#i say that like i literally cant check the cd while im waiting

[greatgoddyke]

i go to to the antique store i buy 4 cds of bands ive never heard of i leave the antique store

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 16

here we go, the crux of the pain...

ok I'm not prepared for this but I gotta rip the bandaid off, lets go

oh!!! magnus flashbacks!! I honestly thought these were shown later...this is such cool setup for the next arc tho I love it

and the tieback to the scavengers ark, showing fulcrum’s flashback but from magnus’s perspective, as the guy labelled with ‘ultra magnus’ blows him up...

and like, I love that those flashbacks are so vague, and you don't even really know why you're being shown them - I feel like when I first read this I assumed it was to show a bunch of times where magnus almost died but didn't even though he was expected to die - like here w/overlord - but we’ll soon find out that's not quite the case...

and I like the little details that don't add up, like the second flashback-magnus having his autobrand at an angle (which current-magnus would obviously hate), and the ‘witty banter’ remark about 3rd flashback-magnus, which could very well be genuine 

oh god oh christ the shot of the lost light flying away from the wreckage of the pod and you can see rewinds broken camera just floating there...fuckgin kill me bro

tg wiping off mangus’s leg because ‘he hates dirt’ tailgate ;_; ily 

drift just chillin with 0 legs left

augh poor tailgate, he’s uniquely unprepared for the horrors of battle after sitting out the whole war

oh god, chromedome is standing on the outside of the ship being sad, I already cant handle this

ohhhh god cd talking about him and rewind looking at the stars together ;_; excuse me while I cry my eyes out

chromedome, you have the worst goddamn coping mechanisms

never over rodimus’s office having flames around the door. my guy

magnus invented a font? that makes so much sense somehow

rodimus is worried about his dad :( 

damnnnnn rung with that absolutely BRUTAL read on rodimus, oof. way to kick someone when they're down...ouch

but really, rodimus’s hero complex is so fascinating, especially bc he’s aware that he has it to some degree, and he’s not necessarily a bad person, so he tries somewhat to avoid playing into it, but that's a difficult thing to do...

 brainstorm hugging his briefcase like that at the funeral...hhhh

swerve, the ‘case quest’ sounds like a spectacularly bad idea

god I'm so sad this whole issue but rodimus giving this big impassioned funeral speech that seems like its about rewind, only for it to REALLY be about some guy who turns into a tripod....really funny

godddd chromedome and brainstorm sitting together, and cd staring at his (remaining) hand....bro :(((

super interested in the fact that rodimus is religious, even though he’s not really overt about it, and it’s not touched on much in the story

rung staring intensely and accusingly at rodimus....jesus that's intimidating

chromedome is clearly uh. Not Coping well, which anyone could see after his “speech” about rewind

brainstorm giving cd that Look :( oh man oh god

GODDDDDDDD the reveal that chromedome has been through this THREE TIMES before, and every single time has chosen to forget, and the whole thing w/the innermost energon...im fucking devastated m8. god

hhhhh and brainstorm saying that he knows cd will go through with it, because they've had this same conversation multiple times before...fucking kill me 

also brainstorm and cd’s friendship is so AUGHHHHH my heart man. earlier on they're friendly assholes to each other but now we get to see that they both have a lot of deep emotions

oh god and now the whole thing with drift. hhhhhh this issue HURTS man

thinkin abt how brainstorm, while talking to cd, said that he thinks that drift ‘has the urge to name names’ but really, drift threw himself on the sword and took ALL the blame, even though cd even said, a lot of it was on him for going into the cell without telling anyone...plus brainstorm (and as we later find out, rodimus) is involved as well....AUGH

and drift being cast out so harshly seems rough, even though we know what he (and the others) did was bad

also looks like magnus is reanimating himself over in the medbay...i love all the symbolism with magnus’s hand this issue

OH GOD OH NO I CANT HANDLE THIS. REWINDS GOODBYE MESSAGE IS SERIOUSLY THE BIGGEST TEARJERKER IN THE STORY

‘you and me apart strikes me as intensely wrong’ I'm literally weeping. hello. I cant fucking handle this 

NOOOO GODDDD I seriously cant deal with rewinds message overlaid onto drift leaving the ship, and being attacked as he goes, and then ratchet helping him up with ‘you're a better person now - stubborn and frustrating but wonderful!’ over the panels AUGHHHH my heart cant handle any of this. my organs are shutting down as we speak

god I'm just ugly crying @ the end of the message.... ‘one more thing - one last thing - because I don't say it enough...I love you’ AUGHHHH

and its rewind himself who says the ‘I love you’ ;_; LOOK HOW HARD I CAN CRY!!!!!!!!!!!

and the panels of chromedome retracting his needles...he was ready to go through w/it just like brainstorm said but rewind was able to convince him otherwise from beyond the grave ;_; its about the LOVE man

like...rewind might not have known about cd’s past husbands and all the bad coping mechanism nonsense surrounding all that (or maybe he did? unclear) but either way, he knows chromedome so well by now, and knows that he’d be devastated by rewind dying, and so he leaves him this final message....additionally, I feel like rewind, being an archivist, would loathe the idea of being erased from the memory of the person who cares for him the most, and his goodbye message succeeded in preventing that

next, to give us a break from extreme emotional devastation brought about by gay robots, we check in with magnus, who has decided he’s had enough of all of this nonsense and has vacated the premise, somehow

aaaaand right back to being hit by a metaphorical emotional bat, because it looks like tailgate’s gonna die posthaste! 

I really love how the character profile descriptions change periodically

SO...this issue...this ARC....GODDDD. I mean its clear from my liveblogs that this destroyed me emotionally, phew....

I will say, I think the writing here is so excellent - this little 3-issue ‘arc’ felt like it had been built up to perfectly from the very beginning, and it all came together in a well-paced and devastating conclusion here 

I mean, this isn't the end of s1, we still have remain in light, but a lot of plot points wrapped up here. I don't know much about comics but I feel like they can get cancelled pretty fast, and idek how many issues mtmte was ‘guaranteed’ at this point, so I really commend jro & co for being able to construct such a fantastic story with a solid conclusion, while also setting up a bunch more plotlines for what would hopefully be future issues 

I will say. I'm super glad rewind ends up coming back, and also that things get a lot gayer soon, bc this would have been devastating to read in a whole different way if it was just a bad ole str8forward bury your gays situation 

but since it isn't, then I'm free to be extremely emotional about it, oof

I feel like I've articulate a lot of my thoughts already so ill end here and say: this slaps, cant wait to re-read more

[khaycaprithewriter]

Losing Kathleen

How is one suppose to feel when the person who stood in church and made a promise to go to always protect you, dies? How is one suppose to feel when the person who made you who you are today gets sick and you can't do a fucking thing to change it? How does one feel when yet ANOTHER person is stripping from your life before becoming successful like they always swore you would? I don't know. I don’t really know how I expected to feel, all I knew was that I felt like the whole world was coming to an end. We had all been expecting things to get worse and even when it did it was still a big reality check and shock to us. I remember the day you told me about your cancer, the time you had left and how the next couple months were going to go. It was also the day I found out my mom was gay, but thats a story for another time. Kathleen had come to visit me, I had just given birth to Naomi, my daughter. Naomi was maybe a month old? It was 2015 and we had been trying to make time to meet up so she could get to spend some more time with her. I had been avoiding and dreading having this conversation and pretending that it wasn't real, I was in denial. Sever denial. When she came in the door she gave me a hug and I went to go hand her Naomi and she told me to wait and I already knew what was going down. This was it, the time for the talk. She looked right at me and said “Its really bad, Kris.” She was the only person I was okay with calling me “Kris or Krissy”. Me being me I did my typical “I know everything” attitude said “yeah, I know.” She assured me that I really did not know. “Im not going to be here much longer, the cancer could spread faster or slower. Either way I know I have a few months, maybe a year. But a year would be pushing it.” She started apologizing to me, “I'm sorry I won't be here for any of her birthdays, I might not be able to see you graduate or get married.” I started to cry because reality was finally hitting me, and hitting me hard. How am I suppose to take that? I just gave birth, I was about to start my senior year in high school, just got my first car. These were the things that went through my head, I was only 17. But I instantly felt selfish because here I am worrying about how I am going to get through this and deal with her having cancer, but the real thing I should be worrying about is how is SHE going to handle this? Yes, my life was changing now but HER life was changing completely. Everything was coming to an end for her. How did she feel knowing that she's on a time limit for life now? In all honestly I doubted her and her ability to get through it. It hurts to say but it is true. How on earth could she get through fucking cancer? How is she even able to breathe and not cry while telling her goddaughter that she's dying and there us nothing we can do about it? I know it absolutely killed her on the inside. Luckily though, Kathleen was always good at being honest with me. My whole life was based on a lie, but she always told me the truth. The truth hurts sometimes but whenever she told me something honestly, it just built more of my trust in her and I needed that more than anyone could ever know. To this day I still say that her being honest with me about the whole process and how her cancer is going, kept me going. It kept me sane in times of worry. I needed her to be as honest as possible so I could understand. That day on the couch with her changed my entire life, forever. It is burned into my memory and I will always cherish it. This was our first real one on one together with nobody else around. From that day on I spent every day worrying. But believe it or not that conversation was almost 5 years ago. She lasted 4 years later after that conversation. Let me repeat that, with STAGE 4 CANCER SHE LIVED 4 YEARS LATER AFTER THAT CONVERSATION. 4 whole years of love and laughter and tears. 4 years of concerts and trips and barbecues and dance parties and long talks. Kathleen made it see me graduate, she made it through not only Naomi’s 1st birthday but she made it through, the 2nd and the 3rd. She was alive to see me get engaged to Rasheed. She was able to see me get into college. All the things we swore she would miss because she wouldnt be here, she was here for and then some.I wish I could tell you all about the amazing life lessons she taught me in those 4 years. It was real life shit, real life things nothing was sugar coated. The times I spent with her not only in my early years of life, but as I got older and needed her the most she ALWAYS showed up for me and that is something I will always be grateful for. A few days before she died, it was a very dark and dreary time. I was visiting her as best I could and knew our time with her was coming to an end, and I was prepared for it. She had been preparing me for 4 years for these last couple days. When I went to go see her for the first time in hospice, I was nervous because they had told me that she is not fully there and she's struggling to breath and eat. I was shaking as I walked into the room and she looked at me. “Kristas here”, she started crying. I felt my heart leave my chest and I wanted to collapse and throw up all at the same time because I was so, so sad. But, I made a promise to not let her see me break like she did 4 years ago on that couch. I had to be strong, for once, I needed her to see me be strong. She cried and I held her hand and she kept saying how sorry she was. I assured her that there was literally NOTHING to be sorry about. “I wont be able to see you get married, or have another baby or get a house or graduate college”. But she didn't realize she already had. She was there for me to graduate highschool, give birth to my first child, get into college and see me get engaged. Everything, every milestone, she was there. The last time I saw her, she was very very weak. I knew this was the last time I would hear her voice and see her. She asked me if there was anything I wanted to say. I told her about a very fond memory that was one of the best moments of my childhood. It was january of 2006, my aunt rhonda had recently passed away a few weeks before the new year. I was very depressed during this time. Kathleen always knew music would cheer me up. We were driving in her car and I was silent, still numb from the pain. She said “hey, do you know who Lauryn Hill is?” I shook my head no. “I want you to hear something”. She took out this bright red CD and it was The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill. The first song that played was “Cant Take My Eyes Off of You”. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, it was the mostt interesting and beautiful music I had ever heard. It made me so happy and we started to sing together with the windows down. I smiled and she smiled at me. “Thats what you wanted to tell me before I die?” I said “Well, yeah. It was the best memory I remember because during that time where i thought I could never be happy again and everyone was doing what they could to make me smile, only YOU knew what to do. You played me one song and it just took all the sadness away”. She smiled and I gave her a soft hug and we said “I love you”. As I was getting ready to leave the room she said “Keep in touch, kid” and softly smiled and I smiled back and said “I will”. It was our version of “goodbye”. She didn't like when we said “goodbye”. She passed away a few days later. Losing Kathleen was a hurt I never knew I could feel. But loving Kathleen was an experience and blessing that only those who know her could feel. I wish everyone could've felt that kind of love. The kind of love where someone actually cares about your life. I miss her with every ounce in my body. I feel angry sometimes knowing others miss her just as much as I do when I feel like I'm the only one who deserves to grieve, but thats the selfish in me. If you read this long, I appreciate you. Thank you all for reading my first blog, it means the whole world to me.

I miss you Kathleen, and hope you're somewhere reading my blog and listening to lauryn hill.