have no father.

That is because the princess had never been in bed with a man before .

Yes this child had absolutely no father. So how did it come to exist ? There was no logical explanation to it. The child should never have existed yet here it was , growing inside the poor, angry, and abandoned princess. Months ago she had felt an energy consuming her while she slept but never once had she been bedded . Doctors checked just to make sure, she was indeed a virgin soon to give birth to a baby but what the hell kind of baby would it be if it had no father?

Soon the baby was born, it was a baby girl with small tufts of dark hair on its fragile head. The baby seemed perfectly human, and almost resembled her mother completely . Except for the small birthmark on its back which looks oddly like a sword of sorts, a Jedi's sword? No, she must have been losing it .

After resting for a day she haphazardly swaddled the infant in a blanket and walked towards the forest. Not caring that the baby had not been fed yet , not caring that it wailed as if it were dying. 'Soon, soon the child would know death' the princess thought to herself as she walked deeper into the forest until she found a small frozen over lake . One of the only lakes she'd ever seen. It was beautiful , but a dangerous area even for an adult . Quickly the princess settled the baby on a frosted over ledge and wrapped the baby up once more for good measure . She then stood up and started to walk back out of the dreaded forest , never once turning back to look at the now sleeping baby girl.

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Quietly walking along the trail he had made in the forest , an older man who appeared to be around 60 years in age started to trot along through the thick woods . He hummed a small tune to himself as he walked . Nothing pretty but still had meaning to him, His name was Percival the machinist . Or that's what people had been calling him since he was much much younger.

His humming quickly came to a stop when he heard what seemed to be the wailing of an infant. Why was a baby out here? He quickly started walking towards the sound, an infant should never be out in these woods , he thought to himself . Surely he heard the crying get louder as he came closer to it . When he appeared by old Lake Ziosashra and saw the small bundle wrapped up on a stony ledge he moved to assess the situation.

"Aw why hello there little dear. " Percival called to the infant as he reached down to pick it up . "Well I'll be damned… who would've let such a beautiful little baby like you out here , huh?" He cooed to the bundle in his arms . The child seemed to calm down quite a lot just by being held,'T his baby can't be more than a few days old. Why is it out here?' , Percival thought to himself . He looked around seeing that there was most definitely no one else around. " Guess I'll just have to figure out how to keep ya myself huh? Is that alright, little moon? " the old man asked the baby , knowing that it wouldn't understand him but he smiled happily at the smiles and giggles that came from the child.

" Guess that's a yes. " he chuckled to himself.  Quickly and carefully, he made his way off the stone ledge to the ground below with a nice crunch as his feet hit the snowy terrain. Making his way back to the trail he looked down at the little one calmly babbling to itself . "Well we have to give you a name don't we dear? And figure out if you're a little girl or a little boy… " he looked at the lake as the sun lit up the frozen top . Such a beautiful , great big lake.

He untucked the blankets from around the baby , quickly taking note that the baby he has all but suddenly decided to care for was a girl . " Hm…. Why don't we call you… Ziosa?" He said wrapping the baby back up to conceal it from the wicked weather around them. The baby made a strained noise almost like a yell of sorts . Percival laughed a little , " Apparently not. Little moon doesn't like that . Well we can figure that out later , for now let's get you out of this cold . " , the old man said walking to the trail he had just been on minutes before he knew what would happen.

'The force surely does work in mysterious ways .' Percival though as he made his way to his mechanical shop and home. All the while holding the baby girl close to himself as if to shield her from the cold weather .

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Once Percival had made it to his home he set down the small infant on a makeshift couch of his, quickly taking off his multiple layers of jackets and cloaks to fight against the cold world. After that he started a fire in the fireplace that was about 10 feet away from where the bundle of blankets sat on the couch. " lets get it a little warmer here why don't we. " Percival said to no one in particular in the room . The baby girl babbled as if to respond to his words .

Once the fire had been started he walked to his room to find a few thicker blankets and saw one on the end of his bed . " I'll need to find her clothes later…. This'll do for now", again talking to himself. You do that a lot when you've been basically alone for 30 years, all except for the occasional customer and many many ships that needed repairing in his shops garage .

Walking back out to the living room he picked up the girl out of the ragged old blankets and quickly swaddled her to the best of his abilities . He'd never taken care of a kid before but damn he had always wanted to raise one . Just never found the right woman to settle down and have a couple of kids with. He rocked the baby in his arms for a bit, humming the same tune he had been just before he found her. Apparently it had lulled the girl to sleep because the next time he looked down, he saw that she was fast asleep nuzzled in his arms.

Percival's heart could almost burst at that moment . He really needed to think of a name for her but he's a mechanic not someone who's creative, in all honesty he could hardly make up blueprints of his own personal projects . Slowly and carefully, he placed the sleeping baby down on the couch again. He then placed another blanket on top of the swaddled little girl hoping that she'd stay warm with all the blankets and the roaring fire that was going.

Suddenly there was a very loud knock on Percival's front door , he almost jumped out of his skin at the random knock . He wasn't expecting anyone today and it was his only day off which usually meant everyone would leave him alone. Again the very loud knock sounded from his front door , he checked to see if the infant was still asleep , which she was . He grumbled a bit walking towards his door and opening it, " What the hell do you want it's my damn day off-"

"Don't start fussin' at me old man I'm just here with ya groceries like usual." , a tall woman said . She had long black hair that hit that hit the middle of her back, half of it braided in sections. Her skin was a dark blue with green in areas. " alright alright Arthala get in before you make me freeze the last bit of life I have off.",Percival said as he moved to the side to let her come inside. " Like ya have much of that anyways , Percy. " , the woman better known as Arthala said walking in .

Percival quickly closed the door and locking it walking over to check on the baby again as Arthala started talking ,"Its colder than usual out there. People in the city say it's goin' to break records tonight so- what are you doin' perc? " , Athala looked up from her place by the door to see Percival bending down and tucking in something to the couch . " Ah oh yeah… so I was on my daily walk and found something near Old Lake Ziosashra ." , the man said now standing up straight and looking at the very tall woman who now stood in his small kitchen. "Something? Oh please tell me ya didn't find another dying bird , ya could get sick.", Athala said looking at her friend .

Leaning down , Percival carefully picked up the bundle of blankets and you could practically hear Arthala's jaw drop. " You found a baby!?" , she yelled . " Will you be quiet!? Yes I found a baby , she was left all alone and abandoned near the lake. " , Percival whisper shouted walking towards the  kitchen swaying the child back and forth to keep her asleep.

" Why would you bring a baby home? You can hardly take care of yourself !", the tall woman said coming closer to look at the bundle of blankets her friend held . "What was I gonna do, let the bats eat her? Someone had already abandoned her… I mean look at her. She's just so beautiful I don't know why anyone would ever leave a sweet thing like this out there to die ….. I just had to bring her home 'Thala" , Percival told the woman standing beside him . "She is quite cute… but how will you take care of her? She can't be but only a few days old… " , Athala asked .

Percival tried to think about what he would do on his walk home . "Honestly 'thala I have no idea yet but i'm going to keep her. I'll just make up what to do on the way ." , he said quietly still rocking the infant . " You can hold her if you want to." he told his friend who was transfixed on the sleeping girl. As Athala nodded he slowly placed the baby in her arms. "Oh look at ya, aren't ya just a beaut? " she cooed to the girl. " Does she have a name yet Perc? " , " No… still thinking about that but you know i'm not creative. Got any ideas? " , Percival replied as he looked up to his friend. " If she was found near lake Ziosashra… why not Zio? Or maybe 'Ziorah' . Rah means ethereally beautiful to my species and she surely fits that description…" , Athala said to her friend.

Percival smiled looking down towards the sleeping infant that was snuggled up in his friends arms, " Ziorah… that sounds perfect. Alright little moon, I dub you Ziorah… my daughter. "

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Hey guys! I hope you enjoyed chapter one of this story involving my baby girl Ziorah! Please feel free to share and comment any feedback you have or even questions! I'd love to hear what you have to say! If you'd like to see what Ziorah looks like please check out my instagram! I'll hopefully make this story into a comic with time but for now I'm writing it out and making some art of certain parts. Hope you've enjoyed this first chapter!

More to come soon!

[mst3kproject]

Hod Rod Girl

Hot Rod Girl was directed by Leslie H. Martinson, who never did anything that ended up on MST3K but did direct the 1966 Batman movie (the one that gave us the immortal line some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!)  Rather more relevantly, it stars Caroline Kearney from The Thing that Couldn't Die and Lori Nelson from Revenge of the Creature and Untamed Youth, and the title, poster, and advertising all have very little to do with the film itself.  It's the sort of movie that feels MST3K-ish even if it doesn't have much specific MST3K cred, kind of like T-Bird Gang or The Galaxy Invader.

After his little brother Steve is killed in an automobile accident, chunky Jeff Northrup swears off racing and buries himself in his job at the garage.  His friends try to bring him out of his funk, to no avail – until certified asshole Bronc Talbot swaggers smugly to town and starts trying to ruin everybody's good time.  Bronc dares a guy called 'Flat Top' (played by Frank Gorshin, whom director Martinson would be seeing again ten years later in that more famous movie of his) into a game of chicken, repeatedly hits on Jeff's girlfriend Lisa, and runs over a mime on a bicycle.  Finally Jeff can't take it anymore.  It's time for him and Bronc to settle their differences like men, by pretending to beat the tar out of each other in time to foleyed-in punch noises!

This movie has the standard misleading poster, which promises us teenage terrorists tearing up the streets.  In fact, most of the young people in this movie are decidedly non-rebellious, happy to use the police-designated drag strip and stay out of trouble.  It's also got the standard misleading title.  There is a 'hot rod girl' in the film, in the form of Lisa, but she doesn't do much.  All that is pretty par for the course of 50's exploitation movies – but Hot Rod Girl also scores significant bullshit points on its back-of-box blurb.  Check this out.

I don't know what movie that's describing, but it's not the one I watched.  The first sentence is accurate enough – Steve's death makes Jeff quit racing.  The second starts to wander.  Bronc doesn't seem to have much of a goal in the story.  He's just a bully, making himself feel important by causing trouble for the people around him. He never tries to win any sort of title at the racetrack.  In fact, he's not remotely interested in the racetrack, which is all too civilized and well-regulated for him.  And the third sentence is a complete lie.  Bronc never steals Jeff's girl, though it's not for lack of trying.  Lisa despises him at first sight and that never changes.  The words hot rod against hot rod suggest that the movie will end in a climactic race, but it doesn't.  It ends with Jeff and Bronc having a fistfight, and then Bronc is dragged away by the cops.

I usually find things like hyperbolic titles and inappropriate posters fairly amusing, but for some reason this particular instance was just frustrating.  Maybe because I expected a little more honesty out of a modern re-release of the film.  Maybe because the blurb never even mentions the conflicts on which the movie actually turns: Bronc's bullying of Jeff's friends, and the death of the cyclist.  Or maybe it's just because the film the box describes sounds way more entertaining than the one on the disc inside.  Without that summary Hot Rod Girl would still be a lousy movie, but I probably wouldn't have found my first viewing nearly so disappointing if the blurb hadn't set up specific expectations that were destined to go unfulfilled.

Maybe that's the difference.  Titles and posters only set up vague expectations to dash.

Either way, you'd probaly assume that a film about car races would be fast-paced and action-packed, but Hot Rod Girl is slow and talky.  We open on a drag race montage in which we have very little idea what's going on because we haven't met any of the characters yet, but after that most of the movie consists of people standing or sitting around and talking, in scenes that have almost no blocking in them.  Jeff is in a funk and Bronc is a jerk, and everybody else crowds themselves around half a table in a soda shopso that the camera can see them all.  Imagine The Giant Gila Monster without the lizard or the reasonably well-developed character of Chase and you'd get something like Hot Rod Girl.  Even when there are racing or chase scenes, they're remarkably low on tension or excitement, largely because there are so many terrible back-projection shots.  I can imagine Joel and the bots making repeated jokes about how all the 'hot rodders' are really just riding one of those little cars outside the grocery store.

The movie has lots of cars in it and the sets look all right, but in order to afford those it had to skimp in a couple of places.  These are fairly well-chosen, but still noticeable.  The movie makes excuses for why its soda shop, run by a guy nicknamed 'Yo-Yo', is almost empty in any given scene, but they probably just didn't want to pay for any more extras than they had to.  Although public opinion about drag racing and its possibly lethal consequences is supposed to be running high, we only learn about this through the cops talking about it and a couple of cheesy newspaper headlines.  Even Ed Wood knew that a Concerned Citizen complaining to the chief of police is far more effective!  We never see the accident that killed Steve, only a pile of parts that kind of looks like a rolled car in the foreground of a shot.

So yeah, it's a cheap, boring movie that was advertised with lies because the people who distributed it were worried nobody would want to see it.  That's perfectly normal for things that can be considered MST3K fodder.  For all that, though, Hot Rod Girl is not entirely a hollow cash-grab of a film.  It does seem to have something to say about teenagers and racing, and I do think the writers were doing it on purpose.  What's more, the movie's theme almost makes the deceptive advertising work for it – this is a film about how the vast majority of teenagers are nowhere near as rebellious or self-destructive as the adults worry they are.

Among the main characters is detective Ben Merill, who acts as an advocate for the teenage racers.  He's the one who got a special bit of road set aside for them, and makes sure that the rules about racing are followed.  In some ways he's kind of a father figure to the whole group: we never actually see anybody's parents in the movie, and the part of  Merill seems to have been deliberately cast with an actor several inches taller than any of the 'teens'.  He is supportive but strict, wanting to make sure that everybody has fun while not getting hurt or breaking the law, and the local kids are perfectly happy with this arrangement.  They don't want to die or go to jail – why would they?  Detective Merill has arranged for them a safe, legal way to enjoy their hobby, and they're grateful to him.  We wouldn't have a movie at all if it weren't for the arrival of Bronc.

Bronc is the only character who comes anywhere near the idea of teenage terrorists tearing up the streets.  We never find out much about who he is or where he comes from, although it seems he's already on the run from the law.  He's not meant to be comprehensible or sympathetic, because people like him are not comprehensible or sympathetic when they occur in our real lives.  Where are those people?  They're not hard to find – they draw attention to themselves at every opportunity.  Bronc Talbot is that loud extremist who gives everybody else a bad name by proxy.  Pick any group you like, be it a sport, a fandom, or a major religion.  There's always some asshole who has to go and ruin it for everybody.

Almost nobody would have gotten in any trouble in this movie if it hadn't been for Bronc.  We still would have had the accident that killed Steve and resulted in Jeff losing his license and promising never to race again, but none of the fights, accidents, or deaths that follow.  There would never have been any threats of closing down the racing strip or Jeff being charged with manslaughter.  A lot of bad things happen in Hot Rod Girl and almost all of them are because Bronc felt the need to be a dick.  The other racers didn't like him even before he put their good time in danger, but people outside the group think of him as typical and therefore want the racetrack closed down.

Why do I think this was the purposeful 'message' of the movie? Well, consider who the audience is supposed to be.  The fifties were when 'teenagers' first became a recognized demographic, and films with teenage heroes doing things like racing cars were made for them. Teenagers don't want to see themselves portrayed as violent and stupid – they get enough of that from their parents and teachers. Most of them hate the Bronc in their group and wish he'd stop getting them all in trouble.  They don't identify with him.  They identify with sensible Lisa or with Flat-Top, goaded by peer pressure into doing something he didn't want to do.  That's the movie they want to see, so that's the movie somebody made – and then the idiots in the  marketing department got a hold of it.

With this as a theme, the title, poster, and description almost become a form of satire.  They're what you see if you take a brief glance at the movie rather than actually watching it – just as the teenagers appear to be a crowd of Broncs if you don't take the time to get to know them.  If that were intentional, it would be kind of brilliant.

The movie still sucks, though.