#i used to build goddamn robots and now im stuck not even being able to change out a damn headlight

[orbmanson7]

....love being savvy with cars, I really do

But I loathe that with every day that passes, they purposefully make it harder and harder to repair things by yourself

I'm just trying to replace a goddamn headlight bulb

I took off the entire front assembly to remove the entire headlight so I could actually get behind it without being right up against the fucking frame just to remove the bulb at least but the damn headlight seems to be bolted underneath too, and I don't exactly have a fucking ramp to be able to get underneath my car

Which means I HAVE to take it to a dealership just to change a fucking lightbulb!

Also half the fucking bolts (Not all, just half of them) were metric so I didn't have the right tools and had to improvise half of this shit

This is so fucking stupid

The last time I had to change a headlight bulb in a 2006 Chrysler 300, it only took me TWO MINUTES, it was That easy

But this fucking 2017 Nissan Sentra, oh actually we need you to have a full fucking shop and every auto tool ever made in the world and also proprietary equipment just to do this simple task

Fuck this fucking industry, man, I hate this shit

[smokeybrand]

This is Snyder

I don’t care for Zack Snyder. I don’t hate his craft as much as i hate Michael Bay, Snyder actually tries to make good movies, but i don’t find his schlock entertaining. He’s not a bad director, i guess, but his movies are always scatter-brained messes. I think Snyder is more a creative than a crafter. He’s the guy you want in your development stages, throwing out ideas and boarding those massive action scenes. If i were to equate him to a sports analogy, Snyder is the Offensive Coordinator on an American Football team. He’s the guy that builds the visual aspects of your scenes, the car who sets up the set pieces. He’s Mr. Battlemaster, the Attack Master, the guy you call in to adds little spice to your drama and conflict laden plot, not the guy you give the keys to an entire cinematic universe where you have to humanize godlike heroes. Emotional subtlety has never been Snyder’s strong point. Since the only DCEU film that was passable was Wonder Woman, the one flick that Snyder didn’t really have his hands on too much, i wanted to take some time and kind of dissect why i hate almost everything Snyder has ever made.

Dawn of the Dead

It’s been years since i’ve seen this movie but i recall enjoying it considerably. But it’s a zombie movie. And it wasn’t written by Snyder. That’s going to be a running theme in this; Other people’s stuff, Snyder is okay. His own stuff, not so much... Zack was only a Director on this flick which meas he just got to bring a script to life. He just got to pick the best scenes and build a cool looking movie. That’s Snyder at his best and it shows. For my money, DoD is his best film.

300

This was his breakthrough. 300 lends itself to Snyder’s style even more than DoD. The comic it’s based on is literally revisionist history written by 80s comic madman, Frank Miller. It is literally a series of splash pages with cool sh*t on them. In comic book speak, it’s literally a series of action set pieces. Splash pages are used to fill every inch of paper with dynamic, poignant, information. When every page of your book is a splash page, it conveys a sense of aggressive action. That is right up Snyder’s alley. There’s no room for plot or character development but that slow-mo buster kick to that persion dude was crazy dope, son! “THIS! IS! SPARTA!” It’s also a superficial, special FX laden, popcorn movie that is borderline sexist with all of the half naked dudes about but still, i had a good time.

Watchmen

Watchmen was the first Snyder movie i saw where i realized he was kind of out of his depth. Dude did his best to bring this unfimable story to the screen, and in some spots i think he did a really good job (Comedian’s arc was okay and that change toward the end made all of the sense to me) but overall, it lacked the emotional, philosophical, and political depth from the source material, you know, literally the reason why Watchmen is so goddamn brilliant. Snyder shot this movie like a mid 2000s cape flick. Think Raimi’s Spider-Man or X2 but infinitely more superficially, which is ridiculous because the Watchmen novel is infinitely more rich. WB kind of let up on Snyder’s leash a bit and he focused way too much on the sh*t that shouldn’t have been focused on. At it’s core, Watchmen is a character study of those old timey 80s archetypes and an indictment of the destructive materialism infecting society at that time. There’s a visceral moral question that my brother and i argue about all of the time and i believe Snyder stuck the landing, but he kept falling off the bar to get there.

Sucker Punch

Sucker Punch is one of the worst movies i have ever seen. The mechanics, the technical aspects of this movie, are just the worst. I can go into how this is basically a shittier version of Inception with the dream in a dram aspects or how that sh*t doesn’t make any sense in the movies established lore or timeline. I can go into how this thing technically takes place in between the five minutes that Babydoll is being moved from her cell to the lobotomy chair so none of it matter or how f*cking ridiculous it is that this woman’s name is f*cking “Babydoll”. Sucker Punch is wildly problematic and i’ve written at length about how i feel about it before, i think, but my point with this entry is to high light how messy this movie feels. This is Snyder wit h no brakes. This is Snyder unleashed, When left to his own design. THIS, Sucker Punch, is the type of movie Zack Syder wants to make. He wanted to explore the psychology behind being in such dire straights, the emotional and psychological rationale of those terrible circumstances but he also wanted naked chick, a dragon, and giant robot samurai in it. How does that work? You can’t put Nazi Zombies in Girl, Interrupted, man. that dog don’t hunt. i know because Sucker Punch tried it and IT was AWFUL!

The DCEU

I thought about doing these thing individually but considering he basically directed all of these f*cking movies (except Wondy) i can lump them all into one entry. WB mistook the success of the Grimdark Nolan Batman Trilogy as audiences wanted a bunch of edgelord superheroes. So they gave the Batman Begins treatment to f*cking Superman. And, to bring this car crash of an idea to the big screen, they give the reigns to Snyder. I don’t like Superman. I think he’s a terrible hero. How do you right him? What aspects do you focus on when the guy and turn back time by flying real fast? How do you make that asshole compelling? Snyder’s solution? Uncle Ben his ass! Guilt trip him into becoming the world’s savior! sh*t’s lazy son! Man of Steel was adequate though. it was good enough for the WB suits to hand the entire reigns of the DCEU over to this asshat and, oh boy, was that dumb! My chick is the biggest Superman fan and she hated this movie. For her, someone versed in the Kal-El mythos, this was an affront. From what little i know about Supes, i’d agree.

SO Snyder double-downs on his Batmanfication of Superman by literally introducing Batman into a Superman story. BvS is an abortion of a film. It destroys the archetype of what all of these heroes represent. Batman is a psychopath killer. Superman is a morose pussy. Lex Luthor is the goddamn Riddler from Batman Forever. It’s a goddamn mess. Which sucks because, at it’s core, there are a lot of good ideas here. I liked how Luthor was more Zuckerburg than Rockefeller. I liked the introduction of Wonder Woman, even if it felt a little forces at times. I liked at the whole “Punished Messiah” story line for Supes, even if it never got deeper than a puddle. I hated everything else. Everything was just too Snyder-y. Cool sh*t to look at as opposed to deep sh*t to identify with. But that’s what happens when you forgone character development for mech fights and a Doomsday story line that should have bookend a phase one of pictures. Seriously, Doomsday in the second goddamn movie of your fledgling franchise? No! no, im not going to get into that. We’ll address that later.

Suicide Squad was a goddamn mess. I know David Ayer directed that, and one day i hope we get to see that sh*t, but the studio brought Snyder in to fix what they felt was an unwatchable film. Seriously, Snyder is considered a “guest Director” on that film and it shows. Justice League is the same way but Joss Whedon kind of added a bunch of levity to this ridiculous film. While i think Justice League is trash, i also believe it’s the second best that the DCEU has produced, mostly because there was reprieve to ll of Snyder’s grimdark bullsh*t. Whedon was able to bring out the best of these characters. I eve liked Superman in this and i f*cking hate Superman. But that’s kind of my point. If you remove Snyder from the equation, you get solid sh*t! like Wonder Woman!

Everything about Wonder Woman screams dope. It reminds me of a Phase one MCU outing, which is a fitting tone for Diana’s adventures. It’s not a perfect movie, there area ton of issues with it, but overall, it is a delight. I think Gal Gadot gave her best performance and someone finally used Chris Pine in an advantageous manner. I think going full on Ares was a mistake but, in the context of the world, i get it. I thought this was a decent ride until the end. The climax was whack. Seeing as how Snyder is credited as a writer, i assume he wrote this part because it feels wildly Snyderish. Literally the worst pat of this film is the ending. Tonally, it’s ridiculous. It doesn’t fit. It’s poorly executed. But it’s fun to watch, i guess. That’s Snyder in a nutshell.

Ultimately, putting this guy in charge of the entire DCEU, which wanted to be a direct competitor to the MCU, was a mistake. His vision is ridiculous. He has too many ideas for any one film and with no one to reel that in, you get the mess that we have now. There are certain things that needed to happen in order for the DCEU to be relevant, to be good. Snyder doesn’t have the patience to execute like this though. He doesn’t want to put in the time to world build. He just wants to throw awesome looking sh*t on screen and move on. That, a good movie, does not make. If i had a say, i’d probably loosely follow the MCU Phases. That sh*t worked and gave ample time to develop a proper story. As an example, i’d have done something like this:

Phase One - Trinity

Movie 0: House of El. Prequel to the entire DCEU set in the final days of Krypton. You could establish all of the requisite Supermann necessities while also planting seeds for Brainiac, Doomsday, Apokolips, and Darkseid. This would be the backbone for the first three phases of your DCEU. Think Star Wars but with Krpytonians instead of Jedi.

Movie 1: The Batman or Gotham, dunno about that title yet, Definitely a Year one or Year Two Bat-story. I’d want to introduce The Long Halloween arc. Make it a noir, focus on the assumed Batman doing his detective thing, until the climax which would be an amalgamation of No Man’s Land and The Man Who Laughs. Like, Joker is holding the city hostage and all of the holiday murders were a distraction while he planted his trap. Batman would have to choose between his morals or vengeance in the end.

Movie 2: Superman Sequel. Calling this one Man of Steel as it would have both Superman and Metallo as the primary antagonist. I figure having Clark and Corbin duke it out makes for a clever title, you know? You can introduce Luthor as the mastermind, secretly collaborating with his miraculous AI that turns out to be Brainiac. Deathstroke could be hired muscle. Cadmus can be introduced. You get to see the introduction of Superman on a world wide scale as he and Metallo duke it out in the open. This would feel like that old Superman cartoon on the WB way back when. Light-hearted yet serious tone. Actual stakes. Sub plot of Lois figuring out Luthor is the reason all of the trauma occurs.

Movie 3: Wonder Woman. It will probably be a period peace set against WW1. It would pit her against Aries and the preconceptions of women during those bleaker times. The battle would be against disillusionment; trying to find a reason why Man should be defended or something of that nature. Wonder Woman would be more or less what we already got from Patty Jenkins, with a much better ending. Like, an actual pgysical fight with Aries seems dumb. If we have to go that course because of executive meddling, at least cast a better Ares. Make him more menacing and less inept. Motherboxes and a bit more of Apokolips will be introduced in this movie.

Movie 4: World’s Finest. Basically Batman against Superman while WW actually solves the real issues behind the scene. Like, she uncovers the underlying plot of the Motherboxes and actually tries to prepare for the coming of Steppenwolf. I really like the idea of Wonder Woman adapting her skill set to covert ops kind of like Motoko Kusanagi does. Also, you know, dudes is dumb and punchy. While Supes and Bats are having their tiff, Steppenwolf actually appears and engages the two of them. Ultimately, Wonder Woman arrives and the three of them, the Trinity, send ol boy packing back to Apokolips and the Motherboxes go dead. The Trinity is established, the seeds of Apokolips have been sown, and we can move into Phase Two - Justice League with the first movie of the lot; Death of Superman. Opening with the sidelining of the most powerful hero opens up a reason for Batman, having an established relationship with Winder Woman and Superman, realizing there are bigger things out there and a team might be necessary to combat them.

See, four movies, five if you count the Krypton prequel, and you’ve established the world, the main characters, the underlying conflict, and you have room to grow. You’ve developed characters, established the backbone to your entire universe, and given each of your principal heroes, Batman, Superman, ad Wonder Woman, their own outing, in the vein of their own themes. Grimdark works for Batman because he IS grimdark. Sh*t doesn’t fly with Superman or Wonder Woman. Diana is a warrior, set her story to the backdrop of a conflict to showcase her strengths. Superman wold spend his time trying to save Metallo, not murder him at the end of the goddamn movie because Supes is about believing in the good, not killing troubled assholes. Snyder didn’t have the patience to do this. He wasn’t building anything. He just wanted to put cool sh*t on the screen while trying to make everything dark and deep. He failed at both.

In closing, i don’t think Zack Snyder is a terrible director. I don’t. I think he has too may ideas and no one to reel him in when left to his own devices. When he is making someone else’s material, when he has a guidelines to follow and people keeping his rampant creative energy in check, he can be pretty good at his job, a la DOD or 300. Hell, i’d even give him Watchmen. But, left to his own devices, we get nonsense like Sucker Punch and BvS. Zack Snyder is everything that’s wrong with modern American cinema and it galls me to the core.

[satans-codpiece]

ok fr im gonna post this bc this is amazing @ 16 y/o me, what happened to you? selfshipping with a character not a single person on this hell of an earth cares about while staring the entire SPN cast straight in the eyes and being like fuck y’all?

[December 27th, 2012]

HE hadn't thought dying would feel quite like this. Or maybe he did, to an extent. Weightless, like he was floating was to be expected, feeling lightheaded, especially as the almost blinding light blasted from the stone. "It wall went white" doesn't have the same ring to it, though. He had seen that poor woman earlier be vaporized by the stone's power, and he was sure that was what was happening to him right now. Individual atomic bonds being ripped apart by the raw energy being thrown off by Stonehenge.

Even as an astrophysicist he hadn't expected to die such an unpredictable death. Maybe in an accidental atomic explosion at the worst, maybe get cancer or something. Much domestic deaths available than this seemed almost appealing, but in the end, he had saved the world in his death. He knew that long before he left the car with Dr. Jennings. He would die at Stonehenge, even if he failed. Getting the key to the center rock would cause what was happening: this discharge of power on a much smaller scale than the one hat would've occurred had he failed. The one that would redirect the atomic bomb, and then the one after procuring enough of the magnetic power from the Earth's poles.

That was why he left his ring with Dr. Jennings, and faked hope when she said she'd be giving it back. He would never see her again. A chestful of anticipation and the weight of quite possibly the literal world rested on his shoulders and he set out with determination.

Which he was successful and lead to this feeling of weightlessness, of falling even. To be honest he hadn't even realized he was falling until he realized his side and leg burned with pain. He had thought with just enough clarity to think that wasn't the pain supposed to stop once your brain had been picked apart one atomic-level bond at a time? Weren't you supposed to stop thinking? And in that moment he opened his eyes and he could swear on every book of astrophysical theory that he was actually falling. The light spiralling around his was not his near death experience, he was actually falling Goddamn it all. Hell, for all he knew he was actually being taken to see who the hell made Stonehenge and the key and terraformed Earth in the first place billions of years ago. He admitted earlier that there were forces they simply couldn't explain with modern theories, and maybe even any theories to ever trickle through peer reviews. Maybe they had something else at work in their terraforming device, they wouldn't even have to know.

The weightlessness was expected, the falling was a bit of a surprise but still could maybe to chalked up to last-minute hallucinations in an attempt to keep his mind in a single piece. It was the collision of his back to a very solid, very hard surface that had Dr. Glaser sputtering and trying to keep his focus on the material world.

Landing had jostled his already tender gunshot wound, and he groaned despite himself. This was so much less graceful than just being ripped apart or vaporized. He really hoped that at least the cult follower was being as disgraced as himself. Maybe a little more dead, since he did after all wish death upon all the humans in the world. That wasn't very nice.

Jacob stared up from his position on what he assumed was the ground of some abandoned building. The walls were concrete, maybe in a basement somewhere- supposing it was of human origins. The walls were old and a dingy gray, obviously uncared for and let to fall into disrepair. On the ceiling, however, Jacob could not comment since above him was only a swirling vortex of light and color: one that he had obviously just fallen from. He thought for perhaps a moment he had fallen through some sort of wormhole, created by the extreme energy at the stone and forced a counterpart white hole somewhere and had sucked him through. Though that hardly explained how he was still alive: a black hole would crush him under the extreme internal gravity. Not to mention it would also be ripping apart Europe by now.

No, Dr. Glaser was contented to ponder on how he got here as he bled to death slowly. It was a sad death, he thought. He much preferred being vaporized to this, at least in being vaporized he could hope someone would make a movie for him one day, with decent special effects for being vaporized. He could be famous, but no, like this he would be that one scientist that ends up being found in 30 years and then accused of faking his death for publicity. At the scale of everything that had happened surely it would be even more incredible than if they had found Hitler's body in South America. He pondered it a moment more.

Maybe not quite that sensational. It would certainly still rattle the gossiping TV shows for a couple weeks. No, he contented to pressing a hand to his wound which still oozed warm blood over his fingers and into this clothing. Judging from the state of the room and likelihood that he was in an evacuated zone, he hadn't expected anyone to show up. He certainly did not expect a loud cry of "Jesus Christ! Sam, Cas! Get in here!"

Actually he was expecting to really be hallucinating that. He looked lazily, the blood loss finally digging at his consciousness, and saw a large pair of too-green eyes staring back at him. The man, - oh God, Jacob could swear he looks just like Jensen Ackles, the American actor, pushes Jacob's hand out of the way to press a cloth to his wound. "Hey man, it's going to be okay, alright?" Jacob's head is too blurry to really understand what's going on, but is clear enough to know that that tone is more like 'I'm saying this so you wont freak out on me' than 'its okay'.

He expected to die anyway so it's all good. Maybe not with an actor trying to keep his blood inside his body, but hey it'll only make the story even better. He could probably get by with better last words than "It was a robot head", but he could settle for dying in an actor's basement. The man turned around again and yelled: "Sam! Cas!"

This time another man appeared from a doorway, rushing over to the first. He was remarkably tall, Jacob knew for certain even from his state on the floor. And now maybe Jacob could start having a panic attack or laughing off this hallucination because god dammit the other man was fucking Jared Padalecki. So either he was dying on the set of Supernatural, or something was definitely off. He recalled distantly that he had called him Sam, not Jared. And now he was sure he was hallucinating: this was absurdly nuts. Yeah, maybe Sabrina had told him that it was real and she was stuck on the wrong side, but come on. She was having some sort of mental breakdown when she said that. She'd said his alternate on the other side was an angel but this was stupid, this was ridiculous.

"Oh my god, Dean, he looks just like..." Jared (Sam?) mumbled, grabbing a hold of the wound on Jacob's leg. Dean- Jensen- nodded somewhere between numbly and grimly. And then around the corner came another body. Oh Christ, why would this have to be his pre-death hallucination, why couldn't he be receiving his award for astrophysics again, that would be nice.

"Move," The Jacob lookalike said, voice way too low and gravelly to be correct with his body. But they moved and Cas(?) moved in close, squinting at Jacob and all Jacob could was try to not cough up any blood that he felt trickling in his throat. Cas pressed two fingers the Jacob's temple and -now its certain he's hallucinating, but whatever- he was just fine. He gasped, happy to not feel restricted by the pain in his abdomen.

"What do we do...?" Sam began, looking helplessly between Cas and Dean. Jacob was still trying to sort his thoughts.

"Do you know Sariel?" Cas questioned, and it took him a moment to realize his lookalike was talking to him. He thought over a minute. Sariel? No, he didn't think he knew any and shook his head accordingly, too stunned for words.

"If she was stuck on the other side would she even be using her real name? Wouldn't she pick something else so she wouldn't, you know, stand out?"

Jacob could piece that together. Stuck on the otherside and there even being a Jacob alternate? He breathed in through his mouth, expecting it to feel tight and dry and shocked to feel it wet and edging on normal. He worked out, "Sabrina,"

The trio looked down at him. "This is another.. world, right?" They exchanged glances and shrugged, a unison of 'more or less'. "Sabrina Jennings, she said she was,"

The surprised yelp from above was all the warning he got as a body was falling much too quickly from the ceiling to stop. It landed heavily with a thick 'thump' on Jacob's middle, making his cough and sputter.

[December 28th, 2012]

"Oooh, I think I'm dying..."

"You are not dying, Sariel."

"You don't know that, ughh, this feels so awful. Won't you help me Jacob?" "No, just taken some more Nyquil, you're fine. You have the flu." I rolled onto my other side and mustered up my best kicked puppy dog look. "Jacob, won't you please go get it for me...?"

He turned around to glared at me, frustrated and tired with my antics. I really did feel horrible, more than what I expected the "flu" to feel like: more accurately I felt like death personified. I ached all over and moving at all left me terribly nauseousness. I'd never felt anything like it, Angelic or otherwise. Hell, I wasn't supposed to be able to get sick. I may have only partially fallen but that implied I was still partially an Angel and as a part angel being, I shouldn't be able to get sick with such human diseases, right? surely that was in my contract. Maybe

I probably should've read the fine print. I didn't even bother reading the shortened juicier version. Not that this metaphorical contract existed, that's why its metaphorical. I just didn't bother to actually consider what would actually happen if I ripped half my grace out (closer to two thirds, I still had a single pair of wings, not all three). I felt temperature and was bothered by it (I took to wearing several pairs of socks in the winter), I needed food occasionally, I slept a little off and on (maybe 3 hours a night, easily looked over). I hadn't even thought that sickness could also claim my much more fragile body.

I was still angelic enough that it would require a heavenly blade to kill me, I knew that for certain after I tripped and stabbed myself one evening. Whether it still took an archangels' blade or if any lackey could kill me was a mystery I wasn't too keen on figuring out. Being dipped in holy oil would probably fry me, which is such a pity.

But sickness is another thing all together, there were a handful of diseases that could affect angels. Mostly they attached to the wings: the most sensitive part of any angel, arch- or not. They were akin to birds' diseases, but the difference was simple. We could rid ourselves of them almost instantaneously. I'd only heard of cherubs being stuck with their sickness for a while, and even then they are so far down the food chain it isn't surprising. They're barely above humans, only capable of flight and hiding themselves from human view. They don't even require vessels.

But the flu, oh the flu. I had kept the part of my grace the healed, which seemed to be useless now, unable to rid my vessel which was essentially now my body, of this virus. Or whatever it was. It wasn't pleasant, I knew that. I ached all over to the very core of my being and even trying to press my grace against the wound-less pains seemed to be useless. I felt cold all the time and yet my body burned inside, and I was partially worried I was becoming Lucifer: burning cold and vessel flushed hot in attempts to press my grace and form out of its physical self. I slept much more, a full 8 hours which Jacob had explained was normal for humans to sleep more when they were sick. It meant their body was working overtime to try to push the stuff that was making you sick out. He swore to show me a movie he called Osmosis Jones, "Even though it's inaccurate in so many ways, it's pretty funny." I didn't really pay attention. I liked almost every movie he'd shown me thus far even though I hadn't seen a whole lot. Only maybe 50ish, and that was being generous. I guess for being around for a year on Earth, that was pretty good.

But this sickness was not "pretty good". It was horrible. I don't know how humans dealt with this as a possibility every winter. I snuggled deeper into the bed, pulling the blankets up to my nose and Jacob seemed to understand that getting up really would send my nausea into overload again. (Last time I had tried to move ended with me curled up on the floor with my head between my legs, crying out of my misery). I left the room for a minute, and I coughed roughly. Dry and it ripped at my throat, I grumbled something about probably using all my archangel abilities, as soon as I got them back, into wiping out the flu virus. This was a perfect example of grade A suckage.

I sniffled and suddenly a bluish greenish liquid in a clear bottle was being thrust at me. Jacob held it out while I took it from it, opened the top and took a large drink of it. He raised an eyebrow and I shrugged. I still had resistance to much of humanities drugs, making going to the doctor especially weird. Jacob had feigned flu as well to get a double dose of Tamaflu, whatever that was. He said I should probably just double the dose and anymore and he'd be worried about its effects on me.

So far I didn't feel any better. Doubling the amount of any medicine I took never seemed to do the trick, at tripling I got trickles of effects, mostly little things. Six ibuprofen and I noted that I didn't want to tear my spine out quite as much. It took ten to really make me relax and be able to think about anything besides it.

I screwed the cap back on and held it out to him again. He took it and set it upon the night stand. He sighed and ran a hand over my forehead, his palm feeling cool against my skin. "I'm sorry you're sick, Sariel." He cooed softly. He leaned down and kissed my forehead.

I stifled a cough and mumbled, "Yeah well, don't get yourself sick too, I can't take care of you like you take care of me... I wouldn't even be able to heal it out of you."

He laughed and stroked a hand through my hair, "I can't get the flu."

I barely contained the shock in my voice: "What? how?"

He grinned and shook it head. "Unlike you, I got my flu shot."