#now folks got a good chunk of things to go off of for their pilot aus

[thebuttsmcgee]

Watching TOH's pilot, it's like I'm back in the old days again...

[thanksjro]

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

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

So.

This is a little different than what I usually do.

Clearly.

God, how did we even get here?

Oh, I remember.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

Haha, I doubt it.

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

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

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

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

For loving his child.

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

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

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

No. Not at all, actually.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s just a shame that I don’t care.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right???

RIGHT??????????

RIGH-

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As if women are property to be owned.

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

We’re 17.5 minutes into this film.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can’t be fucking serious.

ANYWAY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which made me groan aloud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right???

RIGHT??????????

RIGH-

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

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

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

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

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

Ed Sheeran does not survive this experience.

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

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

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

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

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

So they try it again.

This time it works, sort of.

At the very least, he’s left now.

Tail fell off, though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Judy doesn’t count.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For about 20 seconds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ratchet’s fine, by the way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We still have another hour of this movie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nope, that doesn’t happen either.

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

Repeatedly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being advocated for by Optimus Goddamn Prime.

We still have another 50 minutes of this movie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, right, because ~girl~.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y’know.

Like a vast, predatory bird.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feminist icon Megatron?

Feminist icon Megatron.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congrats on your first murder, Sam.

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

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

In tow.

In tow-

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

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

Then Bumblebee talks and he’s fucKING BRITISH.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s where they leave us.

IT TOOK THREE PEOPLE TO WRITE THIS SCHLOCK.

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

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

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

What a mess.

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

COMING SOON:

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

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

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

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

[anistarrose]

Part TAZ Graduation, part TAZ Amnesty, entirely an experiment. Consider this a pilot episode for a fic premise I’ve gone and gotten myself invested in, but don’t have time to commit to right now. Were this an official first chapter, it would be tentatively titled “Prologue — The Exiles.”

The point is, I come bearing Amnesty’s plot adapted to Graduation’s cast of characters, not to mention so much lore. Like, way more lore than I could fit into just one fic.

CW: mind control, something that gets briefly mistaken for a suicide attempt (it isn’t, and no one gets hurt)

***

The most famous features of Hope, Oregon are her two distinct beaches, found beneath the cliffs that house the northern and southern halves of the town. A nameless man — and relative newcomer to Hope — is staring into the ocean, but is not standing on either beach, nor atop the cliffs.

Had he only wanted to stare into the Pacific, the beach to the southwest would’ve been preferable. The white sand is dotted with umbrellas and chairs, and the staircase leading down to sea level from the cliffs is well-maintained, making it a popular tourist destination — less so in these days, he’s been told, but when the tourists do come to Hope, it’s usually for her southwestern beach.

The northwestern beach is less forgiving. Though it appears serene and inviting at first glance, countless signs atop the cliffs dispel that illusion with warnings of rocks and riptides beneath the waves — and even if that didn’t deter you, the only way down to this beach is a rusty ladder that no one but the lighthouse keeper has ever attempted to maintain. This beach is why the town was deemed treacherous enough to warrant a lighthouse in the first place, and why it earned the nickname “Last Hope” from sailors in the olden days.

Yet for a competent climber, the northwestern beach is still an adequate spot for staring out into the sea. The nameless man can only assume he wanted something more than just to stare, even though he doesn’t know what — because for some reason, his feet have brought him not to either beach, but to the most dangerous spot in all of Hope:

Between the two beaches is a crack in the cliffs; beneath the crack is a giant chasm; at the bottom of the chasm, a briny whirlpool. It churns with impossible symmetry and silence, without sound or any sort of fury, yet still more warning signs assure him — the fall into the chasm would surely be fatal, regardless of the rapids themselves.

Yet the nameless man stands on the edge of the chasm, hypnotized by the vortex. He was hypnotized well before laying eyes on it, of course, for he never would’ve came here of his own free will — but now, the whirlpool has joined whatever other compulsion makes its home in his brain, and together, they drag his feet forward.

It contradicts itself — ancient but new, violent but peaceful, chaotic but orderly. It’s a death sentence, but he needs to jump. Someone is counting on him to jump. Somewhere in that chasm, there’s something he desperately needs.

He tears his eyes away just long enough to double-check that the lighthouse isn’t lit — and indeed, it isn’t, presumably because Mr. Keene found more important things to do tonight than climb a flight of stairs. A not-too-comfortable dissonance sends a chill up his spine as he thinks of the lighthouse keeper — he likes Argo, trusts him even — but tonight, a voice echoes in his head, warning him otherwise:

If Argonaut Keene and his partners in crime realize who we are and what we’re doing here, it’s all over. Stay hidden from them at all costs, or some of the banished folk might piece it together.

The voice is familiar, but not too familiar. Yet he trusts the voice more unconditionally than any lighthouse keeper.

Once you’re sure you’re not being watched, double-check that the moon is full — and it will be, if you go tomorrow night. Then jump.

Sure enough, the full moon is the only source of light in all of Hope this evening, with the lighthouse keeper slacking and a fog pervading the entirety of the sleepy town, from the cliffs to the forest. At the center of the whirlpool, the moon’s reflection glows bright — sunlight reflected off lunar rocks reflected off churning water — but you could almost mistake it for a distorted glimpse of another world, peering through a portal at its cosmic neighbors.

The nameless man jumps.

The impact with the water stings, but not as much as it should. Worse is the cold, not cold like near-freezing water but like the vacuum of space, like loss and loneliness as you hurtle into a void with no destination in mind —

But almost as soon as the impact takes place, he’s warm again, and he bobs to the surface of a pristine lake. The moon above him is still full, but the pattern of craters is different, and the constellations look nothing like the ones visible from Hope — or even the ones from his home.

The chasm holds no whirlpool resembling a portal. It holds a portal masquerading as a whirlpool.

A ripple crosses the lake’s mirrorlike surface as he breaches, and as soon as he’s able to take a breath, he ducks back beneath the water, afraid of being spotted. There’s a bubbling trench at the bottom of the lake, which he instinctively knows is the way back to Hope, but he ignores it at first. The crystals embedded in the floor of the lake are what he’s come for.

He needs to find a green gem with silver veins and bring it back to Hope without anyone spotting him. If he can’t, then —

Then —

Then —

He doesn’t know what then. Nothing good, that’s for sure. He won’t let it come to that — and this way, he won’t have to think about it either, or question why he doesn’t know.

Just as his breath starts to run out and his lungs start to ache, he spots it out of the corner of his eye. The particular green crystal is in the shallows, close to the shore, and he can’t stop a few of his limbs from poking out above the surface of the lake as he reaches for it —

Something snags the hood of his waterlogged jacket, yanking him upwards. He emerges in the shadow of a draconic figure standing on the shore, nearly as tall as he is and covered in gleaming silver scales, who exhales a blast of frost and freezes the whole lake solid around him.

Again with the cold. It’s always the cold — maybe there’s a poetic sense of justice about him never being able to escape, it no matter what fleeting hope he finds, but that doesn’t make it any more bearable, and he can’t help but let out a whimper.

The dragon’s expression softens. “Hey, it’s okay. I don’t want to fight you — I just had to be sure you weren’t trying to fight me.” He kneels on the shore to face the nameless man, scales and armor gently clinking against each other. “But I need to know — why are you here?”

“I — I jumped.” His voice is deep, and accented, and just as out-of-place here as it is in Hope.

“That is how most people come through the portal on your end, or so we’ve been told.” A second figure — this one far more humanoid — makes his way to the dragon’s side, holding the staff that must’ve pulled the nameless man to the surface. This one has dark skin, short hair, and pointed ears, but his most striking feature is the one thing he has in common with the dragon — eyes of pure, softly glowing white.

The nameless man is surprised by how little it surprises him. Of course the fae folk of Nua all have white eyes — he’s seen it before, had it explained to him before. He can’t just can’t remember where.

“What Crush and I want to know,” the dark-skinned man patiently goes on, “is why you jumped. Most nights, it isn’t nearly this safe —” He turns to the dragon. “Remind me, hun — how long has it been since a rogue human visited us?”

“Over a decade now, I think,” Crush answers. He inhales, and the ice begins to melt and crack with a creaking noise that, while unpleasant, was a hundred times preferable to being trapped in a prison of cold. “Unless this fellow’s new. Are you new, new guy? Got a pendant?”

The nameless man blinks, still shivering, and slowly manages to shake his head.

“Figures,” Crush murmurs. “Dakota usually comes with the new recruits on their first trip.”

The other fae kneels on the shore, carefully looking the nameless man over. “Did anyone tell you about the portal?”

“I… cannot remember.” He had jumped for a reason, he’d known to look for the crystals for a reason, but that reason is long gone from his mind. He hadn’t even known why he was jumping as he’d done it.

The fae man narrows his eerie white eyes. “You don’t have to lie. You’re not in trouble, we just need to understand how —”

“I did not lie,” the nameless man growls, picking up a floating chunk of ice and crushing it in his fist. “I will not lie. Truth is my honor. I can not remember.”

“Jimson,” Crush hisses softly, but not so softly that the nameless man can’t hear. “It’s not safe for a human to stay much longer without a pendant.”

“Is it any safer for this human to go back alone?” Jimson whispers back. “If you don’t know about the portal at the bottom, there’s really only one reason to throw yourself off a cliff —”

“Shit, you’re right.” Crush’s eyes widen. “Should I keep watch while you go ask Hieronymous? He’ll know what to —”

“He could be busy. I don’t know if we have time to —”

The nameless man dives back beneath the surface of the lake without even taking a breath, ignoring the burning feeling in his chest and frantically paddling for the jagged rift at the bottom. Distantly, he hears Crush shout, but his hands find the edge of the trench and he pulls himself inside, thrashing in the current that suddenly grabs ahold of him —

No one in Nua can be trusted… least of all “Hieronymous.”

He gets a mouthful of familiar salty ocean water, and surfaces beneath Earth’s moon and sky. He’s in the chasm again, the whirlpool behind him and the ocean in front — but the ocean keeps getting closer even though he’s only treading water, as the same current that pulled him back through the portal drags him out to sea —

He hears a dog barking — and then, a voice he’d recognize anywhere yet could not put a name or face to. One moment, he’s struggling to keep his head above the waves, and the next, he’s paddling in air as an invisible hand lifts him out of the ocean, and slowly, back to shore.

It deposits him, kneeling, a few feet from a long-haired collie with a blue bandana tied around his neck, and an elderly man gesturing very carefully and deliberately with his simple wooden cane. For a fraction of a second, the illusion spell flickers, and the nameless man sees pure white eyes behind his rescuer’s glasses —

And that’s all it takes for him to remember everything.

“I… I have brought back nothing, Higglemas,” he admits. “Not one component. This is a great, great shame —”

The collie leaps into his arms, so the nameless man takes the hint and begins to pet him. It is significantly harder to think ill of yourself while holding a dog, and after a few moments, the man realizes that this may have in fact been the dog’s plan.

Higglemas watches with a sad smile on his face and a detached look in his illusion-altered eyes, standing still for close to a minute before slowly angling his head upwards, and staring at the moon as clouds begin to drift in front of it.

“We still have time,” he assures them. “Not all is lost. But… before the next full moon, we’ll need a new strategy.”

Then, he turns to the lighthouse. “We may just have to reconsider staying hidden from the Unbroken Chain.”

***

I have some other projects I’m working on right now that really deserve to be prioritized over this idea, but my outline document is over 2000 words (and that’s really just pre-canon history plus a very brief summary of the first couple chapters) so this has a high probability of getting continued, because there’s no way I can keep all that lore secret forever! This very brief preview already got wildly away from me, after all.

I’m very hyped to get into the Firbolg’s backstory in particular, not to mention Fitzroy and his relationship with his magic (as the resident Aubrey equivalent) — it’s just likely to be a very long wait. Feel free to send me your questions/theories and I will give you cryptic answers!

[popculturebuffet]

Paul Dini’s Jingle Belle: “Sanity Clauses” review or Santa’s Court Ordered Family Therapy Holiday Special

Merry Christmas everyone! I”m finally back on the reviewing reindeer after a week out with a cold, aside from the usual ducktales review, and it’s once again a comission from friend of the blog and the only guy who pays me for reviews weirdkev27. If you have your own holliday hyjinks you’d like me to review I do reviews of television and comics for 5 dollars an episode/issue, wtih variable prices for trades in comics case depending on length. Hit me up via my dm’s here on tumblr or send me an ask for my discord if you want to know more. WIth that plug out of the way away we go.  This one was a bit unusual... in that when Kev bought it up I assumed he was going to buy a few issues of Jingle Belle, Paul Dini’s creator owned character we’re talking about today, and just have me review those. What I didn’t realize is he was buying me the full package, a collection of pretty much every jingle belle tale, as well as the released after it “Handmade’s Tale”. one shot. So yeah, while I had’nt really thought of rules for this kind of thing before from now on your free to buy a work for me to review... just keep in mind i’ts both not required for me to review something, and will not wave the commission fee as I use those fees to pay bills, buy things I need like charger cables, and just generally keep my bank account afloat while I look for a day job. 

But... since I hadn’t firmly established any of this yet, and since Kev’s gift means a bunch more commissions from a guy who not only made sure I could afford Christmas, but who has provided me steady work while i’m out of work... this one’s on the house.  So with all the jargon settled, who is Jingle Belle? Jingle Belle is an indie comics character created and owned by Paul Dini in 1998. Paul Dini is an animation god, who thanks to this review I know more about his career than I did before and as much as I always should have. Dini got his start in the 80′s, writing for everything from He Man to Gary Coleman Adventures, before getting called up to the big leagues for Tiny Tune Adventures around the time of the animation renaissance. To my shock, as  I wasn’t aware he wrote for that fine program, he wrote 35 episodes including my personal favorite Prom-ise her Anything.  But while a talented comedy writer, his main talent would show when he moved on to Batman the Animated Series as a writer and story editor. He was one of the main creative forces along with Bruce Timm, with the two going on to make the DCAU, aka some of the best superhero shows ever made, after already making easily one of if not THE best with BTAS. And Timm’s influence showed, Co-Creating Harley Quinn with Timm, and writing the series best episode Heart of Ice, which reworked Mr Freeze from a hoaky silver age villian into the tragic and thoroughly sympathetic character he’s been since that episode. Seriously that’s another one to add to the review pile.. which is giant and sentient at this point. And seriously EVERY episode on his imdb page credits is an utter classic and one I remember fondly. The guy is one of the most talented and seemingly nicest guys in the business and both the world of batman and the world of animation owe him a LOT.  So to my surprise, I found out in the 2000′s he had a comic, Jingle Belle.. then for whatever reason just never dug into it till now. But now post digging Jingle Belle is Paul Dini’s long running series of one shots and series at various companies following the adventures of Santa’s rebellious teenage-ish daughter.. techincally she’s in the 200′s but still looks and acts like a teenager. The idea came about when he got a christmas card from Stephen Speilberg, and wondered how the kids of famous folks dealt with that and if they resented their famous fathers. And whose more famous than santa?. The series spins both out of that brilliant idea and out of Dini’s love for sunday comic strips, back when the panels were larger and creators were given more freedom to go nuts, though even today i’ve seen plenty of great stuff so it’s not all lost pauly.  So in that spirit rather than one long ongoing Jingle Belle is instead a series of one shots, stories in anthologies and what have you, one and done stories more focused on the comedy. The comic has bounced around from various publishers, starting as something pitched to Oni Press, home of Scott Pilgrim and not much else, and has bounced around various publishers since, most recently ending up at IDW, where the trade i’m reading from comes from. So how does a great concept from one of the world’s most creative minds shake out? Let’s unwrap this present and find out. 

We open with an appropriately christmasy rhymey opening as we get the story of Jingle Belle: She’s the daughter of santa claus and mrs. claus, in this case the Queen of the Elves. Which isn’t established until the next story but whatever. And as you’d expect she grew up a cheery, rosey little girl who loved helpiing dad in the workshop.. then everything changed when puberty attacked. 

As you can see Jingle is now your standard Bratty Teenage Daughter sterotype. At least in this story. See this initial story feels much like a pilot: It’s clear things aren’t ironed out 100% for the idea, and i’ts more a self contained way to get across the general idea, that being Santa has a rebellious teen daughter, via what comes off as an snl skit in comic book form. THat’s not an insult, it’s a GOOD snl skit, and I am genuinely surprised only one movie company’s attempted adapting this comic: the concept is great. I’m just letting you know what i’m working with is all. 

So naturally as a high concept comedy skit, Jing soon, after sharing some cigarettes with the local eskmo boys and accidently lighting her Reindeer’s butt on fire and wrecking her sleigh and some surrounding property, Santa is at his witt’s end and we end up in family therapy. And honestly.. Santa in a family therapists office is a great concept. IT’s why I compare it to a sketch: It’s just a simple one line proposal that’s really damn funny and really damn eye catching. It’s often REALLY hard to get a good santa parody going, so I admire how well he pulled it off here.  But what really centers it is Jing giving her side, making her a bit more than the mostly one dimensional bratty rebellious daughter she’s been pegged as. Oh sure tha’ts still mostly what she is here, I’ll leave it to later stories to flesh her out hopefully, but she gives vallid reasons WHY she acts out: She points out no one even knew Santa had a daughter, and she has no songs or specials or any of that about her. The most Santa can offer up is “Jingle Bells” because the boys say “jingle all the way”... which really, especially in 2020, just makes HIM come off worse for not only slut shaming his daughter, but that the best defense he can offer is “Well some local boys talk about how you boned them that counts right?”. 

That.. poorly aged joke aside Jingle brings up another good point on how sh’es on his shit list.. errr.. naughty list. Still a good gag. And yeah the therapist is understandably surprised Santa dosen’t give his own daughter presents, though his wife does give a valid counter to that: He has to hold a higher standard than anybody. 

And that’s why I’m really intrigued by this concept and want to read more: WE have plenty of stories about Santa’s kids, i’ll grant, from him adopting a kid like in elf, to him passing on the legacy with films like Arthur Christmas and Fred Claus, or even just films about his legacy, like the Santa Claus, aka that time Santa died and his clothes forced Tim Allen into a job he dosen’t want with weight and beard gain he didn’t ask for via yuletide mummy’s curse to become the new santa and nearly loose custody of his child. What i’m saying is the concept is inherently fascinating and The Santa Clause is deeply terrifying if you stop to think about it for two seconds.. as is the sequel what with it’s Nazi Robot Santa Claus Tim Allen. Yes really. 

But this one’s unique in that it’s not about the legacy. Oh sure Santa tries to get Jing interested, and his last attempte wound up with them having to take the bus, another great gag and i’m glossing over most because this is a very funny little comic, but the main focus is more on what kind of pressure that puts on a kid: wouldn’t you rebel too if your parents wanted you to be perfect and to follow in the family business of being basically a perfect human being? Jing herself sums it up perfectly towards the end of the story. 

Granted after a tearful hug, Jing internally says “that new snowboard is mine.. but i’ts hard not to feel that a godo chunk of this is genuine. Sure she’s playing her parents a bit but.. you’d crack too if your dad was freaking Santa. I’m really intrigued to see where this goes both comedically and character stuff wise. 

So we end on another christmasy narration bit as Belle plays good for a while, snapping only when it docent seem like she gets her snowboard. A comedy ending and an eh one. Not the best honeslty, I feel the comci would’ve been better ended just at the snowboard is mine bit, but i’ve seen worse. 

Final Thoughts: A really good story. WHile it’s rough around the edges, clearly Dini and others have buffed them out over two decades, and i’m really intrigued to see more of this this holiday season and others. Again some parts, mostly playing Jing being sexually liberated for “OH HAW HAW SHE’S A SLUT” laughs is cringe inducing, but most of the jokes have aged well and for a pilot it’s not bad. I really look forward to reading more of the character and diving into her this season and beyond. 

Until then be good to one another, have a happy holidays and always remember: There's  always another rainbow. 

[avvidstarion]

For the album ask game... how about The Black Parade?

oh ABSOLUTELY. i LOVE you. this is all subject to change at the drop of the hat bc im wishy-washy and i love all of these songs anyway so

this got WAY too long so i am putting it under a readmore shhvkldlkdgjlkdsj

not including b-sides:

1. Teenagers- kind of a basic pick i know, BUT, in my defense, the song slaps. it’s such a fun song, especially when you’re singing it at the top of your lungs. the guitar part is super cool too- im trying to learn it rn but it’s a slow process bc im bad at guitar.

2. Mama- what can i say. it fucks. the old time-y feel, the harmonies/background vocals, the layers. the guitar goes so fucking hard. banging lyrics- “you should’ve raised a baby girl, i should have been a better son”??????? songs to be trans to.”but the shit that i’ve done with this fuck of a gun” is the kind of lyric that you can only properly convey if you’re screaming it at the top of your lungs. the whole ending is just. mind blowing

3. The End.- LISTEN!!!!!!!!! the end is WAY TOO FUCKING UNDERRATED!!!! oh my goddd i love it so much. i love it SO much. it’s such a perfect beginning to the song. the lyrics are great (”now come one, come all, to this tragic affair” if you look in the mirror and don’t like what you see, you can find out first hand what it’s like to be me”, “another contusion, my funeral jag. here’s my resignation, i’ll serve it in drag. you’ve got front row seats to the penitence ball, when i grow up, i want to be NOTHING AT ALL!!! SAVE ME!!! GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!!! SAVE ME!!! TOO YOUNG TO DIE, AND MY DEAR!!! IF YOU CAN HEAR ME JUST WALK AWAY AND TAKE ME!!). the bit with the snapping and the ooooohs is fun too. such a good song, it could honestly be 1 or 2 but my ranking system isnt based in logic and makes no sense to even myself

4. House of Wolves- house of wolves was my favorite mcr song for a good chunk of time, but as a result i’m kinda burned out on it, which is why it isn’t higher.  however it is still number four  because it’s objectively a fucking amazing song. the guitar is so fuckin fun, the lyrics are great, and it’s just. fun to dance around and sing it at the top of your lungs. you better run like the devil cause they’re never gonna leave you alone!!!!! tell me i’m a bad, bad, bad, bad man!!!

5. Welcome to the Black Parade- the big man itself. the titular song. their biggest hit. a lot of people shit on wttbp for being popular and, like, pretty much the only song of theirs to ever be on the radio anymore (and even then it’s once in a blue moon), BUT. it got popular for a reason. it’s a really good song. i love the structure of it, i love how it builds and builds and builds. the lyrics are wonderfully done- “a world that sent you reelin from decimated dreams/ your misery and hate will kill us all”, the whole “do or die, you’ll never make me” stanza is The Ultimate rallying cry. and the “im just a man, i’m not a hero” is just. ughghghdlkslakdjglsdkg. the titular song of an album entirely about death and dying and misery being SO hopeful and SO upbeat really portrays the album as a whole much differently- mcr is known as The Emo Band because, yeah, their aesthetic is dark and their songs touch dark stuff but they have never been all whiney and boo-hoo-y and melancholic for the sake of melancholy. there’s always been a positive note to their music and a lot of people just don’t get that which makes me sad. anyway. wttbp is fun and i like it and i like the drums and the trumpets at the end. marching bands fuck

6. Blood- ok so the pattern here seems to be that i favor the fun songs over the slow ones, and blood sticks with that. much like with mama, i love the old time-y feel. i love that this is like a fun little bonus ditty to end the album on. the lyrics are silly and fun and jovial, and the piano is great. love it and it makes me happy

7. Disenchanted- OUGHH. OUUUUUGH. i know cancer is objectively the saddest song on the album, but disenchanted just hits different. “when the lights all went out, we watched our lives on the screen/ i hate the ending myself, but it started with an alright scene” just DECIMATES me, man. the acoustic guitar is a nice change of pace, and the vocal performance is just. so fucking emotional. especially the “woahhhhhhhh-ohs” at the end. great song, makes me Feel Emotions

8. The Sharpest Lives- ok so i know this is pretty much in the middle of the list, but i want to stress that i dont hate any of the songs on this album, so even the middle of the list is pretty fuckin good imo. the sharpest lives makes me go batshit.  the lyrics are so fucking wild. “a light to burn all the empires, so bright the sun is ashamed to rise and be” is SO fuckin sick like OH my god. what a line. also “there’s a place in the dark where the animals go/ you can take off your skin in the cannibal glow/ juliet loves the beat and the lust it commands/ drop the dagger and lather the blood on your hands, romeo” like WHAT?????????????? GERARD POPPED OFF W THIS ONE FOLKS!! also i love how at the beginning the whisper-y vocals bounce from ear to ear. also “so why don’t you blow me......a kiss before she goes” is fuckin hilarious. honestly this song should be higher but i havent gone through a phase where i’ve been obsessed w it yet so it stays down here for now. one day it will take hold and be all i can listen to for a month straight and THEN it will climb the ranks. 

9. Cancer- makes me cry like a liddol baby. my mom doesnt let it play in the car cause it makes her too sad. twenty one pilots covered it and it was FUCKING AWFUL so the song is kinda ruined now cause i can only think about their shitty cover. like the AUDACITY. but anyway besides that the song is heart wrenching and amazing. the hardest part of this is leavin you!!!!

10. Dead!- look, i know technically the end. and dead! are the same song/ are just continuations of each other but i’m listing them separately bc dead! is, to me, the worse of the two. not that it’s bad or anything, it just doesn’t pop off the same way the end. and all the songs before it on the list do. however i do love the guitar at the beginning and the solo, and the “one! two! one two three four! LA LA LA LAs” are super fucking fun. 

11. Famous Last Words- i used to hate this song!!!! i truly did!! it’s obvs not on the top of my list now or anything, but i have grown to appreciate it a lot more than i used to. like with wttbp, it is the silver lining of the album that betrays its optimistic side. it’s a happy final message to a dark album. the ending is fucking amazing. I am not afraid to keep on living!!!! i am not afraid to walk this world alone!!!!!!

12. Sleep- Sleep is, unfortunately, just kinda boring in comparison. i almost forgot to even put it on the list. however, i do like the “the hardest part’s the awful things that i’ve seen” and the “a drink, for the horrors that i’m in. for the good guys and the bad guys, for the monsters that i’ve been” lines. also the “three cheers for tyranny, unapologetic apathy!” line. but overall it’s just. eh

13. This is How I Disappear- i have. complicated feelings on tihid. on one hand, it reminds me of my favorite oc, re, and is on their playlist. on the other hand, i have grown bored with it over time. it just doesn’t stand out to me at all really. that being said, i do really like the “who walks among the famous living dead” and the “can you hear me cry out to you” stanzas. 

14. I Don’t Love You- while i dont think idly is a bad song at all, it just simply isnt my kind of song. i do think gerard’s vocals are extremely strong throughout, especially during the “when you go, would you have the guts to say/ i don’t love you like i loved you yesterday” line. like wow ok maam please continue. but overall i just dont vibe w breakup songs bc i cant relate

including b sides: 1. Heaven Help Us

2. Kill All Your Friends

3. Everything else

4. My  Way Home is Through You

my reasoning: 

heaven help us is tied for my favorite mcr song Of All Time. everything about this song is catnip for lil old me. the angsty christian imagery, the vocals, the guitar. all of it. the lyrics make me lose my mind, especially the “will you pray for me? or make a saint of me? and will you lay for me? or make a saint of- cause i’ll give you all the nails you need/cover me in gasoline/ wipe away those tears of blood again/ and the punchline to the joke is asking ‘SOMEONE SAVE US’” and the “you don’t know a thing about my sins/ or the misery begins/ you don’t know, so i’m burnin! I’m burnin!!!” parts. like i absolutely vibe with this song so fucking hard. i sing it constantly, it’s great to sing (very stimmy for me), it sounds beautiful. i am obsessed with it through and through

similarly, kill all your friends also speaks to my very soul. i can’t pick favorite lyrics bc id just have to copy and paste the whole song. i love the build-up, i love the time progression throughout the song (it’s been TEN FUCKING YEARS since i’ve been seein your faaaaaace rounnnnnd heeeere), i love the “you’ll never take me alives”. literally everything about this song makes me emo. it just Gets Me. it’s literally about my greatest fear. all my friends growing up and moving away and getting on with their lives without me, leaving me to rot in my hometown waiting for them to return. we only see each other at weddings and funerals, so it’s time to kill all your friends so we can party when the funeral ends!! it’s probably tied with heaven help us, but i’m putting it at number two just because it didn’t hook me as strongly as hhu did. it’s more of a strong, steady favorite than a “this song has latched on to my very soul and i have to listen to it on repeat over and over and over again”, if that makes sense. it’s still in my top 5 mcr songs though

i never vibed with my way home is through you. i don’t listen to it often, and i just don’t really feel it. it’s not bad, it’s just. eh.

anyway if you’ve read this far down i love you so much. thank you for listening to me ramble, mcr means a lot and i love to infodump about my music tastes. i really really appreciate being given an opportunity to do so <3

[davidmann95]

E L S E W O R L D S ? ? ?

MY THOUGHTS ON THE WORLDS AND THEIR ELSE-ENING ARE MANY.

Gonna put most of this under a spoiler cut just in case, but right up front: I only regularly watch The Flash starting with Season 4 (along with seeing the first half-seasons of it and Supergirl, plus sporadic episodes of the other shows and Invasion!), and while there are absolutely standout episodes, it’s probably the most lukewarmly received piece of media I consume on a regular basis. So Elseworlds looked rad, and The Best Superman was coming back for it, but aside from hints that it was going all Final Crisis (which sadly weren’t realized) I was hardly outright ecstatic at the prospect of a Freaky Friday alone, even with Batwoman’s introduction in play. Basically I assumed it’d a bunch of fine stuff I’d get through so I could drink up the Superman content like a dying man in a desert.

This was my favorite live-action DC thing since The Dark Knight Rises if not in fact The Dark Knight itself, and in all honesty probably my favorite period of the non-Batman division. It was everything I want out of this sort of project and more.

I’mma break this down into a few categories: as a whole, Superman specifically because if you’re here you know what my deal is, THE ENDING, and a multitude of scattershot impressions and thoughts.

AS A WHOLE: Was this a masterwork of layered conceptual depth and calculated plotting tight as drum? Hardly - if nothing else, the sheer fact that the entire Superfamily is functionally and thematically superfluous precludes that upfront. But again, this is the perfect version of this kind of series, where clockwork precision is rarely the name of the game (aside from that dope episode of Flash with the bomb) so much as excitement and character-driven emotion, and in that regard this is the platonic ideal. Oliver and Barry hold the narrative together as Barry low-key relearns the value of his own kind of strength, and Oliver high-key learns to accept that he’s not living in a world defined by him anymore and he needs to be better, to the point where I may not even rag on him as Walmart Batman anymore every time I have cause to mention him, especially since that gets its own perfect sendoff. Batwoman functions as a perfect pilot capsule while still functioning as a chunk of a larger story, and Ruby Rose is on point. Supergirl gets some quality content even with her hands off the wheel (which is one of the lesser aspects given…well, given this is probably gonna be the last crossover like this and she really should have been the lead for one of them). It’s funny and thrilling and so damn weird, concerned above all else with making you giggle at doing stuff you’ve wanted to see for years and then making you give a shit about the emotional consequences of Barry Allen picking up some archery classes, and it earns what it reaches for.

Moreover, this episode represented a moment of maturation for me in terms of its status as a shared universe: Crisis on Earth-X was the culmination of what this world HAD been with its massive group shot aboard the Waverider, and that culmination was my going “wow, lookit that, they really did build something kinda functional out of what they had to work with”. It was a world that was comic book as all hell in the best way, but its own oddball strain made up of recognizable pieces broken off from a larger puzzle and rearranged into a new configuration. Here? From the moment the Monitor chases off 90s Flash on a desperate race from his dead world and the bodies of an army of superheroes to save all creation, into Superman taking his place as a central figure, Batman’s mythology unfurling out of nowhere at a beautifully shameless breakneck pace, the establishment of the Multiverse and Monitor mythology as the base level concept uniting the universe as a whole, and hotlinks to a half-dozen other major mythology elements I’d given up on ever seeing acknowledged, this really and profoundly feels like DC Comics.

SUPERMAN: Still so so good! I will say, this wasn’t nearly as much a breakthrough standout display for Hoechlin’s Clark as his prior Supergirl appearances, with a couple line readings where he’s maybe just a little too chill, and less opportunity to display range or depth given he’s in the back seat. And dude’s gotta practice pretending to be thrown back, however you do that, because that was pretty badly fakey-looking. If this had been his debut, I still would’ve loved him, but he’d be taking up third or fourth on my list of live-action Superman actors rather than sitting pretty at #1; I have to wonder if a lot of his energy simply went to his killer performance as Deegan, or if he’s still modulating his kinda-being-his-real-self-but-also-still-putting-on-the-Supermanness chunk of his performance given it’s with Kara and Lois that he really shines. If someone writes him off as a dime store Reeve though, they’re still wrong and also probably bad. Shoring up his cracks though is Elizabeth Tulloch, who’s already at least vying for a place on the Lois Lane Mount Rushmore. Reminded me heavily of the best of Erica Durance’s take, but with an additional straightforward bluntness that suits Lane incredibly well, and a talent for talking rings around Clark that does more than any other Lois to date to sell the idea that that’s a huge part of what he loves about her. Also she slaps around a mad god with the hammer for the cosmic anvil from All-Star Superman, because if there’s one thing Lois Lane steadfastly refuses to be in the business of, it’s in any way fucking around.

As for the big question: even aside from Tulloch making pretty clear in a recent interview that it’s something producers are talking about, yes, I absolutely think the Superman/Lois chunk of this was as fully intended to act as a backdoor pilot for them as the second act was for Batwoman. I know I’ve been certain on this in the past just as a matter of ‘they can use Superman so it would be foolish not to push that’, but then, well, nothing happened. But here, while the creators are clearly hedging their bets with providing them what could easily be a happily-ever-after, their appearance in this way in this context is bizarrely conspicuous and pointless if that wasn’t what was intended. They’re incidental to the plot (Deegan becoming Superman, while great fun that gives us an interesting new spin on the evil Superman concept, is basically just an aesthetic), the functionality of getting Clark away from National City had already been handled by the season premiere and never actually takes anything more than ‘he’s busy in space/plugging up a volcano/fighting Luthor’ as has already been done in the past, the guest spots and relevant emotional beats could have easily been contained to an episode of Supergirl rather than spilling out into an already stuffed three episodes, and if they could only be used in one crossover for some reason they’d obviously be saved for the next one. And they get a scene to themselves AFTER their role with our leads is wrapped up, with a moment that could have already come off-screen earlier but didn’t, purely to endear them to us in a way that would make us want to see more of them. I’m not saying a Superman show is now guaranteed, but unless there was some bizarre instruction that they suddenly once and for all needed to permanently get rid of him - yet permitted that to be accomplished via the delivery mechanism of more Superman, in a way that’s noted as impermanent in-universe and in a context that’s going to introduce him and Lois and push them as big deals to the maximum possible number of viewers - yeah, I think that’s what the people who made this must have been intending. And that the powers that be let them is incredibly encouraging. As Tulloch said, a lot of this is out of the hands of anyone but corporate, but Elseworlds got season highs so that’s a point in their favor; hopefully Cryer works out as Luthor, because I imagine that’s the other checkmark needing to be crossed off that comes down to the response of the viewership.

Also the proposal was perfect, and I am astonished that happening after the pregnancy was announced got to go through - ‘modern’ indeed, as Cat Grant would put it. I get it’s got precedent of a sort in Superman Returns, but on the other hand, that precedent was Superman Returns. I’m surprised I’m not already seeing thinkpieces on the degradation of American Values coming out of this.

FUCK: 

FUCK.

I really thought there was gonna be one more crossover before they dove all the way in. But nope, nope nope nope, instead by this time next year for-real live action Crisis on Infinite Earths with Flash, Supergirl, Superman, the Monitor, shadow demons, the Psycho Pirate, and assuredly a comprehensive collection of carefully curated cameos from the ghosts of DC TV past will be a thing out there in the world. Marv Wolfman sure must be having a nice day.

And boy, they are not in ANY kind of position to half-ass it. The name value alone would be enough, but if that was it they could at least maybe get away with Dean Cain and Brandon Routh showing up in their old working clothes to help beat up the Anti-Monitor on a cordoned-off Vancouver street, maybe a couple of the Legends folks biting it. But they‘ve been explicitly acknowledging it as a thing they’d build up to for five years, since episode one of their most popular show, and if I’m right and the writing in the book of Destiny was supposed to be the same kind of text that Nora’s writing, they’ve been actively setting up Chekhov’s guns within the shows themselves for at minimum two years. AND they’ve already done three other world-threatening multiversal crossovers, including a classic JLA/JSA-model Crisis, so they’ve already established a threshold of crossover event that this needs to plainly mark itself as an entirely different order of magnitude from, AND they’ve had a threat to the multiverse before in Zoom so just saying that again without really showing it isn’t going to measure up. Hell, the idea of massive status quo changes is reinforced as being just the much of the mission statement of this as the original via Psycho Pirate. They’ve apparently quite knowingly backed themselves into a corner where they actually have to Wreck Shit. At minimum one of the three leads has to die for keeps, and all have the symbolic weight behind them - Oliver included after Elseworlds, and really in the first place as the founder of this DCU - and have obvious enough successor shows waiting in the wings to feel like they’re legitimately in the line of fire.

My hope? One that unlike usual I’m not gonna bolster by drawing on evidence at hand and logical assumptions, but the way I simply feel it Should Go and think at this point has a legitimate chance of being the case? Crisis is its own miniseries in the fall in place of the return of the other four shows, a massive high-budget ensemble piece with room to breathe…and at the end pretty much everyone dies. Most of the Legends, some supporting cast members, and above all Oliver, Barry, and Kara ALL die grandiosely and nobly to save all creation, hidden from the audience successfully by way of a miniseries ‘putting off’ the actually nonexistent renewals of the existing series. Earths 1 and 38 are merged (hopefully without discarding the multiverse as a whole, and with the heroes remembering their pasts), and in the wake of this massive conclusion, the entire DCTV lineup is effectively relaunched. Batwoman comes in here, taking Arrow’s place, while Superman emerges (likely with a psuedo-Rebirth setup since Jon’s on the way - they can figure out a way to get him to the appropriate age) with him dealing with his family and his initial grief, The Flash is relaunched with Wally and/or Nora assuming the mantle, and Legends reconstituting itself, whether by its original title or as Legion of Superheroes or Justice League, with a new lineup made up in large part of the castoffs from the cancelled series. Again, obviously there’s nothing definitely pointing towards this being the case, but somehow it just feels right, especially with Batwoman and Superman shows clearly being gestured towards when Arrow and Supergirl are the shows that would definitely have to end or at least change names with the death of their leads. The strongest evidence against all this, I think, is that Supergirl wouldn’t quite have hit a hundred episodes and syndication yet. Though there may still be that Supergirl movie too, so that’s a factor.

A couple incidental thoughts on that front: 

* Interesting that Flash vanishes in 2024 and is still gone in 2049, but the first crossover - made when ‘Flash vanishes’ was already a keystone mythology element, and given its place at such an important moment you’d think the writers would remember - makes clear there’s an old Barry around in 2056. I could see that coming up. 

* Thawne’s role in this season of Flash feels at this point like it has to dovetail into everything, and I could see him taking up Psycho Pirates’ role in the original story even if the genuine article’s around. 

* I wonder if Jon Cryer’s gonna play Alexander Luthor.

* If Kara and Barry do die, and likely make some post-death appearances, I wouldn’t mind if they for the sake of novelty reverse things so that it’s Kara who comes back for real in Final Crisis, while Barry’s the one who comes from the past unknowingly and tear-inducingly ala Whatever Happened From The Man Of Tomorrow? (that could easily be set up via the “three hardest days of your life” thing Johns did in his Flash run).

* Incidentally, do Final Crisis as the ultimate event the next wave of shows build up to like this was built up to, and make that the end of everything.

* If I’m all wrong about Superman and he’s just being set up as a lamb to the slaughter for Crisis to fill the Supergirl role (which would still by no means require him appearing in Elseworlds, especially given it’s not like he develops a relationship with Barry or Oliver, so I’ll say my points all still stand), I get the impulse is to do him dying in Kara’s arms. But if they do wanna go this way and finish his story, I really, really hope that instead they let him deal at least part of the killing blow and then somehow vanish into ‘Heaven’ with Lois and Jon. If you’re gonna homage a Superman bit from there to close him out, that’s the one to go with.

* If Ezra Miller wasn’t bullshitting and would be willing to put in a little appearance, this is the place.

ASSORTED REACTIONS:

* “Oh Barry, what have you done this time?” Oliver’s wise to your shit, boy. He knows full well he’s pretty much in a ‘Barry fucks up with Flashpoint even further’ meme come to life.

* Barry freaking out that he knows kung fu is a delight, as is Oliver trying so dang hard to do this whole ‘Flash’ thing.

* Knocking out the pair of them is admittedly *a bit much*, but while some might correctly note that they’ve seen so much weird shit they should be able to accept this, I’d say it’d also be fair to note that they’ve seen so much weird shit they’re not wrong to think this is gonna snowball into some bullshit and it’d maybe be simplest to nip it in the bud and get things under control.

* Barry, I’m glad there are toilets in the Pipeline, but someday you’re going to think to ask ‘so Cisco, what are you feeding them down there?’, and then Vibe’s gonna go OH FRAK or some other nerd shit and they’re gonna find 5 seasons worth of corpses to clean up.

* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha they did fuckin’ KGBeast on Arrow. Was that who Dolph Lundgren played? Checking…no. Dang.

* I had heard there was gonna be a Remy Zero shout-out for Smallville, but I assumed someone would just ask for someone to save them or it would be playing on the radio, not that they’d hard swerve from vague orchestral stirrings to pseudo-Nickelback. Loved it.

* Clark’s doin’ Clark stuff and I love it, Lois is doin’ Lois stuff and I love it, she nearly kills the Flash and Green Arrow with a hammer (truly her weapon of choice!) and I love it.

* Oliver pathetically puffing out his chest, WHILE CLARK ISN’T EVEN BEING SUPERMAN, is as good as television gets.

* AMAZO. Aside from basic delight at his existence, I love that the ‘Mirakiru’ ties into the Ivo material I know was in early, pre-superhero Arrow. It’s as if when Smallville got to do Supergirl and Doomsday for real they went ahead and tied them back in to the weird proto versions of them they’d already set up not knowing what they’d be able to do later. Much as Mxyzptlk or Grodd or Muppet Legends (I also caught that shows’ midseason finale, it was delightful) are easy to point to as indicators of how far this universe has come, this underlined that in a very unique way.

* Harsh, Barry - and where did you get those crossbows? - but earned as the Superfamily probably put together when they heard Oliver yelling about how when HE shot Barry he totally had a good reason for it. And along with the sheer, savage power of “I don’t think you can go more than nine hours without some sappy motivational speech”, it sets up Barry’s more understated character arc relative to Oliver in questioning and then reaffirming that his brand of emotional strength is just as strong as what your cowled types draw on. And while Lois obviously had the killer moment, Clark’s little “well, you kinda had that coming” look when Barry floors Oliver is nicely done. Smart money says he was thinkin’ about Bruce.

* Continued into the porch conversation, where the show takes its first real step in rehabilitating CW Green Arrow into a character I may no longer refer to by default as Walmart Batman as the show continues to dunk on him but he begins to take it in stride and realize he’s gonna have to change things up a bit.

* “Cool. Who are you?” “A friend.” So choice. Is that very clearly Williams-evoking musical sting at the end there something that often shows up in Supergirl? And I can’t tell whether’s Clark’s grin is in response to what he’s about to do, or because he’s relishing the hilarity of meeting a normal dude for the first time in his adult life who doesn’t know who Superman is, but either way I love it. And since I found his previous introductory shirt-tear honestly a little sub-par, this was an appreciated moment of redemption.

* Amazo fight rules, obviously. I do like to imagine the headlines the next day mentioning “hey, another superhero teamup happened with Supergirl from that other Earth who helped out with those invasions, and this time a male partner of hers showed up, some kind of…Super-man?” as the one pubic mention of Superman in the history of what’s presented as a ‘main’ DC universe.

* Barry just casually addressing ‘Clark’ by his first name is the first moment where I really thought ‘oh wow, this IS the DC Universe now’. And that “You’re welcome” worked as a reminder where there otherwise wasn’t space that yeah, he’s a nice dude, but maybe don’t tug too hard on his cape.

* Even though it wasn’t overtly followed up on, Barry being reminded that following Oliver’s example as his source of strength isn’t what’s gonna win him the day in the long run in the way that matters is a pretty essential piece.

* Every moment of Total Bat-Bullshit in here was so cheap and I loved it all so much.

* Oliver-dunking takes on its glorious apotheosis here - you know the line I’m thinking of - but it’s a necessary aspect of his journey here.

* Ruby Rose is very good as the charismatic vaguely menacing but easily flirty businesswoman, and again later kicking ass and delivering the growl, which she honestly does better than any live action Batman to this point. Curious to have it elaborated what kind of role she had in Bruce’s operation, given she clearly knew and has her own friggin’ cave.

* And then Barry stands up to Oliver’s demons while Oliver realizes Barry’s.

* “You really do have a lot of tattoos.” Oh my, Kara.

* “You have real steel in you, my friend.” And there you go for Barry’s arc.

* Well, wow. Fan theory bullshit triumphs at last, and now I kind of have to imagine we’re gonna see some actual Lanterns down the line. Hope, likely in vain, we see Hal so he can pal around with them before Oliver and/or Barry bite it.

* Mar Novu, huh? Somea that Final Crisis bullshiiiiit, please do feel free to pursue that further. Mandrakk’s cousin or something I guess?

* That can’t really be the end of the 90s Flash, right? If nothing else, he needs to stick around so that if they decide not to disintegrate Grant Gustin after all he can be the one there to make the death run.

* Episode one: “The darkness…I feel it…it threatens…to…CONSUME me…” Episode three : “oh my GOD Oliver we broke a LAW I’m gonna THROW UP”

* Hoechlin plays the hell out of Scary Dickhead Superman, even if it’s odd that Deegan was defensive about making an arguably sexist choice of identity when he already openly fucking supports eugenics. But an anon asked me about this and suggested this is a top-tier evil Superman, and yeah, I’d agree with that. He’s not scary because’s a mad god, he’s scary because he’s a small, small man who’s lucked his way into being GTA mod Superman, all of the pluses with none of the minuses, all of the ego-assuaging praise and power without having to meaningfully hold up his end of the bargain. It’s an effective twist on Superman as a power fantasy, one that’s scary in a very different way than the idea of it going wrong usually is. Because instead of him letting us down, it’s one of us joining him in the sun and trying to kick him and the rest of us out because it’s all HIS now.

* Oh yeah, of course Superman totally knows about the Book of Destiny. All the REALLY cool superheroes got that that kind of experience in the bag.

* As I said, Supergirl takes a back seat, but Benoist really shines with swaying Alex Danvers - from the moment I saw she’d be in this from the trailer I thought “Kara swaying her can’t be done very believably, it would be convincing her of a whole other life instead of a minor alteration”, but damn if she didn’t sell it.

* I must admit, the Superman V Superman fight is Hoechlin’s low point; him losing the advantage because he’s saving people is perfect, but some of his good-Superman deliveries lack the necessary conviction, and whether due to the animation or his overexagerated tumbling, him getting knocked around the city looks notably fake in parts to an extent that breaks the immersion.

* I guess Superman fought Bizarro at some point, if that concept carried over (I know Supergirl fought a Bizarro too, but if Superman never fought one the average citizen wouldn’t make that comparison). I suppose it’s the Earth-1 Alex Danvers and James Olsen though?

* Similar note: Kara mentions that ‘maybe my pod didn’t make it here’, and given doppelgangers are a thing, it’s been noted there’s a Krypton in each universe, obviously at least one other major superhero carries over in Batman, and the degree of long-term planning clearly going on at this point with the multiverse stuff, I honestly wonder if they might be laying the seeds for something on why Superman and Supergirl never happened on Earth-1.

* I do like that Superman’s technically the one who beats the bad guy flat-out and saves the world from a broken history by sheer force of will, even if he’s not the one with the splashier more permanent win later (and even then he saves Lois).

* Fuck yes. Never liked Superman turning the world backwards, but now entirely worth it for how that shit comes back here in the most gleefully unhinged manner imaginable (even if Mach 7 wiping out Barry and Kara is absurd on the face of it).

* And Oliver comes full circle to realizing he’s no longer the center of his own universe, realizing he can be better while still proving he has it in him to make the hardest call. This dude still ain’t Ollie, but I guess I can acknowledge him as Green Arrow.

* And then it’s all Superman stuff and Crisis, which I discussed, though worth mentioning just how off-guard the Jon confirmation caught me. Thumbs up on that!

[catrwauling]

Now in audiobook format!

(Read the most recent version of the comic here)

Also, matching images under the cut.

OLIVER: Aye, 'arbinger. 'ow much longer till we- LULU: An hour. OLIVER: I din't e'en finish me question, Lulu. LULU: Yes, were you going to ask when we arrive at the Overcloud's central island? OLIVER: Aye. LULU: Then it's an hour. OLIVER: Bloody hell, can't this thing go any faster? LULU: It's not a miracle machine, DeMiir. We'll be home soon enough. OLIVER: It is a damn miracle m'chine, I tell ya. I cannae believe this bolt bucket got past inspection with this kind'o speed. LULU: Watch your tongue, DeMiir, this thing is my pride and joy.

OLIVER: If this is your pride an' joy I hate to see you in misery. LULU: Hush your mouth you! I'll have you know that I spent the last three years on this "bucket of bolts"! By golly, every inch of my blood and sweat into this baby! I tell you, the welding was hellish! Your scholarly mug hasn't even come near a saw, I bet! OLIVER: Oi, OI! Watch the skies, 'arbinger! LULU: I've been blasted by astray flames; cut, bruised, and battered! While you were off studying remnants of humanity, I bent white hot metal! I drilled, hammered, bolted and bolstered! I built this engine piece-by-bloody-piece! I spent an abysmal amount of money on this plane, and still managed to do it all for cheaper than a standard issue Thermos Plane! I beat the system and worked with it at the same time! OLIVER: Okay, okay, I'm sorry, now will ya PLEASE focus on steeri- LULU: And do you want to talk of inspection? Hoo boy bumbler! Inspection! So much paperwork, I can still feel the onset of carpal tunnel in my right hand! And the folk who work there will set a curse upon your kin and cast down a plague on your crop if you even dare come unprepared! OLIVER: Lulu. Lulu please. I beg ye, th- LULU: And don't get me started on the test flights! The officers would take it around the runway, and just come back to tell you it's not skyworthy, and don't even bother to tell you the actual problem! I'd have the plane serviced at some chump shop just so they could tell me that there was no problem at all!

OLIVER: LILIAN! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD, FOCUS ON FLYIN THE DAMN PLANE! LULU: THIS IS MY PLANE AND I WILL HANDLE IT AS I PLEASE, DEMIIR. OLIVER: WELL YOU'LL PILOT IT INTO A DAMN FLOATIN CHUNK OF ROCK IF YOU DON'T TURN YER HEAD FO'WARDS! LULU: WHAT ROCK?! 

LULU: Oh. 

LULU: That rock.

OLIVER: IF WE LIVE THROUGH THIS, WE'RE GONTA- 

[the-writings-of-a-lone-hermit]

Oil and Gasoline

  Frederick coughed, and when his eyes opened again, in the dim gloom of the factory he could see the wispy silver dust settling. So he had grey cough again, great. That means he'll probably be relocated to the painting division, with all the other sick children, and the girls. Eugh.   He hated the painting division. To be fair, he hated the entire factory, but the painting division was one of the worst. Dreadfully silent, windows that lined the roof gave enough light to see just how badly you messed up your brush strokes. So quiet he could hear himself think, to daydream.   Of course, that's what he was doing now, so before visions of fighter planes swarmed his mind, he refocused and drilled another hole, slid the bolt in, and tapped it, moving it down the line. Another tank hull rolled forward, and this time in unison with his fellow workers, he drilled another hole, slid the bolt in, and gave it a rough tap.   He hated tanks. The first time he saw them, he was in awe. Here he was, a boy no more than seven, when a colossus of steel and oil came rolling down the street, five by four, twenty giants representing the great American way: Work, Prosperity, and Freedom, in that order. An enterprising business man saw his awe, and offered him a job in his factory. "Want to see how these steel gods are made," the business man asked, and Frederick had been quick to say "Yes," though now he wished he had held his tongue.   Another hole, another bolt. Another machine to the front. It's the lunch whistle that pulls him from memory, and he hops off the platform he had previously stood upon. Reaching into his back pocket, he feels his mother's Ham and Cheese sandwich, and quick as he can he starts running, off to find a quiet place to eat. He passes dozens of his fellows, thirty five unfinished tanks in various stages of completion, and the division manager, who gives him a sour look as he speeds by.   Up the scaffolding he climbs, like some naked ape in an industrial jungle, the act itself second nature to him. His objective still distant, he had to move fast if he wanted some time there. Floor by floor, he climbed, passing folks of every age. Every one did their part to fight back, men going overseas and all others making machines to keep their families safe. He waved at old man Anderson, and got a brief smile and wave back, before continuing the climb.   Floor five, floor six, floor seven! Kicking off as hard as he could, he rolled from the scaffolding, and bounced as he hit the end of his roll, keeping his speed, but changing it from an upward force to a forward one, charging down the claustrophobic pipe works, the steam and oil flowing through these scalding hot. "Hey Fred," A kid called out from an opening as Frederick tore past.   He'd love to stop and chat, but he had to get there. Turning another corner, he came to a dead end, and looking up, saw a narrow air shaft, one that ascended another three floors to allow these otherwise boiling spaces some much needed airflow. Thick leather gloves slid on as fast as he could, he began the ascent, shimmying up the shaft like the chimney sweeps of old Britain. Without much effort, he pushed the grate at the top off, the fruit of several lunches worth of working on the screws, loosening them for a painstakingly long time.   But now, it was all worth it. Emerging from the air pipe, he took in a deep breath of the fresh outside air, and opened his eyes, soaking in the city landscape he works in, yet never saw. His whole family works and lives in the factory,  in the dormitories on the fifth floor, right in the middle of the building. He hadn't seen the skyline in over four years, spending the entire time deep within the square, three mile by three mile building. It was so large, and had been so long, that he heard that there were four year-olds, almost old enough to work, who have spent their entire lives within the confines of the endless network of halls and rooves.   There, laid out in it's glory, was the spiraling towers of Boston. Skyscrapers, twenty stories high, were dwarfed by the monsters of industry, a hundred stories or more, keeping vigilant watch for the workers below. The air shaft he came out of was bordered on three sides by walls three stories higher yet, limiting his vision to one direction, but even so, the view was breathtaking. The horizon just a faint line, sky morphing into distant ocean, before returning to the near bay.   A wing of fighter planes roared overhead, launched from the nearby airfield to combat an unseen threat across that great ocean. As they flew past, Frederick reached up, as if he could catch one and ride with them into tomorrow's sunrise, nothing but sky at his back. Taking a seat on the slanted metal roof, he pulled his sandwich out, and took a bite, watching the planes become nothing more than distant specks on the horizon.   "Even up here, there are things above us," A voice spoke, and Frederick jumped up, slipping for a moment on the roof, and made to scramble towards the vent, when the voice calls out again. "I've already seen you, kid. No point in ruining a good meal." Freezing, Frederick turned again and looked at the source of the voice.   Standing there was a man, maybe thirty five, dressed in deep olive pants and a tan button-up shirt, a heavy, fur-lined leather coat. Atop his head, a leather cap, two goggles inset into it. "You're a pilot!" Frederic exclaimed, looking at the shadowed man again. "Not just any pilot," he added, pointing to the pins upon the breast of the coat. "Your pins show you're a part of the Night Wings squadron, the second most successful after the Wings of Glory!"   The pilot shrugged, and waved his hand. "After that deployment, I bet we'll win the war before the Wings have a chance to catch up," He challenged nonchalantly. "Come sit with me," He said, motioning Frederick back to where he was sitting, "And finish that lunch."   Cautiously, Frederick got closer, before sitting next to the young pilot, and taking another bite of his sandwich. This close up, he could see the experience in the eyes of the stranger, the weariness of war. But, more importantly, he got a better look at the awards of the pilot. Three for heroic service, two for destroying enemy landships, another five for completing missions deemed impossible. And at the top, a pair of golden wings, given to the squadron commander of any team who served during the Red Night. Swallowing his chunk of sandwich, Frederick exclaimed "You're not just any pilot, you're Sean Davies, captain of the Night Wings!"   That got a chuckle from the grizzled veteran. "You got me. So tell me kid, what are you doing up here?"   Narrowing his eyes, Frederick retorted "I work here, you first."   Holding up his hands defensively, Sean laughed. "Fair, fair. I fly by this place pretty often, but wondered what it looked like to see the fighters launch from this angle. Worth all the propaganda, that's for sure. Now, your turn."   Sighing, Frederick looked upwards. "I haven't seen the sky in three years, and I love planes."   Sean leaned back, aghast. "Three years? Holy cow, kid. Nobody should have to go without the sky."   Eyeing the pilot, Frederick leaned in conspiratorially, even though they were alone on the rooftop. "Can I tell you a secret?"   A smirk crossed Sean's face, before he too leaned in. "Sure thing, kid. What's the secret?"   Looking both ways, Frederick's eyes finally set to looking deep into Sean's. "I always wanted to be a pilot."   "No kidding?" Sean asked, leaning back, whistling slowly. Leaning back in, he had a mischievous grin on his face. "Tell you what, kid. Grow up big and tall, and come see me in the hanger when you can enlist. I'll see you in the sky."   Frederick's eyes flared wide, excitement and shock fighting for control of his face. "Really?" He asked, shaking softly.   "Absolutely," Sean answered, thumping the kid's shoulder lightly. "Bring me this," he said, undoing the strap on his neck, "And you're sure to get airborne." He finished, taking his flight cap off, tossing the hat three sizes too large onto Frederick's head. "Fly high, kid."   It was so large that the goggles ended up beneath his nose, and quickly Frederick readjusted it, to see the pilot standing tall, fists at his hips, elbows extended; The spitting image of American propaganda, up to the billowing scarf. A symbol of the future.   A symbol of Frederick's Future.

[riancraigjohnson-blog]

So what do you think a good ending for episode 9 would be? I’m drawing up blank here. Plus I have to willfully ignore tlj to even recognize finn rey and poe. It feels like nothing is set up and my biggest fear is that they are going to go for the negotiate with fascists and come to a middle ground route.

OKAY IVE BEEN HOLDING ONTO THIS EXCITEDLY ALL DAY

so, let’s just ignore tlj and pretend the ultimate outcome of it: rey and luke have a positive relationship, poe is treated with the respect he deserves, finn leads a stormtrooper rebellion…. obviously there’s the message about failure, because yes, that is an important less if taught correctly, and they each go through their trials. rose is given her own story for personal growth that doesn’t hinge on the death of her sister, and paige is allowed to flourish as her own fleshed out resistance member. jessika pava is back. snap wexley is back. admiral ackbar is treated like the goddamn war hero he is. the loss of han is addressed and handled in a respectful manner. ultimately the resistance is pushed back to the point of them fleeing and desperate for help, but there’s still a glimmer of more tangible hope than ‘lol we’ll just cross our fingers and hope the sun fucking rises tomorrow’. despite the loss and missteps and struggles along the way, despite any problems that may have arisen, they still have hope and fly off in search of it.

as for what happens in between the end of viii and ix, i’m not positive, but i know my personal end goal would be that at the end of the the movie, it’s revealed that rey is a skywalker– but what’s important about this being at the very end of the movie is that it doesn’t give her this legacy to live up to, it doesn’t just explain away ‘oh she was only able to do all these things because she’s a skywalker–’ it allows her to look at one: the things she’s accomplished, the strength she’s displayed, and she can realize that all of that had nothing to do with her heritage; she did that shit herself. two: she may mourn the loss of a family she never knew, but she also finds comfort in the fact that she has a found family, bound not by blood, but by something that runs far deeper. at the end of it all, she has finn, she has poe, she has rose, she has chewie and bb-8 and she has the resistance– she has people who love and care for her. she’s not a nobody; she’s rey, who happens to be a skywalker, but she isn’t defined by her family name.

she’s defined by what she did both on her own and with the support of her friends.

on the flip side, with the first order, obviously they’re defeated just like the empire was; what i would love to see is hux straight up shoot kyle at some point– it’d probably end in his death, but i like the idea of actually showing more of this unstable conflict and power struggle between the two. hux shooting kyle wouldn’t be portrayed as hux being some hero and trying to join the resistance or be a good guy by any means, either– it’s framed as someone who hates kyle so much and just wants him to die because he feels like that’s the best option for the first order to continue.

however, this ultimately backfires on hux after he lands a hit on kyle, and hux gets killed– leaving kyle very much alone. he has no phasma, no hux, no snoke– he is the only one now leading the first order, and similar to azula in avatar: the last airbender, realizing that everyone she had around her have left her, thus leading to one of the most ‘i will light this whole world ablaze like a phoenix with my rage’ fights in western animated history, portraying this fascinating ( but not sympathy worthy ) imbalance of support that affects the central character and their dwindling grip on reality.

of all people who i want to see kill kyle? the obvious set up would be rey, which gives way to the direct parallels between the first order trio and the original protagonist trio– rey and kyle are the force users, finn and phasma are the soldiers / troopers, and poe and hux are the military strategical leaders. finn and phasma’s fight already occurred, so it would make sense for there to be another sort of poe and hux battle as well as the obviously climactic lightsaber battle with kyle and rey.

finally, the ultimate endgame is rey and finn starting a new academy, not teaching them as just jedi, and certainly not pushing this notion of ‘grey jedi’– they just train people in the art of the force and explain that sometimes life is not always what you think. sometimes you’ll have to make difficult decisions, and that’s okay; sometimes, you make the wrong choice, and you fail, and that’s okay too. it’s all about learning from your mistakes, learning to accept when you need help and that it’s okay to ask for it, ( another very important lesson! )

overall, i want there to be closure– i know a lot of people feel reysky is a copout and predictable, but sorry folks, that’s what was served to us:

direct parallels between rey and luke ( and rey and anakin by extension ) due to desert planets, twin suns / twin moons, some sort of pull that makes them know there’s something more to them but they don’t know what

rey’s superior pilot skills and ability to understand binary ( yes i know rey understands a lot of languages and that is explained why in the books, but there is still an interesting connection there! )

she’s had dreams of ahch-to for an undisclosed amount of time, which was where luke was

she played a big part in making sure the resistance got bb-8′s map piece ( taking care of bb-8 when she first meets them, leaving with finn to ensure bb-8 gets to the resistance, sending bb-8 far away from trouble when she knows she’s being chased by stormtroopers / kylo ren– it’s directly because of rey’s involvement that the resistance gets the map at all

the skywalker lightsaber literally called her

and in turn, she later called it to her, over a confirmed skywalker descendent

perhaps my favorite one, and the one i don’t see mentioned a lot: r2-d2 only woke up when rey set foot on d’qar. it wasn’t the map that woke him up– bb-8 displayed the chunk of map they got, and no one knew what it meant, and they couldn’t check r2 at that time because r2 was still asleep….. until rey arrived on the falcon. everyone else on the falcon at that time ( finn and chewie ) had already been on base once before, so it certainly wasn’t because of them that r2 came back to life.

but even with all this, i just want finn and rey to be happy, i want poe and rose to be happy, i want several life lessons learned, and i want people to feel more hopeful leaving the theatre than they did walking in

i just want the golden quartet safe from harm.

[we-are-guildmaster]

Original Story: Dreamer

I like to write in my spare time and I’ve decided to share a little of it here when the mood strikes me. Below is the first part of a story I’ve been working on for a while, I got off to a good start then stalled a bit. I hope you enjoy.

It’s 6:32 am on a Sunday and I was woken up by a Dream. I don’t Dream often anymore, I find as I get older my nights are filled with normal dreams. But tonight I had a Dream. It was of the get together of course, it almost always is. Normally, I would roll over and go back to sleep. But this early morning I received a text.

Prepare to report.

That’s all the text says, and it’s from a number I’ve never seen before. But I know the message is for me, and that there is so much more to it.

The hunt went wrong this year.

Let me tell you a story. On a small farm some where deep in the countryside lives a family, we’ll call them the Johnson family. The Johnson farm is in a remote part of the country and is far from just about anything. It doesn’t produce much, a little of this, a little of that. But each year the Johnson Family farm plays host to a get together.

People from all walks of life come out. They drive for hours, fly, bus, take trains, or do what ever it takes to get there. Most years it’s a different group of people, rarely the same person twice. They show up on what ever day they are suppose to, great the Johnsons with familiarity, even if they have never met before. They are welcomed in and treated as old dear friends. Each person, never more that 13 in total, sometimes as few as two, leaves their donation on the hall table as they arrive, a cashier’s check for $100,000 U.S. funds. Dad Johnson collects the checks in the morning and deposits them in the bank.

The rules are simple. On this one night a year, you don’t go outside, you don’t invite your friends over, you forget the world outside your bed room door even exists. You stay inside. Because this is the night the monsters come out.

Simple back ground, in nature there are predators, the best ones look like something other than what they are. Insects especially are good at this trick. They can look like sticks, or leaves, or chunks of wood, but when the time is right their true colors show through.

Now that that idea to the next level, there are predators who hunt humans as prey, their trick? They look like us. A mistake most people make is thinking that these things are, or were human. They aren’t and never were. They just wear our look to fit in and bide their time. The good news is that just like every other predator-prey relation ship, there are a lot more of us than there are of them.

The ones that are good at what they do, you never hear about. They lead their seemingly normal lives and no one is the wiser. People on the fringe of society near them just disappear from time to time, old folks in nursing homes who have no next of kin, homeless people on their last leg with nothing left to loose, you get the idea.

The ones that are not so good, well, you read about them in the paper and their names are hard to forget. Gacey. Daumer. Bundy. They have the monster equivalent of an eating disorder.

To keep from being wiped out wholesale the monsters have what are essentially game wardens. They monitor the heard and let the other predators know which members of the heard can be picked off safely, when, and how. The world is divided up into 13 regions, and each region has a warden.

Each year, if a warden is having a problem with one of his monsters, he comes to the Johnson farm on the right day and meets with other wardens who are also having problems. They trade information about their problem children, decide on a course of action, and then seal the pact with a traditional hunt.

And what do they hunt you may ask with dread in your voice? One of us of course. Not one of the dregs this time, not this night. When you are sealing the deal, it’s a full on prime specimen. An athlete, a career violent offender, a military special forces operative, someone who actually has a fighting chance. They hunt them, kill them, and feast on the body. The next day Dad Johnson goes out with the tractor, digs a very deep hole, and drops what little remains in and buries it.

But this year there was a problem. This year dinner didn’t go down quietly. And now here I am on a Sunday trying to rub the sleep from my eyes and waiting for the next phone call.

You might be thinking, this guy must be one of the wardens, after all he knows so much. Or maybe he’s just one of the monsters, a silent hunter who has a guilty streak and wants to share his story. Unfortunately wrong on both counts. I am one of the few humans who is born with the ability to Dream. Capital D.

When you go to sleep, your brain takes the miss matched chunks of information, throws them into a blender, and spills them back out across the inside of your eyelids as dreams. Little d. There is no real rhyme or reason to them, it’s just a random bunch of crap your mind puts out there for you to unwind.

When I, or some one like me, which is about 1 in a 10 million people, go to sleep we normally get what you get, dreams. But sometimes, when it’s important, we Dream.

Look at it like this. Jim and Frank get into a fight and they both get arrested. Jim says Frank started it, Frank says Jim started it and no one can figure out what really happened. Jim’s story paints Frank as the bad guy, Frank’s story paints Jim as the bad guy, and both of them believe in their hearts that they are telling the truth. Now in most cases there isn’t much you can do. A judge will listen to both sides and decide what’s what and hand down his verdict. Who ever is ruled against feels cheated and it’s fairly inefficient.

But let’s change it up a bit, let’s say that there was a video camera hidden where Jim and Frank were and caught the whole thing. Now the judge has a blow by blow accounting from an unbiased source. Things become a lot easier for all involved. Those of us who Dream, we’re the video cameras, and we only video tape monsters.

No one knows why we can Dream. Even the really old monsters can’t remember a time when there weren’t Dreamers. But every monster knows we’re out here, and every monster knows that if something big goes down, a Dreamer is going to see it. So from time to time we get asked to come in and tell the higher up monsters what went down so they can keep the rest of the beasties in line. The rules concerning Dreamers are simple. We come when called, answer truthfully and completely, and we stay off the menu, that’s it.

Now why would we be on the menu in the first place you ask? A good question. You see Dreaming take a lot out of you. It’s kind of all we’re good at and built for and it takes up most of the resources out bodies produce. So your average Dreamer is sickly, and dysfunctional in a big way. People on the fringe of society, old folks in nursing homes who have no next of kin, homeless people on their last leg with nothing left to loose, you get the idea. Prey.

Me, I’m one of the really lucky ones, a high functioning Dreamer. I’m confined to a wheelchair, barely able to make it from chair to bed on my own, but completely together in the mental department. That makes me a valuable tool for monster society.

The phone rings, it is 7:04. They must be really on the ball this time, usually takes then over an hour to get to me on the list. As tempted as I am to let it ring I answer on the second tone. “Did you Dream?” the voice on the other end is raspy, and impatient.

“Yes.” I try to hid the fear in my voice, but I know he can hear it.

“We’ll send the van. Be ready in an hour, pack a bag.”

“I’ll be ready.”  Pack a bag. That’s a new one. I slowly transfer into my chair and begin my morning ritual, bathroom, hair, clothes, meds, pack the bag. That’s what life boils down to in the end. Rituals. What we do when we go into auto pilot, the things that pass the time between. I finish up and check the clock,7:49. They’ll be here soon.

8:02, a sharp knock on my door, prompt as always. I roll over to the door, place my bag on my lap, and open it. Big guy this time, serious looking, smells of expensive smoke and leather. “You are prepared?” his voice is deep like distant thunder.

“I am.”

“Then we go.” I roll into the hall and lock my apartment door. He takes the handles and moves me down the hall at a study pace. I use to wonder what they were under the skin. I gave that up after a few visits. Monsters don’t like people asking questions. Besides, it’s better that I don’t know. I have nightmares enough with out seeing the naked truth.

We exit the building and he rolls me over to the van, the ramp is already down with the engine running. I’m the only passenger. No surprise there. We make good time to the airport, no small talk, no radio, just driving and my own thoughts. We bypass security with the wave of some credentials, probably fake. A private jet is waiting for us on a back runway. A tall slim woman in a tan suit is waiting by the stairs to the jet. The big guy lifts me out of my chair and loads me into one of the front seats with out a word.

The lady suit and the big guy board and he closes the hatch behind them. She taps the pilot’s door and says, “We’re ready.” I hear some chatter from behind the door and the cabin starts to pressurize. She sits down across from me, “Are you comfortable? Do you need anything?” She has a soft voice with a hard edge, like a razor covered in velvet.

“A glass of juice would be great.” I answer. She waves a hand to big guy, and he pulls open a mini bar and pours me an apple juice. As he does that I look around the plane, nice interior, plush carpets, leather seats with work stations tucked into the sides.

She points to the big guy as he hands me the glass. “Anthony will be your escort. I am Ms. Landers. Our flight is international, do you have your passport?” I nod and pat my bag. “Good. It’s always nice to work with someone who is efficient.” She pulls some papers from a side pocket of her chair. “Have you ever met the Council before?”

The Council. Shit. I try to keep my voice calm and study, no need to tempt fate by appearing any weaker then normal, “No ma’am. I always report to my local handler and he relays to his superiors.” Shit, shit, shit. This is really bad. The Council never sees Dreamers. There are always intermediaries. One of the game wardens must have been important.

“If I may ask ma’am, why am I meeting the Council? My reports have always been factual and prompt when requested.”

A sly grin passes her lips, the kind that makes you think of a fox in a hen house, or a snake in the grass. “Indeed they have been. In fact that is the primary reason you are being selected. The Council has recently…” She pauses as if looking for words, “come under new leadership, and they wish to meet such a valuable asset as yourself.” She leafs through the papers, a bare glimmer of amusement wrinkles the corners of her mouth. “The First Lord wishes to have a better grasp of events than what was being offered through the local handlers.”

A new First Lord, new Council members, could mean a shakeup in the whole monster rank structure. I sip my apple juice slowly, trying to figure out if I am being called to my last report. Anthony sits across from me, his big frame causing the leather of the seat to squeak as is settles under his weight. Ms. Landers hands him a several pieces of paper. “Your travel papers.” He glances over them and slides them into his inside pocket. “Make yourself comfortable, it’s a 7 hour flight. If you need any of your needs met, Anthony is a skilled nurse provider.” Her tone tells me that the conversation portion of our flight is over.

I settle into my chair and adjust my leg blankets. I close my eyes and drift in and out of sleep. Snippets of conversation between Ms. Landers and Anthony drift through my mind as I rest. They speak in a language I’ve heard before, but never learned the name of. Images of castles and dungeons pass through my worried mind, with all the dread of a child waiting for the monsters to come out of the closet.

I hear the wheel screech on the tarmac and feel the impact of the plane hitting lightly on the ground as it lands. The pilot says something in that language and we begin to slow down and taxi onto the runway towards a terminal. The sky outside is cold and grey as the plane comes to a halt we’re still well away from the terminal. The door opens with a slight hiss/ pop and the steps extend. Outside is a long black car with the rear door open.

[calliecat93]

Red vs Blue: Season 1 - The Blood Gulch Chronicles P1

 If you have been a fan of Rooster Teeth or been on the internet since 2003, chances are you may have heard of the series, Red vs Blue, at least once. Created April 1st 2003, the Halo-inspired webseries about two opposing teams in a box canyon and the stupidity hat ensues has evolved form a 3 minute show made by some nerds in a spare bedroom to not only the internet’s longest running episodic webseries, but the longest running American produced science fiction series. Originally helmed by creator Burnie Burns, the show has run for 15 seasons with a 16th upcoming and gone through various showrunners and tone shifts, but it has always maintained it’s comedy, character dynamics, and wide appeal.

I am very late to the game with RvB, having only gotten into it in early 2017. But even in that amount of time, looking back onto Season One after watching the rest of the show... felt a little jarring. There’s various reasons why. Low quality audio , below average voice performances, characters not being fully fleshed out, and outdated graphics.  When you look at this season and then look at... say Season 10, you can see how far the quality of all of these, as well as the writing, have come since the old days. However the importance of this season and it’s success cannot be ignored. Without this, Rooster Teeth most likely would not have existed. Which that would mean that Achievement Hunter, RWBY, Camp Camp, Day 5, etc would also not exist. It’s importance cannot be ignored here.

So I guess that gets the exposition out of the way, so lets go into the review.

Overview

Talking about Red vs Blue, especially the Blood Gulch Chronicles (Seasons 1-5) is honestly... not easy. The first season especially. Why? Well while RvB has always been a comedy, it later shifted into being more of a dramedy with an ongoing story. This one has the least amount of story, driven more by the characters shenanigans and dialogue.The good news though is that, despite what I thought when I began the show, you don’t have to know shit about Halo to enjoy it. There are some references, like one character referencing Master Chief and the Covenant in the first episode, but you don’t have to understand the lore at all. It may help, but its unnecessary. Which is good since I’ve never played the game and anything I know about is either from this show, Lets Plays, or looking it up.

The show’s concept is, at least in the beginning, pretty simple. So there’s this box canyon, Blood Gulch, smack dab in the middle of nowhere. In this canyon are two bases, Red Base and Blue Base. There are also two teams, the Read Team and the Blue Team. These two sides are at war because... ugh... some reason. The first episode points this out, so lets meet our cast. On the Reds, we are first introduced to Richard ‘Dick’ Simmons (voiced by Gustavo ‘Gus’ Sorola) clad in maroon and is the one pondering this to begin with (”Do you ever wonder why we’re here?). The other soldier, clad in orange, is Dexter Grif (voiced by Geoff Fink, better known today as Geoff Ramsey) and... yeah he has no idea why either, just getting strangely philosophical (”It’s one of life’s greatest mysteries, isn’t it?). The answer is because each side has a base in the canyon. Yeah, that’s the reason. Just go with it.

There’s two other Red soldiers, but we’ll get to them later. For now, lets shift over to the Blues. They only have two guys, Team Leader in colbalt Leonard Church (Burnie Burns) and Lavernius Tucker (Jason Saldana). Episode One very quickly establishes the two sides daily routine. Often, they just stand at their base on guard duty ether talking or watching the other side. Sometimes even both! It’s something that they’re used to/tired of with Church getting annoyed at Tucker pestering him about what the Reds are doing, which is the same thing they always do. Considering that these Season 1 episode are around three minutes long each, they do put that time to good used. The first two episodes alone are enough to establish the majority of the main cast and give us a feel of the two sides regular routine.

Speaking of Episode 2, Simmons and Grif have been called down by their leader, Sarge. Out of all the characters, Sarge is.. the most noticibly different in terms of voice. In the entire series he is voiced by Matt Hullum, RT’s current CEO... but the voice he uses here is DRASTICALLY different. But I’ll elaborate on that more when I get to character stuff. But speaking of voices, this is also a good time to mention one of the season’s biggest flaws, the audio work. It is very difficult to understand what the characters are saying a good chunk of the time with the filter effect not making it any easier. I had to turn up the volume various times to fully makeout what was being said. There is a reason why however. The RT guys were doing all of this out of a spare bedroom, pr in Matt and a few others cases, over the phone. The company was literally three guys (Burnie, Geoff, and Gus and at some point during BGC Gus temporarily moved to Puerto Rico, leaving only two guys) in a bedroom with an XBox and some cheap equipment. So it is very understandable why the audio was low quality, not counting the below average voice acting. But still the audio, especially compared to later seasons were they do have high quality equipment, is noticeable and annoying.

Okay, back to the series. Sarge shows the two privates their newest toy, the Warthog. An army jeep that... I gotta agree with Grif, I think Puma is a much more fitting name. We also learn that Sarge wants Grif dead. Seriously, he gets very creative with ideas in later seasons. The When You Wish Upon a Star parody in Season 8 always kills me. Lets put it this way, we learn that Grif gets shit on. A lot. The Reds are also expecting a rookie to be joining their ranks soon, much to the privates aggravation. A sentiment that the Blues can relate to as they too are expecting their own rookie. Oh, they’re also getting a tank! Cool... but can it play polka music like the Warthog? I don’t think so!

This leads us to episode 3! I’ll give the show this, it goes by quick. So while arguing over going to the Vegas Quadrant, which funnily enough was based on a true story that was later made into an RTAA, Simmons and Grif meet the rookie! Franklin Delano Donut (Dan Godwin), currently clad in the same red-colored armor that Sarge wears. Speaking of, Sarge is currently away at command and as left Simmons in charge... a memo that Grif didn’t get. No surprise there. Anyways, the privates decide to mess with Donut, tricking him into going to a non-existent a store to pick up some elbow grease and headlight fluid. Well now this RTAA suddenly makes sense. While Simmons does wonder if this was too harsh, Grif assures him that all that’s gonna happen is that the kid will run around the canyon for a few hours. What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, the Blues got their tank as well as their own rookie, Michael J Caboose (Joel Heyman). They’re all admiring it with Church bringing up having a girlfriend back home. This causes Caboose to accidentally call her a... not nice word, annoying Church and setting up their relationship for the rest of the series. History in the making folks! Anyways, the two older soldiers get annoyed and send Caboose to guard the flag inside and await a general who doesn't look like them. Just as Donut arrives, and the two stupidly don’t turn around to see who they’re talking to, just assuming that it’s Caboose. So Donut goes in and since he doesn’t loo like the Blues... yeah you can both guess what Caboose does and how much Church probably wants to bang his head into the wall.

Church, believing Donut to be Sarge, wants to use a teleporter to cut him off... by making Tucker go first. Tucker refuses since it’s only been used on rocks, but Church forces him into it. And... nothing comes out of the other end. Wow, I’ve seen characters die early on, but daaaang. So Church goes on foot. Meanwhile, Grif eventually sees that Donut has the flag and he and Simmons get the Warthog. Church catches up to Donut, discovering that it’s not the sergeant... as Tucker finally comes out of the teleporter. His armor, which is normally aqua, is now completely black and he assumes that he got sent into the past. No, no Tucker, it’s two seasons too soon to bring time travel into the mix. Be patient kind sir! Anyways, the Reds show up and cause the Blues to take cover with Grif sending Donut back to Red Base. Kind of weird to see Grif doing his job tbh. Caboose, seeing that the others are in trouble, goes to get the tank.

We now meet Shelia. The tank! Yes, the tank has a name. She takes Caboose through the tutorial program... which he sucks at. Don't you just hate it when that happens? He is able to get it to the Reds, who have left the Warthog to get at the Blues, and the two plan to run back... with Grif leaving Simmons in the dust. Jerk. Well it doesn't matter, the Warthog ends up blown up when Caboose turns on the automatic firing system. Simmons yells at Grif for having the bright idea of exiting the Warthog... though if they had stayed in it, they’d be dead. But meh, whatever. In the meantime, Church realizes that Caboose is piloting the tank and comes out... causing Shelia to target on him and... 

So... yeah... Church is dead. Damn, and only eight episodes in too. But ah well, he’s dead! That’s that! It happens! No reason to care whatsoever! Moving right along now! Oh, and going back to the audio, that explosion nearly blew my ears out when I had it on 10% of the volume. SO thanks for that RT, bunch of assholes.

The Reds eventually make it back to the base as the tank continues to fire madly. Caboose is afraid to try anything to stop it since... you know, he just became a team killing fucktard and all. Fortunately, Sarge calls the team, currently on his way back to base. Grif, in rapid succession, explains what’s happening and luckily Sarge has a solution... by dropping bombs! To his credit it works as Shelia is blown up, though Caboose is able to exit in time. He mourns the loss of the lady in the tank (roll with me here) and the Reds take the first victory in what up to now was a standstill. And that ends the first half of the season!

So lets about the production a little bit. Season 1 is 19 episode long, averaging at around three minutes. This was not the plan. From what I understand, Burnie’s original plan was for RvB to be a miniseries, IDK the exact intended episode count but it wasn't supposed to be this long. I can only assume that the initial success caused him to expand on it. But the point is, there was no long term plan. As such, Burnie originally wrote the episode mere days before they were set to premiere. Unless you are South Park, that kind of production schedule is INSANE. Now since this was initially going to be a miniseries, its once more understandable, hence hwy I’m not going to go off on it like I would with any other show. I only bring this up for a historical perspective and because the next few episodes are going to contain events that will shape the series much later in the future. Events that were conceived shortly before the episode went into production. But I’ll get more into that when we get to the Recollection Trilogy. 

Now for the second half of the season. With a member dead and the tank totaled, Tucker, whose back to aqua-colored armor, calls command for backup. He’s answered by VIC. Now VIC is usually voiced by Burnie, but in this season he’s voiced by a different actor, and it shows. Anyways, the best that VIC can offer is to bring in a nearby Freelancer agent. Freelancers are neutral agents, often being employed by either side... or that’s the story Tucker gives. Oh Recollection Trilogy/Freelancer Saga, it’s gonna be FUN going over you. The agent being hired is known by Agent Texas, or Tex for short. It’s then that Tucker and Caboose receive a visitor... Church! As a ghost! Just... just go with it, okay? Anyways, Church came back to warn the two about Tex, an overly aggressive agent who murdered all of Church’s former squadmates on a snow planet known as Sidewinder. One soldier in particular, Jimmy, got beaten to death with his own skull. Man, that doesn't seem physically possible.

The point is, Tex is dangerous. Having this soldier in particular get involved may end up being more trouble than it’s worth. Church can’t elaborate too much, but he does make it clear to Tucker and Cabosoe that they, under ANY circumstances, should NOT involve Tex whatsoever. He also adds that Tex is the reason why he and his girlfriend didn’t get married, but he vanishes before he can talk further. Tucker is left confused... just as Tex arrives tot he canyon. Ho boy... so guys, do the Blues either A, heed Church’s advice and decide to not use Tex after all? Or B, disregard it completely and let Tex do whatever the Hell they want? If you guessed A, you are giving this show far too much credit, no cookie for you!

Well actually, I guess I can’t blame Tucker too much for not keeping Tex out though. I mean the first thing that they do is use Caboose for target practice. Considering what we find out later, there is another way to interpret this. But the Blues need Tex to get back their flag, and they have a very simple plan: go murder everyone and get it. Bloody... but hey, points for simplicity. Meanwhile, Grif gets the blame for the Warthog and yelled/shot at by Sarge. Donut is lamenting wanting his own armor color... before getting grenaded by Tex, who knocks Grif out and Simmons... meh, he just faints.  All as the Blues watch the carnage from the safety of their base.

Tex returns the flag to the Blues... somehow without leaving Red Base. Weird. But that’s not all that returns, so does Church! Needless to say, he’s not happy when he realizes that his teammates completely ignored what he said and let Tex get very much involved in the conflict. Speaking of Tex, Sarge is able to catch them and knock them out. Grif and Simmons get back up, the latter denying that he fainted. Donut is still down and heavily injured cause a grenade to the HEAD at POINT BLANK RANGE is totally survivable, but if they move fast, he can get treated and recover, so they go look for Sarge.

Lets go check back with the Blues, who have realized that Tex has been captured. Church is annoyed and Tucker brings up his previous comment about Tex being why he didn’t marry his girlfriend. This... isn’t the exact truth. This leads into the biggest plot twist of the season, one that Burnie came up with shortly before the episode’s release. So that girlfriend of Church’s? Turns out that is Tex. Yep, Tex is a girl. We confirm this when she gets back up and a voice filter she was using to sound masculine shorts out, revealing the voice of Kathleen Zuelch (Gynda Goodwitch in RWBY). Much to the Reds shock.

Church goes on to explain Tex’s deal. You see, she had been recruited into a secret military program and given an AI. This AI caused spikes in anger and aggression levels, turning Tex into a violent, bitchy killing machine. Still, Church does care enough that he rallies the others into mounting a rescue. How? Well Church plans on breaking into the Red Base, which with him being a ghost is the most logical option, while Tucker and Caboose play distraction. To help with this, he has the two go through the teleporter to turn their armor back. Yeah I glossed over this, but Freelancers supposedly dress in black armor. This gets majorly retconned later though.

The plan ultimately works pretty dang well. The Blues distract Grif, Church possesses Sarge (which Burnie’s impression ALWAYS kills me), who goes down and knocks Simmons out... again. Well it wasn't by fainting this time. Tex... takes this this all pretty well. The two make their escape, but Caboose is unaware of the possession and... ends up shooting Sarge. GDI Caboose. Which then leads us to, what is by far, the most confusing episode of the season. Not the show, oh Season 3 in itself is a major mindscrew, but man does this one hurt my brain.

So after being shot, Sarge wakes up in the afterlife where Church also is. Oh, Shelia’s there too and Church isn’t happy about... you know, her killing him and all. So Sarge is currently in limbo as in the real world, Grif tries to save him... with CPR... on a head wound... yeah if you wanna survive Blood Gulch Chronicles, then you are going to have to throw logic COMPLETELY out the window. Trust me, when you do it makes it more bearable. This works, again forget logic, and Sarge wakes up good as new. He still berates Grif for it though, even though he just saved his life and all. At least Church and Tex got away alive... okay Church is technically dead, but just... just go with it!

Sometime later, Donut is back and recovered. He also has his own armor color now! Pi... I-I mean, lightish-red!  Sarge also has obtained a speech unit for a Red member that I haven’t talked about yet because he has done absolutely nothing. Lopez, the group’s mechanic who as it turns out is a robot. Up until now he had zero lines and no overall relevance to the Reds antics, so I didn’t feel the need to bring him up. The speech unit works... except only in Spanish. I watched a recent RT Podcast the week before Christmas and Burnie, who also voices Lopez (yeah he does a good amount of voices, I think he did Tex’s voice filter too), got the idea from talking toys that would get stuck on the wrong language setting. When he explained that, it made SO MUCH MORE sense. So no one can understand Lopez and misinterpret everything that he says, a running gag for the entire series that’ll be better utilized in later seasons.

Over on the Blues, Tex is convinced to stick around until the Reds are taken out. as repayment for saving her. Why are the Blues keeping her around? Well Church wants to get the AI out of her head still and that would be kind of hard if she left. Plus forcing her when he can’t even fire a gun properly would not end well. They get Tex to work on repairing Shelia and Church finds that his body is still where he died. Worst, it’s rotting. Eww!! So a bit of a snag comes up. You see, when the Reds are dead, Tex will leave. Church can’t have that happen, so that means that he needs the Reds to stay alive. Since Tex almost has Shelia operational and will strike with her when done, he decides to go and warn them, leading us into the season finale.

Church leaves the Blues to update him on Tex as he goes to the Reds. He takes over Lopez and tries to warn them of the attack... but since Lopez can only speak Spanish, it goes about as well as you’d expect. Tex finishes Shelia and makes her move. Tucker allows Caboose to radio Church over this, a point that we’ll get to later. Church can’t properly convey that his warning failed and Tex proceeds to open fire on the Red Base. Well... shit. The now repaired Warthog fails to help, so what can stop Tex? As it turns out... Donut! He gets what may be some of the best karma upon someone ever, managing to throw a long-distance grenade into Shelia, causing her to explode and promptly kill Tex... for now.

Church, mortified, runs to Tex, leaving the Reds confused. In her dying breath, Tex confirms that the AI is gone and thanks Church. So that leaves the question, what happened to the AI? We find out soon enough. Tucker, realizing that things have gone to Hell, tells Caboose to fall back to Blue Base. But Caboose turns towards the camera, his voice becoming noticeably more menacing as he insists on being called O’Malley. And thus, Season One and the first part of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, comes to a close.

Review

(WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR LATER SEASONS)

Phew! That was a LOT of typing! For Blood Gulch, I’m going to be covering each season in their own post unless it looks necessary otherwise. Mainly because out of the current arcs, Blood Gulch is the least story heavy and the hardest to talk about due to it. But that doesn't mean that there’s nothing to say about it. But, as the warning above indicates, I’m going to bring up later seasons, but I’ll try not to give too much away. So... lets begin with...

Machinima

I couldn’t find a good place to talk about this in the overview, so we’ll do it here. For those unaware, RvB is not a traditionally animated series. It is created via use of machinima. According to Wikipedia, Machinima is “the use of real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production. Most often video games are used to generate the computer animation.“  In short, it means taking an engine like say an X-Box and using a program like say Halo to create the graphics. 

Now there is some belief that RvB is the first to do this, but that isn’t true. This method has existed since at least the 90′s, although it didn’t get the name ‘machinima’ until the early 2000′s. But what can be said is that RvB took the concept and made it work on a mainstream level. No one else was using machinima on the scale that Rooster Teeth was. The only other notable works I could find before RT’s influence was some short films using a video came called Quake, which was the first machinima to be created. I think it’s safe to say that no one had tried making a full-fledged continuous series out of it, or at least no one was hugely successful. It’s also not exactly an easy process, especially in 2003. For example, if you leave a character standing too long they’ll do a default motion as programmed into the game. This can kill a scene and therefore the machinimators will be forced to start all over again. If you have three or so characters all in the same scene and just one does this or you make even a minor mistake with the controls, you have to start from scratch. How Burnie and Geoff did this and lived I’ll never know. Just imagine how it is in later seasons when more characters are brought in, ugh...

The guys used the original Halo for Season 1 and years later would make a remaster. So as far as the machinima goes, it’s done pretty good. They’re limited in what they can do n some shots looked weird, like how when Tex’ filter shorts out she’s facing the Reds, then in the next shot is faced away form them. So that can be kind of jarring, but nothing that really throws off anything.  About the only thing I hated looking at was VIC, who is more uncanny here than in any other season. But meh, his scenes are brief so I can live.

The graphics... have not aged well. This is not RT’s fault, the original Halo is nearly 15 years old and was part of the first generation of XBox. It’s not going to like Final Fantasy, is all I’m saying. Blood Gulch nowadays looks... IDK how to describe it. The settings look more realistic and less bulky and cheap in later seasons, though granted we get more than one location in later seasons. We’re limited to only the box canyon here. But again, I’m not expecting Pixar-quality CGI, so it doesn’t really take away form anything.

Writing

Like I said earlier, episodes were written shortly before they were set to be released. There was also no long-term plan, so Burnie was pretty much making things up as he went along. I mentioned Tex’s gender reveal, but things like Church being killed and in turn the ghost thing were not planned. They were conceived essentially on the spot. Normally, this kind of production style would murder a production. But... I’m not gonna lie, the writing is not bad. Yeah there’s stuff that breaks my brain like the ghost thing and Sarge in the afterlife, but there do get explained in later seasons and humor is subjective, so it might just be me.

Because of machinima’s limitation, the script and writing was probably the most vital thing. If people didn’t find it funny or engaging, then they weren’t going to watch it. This is a very dialogue heavy show where the lines and interactions are what tells you about a character and what they are feeling. Since the character models... you know, have a helmet covering the face and body language is near impossible, you can get why. And the dialogue is pretty good. Tucker’s en about women hooking up like Voltron cracked me up. Oh that’s one thing, the series relies heavily on black humor that wouldn't be out of place in South Park, so... be prepared for that.

BGC is very comedic focused. There is a plot and there are elements that later seasons will heavily rely heavily on. But the comedy is ultimately what comes first. There's a lot of jarring things as I mentioned, but I can say this. They do put many of these things to good use. For example, the teleporter turning armor black. I guess that may be a joke about Halo that I don’t get, but Church later utilizes this to create a distraction. Church is a ghost, and he uses this twice ti limited success. Church mentioning a girlfriend was done to have Caboose make a slut joke, and then it turns out that Tex is that girlfriend. Considering how the writing schedule was, it’s impressive that Burnie was able to take so many little things that were jokes and utilize them for the plot later. Looking back, it’s like a precursor to the decisions he makes for the Recollection trilogy, but that’s for there and not here. Still, kudos for taking those elements and making something out of them. That’s the kind of writing I like to see!

But as I said, the plot is secondary. Season One relies heavily on it’s character and the shenanigans they get into. The plot is kicked off by Donut mistaking Blue Base for a store when Caboose was conveniently told that the make-believe general didn’t look like a Blue. Pretty contrived when you think about it. The biggest plot twists were Church’s death and Tex being a girl, which again were split second decisions. It helped keep things interesting, but it shows that not a whole lot of thought went into the story. Ultimately while the show is genuinely funny, knew how to use certain bits to it’s advantage, and had those two twists, I don’t thin that the writing is exactly what got the show to succeed.

Audio/Voice Acting

We already went into the audio, and how it’s not very good. But the voice acting... is not much better. Aside from Joel and to a degree Matt, none of these guys are actors. So it is not at all a surprise that the voice acting is below average at best. I can tell that they’re trying, but... it comes off as empty and unmotivated a lot of the time. The best of the bunch are Burnie, Kathleen, and the aforementioned Matt and Joel. And even then, it’s weak compared to later on. I’m not saying that the others are bad, it’s just obvious that they were new to this at the time. I mean here’s a video of Gus and Geoff’s first recording session. 

If you’re not distracted by how young they are  (seriously, QUIT GETTING OLD), Geoff missing about 90% of his tattoos, and Gus’ lack of hair, you can tell that they have zero idea what they are doing. I can’t blame them though, this is the very first session after all and again they are trying. Matt, Joel, and Kathleen were also working out of California so I can only imagine how tough getting the proper direction for them was. All of them do improve MASSIVELY though as the series goes on, Heck Season 2 is noticeably better but more on that then. I think another big reason on why it was lacking is because aside from Matt, they aren’t really playing a character so much as exaggerated versions of themselves, so they don’t have as much to work with. Hence why it’s good that Burnie fleshed them out in Season 2.

The show’s music is... actually pretty good! There’s not a lot, mainly just guitar rifts used during season transitions, but they’re work. They have a folk music feel to them (or in the Warthog theme’s case polka) and I’m not normally a huge fan of that genre, but here it works. The shows intro, Blood Gulch Blues, it itself is really catchy and fun to listen to. The music was done by a group called Trocadero, who would do several other seasons. Now do I consider this to be the best music in the series? Well... it’s good, but no. Later seasons have a lot of really good tracks. But still, the soundtrack is nice to listen to and I really enjoy it!

Characters

To me, what makes or breaks a show is the use of it’s characters. A cliched story can be good if it’s both told well and if it’s character are utilized well. The cast here have a range of personalities and no two are the same. That said... they’re definitely not that fleshed out yet. There’s a few tiny things here and there. Simmons is a kissass to Sarge, Tucker makes the comment about using the tank to pick up women, Caboose is... not the brightest crayon in the box, but it’s not what defines them initially. Grif might be the biggest example of this I can think of. Later seasons establishes him as a fat, lazy slob who proudly shrinks his responsibilities, steals rations, and will eat expired food if he feels the need. Here? He... actually is trying to do his job with minimal complaint. I mean one of his lines in Episode 1 has him refer to joining the army to kick alien ass. He would NEVER say that nowadays.

Since I’m already talking about Grif, we’ll start the deeper looks with him. Grif is my favorite character in the show, albeit it took until Season 15 to set that in stone. So going back to now helps put things into perspective for me. As I said, the characters aren’t all that fleshed out yet. Grif is definitely the most laid back of the Reds, but again he’s willingly doing his job. He doesn't really display much of his more lazy characterization that we’re used to. The worst thing he does is leave Simmons to be killed by the tank to save his own skin, which yeah is a pretty shitty thing to do. None of these characters are exactly the most moral, to put it lightly. Back on topic, Grif’s the one who has them go get Donut, makes him go back to base, actually tries to get at the Blues before Shelia came, and even tried to save Sarge, I honestly believe that after Sarge got after him for using CPR, he decided ‘fuck this, I’m gonna get shit on no matter what the fuck I do, so I’m gonna do whatever the hell I want. It’ll make Sarge and Simmons pissy either way, so why even care? I’m just gonna do whatever the fuck I want and they can suck it up!” If that’s true, I can totally buy that and I’m sticking to that. But otherwise, Grif doesn't o very much aside from being the Red’s punching bag. Poor guy.

Simmons also does not do a whole lot. We do establish very quickly that he’s a kissass to Sarge’s command and he and Grif have this weird love-hate relationship. I can't think of too many nerdy moments for Simmons this season, IDT that really comes out until next season. Maybe even Season 3 when he’s fiddling with the portals. I could easily just be forgetting though. He’s kind of an arrogant dick, but he doesn't do anything that really makes him unlikeable. Maybe yelling at Grif about the Warthog, but Grif left him to die... yeah I guess I can’t blame him there... sort of. But otherwise, Simmons isn’t given a whole lot to do aside from arguing wit Grif and siding with Sarge. What I can say that him and Grif’s interactions were probably one of my favorite things in the season. The banter and chemistry between them felt really natural and I snickered at a lot of their bits, like arguing over Simmons fainting. This is probably because Gus and Geoff IRL are best friends, so I can imagine that their dialogue just wrote itself. But it’ works really well and helps make these two likebale despite both being assholes.

Sarge is still the leader and the one most determined to kill the Blues, but it’s definitely not as insane as later. The voice very much reflects this. Sarge has a very exaggerated southern accented voice in the show... except here and the start of Season 2. The southern accent is still there, but it’s mroe... .subdued? Laidback? Normal? IDK the right word, it’s definitely less exaggerated though. It was so jarringly different that I wasn’t sure if it was Matt still doing the voice at first. Sure enough it was still him. I can only assume that when they made Sarge’ murderous tendencies more exaggerated starting next season, Matt felt the need to do the same with his performance to reflect the character, And thank God for it. It felt so wrong here. Matt was probably the best actor, but that’s because he’s the only one given a character. As I said, Burnie essentially write exaggerated versions of his co-workers. Matt, as far as I know since I don’t work for him, isn’t a southern-accented drill Sargent. Anyone who works at RT reading this, please feel free to correct me. But anyways, Sarge is the leader, hates Grif, and is probably the most competent fighter among them, though not by much. Not much else to say otherwise except kudos for getting the most confusing scene in the season Sarge!

There’s even less to say about Donut and Lopez. Lope.... does nothing except fix the Warthog and shoot at Grif once. He eventually gets a speech module that only works in Spanish, and that only serves to make Church fail to warn the Reds. That’s it. Donut is the rookie who has no idea what is happening. He, next to Grif, is also the most different form later. he’s... normal here. I don’t recall him spouting even one innuendo an Dan’s voice is a lot less high pitched than later. He kicks off the plot by accidentally stealing the flag and is ultimately the one to defeat Tex. Which I will admit, was awesome and it was very fitting. But otherwise, Donut doesn’t get much to do here... or for much of the series infact. And don’t get me wrong, I like these characters and find them fun, but from a story perspective... yeah these two in particular aren't given much. But we’ll focus on that in later seasons.

As you may have noticed, the Reds don’t have much story going on.. and don’t for the majority of the series, sadly. They’re just the opposing force/comedic relief essentially. The Blues are the ones who move the story... well most of them. Tucker moves it the least, so we’ll start with him. He’s essentially there to be someone that Church can bicker with when not pissed at Caboose. In this season, this makes him the least interesting compared to Church with his ghost development and relationship with Tex, the badass Tex, and the dim-witted Caboose. His defining trait of being into women isn’t even really here aside from the earlier stuff with the tank. He will have more time to shine and show his competence, but that’s really not going to be until he gets the sword. We’re going to be waiting a while. But as with Grif and Simmons, the banter between Tucker and Church was really good and it worked. I can say the same for Tucker and Caboose as well.

Speaking of Caboose, he’s still an idiot... but not as badly. I mean Joel’s not even using the 'act like I’m taking to tiny animals’ voice that we’re familiar with. He’s using his regular voice. While Caboose is still obsessed with Church being his ‘best friend’and a dimwit, such as shooting Church when possessing Sarge, it’s not even close to what we’re used to. he has common sense and some train of thought for one, such as getting the idea to use the tank. It backfired horribly, but he recognized the danger. Now there is a potential in-universe reason on why Caboose became dumber, but we’ll cover that next season. For now, Caboose is at worst dimwitted and frustrating to Church, but hilarious for us. He’s still the character that I laughed at the most.

Tex comes in later, but she’s drastically different form the others. Not just because she’s the only girl either. She’s the most violent and willing to kill. I mean even Sarge hasn’t exactly done anything as brutal as hit a Blue with a grenade at point blank yet. Part of this can be blame on the AI making Tex more vicious than she would otherwise be. Personality wise, she’s no-nonsense and serious minded, there to get her job done as quickly and effectively as possible. She’s easily able to take on the Reds and only loses due to Sarge getting the jump on her... and even then she got the flag back tot he Blues so she didn’t exactly fail. She’s a tough person and doesn't have the best attitude in the world, even without the AI. She;s awesome and her arrival is ultimately the biggest story element. Her and Church's relationship is funny and really interesting, which helps both characters. Whether her feelings for Church are genuine or not, or even existent, isn’t expanded on here. But I do interpret her shooting Caboose as ‘practice’ as her getting revenge for killing him to begin with. Add that to her dying wors to him and... yeah I’m sure she does in her own way.

Finally that brings us to Church himself. Church is ultimately the character who pushes the story along and actually gets the Blues to do something. He’s a snarky asshole, easily frustrated and annoyed. He’s the straight man to Tucker pestering him and Caboose being... Caboose. His death is one of the biggest things to happen in the season and even in death, he pushes things forward. His relationship with Tex, he’s the one who plans her rescue, he’s the one who carries it out, and he’s the one most motivated to get rid of the AI. Lets face it, Church is the most proactive character and the one who ultimately keeps the plot moving forward, It’s why he was my favorite character in the beginning... that and Burnie being the only person I really recognized aside form Joel due to RWBY. Church is definitely who’d I consider the most well-written and relevant character, especially with what happens later and the closest thing that we have to a lead character.

Final Thoughts

Man, I did NOT expect this review ot get so long. I mean it took up 18 pages in my notebook, but still...

Ultimately, I don’t thin that Red vs Blue succeeded due to it’s writing or vocal performances. No, I think what made this work was both luck and being innovative. As I said, machinima existed, but not tot he scale that RT was putting it out. I think them choosing Halo, a popular game that was new at the time, really helped them. It also helped that they had somewhat of a fanbase due to their previous work on the sadly dysfunctional drunkgamers.com.  Which, as the title says, has a bunch of drunkards reviewing games. Think of it as a sort of precursor to Achievement Hunter. They also released a parody video of the then new Apple Switch, as seen here:

Sheesh, and I thought Gus looked young in the recording session video... but my point here is the show was a success for several reasons. They took an obscure media form and did something different with it, took advantage of the open opportunities (Halo’s popularity, their previous fanbase.) They were also very lucky when it came to copyright. Yes even then, when Youtube didn’t exist, they could have gotten into legal trouble for making this show. Fortunately, Microsoft and Bungie liked it and allowed them to continue without paying a fee. How the deal works nowadays IDK, but I’m assuming that things are good since it’s still being made and all.

Season One proved to be a major success. It drew in Halo fans and fans of their previous drunkgamers efforts. Now IDK how things worked in 2003, I was only 10 and had no idea how to use the web was was too young to watch RvB anyways. However they counted views or whatever, it worked. It launched machinima to a more mainstream market and they even got interviewed by CNN and other news groups. Rooster Teeth very quickly became a spearhead in the world of web content, and they’d only grow form here. Season Two was a guarantee, especially with a cliffhanger that would keep viewers interested. But we’ll discuss all of that in the next review.

[thedeadflag]

So I’m a decent chunk into ME:A, and...the cast is starting to grow on me. Chalk it up to occasional bursts of high quality writing and excellent voice acting, I suppose. Initially, lady Ryder’s VA seemed a little...off to me, but she’s really grown on me as I’ve made my way through the game. 

So far: (minor spoilers below potentially)

I want to hug Cora for 6 hours. Half the fun would be her griping about the length of it, but I have a feeling she’d also kind of really like it. I’m slowly getting over her being hyper-mega-hetero, but I still want to hug her. She’s pretty solid and I empathize with a lot of her worries and history. Her backstory is totally coded as being gay/trans, though, and it’s a super huge mess that she’s a hardcore cishet.

I want to scour the cluster for anything that could make Vetra’s sister happy, because if Vetra’s sister is happy, Vetra is happy. And I like happy Vetra. She’s got a wonderful brand of intensity to her. I don’t think she’d be super into hugs, so I figure doing things for her and her sister would be the best way to show I care. In another playthrough, I might go for her, but for now, I’m happy to give her the title of “Squad Mom”

Suvi is sweet. Aside from a really annoying dialogue choice where you have to either say “I’m faithful, too” or “Believing in a god is fucking stupid, you’re really stupid Suvi”, I’m warming to her. Not a lot of content there, though. She never calls you over to talk, and talking to her rarely spawns anything new and meaningful. Unfortunate, because I think I might like to know more about her character, but she’s definitely been slotted into the tertiary character slot. She has more banter with the pilot than she has dialogue with my Ryder.

Kinda disappointed in Lexi. Not romanceable, sure, that’s a minor disappointment, but she also has next to no new dialogue ever aside from hearing her banter with people on the ship. Maybe that eventually changes, but not so far. She gives a psych eval of your Ryder in the codex, but it’s partially bugged and (at least in mine) included some entirely unrelated remarks that look like they were taken straight out of the middle of a sentence somewhere else. Still, she’s pretty solid enough as a Chakwas replacement, and is the “Ship Mom”, constantly harassing everyone to be safe and healthy and eat all our veggies, and yeah. I just wish there was more there.

Drack is a relatively enjoyable dude. The kind of dude who, if you’re feeling down, will send you random pictures of guns to try and cheer you up. I think that says just about everything I need to say about him. 

Liam is also a solid enough dude. I wish he’s wear a shirt more than he does, but alas, he seems impervious to clothes at the best of times. He cares a lot. A LOT. Like, as much as me. And I care a LOT. He’s...so far... a really solid character that subverts a good amount of toxic masculinity tropes. Especially like that he defends a dude’s right to cry over whatever he’s emotional about. Also, he has infinite health and shields, I think. When fighting the Architect, I don’t think his shields ever broke once. Ridiculous.

Jaal is cool, and I love that after I failed to flirt with him, the future dialog prompts where flirting would happen are literal friendship prompts. I’m building a platonic M/F friendship here, and it’s kind of great.  A very heartfelt dude, and I enjoy him enough to bring him on missions when he’s less useful, since he’s essentially another Me, in terms of abilities and weapon-choice. I know a lot of folks think the Angara look silly, but I like them. 

PeeBee is better than I expected. She’s quirky, but not absurdly so, just very entertaining. Personality-wise, the opposite of Liara, which is what makes me feel better about my Ryder pursuing her. She’s just a very fun character, who shares my character’s love of humour and wit, and who is very very passionate. And not a fan of doctor’s visits, either. Initially comes across as no-strings, which is something my Ryder’s not really all about, but I’m willing to take the plunge and see if it could work. If it doesn’t, then it’ll have been a fun ride of flirtation that I can definitely live with. I’m not sure how she performs at higher difficulty levels, but she’s an absolute beast in my party, being the second beefiest character in health/shields behind Liam (I don’t understand why or how she’s more durable than Drack, but that’s just the reality I guess), and with great crowd control abilities in shockwave and that tech ability that drops defenses and spreads among enemies like a mini-plague. 

Gil...still not warmed up to him a lot, which is unfortunate because the pilot’s always telling me Gil wants to talk, more than any other crew member, even if he only says a few words and then lets me go. A lot of his talks (maybe most of them, so far?) are about how his friend Jill is pressuring him to reproduce, which...is unfortunate. Like, gay cis dudes don’t have to have PiV to reproduce. They can donate sperm. That works just fine and dandy. There shouldn’t be such a big deal about it that far into the future when they’ve perfected human cloning and almost assuredly many other reproductive procedures. So far, he’s a poker-loving mechanic that has an iffy sense of humour. Wish he’d have been better, but I guess there’s always one.

Kallo...all I know about him is that he has a gambling problem, pays to spend time with a woman on the Nexus, and helped design the Tempest. Doesn’t talk much outside of his banter with Suvi. 

There are also some really decently written and VA’d side characters, especially among the Angara. I’ve been thisclose to flirting with a few of them. Not sure if any are options but I figure I’ll try in another playthrough if only because the dialogue exchanges were surprisingly really great and I felt sparks of chemistry, which...for minor characters and mains...almost never happens. 

I’ll leave my comments on the main narrative to myself for now until I can fully 100% confirm my suspicions, and I’m still really upset about Jien Garson and but in terms of the protagonist cast, and their writing and voice acting...I’m a fan. They’re definitely all growing on me.

[g0dblessthefandom]

Brittana!Firefly Fic

Hey All,

So, I finished this a week or so ago, but I thought I would post it here anyway. It’s a Brittana/Troubletones AU set in the Firefly ‘verse that I’d been working on since last year, but decided to finish. I’m posting the first chapter here, and the rest is on AO3 and FFF.net. Hope you check it out!

The explosion was still ringing in her ears as she ran.

Kitty raced down the hill at a breakneck speed, dodging rocks and debris and vaulting over other things that she’d rather not spend any time trying to think about. The air was thick with acrid smoke, and it was all she could do to keep from suffocating on it. Her res pack had been ditched hours ago, thrown to the bottom of some ravine that she’d passed, and not a second thought left behind with it. The heavy weight of it on her back had been fine when she was sitting in a trench, but when she’d had to move, it had only slowed her down.

She was glad too. She’d been running for what seemed like hours, and the pack would have been an unwanted burden on her back. Her lungs burned, but it only pushed her to run faster, away from where her squad had been ambushed, away from the screams of dying soldiers, away from the carnage, away from the destruction. She looked up at the sky for a moment, trying to catch a glimpse of starlight through the clouds. Trying to catch sight of anything that would help her to orient herself, but she didn’t see anything. Only more pitch black. Only more night. Only more darkness. She had spotted the edge of a dune, and thought she’d noticed it has they had marched towards the battlefield, so she followed it slowly uphill for what seemed like miles. She didn’t know where she was going, she just wanted to go home.

Her watch had stopped in the blast, showing the last time that some of her sisters and brothers had breathed their last breath. She had no way of knowing how long she had been running. She only knew she couldn’t rest. She ran on.

She didn’t notice the bit of metal jutting out from the ground until it was too late, a flash of light coming from overhead illuminated the gleaming steel and she only saw it for a moment before the impact. She slammed into it, screaming as the jagged shard tore a chunk of flesh from her leg, and sent her tumbling over the edge of the hill, and into the darkness, the world spinning as she fell.

When she finally came to a stop at the bottom, she lay on her back for a few more seconds, the life all but drained out of her. Her leg throbbed, and she could feel the warm blood spilling onto the charred ground. She looked up at the sky once again, and slammed her fist into the dirt, not minding the way that the movement jostled her newly opened wound.

Kitty screamed, the tears washing streaks of dirt down her face. She had been marching since dawn, full of anticipation and nerves, jostling with her squadmates, ready to fight the good fight, and now…. Now she wasn’t even sure who was left alive.

She tried to remember what she’d learned in basic. She struggled, trying to will the pain that was coursing through her leg, that was coursing through her whole body, to quiet itself so she could think. She squeezed her eyes closed. What was it that the Lieutenant was always yelling at her about? She brought an arm over her face, and gingerly wiped the tears away.

“Gorramit.”

She sighed deeply, and found herself lost in a fog. Either blood loss or shock (or both) was making her brain as addled as her bunkmate Azimio once he’d found himself on the losing end of a drinking contest. It was no use. Her Lieutenant was always telling her that she was a 拉屎 soldier. Now, her team had gotten attacked, and she hadn’t been able to do anything except stay low until the attack was over, and then run away. She’d left everyone behind. She’d left Azimio behind. She closed her eyes against the smoke, and settled in, listening to explosions in the distance.

Suddenly a boom sounded nearby, and rattled the ground, jostling Kitty where she lay. She opened her eyes carefully, shielding them from the debris that sprinkled gently down around her, like a summer rain. As she looked to the heavens a single, bright spot of light dazzled at her.

A star.

Well, stars, plural. Somehow the smoke had cleared, and she could see through the ash, through the soot. She could see the sky. She thought back to her childhood days on Hera. She thought about her parents taking her and her little brother out camping, her mother pointing to the stars that touched the nearest points of their galaxy, and the solar systems that lay just beyond their home. She thought of that home that she was protecting.

“Med pack.”

Kitty looked around wildly. There was no one there, but she’d heard the voice echoing all around her. Heard it as clear as day. It was her Lieutenant's voice, yelling at her like he always had. Telling her the things that she already should have known, but had forgotten. Kitty licked her dried, chapped lips, and brought her hands to her chest and repeated her superior’s words.

“Med pack.”

\

“We’re coming out of atmo, Cap’n.”

“Good. Keep her steady. I don’t want any problems today. Things gotta go nice and smooth.”

“Like a new jar of peanut butter, Cap.”

Mercedes rolled her eyes, and headed off the deck, turning back in the doorway.

“Brittany, this is gonna be your first real job as a part of my crew, and I don’t want any trouble. Let’s set the bar high with this one. 懂吗?”

“懂了, Cedes. You can count on me.” Brittany said, giving a tiny salute. She turned back to the console, littered with tiny dinosaurs and using the steering column, arched the ship, and aimed her downward.

“This is Songbird-022015 requesting landing protocols.”

“We read you Songbird, running credentials.”

Mercedes left Brittany to it. It was the first time (that she knew of) her blonde pilot had ever set foot on Persephone, and the first time she’d be landing their ship without Mercedes’ assistance. She didn’t want her getting all nervous.

She climbed down the small ladder, towards the bunks and headed towards her own at the back of the hallway. They had been cruising through Lux system when her old pal Badger had sent them a wave. He needed someone for a discreet job, and he knew they’d be the ones to take it. He didn’t mention the details, or the cargo, but Mercedes was hard up enough, that she’d put aside her feelings of distrust for Badger long enough to make a quick turnaround.

Captain Mercedes Jones had inherited the good ship Songbird from her uncle, who’d been one of the many casualties of the Unification War. Her father had told her that going out into space on that old rig was silly, but she had fought on the side of the Browncoats during the war, and returning home to farm potatoes with her family seemed like something she wouldn’t be able to stand. So, she took her uncle’s ship, which had been sitting in dry dock for almost a decade, and set about fixing it up.

She brought along her lieutenant from their regiment, Santana Lopez, one of her best friends from back home, Kurt Hummel, and went out among the stars. Lucky for her they didn’t come much more loyal than Santana, meanwhile  Kurt could make a toaster run like a purring kitten, so they made it just fine, skimming along the planets in the outer rim of the system. Along the way they’d picked up a stray or two, and now they had an almost complete working crew.

Though, working was a bit of an overstatement. They hadn’t had any jobs in a few months (either over or under the table). Now, stores were running low, and tensions were running high. She’d had to break up two fights in the past week alone, and the chocolate she kept in her room was not going to be enough to get her through it.

She stopped in the hallway, listening to the thrusters to engage, which signified that they’d gotten clearance to land, and would be in Eavesdown before too long. She smiled, Badger had come through again. She could kiss him. Well, if he ever brushed his teeth, she might consider it.

Her attention was broken by the sound of arguing coming from the mess, and gritting her teeth, she strode forward, passing her bunk, and ducking her head to enter.

“I told you for the last time, Berry, those were mine!”

“And I told you, Santana, that I have to maintain ultimate and peak performance, and if I don’t have fresh things every once in a while-”

“What? Your 小妹妹 is going to smell like tuna?”

Mercedes breached the doorway just as Rachel went red in the face, and took a deep breath.

“Enough, you two! Santana get up there with Brittany and give her a hand. Rachel, why don’t you go back to your shuttle and prepare for landing?”

Santana looked like she wanted to argue, but nodded curtly.

“Yes, sir.”

With that, she turned on her heel and headed back down the hallway, towards the bridge, huffing loudly. Rachel, seemed to calm down right away, and got a delighted look on her face.

“We’re landing?! Oh god, I’ve been waiting all week for this. Finally some work!”

“I take it your dance card is full then?”

“Not as much as if I was on an inner rim planet, but it will do in a pinch. I’ve got to thank you, Captain. The Companions Guild and I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

“No need to thank me, Ms. Berry, we needed the work as much as you do. We’ll be here for a full twenty four hours, so that should give you more than enough time for a few of your clients.”

“Yes, that should be sufficient.” She smiled.

“Good, then.” Mercedes turned to walk away, but stopped, turning back. “Oh, and Rachel, I know that you and Santana don’t get on very well, but you’ll want to stay out of her stash of strawberries. I’ve seen her kill folks for less.”

Mercedes went on her way, and heard an audible gulp from Rachel. She couldn’t help but smile. Santana wouldn’t kill Rachel. Probably. But, there was no harm in giving everyone a break from Rachel’s antics, at least for a little while.

Mercedes stopped for a moment, listening again to the noises from the ship, and thinking quickly, took a detour, heading down to the engine room. She saw a bit of brown, coiffed locks peeking from behind the engine column, and smiled.

“Kurt? What are you doing to my engine room? It sounds like a giant with a case of gastrointestinal distress.”

Kurt looked up over the whirring engine and pursed his lips. “Well, Captain , I’m doing my best, but your new pilot is working the poor girl like she’s a five dollar whore. I can only do so much.”

“Brittany will get used to her, don’t worry.”

“If she doesn’t crash her first.”

Kurt sounded hurt, and Mercedes could sympathize. The two of them had been working on Songbird for years; treating her right, and learning her quirks. She didn’t like the idea of anyone being rough with her anymore than Kurt did. But, Brittany would learn the ropes, and even though she was a quirky woman, Mercedes had never seen a better pilot.

“You’ve gotta trust her, Kurt. She’s good, believe me. She’ll take care of our girl.”

Kurt huffed and went back to work under the engine. “Well, it’s about time we landed anyway. We need two engine couplings, and a new compression coil and-”

“Look, Kurt. We’ll have enough credits for the bare essentials. In the meantime, you’ve got to make do. The job ain’t even begun, and you’re already spending money.”

“But Mercedes-”

“You’ll make do. We land in a bit. Get ready to head out.” That was the end of that discussion.

She didn’t like being too firm with her crew, but she didn’t have much of a choice. Credits were running low. That’s what this job was for. She walked back towards the galley, and saw Puck, who was pouring a handful of protein into his mouth.

“Take it easy, Puckerman, there is actually food on this 大便 planet.”

“Buh I wah owngy now.” Puck said around his mouthful.

Mercedes ignored him, and patted him on the shoulder. “Grab your gear, Puck. We’re going to see a man about a job.”

\

On the bridge, Santana watched Brittany carefully. She noticed the way her eyes narrowed as she looked at her instruments, and the way her hands lightly held the controls as she steadily brought Songbird into the landing docks. More than once her eyes graced over Brittany’s pink lips, her golden hair, her long fingers. She hadn’t spent very much alone time with the new pilot, considering that she’d only been onboard the ship for a short time. And Santana didn’t quite know what to think. Mercedes had chosen her because, “she liked the look of her.” But all the same she’d definitely noticed her. The tip of a pink tongue darted out of Brittany’s mouth as she grimaced in concentration.

“Like what you see?”

Santana jumped, nearly falling out of her chair, before straightening and clearing her throat. “Um, huh?

Her voice cracked a little and she cleared her throat again.

“I asked if you liked what you were seeing. You seemed to be enjoying the view from over there.”

Santana stood up, and straightened her vest, smoothing her raven black hair that was tied back in a ponytail.

“No. I mean, yes. I mean, I was just, um-” She pointed to Brittany’s console. “I was just admiring your plastic dinosaurs. Or, actually, wondering about them. Why do you, um, have them?”

Brittany raised an eyebrow, but turned a beaming smile at Santana. “I dunno. I like dinosaurs, I guess. My dad used to tell me stories about them when I was a kid.”

Santana suddenly had the desire to know more about Brittany’s childhood. Was she still close with her dad, or did they not talk anymore? When was the last time she had seen her family? And why in the gorram hell had she ended up where she’d joined the crew, on Athens, in the middle of nowhere?

Of course, Santana was not the kind of person to ask those types of questions. She stood for a moment, as Brittany looked expectantly at her, and strode over to the console, taking up a dinosaur in her hand.

“好酷.”

Brittany regarded her carefully for a moment, and looked back at the flashing lights of the console.

“I think so, too. We’re landing in a few. Are you joining the Captain on her little expedition?”

“Of course.” Santana said, without any malice. “Where she goes I go.”

“Do you always follow her orders?” Brittany asked, busying herself with pushing buttons and flipping switches.

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“Because without Mercedes Jones, I would have died during the Unification Wars.”

The answer seemed to satisfy Brittany, and she continued her work, taking control of Songbird, and quietly guiding her into a soft landing.

“Very good.” Said Santana, with a hint of a smile on her lips.

Brittany blushed, ducking her head. “All in a day’s work.”

She pushed a few more buttons, and leaned back from the steering column, folding her hands behind her head.

“What about this Badger guy? Do you really think his job is any good?”

Santana shrugged. “I don’t know if the Cap’n trusts him as far as she can throw him. But when he gives us jobs, we make it out alive, so, she hasn’t shot him yet. Plus, he hasn’t tried to shoot her yet, so he’s got that going for him.”

“Unlike that trouble we had at Whitefall.”

“Exactly.”

Santana turned to go, knowing that Mercedes would be waiting for her in the cargo hold, so they could go and meet their contact.

“Santana.”

There’s was a softness to Brittany’s voice that Santana had never heard before. It stopped her in her tracks, and she felt a shiver go down her spine.

“Y-yes, Brittany?”

“Be careful out there, huh? I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

Santana turned, and caught the playful grin on Brittany’s face. She nodded. “S-sure, Brittany. I’ll see you later.”

Brittany gave her a wink. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

Santana went down the ladder quickly, almost missing a few rungs, and walked even more quickly towards the cargo hold. She wasn’t paying much attention and nearly collided with Mike, a boarder they’d picked up a couple of weeks before. The bag he was holding tumbled out of his hands, and syringes and bandages spilled everywhere.

“Uh, sorry, Mike.”

The both bent down to gather the items, and Mike gave her a soft smile. “没问题, Santana. I should have been watching where I was going as well. I know you’re always dangerous after you’ve been spending time on the bridge.”

Santana furrowed her brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that a certain blonde pilot has been flirting with you since she got here, and you don’t seem to notice.”

Santana’s eyebrows went so high they almost reached her hairline. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Chang.”

“Nope. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And I’ve also seen the dumb look you get in response. You’re pretty blind for a while afterwards.”

“Whatever. Don’t think because you stitched me up a couple weeks ago, I won’t be willing to pop you one.”

Mike held up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, fine. I’m just saying. You should talk to her, tell her how you feel.”

Santana rolled her eyes, and shoved the last of the bandages in Mike’s bag. “What have you got all this stuff for? Did someone get hurt?”

“Oh no.” Mike said, laughingly. “I did a quick inventory of the med bay, and was trying to figure out what we should pick up while we’re here. I might even be able to get some hypos that were manufactured this century.”

“Cap’n won’t like that. She’s planning on saving money this trip. Not spending it.”

“Well, Quinn and I have a few credits that we’ve managed to save up. I think it should be enough to get us started.”

As if he were conjuring her up, his sister Quinn marched towards them, her head held high. She looked nothing like Mike, who was tall, with tan skin and round eyes that burned hazel. She was short, blonde, and kind of pale. Santana had never asked why they looked so different from one another, and it never came up. But they called each other brother and sister, and seemed to care quite a bit for one another, so she never pushed it. Besides, they were paying to stay onboard, and wanted to stay as far away from the Alliance as possible, just like she did, so there never was any need to get personal.

Not to mention Mike was a trained physician who would patch them up whenever they ran into trouble. He seemed to be rather good at it, in Santana’s amatuer opinion, and that was worth loads out in the ‘verse. Where things with the Captain tended to get a little hairy more often than not.

However, there was one thing she couldn’t help but notice. While Mike was open and kind, patient and understand, down to earth and casual, his sister was the exact opposite. She was closed off, and watched things on the ship with much too keen an interest for Santana’s taste. She was witty, but sometimes cruel, and seemed to think she was too good for their ship.

Unlike Rachel, Santana simply steered clear of Quinn. Not because she was afraid of her, but because they were paying customers (though Rachel was too), and she had a feeling that Mercedes would never forgive her if she shoved Quinn out of an airlock.

“Oh, Santana.” Quinn only seemed to notice Santana a few moments after her approach, and nodded to her as if she were the help. “Do you know how long we’ll be on the planet’s surface?”

“Sure, Ms. Chang. It’ll be a full day, twenty four hours.”

“Good. Well, let the Captain know that we’re going out. We will be back before night fall.”

Mike pinched the bridge of his nose. “Quinn, don’t start this again. You have to stay on the ship. It isn’t safe for you out there.”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “So, what, you get to be the only one to walk on solid ground after six weeks because I’m a delicate flower?”

“What? No, that’s not it. It’s just that-” Mike stopped short, looking quickly to Santana. “Sorry, Santana. We’ll, um, go below decks.”

Santana just nodded as Mike ushered Quinn away, both of them still arguing in hushed tones. Their reasons for going or staying had nothing to do with her. She had one job. She walked quickly to the cargo hold, and saw Mercedes waiting for her. Her captain look pretty good, she had to say. She was wearing her long brown duster, one that had served her well for many years during and since the Unification War. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was doing her best to project a calm, powerful aura. Her pistol hung by her side within easy reach, and Santana knew that Mercedes had at least two other guns stashed around her person. The one she nervously tapped on at the moment was an old side shooter that she’d had since before the war. Before the Unification War Mercedes had never even touched a pistol. Her father had given her one to help with pests on the farm, and she’d been loathe to shoot it. It was a single barrell, with a wooden handle rubbed smooth by years of use. The stock shined brightly from generations of gun oil and polishing cloths. After she’d gotten rid of her service pistol, and had felt the blood of another person under her nails, the gun had become her constant companion, and she was never far from it.  

But the Mercedes before her wasn’t the woman she’d met on their first day of boot camp. She wasn’t the enthusiastic leader who made her troops feel safe. She wasn’t even the broken woman who’d watched her friends die. Here she was simply Captain Jones; worried about her crew and her family, and trying to make a better life for them. Santana smiled as she approached.

“Nervous?”

Mercedes blinked. “What? No. Of course not. It’s just a regular job.”

“You can lie to all of them, sir, but you can’t lie to me. You’re doing that thing where you tap your thumb against your holster.”

Mercedes looked down at her right hand, which was indeed hitting the side of her gun. She snatched it away.

“Look-” She began in quiet tones. “You know as well as I do how much we need this job. We can’t keep hoping that the money from Rachel, Beiste and Changs will keep us afloat. We need new capital, 好快. We’re taking this job, and Kurt’s going to try and secure us some passengers. And maybe, just maybe , we can start to turn a profit on this thing.”

Santana nodded, not saying a word. Mercedes was right of course, and she knew it. She felt the familiar butterflies start to circle in her own stomach, but then felt a reassuring pat on her back.

“San, we’ve been in worse spots than this. We’ve got this.”

Santana nodded, feeling a bit of the weight lift off her shoulders, like she often did when her captain comforted her. They didn’t emote very often, honestly. They’d spent countless hours together, hunkered down in bomb shelters, fighting off enemies, floating through space. They knew almost everything there was to know about each other, and they trusted each other. In the end, it was all they had.

The moment was broken as Puck strode in, his favorite gun by his side.

“You ready, Cap’n?

“我的天啊, Puck. You’re bringing the rifle? This is a peaceful gathering. Beth won’t be necessary.”

Puck stroked the gun as though it were a long lost friend. “But, she’ll be lonely otherwise.”

“No buts, Puckerman. You leave it in the mule, and take your standard side piece only.”

Mercedes voice was firm, and Puck didn’t bother arguing. He stowed the gun away and secured his holster.

“Gorramit Cap’n. You said I can’t get any whores, you won’t let me bring Beth. You never let me have any fun.”

“It’s not supposed to be fun, Puck. We do the job, we get paid. I don’t reckon that sentence mentions fun at all.”

The firm edge was gone from Mercedes voice, but Puck got the message.

“Fine. I’m ready when you are.”

Mercedes nodded and looked to Santana, who nodded as well.

“Shiny. Let’s get going.”

\

Kitty woke up in a hammock.

She enjoyed it for a moment; swinging back and forth, feeling the warm sun on her face. If there was a better way to spend a long summer afternoon, she hadn’t found it. She grimaced. Wait, no, that was impossible, why would she be in a hammock? If the Lieutenant found her in a hammock, there would be hell to pay. She was probably supposed to be doing KP, and had fallen asleep again . Azimio had tried to cover for her last time, but it wouldn’t work again, and the Lieutenant would have her peeling potatoes for the rest of her natural life. She tried to sit up.

“Whoa there, private, relax.”

A voice sounded above her and she struggled to open her eyes.

“She’s awake, Mace. Let’s put her down.”

“Mat, Sarge says we’ve gotta be back by 0100, and I expect to be. If we’re late, she’ll fry us.”

“It doesn’t do any good to have her jostling about. What if she falls out of the sling? Anyway, a minute or two rest won’t hurt us, and we can check her out.”

There wasn’t really room for argument, but Mason appreciated his sister giving him the illusion of choice. He sighed and sat the sling down, and squatting beside it.

Kitty had her eyes back open, and was jolted back to reality. The swinging of the hammock had been the sling that she was being carried on. Even from where she lay she could see the deep blood stains that were set into its fabric. Her own blood had left its mark as well. The two voices belonged to a man and a woman. They were Browncoats, that much was clear. They wore the deep walnut dusters that all members of the rebellion wore, and the red shirts underneath. The looked like simple folk, probably from a back world like she was, far from home, but fighting the good fight. They both had glassy skin the color of eggshells, and dark, black hair that hung in loose curls around their faces. They were related, that much was clear, they looked too much alike to be anything but siblings.

Mason grabbed some gauze from his bag with a huff. “Fine. Let’s just not waste too much time.”

Madison nodded sharply, and stood up, walking away from the him. “I’m going to keep a look out.”

Mason didn’t respond, but kept digging through his bag, looking for just the right tools. He pulled out a few more things and felt a set of eyes on him.

“How are you holding up there, soldier?”

Kitty swallowed hard. “I-I’m-.” She cleared her throat a few times, but couldn’t seem to clear it.

Mason rushed towards her. “I’m sorry. I should have done this first.”

He held up a flask to the Kitty’s mouth, letting her drink deeply. “You must be parched.”

Kitty didn’t respond, but just took a few more sips of water, nodding when she’d had her fill.

Mason went back to sorting through his equipment, giving Kitty time to gather her thoughts. Not that this was an easy task. She’d been jolted out of a deep sleep back into this nightmarish hellscape, and she wasn’t too happy about it. But what was the alternative? Spend the rest of her life dreaming away? She tried to sit up, but the pain that had been almost ignorable screamed back to life. Kitty hissed at the sudden pain, grasping the edges of the sling.

“Hey, hey, 小心. Relax.” Mason squatted beside her, bringing his equipment and giving her leg a friendly pat. “When we found you, you were in pretty bad shape. Thank goodness you’d had the wherewithal to seal your wound up before you bled out. That was good thinking on your part. But you still lost a lot of blood, and we’re going to want to get your wound checked out once we can get to a facility. You just did a patch job, Private, you don’t want to push yourself.”

Kitty didn’t respond, but watched Mason carefully as he pulled the fabric away from her leg, and looked at her wound carefully. He began to work steadily, cleaning it of debris and adding another layer of sealant, and finally a bandage. Kitty admired his focus, and his expertise. It was clear he’d done this before, and was very good at it. He gave her a shot of something, ‘for the pain’, and once he’d finished, he cleared away the detris, giving her another sip of water from her flask.

“Private First Class Mason McCarthy, at your service!” He nodded in the direction that Madison had walked off into. “And that’s my sister, Madison. Corporal Madison McCarthy, and trust me, she won’t let you forget it. Won’t let me forget it either. You’d think that us being twins would mean that we’re better than all that petty birth order 垃圾, and yet here we are. Though, with the way things are going right now, I would be surprised if I was a Corporal by the end of the day.”

He strapped the flask back onto his waist and stood up, stretching his legs a bit as he stood nearby.

“We’re out looking for survivors, and doing what we can. We weren’t supposed to travel far, but we heard your screaming, and found you down at the bottom of the ravine. What were you doing down there anyway?”

Kitty didn’t respond, and Private First Class McCarthy didn’t seem to be waiting.

“Anyway, you must have gotten all turned around, cause you were making a beeline straight for those purple bellies. If we hadn’t of found you when we did, who knows what would have happened. I mean, you probably would have run into them, and that wouldn’t have been good. What with your wound an all. A bit of 晦气 if you ask me. But then lucky for you we spotted you, and brought you here.”

Kitty tried to speak, but found her voice scratchy and dry. Mason leaned in close to listen, stopping the flow of nervous chatter that seemed would never end.

“Company C?” Kitty tried again.

Mason scratched his head. “You were with Company C, huh? I don’t know anything about them. We’ve been listening to the radio all night, but in shifts, so I might have missed some news-”

“Let’s go, Mace. Let’s get her up.”

Madison’s voice cut through the darkness, and startled Kitty, she hadn’t even known the other woman was nearby. Kitty found it hard to miss the significant look that Madison gave to her brother, but chose to ignore it.

“Where?” She croaked, pointing in the direction they were heading.

“You just sit tight there, Private Wilder.” Madison huffed. “We’re going to see our commanding officer. She’ll know exactly what to do. Shouldn’t be long now.”

Kitty focused on the slowly moving scenery and let the combination of the sway of her sling, and whatever Mason had given her lull her back to sleep.

\

Badger’s place wasn’t the most disgusting den of iniquity that Puck had ever been in. Hell, it didn’t even have any companionship that he could take advantage of. But, the Captain had made it clear that he wasn’t supposed to get distracted, so he tried to keep his focus on the job. They’d walked across the Eavesdown Docks, and Puck kept his ears and eyes open, sweeping the perimeter for anyone who looked suspicious. He probably got distracted by some bare leg hanging from an awning once or twice. At most.

This was his second time at Badger’s and the guy wasn’t a role model, but he was a straight shooter, and he and the Captain tended to get along pretty well. He certainly wasn’t worried about an ambush. But the last time he’d gotten distracted flirting with some girl, the Captain had docked his pay, and put him on latrine duty for a month. So, he shook himself and kept an eye out.

He felt like he was doing a pretty good job until they showed up at Badger’s front door, and knocked. It was a nondescript three story shack in Eavesdown. If they hadn’t been here before, Puck might have just walked past the place. But it was a bona fide operation. And Badger kept enough people paid off to keep out the riff raff. The door opened and they found themselves on the barrel end of a pair of rifles.

“See? I told you we should have brought Beth along.” Puck whispered to Mercedes.

She rolled her eyes, and put her hands in the air. “We’re just here to see Badger. He’s expecting us.”

“Just a little precaution, Captain.” Said a voice inside. “Please, a bit of cooperation is all we ask.”

One of the hands holding the rifle reached out, and Mercedes pulled her pistol out of the holster, handing it over. Santana followed suit with the shotgun strapped to her thigh. Puck thought about resisting, but a slight eyebrow raise from the Captain made him rethink his decision.

“Very good. Please, come in.” The voice said again.

Puck could see inside now, and noticed two men standing near the door. They brushed past them, and entered, going through another small door, and to a much more nicely furnished waiting room. Sitting in front of them was Badger. He was a dealer in all kinds of objects, and one of the wealthiest men on the planet, which was saying something as Persephone was one of the more lucrative places of business in the White Sun system.

“Good to see you, Captain Jones. Santana.” Badger smiled thinly.

“If it’s so good to see us, what’s with taking our weapons?” Santana snapped, sneering at Badger.

“Well, it’s more for your protection than ours. The men at the door work for my client. Not particularly good at their jobs, it would seem.” Badger lowered his voice. “They missed the four guns you’ve all got stashed around your bodies, so I would think you’ve got arms to spare, no?”

“Why don’t we quit wasting time reminiscing, and get down to it, Badger?” Mercedes offered, ignoring the remark.

“Of course. I just thought with us being friends and all, it wouldn’t hurt to catch up.”

“We can catch up when you’re giving us the money for a job well done.”

Badger tsked. “You really must be hard up, Captain. I would have thought you’d be turning down jobs with that crack crew of yours.”

Mercedes didn’t respond, but followed Badger as he turned his chair around, and rolled out another door, down a long hallway.

Puck wasn’t sure about Mercedes or Santana, but he was nervous. As far as he knew, Badger usually would tell them the job, they’d do it, get paid and be on their way. None of this cloak and dagger stuff. It didn’t sit well with him. He liked people who would say what they wanted outright, and this certainly was not that. He moved left a few more feet to put some space between himself and Mercedes, conscious of the footsteps that came even farther behind him. He didn’t bother putting his hand in a position to get his gun. He didn’t want anyone watching to know that he still had two weapons on him. But the job they’d done earlier of taking their more obvious weapons didn’t leave him with the impression that they were particularly skilled. He’d have no problem taking them out if it came to that. But, he wanted to be prepared. So, he slowed his steps down a bit more, and followed behind.

The hallway opened up into an office of sorts, and Badger gestured towards some chairs that were set up in the corner. Sitting there was a middle aged guy who Puck had never seen before, looking very pleased with himself. From how much his suit probably cost, he looked like was old money. He followed Mercedes and Santana, and stood behind the two of them.

“Please, have a seat.” The man gestured towards and chairs.

Mercedes didn’t hesitate, having a seat, and Santana took up the position behind her. Puck figured since Santana was standing, he might as well take a load off, and sat next to Mercedes.

“And might we have the pleasure of getting introduced to this fine gentleman?”

Mercedes gestured towards the stranger who smiled.

“My name is Al Motta. You’ve no doubt heard of me. The Motta family is well known in these parts, and all across the White Sun system.”

Al’s voice was pompous and pretentious, and Puck could tell his captain was trying not to roll her eyes.

Mercedes nodded. “Sure, we’ve heard of you.”

“And I’ve heard of you, Captain Jones. Your crew is known to be one that will get the job done and not ask too many questions, and that’s what I need. I have some family business that needs to be taken care of, and I need someone who will do what I ask and not try to get creative, if you catch my meaning.”

“You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Motta. I’m not sure I know exactly what you’ve heard of us, but we try to stay out of family business .”

The implication was clear to all those involved. The Motta family was as well connected as it got, and they ran everything from weapons to drugs to people. And if they were having problems with another family, the last thing the crew of the Songbird needed was to be caught up in some mafia war. Mercedes shook her head, and made to stand up.

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Hold on a moment. It’s not-” Al cleared his throat. “It’s not that kind of family business. It’s much more delicate than that. Please, let me explain.”

Badger interrupted. “I wouldn’t have invited you over here, Captain, if I’d thought for a second this would be a job you’d refuse. Hear the man out.”

Mercedes settled back down into her seat. “Fine.”

“It’s my daughter. Sugar.”

Al’s voice lost that bragging quality, and because much more quiet, more humble.

Mercedes cocked her head but didn’t speak.

“She’s um, well, she’s troublesome. Daughters are sometimes that way. But, she’s my only child, and someday the business will be hers.  She has to be ready.”

“So, where do we come in?”

“I need an escort. A discreet one. Who will take her to an agreed upon location, and get her there safely and in one piece.”

“I don’t get it.” Santana said, breaking in. “Why don’t you just buy her a luxury line ticket across the stars? You’ve got the money for it.”

“I need to make sure she gets there and no one knows. Also, you’ll find her a bit reluctant.”

“Reluctant?” Mercedes said.

“She doesn’t want to go. At all. I’m hiring a guard, so all you have to do is move them to where I want them to be.”

“I assured Mr. Motta that you would be happy to help. For the right price, of course.”

“Of course, of course. I’ve talked it all over with our mutual friend, Mr. Badger, and I think we’ve come to an amount that we can both agree on. And it’s more than reasonable.”

“I got the wave. I wouldn’t have been here otherwise.” Mercedes stood up, and walked towards Al.  “I’ve got one rule, Mr. Motta. Al. Can I call you Al?”

“Certainly. I-”

“I’ve got one rule, Al. We do the job. We get paid. 懂吗?”

“Then it’s a deal? You’ll escort my daughter to Constance?”

Mercedes stuck out her hand, which Al jumped up to shake. “It’s a deal.”

He seemed relieved and even snuck a small smile at Badger, who looked like the cat that caught the canary over there in the corner.

Mercedes released her grip, and nodded to Santana before turning back to Al. “So, where’s our precious cargo?”

Al scoffed. “Well, I certainly couldn’t bring her here. It’s no place for a lady. Present company excluded of course.”

Mercedes laughed, and Santana hocked loudly and spat on the floor.

Al shivered. “She’s at Motta towers. Near the city center. I’ll bring her to the docks tomorrow at dawn. You should be ready to depart by then?”

“We’re certainly planning on it.”

“Good, then I’ll see you then.”

Mercedes nodded, and turned to shake hands with Badger. They were almost out the door when Al spoke up again.

“And remember, Captain Jones. What I said about discretion.”

“Oh, I can assure you, Al, my crew is nothing if not discreet.”

With that, they were back through the darkened hallways, and back on the streets. The market was bustling, and Puck lost himself in the bright and inviting storefronts as the Captain and Santana chatted behind him.

“All of this secrecy for an escort mission to the Red Sun system? Why would Badger put us through all this?” Santana said, an edge in her voice.

“I’m sure he has his reasons. I ain’t going to be the one to question it, quite frankly. And you won’t either. We’ll get his daughter on our boat, get her to where she needs to be, and be done with it. The price that Badger is getting us-”

“That’s the point, sir. The price is too high. For a simple babysitting? He could get people just as good for half the price.”

“I’ve thought about what it means, Santana. I know it’s a stretch, but there ain’t many straight shooters left on this moon, and I trust Badger. Well, trust is a strong word. I like to believe that Badger won’t rob us outright. We don’t have an overabundance of friends here on Persephone. It ain’t like we’ve got much of a choice.”

Mercedes stopped, turning towards Santana. “Anyway, that’s what I keep you around for, right? Thinking of the things I ain’t thought of yet. You’ll keep your eyes open. And I know I can trust you on that.”

Santana made a face, but nodded anyway. “If you think it’s okay, so do I.”

“Good. Then that’s that. Now, let’s get back to the ship and see how Kurt-”

Mercedes paused and her face broke into a smile. Santana followed her line of sight and saw something that brought a smile to her own face.

There in the crowd was a more than welcome sight. It was Shannon Beiste, a passenger on Songbird who’d joined them almost a year ago. She was a big woman with broad shoulders, who was taller and stronger than most of the men Santana had ever met. But, she was a gentle soul. A shepherd by profession, she tended to the lost souls that came their way, and found refuge on Songbird like so many others before her.

They approached Shannon, Puck walking more quickly to shake her hand. The two had a friendly rivalry, always working out on weights in the cargo hold to see who could outlift who. In the end, they got along even better.

Shannon saw them, and smiled. Santana was a step behind Mercedes, and looked cheerful as well, but her smile fell when she saw who was beside the shepherd.

“Why hello my fellow travelers!” Came Rachel’s shrill voice. “I’m so glad we could run into each other here, and spend some time together as a crew. It seems that sometime we don’t do that, and it’s really a shame.”

“Rachel? I thought you had clients?” Mercedes said, jovially.

“I did. And do. But I’m finished for the morning, and thought I would get some shopping done. You won’t see me until tomorrow after this.”

“Thank God for small miracles.” Santana muttered under her breath.

Rachel didn’t hear (or pretended not to), and grasped Mercedes arm. “We’re having a lovely time. While this certainly isn’t the most chic place I’ve ever been to, it’s still got it’s charm. In fact, I was just telling Brittany-”

“Telling me what, Rachel?”

The voice came from behind them, and before Santana could react Brittany threaded her arm through Santana’s own, and was walking beside her. Santana did her best not to stiffen while simultaneously melting into her touch, and managed only a slight hobble as she strained to keep her senses.

“Oh, I was telling you about the charm of this city. Eavesdown does have a certain je ne sais quoi. Let me tell you.”

While Rachel babbled on in front of them, Brittany pulled on Santana’s arm a little, slowing her down, and leaving them a bit behind everyone.

“How’d the meeting go this morning?”

Santana cleared her throat. “Um, it was fine. Captain did the talking, as usual. And the pay is good.”

“What’s the quarry? Bank heist? Train job?”

“Nope, nothing that serious. Just a simple escort mission.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, you’ll found out all about it soon enough. I’m not sure how much the Cap’n wants out there. We’re supposed to be playing it close to the chest.”

“Yeah, I understand. It wouldn’t be much fun otherwise.”

Santana looked at Brittany, who was smiling brightly, and smiled herself. “You’re always surprising me, did you know that?”

Brittany looked at Santana, and seemed to smile even brighter. “I’m glad. I like keeping you on your toes, Corporal Lopez.”

Santana didn’t reply, but could feel her face getting warm under Brittany stare. She turned her attention ahead, and groaned as she caught the tail end of Rachel’s speech.

“Oh! This place has a karaoke bar! I know where we’ll be having lunch!”

\

Getting back to the ship had been easy enough after they’d detached themselves from Rachel who only stopped singing (her fifth! song) because she was supposed to be meeting with her client soon. They returned back just in time to see Kurt chatting with a tall man who looked like he hadn’t had an original idea since he came out of the womb. The rest pushed past, but Mercedes stopped for a moment.

“Who’ve we got here, Kurt?”

Kurt gestured between them. “Cap’n, this is Finn Hudson. Finn, this is Captain Jones. She’s the owner of this fine vessel you see before you, Songbird. She’s the one you’ll be paying transit fees to.”

Mercedes reached out her hand and Finn shook it. “Where are you headed, Mr. Hudson?”

“Well, Kurt here was telling me you all might be going to the Red Sun system. I’m going to New Melbourne. I can pay.”

“We might be going that way. Can’t say for certain. Might be a few weeks ‘fore we make landfall at New Melbourne.”

“I’m not too picky. I just need transit. I can pay 120 credits a week.”

Mercedes tried not to show it, but it was certainly a bit more than their usual asking price for boarders. Especially ones that didn’t mind she’d be taking the scenic route to their final destination.

“And what’s your business in New Melbourne, Mr. Hudson?”

“Work. My uncle owns some land out there, and he wants me to take over, get a bead on the family business. It’s not my first choice, but it’s something to do, that’s why I’m in no rush. And he’s paying for it, so I can’t complain.”

Mercedes nodded a few times, and then looked at Kurt. “Why don’t you help Mr. Hudson with his things, and get him squared away. Afterwards you can join me on the bridge. Did you find anyone else?”

Kurt looked away guiltily. “Sorry, Cap’n, this is it. Pretty slow now, tourist season has come and gone, you know.”

Mercedes turned back to Finn. “You can entrust Kurt here with your first weekly installment. It’s good to have you on board.”

With a small smile she turned from the two men, and walked up the loading bay ramp, and onto the ship. It wasn’t perfect, but the small bump in cashy money on hand would help with the things they needed right away. Later, once they got the Motta job done, they’d be in even better shape. Things were looking up for the crew of the Songbird, but Mercedes wouldn’t quite call herself happy. She tended to be a pessimist that way.

“Why the long face, Captain?”

Shannon stepped out of her bunk, climbing the last rung, and coming to a stop beside Mercedes.

“I’m just thinking of all the ways that this can go wrong, Shepherd. And there are more than enough ways for that to happen.”

“Worried about Badger?”

“Santana’s got me thinking. And that’s never good, as, believe it or not, she’s the voice of reason in a lot of things. I’m not a rash person, but this could make or break us, this job. I reckon even if there was a bright, flashing light that said ‘DANGER’ we’d have to take it anyway.”

Shepherd Beiste chuckled to herself. “Santana is the voice of reason?”

“Yeah, I know, I know. She doesn’t say much to you all, but I get earfulls, trust me.” Mercedes laughed as well.

“So, why not say no? There are plenty of jobs to be had. You just have to walk in faith.”

“That’s all well and good for you, Shepherd, but I’ve got five crew, four passengers, and two more on the way that I’ve got to keep in good spirits, and fine food. Not to mention the parts for the ship Kurt keeps asking me for. Songbird is barely hanging on as it is. No, we need this job, we need it, and there’s nothing to be done about it. We’ll face whatever comes, when it comes.”

“That’s a rather lassiez faire attitude, Captain.”

“You sound like Rachel, Shepherd.”

Shannon rolled her eyes, and scoffed. “I love the girl, I do, in the way that we are taught to love and cherish all of God’s creatures, but she would challenge the patience of a saint!”

“I’m surprised that Santana hasn’t shoved her into space already.”

“I would have thought you’d have discouraged that kind of thing, Captain.”

“I didn’t say I’d approve. I do, however, think it would be mighty hi-larious.”

Mercedes and Shannon parted ways, and Mercedes kept walking towards the bridge.

Santana heard her footsteps, and straightened up, trying to pretend that she hadn’t been staring at Brittany for the past ten minutes. Brittany had stopped pretending not to notice, sending a lopsided smile Santana’s way every so often. She liked it when Santana watched her. It made her feel safe and adored. She knew that something was brewing between them, but she didn’t want to push Santana any more than she absolutely had to. After all, she’d only known her for a little over a month. So, she bided her time, and smiled a little too long in Santana’s direction, or held her arm for a little longer than usual. It wasn’t much, but Brittany couldn’t get enough of the way the tips of Santana’s ears turned red when they had their moments. She loved the idea that she could make Santana feel that way.

Brittany heard Mercedes approach as well, and turned back towards the console. She knew what her Captain wanted to figure out their next journey. She really liked Mercedes, actually. She’d known a few Browncoats in her time, and even had done some interesting work during the Unification War, but Mercedes didn’t strike her as one of the meat heads that she usually ran into. She was thoughtful and kind, fiercely loyal, and smart. She trusted her crew, but she didn’t accept people lightly. Her relationship with Santana was even more interesting.

Santana was quiet, but seemed to have a bubbling anger right under the surface. She was what Brittany would call prickly. But Mercedes kept her in check. And since joining the crew, Brittany had gotten glimpses of the two of them that she was sure not many people got the chance to see. They played off each other, and trusted each other.

Brittany smiled as she saw Santana try to get her focus back. She was always such a soldier when Mercedes was around. Brittany wasn’t sure why, but they always seemed fall back into old roles when they were together. Maybe it made things easier for them. She wasn’t exactly sure.

“What are we looking like for take off tomorrow?” Mercedes said, not bothering with a greeting before clambering onto the bridge.

“You should probably talk to Kurt about that, Cedes. We’re shut down at the moment with the repairs that he’s had to make but we should be ready to go soon.”

“Captain, I’ve got a preliminary route plotted out. It’ll take us a few extra days with the stop over in Greenleaf, but I think it should be fine.”

“Good, Santana, bring it up for me.”

Santana touched a few keys on her console, and a holographic projection spread out on the screen.

“According to a wave I got from Tina, there’s a big build up of Alliance cruisers about half way between us and Constance. We’ll head towards Osiris,  double back towards New Melbourne, and then onwards.”

Mercedes nodded. “好啊. That’’ll take us a few extra days, but it’ll be worth it to avoid any purple bellies.”

“Yes, sir. Agreed, sir.”

“New Melbourne?” Brittany broke in. “What are we doing in New Melbourne?”

Mercedes touched a few keys on the pad, bringing up the power levels for the ship. She trusted Kurt wholeheartedly, but liked to check up on things when she had a spare moment.

“We got ourselves a boarder. Just joined today. He’s going there for work, and paying us a bundle for the trip.”

Brittany’s face scrunched into a question mark. “That big, dumb looking guy who we took on in the docks? I dunno, Cap’n, he looks shady. I don’t know if I trust him.”

“Well, he’s paying good credits and I have no intention of turning down the cash. We take him, we do the job, we move on with our lives. And, we can use it. Unless you’ve got any better ideas of how we can make some money fast.”

Mercedes’ sharp tone would have kowtowed most other of the crew mates, but the bright smile returned to Brittany’s face and she only beamed.

“No, ma’am, I reckon I’m plumb out of ideas. New Melbourne it is!”

Whether she was confused by Brittany’s sudden change of heart of not, Mercedes paid her no mind.

“Good. Now, unless you two think of anything else, I’ll be in my bunk, getting some well deserved rest. We’ve gotta be up by sunrise to take care of our newest crew member. Once we get her on board, we break atmo, and get the hell off this godforsaken planet. Any questions?”

Brittany raised her hand like she was back in grade school, and Mercedes rolled her eyes. “Yes, Britt?”

“Can Santana stay up with me for a little while?”

There was a moment of indecision on Mercedes part before she nodded slowly. “I don’t see why not. Though, she really doesn’t need my permission. Why didn’t you ask me yourself, Santana?”

Santana balked. “Sir! I didn’t- She didn’t- I wasn’t-”

Brittany didn’t give her a chance to continue, standing up from her console, and wrapping her arm around Santana’s. “太好了! This is going to be fun. Like a sleepover. Maybe you can come sleep in my bunk, Santana, and we can tell scary stories.”

Mercedes smiled, and left the two to their own devices. It had taken everything she had not to just laugh out loud. The pilot had the biggest crush on her first mate, but it would take forever for Santana to see it. Until then, it would be pretty funny to see Brittany drive her up the wall with her antics. She considered saying something, but it would be much more fun to see Brittany torture Santana until she realized how much she liked her back. She was looking forward to it.

Even though it was barely dusk, Mercedes felt the heavy weight that had settled on her shoulders cause her eyes to droop. It was going to be a long trip to New Melbourne. She could feel it already.

[memorylang]

Mothers’ Day, Driving and Sound | #53 | May 2021

May was been great, hectic. Pentecost, the Judeo-Christian holiday some 5O days from Easter and Passover—this year from May 23, 2O2I—led to monumental shifts in what’s been up with me. So, while we’ve gone back into the Church’s Ordinal Time now, I’ll focus this time on that Easter chunk of May. Tales include my first adventures of licensed Vegas driving, followed by experiences on and before Mothers’ Day 2O2I.

Month of Feels

While in Reno on April’s second-to-last Friday (my last before Vegas), I discovered that Evan Call's original soundtrack to 《Violet Evergarden》 was on Spotify. This delighted me immensely because I’ve for years listened to people’s covers of the soundtrack. The originals hadn't been available.

Back during my last semester of interpersonal group therapy in spring 2OI8, a handful of peers had recommended I see 《Violet Evergarden》 for it helped them to better empathize with others. (I'd gone to counseling to better figure out how to communicate my Catholic feelings about grief.) I went back to China that summer for my second time. Then, during my first weekend after my college junior year classes had begun, I finally watched the Netflix series. That was nearly a year and a half since Mom died.

I loved how the show, through its characters, narrative, settings and score capture so many aspects of grief, displacement, inspiration and comfort. Now in 2O2I, I found that I could listen to its entire score. Tracks that particularly resonated this time with me were “Across the Violet Sky,” “Birth of a Legend” and “Another Sunny Day.” Music guides me to meditations. To my surprise, that last song's title resembles "Another Day of Sun”—another song I deeply enjoy. Mom had called me a ‘sunny’ boy.

To Vegas’ Roads

May 1, 2O2I had my first time driving to and beyond downtown Vegas. My family's house has been on the valley's north side.

My older brother and his girlfriend were the only others living at the house besides me. Since they had activities that Saturday, I'd for the first time drive the family’s ol’ Dodge Ram that accompanied us all the way from Indiana.

Dad had in his usual somewhat joking but actually serious way suggested that I could drive the pick-up around town. Dad had hardly used it, so over the years, strangers have placed offers to buy it. He wouldn’t sell. My using it would probably justify his keeping it, anyway.

While I see trucks more as gas-guzzlers, which don’t jive well with my environmentalist tendencies, I appreciated that Dad let me borrow it regardless. I don’t like driving vehicles that lend themselves to considerably negative environmental impacts. Still, a ride’s a ride.

That Saturday, I was to meet from the Southern Nevada National Peace Corps Association a fellow Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) and his family at the Las Vegas Wash Green-Up. Despite having lived in Vegas 2OO8–I5 and again in 2O2O, I marveled at having never heard of the Wash. That said, it’s quite a ways south.

In bygone days, my late ma would have driven me to service events similar to the Green-Up if I couldn’t carpool with Kiwanis Key Club friends. Well, I hadn't read that other RPCVs would from the north. So, I hoped driving in this case would least harm the environment.

Sights and Sounds Known

From the house for my day’s trip, I first looked up a Google Maps itinerary that could get me to a shopping plaza in the north and then down to the valley's southeast side. So, on my Surface, I plotted my route, copied the web address, messaged it to myself, found by our house's door the truck’s keys, came outside, unlocked the weighty vehicle, lugged open the driver’s door, clambered in and on my phone booted up the route.

I’ve driven different vehicles over past months and years, training with friends and family. So, I began my familiar routine of buckling up, adjusting the mirrors, making my seat comfortable. When driving alone, I also tap my phone’s Spotify app and start my “Recent Wonders” playlist or another.

The playlist reminds me a bit of my MP3 player habits when I was younger. I used to have to manually pick tracks from my computer’s library to download to my portable player. Since undergrad, though, I’ve had this Spotify playlist I shuffle for about the same purpose. My rotating set usually has between 15O and 25O songs. I prefer under about 18O. 《Violet Evergarden》 tracks comprise a good chunk of the newest.

Maps and playlist ready, I powered on the mighty truck and lurched it forward. As the high vehicle entered the street, I imagined Dad saying something annoying like, it’s a great vehicle for picking up chicks. Sure, it’s certainly spacious, but I prefer modest rides. If my vehicle were to make a statement, I’d rather it concern the planet not status. Still, I work with what we have.

Familiarly, I drove the streets I’d trained on three months earlier to secure my driver’s license. While the truck was the largest thing I’d driven here, roads’ rules were the same. I brought the truck to 24 miles per hour except when stop signs appeared. I piloted from the neighborhood to the main road, where I brought our speed to 33. Then I began north toward the shopping center along streets I’d walked with in middle school.

Arriving, I located the Bed, Bath & Beyond parking lot. Two of my former Residence Hall Association coworkers, including one whose FarmHouse fraternity brother I had become, would wed this May. So, I’d ordered an item from their gift registry to pick up. Afer sitting in Vegas heat, a woman brought me the gift. Success!

Across the Vegas Valley

Gift in possession, I powered back on the truck to begin my first road trip across the Vegas valley. I’d decided against taking freeways, since I figured proverbially that I’d better know how to walk before I run. Besides, Ma hadn’t liked highways. She’d traveled Vegas fine. So, I opted for major side streets.

I regretted avoiding freeways. Perhaps a dozen signal lights in, I realized that much of the trip felt more “stop” than “go.” I sorely underestimated how few roads let me bring the speed up to 44 mph. 35 zones seemed far more the norm.

Yet, I found the southbound view of Boulder Highway breathtaking. I hadn’t foreseen this urban desert’s beauty. The long road showcased the valley flora's summer embrace. I recalled a similar ride 'round Reno with a close college friend before we’d graduated. While I still resolved today to try the freeway back, my journey felt worthwhile.

Environmentalism For Earth Day

As I steered left off the highway nearing the Vegas Wash, its immensity awed me. I slowed the truck as I neared the parking area. With luck, I backed the truck into a spacious place near trees.

I donned the white Panamá-looking hat from my Mongol host family, hopped out and walked to tents where volunteers looked ready to sign folks in. I picked up and put on branded swag like blue planting gloves, a black face mask and a clear clip-on hand sanitizer. I then followed a dirt trail along the Wash. I was wearing too my ol' hiking shoes Mom had bought me mid-way through my college freshman year. To my surprise, the still fit!

I emerged soon where folks were taking potted shrubberies to flag-marked holes. There my RPCV friend found me. This was our first in person meet-up, so I felt surprised how easily he recognized me. He introduced me to his Kyrgyz wife and one of their kids who’d come to serve too. My friend's daughter was sick at home, but this was his son. We chatted a bit about fermented mare's milk, a drink common to both Kyrgyz and Mongols!

I asked him about the service project. He shared how these projects happen here annually. The flowers and shrubs we'd plant would help filter the Wash. I remembered my Key Club and CKI days and felt amazed that our clubs hadn’t participated. Still, as an RPCV, I found that my love of service remained. I carried plants back and forth, burying them throughout the grid.

After we concluded planting, we returned to check-in. Jimmy John’s to-go boxes awaited us volunteers. I walked with my friend to his vehicle, and we wished each other well. I strolled back to the Wash.

A roadrunner stood on a short cement wall by the water. Then it hopped off and disappeared. So, I hopped up, sat down and removed my visor, face mask and gloves. I like nature. I enjoyed the Wash, my chips and a sandwich.

I felt both stronger and vulnerable. When I finished here, no one would come get me. I got to choose when and how I'd head home. So, mistakes were on me, too.

I didn’t like heat much. I finished my food, saved the cookie and walked back to the truck. Heading back before I tired would keep me safer for my hour-long journey home.

“What If I?”

As I drove back toward Boulder Highway, a new thought came: What if I turned left instead of right?

I could visit Mom's grave. She was buried in the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery half an hour south. Dad hadn’t replied whether we’d visit it the Saturday after, being the fourth anniversary of Mom’s passing. I felt a twinge to go now.

But my phone had already lost half its battery. I’d had it on the hour-long drive to reach here. I wanted to still have Maps to help me navigate, as I would soon take on my first valley-wide freeways.

When two desert roads diverged, I took the one I’d traveled by.

Then freeway traffic sucked. But I think I still made better time. There was the difference.

Vegas and Mothers' Day

The next day, which was the Sunday before Mothers’ Day 2O2I, I took back up the task of sorting Mom’s former belongings. My pa had wanted me to organize the room where he’d been letting me stay in the Vegas house, too. Part of organizing that room meant I’d need to move out my mother’s clothes that siblings and I saved. Last spring’s garage clean-up led me to know that we had both plenty of space and large containers. While I worked, I listened to 《Violet Evergarden》 tracks.

Sight and Touch

On one of my sister Becky's visits, she and I ventured into Mom's closet to box and bag Mom's clothes to send to our stepmother’s family in the Philippines or donate. Working with Tita later, I'd identified some to keep. I hung those in the closet of the Vegas room where I was staying.

We'd kept clothes that were either extremely familiar, like her lavender and mauve ones, or rather unique, like suits and Chinese attire. Many of these clothes, I hadn't known Mom had. Not until after her death had I seen these dresses and sweaters. I wondered when she’d last worn them, in what stages of life. She must have liked them enough to have kept them all these years.

In my room, I unhooked Mom’s clothes from the closet and laid them in a large grey plastic bin with a green lid. Its shape reminded me of a coffin, though this was smaller, more rectangular and less imposing. I tried pushing away the coffin thought.

I laid in Mom’s clothes by Marie Kondo’s method, according to thickness. Thus, “最后的，最厚的” /zuìhòu de, zuì hòu de/, the furthest back, the thickest. I placed Mom's Chinese traditional clothes closest to the surface. I supposed that if any of us sought her clothes, perhaps we’d want to see those first.

I was placing the last of Mom's clothes, white and green silk, when I stopped suddenly.

Patterning looked familiar. I turned back to the closet, to its right half where I kept my clothes. I found my Chinese-style shirt I'd purchased in 北京 Běijīng 2OI7. I took my black and red shirt and laid it beside Mom's Chinese clothing.

The patterns similarly repeated stitched dragons and fish on shimmering silk.

Perhaps these were common patterns. But the coincidence felt uncanny. In China after Mom died, I’d made my purchase for thinking the shirt I found looked cool. Now I wondered, had Mom influenced what drew me to choose mine? For had she been there in person, perhaps she'd have recommended the same.

I exhaled a shaky breath. The shirt I'd bought resembled ones I didn't know my mom wore and kept.

“Across the Violet Sky” was playing—an emotional sound.

Mom was with me perhaps.

Sandals, Years Later

On the Thursday that preceded my drive to Saturday’s service event, I needed to get shopping done.

Older Brother wasn’t busy, so he drove me to the North 5th plaza our family had frequented when we were in junior high and high school. Pops now wanted me to replace my plaid slippers, and I’d also noticed my black sandals getting slick on smooth floors. If I went back to Mongolia, I’d need better wear. Ross tended to be my first choice.

Entering with Brother, I recalled that spring 2OI7 trip when Mom took me to this very store before I left for China. Back then, luggage, shoes and sandals were along the right wall. Now they were along the left. We hadn’t needed to sanitize our hands back then, either. But it’s good practice.

A new thought struck me as I tried on sandals. I’d come to replace the very pair that Mom had bought me in this very store. They’d lasted me all these years, back and forth to China and Asia.

Earlier that week, on the Tuesday when I’d leave Reno, I felt amused. I was telling my pastor after we taped the Proclamation how I’d fly to Vegas that night. He mused how they’d need to find someone to fill my sandals.

I prefer sandals to shoes when the weather’s nice. “They’re comfy and easy to wear.” As an inside joke, because our Proclamation recordings don’t tend to show our feet or much below our waists, viewers don’t tend to see whether we’re totally dressed for Sunday Mass. When permissible, I even prefer walking barefoot!

Anyway, I realized on this seemingly mundane Ross trip to find slippers (which I ultimately ordered online) that I’d returned to the same place to replace sandals Mom got me for my first overseas trip.

Having had a long day, I spent some time that evening while finishing my April 2O2I blog story browsing the web. A particular article caught my eye noting how people can visit dozens of real places from the film, “La La Land.” I felt surprised to think that people can actually swing by the film’s iconic locales. I loved that movie.

Coincidences

The day after sorting Mom’s clothes, Monday, my sister Becky messaged me if I or our siblings would come to L.A. for her graduation. It’d be the next Saturday, May 15. I didn’t conflict with any other graduation events that I’d sought to attend. So, I offered to fly in to visit.

Writing of L.A., I also remembered a friend to whom I’d been talking had said she was living there. The evening of after I stowed Mom's clothes, we’d reconnected for the first time in months. In fact, we'd be chatting over video later that night. I let my friend know that I’d be in the city and asked if she recommended places to see.

My friend suggested Hollywood.

Then I remembered—that “LA LA LAND” ARTICLE!

I also realized in that moment that the film's title contains “L.A.” three times. I doubt that that was a coincidence.

Anyway, I felt super stoked for the trip. Not only could I see my sister and my friend—I could see where filmmakers taped my all-time favorite film.

Final Vaccination

Knowing I'd be off to L.A. made receiving my second Pfizer dose against COVID-I9 more exciting. Two days after making arrangements with my sister came Wednesday, Cinco de Mayo. I’d scheduled from Reno to get my last dose in Vegas.

Brother was busy, so I drove again the pick-up. My appointment at one of the College of Southern Nevada campuses. While my pastor had taken me to my Reno appointment, I was on my own today.

Campus didn’t have many signs to indicate where to go. I asked a woman behind a desk, and she told me which way to head outside to find the site. Sprinting to make up lost time, I arrived and showed my verification. All went smoothly, though the National Guard vaccinating me asked where I’d gotten my vaccination card. Turns out that Washoe and Clark had different-looking ones.

I proceeded to a waiting area after. The Guard didn’t say to wait before I left, but I remembered Reno. I took a selfie and posted it to my Story: “Let’s get vaccinated!”

I heard a pop song and thought it sounded nice. I looked it up and felt surprised to learn it was Justin Bieber’s “Holy.” I used to despise the guy’s songs. But, this one made up for it. I like to let go of negativity.

Fourth Anniversary

That Saturday, May 8, 202I came the fourth anniversary of my mother’s passing. Dad had come back to town and indeed agreed with my hope for us to visit Mom’s grave. The trip would also be our first May visit with my stepmom, who borrowed my ol' Key Club fire visor. She’d joined our trip last August as well, for Mom’s birthday, I think.

Getting into Boulder City, we visited first the 99¢ Only Store—Dad’s tradition here.

Dad dropped off Tita and me at the entrance while he went to park. Tita asked whether to get fake flowers again or real ones, so I suggested real. I feel like fake flowers at gravesites seem weird.

Afterward, Tita requested that I pick out graduation cards for my sister Becky, our other sister’s boyfriend and my older brother’s girlfriend. It was at that time I realized that many folks I knew had graduation ceremonies this spring.

Cemetery

Once we got what we needed and Dad did his browsing across the store, we at last made our way to the cemetery. I found first the gravestone of our family friend, Tom Wood. His was on the edge of a row, making his easy to spot. Grasses had started to cover many of the words.

Ants crowded around his stone, so I didn’t stay long. I’d been trying my new sandals and wanted to avoid getting bitten. My recent binging of Kurzgesagt videos led me to know that ants can be intense. Still, beside Papa and Tita, I said my prayers in thanks to God and our friend who’d helped introduce my siblings and me to making the most of our educations in Vegas.

Then I walked over to Mom’s grave. Hers was nearby, across the road. Dad’s friend and my mom both perished on the same day, May 8, 2OI7.

Mom’s grave isn’t hard to find walking from between a tree and a bench by a trash can then down a few rows. From the ground, I popped out a metal cylinder and filled it at nearby faucet. Tita and I would then set into it some of the purple and white flowers she’d purchased for both graves.

In times like these, I tend to want to talk, but Dad looked quieter than usual. So, I let him have his peace. I wish he’d open up more. I guess that from his patriarchal generation or military service, fathers didn’t believe that sons needed to know their feelings.

Meanwhile, maybe the summer-like lush trees here contrasted Reno’s spring. Or perhaps my thoughts of “La La Land” reminded me of what was on my mind when we first visited this Boulder graveyard. Regardless, I felt transported back to 2OI7.

After personal little prayers, I and Dad recounted to Tita how the area looked back then—how we’d buried Mom in a dirt space at what was the section's edge. But now there are more grasses and grave markers for rows from 2OI8, 2OI9, 2O2O and 2O2I.

We noticed a youngish adult woman who seemed a bit frazzled. She held numerous colorful objects including large flowers, searching for something. Tita and I asked her, and she said she was looking for her parents, who’d passed away in 2OI7 and 2OI9. Tita, Dad and I helped her look. We scanned the ground beyond my mother. We found the parents. I felt glad.

Mothers’ Day

The next morning was Mothers’ Day. Since the holiday falls on May's second Sunday, Mothers' Day most always follows Mom's death day.

This year would be my first time celebrating Mothers' Day with my stepmom. We and her daughters convened at a Lucille's Smokehouse Bar-B-Que, which served meals in large portions. It was Tita’s baby grandson’s first time in crowded public, too! I enjoyed watching the way that baby Luke stared with wide eyes at us. White noise didn't faze him.

That day I’d I wrapped the Bed, Bath & Beyond gift that I’d bought for my friends to wed later in May. Pops, Tita and I readied anything else we’d need for the road trip back to Reno. Then began our journey again.

Into Graduations and May’s End

Friday, May 14 would celebrate the Baccalaureate Mass of lovely student coordinators and friends from my undergrad. The next morning, Saturday, May 15, I’d fly with my youngest siblings to L.A. for our sister Becky’s graduation. Then I’d stay behind an extra day for my friend and “La La Land” adventures.

That Wednesday would mark the 2Ist birthday of my youngest sister, Vana, as well as the day when I’d be fully inoculated, May 19! That Saturday my L.A. sister would then drive through Reno, where we’d sing karaoke.

Pentecost would follow on the Sunday after, May 23. Then would be May 3O and the trip with fraternity brothers to California for the long-awaited wedding of my undergrad coworkers—one of whom was also our fraternity brother. Weddings of peers feel so special.

I’ll probably have a second blog story themed around May 2O2I, given its abundance of activities. This summer I’m delighted mid-June to visit the Bay Area and a childhood friend I haven’t seen in a decade. Then at June’s end, after supporting virtual Boys’ State, I'll journey to Seattle to see Becky before my 24th birthday.

I still hope to return abroad this fall, but January 2O22 seems more likely now. Regardless, I’m doing my best to be ready when my time comes. I’ve enjoyed my year back in America. I hope that wherever I go next, I’ll remember with gratitude this life.

You can read more from me here at DanielLang.me :)

[occupyscifi]

The astronaut lost in time

As soon as I awoke I knew something had gone wrong with my re-entry. NASA had many rooms in many hospitals but none had crumbling brick walls covered in a hundred years of soot and grime. Nor would NASA have left me in nothing but the torn rags of a spacesuit and wrapped in filthy sheets. Or in a room of cot like beds that stank of the sea and of mildew and the oddities of air conditioning that probably hadn’t been cleaned since the days of Christ.

I sat up alertly, there was always training on what happened if you landed in enemy territory. These days it was only North Korea that counted, and if you landed there your luck was against you anyway. However I doubted that even they would be strange enough to house me in what looked like a cross between a homeless hostel and a Rio prison.

There was no one around me, and that was a blessing because as soon as I looked from the one thin window – shaped like the arrow holes of medieval castles – I realised that my previous assessment was incorrect. By several degrees of magnitude. There wasn’t a word yet for how wrong things had gone, there wasn’t even a way to express it mathematical terms. To say it was totally fucked was not nearly strong enough.

The city I was looking over was one I didn’t recognise, and I don’t mean I was in a country foreign to me. I mean that the city itself was achingly familiar, one I had known intimately in my youth, but it was one changed totally it was impossible to describe. Tower blocks that might have been the one I had my first apartment in were nothing but concrete shells, still occupied but resembling nothing so much as shanty towns in the sky. Blue tarpaulins waved in the breeze on the ninth floor. Washing lines strung out between two concrete hulks that had been the headquarters of a major international bank. I saw children playing only inches from a hundred foot drop, saw them walk on age thinned beams where the floors had fallen through.

Underneath them the whole plan of the city had been worn away, as if it had been eroded by an ocean. Where once angular buildings had marched to the horizon in orderly dignity there just sat shapeless lumps in concrete and brick. Some had clearly suffered damage in wars unknown to me, and others had been cannibalised to build what looked like fortifications. I saw the white stone that had formed the Mayoral office and city hall- a wonderpiece of modern neo classical design- re used to make something that looked more like a bastardised medieval wall for the crumbling spires of the city’s famous College.

“why?” I muttered to myself “since when in the name of god does a College need a fucking defensive wall?”

“S’colussi man” came a voice snuffling from behind me “They’s gonna be attacking toot sweet. s’why we’re getting the fuck out”

I turned around sharply, ready to deal with the danger by using my Navy training. Most astros were civilian these days, but not me. Major Kurt Willis had done his time. Navy pilots still had a place in the modern civilian space program. However the person I was looking at looked less threatening than the average hobo. The person – their gender was impossible to discern – was as shapeless as the city and as beaten down. I had seen tramps in New York and Damascus, seen homeless people beaten and lost from the world. They looked like model citizens compared with this creature. A face that looked like it had only known hard fists and a body hidden under so many layers of clothing that a veritable history of cheap fashion stood before me.

“what?” I said “who’s the colussi? What’s happening here?”

“you forgot again” the tramp said sadly, fingering my rags “wish I had that. You spacemen. Got all the luck” a calculating look in the eye that suggested somewhere an intelligence dimmed by drink or drugs was trying to stage a comeback “then again, maybe not. Time and all that”

“what the hell are you talking about...” I began but I was interrupted by boom from outside.

“no time, man” said the tramp, and began to run towards the door. I turned and looked out the window again. Five seconds later I was running after the tramp.

I had glimpsed out the window the true nightmare of the world I had found myself in. As I turned I saw what had caused the boom, halfway up one of the concrete towers a cloud of dust and pulverised stone was raining down onto the streets below. Then I saw the source of the blast. On the streets far below a column of tanks, their camouflage green looking more like mould than something for battle. As I watched they crunched over the brick rubble, their turrets swivelling back and forth. I glimpsed enough to wonder at them, I am a keen observer of military equipment and though their make and model was more than familiar it left more questions than answers. Why use WWII tanks, and why did they look more like the plastic models a child might put together than the sort of thing a military force might use? However it was what I saw next that finally sent me running.

  Some years before my fateful launch I took a holiday in Rome with a sweetheart. We did the usual rounds of museums and ruins, and it was all very romantic. However a ruined empire seemed more like a sad sight of what humanity had lost than a chance to lick Gelato and walk along the Tiber. Nonetheless I remember seeing in the courtyard of the Capitoline museum the remains of a giant statue of the emperor Constantine. I remember being taken aback by the size of this sculpture- how huge must it have been when fully built? What great skill and ambition had belonged to those that had built it?

What I saw walking towards that line of tanks, hurling blocks of masonry like they were tennis balls was a living breathing version of that statue. In a blinding insight I knew what the colussi must have been. In another I realised what would happen to be in the crossfire between those tanks and that monster. So I fled to wherever the tramp was heading. To have survived in such a world so long must have imbued him or her with certain instincts about self preservation.

The room I had woken up in lead out onto a sky garden, cut up by walls into what might have once been bijou little chalets. Now they had the look more of a refugee camp, and I saw I wasn’t the only one fleeing. From the roof of the building I had a panorama of the city, of hills to the west and a winding river and the shining sea to the east. However my memories of the land around the city where a swirling chaos. I knew I had to escape, but to where? And how?

More immediate thoughts struck me. I joined the flow of men and women down echoing concrete stairs, disconcertingly these seemed as ancient as the brick in my room. The steps were worn down to the reinforcing steel which had been polished bright by the passage of many feet. I wondered how many centuries it might have taken and many feet must have passed to cause such erosion. I also wondered why it was ever needed at all. All of the apartment blocks in the city boasted elevators, then I noticed what lit the walls as we hurried down. What looked like electric lights were nothing of the sort. I thought at first they were lumps of some luminescent material, some invention I had missed that lit the darkness without needing power. Then I saw one of them move and I realised they were living creatures, thick and wormlike who crawled slowly across the walls and the ceiling, going about their own sickening progress. I saw as one child reached out almost absent mindedly and peeled one from the wall as he passed. It glowed in his hands and I thought he meant to use it as a torch till he bit off its head and chewed loudly.

“you wanna bit?” he asked, taking my look of horror for one of hunger. I quickly shook my head, thinking I might never be hungry again if this was the cuisine of my new home.

Eventually the stairs let out onto a narrow precinct of what had probably once been a ground level mall. Concrete pillars still advertised wares that were somewhat familiar to me but hinted at some future developments. What were these addons and why were the brand icons featuring emojis with extra hands or simply pictures of an engorged penis? Why were there biohazard symbols next to signs for a toyshop?

Alas there were to be no answers, for the original shops there were no signs, just endless milling people and stalls the like of which you would see on the streets of an undeveloped country. Stalls that were nothing but carts jury built from chunks of plastic lashed together with rope. Stalls that sold items that were nine tenths nonsense and one tenth remembered folk remedy. Tourist handbags jostled next to pharmaceutical goods and dismembered dried animals parts. However I had no time to watch, for I was as keen to get out of here than I was anything else. For not all the people in that underground precinct were civilians.

When you have been in the military of any country you get to recognise soldiers and groups of solders. It doesn’t matter their age, whether they have uniforms or whether they even have weapons. There is a certain stance, a certain way they look at the people around them, a wariness mixed with a pitilessness that suggests they are now outside the rules of the rest of the world and will act accordingly. I imagine it’s the way that slaughterhouse workers look at pigs when they arrive from the farm. It was not a look I wanted aimed at me, and it was certainly not a look I wanted from this group.

I had known, of course, that in many conflict child soldiers were common. That, along with mass rape, is one of the heartbreaking tragedies of most of the wars in human history. However I had not expected, in the heart of the city I had known since childhood, to encounter it. Then again all I had encountered since waking had filled my heart with dread and horror. The sight, though, of twelve and thirteen year old boys and girls moving through that crowd with the determination and single mindedness of soldiers just about broke me. Before I knew what I was doing I was moving towards them rather than away. A part of me wondered what exactly I was going to do, but I’d helped run Scout troops for kids this age. I’d helped them in survival training and I’d realised long since the essential difference that exists between adult and child and even more the essential difference that exists between soldier and civilian. Bad enough that a grown man could kill another, even worse that a child could do it.

“where are you all going?” I asked of the girl in front, her only uniform the hastily biro-ed on designs that covered her bare arms and the warpaint in rainbow shades running in a line across the bridge of her nose and her sharp cheekbones.

“we’re taking the city, boss” she said, her eyes pitiless but recognising in me something of the soldier I saw in her “Colussi Magnus is king in this town and the science fags at the college is gonna get one hell of a surprise”

“who?” I asked “look, I’m not from round here” I added “I’m new”

“you looks old to me” said the girl, regarding the filthy ruin of my clothes and I noticed that instead of boots on my feet there were just plastic wraps, like I was some medieval peasant in some ancient ballad “they got the city” she said “ent for long. Them whitecoats got all the tech. They can breed up a bunch of tanks but they can’t stop the colussi. Can’t stop them at all”

“they’ve got technology?” I asked, regarding the girl’s weapon of a plastic rifle. At first I had hoped it was just a prop but the bandolier of bullets around her waist was real enough. I remembered certain breakthroughs in 3D printing technology. The ease of making solid objects strong enough to fire a bullet. The fact that she had decorated the weapon with tiny glittery stickers of unicorns and rainbows made me even keener to get away from this hellhole.

“they got’s monsters” said the girl, nodding at one of her lieutenants as he ran to secure an exit “and horrors and the like. Magnus says they’re evil and so’s were gonna take em down” her face brightened “you can come, if you like. It’ll be rad fun”

“I’ll let you know” I said cagily “I have to run some errands first. Which way are you going?”

“underground” she said, pointing somewhere to the left “we’ll come up right underneath and give them a hella surprise” she grinned and I noticed that most of her teeth were black and rotted away.

“sounds lovely” I said, and hurried past them.

I figured, of course, that if there was anywhere that still might make sense, where the light of technology and not insanity might shine then it would be the City College. I had also figured that while many things might change the basic layout of the city might not, after all the city of london still had Roman roads with Roman names long after the Romans had gone. While I could only guess how long I had been away- I feared it had to be measured in the centuries- I thought at least the paths I had known that lead to the College might still exist.

Thus I thought if I could get out onto street level I could get my bearings and get towards the university before the band of child soldiers did. If there was anyone to stop me from the College then I could bargain the knowledge of the impending attack, and while I was not naive enough to think it might spare those poor girls and boys lives it might at least prevent some greater bloodshed. For it was obvious to me that whatever insanity had broken out that the last place of rationality and reason would be the college. There they could explain why it was I had woken up not in care of NASA but in this hellish third world version of my cherished home. They might even, and this was a stretch but a person needs hope more than anything, able to get me back to where I should be.

Thus as I burst from one exit onto a rubble choked street I had, not a positive feeling, but one at least of mission. I was lucky, therefore, to still be paying attention enough to realise that I had blundered into the middle of a firefight.

To my left, down the broad boulevard of what had been the older part of town, there were the armies of the colussi. I thanked god I saw not the monstrous commanding beast himself but instead the ragged armies of tramps and lost young things. On the right, coming around the corner of the sandstone edifice that had been a 1920’s department store but was now a melted looking mausoleum, were a line of tanks. I had arrived in the brief pause between their realisation of each others presence and the inevitability of a firefight. In that hushed moment I made my decision.

Seeing that on my side of the street there was nothing but empty buildings, pyramids of bricks and totem poles that had strung on them what I hoped were old shop dummies I knew I could not stay where I was. The College could be reached from the other side of the street, but if I lingered long then I would never make it. I started running just as the first shout went up from the child army. I had reached the dismembered stump of a poplar tree, one of an avenue that had once run down the middle of the street, when the first tank shell whistled down the street to turn a pack of child soldiers into a mass of burning meat.

After that battle was joined and I ran as if the hounds of hell were after me. I could see children that looked no more than ten set up a stand for a machine gun that fired gaily coloured tracer rounds that punched through the armour of the tanks like they were made of paper. One disturbing glance that I hoped was a hallucination was that the holes in the tank bled bright yellow gunk. However I had no time for a double take, knowing that either side would cheerfully butcher me without even giving a second glance. I was also focused in finding somewhere across the street where I could shelter.

 Luckily I noticed a miraculously undamaged storefront, the door invitingly open. I knew all these stores had back entrances for loading and unloading, and knew the tiny backstreets beyond would lead me straight to the college. I leapt over mounds of rubble, swerved to avoid the hail of tracer fire and ducked under a fallen concrete sculpture that seemed to bear a resemblance to some children’s cartoon character. As the road exploded behind me I reached gratefully for the shop entrance and there my luck ran out.

I remember when I was younger I visited a city facing bankruptcy, where all the jobs had gone oversees and all the shops left derelict. The city council, in one last show of defiance spent their budget on two things, the first was flowers so that the city would always be in bloom even if it were half abandoned, and the other was massive posters for the shop fronts. These posters were a fantasy of what the city council wished were there. There were pictures of chemists shopfronts and artesanal cheese shops, libraries and art galleries, bakeries and toyshops. Thus the city council decorated its abandoned shops with the imitation of life and could pretend their city was not dead, in much the same way as makeup can be added to a corpse to give the pretence of life – and with about the same sense of creepiness.

It was my misfortune to mistake one of these lifesize posters for a real shop, and its imitation door for a real one. My fingers scrabbled at a picture of a door that would never open, banging on plastic printed windows that would never break, let alone open. Behind me the street erupted into deadly war and I was left without even the hope of shelter.

It was at the moment I was expecting death that I reached salvation. Perhaps it was a memory from the distant pass or the final breath of a god that had clearly long abandoned his people but as the haze of smoke momentarily cleared I realised that from this angle I could see a gap in the wall of the shapeless bulk of the department store. Pausing only to glance once at the horrors of the battle I ran and dived through that gap, taking with me the noise of battle and the chatter of automatic weapons fire. Grovelling in the dirt and dark, the bright light of the day had left after images on my eyes that had left me momentarily blinded. However I assumed that whatever horrors might lurk for me here could be no worse than that left for me outside.

Soon my eyes got used to the gloom and I saw that where I lay had clearly gone through many transformations in the aeons since I had last come here, shopping with my mother when I was a child. What was left of the walls had been stripped back to the hard stone and onto them painted images of a crude, though arresting, quality. I was reminded of something close to cave art but more the medieval images of life and death, heaven and hell that were common in Mediterranean chapels. It was only the figures involved that I found alien, till I realised that most of them were characters from familiar film franchises, but now rendered in crude pigments. I could make out masked figures fighting with bright glowing red and blue swords. Saw others swooping and diving on broomsticks.

However many of these were faint, and had been coloured over by newer works. Those I did not need an introduction to, but still they filled me with horror. For I had hoped that the colussi might refer to a singular gargantuan monster that roamed the city I had once loved. But from the crudely scratched frieze upon the wall showed me many of them, figures that were superficially similar enough to place in the same pantheon but different even in their simplistic painting. I moved closer, crushing underfoot what I hoped were not bones, to look at them in greater detail. There at the head was the one figure I had seen, his name underneath rendered in letters that were alien to me but might have been the bastardised half remembered descendant of written English. But then again it might have just been gibberish.

The other figures alike looked Romanesque, their heads covered with bronzed helmets bigger than the average car. Eyes stared out emptily yet still retained a cruel contempt that I felt even in their drawn form, and at their feet tiny stick men and women ran back and forth. There was what looked like a temple built from a ruined apartment building and I didn’t need to understand the crude words to know what was going on. Human sacrifice is very hard to mistake for anything else.

I would have lingered longer to try and make sense of what little history I could glean from these barely literate walls but I could still hear fighting and the sound of impact rocked the building. I had to keep moving, for it would not be long before the child soldiers found this room and I could not be sure they wouldn’t take me for an enemy.

I made my way deeper into the gloom, reaching out by memory to where the elevators and the stairs had been. If I recalled correctly the department store had entrances and exits on all four sides, but like all department stores was a labyrinth at the best of times. Now, the centuries having not been kind and its residents even less so, I was not convinced of my navigation.

However I managed after several tries to get myself into the central atrium, one that in imitating certain Spanish houses was a single shaft that had led up to a glass ceiling four floors above. That glass ceiling had long gone, along with much of the fourth floor itself, but its purpose still was fulfilled. From here at least I could spy where I was and which way to go. Gingerly I climbed the mounds of rubbish and tried to work out which way was the exit. I would have remained there quite some time, had I not been hailed from above by a friendly, though not familiar voice.

 “ah!” the voice cried richly “its you!” I looked up to see a well fed face in a fur coat and Nike tracksuit calling me from the second floor. He held in his hand a glass of what might well have been champagne and was cheerfully waving “come on up, you’ll enjoy this”

I was about to cry something out in reply, but once I had got over my surprise the figure had already pulled back his pomaded head.

I was torn, for while it might have been prudent to carry on my way – all the better to get out of this hellhole – the thought that someone recognised me was not something I could ignore. Against my better instincts then I made my way up the battered staircase, one that had been clearly replaced several times since last I had trod on it. This time with simple planks of what looked like some kind of plastic material had been hammered in place. Carefully I walked up, neither trusting what I was walking in nor what I was about to walk into. Both were things that I feared would turn against me very soon, for there was nothing in this world that did not stink of either decay or madness.

However I reached the second floor intact and made my way towards the sound, not of fighting this time, but of cultivated voices chatting amicably away. I walked through a tall doorway into what might once have been some kind of executive dining area but like everything else in the city had suffered centuries of neglect and some rather obvious looting. However if the room itself had lost some of its grandeur the men and women standing within were determined to make up for it.

I believe they numbered around twenty or so, and while they were dressed outlandishly in clashing styles that seemed to show little regard for fashion or good taste they were clearly people of some degree of wealth. They also seemed to be engaged in the odd sport of watching the fighting below with the same degree of calm detachment had they been watching a game of baseball.

Cautiously I walked forward, knowing that just a stray tank round could bring down this whole room and wary of getting too close to the broad open space where once Art Deco windows had looked down over the broad boulevard.

“looks like the little buggers are getting the better of our science chums, eh?” said the man who had spoken to me before, he gestured over the balcony to the street below. I risked a brief look and saw that many of the tanks lay inert, none of them burning but all of them still bleeding disturbingly from multiple wounds. Several of the child soldiers had taken position behind them and were exchanging fire with other armoured vehicles further down the street. I couldn’t help but notice how the child soldiers were consuming the yellow puslike liquid that wept from the bulletholes in the tank like it was some exquisite candy “perhaps this really is the end, eh?”

I looked at the man next to me, who clearly regarded the fall of his city to the strange forces of the Colussi with a degree of cheerfulness.

“is that a good thing?” I asked, confused still by the company I was keeping.

“oh, I expect the Colussi will have all our throats slit” he said with a smile, running a finger across his own neck “probably hang our corpses from the College walls themselves”

“then maybe you should be evacuating” I said, looking fearfully about “or at least getting to the university. The place looks like a fortress”

“oh no, this is much more interesting” he said “besides, we live, we die, we live again”

“err, what?” I asked, not sure if he was serious about his religious ravings. Who knew what these people believed in? All I knew for sure was that he wasn’t coming back from execution “how does that work?”

“same as its always done my friend” beamed the man, explaining to me as if I was an idiot “have you forgotten again?”

“forgotten what?” I asked, remembering how the tramp had suggested the same. A nasty feeling was forming in the pit of my stomach.

“to be expected” he said loftily “you aren’t as young as you once were, but then again it’s not seemed to matter how many years have passed. People like you don’t really change very much”

“what do you mean, people like me?” I asked urgently, grabbing him by the furred lapels of his coat “what the fuck do you know about me that I don’t?”

“a lot, clearly” he said, then softened “look, we’ve known each other a while – well a while for me, probably not so long for you. we’ve got a lot in common”

I looked at him in his Nike trainers and fur coat, sipping champagne as the city around him died.

“I doubt that very much” I said “I’ve been here about five hours so far, and nothing has made any sense. I expected to be in mission control by now, but instead I’m in a  crazy fucking city with a bunch of crazy fucking people.  What possibly can we have in common?”

“we’ve both been around. Seen a lot” he said breezily “only you seem to keep forgetting. I suppose that’s an occupational hazard. Your mind is not what it once was”

“what do you mean?”

“age” said the man “it haunts all of us. Well not me. I get to a certain age, then pop my clogs. Just means I wake up in a slime filled vat in the basement of the University. I get a new body every few years. You, well. Let’s just say you’re old fashioned”

“how….how do you know me?” I asked, beginning in terror to see what he might be getting at, but the reality was too horrible to comprehend “how long have I been here?” “we go back” he said, ignoring my second question “way back to when this city was young. Well moderately young at least…”

He continued babbling but already my mind had opened up. I may have had no memory before waking up in that awful garret room but I have a good imagination. I was not newly arrived, my rags were testament enough to that. Had I in fact been here longer than simply today? And if so was I trapped in a loop of forgetting, living each day thinking I was freshly arrived when in fact I had been here for years. Going through the same futile motions again and again?

“I…I forgot?” I asked, looking out over the rubble and the fighting. The armoured cars had now retreated and the cheering children were running delightedly up and down the streets. Some of the older boys had crowbarred open the turret of a tank and were busy scooping out lumps of what looked suspiciously like lobster meat and throwing it cheerfully to the rest. On the margins the other denizens of the city had started to emerge now that the fighting had moved elsewhere. They all looked much the same as the tramp I had met upon waking. The same defeated aimlessness, the same geriatric agelessness. People lacking any purpose or agency, wary and easily startled. They reminded more of pigeons than of people, living on the edges of society. Doing nothing but making do “I must have been here for years” I looked down at my rags. My NASA clothing was hard wearing, I knew that much. It looked like it had been worn very hard, and for a long time.

“don’t be so hard on yourself old bean” said the man next to me, whose name had still not returned to my mind despite his obvious familiarity “like I say, you have your fugues and your little memory blackouts. Takes its toll, but every time you wake up and you try your hardest. Can’t blame a person for that, can we?”

Despite my misery I recognised that at least, the same old fight and fire that had got me into the Navy and then into NASA. The strength of character that even today had prevented me lapsing into denial or insanity. Perhaps it didn’t alter anything that I had always been here, perhaps I could still make some kind of difference.

“the university” I said urgently, turning to my friend “I have to get there. I have to warn them, perhaps together we can still do something”

“ah, still trying then” said my friend, knocking back his drink and briefly baring his teeth against whatever concoction he had in there “good luck to you. we’ll probably see you there, that is the basement isn’t breached and the Colussi decide to torch the whole place” he looked slightly more cheerful at this, as if the end to his cycle of lives might be something worth wishing for.

“I think if anyone has the answer, they do” I said urgently. Thinking that if I had any purpose in this life it was to get to the university and persuade them…well persuade them of something. I was sure I would remember that on the way. However it only took one glance at the street below to tell me I needed to be on my way. The children were capering and running about now they had won their battle, and I knew in my guts it was only a matter of time before the Colussi appeared. That was something I did not think I would ever be ready for.

“this is goodbye then” I said to the strange man who had called me friend.

“no” he said gently as I shook his hand “It really isn’t. but good luck, eh?”

I didn’t have time for any further questions, preferring to make my way back down the stairs to make my way to the back streets. As I did so I could not help but marvel at my own strength of character. How many of the people I had known back home could have dealt so well with being thrown far into the future? How many of them would not have been driven made straight away by the insanity of the world they would find here? No, it did not matter whether I could remember the past or not. What mattered were my actions now, how I behaved whilst I had the chance.

 I almost made it to the university without incident, and yet I believe if I had I would be the poorer for it. For I have always been an atheist, an opinion not dented by my orbiting the jewel of our mother earth, and I never thought I would see a god. Then again as my atheism always contained in it a rejection not just of the existence of god but at the injustice that should god exist that cruelty and horror was allowed to continue. I had often told people that if god did exist, he would have to be the worst kind of asshole imaginable.

Thus, when we unwittingly ran into the colussi, I had my chance to meet a god, and it confirmed my belief that these truly were the worst kind of assholes imaginable.

After the department store I ran through winding streets I almost recognised. There was a canal that I didn’t remember that gave the city a nice festive feel, despite the bodies in the water. Perhaps the festive feel also came from the people who despite looking like disaster victims were intent on having a good time. It may have been racial memory from the days when the city had been a major tourist spot and couples from across the globe would come to walk arm in along its wide boulevards and its enchanting bars. Or maybe it was because with the advent of the colussi each and every person was in fear of death and thus wanted to spend their last hours in alcoholic oblivion.

I ran past bars that were little more than canvases stretched over ruined buildings, along streets thronged with people blackout drunk and wearing not a stitch of clothes. I passed loudspeakers throbbing with music I swear no human being could ever have composed and saw human beings feasting on foods that made me never want to eat again.

All in all it was the very definition of culture shock, and yet I could not shake the familiarity of it. I had to reluctantly agree that man I had met  must have been right, that my memory had flaked out on me and that I had been here a long time. Hardly a surprise that the human mind would rather erase itself than face the shock of what humanity had turned into. I just tried not to think how long it had been, was there an old man face that would peak out at me if I saw a mirror? Was I some toothless old bird who thought he was still a young man? Luckily I did not find out, instead I was too intent on getting to the university.

As I turned away from the crowds and went down a series of tall streets where the only buildings were high tenements I sighed in relief. At least this area was empty. At least here the sound of desperate partying and even more desperate fornication was obscured by the four and five story buildings. I didn’t think that  the reasons for this silence might not be benign, nor that the houses themselves, tattooed head to foot in endless screeds of illegible text, might have some ill will in them.

“mighty strange” I muttered to myself. I could just about make out some of the words on the buildings, it was as if some long insane person had tried to write out an internal monologue consisting mostly of the phrases used in long gone adverts. Strings of superlative adjectives were written crazily on the facade of a brownstone building, rendered in thick white paint. Elsewhere brand symbols were crudely inverted as if created by some aboriginal being who had dreamed them on some kind of spirit quest “mighty, mighty strange”

My reverie, however, was interrupted by something else.

I had assumed the child army would have had little or no training, and that whoever commanded them would have used them as cannon fodder for the enemy guns. I assumed too that children lacked the discipline for any in depth manoeuvres. When the rubble around me erupted with ten or twelve well armed teenagers I was both surprised and a little bit impressed.

“don’t shoot!” I cried, hopeful that they might be keener to follow orders that engage in wonton destruction. To my relief they spared me, thought I realise it was more because I was no threat than anything else.

One boy, the odour of command wafting from him,  strode over to me with all the arrogance a twelve year old could muster and squinted up at my face “oh, its you” he said, then walked on to where a body lay on the floor. What I had thought was a dead human in a dogmask turned out on closer inspection to be some hideous dog human hybrid

“that’s dinner then” he said with obvious joy. With a single vicious movement he pulled from his belt a knife and went about dismembering the creature, passing chunks of flesh to a girl no more than nine years old whose angelic face was spoiled by the blood she kept lapping from the dead beast.

“what do you mean?” I said, going over to the boy. The rest of his soldiers, boys and girls alike, seemed to have no more interest in me and were instead scanning the lines of sight and arranging positions to take as they pressed forward.

“he wants to see you” said the boy in charge, not looking at me as he hacked away at the beast

“who?” I asked  “why?”

“who do you think?” said the boy in an exasperated voice, as if he were the adult and me the child. He gestured behind him with the gore caked knife “him”

I turned around just in time to see the Colussi Magnus step out from around a corner and into the street.

 I had thought myself prepared after a day of horrors for one more, but I was not. I had thought having spied the colussi from the building I had awoken in might take the edge off my shock, but it did not. Coming face to face with a thirty foot tall bronze god in its full armour and regalia cannot be overstated. Those empty eyes. Those long cruel fingers. Those massive sandalled feet that could crush all before it and not care one bit. I looked up at the colussi and I knew instantly why the armies of children had flocked to his banner. I knew as intimately as I knew myself that whilst this figure might be cast in the likeness of a man it was no more a man than a crude stick figure is. And yet I knew that it was not that this was the imitation of a man, rendered in giant form.  Rather it was the perfect form of us, and we had been made as an imperfect copy of the Colussi. I knew I was looking at a god, and I could not tell apart my awe from my horror, my desire to run away from my desire to run and kiss his feet.

The colussi looked at me, his empty eyes going right through me. I could feel him read my life  from my dirtiest secrets to my most shameful lie to the most banal details of my life. I could see him hoover up everything I was and everything I would be and everything I would never be. The thought that I could conceal anything from him, let alone try to fight him, was so absurd to be laughable. That he was even taking an interest in my continued existence was the most remarkable thing about me. Far more than ever going up into space my most thrilling moment was the one where it seemed he actually spared more than two seconds of his precious time to regard me. Tiny, unimportant me.

“no” he said, a voice that moved around my head and came not from his lips – for they were cast of bronze and utterly immobile “no, this is not who I want” for a nanosecond I felt something that on a lesser being be called confusion, or even such a thing as a mistake “not that at all” he added, and with that the laser of his attention turned away and I could breathe again.

“umm, what?” I said, confused and turning to the boy who still whistling as he skinned the poor dead beast. I had the strangest feeling I had been weighed up, judged and found wanting. I just wish I knew why.

“he told you” said the boy, still not turning around “he ‘ent interested. Bad luck for you I guess. Or maybe good luck. Could be either”

I looked back at the god as it stood in the street, its gaze level with the rooftops as it stared out over the city it had set to conquer. Then it turned its gaze back on me, a gaze that had within it all the malevolence a god could summon. When I had merely piqued his interest the attention of the god had been arresting enough, now I had aroused his anger I was stunned into submission. Even the boy next to me could feel it.

“nope, guess its bad luck then. Hope you had a happy life boss, cos now its over”

with that the colussi strode ten feet towards me, its giant hands ready to end my life in less than the amount of time it would take to cross the street. I felt my knees buckle, my ability to resist shattered before it had even begun. I had accepted death before that beast had even reached me to deal it out.

That was when the other colussi appeared.

 To see one god in a day was an awe inspiring experience, to see two was to inspire pant shitting terror. The thought that they might be allies whirled from my mind, for creatures like these there was no other god but them. For while they might unite against the scientists and the whitecoats of popular imagination there was no love lost between them. If you have ever seen two cats war over territory or status then you can imagine this, though instead of felines imagine Bronze monstrosities the size of buildings.

“damn it” said the boy with a sigh, grabbing his weapon and leaping forwards. At the unspoken command of the colossi the children ran towards the newly appeared god. I noticed that he likewise had an army of minors- grubby and undernourished  but fanatically loyal. A young girl with flowers in her hair pulled  up a machine gun and brought down the boy running at her with a hail of fire.

I glanced up at the colossi- both of them staring at each other with such malevolence  it seemed to burn in the air between them. What history of animosity was there between them? What ancient feuds were they now taking out via their child army proxies?

I for one had no desire to find out, and discovering that the attention of the colossi was not upon me decided that it was better to die trying to escape than whatever tortures the colossi might have in store for me.

So I ran, while behind me children who should have been in school cheerfully murdered each other on the whim of two monstrous gods. I ducked down an alleyway that I knew with hallucinatory clarity lead towards the College, and more importantly to a metro station.

I had no illusion, of course, that the metro would be running. No doubt the people who lived down there had evolved into molelike race with dread eldritch rituals. However the metro conveniently had an subway route whereby tender undergraduates might enter the college directly from the metro when the cold of winter was at its worst. This would mean I did not need to scale the large walls that now protected the college, and having seen already what weapons the college possessed I was in no hurry to try and talk my way around them. If I had to talk to the so called scientists it had best be not from the wrong end of a gun.

So with the rattle of machine gun fire and cries of pre teen death I hastened down the ally, seeing my salvation in the broken down remains of the metro station. I just had to pray that there had been no cave ins, or no insane cult had named the station a temple that must remain inviolate.

My luck held. I hammered down worn concrete steps and into the familiar scent of the metro, an aroma overlaid with the all too familiar stink of human beings and burning animal fat. The lights had of course long gone but there were more of those supposedly edible glow worms. By memory I trotted through long rotten halls where a few tramps and lost nomads clung to each other. I wondered why they had not sought shelter in the grounds of the university but as soon as I rounded the corner that should have lead straight into the college I realised why.

Perhaps it had been built recently, or perhaps in some long ago year. It did not matter which but the entrance to my salvation was bricked up and blackened from cooking fires. Desperately I looked for signs of wear and tear or else some weakness in the wall, but alas I could see there was none. It was all I could do not to weep with frustration and give up. Become another lost tramp haunting these tunnels till the colossi came to kill me – I was even dressed for it, my rags perhaps the result of the last time I had given up on the world.

But that thought seemed to galvanise me. It did not matter how many times I had tried this before, what mattered was that I kept going. Images of Knights errant on quests that might cost them their lives, their memories, their sanity went through me. I recalled my navy training, my failures that at the time I felt were the end of the world, but were not. Each time I had been knocked down I had got up again and fought back harder, till I was a part of the space programme. When I qualified for…well I could not remember that part, but suffice to say my presence in this place outside of time must have come about through some mission or other that only I had been qualified for. And my survival through god knew how many years was testament to my grit and determination. I certainly wasn’t going to let some fucking brick wall defeat me.

So I looked around me, engaging the critical and logical faculties that my fellow human beings seem to have long lost. There were more ways, I knew, into the college than just this one. The very tunnels of the metro ran under the college, and the college had a myriad of basements and underground labs. Surely it would not be too much of a stretch to suppose they might meet? And although a part of me thought that these would certainly be bricked up as well I knew better than to suppose that in these end days people were quite so thorough.

So I turned on my heels and sped towards the escalators that lead to the platform. These had long rusted away, leaving only the stone rails like a ski slope into the darkness. I wrinkled my nose, clearly the platforms were not the nest of some blasphemous  cult, but rather the place the local residents used to go for a shit.

Undeterred I prepared to go into the stygian depths, looking about me for essential supplies. These were of course the glow worm creatures that lit the metro station itself. Why they did not go deeper I did not want to imagine. Instead I grabbed first a bundle of stinking rags from the floor, tying up the corners to make a makeshift bag. This I then filled with as many of the creatures as I could pry from the walls and taking one in my hand I stepped fearfully into the noisome mess.

I need not describe the mute horror of my descent, suffice to say that I grew filthy and would have lost my lunch had I even recalled when I last ate. Soon though I was on the platform level, my glow worms lighting the way ahead.

Down this far there seemed little enough damage and wandering along the northern platform it seemed that not much except the passage of time had altered this place. But for the dust and the spread of mould it was not unlike the stop where I remember spending time when I dated a girl at the college. However back then I would not have dropped gently from the edge of the platform and walked into the tunnel. Naturally I kept my distance from the third rail, though I was convinced it must be as dead as the rest of the electricity in this place. That and a lingering fear of the northbound train hurtling through the tunnel were reassuring memories of a lost time.

The tunnel itself was almost featureless, and I scanned it for signs of service hatches or fire escape routes. I had almost given up hope when eventually I spied a fairly ordinary looking door that promised access to the world above. Supposing that I was long past the walls that protected the college and anxious to escape the subterranean world before my glow worms expired I hastened to the door. The only barrier between me and freedom the once firm lock of the door.

However time ruins everything, and steel is no exception to that. It was the work of a few moments with an old lump of concrete to smash the lock to pieces and pull open the warped door. There before me lay steps and, wonder of wonders, electric lights.

I had expected to be lead up to some outbuilding of the college or else onto the lawns of the grounds. In my memory the lawns and the gardens had been prodigious, and although I supposed buildings must have erected in the centuries since I had left I was sure they would not have blocked the exit to the surface. I was somewhat surprised then to find that the rungs of the ladder let me out in another service corridor. This I followed warily, though the electric light comforted me somewhat. Nonetheless I felt a great sense of foreboding, the humming machinery  and cabling growing thicker as I walked. Not least because the lighting itself quickly grew dim, turning into red light that made everything look like the inside of an intestine.

Not knowing the layout I followed my instincts, hoping I would not be some twist of fate find myself inside the walls of the university. Yet I could feel I was below the college, the corridors branching off leading to sub basements that were clearly in use. What their use was I encountered rather abruptly when I stumbled through an open door and into a large chamber.

It must have been built as a storage room for one of the science labs, perhaps for dangerous chemicals or for equipment. However in its centuries  of use it had clearly become home to something else. Something that become clear as my eyes got used to the gloom and made me tremble in terror.

A face. Looking back at me. Eyes wide and sightless. Falling back I hit against cold glass, turning I saw another body, its face wide. It was only as I saw this creature had floating hair I realised that these were tanks, filled with some unknown liquid and these horrifying specimen. As I calmed myself I saw that these tanks were stacked up to the ceiling and each of them had within them a person. I would hesitate to call them human, for while they were certainly humanoid they were more like the creatures I had seen romping around the city or at the banquet with my old nameless friend. Some had long pointed ears, others whose nude bodies revealed nipples like cats and  hands that ended in claws. Others seemed normal except for elongated skulls or extra fingers.

‘mutants?” I whispered, wondering if like the collectors of times past they were bodies of mutated people kept for study by the university. It was only as I looked closer that the tanks I realised I was wrong, very wrong.

Firstly with some horror I realised that these were not dead beings. A pad on the side of each square tank had a monitor showing a heart rate and other vital signs. The second realisation was that these were not natural mutations caused by radioactive fallout or generations of inbreeding. Instead they were clearly man made, and made by the college itself. For under each pad there was a copyright notice, insisting that each of these poor creatures DNA was the sole property of the city college and could not be reproduced without permission. The monogram of the college, unchanged since my time, had been embossed onto the chest of each of them.

“good god” I muttered to myself. But I had no time to be messing around looking at horror. I needed to get to the heart of this place. But how? I was in unfamiliar territory, and while I had a hazy memory of the refectory of the college and its various bars that would not help me now.

“or do I?” I murmured to myself. Seeing these half breeds in their tanks had stirred something in me, and it combined with the man I had met on the balcony’s words not least my friends about how he had been reawakened many times in this place. A distant amnesiac bell began to ring.

Quickly I groped around for the exit. Felt the familiarity of a door handle. The corridor beyond I thought I had been through before, even if just once. Following now I felt memory. A dull throb of fear. Sparkling confusion. I had been here before. I had run through these corridors. What direction I do not know but I felt the rooms fall into my memory neatly. I had been here, and not in my other life. In this one.

Anxious and fearing that this sudden memory was just a break in the clouds, and that I would soon be plunged back into the enveloping fog of amnesia, I rushed on. Past labs where eldritch experiments were being conducted, for which I had no time. Time. That was the thing. Time.

“how could I have been here before?” I said to myself, not caring as I passed white coated men and women who regarded me curiously. Curiously for sure, but not with fear or animosity. As if they already knew me somehow “when was I here? What time….?”

That was when I realised it, the chunk of memory still refusing to unfog but the logic inescapable. It was confirmed for me when I rounded a corner and saw the entrance to a massive chamber filled with ancient machinery. Machinery that I knew from instinct could only have one purpose.

“time!” I breathed to myself as I looked under an archway into the chamber that I realised had been my destination all along “it must be! How else could I remember this place?”

And with this realisation came another, that if I had done this once I could do it again.  I could  undo what had happened,  to save the city and myself from eternal torment.

The chamber housing the time travel gate was filled with milling academics who fussed over the chaos of machinery. However the description of academic does not do justice to the men and women who laboured to get their equipment in working order before the Colussi finally breached the walls. The men looked more like grizzled warriors than professors, their faces bearded and covered in scars. Similarly the women amongst them looked fierce with bird sharp faces and I found myself facing down a forest of small arms as I entered the chamber.

“wait!” I cried,  out of breath from my journey “for the love of god, wait”

“oh” said one of the academics, looking up from the wall of equipment that powered the gate. In that stack I could see technologies from my own time jostling against biotechnology I could not recognise. At the same time there was  machinery I would swear belonged more to the middle ages or even the stone age than a laboratory that had breached the walls of time itself. I also swear that I saw more than one disembodied head, mouth open in a silent scream, who were wired into the machinery. However I had no time for observation and even less for moral judgements “its you” said the academic, then to the others “don’t worry, its harmless”

“look, you have to take me back with you” I said, limping into the room as the academics holstered their weapons and went back to work they considered far more important than me “I can make things better, I can enforce change, I….”

“you?” said the academic, fixing me with a stare that could perhaps have met that of the colussi themselves “you are nothing. You are less than nothing, you are a mistake that should have long since been corrected by fire....”

“Hey” I yelled back “I’m probably the last sane person in this fucking city and I’m your best chance to avert this disaster” I glared about the room, furious that I should be so easily dismissed. I who had been in NASA, who had travelled though time and survived in this madness  “I need to go back to my time. I’m the only one with the knowledge and the contacts. I can get NASA to listen to me, the US government will….”

“I’m sorry” said the academic fixing with weary bloodshot eyes  “you are what now?” he shook his head “if there is anyone sane in this city it certainly isn’t you. Now get the fuck out before I regret my decision to let you live and have you fed to the machine”

“never” I cried, my finger in his face “I’ve got a right to….”

“you’ve got a right to nothing” said the academic “you are nothing”

“I am major Willis of the US Navy” I said, certain of myself now “A NASA astronaut and a time traveller. I demand you send me  back”

The academic looked at me, his face creased in surprise and for a moment I thought he would relent. That my words would have some impact on him. I was right, in a way, but the impact I was looking for was not the gales of laughter that came from him and the other academic around him.

“oh Jesus fucking Christ” said the academic, his tired eyes almost weeping with laughter “still?”

I opened my mouth to reply but was too confused. My memory was still full of holes but my logic felt flawless.

“how many times do we have to go through this?” he began

“look, I’ve worked it out” I gestured at the machinery “I came through this once before, that was how I got here. Decades ago, it must have been. The time travel itself may have scrambled my memory, and I am sure I have frequent fugues but I think I am in control now…”

“must fucking what?” said the academic “ oh come on, take a look at yourself” with that he left his machine and grabbed me about my shoulders. His bearlike grip manhandled me across the chamber to where a mirrored cube stood some ten feet high “take a good look at yourself and tell me what the fuck you are”

I thought at first it was a joke. That the surface of the cube was not mirrored but a glass containing something hideous. Then the perspective clicked and it all came into focus. I wasn’t Major Willis of the US Navy. I wasn’t a fierce warrior or rational man. I wasn’t even a man at all. The person looking back at me was haggard, snaggle toothed and ill favoured. It was also definitely female but judging by the ears I wasn’t entirely sure I qualified as human.

“what….what am I?” I stuttered, my memory flickering as my voice wavered, its cadence I realised much higher than I had realised, the sound  cracked and broken as if I had been living on the streets all my life.

“A fucking mistake” hissed the academic “we made you. In the tanks under the academy. We made you by mistake and you started thinking you were some guy from the dawn of the chaotic age. You aren’t him. I don’t think he was even real, and we certainly aren’t taking him with us to infect the past with the insanity of the present” he growled and pushed me into the corner of the room where I sprawled foolishly “we’ve got one chance to get this right. Once chance to prevent the Colussi from ever being created. To stop all this shit happening” he gestured to one of the armed men “get her the fuck out of here”

However before the soldier could grab me an explosion rocked the lab, ancient instrument falling to the floor and a severed head breaking free of its moorings to quickly asphyxiate on the floor.

“what the hell was that?” cried one of the scientists as he tapped away at a screen. Behind him something like a medieval orrery began to turn “colossi?”

“can’t be” said another, her eyes looking at another screen, bisected by lines showing the view from cameras across the campus “perimeter walls have not been breached”

There was a scream and the sound of gunfire from outside the lab.

“how….how the fuck did they get in Renard?” yelled the female scientist as the armed men rushed out to the corridor beyond.

“they must have….” Began Renard, clearly the burly scientist who had assaulted me, then whipped around to fix me with a murderous gaze “how the fuck did you get in here?”

“I…I found a way” I said defiantly “I’m a navy trained…”

“oh, stop that shit” he said, stomping over to me. In the background the sound of fighting got louder. Now I could hear the shouts of children, gleeful cries as they ran amok in the basements of the College “you didn’t…” he glared at me, looking at the fresh filth that caked my clothes, at the glow worm bag cast beside me “oh you fucking did, didn’t you?” “look, I wasn’t followed. I’d have known…” I began, gasping in pain as he grabbed me by the hair, pulling my head back and staring hard into my eyes.

“you spoke to one. Didn’t you? Which one?”

“I…I…”

“Magnus. Must have been Magnus” Renard strode over to a machine and checked the readings. All around him the other scientists were desperately starting up the machine, flicking switches and stroking bio-machine hybrid creatures. The academic whirled around, a revolver in his hand and pointing at my face. I could see his finger already on the trigger “we can’t have him coming here. Can’t have him….”

However before he could end my miserable existence there was an explosion, knocking Renard off his feet.

“No!” he roared as the first children ran into the room. He took down two with quick shots, blowing out the brains of a boy barely ten years old. However behind the boy  there were a hundred more and with them came the power of the colossi. It was only a matter of time before those bronze  monsters strode into this room, and with them the end of any hope for the human race. Renard realised that and instead began wildly firing at the machines that would have punched a hole in time “destroy it. Blow the fucking thing to pieces…” “but Ren…” began one of the other scientists, but the academic pushed him out of the way.

“we can’t let that monster in here. Can’t let it use the machine. We have to…” But the gods clearly were not smiling on him, before before he could break his creation a limber thirteen year old girl  rushed into the room. With startling speed she leapt onto his back, plunging a knife into his spine. He roared once, flinging the girl against the mirrored cube and putting a bullet in her. But he staggered and fell, the knife wound in his back coursing with blood.

 Now the lab was a symphony of chaos. The few scientists left were bravely putting up a fight but they were outnumbered and desperate, vacillating between trying to disable the machine and stop the army of children. It was a bitter irony that at the moment they had wanted it least the machine finally came to life.

With a burst of colour that the human race has no name for a circle appeared in the middle of the complex orrery that had been spinning and was now crossing into some place out of time.

“stop them…” cried the last scientist, falling under the knives of smiling urchins who butchered her as cheerfully as opening presents on Christmas morning.

For my part I sat huddled in paralysis. I had thought myself one thing and was now revealed to be quite another. I had thought myself a hero, a man of the past who brought with him rationality and survival. Instead I was just some mad old woman with some stupid fantasy, who had unwittingly doomed the entire human race. That I had brought about the very doom I was seeking to prevent hit me with such bitter irony I welcomed the blades that were sure to slit my throat.

“nah, you’re all right gran” said one girl as I prepared to see my maker “colussi’ll thank you for this one. Give you some lovely new memories. Make your right as rain”

“no….no I don’t want…” I began, feeling weak and old and stupid. Flashes of memory now from behind this evil day. That the man on the balcony had been right, we had know each other. He’d known well the mad hag that capered and acted like she was a NASA astronaut. How I’d performed for them, believing I was this great olden times hero but in fact was little more than the fantasy of some mad mongrel creature bred in the labs under the University. Best the children put me out of my misery, I thought, spying the fallen guns of the scientists who’d died because of me. If I could grab one I could end this charade of life.

But then I had a better idea, looking at the curling vortex of energy. I knew that the scientists had aimed their machine at the past, but did not know when. However any fool could tell that any time was better than now. If I could go back far enough I could even prevent this horror from ever happening. Or at least I could die trying.

With that thought in my mind I scrabbled for a gun, grabbing one and firing it madly. Not into the children, for I could not take a child’s life, not for any reason. But instead I wanted simply to see them dash for cover. At the same time I ran for the pulsing light. Some instinct told me that it was the head in its jar that was the essential ingredient to this machine and as I passed I trained my gun upon it. As I passed into the blinding light I fired five quick shots into it. I felt the machine waver, begin to break down and the spinning orrery  began to lose power. Gathering the last of my nerve I dived through the machine, giving myself to death or glory, not caring which it might be.

Lights danced through my skull. I saw the world reverse. A montage of bullets leaving bodies and smoke retreating back to fires. There was a tremor, an error as something broke down. Then everything exploded into light.

 As soon as I awoke I knew something had gone wrong with my re-entry. NASA had many rooms in many hospitals but none had crumbling brick walls that looked covered in a thousand years of soot and grime. Nor would NASA have left me in nothing but the torn rags of a spacesuit in filthy sheets in a room of cot like beds that stank of the sea and of mildew and the oddities of air conditioning that probably hadn’t been cleaned since the days of Christ.

[themoneybuff-blog]

What early retirement was like in 1957 (according to Life magazine)

143 Shares Sometimes I hit the jackpot in my quest to find old material about retirement and early retirement. Last week, for instance, I was reading Early Retirement Dude's history of the financial independence movement when he mentioned a Life magazine photo essay about early retirement from February 1957. Say what? Within minutes, I was reading the article via Google Books. Within an hour, I had ordered not just that issue of Life but three others with retirement articles. Within days, the magazines were on my doorstep. I'm telling you: We live in the future!

I had intended to scan the entire ten-page photo essay for you, but that proved impossible. My scanner only handles 8-1/2 x 11 paper. (What about legal size?) I took the magazines down to the nearest copy shop, but their scanner can't handle Life magazines either. (They're roughly 11 x 14!) So, I've opted to transcribe the bulk of the text for you, and I've included a few photos from the Google archive of this article. Note: I hate Lifes copy editing. I've taken the liberty of formatting things to match my personal sensibility. Long live the Oxford comma! And paragraph breaks. Also, you should be able to click on any of these images to view a larger version. To many young men, retirement is a goal they cannot hope to reach until they are too used up to enjoy it. To many aging work horses, it is a prospect of boredom bred of too much spare time. Between the two extremes, a few men in their 40s and 50s are pushing into a new frontier of retirement retreat from punishing jobs to a life where they still work but no longer under high pressure. Joel Brecheen, now 45, was a building-products salesman making $10,000 a year [equivalent to $91,000 in 2018] but finding himself always out of pocket for time. In 1952, with $13,000 in savings [$119,000 today], he quit, got married, and bought an orange grove near Phoenix. He remodeled a house, built five rentable apartments, tennis courts, and a swimming pool and settled into the family life he wanted to lead, teaching youngsters how to swim and play tennis and improving his property. He had special qualifications that pulled him past the critical point where many who try retirement give up and return to the beaten track. He was an expert do-it-yourselfer and a qualified athletic instructor. Still, he found decompression from high-pressure life hard to take. I'd be plastering one of the apartments, he says, and I'd suddenly think that I ought to be on my way somewhere. From his property and teaching, Brecheen today nets $8000 per year [$73,000 today].

Holy cats! This dude retired with barely more than a year's salary saved. That's ballsy. As you read these anecdotes, keep in mind they're from February 1957. A young adult reading this might have been born in 1930 or 1935. They would have reached traditional retirement age in 1995 or 2000, and they'd likely be nearing ninety now (if they're fortunate enough to still be alive). To put it another way: Warren Buffett was born in 1930. He would have been 26 years old when this issue was published. Odds are good that he read it. Odds are also good that he thought, Man, I'd like to retire early! A romantic retreat to part-time jobs Arthur and Kathryn Lynch had romantic ideas about retirement: They wanted to get away from it all. They also had advantages $30,000 [$274,000 today], no children, and technical knowledge picked up on jobs as research chemists. Four years ago when Arthur Lynch, at 45, was making more money $15,000 a year [$137,000 today] than ever before, they left Pittsburgh to settle on St. John in the Virgin Islands. There, $12,000 went into a house [$110,000 today], and Mr. Lynch put his training to use on the island's power equipment. Both Lynches like manual labor and hire themselves out as handymen. Working part time in a place they love, they net a livable $4000 a year [$36,500 today].

This guy is a little more prepared than the first fellow. He at least has two times his annual salary saved even if he put a big chunk of that into a house. And what about his wife? If she's a research chemist too, how much does she make? If this article were written today, we'd get stats on both partners in this marriage. Aside from the subtle sexism, I feel like these stories could have been written today. When I think about the folks I know who are pursuing early retirement, their lives and thoughts and passions look very similar to those profiled in this piece. I know people who want to retire early so that they can move to some remote country for a romantic retreat. I know folks who want to escape high-pressure jobs in order to pursue something more prosaic. Like the Wertzes (in the excerpt below), Bob Clyatt retired early to focus on art. People want to retire early for a variety of reasons. But our reasons today look an awful lot like the reasons people had in 1957. Getting free to lead a very busy life In 1948, Joseph B. Wertz, a 45-year-old Washington designer under contract with the government to lay out airbase plans, had reached a high-pressure level of success where he had no time for hobbies and too little time for his newly-married wife, Jeanne. So, he gave up his busy life for a life of retirement which has turned out to be every bit as busy. Today, in a made-over stable in New Mexico, he makes pottery and furniture, paints, sculpts, photographs, and does silversmithing. After deciding to retire, the Wertzes scouted the western U.S. in a trailer, looking for the ideal spot for settling down. Facing the river in Santa Fe, they bought a stable and rebuilt it into a rambling adobe house. They live there comfortably on the $4200 annual income from investments [$38,000 today]. Some of the pottery Mr. Wertz makes is so good museums are interested in showing it. Meanwhile, he has a new interest glass blowing.

Having discovered this article and the three other Life magazines with retirement topics I'm now forced to wonder: How many other old articles are out there about early retirement? In college, I loved working on research papers. I loved going to the library, digging out the catalogs of various magazines and journals (some of which were on microfilm), then tracking down the back issues. This project feels like it calls for similar legwork. As awesome as the internet is, it's woefully lacking when it comes to pre-1990 material. Like the U.S. as a whole, the web has a strong recency bias. Do universities still keep huge volumes that index back issues of journals and magazines? I don't know. But I think it would be fun to take a day to go visit a college library to try to do some research on this subject. Finding time to be a father Allen Cook was an airline pilot whose overseas flights kept him too long from his family. He muffed two tries at retirement. Once, he moved to Florida but got cold feet when the monthly pay check was cut off abruptly. Another time, he tried dairy farming in California and wearied of the long milking chores. Such troubles are common to people who try to retire. But Cook kept trying. In 1954, he sold his farm and livestock and bought a motel in Sarasota, Fla. for use as a business and as a residence. Soon, he was able to sell the motel at a profit, buy a house, and devote himself to a business he liked a camera shop in which he had invested. Now 39, he works at the shop full-time during the tourist season but, with a manager to spell him, only half-time the rest of the year. He takes $100 a week [$913 today] out of the till for the family's living expenses and can afford to do what he prizes most: be a full-time father.

I love that the folks at Life had no qualms talking about these men being retired even though they still worked. Nowadays, there's a lot of push-back when somebody says she's retired yet continues to earn money from her labor. We bloggers jokingly talk about the Internet Retirement Police who roam the web calling out folks who don't meet their definition of retirement. I wonder if there were Magazine Retirement Police in 1957, folks who complained that the subjects of this article weren't actually retired. I suspect not. From my reading, this is a new complaint in the past twenty years. Previous generations had no qualm with folks claiming to be both retired and working. Business tied to pleasure, plus the risks For those who retire young, it is often hard to know which part is vocation and which avocation. Warren Rice, 51, Old Lyme, Conn. engineer, and Bruff Olin, 42, a Worcester, Mass. radio-station owner, both left high-pressure lives at different times to settle in Sarasota, Fla., later joined in a sign-making business. With two of us, says Olin, neither knocks his brains out. And we can do business on a beach as well as an office. Edward Dobson, 52, quit a lucrative 15-hour-a-day law and real estate business in Washingtonville, N.Y. and moved to Sarasota. He now dabbles in real estate and two palm tree nurseries and lives on $6000 a year [$55,000 today]. The scarcity of people who achieve this state of relaxed living indicates the hazards. Capital is needed to start and a period of hard labor and discouragement must be faced. Favored regions are flooded with others trying to retire. While one member of the family may adjust to the new life, others may not. Many people are stimulated by their work, feel dismally let down when they give it up. And some, in trading money for time, simply change pressures. But if it works, early retirement can produce the blissful by-product show [in these pages]. As a word of warning, look for more of these history of retirement pieces in the future. I've ordered six or seven old books on the subject, and am now keeping my eye out for more magazine articles about the topic too. 143 Shares https://www.getrichslowly.org/early-retirement-life-magazine/